Peter Kenyon

A litmus test for political scoundrels

If a politician in Britain doesn't do membership or structures, what are we to think?

If have just been asked to pen about 100 words on changing the way we do politics. This was my response:

Doing politics

Political parties are the mainstay of our representative democracy. Without their structures and members, no politician in Britain can reasonably hope to get selected as a candidate for public office and get elected (except in very exceptional circumstances). Save the Labour Party members do not expect that to change. Any politician that stands on a public platform complaining about rigid structures and membership is simply seeking to avoid accountability.

The challenge is cross-party – the rehabilitation of the political party for the 21^st century. Labour as a democratic socialist party should be leading the way.

 Peter Kenyon - Chair, Save the Labour Party www.savethelabourparty.org

What do you think?

Save the Labour Party, mock not!

For the last five years doubts have been expressed about the name of a small organisation founded five years ago within the Labour Party focussed on its internal structures and processes - Save the Labour Party.

This morning's Guardian carries a compelling story which suggests to me our little organisation is well named and a rescue plan to save the Labour Party is now urgently needed.

This account is entirely consistent with my own understanding of the liabilities of NEC members, and the reasons why David Pitt-Watson turned down the post. The key word in the following quote is "independent".

Though he was Brown's candidate for the post, he declined the offer after receiving independent legal advice that he would be personally liable for repaying the loans and could be bankrupted if Labour's finances collapsed.

What this suggests is that the Labour Party's NEC failed to secure its own advice about liabilities arising from the reckless fundraising activities carried out while Tony Blair was leader of the Labour Party and a member of the NEC. Furthermore, NEC officers appear to have had their heads in the sand when Pitt-Watson first sought assurances about these matters, and obliged him to get his own advice.

In addition to all the other problems on his desk at the moment, this is one that Gordon Brown is going to have to apply himself to pdq as the underlying problems are not going to go away by scurrying to appoint a new General Secretary.

If Labour Party members can't have confidence in the NEC to manage the Party's affairs, why should the electorate have confidence in its Leader? They can't say they weren't warned. But then we are just rank-and-file.

Wisdom of crowds (I jest not) - G Brown

Prime Minister and Labour Party Leader Gordon Brown gave a speech yesterday to Google executives that is exciting WWW interest. Writing on the Spectator's Coffee house blog yesterday, Matthew d'Ancona concluded:

So - believe it or not - the great practitioner of Treasury command-and-control finally declared: 'I believe in the wisdom of crowds'. We'll see if words are matched by action, especially in public service reform and the true devolution of power to neighbourhoods rather than simply to town halls.

To which, we should, add the Labour Party. That link is the route to Labour Party Wiki-politics, providing you are a paid up member; courtesy of Save the Labour Party, Compass Youth and CommentonThis (linked to My Society). Let's release the wisdom of crowds, especially our crowd.

Have your say - Labour Party policy - open to members

If you are a member of the Labour Party and want to have a say in shaping the next Manifesto click here.

Raring to rebuild; are you with us Gordon?

Gordon Brown has been asked by LabOUR Commission members and others to support an open and transparent policy consultation from now on. The letter can be seen here. To win the next election in the light of last night's election results, putting Labour third on 24% of the vote so far, will require a herculean effort. He could rely on his prowess as a manager of the economy, and the consoling thought that this is just mid-tem blues.

As a prudent man, you would have thought this was the time when he would want to make sure loyal Labour supporters were behind him - not to knife him in the back, but to get Labour's message across better in the pubs, at work and the corner shop.

There were too many of us out campaigning (and not for the first time) who are doing so despite Labour in government. Now is the time to ask: are you with us Gordon, or willing to risk opposition by pretending to listen,  but actually ignoring us?

BBC 24 reports criticism from unelected, ignores Labour members

BBC News 24 has just reported vitriolic criticism of Gordon Brown from an unelected member of the House of Lords, described by political reporter James Landale as a 'minor Labour Party figure'. I look forward to BBC coverage of the Open Letter from a constituency labour party comprising elected delegates representing members in Weston-super-Mare. The document was published earlier today on Labour's Membersnet and featured on Save the Labour Party's website - in accordance with STLP policy to provide webspace for CLPs, branches and affiliated bodies in the interests of transparency.

TUC joins call for 10p tax compensation package

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber will today add trade unionists' names to the call for compensation for the 5.3 million who will lose income as a result of the Labour government's decision to abolish the 10p income tax band.

