Four out of five facing pressure in constituencies ahead of expected election are women

Four of the first five Labour MPs to face deselection threats are female, leading to concerns that women may be at increased risk of being targeted unfairly by their local parties.

Diana Johnson, who represents Hull North, and the high-profile Jewish MP Margaret Hodge, Barking, have already been officially “triggered” by their local parties, which means they will have to convince members that they should stay on as their MP.

There was confusion on Monday night as to whether South Shields MP Emma Lewell-Buck will have to face an open selection against other candidates to keep her seat after a tied vote at her constituency Labour party (CLP).

A fourth woman, Louise Ellman, who is Jewish and the MP for Liverpool Riverside, has been called on by her local party to resign. However, motions requesting that she stand down were banned by Labour’s regional office on Monday after it emerged the debate on her future was tabled for the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in Judaism.

Lewell-Buck, who has represented South Shields since 2013 when she took over the seat from David Miliband in a byelection, said she has suffered long-standing and well-publicised issues with some members of her CLP.

“I’ve an angry cohort of men in the constituency and there’s ongoing complaints in the Labour party about it. It goes back to my selection as MP in the first place – that I wasn’t the chosen man,” she said.

“Women in politics always have a tough job but I think there’s particular areas where there’s been a longstanding culture of misogyny and something the Labour party centrally has been unable to get to the bottom of in South Shields.”

The CLP was temporarily suspended three years ago while an investigation was carried out into an alleged culture of bullying.

A Labour source said: “An investigation took place which didn’t find evidence to back up such claims about South Shields, and a wide range of measures have been put in place to support Emma Lewell-Buck and the CLP.”

Labour said wider concerns about women MPs facing the trigger process were “baseless”.

About 50 Labour MPs have gone through the selection process so far ahead of an expected general election. About 15 are expected to stand down and those wanting to run again are either being automatically reselected by party members or local party branches have voted to trigger an open selection process.

Under rule changes made by the party in 2018 the threshold for open selection battles was cut from 50% to 33% of local branches or affiliated unions within a CLP.

Roger Godsiff, MP for Birmingham Hall Green, is the only man to face deselection so far. A Labour source said that suggestions women had been unfairly targeted were without foundation. “This is baseless. Of the three MPs who have been triggered, one is a man who has been widely condemned for opposing the party’s position on LGBT+ education,” said the source.

“There is nothing new about trigger ballots. They’ve happened before every general election since 2001. We’re a democratic party and members have the right to have a say in who represents them.”

Helen Jones, MP for Warrington North, spoke recently of a “culture of contempt for women” within Labour and that it was “no surprise to anyone” that the first two Labour MPs facing full reselection ballots were female. Labour said her claims about an anti-woman bias were also baseless.

Johnson, who has held her Hull North seat since 2005, has complained to the party about how she was deselected and that a local councillor prematurely set up a campaign to take her seat, which is against party rules.

She said: “I think at this moment with a national crisis over Brexit and the possibility of a general election shortly it’s a very challenging time to be going through a full open reselection but if that’s what the local party has decided I will get on with it.

“I am sure there are a few reasons why this has happened to me but I will now be putting all my energies into campaigning hard to be the Labour candidate at the next general election in Hull North.”

Other MPs have said they are far more fearful of reselection after seeing what has happened to colleagues and that the main group under threat appear to be the soft left and those who typically “keep their heads down”.

One admitted missing the party’s conference in Brighton to campaign in the constituency to be reselected as Labour’s candidate instead. Some MPs are still concerned Ellman will face an official trigger ballot at a later date.

It emerged on Sunday that the Labour North-West office, which covers Ellman’s seat, wrote to local branches to advise that no confidence motions submitted in the MP should not be discussed because they could prejudice the outcome of a forthcoming trigger ballot. There have been at least two no confidence motions proposed against her.

A meeting of the executives of the Riverside CLP has been arranged for Monday night to discuss the regional office’s advice.