Two Labour members in an East Sussex CLP have been expelled from the party over allegations they had backed tactical voting for the Liberal Democrats in a non-priority seat during last summer’s general election.
The former members, who had been in Lewes CLP, were suspended last year after an investigation was launched over their alleged breach of Labour rules over support for other parties. They were subsequently expelled from the party.
Lewes has long been a Conservative held seat and was a successful target for the Liberal Democrats at the general election. Labour only achieved 6.7% of the vote in the constituency – which one of the expelled members put down to tactical voting.
One of the expelled members, who asked to remain anonymous, told LabourList: “Over the last year in the run up to the election, we ran quite an active campaign to encourage tactical voting in the constituency.
READ MORE: Compass’ Neal Lawson claims 17-month probe found him ‘not guilty’ over tweet
“We were determined not to see a repeat of 2015, 2017 and 2019 in the constituency.”
The anonymous member showed LabourList their correspondence with the party, which outlined they had “demonstrated the type of support for the Liberal Democrats that is incompatible with Chapter 2, Clause I.5.B.vi of the Labour Party Rule Book.”
Labour Party rules state that public support for other political parties incurs expulsion from the party. But the member said that Labour should “ought to be taking a bigger picture” considering the first-past-the-post electoral system used to elect MPs.
They added: “There was very obvious tactical voting across the constituency that had helped oust the Tory MP. That was the fundamental objective from our point of view.”
The member said the letter announcing their suspension had come “out of the blue” and that they had no indication of who had made the allegation against them.
Despite an appeal in which they argued none of the evidence against them showed they actively supported the Liberal Democrats – and called on the party to acknowledge the context of a non-priority seat – they were later expelled.
READ MORE: Labour supporters told to ignore tactical voting website backing Greens in Bristol
Lewes was classed as a ‘non-priority’ or ‘non-battleground’ seat by Labour in the run-up to the election, meaning the party focused resources elsewhere as Labour’s chances of winning were so slim.
Another expelled member, Tony Dowmund told LabourList about the process he experienced. He said the party needs to “be more honest about the degree to which the recent election results were down to tactical voting – which in many cases helped Labour”.
He added that Labour needed to build a “progressive alliance” capable of organising effectively against Reform and the Tories. “A centralised, centrist, exclusive and authoritarian party isn’t going to be able to do this,” he said.
It comes as a report from the campaign group Labour Together found that tactical voting was instrumental in the party’s landslide election result last year, citing data that showed an average swing towards the main challenger in both Conservative-Liberal Democrat marginals and Conservative-Labour marginals.
Lewes was no exception to this, where the Liberal Democrats surged to victory with more than 50% of the vote – while incumbent Tory MP Maria Caulfield collapsed to just 26.8%.
Neal Lawson of the think tank Compass told LabourList: “Labour threatened candidates and CLPs in the election for campaigning in their non-target seat but now expels members who were left without an effective candidate or campaign for pushing the best placed progressive to the Tories. This is hypocrisy.
“These loyal party members ensured the Commons had one less Tory – they should be applauded not punished. At the next election many party members will face the choice of actively defeating Reform or being expelled – these double standards must end.”
Lawson had himself been the subject of a Labour membership probe over a retweet of a post that backed cross-party collaboration. He was later cleared of breaching party rules.
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