There are allegations of direct interference from Jeremy Corbyn’s office in the process to select a candidate for the Manchester Gorton by-election.
Local members report they are being called and urged to back Sam Wheeler, a Corbyn loyalist, from ‘the leader’s office.’
This would mark a new departure in terms of leadership interference in a selection battle.
Although both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown exerted influence behind the scenes to support favoured candidates, they were never as blatant as Jeremy Corbyn appears to be in Gorton.
After struggling to insert favoured candidates in both the Copeland and Stoke Central by-elections, it seems the Corbynistas are going all-out to shoe-horn Wheeler into the nomination.
This comes as the Guido Fawkes website reports comments Wheeler made in a blog, where he claimed the armed forces helped to ‘to shore up a waning sense of national identity and importance.’
There are also rumours flying around that a deal among Asian Muslim hopefuls to unify behind a single candidate have foundered.
Favourites for the nomination include North West MEP, Afzal Khan, a former Lord Mayor of Manchester and local councillor Mike Amesbury, a former senior adviser to Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner.
Both men have long associations with the seat and would be strong, locally credible candidates, who, while not Corbynistas, are certainly not opponents of the leadership.
This makes the attempts to push Wheeler all the stranger.
Indeed, Amesbury helped pioneer Labour’s attack on the government’s grammar schools proposals and now serves a key campaign lieutenant for Andy Burnham.
The longlist is being drawn up today with shortlisting on Monday.
Tags: Afzal Khan, by-election, Jeremy Corbyn, Manchester Gorton, Mike Amesbury, Sam Wheeler
In this new politics Corbyn cant even manage the electoral stitch ups competently! What hope is there for the party and the country
Yet you seemingly see nothing wrong in candidates parachuted in, all women short lists etc etc.
Only one group of people should select the candidates – the relevant CLP. And only one group of people should decide which candidate wins – the CLPs membership.
“Although both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown exerted influence behind the scenes to support favoured candidates, they were never as blatant as Jeremy Corbyn appears to be in Gorton.”
Oh, what rubbish. They were infinitely more so.
the record of Brown and Blair on parachuting candidates into seats was blatant and needs to be put on the record. Specifically Stoke Central, where Tristram Hunt was so out of touch with the constituency by 2015 he was the least popular MP to win a seat, gaining only 19% of the electors in a seat where turnout declined to below 50% for the third time in all the elections held after the New Labour landslide of 1997 (2001, 2005 and 2015: 2010 it rose to the dizzy heights of 53.7%: Politics in this seat was worryingly irrelevant to working class people) and the imposition of a candidate did not work. The reasons here need particular examination, but Stoke Central was merely one example of a general policy.
Trevor Fisher,
Trevor actually Hunt went for the Leyton seat but we went for John Cryer to be our choice, so stoke picked him later
Personally, I would stop any Labour candidate being foisted on to seats they didn’t have a plausible connection to. Think the point is the London crowd – Blairite or Corbynite – exhibit equal disdain for local members.