Keir Starmer really is determined to make the Labour Party toxic, isn’t he?

His latest wheeze is to turn away anybody who believes in democracy, by making leadership elections more undemocratic than those of the Conservative Party.

You don’t believe me?

At the moment, the Tories elect their leaders by a system in which two candidates are chosen by MPs (in a series of votes that whittle down the potential choices) and then the wider membership is invited to choose between them on a “one member, one vote” basis.

Labour’s current system is more democratic, in that if a vacancy arises, a candidate may be nominated by five per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party or at least three affiliate organisations (including two trade unions) representing at least five per cent of the affiliated membership; if an incumbent is challenged, a candidate must be nominated by at least 20 per cent of MPs prior to party conference. Then the wider membership votes by preferential ballot (candidates ranked 1, 2, 3 etc). Eligible party members, affiliates and registered supporters each have one ballot.

Starmer wants to change Labour’s system back to the corrrupt ‘electoral college’ system that gives disproportionate weight to votes by the few hundred party members who happen to be members of Parliament. They would get an entire third of the vote.

The other votes would be split between trade unions, whose block vote would represent another third of the total – and Constituency Labour Parties whose officers would vote for their choice, whether it was supported by the members or not. They would take up the last third.

Rank and file Labour members would not have any say in the election of a future leader at all. Around 200 MP would have more voting power than around 400 thousand rank-and-file members.

Well, we know what that’s all about, don’t we?

It’s about keeping a bitterly unpopular leadership failure – and Tory fellow-traveller – at the top of the Labour Party even if the membership at large is desperate to remove him.

Starmer would find it much easier to keep his job if a third of the votes in a leadership election come from his right-wing (and deeply unpleasant) fellow cuckoos, many of whom were parachuted into seats during the Blair/Brown years and are closer to the Tories than to traditional Labour in terms of their political values; and if CLP executives that have been purged of left-wingers under the nightmare tenure of unelected general secretary David Evans get to impose their will on party members.

Looking into the future, the trend would then continue because genuine democratic socialists would quit in large numbers, in the realisation that Labour is now neither democratic nor socialist.

And Boris Johnson would then have a free ticket back into Downing Street for as long as the situation would last, because Keir Starmer has absolutely no interest in mounting any serious opposition to the hard-right Tory despot.

Starmer’s words on the subject are as ridiculous as you might expect: “I have said I will make the Labour Party the party of working people, I am determined that the Labour party I lead focuses on the country, on the concerns of voters, so we need party reforms that better connect us with working people.” Nonsense!

He’s making it the party of privileged right-wing MPs! This duplicitous piece of treachery would sever the connection between the party leadership and working people and Starmer knows it. He is simply trying to trick the gullible.

Fortunately, there remain a few people in the Labour movement who are prepared to oppose the Blue Abstainer.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said, according to the BBC: “This proposal to reduce the membership to one third of the vote, while inflating the vote of Labour MPs is unfair, undemocratic and a backwards step.

Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.

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