Skwawkbox understands branch has queried nomination of right-winger with lengthy anti-worker record
Yesterday, Skwawkbox reported that the Unite union has nominated disgraced right-winger Gerard Coyne to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate for West Bromwich East, triggering widespread anger. Coyne has also tweeted his pleasure at the nomination:
Coyne, a Murdoch– and EDL-supported candidate who ran on a similar ‘keep Unite out of Westminster’ slogan to Graham, was sacked by the union after data breaches during his first, dirty campaign to take over the union – a breach that led to him emailing people who were not even members of the union. Coyne was foolish enough to admit that his campaign had used member data provided to him by fellow right-wingers in the Labour party – a blatant breach of data laws, since none of the members had given their permission for their data to be used by him.
Coyne was also censured by the union for during the campaign for his tactics and his team boasted about having access to huge amounts of cash and ‘patronage’ for the campaign, which was strongly linked to destructive former Labour deputy leader and former MP for West Bromwich East, Tom Watson.
Coyne also went to the reviled Murdoch S*n to smear rival Len McCluskey and, after losing the 2017 general secretary election, tried to use the courts to overturn the result – a bid that ended humiliatingly, with the judge dismissing his bid, in which he had accused the union of things in fact done by him, as ‘inconsistent, confusing and weak’ and ‘improper‘.
Now Skwawkbox understands that Unite’s Brighton and South Coast branch SE/6246 has written to Ms Graham demanding to know who exactly approved the nomination and how a would-be candidate with Coyne’s anti-worker record could be supported by the union.
Whether they will receive a reply, let alone a convincting one, is of course another matter. Graham’s tenure as general secretary has been marked by worrying allegations: trying to have evidence against her husband destroyed – he was on a final warning from the union for his conduct and was the subject of a string of bullying and misogyny complaints, but now holds a senior position in her team despite receiving a final warning over his behaviour; she has been the subject of intense protests in Ireland over Unite’s treatment of Irish union legend Brendan Ogle, who did not support her bid to become general secretary; ‘dark money’ spending on social media ads for candidates in the recent Unite executive election who supported her – and the union was accused of allowing her supporters to stand for election despite ineligibility and even racist comments.
Graham has also been criticised for cosying up to Labour leader Keir Starmer after running – like Coyne in 2017 – on a platform of pulling the union out of Westminster politics.
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Tom Watson old Constituency.
I don´t know how efficient is the incumbent Tory MP, but if he is any good and taking into account Coyne record and that bad taste that Watson left behind him, I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour was to fail to regain the seat.
Coyne was always seen as a man more associated with those plotting to undermine/remove Corbyn, go figure. His bid for the leadership was seen in purely factional terms. Bad apples everywhere.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Southside told Unite that’s who’d they’d accept and no one else.
Incumbent MP Nicola Richards is standing down.
As far I can see it’s only Birmingham branches of Unite which are supporting Coyne.
Paul, about 40% of West Midland branches is more accurate.
Who is driving this march ever rightwards?
Labour HQ? Luke Akehurst?
Never have so many been dictated to by some unpopular tin pot official whose views have so little support.
Why don’t the union leaders resist?
Maybe because they want to ensure Coyne cannot stand for election as Unite General Secretary in 3 years time and wish to see the back of him?
Beside on Coyne´s record the Tory incumbent maybe retain the seat, depriving Labour for regaining the seat.
Hmm… maybe?
But alas, I don’t think such smart forward planning has much to do with it.
Probably just another case of the right exploiting apathy. Many on the left just assume socialist principles will win through or defend themselves.That explains the low turnout in Unite’s and other unions’ internal elections. The always scheming right-wingers exploit that apathy, and end up disproportionately represented.
If Coyne does join the nest of vipers that is Starmer’s PLP, he’ll certainly feel ‘right’ at home.
Do we know when the selection process of the candidates for West Bromwich East’s Labour Party PPC will take place?
What’s this “we” lark?
Some form of opposition to coyne’s nomination? Nah, can’t be – not if keef endorses it.
Some subliminal suggestion of solidarity, is it? 🤔
You’re (supposedly) in the Caribbean. This matter affects you about as much as what I had for my tea last Tuesday affects my neighbour’s budgie..
“we” ffs.
