THE ASHFIELD PARACHUTE

One can expect an avalanche of "revelations" in the weeks to come as the Mail On Sunday gets stuck in to Labour candidates everywhere. The news that Gloria de Piero, the Brownite parachuted into Ashfield, the constituency of discredited Geoff Hoon, once posed for topless pictures is an irony in the light of others' unsuccessful attempts to beat the New Labour machine in the same constituency.
My LRC colleague Christine Shawcroft , an NEC stalwart for many years and campaigner for the left, was stitched up and excluded from the Ashfield shortlist. Grossly unjust
As things are, I am profoundly grateful I was not selected as a PPC in either of the two constiturncies I had a go at because I would actually have been unable to campaign properly due to family illness.
I still regard the imposition of All Women Shortlists in constituencies where they were neither desired nor necessary as a cynical way of excluding left candidates. Ashfield is only one of many similar stories. Gloria's youthful folly is not the reason why her selection was unjust. Party members everywhere are sick and tired of favoured candidates winning out over local activists.
I hear also on the graoevine that Peter Wheeler is to be shoo-ed in to Stalybridge and Hyde......