Hilary Benn under threat of Deselction

[SoloD]

It appears there is a plan to deselect the Labour MP for Leeds Central,

The only senior Corbyn person to talk about this has been John "the IRA are heros" McDonnell who has said that he

"won’t interfere in local democracy"

Which sounds like tacit support to give Benn the Boot given the circumstances.

The Labour civil war it seems in moving into the next phase.

It would be good to be assured that local democracy will similarly hold elsewhere even if inconvenient to the centre.

I'm sorry. I respect him as a politician and when I worked with him I liked him a lot. I know there are some less keen on him, but my experience was good.

Begins to feel like the militant era again.

This is a dreadful thing to happen to an honourable man. When will the Labour Party wake up to itself?

Again the worst part is that the Labour party are not giving any real opposition to the government.

Almost all Labour MP's are being deselected because of the boundaries being redrawn.

Hillary Benn's constituency is being split into four, so he will have to go through a selection process just like anyone else if he wishes to remain an MP.

If he doesn't get selected I imagine it will be because his new constituents don't want him, given that he spearheaded the coup which has done so much damage to his party, but those are the risks you take when you try to topple someone and it doesn't work.

This situation is nothing to do with reselection and everything to do with the gerrymandering of constituency boundaries, which has passed unremarked and is a major threat to fairness and democracy. The winners of the game should not be allowed to change the rules to favour them winning the next time.

I agree with Coffee. Somehow, having tried to either split the party OR overthrow an elected leader with a mandate to lead, some people now see themselves as the victims in all this.

And not to mention Syria.

House of Pain,

I am sorry but Corbyn's willingness to watch the suffering and misery and downright murder taking place in Syria is nothing but shameful.

Fair enough Iraq was a disaster, but other times we have taken military intervention such as in Sierra Leone or in Kosovo (both of which Corbyn was against) the results have been far far better than had we ignored it.

The fact that Corbyn is willing to give tacit support to conflicts against the interests of the west (Russian bombing in Syria, the IRA campaign against the UK) just says it all.

Gerrymandering is fixing boundaries to help one particular party - that is what the Labour government did last time. This time its being done by civil servants to equalise the size of constituencies and reduce the number of MPs.

Shame that with his mandate to lead, Corbyn is incapable of actually leading. Utter disaster for Labour and is going to stick us with a Tory government for the next nine years. By then it'll be too late to save the NHS, or to have avoided a terrible Brexit deal, and that will be on Corbyn, McDonnell and co. They've had the chance since he was re elected to properly oppose these things, and are not doing so.

SoloD - your post was about Benn being deselected and I was offering a further explanation as to why he might not be popular which, alongside the redrawing of boundaries, gives context to concerns stated in your post. There was a lot of opposition on all sides to the bombing in Syria with compelling arguments regarding what it would add apart from added suffering to the people if Syria. The behaviour of MPs during the vote was appalling and Benn, whether he likes it or not, is linked to that. The MPs who also didn't support the vote against arms to Saudi Arabia are also an embarrassment but that doesn't matter because Saudi Arabia is our ally; the attitude of West versus the rest (which you pretty much state) just smacks of colonialism.

I don't think you're really interested in discussing reasons behind deselection. This thread is aimed at Corbyn-bashing and the inevitable pro/anti-Corbyn statements will be offered.