SELECTION SKETCH: Finally, Labour members in the new Parliamentary constituency of Croydon East have been allowed to have their say. KEN TOWL, right, went behind the scenes of this secretive process to choose someone who very likely will soon become an MP
Handover: MP Sarah Jones, whose Croydon Central constituency is largely re-booted as Croydon East, congratulates selection winner Natasha Irons
Laborare est orare. The motto of Coloma Convent Girls’ School means “To labour is to pray”, and on Saturday some 160 or so Labour Party members were praying for a timely conclusion to a selection process that had been going on for half a year (even longer, unofficially).
We were there as “the selectorate”, party members of at least a year’s standing with their fees paid up to date. This is the quid pro quo of politics – you pay your fees and occasionally, very occasionally, you get to exercise collective power to shape the destiny of your candidates for office.
We were praying, too, for a free and fair selection process, something that our party has not been terribly good at delivering recently.
The creation by the Boundaries Commission of a new constituency of Croydon East, made up of the great majority of Croydon Central with a little bit of Croydon South, means that all the political parties need to select their candidates. Conservative and the Green have voted for theirs (Jason “15% Council Tax” Cummings and Peter “A Plague On Both Your Houses” Underwood respectively), but Labour had to suspend its process back in November due to what the party’s regional officials at London Labour admitted was an attempt to tamper with the data supplied to candidates.
This fraud is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.
The selection process was reactivated this month after a lengthy hiatus, during which time members were regularly not updated with any information, either from London Labour or from a specially appointed “Selections Secretary” who was also the interim chair of Croydon East Labour Party. Interim as in imposed by the party.
In the end, the selection process was not reactivated by the permanently silent Selections Secretary, but by London Labour.
Dumped: supporters of candidates were able to leaflet the selectorate as they entered the hall. Not all got read…
Carole Bonner, the “selections secretary” and interim local party chair, was not only not running the selection meeting, she did not even attend. Speculation, inevitably, was near enough rife.
Also unexpectedly not in attendance was Maddie Henson, co-owner of the controversial online voting system, Anonyvoter, which Labour uses to manage absentee voting.
What is very odd about Croydon Labour is that such a situation barely causes a raised eyebrow among some members. The principle that democracy, like justice, has to be seen to be done appears to have little traction here.
The third notable absentee was Joel Bodmer, once one of the four candidates for selection in Croydon East and touted as the favourite. Favourite, that is, as in most likely to, rather than most liked. When London Labour sent an email to party members saying that the race was back on, it informed us that there would now be three candidates in the race and that Bodmer had “withdrawn”.
Eyebrows were almost raised. Bodmer has since claimed that he wishes to spend more time with his family. Which very much sounds like a euphemism.
In order to keep things clean this time, a phalanx of apparatchiks from London Labour had been dispatched to spend their Saturday morning at the Croydon convent school to run what looked like a convincingly professional and almost transparent process. It was all very orderly.
We were made to queue up in the playground, like school children lining up for class, and we were admitted in batches and identified as bona fide members of the selectorate.
Withdrawn: Joel Bodmer showed up at the Croydon East selection, only virtually, like Banquo’s ghost
A woman sitting behind a school desk handed me a pink slip which said “Do not lose this paper” on it.
“You will be able to exchange that for a ballot paper after the speeches”, she said, “Don’t lose it!”
I took the opportunity to ask if there was any arrangement for observation of the count and she said that each of the candidates had nominated someone to do this. This was reassuring. “And the anonyvotes?” I asked.
“They are printed so they can be included in the count,” she said.
This was a great improvement on the Assembly member vote in which, as far as anyone knows, there was no scrutiny of the count. We do not even know how many votes each of the candidates got.
Once we were all checked, approved and seated, the candidates were allowed in, one by one, each to give a seven-minute speech and answer London Labour-approved questions for 10 minutes. Rather like the old TV show Mr and Mrs, they were not allowed to hear each others’ answers.
Johnson Situ spoke first. Despite his slightly stilted delivery, he came across as a thoroughly decent man, the sort of person we could do more of in Parliament. When asked where in East Croydon much-needed housing should be built, he sensibly avoided a direct answer.
Next came Olga Fitzroy, who seemed a bit nervous at first but appeared to grow into the role as she answered questions and impressed as someone who had the experience, the empathy and the competence that we should expect from our Parliamentarians. When asked where in East Croydon much-needed housing should be built, she sensibly avoided a direct answer.
Finally, Natasha Irons took the stage, and though quite hesitant when it came to answering questions, she delivered a speech with aplomb and told a human story that the audience could get behind. When asked where in East Croydon much-needed housing should be built, she said she didn’t have a map on her.
As an astute observer sitting next to me noted, MPs aren’t in charge of housing anyway.
The candidates had all done their bit. Now came the vote. Row by row we lined up again to hand over our small pieces of paper in exchange for large pieces of paper with instructions to number the candidates in order of preference.
And then we waited.
In control: London Labour region officials ran yesterday’s long-delayed Croydon East selection staged in a convent school’s hall
A member of the London Labour phalanx informed us that the count, probably including a transfer of second preferences, would take 45 minutes to an hour.
After 30 minutes, we were told that an announcement was imminent.
The candidates were paraded back into the room and made to stand in a row facing us. The tension was palpable. It looked like the first round of counting had produced a winner. Someone had secured more than 50% of the vote. There was a hush as we all tried to read the expressions on the three faces in front of us. Never mind MPs, I thought, they would all make great poker players. There was nothing, no sign of a tear, no irrepressible grin.
I got ready to write down the numbers.
There were no numbers, just a name.
It came in an announcement that would have been at home at the Oscars: “And the newly selected Labour Party candidate for Croydon East is…
“Natasha Irons!”
The candidates were at last allowed to have facial expressions. For two of them, it was an unkind blow. Politics is a tough game, and in Croydon this year it turned out to be tougher than usual. The party, or at least some of its members, has really put these people through the mill. We will not attract the best candidates in future if we treat them like this.
For Natasha Irons, emotions were high too. During her acceptance speech, you could see that she was trying oh so hard to hold back the tears but those tears flowed, particularly as she alluded to her mother and how proud she would be of the girl who had once thought that politics was for other, more privileged people. Every tear was to her credit.
And the numbers?
A couple of people more savvy than me managed to get them by the clever tactic of asking a London Labour official for them. Out of 247 votes cast (so maybe one-third were anonyvotes) Irons got 129, a little over half.
In Natasha Irons, London Labour has managed to enable Labour Party members to select a truly human, decent and capable candidate for Croydon East in a democratic and, if not entirely transparent, eminently translucent process.
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