Peter Kenyon

Angela Eagle sets out her stall

Congratulations to Angela Eagle on having her name put forward by Labour Leader Ed Miliband to replace Peter Hain as chair of the National Policy Forum.

I worked with her on the LabOUR Commission in 2006/07. This is her Foreword to the Commission's Interim Report - Renewal a two-way process for the 21st century, published in 2007:

Foreword – Angela Eagle MP

Labour has to renew its financial, organisational and political vigour to secure a fourth term in Government . The loss of four million votes and half of our membership since 1997 sounds the warning bells clearly enough. Political culture is changing and we must respond. The era of Labour as an over centralised ‘command party’ - see Figure 1 opposite - which replaced the chaos of the 1980s with a winning formula, has now become counter-productive. It has bred cynicism and stifled activism. The urgent question now is: What should replace it? The forthcoming Leader/Deputy Leader elections will help to define this new era for our Party. The LabOUR Commission’s Interim recommendations presented here are based onthe findings of the first representative study of Labour Party members’ views since Labour’s landslide victory in 1997. Both lapsed and current members were contacted. A crucial lesson from our research is that Labour in Government has not trusted Party members enough. Our research findings show that the Labour Party has changed. Labour Party members are pragmatic and they want Labour to be in Government. They understand how important it is to win. In return, they expect to be trusted to help shape policies to win support from the communities Labour seeks to serve.This Interim Report suggests a model of Party organisation which will serve Labour well in the future. As a Party seeking to empower all sections of our society, we know we cannot rely on the kind of mercenary multi-millionaire donors now currently filling Tory party coffers. Labour will always need its activists who go door knocking whatever the weather. Members, both individuals and those from our affiliated organisations, are Labour's most precious resource. Our interim recommendations should be seen against the background of rising and wasteful election spending on billboard advertising, and remote professional canvassing. That is why all year round election spending limits are essential. This would create a level playing field between the main political parties for the first time in British political history.As a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee, I know we have it within our power to reinvigorate Labour and remake our Party structures with members at the centre and accountability re-established. People join the Labour Party to change the world and make our society a better place for us all to live in. I hope our Interim Report will provide fresh hope to Labour Party members throughout Britain. Our recommendations show how renewal is possible, and that under new leadership it must be achieved by a genuine dialogue.

May 2007

The full report is available here.

Will Ed's donation cap rate as highly as Baldrick's cunning plan?

Desultory efforts on my part to discover the rationale for the call by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband on the AM Show on Sunday 15 April 2012 for a £5,000 cap on donations to UK political parties has left me wondering.

Should we blame Baldrick?

Update promised as soon as I get some information worth reporting.

Ed Goes to Bradford

There is one person I was hoping to hear was included in list of people Labour Leader Ed Miliband was going to listen to in Bradford, following his party's humiliation in the Bradford West by-election.

This report:  Ed Miliband 'listens and learns' in Bradford after poll defeat | Politics | The Guardian http://bit.ly/HAnXCD makes no reference to him.

His name is Naweed Hussain. He was the former MP, Marsha Singh's campaign organiser and agent, who became George Galloway's de facto agent. There is an excellent account of his role in Prospect magazine here. The author David Goodhart sums up his role:

Even more than George Galloway, a young man called Naweed Hussain is the key to the Bradford West by-election upset.

So, Ed: Did you meet him? If not, why not? Too hot to handle?

 

Has Ed thought through the human/financial costs of year-round campaigning?

Labour Leader Ed Miliband gave a speech earlier today in Derby in which he set out an ambition for year-round campaigning on your street.

But I know we can do more. Not just campaigning at these elections for your vote. But also campaigning year round for change on your street, in your neighbourhood.

This is a fine sentiment, but has he done his sums? Is year round campaigning actually what the Labour Party should be aiming to do? Or is that just part of a community political process? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to discourage this line of thinking. I just want the resource implications acknowledged and members encouraged to think and plan in those terms. Otherwise, Ed, if I may address you personally, you risk widening the gulf between yourself, our party and the electorate. People understand time and money, they have to wrestle with completing demands day-in, day-out.

