This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[Filuwaúrdjan]

CLP section results have gone: 5 GV, 3, LtW, 1 OL. Compared to the outgoing NEC that is plus one for LtW and OL each, compared to the NEC elected last time round that is plus three LtW, plus one OL. Notable new members: Luke Akehurst (LtW), Ann Black (OL), Laura Pidcock (GV). One outgoing member - Henderson (GV) - defeated. None of the new slates managed to break through, but, bluntly, NEC elections are basically all about mailing lists so that probably shouldn't be seen as a surprise. No detailed figures yet so can't comment on turnout - it is usually pretty low o/c - or any other patterns, but we shall see.

And for Welsh Representative, well, Carwyn won. Holland re-elected Treasurer ('re-elected' really: half the vote cast by TU block vote and that was totally sewn up), GV candidates win Youth Rep and Disability Rep posts, but, again, this was near-certain given the TU nominations and the same rule as for Treasurer.

In terms of Balance on the NEC? Two extra seats for the pro-leadership camp, essentially. Plus another seat (the Welsh Rep) already in that camp becomes more enthusiastically so. And, ahem, a more fragmented CLP section means that, by default, the TU section becomes more influential, which definitely wasn't why so many were keen on the shift, my goodness no.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Document with results and transfers etc. here. Akehurst topped the poll.

[cp]

That's a good 2 or 3 seats fewer than LtW expected to gain. Signs of hope for the left of the party.

[Blair]

A good performance for the left; I wonder to what extend some of the firmer stuff from Starmer impacted this (aka would a Starmer that refused to sack/suspend RLB/JC & which took a more aggresive approach to the Tories back in April have done better; maybe? But equally that would have caused other problems in itself)

The main story as Al said is that this result was generally decided the moment that FPP was abolished; which meant the anti-Starmer wing lost votes. Likewise Ann Black being able to win meant that the left was deprived of a seat.

I wonder whether we'll see any future changes to the NEC outside of the big unions; others can correct me but the NEC has been stitched up at least 4 times in the last 4 years if I'm right?

(Community kicked off, Scottish+Welsh Seats, CLP section expanded & then STV?)

In terms of membership it's ashame that Jermain Jackman didn't get on (iirc there was talk he got blocked from the youth section by the parts of the left) as the CLP rep.

I think the party is generally better if we don't go from just electing 9 random ideologues (of both wings of the party) on the ruling body based on the winds of the year.

This thread has gone rather quiet too......

Latest on the Corbyn business is Jon Lansman making clear he wasn't happy with the former leader's response to the report (though he also disagrees with the suspension, unsurprisingly)

The Labour Party is generally in a good place when we're not glued to NEC meetings!

[EastAnglianLefty]

And for Welsh Representative, well, Carwyn won. Holland re-elected Treasurer ('re-elected' really: half the vote cast by TU block vote and that was totally sewn up), GV candidates win Youth Rep and Disability Rep posts, but, again, this was near-certain given the TU nominations and the same rule as for Treasurer.

Actually, disability rep was surprisingly close - especially as the GV candidate there is a less obviously toxic candidate than the youth rep.

That's a good 2 or 3 seats fewer than LtW expected to gain. Signs of hope for the left of the party.

I seriously doubt LtW expected to win 5 seats, and 6 were never on the cards. Realistically their best case scenario was getting 4 candidates elected and Jackman or one of the Tribune slate beating the fourth GV candidate.

EDIT: One other point: reading between the lines, there seems to have been a much strong alphabet effect than normal. I suspect this may have been exacerbated by the ballot and candidate information being all online, whereas in previous years they've generally sent out a candidate booklet.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Turnout figure of about 20% lol. You can make an argument that, in its way, that's a good thing.

Edit: not *quite* as low as that, but still very low, like a Blair-era NEC election: 27%

[CumbrianLefty]

Turnout not much lower than previous standalone NEC elections recently. Its not impossible that this one being an entirely online affair (previously, literature was sent to members) had an impact too.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Turnout not much lower than previous standalone NEC elections recently. Its not impossible that this one being an entirely online affair (previously, literature was sent to members) had an impact too.

Yes - the only people voting will have been those contacted by the various mailing lists, whereas 'normally' there will be a certain number of people who vote because they get the stuff in the post, which is harder to ignore than emails.

Though an interesting detail: this is basically not a news story. That's a good thing for Labour.

[CumbrianLefty]

Though the figures released do suggest party membership has dipped back below 500k.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1327959368034299906

I'm not a huge fan of Owen Jones but he is spot on here - it seems the Labour Left aren't allowed to support regimes such as Venezuela and China but Blair and his acolytes do...

[Silent Hunter]

Whataboutery is something Labour really needs to stop doing.

[Zinneke]

Whataboutery is something Labour really needs to stop doing.

But there is a serious difference between blind ideological naivety and then literally prostituting your services to dictators for money. How can Blair's acolytes seriously be frustrated with someone going to a support event for China when their Dear Leader is using his considerably larger influence to promote the regime and his own interests within it? Abbott is a liability but Blair is a moral stain on the party. If the Uyghurs were a little closer to home and had the same deep entrenched effect on certain psyches as the Israel-Palestine issue, this would be taken much more seriously. Labour politicians promoting the internment without trial of thousands of people based on their ethnicity...absolutely scandalous.

