Corbyn’s mob recruiting activists on £25k salaries

JEREMY Corbyn’s hard- Left Momentum group is recruiting teams of paid activists around the country as it goes on a permanent war footing to oust Tory MPs.

The grassroots organisation is credited with helping Labour outgun the Tories on the doorstep before the general election last June by flooding constituencies with volunteers.

Now it is employing regional organisers as it mounts a ‘permanent election campaign’ and seeks to tighten the Labour leader’s grip on the party.

Momentum, which grew out of Mr Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign in 2015, has launched a so- called ‘ decapitation strategy’ which is aimed at unseating senior Tories including Boris Johnson and Amber Rudd at the next election.

It is also looking to corral its supporters so that candidates sympathetic to Mr Corbyn are picked to stand for Labour in winnable seats, with fears it could attempt to de-select his critics in the parliamentary party.

The group is advertising on its website for an unspecified number of regional organisers on permanent and temporary contracts on salaries of between £18,000 and £25,000.

According to the job specification, the employees will ‘support groups, members and supporters to campaign for Labour victories in the general election’.

They are also tasked with ‘utilising a range of online and offline tools to boost turnout for Labour campaigning activists’ and ‘building links’ with trade union organisations.

Momentum’s move will strike fear into both sitting Conservative MPs and Labour moderates. Until now it has largely relied on the goodwill and enthusiasm of volunteers.

The group has already served notice that it will target senior Tories in marginal seats, with For- eign Secretary Mr Johnson, Home Secretary Miss Rudd and former party leader Iain Duncan Smith all likely to face campaigns to unseat them.

It mirrors the Lib Dems’ 2005 decapitation strategy which tried – unsuccessfully – to paralyse the Tories by taking out senior figures, including then leader Michael Howard and Theresa May.

A series of training camps will be held across the country where supporters will be taught a range of campaigning techniques, including how to make viral videos, as part of efforts to target 160 marginal seats.

It comes after Mr Corbyn spent much of the summer visiting 40 key marginals, and Tory MPs have warned that Labour has main- tained its activities locally since the election.

As well as boosting Labour with boots on the ground ahead of the election last June, Momentum was credited with helping the party reach far more people via social media than other political groups. The Tories spent £1million on social media adverts during their election campaign, most of them attacking Mr Corbyn.

Despite this, it is believed that Labour’s messages – backed up by Momentum – had far more reach, even though the party had less money to spend.

It is not known how Momentum is funding its recruitment drive as most of its money is thought to come through small donations that do not need to be declared to the Electoral Commission.

The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act states that any ‘membership’ political group, such as Momentum, must declare any donations above £7,500. No such donations to Momentum have been registered with the Electoral Commission.

Momentum was set up four weeks after Mr Corbyn’s shock victory in the Labour leadership contest in 2015.

It is run independently of Labour and Mr Corbyn. However, since July this year all members have been required also to be members of the party, and it is seeking to become an official affiliate. According to its website, it has 31,000 members, 200,000 supporters and 170 local groups.

Mr Corbyn has appointed a former head of the civil service to help prepare his party for government. Lord Kerslake, 62, has also enlisted a group of former mandarins to support him.

The independent crossbench peer, who is not being paid for his advisory role, headed the civil service from 2012 to 2015. He said many of Mr Corbyn’s Left-wing ideas were ‘not unusual’ and were common on the Continent.

‘Target 160 marginal seats’