Labour leadership

[agricola]

Most of those 60,000 are people who've let their membership lapse, false names or duplicates. Only 3000 trots, tories & greens, which sounds like a reasonable number to me.

.. and yet the papers have been full of three campaigns (and most of the rest of the leadership, past and present) banging on about infiltration all month. Given past history, and the leaderships obvious interest in one candidate not winning, perhaps their reasons for binning the votes of what is after all more than a tenth of the electorate in this contest should not automatically be believed.

 

[killer b]

Of course it shouldn't automatically be believed. But nor should it automatically be discounted - I generally tend to err on the side of incompetence and seat-of-pantism over outright corruption in cases like this though. If there is outright corruption, we'll see soon enough - I suspect we won't.

 

[andysays]

here, I done that already.

Looks to me more like you've contradicted yourself, but I really can't be arsed to pursue it with you...

 

[killer b]

Please don't.

 

[free spirit]

I heard something on the radio earlier that 1900 of the 3000 are Greens

not surprising, I'd have thought that 10,000 + Green members would be ex Labour, many fairly recently ex Labour and recently Green.

If they've been excluding people who've actually resigned from the Green Party that's going to cause a bit of a kick off, as the appeals process doesn't seem to allow for the person appealing to end up having a vote - they're only letting people appeal by submitting a full membership application, which will obviously be submitted after the deadline.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Petition on 38 degrees here

We want to see Liz Kendall's outstanding application to join Conservative Party be accepted.

We were sorry to hear about her experiences with the party during her time in Cambridge. Back then Conservative Party student groups had barriers to entry and Liz couldn't meet some of those conditions. Her family hadn't given her a large enough trust fund, none of her ancestors had married a cousin and she wasn't meeting the RDA for cocaine to allow her to enter the Cambridge University Conservative Association...

 

[brogdale]

Serwotka's been rejected by the LP.

 

[Sprocket.]

Serwotka's been rejected by the LP.

Labour having relations with those lefty trade unionists! The Daily Mail will be telling their Labour Party readers and they will have something to say about any of that carry on.
Labour becoming more ludicrous by the minute!

 

[DotCommunist]

they're blocking affiliate members as well now? I thought it was just three quidders

 

[brogdale]

Labour becoming more ludicrous by the minute!

Clearly Serwotka's work to defend the interests of PCS members is seen as either "funny" or "clever".

 

[Sprocket.]

Clearly Serwotka's work to defend the interests of PCS members is seen as either "funny" or "clever".

The last of the 'Awkward Squad'.

 

[free spirit]

they're blocking affiliate members as well now? I thought it was just three quidders

IIRC PCS aren't affiliated to Labour.

 

[DotCommunist]

IIRC PCS aren't affiliated to Labour.

huh, and heres me thinking they were- google say not also

 

[Sprocket.]

IIRC PCS aren't affiliated to Labour.

Ruth Serwotka is under the impression that Mark is an affiliate apparently.

 

[agricola]

Labour having relations with those lefty trade unionists! The Daily Mail will be telling their Labour Party readers and they will have something to say about any of that carry on.
Labour becoming more ludicrous by the minute!

At least one fairly senior person from the FBU as well, apparently.

 

[belboid]

Ruth Serwotka is under the impression that Mark is an affiliate apparently.

Union officials are usually members of a different union to the one they work for, iirr

 

[brogdale]

Ruth Serwotka is under the impression that Mark is an affiliate apparently.

Is it possible that mark is a member of another body, aside from his own union, which is affiliated?

 

[brogdale]

Union officials are usually members of a different union to the one they work for, iirr

snap!

 

[emanymton]

Union officials are usually members of a different union to the one they work for, iirr

GMB usually isn't it?

 

[belboid]

GMB usually isn't it?

I think so

 

[brogdale]

 

[belboid]

I'd guess his crime was regularly supporting candidates opposed to Labour.

 

[agricola]

I'd guess his crime was regularly supporting candidates opposed to Labour.

If he is an affiliated member, does that matter?

