What’s going on in Barrow? - written by Alex Hilton
Uncategorized - 26 Comments » - Posted on October, 14 at 4:47 pm
No10 Adviser Jonathan Woodcock has gone to the media with complaints about the selection process in Barrow in Furness. The selection is taking place due to the retirement of John Hutton, for whom Woodcock was once a Special Adviser.
Woodcock’s complaints centre on a piece in last week’s Observer (Scottish edition!) that cites a letter of complaint about the selection in Barrow from the local Branch Secretary in Ulverston. But this isn’t any Branch Secretary – the complaint came from retired MP Colin Pickthall, a highly respected and experienced politician, who for a number of years was PPS to Jack Straw.
According to the Observer;
In his letter Pickthall, himself an ex-MP, does not name the “machine” he claims is at fault but suggests Woodcock has had help from within the constituency, the MP’s office and others.
He claims Woodcock’s campaign was launched a month before the official timetable for selection, with a local newspaper article claiming he was being “backed by party stalwarts”.
Woodcock is backed both by Hutton, for whom he worked as a special adviser, and the leader of the Labour group on the local council.
Pickthall claims that some local party members were told it was “pointless turning up to nomination meetings because it was already decided”, while local newspaper articles described two of his rivals as “the woman candidate” and the “ethnic minority candidate” – tactics which Pickthall describes as “offensive and nasty”.
After making some enquiries I understand the allegations also included having advanced access to membership lists and that a candidate encouraged and delivered postal vote applications to members, though this has not been confirmed to me.
Surprisingly, the Labour Party quote to the Observer was;
“The Labour party has not been provided with any evidence of rules being broken in the Barrow selection process and has full confidence in that process”
Yet from its description, it seems there are plenty of allegations in Pickthall’s letter worthy of investigation.
Furthermore, in Woodcock’s own response in the North West Evening Mail, he said;
“I think it is a shame that people have chosen to raise this in a national newspaper in this way. There is a proper process for dealing with complaints and I don’t believe that anyone in the constituency would want to ignore that and stir up controversy about Barrow and Furness in the national press like this. I can only think that these sort of negative tactics come from outsiders who want to influence the outcome ahead of people here getting the chance to have their say. The majority of local Labour members I have met have said how good this selection process has been in re-energising things here.”
Frankly, that looks like a direct contravention of the party rule banning aspiring candidates from commenting on the selection process to the media. My understanding is that all enquiries about the process of selection are strictly to be referred to party officials.
But it doesn’t end there. As I was writing this up and looking for the appropriate media references, I came across this article in the North west Evening Mail, “Prime Minister backs Barrow Shipyard”.
Showing Woodcock pictured with the PM, the piece says;
PRIME Minister Gordon Brown last night told the Evening Mail he will “guarantee a generation of high skilled jobs” in Barrow by pressing ahead with the successor submarine programme. The promise to the shipyard workers came after meeting a delegation with Barrow’s Keep Our Future Afloat Campaign at a specially arranged get-together at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton yesterday.
The piece continues;
Yesterday’s meeting was organised by John Woodcock, adviser to the Prime Minister and one of the candidates in the race to succeed John Hutton to become Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Barrow. He said: “I was really pleased Gordon was able to find the time to meet the KOFAC delegation and leave the people of Barrow and Furness in no doubt over Labour’s determination to keep investing in the yard.
The picture is captioned, “DISCUSSION: Left to right, Stuart Klosinski, Furness Enterprise, Terry McSorley, John Hutton’s agent, Harry Knowles, Furness Enterprise, Gordon Brown, Terry Waiting, KOFAC, John Woodcock, PPC for Barrow and Furness[sic]”
Is it just me or is this a really crass attempt to pervert a fair selection in Barrow? I simply can’t believe Gordon Brown was aware of what the angle was because that would just cheapen the office of Prime Minister. In which case, Woodcock, or someone else with influence over the PM’s diary has abused their position to organise a meeting with the sole object of getting Woodcock a valuable photo opportunity and media hit.
The message he is sending is, “select me because I can influence the Prime Minister” and he is sending that message through the media in front of the general public. This is a fundamentally dangerous proposition, because it says to people it is sensible to want the candidate most likely to be able to influence a PM in the next parliament.
