Peter Kenyon

Careering On - Building a One Nation Labour Party

Dear Ray

Season's greetings

I don't envy you this task. On the one hand we have our party leader, Ed Miliband seeking to position himself against powerful vested interests, and on the other an anti-union agenda being run by …..powerful vested interests. It would be easy to be distracted by the context in which your assignment was set.

As you know I prefer to think positively. So this report you are preparing is an opportunity. To build a one nation Labour Party must surely involve membership. At the heart of this challenge are questions about the role of political parties and their members in modern society.

One thing that is a given is “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party” - the first sentence in the revised Clause IV of the Labour Party's constitution. To the best of my knowledge you will not be recommending any change there.

So let's start with political parties themselves. What are they for? For me, they are unique, the only institutions in a democratic state able to form a government, decide the policies that reflect the values of those being represented, and empower their elected representatives to make the law to enact those policies.

So any credible recommendations to build a one nation Labour Party must surely have a paying mass membership at their heart. Anything less suggests the right of a (necessarily) small number of career politicians to decide what is best for the rest of us.

Benjamin Franklin said: "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." Personally, I have never had any reason to doubt the certainty of death. But taxes? Their certainty begs questions about rights to impose and, if legitimately, how? Bearing in mind, today is Christmas Eve, one of the New Testament gospel authors, Luke, tells us: “...there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”

So Ed decreed that a one nation Labour Party should be rooted deeper in the lives of working people and their communities – but to what ends? To reinforce prejudice and inequality? Of course not. And paid for out of general taxation? Ah, state-funding, so tempting.

Like too many leading figures in public life, Ed is a career politician. In building a one nation Labour Party, he has to face these problems head on. Career politicians are not the creatures of conjurers. Political party membership is the starting point for power-crazed careers as well as keeping them in check, as the Labour Party knows very well from recent experience.

So I'm looking forward to you promoting mass membership as the centre-piece of your final report. That leads rapidly on to affordability – the current full rate is too high. And making membership compelling – very difficult if the first thing membership involves is freezing you out of selections.

Good luck

With best wishes

Will Labour's NEC take Executive Board plan lying down?

Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC) meets today in the wake of news of the membership and chair of the unconstitutional Executive Board. My own jaundiced views were posted here. Labour List provided details here. Dan Hodges added spice here and The Guardian played catchup here.

Will anyone have the temerity to challange the proposals and demand a debate and vote(s)?

I haven't bothered to ring any of my sources. There is not a mention of the Executive Board on either of the blog sites of Johanna Baxter or Luke Akehurst - the two most energetic member representatives on the NEC in the blogosphere. (Note they are members' representatives, not CLP representatives under the one-member-one-vote election system.) 

What are its Terms of Reference? When were they agreed? How does this body relate to the NEC Business Board?

If Dan Hodges' account is to be believed, the Labour Party made a £1.7mln loss in 2011. That suggests that the Business Board lost its grip on the management accounts early on in the last financial year, while m'lord Collins was still carrying the title of general secretary, but Alicia Kennedy was actually in charge.

If nothing else, I hope some highly pointed questions are being asked about who was managing the money. Remind me who is the Treasurer?

But I'm not holding my breath. Just keeping a firm hand on my pocket book when it comes to donating money to the Labour Party. As for the idea of an unelected business person chairing an unconstitutional body within a democratic socialist political party, I have only one thing to say - stand for election after you have got your proposals authorised by the constitutionally designated body - the NEC. Otherwise make your excuses and leave those responsible to put the Labour Party's affairs in order.

Awaiting the piss-up in Brewer's Yard

Crikey, it's four and a half weeks since I last posted a blog. Was it the weather? Was it the moon? Was it a branch in my constituency labour party that must remain nameless? Was it the polls? Whatever, it was has passed. At last news about those six director level appointments at Labour Party HQ and a lot more. They were first advertised in early January here. They are due to move shortly from Victoria Street further west of Parliament to Brewer's Yard. (You couldn't make it up!). 

