Peter Kenyon

Labour aspiring MPs: NEC fast-tracks selections

Is it a plot? Or is it just being practical? On a day when Taliban Tories were venting their spleen on the airwaves about Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) being parachuted in or 'imposed by Conservative Central Office in the wake of the Liz Truss affair, I found myself in a Labour Party National Executive Committee meeting confronted by a laid-round paper proposing changes to our own PPC selection procedures.

Labour led the way in British politics to get more women and BAME candidates selected as PPCs and elected, not just to the Westminster Parliament, but the European and Scottish Parliaments, the Welsh Assembly and local councils throughout the UK.

Following parliamentary expenses scandals, deselection, resignations, rumours of stitch-ups, parachuting in and the unsolved mystery of ballot-box tampering inside Labour Party HQ, there is now a log-jam.

It should be broken on Monday 23 November. The newly established Special Selections Panel, with delegated powers, will hold its first meeting at 1pm. Its first task will be to establish more open and transparent criteria for deciding which seats should be All Women Shortlists, and where BAME candidates should get a preference. The timetable for selections once authorised has been slashed to five weeks.

From 1 January 2010, the Panel will also have the power to decide the shortlist of candidates. Here's the rub. Will this be an opportunity to recruit fresh talent, or seen as one for the 'powers that be' to slot in old lags as lobby fodder for favours past and present? In debate, the NEC was unanimous that constituency labour party members should continue to vote for their PPC, and have a predominant role in shortlisting. The only exception might be a very late PPC withdrawal after an election has been called and nomination day looming.

So my advice to any CLP in the log-jam is get vocal, make sure your elected constituency representatives on the NEC are fully briefed.

Labour General Election strategy - rethinking the role of money

Here's another divide between Labour and the Conservatives. The Tories think the electorate can be 'bought', as implied in this commentary on the Spectator's website. I'm delighted that the Blairite legacy of reducing the Party to near bankruptcy is forcing a rethink about how Labour fights the forthcoming General Election Campaign. If there is any truth in the Times story today that prompted Coffee House comment, it only goes to show how there is everything to play for at tomorrow's Labour Party National Executive Committee meeting.

Save the Labour Party's election strategy starts with securing an open and transparent debate about what will be in our Election Manifesto. That, if achieved, will open up the prospect of a new income stream in the form of small donations, providing that the next step is followed. That involves getting rid of more Blairite baggage to win back support among opinion leaders trusted by our core vote. 

We have to kindle a sense of hope and then optimism among Labour voters, past and present to look forward to a Labour future. I can't believe that the Brown re-election team thinks that hunkering down and abandoning seats to our opponents is the way forward. 

Labour Party: NEC primaries - CLGA update

Confused? Tonight I learned from right-wing Labour First leading light and self declared NEC candidate  Luke Akehurst that I will be on the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate to contest the Labour Party National Executive election in 2010. (Labour First is an email list, not a membership organisation, Luke insists - well that avoids any need for accountability.)

All I know is that Save the Labour Party set a precedent in 2005 when it held an all member postal ballot  to decide whom to back for the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) slate for the 2006 NEC elections. In today's parlance I suppose it was a primary. The next STLP primary was held in 2007 for the NEC 2008 elections in which I came second to Ann Black. At the CLGA slatemaking both of us made the cut (there are no membership organisation quotas), appeared on the NEC ballot paper and we both got elected.

Today, the latest STLP primary is being held to determine member's preferences between Gary Heather and myself. The deadline for ballot papers to be received by the Returning Officer is 23 November 2009.

Meanwhile another CLGA member organisation, the Labour Representation Committee, held its AGM and CLGA hustings yesterday. A membership ballot of those present backed Christine Shawcroft and Susan Press.

This leaves questions about how other CLGA member organisations are going to select their candidates. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy is the other leading body in the CLGA. I look forward to hearing about its plans and those of any other CLGA member organisations about how they are going to select possible candidates for the slate - Compass Youth and Progressives for London, for example .

Rumours are circulating of a meeting last week between Neal Lawson of Compass and Ken Livingstone of Progressives for London. I do hope they are planning their own primaries for the slate-making process too. Except Compass hasn't applied to join the CLGA as far as I know.

Let's hope the Compassites read the article in Saturday's Guardian by Ed Miliband MP, the concluding keynote speaker at their own AGM, who wrote:

We have been warned. It really is up to people of progressive persuasion to decide where they stand.

Quite so.

Compass: building a new political movement

The Compass Annual General Meeting is being addressed by General Secretary Gavin Hayes.

He stated that Compass is not creating a new political party, but a new "political movement". Can anyone explain the difference?

He lauded the growth of local groups. I don't know about you, but I have not got time to build a Compass group as well as a Labour Party branch linked to electoral wards and a Parliamentary constituency.

Is Labour operating a scorched-earth policy in Stoke-on-Trent?

