Four hours after Ed Miliband announces that Labour’s London Mayor Candidate will be the subject of a “Primary”, the Evening Standard reports  that Lord Andrew Adonis is considering running for Mayor. Adonis is an ex-Government Minister, who has never fought an election, and is Labour’s leading evangelist for executive directly elected Mayors and the leading evangelist for academy schools. He was made by Tony Blair, and is a leading thinker  on the right of the Labour Party and currently Chair of Progress, the Sainsbury funded think tank and caucus .

I think we can see a pattern here.

For a right winger to win a London Labour nomination it is necessary to change the rules, it is exceptionally unlikely he would win a ballot of London members. Last time they were asked, Ken Livingstone beat Oona King by a 2-1 margin in the last internal election of London members.  In that election the turnout was massively enhanced by the Party Leadership Ballot taking place at the same time.  It was further enhanced by reducing the membership fee to £1. This was done to encourage supporters to join to participate in the Leadership election.  It remained necessary that new members/voters agreed with the Programme, Policy and Rules, and considered themselves to be members.

Why are people so keen that people who won’t sign that they agree with the Labour Party should have a say in who our candidates should be.

ooOOOoo

Thanks to Zelo Street for pointing this out to me.

And so it begins
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