Trigger Democracy wins!

A great result today for anyone who really cares about democracy and truth in Newham.

"Dear Member Following the count of votes submitted by branches and affiliates of West Ham CLP and East Ham CLP, it has been determined that a full selection will now take place to decide Labour’s candidate for directly-elected Mayor of Newham. Further details of the procedure and application process will be announced as soon as possible. Best wishes Neil Fleming Acting Regional Director Greater London Labour Party"  All 20 Labour Party branches in Newham voted to trigger the current Mayor and hold an open selection of candidates for the election in May. 11 affiliates & forums also voted to trigger and only 4 in favour of status quo. A stunning result!  Last time the total was 20-17 not to trigger. This previous selection was of course overturned due to legal action by Party members. So let's have a good clean fight (no more dirty tricks please) and elect a candidate who will unite the Party in time for the local elections.

. 

Newham Mayor admits that his selection process was "rigged"?

I have received a number of comments from Labour Party members in Newham today who were somewhat surprised to get a very odd email from our  Labour directly elected Mayor, Robin Wales.  He wants a rerun of the very controversial trigger ballot selection process that "elected him" as a Mayoral candidate for the 5^th time (20 years in power) for the local elections next May 3^rd 2018. 

This email appears to have been sent at the same time as a press release from Robin to the local newspaper, Newham Recorder - see here. 

I would not normally comment on such internal Labour Party matters but I can on this occasion as I was the campaign manager for Councillor John Whitworth   John had previously declared in the controversial selection process that he wanted to be a candidate, if the trigger ballot had resulted in an open selection.  I therefore think I ought to point out some points of clarification. 

Robin suggests in his press release that "anonymous" people are attacking him and have filed a court case against the Labour Party. Since Robin has brought this out into the public arena, I feel that it is only right that I point out that in British law if you are "anonymous" you CANNOT take such legal action and that I understand the claimants in this legal action are actually named former senior Newham Councillors and long standing local Labour Party members from all political wings of the Party. 

I assume from the email and the press report (which are different but the full email has been widely published on social media) that Robin accepts that there is overwhelming evidence his selection process was indeed 'rigged' and that the Court would find against the Party over it or he would not now be calling for it to be rerun?

There are other allegations flying about which I cannot comment upon but I am, to say the least, disappointed that Robin has done this public act without any apparent consultation with the local Party. 

The only thing now is for the Labour Party to order an open selection process, not yet another a discredited trigger ballot, for local members to choose from a selection of candidates including Robin (who will automatically be shortlisted by the Party) by secret ballot. 

There is a real practical problem in that there is simply not enough time to have a Mayoral trigger ballot, which could end in an open selection before 3 May 2018 and complete the outstanding Newham Councillor 2018 candidate selections.

Open selection. One member. One vote. Decision.

Let’s get on with it. 

"Labour refuses Newham ‘trigger ballot’ inquiry as affiliate finds breach of its own rules"

From Guardian journalist Dave Hills on his blog. "Labour’s governing national executive committee (NEC) has turned down a request from party members in Newham to hold an inquiry into how the borough’s executive mayor Sir Robin Wales was narrowly chosen to seek election to the post for a fifth time next year despite two of the affiliated organisations that supported him conducting their own investigations into how their votes were cast, one of which has now concluded that its local branch broke its own rules.

Sir Robin announced his re-selection, secured by 20 votes to 17, to a full meeting of Newham Council on Monday. The NEC had concluded on 24 January that the result of the close-run local “trigger ballot” to decide if he would automatically become Labour’s candidate for May 2018 or face challenges from other hopefuls should stand.

However, the national Fabian Society has informed its Newham branch, which is affiliated to Labour locally and voted “yes” to Sir Robin’s automatic re-selection, that it had “breached the society’s rules” for determining how trigger ballot votes should be cast and that “the Labour Party has been informed” of the outcome of its review of what occurred.

In a 13-page letter sent to the NEC prior to its meeting last week, 47 Labour members in Newham, including ten councillors, asked that the Fabians’ vote “be held in abeyance and not counted” on grounds that included failure by local officers to hold a meeting of members to discuss which way their “trigger ballot” vote should be cast. A statement from the national Fabians said, while it accepted that its Newham officers had acted in good faith, “the national society’s by-laws require a vote of members in the re-selection of a mayoral candidate” and that this had not taken place.

Separately, one of the trade unions whose vote helped Sir Robin to victory is looking into whether the locally-affiliated branch responsible for the decision followed the correct procedures. Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of media union BECTU, has told On London that, although the union’s head office had no involvement in the matter, the way the “yes” vote was settled is to be considered by its executive committee later this month. BECTU has recently become a sector of another union, Prospect, and dis-affiliated from Labour with effect from 1 January.

