Ballot forms will shortly be available to members of the Labour Party to cast their votes in the annual internal election for who gets to sit on the party’s most powerful National Executive Committee.
As disillusioned left members daily announce their resignation from the Starmer-led party the right wing factions expect to win a majority of seats if not achieve a clean sweep.
The result will not be known until November 12 when voting ends. The result should be announced the following day.
Two of the current crop of candidates standing on behalf of the right wing Labour First also stood in 2017 but as independents.
Johanna Baxter and Gurinder Singh Josan claimed in 2017 that they were standing for “independence and diversity” because they are “independent minded” and will “not take instruction from any faction.”
An online newsletter called Vice discovered that the registration for the “Independent NEC reps website” was registered by Matthew Pound, the full-time organiser for Labour First and the admin email address was LabourFirst@gmail.com
This year Baxter and Josan are standing as Labour First candidates but is this yet another false flag to fool party members or the real real thing?
The NEC voting system has been changed from first past the post to single transferable vote allegedly to prevent factional ‘slates’ of candidates, though both right and left have published their slates!
But the changed voting system has encouraged more members to stand and 173 have put themselves forward for the tiny number of seats.
Candidates are standing under the following headings: from right to left; Labour to Win (joint Labour First and Prospect) six candidates; Tribune group of MPs three (includes two overlaps with Labour to Win); Open Labour two; Centre-left Grassroots Alliance six ; Labour Left Alliance six (includes one overlap); Momentum two and 10 independents.
Factions have put up less than a full slate of nine in the belief this will benefit their candidates because of the new selective voting system which ranks candidates in order of preference. If their favoured candidate fails that candidate’s votes are transferred to the voters second favourite and so on until one candidate achieves a majority vote.
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