[Oboogie]

When breakfast telly started, a concession was made to the newspaper trade by having the daily paper review, so as not to undermine the press totally. These days it's partly space filler, and partly a way to voice opinions that make good telly but can't easily be aired. The "just saying what others are saying" loophole helps here.

I've not read any explanation for the decision yet, but I note that the BBC have dropped their The Papers since the beginning of the year.

[mattomac]

Well if anything is going fall foul of impartiality some of them would.

[Oboogie]

Well if anything is going fall foul of impartiality some of them would.

Indeed, it cost Martine Croxall her job three months ago.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63500745

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Jared O'Mara gets four years. Could have been more...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-s ... e-64577552

How ever did he get selected? Ask the Cult. I found this interesting piece:

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/ja ... er-1767597

This was a victory that happened in spite of, not because of Labour’s national and regional officials. The victors certainly had a point when they described O’Mara as “Momentum’s first MP”.

Momentum are now desperately trying to distance themselves from the monster they created. It won’t work. They certainly knew of concerns about O’Mara, particularly his attitude towards women, at the time of the election. They just didn’t care so long as he remained loyal to Jezza.

I am tempted to say this is what happens when you allow the far Left to choose your candidates. That is true, but probably more importantly this is what happens when you allow ideology to trump the one thing that really matters in an MP – character.

[mattomac]

To be honest it’s the perfect example and there are several independent MPs that also provide this case that selections have to be on the ball.

Labour need to even consider this in seats that they would potentially have thrown a paper candidate in, yes some selections will go slightly awry and it’s not perfect but it’s no different from most of the Corbyn era when it comes to “preferred candidates” without hopefully the likes of Webbe and O’Mara.

[Arrowhead]

How ever did he get selected?

Michael Crick has been giving an interesting insight as to precisely what happened re the O'Mara selection via his Tomorrow's MPs account on Twitter. The tweets aren't threaded for some reason, so here is what he has shared:

When Theresa May called the 2017 election, Labour had no candidates in any seat where they didn't have a sitting MP - despite Labour warning since T May became PM the previous July that she would call a snap election. Incompetence? Or maybe Labour didn't believe what they said? But 2017 was one of longest election campaigns in history so there was still lots of time for proper checks & democratic procedures. In the early weeks it was purely a defensive operation for Labour, to hold the seats they already had, with no hope of gaining new seats anywhere.

To pick candidates in seats the party didn't hold - like Sheffield Hallam - Labour convened a 3-person panel in each region, who met, sifted through applications CVs, & chose candidates for each seat. No background checks, no interviews, no speeches, no scrutiny by local members

In Sheffield Hallam, the obvious Labour candidate would have been Oliver Coppard who'd come within 2,353 votes of beating Clegg in 2015. But Coppard had just begun a new job, and the prospects in Hallam didn't look promising, so he declined the party's approach.

The 3-person regional NEC panels were under pressure from Labour high-command to go for diversity: with more women, people from ethnic backgrounds, & more disabled people - on the latter Jared O'Mara had cerebral palsy & would later say he was the first autistic MP in history. In other respects O'Mara was a pretty weak prospect - although he'd stood for Sheffield council in the past, he'd never been elected. One source says only one member of Labour's Yorkshire regional panel turned up. They chose 4 people that day who went on to become MPs.

There was no involvement by Labour Party members in Hallam. The excuse, of course, was the 'snap" nature of the election, but it all seemed academic at the time, as nobody expected Jared O'Mara to win - or any other candidate in a seat that Labour didn't already hold.

This process of selecting candidates by a 3-person regional panels, without interviews, speeches or proper scrutiny, resulted in 24 candidates who became MPs at the 2017 election, though some were former MPs. The 24 Labour MPs selected in this curtailed manner also included Fiona Onasanya in Peterborough. In 2019 she was jailed for three months for perverting the course of justice relating to two speeding incidents, and she was ousted from her seat by a successful recall petition.

[kreuzberger]

Jared O'Mara gets four years. Could have been more...

Four years seems rather harsh for the cash alone but perhaps sends a signal to parliamentarians. Pound for pound, her with the posh undies should to be going down for around 400.

[davidjay]

Any idea what this is about?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Nope.

[Arrowhead]

Countdown to the new Half Man Half Biscuit album?

[mattomac]

Looks like one of those wrestler promos.

[Yug]

And they're off...

The leaders of a local Labour Party have walked out over a "a clique in London" they claim are dictating who is selected to stand as an MP.

Nine members of Labour's 13 strong Bolton North East executive say they "lack confidence in the integrity" of the party's selection process.

It comes after a local party figure, Leigh Drennan, was prevented from standing in the seat.

Labour Party HQ in London has been contacted for comment.

Party bosses have previously said they are ensuring that every candidate they put forward is of a high standard...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-64595772.amp

Waaah! They're not letting us field a drug-crazed anti-Semitic fuckloon as our candidate. He's the perfect choice, but Keith won't let us just because he hates the Labour Party and would rather see the Tories win than have a good Jezzarite candidate. Waaah!

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It's a shot across the bows of some overmighty unions or at least Unite), and also to Angela Rayner and the Corbyn stub.

[Youngian]

Everything’s simple when you’re simple.

[The Weeping Angel]

I should also point out that the three candidates shortlisted are all local councillors.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Everything’s simple when you’re simple.

Starmer has a MANDATE

[The Weeping Angel]

Yes but your forgotting the pledges which as you know are sacrosanct.

