Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Entrism and the Labour Party - text LABOUR to 78555
Regular HoL readers may recall that I've been banging on about the very low membership numbers nationally in the Labour Party for years and the potential for infiltration by entrism. This is what happened in St Ann's, just FIVE people were required to completely change the three councillors that represented that ward.
Nationally at the election The Labour Party had 200,000 members, currently it has 268,000. This is still a tiny, tiny number of people who will decide a huge number of our MPs in London. No wait in London it's worse, there are about 25,000 members.
Harriet Harman has promised to weed out Labour Supporters that have signed up to take part in the leadership and London Mayoral selections in September but aren't the kind of people they want. So entrism from the right, in the form of wealthy businessmen who are prepared to support them with big donations is OK, they only want some small favours locally, like their neighbourhoods gated, a turn at being mayor or perhaps an opportunity to get some state assets cheap. However as soon as thousands of ordinary Labour Voters sign up, they worry about entrism.
There may be 300,000 people who take part in the leadership selection (optimistically) so why wait until you're voting with the millions who take part in a general election and the screwed up FPP system we have? Get in there at the selection where your vote is worth hundreds of times more than it will be at an election.
Not only that but you could also vote to select their London Mayoral Candidate. I estimate that the winning candidate for this selection would need about 10,000 votes from members and supporters. This is why David Lammy wanted the system to be free, he could easily get half the numbers to win, just in Tottenham where he commands ever increasing parliamentary majorities.
Personally I have paid up my £3 (text LABOUR to 78555) so that I can vote for Christian Wolmar in the mayoral selection. Being able to perhaps swing the party back to the centre-left by voting for Jeremy Corbyn is just a bonus.
Tags for Forum Posts: christianwolmar, election, entrism, jeremycorbyn, labour, london, selection, stanns, wolmar
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Sorry, Gambling Act was 2005, Licensing was 2003.
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There is a very good (but short) blog article by an Uber driver about David Lammy's candidacy, here.
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If you look at Cllr Kober's twitter feed you can see that she wholeheartedly endorses Tessa Jowell for the mayoral nomination. I've heard that there may be a deputy role for her in return.
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Permalink Reply by Michael David Holding on
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HI John,
Paid £3 to vote for Jeremy. Can't vote for Mayor because living in Yorkshire since 1971! [Grew up on Weston Park, Crouch End and went to Stationers. Have 2 sons in Walthamstow -one of whom (Mark Holding) was Jeremy's Agent a few years ago]. Am not one of the new young recruits as am over70. Just hoping we can change the zeitgeist a bit. Maybe socialism might be able to be at least mentioned again. J will get 4 votes from our family of 7. Could make all the difference!
Yours, Michael Holding.
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