This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Blair]

Given that McCluskey only got narrowly re-elected in 2017 against pretty dreadful opposition, there must be a fair chance that Beckett won't win anyway?

(though I admit I know next to nothing about the other hopefuls)

From what I remember their was a grassroots left candidate who they tried to force off the ballot but who did quite well in taking votes off Len. There was also an extremely aggressive campaign against him; irrc there was an all members mailer which mentioned the purchase of a flat....

There's another challenger within the United Left caucus but I'm unsure if they're any different in terms of the forever war.

[Blair]

Not a surprise but a significant story.

I did laugh at the quote from an NEC member who complained that the party had received legal advice in the JC era that they would win; which ignores the fact that virtually every NEC claims to have 'legal advice' backing up their position (by favourite was in 2016 when the GS office & the NEC iirc actually had different advice) and also ignores that this is a political decision, not a legal one.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/15/labour-to-apologise-to-antisemitism-whistleblowers

[Blair]

Surprising news but he was on my list to be sacked in the first reshuffle.

https://twitter.com/lloyd_rm/status/1283823256944992257

[Blair]

Welcome news.

https://twitter.com/SteveT_Unite/status/1284530734502481920

[Blair]

and in a surpise to no-one...

https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1284534046056427520

[Blair]

There's a very good piece in the New Statesmen; the decline of proper industrial reporting really is a major problem (I guess Skawkbox is the closest thing we have...)

But as the piece makes clear Turner is on record as being a lot less hostile to Starmer, although he's firmly a man of the left.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/07/after-mccluskey-who-will-win-unite-s-crown

[Blair]

If you want to sum up the stupidty of this man; he threatened to withdraw UNITEs funds (and in turn it's NEC seats, it's ability to pick PPC & basically any political influence) over something that the party already supports...

He told a Facebook event hosted by the left-wing website The Canary that if successful, he would seek to maintain the radical course charted by Mr McCluskey, whom he described as a “giant”.

Mr Beckett has accused Boris Johnson and Sir Keir of seeking to punish the working class for the coronavirus pandemic.

He told The Canary that he would withdraw funding from Labour if Sir Keir did not commit the party to an anti-racism curriculum in every school.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/len-mccluskey-pressure-on-keir-starmer-as-union-boss-confirms-early-exit-290zlphq5

[Blair]

I was also too stupid to work out that this wasn't even a formally binding vote or primary; so I very much doubt that there's any actual oversight. There are claims about dead people not voting, ballots missing etc- shawkbox are pumping this out; which is no surprise. Funnily enough a lot of the comments on their site were anti-Beckett; with a lot of people saying he's came to union politics very late in his life.

The two things which made me laugh was the left wingers claiming it was fixed because 'I've been a unite member for 40 years and never got a ballot' before being told it was only for UL members.

It annoys me in every Labour election that people scream saying 'it's fixed I never received a ballot' who you then ask 'have you contacted the party?' ..'Well no but they're rigging it'. A good reminder for the whole movement is that we have other legal ways to gerrymander; it's almost always incompetence!

I did chuckle at people saying that bank statements were being used as evidence; what is it with the Labour movement & the tyranny of direct debits?

[Blair]

In a guess for the future there's talk of another re-run of the UL election; I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't as a result of some deal, or if Turner wins again.

However regardless it does present the chance for a split; there's reports that Sharon Graham (who's an Assistant General Secretary) could run too.

[Blair]

A car, a car, my union for a car.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ex-union-chief-tim-roache-under-a-cloud-is-given-80-000-for-long-service-5bmj2dbl5

[Blair]

Isn't Brighton council & the CLPs to put it bluntly full of cranks? Why are they all on the South Coast?

In the forever war news it appears that tomorrows court case is going to be interesting...

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/corbyn-milne-and-formby-attempt-to-stop-labour-apology-1.501779

The JC understands that this last minute legal action is being funded by Unite.

Great use of members subs during a pandemic... almost as good as the car.

