What a broken ballot box tells us about the Labour party’s future

I expect that the selection of a Labour candidate in Erith and Thamesmead would normally be of limited interest to Coffee Housers. But the contest there, which has had to be suspended because of a broken seal on a ballot box, is a sign of the coming internecine war in the Labour party.

Erith and Thamesmead has Georgia Gould, the 22 year old daughter of Philip Gould Blair’s pollster, competing with a candidate backed by Unite, the union that Charlie Whelan works for. The fact that even with Labour still in government this contest has become so fractious suggests that after a heavy defeat Labour’s internal discipline might come close to total collapse.