Peter Kenyon

Crisis? What crisis?

Public service broadcaster, the BBC, has this. What more do we, Labour Party loyalists, need for the weekend? Cheer up, Gordon.

Labour Party union power - what goes round, comes round

'News' of trade union policy demands tabled for next weekend's National Policy Forum merely highlights how poorly organised the Labour Party's members are to mobilise opinion around policy. Though that's not all that came to mind. I thought of former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson who, nearly 40 years ago, in 1969 at a meeting in Chequers, told a leading trade unionist: "Get your tanks off my lawn." Local branch and constituency organisation for individual members was as varied then as it is now. Instead of worrying about the unions, the current Leader of the Labour might be better advised focussing on what he set out to do when elected unopposed - expanding and renewing party democracy. Very few members have had any opportunity to have a say in the current policy review. The Joint Policy Commission meeting on Monday could usefully reflect on that fact before binning too many challenges to current Labour Party policy. While affiliated trade unionist get to meet the ministerial chair of the National Policy Forum, Pat McFadden, and manifesto supremo, Ed Miliband, no such invitations will be extended to the leaders of membership pressure groups that are campaiging against Trident, privatisation, 42-day detention and in favour of council housing, higher taxes on the rich or renewable energy. it's classic divide and rule and our party democracy is the poorer for it.

Anger management - Labour Party style: knives

When I joined Save the Labour Party and helped set up the Labour Commission, I learned that anger management was vital. It almost seemed worthwhile 12 months ago in the run up to the resignation of Tony Blair. Now it is becoming increasingly difficult to turn on the radio/television news bulletin/current affairs programme, or open a newspaper/political magazine without screaming. Knife crime and our Labour government's response over the weekend is the latest lunacy unfortune error. That's not my opinion but that of my wife, and fellow party member who happens to be one of the country's leading clincial experts on post traumatic stress disorders. A considered note from her is in the works.  If you had only picked up the phone, Jacqui.

Perhaps the Labour Party's National Executive Committee (meeting tomorrow) will spend a moment considering how to harness the expertise of its dwindling membership to help turn round public opinion between now and the next British General Election. In the absence of any leadership on the use of that resource, my branch is drawing up a couple of sides of A4 across the major policy issues that need addressing now, not in the next manifesto, if we are to have any hope of winning a 4th term.

Labour members - rediscover your voice

Earlier this week my branch met and among other business considered an Emergency Resolution on Zimbabwean refugees condemning the Home Office and calling for leave to remain while terror and starvation rule. Even ardent opponents of resolution bound policy making supported the call. For me it is a further example of the need for Party checks and balances to be restored. Resolutions are expressions of opinion from people who share a set of values, and ambitions. Centralised political control of the Labour Party has seriously eroded membership and activism, it's time for Labour members to rediscover their voices and tell the Leadership regularly what's a winner, and what's a loser - not just on blogs but through collective organisation. There is no reason why this has to be left to humanitarian and Church lobby groups. I'm proud of Labour Values. I think we should practice what we preach.

On the subject of Zimbabwean refugees there was a hint at PMQs by Harriet Harman that the issue was under review. Today's Independent reports movement in the Government's position. The critical issue is leave to remain AND work. What happened to your moral compass, Prime Minister?

UPDATE 1700 Archbishop calls for justice for Zimbabwean refugees.

No more tantrums, Gordon, we want to win. Do you?

Time to grow up, Gordon. You've got the job. Now you have to learn to work with your Party and Labour members of Parliament to win another term. The 'Speccie' columnist, Fraser Nelson, classifies your detractors into three camps. My Labour Party branch is in none of them. We met last night to among things review the state of the Party. Changing leader was not seen as a viable option. Frankly, who would want the job in present circumstances?

So we committed to work with you, providing you commit to working with us - rebuilding Party morale between now and Conference and setting out clearly the policies that will win back the voters. We will be sending your Political Office our thoughts on how to straighten out the muddles over Redistribution/Equality, International relations, Climate change, and Security and Civil Liberties.

