Rules

The NEC has suspended Wallasay CLP; I was looking through the rules to see how they’ve done it. Chapter 6 applies only to the disciplining of individuals. Chapter 1, Clause VII, 3 A gives the NEC, not the General Secretary the right to suspend a party unit.  Rule 1 VII 5 gives the NEC the power to delegate this decision to an Officer or sub committee. So where’s the minute?

Shakrabrti also criticised the Party for suspending people pending invesigation, or least for making this the default position.

I also discovered a rule that the Leader is entitled to attend any meeting of the Labour Party. So that makes Corbyn’s exclusion during the NEC illegal. …

Here come de Judge

Here come de Judge

The highest levels of international judiciary have been busy over the last week, I report and comment on the Microsoft vs. FBI on linkedin Pulse, in an article called “Citizens Win”. It was quite simple in the end, the law under which the FBI was seeking search warrant powers was not on of the post 911 laws, but an earlier one and the US District Court says that the law grants no power of inspection abroad. The spooks are going to have to apply for an Irish warrant. In Europe however, Tom Watson’s & David Davies’s judicial review on DRIPA have reached the Advocate General. This reported by Tom Watson here, and by Glyn Moody here. Watson writes about the need for strong judicial review of the search warrants, and Moody brings up that mass surveillance can only be used in the fight against serious crime.  …

Hacking Labour

The story about the Progress faction’s attempts to obtain personal data from the Labour Party’s membership system has broken. The tag, #HackingLabour will find loads of stuff, including the Information Commissoner’s Office response, which it seems is to write a stern letter. Tim Turner looks at the Law, here, and I comment on his thread, repeating what I said in my post, Compliance, that the Chakrabarti inquiry stated that the Labour Party can’t run a legally safe disciplinary process; it lacks the legal skills and it is becoming clear it lacks the IT security and data protection skills which become mandatory under the EU’s new Data Protection regulation. …

Trident

The House of Commons voted on Trident last night, Jeremy Corbyn while speaking against was interrupted by Labour MPs asking him why he didn’t support Labour’s (losing) Manifesto. They can’t have it both ways, either winning elections is everything and they can dump the elected Leader because they think he can’t or it isn’t and the demonstrable fact is that the manifesto failed to win. Why not change the policy rather than the Leader?

They also have a very selective memory as to what the manifesto/programme said.

The 2014 programme, on which the manifesto was based, stated that Labour would need “a clear body of evidence” to abandon its commitment to a continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent yet that it would “actively … work .. on global multilateral disarmament efforts,  …  looking at further reductions in global stockpiles and the number of weapons”.  It stated that in government it would look for the evidence, that the 2015 Defence Review would be “examining all capabilities including nuclear”.

It also says that “Labour would … take a leading role internationally to push the agenda of global anti-proliferation with nuclear and non-nuclear states … to advance ‘Global Zero’ which seeks to … [eliminate] … all nuclear weapons.” Labour would have put the ICBMs on the table.

  …

Narcissism

The problem with the NEC rulings on voter suppression isn’t the levying of a £25 fee on registered supporters, although I think the fee is too high (as are the non-concessionary membership fees); it is doing this in conjunction with the dubious legality of prohibiting them from any long term relationship with Labour Party and the use of this mechanism to allow richer people to buy their way around the dubiously legal freeze date of 12th January & 24th June. Allowing the registered supporter registration to be available for only two days cannot be designed to maximise participation.

Like many I argued together with our local party comrades against the Collins rule changes, but we lost. Conference has said, twice, it started in 2010, that registered supporters will have a say in choosing our Leader.

The NEC rulings also stop all those people who have joined since the referendum from voting in both the Leadership and the NEC election. It is cynical narcissistic ploy, promoting the interest of faction above that of mass membership party. …