Is the Lewisham East by-election a “stitch-up”?

Heidi Alexander has left parliament to take up a job in City Hall. The race for her safe Labour seat is now well underway – and moving fast. Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) officers group, which has a solid left-wing majority, has come under fire this week over its speedy timetable for the Lewisham East by-election. Dissatisfied local members and onlookers have called the process a “stitch-up”. Are they right?

The party says it is a parliamentary custom that by-elections are held as quickly as possible, particularly in the case of resignations (rather than deaths, whereby funeral arrangements might get in the way of a high-speed process). If the NEC didn’t draw up the shortlist of parliamentary candidates, the whole operation would likely take up to two months.

Before the timetable was approved by the NEC on Thursday, Lewisham East CLP chair Ian McKenzie wrote to local members encouraging them to make their opposition to it known to NEC members Ann Black and Andy Kerr. McKenzie said there was “no need to rush” and called for the shortlist to be “decided locally”.

But CLPs do not determine their own shortlists for by-elections – in fact, this is stipulated in the party rulebook. In 1987, the Greenwich local Labour party selected left-winger Deirdre Wood for its by-election. Much like Peter Tatchell had been during the high-profile 1983 Bermondsey by-election, Wood was heavily attacked in the press and lost the seat to the SDP’s Rosie Barnes. That presented a turning point, prompting Neil Kinnock to implement a rule change that put an end to locally determined shortlists for by-elections.

So it’s not unexpected that Lewisham East members aren’t able to draw up the shortlist. It is true that six days’ notice for the selection meeting is remarkably short. After all, it is a common rule in CLP standing orders that local Labour members must be given at least seven days’ notice for ordinary CLP meetings. But the party says the returning officer from the local council has set a deadline of 17th May, and Labour must have a PCC ready by then.

The actual grievance is that the NEC officers group will compile a shortlist of candidates exclusively from the Labour Left. Some are worried about that old trick of managing selections by putting up one credible candidate along with two not-so-credible candidates, which doesn’t offer the CLP much real choice at all. (The selection of Mandy Richards shows the unintended consequences of such a management style.)

In other words, the CLP executive – which has a Corbynsceptic majority – is kicking off with the aim of ensuring there is “broad political choice”, as more than one member has put it to me. Whether their efforts make a difference to the shortlist remains to be seen.