BTW as I no longer have any input into the policy prescriptions you set out, why should I bother to campaign? Time for a return to resolution-based debate, providing the resolution is the result of local collective deliberation and not a personal agenda? Whatever, you are going to have to be bold to break the current political mould.

 

Bradford West - a lifeline or noose for Labour leader Ed Miliband?

Ed Miliband interviewed in today's Observer newspaper just might be starting to ask pertinent questions about the Labour Party on the ground. According to the paper's political editor, Toby Helm:

At the top of a list of questions he will want to answer is why Labour's canvassing, on the eve of polling, was still showing the party way ahead. "Even by late Wednesday our canvass returns were suggesting that we would win."

The failure to gauge what was happening is part of a wider challenge Miliband wants to address – how to ensure Labour engages better with local people and supporters.

I should point out that I am not the Labour Party's leading expert on canvassing. But I have done my fair share in the last 40 years. Local organisational capacity was my starting point in the Twittersphere as soon as it became evident an upset was in prospect on Thursday night/Friday morning of last week. I asked Fabian Society deputy general secretary @marcusaroberts who was minded to cross his fingers for a Labour retain:

Done CLP audit / electoral ward, membership / campaigning / fundraising capacity? No point crossing fingers.#bradfordwest

This provoked a twitterslapdown from Labour First campaigning guru Luke Akehurst:

@PeterKenyon the Bradford West CLP is extremely active and large so problem not organisational

That compounds the issues that our Leader is going to have to review, and not before time in my view. If a constituency labour party (CLP) that is "extremely active" and "large" to quote Luke can't spot a looming loss of 10,000 votes, then it is not unreasonable to speculate that the Party is suffering systemic failure. NB Luke is seeking re-election to Labour's National Executive Committee. 

Labour has invested heavily in IT support for voter identification in New Labour speak or canvassing as, I'm glad to see, Ed called it in his interview. So it should be possible to analyse the canvass returns by electoral ward/date/canvasser. Let's be clear this is an art, not a science. Critical dates for reviewing Labour's standing might be pre-last date for postal vote applications, last day of canvassing. What were the canvass results (if any) from postal voters? The overarching problem in any canvassing is quality control - filtering out canvasser's inclinations (for example: to pose leading questions, record what they want to hear, discount what they don't want to hear) is impossible at the point of data entry.

High levels of volunteer commitment and dedication are required to reduce the risk of error, and maintain records in a timely fashion on Contact Creator. I would be surprised if any canvassing of representative samples was conducted in key wards in the final week of the campaign. (I have vivid memories of straw poll sampling Labour voters in Brownwood Ward in the last days of the 1992 general election campaign and picking up switching in the wake of the Tories' devastating Tax Bombshell advertising. By then it was too late and we were doomed, as it turned out to another five years' in opposition.)

If nothing else, Ed will learn more about canvassing. He has also promised to revisit the constituency and listen. Very commendable, but who does he listen to? People 'volunteered' by party staff, or a representative sample of Labour core voters as recorded on the canvass returns?

Next there is that bizarre message to staff co-signed by Ed and party general secretary, Iain McNicol issued the day after the by-election. There was no mention of volunteers. What on earth is going in their heads? What more eloquent proof of just how disconnected the Leadership is than a read of this indictment of Labour's political class? We know there are problems with party staff, but this herogram is absurd in the circumstances.

Our staff in Bradford were fantastic. As always our staff give everything for Labour and Bradford West was no exception. Staff can hold their heads high about their performance, we shoulder these problems as one party and we fight back as one party. 

What is it about the Labour Party that performance management doesn't apply to party staff? Then you realise the Leadership is so wedded to the paid-hands model of modern political organisation that with the London Mayoral elections now only weeks ago they have got to keep staff on side. The party on the ground (i.e. volunteers) remain a resource to be developed.

So those of us who thought Ed might be able to save the Labour Party are going to have to go along with the warm words, and, as Marcus did on Thursday night, keep our fingers crossed for 3 May. But that should not detract from the need for a radical new approach to party organisation based on building up from the electoral ward level the Labour Party's volunteer-based membership/campaigning/fundraising capacity with professional support (not control).

If the Bradford West inquest leads Ed to that conclusion, it will represent a lifeline. Continued dependence on the Refounding Labour command and control professional praetorian guard model will prove a noose.

