The manifesto will have to be responsive

By Sunder Katwala

The world has changed, with the financial and economic crisis, as the government and everybody else keeps telling us all.

So the Labour manifesto will have to respond.

But that will also mean we need to rethink how we make policy in the party if this is to respond.The major National Policy Forum meeting last summer in Warwick saw some new ideas for the manifesto – such as votes at 16. But how will it now respond to the new context?

And what should be done to engage a larger number of party members and broader progressive constituencies.

Isn’t this a chance to start putting that ‘learning from Obama’ debate into practice? How could Labour’s growing interest in online spaces be used to do this? And how do we make sure its real?

I wrote to Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman last week about this. Ed told today’s Fabian conference that he agreed with the need to open up the debate.

How it should be done is more difficult. I don’t have a fixed view – and I didn’t get the sense that Ed did either. Former Fabian Chair Anne Campbell has argued on Next Left that the whole NPF process – a step forward in its time – now needs a more fundamental rethink of how the party debates values, politics and policy.

This was my letter:

—
12th January 2009

Dear Ed,

Re: Labour Party General Election manifesto

Happy new year. We very much look forward to your speaking at the Fabian New Year Conference ‘Fairness Doesn’t Happen By Chance’ on Saturday. We hope it will help to place fairness and equality at the centre of public debate as we kick off the political year.

I am writing to you given your role in coordinating the Labour Party’s manifesto for the next election. In particular, I want to recommend that the policy-making and manifesto process needs to be opened up to respond to the enormous recent changes of the global financial crisis, and to ask what steps you and colleagues will propose to ensure party members and affiliates can have the fullest possible opportunity to debate and shape Labour’s approach to the new economic situation.

I am also writing a similar letter to Harriet Harman, as the elected deputy leader of the party, and to Pat McFadden as Chair of the National Policy Forum.

The July 2008 Warwick meeting of the National Policy Forum was the final meeting of the three year cycle, and so has naturally been widely seen as the crucial meeting in agreeing outcomes from the policy commissions to shape the manifesto, just as the Warwick meeting of Summer 2004 had been ahead of the 2005 General Election.

Last summer’s meeting took place several weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Since then, the world has changed dramatically. The government has argued that the economic, policy and political landscape has been transformed. The need to ensure the party’s internal policy debate and manifesto process can fully respond to these enormous changes must follow from this.

The Chancellor’s pre-budget report saw the government respond decisively to the immediate crisis to promote stability and fairness. (Given the Fabian Society’s work on inequality and progressive taxation, I particularly welcomed the strong focus on fair burden-sharing, including additional support for pensioners and the low paid, and proposals for a new higher rate on the top 1% of earners).

While some useful reforms have recognized the need to make the policy commissions more responsive to topical events, I think the scale of these events will require a significant move to ensure the party is as fully engaged as possible in a wide-ranging debate about the values, arguments and policies which Labour will put to the British people in the next election manifesto and campaign.

I expect there many be a range of different views about how to do this, on which I do not have a fixed view.

In principle, there may be a case for a further major National Policy Forum session in 2009, similar to the Warwick meetings of 2004 and 2008, to conclude the cycle. However, I can also see significant practical barriers to that approach (particularly given the importance of campaigning for the European and local elections this year). I am not personally convinced that the model of each policy commission again producing lengthy documents for formal amendment would be, at this stage, the most effective way to invite contributions from members, affiliates and the broader public.

Many of us in the party currently studying the important lessons from the new ‘movement politics’ in the United States so that we can learn from the success of Barack Obama campaign, the Democratic Party and other progressive campaigning groups in engaging people in the Democratic Party and beyond in revitalizing progressive politics in the US. I think the Labour Party could seek to emulate this by opening up a new round of debate on the specific theme of fairness in an economic downturn – and how Labour’s policy and manifesto should respond.

I would like to see that debate take place not only within the NPF itself but to open it up and make this an important focus for party activity this summer and Autumn, by facilitating online debates open to all party members, facilitating debates at regional and constituency level within the party, and also inviting other progressive campaigning groups, from party affiliates in the socialist societies and trade unions to broader civic society groups to contribute. (Such an approach would be in the spirit of the reforms to engage members and broader progressive audiences, proposed by Tim Horton and colleagues in the Fabian Society pamphlet ‘Facing Out’ in 2007).

I think it would make sense for the party to propose a way forward in advance of the NPF’s February meeting. My view is that the precise model adopted would matter less than winning trust so that participants can see that their input is valued, and can genuinely contribute to influencing party and government policy. I feel there will be important lessons from earlier initiatives – such as the Big Conversation – which, while useful experiments, were were not as effective as they might have been in gaining such trust.

I appreciate that you have placed a great deal of emphasis on seeking to to promote as open and participatory an approach as possible to engaging members and to the manifesto during this Parliament. In that spirit I do hope that you will agree that finding new ways to engage members, supporters and voters should be an important way for the party to strengthen its agenda and motivate supporters to win the public argument for an approach rooted in Labour values of fairness.

I look forward to hearing from you

Sunder Katwala
General Secretary