How about “a real voice inside the party” for members, Ed?

Earlier this week Ed Miliband spoke about his proposed Labour-union reforms, telling an audience in South London that:

“We need the three million nurses, engineers, shop workers, bus drivers, construction workers who are members of trade unions to be a proper part of our party. We need to reach out to people in every walk of life, including small businesses, entrepreneurs, and in every part of the country, South as well as North.

“We need to give all these working people a real choice about joining Labour – and then a real voice inside the party. If we succeed in this then Labour has a historic opportunity to become a truly 21st Century party.

That all sounds very positive, and is in keeping with Ed Miliband’s affirmed aim of building a relationship with individual trade unionists. It also sounds like Miliband is keen to offer affiliates full membership of the party – as he mooted in his speech a couple of weeks ago – which would significantly expand the size of the party membership.

Which is all well and good, but there’s something that rankles about the statement.

It seems to suggest that Labour Party members already have “a real voice inside the party”. I’m not entirely sure that’s true. That was one of the alleged aims of “Refounding Labour”, but although that acheived some worthwhile successes and internal reforms, it never lived up to the hype of “refounding” the Labour Party. Quite the opposite for many who felt that it reinforced huge chunks of the status quo. Which begs the question, what kind of “real voice” do members currently have in the Labour Party? Here are some examples:

Conference – Labour’s big set piece event of the year is more of a political jamboree than a democratic decision making body. In fact, it makes few decisions of any particular importance. Constituency representatives have half of the votes on conference floor, but often by the end of the week there are empty seats where the delegates should be. Why? Because they know their votes don’t really matter so many of them have gone home. Labour members have a voice at conference, but does it matter what they say?

NEC – the representatives of lay party members often do sterling work on the NEC, and are incerasingly good at reporting back after meetings and keeping members informed on what is happening in the party. However, those directly elected by party members are only around one-fifth of the NEC membership, with the rest made up of affiliates, socialist societies, MPs, councillors and others. Ordinary members have a voice on the NEC – and often a passionate and powerful one – but it’s also a small one.

Policy – this one is a real bone of contention for many party members. It’s no good talking about “a real voice” for members if policy is determined by the Shadow Cabinet or the Leader without any real discussion, debate or – dare I say it – democracy in the party’s policy making structures. I’m not arguing for members to have a veto on each and every plan a shadow minister might have – that would be unworkable – but I don’t remember Labour members being even tangentially consulted on maintaining free schools, opting for a welfare cap or maintaining Tory spending limits, to name three recent examples. And whilst the NPF is better than it was, and the “Your Britain” website is a positive step towards collecting the views of party members, supporters and the public, it still feels like crowdsourcing policy which the leadership can cherry pick, rather than a democratic process. Labour’s manifesto should have the backing of party members – and with that in mind, Clause IV of the party rule book looks ripe for reform. But that’s for another day…

Selections – Now this is a better one for Labour members, who can nominate candidates at branch meetings and select candidates within their CLP. That’s a real improvement. Yet for by-election selections the shortlisting is done by a panel of the NEC in London and presented to members (often ruling out candidates who might have stood a chance of winning) and what happens when MPs retire just before a general election? Will candidates be “parachuted” into constituencies or “imposed” by the party? I hope not, but until we get to that point, we won’t know for sure.

Ed Miliband’s desire to get more people involved in the party and give them more of a say is laudable and right. But for it to be completely believable, he should start by making current party members feel like they have a real voice within the party. Because if they did, membership might not have declined by over 5,000 in the past year, when it should be going up.