Jennie Formby’s to-do list – longer than a Leonard Cohen song

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Jennie Formby has a lot on her plate. While MPs focus on constituency work as the Commons rises for Easter recess, councillors-turned-candidates canvass relentlessly during purdah and CLPs across the country suspend meetings (in my case, a welcome break from fortnightly shouting matches, although I’ve heard others are actually quite pleasant), the new general secretary has an unenviably long and difficult to-do list.

First, Formby has that small task of tackling antisemitism in the Labour Party. Sorting out the party’s governance and legal unit (aka compliance) and the NEC’s disputes panel is priority number one. I’m told some NEC members have suggested antisemitism complaints should be dealt with separately, in the same way those about sexual harassment have been set apart.

Another idea has been floated by Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum, who yesterday followed up on the group’s impressive statement with a call for training and education programmes. They would be attended by all NEC members including Jeremy Corbyn, he said. Lansman made clear that Labour’s antisemitism problem is not just Holocaust deniers, of which there are few, but more widely it is one of “unconscious bias”.

Then there’s the May elections. Seats are up for grabs in all 32 London boroughs, 34 metropolitan councils, 68 non-metro councils, 17 unitary authorities and five directly elected mayoral posts. As Alice Perry writes in her latest NEC report, Labour is looking to “build up our base in key marginal parliamentary seats” and give special attention to areas where polling stations requiring voter ID are being trialled. Meanwhile the Lib Dems are launching their local election campaign today (not that anyone’s noticed) and the Tories still don’t seem to have a proper plan in place.

Apart from that, it’s just restaffing Labour HQ, addressing the concerns of sexual harassment complainants who have felt deeply dissatisfied with the handling of their cases, and preparing for a general election that could be called at any moment.

Sienna @siennamarla

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