 

Labour Party democracy: that pasty feeling

No, with elections in five weeks' time, now is not the time to write discursively about Labour Party internal democracy. So I will. 

An early morning coffee with Labour Democratic Network chair, Andy Howell, prompted a heated debate about the politics of pasties, petrol cans and parliamentary selections in no particular order. We were ensconced in a newly opened italian-style cafe in that Labour managerial stronghold, the London Borough of Hackney.

Did Labour leader, Ed Miliband further Labour values by being filmed queuing with Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Ed Balls for sausage rolls in Gregg's, Britain's biggest baker and therefore victim of the proposed imposition of value-added tax (VAT) to freshly baked products such as pasties?  

As a symbol of how a Conservative government led by a pack of multi-millionaires is out of touch with the vast majority of 'hard-working' people, the pasty tax is resonating. Recent measures of public opinion suggest support for the coalition is waning. Labour's challenge as ever is how does is rebuild trust with the electorate, and establish a membership/campaigning base in every electoral ward nationwide?

In that regard, like the ambient temperature test for taxing the pasty, I find myself going hot and cold when it comes to judging the Labour Party's commitment to democratic socialism. Inevitably to my mind it's going to have to get personal.

Ed Miliband has evidently given up any pretence of believing what forms the first sentence of Chapter 1, Clause IV of the Party's Constitution, namely:

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party.

Since his election he has accepted the Labour First/Progress domination of the party machine as a given and continued with Blairite top-down practices marginalising the National Executive Committee, and the National Policy Forum, and taking the practices of personal preferment and patronage to new depths. Abolishing shadow cabinet elections, and retaining the appointed and unconstitutional posts of Party Chair and Deputy Chairs are but two examples.

Among his advisors, egging him on in this anti-democratic fashion, is Lucy Powell, now deputy Chief of Staff in the Leader's office. She was the unsuccessful prospective parliamentary candidate for Manchester Withington in 2010. She is still a member of the National Policy Forum representing the North West who reportedly ran on the Labour First/Progress ticket. Yesterday, she was short-listed by the NEC panel as one of four for the prospective parliamentary candidate selection in Manchester Central. (Sitting MP, Tony Lloyd, is standing down to run as Police and Crime Commissioner for Manchester.) Andy and I wondered whether local members in Manchester might be interested to know about her role in, for example, trying to stop Iain McNicol being selected as General Secretary, preferring the Labour Party Deputy General Secretary, Chris Lennie, instead?

Maybe the majority of Manchester Central members would approve of her actions in that regard, as well as keeping the unconstitutional posts of Party Chair, and Deputy and scrapping shadow cabinet elections. But how would they ever know? Of course, party rules forbid personal attacks in internal elections. However, for any member concerned about the rise and rise of the political class in the Labour Party, we have got to ask ourselves how is that trend ever going to be reversed?

If the nasty party can get a media pasting for taxing the pasty baker. The Labour Party nomenklatura can expect one for playing the 'known quantity' gambit. Nudge, nudge, local woman, local champion, backed Ed Miliband for Leader, we need a woman MP in Manchester...... That was the line being promoted by local fixer, Kevin Peel on Twitter last night. Actually, there are women - Hazel Blears and Kate Green - representing Labour in neighbouring Salford, and Stretford and Urmston. But those constituencies are not in the City of Manchester. Geddit?!

By the way the shortlist includes another woman, Rose Battle. So if the 'let's have a woman MP in Manchester' bandwagon gains pace - local members have a choice. Time will tell whether she was included as a candidate on merit or a make-weight as we saw with so many 'Selections in the Spotlight' in the run up to the 2010 General Election campaign.

Local members will never be sure whether they are being used until they demand local control of selections of Labour candidates for elected office, with regional or national oversight.

Sadly, for the foreseeable future I fear party democracy is in the same place as an untaxable pasty - the deep freeze. 

Break-ins, flashbacks and ballot boxes: Ed get's an inkling

News of forced entry in the Leader of the Labour Party's office in the Palace of Westminster reminded me of the infamous ballot box and voting paper tampering during the Erith and Thamesmead prospective parliamentary candidate selection in 2009.

