Tag Archives: Reselection

LOCAL LABOUR TRIGGER UNHAPPY

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LOCAL LABOUR TRIGGER UNHAPPY

GOOD NEWS for the Reverend Rees as he’s “overwhelmingly” reselected to stand for mayor in 2020 for Bristol’s Labour Party.  Although it looks like the Reverend’s well-remunerated sidekick Kevin “Slo” Slocombe may have worked tirelessly BEHIND THE SCENES stitching-up the procedures for the ‘trigger ballot’ that decided the Reverend could not be challenged for the Labour candidacy.

Labour’s ‘trigger ballot’ rules were CHANGED at their last conference so that ward branches (of members) and party affilliates (staffed by bureaucrats) are balloted SEPARATELY and if either section has ONE THIRD in favour of a selection process then one is run. Under the old rules, there was ONE BALLOT requiring a simple majority for branches and affiliates combined. This tended to favour affiliates, such as trade unions who CONSIDERABLY OUTNUMBER WARD BRANCHES. For example, in Bristol, there are 25 ward branches and 92 affiliates, which means membership votes were outnumbered almost three to one by the bureaucrats.

However, trade union insider, Slo Kev’s LOBBYING of eager right wing bosses at Labour’s South West Region, who LOATHE the Corbynite rank and file of their party, persuaded them to bend the rules and allow the Reverend’s trigger ballot to be run UNDER THE DODGY OLD RULES. This meant even if every Labour ward branch in Bristol had voted for a reselection process, THERE WOULD NOT BE ONE if the affiliates decided they didn’t want one.

And so it came to pass that the Reverend was reselected as Labour’s candidate even though many wards hadn’t even had time to run a ballot before they were STOPPED by Labour’s dodgy regional bosses because of the impending Euro elections. Other wards complain their selection meetings weren’t QUORATE (ie. there were not enough members there). The Reverend’s own branch, Easton and Lawrence Hill tell us their vote wasn’t quorate but an ‘indicative vote’ was 32 – 5 AGAINST their own member.

Over at the Hartcliffe, Withywood and Bishopsworth branch, the meeting was quorate but the ballot paper WASN’T WORDED CORRECTLY so couldn’t be counted. While in Eastville, the Reverend’s former election agent, Kelvin Blake FORGOT to invite any party officials to their ballot and declared a victory for Rees despite the meeting not being quorate! In fact, the only branch we can find that legitimately voted for Rees were the wealthy liberals of Redland keen on a reheated Blairite to maintain the status quo.

What a shambles. Is this a party fit to run a city?

LABOUR NEWS

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The selection process for the Labour mayoral candidate in 2020 continues to be gripped by BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA. As nobody, it seems, in the entire Labour movement still has any idea how the trigger ballot process they’re proposing to use to decide if the Reverend runs again or not actually works or when it might take place.

However, we do now have some idea about the Labour-affiliated organisations who will DECIDE whether the Reverend Rees gets a free run at re-election next year or whether he will need to go through a proper and, likely, very tricky ONE MAN ONE VOTE selection process within his own party.

We’re reliably informed that 25 Labour WARD BRANCHES made up of members have a vote each in the trigger ballot; 15 SOCIALIST SOCIETIES have a vote and 77 TRADE UNION AFFILIATES have a vote. Members, many of whom oppose the Reverend, are therefore outgunned THREE TO ONE by the votes of faceless trade union bureaucrats. If this ballot ever happens, the result seems a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile the Bristol Labour Party, encouraged by Momentum campaigners, has forged ahead with an “open” selection process for its candidates for councillor. Although all might not have gone quite to plan after a well-organised LGBT LOBBY helped out by right wing  DARREN “DIPSHIT” JONES SUPPORTERS in Bristol North West managed to get two female socialists and opponents of Rees’s Tory austerity agenda REMOVED from the councillor list for “transphobia”.

Naturally, the usual ragbag of Blairites, social climbers and former Lib Dems who tend to make up the majority of Labour’s council candidates have all been waved through for selection as candidates.

DESELECTION NEWS

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The question on the lips of many Labour members in Bristol – “How the fuck do we get rid of the Reverend Rees”? – remains UNANSWERED by the Bristol Labour Party less than 18 months before the next mayoral election.

Members have been told that any selection process for their mayoral candidate in 2020 will be subject to a ‘TRIGGER BALLOT’. A process where affiliated organisations such as constituency parties, trade unions and other largely mysterious and unknown Labour Party interest groups get a vote to decide whether there should a selection process or whether the Reverend Rees should get another shot at mayor UNCHALLENGED.

Many local Labour members are unhappy with the trigger ballot process, claiming that a decision on whether to have a selection process should be ONE MEMBER ONE VOTE and not left to the Labour Party’s labyrinthine bureaucracies and rule book to decide.

Unfortunately members appear to have LOST that battle already.  Instead, local members are left scratching their heads at the nature of this ballot they do not want after trigger ballot rules, largely used to challenge sitting MPs, were CHANGED at the last Labour Conference. Now, nobody seems sure what that means for a mayoral trigger ballot in Bristol.

Local Labour members have been told that the local party and its regional office is “seeking clarification on what the changes to the trigger ballot process mean for the Mayoral selection”. But the clock is now running down FAST.

Will the Reverend get returned to office due to administrative incompetence and bureaucratic inertia against the wishes of the majority of Labour members in Bristol?