Peter Kenyon

Labour Conference must give members a say - STLP

Save the Labour Party has just issued the following press release. STLP's webmaster is temporarily offline due to technical problems. So here it is:

London, 24 September – The Labour Party Annual Conference must give members a say in shaping policy if it wants to win the next General Election according to the pressure group Save the Labour Party (STLP).

STLP chair Peter Kenyon, who sits on the Party’s National Executive Committee, today wrote to General Secretary Ray Collins setting out how the Party will need to be radical to rebuild members’ morale and optimise use of the Party’s assets – both human and financial - to fund its General Election campaign. “A massive boost in small donations to reduce the need to borrow is needed”, Kenyon said, adding, “That will only happen if members and supporters think Labour is going to the electorate with a Manifesto reflecting Labour values, alongside the government’s success leading the country out of recession triggered by the near collapse of the banking system.”

A special meeting of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee has been called tomorrow afternoon (Saturday) to discuss how to take forward Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ideas about ‘Extending and renewing party democracy’ following a recent review, as well as its General Election funding strategy.

Warning Labour can't afford to fight poll - FT

You don't have to be a member of Labour's NEC to know that money is very tight. So an FT story reporting former Labour Party beneficiary of Prime Ministerial patronage, Charles Clarke's, latest embittered utterances comes as no surprise. 

“There is a real challenge even to pay the wages of our current staff, and we need nearly £20m just to pay off our debts and keep going until next May,” the MP told a meeting of Progress, the Blairite think-tank, last night. “Raising the money to fight a general election campaign seems almost impossible in current circumstances.”

Instead of calling for Gordon Brown to step down, I have been wracking my brains about how to help ensure a Labour victory at next year's General Election, and how the Party might pay for it. The Labour Party has three classes of assets: people, money and property - the vast majority of which are now scattered around the country in its constituency and branch party structures.

Under New Labour, members became the most neglected, despised and downtrodden parts of a proud movement for social justice, internationalism, freedom and economic prosperity. The challenge at this year's Annual Conference will be to mobilise those assets, both human and financial, to help campaign and pay for a dramatic turnround in Labour's electoral prospects. For leaders wanting to raise funds to get re-elected remember s/he who pays the piper calls the tune. If you want members to pay, they will want a say.

There is a raft of rule change proposals to give effect to building and protecting members' rights to a say in their party. The NEC's job on Saturday at a special meeting to consider 'Extending and renewing party democracy' will be to package them so that members and supporters will want to 'Give to Win'.

All Gordon Brown has to learn is: it's selling, not telling that will win the day.

Saving the Labour Party - giving members a say

Ten words that could help.

“Conference must restore members' rights to shape party manifesto policies”

This is a 'Contemporary Issue' submitted to the Conference Arrangements Committee by the Cities of London and Westminster CLP.

The reasoning:

The NEC failed at its July 2009 meeting to reach agreement on how members might be involved in shaping the next General Election Manifesto. Prior to Annual Conference 1997 all members had a right to formulate a resolution about any issue and seek support for debate at a future Annual Conference through their local branch and constituency labour party. That right was removed by Conference 1997 agreeing Partnership in Power – in theory a year-round cycle of policy making, through commissions and the National Policy Forum. A residual resolution drafting right was retained. Contemporary and Emergency resolutions were permitted to cover the time roughly defined as the end of July until a week before Annual Conference for contemporary motions and the week before Annual Conference and Conference itself for Emergencies. The right of members to table a Contemporary Resolution was removed by Annual Conference 2007. It was replaced by a device called a Contemporary Issue, which had to set out in no more than 10 words, but for which a 250-word explanation could be appended. In the meantime, individual membership of the Labour Party has fallen 60%. Research shows Labour Party members expect a say in policy formulation. With the party facing a major challenge to win the next election, this contemporary issue if approved by Conference would empower the NEC to devise ways of restoring members’ rights in time to help shape policy before the General Election Manifesto is finalised by the Clause V Committee.

