Labour Party '˜to begin considering official NI candidates'

A statement on Monday night from the wing of the party based in the Province said that the Labour National Executive Committee had launched a consultation “into organising electorally in Northern Ireland and standing candidates for public office here”.

Such a consultation will be far too late to make a difference for this upcoming Assembly election, due to take place on March 2, because the deadline to confirm candidates for this has already passed.

On Monday evening, a statement from the Labour Party in Northern Ireland said the consultation will run until the summer 2017, when a report

will be presented to the NEC for consideration.

It said: “The key question the party will be asking is ‘will the impact of Labour running candidates here have a positive beneficial effect on

Northern Ireland’.

“Given our recent experience of the failure of the existing parties to find agreement and the descent into ‘brutal’ sectarian politics, we

would say the answer is definitely yes.

“More than ever, if society is to move forward, Northern Ireland needs cross-community Labour Party politics based on those Labour values

which are shared widely throughout our society: equality, justice and fairness.

“It is time for all stakeholders in Northern Ireland to let the Labour Party know that we urgently need the party to stand electorally and

play a transformational role in our society.”

Another statement forwarded to the News Letter in the name of Iain McNicol, General Secretary of the Labour Party, said among those being consulted will be “the Northern Ireland Constituency Labour Party, affiliated trade unions, the Irish Labour Party, the Co-operative Party and our sister party the SDLP over the coming weeks”.

Despite an official ban on standing candidates in the Province (linked to the fact that the UK Labour Party has a long-running “fraternal” understanding with the SDLP), last Assembly election saw a renegade group of Labour members put themselves forward for election without official backing from the party hierarchy.

They performed poorly, with just 1,577 first preference votes right across the Province.

Meanwhile, an unrelated party called the Cross-Community Labour Alternative began fielding candidates in 2016, and is doing so again in 2017.

Last autumn, Northern Irish Labour secretary Boyd Black had said that he did not wish to comment on one prominent example of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s support for republicans during the Troubles, saying that the party is focussed on the future, not the past.

Read more about Mr Corbyn’s past republican associations here, in one of the most-read investigations ever posted online by the News Letter.