Steve Reed adviser battles Momentum official for chair role in London CLP

Steve Reed’s parliamentary adviser is battling to hold on to his CLP chair role in a contest against the suspended Labour councillor and Momentum official Martin Abrams.

Oscar Harman, who has served as chair of Streatham and Croydon North CLP chair since November 2023 and who began working for the environment secretary last year, faces a challenge by Lambeth councillor Martin Abrams. LabourList understands a vote on who should hold the position is due to be held later today.

Harman said it had been “an honour to volunteer my time as CLP chair alongside our brilliant local members and activists”.

He told LabourList: “Since July, our new Labour government has made meaningful strides to improve the lives of working people in our area. The vast majority of members I speak with want to continue to campaign positively for Labour representation at every level – not talk our party down.

“I hope delegates place their trust in me for another year, so that together we can build on our work to create an open, inclusive and campaigning CLP that our members are proud of want to be part of.”

Abrams, who remains a Labour member, was suspended by the local Labour group last year after backing a Green Party motion calling for “an immediate ceasefire and the end to human rights atrocities in the Israel/Palestine conflict”.

The challenge is the latest chapter in Streatham CLP’s factional history, with successive fraught debates over the structure of CLP-wide meetings, and having once been the seat of former Labour (later Change UK and Liberal Democrat) “rising star” Chuka Umunna.

Abrams, a vocal critic of the Starmer government, has said he wants to “restore full democracy” to the CLP and hit out at a “serious conflict of interests in people ‘double jobbing’ with a CLP officer post whilst working for our local MP”.

He told LabourList: “The division of powers is at the heart of our democracy. We would not be comfortable with the Downing Street chief of staff acting as Speaker of the House of Commons, because it removes one of the checks and balances that make our political system tick.

“That analogy can be applied to our CLP being chaired by someone whose main job is to run our MP’s office.”

Abrams also said that the Labour Party at a national and local level is “blowing that rarest of opportunities by continuing down the road of Tory austerity, cutting frontline public services and placing the financial burden of their ‘fiscal rules’ on the shoulders of working-class people”.

Abrams is being backed in his bid to become CLP chair by the Socialist Health Association, one of the party’s more left-wing affiliated societies, and the X59 branch of the GMB.

READ MORE: Islington North CLP reborn as drive to oust Jeremy Corbyn in 2029 begins

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