Members ignored, overruled, excluded and told to vote despite not being clear what they were voting for, while questions and points of order repeatedly ignored by London regional director
Skwawkbox has received a video made my West Derby Labour members that sheds further light on the farce of the party’s supposedly democratic vote on whether left-winger – and MP of the Year – Ian Byrne should continue to stand for the party in the Liverpool seat.
The process so far has been marked by members’ claims of rigging and other issues, while Skwawkbox exclusively revealed yesterday that right-wing challenger and party staffer Anthony Lavelle is able to send campaign emails to members, incumbent Byrne has been locked out of Labour’s communication systems – in breach of party rules.
So serious were the issues that Labour’s own official refused to sign off on the ‘trigger’ vote ‘results’, but instead of investigating the official’s concerns, Labour simply removed them and installed its London regional office, which has been accused of rigging, data breaches and ignoring intimidation in London votes, to run the process instead.
In addition, allegations of bullying and ‘concentration camp’ hate speech by Lavelle toward a young disabled woman have been ignored by the party, which has longlisted him regardless.
Earlier this week, Lavell and his fans trumpeted the result in the branch nomination meeting of Lavelle’s own Knotty Ash West Derby branch. But the new video reveals the vote was a ‘shambles’ in which Labour’s London regional director ignored and overruled members trying to ask questions or raise points of order, huffed in apparent frustration when they wouldn’t simply acquiesce, then declared the meeting closed while many members were still asking questions or raising issues – including that of at least one member who had been shut out of the meeting and was knowingly not allowed back in:
Rather than cast votes at the meeting, where members could verify and if necessary challenge the result, Starmer’s Labour is using the ‘Anonyvoter’ system over a 24-hour period after the meeting closes. The company that runs the ‘Anonyvoter’ system is owned by right-wing Labour councillors close to Keir Starmer’s general secretary David Evans.
During the ‘trigger’ process, Byrne supporters heavily outnumbered opponents in some meetings that were then reported as losses. In others, Byrne supporters were excluded from voting and party officials briefed hostile journalists that Byrne had lost before the vote even closed.
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Let’s start by pointing out that a branch doesn’t need to select more than one candidate unless the branch wants too. The branch would have been perfectly entitled to select only one candidate for example Ian Byrne and that would have been the end of it.
I would argue that the procedures Secretary didn’t explain the procedure correctly. Why the second candidate has to be a woman? Why the first candidate has to be a man? For the purpose of clarification a branch doesn’t have to select a man candidate if it doesn’t wish to select one.
Lets say that a BAME candidate is selected as a 1st of 2nd candidate them their not possibility of selecting a 3rd BAME candidate as already one has been selected, if the 1st candidate is a BAME and woman too them she would be the only candidate selected.
I doubt that they would have had the option to vote for Ian Byrne. They were being asked to pick from a short-list of candidates to stand against Ian because an electoral college of their CLP Branches and Affiliates had already voted to trigger him. Ian is already on the ballot paper for the final OMOV as a matter of right. Was their branch one of those that voted to trigger Byrne?
Unless all ‘the left’ members living in Liverpool’s West Derby constituency have already resigned their memberships (like some on these pages have) then he should walk the only vote that really counts. 🤔
Ask yourself, how many sitting members of the PLP have actually been deselected by their PLP using this ‘trigger process’.🤔
It is reasonable to assume that similar wrongdoing will be directed against the rest of us if Labour were to win a general election.
Thank you to Ian Byrne for opposing the return of U S nuclear bombs to Britain after an absence of 14 years.
If your MP has not signed, please contact him/her using the facility below:
https://cnd.eaction.org.uk/EDM98
Ooh, look, CND, nice of you to join the fun. Been on hols, have you? I understand, climate change and convid.
Sadly i can see the couple who are filming. I have no doubt they will be expelled such is this labour dictatorship.
You should have blurred their faces steve. They will now be expelled be very sure of that. This statmer fascist dictatorship is revolting.
Jillazzouz no only blurred their faces but altered their speech too.
Why in God’s name does anyone still belong/pay to this shambles of a party? You’re just money-fodder to a right wing cabal!
