Emma Dent Coad who won Kensington for Labour barred from selections
JVL Introduction
Emma Dent Coad who stunned pundits to become Labour MP for Kensington and Chelsea just days before the tragic – and tragically avoidable – Grenfell fire has been prevented from the selection process to find the next candidate. She is the only Labour candidate to have won the seat and is well known and respected in the community in an area where she has worked tirelessly for 20 years. The stated reasons relate to “due diligence” but what had she done wrong? Spoken at Stop The War meetings? Supported Jeremy Corbyn? Been a socialist? Supported the Labour Movement?
Her exclusion is one more to add to the growing examples of centralised control over selections under Starmer leading to the exclusion of left wingers. Maurice Mcleod in Camberwell and Peckham, several local and other candidates in Hastings & Rye as well as in Sedgefield where Tony Blair had been the MP and where the lack of Party democracy led to the resignation of 12 CLP Officers.
There are more examples, Sam Tarry in Ilford is one and “MP of the Year”Ian Byrne in Liverpool may well be another may well be another.
Zarah Sultana comfortably survived her trigger ballot as have a few others, but it seems harder and harder to become a new candidate from the left of the Party or even from that wing that stands soldidly with the working class. We watch anxiously to see what will happen to Apsana Begum. This matters because without giving voice to serious alternative ideas to address the crisis, without those people who will solidly stand with the working class and, indeed, the middle class people of this country – and internationally Labour’s coming victory against the pernicious and chaotic Tories will not offer the change that is desperately needed.
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Mon 17 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
Labour blocks ex-Kensington MP Emma Dent Coad from running at next election
Former member of Corbyn-loyal wing of party was target of tabloid stories during time in parliament
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Emma deserves the highest respect. She is one person in politics who, indisputably, can be described as having a soul.
If the local branch had enough balls (forgive me) they’d still support her and not just walk away or support a ‘choice’ foisted on them. She could be the ‘real Labour’ candidate with the support of the LOCAL Labour Party. We have to stand up to Starmer & Co. and this next GE may be our last chance.
Insanity.
Truly sorry to hear Emma has been barred from standing as a candidate for the LP Parliamentary nomination. I campaigned for her in 2017 and appreciated her coming to Brent and speaking on housing at the Brent Transformed event. Shameful way she and other good socialist are being treated by the LP. No justice, no peace. Solidarity
I suppose the Labour Party is frightened and dare not push for traditional left wing policies. It means it will not win the next election as many Labour voters will stay at home.
I agree with Derek Taylor. The local party should simply refuse to accept an imposed candidate or gerrymandered long/short list. This decision is simply outrageous and means that the next PLP will virtually all be neo-liberals
More proof that the anti-democratic gang around Starmer will do anything not to spook their quest to curry favour with Tory voters by appearing to be in any way, shape or form “socialists” and that those in the party who are will be witch-hunted out out or otherwise blocked.
If ever evidence was needed about the venal path being trodden by this bunch of unprincipled sell-outs then look no further than this case of Emma Dent Coad. Jeremy Corbyn bent over backwards to accomodate the likes of Starmer into his front bench whilst party leader and the unwise decision to pursue this tactic, in light of how now in return he and his supporters are treated by this bunch of Judases.
In due course when they prove unable to resolve the crisis of British capitalism, expect them to accept their pay-offs for services rendered before retirement to the House of Lords or other lucrative positions as befits their political ilk.
The same has happened in Peterborough. All local candidates sidelined and someone unknown to the area parachuted in. So demoralising.
Labour has also blocked Doina Cornell from standing for Stroud where she has successfully led for many years, a popular council administration in alliance with Greens and Libdems.
The majority of Labour councillors resigned the party and now sit as independents. The party had instructed them to step down from leadership and sit in opposition with the Tories! Labour has been destroyed here.
When I left the Labour Party in February this year I likened the methods of its internal regime to those of a right-wing dictatorship. The blocking of Emma Dent Coad from standing as Labour’s candidate in Kensington suggests this might have been an understatement.
Emma’s dogged campaigning for “the many” for 20 years in Kensington produced an astonishing result when she won this Tory stronghold in 2017. Her care and support for the community who endured and survived the Grenfell catastrophe a week after the election, was phenomenal.
She would still be the MP today were it not for the vanity and stupidity of the Green Party who stood against Emma in 2019 as she defended a wafer-thin majority. They knew that any votes they gained in that seat at Labour’s expense could only help the Tories. Emma Dent Coad lost by 150 votes; the Greens got more than 400.
Labour’s right-dominated bureaucracy are exploiting the Tory Party’s ongoing implosion to step up and accelerate a bloodbath of socialists who live and act by unshakeable principles. In blocking Emma Dent Coad they demonstrate they are finally worthy of the description that Bevan reserved for Tories.
This is Starmer’s plan to rid the Party of Socialists.
Why are the Constituency members voting out Left Candidates? It’s because, now, they are the majority, why, because of the tens of 1000s that have been suspended or expelled and the 100.000+ that have resigned from the Party because of Starmer, has left many Constituencies with a Rightwing majority.
Emma lost Kensington in 2019 in part because of a set-up engineered by, among others, the Guardian’s tactical voting guide, which nominated the Liberal Democrat candidate as the one most likely to win. This despite polling that showed that Emma was more likely to win.
After the shock result of 2017 the establishment was determined to stop Corbyn at all costs, making use of anti-Corbyn forces from within his own party, as well as a media platform that promoted a neoliberal agenda while pretending to sympathise with liberal ideals. The Guardian discredited him with the voters by constantly planting hostile stories in the media, and most crucially the right of his party lumbered him, against his own instincts, with the dreadful Second Referendum policy that lost him the Red Wall of previously loyal Labour voters who had voted for Brexit by large majorities. The man responsible for foisting that policy onto Corbyn was Keir Starmer.
Given this history it should come as no surprise that the Labour Party under Starmer should have blocked Emma’s candidacy at the next General Election.