Akehurst’s confidence in Evans confirmation questioned as Labour right scrambles to avoid proper vote
Labour National Executive Committee (NEC) member Mish Rahman has publicly challenged notorious right-winger Luke Akehurst over Akehurst’s posturing in the media last week about the result of today’s vote on whether to confirm or reject Starmer sidekick David Evans as the party’s general secretary.
Akehurst said that he would ‘welcome’ the vote because it would ‘expose the rather low level of support that [Starmer’s opponents] have’.
But after a week in which a number of unions have lined up against Evans, while even right-run unions are furious with Starmer and Evans for their anti-democratic manoeuvres and a purge of left delegates has looked increasingly unlikely to be enough to save Evans, Rahman asked Akehurst via Twitter whether the notorious right-winger had ‘bottled it’:
Akehurst showed a similar confidence in ‘little support’ for the left in 2015:
In its latest show of desperation, Labour is now trying to avoid having a proper count of the votes on Evans’s future, instead trying to declare a result based on a ‘show of hands’ of a type that has often been abused by the right to bypass democracy in the past.
Someone might need a bigger bottle.
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I am not endorsing this but “Historically no vote has been taken: instead, the chair has told conference how the NEC voted and their pick has been endorsed with ‘aye’s. The chair could therefore choose this path (and their ruling could only be overturned by a two-thirds majority).
https://labourlist.org/2021/09/could-labour-conference-really-reject-general-secretary-david-evans/
Personally I think that in this day and age that the party should be hiring a conference voting system so that effectively every vote was a card vote. Hanging onto the ‘tradition’ of voting by a show of hands or card votes is just a ludicrously outdated waste of time.
It would also save a lot of arguments if we had a definitive vote for every motion.
As McDonnell says, they’re opening themselves up to allegations of vote rigging.
https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1441347521859575828?s=19
lundiel – Unfortunately that didn’t seem to bother ‘the left’ when Jennie Formby stepped in and overruled the Chair’s decision at conference over the Brexit policy vote and then refused to accept legitimate applications for a card vote
Whataboutery is neither here nor there and doesn’t change the fact that Starmer’s Labour are showing themselves to be untrustworthy. You really shouldn’t try to bring a serious lapse of behaviour and democracy down to the level of the playground.
Reprobates and charlatans like Akehurst pick their words very carefully when laying out their lies. Thing is, not even I, nevermind the good delegates who attand a Labour Conference, would – in a public setting – describe themselves as an “opponent” of an elected party leader.
We are not opponents of Sir Elmer the billionaires buddy, we are democratic socialists and we do not oppose the leader, we reject him completely in our democratic socialist souls.
qwertboi – You simply don’t have the numbers to do anything about it and you’ll have even less chance of getting anyone on the ballot paper if the PLP nomination requirements go up from 10 to 20% when this comes before conference at about 5pm tomorrow. This was passed by the NEC today.
Are you finding that his democracy thing can be a bit of a nuisance when you are in the minority.
SteveH – You seem gleeful over the democratic will of Labour members and potential supporters being frustrated by what is basically RW skulduggery.
The PLP RW are setting themselves up as a permanent feature, however unrepresentative they become. They won’t allow CLPs the democratic tools to vote them out. In the US they have Primaries, why should parachuted-in Blairites have seats for life, as if being an MP is a god-given right?
And beyond interal rows, what are Starmer’s crew actually winning, out in the real world? Starmer’s ratings are abysmal, they’ve no new ideas(14,000 essay that says very little) All they’ve got is the King Canute act of trying to stymie the party’s left.
Do you support madatory reselection or open selection, SteveH?
Andy – “Do you support mandatory reselection or open selection, SteveH?”
Of course I do. I also don’t think that the PLP should be able to act as gatekeepers when there is a vacancy. When there is a vacancy any member of the PLP ought to be able to nominate themselves to be on the ballot paper.
However in the case of a leadership challenge there needs to be a fairly high threshold because they are attempting to overturn the democratic wishes of the membership.
It is not that 10% or 20% matters particularly.
The fact that it is left up to MPs to nominate is the anti-democratic problem.
Whatever the percentage requirement is, it should be a percentage of the constituency parties that counts – not MPs. Then there would be a greater degree of democracy in the process. Currently all those members of the party who are in constituencies that don’t return a Labour MP are denied any input into the process of nomination.
