London Labour held its annual conference on 18th and 19th of July, a month and half after disastrous local election results, and in the shadow of Keir Starmer’s resignation as leader of the Labour Party. These two events shaped the debates that took place and in the tradition of the current leadership faction, the vast amount of time was given over to speakers from the platform, either as panel speakers, or just guest speeches.
There were two MP guest speakers, David Lammy and Wes Streeting who were occasionally joined on the platform by the outgoing regional director, Aline Delawa and regional chair Maggi Ferncombe of Unison.
They all repeated what’s becoming a line about what a good leader and Prime Minister Keir Starmer was, how he’d delivered a working majority after Labour’s greatest post-war election loss, and a successful government, even though and unmentioned, the number of votes won was amongst the lowest. This story is not true, and repeating this nonsense will make it harder to recover our vote share; it leaves the question, that if he was so good, “why did he have to resign?”, unanswered.
It’s a retread of Mandelson’s strategy, “they have nowhere else to go”, which has been proven to be false, most dramatically in 2019, and I am reminded, that in Scotland, there is now a generation that has never voted Labour and that in 2024, the hero voter strategy failed.
There is reticence to recognise that Palestine cut through and that the mantle of community progressive leadership has, in London at least, moved to the Greens. Labour were also hampered by being unable and/or unwilling to say it was a good government. For me and my Labour comrade councillors, it is galling to live in a borough which wins awards for its parks and have introduced landlord registration and yet lose to the Greens particularly where renters have switched from Labour to the Greens to punish a Labour Government that strengthened renter’s rights by making new laws.
Something I have noticed, and it came up at the Conference, is an anti-Green sectarianism. While it should be clear that there are political disagreements between the two parties, the crude stupidity of Labour’s anti-Green position, focusing on NATO and a controversial position on drugs makes it hard to genuinely speak to Labour’s defecting voters, most of whom are good people who feel let down by the first Labour Government of their generation. We may come to regret this.
Another part of the complacency is the idea that they’ll come back, we just have to wait our turn. During a Q&A session, one of the contributors pointed out that, the General Election strategy, where Labour instructed campaigners to campaign outside London meant that voters might and did feel ignored as the level of contact and conversation was diminished.
We need to ask just how good the London Labour regional offices is or has been. It’s job has been to manage the party; winning elections has come a distant second. In London over the last two local election cycles, London Labour have lost six councils and in three of them, the councils are now led by Labour defectors who have been the victims of underhand administrative action by the regional office.
Len Duvall, the leader of the Labour Group on the GLA spoke of the next London wide elections, on the challenges facing the Mayor and highlighting his successes, the Fare Freeze, School Meals, Policing, where knife crime is down, and clean air, through electrification and investing in trees and parks. He also highlighted Kahn’s brave stand against hate. Duvall warned that Labour needed to get its candidates in place as soon as possible. London Region’s record in just forgetting to hold trigger ballots is well remembered, at least by me.
In the REC elections, Labour to Win won all the seats, with one exception and that was because they failed to run a full slate. The office had also excluded the delegation from Islington South CLP; its presence might have made a difference in that division which has often been a stronghold of their opponents. The three Newham Parties remain suspended.
There was 1½ hours for motions, which were on the whole pretty anodyne. They included motions from the Unions on Pay, London Weighting, Hours, the Health Service, and gambling. To this we add Unite’s motion calling for a debate and greater regulation of automated vehicles with a moratorium until regulation is in place. The Co-Op party tabled two motions. The CLP motion on re-nationalising Thames water was ruled out of order, and a CLP motion calling for better rail routes in South London was defeated when the ASLEF delegate stated that it would require more track or sacrificing other routes. Lewisham North’s motions on Horizon Europe and Rail Services were not submitted on time. Does this accurately show the interest that CLPs have in policy?
I attended as a delegate from my Union, and this is written in a personal capacity. It was written in mid-August, from contemporaneous notes and back dated to the Monday following the Conference. The featured image is from unsplash.