The left needs to initiate its own debate on delivering a mass party

Ed Miliband’s proposed changes to how trade union members relate to the Labour party may generate a lot of heat.

It would be easy to argue that this is simply a capitulation to a Tory-led agenda, with the ultras on the ‘Blairite’ wing of the party acting as a transmission belt for Cameron’s attack.

But Ed Miliband is surely right to want to set as an objective the transformation of the Labour party into a much bigger party of working people.  There will be different views about how to get there but we ought to first get that point of agreement under our belts.

The left has talked for many years about a mass party based on the experiences of working class people. We can hardly object if a Labour leader tries to achieve it. Ed Miliband will have to convince the wider movement that his idea is the right one – but the left will have to engage with it. If we think there is a better way to achieve Ed’s objective we should debate it but our starting point is that the desired outcome is surely right.

As Len McCluskey has said today:

‘If Miliband wants to find ways to get more individual trade unionists active in the party, exercising their own judgment on policy and people, I would join with him. Done right, this could be a 21st-century way of ensuring working-class influence in the party, just as traditional affiliation has been hitherto.’

My own view is that the left needs to initiate its own debate about how to deliver the mass party Ed Miliband’s speech proposes.

It is completely unsatisfactory that so few levy payers in the affiliated unions are members of the party. Labour ought to have a more direct relationship with these trade unionists.

When I joined the Labour party, branch meetings were full to the rafters. Now, even a meeting to select candidates for local council elections can be sparse. Whatever else happens, the status quo is obviously not an option.

I think we can all agree that more members of trade unions ought to be members of the Labour party. And I am attracted to the idea of an influx of new members under Ed Miliband, drawn from the trade unions.  A cohort of new members already based in the labour movement and recruited into Labour under the present leader would be an asset to him as he seeks to take the party in a better direction.

If in one parliamentary constituency there are, say, 7000 members of affiliated unions, then it only takes five per cent of them to join the party to more than double the size of many CLPs. That has to be a good thing.

The challenge however is to do it and also maintain a strong relationship with the trade union movement. The trade unions are without doubt the strongest factor in keeping Labour grounded in the working lives of real people. Ed Miliband needs to send a strong signal to the leaders of Britain’s trade unions that his policy agenda is one they can sign up to. He also has to be able to talk about options within Ray Collins’s review.

But Ed Miliband’s real difficulty will be that he will only be able to pull this off if he simultaneously makes a pitch that offers real hope. Only that will encourage people to take up these easier and quicker routes to join Labour. The organisational question of joining people up will only ever be resolved if it connects to the political task of changing Britain in a meaningful way. Triangulation has to be a thing of the past.

So we need to hear more clear policies – about protecting public services and not endlessly squeezing public sector pay; about how we will build more council housing; about turning around public transport and getting public ownership of rail; about better labour market standards and stronger workplace rights. We are going to need a clearer set of transformative policies that give people a sense of real change.

The challenge to the unions today is to address the task that Ed Miliband is setting the Labour party – to grow into a bigger, better, more dynamic party of working people. The task for Ed Miliband is to show them that it is worth doing.