Labour has been forced to cancel a hustings for parliamentary candidates in Shoreham this weekend after a row broke out when the national executive committee vetoed a plan by the local selection panel to drop a candidate from the shortlist.
Sophie Cook, who was the 2017 candidate for East Worthing and Shoreham, would have been Labour’s first trans women in a winnable seat and has been given high-profile backing by the Unite union.
Cook was among three candidates shortlisted again for the seat but the Guardian understands she was called into be re-interviewed by the local selection committee after claims were sent to the regional office about alleged financial irregularities in her past. Sources alleged Cook had not disclosed information in her first round interview and that they were dissatisfied with the account she gave.
The committee, which is made up of local members, trade unions and regional representatives, is understood to have come to the unanimous conclusion that Cook should be pulled from the shortlist.
Labour rules mean that final hustings, where the candidate is chosen by party members, cannot go ahead without a minimum of two candidates.
However, when local members consulted the NEC about how to proceed, they were told Cook must remain on the shortlist as the historic financial issues were not serious enough to merit her being excluded but could have been considered in the final round of the selection, when local members vote.
The decision to overrule the local panel caused outcry among activists in Worthing and Shoreham, sources said, prompting the two other shortlisted candidates, local councillors Beccy Cooper and Catherine Arnold, to drop out of the selection in protest.
“With all talk of party democracy, yet again the Momentum-dominated NEC is ignoring local members,” said one party source.
Labour sources claimed the local party had acted outside the rules, and should not have called Cook for an additional interview.
The need for rigorous selection processes has been underlined recently by the case of Mandy Richards, the candidate for Worcester who was chosen despite being placed under civil restraint by the high court for a series of reported “false and vexatious claims” against MI5 and MI6 and a long list of others, including her GP and Thames Water. Her selection was not endorsed by the NEC and she was de-selected.
Unite’s Jim Kennedy, who chairs the NEC organisational subcommittee which deals with selections, wrote to local members on Friday night saying Sunday’s hustings could now not take place, given Cooper and Arnold had dropped out.
“Following the withdrawal from the process of two of the three shortlisted candidates, there is now only a single shortlisted candidate,” he said.
“As a result the process is now cancelled and tomorrow’s selection meeting will not take place. The regional office will be in touch regarding arrangements for the new process early next week.”
A Labour spokesperson said: “The selection process in Worthing will be restarted in due course.”
Ivor Caplin, former Labour MP for nearby Hove, said: “I think it’s always important that the views of members locally are properly taken into account and, in this particular case, they clearly were, because the selection panel made its decision — and that is also how the NEC should operate in making its final decisions.”
The turmoil is likely to cause some anguish for Labour given the party’s hopes that Cook would be a high-profile trans women in a seat where she had a chance of becoming the first trans woman in parliament.
She cut sitting Conservative MP Tim Loughton’s majority by 10,000 last year, to 5,106.
Cook, a former photographer for Bournemouth football club, has been a long-time campaigner on equalities in football and an ambassador for Kick It Out.
She said: “I was proud to contest East Worthing and Shoreham in the snap election, and to increase the Labour vote by 114%. During my campaign to be selected as the candidate I have been overwhelmed by the positivity of the majority of members and their determination to return a Labour MP. I look forward to campaigning with them to do just that.”
She has also recently spoken out about receiving a barrage of transphobic abuse after an internal Labour row about ensuring trans women could run on all-women shortlists.
“Nearly 21,000 people may have voted for me and the Labour party last year. But the transphobic arguments remain the same,” she tweeted earlier this week, with pictures of tweets calling Labour a “trans cult.”
A friend of Cook’s told the Guardian: “Like many people a business start up of Sophie’s went bankrupt. She made this clear to both the local party and the NEC. I hope this process can be rerun in the near future so we can continue our campaign for a Labour MP.”
The row comes as another Labour candidate, Fiona Derbyshire, stood down as the candidate for York Outer just five months after winning a selection battle. Derbyshire said the position would take more work than she could commit to doing for the next four years, saying she had been working 70-hour weeks.
“It’s fair to say I thought I was experienced in the knocks you get in politics, but this has been a lot bloodier than I thought,” she told the York Press.