The Peatling Parva by-election sounds like an episode of a sitcom

Harborough is a large rural district council taking in all or part of three parliamentary constituencies. In the mid-1980s the only organised branch of the Liberal Party in the district was in Market Harborough, which meant that large parts of it were a bit of a mystery to us.

It sounds like an episode from a sitcom on local politics, but the effect of this was that when we heard the Liberal candidate had won a Harborough District Council by-election in Peatling Parva, we were delighted but had no clear idea where Peatling Parva was.

Soon afterwards, I won a by-election myself and got to know the councillor for Peatling Parva, the lovely Lisa Brown. This was so long ago that I find it natural to describe her as Yugoslavian. (Ask your grandparents.)

Sadly, Lisa did not hold her seat at the all-out elections the following year, even though they saw the Conservatives lost control of the council. She was replaced by an amiable Tory whose appearance gave you the impression he might play in a trad jazz band.

It turned out that Peatling Parva was not quite the backwater it sounds. Yes, it was a large rural ward, but it contained Bruntingthorpe, a military airfield of the Cold War era that was being turned over to commercial uses, including a proving ground for cars.

Not surprisingly, Bruntingthorpe generated much of the casework for the member for Peatling Parva, but the new Tory councillor had business interests there. So every time it came up in council, he had to declare an interest and leave the chamber.

I'm not sure where this rambling memoir is headed, so let's end by saying that this last point is a reminder that standards in local government are higher than they are at Westminster.

Two Labour members thrown out for backing a tactical Lib Dem vote in Lewes

In what Mark Perryman on Labour Hub calls "a sorry tale of hypocrisy and snitching", two members of Labour's constituency party in Lewes have been expelled for advocating a tactical vote for the Liberal Democrats there in last year's general election. 

The Lewes seat, which was held by Norman Baker between 1997 and 2015, was recaptured from the Tories last year by James MacCleary.

Perryman calls it hypocrisy because:

Labour publicly identified Lewes as a ‘non battleground’ seat .... 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?

And the snitching?

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 ....

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. 

Labour List also has the story - apparently Clause I.5.B.vi of the Labour Party Rule Book is the one you have to watch out for.

I voted Labour in Harborough, Oadby and Wigston last year. That was partly from a slim hope that they might defeat our very online and increasingly radicalised Conservative MP.

But it was more from a feeling that it was hypocritical of me to be so keen that Labour voters should back the Liberal Democrats in places like Lewes if I wasn't prepared to reciprocate myself.