Labour NEC elections: No cage for this Bird

After grassroots outrage at her suspension, Palestine solidarity campaigner and Left-wing Jewish Labour Councillor Jo Bird is back in the race to be elected to Labour’s ruling national executive.

Birkenhead Councillor Jo Bird,, was the leading Left candidate for the NEC when earlier this week she was suspended by the Labour Party during the nominations phase of the by-election for the National Executive Committee.

Jo Bird, who is running in the ongoing Labour National Executive Committee election with the support of Jewish Voice for Labour, Labour Representation Committee and Labour Left Alliance, was suspended from Party membership. The result of which excluded her from standing for office, thus disenfranchising the 80+ constituency labour parties that have already nominated her.

The Party keeps confidential what Jo, the only Jewish candidate standing for the NEC, had been suspended for. Given previous events, it was safe to assume that allegations of antisemitism were involved. This is borne out by publication in the Jewish Chronicle at the weekend of an article linking her suspension to a short video she made in the JustJews series, explaining her support for the party in the face of multiple antisemitism charges. By no stretch of the imagination is there anything antisemitic in this video.

Jo is the leading left candidate running for the NEC so the timing of her suspension is deeply suspicious. It has the hallmarks of a deliberate attempt to undermine party democracy and the wishes of thousands of party members, in the 86 CLPs that have already nominated her.

However due to Jo’s popularity and lack of any credible evidence not to mention the fact suspending the leading candidate without due process was a perversion of democracy, Jo Bird is back on the ballot.

Thanks to Left-wing media outlets such as JVL, The Skwawkbox, The Electronic Intifada along with the thousands of grassroots members organised petitions kept up the campaign to reinstate Jo. 

Now all we need to do is get out and vote.

The news comes the same day The Skwawkbox reported that up to 90 percent of evidence in recent anti-Semitism investigations is rejected by a key Labour disciplinary committee as “flimsy or irrelevant.”

Labour’s online tally of local party nominations to the National Executive Committee now again lists Bird.

A copy of the same page from earlier this week omits Bird’s name.

Her current tally of 111 nominations puts her in fourth place. Before her suspension, Bird had been in joint first place.

Labour’s ruling national executive has the power to set the party’s rules and enact disciplinary measures against members. Three seats on the committee are up for election.

Voting will take place next week.

Bird was suspended earlier this month in what many members said was an attempt to rig the election against the left and Palestine solidarity campaigners.
#JoBird4NEC

Skwawkbox Exclusive – up to 90% of antisemitism evidence unfit