• WHEN I was in the Labour Party it was always very noticeable when a election appeared on the horizon how the political manoeuvrings and internal shenanigans become even more intense than they usually are.

The nomination of prospective candidates and the process they have to go through in order to be selected is kept under tight control by small cabals of people who have managed to engineer themselves on to the relevant decision-making bodies long before any election comes round.

I don’t know how Lorna Greenwood was selected for the forthcoming Fortune Green by-election but the letter from Dr Agnes Kory (Political power struggles don’t help people, June 17), who was also a candidate, suggests that Ms Greenwood won the contest on the basis of considerations that had nothing to do with local issues and everything to do with top-down political power, exercised from the highest echelons of the Labour Party by a small number of individuals who have no connection to, or knowledge of, Fortune Green and the concerns of the people who live there. Or maybe I’m wrong.

The point is surely that there is no reason for the Labour Party to be secretive about what those considerations were.

Since it is often claimed that we live in an open democracy, may I therefore invite the Labour Party to respond, via your newspaper, setting out what questions each candidate for Fortune Green was asked and how the selection process was conducted.

Surely anyone who may be thinking of voting for Ms Greenwood ought to be given access to full information about the basis, on how many candidates there were, how many were let through for approval by the rank-and-file party members, and why she was chosen as being a better candidate than anyone else for Fortune Green.

People should know exactly who they are voting for.

TOM MUIRHEAD
Address supplied