[Yug]

The sort of thinking that demonstrates the vast gulf between Labour and the Tories. John Smith showing what a Prime Minister the country lost when he died.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

[Abernathy]

Herewith a piece displaying remarkable clarity from Danny Finkelstein, otherwise tucked away behind th Times paywall :

he Labour left is facing its moment of truth
If Corbyn’s allies leave him to fight alone they will be admitting that Starmer’s ‘modest social reform’ is their only hope
Daniel Finkelstein
Tuesday February 21 2023, 5.00pm, The Times
In 2015, Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party with 60 per cent of the vote. The following year he won it again with 62 per cent. He led the party into two general elections and in one of them he did well enough to deprive the governing Conservative Party of its majority. Yet less than a year after being Labour’s candidate for prime minister, Corbyn was expelled from the parliamentary Labour Party.
And now it has been made perfectly clear that he won’t be allowed back. He will have to fight the next election — if he fights it — against the party he so recently led. All without him having changed his view on anything.
These facts are well known, but I restate them merely to emphasise how remarkable they are. There isn’t, I think, a parallel in British political history. It is true that Labour expelled Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 and fought him in the election of that year. But that was because MacDonald had formed a National Government with the Conservatives. Expelling a former leader of a major party just because they repeated the view they held when they were leader is without precedent. The Liberal Party didn’t even expel Jeremy Thorpe when he was put on trial for conspiracy to murder. And it’s important that familiarity doesn’t dull the sense of how significant this all is.
Keir Starmer has challenged the left of Labour in a fundamental way. And if it does not respond, or responds half-heartedly, it will be broken, broken completely. And I don’t think it will respond. Which means I do think it will broken. Certainly for many years. Quite possibly for ever.
What Starmer has done is settle an argument the Labour left has been having since at least 1961. In that year the Marxist thinker Ralph Miliband (father of David and Ed) published Parliamentary Socialism, a history of Labour over the previous 60 years. He concluded that inside Labour, the left can do little more than act as “a pressure group”. He rejected Labour, saying: “The Labour Party will not be transformed into a party seriously concerned with socialist change.” Instead it would simply be “a party of modest social reform in a capitalist system”.
Miliband did make common cause with the Bennites, people like Corbyn and John McDonnell, and they always saw him as their intellectual guru. When McDonnell was shadow chancellor he advised Treasury civil servants to read Miliband as a preparation for a Labour government. But Corbyn and McDonnell always argued with him about the party. Was Miliband right to reject Labour, or were Corbyn and McDonnell right to see membership as the best strategy for advancing socialism?
And now Starmer has intervened to make the position clear. Corbyn might want Labour, but that no longer matters. Labour doesn’t want Corbyn. Starmer’s party will be “a party of modest social reform in a capitalist system” rather than one “seriously concerned with socialist change”. There will never be another moment like this for the left. Never another moment where they have, outside the party, such a prominent leader, a household name (for good or ill) with a personal following. Someone with allies, someone with a brand, someone able to attract hundreds of thousands of people to join a political party. Someone who had thousands of young people singing his name.
Someone with a clear and unwavering political view, that has a demographic — young educated people — to which it appeals strongly. Someone who can associate himself with big progressive trends, including social liberalism and green economics, just as British attitudes appear to have turned leftwards.
And someone who has enough of a personal following in his own constituency to give him at least a chance — I’d say a decent one — of keeping his own seat.
So if the left decides now to let him be expelled, to let him fight on his own as an independent and not join him in a new political venture, what is it saying? Some big things.
First, it understands that all its rhetoric about being the true representative of working people is hot air. That by itself — without the Labour right and the Labour name — the left would be revealed as a sect with tiny support. That it knows they need Starmer and he doesn’t need them. Even led by the most prominent leader they could ever hope to have, they know they would flop. Quite an admission.
An admission that they do not represent the heart of Labour, even if they seized the leadership briefly, for if they challenged Labour they understand well they would be crushed.
It would mean that all the stuff they say about principle mattering more to them than mere electoral politics is nonsense too. Because when it comes down to it, Corbyn’s allies don’t want to risk their own seats. Principle at the expense of electoral progress is a policy they urge on Starmer, but aren’t willing to live by themselves.
But perhaps the most interesting admission made by standing by as Corbyn is kicked out, is they don’t really believe all they say about Labour’s current leadership. The most solid objection to the creation of a new left party is it might reduce the chances of Labour winning an election. I don’t happen to think it will hurt it much, as the anti-Tory wave is pretty strong, but it’s certainly something for any progressive to bear in mind.
Yet making sure you don’t damage Starmer’s electoral chances only matters if you believe that, in the end, Starmer is not himself a Tory, and deep down believe that having a Labour government under him matters. In other words it makes a lie of the pretence that “modest social reform” is hardly worth having if it is under capitalism.
These are all the things implied by Labour-left MPs not quitting to join up with Corbyn. And not even being able to indicate support for him, because to do so would lead to their own expulsion. They will bravely have to leave him on his own.
They will try to dodge the choice facing them by continuing to call for Starmer to change his mind. But this is a lame response. They know full well he’s not going to and no one is going to force him to.
And then I think they will find themselves still in Labour at the general election, having dithered and debated their way into total irrelevance.
It’s what I hope they do, because I believe their influence over the last decade has been baleful. And it’s what I think they will do. Because in the end, they are the few and not the many, and they know it.

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