We Told You So! Labour Party Democracy Circa 2021.

We learn that Labour Party members in Newham have all received an email about the suspension of the parties in East and West Ham. They learned that the parties are still suspended!

But also, “a membership audit will be conducted to verify local membership lists. You may be contacted in future to confirm your own Party membership and we ask that all members cooperate fully with this request”. It’s only taken three months to get this far, but we recognise that the Labour Party is snowed under with complaints at the moment.

Such is the distrust that “owing to the serious concerns that have been identified as regards recent membership recruitment practices in Newham, and in order to maintain the integrity of membership lists going forward, both CLPs will be placed in special measures. This means that enhanced membership checks will be required for members joining.”

This does sound very like the paroxysms that Newham NE went through in the Prentice era, when people wanting to join were told that the party was “full up” and that there was no room for new members.

They save the best bit for last, and remember, we told you so! There will be no selection of candidates by the membership. This year an “NEC-led selection procedure will be put in place for all local government selections in Newham, so as not to unduly delay the selection of candidates for next year’s council elections”.

It seems that Mayor Fiaz has got her way. We read the letter to suggest that Fiaz can expect a shoe in. She now avoids the scrutiny of the members she has alienated or disappointed.

Councillors know that they have to be wary. Fiaz has indicated that she wants rid of half of them.

The question for the rest of us is whether they will kowtow in supine homage or will they genuinely hold this increasingly desperate mayor to account. How many will be bought off with threats of deselection? And, can they trust any promises the mayor might make?

And the electorate? Fiaz stormed to victory in 2018 with 70% of the vote. Does anybody expect that to happen again? Imagine for a moment that a resurgent Respect (under whatever name they are operating now, The Workers’ Party? Maybe they would offer up Gorgeous George himself), imagine if they stood. On past performance we would see 20-25% of Labour’s vote disappear immediately. If Galloway stood, he could reasonably assume to pick up an additional 2%-5% of the vote which belongs to the hard left and perhaps some simply because of his notoriety. So very quickly we see that the Labour monopoly of the votes in Newham is not as strong as it seems.

And then there is the prospect of the Tories standing a credible candidate and putting up a real fight. Admittedly, there is absolutely no evidence that the Tories are treating Newham as anything other than a training ground for political wannabes who will drift elsewhere to fulfil their political ambitions. But as the note shows below*, they can generally count on 20% of the electorate no matter what. If they were to do some real work in key seats, who knows what the outcome would be. With Labour running low in the national polls and the Labour Party in Newham being seen as an absolute basket case could they push to 25% or even 30% of the vote? If they were willing to do the work there is little that would stop a clean Conservative sweep in two or three wards. One by-election does not create a momentum, but they have seen a 22% swing towards them early in 2021. They should feel confident of their chances. 

(*Conservative performance in Council Elections since the beginning of the mayoral model. 20% in 2002; 23% in 2006; 19% in 2010; 23% in 2014; 15% in 2018)

For the issue of the mayoralty the implications are that at least 50% of the popular vote is at risk, when the patchwork of smaller parties is added, (e.g. Disgruntled of Forest Gate voting Green in protest) then Labour, even with Fiaz at the helm must still be the favourite, but Labour’s grip on power is looking increasingly tenuous. Second preferences would probably secure the Labour vote, even for Fiaz, but the rapid collapse of the vote would be a humiliation for Labour.

So, what about Newham NE and who was Reg Prentice?

You have to be quite old to remember the saga of Reg Prentice. The then Labour MP for Newham North East, suffered with a fractious local party. Back in the 1970s, Newham NE CLP had been the target of infiltration by a group then known as Militant. They being Trotskyists didn’t like Prentice, who wasn’t. They managed to deselect him.

More recently Mayor Fiaz is the first citizen in a borough where the Labour Party has again been infiltrated, we are told. This time, not by Trots, though there are plenty of those around, but by Muslims. Strangely, Fiaz was once a friend to these particular Muslims. They provided the numbers for her to win selection, but alas, times have changed and they are no longer in favour. Fearing deselection, we understand, Fiaz has put pressure on the Labour Party to ensure that there will be no popular vote amongst members with regard to her re/de-selection.

An aside. If the party was suspended when Fiaz cried foul, why was it not suspended when Wales called foul over the same issue? Just wondering.