politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Henry G Manson says that party selections rarely leave clea

Threads changing quicker than "tim's" briefing notes from Ed's bunker.

Easterross said:

At least Tory selection is only done by Constituency Assoc members with no votes given to external bodies.

Only Labour party members vote in their selections.

Easterross said:

Labour selections are always entertaining. Who can forget Mr Harriet Harman, Jack Dromy (who just happened to be a Trade Union baron and the Labour Party Treasurer who didn't know about £18 million loans raised by Lord Cashpoint) winning one of his wife's all-female shortlists

There should be a pbc sinbin for people repeating this after it has been debunked here umpteen times.

How have Labour managed to make a mountain out of their own molehill? Good timing!

Henry G

A nice attempt of apologetics but it is not persuasive. Yes Labour has a record of imposing rules and then breaking them when it suits its personal purpose (like Mr Harriet Harmon).

However, when the major donor to a political party unapologetically and publically announces that the party that it has been supporting has MPs and candidates that are not supporting the believed basic ethos of that party (and adopts measures (invalid? or illegal?) to correct that imbalance) then it is valid that questions are asked.

On Today this morning, Anna Eagle could only offer the defence for Labour's inaction/action that "we had to defend the rule book" and would not recognise the scenario that was put to her that Unite could withdraw its funding of Labour.

Financier said:

On Today this morning, Anna Eagle could only offer the defence for Labour's inaction/action that "we had to defend the rule book" and would not recognise the scenario that was put to her that Unite could withdraw its funding of Labour.

Defending the rule book is more sensible than ignoring it. She is right to believe that Unite will not disaffiliate from Labour.

Neil said:

Financier said:

Yes Labour has a record of imposing rules and then breaking them when it suits its personal purpose (like Mr Harriet Harmon).

Are we going for a record? The number of times we can cite an example of how a selection wasnt fixed in a thread about how they are fixed?

Oh well if we're playing Record Breakers

what about Jack Dromy being selected on an AWS ?

you heard it first from Easter Ross McWhirter.

Awkward for Miliband seeing as he owes his job to the twisted electoral college rules which meant the Brothers won it for him...

But 95% of the public are entirely unaware of this story and 90% of the remaining 5% either don't give a monkey's or don't understand it.

tim said:

So far we've had the "Dromy" (sic) AWS myth and "Anna" Eagle on the radio.
Surely there's an IQ filter that can cope with these posters.

tim if you change "myth" to "scandal" in that post, you can join our record attempt.

Con 23% with Survation, prompting for UKIP must be making a huge difference now the voters have started to forget they exist.

This is an attempt to say all parties are like this, when they clearly aren't.

Alanbrooke said:

tim said:

So far we've had the "Dromy" (sic) AWS myth and "Anna" Eagle on the radio.
Surely there's an IQ filter that can cope with these posters.

tim if you change "myth" to "scandal" in that post, you can join our record attempt.

The Idiot Mr Harman ;

" The great majority of the womens (sic) who came into parliament were women ".


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJWHwAp5Css


Labour's inbreeding is producing a race of imbeciles.

Selection of candidates: who cares? Answer: only the potential candidates themselves and their backers.

Len McCluskey's onslaught on Ed Miliband is far more significant than the Falkirk brouhaha itself.

MonikerDiCanio said:

Alanbrooke said:

tim said:

So far we've had the "Dromy" (sic) AWS myth and "Anna" Eagle on the radio.
Surely there's an IQ filter that can cope with these posters.

tim if you change "myth" to "scandal" in that post, you can join our record attempt.

The Idiot Mr Harman ;

" The great majority of the women who came into parliament were women ".


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJWHwAp5Css


Labour's inbreeding is producing a race of imbeciles.

And we thought Labour were against all this family inheritance, blueblood, right breeding stuff ? Is it like the Rev Moon I wonder where the NEC decides who gets to marry whom ?

antifrank said:

Selection of candidates: who cares? Answer: only the potential candidates themselves and their backers.

Len McCluskey's onslaught on Ed Miliband is far more significant than the Falkirk brouhaha itself.

Could not agree more. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.

RobD said:

foxinsoxuk said:

Sarah wooloston is a good advert for open primaries. I think that govt funding of parties is not such a good idea, but open primaries funded by the govt would be acceptable.

We would then get away from stitch ups like Falkirk, or any number of others. It would reduce the power of the self replicating cotierie of SPADs that form the oligarcies of our two main parties.

It was in the coalition agreement as I recall.

How would you prevent abuse of the primary system? For example you could imagine labour supporters voting en masse for the most unpleasant Tory candidate on the list, in order to increase the chances for their candidate at the election.

