A SECOND city Labour Party group has passed a motion which could lead to sitting MPs facing reselection-or-deselection votes ahead of the next General Election.

The decision by the Kemptown Constituency Labour Party (CLP) comes a week after the same motion was approved by the party’s Hove group.

It increases pressure on the party’s national conference committee to approve the idea for consideration at the September conference in Brighton.

The motion passed on Thursday night would invert the balance of power between MPs and local activists, meaning only parliamentarians with overwhelming support from party members - regardless of their majority across the constituency as a whole - would be reselected automatically.

At a time of fierce divisions within the Labour Party, with one local branch of left-wing group Momentum having published a ‘hit-list’ of 50 MPs it wishes to deselect, the move raises the spectre of a nationwide coup by left-wing activists.

During the election campaign, Brighton’s Momentum activists focused their attentions almost exclusively in the Kemptown consistency of Corbyn-supporting Lloyd Russell-Moyle.

Mr Russell-Moyle won the seat from the Tories, overturning Conservative incumbent Simon Kirby’s slender majority of under 700.

Reacting to Thursday’s vote, Mr Russell-Moyle said: “It’s not something I voted for, I abstained. I don’t think it’s right for the MP to be deciding this.

“I’ve always said I’d only stand with the support of members. I’m very comfortable about it either way.”

His comments are in marked contrast to the response from Mr Kyle when his Hove CLP meeting last week passed the late-scheduled motion with fewer than half its members in attendance.

Mr Kyle MP said afterwards: “With the unprecedentedly increased majority comes an unprecedented set of expectations to deliver, and that’s all I’m focused on. If other people have a different approach to politics, then so be it.”

Similar votes have taken place elsewhere in the country, including in Bristol where the sitting MP has had frequent public rows with Jeremy Corbyn.

In a letter to the paper following The Argus’s report on the Hove vote, prominent Momentum activist Greg Hadfield wrote: “Momentum Brighton & Hove was delighted branch delegates... voted by a significant majority for a motion that argues no Labour MP has the right to a job for life. Why would any Labour MP not want to submit themselves - even voluntarily - to such democratic accountability?”