Labour-run authority in Scotland U-turns on cuts – days before crunch by-election

Good morning, and before I begin: my apologies to any parliamentary candidates (and, indeed, anyone else) who read yesterday’s email subject line about Brenda from Bristol and momentarily thought I was announcing a snap general election, as a LabourList exclusive. Just another by-election I’m afraid folks – we’re still waiting on the big one (do you think it will be May? Or September? Or a secret, third date? Get in touch and let us know your theories and preferences). On other housekeeping – if you’re after tickets for LabourList karaoke at conference, you can get the current release at this new link, but be quick.

North Lanarkshire council U-turn

Last week, Labour-run North Lanarkshire council announced plans to close 39 leisure facilities, including the bulk of the authority’s swimming pools. After a significant backlash, the council has announced that the closures will not go ahead. Leader Cllr Jim Logue said it would protect “important community assets”, but condemned the Scottish government for not offering “a single penny more to support these facilities despite receiving £6m to support swimming pools from the UK government”.

The Daily Record ran an entertainingly titled story on the subject, headlined “Anas Sarwar refuses to say whether he gave North Lanarkshire councillors a ‘bollocking’ over closures”. The implication that many might draw from the plan’s rapid reversal is that the Scottish Labour leader did indeed do just that. With polls opening tomorrow in Rutherglen and Hamilton West (in the neighbouring local authority, Lanarkshire South), the party can ill afford such a bad news story.

EXCLUSIVE: Labour cut “apartheid” description from Palestine conference event 

A new story on LabourList this morning reveals that a Palestine solidarity event at next week’s party conference, originally titled “Justice for Palestine: End Apartheid”, was re-titled by the party and is now called simply “Justice for Palestine”. Apparently organisers were told Labour would not publish material “detrimental to the party”. Tom Belger has the full story here with reaction from campaigners for and against the move, and we also have an op-ed from the director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ben Jamal, who argues “one cannot tackle an injustice unless one is prepared to name it”.

Tory conference 

It’s the last day of Tory Party conference, with Rishi Sunak due to speak at 11:15am. Labour national campaign coordinator Pat McFadden got his punches in early, condemning any attempts Sunak will make to paint himself as the man to fix Britain: “We’ve had 13 years of Tory failure. Rishi Sunak isn’t a cure for that failure – he’s a product of it.” He called the PM “too weak to take on all the competing factions and contenders already jockeying to replace him”.

Not unrelatedly, Suella Braverman gave quite the speech yesterday, railing against a Labour Party acting in the interest of those with “luxury beliefs“. The Home Secretary, a headline speaker at this year’s National Conservatismconference, was here using a term coined by unedifying right-wing American substacker Rob Henderson. I have previously bemoaned a Labour Party that’s insufficiently online, unable to respond or gauge political currents on the internet. Braverman’s latest missive suggests a different problem: that a certain part of the Conservative Party milieu has just absolutely pickled its brain in the brine of heavily American inflected online culture war, and now speaks its language and imputes its stakes onto British politics.

Braverman clearly wants to be Tory leader. Disgraced Republican operative Nate Hochman famously said that every junior staffer in the Trump administration had read far-right screed Bronze Age Mindset. I think that’s a statement that would quite quickly become true of a Braverman administration, one that endlessly chases “wokerati” while amping up human cruelty both at the border and within it. Not that the current administration doesn’t meet that description. Happily, this awful party is going to lose the next election: or so suggests new Savanta polling out today, which puts Labour 19 points ahead.

In other Labour news…

SELECTIONS: Joe Dancey has been selected to fight the new seat of Stockton West, which takes most of the current Stockton South constituency and should be winnable for Labour. Dancey is the partner of Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who tweeted his support.

MORE SELECTIONS: Over the weekend Louise Jones was also picked to fight North East Derbyshire.

UNISON PAY WIN: Many workers could be entitled to thousands of pounds unfairly taken from their pay following a landmark Supreme Court ruling today, according to union UNISON which brought the claim (not online).

MID BEDS: Sign up to help out on polling day (October 19th) by filling in this form.

RUTHERGLEN: Polls will be open in the Rutherglen by-election this time tomorrow! If you can’t make it over to campaign, you can sign up to do some online campaigning here.