Labour leadership contest: Party aides fear 'purge' if Jeremy Corbyn is elected

[Recursion]

Source: The Independent

Dozens of Labour staff members and Shadow Cabinet aides could be dismissed within hours of Jeremy Corbyn winning the party’s leadership, it has emerged.

The Independent understands that large numbers of Labour staff members are on contracts that expire the day after the new leader is elected. This means Mr Corbyn and his new shadow cabinet team will have a completely free hand at choosing who works for the party, with little or no legal obligation to existing staff.

Labour aides, who have worked for the party for the past five years, fear those around the new leader will use the opportunity to “purge” party HQ of those considered to be on the right, and replace them with people whose views are more in tune with the new leader. Other staff members intend to leave of their own volition and are understood to be already sending out their CVs in anticipation of a Corbyn victory.

“It is not a case of having a contract that gives you certain rights. It ends with the leadership election and that’s it. Then, unless we get re-employed, we’re out and there is nothing we can do about it.”

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-contest-party-aids-fear-purge-if-jeremy-corbyn-is-elected-10458320.html

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Posted for the Schadenfreude...

[T_i_B]

1. A large number of Blairites have already said that they will refuse to serve under Corbyn

A lot of these people are the ones who will be actively campaigning to get rid of Corbyn from day 1.

Also, there is the whole matter of whether or not the Labour party is too centrally controlled.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. The Blairites Underestimated Jeremy Corbyn; Now They’re Panicking

Yet the most hilarious aspect of this fiasco is that the Blairites actually think that they have resonance with the public and those voting in the leadership contest. Both party members and the public disowned Tony Blair and his ilk years ago, and they abandoned his politics then, too. Ed Miliband lost in May because he was seen as too embedded within the Labour establishment and his politics too similar to that that it produces. Every leadership candidate except Corbyn is viewed upon in the same light as Miliband, hence why Jeremy has went from rebellious outsider to leadership favourite. People now want socialism back in the political mainstream.


Labour didn’t lose in May because they were too left-wing, they lost because they offered nothing new and refused to oppose the myth that they caused the financial crisis. The same could be said in 2010. The only candidate that is offering something new in this leadership contest is Jeremy Corbyn, and he is - by no coincidence - the only candidate to have inspired people. Blairites ought to take notice, for it is not socialism that the electorate is exhausted with, it is Blairism.


https://medium.com/@curran_98/jeremy-corbyn-started-off-at-100-1-to-win-the-labour-leadership-contest-before-being-only-minutes-11e6b21d5ecd

[T_i_B]

3. The Blairites haven't offered anything positive to the public for years

And the result has been continuous decline since Labour's second landslide victory in 2001. Made worse by the control freakery of Labour's Blairite leadership.

[T_i_B]

4. Lord Mandelson's failed 'mass resignation' bid to attempt to stop Jeremy Corbyn winning

Desperate stuff

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11806498/Lord-Mandelsons-failed-mass-resignation-bid-to-attempt-to-stop-Jeremy-Corbyn-winning-Labour-leadership.html

Lord Mandelson tried to persuade the three mainstream Labour leadership candidates to quit en masse to stop leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn and force the party to suspend the election.

It also emerged that Liz Kendall urged Yvette Cooper to stand down because Andy Burnham is the only candidate who can win - but Miss Cooper refused.

The claims lay bare the desperation by the Labour hierarchy to try to stop Mr Corbyn from succeeding Ed Miliband as leader in less than four weeks time.

[Warpy]

5. Is there a down side to this?

Getting rid of Blair's people sounds like a good idea to me, they can always go back to the Tories. If they go off in a huff, you won't have to bring out the crowbars and dynamite.

Now if we could only do a similar thing here in the US.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Yes, that the party might split and keep the Tories in power forever; and yes, the real Tories are

even worse than the Blairites.

However, I think all this talk of 'purges' is baseless paranoia. If Corbyn gets the leadership, and wishes to stay more than a few months, he will have to negotiate with all wings of the party, and and give a few jobs all round.

Despite the media stereotype that everyone on the left is like Stalin, Corbyn is as far as I can gather a nice, not particularly tough, individual who doesn't really want power all that much. My worries about him are quite the opposite of the stereotype - that he might not be able to control party infighting and rebellions sufficiently; not that he'd go around purging everyone.

