Labour On The Brink Of Civil War

My Crawley Observer column this week is generating quite a stir. I can't say too much but it is a fact that it would only take one Labour Councillor in Crawley to defect to change the political control of Crawley Borough Council from Labour to Conservative. We are now less than 60 hours to the announcement of the next leader of the Labour party. Once Corbyn's likely win is confirmed, we enter uncharted territory. It won't be pretty.      

Jeremy Corbyn is set to become Labour leader  

"Unless all the predictions are wrong, this coming Saturday will see the Labour party elect left-winger Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Stuck in a 1970s timewarp, don’t be under any illusion that he won’t be the most politically extreme MP to lead any major political party in modern British history.

It has been well documented that the Labour leadership election has been a complete shambles, including problems such as blatant entryism. It has certainly been apparent that voters made the right choice in May by electing a Conservative government, as Labour have proved themselves unable to competently run a leadership election, yet alone the Country.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party will have a majority of its MPs hostile to him as leader while over half of the party membership will support him. Stuck in the middle will be Labour Councillors - worried that they may have individually aligned to the ‘wrong’ faction.

A period of vicious Labour in-fighting looks likely as the far-left Corbynites seek to purge the Blairites, while the Blairites will fight to reclaim the party for themselves by trying to depose Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

Locally in Crawley, I can see how the on-going battle for the control of the Labour party is going to be all-consuming. This is concerning as Labour are nominally in political control of Crawley Borough Council with 19 Councillors to the Conservatives 18. I struggle to see how they can effectively run the Council while a civil war rages within Labour that could last for many years. They are set to be in office but not in control.

Amid the Labour turmoil, the focus of my Conservative colleagues and I continues to be the town we love and working for our local Council to be run for the people of Crawley in the best way possible. To the more moderate Crawley Labour Councillors - my door will be open if you wish to escape the bitter in-fighting. You can talk to me in the strictest confidence about potentially joining the Conservatives - helping to ensure our great town of Crawley remains top priority."

Jeremy Corbyn Set To Win Labour Leadership

This week in my Crawley Observer column, on the day that new sign-ups for the Labour leadership vote finally stopped, I have written about the shambolic leadership contest and the dangers of entryism. It has tonight been announced that there are 610,000 potential votes in this contest but that only 200,000 of them were members before May's election. We all know where the majority of those new votes will go.

Entryism - helping Jeremy Corbyn go from 100-1 outsider to 1-3 favourite

"If just four months ago, anyone had suggested to me a scenario that in 2020, President Donald Trump could be welcoming Prime Minister Jeremy Corbyn to the Whitehouse, I would have laughed and said it was impossible. Fast forward four months and while still unlikely, such an event has now become possible.

Such a weird scenario becoming possible is a symptom of the strange political times we are living in, where the unexpected and bizarre can become reality. I don’t tend to follow American politics very closely and their systems of picking Presidential hopefuls, but I do take a keen interest here in the UK.

The unusual way the Labour Party are conducting their current leadership contest has its roots in the last one. The national choice of their party membership was David Miliband but Ed Miliband got over the line due to Trade Union votes. This was true in Crawley where the local Labour Party publically nominated David Miliband but ended up having to pretend for five years that his brother was the chosen one.

Labour recognised they had to change their leadership election system but what they came up with is increasingly likely to produce the wrong outcome, meaning Labour could have another unelectable leader for another five years. The problem now is that the system they created is open to blatant entryism, with half of all those with a vote having signed up since after the general election. I also suspect that returned votes will be higher among the new ‘members’ than the existing members. Entryism may well make Jeremy Corbyn leader of the Labour Party, as many pundits are saying most people signing up are from even further to the left than Labour.

As I wrote last week, oppositions whether nationally or locally need to be credible and electable. An outcome determined by entryism is not good for democracy and is of course unfair. Potentially, all parties can be at risk from entryism, including down to a local level when choosing candidates, but this Labour shambles is of huge consequence when picking a potential Prime Minister."

Worth Park Gardens Restored

This week in my Crawley Observer Column, I wrote about the Conservative achievement of the restoration of Worth Park Gardens and how Labour Councillors (including some who have since become very senior at the Council) very nearly cost Crawley £2.42 million of Heritage Lottery Fund investment to restore Worth Park Gardens to their former glory.

Worth Park December 2013 when I was lead councillor for the project  

“Last weekend saw the official opening of Worth Park in Pound Hill, having been restored with an ambitious project devised and implemented by the previous Conservative Administration at Crawley Borough Council. I found it a pleasure to have previously been the Council’s cabinet member that was overseeing this project, and I am delighted that all the hard work has paid off with a park that all of Crawley can be proud of.

It wasn’t always so good. I remember only too well back in January 2012 when Labour Councillors sought to sabotage this project by cynically using council procedures to cause a potentially fatal delay. This delay put at serious risk the £2.42 million funding that we had been successful in securing from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Thankfully, Labour’s cynical tactic failed and we haven’t looked back since.

While I am grateful Labour didn’t scrap the Worth Park project when they took control of the Council last year, it is still startling that they take credit for Conservative achievements like this. This fits a pattern of behaviour I've observed since Labour took power at Crawley Council last year.

I recommend checking online to see who really got these good projects moving for Crawley, which are now in full swing or have been completed. To add to Worth Park, other local Conservative achievements that Labour are taking credit for include new and improved Tilgate Park attractions, Ifield West/Dobbins Pond improvements, Ifield Mill Pond restoration, Broadfield Barton revamp, major regeneration of Queens Square, new Crawley Museum, and new equipment for our Children’s Play Areas.

There are two key points here. Firstly, it took a Conservative Administration with vision and aspiration for Crawley to bring these projects forward, often in the face of Labour opposition with no aspiration for Crawley. Secondly, all of these projects could only be afforded thanks to the Conservatives’ sound financial management of the Council.  Labour mostly opposed the efficiency savings we made that enabled us to invest. The reality is that most of these great projects would have never happened if left to Labour.”