#KeirStarmer seizes control of #Labour candidate selection. Members are no longer needed
Apt: Keir Starmer reckons he was named after original Labour leader Hardie – but can anyone doubt that his illustrious forerunner might have said these words, if confronted with evidence of Starmer’s abysmal behaviour.
The Labour Party leadership has seized control of Parliamentary candidate selection from local parties. Grassroots members now have no control at all over who represents them in Westminster.
Longlisting of candidates will now be carried out by national and regional executive committees run by hard-right-wing apparatchiks whose aims are unlikely to correspond to those of the socialist grassroots.
The argument for the change is that NEC longlisting increases diversity and ensures a higher quality of candidates because due diligence is done at the start of the process. It also reduces the timetable of selections from nine weeks to a maximum of five and introduces a spending cap on selection campaigns of £1.50 per member, with a maximum cap of £3,500 applied.
The decision means Westminster will become an exclusive club for right-wing friends of Keir Starmer. He and his cronies will choose who gets to join the club with them.
Local constituency party members will have just one use: to campaign on behalf of the members of the Westminster club, who will enjoy all the rewards but do little of the work.
Who wants that sh*t?
This Writer strongly recommends that any left-wing, socialist Labour Party member should quit now.
Just rip up your membership card and send it back with a note of resignation and a request for your membership fee to be refunded for the period between now and whenever it runs out.
Then go and join one of the let-wing organisations that have sprung up to take the torch of socialism that Labour has dropped.
As someone else has already said, Labour is a movement, not a brand.
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It would take very peculiar circumstances indeed for any political party to come to power in Westminster and then implement actual democratic socialist policies.
But getting the corrupt Tory government out of power, even if only replaced by Starmer’s pathetic centre-right labourism, would still be a step forward. Paradoxically, it might impede the current trend towards authoritarian government.
Labour’s policies under Corbyn’s leadership, though inspiring, were little more than what would be seen as centre-left in many other European countries.
We have seen that the Right, in government or in the Labour bureaucracy, can swiftly dismantle what we build, whether that is the rare community initiatives like Sure Start gained through a Labour government, or a democratic Labour Party structure and vibrant membership.
We cannot depend on the Labour Party to advance our socialist aims through elections to the Westminster Parliament. But we can still try to get it elected, if only to expose its limitations and make plain the pressing need for an alternative.
A socialist movement is required to link up with the existing activist movements for change and the defence of our communities, and eventually I think a democratic socialist party to promote change and maybe help organise it.
Voxpolitical said:
“… Westminster will become an exclusive club for right-wing friends of Keir Starmer.”
Starmer is a right sectarian who permits no disagreement with his centrist approach. But politics is about everybody, isn’t it?
Starmer fails not only on politics, but simply on tolerance.
Voxpolitical said:
“… Westminster will become an exclusive club for right-wing friends of Keir Starmer.”
Starmer is a right sectarian who permits no disagreement with his centrist approach. But politics is about everybody, isn’t it?
Starmer fails not only on politics, but simply on tolerance.
I am in fact agreeing with Voxpolitical’s article because:
Starmer’s Labour cannot advance our socialist perspectives. Only a movement and maybe a new party, which unlike the current LP would be a democratic socialist party, could do that.
Have you heard of the People’s Alliance of the Left (PAL)?
Yes, it’s an electoral coalition, rather than aimed at building a movement. I doubt that elections to the Westminster Parliament will achieve socialist objectives, though they may be useful tactically for an organisation building a movement.
TUSC is already well known so presumably the others will help make an even bigger impression at election time.
I think it’s actually an electoral coalition that is very much aimed at building a movement.