[Warpy]

8. I don't think they'd split the party, I don't think they've got enough popular support for that

but I'm reading things from across an ocean and 2/3 of a continent, so what do I know?

I do think a few of them will go off in a huff and rejoin the Tories. Most will stay, grumbling about the good old days when they were on top. I hope Corbyn is the peacemaker you say he is, or that he's got adequate staff to do it for him if he's too much of a Milquetoast.

[ananda]

9. Agree.

I hope Corbyn wins!

[T_i_B]

10. There's another down side we're seeing at the moment...

...a lot of people (unsurprisingly Corbyn supporters) are having their votes for the Labour leadership rejected by Labour and are going onto social media to complain about the letters they've received from Labour telling them that We have reasons to believe you do not support the aims and values of the Labour party.

If one of the mainstream candidates does win, there will be major questions about the way this vote has been handled by Labour. And there are many complaints about the system used to elect Labour leaders as it is anyway.

Which leaves Labour looking not only divided, but incompetent.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Mark Steel, for instance

Canvassed (and voted) for his local Labour candidate in May, but also supported Caroline Lucas in the neighbouring constituency, so they rejected him: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/08/13/mark-steel-labour-jeremy-corbyn_n_7982648.html . He obviously does support Labour when they have the best candidate for him, and so that's the kind of elector they need to attract.

[T_i_B]

12. He's not the only one

Even some full members who were full members before the general election have had their Labour leadership votes rejected after they have voted, receiving letters and e-mails stating that It has come to our attention that you don't support the values of the Labour Party. All the people complaining about being purged are vocal Corbyn supporters as it happens.

Which makes a leadership contest that's already descended into open civil war and farce now look incredibly murky. I'm very glad that I haven't made any attempt to sign up as a registered supporter. Even though I don't shout about who I vote for from the treetops and have signed a Labour candidates nomination papers in the past, I very much doubt I'd be accepted.

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Wow, that's really bad.

This is looking like a disaster. If you want to show yourselves unfit to be a government, a good way to start is showing yourselves unable to run an internal election. Falkirk looked bad enough, but this is, as you say, a farce.

[T_i_B]

14. I think it's fair to say....

...that Ed Milibands reforms, made in reaction to what happened in Falkirk have been an unmitigated disaster.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/LabourPurge?src=hash

But then again I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised, given how closed the local Labour club where I live is to outsiders.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. "Can't just be coincidence that #labourpurge is happening on the anniversary ...

... of Trotsky getting whacked with an ice axe."

Dark humour, but brilliant.

[T_i_B]

20. Labour supporters claim leadership vote 'purge'

http://www.channel4.com/news/labour-supporters-purged-from-leadership-vote

Labour supporters who have joined the party to vote in the leadership election are being barred from voting, accusing the party of "McCarthyite" purges, Channel 4 News has learned.

Supporters who joined the party in recent months - as £3 affiliates or fully fledged members - have been written to by the party telling them they will not be allowed to vote in September's election.

The Labour Party has said they have a robust system to prevent "fraudulent or malicious applications" and all applications to join the Labour Party are verified those who are identified as being candidates, members or supporters of another political party will be denied a vote.

Furious would-be voters, including the Have I Got News For You writer Peter Sinclair, have taken to Twitter to express their fury. The hashtag #LabourPurge was trending on Twitter on Thursday morning.

[Ken Burch]

18. What, exactly, was so terrible about what UNITE did in Falkirk?

It's not as if whoever they opposed being selected as the Labour candidate was inherently superior to whomever they supported.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. It's not that Unite did something bad; it's that the process was a mess

With claims and counterclaims about what was allowed. People ended up resigning; the candidate that the local Unite members seems to prefer withdrew. They had one set of rules for how to choose a candidate, and when one section thought it was going against them, had them overruled. But that was just in one constituency; this is nationwide.

[candelista]

21. So the leadership can cancel your right to vote....

...if they think you're going to vote the wrong way? That's a great little system--for the leadership. Someone should mention this idea to the DNC.

