For Lauren Townsend, becoming an MP was an obvious choice. Born in Milton Keynes to a working-class family, she has lived in the city all her life, working in a variety of jobs, including as a waitress for TGI Friday where she led a campaign for fair tips for restaurant staff. In 2019, Townsend was elected as a local councillor, and later became a council cabinet member. In October, she applied to be Labour candidate in the seat of Milton Keynes North — and that’s when her party career came to an abrupt end.
The opinion polls suggest Keir Starmer is heading for a majority at the next election, with a Labour victory in Milton Keynes North. Given the party only has 202 seats, securing a majority will require the biggest influx of new Labour MPs since 1945 — roughly 140 new MPs to get up to the 340 mark, which would entail a majority of about 30. Add to this the usual “retirements” — perhaps 40-50 existing MPs — and the current selection processes taking part across the country will determine not just the texture of Starmer’s forces in the Commons, but also the pool of MPs from whom his ministers would be appointed.
Starmer’s team knows this, and is quietly managing the process in minute detail. This battle is being overseen by Labour’s election campaign director Morgan McSweeney, who worked on Starmer’s leadership campaign and was briefly his chief-of-staff. McSweeney “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard Left”, says his friend Nick Forbes, a former leader of Newcastle City Council. “He thinks they need to be eradicated from the party because they are so dangerous.” This ruthlessness now underscores every Labour selection process, as Lauren Townsend discovered last month.
Townsend was backed by six major trades unions, which would normally have guaranteed her a place on the long-list. But Labour’s National Executive Committee panel blocked her. Among the reasons given was that Townsend had “liked” a tweet by Nicola Sturgeon in 2021 in which the Scottish First Minister announced a Covid test she had taken was negative. Her offence, it seems, was “supporting other parties”. Townsend was also accused of being involved with the Green New Deal campaign, whose policies go further than Labour’s official Green New Deal. “I feel gutted,” Townsend said after she was blocked, “not just for me but for what this says to the wider membership of our party and especially to other young women and/or mothers who desperately want to get more involved in politics, but find it an impossible and somewhat intimidating prospect”.
Bigger names than Townsend have been purged too. Lisa Forbes, who was MP for Peterborough until she was unseated in 2019, was kept off the long-list this time round. Emma Dent-Coad, another prominent Left-winger who was MP for Kensington from 2017 to 2019, was also kept off the long-list for her old seat, despite building a formidable reputation for her response to the Grenfell fire tragedy in her constituency just after she was elected.
Meanwhile, Labour’s Candidates Team is busy working in the background, deciding seat-by-seat who they do want. They have to operate surreptitiously, as local parties guard their independence and do not like to be pushed around. Nor does it do a candidate any good to be known as the choice of the Leader of the Opposition’s Office — the LOTO contender. But in most selections, it doesn’t take much to work out who LOTO is backing.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe