Peter Kenyon

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.

 

No thanks from Labour's GS Iain McNicol as Refounding Labour cuts bite

As previously reported the Labour Party Head Office is moving to Brewer's Green, earlier today I learned Friday is the day. As if further evidence of couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery were needed, I also received an eMail from General Secetary, Iain McNicol setting out changes to my constituency labour party (CLP) income. The proportion of membership subscriptions being remitted to local parties is being slashed in some instances from one-third to nearly one-thirtieth. 

The changes arise from the notorious top down stitchup agreed at last year's party conference mislabelled Refounding Labour. They mask a lamentable and wholly avoidable failure on the part of the leadership and the National Executive Committee to rethink the way the Labour Party pays its way as a mainstream political party. Instead we have more hankering after state-funding (see Party funding rules face overhaul as talks continue http://bit.ly/Hx4jw0) , and a clampdown on local parties' finances to fill the holes in Head Office accounts. To add insult to injury, there was not a word of thanks, appreciation or recognition of any effort expended by members administering the party on the ground.

I had expected better when Iain was elected. Oh, BTW the citation should have been 'Dear Comrade', not 'Dear friend'. 

 

An alternative to state funding - electoral ward political party branch budgeting

This is as stoggy as a hot cross bun. Read no further. Debate about how political parties should be funded has been rekindled by yet another scandal. The latest involves cash for access and co-treasurer of the Conservative Party, Peter Cruddas, who promptly resigned. Attempts by Labour to score political points are unlikely to impress the vast majority of the electorate. Most of the debate focuses on the motives of donors and the base practices of party fund-raisers. Few if any commentators, let alone voters, give a moment's thought to when, where and how often political parties need money.

Democratic societies need political parties. They are generally the only institutions capable of forming governing bodies at whatever level - national, regional or local government. (There are some worrying departures in the European Union following the Eurozone crisis, but that should not detract from the norm.) If you want power, or a handle on power, or to enable others to exercise power on your behalf, then joining a political party is the way to go. There was a time in the UK when money played a direct part in securing a seat in Parliament. The notorious "Spendthrift election" came in Northamptonshire in 1768, when three earls spent over ₤100,000 each to win a seat. These blessed isles saw the light about politics with the introduction of rules to limit spending on elections at a local ward/constituency level. Though it took over 200 years to introduce limits on national spending in General Elections. Such rules are now bundled with a regulatory body, the Electoral Commission (EC), into law. People at the centre of party politics came to see the legislation enact by Labour in 2000 as the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act as a curse. That includes Labour. It is worth dwelling for a moment on why. The EC took a rather silly view about the role of treasurers in political parties, placing what seemed to be overly onerous requirements even on constituencies accounts. The absence of anyone with any experience of active party membership on the Commission itself didn't help. But it did have some sound ideas, which really irked the professional political class. In its requirements for annual reporting by registered political parties, the EC suggested membership should be included in the annual Statement of Accounts. As one if its first decisions, the Commission embarked on an Inquiry into the funding of political parties. In its recommendations published in December 2004, the EC concluded there was no case for state-funding, but that there were issues for political parties concerning membership and small donations. Given the presumptions of the political class, and that includes Labour's upper echelons, the EC recommendatons were buried. The then Leader of the House of Commons Peter Hain failed to make parliamentary time available. Yes, the same Peter Hain who presided over the bungled exercise to Refound Labour last year, adn who is still in an influential party position as chair of the National Policy Forum.

This is unfinished business. Labour doesn't have to wait for the other political parties. It has an opportunity to reconnect with its core vote and build the Party on the Ground.

This is not a hopeless cause, or one lacking possible traction either with the new general secretary or members of the parliamentary labour party. There is a strong case for looking at the issue of political party funding through the other end of the telescope. You just have to ask: how many Labour members of parliament elected in 2010 won their seats thanks to above average levels of local campaigning activity undertaken by volunteers, with or without professional organisational support? In which seats did Labour win a higher percentage of the vote than the national average? 

What the 2010 general election campaign highighted for Labour were different models of local political organisation -  an often cited example was Birmingham, Edgbaston where the sitting MP Gisela Stuart secured re-election with a slightly lower share of the vote and a modest 1.3% swing to Conservative from Labour. This compared with a national swing against Labour of 6.2%. Much more deserving of study is the result in Oxford East where sitting MP Andrew Smith was relected with a 6.5% increased share of the vote and a swing TO Labour of 4.2%. Whereas Stuart's victory was MP/organiser campaign led, Smith's was underpinned by an active local party and a local councillor-base/Labour group that had seen off the Liberal Demcrats on the city council. This is not an exact science. But it is a pointer to the future.

Layering community activity, and the way it is organised and accounted for is critical to rebuilding the Party on the Ground, winning future elections and burying the threat to our democratic socialist party from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. A possible place to start is using the national agreed limits to start building election-cycle budgets and fundraising strategies to match political goals overtime. After the May elections, of course. Someone in your CLP will be filling in the forms for election expenses. Those limits matter, both for accounting and future budgeting. Think about it. 

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.