Deselection in the UK Labour Party is the process by which support for an MP is withdrawn by their local party meaning that the MP is unable to stand in a forthcoming

general election A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from By-election, by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. Gener ...

with the support of the party.

Rules governing deselection

Labour Party rules specify that MPs will face a "trigger ballot" procedure where each

branch A branch, also called a ramus in botany, is a stem that grows off from another stem, or when structures like veins in leaves are divided into smaller veins. History and etymology In Old English, there are numerous words for branch, includ ...

of the Constituency Labour Party (CLP) and each affiliate (

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

and

socialist society The Socialist Society was founded in 1981 by a group of British socialists, including Raymond Williams and Ralph Miliband, who founded it as an organisation devoted to socialist education and research, linking the left of the British Labour Part ...

) branch will have a simple majority vote on whether they wish their sitting MP to automatically stand again in the next general election, or whether they wish to have a full selection process. If one third or more of party or affiliate branches vote for a full selection then the sitting MP will face a vote of all party members to decide whether they want their existing MP, or an alternative candidate to represent them at the next election.

History of deselection rules

Before 1970

Before 1970 the process for reconsidering support for a sitting MP required three Constituency General Committee (GC) meetings to be called for the purpose of considering whether to support the MP, followed by a meeting of affiliates to the CLP where affiliate GC delegates were mandated to vote a certain way. If the local party sought to remove their MP the MP could then appeal this decision to the

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered at the NEC Supertower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It provides IT and network solutions, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Inte ...

. The NEC was at this time controlled by the right of the Labour Party and almost invariably sided with the sitting MP and against the Constituency Party. The NEC threatened to disband some CLPs which sought to change their Labour MP.

1970–1979

The rules governing reselection were amended at Labour Party Conference in 1970 making it marginally less difficult to challenge a sitting MP. Dropping the required number of GC meetings from three to two and removing the mandating of affiliate GC delegates. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD), founded in 1973, was set up by left wing Labour activists to organise for greater democratic representation within the Labour Party. CLPD spent the next six years organising to seek to win a rule change at

Labour Party Conference The Labour Party Conference is the annual conference of the British Labour Party (UK), Labour Party. It is formally the supreme decision-making body of the party and is traditionally held in the final week of September, during the party conferen ...

to create an automatic reselection procedure for each sitting Labour MP. At Labour Party Conference in 1974 the NEC reported that they had conducted a review of the rules and concluded that no changes were required.

Ken Coates Kenneth Sidney Coates (16 September 1930 – 27 June 2010) was a British politician and writer. He chaired the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation (BRPF) and edited '' The Spokesman'', the BRPF magazine launched in March 1970. He was a Labour P ...

moved a motion to seek automatic selection at this conference which was defeated. Although CLPs submitted motions in 1975 and 1976 calling for an automatic selection procedure to be introduced these were ruled out of order on the grounds that they breached the 'three year rule'. 67 CLPs submitted motions calling for automatic reselection to the 1977 conference. These motions were ruled out of order on the grounds that they breached the '1968 rule' However,

Ian Mikardo Ian Mikardo (9 July 1908 – 6 May 1993), commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour Member of Parliament. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons. He was a member of Na ...

announced on behalf of the NEC that "We shall put down at next year's Annual Conference all the amendments to the constitution necessary to provide automatic reselection in the way and in the sense that the sponsors of those sixty-odd resolutions want. ''I do not think there is the least chance of the Executive reneging on that undertaking.''" At Labour Party Conference in 1978 the NEC broke this commitment and did not bring forward the proposal for automatic reselection. CLPD organised for a motion on automatic reselection to be voted on. The

Amalgamated Engineering Union The Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) was a major United Kingdom, British trade union. It merged with the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union to form the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in 1992. History ...

(AUEW) delegates had democratically agreed to support the CLPD motion however when it came to the vote the AUEW's then president,

Hugh Scanlon Hugh Parr Scanlon, Baron Scanlon (26 October 1913 – 27 January 2004) was a British trade union leader. Scanlon was born in Melbourne, to parents who had emigrated from Britain. His mother brought him back from Australia to the UK when he ...

, voted against the CLPD motion, and it was narrowly defeated. Following an intensive 12-month organising campaign by CLPD, at Labour Party Conference in 1979 a CLPD motion for automatic reselection was passed.

Gavin Strang Gavin Steel Strang (born 10 July 1943) is a Scottish Labour Party politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh East from 1970 until 2010 (including two terms for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh). He served as a minister in th ...

MP suggested that one of the consequences of the introduction of mandatory reselection was that MPs spent more time in their constituencies, saying "it's far more the normal thing now to have an office in the constituency, to employ someone there, and to live in the constituency. Reselection has turned MPs into better campaigners for the local party."

1979–present

In 1990

Neil Kinnock Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock (born 28 March 1942) is a Welsh politician who was Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom), Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 Labour Party le ...

, then leader of the Labour Party, scrapped mandatory reselection, replacing it with a system of trigger ballots. Changes to make deselection of Labour MPs easier, by lowering the number of branches that have to vote to trigger a contest from 50% to 33%, were passed by a large majority at Labour's 2018 Party Conference. However, the proposal made by a number of CLPs for open selections was not permitted to go to a vote, leading to criticism from Momentum who described the changes as "meager" with "key proposals being watered down". No Labour MPs were deselected during the leadership of

Ed Miliband Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for D ...

or the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. In February 2022, it was reported that Jeremy Corbyn was close to being deselected. In October 2022,

Sam Tarry Samuel Peter Tarry (; born 27 August 1982) is a British former politician who was the Member of Parliament (United Kingdom), Member of Parliament (MP) for Ilford South from 2019 United Kingdom general election, 2019 until 2024 United Kingdom ge ...

became the first MP to be deselected since 2010. He was beaten by leader of Redbridge London Borough Council Jas Athwal. Tarry questioned the integrity of the election, citing the electronic voting system that was used to count the votes.

List of deselected Labour MPs

This list does not include MPs who successfully overturned a vote to deselect them at the

Rules governing deselection

History of deselection rules

Before 1970

1970–1979

1979–present

List of deselected Labour MPs

Further reading

References

See also