Missing In Action: Refounding Labour

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

It’s six weeks since the Refounding Labour consultation came to an end. So far all we’ve seen is a twelve page summary document that said very little.

It’s an open secret in the Labour movement that there’s a 30+ page document circulating amongst the higher echelons of the party. Worryingly, it’s also strongly rumoured that the document was largely drafted before the close of submissions. That’s enough to give a consultation that many of us became personally invested in the uncomfortable and unpleasant whiff of a sham.

So either Ed Miliband and Peter Hain wrote (or authorised) a document to be written before the end of the consultation process (and therefore without proper consideration of the submissions), or someone else did. If so, who wrote this report? Whose name is on it? And what does it propose? At the moment all we’re getting is damaging leaks, briefings and counter-briefings.

Worse, we’re now hearing that the document will be subject to a series of “take it or leave it” votes, including to the NEC and conference. It’s ludicrous to ask conference to back an entire package of proposals as a whole without a reasonable period of discussion and without being able to tackle the individual details contained within the document. The leadership are effectively trying to reform the party by presenting conference with a fait accompli. That’s certainly not the new politics, and it’s not what we were promised. And conference is likely to take such behaviour very badly indeed.

P.S. – if any democratically minded NEC members, NPF members, MPs, shadow cabinet members or staff members would be interested in giving this process more transparency by passing on the document to LabourList, we’d be happy to (anonymously) publish it.