Leader, Ed Miliband was reported earlier today by the Press Association, picked up by the Huffington Post here as being 'deeply concerned'. Quite rightly so too.

...a senior Labour source said the motivation behind the break-in remained to be established and that it was still unclear if anything had been taken.

"We do not know whether anything was taken. We do not know the motivation for this crime," the source said.

"But we are deeply concerned that this can take place within Palace of Westminster."

Before the moment passes Ed and his aides might care to think back to the events surrounding that notorious ballot box incident in Labour Party HQ in Victoria Street. In that instance, the London Regional office seized control of a prospective parliamentary candidate selection from Erith and Thamesmead constituency labour party, in controversial circumstances.  A former general secretary Margaret McDonagh was actively promoting the candidacy of Georgia Gould. The ballot box for postal ballots was transported to Victoria Street for 'safe-keeping'. Mysteriously, the seal on the box was broken inside HO. (For the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting any link between that former general secretary and the need to void all previously cast postal ballots.)

In this instance there was an investigation, including DNA sampling. The identity of the tamperer is known. But the Labour Party machine decided to take no action, and the NEC proved itself to be powerless. So an event involving a complete breach of trust between paid staff and lay members remains an open sore inside this self-proclaimed 'democratic socialist party' of ours.

Nor should the lessons of that ballot box crime be lost in the context of the power struggle ongoing between the Leader's office, Labour Party staff and the new general secretary. The perpetrators of repeated offences against party democracy are still in the employment of the Labour Party - in the Leader's office, and Labour Party HQ. No more crocodile tears, please.

For a brief dispassionate overview of the E&T selection this is how the BBC reported it. 

Awaiting the piss-up in Brewer's Yard

Crikey, it's four and a half weeks since I last posted a blog. Was it the weather? Was it the moon? Was it a branch in my constituency labour party that must remain nameless? Was it the polls? Whatever, it was has passed. At last news about those six director level appointments at Labour Party HQ and a lot more. They were first advertised in early January here. They are due to move shortly from Victoria Street further west of Parliament to Brewer's Yard. (You couldn't make it up!). 

I can reveal that some high-placed Labour Party sources see these appointments as a litmus test of Iain McNicol's grip as General Secretary. There was a three-way power struggle between Iain, his outgoing Deputy Alicia Kennedy and the Leader's officer. Iain you will recall was not Ed Miliband's candidate for the job. His election in favour of the well-oiled machine hand, Chris Lennie, followed the elevation to the peerage of m'Lord (formerly Ray) Collins.

Alicia Kennedy, de facto General Secretary under Ray Collins, whose role as Deputy General Secretary has been written out of the new structure, is appointed to a new post as special advisor to the appointed Deputy Chair Tom Watson. Chris Lennie, the other former Deputy General Secretary, will continue to assist in external relations and fundraising. Now the transfer window has closed, we must ask: is it possible that the Leader's office will be pulling the strings leaving McNicol wondering whether his move from the GMB was wise?

Update: News of skirmishes from the Leader's Office (aka Eastern Front) on Left Futures : Leader’s office oversteps mark with Labour Party HQ http://bit.ly/wQ3WEk

Update: A different take here Vive la résistance la rue Victoria! « Labour Uncut http://bit.ly/wCRLgC which reports:

In the words of one staffer on Friday, “Iain [McNicol] is basically now a glorified head of HR”.

Update: The whole debacle is reduced to an even baser level in the Telegraph: The Labour Party is tearing itself apart, and Len McCluskey is preparing a silent coup  http://soc.li/guJfMZK

For the avoidance of doubt: a NPF before Easter?

Working on the assumption that Labour needs to mobilise as many members as possible to win back London, what's going to get them motivated? Well, we can take it for granted that crass remarks by Labour Leader Ed Miliband committing Labour to sticking with Coalition public spending cuts, and shadow Chancellor Ed Balls pledging to freezing public sector pay will not get party activists out on the knocker. Let's not forget that the new Leadership, in what can only be described as a very unfortunate oversight, has gagged members directly elected representatives on the National Policy Forum. Nor can the Refounding Labour debacle be readily dismissed as an administrative hiccup. A deadening sense of business of usual, when Ed Miliband promised change, is having a corrosive effect on party confidence and could result in historical precedent being overtaken by events. Labour may have never replaced a leader by staging a coup, though former Leader Tony Blair, might want to disagree with that analysis.