The letter from the Newham members to the NEC stated that the signatories “do not believe” that local affiliation fees to East Ham constituency Labour Party (CLP) had been paid by the BECTU branch and that “a communication” from the union’s branch delegate suggests that the person concerned decided how to vote in the ballot without any consultation with fellow BECTU branch members. In this case, they asked that the ballot “be declared void and that BECTU be deemed not to have voted”.

It was among a large number of points made about the trigger ballot process as a whole in a sometimes the strongly-worded document, which asked the NEC to void or hold in abeyance a total of seven of the 20 individual “yes” votes, comprising two from unions, two from other affiliates and three from party ward branches, of which two took the “yes” option by a single vote. Eleven out of 20 ward branches voted “no” to the automatic re-selection of Sir Robin.

The letter also asked the NEC to examine why some eligible unions cast more than one vote and suggests that inconsistent interpretation of the rules arose from a major failing in the running of the trigger ballot process. The GMB cast four votes (all “yes”), the CWU cast three (two “yes”, one “no”) and Unite cast two (all “no”) while Unison (“no”), Usdaw (“yes”), the TSSA (“yes”) and Bectu (“yes”) cast only one each. The letter attributes this to some locally-affiliated union branches each casting individual and other unions only voting once no matter many branches had affiliated locally to one of the two Newham CLPs as a result of rules being interpreted differently.

The CWU and TSSA have not responded to email requests to comment on the matter and the GMB, despite several requests and an assurance that a response would be provided, have yet to offer answers to any of the questions first put to them about the trigger ballot process before Christmas.

In email correspondence Newham party members, Labour Party general secretary Iain McNicol has written that the trigger ballot was “raised very briefly” at the NEC meeting and that “there was a short discussion” but that the body “did not discuss or agree to pausing or changing the result of this process”. He added that “NEC members have agreed to come to Newham and speak to members about what lessons can be learned from this process [regarding] how future trigger ballot processes can be conducted in a way that best engages members and affiliates”. It is believed that two NEC members will be involved. Signatories to the letter are considering how to respond. One has expressed dissatisfaction to McNicol that the request for an inquiry has not been granted.

In a statement, Labour’s London region has said that, “the process in Newham was carried out in line with established rules and procedures”. A source close to Sir Robin has denied that the ballot process was flawed and suggested that an influx of new members prompted to join the party since May 2015 in order to support Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s leader, lies behind much of the opposition to Sir Robin, although only members who joined before 25 April 2016 were entitled to vote in their ward ballots to determine which way to vote in the trigger ballot, which ran from 25 October until 4 December. This would have excluded any Newham members who joined Labour last summer in order to help Corbyn defeat the challenge to his leadership by Owen Smith.

The source also contends that a group of local Labour members called Trigger Democracy, which has campaigned for an open selection, is a manifestation of this, something the group itself denies, saying its members “aren’t anti-Robin” and “don’t represent any faction”. Those behind it decline to reveal their names on the grounds that they “wanted to provide as neutral a platform as possible” and because some of them work in or for the borough.

Newham is notable for all 60 of its councillors being Labour. Some of these and other local members believe that Sir Robin has been in the job too long and that his grip on the machinery of the Town Hall has made it difficult to hold him to account. Even so, the letter to the NEC said that its signatories would support his candidacy without equivocation if they considered it secured “as a result of an open and fair re-selection process”.

Councillor says Newham mayoral trigger ballot process is ‘neck and neck’

Check out reporter Kat Hopps latest from the Newham Recorder

"Campaigners from opposing sides of the Labour candidate Mayor of Newham 2018 election process say they are confident of winning.

Sir Robin Wales has so far won nine trigger ballots and lost three in votes which took place in wards across the borough this
week.

However, Cllr John Gray, who is campaigning for Labour members to vote “no” in the ballots – in order to give other candidates the chance to run rather than Sir Robin being automatically selected – said the “close” results had already caused an “earthquake”.

He said: “It is neck and neck because the wards that were always more likely to vote yes were held this week.

“The wards that are more likely to vote no are more likely to vote next week.

He added: “There is already an earthquake in Newham politics and there has never been a challenge like this in Newham wards.”

The wards that have voted “yes” to keeping Sir Robin as the party’s candidate are Beckton, Custom House, East Ham South, Forest Gate South, Green Street West, Plaistow North, Royal Docks, Wall End and Manor Park after a initial tie led to the vote being re-run.

Wards that have voted no are Canning Town, East Ham North and Forest Gate North. A further 12 affiliated organisations are also in the process of voting and have yet to declare.