What if another person seeking selection had similar patronage from Harriet Harman? Would it be their message that you should select them over Woodcock because Harman is more likely to be a PM for more of the 5 years subsequent to the election than Gordon Brown? More chillingly; what if the voters decided that David Cameron was more likely to be the PM than either Brown or Harman? Then Woodcock’s logic would imply they had better elect a Tory MP if they want someone able to influence a PM.
This is the problem with patronage, it unavoidably imposes top-down accountability at the expense of bottom up accountability. It may well be that Woodcock would make a very good legislator. I met him once, briefly, at conference (although there was no press release) and he seemed both engaging and intelligent. It’s also conceivable that, as the Labour Party says, there have been no rules broken in the Barrow selection.
The truth about patronage is quite the opposite. If you get elected because of favours from above, then for the rest of your career, they influence you, not the other way around. Once you are owned, why does your patron need to buy you again? Once they do that favour for you, you are forever more returning the favour, not influencing them in any way. You might find yourself promoted so that you can do your master’s bidding more effectively, but you won’t be influential.
Furthermore, if Woodcock were selected, and then elected in these circumstances, then for the entirety of his political career it would be clear to whom he owed his power, and it would not be members or voters in Barrow. And why then would the beneficiary of any undermining of grassroots power within the party ever have any qualms about continuing to erode member power for the rest of his career? He would know by that time that his own power would be derived through those who owe him favours, not through those who nominally selected him.
And if the rules have not been broken, then it’s clear that the rules need changing. If you don’t want party staff interfering with internal party selections and elections, then make it a sacking offence to do so. And take these so-called “investigations” out of the hands of paid staff and into the hands of the NEC, Regional Boards and NCC. I recall a councillor being investigated by the London Regional Party and the entire investigation consisted of a paid member of staff phoning the leader of the Labour Group to ask her what she would like the result to be – a question she refused to answer.
All I want is transparency. Of course I’d like a level playing field – but if the party leadership insists that we can’t be trusted to select our candidates, then they should change the rules and take that power away from us.
Or, as I have advocated before, we should have “All Parachute Shortlists”. Let CLP’s vote if they wish to have their shortlist imposed from a “parachute list” of candidates who have powerful factions behind them. Let the parachute list have the benefit of the doubt on all rule breaches as they have now, but then ban them from applying for any seat where the CLP wants a real selection with candidates all willing to stick to the letter and the spirit of the rules.
Colin Pickthall said he believes Jonathan Woodcock might be strong enough to win the Barrow selection on his own merits. But neither we nor Woodcock will now ever know if that is the case.
Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments »
Very well said Alex.
Incidentally, is it proper for the Labour Party web hosting infrastructure to be used to host a selection candidate’s website?
http://www.john-woodcock-for-furness.org is hosted by the Party’s Taligent labs infrastructure, which rather unfortunately leads to this selection candadite’s self-promotion material getting the footnote:
Promoted by Ray Collins, General Secretary, the Labour Party,on behalf of the Labour Party …
It looks like this selection candidate’s promotion material was first uploaded onto the Labour Party web infrastructure at around about 19 Aug 2009 13:05:11 GMT. When did the selection process commence?
What a surprise. Photographed with Gordon with that caption. I’m not as charitable as you though Alex, I don’t think for a minute that Brown is an innocent bystander. Sure, he probably isn’t in on the whole ‘let’s bend the rules to select Woodcock’ scheme but I am confident that he doesn’t really care about the pre-determining of candidates selected, provided they are loyalist.
Well, I think we need to be careful here. Yes, there are questions that need to be answered. However…
Just because Woodcock appears in a photo opportunity with the PM, it doesn’t necessarily mean that anything untoward has occurred. It’s perfectly possible that Woodcock did genuinely work hard behind the scenes to keep Barrow Shipyard afloat. And we know what shoddy journalism local papers are capable of. By calling him a PPC, it looks to be like a mistake rather than anything more sinister.
And we can hardly blame Woodcock for making a small remark to a newspaper which loosely relates to the selection process, since he has effectively become the story! He’s entitled to defend himself here.
If some of his supporters are discouraging others to stand, well then they are the ones with questions to answer.
But please be careful, because there’s no clear-cut evidence here to suggest anything untoward has happened, and it would be very wrong if Woodcock has his name dragged through the mud when he’s genuinely done nothing wrong, other than promote his candidacy (which let’s be honest, all candidates do).
