Jamie Driscoll has claimed the people of the North East “will not be happy” if the Labour Party refuses to let him back into the race to become the region’s mayor.
A bitter dispute over the sitting North of Tyne mayor’s absence from Labour’s longlist of candidates to stand for election in a bigger combined authority area next year continued on Tuesday, after days of feuding. Sir Keir Starmer has come under pressure to reinstate the left-wing mayor to the selection contest, after he was barred because of an appearance on stage with filmmaker Ken Loach – who had previously been expelled from Labour amid efforts to root out antisemitism.
Party sources have said it was “impossible” to allow Mr Driscoll to seek the North East mayoral nomination because of his association with the I, Daniel Blake director, with the Jewish Labour Movement having called the event at Newcastle’s Live Theatre “hugely upsetting”, and his subsequent failure to apologise. But figures on the left have accused the leadership of “out of control” factionalism.
The row was very much the elephant in the room at the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA) on Tuesday, where Mr Driscoll and his cabinet celebrated a “major milestone for the region”. He and council leaders formally agreed to abolish the authority, which has been in existence since 2018, once a £4.2bn devolution deal to create the new, larger North East Mayoral Combined Authority is finalised – with plans to elect a new mayor next May who will cover all of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and County Durham.
While Mr Driscoll defended his record on job creation and hailed the “remarkable” work of the NTCA, there was no direct mention of the furore that has erupted over recent days. However, he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) afterwards that the infighting over his future was “seriously damaging Labour in the North East” and that the party had “clearly underestimated the backlash” it would create.
The mayor said: “People are sick of being ignored here. They [the Labour leadership] are talking about giving power to regions, but they are then saying ‘we choose the narrow group of people who are going to exercise that power’. The people of the North East will not be happy.”
He added: “Whether you voted leave or remain, whether you support Sunderland or Newcastle, what people want is for the North East to make its own decisions. The idea that the London Labour HQ is saying ‘we are allowed to choose who you will choose from’ is, I think, contemptuous towards the [Labour] members.”
A Labour source has said that Mr Driscoll was unanimously rejected as a candidate by the party’s National Executive Committee and that he had “ caused great hurt and upset" by appearing with Mr Loach.
Shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds told Sky over the weekend: “Specifically in a case where somebody shares a platform with someone who themselves has been expelled from the Labour Party for their views on antisemitism, for opposing the tough action that needed to happen, that would preclude them from being a Labour candidate going forward. Because when we said we’d have zero-tolerance for antisemitism, when we said we would tear it out from its roots, we were serious about that.”
The three names who did make Labour’s longlist were Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness, Newcastle councillor Nicu Ion, and ex-MEP Paul Brannen. Mr Driscoll claimed on the BBC’s Newsnight on Monday that Gateshead’s Labour group had refused to nominate any of those for the mayoral selection contest “on the basis of the way I have been treated”.
However, Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon clarified that there were in fact a “number of reasons” for that. He told the LDRS that members of the 49-strong group held various reservations – including Driscoll supporters unhappy at his exclusion, non-Driscoll supporters who “wanted some explanation” about the events of recent days, and some who are entirely opposed to the idea of any elected mayor.
Coun Gannon, who has personally endorsed Ms McGuinness as Labour’s candidate, said his group had “made no statement that this was because of what happened to Jamie Driscoll or because we support Jamie Driscoll”.
Independent councillors in Newcastle are also seeking to submit a motion in support of Mr Driscoll to a city council meeting next week.
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