The Vietnam Oral History book that I keep plugging (Christian Appy) describes how Nixon's team enthusiastically worked to get the far-left McGovern chosen as his challenger. I don't think open selections work well at all for that sort of reason. But a consultative public vote before a selection could be interesting. If another party had obviously packed the meeting members could just roll their eyes and ignore it. As Henry observes, packing the nomination process by unions or anyone else doesn't really work either - a good candidate will make it to the final and then only members' votes count. Persuading people to join merely to support you is hard and can be counter-productive - I got my very Tory mum to do it in 1983, and cringed when she turned up at a branch meeting above a pub in an ocelot jacket, then refused to sit at the table as it would make 13 and she was superstitious (mind you, they then made her Branch Membership Secretary so maybe they were desperate enough not to care).

Being a party member isn't that much fun most of the time. The right to choose your candidates is more interesting than everything else, since there's a chance that you can change the outcome, which isn't really usually the case for an individual voter in a GE, however much we shout "your vote could be decisive!" at them. If members give up the right to select, I'm not sure that many will bother at all.

Can everyone please give the whole "this Unite/Falkirk is a story" thing a rest.

We can take our lead from the mighty and left wing airbrushing BBC on this one where the first five stories (including multi-media elements) are about the kitten in Derbyshire which got stuck in a can of coke.

Not sure how this is going to pan out.
Is there actually, perhaps unexpectedly, a way this could be turned into a win for Ed Milliband? With clever spin that could surely be doable (Although he hasn't got off to a good start).

On the other hand, I don't know what is yet to come out, and what Tom Watson will do next.

tim said:

Anna Eagle
Dromy
Woolaston

This is supposed to be a politics site not a remedial class.

Have we told you the one about Blackbusters ? arf.

MBoy said:

This is an attempt to say all parties are like this, when they clearly aren't.

There are two factors here.

1. Different factions within a party will attempt to ensure that their supporters are selected for promising seats to become MPs.

This happens in all parties, and Conservative Eurosceptic groups have been particularly successful in ensuring that the PCP reflects their views.

2. The degree to which rules are bent or broken in order to achieve #1. You have things like older MPs allegedly being offered Peerages in order to announce that they will not fight the election sufficiently close to the election that the hierarchy can parachute in one of their mates.

This appears to be regarded as routine within the Labour party, but could fall within the definition of bribery, in my view.

Then you have the situation of an organisation like Unite trying to, in their mind, correct the balance and possibly slipping in to fraud to do so.

Unite are often being criticised for #1, in which all parties are alike, when what is going wrong with the selections is #2.

I think we should worry if an MP owes their place in Parliament to corrupt practises. Government funding for open primaries might help [but determined people can always find a way to corrupt a process if they wish], but it raises a number of questions.

Would the government fund an open primary to select a BNP candidate? If you set a threshold of only funding primaries for parties who saved their deposit at the last general election then the primary process would act to reinforce the status quo by providing free publicity for those parties that are already established in an area. Is that consistent with a fair election?

STV would help, because people would be able to rank their preferred candidates for each party, and so in effect it combines the process of an open primary with that of the general election.

Fat_Steve said:

Not sure how this is going to pan out.
Is there actually, perhaps unexpectedly, a way this could be turned into a win for Ed Milliband? With clever spin that could surely be doable (Although he hasn't got off to a good start).

On the other hand, I don't know what is yet to come out, and what Tom Watson will do next.

As noted below the overwhelming majority of voters know and care little of who is selected for what constituency, or how. But what they may see is the bloke who supposedly pulls all Ed's strings talking very angrily about how Ed is not doing what he wants. Up to now, Len seems to be a pretty lonely voice. Could it be that he is somewhat isolated?

tim said:

@TGOHF

I wouldn't mind the lack of rigour on all the names if the same people didnt also get elections horribly wrong

Ironic coming from the Gove worshippers.
Or proof that dropping the coursework leads to failing the final exam too, you decide.

tim, chillax man,

you sound so uptight, dude

here's a link to Drenge help you get in the zone

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/24/new-band-drenge

SouthamObserver said:

Fat_Steve said:

Not sure how this is going to pan out.
Is there actually, perhaps unexpectedly, a way this could be turned into a win for Ed Milliband? With clever spin that could surely be doable (Although he hasn't got off to a good start).

On the other hand, I don't know what is yet to come out, and what Tom Watson will do next.

As noted below the overwhelming majority of voters know and care little of who is selected for what constituency, or how. But what they may see is the bloke who supposedly pulls all Ed's strings talking very angrily about how Ed is not doing what he wants. Up to now, Len seems to be a pretty lonely voice. Could it be that he is somewhat isolated?

