Left leader breaks cover to advocate party within a party

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7539698.stm

Michael White writes in today's Grauniad.

John McDonnell has announced that he is boycotting the Compass conference this weekend over leading Compass MPs' support for 42 days legislation.  Yet he ignores the fact that it was his own Socialist Campaign Group MPs that made the key difference to the vote.

You couldn't make it up. http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,,2084946,00.html

 

<h1>Call for inquiry into leftwing leadership fight</h1>

Patrick Wintour and Will Woodward
Tuesday May 22, 2007
The Guardian

Recriminations are growing over the way Michael Meacher lost the chance to go forward as candidate of the left to challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership, evidence seen by the Guardian shows. Mr Meacher, the former environment minister, stepped aside to allow John McDonnell to be the standard bearer for the left, only for his rival to fail to garner enough support to make it on to the ballot paper.

 

With questions growing about the failed campaign, two MPs originally claimed by Mr McDonnell to be supporters have denied ever nominating him. Papers seen by the Guardian show that the McDonnell camp had claimed the support of Jon Trickett, Labour MP for Hemsworth.

But Mr Trickett said yesterday: "I nominated Gordon Brown for the leadership and never nominated anyone else." If Mr Trickett's name had not appeared as a supporter of Mr McDonnell at an initial meeting between the two camps, Mr Meacher would have had one more nomination than Mr McDonnell, and would have gone forward as the candidate of the left.

Mr Meacher has written to Peter Watt, Labour's general secretary, to ask him to investigate how the error occurred. Mr Watt may refuse to intervene on the grounds that the deal between Mr McDonnell and Mr Meacher was a private matter. Last week it was disclosed that Mr McDonnell's camp had claimed the support of Bradford West MP Marsha Singh. Mr Singh then insisted that he had only nominated Mr Meacher, and was adamant that he had never signed any nomination paper in support of Mr McDonnell.

At the first meeting of the two camps last week, it was agreed that that the two men had 22 nominations each. The two camps reconvened last Monday, by which time Mr McDonnell had apparently secured a decisive 24-21 lead.

A spokesman for Mr McDonnell's campaign said: "I don't know anything about that [Trickett]. The process was agreed and completely accepted by both campaigns and the two sets of supporters.

"There was no dispute over the fact that John was the candidate who had the majority of support. Our feeling is that people are trying to create some mischief."

I was looking forward to a Leadership election so that I could vote for Gordon.  I feel I have been denied this by the failure of the left to support a candidate who could even get on the ballot paper.  Who can I complain to?

I have been far too busy to blog all day because have been in the whirlwind frenzy of media demand for John McDonnell.

The press conference was handled excellently with Meacher graciously withdrawing and endorsing John, and offering to speak up and down the country in support of John's campaign.

I blogged live from the leadership hustings and published it www.unionfutures.blogspot.com - thought some of you may be interested in seeing it here.

From www.unionfutures.blogspot.com
I blogged live from the Fabion Society Leadership hustings last night.

So who has how many MP's??

Guardian says 25/26 - Dianne Abbot says 24 each and no figures released from either camp?

Exactly who are Meachers supporters?

Is it just me, or has Michael Meacher been keeping a very low profile recently?