The right have got away with their shameless stitching for so long because they can. I doubt Keir Starmer scrutinises every application. He's content to leave matters to his team of fixers. Charged with excluding candidates who could embarrass the party, as factional warriors to their core that means anyone who utters the S word and means it. Opposition to Britain's current and future military adventures also qualifies, as does a record of protest against its allies. A reputation as a left wing councillor or being seen too close to trade unions fits the exclusionary template too. And not facing any push back, they've been fearless in who they shaft. After dispatching Sam Tarry without too much difficulty, they carried on showing their contempt for Angela Rayner's writ and carried on as if she wasn't Labour's deputy leader. And so the Chair of the North West party was barred from standing. It's almost as if some in Starmer's circle are more interested in avenging themselves for how Rayner made their boss look like an idiot than selecting quality candidates rooted in their communities.
Throughout, the "Starmerites" have got away with their grubby war on the left. No one in the press is bothered, bar the few voices of the left who've got a column. The news bulletins aren't going to scrutinise the stitch ups hatched over WhatsApp. And Newsnight won't be running a feature on the blatant factional abuse of process. For one, because most of these people have no time for the left, except save as a token voice from time-to-time. And second, they know Starmer's going to win the next election. Breaking future politics stories and getting the inside track depends on sucking up to the Shadow Cabinet now. The only way the stitchers will be reigned in is by increasing the costs of stitching up. The complaining of two unions covers for movements behind the scene, and they should not be afraid of throwing their weight around lest it embarrass the leader. It's at his behest the selections are getting nobbled, and therefore Starmer's responsibility if the party cops any heat from it.
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"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out"...
ReplyDeleteInteresting selection process also in Stoke on Trent alas... again and again.
A model for building distrust in LP governance.
ReplyDeleteAnd ever onwards goes the rolling Purge. The now totally re-dominant neoliberal Labour Right is , day, by day, fulfilling Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair's dream of turning it into a version of the US Democrat Party - fulfilling the ambition of completely purging its Left wing membership . How long before the trade union affiliation connection is broken too - as Blair wanted to do whilst leader ? As the now well recognised by the ruling class , 'Safe pair of hands' to take over from the now utterly shambolic Tory Party, Starmer's outfit is ready to govern only for those that really matter, the rich .
ReplyDeleteThe recruitment of that senior civil servant, Sue Gray, as Chief of Staff is emblematic of the total takeover of Labour by the ruling class as its 'reserve party of UK Capitalism. Why is that ? Sue Gray had a strange 'career break' in the 1980's , running , with her hubby, a rural pub in Northern Ireland's 'bandit country'! the only possible explanation , cited by many a Left site, is that she was a spook . If so, the supposed Party of organised Labour is now run by the ex DPP, Starmer - sole invited Parliamentarian in the Trilateral Commission, and a long term groveller to the UK Deep State and the US State Department' assisted by another Deep State asset ! . (Read Oliver Eagleton's 'The Starmer Project' for solid evidence of what a craven creature of the state Starmer has been for years - despite his Pabloite dalliances as a young wannabe lawyer opportunist - looking to get into a lefty Barristers Chamber as a career move up that slippery ladder).
The UK is quite clearly nowadays really a facade democracy - with no real choice available to voters under FPTP .Not that the UK was EVER a full bourgeoise democracy - with the utterly undemocratic House of Lords as its Upper Chamber. The coordinated defamation and destruction of the 'Corbyn Insurgency' of 2015 to 2019, by all the media weapons of misinformation available, in close coordinated cahoots with most labour MPs - to the extent of deliberately sabotaging Labour's chances in 2017 in particular, represents a 'constitutional coup' against the electorate. Anyone with illusions in Labour as a vehicle for positive change now is really deluding themselves.
«candidates who could embarrass the party, as factional warriors to their core that means anyone who utters the S word and means it. Opposition to Britain's current and future military adventures also qualifies, as does a record of protest against its allies. A reputation as a left wing councillor or being seen too close to trade unions fits the exclusionary template too.»
ReplyDeleteBut all that is COMMUNISM! And if there is one thing of which Starmer must be proud is his fight against domestic and foreign COMMUNISM! So much that he has made it the leading position of New New Labour.
:-)
«And not facing any push back»
Understandably: the New New Labour Party is *their* party, not a place for entrists from the Labour Party.
«they've been fearless in who they shaft»
The #1 entrist, Corbyn? :-(