Sam Tarry, the Corbynite MP best known as Angela Rayner’s boyfriend, is facing the fight of his life to stay on as the Labour candidate for Ilford South at the next election. His securing of selection in 2019 was incredibly controversial at the time, resulting in local discontent that he’s clearly failed to reconcile. At the time the frontrunner, Jas Athwal, was suspended by Labour, allowing Corbyn to slot his favoured candidate in. Now deselection battles are in full flow… 

As of Saturday, members have so far voted 224 for a full and open selection contest, with just 104 backing Tarry. Over the weekend, six local Labour branches held their trigger ballot, with Tarry losing all six. Oh dear…

Over the weekend Tarry threw a barrage of emails at members from MPs and Lords backing his claim to the seat, not least from Ed Miliband who told members that Tarry worked as his shadow PPS, where he was “passionate” about the Green New Deal. Tulip Siddiq also sent a brief lobbying email, writing “I’ve known Sam since we were members of Young Labour and I know his commitment to socialist values.”

Most eyebrow-raising was an email to members from Lord Wajid Khan, by far the longest textual endorsement of the beleaguered Corbynite MP. Notably this email was sent exclusively to local Bangladeshi members, who were told “Sam has spoken up tirelessly for Kashmiris during his time as a member of the [APPG] for Kashmir as well as serving on the Executive Committee of Labour Friends of Kashmir.”

To think, open selections were once the favoured tool of Corbynites to remove Blairite MPs…

Big news from Southside: in a low-budget remake of Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers, Sir Keir has been captured, jugulated, and reprogrammed from a Remainer into a committed Brexiteer. In his speech later today, in which he’ll explain how he’ll “make Brexit work”, Starmer will categorically rule out returning to the single market, the customs union, or rejoining entirely. He’ll even say he “couldn’t disagree more” with those in his own ranks – including, erm, the Mayor of London – insisting otherwise:

“There are some who say ‘We don’t need to make Brexit work. We need to reverse it. I couldn’t disagree more. Because you cannot move forward or grow the country or deliver change or win back the trust of those who have lost faith in politics if you’re constantly focused on the arguments of the past […] Nothing about revisiting those rows will help stimulate growth or bring down food prices or help British business thrive in the modern world — it would simply be a recipe for more division.”

Those who voted to leave the EU will be screaming at their TVs ‘where was this from 2016 to 2019’? Six months before the 2019 election, Sir Keir was swanning around telling everyone he backed a second referendum, and would even have advocated for Remain had he successfully helped deliver Jeremy Corbyn the keys to Downing Street. Something his own leadership campaign chair Jenny Chapman later admitted was “a bad idea tbf”…

In July 2019, just after the European elections, he made that position quite clear during an online webinar:

“In the aftermath of the local elections and particularly the EU elections, there are many in the Labour party who feel we need to be very clear about a second referendum and about making the case for Remain… That’s certainly what I’m advocating, discussions are going on at the moment, I hope we can resolve it pretty soon, and that will be a material step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.”

To be fair, last week Starmer proudly extolled the virtues of changing one’s mind. Going back on every single one of his leadership election pledges, going from a Corbynite to a Blairite in two years and now tearing up his only well-known political belief on EU membership. That, as the metropolitan commentariat will tell us, is real leadership…

Sir Keir is reportedly promising he will never strike a coalition deal with the SNP to enter Downing Street, and plans to make it clear he’d rather be in a minority government than work with Sturgeon. According to the Guardian, Starmer is keen to get on the front foot over the Tories’ “coalition of chaos” attacks by ruling out any concessions to the SNP, and will pledge to offer a procedural guarantee against a deal – including rejecting a referendum – in a motion at the party’s conference. Because as everyone knows, a pledge from Sir Keir is worth its weight in gold.

This comes as Boris himself laid bare the Tories’ strategy for the next election. In an interview with the FT’s Seb Payne earlier this spring, the PM said:

“Do you want a sensible ‘One Nation’ Conservative party? This is a One Nation government that has done some fantastic things already and we’ll do a lot more. Or do you want Labour propped up by the SNP? We’re going back to that choice.”

Earlier this week, Matt Hancock said essentially the same thing in a Mail op-ed. Given there’s still a vacancy for the party chairmanship, he was probably hoping Boris was paying attention.

Well, it worked so well for Ed Miliband…

Starmer has bottled sacking any shadow ministers who broke his edict not to join rail picket lines last week, The Guardian reveals. The five shadow ministers and PPSs who joined striking workers will merely be “warned about future conduct”, which even represents a climbdown from briefings last week that the rebels would be “encouraged to issue public apologies” to avoid risking disciplinary action. According to the Grauniad, the five rule breakers were sent letters instead of losing their jobs. Thankfully the slaps on the wrist were posted before the potential post office strikes, which presumably they’ll also participate in…

What originally seemed like a safe bet for Sir Keir is now looking like an increasingly high stakes gamble. Yesterday the Mail on Sunday revealed Durham Constabulary, the police force currently investigating Starmer over Beergate, have handed out over 100 Covid fines retrospectively, with 90 handed out at least a week after the breaches were discovered, and another dozen or so meted out over a month later. One of the reasons Sir Keir felt safe in pledging to resign was his belief that Durham Constabulary don’t hand out retrospective penalties – it turns out they did…

The FoI requests published in the MoS also reveal the Constabulary issued fines for gatherings far smaller than Sir Keir’s – and in the same month Beergate took place. Six fines were handed out for gatherings of just three people, with another for a meeting of just five. There’s no definitive attendee figure for Sir Keir’s bash, because the story keeps changing, although it’s now assumed to be between 15 and 30 people…

One woman even received a £10,000 retrospective fine for organising a memorial for her father-in-law who died of Covid. She only had it reduced to £500 on appeal in April 2021, a week before the Beergate gathering. Not long to go now before the investigation concludes. No wonder contingency planning for the ‘worst case scenario’ is ramping up…

Since Guido’s morning story on Shadow Northern Ireland PPS Kate Osborne, more and more Labour frontbenchers are breaking rank by joining their comrades on the picket lines. Probably encouraged by the news that the Chief Whip might not bother disciplining them anyway…

Guido will keep a rolling list updated throughout the day. Here are the frontbenchers who’ve railed against Sir Keir so far…

• Shadow Northern Ireland PPS Kate Osborne
• Shadow Defence PPS Paula Barker
• Opposition Whip Navendu Mishra
• Shadow Minister for Nature, Water and Flooding Alex Sobel

This is an outright test of Starmer’s authority. Plenty of socialist backbenchers like Zarah Sultana are also out on the picket lines – that’s not really a surprise. The fact that even Rayner and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar are sticking their necks out – though Rayner hasn’t actually joined the picket line… yet – is a serious problem for LOTO. Stay tuned…