“Do we know when the selection process of the candidates for West Bromwich East’s Labour Party PPC will take place?”
Assuming, reasonably, that the term “process” used in this sentence is based on how such matters operate in practice rather than in theory the question makes no sense in that the question does not accurately reflect the reality of the process it is referring to.
On the basis of previous evidence it is highly likely – indeed probable – that the candidate to be selected has already been determined by the clique at the top of the hierarchy. Any subsequent process activity from this point on being a rubber stamp for a decision already taken.
There are a number of ways in which such pre-decisions are processed to the desired result. One such being that of a shortlist of three in which one candidate ‘suddenly’ pulls out on the day leaving two candidates for the rubber stamp selection meeting in which the counting of the ballots are carried out under, lets say, strict supervision with the ‘winner’ being announced under the same conditions with no announcement of how many votes each candidate received.
[sarcasm alert] But, actually being on the front line of this rather than several thousand miles away behind the lines in the Caribbean (allegedly) WTF would I know.
Dave – A simple ‘No’ would have sufficed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
……but would have been factually inaccurate as detailed.
Dave – Thanks for your opinion. 😕
but as I said above
“A simple ‘No’ would have sufficed. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”
An interesting philosophical argument.
So what you are claiming steveH is that as a general principle observable evidence – whether its observation of the process in which pre-selected candidates are gerrymandered into place, or any other observable process from gravity and the laws of motion to evolution – is merely an “opinion.”
How very post-modernist.
It does, however, explain a lot. You are a sloth self-identifying as a human being and I claim my £10 Lidl voucher.
In other news (which seems to have been overlooked by the media):
Bilderberg meeting currently being held in Portugal
Attendees include:-
Albert Bourla of Pfizer
Sam Altman of ChatGPT
Avril Haines, America’s top intelligence official as the Biden Administration’s Director of National Intelligence
Henry Kissinger, who turns 100 years old at the end of the month
Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft
Matthew Pottinger, the former national security official who played a major role in pushing covid lockdowns.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google
Peter Thiel
Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the commander of US European Command
Borge Brende, the president of the World Economic Forum
Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO
Bernard Emie, leader of France’s top spy agency
Jeremy Fleming, a longtime British top spy official
Chrystia Freeland, deputy prime minister of Canada and World Economic Forum leader, infamous for her crackdowns against free speech
Mette Frederiksen, prime minister of Denmark
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukrainian minister of foreign affairs
Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister
Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish politician who thanked the US for bombing the NordStream pipeline
Topics for discussion include:-
AI
Banking System
China
Energy Transition
Europe
Fiscal Challenges
India
Industrial Policy and Trade
NATO
Russia
Transnational Threats
Ukraine
US Leadership
It’s all about how to control the world.
I’m sure that the Indian government will find it interesting that India appears on the list.
Can’t help but think that they will not see this a s friendly gesture from “The West”.
goldbach
Capatalism and the American Empire is cooked
…..or, goldbach, on the subject of kissinger this piece from Gilbert Doctorow:
https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2023/05/19/the-nation-new-positioning-with-a-lead-article-on-henry-kissinger-war-criminal/
“I have to wonder how the author and his editors at The Nation have managed to isolate the case of Kissinger and his offense from the reality of American foreign and military policy these past 25 years. The country has been governed by one certifiable war criminal after another. What do we say about George W. Bush, about Dick Cheney who are also “still at large”? What about Barack Obama and his drone attacks that murdered wedding parties and inflicted other misfortunate collateral damage in Middle East countries without ever being held to account.
But the most remarkable criminal of all is the present incumbent of the Oval Office and his comrades Tony Blinken and Victoria Nuland, who, are prolonging a hopeless war in and about Ukraine by sending a hundred billion dollars of military “assistance” to Kiev, the only result of which is that tens of thousands of Ukrainians are being slaughtered on the fields of battle to no purpose whatsoever. Is this not cynical use of war to enforce American domination over its vassal-like allies in Europe and Asia? Yet this criminal president enjoys the support of the publisher of The Nation and of the Progressive Democrats whom the publication has as its core audience.”
goldbach – The Guardian have just published an article that may interest you
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/20/bilderberg-meeting-group-lisbon-kissinger
At Bilderberg’s bigwig bash two things are guaranteed: Kissinger and secrecy
I’ll have a read and keep in mind that it is the Grauniad.