I can't speak for my colleagues about the reports of your thumping the table at a meeting with backbench Labour MPs. If that is how you are behaving - you can't be serious about winning the next election. We can see how we could win in 2010 - the electorate needs clarity from you, and the party needs rebuilding. You need us to help communicate our shared values. You won't get us to do it by shouting at us, or throwing mobile phones, we have got to be convinced that you know what you are doing. Currently, we are thoroughly sceptical.

Inside that envelope

Oooo..raffle tickets, Labour Today, covering letter and a 2nd class pre-paid envelope  err...where's the ballot paper? Aagh....err covering letter is headed "Our opportunity to shape the Labour Party's future 4th para ..The NEC....no, no no..has just appointed a new General Secretary ......NEC ballot paper enclosed? Nope, raffle tickets, Labour Today, covering letter and 2nd class pre-paid envelope.

Aagh, sooo silly.....turn over the covering letter the ballot paper is attached.

Should I use a cross or a tick?  Doesn't say!

What about the candidates? Covering letter pointers? Err, no. Ballot ballot paper references? Err, no. 

Aagh..Labour Today cover - no, its not a TV set in Gordon's living room - it says NEC Ballot 08 use your vote candidate details inside (8pt, maybe)

Page 2 - nope, Page 3 - welcome signed Harriet Harman, Page 4...Page 5...Page 15...NEC Candidate information

First task if elected get agreed format for future postal ballots that meets minimum standards for the conduct of such elections - ballot paper(s), candidate book, sae.

If the Treasurer has failed to factor in enough money to pay for OMOV ballots, then we can all draw our own conclusions.

Where are Labour's accounts?

Today is the official deadline for the filing of an annual Statement of Accounts by larger political parties with the Electoral Commission.

Parties whose total income or gross expenditure is £250,000 or less are required to submit a statement of accounts within three months of their year end. Those parties that exceed this limit are required to submit their statement of accounts within six months of their year end.

As a member of the Labour Party, I want to see a copy too - now.

All that the new General Secretary-designate Ray Collins has to do before he goes on holiday is authorise their publication on the Labour Party website - a virtual 'cost-less' exercise. It's what I would have done if appointed to the post.

Why? The future of the Labour Party depends on rebuilding trust not just with the electorate, but with the its dwindling membership - currently the source of 40% of annual income and activists to knock on doors and deliver leaflets.

Unlike, Sir Gerry Robinson, I am not demanding the head of the Leader, before I put my hand in my pocket. On the contrary, we have democratic procedures to elect Leader/Deputy. They could be improved. But blackmail should not feature in a so-called democratic society.

Personally, I will not donate another penny to central party funds until the accounts are published in a timely fashion and I have the right to question the NEC in general and the Party Treasurer in particular about their stewardship of the Party between Annual Conferences. Oh, before I forget, another pre-holiday action that the GS-designate could take would be to circulate those nomination papers for Leader/Deputy to CLPs pdq. Personally, I would be recommending no change. My hunch is that the majority of CLPs and affiliated trades unions and socialist societies would do the same. That would put the celebrity donors in their place.

Reaffirming a commitment to openness and accountability is the only forward for Gordon Brown. Don't you think?

Labour's tipping point - no return?

Irwin Stelzer writing in today's Daily Telegraph concludes:

So when Gordon Brown's advisers grope for ways of using the two years left before a general election to extricate the Government from its difficulties, they have to ask the right question. What were the tipping points that brought us low, and how can we retreat from them in a significant way? As the £2.7 billion tax fix, class warfare in Crewe and the PM's pledges to get on with the job demonstrate, tinkering won't matter.

Only a drastic rollback of the frontiers of the state - on taxes, spending and intrusive regulation - can set in motion a pull-back from the tipping points that Labour has arrived at.

It is not a U-turn of which this Prime Minister is capable.

I beg to differ. In two recent speeches Brown has spoken about the power of communication and the wisdom of the crowd. Late 20th century British politics was dominated by spin. The latest developments in communication technology have condemned that approach to influence public opinion to the dustbin of history. Labour Party members have already shown the way with policy-making. It's very early days. But it is the future.

