Labour Party members should choose Labour Party candidates - now

With a General Election on the way there is controversy surrounding the selection of Labour candidates in seats where we expect to win. Even Dave Prentis has got in on the act.

There is something more than a little unappetising about how much disputes about the selection of candidates in winnable seats, which are essentially contests about individual political careers, take on the misleading appearance of disagreements about political principle, but it’s hardly a new phenomenon.

It is because this is a problem with a long history that I sympathise very much with comrades in Vauxhall Labour Party who have protested that their local democratic desire for an All Women Shortlist (AWC) has been denied by the National Executive Council (NEC).

Whilst one might think that it would be an easy matter for a local Party to ensure that they selected a woman candidate if that was their wish, this would depend upon there being a selection process in which local members could express their views.

Those who remember the imposition of Kate Hoey by the NEC in 1989 will appreciate, however, why members in Vauxhall are worried that a local Party saddled with an MP they didn’t select for the past thirty years might end up in the same boat again if, as in 2017, the NEC has to take over selecting candidates when a General Election is called.

The answer to the dilemma confronting the Party, in Vauxhall and elsewhere, is surely to get on with open democratic selection of candidates in every constituency (including those with sitting Labour MPs).

For those of us who don’t have a sitting Labour MP – and are not at the top of the list of target seats – even we would still like to have a say about who our candidate will be. There are thousands of loyal Labour Party members who are preparing to spend several weeks campaigning for candidates across the whole country – not only in seats we expect to hold or gain.

In 2017 we were taken by surprise and it was understandable that candidates had to be selected – and imposed – by the NEC. Since we have been watching this General Election approach for months now it would be much less understandable if we were to deny our mass membership their democratic right to choose candidates at constituency level again.