It’s worrying Joe. Good, decent people fighting like tigers to keep their seats when if they are successful they will be vilified and ignored. Has there ever been a leadership such as this before? They loathe the unemployed and say so openly, they encourage all manners of prejudices, the hungry can starve and our kids are not safe in their ‘clutches’, I would never attack them for staying but I would like to know what they believe that they can achieve under a Headroom junta after the next GE?
At least we get to see the shitshow thanks to Squawkbox
.Most of the public and a lot of the members have no idea of just how dangerous the labour party are.This type of thuggish behaviour and walking all over the members is just horses for courses for the knight of the realm…..”The end god willing “
Like it or not it was Jeremy Corbyn that went behind the members backs and foisted the trigger ballot system on Labour’s membership.
Incidentally does anyone know how many incumbent members of the PLP have actually been deselected by their CLP? 🤔
Like it or not it’s shitfests like the one I’ve just witnessed that keeps your shower of shite in their cushy specs because they decide arbitrarily what’s what and any sort of scrutiny, transparency or DEMOCRACY is out the fucking window.
But you avoid mentioning anything about the events in the video. I guess it’s just another hatchet job eh?
You’re every bit the shithouse toerag that says the reason foodbank use has increased is because labour didn’t point people towards them.
Or the type that (didn’t in your case) complain about WCA’s – when your lot introduced them and are funded by lobbyists for the companies that run them.
Always someone else started it, isn’t it?
Just like the nonce types that think it’s ok to be a nonce because they were nonced as kids themselves.
Vermin.
SteveH, you are once again misleading. The trigger ballots were on Labour Party rules well before Corbyn became leader.
Under Corbyn the trigger was reduced to 1/3 of branches. Starmer has reinstating the trigger procedures to the previous system
Maria – I’m not misleading anyone and I am well aware that trigger ballots were part of the rule book before Corbyn’s tenure as leader. My point is that the membership and the Unions both wanted to replace this system with one of mandatory reselection but Corbyn went behind their backs to thwart the democratic wishes of the membership.
Here are some quotes from an article that Len McCluskey wrote explaining how Corbyn persuaded the Unions to vote against their own democratically agreed policies. What happened to the promise of a members led party?
“These plans were presented with the full backing of Jeremy Corbyn at the NEC as a sensible and democratic way forward. I only regret that the leadership did not make that clearer at conference, since doing so would surely have taken much of the sting out of the debate even if some delegates might have remained unhappy.
The position of Unite has been misrepresented, including by some who should know better. It is one thing for a couple of delegates to shout “shame on the unions” in the heat of the moment. We have all made heckles we might regret later. But it is quite another for an MP of Chris Williamson’s standing on the left to accuse Unite of voting against the union’s policy on mandatory reselection. That is simply false.
Unite has indeed got a policy in support of mandatory reselection. Had that issue been voted on directly, the Unite delegation would have voted in line with policy. But we have another policy, which I recommend to Chris and all Labour MPs: we support Jeremy Corbyn.
If Jeremy and his team – taking the overview of the entire political landscape, including the situation within the parliamentary party and the leadership of Momentum – urge a particular course of action, Unite is not going to go against that without the most serious reasons.
https://labourlist.org/2018/09/len-mccluskey-accusing-unite-of-machine-politics-undermines-jeremy-corbyn/
What are the rest of the SCG doing to help Byrne? Sod all by the looks of it…..What a mess, and so glad I’m out of it.
Me too Baz2001, I left last year after Conference and I haven’t regret my decision a single second. I don’t know what the SCG is doing but I tell you what I am doing:
I am putting the equivalent on my levies to the Party in a jar every month, come the next election I will donate to the candidate/s of my choice Ian Byrne (it standing as independent) and Zara Sultana (marginal seat) are top of the list.
Baz, I was wondering about that.
No surprise, so called moderates who in the Corbyn years constantly screamed about purges was projection.
….and yet in Feb19 Jennie Formby gave a speech bragging that under her leadership they had streamlined the procedure for expelling members (who coincidentally seemed to be mainly from the left) and made the process far more efficient.