I can reveal that some high-placed Labour Party sources see these appointments as a litmus test of Iain McNicol's grip as General Secretary. There was a three-way power struggle between Iain, his outgoing Deputy Alicia Kennedy and the Leader's officer. Iain you will recall was not Ed Miliband's candidate for the job. His election in favour of the well-oiled machine hand, Chris Lennie, followed the elevation to the peerage of m'Lord (formerly Ray) Collins.

Alicia Kennedy, de facto General Secretary under Ray Collins, whose role as Deputy General Secretary has been written out of the new structure, is appointed to a new post as special advisor to the appointed Deputy Chair Tom Watson. Chris Lennie, the other former Deputy General Secretary, will continue to assist in external relations and fundraising. Now the transfer window has closed, we must ask: is it possible that the Leader's office will be pulling the strings leaving McNicol wondering whether his move from the GMB was wise?

Update: News of skirmishes from the Leader's Office (aka Eastern Front) on Left Futures : Leader’s office oversteps mark with Labour Party HQ http://bit.ly/wQ3WEk

Update: A different take here Vive la résistance la rue Victoria! « Labour Uncut http://bit.ly/wCRLgC which reports:

In the words of one staffer on Friday, “Iain [McNicol] is basically now a glorified head of HR”.

Update: The whole debacle is reduced to an even baser level in the Telegraph: The Labour Party is tearing itself apart, and Len McCluskey is preparing a silent coup  http://soc.li/guJfMZK

Refounding Labour: a SADD case - serious accountability deficiency disorder

Is there any such thing as a perfect crime? Reading m'Lord Collins's letter to Labour Party members published yesterday here about Refounding Labour had me wondering. Here was the outgoing general secretary of the Labour Party proclaiming the outcomes of a controversial consultation, declining to offer any details, that will consolidate a command and control model of politics for another generation.

His letter is littered with clues. The mere fact that it was written a week before Labour's Annual Conference will be enough for some. Then consider who it was written to - individual members. How are they going to be able to convene, consider and decide how to mandate their elected representative to Conference in the coming week? The answer, even for the e-literate is only with extreme difficulty. Describing how it's possible is the subject for another blog. For me, possibly the most telling utterence was m'Lord's statement on changes to the procedure for selecting the Shadow Cabinet:

Rights and responsibilities of the party leader will be defined for the first time, including control over appointments to the Shadow Cabinet. [my bold]

This could be an important clue. Anti-democratic behaviour is now so deeply engrained in the Labour Party that our elected representatives are brazen about their entitlements. Our society is suffering a pandemic of ADD - Accountability Deficit Disorder. The political class has the most acute form: SADD - Serious Accountability Deficit Disorder. That condition arises from it having been exposed to prolonged right-wing media influences promoting intense fear and distorted vision, a fixation on neo-liberal thinking to the detriment of the hapless majority. Labour's Refounding Labour 'consultation' is a case in point.

The circumstances leading up to a decision by Labour's newly elected Leader Ed Miliband to want to be able to appoint his Shadow Cabinet reflect the construction of Labour's electoral college, the outcome of the leadership election last autumn, and doubts about the loyalties possibly of a majority of Labour elected representatives in the House of Commons. In plain language, they couldn't be trusted to elect a Shadow Cabinet loyal to the Leader. This cascades down through stripping out local government committees to an 'anything goes approach' to local party organisation that tolerates 'family and friends' command and control without question. As for candidate selection: incumbency rules.

As currently constituted, the Labour Party remains the creature of that section of the political class that believes in my Leader right or wrong - a communion of Latter Day Royalists aka Blairites. Public distrust of politicians is still on the rise as evidenced last week with the publication of fresh data by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. That trend can only be reversed with a dramatic change in behaviour. 

The clue to Refounding Labour is on every member's party card. The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. So there is a simple test that could be applied to all the proposed rule changes still being kept under wraps by Labour's high command - does this change make the party more democratic and or socialist or not?

Much will depend on the role of the trade union representatives on Labour's National Executive Committee which has its Pre-Conference meeting in two days time on Tuesday 20 September. Are they ready to herald that needed shift to a more democratic party that will help membership recruitment and retention, and persuade Ed Miliband he has nothing to lose politically by enabling members a proper say in the future direction of the Labour Party?

