Momentum has suffered a string of defeats in Labour party selections, Guardian analysis can reveal, winning just a handful of battles for marginal seats across England and Wales.

Of the 29 seats where candidates have been selected, just seven selections were won by candidates with Momentum campaigns behind them.



Overnight, Erica Lewis, a former staffer for MP Cat Smith,lost her bid for selection in Morecambe and Lunesdale, despite backing from Momentum.

The selection highlighted tension between the local and national movements. North Lancashire’s Momentum chair protested against the national group endorsing a candidate for the seat apparently without consulting local members.

Kay Dickinson, who resigned as chair of the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency Labour party over the process, described the approach as “patronising, inappropriate, heavy handed and undemocratic” and added in a Facebook post: “Quite frankly it is an insult to the other left candidates and the hard work and advances that local Momentum activists in the constituency have made.”

Over the weekend, Laura Davies, Labour’s 2017 candidate in Shrewsbury, was reselected by members, beating Cindy Mason-Morris, who was backed by the local Momentum group.

Candidates backed by Momentum have also been defeated in selections for other marginal seats including Rossendale and Darwen, Rochford and Southend East, Carlisle and Corby.

Mike Hedges, a Momentum- and Unite-backed candidate with close ties to the Labour leader, lost his attempt to become the candidate in Watford after a bitter selection contest during which he was initially left off the shortlist. The taxi driver was added after Unite complained, but lost at the final hustings to Chris Ostrowski, who stood in June.

Momentum said the results dispelled the claim that it had total control of the party and proved Labour members were diverse and open-minded.

Labour is hoping to select more than 75 candidates for marginal seats by April this year, with the aim of winning the seats at the next general election.

Several candidates selected over Momentum candidates have criticised Labour’s leadership, including Sally Keeble, the former MP for Northampton North, who won re-selection against the Momentum-backed campaigner Anjona Roy.

Keeble, who once said Jeremy Corbyn would be “very damaging indeed”, has been contesting the seat since 2010 when she lost to the Conservative Michael Ellis, who now has a majority of just 807.

Other moderate Corbyn critics have won selection battles elsewhere, including Peter Lamb, a local council leader who will fight the bellwether seat of Crawley.

A significant number of candidates selected in the 29 seats were considered locally to be the leftwing candidate, even if they didn’t have significant Momentum backing.

In Norwich North, the Momentum-backed Unison organiser Jo Rust did not make the shortlist, prompting an angry letter from 150 local members to the party’s headquarters. Karen Davis, a local councillor who gained Momentum’s backing in Rust’s stead, won the selection.

Momentum is understood to consider two more candidates to be broadly aligned with its values, even though it did not explicitly endorse them. They are Jo Pike, a lecturer who will take on the Tories’ Philip Davies in Shipley, and Debbie Bannigan, a Unite activist and former charity boss, selected in Rugby to challenge the Conservative incumbent Mark Pawsey.

A Momentum source said the national group had only officially campaigned for candidates in 18 of the seats. “In one breath our critics will say we’re taking over the party and then in another, claim Momentum aren’t doing very well at getting candidates selected,” the source said.

“What’s really happening is that Labour members are, and always have been, intelligent, independently minded people who will pick the candidate they think best represents their constituency. This has resulted not in a hostile takeover but in a diverse range of candidates being selected across the country.”

Momentum’s fortunes could yet turn around. The group had a surprise success in Stoke-on-Trent South, one of the country’s most marginal seats, snatched from Labour by the Tories in June. It backed winning candidate Mark McDonald, a London-based barrister who founded Labour Friends of Palestine.

That seat also saw discord between local activists and Momentum’s national operation. Momentum’s branch in Newcastle-under-Lyme backed the local councillor Ruth Rosenau, and the constituencychair said he was disappointed McDonald, a long-time Corbyn ally, was not from Stoke.

Similar divisions have emerged in Truro, where another local Momentum chair, Laura Rogers, resigned, saying local members had been shut out of the process to choose which candidate to endorse and had been “insidiously undermined”, which the national group denied.

Richard Angell, the director of the Labour centrist group Progress, said the diversity of chosen candidates showed how it would be folly for the party to embark on a policy of mandatory reselections of sitting MPs. “There is clearly no demand for it and Labour members from all wings want to focus on beating the Tories, not infighting,” he said.

Of the seven Momentum first-choice candidates who won selection, several were 2017 candidates, including Emily Owen, a student who will contest Aberconwy, and the local councillors Fiona Derbyshire in York Outer and Charlynne Pullen in Milton Keynes North.

New victories for the leftwing group include Paul Farmer, a former bus driver who wonthe selection race in Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, Labour’s top target seat in the south-west. Momentum also backed Greg Marshall, a local councillor who won the right to contest Broxtowe, the seat of pro-EU Tory MP Anna Soubry.