Nationally the share of the vote looked like this:

Tories 44%
Labour 24%

In London, with a socialist candidate the share of the vote looked like this:

Johnson 42%
Livingstone 36%

Grimmer mentions their candidate, Janet Oosthuysen, falling short of ousting the Lib Dems by 53 votes, they campaigned on a slogan of "Vote Labour - Get a Socialist".

I think there is a message here for the Labour Party and somewhere in it is the 'S' word.

John Wiseman, the prospective parliamentary candidate for Westmorland and Lonsdale has picked up some attention for his recent entry on Labour Home where he made a plea to Gordon Brown to reinstate the 10p rate of tax.

He's running into a lot of flak, some of it to be frank quite ghastly with plenty of ad hominem attacks thrown in against him too. He has also picked up a lot of support too, with for example Grimmer weighing in on this issue too.

The Labour Party, according to my membership card is a democratic socialist party. If members of the Westmorland and Lonsdale Labour Party and the public there think the 10p rate should be re-introduced then their candidate should be representing them and speaking out on their behalf - that's the candidate's first priority, represent the party membership and the working class. The Labour Party is a broad political party that is rich with a diverse set of opinions, far more so than the other two political parties so of course we're not all going to agree on everything all the time. Long may that continue and long may our members and candidates have the right to freedom of speech and the freedom to criticise. This is a strength - not a weakness.

Those calling on John Wiseman to "shut up" and represent the party leadership top-down need a strong reminder of what living in a democratic society and working within a democratic organisation means.

I was invited to attend the Yeovil Trades Council meeting yesterday. I was pleased to see the discussion was very open and it sparked a debate about being in or out of the Labour Party, one I've had with myself prior to joining for many years.

I wasn't able to get all of my thoughts out at the meeting on this, so here they are.

A couple of comrades brought up the point that because the Labour government was carrying out a neo-liberal agenda, which is perfectly true, such as moving the postal service in the direction of privitisation etc, they shouldn't have our support and we should attempt to form a new party.

Lenin said the Labour Party was a bourgeois-workers party, so we shouldn't be surprised that the leadership is carrying out a bourgeois program, with some concessions that is after all what they have been doing since it was founded.

It is a valid point to say that New Labour is far worse, and that Brown is even more right-wing than Blair. So we should look for an explanation why, I believe one possible candidate would be the state of socialists within the party. I believe thanks to all the people saying work outside the party, or attempting splits it has allowed the leadership to get away with far too much.

The state of the Labour Party is the way it is firstly because of the purges during the 1980s which weakened the left, largely thanks to the help of the media, Thatcher and the Labour leaders and their "longest suicide note in history" crap, and later because of so many people calling on their comrades to abandon the party.

If we lose the Labour Party, we lose the political wing of the working class. Instead of having the couple of dozen socialists in parliament we have nobody, 2.5 business parties sitting opposite each other. In effect handing the bourgeoisie total control of the parliament.

The fight for Labour isn't over, the next few years I think will be crucial, as a few comrades mentioned the possibility of losing the next election is something we need to be aware of, the polls are grim reading. But will an election defeat strengthen New Labour? Of course not it probably destroy it, it will end the one thing they've had going for them with all the moderates inside the party "we can win elections" doesn't amount to much when you lose an election.

Marxism-Leninism also cropped up, and how that the USSR and China are bad, oppressive and so on and so forth, Dave (Bridgewater TUC). How that has any relevance is beyond me, if anything it seemed more like an ad hominem against Ken (sorry I forgot your last name) from the Communist Party of Britain.

By the same logic one would attack democracy because George Bush declares he is for democracy - or any number of things. Marxists should not hand over our words just because Stalinist and Maoist revisionists like to use them.

Marxism-Leninism, or Bolshevism is important for the working class, the Labour Party is not capable of revolution, its a mass party of the working class, but still bourgeois which we should use to win progressive advancements for the working class. However when the time comes and the labour leadership are brought off on the edge of revolution, we need a revolutionary party to finish the job.

So in the wake of this whole Abrahams thing, the New Labourites are plotting to destroy the Union link, something they've been keen on doing for years but have so far been unable to.

This will prevent Trade Unions from funding the Labour Party, their contributions would have to be dramatically reduced, and as such radically change how the Labour Party operates, it will force trade unionists to essentially make individual donations (and I can't see many doing that with how the government are carrying on)

Grimmer has been following this for the last few days (here and here).

She's right, if this goes ahead it'll be the final nail in the coffin of the Labour Party. Lenin said the Labour Party was a bourgeois-workers party, such a move would turn it into a bourgeois party, it would break its connection to the working class. A party unconnected to the workers is not something I want to be part of.

This evening the Yeovil Labour Party held its hustings event to select a candidate to stand in the next general election.

