Derby Defections: nailing the lie

A week ago tonight, our TV news was full of reports of a mass defection from the Labour Party to the LibDems in Margaret Beckett's Derby South constituency.

The story flavoured the weekend political programmes and was raised time and again by the hacks as evidence that rank and file members were abandoning the Labour Party in droves due to the Government's policy over the war in Lebanon.

At the time, I suggested that the story was not all it was cracked up to be by Derby LibDems who read out a list of names at a press conference last Friday afternoon.

From an early stage, it was clear to insiders that this was a media stunt that had nothing to do with Lebanon and everything to do with the selection of Labour Party candidates for Derby City council seats next May.

But the media weren't about to let the facts spoil a good story and lapped up pictures of Ming Campbell welcoming his new flock and running with the Lebanon angle.

It's taken a few days for the Labour Party to thoroughly comb the list of so-called defectors, but we now have a much clearer idea of the truth of the LibDem stunt.

Of the 41 names, six are genuine defectors: eight if you include the two former members who had allowed their membership to "lapse".

Two of the small band of actual defectors failed to be shortlisted as Labour Party candidates by members in Arboretum and Normanton in the days before the "mass defection" (needless to say not mentioned as part of the story).

But here's the dynamite which blows the story out of the water:

An astonishing 27 people on the list of so-called defectors were not Labour Party members, but had applied to join in the run-up to the selections for city council seats.

The Labour Party has a "freeze date" for membership well before selections, to stop potential candidates signing up bogus members immediately before the selection meetings to unfairly sway the vote.

But in the run-up to the January 1st "freeze date" in Derby, the Labour Party noticed an unusually large number of membership applications.

The Party suspected possible foul play and triggered immediate tougher than usual verification measures in the affected areas.

Every membership application had to be personally ratified to ensure that the applicant was a real person, living in the address stated, wished to be a member of the Party and had paid the membership fee themselves.

Since then, the Labour Party has been unable to verify 27 names - the very same 27 names which the LibDems now claim to have signed up.

This comes as no surprise.

It vindicates the action taken by the Labour Party.

The bottom line is there was no mass defection.

This story was a lie.