All we are asking for is that the rulebook is applied. If the right wing don’t like the way selections occur and want to change it to give the leadership the power to promote their own candidates then they are entitled to put that forward at party conference (good luck getting that one passed…). However, the rules as they stand demand an even contest and spell out sanctions for activities such as filling in postal votes for members (note: not alleged in this case, but a great issue nonetheless). All we want is for the rulebook to be applied fairly and evenly to prevent electoral fraud.
Yes, I agree that the rules should be applied.
But is there any real evidence that the rules have been broken in this case? There seems to be a lot of rumour and some tenuous links, but no hard evidence.
We still have a rulebook?
http://www.macclesfield-express.co.uk/news/s/1171317_tories_resign_over_selection
seems were not the only ones, apparent Iain Dale’s not impressed with us too
Seems to be a pattern – run down the CLP membership and put in the leadership’s choices. It’s in the “How to Turn the Labour Party into the US Democrat Party” manual.
NM: Wouldn’t it be a breech, though perhaps small, of the rules if free website hosting was selectively given to one aspiring candidate by some Labour Party employee? I thought there was a rule no employee could help a selection candidate in campaigning. It is also financial (in-kind) help for one selection candidate.
I’ve never noticed a selection candidate being provided with website hosting on Labour’s infrastructure before. Is that offered to all selection candidates? It probably should be offered to all candidates to save costs and offer an even platform for candidates easily found by members – but I don’t think that is the current position.
This looks like it might be hard evidence of a small breech of the rules.
[...] Woodcock and Alex Hilton Jump to Comments I see Alex Hilton has once again published a one sided and tendentious attack on a possible Labour candidate on his Labourhome site, which has once again been picked up by gleeful conservatives and used to [...]
Hopi Sen has published an attack on me for scrutinising the Barrow selection.
Here’s my response.
My whole point is that Jonathan Woodcock not only shouldn’t have, but probably didn’t need to warp the system.
You can be as snide as you like about me but the allegations come from Colin Pickthall, who is extremely well respected. Are you going to undermine his credibility?
Very simply Hopi, you sound like you agree that party HQ and No10 should be hand-picking candidates. Which would be OK with me if the stopped pretending to have fair selections.
Since you raised the Georgia Gould issue, the apology was made after her lawyers complained about something I hadn’t written or even seen, and in fact which she or her lawyers hadn’t seen and which may possibly never have been on the site. There was a quote in a newspaper purporting to be from a comment on Labourhome, which neither I nor her lawyers could find (and which may never have been there). It seemed a bit mean though so I didn’t mind publishing an apology. If you want to hold that against me go ahead.
in the meantime I’d be interested to know if you believe the party does influence selections for preferred candidates and if you think there’s anything wrong with that.
There seems to be some backlash of the right-wingers going on. Luke Akehurst has had a go about the Barrow selection too.
My response is:
Luke,
I have some respect for you for standing up for a friend if that’s what you’re doing, but I didn’t make the allegations. I’m not throwing dirt, I’m highlighting the very serious concerns raised and seemingly ignored by a local member. That member is retired MP Colin Pickthall.
Are you going to start slagging off Colin or am I the easy target?
Answer this, do you believe the party interferes with internal elections and selections? Do you think it’s wrong?
I’ll take it as read that on some level of faith you believe that Barrow has been a clean selection so far regardless of Colin Pickthall’s complaints.
Alex Hilton
Alex,
here’s my response to your comment.
Let’s start at the beginning. This is Labourhome’s second attempt to attack someone running for selection as a parliamentary candidate. To say you apologised because of something you hadn’t seen or agreed may be technically correct, but your site ran a whole series of articles about Erith and thamesmead, many of which were directly damaging to one candidate.
Second, you say that the allegations don’t come from you, so they should be trusted. I’m sorry, but I’ve seen all sorts of allegations being made by all sorts of people during selections, and a stronger burden of proof than a simple allegation is required before you throw a possible fellow candidate under the train like that. You don’t think your accusations won’t be used against John if he wins selection? You’re not nobody, you’re a PPC, and you need to understand that your actions can damage others and weigh that in the balance before throwing accusations around.
After all, how would you like it if people starting accusing you of breaking the rules in the middle of a parliamentary selection using hearsay?
Finally, I don’t know where you get the idea that I think the central party should control selections from, as it’s certainly not in anything I’ve said. CLPs are perfectly capable of picking the right candidate for them without outside interference, whether it comes from No 10 or Alex Hilton.