Until the actual rule changes are published, it is genuinely difficult to be sure. But I wrote to Peter Hain the week before last with a copy of a resolution passed unanimously by the City of London Labour Party calling for publication of the submissions and a period of reflection leading to a special conference on Refounding Labour in the spring.

He replied:

Sorry we simply don't agree because I thought you like me want reforms to empower grass roots members and turn Labour from an obsolete Party like our rivals into a popular movement relevant to today's politics. That's what RF aims to do and you can help make it happen.

Here's an extract from my response:

There is nothing in the current rule book that prevents our local party getting on with campaigning or fundraising or reaching out into our local community, which it does.

 

This is done in the main despite Labour Party Head Office and the London Labour Party.

So there's another test: What difference will these unseen rule changes make? If they reduce accountability, they should be rejected out of hand by the NEC. A named vote would be helpful. Don't suppose there's a rule for that in the proposed package?

 

Will the search for a new Labour Party GS be triggered this week?

Labour's 'ruling' National Executive Committee meets on Tuesday. Key question is will the long-awaited search for a new General Secretary to replace Ray (now m'Lord) Collins be triggered? Talk on the March for the Alternative suggested it might.

Not before time either, the Party needs fresh ideas to modernise itself and develop a new financial settlement in which dependence on rich individuals becomes a feature of the past, and membership subscriptions, affiliation fees and small donations make up the vast majority of the Party's income.

Rebuilding from branches based on electoral wards is IMHO will be an essential of the Labour Party of the future.

Re-engineering Labour's finances - a daft way to start

What is it about our political leaders or those paid to speak for them that obliges spouting ideas without bothering to do any basic research?

Today, we are told by the Independent's political editor, Andrew Grice that: Miliband plans to sever 'big money' ties with unions . I remember interviewing former Labour Party finance director David Pitt-Watson while researching for the LabOUR Commission about a considered approach to re-engineering Labour's finances. In the immediate aftermath of that famous 1997 Labour election victory, he had proposed a formula. The intention was to boost income from members in small donations and subscriptions to account for some 40%, while trade union affiliation fees and donations were to account for 30%, high value donors, 20% and commercial activity 10%. It suffered the same fate as all good intentions. But at least it respected the Party's historical origins and federal structure.

By allowing the sort of headline that appeared today in the Independent, together with a pandering editorial MiliE shows he has got no better grip that either of his new Labour predecessors of the state of the part that he now leads.

Most Labour Party candidates for elected office never see a penny from Labour Party HQ - they are seen as the 'losers'. No that's unkind. But that's how it feels. During my two-year period as a member of the National Executive Committee there was never any discussion about the party's finances, how they are structured, the political issues arising from the current ratios between stakeholders or methods of fundraising. Nothing, ziltch, and conspiracy of silence - part fuelled by left-wing insistence that the unions would be always stand by the party, and a right-wing fixation that the Party couldn't afford an ethical donations policy!

As immediate reactions in the twittersphere suggest, I am not alone, in wondering why the issues about the Party's finances are being raised in this particular manner by party spokespersons. I would like to see a debate. But not on the terms apparently ventured by outgoing General Secretary (shortly to be m'lord Collins) to the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Anyone who thinks reducing the level of individual donations to £500 a year is the answer to reducing undue influence is living in cloud cuckoo land. As my maternal grandmother used to say: life is not about what you know, but who you know. Influence is multi-faceted and multi-layered.

After all MiliE has only got to ask himself how he got to where he is, or the people now running his office. Meanwhile out here in the real world there are thousands of people wrestling with statutory or non-statutory end year reporting requirements - annual reports and annual accounts. Then there are those with foresight preparing multi-year plans and budgets. Analysts pronounce on future trends and how that will affect business, investment opportunities or charitable donations. All of which assists collective decision making. Which is all a trade union or rich individual is doing when it/she/he decides to grant money to a political party.

What matters is openness and transparency to assist accountability. Trading a donation limit as m'lord Collins is reported to have proposed to the Committee is just form of political horse-trading. MiliE needs to rein him in and put him out to pasture in the Lords sooner rather than later. Then recruit a General Secretary with some experience of the real world. m'Lord Collins handicap is that all he knows is trade union fixing. Nearly three years ago in the wake of the cash for honours scandal, I suggested that the Labour Party needed a financial planner as its next GS. The point remains that there is a widening gulf between the Labour Party national organisation and its constituency/branch structure.

