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Courtesy of Labour List
Labour’s wave of selections for parliamentary and council candidates threaten to re-open some of the divisions in the party which have been fading since Jeremy Corbyn’s second leadership win. The issue was revived today with a story a Times splash which roars Moderates forced out by hard left in Labour purge.
The reality, as always, is a little different. In short there have been some de-selections on factional grounds - and it would be absurd to claim there are none, or that there is an epidemic.The Times cites the cases of Samantha Jury-Dada, who was de-selected from Southwark in south London last year - “a young LGBT woman of colour, was deselected in favour of a white man who doesn’t live in the ward” as BAME activists wrote on LabourList at the time - and of Tim Gallagher, a councillor who withdrew from the process in Haringey after he was not automatically re-selected. Centre-left groups like Labour First and Progress are angry, accusing the left of a factional purge. Jon Lansman, the founding chair of Momentum, said this year however that his organisation would not be campaigning for de-selections and it simply wants “democratic selection processes” to reflct Labour’s vastly expanded membership base.
I have tried to sift through the claim and counter-claim here. What is clear, however, that any any attempt to de-select sitting Labour MPs and councillors on factional grounds is completely inappropriate. Amid Brexit, and with more than one million people unemployed and an NHS being starved of cash because of austerity, we must concentrate on fighting the wicked Tory policies which erode the fabric of our country and hit poor people the hardest. The selections for 75 key target seats - which are due to be carried out before Christmas - so far seem not to have been hugely factional contests. We have an update on the Plymouth Moor View seat, where three strong local contenders are competing for the right to take on and hopefully oust Johnny Mercer.