Some thought on Labour’s Leadership campaign

Some thought on Labour’s Leadership campaign

The Labour Leadership elections seem to be less inspiring than 2015. We should all remember and recognise that Corbyn’s victory in the 2015 Leadership election was the result of revolutionary change in British Politics, he surfed a wave; it was not created by the minuscule and impotent Labour Left. At the time, I was shocked by Ed Miliband’s defeat (at least its scale) and began to question my own sense of strategy. I engaged with several parts of Labour Left which I had not been associated with and found an entrenched sense of entitlement, that “it was their turn”. This has survived to today.

With respect to the current election, for Leader at least, I am concerned that should Lisa Nandy win, she’ll end up trapped like Ed Miliband, (and arguably Corbyn), in an office without the ability to win her policy agenda in the Party, either at Conference or in the PLP. It is my view that the faction around Ed Balls organised and blew Miliband of course and his genuine supporters were insufficiently powerful or skilful to defend his policy agenda. I sort of agree with her and Phillips that 40 second replies to “moderated” questions are not the best way to allow candidates to speak to the members, although Nandy has shown how well she can use even less time on the Andrew Neil interview. I also question the judgement behind her voting record over the autumn. She seems shocked that the Tories are reneging on promises they made to win Labour votes for both Brexit and the election and while her statements on Workers’ & Migrants’ Rights are welcome, her role in ending the Parliament and thus stymieing a “final say” referendum is not, in my opinion good.

For those that place the worst possible interpretation on Nandy’s comments on Catalonia and Scottish independence, you are wrong, she clearly did not mean to support the aggressive police or judicial response; suggesting she did  puts you in the same category as the anti-Catholicism surrounding Rebecca Long-Bailey. It infantilises our politics and buries much more important questions. Scotland and its relationship with the UK deserves a better debate than this.

Last night RLB made herself the first of the Leader candidates to commit to Open Selection. I suspect that I am in a minority amongst Labour’s Left in that I don’t consider that we failed to win re-selection ballots because of the rules, or the constraints/rules of the debate. It is clear that the argument, “we deserve a choice” didn’t have the resonance that one would have hoped, but, we lost the re-selections because on the whole people didn’t turn up, and they didn’t turn up because the Left don’t know who they are and many of them have given up on us as leaders of the Corbyn project. We must recognise that, we i.e. the Left have driven people away through our sectarian and indecent behaviour.

Another problem I have with Open Selection is that it is based on an elitist model of power. If we had a democratic policy making process which the leadership and the PLP would follow, then who the MPs are would matter less but that’s not how the Labour Party does and it’s looking as if the new Leadership nomination rules will end up restricting choice and not enhancing it.

I plan to look at my proposals over the last two years and see which one’s need to be resurrected, but we need to recognise that many of the democratic reforms stemming from the democracy review have not introduced member power, they have reinforced the power of the Party’s bureaucracy. We need a stronger Conference and stronger CLPs, but achieving these things will take a change of culture, the Party needs to become an instrument of collective endeavour not a battlefield of power.

In her speech last night Long-Bailey said,

This means open and democratic policy making at every level, properly resourced political education and a professional and accountable party operation. These are the basics.

Sadly Party Democracy is a critical issue, I’d prefer that policy and electoral strategy were at the centre but what the candidates say in response to my question will be critical in how I cast my vote and speak at the nomination meeting. …

Council Power

Council Power

I wrote to one of Lewisham’s Councillors on the results of the Democracy Review and pointed them at things I have written and published, on Mayor’s and power in the council.

  1. https://davelevy.info/lewishams-democracy-it-could-be-better/ … what i thought was needed
  2. https://davelevy.info/what-is-to-be-done-with-lewisham-council/ … summarising what I said, i.e. my submission
  3. https://davelevy.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Lewisham-Democracy-Review-DFL-V1_1.pdf … my evidence, in which I recommend a series of reforms to improve the accountability and transparency of the Mayor, Council and senior officials including a recall mechanism, term limits and much improved monitoring of personnel, decisions and programmes.
  4. https://davelevy.info/abolishing-executive-mayors/ also hosts the LGIU paper which talks about returning to the Committee System.

And here are my notes about what they said; https://davelevy.info/wiki/lewisham-councils-democracy-review/ which includes comments on power & communication.

For completeness, https://davelevy.info/dictatorship/ my manifesto for abolition of the Mayor. …

And it’s out

And it’s out

While building my evidence to the Lewisham Democracy Review, I made a wiki page to hold my notes. This has been updated to record my first impressions. The head line,

Does this report challenge the status quo? I think not and this is at the heart of the problem. There are certainly no SMART proposals.

Dave Levy

I say, almost centrally in summary, ‘On Page 19, They say, “Clearer and more engaging ways should be explored for explaining how the Council works and the roles and responsibilities of councillors and officers.’. To which I reply, “The power and division of responsibilities between councillors, council and officers needs to be reviewed to maximise democratic control.” The officers are too powerful through explicit powers and mushroom therapy.  …

What is to be done, with Lewisham Council?