If there is to be a credible UK response to the so-called 'new politics' it will be from a grassroots perspective. It won't be not dreamed up in Victoria Street or the Leader's office in the House of Commons. It will include electoral cycle financial planning as well as campaigning. That's the way to expand the skill base to initiate community/co-operative based solutions to our current state or privately owned enterprise or publuc service infrastucture. The Labour Party itself and its trade union/cooperative movement partners should be at the forefront of that drive. Scrambling to regain the moral high-ground pandering to yesterday's media obsessions is doomed to failure.

How many Labour Party branches will be delivering an Annual Report and Accounts for 2010 to AGMs early in the New Year? How many will be audited? And so on.

Ed get a grip.

More 2.0 pantomime via Fresh-Ideas promoted by Ray Collins out of Tangent Labs

'Your views' are back. It must be the pantomine season. This follows an unexplained disappearance which I reported here yesterday.

Each edited Fresh-Idea now comes with a 'first' name and a date, for example:

Fund higher education through general taxation- not just graduate tax or student loans. It's in everyone's interest that the brightest are highly qualified, not just the richest or those with family backing.
Louisa, 20-12-2010

Employ more Police Constables and less PCSO's; PCSO's do a great job, but I would prefer to see more Constables. As Police officers can make more of a diffrence to our communitys and make them safer.
Innes, 19-12-2010

Not that this information is the slightest use to anyone wanting to contact the source of the fresh idea directly.

If you comment on my blog there is scope for open and transparent two-way communication. By way of contrast Fresh-Ideas is the same old cyber-space black hole. This is the Labour Party HQ flagship vehicle for new Labour Party leader's ambitions to rebuild mass membership and give members a 'proper voice' in policy making. It is a scandal.

The top down charade continues. 'Latest comments' remain 'Latest edited comments'. 'Your views' remain 'Your edited views - by us - Labour Party command and control freaks'.

The site is promoted by  Ray Collins, General Secretary, the Labour Party on behalf of the Labour Party, both at 39 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0HA and

Powered by taobase from Tangent Labs. Hosted by Rackspace, 2 Longwalk Road, Stockley Park, Uxbridge, UB11 1BA.

Enuf said.

UPDATE: 1630 Just posted as First Name: Peter Kenyon (#CLW)

Labour should recruit new General Secretary asap

News of the elevation of Labour Party General Secretary Ray Collins to the peerage prompted two seemingly contradictory statements.

An email circulated by Ray to Party staff reads:

From: Ray Collins
Sent: 18/11/2010 17:37 GMT
To: All Staff
Subject: Message to Staff
As you will have heard today I will be standing down as General Secretary before the next election.

Over the coming year or so, Ed and I will continue to work closely together to reform the party in a positive and modern way before I stand down. My successor will then be in place in plenty of time to prepare the party for the General Election.

Ray


Ray Collins
General Secretary
The Labour Party
39 Victoria St.
London
SW1H 0HA
Tel: 020 xxxx xxxx

Whereas Party Leader Ed Miliband said:

“I am delighted with the new Labour peers that will be joining our team in the House of Lords. They are all excellent appointments and they will be working peers who will actively hold the government to account.

“They were chosen for their experience across a broad range of fields, and I am sure that they will add to the work of Parliament.”

The last thing the Labour Party wants are stories all over the right-wing media about "two jobs Collins". So hopefully the agenda papers for next week's Labour Party NEC will include plans for the prompt recruitment of a new general secretary.

Time to tidy up my CV.

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.

Pressure now unstoppable for at least 6 in the Labour Leadership ballot?

It's not often that representatives of the Labour Party's different ginger groups/thinktank/bloggers get their act together. So hats off to Andrew Fisher of the (far) left Labour Representation Committee for getting the following to sign up to a joint letter: Sunder Katwala (general secretary of the Fabian Society, albeit in a personal capacity), Neal Lawson - chair of the centre left campaigning think tank Compass, Alex Smith editor of Labourlist - the leading independent Labour Party blogsite, and myself - chair of Save the Labour Party - focussed on mass-membership, party democracy, ethical conduct and financial solvency.

