Vote for Labour councillors in West Lancashire this May and the Party HQ in London looks likely to pull their strings

It’s not often that a couple of councillors resigning should cause much comment, but when two Labour council leaders resign within the space of two weeks citing bullying and racist abuse, then we should take notice.

Now I know very little about internal Labour politics, so I’ll simply quote directly what these two Labour Council Leaders said on resigning.

First, Claire Kober, led Haringey Council in London for 10 years and was Labour’s most senior woman in Local Government.  She resigned after Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) intervened with a clear message that a major Regeneration Programme agreed by the local council should be re-thought.  She went on to say that she wasn't consulted over the NEC's ruling which she says was handled "very badly".

Worrying she then added, "The sexism, bullying, undemocratic behaviour, and outright personal attacks on me, as the most senior woman in Labour local government, has left me disappointed and disillusioned."

Ms Kober said she "didn't want to go over details" of her claims, but added she was "in no doubt that the behaviour and actions of certain individuals at certain times met the test of both sexism and bullying and politically intimidating behaviour".  She is resigning as a councillor as well.

The decision of the Labour NEC to intervene in Haringey has been publically criticised by 15 other Labour London council leaders.

Then today, it became clearer why the Labour Leader of Harlow Council, Jon Clempner, resigned as both Council Leader and councillor a couple of weeks ago.  He said:

“There has been a lot of speculation about why I resigned as Leader of Harlow Council, as a Councillor, and subsequently as a member of the Labour Party… 

Those who follow my personal social media will know I did not react well to an active campaign against my leadership by a local Momentum organiser (which this individual denies, despite several independent witnesses), being called a neo-Nazi by some Corbyn t-shirt wearing person outside the Labour Party Conference, and events at a national level targeting Labour Councillors and Labour Councils that do not conform to the particular form of ideological purity that seems to have taken a grip of the party, and that will shortly culminate in the output of a party ‘democracy review’ to make Councillors more accountable to a small group of party members (and less to the actual electorate presumably). Councillors, unless formally endorsed by the privately owned company Momentum, seem to have replaced the Parliamentary Labour Party as the focus of the hard left’s ire…

He went on: “the Labour Party was becoming a deeply unpleasant place, I resigned from the Labour Party shortly after”.

What appears to be happening in Labour is that the national party is telling local councillors elected on local manifestos what they can and cannot do.  It’s a one size fits all approach and a direct threat to the general view of local democracy that local councillors should be free to respond to the needs and requirements of their area and residents.

If this trend continues, then local residents in West Lancashire can have no confidence that if they vote for a Labour councillor in May that that person won’t simply have to march, not to the local party whip, which might be bad enough but to a centrally imposed agenda set 200 miles away in London by people who weren’t even in the Labour party 3 years ago.