Peter Kenyon

Labour's Clause V manifesto committee meets today

At noon today any member of the collective leadership of the Labour Party can have her/his first sight of the draft 2010 election manifesto. Don't expect any leaks here. It's the process that interests me as much as the content. Labour has been struggling with how to make policy, to win elections, since it was founded.

A radical change the process was heralded by the forerunners of new Labour in the early 1990s with the creation of a National Policy Forum. Annual Conference voted to strip itself of its powers to make policy by resolution in 1997 with the launch of the misleadingly labelled 'Partnership in Power' process. 

Partnership dissolved into diktat from Downing Street. According to the Rule Book, all Labour Party members should have a vote on the general election manifesto. It was a ludicrous attempt to provide a democratic veneer for a thoroughly undemocratic way of making policy. Some may argue that the absence of a membership vote in 2010 is a further erosion of members' democratic rights.

But let's go back to the processes that have been at work leading up to the drafting of Labour's latest manifesto. Latterly and to his political credit, manifesto coordinator, Ed Miliband has kept an access channel open direct to his own office to enable anyone with ideas to get in touch. Face to face meetings have taken place with the Party's stakeholders in the period since New Yea.  Save the Labour Party has been urging members to take advantage as set out in its recent newsletters. Other organisations like Compass, Power 2010 have been engaged in their own manifesto related promotions.

What has been missing are reputable open and transparent polling mechanisms to test the strength of opinion about particular issues, either among members, supporters and potential Labour voters or the electorate as a whole. That needs to be kept in mind for the planned review of policy making after the election.

For now I and my colleagues haven't got long to wait to find out how Labour's values have been set out for the next Parliament and beyond, and make our last minute suggestions. Those who will be attending today's meeting include the Cabinet, the National Executive Committee, affiliated trade union leaders, and representatives from the National Policy Forum - all part of Team Labour. In their turn each of those present represents a wider constituency of members, both individuals and affiliates - and they in turn the communities that Labour seeks to serve across the UK, and internationally.

It could and should be in sharp contrast to the sycophancy and deference that mired the drafting of manifestos under Gordon Brown's predecessor.

Co-operatives and co-operation: older than Labour let alone 'New....

The Labour Party should be comfortable about the idea of working with the Co-operative Party in formulating its manifesto as reported in today's Guardian. That is as long as no one else makes the mistake that Minister for London Tessa Jowell made recently of trying to brand mutualism as 'New Labour'. The Co-op Party pre-dates 'New Labour' by some 70 years and the principles which it promotes pre-date the Labour Party itself. Hardly new.

BTW I'm not sure the brothers and sisters will be too happy about the Prime Minister Gordon Brown lauding the John Lewis Partnership as the corporate model of the future. If my memory serves me right JLP has a distinctly frosty attitude towards trade unions, prefering the paternalistic staff association model of  controlling guiding industrial relations.

Labour's radical manifesto: who decides?

Today's media is littered with reports of yesterday's Cabinet at which it was proclaimed the next Manifesto will be the most radical in recent times.

At about the same time a message went out from Head Office to Labour's beleaguered constituency National Policy Forum and National Executive Committee representatives setting out a process for further consultation with Constituency Labour Party members via their representatives.

Being a practical person, I have been wracking my brains about how members at this late stage can have any sense of ownership over the policies that might persuade the electorate to give Labour another term in office governing the United Kingdom. Remarks like these reported in the Times this morning are not helpful:

Mr Brown said there must be no repeat of last week’s botched coup. The campaign must be not “about us and the Labour Party” but about the public’s priorities. Sources said that the words amounted to an instruction.

No, Mr Brown if you have been correctly reported, in the first instance you need to remind yourself about what resources you have available to fight this General Election. If Labour is to win, it has to win over its Party pdq. Your Joint Policy Committee opted to abandon a further meeting of the National Policy Forum. There is no Spring Conference. Volunteer members of the Labour Party are not readily inclined to being told what to think (though that doesn't stop some of the NEC, too many Party staff, not to mention some Labour elected representatives from behaving as though they are the 'thought police'.) At least Labour local government understands the importance of rallying morale and is holding an event on the last weekend of February.

Instead of barking orders, some of us think reality checks are vital. Save the Labour Party is experimenting with a short survey on Labour loyalties. It is currently running in an open version on Labourhome and Facebook, and closed versions in Bury North, Weston and the City of London Branch, plus the Labour Party's own Membersnet. A report of responses on Labourhome to date is available here.

Reading between the lines, if this survey were representative, and I would be the last to claim it is on the basis of responses to date, then you would be thinking:

If your most with-it members don't think the party can win, policies are important, want a say, but they haven't one....then a further decline in membership not to mention a crushing defeat at the GE is inevitable.

That's the challenge, and it will not be altered by hand-me-downs from Downing Street. We, the members, have to want to change the zeitgeist and get on with it as part of Team Labour.

Labour Party reconnecting... closing ranks - united to win!

City of London Labour Party - a local branch - is going ahead with its AGM next week. This is despite a message from Head Office just before Christmas allowing such meetings to be suspended until after the General Election on the pretext of enabling more campaigning. That illustrates the gulf between Labour Party head office and rank-and-file members more familiar with everyday life. The real world in which the vast majority of us live is very demanding as far as accountability and governance are concerned. That is in sharp contrast to the Political Class - Labour Party branch as was illustrated vividly yesterday by the snowflake plotters.

So an Annual Report and Accounts are in production. Nominations are being sought for Branch offices. Participation is being encouraged with personal telephone calls. Then there are the reality checks. A survey has been designed by Save the Labour Party (STLP) to gauge Labour Party member opinion towards involvement in the 2010 General Election campaign.The local branch chair and vice-chair have agreed it should be circulated to all members. The thrust of the five questions follows the conclusions of the LabOUR Commission interim report in 2007 - that members expect a say in policy making.

With an election only a few months away is it too late, or could this be part of an election strategy that enables the Labour movement to feel involved, close ranks and reach out to the electorate to secure an overall majority in the next Parliament?