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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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.