Angela Eagle prepares to do “a Dobson”

The last time Labour MPs tried to find a way to squash the views of Labour Party members, they had to eat humble pie. It was at the turn of the century, as the Labour Party selected its candidate to stand in the first election of a London Mayor that the disaster occurred.

The three party members who stood for selection were all MPs: Frank Dobson, Ken Livingstone and Glenda Jackson. Party bosses knew that Livingstone was popular with party members, so having two MPs oppose him was helpful to their cause. Women members not immediately attracted to supporting Dobson might be drawn over to support Jackson and could then be encouraged to vote for Dobson in the second round.

The selection process was a federal one. There were three groups of voters – “elected members” (MPs and MEPs), individual members and “affiliated supporters” (trade unions). Each group’s votes had the same weight in the result. In other words, very roughly, the votes of 70,000 individual members counted the same as the votes of approximately 70 London MPs.

In the first round of voting, 86.5% of MPs voted for Frank Dobson but he won only the votes of only one third of individual members and one quarter of trade unions. Only 12.2% of MPs voted for Ken Livingstone, but half the individual members and nearly three quarters of trade unions voted for him. The system of giving equal weighting to the three groups of votes meant that the two candidates ended the first round almost neck and neck.

Glenda Jackson was eliminated and in the second round the 5% of first round votes she had obtained were distributed between the other two candidates – just enabling Dobson to edge ahead.

Frank Dobson was duly appointed Labour’s official candidate for London Mayor. Ken Livingstone deliberated and then said he was going to stand by Labour Party members, accept their mandate and stand as a candidate for Mayor. He had to stand as an independent candidate – which saw him being automatically excluded from the Labour Party.

(Ten years later, Lutfur Rahman was selected by party members to stand as the Labour Party candidate for Mayor of Tower Hamlets – only to see the Labour Party officialdom remove him and appoint their own candidate. Lutfur Rahman also accepted the mandate of party members, stood as an independent candidate and was excluded from the Labour Party.)

Jim Fitzpatrick MP was appointed Frank Dobson’s campaign manager and appeared on TV saying – with a totally straight face – that Dobson had every chance of beating Ken Livingstone.

The independent candidate Ken Livingstone went on to win 667,877 votes in the first round – with Frank Dobson obtaining just 223,884, coming third behind the Tories and being eliminated. In the second round, Livingstone beat the Tories by 776,417 votes to 564,137.

The Labour Party officialdom learned its lesson. By the time of the second London Mayoral election four years later, Ken Livingstone had been re-admitted to the Labour Party and was their official candidate.

The danger for Angela Eagle is that all she can offer Labour Party members is to be a “Dobson”.
•For a start, her own constituency party members asked her not to sign the motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn that was circulating around Labour MPs – which hard bodes well in terms of her commitment to follow party members’ wishes.
•Second, she held office in Gordon Brown’s Government – first as Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury and then as Minister for Pensions and Ageing Society. She was also in Ed Miliband’s Shadow Team. In other words, she has been part of a Labour team which lost a General Election and a Labour team which didn’t win one. That doesn’t bode well for the policies she stands for – they have lost two General Election campaigns already.
•Third, she isn’t even popular among Labour Party members. She stood in the Deputy Leadership contest last year and came fourth out of five candidates.

Labour Party members are reported to be stunned at Angela Eagle’s move – and struggling to understand why she wants to destablise the Labour Party just at the point when the Tory Party is at its weakest.

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