Thread by @PaulBrandITV

BREAKING: I understand @KateOsamor has become the latest Labour MP to be triggered by her local party. Now faces a reselection battle in Edmonton. Not clear yet what the issue was - she has been a loyal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, having served in his shadow cabinet.

@KateOsamor Labour source says "Momentum/leadership have totally destroyed the selection rules and can't even protect their own people."

@KateOsamor Digging further, @KateOsamor's local party is a complex mix of rivalries, with ethnic divisions. Labour source suggests that with trigger threshold set at 1/3 of branches, it's easy for one faction to bring a candidate down and "the main victims are BAME and female candidates".

Sample size is small, but there is an argument that a pattern is emerging.

Margaret Hodge
Diana Johnson
Kate Osamor
Emma Lewell-Buck
Virendra Sharma*
...all triggered - all female/BAME.

Roger Godsiff is the only white man to be triggered.

*later declared null & void

And also hearing that the next candidate to be triggered could be Rupa Huq. Again, a BAME woman.

Too soon to draw empirical conclusions, but if the aim of reselections is to increase diversity of candidates (as Momentum says), then so far it may not be having the desired effect.

And clear from this tweet from @PreetKGillMP that the concern is real

https://twitter.com/PreetKGillMP/status/1183013358930419713?s=20

@PreetKGillMP This was the detail of Virendra Sharma by the way that earns the asterisk. First two votes went against him, the NEC declared them null and void, didn't get to full trigger stage. newstatesman.com/politics/stagg…

@PreetKGillMP But in a highly confusing run of events, Sharma still faces possible trigger

newstatesman.com/politics/stagg…