[Blair]

I'm a broken record on this but the greatest shame with both the EHCR & the Labourleaks report is that it has prevented the chance to actually honestly uncover what was going on in the Labour Party last year when it responded in such a ham fisted, inept & financially ruinous way to accusations of institional racism & discrimination.

[Blair]

Shouldn't be a surprise as Starmer said during the election he would settle.

Momentum are calling for the legal advice to be released.  I think it would be brave of a party to publish legal advice from a libel action; and frankly if we want to go down that route there's a lot of internal documents from the Corbyn era that could be published too...

As I said on a previous page everyone claims that they have legal advice that supports them; if Momentum want to spend more time talking about internal rules & legal advice feel free- I remember cringing in 2016 when Owen Smith banged on about AWL taking over the party.

Ordinary members most likely didn't know about this news until yesterday when it was very nicely on the bulletins as Labour apologies to anti-semitism whistleblowers.

But some of the left appeared to be happy spending time whipping themselves up over this.

Predictably, many on the left aren't happy over the party's decision to reach a settlement with its former employees in the libel case resulting from *that* Panorama programme.

Pragmatically, the leadership had little alternative really - the main worry outside the "headbanger" Corbyn ultras is that it points to the ongoing Forde inquiry being something of a whitewash. Though there is still no reason why that *has* to be the case.

The thing I don't understand about this is that on a practical case the Forde inquiry is a party commissioned internal review whereas this was a libel case in the courts bought by the whistleblowers; you can't turn up to the court and say 'oh please your honour can we wait for 7 months so we can do this review'.

Which means the only alternative would have been for the party to fight this case purely to save face for an internal review; it feels like an argument being made to cover for the fact that some people believe the party are wrong to settle.

It's easy for people (and this has been true of the right before) to forget that there's bigger things than the Party in play during situations like this.

To be frank, if Starmer doesn't nip this sh!t in the bud right now, this movement of yours is going to stay 'Once Great'. Umming and ahhing and ifs and buts will continue to make things worse.

Starmer has provided extremely happy to nip it in the bud on something which needs immediate action & is in his power; aka sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey. The fact that he didn't appoint Shadow Cabinet members like Dawn Butler was a sign of his seriousness on this issue (she refused to sign the BOD pledges)

Other actions such as yesterdays apology have to be planned in advance around events & done within the appropriate channels; even something hypothetical like the suspending of certain MPs can't just be done overnight.

Starmers plan has always been quite clear; an NEC majority, an indepedent complaints process, a settlements with the whistleblowers & a proactive responce to the EHCR report. And regular re-engagement with both the Jewish community press & JLM.

[Blair]

Ah so to quote Emily Thornberry it appears some people were 'making up sh**t' about the result.

It's good to see that UNITE's internal election can now actually be about industrial policy, rather than vicious personal attacks & who hates Keir Starmer the most.

[Blair]

There's no point in picking a fight with someone who is already finished. Looks like a vendetta, and you want to avoid that. Better to use the forthcoming report* as the foundations for wider (necessary) changes to party structures and culture, and enforce matters rigorously and consistently.

A greater problem than former leaders would be quite how toxic many constituency and branch parties have become. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that some are now quite dangerous spaces: I am aware of cases where what has been euphemistically described as 'physical intimidation' occurring at meetings. I don't know whether the solution is to go down the route of research, special measures and the targeted expulsion of sociopathic monsters, or whether a wholesale reorganisation might be more effective and less painful. But it's a topic that needs discussion.

_{*Note that whatever it recommends will be compulsory anyway.}

On a side note I'm always curious which CLPs are the worse; those in Tory shire safe seats where 15 people turn up, those in now Tory held seats in the North-East where 10 people turned up or the huge urban ones where you can reliably get 20-30 people from one faction to turn up to wreck meetings.

My experience of my own CLP in South London is that the larger meetings where always much better & it was much better when an effort was made to avoid talking about things that would actively slander certain individuals or groups within the party.

Of course even though the exec has changed hand we still have the problem that one branch acts like a feeder for hilarity & chaos.

I really don't know the answer; I just come from the conclusion that if you were designing a system to run local parties the current system is the absolute worse for a whole host of reasons.

