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Selections latest – new PPCs for Burton, High Peak and Peterborough

September 10, 2012 3:54 pm

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As well as Janos Toth being selected in Cannock Chase, the following candidates were also selected this weekend to fight the next election:

Burton: Jon Wheale is a regional advocate for Labour Friends of the Forces and CLP chair, and served with the Gunners in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

High Peak: Caitlin Bisknell has been re-selected to fight High Peak, having been the party’s candidate in 2010. She has been a borough councillor since 1999 and for the past year has served as Leader of High Peak Borough Council following Labour’s success in the 2011 local elections.

Peterborough: Lisa Forbes is a local councillor and full time mum who has lived in Peterborough for 25 years. She joined the party in 2010 and earlier this year trebled the Labour vote to take the party from a 20% vote share to 47% in a Tory ward to win her council seat.

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  3. Don’t ignore that flats above the high street
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  5. As Labour MPs and PPCs, we can all do our bit
  • BigRedNev

    High Peak, not Peaks.

  • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

    Great candidates. Oxbridge refreshingly unrepresented, Westminster nerds absent, ordinary people present. Result.

    • http://twitter.com/redrenie24 Renie Anjeh

      Thank is offensive to all those Oxbridge people, SpAds and think tank people who do a good job in politics, but I agree with the overall jist. With people like Lisa Forbes we could take

      • Hugh

         ”offensive to all those Oxbridge people, SpAds and think tank people”

        They’ll live.

        • AlanGiles

           If “Oxbridge people, SpAds and think tank people” go through  life being no more “offended” than RA  imagines they were by Dave’s post, then they will lead very sheltered lives. They probably do, come to think of it.

        • AlanGiles

           If “Oxbridge people, SpAds and think tank people” go through  life being no more “offended” than RA  imagines they were by Dave’s post, then they will lead very sheltered lives. They probably do, come to think of it.

          • http://twitter.com/redrenie24 Renie Anjeh

            Why are you still indirectly responding to my posts? No offence but you say something and you never do it, are you just being a deliberate troll.

          • AlanGiles

            When people use hyperbole (e.g. describing a quite innocuous post as “offensive”, alleging that another poster “hates” somebody because you have dared to point out their part in the expenses swindle, or describing a critique of Tony Blair as “beyond the pale”), then I reserve the right to respond to it.

            And please don’t pepper your posts with “no offence” because I put it to you that it is exactly your main intention to offend: “Troll”? I was voting Labour decades before you were even thought of.

            You are not backward in coming forwards to express your viewpoint on all manner of subjects, so I am afraid you will just have to accept that, in a free society, everybody else is as entitled to express theirs.

          • http://twitter.com/redrenie24 Renie Anjeh

            But you said that you would not respond to my comments? Why have you done so? You are being incredibly rude and condescending if you have not realised.

        • http://twitter.com/redrenie24 Renie Anjeh

          They will but we should not be demonising successful people who have academically worked hard or have served Government before in a very junior level.

          • Hugh

             I’m not demonising them; I simply don’t think we need any more of them than we have.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Pelton-Level/100001426773952 Pelton Level

             It depends – if they have done something other than PPE and have worked outside the policy/lobbying bubble then they might have something to offer.

    • jaime taurosangastre candelas

      @ Dave Stone,

      an honest question, to which I do not have the answer.

      I can see your support for ordinary people to stand to be elected as MPs, and I certainly do not see anything wrong in that.  What would be wrong with an ex-office cleaner contributing to a debate on low pay or unsociable hours?  Or an ex-Councillor on the practical problems of problem families, or of housing benefit.  Nothing at all – there is experience to be gained from such a contribution

      However, should we not also look from the other end of the telescope?  Given 650 (or possibly 600) MPs, from where do we get our foreign policy specialists who can represent Britain at inter-governmental conferences?  The Minister who really understands business at the macro level, perhaps having grown a business from nothing to some high value of turnover?  A Lord Chancellor who has many years experience of the law?  A Minister who understands how the NHS works at a systemic level, not necessarily because they have a background as a cancer nurse?  

      To me, the answer is a balance of both ordinary people who “keep it real” (my daughter’s expression – I do not like it but it is short and descriptive), and who have long experience, judgement on technical matters, and who have directed the work of very complex entities?  I think we need both to have a great government, whether it is red or blue.

      (The answer is not in legions of Oxbridge PPE “SpAds”" – we can certainly agree on that)

      I can certainly understand the frustration many feel with shortlists of nothing but SpAds and “wonks” seeking a proper job, but where is the dividing line?  A good example is Dan Jarvis, an MP who seems thoroughly “grounded” to me, but who was an Army Major and who served in Afghanistan, and who I hope will become a Minister in a future Labour Government.  I recall quite a few people on LL very much disliking his selection for Barnsley as he was not very local, nor had any council experience.  But in the future, who would be more credible as a Defence Minister in a Labour Government – someone who has led his troops on the front line, or someone who was once a Barnsley councillor and has no direct knowledge of fighting a war, but once saved a library from closing?

      The balance is what is needed, I think, but where the balance is, I do not know.

      • http://twitter.com/waterwards dave stone

        I agree, Jaime, balance is what is needed; hence my enthusiasm for the above selection.

      • Brumanuensis

        I thought Jarvis was a good choice, but I believe the concern among some Labour members was that as he was from Nottinghamshire, local voters with memories of the Miners’ Strike might hold that against him – some did, but not enough to affect the result.

        As I’ve said to you before, I don’t buy this idea that ministers should have direct knowledge of their portfolio before taking office. If enacted, it would make democracy virtually unmanageable. The job of ministers is to implement political priorities and the Home Civil Service exists to provide technical support. It would be a bad trend if members of the Civil Service were appointed on political grounds, but as long as a minister is intelligent and reasonably hard-working, they won’t have much trouble getting up to speed with their departmental responsibilities. If anything, there’s a case to be made that appointing lawyers to the Ministry of Justice would lead to the perpetuation of the current cosy cartel that is the English legal system.

        I’m certainly not against the idea of having people with a broad range of backgrounds in the Cabinet and the current career paths of most senior politicians are wearyingly repetitive. However, to give one example, the Lord Chancellor – a sinecure incidentally, the real post is Secretary of State for Justice – has had virtually no judicial responsibilities since the passage of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, and in any case, the LC’s attendance at hearings of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords was in decline even before the Second World War – with the exception of a brief resurgence under Lord Hailsham of Marylebone, Mrs Thatcher’s LC between 1979 and 1988. So the holder doesn’t really need expertise in the way they might have done in the past and in any case, there’s enough lawyers around them to advise them if they make any legal faux-pas. Then again, Grayling is bound to say something stupid about the HRA, so there’s no guarantee of that either.

  • david

    It’s High Peak – singular, not plural. 

  • BigRedNev

    It’s High Peak, not Peaks.

  • Redshift1

    Why has Labourlist still not mentioned that we’ve selected in Crewe & Nantwich. It’s a key marginal!

    • PeterBarnard

      “Why has LabourList still not mentioned …?”

      Because the Good Lord only made one perfect person, I guess ….

      Adrian Heald is a good bloke and I’m sure that he will give it his best shot. We have done a couple of “Save our NHS” sessions in Chester.

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