Peter Kenyon

Why Labour's new leader should invite his Deputy to lead on Party renewal

With the ballot for the Shadow Cabinet closing today, who will be assigned to look after the Labour Party? Continuing my check-list theme for assessing whether Ed Miliband is his own person or in the thrall of the Party machine comes the contentious issue of a Party Chair. The position does not exist in the Labour Party Rule Book. It never has, though the defeated leadership candidate, David Miliband had ambitions to create the post. And fallen leftie idol, Jon Cruddas has made no secret of wanting to be crowned the same.

Ed Miliband seeks a mass membership party. After 13 consecutive years of declining membership, he needs a senior figure to champion the role of members in the Party both as contributors to the Party's finances, policy making and campaigning capacity. It is an enormous job in its own right.

During the Deputy Leadership campaign in 2007, Jon Cruddas led on making that position the vehicle for rebuilding the party. The eventual winner Harriet Harman portrayed herself as a unifying force who would take the Party to victory at the next election. But rather than focus on the Party, she accepted a sheaf of ministerial responsibilities ranging from Leader of the House, to Minister for Equalities and Women, as well as taking the courtesy title of Party Chair, originally created by Tony Blair after the 2001 general election.

Given the welcome and spontaneous interest in Labour Party membership since the May 2010 general election, this will need encouraging and nurturing if the new joiners are to renew in 12 months time. The Party also need to mobilise more candidates to run for local council seats in May next year, as well as a senior Party figure to oversee giving members a say in policy making, possibly as chair of the National Policy Forum. These tasks must be tackled now to position Labour to win the next General Election.

The only person with the necessary democratic legitimacy to do that job is Deputy Leader Harriet Harman. She doesn't need a the insult of a courtesy title like Party Chair to get on with it, as I'm sure the Party machine will be urging.

Avid readers of this blog, who include her husband Jack Dromey, now MP for Birmingham, Erdington, may be somewhat surprised by my advocating Harriet for this task. After all it was only yesterday I was reiterating my contempt for her clinging on to the position of Deputy Leader. (She declining the opportunity even to open nominations for Deputy Leader after Gordon Brown stepped down as Leader in May.) It was a pity she didn't run. I'm convinced she would have been unopposed. But in any event that's history. We have to move on. Her readiness to take on a Party focussed role would also help clarify whether there is any point in  the position of Deputy Leader. The alternative would be to delete the Deputy post and create a position of elected Chair with an unambiguous job description instead.

So I hope Ed Miliband will show his mettle by inviting her to use her unifying skills as the Party's Deputy Leader and take on that vital role of rebuilding the Party from the grassroots. And, of course, I am sure that she will recognise the massive job that needs to be done and accept the challenge graciously.

Jack - Labour Party masseur proffers fluffy towel

Creative accounting has been taken into a new dimension by Labour Party outgoing Treasurer, Jack Dromey. Delegates to Annual Conference voted just before lunch today on a Rule change which requires every constituency and branch labour party "to transfer the beneficial ownership of their respective freehold and leasehold properties legal title........to and for the benefit of The Labour Party......."

Questions were asked. Reassurances were given. Jack offered a "cast-iron guarantee". Quite correct. Cast iron's defining characteristic is: it is brittle.

Moving the Rule Change, Cath Speight, a past NEC chair and representative in the Trade Union section from Unite the Union, played the masseur's assistant assured conference there had been a proper consultation. And indeed there had been between end July and mid-September, when few CLPs meet, if you call that proper. NEC members were told last week some 60 replies had been received. But there was no written report. So no opportunity for other NEC members to look at the responses alongside the recommendation, which I call sequestration.

If implemented, the consequence will be to add assets to the Labour Party's balance sheet. It currently shows liabilities far in excess of current assets. So bravo, Jack, masseur extraordinaire. That should drape a towel over the naked financial irresponsibility which took the Labour Party to the brink of bankruptcy after the 2005 General Election. And who was Treasurer at that time? In his own defence, Jack insisted that there had been "complete concealment". Well, I'm sorry. As anyone who has ever put in place financial governance arrangements for a multi-million pound organisation, and I have, when elected Treasurer he simply never paid attention to the necessary detail in the first place.

I sincerely hope his successor as Treasurer, Diana Holland, doesn't make the same mistake, however fluffy Jack's towel looks.

