There’s also the central party machine being heavy handed when no-one wants them, and not helping when people ask.
There’s a local councillor where I live who’s a nightmare. She thinks it’s her god-given right to become MP and that she must sabotage anyone who gets in her way (especially other women, there can only be one Labour Woman in our local area). Except she never gets the nomination, so turns her energy to tearing down whoever does.
Our last candidate was excellent, but got no support from central office, because she was backed by Momentum. There was a anonymous muck-raking blog about this candidate set up, raking over her life for scandal (they couldn’t find any or make much out of anything) and racist dog-whistles because this candidate is mixed race. The blog claimed that this candidate was “unsuitable” for the area, and it was insulting to have her as candidate because she’s “too educated” for the local people. It was very clearly the nightmare local woman and her pal doing it, and there were also anonymous complaints against the candidate sent to head office, which she had to waste time and energy defending herself against.
The same nightmare local woman also saw a local activist doing a campaign about an important local issue, and instead of backing it, set up her own rival group and tried to sabotage and harass the woman running the campaign.
Yet head office do absolutely nothing about the nightmare woman, despite people complaining about her again and again with evidence, because she’s doing useful work for them chasing away left-wingers and grass roots activists.