As to your view about selections, there are many examples to show that the idea a “machine” candidate has the process rigged for them is untrue.
Look at Newcastle Central, where a complete outsider won the selection against a Labour party staffer. Or Easington where the local agent won, or Houghton and Washington where a local candidate beat a former minister. Or Stockton North, which aroused no controversy whatsoever despite being a deselection of a sitting MP.
That’s four recent selections where there probably wasn’t even a “machine” candidate just in the north east. Each of those seats is far safer than Barrow – from which I can only conclude that if there is some nefarious machine rigging safe seats for loyalists, they’re doing a terribly incompetent job.
Unfortunately some peoples attitude seems to be that when a candidate close to the leadership might win selection it’s because the machine fixed it for them, but when someone else wins, all that’s forgotten.
In fact candidates usually win selection by being intelligent, dedicated, hard working and personable, whatever wing of the party they’re from.
On those criteria John Woodcock would make a brilliant MP, but it’s not up to me, or to you, it’s up to the members in Barrow. I’m happy to trust their judgement.
Thank God Hopi, someone talking sense.
Hopi,
Thanks for leaving your detailed comment on Labourhome.
A number of people wrote articles on Labourhome about the Erith selection and some supported certain candidates. As far as I recall I wrote something suggesting HQ had been incompetent for failing to maintain confidence in the process, and given the ballot tampering at HQ, I think that was reasonable. So it’s simply false for you to suggest I had a brief for or against any candidate there.
Labourhome’s a pretty free space. I don’t tell the writers what to write and neither am i responsible for it.
However, I did write about the Barrow selection AFTER it had been in the media and after Woodcock himself had commented on the selection, which is itself a breach of the rules.
Colin Pickthall’s allegations are serious and the party’s response is that there is no rule breach to investigate. It is the party’s dismissive response that has shaken my confidence in the fairness of this selection, not the allegations themselves, though coming from Colin, I happen to give them some serious weight.
You also seem to think that as a PPC I’m supposed to have a lobotomy. I’m a candidate because I want the country to be run better, not because I want to be a cheerleader for the incumbents. This is a fundamentally critical position. If the public think we’re mindless zombies unable to see or vocalise our own flaws, then what confidence can they have that we can improve government?
And I’m critical of the party too. I have seen too many fiddled selections and internal elections. I have seen party staff joke about subverting party democracy like it’s a badge of pride. And yes, I vociferously oppose this attitude. Bite me.
If people used hearsay to attack me during a selection I’d be pissed off, but I’d counter it with facts. And I wouldn’t go to the press about it because it’s against the rules to do so. On the other hand, if someone with Colin Pickthall’s integrity were to raise such allegations against me, then I would expect them to be properly investigated.
I didn’t say I think you support HQ perverting selections, I asked you if you think it happens. I don’t know you, I’ve only ever heard good things about you and I don’t imagine you would support such misbehaviour. I was wondering though, whether you believe it happens.
I’m very happy for you to endorse Woodcock, that’s fair enough. Your experience of him is that he’s “intelligent, dedicated, hard working and personable” and that’s worth something.
But your logic is flawed if your evidence that this selection is clean is that some other selections were clean. They have nothing to do with it. In this selection though, Colin Pickthall raised some very serious concerns. I happen to think Colin’s reputation is worth something too.
Where was this passion about party selection before!?!?!?!
In the run up to the 2005 General Election where were these objections when Ed Balls was magically parachuted into Normanton? Do people really believe that Bill O’Brien wasn’t made to stand aside in the same way Colin Challen now tells us he’s been forced to go so Ed can stay? Sure – Ed’s wife is the MP for the next constituency over, but you can’t help but be suspicious now it’s happened two elections in a row!
What about Alison Seabeck, who touted her “Special Adviser” to Nick Raynsford status extensively in her attempts to secure Manchester Worsley and then Plymouth? Whilst former MP Dennis Turner was pushed aside in Wolverhampton East for Pat McFadden (see the GMB’s “Dodgy Promotions” publication).
Was it Ed Miliband’s “personal relationship” with Doncaster that secured him the nomination then? Or was it that his candidacy was endorsed by both the current Leader and Deputy Leader?
Patronage has played a huge role in seat selection, whether it’s the endorsement of the local union baron or the fight to get the support of the local CLP Chair. It’s wrong to exploit your connections for personal gain – that’s a core message of our Party.
