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The Stop Kev, unsettle Kate Hoey and prop up the Poster Boy campaign failed at the Vauxhall Constituency Labour Party AGM last night. The right wing of @LambethLabour, and in particular, the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor, fell short by just a single vote to put in place the right wing puppet Paul Gadsby as a replacement Secretary for Hoey’s right left hand man, @kevindcraig.

The move was designed to weaken the MP for Vauxhall and allow @LambethLabour to makes moves on putting the Poster Boy up for Parliament. It now looks as though @LambethLabour will have to be content with controlling the herd within Lambeth Town Hall, and not the CLP.

Hoey was held to account at the meeting with some early questions from Stockwell’s Councillor Bigham. He asked Hoey about her plans for future local campaigns, only to be silenced with a call to focus upon community events, rather than the issues.

This was just the warm up event ahead of the knockout blow that @LambethLabour has been in training for ever since May 6th. Even with most local branches voting to support @kevindcraig, the final voting was all down to the branch delegates.

It’s a strange system of democracy that allows a branch meeting to endorse one candidate, yet the absolute power is in the hands of the delegate that then attends the AGM, and is able to ignore the wishes of the members.

Which more or less is what happened on the night at the Wheatsheaf Community Centre along South Lambeth Road. One by one, the local Vauxhall branches have been turning their backs on the campaign to kick out Hoey over recent weeks. But with the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor, um, whipping, the delegates ganged up to do the dirty on @kevindcraig.

This was acknowledged by @kevindcraig in his speech. He recognised the “hate” within the party, but instead called to focus the CLP on attacking the Tories. Given the similarities between the Big Society and #lambethcoop, you can see the implications of the message from the left of centre candidate.

Questions followed from the floor, with a call to engage more women and young people. With the Vauxhall CLP having a low head count of only 750 members, you would think that it is keen to hold on to all within the party, rather than try and kick out the likes of Councillor Abrams after the botched @LambethLabour email hack.

Crunch time soon came for the Stop Kev campaign, and true to form, the delegates ignored the wishes of the branch members and voted for the @LambethLabour puppet. It was left to the trade union representation to show some sense of political conviction within the left of Lambeth politics.

@kevindcraig was returned as Secretary of the Vauxhall CLP with a 21-20 vote in his favour. Hoey will remain doing whatever it is that Hoey does, and the Poster Boy will be left scratching his head, and looking around for another constituency to try and conquer.

As for the squeaky clean (and recently newly elected) Lambeth councillor? A half-decent first effort in trying to destabilise further what is already a split party in Lambeth. It makes you wonder why the right wing @LambethLabour doesn’t just do the sensible thing and join up with their Big Society, big business loving Tory chums and put an end to the Nu Labour project.

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