 

[Wilf]

I think it's worth recognising the difficult position Labour are in: when they brought in these new rules, the likelyhood of someone like Corbyn getting on the ballot - let alone becoming the runaway frontrunner - was preposterous. Had he not done, there would be no issues with these few hundred thousand extra voters as they just wouldn't be joining up.

As it is, they do have a duty to check each applicant, not least because there's been a visible campaign from a number of non-labour organisations to join and affect the vote - and as everyone is joining to vote Corbyn, then it stands to reason that most of the people being refused are people who were going to vote Corbyn.

They need to have - and be seen to have - a rigorous screening process, and have a very small amount of time to do the screening: I suspect once the dust has settled most of the people booted will be those with a provable connection to another party, rather than them just refusing anyone who looks a bit lefty.

I think that's all true, though they did bring it in and they are the ones who started off with some vague idea of scrutiny and then had to ramp it up mid-process to something more rigorous. To be honest it's the headless chicken thing that is most laughable - one the one side 'come one come all, just need to support our values... bring your pals to the hustings, even if they didn't vote for us a few weeks ago' - then on the other turning people down because they nominated for the Socialist Alliance 10 years ago. If they weren't so obsessed with stopping Corbyn they could have spun this as one of the best periods in the party's recent history - the fucking Labour Party attracting the interest of 100s of thousands (even if it's only £3s worth of interest)!

 

[brogdale]

If he is an affiliated member, does that matter?

No, only exception being those likely to put JC 1st pref.

 

[andysays]

If he is an affiliated member, does that matter?

I signed up as a member of an affiliated org and I had to declare I support the party's aims and values, so yes, it does matter if they reckon he doesn't

 

[Wilf]

On this bit:

Labour has weeded out almost 60,000 people for being duplicates, not on the electoral roll, or in arrears with their membership

It's impossible to tell whether it's the duplicates, not on the roll or debtors that are the biggest group. My first assumption was that it would be people in arrears. What would be really interesting though would be if there were large numbers of people not registered to vote joining the Corbo bandwagon - Labour reaching the parts other parties can't reach. Can't see it to be honest, but it would be fascinating to see a genuine breakdown of the people who have joined the party, done the £3, been rejected etc. Part of it is just Labour's version of the increase in members the greens, snp and the like got after the election, amplified by the chance to vote for a leader/corbomania, but interesting nonetheless.

edit: a quick dashround the various papers shows they are all reporting this the same way in terms of the 60,000 - 'duplicates, not on the roll etc' - nobody asking for a proper breakdown. Regardless of the Corbyn stuff, 60k is a massive number to reject and also to piss off.

 

[andysays]

According to the Guardian, Serwotka signed up for £3 as a registered supporter, voted by email for Jeremy Corbyn, but was told on Tuesday evening his vote had been rejected

 

[free spirit]

Has Serwotka in any way supported TUSC?

 

[free spirit]

On this bit:

It's impossible to tell whether it's the duplicates, not on the roll or debtors that are the biggest group. My first assumption was that it would be people in arrears. What would be really interesting though would be if there were large numbers of people not registered to vote joining the Corbo bandwagon - Labour reaching the parts other parties can't reach. Can't see it to be honest, but it would be fascinating to see a genuine breakdown of the people who have joined the party, done the £3, been rejected etc. Part of it is just Labour's version of the increase in members the greens, snp and the like got after the election, amplified by the chance to vote for a leader/corbomania, but interesting nonetheless.

edit: a quick dashround the various papers shows they are all reporting this the same way in terms of the 60,000 - 'duplicates, not on the roll etc' - nobody asking for a proper breakdown. Regardless of the Corbyn stuff, 60k is a massive number to reject and also to piss off.

I've seen quite a few people commenting that they'd had issues with rejections due to their electoral role info not exactly matching with what Labour has.

I suspect Labour have been using a fairly crude filter to check the exact names and addresses against the electoral role, any discrepency and it gets rejected. There can also be delays between it going on the council electoral role, and making it to the electoral roles that the national parties can get access to.

Also quite a lot of union affiliates seemed to be doing the £3 thing as well just to be sure their union didn't cock it up, so that's probably a big source of duplicates.

ps I've been spending too much time reading through the comments threads on corbyn and the other candidates posts and elsewhere. It's oddly compelling.