Labour's NEC is proposing that future leadership candidates need 1/5 of all existing MPs... here's why that should be stopped: 1/ it's designed to stifle the left only... the membership is way to the left of the PLP...
2/ It entrenches machine politics. The PLP is already substantially bereft of people who could feasibly govern, or make a convincing speech - but now all you have to do is network at Westminster...
3/ ... it stifles original voices and ideas: most truly competitive fields - business, the arts, sport - are led by talented misfits with the flair and passion to excel... the list of great potential Labour PMs we never had will grow ...
4/ ... it will ensure conference opens with an internal row and hopefully a defeat for Starmer abs the NEC majority - Sunday headlines will be: Labour divided - and they'll be spot on...
5/ ... what does it say to the 18-24 generation of politically engaged people? If you dream of running the country and radical change, don't bother trying to do so unless you can persuade a bunch of white, middle aged centrists to put you into their machine process...
6/ ... but it looks like we beat the electoral college. I won't mourn the end of registered supporters voting: given how hard it is to be a member, it's the members who should get to vote.

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More from @paulmasonnews

26 Sep
Starmer's rule changes, already watered down, pass by just 53/47... can't see the breakdown but I assume that means constituency vote was even closer or went the other way... huge bonfire of political capital that will only benefit a right-wing challenger ...
2/ ... and given the branch shutdowns, union backroom deals needed to achieve even this, I can see this being reversed fairly easily if the left advances in Unison...
3/ Added to this the Green New Deal motion ruled out of order a week ago just passed. The left needs to create a single Labour entity that new people can join up to and participate in...
Read 4 tweets
26 Sep
Starmer #Marr interview leaves a random selection of Labour faces here in Brighton pretty dour... energy nationalisation is the only possible solution: you can't run the National Grid as a co-op... 1/
2/ Rayner's "scum" comment reflects exactly how working class people talk - and how many voters want to see the super-rich crooks characterised ... yet Keir couldn't bring himself to endorse it...
3/ There's already quite a bit of disquiet over the rule change SNAFU - even among the Labour right... who are rightly obsessed with speaking outside the bubble ...
Read 6 tweets
22 Sep
Labour's attempt to ditch one-member-one-vote is, of course, a massive diversion from the important debates: Green New Deal and constitutional reform... but defeating it is vital... 1/ We're not in the 1970s anymore...
2/ I fought against OMOV in the 90s, because CLPs were sparse, inactive while unions were still (just) activist organisations, whose members could pressure bureaucrats through mass action...
3/ Today, I see OMOV as vital to Labour's transition from a Labourist party to a radical social democracy ... in a networked society, with multiple forms of exploitation, the individual activist should be sovereign...
Read 9 tweets
8 Sep
What's the social-democratic answer to the care crisis? That's the question that should guide Labour today. The answer is 1/ As a universal social need, care should be free at the point of use and funded from general taxation... that's been a Labour value since the year dot...
2/ Nobody is asking Labour to design this on the back of an envelope but to state the principle. It may need a decade to get there, like zero net carbon, but the principle has to be clear... and here's why...
3/ Since health and social care need to integrate, and one is user pays and the other free at the point of use, over time the user pays principle will erode the NHS... so will hypothecation...
Read 10 tweets
7 Sep
First reaction to Johnson's NI rise 1/ It's a clear reversal for the Tory right - Sunak promised before the last election to cut NI... but as a move it's regressive, and attacks the incomes of working age families...
2/ The cap and floors for the wealth grab don't solve the problem: a semi in Newbury sells for 400k, the average house sale in Leigh is a terrace for 112k - so all caps that are not proportional are regressive...
3/ There's nothing in this that improves care quality, availability, or even the fragility of the private care industry...
Read 7 tweets
25 Aug
The US far-right has hailed the Taliban victory. 'They hate what we hate, we can emulate their strategy, they bring closer the global ethnic civil war,' is the sick logic... but the parallels with Saigon are ominous 1/....

medium.com/mosquito-ridge…
2/ The alt-right/Taliban mutual admiration network exists because both forces are philosophically anti-modern, anti-rational and anti-woman... medium.com/mosquito-ridge…
3/ But as @kathleen_belew points out, the parallels with America's defeat in Saigon are more than symbolic. Her study of the White Power movement in the 80s/90s shows defeat in Vietnam was a major impetus for its radicalisation and militarisation medium.com/mosquito-ridge…
Read 7 tweets

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