Forum Topic

Labour constituency nomination meeting - tonight's the night

Tonight the Labour Party in Brentford & Isleworth will be meeting to decide whether to endorse the party leader Jeremy Corbyn or his challenger Owen Smith in the forthcoming party leadership contest.  Although Brentford & Isleworth's decision is unlikely to have much bearing upon the contest one way or the other, it will make for some interesting scenarios.  Not least it will give the many residents of Church Street who have recently been signed up as party members, obviously as a result of deep (if rather recent) ideological conviction and not with any more ignoble motive in mind, their first opportunity to have a say in the direction in which their newly-adopted party is headed.More importantly though, it will send a message as to how far the new politics being mooted by Jeremy Corbyn, and in particular his stated desire to bring more power to communities, has resonated with the wider membership.  We all know the attitude of those in positions of power locally towards any notion of sharing power with the great unwashed - or the "common people" as one of the new Church Street recruits has labelled us on this forum - but will the much-swelled and newly-engaged grass roots membership take a different view and start to reach out in a way that the local party has shunned hitherto?The outcome of this will be genuinely interesting, and should give those of us on the outside some indication of where Labour is heading in this little corner of the world and of where, if anywhere, as local people, we fit into it all.

Phil Andrews ● 3285d10 Comments

This will probably have occurred to them.  They could of course re-run the meeting, this time excluding all the new members.  I imagine this will help them to at least get closer to their preferred outcome.The problem they have is that everybody already knows the constituency party is divided approximately 2-1 in Momentum's favour.  No amount of new criteria, exclusions or edicts pronouncing that only one-legged Mexican men called Geoff can vote are going to obscure that fact.And to cap it all, in terms of the leadership race the constituency vote actually means nothing anyway because the outcome, as I understand it at least, is to be on a "one member, one vote" basis.  So they risk making themselves look utterly foolish for absolutely no political gain.This will probably have occurred to them too.

Phil Andrews ● 3283d

What I am not getting is - if new members were at this CLP nominating meeting and now they have been told they can't vote in the Leadership elections, would that invalidate the result of this meeting? Supposedly if there were enough new members there that is a possibility.

Vanessa Smith ● 3283d

Seems the Labour Party has just won its Appeal to prevent 130,000 of its own members from voting in an election for the party leader, an Appeal financed in part by the membership subscriptions of those 130,000 people who had joined having been told by those appealing that their subscription included the right to vote in a leadership election. The Appeal was launched by the people who want to save the Party from the undemocratic extremists.

Phil Andrews ● 3283d

Bet Ruth suddenly becomes a big Corbyn fan just before the selection process starts again locally ;)

Paul Fisher ● 3284d

Shouldn't the local council candidates reflect the make-up of the members as a whole?  Steve 'Liz Kendall is the one the Tories fear' Curran suddenly looks like a square peg in a round hole, although I can imagine Iain Duncan Smith lying awake worrying that Liz might make him look a bit of a pinko.

Ian Speed ● 3284d

Full story is on W4.com at goo.gl/IVr1dt

Phil Andrews ● 3284d

Hi PeterThe e-mail sent out to members by Ruth Cadbury seemed to imply that they would respect the court's decision - for now anyway - although it did also make reference to the appeal. Good luck with your meeting.

Phil Andrews ● 3285d

And did your Brentford CLP meeting apply the potentially illegal six month NEC ban on recently joined members voting? We have our Ealing Central and Acton CLP nomination meeting tomorrow and some weeks ago we received detailed instructions from Labour HQ about who could and couldn't vote, all based on a decision that has since been overturned in the High Court.

Peter Evans ● 3285d

Thanks Kath.  Was there much support for the leadership from amongst our elected representatives?

Phil Andrews ● 3285d

Corbin was nominated by roughly 2/3

Kath Richardson ● 3285d