Peter Kenyon

Labour PPC selections and postal voting

Journalists from the Guardian and the Independent have rung me in the last 24 hours about the postal voting issues in prospective parliamentary selections in Calder Valley and Erith and Thamesmead.

Like lots of other people I am concerned that the Labour Party's rules are not being administered properly. The selection in Calder Valley involved 61% of members voting by post - 90 out of a total of 147 votes cast. In Erith and Thamesmead, Tribune reported last week that a third of members had applied for postal votes.

The point I made to both the Guardian and the Independent is that it appears on the surface that a shift in public policy towards postal voting had taken place inside the Labour Party, without any change in its Rules. My concerns are that our PPCs rely on voluntary help at election time. Any suggestion of manipulation of a selection is detrimental to volunteers' willingness to campaign. Members who have taken part in selections and accept that the best candidate won in an open and transparent selection may be more likely to want to go out campaign and get that candidate elected.

That is what is at issue. According to this morning's Yorkshire Post: "A spokesman for the Yorkshire and the Humber Labour Party said the Calder Valley contest had been carried out under the rules laid down by the party's National Executive Committee and Steph Booth had gained a "clear victory.""

I hope the General Secretary is urging his staff to exercise a little more caution about these matters until the astonishingly high proportion of PV votes has been examined thoroughly. This should be part of a wider inquiry into the conduct of PPC selections, which I believe would be best undertaken in the context of membership recruitment and retention.

Tribune reports Labour Leader ambitions to reform party

This week's Tribune carries a report about the Labour Party leader, Gordon Brown's apparent ambitions to reform the Labour Party. If only. For those of us who spent two years' worth of voluntary time immediately after the last election researching opinion among members and former members, such a move can't come soon enough if we are going to have a cat in hell's chance of winning the next British General Election.

The results we published as the LabOUR Commission Interim Report. There are problems currently with the links following the transfer of the host for its website, which we hope to rectify very soon.

In the meantime, I hope every CLP/branch/affiliate will take a few moments to remind the leadership that to rebuild the Labour Party it has to be seen as ethical, solvent, democratically-run and aiming for mass membership.

The problem with any Labour Party review of its internal structures or its policies is whether the Leadership takes any notice.

I am quoted in the Tribune article as saying:

“It has to be open and transparent and give proper weight to views decided at collective levels within the party. This is an opportunity to revisit some important issues and we don’t want party members’ views disappearing into a black hole.”

I will have an opportunity to make representations on Tuesday at the next meeting of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee.

New Year preparations - Labour Party branch AGMs

One way of working off the mince pies post-Christmas for me has been preparing for local Labour Party branch Annual General Meetings. My predecessor as secretary for the Cities of London and Westminster Constituency Labour Party, Jason Thomas Williams left an excellent set of ideas in his files to assist his counterparts at the branch level. It includes times, deadlines, posts to be filled to share out the work,'job descriptions' and a set of the standing orders to help ensure the business is conducted systematically - or at least that's the theory. I have just amended them for 2009 and despatched them to my counterparts and the chairs of branches, including a reminder to branches to prepare audited accounts if they are raising/spending and holding money.

It became fashionable under our previous Labour Party leader to scorn these routines. Checks and balances are a vital part of our society, not just our democracy. Having seen the banking system come close to collapse worldwide, my wish for 2009 is that our new Labour Party leader will make clear his appreciation of the role of branch officers, including those who account for the money. We need lots more people in local communities who understand the importance of these functions. Many used to gain their apprenticeships as chairs, secretaries, organisers and treasurers in trade union and Labour Party branches.

Let's consign sofa government to the dustbin of history in 2009.

Post-election role for the Obama grassroots?

The Guardian's Gary Younge writes today about the big question for those of us utterly convinced about the role of the grassroots in democratic politics.

With no democratic input, they promoted the agenda the campaign had outlined. It was Obama's show. They funded it and promoted it. But they did not own it. But since Wednesday all of that changed. They won. Now we'll see whether this electoral base has the will and wherewithal to transform itself into a political movement that might both support and challenge him.

Members of the British Labour Party have faced the same challenge throughout 11 years of Labour governments. The LabOUR Commission set out an agenda for renewal in its interim report published last year Angela Eagle MP, then vice-chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party and chair of the Commission, wrote in her Foreword:

Our recommendations show how renewal is possible, and that under new leadership it must be achieved by a genuine dialogue.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown missed the opportunity last year, but as a son of the manse he knows it is not too late to admit to mistakes - as with Iraq and the economy, it is the same with the Party. Next week's Labour Party NEC represents the opportunity to build a genuine partnership in power for Labour's volunteer membership.

