Fresh from his ‘democracy roadshow’, which as far as Guido can make out consists solely of Williamson travelling to the constituencies of colleagues he dislikes and agitating for their deselection, our favourite nutty purer-than-pure Corbynista is now facing a deselection threat of his own. HuffPo’s Paul Waugh has heard that Williamson will “definitely be challenged” by the Unions, who see his mandatory re-selection campaign as one to undermine the power of the unions. Getting a taste of his own medicine…
Guido hears that the Boundary Commission will be publishing their ‘Final Recommendations’ on September 5, now that the DUP have seemingly dropped their major objections, accepting that downsizing the Northern Irish contingent of constituencies was probably worth it to help keep Corbyn away from Number 10. The boundary review began in 2011…
Guido reckons that the Commission’s aim of equalising the size of seats to within 5% of a target number will boost the Tories by some 20 seats by removing anomalies that favour Labour. Guido thinks it cost even more incumbent Labour MPs their seats. Corbynistas won’t be able to resist the temptation to push for sweeping deselections, justified by even very small adjustments to boundaries. Momentum have already scented first blood with the threatened removal of Kate Hoey and Frank Field…
Momentum have succeeded in deselecting three sitting councillors in Brighton and Hove, replacing them with Momentum candidates in time for next year’s local elections. Momentum has 2,000 local supporters in the area…
Amongst those deselected was Anne Meadows, one of Brighton’s longest serving and most senior councillors, who responded to her deselection saying: “Momentum are operating within the Labour Party but have no real loyalty to the party and as you know I have suffered intimidation and abuse so they can deselect me and control the ward and the party.” Kinder, gentler…
As of lunchtime only one Labour MP has publicly defended Luciana Berger against deselection threats. Now shadow minister and top Corbynista Chris Williamson has doubled down on those threats, telling Kevin Schofield:
“There are interest groups and individual MPs in this party who think it’s their god-given right to rule. No MP should be guaranteed a job for life and it’s crucial that we all get with the times. MPs elected in earlier phases of this party run the risk of failing to understand what is really going on out there in society. Although this Party’s hundreds of thousands of new members were once demonised the election has shown that the political instincts of these members are in line with popular opinion. For our party to succeed these members must be listened to.”
The moderates know what is coming. They are too scared to put their head above the parapet and speak out against it…
Luciana Berger’s Liverpool Wavertree CLP has fallen into the hands of Corbynistas, who are now threatening to deselect her unless she does what they say and apologises to Jez. Ringleader Roy Bentham warns:
“Luciana needs to get on board quite quickly now. She will now have to sit round the table with us the next time she wants to vote for bombing in Syria or to pass a no confidence motion in the leader of the party – she will have to be answerable to us.”
Where are the moderate Labour MPs defending Luciana? Her friends in the PLP are almost all silent. Only John Woodcock has directly tweeted in her defence, and as ever with him they are words rather than actions. Labour MPs stood by and watched following the anti-Semitism whitewash, they did nothing about the Ken farce, nothing about Corbyn’s extremism problem, nothing about his Trident posturing, now they are sitting there while his people threaten to deselect them. Yesterday Corbyn’s spokesman confirmed deselections were a possibility, while his prominent Twitter supporters Matt Zarb-Cousin and Aaron Bastani endorsed the move against Berger. Have to wonder if moderate Labour MPs will ever show a bit of fight or just continue to do nothing while the Corbynistas run them out of town…
NEW: Corbyn ally & newly promoted MP Chris Williamson tells me he favours mandatory reselection of Labour candidates to ‘concentrate minds’. pic.twitter.com/2PRHOCL2GG
— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) July 3, 2017
Venezuela-loving, Momentum-backed retread MP and new Corbynista shadow minister Chris Williamson has threatened Labour MPs with deselection if they rebel against the dear leader:
“MPs need to reflect the political programme that is overwhelmingly supported by Labour members and Labour supporters and if people aren’t prepared to do that then it will be up to Labour members in their constituencies to find someone else who will.”
If Corbyn critics think they are going to be forgiven they are naive in the extreme…
