UPDATE 3PM 01/11/14: the result has been announced, and Christina Rees will contest Neath for Labour at the 2015 general election.

THE south Wales town of Neath will be on the front of no other newspaper today.

But as you read this, the town is choosing a successor for MP Peter Hain — and some say the contest epitomises everything wrong with politics.

Seven months after neighbouring Aberavon selected Stephen Kinnock — son of former Labour leader Neil — Neath is faced with a choice of three outsiders. The favourite is Mabel McKeown — an enthusiastic charity worker brought up in Los Angeles and London. She will face Bridgend-based Christina Rees, previously backed in internal elections by pro-business lobby group Progress, and Karen Wilkie, the deputy general secretary of the Co-operative Party.

Three local candidates were kept out — to “further McKeown’s selection,” according to one member. Mr Hain’s former agent reportedly shouted at a selection committee member who suggested shortlisting all six applicants.

A defensive Mr Hain last week insisted he was not stitching up the seat for Ms McKeown — as the Guido Fawkes blog had suggested. Not everyone is convinced. Three separate sources told the Morning Star that a clique of activists instrumental in selecting Mr Kinnock has worked flat-out for Ms McKeown.

Ms McKeown’s mother, TV star Tracey Ullman, is close to Neil Kinnock. He even appeared in her music video My Guy.

For some, this is all too much. “Stephen Kinnock and Mabel McKeown are the Ken and Barbie of the Labour Party,” one member said.

“Kinnock’s harpies were asking people whether they were going to turn up, and then pressing them, can we register you for a postal vote.”

The member did not accuse the pair of breaking rules. It was Mr Kinnock who complained in the Aberavon contest when the staff of sitting MP Hywel Francis backed Progress activist Jeremy Miles. Another south Wales leftwinger insists Mr Kinnock was not a parachute candidate.

But though the party enshrined a commitment to working-class representation in its rulebook two years ago, local candidates have time and again been pushed out.

In Aberavon, Mr Francis’s staff allegedly phoned members saying that lay Unison rep Mark Fisher “lacked the academic ability” to be an MP.

In Glenrothes, Scotland, local candidate Julie MacDougall lost out to Melanie Ward — described by one local member as a “parachutist.” The Scottish party has refused to disclose the breakdown of the vote cast for each candidate. Three constituency executive members have resigned.

Where there is officially no impropriety in selections, there is always room for a well-oiled machine to take advantage of low and aging party memberships. And perhaps, some members think a big name in a slick suit will reverse their fortunes.

In some areas, local activists and unions have been more successful. Then look at the backlash after Falkirk, from a Progress machine incredulous it had some opposition.

Ms McKeown contested Ealing Central and Acton last year. An activist who encountered that selection said “hints and reminders” of Ms Ullman’s donations to the party were put about at the time.

Allan McKeown Presents Limited, the company set up by Ms McKeown’s late father, donated £1,700 to shadow chancellor Ed Balls’s local party branch in April. Ms Ullman is listed as a company director.

Ms McKeown did not respond to requests for comment, but an Ealing Labour member said she had played fairly in the contest — which she lost to academic Rupa Huq.

As for Ms Rees, she happens to be the ex-wife of Ron Davies, Tony Blair’s original choice for first minister of Wales. She alientated leftwingers when she ignored a mandate from Bridgend members at the 2012 Labour conference.

Whatever the result today, Labour must surely explain why seats continue to fall into the hands of its aristocracy.

conradlandin@peoples-press.com