Momentum raises the alarm about Labour left representation in selections

Another day, another selections drama. This time, it is the turn of Tony Blair’s old constituency, Sedgefield. 13 members of the local Labour Party executive resigned yesterday, following longlisting, amid accusations of a “stitch-up” of the process to select the seat’s next Labour candidate. In a statement released on Wednesday, the Sedgefield Constituency Labour Party (CLP) officers declared that it had become “abundantly clear” that the voice of the CLP, its officers and local members are “disposable” to the party. Included on the list of signatories was CLP chair Paul Daly who had put himself forward for selection in the constituency. He claimed in a tweet on Monday that there had been a “stich-up” in the process when he was left off the longlist, highlighting the number of nominations he had received from trade unions and socialist societies.

The longlist for the constituency has been confirmed as Alan Strickland, Vicky McGurk, Ash Singh and Laura Harris. Momentum argued that the selection is being “stitched up” in favour of the “Labour right-affiliated” Strickland, and similar concerns were raised by Daly. Commenting following the CLP officers’ resignations, Daly told LabourList: “If the Labour Party is unwilling to give members a real choice, we are unwilling to volunteer our time and effort towards a project that does not believe in us, nor us in it. The selection process is as much of a facade as [Keir] Starmer’s ten pledges have proven to be.”

This is not the first selection process in this cycle to cause controversy. Back in June, the Labour leader of Stroud council Doina Cornell criticised the decision to exclude her from the longlist for the selection process in the constituency over concerns about historic social media activity. Cornell declared that the reasoning behind her exclusion was “spurious and partisan”. In the Wakefield by-election selection earlier this year, the CLP executive committee resigned en masse after three local candidates were excluded.

Complaints about candidate selection are not a new phenomenon under Starmer. Numerous CLPs raised concerns about selections processes in 2019, and there were claims of stitch-ups in constituencies including Coventry South where Labour left candidate Zarah Sultana was eventually selected. But Momentum argues that what is happening this time round is “on another scale entirely”, with candidates on the Labour left being blocked from standing “as a rule of thumb” in a “historic break with the ‘broad church’ Starmer himself has espoused”. The left saw little success in the first round of selections earlier this year, with Faiza Shaheen in Chingford and Woodford Green its only real victory. Kensington will be a key contest to watch in the coming days, where Labour left candidate and former MP Emma Dent Coad is standing again. Longlisting is scheduled for Friday.

On LabourList today, we have a piece on our recent focus group with voters in Bury South, who discussed the performances of Starmer and Liz Truss in their respective party conference speeches. The seven participants – who all voted Tory in 2019 – concluded that the Labour leader did better than the Prime Minister, with one describing the two speeches as “night and day”. The group said Starmer’s speech was “powerful” and “inspiring”, and all seven participants told the moderator that they would back Labour at the next election.