 Today we found out the results of elections to Labour's ruling body, the National Executive Committee. It was good news for the left, so of the nine seats elected in the CLP section, that's the constituency Labour Party section, the momentum-backed slate won five of the nine seats. That compares to three seats for the slate backed by progress in Labour first, so that's the Labour right, and one seat for open Labour, so they're the representatives of the soft left. The left-back candidates also won the disabled member's seat on the NEC, which went to Ellen Morrison, congratulations, and the young member's seat, which went to Lara McNeil, who you'll probably know because she's been on this show many times before. Congratulations to Lara. And yeah, this was a significant victory for the left. People were not sure that the left would outperform the right in these internal elections, and it seems to have been actually pretty clear-cut. This is Sienna Rogers' take. She is the chief journalist at Labour List, so it's sort of a non-factional organisation, tends to give fairly objective takes when it comes to the Labour Party. She writes, Labour left definitely have done better than expected here, winning both youth and disabled rep posts and five local party reps, though this is down to on their previous number of members reps. You can see most people in the Labour Party agreeing these are very good results for the left. You might ask though, if these results are so good for the left, why is Sienna Rogers saying that the left are down to on their previous number of members reps? If it's a good result, how can you have done worse than you did last time? The answer is that the voting system was changed. So the members used to be, or the members representatives used to be voted by sort of winner takes all, so if the left slate won, then all nine people from the left slate would go on to their NEC. Now it's single transferable vote, which means it's very difficult for any slate to win more than five, because you sort of rank your preferences and you're always going to end up with a bit of a plural outcome. In theory, very good voting system. In practice here, it's one which gives Keir Starmer a permanent majority on the NEC, because the members only make up nine of about 40 people on the NEC and so many of them come from the PLP and from friendly trade unions, trade unions that are friendly to Keir Starmer, that he basically has an inbuilt majority. So whilst this shows the strength of feeling amongst the left within the Labour Party, and it's very important actually to show this is the direction that the Labour members want to go in. What we want is to have a party which is fighting for left policies of the kind that we had under Jeremy Corbyn. I feel like Keir Starmer has tried to humiliate Jeremy Corbyn and I think that's really disgraceful after a campaign where what he said he was doing was trying to unite the party and take the best from Jeremy Corbyn. What members want, I think, this is the impression I have, is they want the policies of Jeremy Corbyn with someone who is more popular, someone who can deal with the media a little bit better, who won't go into a general election as sort of destroyed and battered as Jeremy Corbyn did. Let's be frank and what Keir Starmer seems to be threatening to do is saying, oh let's actually park the whole of the past five years, let's sort of hide that in a cupboard somewhere and what we're going to return to is the kind of Labour Party that we had under Tony Blair and I think the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn speaks to that. It is unfortunate that whilst we can in some sense see these elections to the NEC as a bit of a referendum on what direction do members want the party to go in and definitely the left have come out on top there because of the inbuilt majority on the NEC for Keir Starmer, I don't know how much effect this is going to have on that suspension of Jeremy Corbyn which is what we are going to talk about next because there is another controversy in the Labour Party going on at the moment, over and above the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn which is that people are now being suspended for objecting to Jeremy Corbyn's suspension or at least to hearing motions in their CLPs in their constituency Labour parties about Jeremy Corbyn's suspension. This was news which was published in Labour List again. At the time that they wrote this it was members in Bristol West including the chair and the co-secretary and other members had been threatened with suspension. Now many of them have actually been suspended and they have been suspended for voting on a motion which objected to the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and believed it was politically motivated and also for tweets encouraging a regional director to resign. If it was against party rules to call for someone to resign then 170 MPs who took part in the chicken coup in 2016 should also not be in the party. I don't really see how calling for someone to resign should be a suspendable offence. The reason I think they sort of called for him to resign is because one he tried to block them hearing the motion about Jeremy Corbyn and two he blocked a donation to Acorn which is a sort of housing activism group a very very worthy cause actually. To go into some of the background of this into these suspensions which I personally think are disgraceful there is an email from David Evans who is the Labour Party General Secretary this was after Corbyn's suspension he emailed all local party secretaries and wrote the following. I must remind you that in accordance with the instructions of my predecessor which I fully agree with it is not competent business for CLP's branches and any other party units to have discussions about or pass motions in relation to any aspect of individual disciplinary cases. He warned that the party will not hesitate to take appropriate action including against individual members where our rules and guidance are not adhered to or standards of behaviour fall below that which we expect. So obviously the people in this CLP against the warnings of David Evans heard a motion supporting Jeremy Corbyn now they've all been suspended the response from Darren McLaughlin who is co-secretary of Bristol West Labour Party presumably one of the people who's been suspended is very good. So he told Labour List that anti-democratic suspension of Jeremy Corbyn has rightly been a topic of huge debate within the party because of this it is absolutely right that members should be able to have their say as Keir Starmer does in every interview he gives. And that final point is the one that I think is the most important because basically what is happening in the Labour Party now is the general secretary in consultation with Keir Starmer we know he consulted Keir Starmer because the Labour Party have said so they have suspended Jeremy Corbyn for saying something true about the EHLC report we can debate whether or not it was well timed I personally don't think it was amazingly timed that you should be suspended for a poorly timed but true statement is ridiculous anti-democratic Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended I think it's political Keir Starmer gets to go out on the airwaves and say oh I think it was the right decision I totally backed the suspension he's a political person in the party he's the most political he's the leader and they're using bureaucratic methods now to say it's only us who are allowed to have a voice we at the top of the party can have opinions about this suspension you at the bottom of the party you have to be silent or we're going to kick you out and you can see how this is absolutely waiting everything in the favour of the leadership even though as these NEC elections have shown the membership is in a very different place so Keir Starmer got elected saying look I want to bring the party together I want to create unity what has he done probably the most a more divisive act than I think anyone could have imagined in that leadership election even the most cynical opponents of Keir Starmer did not suggest that he was going to within six months suspend Jeremy Corbyn they did not he has way surpassed anyone's expectations of how divisive Keir Starmer could be as Labour leader there's a huge mandate from below from the members to say let's stick to a progressive direction why don't you stick to your original unity platform Keir Starmer that's why there are five members from the left slate who have been elected to the NEC and only three from the right wing slate which is ostensibly the Keir Starmer supporting slate and the only way it seems that Keir Starmer can make moves like suspending Jeremy Corbyn without any significant backlash is if they ban people from talking about it and one it's completely undemocratic and also and this is the thing that really annoys me it's really unnecessary you know Keir Starmer could easily have said about Jeremy Corbyn I don't think what he said was well timed I don't really agree with what he said but obviously we cannot suspend people from the Labour Party for having an analysis which differs from my own about what happened over the last five years and I think the fact that he has got himself into this situation where they are silencing members but opposing the suspension of the Labour leader who only six months ago Keir Starmer said he wanted to create unity with is it just goes beyond our worst sort of fears about Keir Starmer as leader with the Labour Party