STOP PRESS: UKIP WINS FIRST PARLIAMENTARY SEAT Nigel Farage’s UKIP has just achieved its long-awaited breakthrough into the House of Commons. True, the grand entrance will not actually take place until next May; but the event is a foregone conclusion. At the local elections on 22nd May, UKIP made considerable gains in both votes and council seats. They won eight seats on North East Lincolnshire Council and topped the poll in the North East Lincolnshire Euro vote. After that result Nigel Farage said that Grimsby was now among the top UKIP target seats for next year’s General Election. Grimsby? (Yes, I was horrified too.) Surely Grimsby’s been Labour since the year dot? Well, it was the late Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland’s seat until his death in 1977. After that Austin Mitchell won it in a by-election, and soon became a Grimsby legend, for his willingness to stick to his guns even in defiance of the party line, and for his robust (but not swivel-eyed) Euroscepticism, which is an absolute must in a town whose fishing industry was devastated by the Common Fisheries Policy. Even so, during his 37-year tenure of the seat Austin’s majority twice failed to reach four figures. And now he is pushing 80, and must be granted a well-earned retirement. And so Labour need not just a new candidate, but a candidate who can fight and beat UKIP. It is no good doing this by Buggins’ (or Bugginas) Turn. I don’t like UKIP any more than you do, but it can’t be denied they bring a fresh approach and don’t pussyfoot around the issues (even if we’d all rather they did). What Labour would have needed to fight them effectively is a candidate with local connections who could do battle on the stump with wit and verve. How did Grimsby Constituency Labour Party respond to this challenge? We’ll probably never know. Because five days after the elections, on Tuesday 27th May, they were called in to a meeting with Labour NEC and told that they were having an all-women shortlist imposed. No arguments. Various Grimsby Labour figures and Austin Mitchell himself have protested, but they might as well have been talking to the wall. The word is – this has been in the public domain since January – that Ed Miliband has personally endorsed someone called Melanie Onn, who was for many years a Legal and Financial Compliance Officer for the party, threatening non-line-toeing blogs and websites with the law; but who, in accordance with the Grand Plan, has now been moved oop north as regional organiser for UNISON, prior to entering upon her inheritance. I am sure Melanie Onn is a good Labour member and trade unionist. And I am willing to concede that she may very possibly be able to find Grimsby on a map, with assistance from Mr G. Oogle. And she may indeed be just the person to look Farage and his boors in the eye and make them wilt. But I’m not sure that was what she was (or will be) picked for. And so I’m not confident that she can win the seat. If she is in fact (she may not be) a classic apparatchik spouting Eurocrap and Primrose Hillery in West Marsh or Pyewipe, UKIP are home and hosed. I don’t want to get into trench warfare on the subject of all-women shortlists. I will merely note that it’s a damn convenient method of parachuting in a candidate without local roots against the wishes of the local party. The only question is: should a locally-connected candidate (guess who) run against her? Obviously this hypothetical candidate does not want to go down in history as the man who delivered the seat to UKIP on a plate, but if UKIP are going to win anyway…..?
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 17:18:37 +0000