A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Monday, April 08, 2013

Labour Euro Candidates

Labour has announced its lists of candidates for the European Parliament elections next year. There will now be an OMOV ballot of Party members in each region to rank the candidates. The sitting MEPs who are restanding will top each regional list.

When voting, members will need to place the re-selected sitting MEPs in order of preference (voting 1, 2, etc). To comply with the Labour Party’s rules regarding positive action and also to counter the possible losses of female elected representatives that may arise from the effects of EU enlargement it is again proposed that one of the top two places for re-selected MEPs in each region is filled by a woman.

There will be a separate ballot of newly selected candidates for the vacant seats to place them in order behind the re-selected MEPs. There will be separate voting, in order of preference, women and men. Women and men will then appear alternately in the list. This method of preference voting is known as zipping. A woman will be placed at the top of the vacant seats list.

The exceptions are as follows:

• where only women MEPs (more than one) have been re-selected. In this case a man will be top of the vacant seats list.
• where only one woman MEP is re-selected, then the ballot for new candidates will not have separate sections for women and men, and will be taken in a single vote. The candidate with the highest vote will take the top place, and the list will be zipped thereafter.
• where one woman MEP and one male MEP is re-selected, then the ballot for new candidates will not have separate sections for women and men, and will be taken in a single vote. The candidate with the highest vote will take the top place, and the list will be zipped thereafter.

East Midlands
MEP
Glennis Wilmott
New candidates
Nicki Brooks
Khalid Hadadi
Rory Palmer
Linda Woodings

Eastern
MEP
Richard Howitt
New candidates
Naseem Ayub
Bhavna Joshi
Alex Mayer
Paul Bishop
Sandy Martin
Chris Ostrowski

London
MEPs
Mary Honeyball
Claude Moraes
New candidates
Sanchia Alasia
Lucy Anderson
Ivana Bartoletti
Andrea Biondi
Seb Dance
Kamaljeet Jandu

North
New candidates
Judith Kirton-Darlin
Jayne Shotton
Paul Brannen
Nick Wallis

North West
MEP
Arlene McCarthy
New candidates:
Steve Carter
Kevin Doran
Theresa Griffin
Afzal Khan
Wajid Khan
Pascale Lamb
Angeliki Stogia
Julie Ward

South East
New candidates
Anneliese Dodds
Maggie Hughes
Karen Landles
Farah Nazeer
Emily Westley
Phil Bloomer
John Howarth
Del Singh
James Swindlehurst
James Watkins

South West
New candidates:
Clare Moody
Ann Reeder
Jude Robinson
Junab Ali
Glyn Ford
Hadleigh Roberts

West Midlands
New candidates:
Claire Edwards
Neena Gill
Olwen Hamer
Lynda Waltho
Ansar Ali-Khan
Anthony Ethapemi
Sion Simon

Yorkshire & the Humber
MEP
Linda McAvan
New candidates
Richard Corbett
Daren Hughes
Asghar Khan
Helen Mirfin-Boukouris
Tracey Simpson-Lang
Eleanor Tunnicliffe

Scotland
MEPs
David Martin
Catherine Stihler
New candidates
Asim Khan
Derek Munn
Katrina Murray
Kirsty O'Brien

Wales
MEP
Derek Vaughan
New candidates
Jayne Bryant
Christina Rees
Alex Thomas

6 Comments:

Anonymous Andrea said...

So basically

there will be 2 ballots (one for male candidates and one for female hopefuls) in South East, South West, Wales, North East, West Midlands and East. The first vacant spot (which is the top in SE, SW and NE and the second spot in Wales and East) will go to a woman.

In Scotland, London, North West, Yorkshire and East Midlands, there will be just 1 ballot with the winner taking the first vacant spot and then going on with zipped list.

To increase BAME representation, has it been thought for ex to say that in regions where the top spot is now reserved to women that the top spot should go the highest polling woman or BAME man? I believe it was done in Scotland with regional lists in 2011.

5:10 pm, April 08, 2013

 
Anonymous Andrea said...

ah, is there a name missing in Wales? In other regions the shortlist is usually composed by the number of available places + 1. In Wales it's just 3 + the sitting MEP=4 and the list will contain 4 people.
There won't even be a male ballot as there is just 1 male candidate (who will directly be ranked as third overall)

5:34 pm, April 08, 2013

 
Anonymous Andrea said...

just to go for 3 in a row: I am actually wrong. It's mainly number of shortlisted candidates = number of available places except in a couple of regions (NE, NW and Yorkshire)

6:15 pm, April 08, 2013

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And MEPs from the last round are assured of places at the top. Is that to achieve continuity or to maintain jobs for the boys and girls who did such a good job in the last Parliament?

How many MEPs are we expecting next time?

8:49 am, April 10, 2013

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In my region, I reckon the two best candidates are women. The system doesn't appear to allow them to be ranked 1 and 2 (at most, two will be elcted).

10:38 am, April 14, 2013

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Anyone know where I can vote on the MEP candidates?

4:48 pm, June 13, 2013

 

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