Labour’s internal elections strengthen Keir Starmer further

But at the price of an incomprehensible proportional representation system, says John Rentoul

Laura Pidcock, out of parliament but back as a member of Labour’s NEC (Getty Images)

One of the great myths of recent history is that New Labour was guilty of “spin”, when its opponents were always more proficient at the art of putting a partisan gloss on facts. That was still the case last week, when Momentum, the Jeremy Corbyn claque, claimed: “Momentum-backed left slate wins big in Labour National Executive Committee elections.”

True, it had won five of the nine places representing the party membership as a whole. That means Laura Pidcock, who was going to be Corbyn’s anointed successor until she carelessly lost her parliamentary seat last year, is back in national politics. But you wouldn’t know from Momentum’s brave talk of “victory” that this means the faction has gone backwards since the last full National Executive Committee elections two years ago. 

What has happened since then is that the party has brought in a system of proportional representation (PR) for those nine seats. That meant that where Momentum won a clean sweep of all nine places in 2018, this year it lost four. Under PR voting, the “Labour to Win” slate, which describes itself as “supporters of Keir Starmer’s leadership”, won three places, and Ann Black, an unfactional veteran who often voted with Momentum before it booted her off the executive two years ago, won the remaining seat.