Here is our opportunity to transform Labour – as members we all have a duty to play our part

By Gavin Hayes

This week Peter Hain launched his new consultation document and initiative Refounding Labour in which party members are being invited to submit their ideas on party reform. This should be warmly welcomed as an overdue opportunity to debate how we reform our party structures in order to make them more inclusive, plural, democratic and open. Not only that it should be used as a vital chance to restate the party’s aim and values. And let’s be clear the Labour Party doesn’t just need refounding, more than that it needs radically transforming.

Refounding Labour succinctly documents the decline of the party over recent years: the election defeat of historic proportions and consequent millions of lost voters, the hundreds of thousands of members that deserted us, the thousands of councillors we lost – this airing of what has gone wrong should be seen as a good thing in order for Labour to move on. So too is the admission and theme throughout the document that Labour must become more plural and open, along too with the acknowledgment that only radical transformation will turn the party’s fortunes around.

Grassroots party members now need to be at the forefront of putting forward new ideas for change, it’s time that we used this process to ensure that our voices are heard loud and clear. As members we now have a responsibility to demand power back and ask for greater party democracy and a greater say. No single leader can transform or refound the Labour Party on their own; ultimately the party is a collective entity that is owned by its members and it is we who must choose its future.

So what would a transformed and refounded Labour Party look like? What kinds of reforms should we as members call for? To answer these pertinent questions this is why last September Compass launched the publication Transforming Labour which contains ten key reforms that were backed by a majority of party members in a major survey we conducted a little under a year ago. In the advent of the Refounding Labour initiative it’s worth re-examining and re-articulating those reforms to get us all thinking.

First and foremost we urgently need a chair of the Labour Party that is democratically elected by the membership by a one-member one-vote ballot. The interests of the membership at large are not formally represented by any single person within the cabinet or shadow cabinet. No one is charged with being the chief link between the grassroots Labour movement and the leadership. We need the chair of the party to be the commander in chief of the grassroots. It can be elected every two years with the NEC elections and make those elections really worth voting in.

Second, why not before a general election have a process by which all party stakeholders are given the opportunity to submit their ideas for the manifesto, followed by a ballot of the membership for their top ideas for the manifesto. It’s time to adopt some measures that allow direct membership democracy and a way in which all members can directly influence and vote on the ideas Labour puts to the people in its manifesto.

Third, immediately after every general election why not have a formal process involving all party stakeholders to debate and restate Labour’s traditional aims and values? We were in government for over 13 years, yet not once did we allow ourselves the opportunity to robustly debate Labour’s aim and values, if we had then we may have been better at successfully communicating to the electorate exactly what we stand for.

Forth, it’s high-time that the Labour Party conference is given a formal policy-making role once more. What is the point of being a delegate to Labour conference if you don’t get to vote on any specific policies? The Labour conference should be the most important party gathering of the year, yet instead it’s been stripped of any real power. So why not allow any resolution that receives the support of at least 2% (or some other nominal figure) of members to be debated and voted on conference floor?

Fifth, to ensure greater membership democracy, why not also introduce a mechanism to allow for internal party referendums, as part of the formal policy and constitutional renewal process? So why not allow any referendum question that receives the signatures of say 5% or even 10% of all party members to be put to a one-member one-vote ballot. If you can have an issue debated in the European Parliament with the signatures of 1% of EU citizens then why not adopt a similar mechanism for internal party referendums?

Sixth, our youth and student structures urgently need transforming. It simply cannot be right or fair, that whilst Labour Students have three elected full time sabbatical officers based at head office, Young Labour meanwhile has absolutely none. At the very least as a start the chair of Young Labour should be made a full-time sabbatical position elected annually, along an annual youth conference. Crucially we should trust our young members to run their own affairs and given them the resources they need to organise and campaign effectively and autonomously.

Seventh, we need to make MPs far more accountable to their local parties. Let’s be clear there are brilliant Labour MPs out there that are shining examples who already engage well with their local parties, but if we’re honest there are probably some that could do better, this was amply demonstrated during the recent MPs expenses scandal. If we are to avoid such mistakes and problems in future there need to be mechanisms to hold our local parliamentary leaders to account and keep them in check. At present it is too easy for MPs to get automatically re-selected, we need to end the job for life culture and ensure our MPs are fully accountable and it’s the Labour Party that should be leading on this. Therefore why shouldn’t all MPs face mandatory reselection before every general election? If they’re good at their job, if they listen and engage with their members and local communities, then they have little to fear from a greater dose of local party democracy and accountability.

Eight, local parties also need to recognise that they too need to urgently change. All too often when I speak at CLP meetings across the country, afterwards members inform me that it is the first real political debate they have had in months, sometimes years. That’s just one example of how they need to get better – meetings shouldn’t just be constructed off the back of a technocratic agenda, but instead engage members in political discourse. In reforming local parties should be given greater flexibility in their organisation, adopting structures that best suit them, whilst of course meeting basic minimum standards.

Finally, there has been an ongoing debate in recent weeks and months over the role of primaries; this debate was in part further reignited this week with The Guardian reporting that the leadership were looking at giving party supporters a vote in leadership elections. On this, in my view, such radical reforms should not be imposed on the party from the top or rushed to be implemented, not least without first adopting other reforms to re-empower the membership and only then after an extensive consultation linked to a final democratic vote of the wider membership. It is absolutely right that the party looks to adopt bold and imaginative ideas that enable it to open up, democratise, pluralise and reach out to people, that we all think outside the box, yet it is absolutely crucial that we are not seen to disempower the membership even further than they already have been.

Indeed crucially for any programme of reform to be successful it must come about from a robust and extensive consultation and a democratic vote. One of the more positive aspects of our party’s reforms in the 1990s was that at least to a minimal extent we did that – the reform of Clause IV, the move to one-member-one-vote, the New Labour New Life for Britain pre-1997 consultative manifesto document were all adopted with the consent of the party at large through consultation and a democratic vote.

This time round we should be even more ambitious and strive to make the process of reform even more democratic and even more inclusive. This is a once in a generation opportunity for major party reform, any package of reforms should therefore not only come about through the widest possible consultation of party stakeholders, but be put to a one-member-one-vote ballot of the entire membership for final consent. A vote at conference will simply not be good enough and we shouldn’t stand for it. Every single Labour member deserves a final vote on the reforms that are put forward and it shouldn’t be an all or nothing vote either, we deserve a vote on every individual major reform that is proposed. This kind of ballot would represent a new covenant of trust and respect between the leadership and the membership at large and a new commitment by the party to greater democracy and plurality.

These are just a small handful of ideas that whilst not a panacea to some of the problems, could act as a catalyst for the democratic organisational transformation that is urgently required. Crucially in the process of refounding and transforming Labour in the coming weeks, months and years it is critical that we ensure all our voices are heard.

Gavin Hayes is General Secretary, Compass and author of Transforming Labour – A Charter for Party Renewal