> Labour’s National Executive Committee panel blocked her. Among the reasons given was that Townsend had “liked” a tweet by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 in which the Scottish First Minister announced a Covid test she had taken was negative. Her offence, it seems, was “supporting other parties”.
This is genuinely pathetic.
Keir Starmer in 2020:
> The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.
> McSweeney “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard Left”, says his friend Nick Forbes, a former leader of Newcastle City Council
What is the “hard Left”?
And it sort of makes sense. Corbyn’s leadership lead to Labour getting annihilated in the GE, in the face of a set of circumstances that should’ve been an pretty easy win.
The last time Labour was in power, it wasn’t the left wing of the party holding the reigns. In fact, I’ve never been in power with the left wing of Labour holding the reigns of power, because people have tended to not want them in power.
> Perhaps it’s unsurprising that, so far, the Labour Left has been trounced in this round of selections. Of almost 60 selections, only one has produced a candidate who is firmly on the Left — Faiza Shaheen, who was picked for Iain Duncan Smith’s seat, Chingford and Woodford Green, the constituency she contested in 2019.
OK.
But is this only due to the actions of the Labour party?
Correlation is not causation.
> The plan seems to be to wipe out the Left completely, to find the flimsiest excuse to block anyone who doesn’t toe the party line.
Or because the left-wing of the Labour party have been a hindrance and a nuisance to getting overall political power in the UK for the past 30 years?
I’m not saying that there should not be a left-wing in the Labour party. There totally should be. But the data seems pretty clear: Labour does better when it is more moderate than when it is controlled primarily by the left-wing.
I know that sucks to hear for many people, but it’s just the factual truth of modern Britain. We’re not getting another staunch lefty for the forseeable future.
2 comments
> Labour’s National Executive Committee panel blocked her. Among the reasons given was that Townsend had “liked” a tweet by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 in which the Scottish First Minister announced a Covid test she had taken was negative. Her offence, it seems, was “supporting other parties”.
This is genuinely pathetic.
Keir Starmer in 2020:
> The selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local Party members should select their candidates for every election.
> McSweeney “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard Left”, says his friend Nick Forbes, a former leader of Newcastle City Council
What is the “hard Left”?
And it sort of makes sense. Corbyn’s leadership lead to Labour getting annihilated in the GE, in the face of a set of circumstances that should’ve been an pretty easy win.
The last time Labour was in power, it wasn’t the left wing of the party holding the reigns. In fact, I’ve never been in power with the left wing of Labour holding the reigns of power, because people have tended to not want them in power.
> Perhaps it’s unsurprising that, so far, the Labour Left has been trounced in this round of selections. Of almost 60 selections, only one has produced a candidate who is firmly on the Left — Faiza Shaheen, who was picked for Iain Duncan Smith’s seat, Chingford and Woodford Green, the constituency she contested in 2019.
OK.
But is this only due to the actions of the Labour party?
Correlation is not causation.
> The plan seems to be to wipe out the Left completely, to find the flimsiest excuse to block anyone who doesn’t toe the party line.
Or because the left-wing of the Labour party have been a hindrance and a nuisance to getting overall political power in the UK for the past 30 years?
I’m not saying that there should not be a left-wing in the Labour party. There totally should be. But the data seems pretty clear: Labour does better when it is more moderate than when it is controlled primarily by the left-wing.
I know that sucks to hear for many people, but it’s just the factual truth of modern Britain. We’re not getting another staunch lefty for the forseeable future.