Island Labour have said they will not be taking part in the East Wight Primary, but representatives from EWP say they will be keeping the door open should circumstances change.
Richard Quigley, Island Labour’s chair told News OnTheWight that one of the reasons was because “we don’t have official candidates as yet”. However, they are expecting to officially select a candidate within the next four weeks.
As reported by News OnTheWight last week, the six EWP Town Hall sessions run from 11th March to 23rd March in a number of venues across East Wight.
Invitation remains open
A spokesperson for EWP told News OnTheWight that “the invitation to the selected Labour candidate remains open up until a minute before each meeting begins” and that they have been discussion with the three parties since autumn 2023.
News OnTheWight asked Island Labour if the candidate was selected by any of those dates, would they take part? We’re still awaiting an answer to that point, although Richard Quigley did confirm that,
“We are working with Charity [EWP] to promote voter registration, voter ID and postal voting.”
Attfield: We’re part of a nationwide project
At the beginning of February, Philip Attfield, Joint Secretary of Isle of Wight Constituency Labour Party, told News OnTheWight,
“We’re waiting on instructions from the Labour NEC/Regional selection panel. Dependent on number of applicants per constituency and due diligence we’ll either be told that we have one approved candidate or there will be a shortlist for local members to select from, following hustings. The window for the hustings is two weeks following a list being declared.
“The Labour Party is processing applications for a large tranche of seats including the two on our Island. We’re part of a nationwide project and we’re expecting to be able to announce our PPCs on the island in a window from now until early March.”
That process is obviously taking longer than expected.