Saving the Labour Party - positive thinking

To win, Labour has to believe it can. I'm in a small minority which thinks that we can. But I'm not under any illusions. I spent Monday and Tuesday in Liverpool at the TUC. As Chair of Save the Labour Party, it's my job to think up ways of ....saving the Labour Party. One issue that has popped up over the summer is the reported use of the private postal service TNT by the Labour Party to deliver direct mail to members and voters. Labour Party members are not happy about this. And. of course. there is a knock on effect. What impact is the Labour Government's ambiguous policy towards Royal Mail and the Labour Party Head Office's cost-cutting stance having on members' and supporters' attitude towards dipping into their savings and funding the Labour Party?

Labour Party General Secretary Ray Collins when appointed last year launched an excellent small donations scheme called 'Give to Win'. The idea was to reassure members that every penny donated would go to pay directly for campaigning, and not a penny would be used to pay off the scandalous debts incurred under former Leader, Tony Blair, paying for the last General Election.

So I have asked Ray if Labour would attract more in small donations if it backed the Royal Mail than it would lose by incurring extra costs sending its post by Royal Mail instead of TNT.

Question 1: would it out a smile on your face if Labour's NEC voted to back Royal Mail to deliver its post?
Question 2: would you be more likely to make a donation to help Labour win the next election if it did?

Labour Party - latest morale booster

I have just been alerted to a new version of the Labour Party's inpenetrable intranet, Membersnet. I'm not sure this is going to facilitate easier communication. I did suggest to the General Secretary, Ray Collins, some months ago that a User Group needed to be set up to guide IT expenditure and make sure it was fit for purpose.

Here's an example of its functionality

PLP Index (whatever that is...)
Welcome to the PLP Online Within PLP online you will find all the briefing and information, campaign resources and best practice examples you need to do your work ........

Read more...(and I tried. Here's the response...)

Unauthorized Access - error 401

You must be authorised to access URL http://members.labour.org.uk/plp_index

Requested URL: http://members.labour.org.uk/plp_index

I'm just a humble elected member of its National Executive Committee and a constituency labour party secretary.

...and more useful data for Labour election stategists

Today's Financial Times reports:

The key swing constituencies that the Tories need to capture at the next general election to win an overall majority have been less affected than most by the recession, research shows.

Admittedly this might be seen as clutching at straws (no offence, Jack), but if emerging from recession is a headline no-brainer in newsrooms today, and our Gordon is seen as having made the right judgement calls staving off a banking collapse, propping up the economy with a spend, spend, spend policy and refusing to bend the knee to 'market forces', who knows what the electoral dividend might be. This all might seem a little self-indulgent, but Gordon's immediate problem is tens of thousands of Labour Party activists, who are (in the venacular), right royally p***ed off.

Last year's conference speech 'rabbit out of hat' is not seen as a repeatable. So what would galvanise  party activists to go out and work for a 4th term?

A useful poll for Labour strategists

ComRes has some useful data for Labour election strategists in its latest poll, which highlights the proportion of the electorate that could change their minds between the date the poll was conducted and election day.

The other highlight is Trident and the proportion of the electorate who want it scrapped. Chartist has a tantalizing article on this subject written by Joy Hurcombe, chair of Labour CND.

The direction of travel is rather to the left of where the Brown government appears to be situated at present. However, that could change if there were clear unashamed leadership closely linked to Labour values. Loose ministerial talk about more public service reform, while parliamentary, civil service, public corporation/publicly owned agencies and quango excesses at the top go unchecked will not help Labour's cause.

Affiliation fees - Labour's achilles heel?

This article should provide a wake up call to some of my critics on Labour's National Executive Committee.

Today's Sunday Times reports:

Westminster insiders believe that Unite, which has almost 2m members, is about to be taken over by left-wing insurgents who will sever the historic financial link with the Labour party.

At the last Labour Party NEC meeting, I was accused of trying to sink the Labour Party, rather than save it as a result of my questions about its finances. Among my concerns are the robustness of the current financial strategy, which relies on large donations, from private individuals and trade unions, and commercial activity to pay off unsecured loans. Rebuilding membership and small donations don't really feature in any meaningful way. The major obstacle to expanding those sources of income is the Labour Party's current method of policymaking. Members are denied a real say.

If we want to win the next Election, then we need an adult debate now about how we make policies and pay for the elections to win power to implement them.