A bitter Labour row has broken out after Jeremy Corbyn’s allies tried to cancel the election for the chair of the party’s national policy-making body, HuffPost has learned.
Just minutes before the party’s National Policy Forum (NPF) was due to gather in Leeds on Saturday morning, an emergency meeting of the ruling National Executive Committee officers’ group decided to block the vote.
Veteran activist Ann Black – who lost the backing of Momentum this month - had been on course to defeat union rep Andi Fox in a hastily-arranged election to chair the hugely important policy forum, which sets Labour policy for future general elections.
Labour activists furious at the NEC officer decision tried to still go ahead with the election.
NPF vice chair Katrina Murray, who chaired the main gathering, called for a vote despite the opposition of NEC chair Andy Kerr. Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry is understood to have been among those to back the leadership.
The NPF - which is made up of MPs, union reps, local members and others - was also set to discuss the party’s line on Brexit at the crunch meeting.
Former MP Ann Cryer and NPF chair announced this week she was stepping aside from the post, sparking a race to succeed her.
But as it emerged that Black was on course for victory, Corbyn supporters objected that there had been too little notice of the election and voted to cancel it.
A conference call of the NEC officers group voted by 5 votes to 1 to halt the election and NEC chair Andy Kerr was set to inform the Leeds meeting of the controversial decision, multiple sources revealed.
Neither Jeremy Corbyn nor deputy leader To Watson took part in the vote, but left-backed unions won the day. Only Unison’s Keith Birch voted to go ahead with the election of the chair. Momentum-backed Christine Shawcroft was not on the conference call.
Momentum surprised some activists when it decided to withdraw its support for Black this month, but she has since won the backing of MPs and others who feel she is an ‘honest broker’ with long experience in the party.
Former Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell expressed her irritation at the decision.
At the heart of the row is the battle for membership of the party’s nine-member NEC officers’ group, which controls selection of Parliamentary candidates and other crucial issues.
Chairmanship of the NPF automatically carries membership of the officers’ group, which currently has a ‘Corbyn-friendly’ majority of six-to-one.
A senior Labour MP told HuffPost: “We are expecting fireworks now because members of the policy forum are angry that the NEC officers seem to be doing this on the instruction of the Leader’s office.”
One source added that the process for elections was agreed by the Joint Policy Committee, which oversees the NPF jointly with the NEC, of which Corbyn is co-chair.
Another NEC source said that veteran leftwinger George McManus had been due to nominate Black for the chair’s role, along with several constituency Labour parties.
“Jeremy has ordered a national review of party democracy and yet this morning it looks like his office has ensured there is no internal party democracy for the National Policy Forum,” a party insider added.
HuffPost understands there is some union disquiet at the way the party leadership decided to back Fox - who represents the leftwing TSSA union - as its candidate for NPF chair, when other contenders could have had a better chance.
When it became clear that Fox would not defeat Black, a hasty decision to cancel the election was taken.
Richard Angell, director of centrist group Progress, said: “As ever, the leader’s office, Momentum and their union boss allies only like party democracy that goes their way.
“If they cannot get the outcome they want, they will bend the rules and fix the outcome. It’s shameful really.”
A Momentum source hit back: “Only one out of the nine members on the NEC officers group is Momentum backed [Shawcroft], yet this still ends up being a ‘Momentum plot’.
“The motion was carried by the trade unions - who have a clear majority on the group - but obviously that doesn’t fit with the paranoid fantasies of a small minority in the party.”
HuffPost revealed this month that Momentum had decided to pull its support for Black because of her role on the NEC in excluding 125,000 new party members from the leadership election in 2016.
Black’s supporters point out she had in fact proposed allowing all members who had joined up to July that year to take part, but the move failed because Corbyn and Shadow minister Jon Trickett were out of the room.
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