[Silent Hunter]

I doubt the public at large cares about Tony Blair these days.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

There are critics of Israel and then there are anti-Semites. The division is fairly thin at times.

One doesn't imply the other. See Viktor Orban for a pro Israel anti-semite.

[morgieb]

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1327959368034299906
I'm not a huge fan of Owen Jones but he is spot on here - it seems the Labour Left aren't allowed to support regimes such as Venezuela and China but Blair and his acolytes do...

The majority of the Labour party isn't exactly willing to defend Blair now, though. Nor does he have any real influence left over.

[Zinneke]

https://twitter.com/OwenJones84/status/1327959368034299906
I'm not a huge fan of Owen Jones but he is spot on here - it seems the Labour Left aren't allowed to support regimes such as Venezuela and China but Blair and his acolytes do...

The majority of the Labour party isn't exactly willing to defend Blair now, though. Nor does he have any real influence left over.

The same could be said of Diane Abbott

[CumbrianLefty]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

[cp]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

Well, by the same logic you could argue the reason this sort of thing keeps happening is because so many on the Labour right refuse to denounce clearly bad behaviour by the US, UK, Israel, or others despite loudly proclaiming their support for human rights, international law, and their own ideological faction's ethical superiority.

[Zinneke]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

And the backing on rich dictatorships keeps happening on the Labour Right simply because Blair, and his acolytes, eventually fall in love with money.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Of course some are hypocritical in castigating the likes of Abbott whilst giving Blair a free pass, but the fact remains that DA happily appeared on a platform with people who are basically genocide deniers. Apologising was the least she could do.

And this sort of thing keeps happening because of the extremely reductive and simplistic "anti-imperialism" that so many on the Labour left subscribe to. At its crudest this seems to boil down to a genuine belief that the US, UK and (of course) Israel are literally the only bad countries in the world.

Well, by the same logic you could argue the reason this sort of thing keeps happening is because so many on the Labour right refuse to denounce clearly bad behaviour by the US, UK, Israel, or others despite loudly proclaiming their support for human rights, international law, and their own ideological faction's ethical superiority.

I mean you could, but given that the Labour leadership voted to recognise Palestine in 2014 and that the Shadow Foreign Secretary (and most right-coded leadership candidate) is a former chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, it might not be the most convincing argument.

If your definition of the Labour right is fundamentally 'Luke Akehurst', you're left with a set of beliefs that I'm not even convinced Luke Akehurst believes.

[Blair]

Yeah I mean as someone who is close to being a card carrying member of the Labour Right but never ventured into joining Progress because I'm normal my views on this are basically that everyone with any sort of moral core on foreign policy detests Blairs post-PM work & is happy to say that he is pretty much willing to do whatever he needs to if it ticks one of these boxes (makes huge sums of money, ties into his weird evangelical views or gives him influence)

Tony Blair however isn't a sitting MP. There's generally two bars for stuff like this; is it stupid and is it against party rules? A lot of people say why hasn't Blair been suspended for X, Y, Z but the whole point is it's not against Party rules; what Dianne did doesn't appear to be, it just falls short of the conduct you expect as an MP. She got called out & she said sorry- the system works!

I mean even as someone on the Labour Right I supported the vote for a Palestine state, supported similar action being taken against Israel as was taken against Russia if the West Bank annexation happened, want Saudi Arabia stripped of its UK arms sales (and a whole host of wider & less flashy measures around that) & generally think the successive governments have an awful record on international affairs- these views are broadly common within the Labour Party!

I didn't see the Abbott story (the one joy of being off Labour twitter is that you can see what stories break through to either facebook, BBC, Guardian, R4 etc etc) & it seems like she was told to apologise; of course I'm guessing but I'd guess that some of the people calling her out over this were on the left!

My wider point on this general is that MPs should not go on panels unless they're either vetted by someone who can be trusted or come from an area so boring that it's impossible to be controversial (a panel on the de-carbonisation of refuge collection). It's hard enough to understand the weird astroturf groups & social media makes this whole situation 1000 worse; there was a reason why Jeremy & others got away with appearing on panel discussions for years before the social media age (or indeed before people spent their life researching it)

[CumbrianLefty]

Corbyn made some "clarifying" comments this morning, probably as near an apology for his remarks on the morning of the EHRC's report release as we are going to get.

Ball now in the NEC's court, rumours his case could be considered as early as today.

[EastAnglianLefty]

And his suspension has been ended with a formal warning. No word yet on whether the Labour whip will be restored - on the one hand Starmer's statement on the matter sounded seriously unimpressed, on the other hand he may not be eager for this to run and run.

[Blair]

Yeah this seems to have created another row & appears to be causing a lot of cracks on the most corbynsceptic parts of the party; it appears that the decision was made by an NEC sub panel.

It does however just bring forward what was always going to happen; the painful decison about whether he could remain a Labour MP. I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly.

[Blair]

what it does show is that it's baffling for the NEC to still be making decisions on issues like this when the EHCR report & all the headache for the last year happened because of NEC decisions; which often then had to be fixed/remedied/changed by the leaders office.

Very much expect that Starmer will be having to do clean up work on this without breaking the principle that the Leader cannot get involded; good luck squaring that circle.