Labour’s beleaguered moderates must act now before it’s too late

When is left-wing not left-wing enough? Veteran Labour organiser Ann Black is finding out the hard way. Yesterday morning, she was the respected chair of the disputes panel, the party’s internal disciplinary committee, and responsible for investigating anti-Semitism and other accusations against members. Now, she is the respected former chair, ousted in a Momentum-led coup as the far-left celebrates its majority on the National Executive Committee with a bit of muscle-flexing. 

Black is not some Blairite ultra. She was elected on the leftist Grassroots Alliance slate. What changed? Well, some comrades have not been impressed by her handling of suspensions. As Paul Waugh notes, Black wrote last year:

‘Anyone who thinks these cases are trivial should read the obscene, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-Semitic sewage which we have to wade through.’ 

Perhaps her replacement Christine Shawcroft will be more to their liking. A fixture on the NEC for the past two decades, she was suspended in 2015 for publicly backing former Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman.