Almost 10 years later, you might ask what has changed? Now, instead of red princes and favoured sons of the Labour right getting a leg up in the selection process, luminaries of the Labour left are in receipt of helpful hands from above. Suddenly the new politics are looking very much like the old politics.
I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to sharp practices. They are inevitable in any organisation, not just politics. When interests clash with interests the counter briefing, the back stab, and the shafting are going to happen. For instance, when it looked like Tom Watson was in trouble, my tear ducts were as dry as my laughter as the stitcher-in-chief so very nearly became the stitched. How humiliating it must have been to have got saved only by Jeremy Corbyn's intervention, though he's never going to show his gratitude or act as if he owes the Labour leader a debt of honour. Political struggle and democratic victories are infinitely preferable, and in my view reaching for administrative mechanisms is an absolute last resort when nothing else is possible. It is subordinate to, and not a substitute for politics.
To find the left finessing seat after seat speaks both to Corbynism's strength and weakness. Strong, because Labour First - former purveyors of and beneficiaries of fixed selections - are reduced to begging signatures for a petition against rigged selections. Their marginalisation from the party machine is such that this is the only avenue open to them. A fitting fate for such an awful organisation. Corbynism is now the master of the central party machine, and making it known this is now the case. And yet it is also a symptom of weakness. As we have seen with the trigger ballots, the membership have so far proven unreliable. Or, to put it more subtly, it's simply not mobilising in numbers to turf out awful MPs who deserve turfing out. The success of Jess Phillips last week being a case in point. Without the work being done to prepare the ground, Momentum pointedly not mobilising for trigger meetings, and a membership shell shocked and cynical following two years of demobilisation and demoralisation as elite politics has asserted itself again over movement politics, is anyone really surprised? And so without a mass appetite for reselections, most members are staying home - and those who are turning up are buying the pragmatism of now-is-not-the-time. Bureaucratic selections then are a symptom of weakness. If an active movement of members can't do the job, then despotic but enlightened administrative moves it is.
The problem is going all stitchy compromises the left's image, and feeds cynicism and nihilism. And to go all out as these selections are doing risks alienating others hitherto supportive of the Corbyn project. It's not just right wingers getting the cold shoulder, local lefts without the impeccable connections are facing the squeeze out too. And what happens when, say, a favourite of the Unite machine gets a seat thanks to the bureaucratic exclusion of a Unison nominee? Nothing good. It's a recipe for the division and balkanisation of the left, and one that could cost us in the long run. Is this price for redressing the balance in the parliamentary party really worth paying?
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