Fascinating video here on the Guardian wesbite, about the Blaenau Gwent constituency.
Blaenau Gwent, you may remember, erupted when smug ‘new radicals’ in New Labour HQ decided to impose their own sanctimonious brand of social-engineering on one of the most hallowed parts of the whole political process – the local selection of candidates for Westminster.
Refusing to lie down, local Labour folk rallied and, forming a party they called People’s Voice, they took the seat from New Labour and have doggedly remained in charge ever since. And they remain unrepentant too: whilst the initial fight was about all-women shortlists, the bigger battle has become one of representation generally, and the question of the direction of the party as a whole. The local population, it would seem, continue to support the new movement – socialism is not a dirty word in their mouths, and they fail to see why tribalism should trump representation when it comes to the people of Blaenau Gwent.
Needless to say, the parallels with a certain Tory ‘Turnip Taliban’ are clear, which was really more about local independence against the smug control-freakery of conservative HQ than about the extra-curricular activities of Miss Truss.
Which all goes to reinforce the now well-worn narrative of the political class as a socially-distant constituency of its own, playing only to its own galleries, loyal only to its own members, trying to convince only its own constituents.
But for people outside the politically incestuous world of SW1 important distinctions exist, and are worth fighting for. And parachuting in either the fashionable ideologies or the fashionable apparatchiks of the metropolitan classes ought to be done with great care.
I suspect New Labour has learnt its lesson, even if it resents it. Don’t be surprised if Mrs Bercow is kept well away from the traditional heartlands of Labour’s ‘core vote’.
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