You would think the above is stating the pretty obvious, but sometimes I do wonder. Thinking on party reform being influenced by the Democrat model does, as it was rightly pointed out to me on Twitter last night, go back at least 10 years, to Partnership in Power and the neutering of our annual conference. We are, however, not the Democrats.
For one thing we have a better, more integrated and historically established link with the trade unions and we have much stronger Socialist currents than they do.
So, transposing the Democratic model to the British Labour Party is, at best, to lose a sense of the important contextual differences between the two organisations, the environment they operate in, and in their entire history and culture.pAll sorts of dark mutterings (and suggestions of a whole range of potential political horrors imported from across the pond being potentially inflicted upon us) are regularly raised. For example, open primaries and gimmicky ‘open days’ at the end of our conference.
Let’s start with open primaries – a truly dire idea which sounds wonderful in theory but, in its actual real-word impact, is doomed to make our political class even more elitist and less representative than it already is. It is a big enough struggle for anybody south of an upper middle class income bracket to make it as an MP without adding in the cost (and time off work implication) of a selection process which includes not one constituency wide campaign but with the addition of a primary (so effectively two constituency wide campaigns.) Oh, and by the way, it will increase dramatically the importance and therefore undemocratic influence of money in politics.
Now to the open day. I have nothing, in principle, against the public attending our conference. However, I do when it comes at the expense of members doing so. Since I am unlikely to be able to attend this year, I am going to struggle not to sound jaded, jealous and unnecessarily bitter here but, nonetheless, I will persist. I think its a downright insulting idea when so little is done to involve our members in the conference of the party they pay subs too and work hard for. So rather than an open day, we should (for example) make a big, open and generous offer to our annual new intake of subsidised involvement in conference so they can see how the party works and be welcomed properly to the Labour family. We can and should look at a variety of options to fund this scheme, including increasing the fee we levy from media outlets to cover our conference.
Finally, an article like this would not be complete without a look at the dreaded ‘registered supporters’ scheme which is now one of the key bones of contention in Refounding Labour. This is a product of thinking imported from a country where primaries are part of the basic fabric of political life and being a member of a political party is more a status symbol than a meaningful commitment on either’s part. That its precisely the kind of system (and the way of doing politics) that has allowed the Tea Party to gain a controlling interest in the Grand Old Party and turn it into a vipers nest of hard-right ideologically blinkered fanaticism.
In fact, the Tea Party/Republican experience nails the myth that adopting the American model will make you naturally more in-tune with the electorate – as they showed during the budget stand-off they are about as out of touch with American electorate as it is possible to be while still inhabiting the same land mass. Currently they are busy burying the GOP’s Presidential prospects and they are a huge blessing for an unpopular Barack Obama.
So, in conclusion, what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander. Our leadership, when thinking about party reform, should stop being entranced by the latest trendy political thinking from across the Atlantic and start addressing itself to the values which make us unique and special as a political party – therein lies the road to success and our eventual return to government.
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