have you quit the labour party yet?

wtf!

Sky said she had told them personally she'd been barred er.....

lol wanker with LBC mic on the high street already. Asked me if I lived round here, I said "not interested in talking, thanks", he groaned.

So could it be that she's decided to retire? Jump before pushed? I can't work out what's going on here.

the Labour leadership presiding over leaks, much confusion, the veritable clusterfuck of the day. You see this.. this is what stability looks like.

Robert Peston tweeted something saying that she'd negotiated a deal with the leadership where she'd retire, the whip would be restored, Starmer and other senior figures would make respectful statements paying tribute to her, but then these briefings appeared in the Times saying that she'd been barred from standing (from Labour right types who couldn't resist the urge to take a victory lap/brag about hammering the left?) But who knows.

guessing the problem will be "media regurgitating quotes from unnamed political sources as if they are facts" again

I also wouldn't be surprised if she said one thing to Starmer, another to Sky and now another on Twitter. Not quite sure how Labour thought this would play out to their advantage.

They forgot she isn’t as ‘nice’ as Jeremy Corbyn. Gwan, Diane!

I'm old enough to remember when ppl said that the guileless simp, Kieth Starmer, that he was forensic and a formidable opponent.

> Just been confirmed that Diane Abbott has been barred from standing.

this tweet though, from 10 this morning, suggests otherwise
https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1795740459085750561

"But I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate."

Make em own it Diane

Ok

This clip is being circulated among BAME Labour MPs, I'm told – one, not on left or close to Abbott, says: "Like every other white man he doesn’t get how important Diane is"

Real discontent in PLP. Starmer trying to calm it all down by saying decision hasn't been made yet https://t.co/5eJX9JwpU1

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 29, 2024

Definitely sending out Streeting to do the interviews about this is a great look, kiu Keir

Centrists are so aggressively unlikable pic.twitter.com/TAX2uvSXVP

— ashok kumar 🇵🇸 (@broseph_stalin) May 29, 2024

Ok

🐦[This clip is being circulated among BAME Labour MPs, I’m told – one, not on left or close to Abbott, says: "Like every other white man he doesn’t get how important Diane is"

Real discontent in PLP. Starmer trying to calm it all down by saying decision hasn’t been made yet https://t.co/5eJX9JwpU1🕸
— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 29, 2024🕸]🐦

SCOOP: Labour is blocking leftwing Brighton MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle from standing at the general election. https://t.co/h8EENAv2V5

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) May 29, 2024

https://x.com/lloyd_rm/status/1795863977961926933?s=46&t=Xety4ZUudTBKt4dxOZMmDw

"he picked up the mace in 2018, and he looked a bit of a prick" is my prediction

xp okay well, could be something else

He’s also under fire from terfs (ugh his replies) for wanting conversion therapy banned.

I was thinking it must have been the ace with the mace incident at first, but that was 6 years ago - apparently russell-melt's historic political crime was from 8 years ago.

Going after Asian, Black and gay MPs, is it?

Jones has said they'll dump Coyle as well, just to show how impartial this purge is

Diane Abbott saying she HAS been banned from standing and she will stand no matter what - including as a independent.

it was a windy journey to get here, but I'm glad she's standing against Labour now

not quite at the point of hoping the tories pull off a surprise victory yet but jfc I am really not looking forward to The Starmer Years

Am I being unreasonable in really disliking Streeting?

no, he has accurately been described as unlikeable upthread

no, he's fucking horrible. He's a 6 foot odd bully with anger management issues, a lickspittle tory cunt and he's going to finish off the NHS. Dislike away to yr heart's content!

whomst among us has not purged our enemies?

Labour history is cyclical - hours before a selection vote in Ilford South in 2019, moderate stalwart Jas Athwal was suspended over last-minute allegations which were similarly unspecified and (in his instance) later found to be groundless.

