One of the themes of the site has been to highlight the use of all-women shortlists by the Labour Government to ban men in the Labour Party from being able to stand for Parliament (link and link).
One of the arguments beyond the fact that all-women shortlists are by their very nature sexist, is the fact that men are being prevented from representing their community because of the gender. This is particularly pernicious and has for the coming General Election meant that in seats 29 Labour have banned local men from being their candidate,
In the 2005 General Election, Peter Law became a hero (link) by resigning from the Labour Party and winning when standing as an independent becuase they banned him from standing for his local community.
Now in Airdrie (Scotland),the same could happen. The Scotsman and Herald report (link and link) that Labour supporters in the seat are up in arms because they will have an all-women shortlist imposed on them meaning that they will not be able to choose North Lanarkshire councillor, Jim Logue, as their candidate.
What is also chilling is that the Labour Party clearly state in their argument that if a man retires (John Reid,in this case),the seat must go to a women. Notice how the Labour spindoctor does not mention ' the best person for the job' etc, all that counts is that it cannot be a man.
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