Finally I have submitted my thoughts on Lewishams’ Democracy Review. Lewisham Democracy Review by Dave Levy V1_1. My initial thoughts were published in this article on this blog. Three things,

  1. I am shocked at the true legal position, we elect a dictator, with no recall, & no term limits. Executive Mayor’s are not just a first-amongst-equals “Leaders” with a different mandate, it’s an alien form of government, lifted from the US & France and designed to reduce the accountability of the decisions from voters and their political parties. I am equally shocked at the extent to which the Mayor’s power’s are delegated to full time staff.
  2. I have recommended that they abolish the Mayoral system, and in the expectation that this will be rejected,
  3. I recommend a series of reforms to improve the accountability and transparency of the Mayor, Council and senior officials including a recall mechanism, term limits and much improved monitoring of personnel, decisions and programmes.

The deadline is Sunday.

A URL for the document is http://bit.ly/2DA5aho, a SURL for this article is https://wp.me/p9J8FV-1IN …

Lewisham’s Democracy, it could be better

Lewisham’s Democracy, it could be better

Writing up what I think for Lewisham’s Democracy Review is proving harder than I thought, the source material i.e. Lewisham’s Constitution [www] is very long(483 pages), it’s .pdf, can’t easily be indexed or highlighted, so item No. 1. is to increase the transparency of the rules so citizens can understand how decisions are made.

This is a very Un-British way of doing things and all our instincts are wrong. Every decision is reserved for the Mayor who must present a number of plans to full council. the decisions are then taken in the context of the agreed plans which only require ⅓ voting in favour. The Mayor delegates all their executive functions to the Cabinet as a collective but also to the council’s principal paid officers. The backbench Councillor’s Scrutiny Committees can only delay these decisions. There, apart from criminal sanction, is no way to recall the Mayor. The Mayor does not hold office due to their ability to command a majority, they do not need to get many decisions agreed by Council. This is not just a first-amongst-equals “Leader” with a different mandate, it’s an alien form of government, lifted from the US & France and designed to reduce the accountability of the decisions from people and their political parties.

My first proposal would be that the Council agree to ask the people of Lewisham to abolish the Mayor and return to a collective committee led Council. It might seem to be less democratic but a committee led council has to maintain its mandate throughout it’s term of office, a Mayor led council supported by a just ⅓ of the Councillors can ignore civic society and wait for the next election.

The other ideas I need to develop,  and we’ll see how much detail I can research, would cover Recall, maybe requiring a more than 50% vote of the Council, Term Limits, something about an Ombudsman & Compliance Committee and independence, having the Cabinet appointed by the Council, the move to a Green Paper/White Paper process for decision making, improved citizen communication, the web site is shite, smaller wards and some thing on the need to use the powers in the Localism Act to get the changes in law that some of these things would require. …

I.T. implications

In my many articles on Labour’s Democracy Review, and in a preview I talk about the Information Technology implications of Labour’s coming rule changes. I have extracted the following quote from my article, The denoument, as I’d like it to be easier to find,

In the NEC rule changes as presented to Conference the NEC talks about using IT to maximise participation. All constituency documents, are to be available to all members via a clockwork platform, sorry, I made it up, an electronic platform, “provided by the Party”; I hope that’s the national party as I have thought hard about this and creating a shared disk is not hard, managing the Access Control List (ACL) is, particularly if your membership and volatility is large.

 …

The denoument

… of the Democracy Review

This is a report on the debate at the Democracy Review. It is best read in conjunction with Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) Report 1, pages 28 to 55. This article describes the proposals, the debate and how I voted. The packages covered member’s rights, local structures, regional structures, national structures, Leadership elections, the National Constitutional Committee (structure and remit) and Westminster selections. The rest of this blog is below/overleaf …  …

Online Democracy

In Labour’s Democracy Review, they argue for more IT and remote access and online balloting, they say

Carers, disabled members, shift workers, women and young members have argued it is the poor, disadvantaged and already under-represented who are least likely to have the time and resources to attend meetings. These points have been made particularly at the disability events we have had.

Who the fuck do you think are least likely to have internet access?

In the HuffPo article, they argue that Momentum is an example of how digital engagement creates activity and energy. In my book, Momentum has some questions to answer about it’s on-line democracy. (It’s closed source, and its IT Security Controls are not public and its segregation of duties is not published, and probably non-existent. )

In my short essay, https://davelevy.info/e-voting/, I say,

Bruce Schneier, in a 2004 essay, posed four requirements, that voting systems be fast, accurate, scalable and anonymous. To these I add, transparency.

E-voting systems struggle to meet the Schneier’s first four criteria and yet the last is possibly the most important; critically losers must trust that the result is accurate.

I say [much] more in articles on this blog tagged e-voting.

ooOOOoo

The HuffPo article posted the full review and I have mirrored the section on Digital Democracy on this site. The report itself is pretty moderate in its ambitions, restricting itself to improving training, asking all CLPs to have a web site and making the social media officer a specific role. No harm really; although it is important to maintain the collective nature of decision making in the Party, where remote attendance and postal votes isolate and allow non Party voices i.e. the right wing press to have a larger voice than our members then this must be opposed. …