The left and right slates have secured three places each on the new Labour Party National Executive Committee which takes office after Conference. Top of the poll was Ken Livingstone with 88,235 votes from a total of 127,331 ballot papers returned. Ken ran on the controversial Grassroots Labour slate assembled by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). Second was the right wing Labour First's Oona King with 64,004. Ann Black, current NEC chair, who has shimmied left from Labour Reform via Save the Labour Party on the former Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate to the CLPD Grassroots Labour confection secured 59,200 votes, Labour First's Ellie Reeves who infamously opposed constituency labour parties (CLPs) a role in parliamentary candidate selections ahead of the 2010 General Election scored 45,481, while Grassroots Labour's Christine Shawcroft, who has just been threatened by the NEC for giving a faithful account of the Tower Hamlets decision last week was close behind with 44,338. This left Labour First's Luke Akehurst (and my former Hackney North GC colleague) taking up the sixth place with 30,825 votes.
Yours truly was well off the pace in 13th place, having run independently, with 18,650 votes some 2,000 more than in 2008. So it will be goodbye to the NEC on Wednesday night when the formal handover takes place. But not to the issues of party democracy, governance, organisation and funding, which I intend to try and put even more vividly into the public domain.