But Hopi Sen is right – this isn’t a conspiracy, it’s not some centrally plotted Victoria Street scheme. The situation now is no different to the situation as it has always been with “who you know” helping more than “what you know”. Hopi is also right that if it was a conspiracy then the “Grand Plan” has hardly worked out in Victoria Street’s favour! The very Party staff parachuted into safe seats in 2005 are now in Government and the Cabinet leading the Labour Party into opposition!
There absolutely should be an investigation into whether candidates received inappropriate access to membership lists etc – and if it is found that the rules were broken then those individuals should be barred from standing. When it comes to endorsements and being photographed next to someone though – that’s politics. I just wish people actually listened to candidates opinions rather than went on whether or not Alistair Campbell has phoned round as a favour for daddy.
Personally, I’m more bothered about the fact that nobody who is currently local is standing! The CLP has to choose from – the “Party stooge” from London, the human rights lawyer from London, the Parliamentary staffer (now) from London, the Party activist from London or the councillor from Oxford. What happened in the local CLP that none of the local members want to stand? Where is the docker from Barrow shipyards who wants to fight for the jobs of the people he’s worked alongside for the last two decades? Where is the teacher, the nurse, the local Party activist who has seen the positive work that Labour has done in Government? I don’t particularly like candidates parading around with a collection of photos of them with Hilary Benn or David Miliband or endorsements from parliamentarians as if they’re badges of honour. Nor do I like candidates who believe that somehow they have more of a right to stand for Parliament than another candidate. But most of all, I really dislike the disconnection between the Party and it’s membership base which has resulted in a drought of truly local candidates.
Alex, thanks for raising this. And don’t get the impression that there’s a monolith “right wing” that’s okay with favouritism and patronage – I’m about as New as New Labout gets, I think (except I do believe in equality…) and I’m concerned about the way selections happen in the Labour Party.
I don’t think Hopi’s approach – if there’s no “clear cut” or “hard” evidence then don’t rock the boat – is good enough in 2009. If Labour wants to be associated with integrity then it needs to be seen to above any possible suspicion of favoritism in selections. In effect, we should see ourselves as having constantly to prove our integrity to the public, not as having some entitlement to be seen as innocent until proven guilty. That principle is for the criminal courts, not to protect those who seek power.
I increasingly think we need open primaries, and independent, non-Labour input into shortlisting the runners in such primaries. I’d like independent scrutineers to make a report about whether they were content with the runners and how they were chosen, and for that report to be automatically published.
[...] you ever had any doubts about the wisdom of open primaries just read THIS take of woe from Alex Hilton on LabourHome. He recounts in graphic detail the internal machinations [...]
“Revenge of the Apparatchiks” where the undead make the party suffer primaries because of the insults to their members in Erith and Barrow.
Of course if the NEC wanted it to be seen as fair, they could restart the process as they did in Erith when one of leadership’s own was in trouble.
[...] Primaries to select our candiates. I know our current system isn’t perfect and can be open to alleged abuse, I think moving to primaries won’t help the party or help us serve the [...]
Yet again another special advisor. Labour’s parliamentary gene pool continues to shrink. When will ordinary people, trade unionists etc, get their act together to get selected?
Erith and Thamesmead was put right with the help of Labourhome pressure -it looks like it is happening all over again.
RonnieBennett – The Labour Party shouldn’t just be the party that represents the ordinary person, it should be represented by the ordinary person.
Sadly, you get the impression that if you don’t know your Bollinger from your Moet or how you should eat your Tapas, then you’re not welcome except as fee paying fodder.
In the 2 CLP’s I have observed very closely-in the end because of the high turn out of the invisible membership (only seen at selection hustings and General Elections) they will vote for the future and an all rounder who assertively personifies aspirational politics with calm quiet confidence.
I am laying 3/1 on Cat Smith to benefit from a split vote and romp home.
Dear Comrades
I am backing Cat Smith and Mark McDonald on this one because at least they know how to fight for what they believe, for too long the establishment has stopped decent candidates being selected, with Labour Home’s help I am sure this investigation will proove it is the end of the parachutes and the long awaited beginning of the change we need in the Labour Party infrastructure. I am somebody has seen it in action through a number of selections. If you even slightly left of the new labout tag suddenly your opposition gets the support, but in this case it starts at the beginning. Lets just say this selection has some way to go.
Wiseman