Bilderberg works under the “Chatham House Rule.
This is not a vow of secrecy. Anything that is said or discussed can be talked about to outsiders but what must not be said is who said what..
I’ll see what the Grauniad makes of it when I’ve eaten.
Well. I should have spent the time watching the grass grow.
Reminds me of why I stopped reading the Grauniad years ago.
As for Bilderberg, there is one ray of hope. Kissinger is there.
I am far from being a fan of Kissinger but at least he is a realist.
Maybe he can talk some sense into the juvenile neocons regarding the need for the US (and the UK and EU) to find an off-ramp in Ukraine.
Now this, from the FT, actually is interesting.
The FT writes articles that actually tell you something, unlike the Grauniad.
https://www.ft.com/content/042d43dd-01db-48cc-9448-b6fd6e774dca
The Bilderberg crowd are clearly bent on escalating confrontation with China and, truly bizarrely, go on about how they are against “economic coercion”.
This is genuine Newspeak. It seems that those countries that have imposed economic measures against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Russia etc. for years are firmly set against economic coercion.
???????
goldbach,
You might be interested in this recent article from Pepe Escobar:
https://strategic-culture.org/news/2023/05/20/adventures-in-natostan-sparks-flying-in-ibiza-locked-down-bilderberg-in-lisbon/
Particularly these observations from a meeting of high level European business leaders in Ibiza:
“When it was my turn, I went for the kill, dismissing all those EU press release platitudes as absolute nonsense, and stressing how Europe is already being eaten alive by the proverbial “American interests”. As briefly as possible I explained the whole geopolitical background of the war in Ukraine.
Well, this was all delivered to top business people who consume The Economist, Financial Times and Bloomberg as their prime sources of information. Their reaction would speak volumes.
Predictably, the EU-paid bureaucrat completely freaked out, and shrieking with outrage, went full pre-ordained script, from threatening to abandon the stage to accusing me of being “paid by the Kremlin”. I asked her, point blank, to “contradict me, with facts”. No facts were provided. Just fear and bewilderment, mixed with intimations of cancel culture….
There’s no way to counter-act the fabricated narratives parroted by EU-paid hacks and bureaucrats except for ridiculing them – in their faces. They become livid and barely manage to stutter when their lies are exposed. For instance, one of the questions from the floor, by a top of the line German businessman, enumerated a litany of dark facts about Ukrainian “democracy” that are absolutely verbotten by EUrocracy.”
I saw this article / comment that I thought was excellent………So Gerrard Coyne, the disgraced and defeated, right wing candidate in the 2017 and 2021 Unite General Secretary elections, has been niminated by Unite to become the prospective parliamentary candidate for the constituency of West Bromwich East.
It is bad enough that someone like Coyne obtains the backing of our union for such a position, but for an unscrupulous faction within Unite, to then try to lay the blame at General Secretary, Sharon Graham’s door, is duplicitous to say the least.
There are procedures that any individual seeking Unite’s support for such a position has to go through.
First the individual has to express an interest by filling in the appropriate form.
A decision is then made by a panel that is made up of lay members of union executives Finance and General Purposes sub Committee, FGPC, and lay members of the relevant regions Labour Party Liaison Committee, RLPLC.
Why an earth an expression of interest for such a position, by an individual like Gerrard Coyne is even considered in the first place is beyond belief.
When his name came in front of the committee, what were those lay delegates from the FGPC and the West Midlands RLPLC thinking of to give him the official backing of our union.
Those currently in control of the powerful Finance and General Purposes sub Committee and the West Midlands Regional Labour Party Liaison Committee are clearly responsible for this outrage.
Those who attempt to lay the blame on Sharon Graham, are clearly conducting a cynical smear campaign.
Just a thought…but what happens if/when coyne’s defeated in either the selection process or the election?
He gonna accept it graciously this time?
Toffee,
see here;
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/05/19/members-write-to-graham-demanding-why-unite-endorsed-disgraced-right-winger-coyne/#comment-244420
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I am starting a collection for Rishi Sunak. Please give whatever you can afford:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rishi-sunak-akshata-murty-sunday-times-rich-list-b2341930.html
But at least he won’t now be taxed any more heavily thanks to Rachel Reeves.