The North Shropshire Stitch-Up

As a good Labour Party person, I would ordinarily congratulate a successful candidate on their selection for a seat. This time the upcoming North Shropshire by-election, which Labour selected for this Sunday afternoon. Except, just like Hartlepool the heavy hand of the leadership intervened and stitched the constituency up. This seems excessive considering the seat has never returned anything but Tories.

Graeme Currie, Labour's candidate in the seat these past three general elections has complained that he was barred from the shortlist by Labour's NEC. Graeme said "Under the guise of “due diligence” they raised spurious concerns regarding a tweet 2018 of a Palestinian badge and a Facebook post in 2020 where I quoted Jeremy Corbyn calling for calm following the Equalities Commission’s report on findings of Institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. I consider I have been unjustly slurred as anti-Semitic." Graeme has indeed has his character impugned, but this is to be expected from a leadership that lies brazenly and has contracted out its policy on the Israeli occupation to the gentile-owned and directed Jewish Chronicle.

Two who did make it through to the selection were David Hallam and Ben Wood, the successful candidate. David is well known to West Midlands Labour members who've been around the block for a while. A stalwart of the old Labour right, he was an MEP for the WestMids region between 1994 and 1999 and was a victim of a Blairist clear out that dispensed with the services of other Labour MEPs, such as Christine Oddy (who subsequently stood as an independent) and Mike Tappin, who before and since had a career in Stoke's local politics. David went on to write several books and work as a press officer for WestMids regional office, being very much part of the rightwing/"Watsonite"/Labour First power base who survived the Corbyn interlude. His support for Iraq Body Count, which was based out of Keele University, and upsetting His Blairness in opposing the rewriting of Clause IV was as left wing as his politics got. Ben Wood, who hails from Oswestry, is very much the London candidate despite the local pedigree. Getting his break in Labour politics interning for Neil Coyle, as a youngster he did constituency work experience for the unlamented Owen Paterson. He currently works in the Lords for the opposition leader Angela Smith and chief whip Roy Kennedy as a special advisor.

Why the stitch up? With the Tory reversal in the polls, as the second placed party in 2019 and ahead of the Liberal Democrats by some distance, there is an outside chance Labour could scoop the seat. And if this was to be the case, there's no way Keir Starmer is running the risk of another leftwinger entering into parliament. Second, Ben was obviously the leadership's preferred candidate. He's young, relatively inexperienced, has climbed the university-intern-spad ladder like so many sitting Labour MPs, and shares their outlook and understanding of how politics works. And undoubtedly his bosses - both of whom attend Shadow Cabinet - would have put a good word in for him. By allowing David on the list, if Ben had come unstuck in the selection meeting having someone with good Labour First creds would be a consolation Starmer and co could live with. Whether having Graeme's story splashed all over the local paper already harms Labour's chances remains to be seen, but it certainly didn't help in Hartlepool.

The lesson here for the left? I don't know Graeme, but the NEC were able to easily sideline him because he did not possess sufficient institutional pull. Decades of activism and loyal service means nothing to these people. If Labour members are serious about contesting selections because they want to prosecute socialist politics and working class aspirations, it's going to take more than a spring clean of one's social media (besides, someone will have the receipts on everything any half-prominent local leftist has said online - there are a few amateur Stasi agents in every CLP). The only way of taking on the Labour machine and winning is if another machine is in your corner: trade union backing. It's much easier to dismiss an "isolated" leftwinger than someone who has strong and long-standing relationships with one or more of the big trade unions. In other words, North Shropshire was stitched up for political reasons, but also because Starmer and his NEC minions could do it. If staying and fighting means anything, it's about not letting them having their way easily.

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