Ed’s party reforms are a good start – but we need to go further

I was grateful to The Guardian for a leaked copy of Ray Collins’ report from his wide ranging review into party reform which was published on Saturday – days before the 200,000 grassroots members who will have to vote on and live with whatever is agreed had any official word, but that’s another matter…

I think what Ray Collins and Ed Miliband have come up with is a reasonable compromise broadly representative of what members were saying to me when I was discussing the issue at my CLP and with contacts all over the country through social media.

Most importantly, we finally get a modern and democratic way to elect our leader and deputy leader through One Member One Vote and a strengthened link with individual trade unionists which I have long tried to create through local party work. I sincerely hope this will lead to more Labour supporting trade union members actively engaging in local parties and standing for election.

However there are a number of areas in which I think the recommendations – agreed by the NEC 28-2 on Tuesday – fall short:

Spending limits

I don’t have a problem with spending limits but they don’t help if you haven’t got any money in the first place. I worked on a Parliamentary selection campaign for a friend of mine who is a single mum of four. She really struggled to raise the thousand pounds it cost to win and had to rely on donations from supportive friends and family. If we want to get a more diverse range of candidates – the cleaners, shop assistants and factory workers we’re always talking about – to consider standing for local, national and European elections then we have to do more than limit the amount their competitors can spend. I don’t know what this might look like but I spoke to a Lib Dem recently who said for his local selection the local party put out leaflets from all shortlisted candidates with the mailing about the ballot. Perhaps we should be looking at something like this to put all candidates on a level playing field.

The other issue linked to this of course is the time off you need to take to run a selection campaign. There is no way I would be able to go to my boss at the charity I work for and ask for a month off to run for Parliament and I imagine most people are in the same position. The current selection timetable – which can vary wildly from seat to seat – favours candidates already working in politics or for trade unions and should be shortened. We should also look at some rules on outside help.

Registered supporters

Eight million, six hundred thousand people voted Labour in 2010 and eight million, four hundred thousand of them are not members of the Labour Party. Less and less people want to join a political party but we’re set up as a closed shop unless you’re willing to fork out £6 a month for the privilege of attending what are often quite dull meetings and occasionally getting a vote to select your local MP or candidate. We need to end the closed shop and give our supporters a meaningful way to engage in the party without demanding money they may not have and I’m disappointed that what is proposed doesn’t go far enough.

If we’re going to allow registered supporters to vote in leadership and primary elections then why can’t they vote in local, Parliamentary and European selections? This discrepancy doesn’t make any sense and it tells Labour Party supporters that we don’t *really* want them to have any significant involvement in the party at the grassroots.

Registered supporters should be able to vote in all selections and we should welcome this opening up of our party to a potential eight million (hopefully more in 2015) new people and see it as a stepping stone to membership and increasing our pool of prospective candidates. If just 1% of our 2010 voters decided to sign up and get involved we’d have over 80,000 new activists.

I get that some Labour Party members see their selection vote as the only power they have and don’t want it to be diluted in any way. However, I don’t know about you but I joined the Labour Party to make change happen. I didn’t have the faintest idea about internal processes or voting for candidates and it had no part in my decision to make a financial commitment to the party. If people feel that the only reason to be a member of the Labour Party is their vote in selections then we’ve got a wider problem we need to address with the role of members in the party.

A representative NEC

The make-up of the party’s NEC wasn’t even considered in the review but it’s here where reforms should begin. Just six people represent the 200,000 members of our party on an NEC of over 30. Only two people represent Labour’s 5,000+ hard working councillors. We need to correct this imbalance and give members a stronger voice at the highest level of the party. We also need dedicated places for representatives from the devolved nations and to look at how we address the geographical imbalance. Five of the six current constituency representatives live in London and the South East. It’s no surprise really – this is where a majority of members are. But we up here north of the Watford Gap deserve more representation too!

Ed’s reforms are bold – bigger than Clause IV – but they could be bolder. Let’s have a debate about how we can go even further to open up politics and our party and give a stronger voice to members.