Just got back to discover the Labour NEC Special Selections Panel (SSP) has decided that two repeat two seats with vacancies for PPCs in Wales, both with thumping great majorities, have been declared OPEN. Speculation from the other side of Offa's Dyke has started
here. The Labour Party has a policy of seeking 40% women MPs to represent it in the next Parliament. All Women Shortlists (AWS) have been the preferred means of achieving this objective, whatever the impact on local constituency parties as evidenced at the last General Election over Blaenau Gwent.
Last week Wales Online reported a 'battle' between outgoing Pontypridd MP Kim Howells and Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman over the issue to avoid any more self-inflicted wounds. Could he have won?
Here are the essential details of the two Welsh seats declared by the NEC SSP as OPEN today.:
Pontypridd AWS:
No OPEN shortlist Held
by: Lab Maj:
11,428
CVs
to be submitted by: 22 Feb Shortlisting
interviews: 25 Feb
Islwyn AWS:
No OPEN shortlist Held
by: Lab Maj:
16,787
CVs
to be submitted by: 22 Feb Shortlisting
interviews: 25 Feb
There is a growing suspicion among Labour grassroots members that All Women Shortlists (AWS) are being used by the dominant forces controlling the Labour Party not to get more women into Parliament as Labour MPs, but to engineer selections for their preferred candidates. Members in Scotland should be taking a very close interest in this latest development. A timetable has been announced for Airdrie and Shotts declared an AWS over two years ago. The procedures function is being managed in Scotland by guess who? The Scottish Labour Party. This is a seat which has endured imposed candidates ever since it was created in 1997. According to my sources across the political spectrum in the Labour Party in Scotland, local members would have preferred the opportunity to exercise their right to select their own candidate when John Reid MP announced his intention not to run for relection back in 2007.
Instead we have seen squalid deals done, and there are suspicions of more to come - Ashfield could be next perhaps, just vacated by Geoff Hoon MP.
An excellent article questioning the activities of Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey appeared last Wednesday on the Guardian Comment is Free blog by Martin Kettle. He concluded:
Jack Dromey would be a more than adequate Labour MP, too. But this
doesn't mean he should do it. It would look as if he had got the job
because of who he is married to. It would look as if he had lined
himself up a nice post-retirement life because he had the connections.
It would look as if he had benefited from connections that others could
not call on."Why does a dog lick its own backside? Because it can," goes the saying. But that doesn't make it an action to imitate.
Like Kettle, I know Harriet and Jack socially albeit only slightly. It grieves me to see such poor political judgment being paraded by them both at such a critical time for Labour. Behind their personal saga, another two safe Labour seats were surprise, surprise... declared OPEN - Leyton and Wanstead, and then Birmingham Erdington. It stinks. If Gordon Brown had any regard for the re-electability of the Labour Party, he will intervene immediately to order a clean up of the Labour Party fast-track selection process.