Unity pleas must not mask a deep rift over how the Labour Party is run

A HH:MM:SS countdown to the Labour Party Leadership announcement adorns its website. A gradual swell of pleas for unity can be anticipated ahead and after the declaration. The political fight has to be taken to the Tories. Who could disagree? Livelihoods of millions of people whether in or out of work for whatever reason are under threat from the ConDem's mismanagement of the budget deficit.

All the more reason to expose and seek to heal a long-standing rift over how the Labour Party itself is run. Rift? What rift? It's between the democratic centralisers and the democratic socialists. There was a time, it is said, when Party staff served all sections of the Party. No longer. Throughout Tony Blair's period in office as Leader, Party staff were deployed to serve the Leader; and with increasing ruthlessness. Remember the fiascos over the leadership of the Welsh Assembly, and who should run in 2000 as Labour's candidate for London Mayor?

The lingering stench of democratic centralism continues to pollute the Party as was all too evident at this week's pre-Conference National Executive Committee. A prolonged campaign of interference in the rights of Labour Party members in Tower Hamlets to select their own candidates for public office reached fever pitch with a mini-hysteria led by Acting Leader, Harriet Harman, her husband, Jack Dromey, aided and abetted by NEC chair Ann Black (seeking re-election on the self-styled Grassroots Labour slate) and the General Secretary Ray Collins. Swift action by the new leader to replace Collins and other HO staff has been called for on Left Futures. That's easier said than done. There is a deeply engrained democratic centralist culture espoused not just by Labour Party grandees and HO staff, but supporters at every level of the Party. John Harris in the Guardian on Wednesday caught a facet of this culture in his Comment piece Labour's right will roar back. He asked:

What has happened to the party's right? Most of its remaining number are clustered around MiliD, and aside from the odd pop at "Red" MiliE, keeping shtoom. But do not be fooled: they are as fired up as ever, and preparing for a return once the membership gets back to leaflets and balloons.

Note Harris's appreciation of members as sentient beings. The centre-left has no coherent vision or message for members disenfranchised in constituency parties frozen in time by the National Executive Committee awaiting the outcome of a ConDem government boundary review, which will take years. The machine's dogged resistence to parliamentary prospective candidate reselection needs to be recognised for what it is - a sitting MP's insurance scheme. I'm a Chartist. I support annual parliamentary elections as the most effective means of holding our elected representatives to account. But given recent experience the least Labour could do is reintroduce compulsory reselection. Where  there is no Labour MP, CLPs should be encouraged to come up with not just consituency, but branch development plans. These should link fundraising, local/national campaigning and political education to fight every parish, town, district, local and regional government seat. Alliances can be forged with community groups. It is a mammoth task. The new Leader should seek a rapid start on this work.

In doing so s/he will have to be mindful of what the NEC is actually proposing at Conference in Manchester. To encourage local initiative (not), it is proposing a rule change to oblige all party units to transfer any property it holds in trust or owns into the name of the Labour Party. It is sequestration in defiance of the wishes of countless benefactors dead or alive. Why? To bolster the national Labour Party's balance sheet increasing its assets at no financial cost. I doubt my ability to organise a sufficiently vocal protest to get  the proposed Rule change withdrawn. But if the new Leader wants to send a clear message to members s/he could useful insist at the NEC meeting on Sunday that sequestration is deferred pending an open and transparent consultation.

As I said at the NEC on Tuesday soundings undertaken by the outgoing Treasurer Jack Dromey were utterly cynical. They took place over the summer holiday period between the second half of July and 17 September. Worse, sound reasons for having a coherent property policy are being used to cover up the scandalous breakdown in financial governance arrangements of the Labour Party without the lessons being fully aired, understood and addressed. In the absence of proper budgets and management accounts, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that I should not  trust HO with my membership subscription, let alone a bequest . 

In the quest for change in the Party, relations between Leader and individual member and political levy payer/affiliate awakened by the 4-1/2 month long campaign have to be built on further. Reform of policy-making and encouragement of debate taking on the Tories should not be confined to Westminster but extended to everywhere people live and work. Here there is an opportunity to rebalance the Party's federal structure. New Labour squeezed the affiliated trades unions' representation on the National Policy Forum - to around 1/6th. But it left the TUs holding a disproportionate number of NEC seats - 13/33 who continue to fulfil a praetorian guard function for the Leadership. That compares with just 6/33 for constituency reps. TU representatives also hold the whiphand on the NEC organisation committee. Those whom I have encountered in my two year term on the NEC are temperamentally unsuited to managing discipline in a voluntary organisation. Put simply they have forgotten the need for carrots. Sadly, they have abandoned any regard for natural justice as evidenced in former MP Ian Gibson's deselection last year, and latterly over Tower Hamlets. There should be equal representation of affiliates and CLP representatives on the Organisation Committee, and in the coming year it should be chaired by a CLP representative.

