The wheels have come off our assessment/selection procedure for next years’ elections. Its a long story, but the procedure we were using had a few flaws in it. At last week’s constituency meeting it was decided to wipe the slate clean and start again.

So that means I am not on the panel of candidates now, but will have to have another interview. It really does seem like a lot of trouble to go to just so I can get selected for an unwinnable seat.

The meeting was a bit fractious, as Labour party meetings always are when there are matters of procedure to discuss – if we put half as much effort into campaigning as arguing about procedure we would be unbeatable.

I don’t think it helped that I had to chair the meeting. Lets just say that at the next AGM the party will probably be happy to let me sit at the back where I wanted to be anyway, and not pressure me into taking any sort of office! I had to put my foot down a couple of times and people don’t tend to like that. The funny thing is that it could have gone a lot worse!

One thing that has come out of it is that we really need to get this assessment thing sorted out properly for next year. I am trying to put together a draft document for discussion. If anyone from any other CLP would like to provide a copy of their own process for reference purposes I would be very interested.