Simon Danczuk Is Finished

[Update at end of post]

If we are to have a General Election on the 8th of June, the Labour Party has one outstanding matter which it could clear up before nominations close: the future within the party, or lack of it, for Rochdale’s still nominally Labour but increasingly semi-detached MP Simon Danczuk. He has been suspended ever since he was caught “sexting” a 17-year-old girl at the end of 2015. Will his hearing come soon?

Spanker Si will be hoping it will - not because he hopes Labour’s NEC will want him back (unlikely), but because it’s his only chance of being the party’s candidate in Rochdale (he can forget being nominated anywhere else). Only by being readmitted to the party after the NEC has considered his case can he stand as a Labour candidate. Why is that? A Labour Party source tells me that they have consulted the rule book (unlike Dan Hodges).

And the rule book is unequivocal on the subject: a Labour Party member who has been suspended, and remains suspended, cannot be considered for nomination as a candidate. That is why Danczuk’s only hope is to get his NEC hearing before nominations close, and for it to go his way. Otherwise he is screwed. His only chance would be to stand as an Independent, and therefore without the resources of the local Labour Party behind him.

Who might back an independent Danczuk candidature, apart from representatives of the tabloid press and Himself Personally Now? Even the local publicans whose takings are routinely swelled by Spanker Si’s benders would most likely do no more than politely abstain from that one. Local businesses are unlikely to forgive him being elsewhere - and ratarsed - when central Rochdale was inundated by flooding.

No, the only remote possibility for Danczuk is that Arron Banks gets his Patriotic Alliance off the ground before nominations close. But that would ally him with what Young Dave unwisely, but correctly, identified as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”. So that would be the support of Rochdale’s Bangladeshi community down the chute in one go. And in any case, he would lose - even if Labour do badly nationally.

But, Danczuk loyalists might protest, there would have to be someone from the party membership prepared to put their name forward for nomination. That person might have to stand against someone who had the advantage of being the incumbent MP. Well, as the long-running satirical TV show might have put it, Have I Got News For You: Zelo Street understands that there is already one name in the frame.

There will be more. And Labour is under no obligation to bring forward the date of Simon Danczuk’s hearing in order to give him that slimmest of slim chances of getting his name on the candidate shortlist. The party can just leave him hanging in the breeze, while not unreasonably telling anyone wanting to know that they have bigger fish to fry right now.

Spanker Si’s recently eventful time as Rochdale’s MP is about to come to a close. And there is nothing he can do about it. Just rejoice at that news.

[UPDATE 1750 hours: Simon Danczuk has now been quoted by Rochdale Online as saying that he hopes he will be the Labour candidate. If not, he will stand anyway.

This would do the Labour NEC's job for them: if he were to stand against an official Labour candidate, he would be summarily expelled from the party. Job done!]