So all is not hunky dory inside Labour!

It happens in all parties, Take Uxbridge & Hayes Tories for instance.

Londoner said…
I know Elly Jupp and I know the association. So I may be able to shed some light on the situation to give balance to some of the uninformed comments on this section of the blog.
I suspect that Elly decided to stand down because she was forced out by a group of nasty, misogynistic men who thought bullying a remarkable and intelligent young women would make them feel big and important. Many of those men were very recent arrivals to this country who were signed up by a clique within the association for no other purpose than to make sure they would turn up to vote en mass to force Elly out at the next AGM.
Having witnessed this situation for over a year, I am disgusted at how little support Elly was given by the party in west London. She was very hard working. She was out at least twice a week. She was a very good candidate who cared about the people she was trying to represent, unlike her opponents in the association, for whom this was a nasty little game.
Elly fought very hard for over a year. She had the support of the majority of the association. She ran circles round her opponents at the last AGM. She won her vote of confidence overwhelmingly. What she couldn’t compete with was a small group of men who, day in and day out, were signing up extended family for no other purpose than de-selecting her. Most of the new members of H&H Conservatives, I suspect, have no idea about the difference between Labour and Conservative. The people organising them are utter dross. They are the sort of people who drive away new members.
Unlike some female candidates, Elly is not some dizzy posh girl who got daddy to pull strings to get her on the A list – in fact she wasn’t on the A list. Elly got herself into Oxford from a state sixth form. What she has she worked for. She had integrity and intelligence in spades, unlike her opponents. If David Cameron’s A list was based on merit, not connections, she’d be at the top of it.
If the leadership of the Conservatives wants to support change and good women candidates (based on merit not connections), they would look at seats like H&H and work out how to stop them being gerrymandered by men who find the idea of a single, beautiful, female candidate such a threat to their masculinity and such an insult to their culture that they have to set about undermining her. For anyone who wonders if we need greater female involvement in politics, I urge them to go and meet the ‘men’ who run H&H.
If the Tory Party is going to survive we need bright shining lights like Elly, people who achieve in life without being rich or well-connected, people who are living proof that our party can be a meritocracy, and who, despite their tender age, can articulate a good and decent vision of our future. She was one of our best candidates.
There are associations which are full of decent people who will welcome genuinely remarkable candidates like her with open arms. If we lose candidates such as Elly to the sort of rubbish who are currently fighting for control of H&H, we don’t deserve to survive.
Reply October 29, 2008 at 08:29

I know about the Elly story and it was a very unfortunate affair – but cchq did suspend that association and put them in probation – they were retrained and I hope now know how to manage and properly run an association.

However the two although seniors are dissimilar. Associations are made up of grassroots and activists, some know their by laws and some don’t – in the case of Labour, the PLP is the cause of the embarrassment – they are the one who are doing the most bickering about Red Ed!