UK Labour's dirty trick excludes 130,000 members from leadership vote

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/12/uk-labours-dirty-trick-exclu.html

My, they are desperate, aren’t they?

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…and the shit-show must go on?

Must it really, though?

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This party is dead. Utterly dysfunctional.

Mind you, 'twas ever thus.

As I saw today, they’ve only had one leader (now deservedly hated by most of the party members) since 1974 who’s led them to a majority - a barely workable one of 3, even then - the last real majority they won was 10 years before that.

To steal a phrase, Labour isn’t working.

It’s time for a realignment of the left. Most of the MPs would seem to be better suited to a social democrat party (a new SDP?). I’m past caring what happens to the Labour party, but someone needs to actually be opposing terrible Conservative policies. Maybe a split could lead to two parties that could work together on areas of broader agreement, along with the other opposition parties, instead of one party busy stabbing itself in the back.

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Apparently Owen Smith is going to stand too.

At least he didn’t vote for Iraq (mostly because he wasn’t an MP at the time…)

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When are all the not-really-Labour MPs going to realise that Labour doesn’t want them anymore?

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Don’t forget, our new PM with an electorate of over 44 million has managed to get in power from 159 voters, so there’s that…

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So Corbyn is challenging for the job, and can’t even get the required number of MPs to support him.

So time to disband Labour. Assets and debts get split, no one gets the Labour name, so no winners, no losers.

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Corbyn isn’t challenging for the job. He’s in the job at the moment. And if anyone wants rid of him, they simply have to win an election against him.

How does anybody expect a replacement to win a general election if they can’t even beat Corbyn.

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I don’t think that word means what he thinks it means.

Well the Labour leadership electorate is not broken into geographically bounded areas so it is not a literal gerrymander. The intricacies of the vote are, however, changed to ensure that many of the members will have no vote in the leadership. I don’t know of a word which is exactly and literally what is happening here.
I guess the headline covers it “dirty trick excludes 130,000 members”.

Why don’t they just purge their membership?

Tories are loving this. They have just gone from having the least competent dullard in world politics leading them to two general election victories, a catastrophic egomaniac measuring contest which threatens to fuck them up proper, into a leadership contest which had the world gaping at the parade of pure stinkng evil they managed to dredge up, and Labour are too busy knifing their leader to do anything about any of it.

Fuck off Labour. Goodbye. Don’t come back.

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The horrible fuckers. It’s still not going to do them any good though, is it? Just means he’ll win by a smaller margin.

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Desperate pond scum. It is exactly this kind of procedural infighting that caused many people to dislike the Labour Party.

Splittist! The Blairite People’s Liberation Front spits on the People’s Liberation Front of Blair!

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So, I joined in March as a Member, and chose to pay £15/month. So that means I have paid the Party at least £60 but I don’t get to vote for the leader. On the other hand, somebody else who isn’t a member can pay £25 and will get to vote for the leader.

From the Labour Party website:

As a member, you’ll be a key part of the team. You’ll be eligible to vote in leadership elections, you can help shape party policy, you can attend local meetings and you can even stand as a candidate.

http://www.labour.org.uk/pages/questions-about-membership

Sounds like a case for the ASA?

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That’s what you get when the shit is about three millimetres from the fan and someone is desperately looking for the off switch. It probably saved the £ from hitting $1.20.

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[quote=“nickle, post:8, topic:81359”]
So Corbyn is challenging for the job
[/quote]No, he has the job, therefore he is not challenging someone for the job. So doesn’t need to get any MPs to support him to be included on the ballot, as is written in the rules.

[quote=“nickle, post:8, topic:81359”]
So time to disband Labour. Assets and debts get split, no one gets the Labour name, so no winners, no losers.
[/quote]This may need to happen though.
A ‘broad church’ party with a variety of views is one thing. But having rightwing MP’s that treat their own party leader, who follows the founding policies of the party, as public enemy number one and the Tories as an indifference that do not need to be opposed in any meaningful way? That is not a workable situation.

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Whoever came up with this idea, put it in motion and backed it are crooked, sneaky scum. Corbyn’s the only relevant UK politian that doesn’t make me wanna puke, but it’s not looking hopeful for this country if labour and the tories are each a wretched bag of poisonous snakes.

Hey hey! It’s conspiracy theory time. I firmly believe that the powers that controlled David Cameron control many other politicians through a system of bribery and blackmail. They are in the business of having dirt on everyone and showed their hand a bit when that piggate rubbish scandal was chucked to the papers. That’s when I knew they had Cameron in their pocket, all his actions were dictated by shady Etonian sources. That scandal was nothing compared to what they had on him. When he “stepped down”, and then Boris, and then loads of other slimy chumps all I could imagine was some pervert in a culty robe symbolically knocking over elborately carved chess pieces. Labour may not be controlled directly by the same group but very few people in politics got there without owing favours to those already in power, I expect that the overwhelming in house aversion to Corbyn is because many members secretly/openly represent the interests of companies/corporations that may suffer losses if Corbyn is allowed his way. He’s the thorn in the side of a fat, ugly multiheaded beast and I hope he perseveres.

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It’s not really a conspiracy theory in the tinfoil-hat sense. They’re called ‘Tabloid Owners’. They lean right, at their very kindest, and the Labour party are pathetically afraid of them.

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They waited to vote till 2 NEC members had left. Loosely “gerrymandering” means fixing an election by tampering with the electorate. Mind you, I’d just call it “electoral fraud”.

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The sad thing is that when Tony Blair bent over backwards for Rupes he was winning anyway. The Tories had run out of steam, their own party hated the leadership, none of their options were in any way inspiring (mind you there was nothing as empty as a David Cameron shaped cardboard cutout on offer).

He didn’t need to. As Chris Patton said “the thing about Rupert is, he’s only there when you don’t need him”.

He should have hung tough and then dealt with anti-trust and monopolies in the media. The ethics problems would have required hauling the coppers over coals, and who has the fortitude for that?

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