Dear All
On Monday, I highlighted in a post a problem within the
Scottish Labour Party, two days later it seems that matters have gotten much
worse.
I stated that after this contest was over that people will
have a new view on Anas Sarwar and his supporters, and it won’t be positive. As
much as the stories which have already came out regarding Anas Sarwar’s
personal life and situation, this new revelation is the worst yet.
The Labour leadership contest hit by row over new members
joining with same email addresses, when I read about this, my first thought was
this isn’t happening from the campaign of Richard Leonard.
What is clear; is that the Scottish Labour Party needs to
introduce new rules of membership voting. It is now out in the public domain
that a sizeable number of new recruits who had signed up in recent weeks
provided identical personal details in their applications. This has and should
set alarm bells ringing because if single email address is being used then it
raises the prospect of an individual casting someone else’s vote in the
electronic ballot.
This cannot be a good thing for internal democracy and
certainly won’t leave a good taste in anyone’s mouth post election, whoever
wins, this grotty little episode will reflect badly on certain people.
Such is the concern that two secretaries of Constituency
Labour Parties (CLPs) that nominated left-winger Richard Leonard for the
leadership have raised concerns with Scottish Labour about this issue. When I
started to read about what was going on, my immediate thought was how immoral
and repugnant the practice was; now it seems that this contest is going to be
seen by some as akin to vote rigging in order to attempt to win the leadership
for Anas Sarwar.
The Leonard campaign has reacted by saying if complaints had
been made then "we expect these will be dealt with through Scottish Labour
Party's procedures." At this point in time, there isn’t much else that
they can say.
A spokesperson for the campaign of Anas Sarwar however
completely ignored the issue by saying:
“It’s incredibly encouraging that people across Scotlandhave joined the Labour Party and we are confident
that many have been enthused to do so by Anas’s positive campaign and by a
belief that he can be the next Labour First Minister.”
Anas Sarwar isn’t going to be the First Minister of Scotland,
and if Richard Leonard gets elected then I doubt that Anas Sarwar will be
holding the health brief, if any, and there should be an investigation into
this affair.
This contest between Leonard and Sarwar has become a nasty
bitter affair; this will encourage more support for people to join the Campaign
for Socialism or Momentum if Sarwar wins.
Momentum is the pro Corbyn group within the Labour Party.
At the weekend, we heard that around 1600 sign-ups to
Scottish Labour had happened with around 1200 of these being Asian members. This
brought some to suggest that the sig ups were to “edge it” for Sarwar. The new facts
put the application process under the microscope with a senior party source
stating that in some cases, the same mobile phone number has been provided for
all or many of the new members in a household. And it is also stated that in
some multi-resident households put down the same email address.
Imagine that Anas Sarwar wins, who is going to work with
anyone who is a supporter of him?
It is a bitter contest and for the sake of the party there has
to be a victory for Richard Leonard or
civil war will probably erupt in Scottish Labour, Momentum didn’t get their
fight with Kezia Dugdale, she jumped ship but they will get new members by the
truckload if this contest is seen as being vote rigged.
It isn’t enough that justice is done; it needs to be seen to
be done!
Finally, a verification panel, chaired by interim party
leader Alex Rowley, has been set up to scrutinise the sign-ups but given the
way the Scottish Labour Party rules operate there appears little that can be
done, and that is the real shame of this sorry episode.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
3 comments:
They still haven't learned. People lost their confidence enough that they've been slaughtered electorally over the past ten years, and they still behave like idiots.
A lot of folks in Sara’s community struggle with written and spoken English. This is the only reason you may be getting multiple people attached to same phone number and email address. Sarah is entitled to these peoples support ‘these new Scots are entitled to get involved in our democratic process’ I say that leopard guy is just jealous because he only managed to get 4 people to join the Liebour party whilst our Sara has manage 1596. It now appears the only folk remotely interested in Liebour in Scotland are the new Scots.
Hi George
This stinks right enough.
Tom
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