The newly elected and almost instantly suspended chairman of the Brighton, Hove and District Labour Party has given his first interview to the BBC.
Mark Sandell is due to appear on the Sunday Politics this morning (Sunday 17 July) to discuss the suspension of the local party – Labour’s biggest single branch, with more than 6,000 members.
Mr Sandell, the former president of the West Sussex branch of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), was elected with 62 per cent of the 600 votes cast.
On the Sunday Politics South East, Mr Sandell is expected to give his account of what has been happening in the local party and on the day of the annual general meeting (AGM) eight days ago.
Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has quashed the votes at the AGM – won predominantly by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn – and has suspended the local party.
Mr Sandell is also expected to urge members and supporters to help the party’s candidate in the East Brighton by-election, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, to be voted on to Brighton and Hove City Council. The by-election takes place on Thursday 4 August.
Members of the suspended party are planning a rally to protest against what they have described as smears about abusive behaviour used as a pretext for the suspension. The planned rally is part of a fight back against “the undemocratic intervention by the NEC”.
The Sunday Politics starts at 11am on BBC One, with the South East segment scheduled to start at about 11.40am.
Labour in Hove and Brighton made a terrible mistake by feebly going along, for a second time, with the bizarre fixation upon closing down Hove’s Carnegie Library.
At the outset Labour’s Nicky Easton laid into me for having a campaign against this.
Her attitude struck me as incipient Fascism: that one should be castigated even for broaching discussion about a subject.
Eight months on, I am still shocked by her grotesque behaviour.