Liverpool West Derby
An already good weekend of selection results with Leeds West became a superb one with Stephen Twigg's selection for Liverpool West Derby (Lab notional majority of over 14,500), replacing sitting MP Bob Wareing who came 3rd.
This will put back into the Commons one of Labour's star performers. Anyone who knows the work Stephen did in Enfield Southgate will know that the Labour Party and the electorate in Liverpool West Derby will be getting a very impressive and hard-working local MP, as well as someone who will hopefully be back as a minister as soon as they are back in the Commons.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 9:30 am
23 Comments:
Liverpool local paper says that Wareing will resign the Labour whip, Labour membership and will stand as an indipendent at next GE.
10:13 am, September 17, 2007
If that is Wareing's response to his members' democratic vote, then they were absolutely right not to reselect him.
As as independent I am sure he will secure, oh, hundreds, of votes!! I look forward to Stephen Twigg being back in Parliament.
10:52 am, September 17, 2007
Good luck to Wareing if he does. Twigg deserves to be run over for this shitty piece of carpetbagging.
Apparently 18 USDAW branches affiliated in quick succession to the CLP in order to vote against Wareing in the trigger ballot.
Democracy in action from the far right of the party again, eh?
Unspeakable people.
10:53 am, September 17, 2007
"As as independent I am sure he will secure, oh, hundreds, of votes!! "
He may battle the LDs and the Liberals for being a distant second place
10:54 am, September 17, 2007
fuming you are being ridiculous.
Wareing has just lost an OMOV ballot of members, and didn't get the support of the majority of party branches, so complaining about the union nominations is totally beside the point.
It was the Bennite left who opened the Pandora's box of mandatory reselection (and sowed the seeds of the SDP split when the Beckett's deselected Dick Taverne) back in the 1970s, and now you are having to live with the consequences.
This is party democracy in action comrades - you ought to be celebrating.
11:24 am, September 17, 2007
I think it's an absolute disgrace.Stephen Twigg has been parachuted in. But Bob should know better than to hand the right ammunition....
12:15 pm, September 17, 2007
In what sense is winning an OMOV ballot against the sitting MP and several very strong local councillors being parachuted in?
"Parachuting" is usually used to refer to candidates on shortlists of two imposed by the NEC on a 48 hour process due to very late retirements just before a General Election.
12:22 pm, September 17, 2007
Grim Up North "it is a disgrace" so is democracy a disgrace Stephen Twigg won fir and square and Bob Wareing came third if he was any use he would have been re-selected easily he only has himself to blame!
12:57 pm, September 17, 2007
I think grimupnorth's comment is very illuminating. Now we are seeing what the hard left really think about party democracy - they are only in favour of it when their candidates win.......
3:44 pm, September 17, 2007
I wonder if Grim Up North would have be so scathing if Steven Twigg had beaten say for example Hazel Blears, or would that be "a great progressive step against homophobia"!
4:37 pm, September 17, 2007
What a strange couple of comments.
Twigg should be opposed wherever he goes. Scum.
5:04 pm, September 17, 2007
In what sort of parallel universe would anyone rather have Bob Wareing as their MP than Stephen Twigg?
Where are the potential left PPCs of equivalent ability and popularity to Stephen?
5:08 pm, September 17, 2007
There are plenty god left candidates but they usually get shafted by the Party apparatchiks and fixers . I won't name names for obvious reasons.....I have NOTHING personal against Twigg but to pretend he's the ideal candidate is, frankly, rubbish. Dd he know where West Derby was 12 months ago?
5:20 pm, September 17, 2007
Again - I've nothing against Stephen Twigg, but to pretend this was a perfect example of OMOV in action is pretty daft.
The brand new USDAW branches (I will follow their activism from now with interest) is NOT irrelevant, because they fixed the trigger ballot (there may be all manner of sitting MPs who would be struggling to keep hold of their seats in the event of a fixed trigger ballot). There are also examples of more than one nomination coming in allegedly from the same union branch.
It may well be that Bob would have lost anyway - but at the very least the party needs to investigate it: of course Stephen Twigg's not to blame, but I think some of the comment on this has been ridiculous. If this had been a New Labour MP cut out by left activists, the decision would not have been allowed to stand.
Some of the machinations were so blatant, I'm not sure I even believe the result of the ballot (after all, most of these characters are former grandees of Labour Students, where shifting a few ballot papers into the 'right' box was common-place: ask Michael Dugher!)
5:51 pm, September 17, 2007
I am amazed to read of Usdaw affiliating 18 branches to allow hatchetry in the trigger ballot. Is that assertion actually true?
And is it not the case that TU participation in MP selection has in places been pretty damned embarrassing with a dozen people say giving out as many nominations as the combined CLP membership. It needs sorting out.
