UK Edition
Jeremy Corbyn's takeover of Labour gets huge boost as Left-wing trio elected to NEC
Jeremy Corbyn has tightened his grip on the Labour party after a trio of leftwingers were elected to the party's ruling National Executive Committee.
The election of Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentym, Yasmine Dar and Rachel Garnham, to the NEC will allow the Labour leader to make major changes to party's constitution and cement the take over of the party by the Left.
The trio won nearly 200,000 votes between them out of the 315,000 cast after appealing to the grassroots Labour members who signed up to the party because of Mr Corbyn.
Eddie Izzard, the actor and stand-up comedian, was fourth in the NEC elections, which were announced at lunchtime today.
The Labour leaders sent its congratulations to the trio on Twitter, saying how he looked forward to working with them.
Mr Lansman founded and chairs the activist group Momentum, which helped secure Mr Corbyn's 2016 re-election as leader and drove Labour's advance at the 2017 general election.
Ms Dar, a Labour party member for the past five years, is a Manchester councillor who once spoke out at an event to mark the Iranian revolution.
Rachel Garnham has been a Labour activist in Befordshire for the past 20 years.
Mr Lansman, now one of the most influential figures in the Labour movement, said on Twitter he was honoured to be joining the Labour party which was now a “21st century version of the socialist party I joined 44 years ago”.
He said: “Really honoured to now represent almost 600,000 members on the national executive of UK Labour - at last the 21st century version of the Socialist party I joined 44 years ago.”
The leftwing victory is likely to give Mr Corbyn a decisive grip over the party machine and allow the Left to bring in new rules on reselecting Labour MPs.
Mr Lansman wants Labour to be a "members-led" party, diluting the power of its MPs, many of whom remain sceptical about Mr Corbyn's leadership.
Among the changes he wants to introduce - and which will now be much easier to push through - is a reduction in the number of MPs required to nominate leadership candidates before they can go on the ballot paper.
The new look NEC meets for the first time at Labour party headquarters on Tuesday.
Mr Lansman, 60, is steeped in the history of Labour politics. In 1981, he was the campaign coordinator for Tony Benn in his narrow defeat against Denis Healey in the battle to be elected deputy lead of the party.
Mr Lansman tried again in 1988, organising Mr Benn’s challenge against Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, and losing heavily, beginning a lengthy period in the political wilderness.
In 2010 Mr Lansman started work as a researcher to the late Michael Meacher before volunteering for Mr Corbyn’s leadership campaign in 2015.
Mr Lansman, who has a newly grown Rasputin beard, is described by the New Statesman magazine as being “immediately recognisable from his psychedelic dress and omnipresent backpack”.
He was one of those outside the Parliamentary Labour Party office on 15 June 2015 when the future leader achieved the requisite 35 MP nominations.
One of the leaders of the centre-left campaign group Progress urged Mr Lansman to make sure that the Labour party continues to be run on democratic lines.
Stephanie Lloyd, deputy director of Progress, said: ““My hope is that Jon Lansman will not try to run the Labour Party like he runs Momentum.
“As a party we need our focus to be on stopping a Tory hard Brexit, not stopping Labour conference discussing Brexit; we need to replace Tory MPs, not deselect our hard working Labour MPs we already have; and, encouraging young members, not closing down the Momentum youth section.”
She added: “The result of these NEC elections is no real surprise and we extend our congratulations to those who have been elected.
“The new establishment has a big responsibility to ensure a broad church Labour Party that can use all the talents of Labour to stop a hard Brexit and win the next election, not focus on internal rules changes.”