Time to learn the lessons

By Joanne Milligan / @Jo_Milligan

We know who’s on the ballot paper but the process for choosing Labour’s candidate for London mayor has been, and continues to be, the subject of controversy – as it has done since the inception of the post. Surely it’s time we learned from our mistakes.

This isn’t about Oona versus Ken. I haven’t yet spoken to any Labour member in London, whoever they’re supporting, who is happy that we’re choosing our candidate in the shadow of our leadership election. Yes, there are cost savings in having the postal ballots at the same time but we’ll lose the opportunity to have a probing, energising and engaging debate about the future of London.

The last London Labour Regional Board, of which I’m a member, was informed that the NEC had agreed the timetable and process at a meeting on 18th May – a fait accompli. There is recent precedent – the leadership timetable – for NEC decisions to be overturned and amended by the Procedures sub-committee. Maybe it’s not too late for them to do so.

It’s also now time to act so that, in future, there can be no confusion and no accusations of a political fix in the process for choosing our candidate.

I was surprised to discover that detail on the process for choosing the London mayoral candidate is not in the rule book. NEC Procedural Rules for selecting Parliamentary and Council candidates are there – as are caveats which allowed the recent, sometimes unedifying, arbitrary decisions by the NEC on ‘emergency’ parliamentary selections.

Why, then, in the ten years since the post of London Mayor was created has National Conference never been asked, by the NEC, to consider rule book amendments which set out the Procedural Rules governing the selection process and timetable? There is a need to resolve this unless the NEC and party want to continue to leave itself open to accusation, internally and externally, of preferment-based decisions and political fixes.

There were cries of foul with the process in 1999, cries of foul in the run up to the 2004 London election and cries of foul in recent weeks. The NEC has the ability to bring forward the necessary rule changes for debate at annual conference as do CLPs. I would urge them to do so as a matter of urgency so that the opportunity for cries of foul and political fix can be dispelled once and for all. We may not be able to design the perfect system where unintended unfairness is eliminated but we can certainly design-out ambiguity, confusion and ‘insider’ bias by putting the NEC Procedural Rules in our rule book.

This also raises a more fundamental issue. When we select Labour candidates for election to public office – Council; Parliament; GLA; European Parliament; – we do so by One Member One Vote (OMOV). Only when choosing Labour leaders – national party leader or leader of Labour in the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly – do we do so using an electoral college and, importantly, one with three sections. The current two section electoral college is a hybrid introduced solely to satisfy criticism stemming from the first mayoral candidate selection process when a three section electoral college was used. There is no other election for a party post or candidate selection where a two section electoral college is used.

There should be an OMOV ballot to select the candidate. I appreciate that this is potentially controversial. However, if we want more transparency and more involvement in our processes then let’s also have the discussion about why this public office is the only one where an electoral college, rather than OMOV, is used to select the candidate. The NEC should not be making decisions about the scope of the franchise on the basis that it might benefit or disbenefit any potential candidates. There is no principled argument for such decisions. If a coherent rationale exists for this hybrid then let’s hear about it, discuss the merits or otherwise of it, make a decision and move on.

I don’t anticipate much success in persuading the NEC or the Procedures sub-committee to review the decisions it has already made on this issue but I do hope they will consider, as a matter of urgency, how to legitimise their decisions and instigate changes to ensure that the rules, processes and timetable are consistent, fair and clear for all.