Saturday 3 September 2016

Tom Watson's declaration of war on Labour Party democracy


The Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has realised that despite his "Reds under the bed!" fearmongering nonsense, the Labour Party membership is decisively rejecting the Anyone But Corbyn coup-plotters who chose to throw the party into turmoil instead of holding the Tories to account for their Brexit shambles.

A majority of the membership are furious that the coup-plotters spurned the best chance to attack the Tories in decades with their self-serving coup attempt, but Watson's reaction isn't going to be to accept the will of the membership and knuckle down to oppose the Tories, it's going to be the submission of a plan to scrap the democratic One Member One Vote system for Labour Party elections and replace it with an electoral stitch up where just 230 Labour MPs get the same amount of influence over the outcome of the election as some 600,000+ ordinary members. 


This plot to reverse the democratisation of the Labour Party has clearly been on the cards since Watson made his absurd claim that democratisation of the Labour party was "a terrible error of judgement" back in August.

Watson and the coup-plotters know they have to try and force such an anti-democratic move through the NEC before the anti-Corbyn members like the appalling Luke Akehurst are replaced by the newly elected NEC members, because the new members will tip the balance of power away from the coup-plotters and make such a cynical anti-democratic vote-rigging move impossible to pull off.


This obvious effort to rig the next leadership election is absolute proof that Tom Watson and the Anyone But Corbyn camp are anti-democrats.

Their anti-democratic attitudes were already clear before from their decision to retroactively disenfranchise 130,000 Labour members from the leadership election and the ongoing purge of Corbyn supporters for "crimes" such as liking the Foo Fighters too much, voting Green years before they even joined Labour and even posting one single Tweet saying the Green Party should be allowed to participate in the 2015 General Election TV debates. However the idea of rejecting the will of the membership again by submitting a plan to rig the next leadership election in favour of the coup-plotter MPs is another staggering escalation of the Labour Party elites' "war on democracy".


It's essentially a demonstration that the coup-plotters are determined to continue forcing leadership elections until they get their own way, and if they don't get the result they want, they'll continue rigging the election process until they do. They're a bunch of petulant elitists who are refusing to take "no" for an answer and are now determined to demonstrate how much they despise ordinary Labour Party members by seeking to disempower them.

This is undeniably the behaviour of anti-democratic elitists. The original purpose of the Labour Party was to give a voice to ordinary people, but the party hierarchy has become so over-run by self-serving elitists these days that Labour MPs like Tom Watson are intent on forcing their will on the ordinary party membership, no matter what it takes.

The Labour Leadership election is a battle between a tiny cabal of elitists who see themselves as an untouchable managerial class with the exclusive right to dictate what is best for the party against the majority of the party membership.

It doesn't surprise me that some people have reservations about Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership. He clearly has personal limitations and significant change always comes with uncertainties. What does baffle me is how people who consider themselves even remotely left-wing or democratic could align themselves with an Anyone But Corbyn coup that is backed by every right-wing Blairite in the party, outrageous Labour Party elitists like Tristram Hunt, abusive cry bullies like Michael Foster and the brazen anti-democrat Tom Watson.

The choice is simple. The choice is between the the Labour Party democrats who want to make Labour MPs more accountable to the people who actually elected them, and the anti-democratic Labour Party elitists who are convinced that they alone know what is best for the party, and who are determined to continue disempowering the Labour Party lower orders until they get their own way.

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