Crucial National Executive Committee vote transforms Labour's future

A raft of pro-Jeremy Corbyn candidates have swept the board in a crucial election to Labour's National Executive Committee.

Among them is John Lansman, the founder of left-wing pressure group Momentum.

Manchester councillor Yasmine Dar and long-standing member of Labour's National Policy Forum Rachel Garnham also join the body, which runs the party and sets its rules.

Comedian Eddie Izzard and other candidates on the centrist side of the party - including one former NEC member standing for re-election - missed out on the roles.

Although little noticed since the turn of the year amid the trials of Theresa May's latest botched reshuffle and the NHS winter crisis, they were the latest staging post in the Labour civil war.

Hitherto, control of the NEC has largely eluded the leadership, with the composition being finely balanced between left and right.

Technically, with Kezia Dugdale's shock resignation as Scottish Labour leader last year, the left had a small advantage.

But with their win on Monday, that majority has become well entrenched.

That worries plenty of Labour MPs. They know that the long-term aim of the left is to wrest more control from Members of Parliament to members of the Labour party.

At the forefront of that movement was Jon Lansman, perennial "Labour Lefty" (as he calls himself).

He told me: "I think members need to have a greater say and need to be seen to have a greater say because firstly they need to feel ownership of it, but we also have 600,000 members who know their communities, fellow workers and their workplaces."

In practice this could mean lowering once again the number of MPs required to nominate someone for the leadership (or allowing party members, trade unions or affiliated Labour groups to do so as well).

Or it could mean handing power of manifesto policy setting to the membership (possibly, as Lansman tells me, through "the power of digital democracy").

Mandatory re-selection of MPs could also be on the cards, meaning those already sitting in the Commons would have to be readopted as candidates by their local parties before every general election.

There's no doubt Lansman and his fellow left-wingers have deeply held beliefs on democratisation of the party.

There's also little doubt that they also believe such measures would empower their own wing of the party and embed the Corbyn legacy and permanently transform Labour.

With a larger majority on the NEC this project can begin with gusto.

There is, however, one solitary fleck of grit in the Corbyn oyster. Another slow-rumbling development in Labour politics could derail this new leftist-hegemony.

Len McCluskey, the close Corbyn ally and General Secretary of Unite (Labour's biggest donor and Britain's biggest trade union), could have his election as the head of his union declared void - after alleged voting irregularities.

If that happened it would throw Unite into turmoil and he may potentially have to hand over to Gerard Coyne, no friend of Corbyn.

That could make Unite's seats on the NEC up for grabs and the left's majority might in the medium-term disappear. A Labour source tells me the Unite decision might come very soon.

It's just a reminder that just when one faction seems unassailable the political gods have a peculiar way of redressing the balance.

In the 1990s and 2000s it looked as if the Labour left was moribund, never to return. Now they seem invincible. But invincibility can be fleeting. Perhaps then all the more reason to move quickly.

Now the Corbynistas have won this battle, expect more headlines on changes to party rules - and sooner rather than later.