I'm as much a Labour obsessive as anyone but even I find going to my CLP as fun as getting my teeth pulled

[Blair]

https://twitter.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1286720085080645632

Well someone did say the problem with this whole saga is that a lot of journalists are limited in what they can so because this is or is about become wrapped up in legal proceedings! I think this might have been part of the it but it wasn't retracted when I saw it & there was a lot more than the above posted.

[Blair]

You can tell I've had a week off from obsessively following the Labour Party as I haven't posted all week.

In non litigious news Bob Kerslake is doing a review of the Labour Party's structures; he did a review of Corbyn's office last year which had the sole purpose of reviewing the purpose of Karie Murphy.... it was then seen as a power coup by McDonnell (don't sue me for libel but I assume they crossed paths at the GLC) I expect there will be much more about this in the book coming out in September.

This very much looks like a pre-ordained review & one that is badly needed; I have never worked for the party but I know that there's a whole host of problems- I read this week that Scottish Labour has one press officer.

A big problem is the exodus of talent after every defeat or campaign; this might be a wider problem with politics (which either burns people out or convinces them to do a nicer job) but seems very much so a Labour party one.

[Blair]

In North of the Border news Jackson Carlaw (who?) quitting as Scottish Tory leader surely puts some pressure on Richad Leonard to be ditched before the Scottish Parliament Elections.

Carlaw was forced out by the Tory suits because he was seen as bland with no public profile & had no chance in hell of winning- sound familar?

I don't pretend that there's someone in Scottish Labour who will reverse our fortunes overnight, or even get us to 2nd place but surely it's at least worth a shot?

Doing some reading let me to the below... thoughts as always much welcomed as I don't know a lot about it & no-one even bothers to discuss it anymore

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13213159.scottish-labour-inside-the-campaign-from-hell/

[Blair]

Sure there's a reason (probably to save Labour figures at the time) but it's baffling to me that that being an MP doesn't disqualify you from holding other forms of elective office e.g councillor, MSP or London Assembly Member.

There's irrc a fair few Tory Cllrs who are now MPs miles away from their ward and frankly that's enough of a pisstake but being both an MSP & MP at the same time should not be allowled.

In funny news this is actually a sub plot in the SNP's current wars; as Joanna Cherry has effectively been barred from becoming First Minister as they said in order to run for Holyrood she needed to resign as an MP.

[Blair]

Actually, I believe the decision was even more Machievellian than that - they ruled that she would need to resign in order to put herself forward for the selection.

We love a stitch up.

Covid-19 has actually hid or delayed the huge internal divisions within the SNP; who've always been remarkably good at keeping this stuff behind closed doors.

[Blair]

The 4 year quest to get Katy Clark a safe seat has paid off; the final act of Corbynism ironically.

[Blair]

Yes, such an overall hilariously awful list had to include Labour's own contribution

I should have added of course that Tom Watson was expected to get one as part of his deal but it got blocked; which in a way sums up the last 4 years for him too.

It's good to see Sue Hayman return though; I had suspected Starmer would appoint her (they were very close as she was basically part of the Brexit team)

The political 'non-alligned' list is absolute rubbish; god knows what Kate Hoey and John Woodcock are going to bring to the Lords. The second name very much surprised me as well

[Blair]

As for SLab potential good leaders, I've liked Paul Sweeney for a while.

Yeah both him & Ged Killen were extremely good and a much needed breath of fresh air; it was beyond depressing to have to watch them watch their careers go up in smokes

[Blair]

Big Len clearly reads this thread as we were saying this weeks ago!


https://twitter.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1289641403841093632

The article is well worth reading; as usual it's more well measured than the headline about withdrawing funding (a threat that Len made in 2014 against Ed). There's a line about leaving the fights against Keir unless they're based on policy; this shows that some people within UNITE & the left are actually able to plan ahead

[Blair]

Yeah I mean my general rule of Labour internal politics is that if you're complaining loudly & publicly it's because you've already lost the vote/battle/motion etc