Exactly so.

Internally it might matter a very great deal, externally people are bored or don't really care or notice but the overriding impression - where there is one - is nevertheless negative.

Moreover although this seems a pretty egregious example, "Unions support Labour" is hardly a man bites dog moment. The story, as ever, is the attempted explanations/cover ups which seem not to add up and keep the story going and arouse peoples' suspicions.

TGOHF said:

Alanbrooke said:

TGOHF said:

Guido has a leaked Labour EU vote briefing - dunno if it was left in the toilets.

http://order-order.com/2013/07/05/read-leaked-labour-eu-vote-briefing/

They want to appoint an "EU commissioner for growth" - deary deary me.

You'd better proof read it for spelling mistakes and grammar ;-)

Apparently we should stay in the EU because lots of people from the Uk travel there every year.

It's kindergarten stuff.

flicking through that they keep quoting Miliband for some reason, they haven't mentioned Len's view once. Misleading.

@joeyjonessky
magnificent labour turnout for wharton bill. definitely double figures.

@GuidoFawkes
So whips told Labour MPs to go home and enjoy the sunshine. Suspect that line won't hold.

weak, weak, weak.

tim said:

@Southam

If Len is writing Labour policy can we wait for him to get Labour to support Unites policy on Heathrow expansion before he gets stopped please.

Len is writing Labour policy, but disagrees with it. That may make sense to some, but it puzzles me as a concept.

Fenster said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23159023

I was actually surprised to see that there are 40 muslims playing in the Premier League.

I expect nearly all of them are north African...

tim said:

@Southam

If Len is writing Labour policy can we wait for him to get Labour to support Unites policy on Heathrow expansion before he gets stopped please.

Should that not be Unite's tim? Perhaps appointing yourself as the PB English language expert wasn't such a good idea.

TGOHF said:

Link to the live debate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/21006885

Where are the Unite Party members ? Are they on strike ?

The Labour briefing note is rather good (much better than the notes for Prime Minister's Questions from the other day).

It is, however, a bad sign that the Labour party has suddenly become very leaky. It implies that discipline is breaking down.

AndreaParma_82 said:

@Plato

It becomes "must" in 2010 version.

In addition to fulfilling any statutory
requirements for the relevant public
office, persons wishing to stand as a
Labour candidate must have continuous
membership of the party of at least 12
months. They should also be a member of
a trade union affiliated to the TUC or
considered by the NEC as a bona fide
trade union and contribute to the
political fund of that union. Any
exceptions to these conditions must be
approved by the NEC or by officer
authorised by the NEC
http://www.leftfutures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Labour-Party-Rule-Book-2010.pdf

So before Refounding Labour which was approved at Conference 2011.

And what would change in practice switching from should to must? I know must is more decisive than should. But if you leave the "exceptions" clause in the next line, it's not conclusive anyway.

Curious one. "Must" implies that there is no scope for any exception to be considered whereas "should", especially in the context of an exceptions process being listed, implies that it's expected but not necessary. The use of the two different words within the same clause does indicate that the conditions have different standing. However, there are only two conditions and the clause states "exceptions to these conditions" i.e. exceptions can apply to both (given that conditions is in the plural). So it's as you say, not conclusive. The only reasonable interpretation is that either or both conditions can be waived but reasons acceptable to waive the union membership requirement are not as strict as for the 12-month membership rule.

tim said:

Carry on banging on about Europe and immigrants

@MSmithsonPB: UKIP was in 2nd place ahead of CON in Survation ITV/Mirror poll before reallocation of don't knows
See http://t.co/TwErrJs3KV

Problem here is obvious, half the Tories fall for this xenophobic crap.

Some of the detail on the NHS is interesting.

For example, there's a wafer-thin majority in favour of paying more National Insurance to improve the NHS: 40.4% - 39.9%.

However, when you look at the Midlands - traditionally regarded as being swing vote territory where the marginals are - then there are large majorities opposed to paying more NI for the NHS. In the West Midlands by 46% - 35% and in the East Midlands by 49% - 34%.

It would be great if one of the polling companies would start producing data tables that split out those living in major cities, say >250,000, and those in rural areas, say a population <10,000, from those in between, the <a href="http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/17/where-the-next-election-will-be-decided/">METTHs that were identified by Blair Freebairn here in 2007.

I'm pretty sure that it is the Ashcroft polls that ask people whether they live in an urban area, defined as >10,000, or three further options [village, hamlet, isolated dwelling], but that still lumps the METTHs in with the larger conurbations.