Three candidates stood for the position, Colin Counter, and Colin Rolfe who stood for us at the last election and lastly myself.

I'm pleased to announce I was selected with a majority vote. Below is the rough outline of the speech I gave at the hustings:

The Labour Party was founded for a noble cause, to represent the working people of Britain by becoming a mass party of the working class.

I think we are all disappointed with the record of this government even if we don’t like to admit it publically, there was so much we could have undone from the Tory years, so much that wasn’t done, or too much that was done – in the wrong direction, like privatisation.

I was 14 when Mr Blair moved into number 10. By that time I was already interested in politics and considered myself a socialist. I remember that we had support from a broad section of the population, everybody was optimistic that the damage Thatcher and Major had brought would be undone. I don’t think we’ve done that.

Yes the leadership have carried out several key progressive steps for the people of this country, fox hunting semi-banned, resolution to the Northern Ireland issue, the minimum wage probably being the biggest one. When I started working I got £4.10 an hour, now it’s £5.55. An improvement of just over 30%, even with inflation that’s about a pound an hour more. Not too shabby, however in the same time property prices have almost doubled. Why?

Because interfering in the market should be avoided at all costs, at least according to the ideology of our leadership. Instead of doing the obvious thing when this housing issue surfaced, like building more council houses, and putting a stop to land lords buying up multiple properties and renting them out so they can live off other people’s work. They let the market carry on building super-profitable living spaces in London to be sold on for a couple of million quid.

There’s a lot of things this government has done which I think are wrong, and which I hope many of you will agree with me on. Shooting down the Trade Union Freedom bill, and not stopping let alone reversing privatisation in the public sector, they’ve privatised more jobs faster than even the Tories. These are things people care about, public service being put before private profit.

Just last week Gordon made a speech on climate change, while at the same time caving to BAA’s expansion plans for Heathrow airport. If you put the environment first you’d cut into the amount of air travel by nationalising the railways and building a high-speed network like they did in France.

We don’t have a political party in this country which stands up for these ideas, people rightly say it’s the Labour Party that should be doing this, yet at the moment it isn’t. I believe this is one of the key reasons why voter turnout is so low. Particularly among my generation.

I was talking to a work colleague of mine a couple of months back; I asked him who he normally votes for. He replied that he doesn’t. Now this guy is 27 and he’s never voted, I pressed him a bit more and he said “well I wouldn’t vote for Tony Blair”, yes, several months after Tony Blair had stepped down, I also asked him if he was registered in Sedgefield and he just looked confused. Everybody at work that day I asked, 4 or 5 of them said they hadn’t voted before, all of these people were in their early or mid 20s.

I think we need to tackle this over the coming years. Through reaching out to younger people informing them of the historical positions of the parties, something in my mini survey they know little about. They should know about which party historically represents them and which one represents the interests of the privileged few.

To do this we need to be a little bit radical, not be afraid to be open and transparent not be afraid to speak our minds and differentiate ourselves with the leadership when we want to, and not attempt to defend the indefensible – which is one of the key reasons politicians have a reputation of being less than honest.

With Gordon appealing to the centre and centre-right ground at least at the moment, areas where David Laws and the Tories like to sit, we can make good use of the huge amount of unrepresented space on the left-wing of the spectrum and hopefully re-connect with voters we have lost, members we have lost and make new connections with my generation. Perhaps with such a program, based on transparency, honesty and the correct working class policies we can build this party and start advancing our share of the vote.

I know some will label me as a grumpy socialist, and won’t like my public criticism of the leadership. OK fair enough. Yes sure I’m left-wing, yes I believe in public ownership, and yes I criticise, heck I like to criticise, but according to Clause IV we’re a democratic socialist party, a democratic party without criticism isn’t very democratic. And a socialist party which doesn’t stick up for the working class isn’t very socialist.

Thank you.

I'd again like to thank all the people for showing their support. I am determined to work hard between now and the election and increase our share of the vote, and provide a platform for these ideas going forward.

Update: The date for this appears to of been shifted to the 25th of November.

The Yeovil Labour Party will decide their candidate for the next generation election in under four weeks time, on the 15th of November the hustings will be held, and hopefully we'll have the results soon after.

Why am I interested in standing? To give Yeovil Labour Party members a socialist option and if successful to give Yeovil residents something other than the right-wing, pro-business nonsense of David Laws or that Tory bloke. How people can honestly expect to be well-represented by somebody who used to run an international textile company, or a former vice president of JP Morgan is beyond me.

Surely a shop worker, or other selection hopeful Colin Counter, a bus driver can represent ordinary people a hundred times better then these businessmen. Who in my opinion just don't understand the issues ordinary people have to deal with.

I think it's disgusting how this Labour government has continued privatisation, has not reversed Thatcherite anti-union laws, and allows the market to run wild.

