Mark Perryman reports on a sorry tale of hypocrisy and snitching.

I was informed on Friday by a good friend and fellow member of the Labour party in Lewes that they have been expelled by the Labour Party following the 2024 General Election campaign.

This brings to two such expulsions. As far as I know, no other members are being ‘investigated’.

I am fully aware of the Party rule banning members from openly advocating a vote for another party, so I always choose my words carefully around the time of the General Election.

“In Lewes and other places like it Labour can’t win, but the Tories can lose.” This is an objective fact, and despite Labour winning in 2024 seats it never expected to win, nothing in Lewes has changed.

The total hypocrisy of Labour head office on the two expulsions is unbelievable. Labour publicly identified Lewes as a ‘non battleground’ seat – see here. The candidate and his team were instructed to minimise campaigning; instead they were sent to seats where Labour could win. Which party precisely did they think this would benefit?

Like myself, Labour’s ‘non-battleground list’ didn’t advocate voting for another party, but on a far grander scale than my good self, it amplified the fact that there are seats Labour won’t win, but the Tories can lose.

Or to spell it out: every one of the historic 2024 Lib Dems 64 gains is in that list.

And two Lewes Labour members were expelled for helping make that happen?! Hypocrisy is about the politest word I can think of for describing this.

But it gets worse, and this time it’s personal. The two expulsions wouldn’t have happened without the snitch in Lewes CLP who reported them.

The 2024 tactical voting campaign in Lewes was organised by the local Lewes Compass Group. Compass nationally, despite, its very public support for tactical voting, is not a Labour Party-proscribed organisation. It is cross-party, yet at its core are a whole host of Labour members, including councillors. At least three Cabinet members I can think of have spoken on Compass platforms.

The local campaign went beyond what is permitted under Labour rules. I have never displayed a poster advocating a vote for any party other than Labour (Oh, OK in 2015 there was a Vote SNP poster in my window, but that was before I joined, and my outright support for Scottish independence was of marginal electoral impact in East Sussex!).

But not everyone is as tuned in to navigating the Labour rule book as me.  Our ‘snitch’ didn’t  have the good sense to give a friendly piece of advice to his or her fellow members that they were breaking Party rules. Instead they were busy compiling their evidence to secure expulsions.

Nobody has ever owned up to this cowardly behaviour, so in our local Labour Party we have a snitch entirely unwilling to justify their actions politically.  Despite wave after wave of ‘modernisation’, comradeship remains a founding principle of Labour Party culture. A cowardly snitch unwilling to justify their actions is no comrade of mine or anyone else who might fall foul of their actions.

The two expelled have both been active in Lewes Labour for as long as I’ve been a member, more active than 95% of a largely inactive membership. I know one of the two particularly well; they were out canvassing for Labour in our allocated target seat. They canvassed for Labour in target seats in 2017 and 2019 too. Amazingly, this person has already told me they want to join such target seat canvassing for Labour at the next General Election. Unlike our snitch I’m proud to call these two expelled people friends, but most of all comrades. 

It’s an absolutely foul political culture that combines snitching at the local level and utter hypocrisy at the national level to expel members without even a warning. This is a Party that has been losing a member every ten minutes since the 2024 General Election. We might think that it would want to keep members who both actively helped secure that victory and had no intention of leaving. But no, all that mattered to our secret snitch was to get them expelled.

Mark Perryman is a member of Lewes CLP. He writes in a personal capacity.

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