There will be fury from the left over… https://t.co/EzDz4tmiLd

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) May 29, 2024

x-post - Yeah. It's the last part - the fact that he's not saying he thinks the NHS is a thing of wonder - that wearies me.

to him it's a thing of wonder in the sense that all his top donors have private healthcare interests and his biggest one is actually providing pro-privatisation senior management staff to the NHS. It's not creeping privatisation anymore, it's a fucking war of annihilation.

it's weird for the leadership to be starting a row over this now, when the left have been so thoroughly cowed - it's not like a handful of left MPs were ever going to have much impact on a Starmer govt post-election anyway? But certain elements on the Lab right seem pathological about this stuff - e.g. this article about the Labour left from earlier this month which is 90% people on the left saying that they're totally fucked, but also Luke Akehurst warning that they're liable to wrest control of the party back at any moment:

From the leader’s office and the front bench to Labour’s many internal party committees, the flank that so dominated during the Corbyn era has now lost power at every level of the party. Yet Luke Akehurst, the influential secretary of ‘old right’ group Labour First and member of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), recently warned Starmer supporters that the left has not gone away entirely.

“Whatever happens in the general election, we’re going to have to be ready to have a scrap with these guys again,” Akehurst said. “If, God forbid, we do not get an overall majority, they will not say ‘that’s because your task was really difficult’.

“They’ll say it was our fault – ‘if we’d only kept Jeremy Corbyn or Rebecca Long-Bailey, and had a robust socialist programme nationalising 100 industries’, or whatever, ‘we would have walked it’ – and they’ll come back fighting on that. Or if we win, they’ve already got the narrative going of betrayal and disappointment.”

tossing the ming vase to one side so you can start taking wild swings anyone nearby who looks vaguely left-wing

You'd kind of hope that anyone in the Labour Party wasn't hoping for the Left to go away.

meanwhile

Congratulations to @lukeakehurst, Labour's candidate for North Durham! pic.twitter.com/E6NGK873dh

— Labour North (@LabourNorth) May 29, 2024

mum, why is this scary egg-man at our door, please make him go away

i think it'll be great if the general public gets to see more of Akehurst, he's a naturally charming guy whose stock will only rise with more exposure

lol, Labour have selected a former Reeves aide in my new constituency.

Labour Friends of Grima Wormtongue

Meanwhile.

Labour is reportedly set to block left-leaning candidate Faiza Shaheen from contesting Ian Duncan Smith's seat, planning to suspend her for liking social media posts that "accused Israel of genocide." #Labour #FaizaShaheen pic.twitter.com/a4UPovtkTL

— Pakistani Index (@PakistaniIndex) May 29, 2024

Hilarious

Surprised IDS still isn't hanging it up tbh

Luke the nuke's old tweets over my TL, and look at this gem from ten years ago.

And now a completely offensive and gratuitous comparison between Apartheid and the Israel/Palestine conflict from a delegate #Lab14

— Luke Akehurst (@lukeakehurst) September 22, 2014

Meanwhole.

🔴 I’m told some last-minute seats, eg Leyton & Wanstead, Labour are considering senior military officers with a view to jobs in a Labour government

— @Tomorrow'sMPs (@tomorrowsmps) May 29, 2024

Good, short thread on the 'soft left'

Starmer himself is of that faction. He has no control over the Lab right and they will come for him sooner or later.

thing about the soft left is they try to please everyone and so when the right comes for them they have no real allies. hence executions like this. https://t.co/hTCnYc89PD

— bat020 (@bat020) May 29, 2024

This is a pretty amazing night of the long knives. It's hard to be fully sympathetic to people who haven't already recognised what the Labour Party has become, but I'm enjoying the mask coming fully off. I don't care how much anybody equivocates about getting the Tories out, we've reached the stage where voting Labour would be the height of amorality

Always going to happen when you don't get rid of these freaks. Had a chance, now gone.

“Honestly I’m so shocked right now, to be treated this badly”

Faiza Shaheen, who was set to stand for Labour, describes hearing that her candidacy had been pulled over liking a series of Tweets which she claims Labour said would frustrate its campaign#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/JtMIywDz2N

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 29, 2024

Quite! pic.twitter.com/Ini9WzNYjX

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) May 29, 2024

^ goes without saying this world has got to be burnt down.

Pretty sure someone like Lee Harpin is being paid to go through left wing candidates’ social media.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GOxvRVhWsAA2COY?format=jpg&name=large

I don't think most ordinary ppl (i.e. anyone slightly offline/unaware of the finer points of Labour 2015-19) are quite ready for this fucking stupendously grotesque freak