Last night, the parliamentary Labour party debated and agreed to ballot Labour MPs on a rule change from Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey – two of the MPs who last year nominated Liz Kendall – which sought to eject from his place on Labour’s national executive Steve Rotheram, MP for Liverpool Walton who nominated Andy Burnham.
The justification is that he was elected to that position by MPs as a backbench representative and he is now PPS to the party leader. The fact is that the status of a PPS, frontbench or backbench, has never been very clear. What is clear is that it hasn’t stopped a PPS – to the leader or otherwise – being a backbench representative on the executive before. Ann Snelgrove was in that position from 2008 to 2010 including as PPS to Gordon Brown whilst he was leader. So far as I know, no-one questioned this at the time. Continue reading