A really bold Leader would tackle the representation of women in the Party's structures head on. An opportunity to set a 50% minimum for elected places in the Shadow Cabinet was lost on Tuesday thanks to the sisterhood. Acting Leader Harriet Harman failed to secure the votes in the PLP ballot. The NEC failed to hold the PLP to account. When I questioned the status of the PLP inside the Party, i was told by self-professed equalities champion and General Secretary Ray Collins that standing orders were outside the scope of the Rule. Not true, every CLP and local government groups SOs have to be approved by the NEC. When I protested NEC vice-chair Norma Stephenson moved next business, which was promptly adopted by NEC chair Ann Black. There are sound reasons for the PLP to be brought explicitly within the scope of the Labour Party's Rule Book when it comes to Party policy and financial governance arrangements. A thoughtful Leader on Sunday morning would ask for a rethink and suggest that the PLP SO changes should be put to Conference with an NEC recommendation for immediate adoption of a minimum of 50% elected places for women. Then a political education programme is needed to both encourage women to stand as Labour candidates, and branches and constituency parties to choose them.

Finally, there is the question of accountability of the Leadership. The Party hierarchy has already fixed an indefinite term of office, contrary to Rule, for Deputy Leader Harriet Harman. Nomination papers for Leader and Deputy Leader should be issued each year. The democratic centralists have ignored this since 1997. If the new Leader wants to reconnect with members s/he should insist that nomination papers are sent out. it gives every member the chance to say: "You are doing a great job, I will renominate you" or "Hang on, you are not, I will nominate another member of the PLP". The democratic centrist fear chaos, and bizarrely are proposing a Rule change in Manchester. That has been  described by Left Futures as a "wreckers' charter". If that is intended to stir up effective opposition, it is to be applauded. But not at the expense of securing a commitment from our new Leader to be accountable regularly to the membership as well as the electorate.

After seven years of campaigning for membership and our critical importance getting Labour's messages across on the doorstep, I hope our new Leader will not just put the Blair/Brown years behind, but the democratic centralist practices that prolonged them beyond the electorate's patience.

Parliamentary seat engineering: Hunt for Stoke Central - update 2

Longlisting for Stoke Central to decide who will replace sitting MP Mark Fisher as Labour's candidate is expected to take place today.

Word has is that Tom Watson MP (who mysteriously sits on the Labour Party's ruling (sic) national executive committee as a government representative even though he's been out of government since July last year) has been stopped from chairing any more of the three-member selection panels. 

The baton to ensure a particular outcome may have been passed to Deputy Leader Harriet Harman, it is alleged, who, since husband Jack Dromey won the All Male Shortlisted ballot in Birmingham, Erdington, is free once again to take part in parliamentary seat engineering, as I call it. Her name is being linked to a private understanding with m'lord Mandelson in a bid to secure seats for favoured candidates.

I can't attest to the voracity of these suggestions. But knowing those who are making them, I consider they must be aired in the hope that sanity will prevail. An open and transparent process could have avoided these suspicions, which are extremely damaging to member morale, and to Labour's electoral prospects.

A shortlist for Stoke Central that offers local members genuine choice in the ballot that will take place shortly will be a real test for the Labour leadership. Is it focussed on winning the election or more concerned about positioning ahead of a leadership contest that would follow defeat?

UPDATE: 0903 Friday 26 March - Harriet Harman is not on the three-member panel that will be interviewing and shortlisting candidates on Monday afternoon, which I understand will comprise Keith Vaz MP, Cllr Ann Lucas and USDAW's Paddy Lillis.

Choice for local members has already been compromised by the omission of Mark Seddon, former editor of Tribune and NEC member from the long-list. Given their full right's would Seddon have got some nominations from members? But in the faux democracy deeply engrained in the upper echelons of the Labour Party, those members' rights now count for little, if anything at all. Shameful.