Unfortunately many seem unwilling to criticise where criticism is due, and this has allowed the Labour leadership to get away with this for far too long.

Although we have had some successes with the minimum wage, the semi-abolition of fox hunting and peace in Northern Ireland, the failures of the New Labour government can be seen in the invasion of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. The growing gap between rich and poor, and private businesses profiteering at expense of public services.

I want a Labour government that will nationalise manufacturing businesses which are moving their work forces abroad, to defend people's jobs and livelihoods from the anarchy of the market.

I want a Labour government that will re-establish Royal Mail's postal monopoly and end the race to the bottom resulting from competition.

I want a Labour government that will take transport back into public ownership, and pump the money in that it so sorely needs, instead of pumping public money into the pockets of private business.

You get the idea.

Well, thanks to the positive feedback on my last post, I've fired the letter off today announcing my intentions to face selection.

Due to the nature of Yeovil, my name will go onto the short list automatically. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long for the hustings, and then the vote.

Even if I don't get selected, hopefully my running will put some socialist issues on the agenda, which I'm confident is the only way we can recover, and increase our share of the vote.

So the deadline for nominations for Yeovil Labour candidate is soon.

Obviously I think we need a left-wing candidate. One who if won the election, would support the Trade Union Freedom bill, vote against anymore imperialist wars, resist the increasing infestation of private business in public services, renationalise the railways and support measures to reverse the growing gap between rich and poor. Things that no doubt have wide support among the public, and the Labour Party membership.

But at present due to the rushed nature of the whole now known to be needless electioneering, the only way to really guarantee that there will be at least one socialist up for selection is to throw my own hat into the ring.

So I'm toying with what to do, personally I'm split on the issue, I have little experience with how the local party functions or what would be involved and so would rely heavily on the support of other comrades.

If there were several other people nominated, it would sort itself out, and the party would decide if I was experienced enough or not. But there is the possibility that I may one of just a small handful of nominees, or worst case scenario the only person put forward. Leaving party members with only one option - to vote for me. Which isn't exactly the ideal test of democracy.

What to do... Any thoughts?

Spotted this over on Grimmer Up North, Tony Benn intents to stand for parliament once more.

If he stands it'll be for the Kensington and Chelsea seat, which is a safe Tory seat.

However clearly there are many positives, first he may actually win; this is Tony Benn we're talking about here. But more importantly this puts socialism on the agenda again, the more attention we can get to this the better - at the coming election the left must make a push to get as many socialist in parliament as possible, we must build on the advances that came about thanks to John McDonnell's campaign.

Neo-liberal-Blairite-Tory candidates and MPs must be deselected and replaced by people who actually represent Labour, and not business. Every CLP in the country should be resisting candidates imposed on them top down. I am happy to see several Labour bloggers saying they will not doing any campaigning in their constituency if they have a right-wing candidate, instead they'll do their campaigning elsewhere, where the people standing actually represent their beliefs.

Tony Benn, by standing, can help this cause, to re-energise the left and bring more socialists into the Labour Party. Good luck Mr Benn.

John McDonnell:

In the past political parties brought together their supporters to debate, discuss and decide the policies which were then drafted into a manifesto and placed before the electorate. If there was sufficient support for the policies and the party was elected, new ministers would arrive into office with civil servants waiting with advice on how to implement the policy programme. The battle for an incoming Labour government was with the vested interests of the status quo which had largely permeated government and all its departments.

Trade unions need to forget this archaeological exhibit of constitutional theory. The modern reality is that policy may still be debated within the Labour party but this policy debate and even decision making is rarely translated into the manifesto which is drafted internally by the Prime Minister’s closest aides. Once in office ministers responsible for policy implementation are now surrounded by a policy network dominated by advisers drawn from or even directly representing private sector interests. Dominating centralised control means that no policy which contradicts the core ideology of the government is allowed to surface.

The core ideology is shared by both main political parties. That is why Gordon Brown has found it so easy to appoint Tories to be part of his government. Both parties share a neo liberal ideology which believes that the market must be given free reign and as a result will produce the optimum solution in virtually every instance. Consequently both share an evangelical zeal for flexible labour, privatisation, low corporate taxation and corporate driven globalisation.

And a little something for Brown's Stalinisation of the party:

First, trade unions need to ensure that what limited opportunities for influencing policy debate within the Labour party still exist are maintained by rejecting at this year’s Labour Party conference the imposition of the Brown proposals to undermine Labour Party conference policy making powers.

Second we mobilise immediately a new alliance across the unions, constituency Labour Parties, affiliates and linking with supporters within the Parliamentary Labour Party to reassert democracy within the Labour Party at every level.

More of course on John McDonnell's blog. I've also come across something on the Morning Star on this topic, it highlights the matter quite well.