Brown's destiny and that of the Labour Party are not dependent on a U-turn. They depend on unleashing our capacity to think for ourselves and organise collectively to win electoral support, and shape policy through established institutions; namely, political parties.

Brown has everything to play for. Personally, I just wish he would stop making political life so difficult both for himself, his ministers, his MPs and party members and supporters with delusions of populism, which Rupert Murdoch's own guru recognises are past the point of no return.

A TU bailout is not the answer to Labour's financial woes

Hat tip to Labour Outlook for spotting this story in the Daily Mail on Saturday. However, I strongly disagree with the author's conclusion, namely; only the unions can bail Labour out.

Modern union barons might, with immense reluctance, bail out Gordon Brown's Labour Party, but only if the Prime Minister makes commitments that carry a very heavy political cost.

The Labour Party's National Executive Committee appears to have failed to exercise control of the Party's finances since David Pitt-Watson was director of finance in the late 1990s. One obvious source of finance that has been consistently ignored since are its individual members, regional, constituency and branch labour party structures - at least as far as systematic fundraising is concerned. It is neither in the interests of the Leadership, the affiliated trades unions or individual members that Labour in government become dependent exclusively on trade union donations and affiliation fees for solvency.

But before that process could be triggered there has to be a radical overhaul of the Party's financial management arrangements and a clear commitment from the former Leader Tony Blair to commit to repay a substantial proportion if not all of the reckless loans taken out while he was in charge. Most people think it is quite unseemly, if not obscene, for him to be accepting highly lucrative directorships and other paid positions after authorising Labour Party fundraising to be undertaken in circumstances, which ordinary members might be forgiven for thinking were ultra vires.  

Rediscovering winning ways - the Leader

In the morass of comment proporting to be analysis in the wake of Labour recent elections reversals, confidence in the Leader has become a, if not the, touchstone issue.

I don't see how a change of Leader arising from a PLP-inspired putsch is likely to enhance Labour's electoral prospects. There is already a strong body of public opinion that thinks, wrongly) it elects British Prime Ministers. But constitutional niceties have never been a strong point among the British media, even the licence-fee (regressive tax) funded public broadcasters. We were able to change Leaders last year without even an internal election. I am very doubtful that can be achieved again with terminal damage to our ambitions to get relected as the majority party in the Westminster parliament.

There is, however, a readily available mechanism within the Labour Party's Rule Book that would enable member opinion to be tested. Nomination papers for Leader and Deputy Leader should be being sent out to all party units ahead of Conference 2008. They have not been despatched since 1996.

Just as Gordon Brown was billed in a recent Guardian report giving members a say in policy making, he should make it known that he wants all members to have a say in whether he should continue as Leader with or without an internal election contest. If the majority of CLPs and affiliated trade unions and socialist societies nominate him and his current deputy, that would be the end of the careerist ambitions of the pretenders in the Westminster village.

In the meantime there is that policy review, supposedly open and transparent, it depends on members being informed, opportunities for debate being created and sufficient time being allowed to enable views to crystalise and be forwarded to Head Office through the laid down official channels. As reported here, on MembersNet, the Labour Party intranet, Compass Youth's blog, Labourhome and most recently Tribune - I have been involved with comrades in Save the Labour Party, Compass Youth and technical enablers at CommentonThis in providing a 'pirate website' to enable any Labour Party member to comment. That's irrespective of whether a member has either the time or the inclination to attend a Party meeting. The Party machine has refused to endorse this approach.

In answer to questions at the Google Zeitgeist Conference at the beginning of last week, Gordon embraced the 'wisdom of the crowd'. Now's his chance to prove to his Party and hence the media and the electorate he understands what he was talking about. If I were a member of his inner-circle, I would be advising him that this policy review and the Leadership nomination process are part of the process of rediscovering winning ways. Talking about listening with fingers in one's ears is not going to convince anyone, and that's the appearance the Leader is conveying at the moment.