Momentum Backs Plans To Make It Easier To Deselect Sitting Labour MPs

Momentum, the pro-Jeremy Corbyn campaign group, has officially backed plans to make it easier for local party members to deselect sitting Labour MPs .

Ahead of Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool this month, the grassroots organisation said it was time the party’s “restrictive, outdated rules” were replaced with an “open” parliamentary selection process.

Centrist Labour MPs think such a change is designed purely to make it easier to replace them with pro-Corbyn loyalists.

Corbyn has not explicitly backed so-called mandatory reselection as leader, but he has said MPs should be “accountable” to their local parties.

Under the current “trigger ballot” rules an MP only needs the backing of 50% of their local branches to automatically stand for parliament again.

Momentum said today this had the effect of…