Exclusive: Labour’s Bassetlaw selection shortlist

LabourList has been sent the following shortlist of three candidates for Labour’s Bassetlaw parliamentary selection by a reliable source:

• Keir Morrison – Ashfield councillor and deputy leader of the Labour group
• Julia Long – CLP chair in Ashfield
• Sally Gimson – Former Camden councillor, Labour’s 2010 candidate in South Leicestershire

Morrison is thought to be the favourite to win, and the candidate favoured by Labour’s national executive committee. Both he and Long have been backed by Unite for selections in the past. Gimson is a pro-Remain activist from north London.

John Mann, the sitting MP who is standing down to become a government antisemitism ‘tsar’, has tweeted his views on the selection. He considers it to be a “stitch up” due to the exclusion of the local council leader from the longlist.

The MP is highly critical of Jeremy Corbyn. Commenting on his own resignation last month, Mann said of the Labour leader: “I don’t think he’ll be a good Prime Minister and I’m not prepared to lie to my constituents. Never have done and not prepared to now.”

Morrison, by whom Mann is likely to be replaced, is on the left of the Labour Party and supportive of Corbyn. He once posed for a picture with Ed Miliband wearing a t-shirt that featured the words: “‘A generation of trade unionists will dance on Thatcher’s grave”.

Although historically a safe Labour seat, the current majority in Bassetlaw is slim, at 4,852 votes. The constituency voted to Leave in 2016. Mann has previously written for LabourList that the voters in his seat are “fed up with Labour’s anti-Brexit metropolitan elite”.