Sham of Democracy
What a complete waste of time, effort and money - given that there are a lot less than 20,000 Labour party members in Scotland these days.
I remember reading several years ago that the Scottish Labour membership had fallen below 20,000 - and since then the party has been in free-fall.
So well over 280,000 of the 300,000 ballot papers must be targeted on union members - whose unions are affiliated to the Labour party - the bulk of which will be from the big public sector unions - GMB, Unite and Unison.
The laugh is that the majority of union members don't support the Labour party these days - and only penny numbers will return their ballot papers - less than 10% is likely.
Yet the derisory number of union members who do vote - will carry the same weight as all the individual Labour party members across the whole of Scotland - and some will be voting two or even three times.
Because Labour's barmy electoral college is divided into three sections - individual party members (less than 20,000), MSPs and MPS (less than 100) and affiliated trade unions (more than 280,000).
But some votes in the People's Party are worth much more than others.
The vote of one MSP vote is worth the votes of 200 party members - and the vote of one party member vote is worth the votes of 14 union members.
So how can that be fair or democratic?
The whole sorry mess has been cobbled together to maintain the unhealthy influence of trade union bosses - in Labour's internal affairs.
Instead of just leaving Labour party members to decide for themselves - on the basis of one-member-one-vote.
But the biggest laugh of all is that more unions members support the SNP - than Labour - these days.
In which case why bother asking them - who should be the next Labour leader?
