A surfeit of chairs

By Luke Akehurst / @lukeakehurst

Jon Cruddas has announced that Labour should have an elected chair.

My memory is of all the incumbents of the post Blair created actually doing the job of being campaigner-in-chief rather well despite the lack of legitimacy implicit in the way they were appointed.

The situation has since been muddled as Harriet Harman is both the elected Deputy Leader and the appointed Party Chair.

My feeling is that this is one position more than we as a party need. Its existence as an appointed position undermines the authority and status of the General Secretary, who should be in full command of Labour’s campaign machine – the way in which we have repeatedly had cabinet ministers trying to run general election campaigns in their spare time is ridiculous – as politicians they are (often talented and experienced) amateurs who should stick to being the public face of the campaign, not interfering in the running of it which should be left to the professional staff.

If it was an elected position it would undermine the political authority of the leader and deputy leader as the holder could claim they had an alternative and rival mandate, or the election for it could be used as a dress rehearsal for future leadership elections, as the treasurer post was in the 1950s and 1960s. The only way round this would be to ban MPs from holding the post of chair.

As I cannot think of any value that would be added by the creation of this new elected position, and the old appointed one is clearly undemocratic, I would suggest that the post of party chair be abolished and it’s responsibilities divided up as follows:

• General secretary to have their control over election campaigns and organisation reasserted

• Leader and deputy leader to focus more on building the party and campaigning, as we are not in power so presumably they don’t have to spend time running the country

• Chair of the NEC to take on any literal chairing functions and be voice of the party to the Leadership

Those MPs like Jon who are keen to contribute to the party’s wider campaigning should be given a role encouraging and leading activity in groups of non-Labour-held seats – there is no need for them to take part in expensive OMOV ballots or be given fancy titles to enable them to do that.

Luke Akehurst blogs at www.lukeakehurst.blogspot.com