Luke Akehurst: Why I’m standing to represent local parties on Labour’s NEC

Having topped the poll among Labour members in the 2020 national executive committee elections (NEC), I’m proud to be standing for re-election on my record two years later. I am proud to have worked both with my Labour to Win colleagues and a wider majority coalition, including colleagues from parliament and the trade unions, to bring about changes to the Labour Party that go far beyond what most people believed was possible when we were elected.

I’m proud of the work we have done implementing the Equalities and Human Rights Commission recommendations on antisemitism, proscribing groups that whitewashed it, speeding up the parliamentary selection process to make it more accessible, restructuring our staff to stabilise the party’s finances and changing the rulebook to stop MPs constantly having to look over their shoulder at deselection and to ensure any future leader is picked by our current members, not by who does best at 2015-style mass recruitment.

But whilst the pace of change has surpassed expectations, Labour has still changed far less than it needs to in order to be confident of winning a general election. The pages on the calendar are turning inexorably, and a general election is at the latest in January 2025 and perhaps even just a few months away if the new Prime Minister gets a honeymoon polling bounce. The NEC needs to put its foot to the floor and drive through more change, faster, to get Labour ready to win.

We shouldn’t assume that the battle against antisemitism, into which we have put so much work and so many hours on disciplinary panels, is yet fully won. We know from the panels we serve on that there are still party members propagating bizarre tropes about the Rothschilds controlling global politics and smaller numbers who promote equally vile racist prejudices about Muslims, Hindus, Gypsies and Black people. Not only does the presence of racism within Labour contradict every value of equality we are supposed to uphold as democratic socialists – but unless we deal with it decisively we won’t be viewed as fit to govern.

We need to get the party properly funded both to build a war chest for the election and put us on a sustainable basis going forward. We’ve had to take very tough staffing decisions because trimming back the party to a mid-term size had been put off for too long, and because of the huge costs involved in creating a disciplinary team able to tackle the antisemitism crisis and a series of legal challenges.

Now we need a culture that attracts high value donations and celebrates the donors, not pushes them away. There’s nothing shameful about people who have wealth giving some of it to Labour to try to get a government that delivers social justice and a more equal society. The immediate spending priority needs to be rebuilding frontline organising staffing in the regions and nations. We can’t fight a general election with regional offices that have been stripped back to the bare bones and only have three staff in some cases.

That lack of regional staff is also unacceptably slowing down the selection of parliamentary candidates. We are just completing initial tranches of 36 candidates, and we should all be proud of the excellent candidates being chosen, but that leaves 100 more to pick just to cover off the seats we need for a majority, let alone all the less winnable seats where members last got to democratically pick candidates often a decade ago.

The new, faster five week process is great – but more seats need to be selecting in parallel without slacking on the due diligence by the NEC at longlisting, which has ensured the first 36 candidates are universally high quality ones who will pull in extra votes for Labour in their patch, not turn voters off or implode on take-off when some dreadful piece of personal history, social media racism or political extremism is uncovered.

Whilst the current Parliamentary Labour Party has some undoubted stars in it, it is weak by historical standards because of Corbynite stitch-ups in the 2019 selections and the loss of so many good MPs in that general election, so a high-quality field of new candidates is essential. If we win, many new MPs will have to be thrust straight into junior ministerial roles, so we need candidates who have experience leading and running organisations, whether that’s in local government, or the private, public or voluntary sectors.

We need to drive political and cultural change in every Constituency Labour Party (CLP) and council. Some CLPs have already changed unrecognisably for the better since 2019. But there are still too many that are unwelcoming to anyone outside a narrow clique; that are obsessed by passing resolutions that are unrealistic, deliberately divisive or aggressively critical of their own party; that are not focussed on campaigning; and that see the real enemy not as the Tories but as Keir Starmer, David Evans, the NEC, the PLP or the local Labour council.

We should be a broad-church party – but that means welcoming people with diverse views who nevertheless share Labour values, care about Labour and want Labour to win. We don’t have to tolerate racists or anti-democratic Leninists who don’t share our values, or entryists who owe their loyalty to some other party, or people who don’t want to see Keir beat the Tories. We need to use the rulebook to take action against bad practices and stitch-ups and use our organisers to spread best practice and campaigning excellence.

We particularly need youth and student wings that the party can be proud of rather than embarrassed by, and that act as a pipeline of talented future leaders and activists, as well as a mobile strike force to go to marginal seats in the general election. Any party that allows its youth and student wings to atrophy or be hijacked by extremists is signing away its future.

I am proud to have been part of a team that has consistently put in the hard work to get Labour back on track. It isn’t just the widely reported six- or seven-hour NEC meetings – we put in hours and hours of unglamorous but necessary slog on panels and sub-committees dealing with vital disciplinary, selection and organisational matters. When we take decisions, we do the right thing to uphold the rulebook, protect the reputation of the party and relentlessly ensure Labour is positioning itself to win elections. This is in stark contrast to other political forces on the NEC who grandstand, stage walkouts, indulge in partisan attacks on Keir, and have voted against proscribing organisations that whitewash antisemitism, and even against signing-off funding for new trainee organisers!

It isn’t enough for me, Johanna Baxter and Gurinder Josan to be re-elected, we need a bigger team of Labour to Win members including our new running mates Abdi Duale and Jane Thomas, so the burden of work changing the party is carried by a wider group, and the voice of members who support what Keir is trying to do to make Labour electable is amplified.

With a general election so close, it is essential that members vote for an NEC that will get Labour fighting fit to take on the Tories and win, not one that will undermine the leadership and drag us back into the chaos of the Corbyn period. I’m ready to serve for another term, but I need your support for me and the rest of the Labour to Win team to renew my mandate. Please give me your first preference vote and give your second, third, fourth and fifth preferences to my Labour to Win running mates.