THE UK Labour leadership contest has been dogged by claims
that the rules have allowed Tories and non-Labour supporting lefties an
opportunity to skew the result.
Over 112,00 people have paid the £3 to get a vote as
registered supporters, 148,182 have signed up through affiliated unions, and
105,973 have become full-blown members.
Most of these new recruits, it is claimed, are supporting
left-winger Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership.
Scottish Labour has not been immune from this phenomenon.
In its own leadership contest, 6,000 registered and
affiliated supporters took the franchise to around 21,000, which included a
mini-surge in new members.
The question some party figures are asking is: what effect
will these new folk have on the internal List ranking system for the Holyrood
election.
As has already been reported, Labour expects to lose all its
constituency seats next year, so any MSPs will be regional members.
Kez Dugdale, Scottish Labour’s moderate new leader, wants fresh
talent (code for a cull) and a rejuvenated group.
The prospect of thousands of Corbyn-loving left-wingers
voting in the internal contest is deemed in some quarters to be a threat to these ambitions.
However, such fears look to be unfounded.
For one thing, the franchise will be restricted to members and exclude registered or
affiliated supporters.
Labour’s
governing Scottish Executive Committee (SEC) also decided in June that the freeze
date for members voting in the List rankings process will be June 13th.
At this point, Corbyn was not on the ballot and the surge in
members sympathetic to him had not taken hold.
In other words, Corbyn’s bedrock support – the new tiers of
party supporters, plus newly recruited members – won’t get a say in who will be Scottish Labour's A-list candidates next year.
The SEC meets again on Saturday and, if the June 13th
freeze date is revisited, I am told it will be pushed back even further.
The end result is that Corbyn-mania is unlikely to have an
effect on the selection of Labour candidates for next year.
