The big noises in the Labour Party may have finally realised that there is something possibly rotten in the constituency Party in Leicester East. It’s taken the Labour leadership a fair amount of time to clear out the local branch, which has been the subject of numerous rumours of misconduct, but since at least earlier this year, the Labour leadership has been cracking down on the constituency party that has given Westminster such ‘lovelies’ as Keith ‘drugs and rent boys’ Vaz and Claudia ‘harassment conviction’ Webbe.

The Party has already deselected 19 of its councillors in an effort to clean up the local Labour Party establishment with the bulk of those deselections belonging to those described as ethnic minorities, which suggests to me that there is the possibility that there has been a lot of nasty communal politics going on in Leicester. It’s probably the case that the Labour leadership has finally had to confront problems in their Leicester East branch because these problems may now have got too big to ignore. The running sore of Claudia Webbe’s presence in the Commons, a woman who was elected on the Labour ticket but who has since been suspended from the party, helps to keep public attention on Leicester East and Labour now urgently need to deal with their Leicester East problems before the General Election focuses any more attention towards it.

The BBC said:

The national executive (NEC) is investigating the troubled constituency Labour Party (CLP) over concerns around its operation, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

Branch and constituency meetings will be stopped “until further notice” and all officers have been “relieved of their positions and duties”, according to an email seen by the LDRS.

The CLP has been contacted for comment.

It has not been confirmed specifically what prompted the suspension.

A Labour Party source said in reaction: “The NEC has a duty to safeguard the integrity of CLPs, to ensure that they are properly run in line with the party’s rules and procedures and can operate fully, inclusively and democratically.”

It comes after what has already been a turbulent year for Labour in Leicester following mass deselections ahead of the 2023 Local Elections in May.

The national committee purged 19 of its councillors ahead of the elections – a decision slammed as “undemocratic” at the time.

A majority of those deselected belonged to ethnic minorities, which also led to criticism. Labour sources stressed that the newly-selected candidates were representative of all communities.

But the party lost a significant number of seats in Leicester East wards following the shake-up, managing only 31 seats in the 2023 Local Elections compared to 53 in 2019.

Rushey Mead, Belgrave, North Evington and Evington were previously Labour strongholds within the constituency. The areas had all-Labour councillors after the 2019 elections but lost all seats to Conservative candidates this year.

I don’t think that Labour’s leadership really had much choice but to intervene in Leicester East. The situation with regards to the local party has got so politically smelly that they had to intervene. I’m not a Labour supporter by any means but I support this intervention and it is the correct thing to do for the health of the party as a whole. If they had done what they’ve done for years and ignore the lurid stories surrounding the local party and left the local party in place for the General Election then the constituency would become something of a political meme and a millstone to hang around the party’s neck and damaging the image of the party.

Labour should have sorted out the problem of party branches that have become communal and familial fiefdoms years ago but at last the party seems to be coming to the realisation that allegedly corrupt and undemocratic local party branches do nothing for the public perception of the Labour Party.