Labour is on course to lose the local election in May, with seats going to the Tories and Greens, Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said today (Thursday 21 February).
Mr Russell-Moyle, who was a member of Brighton and Hove City Council before his election to Parliament, urged colleagues to work harder.
Defeat, he warned, “could even be the final nail in Labour’s coffin,” weakening party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Mr Russell-Moyle said: “Unless something changes in next few weeks, I believe we are on course to lose seats at the local election to both the Greens and Tories.
“We need to be out every night of the week in every ward. Candidates need to commit to this as a part-time job and in the next few weeks as their full-time job of campaigning.
“Remember we have an uphill struggle and being a councillor is a tough job but being a candidate in the last two months is a full-time job.
“It’s like an endurance test. If you can put the time in, you become a councillor. If not, you will never win.
“We need targeted letters to each voter (not just generic leaflets that few read). We need to have door knocked every house three times and we need to take this seriously. Less debate and more direction.
“Because we are being held up as a big win for Jeremy in May and if we fail it will weaken Jeremy, it could even be the final nail in Labour’s coffin. If anyone cares about Labour and Jeremy, you need to take the next weeks off from your diary. Book no social life.
“You should not be travelling from one ward to another but out every day in your ward or your nearby key ward and work work work.”
Council leader Daniel Yates said: “Lloyd’s making it very clear that complacency isn’t an option. What he was issuing was a call to arms.
“You can’t take voters for granted. Every single vote in every single ward matters.”
Telling potential passengers that your ship is sinking is hardly a winning sales strategy, is it?
Labour are old news! The youth vote in parts of Hove is now 80-85% Tory and rising. Led by the geriatric Corbyn (The Pinochet of Islington) they are doomed to failure. Children are on the march, a crusade! I am willing to bet that the Conservatives will make great in-roads into Hove and Seven Dials, that the Greens will crumble in the North Laine and Labour will be reduced to an East Brighton rump! A rump! I had some respect for Sunny Jim Callaghan even in the winter of discontent but no more.
What fantasy statistical fake news fed your mistruth that up to 85% of our young people are voting Tory in parts of the City. Possibly the count that was done at the cafe where the Conservative youth wing met for their AGM, and 8.5 said they were voting Tory. One abstained and one couldn’t make their mind up!
Children ARE on the march, to protest at the huge cuts in our local services due to Tory austerity, to raise awareness of the dangers of climate change, to support our homeless citizens through acts of volunteering, and through taking exception to fake news purporting to represent the young people of Brighton and Hove. Shame.
He may well be right. But it’s down to his extreme wing of the party if Labour lose control and aren’t doing the necessary work.
Just look at the strategy of how we’ve got to where we are with what his far-left wing have been doing:
1) repeatedly berate, abuse and otherwise criticise members in the rest of the party, telling them they are not Labour and to leave the party – so many stop helping and many others do leave, reducing the volunteer base, or worse – defect to another party as we have seen once councillor, who faced a particularly large amount of abuse, did.
2) focused on fighting against those in the rest of the party, focused on complicated rule changes and niche topics for discussion at party meetings, rather than the big issues that could make a real difference to people’s lives
3) time campaign days poorly and inflexibly so that you get a day focusing on the NHS when Brexit is more topical, or stick to a campaign on school funding when there have just been huge revelations about Brexit that could win over lots of people if you switch to campaign on that.
4) publicly criticise the Labour run council for being right-wing Tories, saying they are failing our city, rather than being realistic and understanding the councillors were doing a good job in extremely difficult times due to huge funding cuts
5) failing to vet councillor candidates properly, effectively letting everyone through to the selection stages, and then controlling the selection meetings to restrict the ability of branches to question the potential candidates, while at the same time instructing members on who to vote for…resulting in at least one candidate being kicked out for antisemitic issues after they were selected and one or two others leaving for other reasons. I dread to think what has yet to be uncovered about some of the candidates
6) targeting the Labour council leader with huge levels of abuse, repeatedly hounding him, criticising him all the time so it got to the point that he’d, rightly, had enough, and stood down
7) targeted his replacement for deseletion as a council candidate (unsuccessfully), as well as targeting (successfully) several other excellent and popular councillors because they simply did not belong to their clique.