The letter to the Guardian is here.

In the meantime, some Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) are thinking about the issues too. Greenwich and Woolwich Executive Committee (EC) agreed to table an emergency resolution last week for its General Committee (GC) tonight. Cities of London and Westminster GC debated the issues and agreed to submit its own emergency motion when it met on Tuesday.

Its resolution (still in draft) awaiting approval by eMail procedure says:

"This CLP notes the decisions of the NEC on 18 May 2010 and its Procedures Committee on 20 May 2010 that:

a)   PLP nominations for the post of Leader shall close on 9th June 2010;

b)   CLP nominations for the post of Leader shall be regarded as supporting nominations only and shall close on 26th July 2010.

c)   The threshold for Leader nominations will remain unchanged at 12.5% of the PLP

d)   Nomination papers for the Deputy Leadership of the party will not be issued and no contingency plans made for a Deputy Leadership election.

This CLP believes that these procedures are contrary to the rules of the party and as a matter of urgency respectfully requests that in the interests of an open, democratic and transparent debate about the future Leader, all declared candidates are enabled to take part, and on terms which respect the rights of all constituent sections of the electoral college, namely MPs/ MEPs, CLP members and affiliated organisations (TUs and socialist societies), both to nominate and vote."

That may not read easily if you are not familiar with the Labour Party Rule Book. But that's no different from your lack of familiarity with the Road Traffic Acts until you get your first parking ticket. The point is that, as in any organisation, there are Rules and in this instance Rules 4.2.B.i thru iv apply to the nomination process, Rule 4.2.D applies to timing.
 
I provided a write through the nomination process on this blog here last week. Rule 4.2.D.i just caps the argument.

When the PLP is in opposition in the House of Commons, the election of the leader and deputy leader shall take place at each annual session of party conference.

So I say to the Labour Party's general secretary Ray Collins: "Think about the future. Forget about the dubious practices of your predecessors. Concentrate on how (as Save the Labour Party has been campaigning for seven years) you guide the building of a mass-membership, democratically-run, ethical, solvent political party whose new Leader can depend on to deliver election victories - locally and national for the foreseeable future and beyond."

Of course, it is possible that all the current six declared Leadership candidates and more could get on the ballot paper with a little 'arm-twisting' in the PLP. Or may be even the brotherly love of nominated candidates will do the trick by asking surplus supporters to 'lend' their nomination rights to other candidates to assure them a place on the ballot paper, which I wrote about here even BEFORE the NEC met.

Personally, I find neither 'arm-twisting' nor 'patronage' appropriate devices to remedy flaws in the Labour Party's constitution, and misinterpretation of the Rules as set out.

It is the Geneal Secretary's job to smooth the way and that requires:

1. the reconvening of the NEC Procedures Committee

2. an honest account of the legal advice refered to on 18 May and its relevance in the circumstances the Labour Party now faces (NB there wasn't any sought)

3. revised proposals to put the Leader/Deputy nomination/election process back in line with the Rules governing when the Party is in opposition

4. an appraisal of the likelihood of either Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, and possibly Andy Burnham getting on the ballot paper without arm-twisting or the use of patronage by nominated candidates 'lending' their own supporters to get other contenders on the ballot paper

5. appropriate remedies to 4. above.

Here the Party has to be careful. Yes, the threshold could be cut. But would the Party want to invite the risk of a frivolous contest every year? I think that the vast majority of the Party would be against that. So there may be a case when there is a vacancy for Leader/Deputy for a lower nomination threshold to stimulate debate. That would not detract from the retention of the higher 20% threshold when there is no vacancy to underpin stability. Nor from the need for accountability as provided for in the Rule Book by the annual issue of nomination papers, whether in government or opposition. That practice MUST be restored now to prevent a repeat of the Blair years of an unchecked trampling of Labour values. That is until the coup to force Blair's protracted resignation in 2006/07. Though Blair himself was forced from office as Prime Minster his policies and influence lingered on until purged by electoral defeat on 6 May.

Now is our opportunity to learn those lessons. We need to do so quickly to regroup and return to winning ways quickly.