Labour activist Rhea Wolfson wins nomination for party’s NEC
Ken Livingstone replacement candidate defies efforts to block her nomination, transfers membership to alternative constituency
Gabriel Pogrund is a journalist at the Sunday Times .
Rhea Wolfson, the Momentum activist, has received unanimous backing from her new constituency party to stand for Labour’s national executive committee.
Wolfson, 25, won the full support of Almond Valley, and will now appear on the ballot paper as a Momentum candidate for this year’s NEC elections.
Her campaign looked to be over last Sunday after Eastwood, the Glasgow constituency where Wolfson had her party membership registered, refused to back her.
Party rules stipulate that candidates must have backing from their registered constituency party, even if they have gained support elsewhere.
However, a defiant Wolfson later wrote on Facebook that her campaign was ‘not over’.
The former Jewish youth worker claimed she was registered in Eastwood for ’emotional reasons’ and that she in fact divides her time between her family home there and Edinburgh, where her partner lives.
She subsequently successfully re-registered her membership with Almond Valley, an Edinburgh constituency, and received its full backing on Sunday night.
Having received the backing of constituencies in London, Yorkshire and Glasgow, Wolfson is now the Momentum- and Jewish Labour Movement-backed nominee for the NEC.
Wolfson’s campaign has been marred by controversy from the off. She was put forward as the hard Left’s replacement for Ken Livingstone after he was suspended from the party for comments claiming Hitler was a Zionist, rendering him ineligible to stand for the NEC.
When Wolfson’s campaign for the NEC was blocked in Eastwood, she and many of her supporters said that it was the result of a belated intervention by former Scottish Labour Party, Jim Murphy.
Murphy asked Wolfson to leave the room minutes before Eastwood’s members cast their votes and, apparently owing to his anti-Momentum position, petitioned them to vote against her.
In a Facebook post, Wolfson thanked her ‘home’ constituency party for their unanimous support.
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