Similarly, the process of passing (or rejecting) a vote of no confidence in the leader of the party should be in the hands of the constituency parties and not the MPs. Otherwise the constituencies that don’t return a Labour MP are, again, excluded from the process.
Goldbach, I reckon your suggestion would be acceptable to all democratic socialists.
SteveH – Had Corbyn tried to cement himself in place, can only imagine the reaction from PLP and MSM alike.
I get your point about it’s the members who put that leader there; namely, these decisions shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Not that that was respected by the PLP, who challenged an ovewhelmingly elected Corbyn in 2016, less than a year into his leadership.
But take Starmer now, in any other walk of life he’d be in breach of contract – the binding pledges and promises that were exchange for support, are NOT being honoured.
“You simply don’t have the numbers to do anything about it….” Yes steveh, sadly true.
But we have enough members and former-members to make our new-found resistence of bourgeoise prretend-labbour Labour candidates miss our campaigning, door-knocking and ‘phone bank work.
Even the GE19 Labour result will look good when compared with the woeful performance Labour’s neoliberal pretend Labour liberals will put in at the next GE..
qwertboi – Do you mean all those members who joined to vote for Keir Starmer.
Come back and tell me all about it after the next GE.
stevieh:“Do you mean all those members who joined to vote for Keir Starmer.
Come back and tell me all about it after the next GE.”
I only know the numbers for one CLP of course, but there were no more than 9 new members in Leeds NW since the election campaign where the billionaires buddy hid his multimillionaire racist sponsor . Nine.
Over 150 recent members tell us they no longer consider themselves members – the party doesn’t of course!
qwertboi – The figures below were extracted from the voting returns for various internal party elections and are the actual number of fully paid up members who were entitled to vote in an internal election. They tell there own story and it isn’t the one you are telling.
July 2017 – 538,606
November 2017 – 525,779
June 2018 – 506,320
November 2019 – 430,359
January 2020 – 552,835
August 2020 – 495,961
Going by his tweet on scrapping OMOV.
Does Akehurst seriously believe members who elected him to the NEC, did so for him to cast a vote to deprive them of their voting rights?
Hope the people who did elect him are paying attention.
His behaviour is astonishing.
Blairites have always been prone to authoritarianism.
The PLP are a bunch of upper-middle class snobs, who are terrified the great unwashed will join their party and actually make it do what it says on the tin.
Actually – Akehust’s behaviour is entirely predictable.
Max Headroom is about to self combust, and standing in the wings to pick up the pieces are Streeting, Rayner and Phillips……Oh Lordy, an even bigger Turd to polish.
Card vote! The right-wing must be confident.
luke akehurst would be an ideal host for the offspring of Dung Beetles!
I see our favorite sock puppet Steve is playing the watabout …. game where you take something vagally similar and try and convince everyone there side is the more honest…
As is any right wing person in the history of mankind has been a honest broker they all lie it’s the right wing way anything to grab and take that little more power or control it’s almost a compulsion!
I’m simply pointing out that it is difficult for ‘the left’ to claim the democratic high ground.
DisabledGrandad, unfortunately that does seem to be a permanent state of play.
I wonder how different things would have been if Corbyn had got rid of McNicol as soon as he was elected in 2015.
There exists an inbuilt undemocratic feature of the card vote at LP Conferences.
The vote of Trades Union members who are also members of a CLP will be registered twice. Once under their CLP membership and once under their Trades Union membership.
In card votes in which their is a split between the two sections (CLP’s and TU’s) such individuals will have in all practical effect be voting both ways on the same issue.
In card votes in which their exists agreement between both sections the practical effect is that such individuals will have two votes counted for the same issue.
Either way this disadvantages those LP members who, for various reasons, are not Trades Union members.
Akehurst… If ever there was a candidate for being bullied at school, it’s that fat bespectacled ginger tosser with that sort of attitude.
Are you a fat, bespectacled, ginger tosser, wee stevie?
July 2017 – 538,606
November 2017 – 525,779
June 2018 – 506,320
November 2019 – 430,359
January 2020 – 552,835
August 2020 – 495,961
And?
Just how long has 538,606 been m
less than 495,961, genius?
Even the last two figures tell its own story, you complete nuckfugget.
What’s the figures for today – I’ll bet they’re much lower again