What does a left-wing Labour Party look like? It’s crunch time for internal democracy

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Tom Watson announces a fresh set of tough policies on the “public health emergency” that is “problem gambling” today. Labour is calling for a ‘whistle to whistle’ ban on live sports gambling adverts, borrowing an idea from the Australian government, plus a new levy on operators and a ban on credit card betting. The deputy leader and the shadow digital, culture, media and sport secretary said: ““The refusal of the current Government to address any of these issues is letting problem gamblers and their families down. Labour’s new policies announced today aim to build a world class framework for the prevention and treatment of problem gambling.”

But Labour members are still talking about the events of Tuesday’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting, which have now become clearer. Writing for LabourList, Luke Akehurst reveals which of the rule changes I outlined as being up for discussion earlier this week will be recommended by the ruling body to party conference.

According to our Corbynsceptic columnist, a number of decisions were deferred until 2019 – such as changes to local government and the party’s policy-making process – while reforms to make it easier to turn local parties from GCs (delegate structure) into all-member meetings (AMMs) and the introduction of one-member-one-vote (OMOV) by-elections for NEC vacancies were passed. Other suggestions favoured by Momentum were dropped. Luke points out that the democracy review “seems to have failed to meet the very radical expectations generated by Momentum” and advises “leadership cheerleaders” to stop “mouthing off about the unions”.

Huda Elmi, recently elected to Labour’s NEC and due to take up her place on the ruling body after conference, has put forward what can be fairly described as Momentum’s view of the meeting, more or less. In her article for LabourList, Huda slams those who should be supportive of Jeremy Corbyn for voting against him at the NEC, leaving the leader “defeated on reasonable democratic proposals”. In the effort to fight against this “abuse of trust”, she urges activists to lobby all current members of the NEC. The petition in favour of open selections for Labour parliamentary candidates has now reached 20,000 signatures, and I’m told thousands of emails have been sent to NEC members at Momentum’s urging.

Luke wonders why the leader’s office failed to pre-negotiate democratisation proposals with unions. “This was always going to be necessary as the unions hold the balance of power on the NEC and almost half the votes, an effective veto, at conference,” he writes.

It looks like conference 2018 is crunch time for competing visions of a left-wing Labour Party.

Sienna @siennamarla

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