This report appeared in my Google Alerts for the Labour Party overnight about the latest developments in the Labour Party in Stoke-on-Trent. It is from a local blog Pits'n'Pots. The author former Labour Group leader Mike Barnes writes:

This witch hunt is brought about by those that want to blame everybody but themselves for the mess the local Labour Party and more importantly, the City is in. They cannot see that they completely disconnected with the people: that the whole experimental disaster of the Elected Mayor is directly responsible for this monumental downfall.

This operation is under the control of the Labour Party's Organisation Sub-Committee. There are evidently questions to be asked at next week's NEC.

Labour Party: funding the 2010 election

There are all sorts of worrying rumours flying around. As a self-professed Labour Party explorer, I'm reasonably sure that the majority of Labour Party members and supporters are sitting on their wallets at the moment, at least as far as national fund-raising is concerned. According to the Sunday Times last weekend, this may also apply to rich donors too. This has got to change if Labour is going to improve its standing in the polls ahead of the General Election, which has to be called no later than early June next year. 

Avid readers of the LabOUR Commission interim report (2007) will recall in its analysis on finance:

7.12. We believe that it is reasonable to assume in the current climate that local fund raising for spending locally will be easier than national fundraising until members’ confidence in the Leadership and Party HQ has been restored.

If that was the unanimous view of 15-prominent lay members two years' ago, it is reasonable to presume the situation is worse today. Unsurprisingly, the powers that be completely ignored the LabOUR Commission interim report when it was published and have done ever since. Worse, when Save the Labour Party's national committee discussed the state of the Party's finances in January 2009 and wrote to the powers that be, it was fobbed off with allegations of being "unhelpful". That nonsense has got to stop, if the Party is serious about membership, and reconnecting with the electorate. Today, Save the Labour Party has written to Labour Party manifesto coordinator Ed Miliband. We are proposing openness and transparency in his clarion call to members to 'help write this manifesto together'. The means exist. It is not too late to change tack.

STLP thinking, based on evidence, is that paying members of the Labour Party expect a say. So if the Party hopes to raise money from members and supporters it is going to have to get real about how it makes policy. Fifteen years of top-down diktat needs to be brought to an end. At the moment the powers that be are still stuck with neo-liberal centralist mentality which may see a hung Parliament or Labour swept from power in six months' time, depending on which commentator you follow.

My colleagues and I in STLP would like to think with the power of reason and debate, Labour can still win deservedly. But change we must. The means of donating nationally online exist here. What is needed is positive encouragement. Lots of its. Not just from the top, though that would help. Personally, I would welcome an option to enable donations to be directed to whereever a donor wanted - local branches, constituencies as well as nationally. But as a member of the NEC, I recognise in the first instance we have got to have an attractive offer, whether to members, or donors. Getting that is going to be a real challenge.

Political myths: local Labour parties: semi-professional!

Really. If you want to know what's wrong with our political system treat OpenUpNow.org with some suspicion.

Writing in today's Guardian, John Lloyd, a comedy writer (I jest not), claims:

One way to change the kind of MP we get is by changing the way the candidates are selected. At the moment this is controlled by local party associations – in themselves semi-professional politicians who are quite happy with the status quo – and by the central party machine which frequently parachutes party researchers and spin doctors into safe seats where they have no connection with the constituency.

Sorry, John you need to check your facts. You will find that local and central party organisation are often at loggerheads. The underlying problem is a lack of public appreciation about democracy and the effort required at a local level by volunteers to enable it to function. Start with the LabOUR Commission report and you will begin to sense what dwindling members of the Labour Party are up against.

MPs expenses: only the political parties can deal with abuse now

Sir Christopher Kelly's recommendations for the future and those of Sir Thomas Legg about the past are not dealing with the here and now and a public perception that some MPs have been on the make. Worse, Kelly's recommendations according to this BBC summary leave the door open to:

1. resettlement allowances until the General Election after next,

2. existing mortgage expenses claims for the duration after the next General Election, and

3. ditto for the current employment of family members.

Given the level of public concern, I don't see how Labour's National Executive Committee can stand idly by and let sitting MPs who are believed to have abused the current system continue to stand without allowing CLPs the opportunity to question, and if necessary, start a reselection process.

Save the Labour Party AGM debate with Cruddas and Black - 7 Nov

An obscure organisation called Save the Labour Party (in which I declare an interest as Chair) is holding its AGM on Saturday 7 November. Keynote speaker is Jon Cruddas MP and NEC chair Ann Black is planning to be there too. The main issue is: Can Labour reposition itself to win the 2010 election?

All Labour Party members are welcome. Details of the event are available here.

In the meantime, here is an extract from my Chair's Report:

STLP now needs to gather support for a rapid follow through on the NEC to ensure that other recommendations of the LAbOUR Commission are taken forward into the constitutional review promised by the NEC after the general election in 2010. For that to happen the NEC itself has got to wrest exclusive strategic control of the party from the Leadership now.

Labour NEC meets in two weeks - what should be on the agenda?

In the interests of openness and accountability, I would like to hear from any Labour Party member, or supporter: what steps you would like to see the Party's National Executive Committee take to improve Labour's chances of a bigger win in next year's General and local council elections?