Election looming: Labour Party internal workings - spotlight ON

Conventional thinking in our party politics, at least in my experience in the Labour Party, is that when an election looms, its heads down and focus on getting our candidates elected. Last night, I appeared on Newsnight commenting on the Erdington selection of Jack Dromey, as did Andy Howell, a Labour Party member from a neighbouring Birmingham constituency

Without relentless, on going scrutiny, the Labour Party risks further alienating its members, undermining its own capacity to campaign locally on the doorstep, raise money and, ultimately, win the next and future elections. So it is important for all champions of party democracy to keep the spotlight ON these secretive Labour Party workings. When it comes to talking to the media, Labour Party officials and staff have no authority to interfere in our freedom of speech or expression. However, it is significant that not a single member in Erdington felt free to talk on camera to Newsnight last night. Such is the 'reign of terror' that continues to pollute the Labour Party.

Incidently, that's why, I am raising fundamental questions about the standoff between Stoke Central CLP and the National Executive Committee (well documented publicly on local web-based new blog, Pits'nPots). There, the sitting local MP, Labour's Mark Fisher is facing the BNP Deputy leader, Simon Darby, and 1/3 of the local council seats are up on 6 May. Instead of enabling the local party to rebuild and develop the 'powers that be' are conducting a vendetta against the leaders of a successful campaign to get rid of an elected-Mayor - a Blairite flagship local government imposition.

On the selections front elsewhere, questions are being asked in Ashfield about why that seat has been declared an All Women Shortlist. The vacancy created by Geoff Hoon's decision to stand-down (faced with a possible CLP vote of no confidence). There is a strong suspicion that this is an entirely cynical move intended to provide a justification for declaring Mansfield (should sitting MP Alan Meale stand down) an OPEN selection. It is rumoured locally that a male aide of Prime Minister Gordon Brown (should the seat become vacant) is waiting in the wings.

All this speculation is highly corrosive to local member morale. The arrogance of office, thoughtlessly exercised, over the past 13 years risks the prime purpose of party politics - achieving and retaining power. 

I confidently expect to be accused of undermining Labour's electoral prospects when the National Executive Committee next meets, without any sense of irony on the part of those pointing their self-righteousness, issuing 'faux instructions'  and baying.  

In the meantime, I don't know (officially, as a member of the NEC) any of the details about the proceedings of the Special Selection Panel, other than which seats have been declared OPEN or AWS.  So though we know that Jack Dromey won the Birmingham Erdington selection, we don't know: how many votes were cast, how many votes were valid, how many votes were cast for each candidate, and as it was an eliminating ballot, the results of each round of transfering votes (if any). That's before putting all the preceding steps of the process in the spotlight.

So the suspicions remain that someone, or somehow this seat was fixed for Jack. That means some members will not campaign.  Some voters will cast their ballot for another candidate, if they bother to vote at all.

That's why, Jack , I invite you to join me in demanding that there is full publication of all the key facts relating to this and every other PPC selection under the NEC fast-track procedure.

Has Labour shelved All Women Shortlists in Wales?

Just got back to discover the Labour NEC Special Selections Panel (SSP) has decided that two repeat two seats with vacancies for PPCs in Wales, both with thumping great majorities, have been declared OPEN. Speculation from the other side of Offa's Dyke has started here. The Labour Party has a policy of seeking 40% women MPs to represent it in the next Parliament. All Women Shortlists (AWS) have been the preferred means of achieving this objective, whatever the impact on local constituency parties as evidenced at the last General Election over Blaenau Gwent.

Last week Wales Online reported a 'battle' between outgoing Pontypridd MP Kim Howells and Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman over the issue to avoid any more self-inflicted wounds. Could he have won?

Here are the essential details of the two Welsh seats declared by the NEC SSP as OPEN today.:

Pontypridd AWS: No OPEN shortlist Held by: Lab Maj: 11,428

CVs to be submitted by: 22 Feb Shortlisting interviews: 25 Feb

Islwyn AWS: No OPEN shortlist Held by: Lab Maj: 16,787

CVs to be submitted by: 22 Feb Shortlisting interviews: 25 Feb

There is a growing suspicion among Labour grassroots members that All Women Shortlists (AWS) are being used by the dominant forces controlling the Labour Party not to get more women into Parliament as Labour MPs,  but to engineer selections for their preferred candidates. Members in Scotland should be taking a very close interest in this latest development. A timetable has been announced for Airdrie and Shotts declared an AWS over two years ago. The procedures function is being managed in Scotland by guess who? The Scottish Labour Party. This is a seat which has endured imposed candidates ever since it was created in 1997. According to my sources across the political spectrum in the Labour Party in Scotland, local members would have preferred the opportunity to exercise their right to select their own candidate when John Reid MP announced his intention not to run for relection back in 2007.

