Activists out of tune

Published: 7 October, 2010

• DID you notice the result of the Labour Party leadership election?

Not that Red Ed beat Dave, but the votes by Labour members in Camden? At special meetings in both Hampstead & Kilburn and Holborn & St Pancras, the activists voted overwhelmingly to back Red Ed, with Diane Abbott second and David Miliband third.  

They then sent out recommendations to their local membership to vote for Ed. The released results, however, show that the full local membership of both local constituency parties preferred moderate David Miliband over militant Ed Miliband (just as they did across the whole of London). So the local Labour activists are clearly out of tune with their more moderate membership. 

Will Labour’s Camden leadership now seek to repair this rift, as their new leader has attempted to, by not joining this month’s big demonstration against the cuts to public services and by not backing the strikes their union friends are threatening?

After all, as Red Ed has now admitted, the Labour Party fought the last election promising almost as many cuts of its own...

Cllr Andrew Mennear Conservative,
Frognal & Fitzjohns ward