Only weeks after Falkirk, another selection row is underway

In the aftermath of the aborted selection process in Falkirk, many people within the party – including Ed Miliband – said that Labour Party selections needed to change, that rule breaking would be taken seriously, and that machine politics must come to an end. Although regrettably the Falkirk report still hasn’t been made public (so the accusations against candidates are still unclear, despite media suggestions to the contrary), the party clearly felt that rule breaking had taken place and that changes to Labour Party selections needed to be made.

As someone who has frequently spoken out about the flawed process of Labour Party selections, that’s something I welcome.

Yet it’s not clear that we’ve entered a new period of transparency after all. In fact, accusations have already been flying around about at least one other selection already. Remarkably, the selection hasn’t even got underway yet, but there are already accusations of rule breaking.

For those hoping to find out the name of the accused candidate and the name of the seat, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. I’m not going to name them – they deserve the full due process of the party, and should they go on to win the selection I don’t want accusations of wrongdoing harm their General Election campaign. What the party needs to do is to investigate the complaints around this – and other – selections properly to ensure that there is no rule breaking and no wrongdoing, and to give members confidence in the selection process. But in this particular case, that doesn’t seem to have happened.

Here’s what seems to have gone on.

The seat – one which should be won by Labour in 2015 – was confirmed as an “open” selection by the party. That means that all candidates can stand. A matter of days after this decision was made, a well-connected candidate sent out an email to party members in that CLP announcing their intention to stand for selection, despite the selection not having officially begun. Text messages were also sent – seemingly from a mass SMS system, as they came with the option to unsubscribe from the texts.

This is where things get messy.

Several local party members contacted LabourList saying that they had been sent this email (and in many cases a text too) despite never having provided the candidate with their contact details (the candidate allegedly claims they were using their “personal address book”). More problematically, the email appears to have been sent from a Labour Party email address, complete with an official looking Labour Party footer. The contention amongst many local party members was that the candidate had somehow managed to obtain and use a copy of the local party membership list to contact CLP members before the selection campaign had begun, for the purposes of canvassing support for their campaign.

If so, that appears to be a clear breach of the rules.

Yet I’m told that despite multiple members contacting the relevant Regional Office, no action appears to have been taken. With this in mind, I contacted the Regional Office myself, and was told that “There has been no breach of the Labour Party’s rules” regarding the selection in that CLP. Despite reiterating that I had received copies of the email in question, and that I would happily provide them to the Regional Office as part of their investigation, I received no further response. I also received no response to a query regarding what investigations had taken place following the allegations, which Unfortunately suggests that no investigation has taken place. And if no investigation has taken place, how can the party be clear that there has been “no breach” of party rules?

Today marks two weeks since Ed Miliband’s speech, calling for an end to the “politics of the machine”. And here we are again, a selection process in question, but no clear sign from the party that such allegations are being taken seriously.

And whilst I am not going to name the candidate or the seat involved, don’t expect angry party members to behave likewise. The allegations of rule breaking in the selection will be under discussion at selection committee and GC meetings in the constituency soon. If the party doesn’t get a grip and investigate properly soon, they could have yet another selections mess on their hands.

And that’s the last thing anyone in the party needs.

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