8) selecting numerous council candidates who have stood for other parties in recent elections, when in actual fact party rules should have prevented them from even being in the party in the first place
9) elected a number of officers over the last couple of years to constituency executive committees (ECs) across the city who have since been suspended and expelled for issues like antisemitism, convictions for ignoring UN sanctions, abuse of members and more
10) electing members of the ECs and campaigns forums based purely on their connection to their wing of the party, often organised and agreed ahead of time by Momentum, irrespective of their ability or experience. If anyone happened to get elected who was not part of this group, they were sidelined and silenced where possible. This leaves the party is a large number of incompetent people in charge in the party structure, with all the talent excluded
11) some of the new selected council candidates have no clue what councils can do and won’t listen when told the limitations, instead preferring to shout down or simply ignore those who try to explain at training sessions
12) party meetings have been made hostile places, where rules are twisted to further their aims, bullying and intimidation happens and there have been more than once instance where hard working councillors have been targeted for so much abuse they have had to leave – some times in tears
13) regional and national party structures are unwilling to intervene to sort out problems preferring to ignore what is going on to make their lives easier
All in all, the Labour party in Brighton and Hove is a complete mess and a joke, like Labour nationally.
Some hard working councillors, including the council leader, are trying to keep going and there are actually a few excellent new candidates standing in May. But over all it’s very bad, with low levels of effort from those on the far-left, little expertise in those running things, no strategy, no cooperation in what they do and it will lead to failure.
I fear for those good people caught up in all who could lose out on being elected and also am sad for those in the city, who would have benefited a lot from a good quality Labour majority council, which was definitely a possibility this time around, if not for all these issues.
As for LRM, he needs to realise this is all the fault of the far-left wing of he party he has aligned himself to. He and his ‘comrades’ are to blame. He can’t try and pass the buck, otherwise he might see many more people leaving Labour, like a number of his Westminster colleges have done this week.
Nice to see what he looks like. He’s an invisible man for me in Saltdean, especially compared to our previous MP. I’m not aware of anything he’s done for us
I see he has called those that left the labour Party Scabs.Talk about how to win friends and influence people.Now he is telling people to work harder.He wouldnt know a hard days work if it bit him in the face.
Labour foolishly messed with Hove’s Carnegie Library in 22003 and thereafter, and lost in 2007; looks as if the 2015 attempt to close it down will clobber them again.
Hove people do not take kindly to the destruction of the Library.
What if Jeremy resigns?
That could help
If Jeremy resigns, I predict Labour would trounce the Tories after their complete mishandling of Brexit (including calling a referendum in the first place) – and I have voted Tory in the past a couple of times before I saw the light!
Lazy MP who hasn’t done a hard days graft in his life.
As for council elections – 23 Labour councillors won in 2015. 3 have left since. 6 of the 23 are restanding.
One had death threats from her own party in Queens Park. The rest have been hounded out by Momentum .
If you are anti Semitic, want a continued graffiti city with poor services, no vision council, then vote for the hard left party of hate.
Any sane resident would vote for anyone else
Jeremy Corbyn says Shamima Begum should be let back into Britain
https://mol.im/a/6729677
If true – this is reason alone why the public will not vote for Corbyn & his meerymob o
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This is a bad thing? *puzzled face*
“It’s like an endurance test. If you can put the time in, you become a councillor. If not, you will never win.”
From the only councillor who wasn’t elected in the last set of elections AND won’t be standing in the next elections.
Lloyd Hustle Snake-Oil.
Christopher Hawtree should stop spinning lies about Hove Library. There are no proposals to close it.
Christopher Hawtree should be reminded that it was the Green Party that actually closed a library service, our mobile library service. Hove library is flourishing now, with its cafe and creche.
I have been asked to post this on behalf of a friend who wants to be ingognito “I have been informed by someone in the know what tricks far left momentum are up to.Corbyn and his gang of momentum corbynistas want total control of Brighton and will do anything to achieve their goal.Brighton will be like the Kremilin of old.Even Russia has realised extreme socialism has failed.They want to get rid of any councillor or MP who doesn’t believe in extreme left views.Brighton under a labour council has failed the city.We are a scruffy,grafitee riddled city who welcome drunks,druggies,rough sleepers,tenters,camper vans.Our roads are screwed up with badly planned roads and traffic light systems.We have too many HMO’s ,student flats ruining lives of ordinary hard working citizens.I love Brighton but shortly will be moving out of the area to a beautiful village in a tory constituency.My life will change for the better but i feel sorry for the future of Brighton if the momentum lot take over.
Like it wasn’t like that under the Tories. Ha ha! And you expect it to get better under Tory cuts. Ha ha! If you could pass it onto your friend.
I’m standing in Hangleton and Knoll as a totally independent candidate.
I’m giving the electorate chance to go into the polling booth and make it clear that when it comes to politician, they are sick of the lot of them.
If elected my main objective is to make the council realise once and for all that it is there to serve the community, not the other way round.
On the streets I’m getting a very positive reaction.
People are actually going to vote Independent sick of the lot of them ) candidate.