Personally, I have no confidence in any of the alternatives cited as potential leaders by more celebrated commentators than myself. I want Ed Miliband back on track. Not as red Ed, but as democratic Ed - the Leader willing and wanting to listen. He should talk to attendees at the first National Policy Forum meetings in the early 1990s. They remember the former, and sadly late, John Smith sitting at the front and listening to debates.

Just because there are elections in less than 100 days time does not mean elected representatives should not be discussing and debating policy. On the contrary, I would argue the opposite. Given the need to persuade the electorate that Labour values matter, what better way to get key messages to members - you matter, and voters - we understand your needs and have better ways of addressing them, than having open discussion? 

According to Luke Akehurst's account of last Tuesday's National Executive Committee:

[He] asked why there wasn’t going to be an NPF meeting before the reps face re-election in the summer. Peter [Hain] said that if an affordable venue could be found then an NPF meeting would be held in late June or early July.

Rather than remonstrate with Peter, and rail against Ed, now is the time for practical responses. So, the Labour Democratic Network is asking all NPF representatives elected by members, and representatives of the other stakeholders, about their availability on Saturdays between now and Easter. Further it is offering to find and pay for a suitable venue in London to enable them to meet.

The proposed format is deliberative - no set speeches, no campaigning sessions eating into time for discussion, debate and voting. LDN hopes that this will be seen by the Leadership as a genuine offer to help set the seal on the change needed to our politics.

(Apologies in advance to any NPF CLP representative if we haven't got a correct eMail address for you, if you don't receive a Doodle invitation in the next 48 hours, please get in touch.)

 

 

Being Leader of HM Loyal Opposition doesn't mean members have to bow and scrape

Sorry, Ed but it has to be said. I didn't vote for you as Leader of the Labour Party to enable business as usual. I don't believe the vast majority of members and affiliates who voted for you in 2010 did either. Yet that is what you appear to be presiding over. If you want to know why you are not making headway in the polls, you probably need look no further than the National Executive Committee (NEC) agenda and the people sat round the table at today's bi-monthly meeting.

You will no doubt have given your Leader's report. NEC members will have put in a question or two, if they were lucky enough to be called by Chairman Cashman. But there probably wasn't any debate, and as for voting for or against any resolutions - perish the thought. 

That takes me to the root of Labour's mess. The party has been corrupted by a culture of deference and mis-placed loyalties. it would be naive to suppose that other political parties don't suffer from the same afflictions. They do. But we are the Labour Party. Constituted as a federated body of individuals, affiliates and elected representatives, mainly to the increasingly beleagured Westminster Parliament, our values have been suffocated by careerism.

You had a opportunity to stop the rot, to save the Labour Party. Instead you allowed your fratricidal guilt to be eased by the machine operatives, having plucked the crown from your brother with what now seem nothing more than false promises.

We were expecting internal party reform. Submissions were garnered. It was branded: Refounding Labour. Electronic means were provided to enable members to submit contributions. They could have been published for all interested members to see, read and analyse. But no. Those clever scheming control freaks failed to put a check box on the electronic submission form enabling members to authorise internal publication. Earlier this month, I received a letter from Head Office dated 22 December 2011 setting out various deadlines. It includes one concerning the party's policy making process - now that we are in opposition - known as Partnership into Power. It doesn't even include an eMail address for submissions, let alone an option to enable other members to see any other submissions. It is the ultimate insult in a democratic socialist party of which you are Leader.

A key internal indicator of your success will be membership trends. I would be very surprised if membership nationally on 31 December 2011 was higher than on the same day a year earlier, and I would be even more surprised if it wasn't starting to fall sharply. Tell me I'm wrong.

The temptations of office have to be rejected. Use of the first person singular about collective business should be banned. Policy is collective business. As leader you can guide and shape. But having gagged our National Policy Forum representatives, all one can presume is that you are frightened of debate and as a result your policies are a mess. The public sense that. The only way back is to start behaving like a democrat. Debate has to be enabled. People have to feel empowered.