"Global economic turbulence has left the Treasury with little room for fiscal manoeuvre, but the £550 million needed to help those who have been hit hardest by this week's tax changes could easily be raised by closing a well-known tax scam.

'When it is so clear that the growing numbers of super-rich are not paying their fair share of tax, it is not surprising that average and low-earners resent any increase in their tax bills. The danger for progressive politics is that this leads people to question the fairness of our tax system, which in the longer term risks undermining the pensions, benefits and decent public services that depend on fair taxes."

If Gordon Brown has got time to visit President Bush and make pronouncements about the Zimbabwean presidential elections, he must make time for the low paid.

Ed Miliband urges recruit new members

Defining moments don't come often, but Ed Miliband's closing talk to the Labour Spring Conference could prove to be one. My former colleague on Hackney Council and fellow blogger Luke Akehurst posted about it yesterday as 'the speech of the Conference'. I walked into the hall after he had started. There was Ed centre stage thanking us, reminding us and urging us on. No lectern, no scrolling speech screens, no note cards. As Luke wrote it was "stunningly impressive". I found myself looking up and around - was there some new gizmo hanging from the ceiling to enable him to read from? He rounded off with music to my ears as chair of Save the Labour Party with the words:

And I urge everyone in this party to seize the progressive opportunity. Campaigning in the local elections in May Going out and recruiting new members to our party. And together creating the ideas and policies for a manifesto not just to win, but to be proud of and build the kind of country we want to see.

Looking to the next generation of leaders, I wondered do we need to look any further?

Labour - all member ballot for NPF - 2009, 2011, ever?

At 10 am next Saturday morning, I hope to be in Birmingham to hear Gordon Brown set out further his vision for Labour in government at the Party's Spring Conference. My hope, although I'm not holding my breath, is that he will take the opportunity to praise active members - the people on whose support many elected representatives depend.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if he talked up the importance of members in the modern Labour Party having a say? It will involve ensuring transparent policy making (just like the total transparency now sought for MPs allowances and expenses). The final round of key policy proposals for any election to be fought by Labour candidates needs to go to an all-member ballot with clear political choices. That approach would offer the prospect of genuine unity ahead of the next British General Election, and pave the way for winning back voters now.

Political cynics would be stunned. Opposition parties would flounder. Labour Party morale would enjoy a big boost.

As a forward-thinking Leader, he will have done his sums. To give members a say means enabling an OMOV ballot for National Policy Forum representatives at the next available opportunity in 2009. As Leader of the Party he is uniquely placed to enable that to happen. It requires a Rule change to be agreed at the 2008 Annual Conference. Only the NEC has the power to table Rule changes at such short notice.

Brown may not be aware. But there is a growing consensus about this reform among members. last Saturday it was debated at the AGM of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD). A resolution proposing that all national constituency representatives to the Party's National Policy Forum should be elected by a One-Member-One-Vote ballot was passed unanimously.

STLP has been actively campaigning about this for nearly five years. It is one of the recommendations of the LabOUR Commission, chaired by Angela Eagle MP, now a Treasury minister, that published its interim report last May.

We had hoped that early discussions with the NEC would have led to a consultation in time for Rule changes to be proposed to the 2008 Annual Conference in Manchester next September. Then the next round of NPF elections in 2009 could have conducted in accordance with members' wishes, which I and others hope would mean ALL members. That path was blocked by Mike Griffiths, now a candidate for the post of General Secretary, who to the best of my knowledge as Clerk to the Commission never even replied to Angela's letter setting out the scope for further evidenced based work to enable members to have a say. If Brown and the NEC, of which he is a very important member, continue to sit on their hands members, will have to wait until 2011 at the earliest to have say.

Having inherited a £20 million debt mountain from his predecessors, Brown needs to lead a renaissance of Labour as a mass-membership party representing the many not the few to consolidate his position as Leader and PM. Rebuilding the party will take a generation or more to achieve. But with key electoral tests in London, and English and Welsh local government on 1 May, what better opportunity to start the process than Spring in the centre of England?

Labour more sleazy than Tories poll - time to act

Reuters has just sent that headline round the world on the back of a Times report today of the latest Populus poll conducted after news of the Conway story broke. This role reversal compared with the mid-1990s requires radical action from Labour, and its not state-funding of political parties. What's the PLP's position?