Labour's next NEC meeting: time for decisiveness

In two week's time I am due to attend my first Labour Party National Executive Committee meeting with a full business agenda. It will have been preceded by a full-day of broader thinking about strategy over the next 12 months or so, and hopefully beyond.

I've just penned some thoughts for the Save the Labour Party newsletter Issue No.16 November/December 2008, which will be published shortly.

With US polling stations now officially opening across the pond, my attention is on the remaking of Democratic Party politics. I bumped into a contact at No.10 over the weekend who told me that a recent article I blogged about here in early October had been circulated around the PM's political advisors, and asked had I seen the latest Fabian Society Freethinking paper, or read Matt Bai's book The Argument - Inside the battle the remake Democratic Politics?

Well, I hadn't then, but I have now. I'm going to encourage all my NEC colleagues to read them too.

Nick Anstead, author of one of the two articles in the Fabian Society paper concludes:

The US election challenges Labour to change dramatically – altering the way the party is organised, how it interacts with its supporters and communicates with the electorate. The reward of learning the lesson, however, is potentially huge; reawakening Labour as a movement and making the party fit for purpose as a campaigning force in the twenty-first century.

What do you think?

 

Rebuild the Labour Party - redemocratise

Benjamin Barber writing in today's Guardian makes the case for our current market difficulties focussing on decades of eroded trust and democracy. He concludes:

The lesson? The remedy today lies not simply in de-leveraging but in re-democratising. Recreate social capital and trust will follow.

That's been my cracked bell for the last five years. Now I'm a member of Labour's NEC I intend to clang it more loudly. If we want to win the next election, we practice what we preach and start by redemocratising the Labour Party.

Labour Conference guidelines (part) on STLP website

Alongside a highly readable lament by Polly Toynbee in today's Guardian about how the Labour Party's National Policy Forum has effectively stifled debate at this year's Conference in September, official guidelines have been written which will be seen by many as further dampening the possibility of real political discourse.

The guidelines, now available on the Save the Labour Party website come in the form of a six-page guidance note from the Conference Arrangements Committee concerning 'Contemporary Issues'. This was one of Gordon Brown's ideas set out in his paper 'Expanding and renewing party democracy' bounced through passed by the National Executive Committee on 24 June 2007 - the day of his coronation adoption as Leader of the Labour Party.

A deadline of 12 September has been set for the submission of 'contemporary issues'. I know that date is before my own CLP meets in September. STLP intends to survey the Party nationally to find out how many CLPs have meetings scheduled before that deadline.

To date, no official information about this issue has been circulated to CLPs whatsoever. It is a scandal and further evidence of why Labour will remain unelectable in Westminster until its Leader acts like a democratic socialist. That means encouraging debate, not suppressing it. Perhaps, he should be subject to the backyard test first?

UPDATE : POLL Has your CLP got a scheduled meeting before 12 September?

Lessons in democracy from the Anglicans

While Gordon Brown is finishing his plate at yet another G-8 banquet in Hokkaido, he might well reflect on democracy at work in the Church of England. I have always been impressed at the way each well-run Anglican parish keeps an electoral roll, elects its parish councils at an Annual General Meeting, checks over the Parish accounts. It contrasts with a rather more paternalist model operated by Roman Catholic parishes, I know. Last night's news of the Synod vote on women bishops highlights the readiness of an institution to debate and decide difficult decisons. It puts the Labour Party to shame regarding the way it treats issues about which there are differing opinions. Unless, of course, Gordon recognises that the National Policy Forum starting (or will it) on the day of the Glasgow East by-election is his big opportunity to confound his critics and open up the Labour Party to democratic debate.

Three election wins and you're out - democracy?

Would this have been the image that aided Labour to a 4th British General Election victory? If it had it would, by implication, have been a travesty of democracy according to Geoffrey Wheatcroft writing in today's Guardian.

It's just that the three elections Labour has already won are quite enough for the time being, not to say a distortion in our political culture that needs to be corrected.

Going to the polls once every four or five years (more often if you are Italian) has never been my idea of democracy. The idea that if the electorate were, perish the thought, to vote in the same party four times in succession being (why didn't Wheatcroft say it?) "undemocratic" is quite ludicrous. This two-dimensional perspective needs exposing for the "Ya, bo, sucks politics" that it illustrates.

Labour will only win a 4th term by rebuilding its membership, finances and electoral support from the grass-roots up. Our new Leader and the NEC need to appreciate the radical change in the Party's internal political culture necessary now to achieve those objectives. We certainly don't want to wait as Wheatcroft suggests:

And defeat would teach Labour a very healthy lesson, which might even forestall a terminal crisis for the Party.

What are you waiting for, Gordon?