So far there have often been just a few votes difference in the results.

The Recorder has been told by a spokesman speaking on behalf of the Labour Party that Sir Robin Wales and his supporters “are feeling confident that they are in a position to win”.

A spokesperson for Trigger Democracy disagreed. She said: “Compared to 2013, lots of wards have been voting “No” or have been really close.

“We’ve achieved a lot in a short time with lots of members visiting our web, Facebook and Twitter and we’ve had members coming along to meetings talking about and voting for an open selection.”

Although the Recorder has yet to receive official confirmation, it understands that only two wards voted against Sir Robin being automatically reelected as the Labour Mayoral candidate for Newham in 2013.

A decision to set the six-month “freeze date” on new Labour members being able to vote four months earlier than in 2013 is also proving controversial with an official complaint being raised with the Labour Party.

Cllr John Gray has said “hundreds of new members in Newham will be disenfranchised” from the vote who may be more likely to opt for a multiple candidate option.

East Ham Labour Party vice chairman, Tahir Mirza, even raised the issue with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at Saturday’s London Labour Conference.

A representative for the Newham Local Campaign Forum (LCF) said the timetable and freeze date for Newham’s mayoral trigger ballot “were set according to the proper rules and procedures of the Labour party”.

The breakdown of the results are as follow

Beckton: Yes 16, No 3; Canning Town South: Yes 6, No 8; Custom House: Yes 7, No 6; East Ham North: Yes 20, No 23; East Ham South: Yes 26, No 8; Forest Gate North: Yes 13, No 30; Forest Gate South: Yes 34, No 21 ; Green Street West: Yes 36, No 32; Plaistow North: Yes 27, No 17; Royal Docks Yes 11, No 1; Wall End Yes 20, No 18.

In Manor Park a first vote declaring a tie of Yes 30, No 30 was re-run with the second vote resulting in Yes 29, No 28.

(Photo not from the Newham Recorder but "Je Suis Whitworth for Mayor Campaign". Play "Spot the Mayoral Advisor" game. Also note the "Labour Party" will not have made any statement about Sir Robin "feeling confident". His paid appointees may have done)

West Ham delegate asks London Labour Conference panel on diversity why their motion supporting diversity is ruled out of order

She did not get an answer! Check out the motion here http://grayee.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/emergency-motion-to-tomorrow-labour.html. 

When Voting NO means YES to fairness,choice and democracy: Newham Labour Mayor Selection - First Reason

I have blogged about the process and how important the position of a Directly Elected Mayor or so called Executive Mayor is here and also about a website triggerdemocracy.com that argues that there should be an open selection process for the next Labour Candidate to be the Mayor in Newham.

I now want to discuss in more detail why I think Labour Party members and affiliates ought to vote NO at the trigger ballot (or so called "affirmative ballot") meetings during the next few weeks and therefore saying YES to fairness, choice and democracy.

First Reason. 

The position of Directly Elected Mayor is immensely powerful and influential. The Newham Mayor has decided to retain near 100% of Executive power in the Council. This is in his gift according to law. Money is of course key and the Mayor is completely in charge of making appointments and patronage.

Councillors are pretty powerless, since the only way they can block the Mayor is if two thirds of them vote against the Mayor's Budget. They still have an important role in advocating and representing constituents but essentially they have little or no individual or collective power compared to the Mayor.

The Council "Cabinet" is also powerless, at best a talking shop and purely advisory. The Mayor can ignore cabinet or scrutiny decisions and appoint or fire cabinet members and advisers at will. All paid advisers and Cabinet members to the Mayor are bound by a Council protocol to support the Mayor or face being sacked with no right to appeal.

Recently 10 out of the 60 Newham Councillors were given full time paid positions receiving each up to £44,000 including the basic allowance per year and (legally suspect) pensions purely to be advisers to the Mayor - appointed solely by the Mayor.  Other payments are made for sitting on non Council bodies.

Some 27 out of the 60 Newham Councillors have been given paid positions (with pensions). While 6 of them are nominally independent of the Mayor (and I think that "nominally" is the best description given his position and influence) the rest are purely there according to the grace and favour of the Mayor. Many are dependent on the Mayor to pay their bills and their mortgages.

This is why we need to have an open and democratic selection process for the next Mayor. Such a powerful position must have some basic checks and balances. Being openly selected from time to time must be one of them.

Is there any good reason why Directly Elected Mayors should not face an open selection process every 4 years as do all Labour Councillors everywhere and and all other Labour Council Leaders?

If there is (and I doubt it) then there is certainly no good reason for not having an open selection for 19 years (2002 the last one and if not this time then 2021 the next - which may even be another trigger ballot).