Is this Usdaw report true? how do we distinguish between success in getting union branches to affiliate locally - with the £1000 or whatever this brought the constituency - and the worry that they will pile in to influence selections?
My take on this is that Bob has been thoroughly disorganised at both stages of things. And that we need to be thankful that more people have not been knifed.
Local activists who are suitable to replace Wareing have more grounds for complaint about carpetbaggery than Bob. IMO.
6:04 pm, September 17, 2007
"I am amazed to read of Usdaw affiliating 18 branches to allow hatchetry in the trigger ballot. Is that assertion actually true?"
10 USDAW branches according to the local paper
6:22 pm, September 17, 2007
I might add - if, as you say, Twigg can expect a fast return to ministerial office - West Derby have essentially chosen not to have a proper constituency MP any more.
9:03 pm, September 17, 2007
Shame he isn't willing to go back and fight his old seat...
11:34 pm, September 17, 2007
Erm, Wareing has been on borrowed time ever since he made his numerous unhelpful interventions in favour of Slobodan Milosovic during the late 1990s (hence the sobriquet 'Slobbabob'). That he was still a Labour MP in 2007 was already a disgrace.
I'm no Blairite but this is good news that we should all applaud. I don't care if he's been replaced with a stuffed toy, the fact is he's gone. Fuck off you piece of Parliamentary trash.
11:36 pm, September 17, 2007
"West Derby have essentially chosen not to have a proper constituency MP any more."
Considering Wareing doesn't live in Liverpool and doesn't even have a constituency office, I'm not sure they currently have a constituency MP...
8:19 am, September 18, 2007
19,000 voters at the last election didn't seem to agree.
12:49 pm, September 18, 2007
I used to live in the constituency and was a Labour party member there.
Bob Wareing progressive? This is the man who wrote to Liverpool Uni SU when I was doing my MA, promising to vote for an equal age of consent then failed to do so, in June 1998. He has also made other decidedly dodgy comments about gay issues in the past.
He is a 'workerist' , and as for his support for Milosevic and Serbia - speaks for itself.
Plenty of left wingers didn't vote for him.
As for Stephen, he made it quite clear he was interested in the seat and has been in Liverpool regularly since then to win support. I don't agree with him on everything but he would have got my vote if I was still living on Croxteth Park. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking for a safe seat. Lots of people do it. Tony Benn for one! And I reckon John Cryer may well end up as MP for a Yorkshire seat....
If Wareing stands as an indepencdent he will come fourth. he's not actually all that popular and this myth about him being a great constituency MP - since when? Peter Kilfoyle snd Liuise Ellman certainly are, but Wareing??
3:56 pm, September 18, 2007
If Bob Wareing doesn't have a constituency office, can one of you (presumably) New Labour people (which has become synonymous with "liar" in my eyes) tell me what was going on behind Whitegates on Mill Lane where the sign "Bob Wareing MP" and surgery times was posted?
Alec McFadden was sad to see Wareing go because of his pro trade union activity and I'm not unhappy to take a lead from him. Do you think Stephen Twigg will fit that category? No, he won't, because he'll do whatever Gordon's successor tells him.
Labour have lost my vote forever, and if I'm indicative, then keep slapping yourselves on the back about ousting a 24-year sitting MP in the third safest seat in the country and mocking the number of votes he might get, but enjoy your backslapping from the cheap seats because you'll be in minority opposition next time around.
I am a West Derby constituent, my family are staunch Labour, we come from a Union background of printers, dockers, rail workers, public sector and men and women. However, I would sooner stand outside the Millennium Centre symbolically burning my voting card every ten minutes on election day than vote for another anodyne New Labour yesman in a Liverpool constituency. Because you're just Conservatives in a red rosette and I lived through the 80s and will rail against that until my dying day.
One final thing. The first Labour Newsletter for the constituency was delivered this week - some councillor who looked like a seaside cabaret act and Stephen Twigg in a round necked pullover - "man of the people" look - going on about a housing development in a (now closed) school and speeding traffic on the road where Bob Wareing's constituency office presumably isn't according to a prior poster.
(i) Celebrating the loss of a school isn't really "Education, education, education"
(ii) Speeding on Eaton Road North isn't going down the lines of Gordon's soundbite of getting the guns out of Liverpool.
Of course, Liverpool doesn't matter any more - the MPs aren't representative in the literal sense. Kilfoyle saw that - seen how his career's in decline now? Not singing the party song, he should look out for parachutes as well.
Think that's unfair? Wareing sat as MP for Labour here for 24 years. In the newsletter he never got a single, solitary mention. New Labour have already airbrushed him from history WHILE HE'S STILL SITTING. Your Loydens, Heffers, Fields, Parrys all served for nothing. And Bessie will be turning in her grave at the betrayal.
10:46 pm, December 26, 2007
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