What do we mean by a representative Labour Party?

Everything that has happened over the last week has been about how to open up the Labour Party. How to strengthen our relationships with as many people as possible in a way that represents both our country and our values.

I’m delighted that the Labour Party are making moves to have a closer relationship with ordinary union members. But I also agree with Hopi Sen that we also need a better relationship with the millions of people who aren’t.

The argument we are having, boiled down into its crudest form is a whether the PLP should look like the Party or the country. That’s a crude division. Others will use other words, better words, more politically astute words. But that’s what we mean. Are the people we are selection the right kind of “people like us” enough to please our various factions?

Of course all of us have a different conception of what that means – and we all put our own personal spin on it. We use concepts like “local” “electable” and “working class” to mean essentially “who I like”. Who we like (and sometimes who we really don’t like) tend to be other Labour Party members. We select in our own image, by our own criteria.

A mass membership party is a great aim. The more members we have, the more reflective of the general public we have the chance to be. But it will need an adjustment in what we mean by “us”. That cannot and should not mean a dilution of our values, but it can and must mean reaching out and making those values as attractive a proposition for as much of the country as possible.

But to do so, we will need to examine what we mean by representative, what we mean by “working class” why “local” is important and what that means and what really is “electable”.

Firstly our calls for local candidates deny the ambitions of people based on their geographical place of birth or where they were raised. If the next Clem Attlee, Ken Livingstone or Tony Blair (delete by personal preference) happens to live and work in the heart of Toryland, that shouldn’t stop us being led by them. But we do need people who will root themselves in the communities they represent. That doesn’t mean they have to have a life history there, but it does mean interrogating their desire to build one.

We also need to remember that electable doesn’t mean looking like who has already been elected. That way homogeneity lies. Opening up the Labour Party means fewer grey men in dull suits and a language that no one but the Westminster elite speak.

A recent BBC survey found that our traditional definitions of class don’t fit the majority of the country and their lived experiences. A blunt three category class system no longer matches the way we live our lives. So looking for candidates that suit smaller and smaller groups of people miss out larger and larger groups of workers across the country who would make ideal Labour representatives.

In addition to this, our own MPs don’t fit the roles we expect their backgrounds to carve out for them. Plenty of those on the Labour right have working class backgrounds – the amiable Alan Johnson and the somewhat controversial Simon Danczuk spring to mind. And of course the doyen of the Labour Left – Tony Benn – is not now and has never been working class.

Class isn’t static. Labour is the Party that brings new opportunities to people to use their talents not their connections. Sometimes that means that class and the perceptions that go along with it change.

A world where taking our talents to the places they are most needed means a world where the grandchildren of miners become barristers. And the children of barristers may become call centre workers. What people do and who their parents and grandparents are should not matter – from wherever they come from. This must be the vision for the Labour Party. A world where talent is nurtured and all citizen contributions are recognised and valued.

So we should stop using class as a substitute for politics and politics as a substitute for class. Both are important but one is a way of catagorising our lifes, the other is about changing them.

We need our left wing and our right wing as we need to best policies they come up with through the cross examination of each others ideas. We also need people from all walks of life to join that debate. We will support those we agree with, but let’s do so in ways that invite more people than ever to join our conversation – not one that throws up ever greater barriers between us.