This is what an open party feels like

The Labour Party has more members than any other political party in the UK. In fact, according to Hansard we have more members than the Tories and the Lib Dems put together. Unlike these parties we have strength in Local Government all over the UK, running many of our great cities – particularly in the North where the Tories have next to no representation. We run the Welsh Assembly and have the largest representation on the GLA.

In addition to this, our relationship with union members, recently strengthened through the reforms Ed Miliband has made to the party, mean we have links with millions of working people. And through the Socialist Societies we have experts, practitioners and community representatives who combine their passion for their subject with their identity as a Labour member or supporter.

This is an extraordinary resource that has long been available to the party. But for a long time, members felt side-lined at best and outright ignored at worst. As Ed Miliband put it in his speech to the National Policy Forum in Wrexham “the leadership believed its role was to protect the public from the party”.

This tightening of who was heard from and who had a voice certainly ensured discipline. But it meant that where no dissent was heard, where no differing perspectives were brought, where arguments remained untested, we got things wrong. On issues like Iraq, the 10p tax rate and housing, party policy lost touch with party members, with catastrophic results.

The great news is this is changing. During the Refounding Labour process, the National Policy Forum – Labour’s representative policy making body – was strengthened and given a more central role in the ongoing and iterative formulation of policy. Every member of the NPF now sits on a policy commission. We all – Socialist Socieites Reps, CLP reps and union reps – have a role in working together to formulate policy in the areas we are most knowledgeable and passionate about.

But our opening up didn’t stop at the enhancing of our internal bodies – important though that is. Not everyone can be on the NPF and not everyone wants to. But anyone who wants to can submit a policy idea to the Labour Party through the fantastic Your Britain website. And any Labour member can show how they feel about these policy submissions by voting them up and down.

As a member on the National Policy Forum’s Stronger, Safer Communities policy commission, I have seen literally hundreds of policy submissions I might never have otherwise have seen. These have introduced policies we had not thought of, have influenced session themes and have shown the strength of feeling on some subjects that has led to their racing up the priorities list.

Some still mourn the changes that were made to our annual conference back in the 1980s. For me, this is missing the point. A truly democratic party doesn’t come together once a year to make a few big, symbolic decisions. We work day in, day out, week in week out to ensure the policy process is open, transparent, democratic and listening. In these days of social media, we know what an iterative process feels like more instinctively.

This is what an open party acts like. This is what an open party feels like. Labour has taken leaps and bounds on our journey to open up the process. Our processes are infinitely better for it. But far, far more importantly, so are our policies.