Existing Croydon councillors shoved out for Starmer's niece - is this right?

[JohnnyMcGrathSaysFuckOff]

Has anyone else seen this? Starmer's niece has apparently been "parachuted" into a safe Lab seat in Croydon, with the existing councillors deselected.

I cannot do a sharing link, but this is reported in The Times.

Apparently, the deselected councillors are well regarded.

Can this be true?

"Labour Party members in London are furious after Sir Keir Starmer’s niece was “parachuted” into a safe seat for the forthcoming local elections.

Ellie Sandover was selected as a council candidate in Bensham Manor, a ward in Croydon, south London, regarded as one of the party’s most winnable seats.

Grassroots activists claim they were excluded from the decision-making process and have criticised what they call centralised control and cronyism. Several sitting councillors were removed before the candidate selection process, prompting concern among local members about transparency and fairness. ...
Steven Downes, the local journalist who revealed Sandover’s connection to the prime minister on his Inside Croydon blog, said local party members were concerned at the way she had been “parachuted into a safe Labour seat”. ...
Their discontent appeared to have been compounded by the deselection of incumbent councillors. Downes said: “Six sitting councillors, including five women, four of them black women, were summarily deselected by the NEC apparatchiks, without any local involvement or right of appeal. One Croydon Labour member told me ‘it’s a travesty’.”

The narrative of people being shoved out for KS's relative is good headline stuff I suspect the reality is more mundane.

Deselection is a pretty regular thing in Labour; they've deselected sitting MPs in the past.

There's then a selection process to identify replacement candidates. Unless that process was corrupted to let KS's niece in, and if it was let's have the evidence, it's just local politics.

If they wanted to parachute in 1 niece, why kick out six councillors? Suspect it’s not the full story.

Noble, I agree.

I imagine, it is probably not corruption as such, but once again a lack of understanding of how optics works in politics. Because obviously someone was always going to pick up on this.

I don't necessarily agree that there has been a fair selection procedure. She was apparently imposed by region. My experience of unelected regional officers overriding local members' concerns and wishes within Labour would lead me to believe that this could well be the case here. Besides that, her "experience" is also as optically dodgy, screaming nepotism right left and centre. Whoever pushed for her to stand really is stupid. I think even faithful Labour voters might be thinking twice before voting for her now that her connections have been exposed.

What I don't understand is, why do they keep doing this?

Like the whole Starmer letting his son use a rich donor's flat for revision, the whole stupid glasses-gate episode, Reeves tarting up CV, etc - these things will always get out, and whilst they are not illegal, they just look bad!

Why don't they get it?