[T_i_B]

22. Well....

Ostensibly it's to weed out people from rival parties who've paid the £3 fee to vote in the contest. A number of Tories have attempted to join up and vote for Corbyn as they think he's totally unelectable and will hand the Tories a huge landslide victory.

But the purge has clearly gone much further than that, and looks eerily like an attempt to stack the ballot against Corbyn by the ruling Blairite faction, with a good dose of petty vindictiveness for good measure.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/08/labour-purging-supporters-jeremy-corbyn

The reasons range from the clear-cut – Marcus Chown, who has been expelled today, is on the ruling executive of the National Health Action party – to the ridiculous – one member was reported for failing to attend the CLP barbecue, in a complaint that has not been upheld but at this stage in the process, all that happens is that staffers gather the evidence, and pass it up the NEC, who ultimately decides whether or not to expel voters from the rolls. (Liking or following another political party on Facebook is not grounds for dismissal – tweeting or posting about joining another political party after the election is.)

[candelista]

23. I see.

The spirit of the rule is being twisted for the sake of political power. Can this possibly work?

[T_i_B]

24. It's clearly not working

It's difficult now to argue against the assertion that Labour is incompetent. Which is a total disaster as we do need a stronger Labour party and a much stronger opposition to the Tories.

Never mind the whole debate about whether or not Labour needs to move left or right. That matters far less in terms of electability then Labours current issues with infighting and cocking things up.

[MisterP]

6. I remember the thundering screams of the imminent "purity purge" when the Dems won the House in 2006

of course it was Cegelis, Lamont, McKinney, Halter, Romanoff, Sestak, Grayson, Kucinich, Buono, Lutrin, and now Sykes, Weiland, Davis, Grimes that were eased out by deck-stacking and other party-lever shenanigans

[bemildred]

16. "You say that like it was a bad thing." nt

[Ken Burch]

17. The term "purge" is inappropriate and deeply inflammatory.

Not having your contract renewed is not the same thing as being lined up and shot, for God's sakes.

There's a bitter irony here as well:

Most of these people cheered Tony Blair on when he pissed on the unions and pushed for "labour market flexibility&quot i.e., making it easy for employers to get rid of people without cause-the ultimate betrayal of Labour's historic roleas thhe defender of the rights of working people). Yet they are now acting as if they, and they alone, are owed jobs for life.

Elitist arrogance at its worst.

[T_i_B]

25. Labour rejects votes from people who can't pronounce ‘quinoa’

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/labour-reject-votes-from-people-who-cant-pronounce-quinoa-20150821101325

Labour officials, determined to stop a Jeremy Corbyn victory, have launched ‘Operation Quinoa’ to root out poor, working class people unable to pronounce the name of the Peruvian superfood.

Nikki Hollis, who joined the party last month, said: “I got a call from Labour HQ asking if I’d ever been to a farmers’ market and, if so, did I buy a particular grain that is grown in the Andes.

“I said no I hadn’t as I’m on a low income and farmers’ markets are designed to take advantage of simpering, middle class fucknuts with more money than sense. That did not go down well.”

A senior Labour source said: “We’re just trying to take our party back from working class people and their big, greasy hands.

[Ichingcarpenter]

26. DailyMash and other satire sites from Britian

are having a field day with the Blairites...... funny stuff

[T_i_B]

27. Calls to postpone leadership contest after suspicions Labour infiltrated by Labour supporters

http://newsthump.com/2015/08/25/calls-to-postpone-leadership-contest-after-suspicions-labour-infiltrated-by-labour-supporters/

There have been calls to postpone the Labour leadership contest after claims that the Labour party has been infiltrated by Labour supporters. The four contenders have been meeting to discuss concerns that there may not be a predictable passing of the leadership from one tedious New Labour wonk to another.

“There are very real concerns that genuine Labour supporters have infiltrated the party’s membership,” said Liz Kendall earlier. “We spent the best part of the last twenty years trying to get rid of these ghastly people with their beards, dungarees and Billy Bragg albums and replace them with pleasant looking young people in nice Next suits, and now they’re back.”

Liz Kendall would like to see the vetting process for new Labour party members changed.

“I think we should be asking all new members if they would vote for Jeremy Corbyn. If they answer ‘yes’ then I think it’s clear that they’re Labour supporters and therefore not the sort of people we want in the modern Labour party.”