From what I can ascertain there would appear to be a widespread purge afoot in which large numbers of people who are suspected of being likely to vote for Jeremy Corbyn are being suspended from membership, thereby denying them a vote in the contest.The right must be aware that any victory for their candidate would not be a consequence of him having won the support of the largest number of members, but rather of the party establishment's success in excluding sufficient numbers of the other candidate's voters to facilitate a corrupt result. Whilst Owen Smith seems happy with such an arrangement, inevitably Jeremy Corbyn's supporters would not accept it and thus a split of some kind would appear inevitable. Presumably therefore the objective of the right is to bring about a situation in which it is their adversaries who are forced to walk rather than themselves.What is interesting for me is how this whole affair throws the spotlight on Jeremy Corbyn's call for a new politics which is honest and has integrity, and is devoid of the spin and underhand machinations of the very kind that we are witnessing here.Nationally, as locally, the battle as I see it is as much about ethics as it is about the politics of left and right in any conventional sense. Underpinning the whole debate is an establishment narrative which has it that honest politics is not what us ordinary people want, and that adherence to it would make a party "unelectable". Which of course is how they would prefer it to be.Corbyn appears to be challenging that narrative and thus in my view it is important for us all that he succeeds. Or to put it another way, this is about more than just the internal affairs of the Labour Party.
Phil Andrews ● 3447d