Labour's attitude to picking candidates to be MPs in the words of their own members

It is a matter for the Labour party who they pick as their candidates.

Nevertheless, when key local activists in a political party are resigning en masse about the way their party leadership has run the selection of a candidate, and are using words like

  • "Undemocratic and against everything our party stands for" (the previous parliamentary candidate)
  • "This is a travesty" (Cumberland Councillor and a portfolio holder on that Council)  
  • "A dreadful decision" and "It's beyond parody" (Cumberland councillor for the area I used to represent)

then the fact that the very people who have been pounding the streets for a party are saying such things about the way their party is run is informative.

You can read here what the secretary of Copeland Labour party, Bransty councillor Joseph Ghayouba,  has written about the decision by the Labour leadership to block him from standing to represent the area in the next general election. The quotes above are all responses to that post.

Here is what the previous Labour parliamentary candidate for the area also wrote on FB.

Here and below is the resignation statement posted on Facebook by eleven members of the Labour selection committee and CLP executive, explaining that they are resigning in protest against what they call a "shameless disregard for democracy." 


  



Comments

Gary Bullivant said…
I suppose the national Lapour Party has done a political calculation and concluded that the efforts of local members won't be needed to take back Workington and Whitehaven. As for the local parties, on every side, shouldn't they be moving towards the new electoral boundary structures and building candidate presence by now?
10:45 am
Chris Whiteside said…
Yes, Gary, the parties should indeed be moving to select on the new boundaries. It is a reasonable assumption that the second round proposals from the Boundary Commission will be identical or very close in the vast majority of cases to those on which the next election will be fought.

The Conservative party has been encouraging local associations to set up new constituency parties on the basis of the new boundaries and has started selecting candidates on that same basis - for example, Mark Jenkinson ahs been selected to fight the new Penrith and Solway seat.

Michael Crick has reported the suggestion that Labour is selecting on the old Copeland boundaries rather than the new Whitehaven and Workington ones as another fix, this time as a means of disadvantaging a particular candidate whose power base is likely to be in Workington.

I have no idea whether this is true: the candidate concerned has not been excluded from the Long List.
11:32 pm
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