Instead we have seen squalid deals done, and there are suspicions of more to come - Ashfield could be next perhaps, just vacated by Geoff Hoon MP.

An excellent article questioning the activities of Harriet Harman and Jack Dromey appeared last Wednesday on the Guardian Comment is Free blog by Martin Kettle. He concluded:

Jack Dromey would be a more than adequate Labour MP, too. But this doesn't mean he should do it. It would look as if he had got the job because of who he is married to. It would look as if he had lined himself up a nice post-retirement life because he had the connections. It would look as if he had benefited from connections that others could not call on."Why does a dog lick its own backside? Because it can," goes the saying. But that doesn't make it an action to imitate.

Like Kettle, I know Harriet and Jack socially albeit only slightly. It grieves me to see such poor political judgment being paraded by them both at such a critical time for Labour. Behind their personal saga, another two safe Labour seats were surprise, surprise... declared OPEN - Leyton and Wanstead, and then Birmingham Erdington. It stinks. If Gordon Brown had any regard for the re-electability of the Labour Party, he will intervene immediately to order a clean up of the Labour Party fast-track selection process.

Erdington shortlist: full of surprises!

My sources have just astonished me with news that Birmingham, Erdington has already been shortlisted by the Labour Party. Applications only closed at 12 noon on Friday. The luck four are reported on The Stirrer to be....yes, the one Labour Party Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, has been impatiently waiting for,  for so long, Jack Dromey, together with former local councillor Steve Bedser and Washwood Heath councillor Ansar Ali Khan and Handsworth Wood councillor Gurdial Singh Atwal.

According to the Stirrer report:

Former Birmingham councillor Steve Bedser has been outlining his credentials to replace Sion Simon as Labour’s candidate in Erdington – and while he’s too diplomatic to criticise his maIn rival, union baron Jack Dromey, it’s clear that he’s positioning himself as the prime local choice in a duel against a nationally backed “outsider”.

It is alleged that longlisting and interviews resulted in other local candidates not getting a look in. I can only say it is a pity that the Labour Party is still failing to take advice and ensure an open and transparent selection process.

Selection in the spotlight: Erdington

Mike Smithson at Political Betting is taking a close interest in my avid reader, Jack Dromey and his prospects in the Birmingham, Erdington seat recently 'released' by Sion Simon MP. He announced his decision not to seek re-election last week. The deadline for applications is midday today. This constituency is in Labour First territory in the West Midlands, and therefore bound to provoke unseemly speculation.

I'm not putting any money on a mainstream broadcast journalist taking up the theme though. It will be a brave soul that decides to take the lid of the power-broking now underway by Gordon's fiesty friend, Tom Watson at the heart of the Labour Party. #153 on PB's story

Could Hattie’s man come a cropper in Erdington?

rules out BBC Newsnight's Michael Crick. I can't imagine why. Surely, this is right up his street.

Predictable and avoidable: Harman misses key selection meeting

With less than 24 hours to go before the deadline for applications to run as the Labour Party's PPC in Leyton and Wanstead, the right wing press is freshening stories about Deputy Leader Harriet Harman's alleged absence from NEC special selections panel meetings. It is alleged that this was for reasons linked to her interest in her husband, Jack Dromey, being selected as a PPC for Labour in the forthcoming General Election.

If that is the case she and Jack should have resigned from the Labour Party special selections panel before its proposed membership was submitted to the Labour Party NEC back in November. As neither of them did, I'm presuming that neither Jack, nor anyone else on the SSP,  has any interest in being an PPC for Labour in the 2010 General Election.

Labour Party NEC: declarations of interest

Correction on Thursday 17 December Today, the Labour Party National Executive Committee's Special Selection Panel is due to meet to consider the latest crop of pending candidate selections. Any member of the Panel who has a particular seat with a vacancy under discussion is obliged to declare an interest and leave the meeting. But in the interests of avoiding any doubt, shouldn't any member of the Panel resign forthwith if  s/he plans to apply as a possible candidate for the 2010 General Election? That would, of course, apply, to any partners ro relations on the SSP too.

Suggestions that the following story have influenced my decision to blog about this today would be entirely correct.

So apologies, Jack and Harriet. But there is no time 'to feel my way on the NEC' about this issue.

Perhaps a declaration of no-interest in being a Labour Party PPC for the 2010 General Election would be the better way of helping to consolidate trust in the fast-track selection process.