“Everybody’s entitled to an opinion. What they’re not entitled to do is invent facts,” says Piers Morgan on a BBC News advert that’s currently airing.

Inventing facts was exactly what Baroness Jenny Chapman did – on the BBC – yesterday (June 11) when she told a BBC North interviewer that Labour Party members would be able to choose the candidate they want to be the new North East Mayor.

This is clearly untrue while Jamie Driscoll is excluded from the longlist of candidates.

Baroness Chapman batted this criticism away with a non sequitur claim that Labour is “not a debating society”. That much is very clear.

But it does present itself as a democratic organisation, and if candidates for political office are excluded from the running before people who are entitled to vote even have a chance to do so, then that claim is clearly untrue.

Here’s the dialogue – watch and listen for yourself:

“This is about getting the right outcome for the people of the North East?” Shouldn’t that be the right-wing outcome?

“We need to have a leader in the region who can be that champion for us.” Who’s “us” in that sentence?

Jamie Driscoll has repeatedly set out the list of his achievements as North of Tyne Mayor – and it’s a long list.

Isn’t Baroness Chapman’s concern that Labour’s representative should be someone who will do what her party’s leaders in Westminster want – and not what the people of the northeast need?

Voters in that region would be well-advised to boycott the Labour Party – no matter whose face is being used to represent it – until this insult to democracy is reversed, and apologies presented by all those involved in it. And that includes Baroness Chapman.

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