However Mr Corbyn said recently there should be a “full selection process in every constituency” after the review – meaning every Labour MP would need to be chosen to stand again.
Critics of Mr Corbyn would therefore have to be reselected as Labour candidates by local parties that have swelled with left-wing supporters in the last year.
As a lefty tactic that is.
Control who can stand as a candidate and thus you control the system. And you do so buy controlling a few tens of thousands of votes.
Well, yeah, but I am always completely dumbfounded by the way this is even an issue in Labour—reselection is standard practice in democratic parties, certainly is in the LDs and, for example, Paul Ryan won his reselection primary in the US yesterday.
That this isn’t already standard practice in Labour is really weird, that it’s such a big issue is indicative of the top-down authoritarianism that’s at the root of the Labour party in general.
Sounds democratic* to me. If the base is now all Trot the candidates will play poorly at the next election, but that’s also democracy.
* Yes – and Trot. In the party for £3 gets you full entitlement alongside longstanding members without having lifted a finger for the party. Same as their attitude to life in general, really.
+1 MattGB – I had to apply to be reselected for every election I stood in.
Same as their attitude to life in general, really.
Yes, ha ha!
If my MP gets deselected and replaced by some Trot whom the knee-jerk Labour voters then foist on me then I shan’t be best pleased.
And that’s why UKIP have a future, if they can grasp it. Gives the voters somewhere to go.
Having been a member of a party to me choosing the candidate is normal. Might be 3 or 4 standing for a council candidate, might only be one invited and used as a placeholder.
MP choosing – have had the current MP standing plus usually one or two other people (had 6 once) and members voted as to who would be the candidate in the election.
The standing MP has an advantage of track record. New potential candidates have the advantage of being able to lobby for support early.
Now if anyone wants a nightmare scenario. Very unlikely but within realms of possibility…
New candidates in all labour constituencies, none with MP experience before. Radical ideas.
Then elected.
No experience of national government, shadow posts, budgets, meetings outside the bubble etc. And they get given the home office, transport, MoD etc….
Scary.
Frankly, no scarier than a career politician who’s backstabbed his way up the greasy pole and has a bee in his bonnet about transport, defence, prisons etc.
I don’t usually call out Tim’s typos (unless they materially affect the sense of what he is saying, and this doesn’t), but it’s a glorious one.
@SE
Yeah and its still up there after 12 hours!
The big hope is that the ones who aren’t complete Sparts will flounce off and form SDP Mk II, thereby splitting the vote and ensuring Labour has no chance of being elected this side of the Sun’s red giant phase.
@SE Going for a personal record: now in the second day.And its a misspelling of a two-letter word!
Martin said:
“New candidates … none with MP experience … elected … No experience of national government … And they get given the home office, transport … etc.”
The only home office and transport most of them are interested in are the ones they can put in expense claims for.