This is part II of my commentary on the Labour Leak, it looks at the missteps and failures to control the bureaucracy from 2015 to 2019 and looks at the structural faults, the need for a robust segregation of duties, how Labour has changed its rules to make expulsion of alleged antisemites or troublemaker’s easier and how McNicol’s eventual departure allowed both damage to be continued and a cover-up to become deeply embedded within the Party.
The Labour Party has extended its national policy consultation and so policy proposals, comments and votes can be made at https://www.policyforum.labour.org.uk/. In order to vote you must have a “my labour” login and login to the policy site. If not a member, you need to register at the site itself.
I have written proposals on the economy, a post-Brexit trade & co-operation deal, employee protection, and the surveillance society & police powers. I have supported proposals on free movement/immigration, and anti-union laws, It’d be great if if you could vote them up,
I would be grateful to be pointed at great proposals on social care, social security and education.
Other’s may find this & this on a Post-Brexit deal, inspired by Labour Movement for Europe worth voting up. …
I was invited to speak about my blog piece, “Closing the Stable Door” on Stay at Home for Labour, Crispin made a Video, here’s his copy, the full show, including comments from Pam Fitzpatrick, Mark Howell, David Osland, Mark McDonald and Ann Henderson & Gurinder Josan. Here’s a video of my contribution,
An apology. I was led to believe that Labour’s NCC had been restricted to appeals on procedural grounds only; on a more serious reading of the rules, it would seem this is not so. Appeals can be lodged on the grounds that the NEC exceeded it powers by taking a decision other than one authorised by rules. This includes the constraint below,
There is sufficient evidence in documentary or other recorded form to reasonably conclude that the charge is proven and justify the sanction proposed;
Labour’s Rules 2020 C6.I.b.iii (P.24)
So an appeal can be lodged on the grounds that the evidence does not reasonably support the determined sanction.
Point of Order, Chair! The speaker is talking bollocks. …
Tye Labour Party’s inquiry, now known as the “Forde Inquiry” after its independent chair, Dr Martin Forde, into the leaking of its investigation into the activities of its complaints team and senior management has published a call for evidence. It’s web site is at fordeinquiry,org and the call for evidence page is here and behind the image.
I plan to make a submission based on Unanswered Questions, also Closing the Stable Door and a third one based on the various acts in breach of the member’s charter, the rules and the law which impacted me personally. …
I have just bookmarked Crispin Flintoff’s video made for Stand up for Labour, as part of his campaign to get the Party to spend more on the CLPs by means of remission of a higher proportion of the membership subs.
From 29:30 Dave from Milton Keynes, kicks off a discussion about the management and reporting of the Party’s finances. Two NEC members, Gurinder Singh and Jon Lansman comment on the exclusion of the NEC from the management of money. It’s really quite shocking. …
This blog article is one of several albeit the first published on the labourleak. It focuses on fixing the problems identified and implied in the #labourleak in a holistic way. It looks at the controls, briefly on why they failed, how the private sector manages, the question of Union collusion, IT standards & controls, the disciplinary process, the NEC and if genuine professionalism can possibly improve the quality and honesty of the decisions taken by the Labour Party; it concludes by proposing that the rules be changed to place a duty on all role holders to conform to the Nolan Principles, and that whistle blowers have better protection, but on the way recommends that the Labour Party use a series of external certifications, ask the Auditors to to inspect that payments and receipts are handled according to the Party's financial control rules, increase the professionalism of the staff and NEC committees, all of this to guarantee to its members and staff that good practice and not arbitrary actions are the guiding principles of judgement and decision.
I am not sure how well it’s being circulated, but here is Yasmine Dar’s write up of the last NEC meeting, I don’t think we’ll be ending factionalism any time soon. It’s very long and deals powerfully with policy development, CV19 & the lockdown, and factionalism and the leak and leak inquiry. …
Paul Mason comments on the Labour Together report; the article examines how to reassemble a majority voting coalition, he argues it’s not just policy, it’s campaigning culture and this I agree about; he also argues that we must be ready to go into coalition with the SNP as we cannot win sufficient Scottish seats while Scottish Labour holds a unionist position. I think he maybe right about economism being sufficient but is too hopeful about Momentum, certainly the election campaigns to its national committee itself suggests that neither its leadership nor its challengers are ready to learn the lessons on political culture that he advocates. The Left needs to recognise why Corbyn’s coalition has fractured and learn how to rebuild a new one otherwise it’s in a minority in the Party and country. …
It looks like the Labour Party plan to go ahead with Candidate selections for the 2021 local authority elections and possibly the 2022 whole council elections. This is despite the lockdown, and due to the 2019 Conference Rule changes which planned to change the committee structures that manage this process, the bureaucracy’s response was to suspend the old committees and prohibit their AGMs. For most areas, this wouldn’t have mattered, since AGMs must take place after May and the meetings would have to have been postponed due to lock down although the size of the meetings would have made meeting and voting via video conference possible.
I have written previously about the rule change, in this article, which includes a link to the rule change which should now be incorporated in the current Rule Book.
I am worried about the transition to the college based LGCs and I have written a “principles” document, to highlight some outstanding issues and challenges, which includes the size, the electorate for all 3 colleges, candidate eligibility, counting abstentions, conflict of interest, the nature of the due diligence and that TU & CLP delegates are included in the selection committees and that the Procedures Secretary is not a councillor. However it seems that the selections will be done by the incumbent LCFs, so we can postpone those worries.
One area of concern, irrespective of the committee structure, is that the due diligence of candidates is often onerous and factionally biased, I believe it is necessary that candidate assessments may only withhold an endorsement on the grounds that a candidate is not eligible to stand, fails to meet the Labour Party’s eligibility rules, states that they will not conform to the rules on Group conduct and/or other Labour Party rules or for other good reason; the holding of opinions on policy shall not be a reason for non-endorsement.
Two further issues, which ideally required rule changes are the existence of trigger ballots, which it seems for Councillors are not going to be held, but we are unclear what will happen to the Borough Mayors.
The other issue is about conflicts of interest. At the moment the rules only state that familial or marriage relationships are considered conflicts of interest. We should seek to ensure that business relationships, some other commercial relationship such as a rent agreements, a supervisory/supervised relationship in employment or any other issue which might reasonably deemed to exist are declared and appropriately managed. I have written a rule change on this but it is a direct textual amendment to Appendix 4, and Conference can’t amend the Appendices, and there isn’t going to be one. The rule change can be amended to be valid by amending Chapter 5.
Labour Briefing published a scorecard on the LCF’s and found it wanting, an article called, “Local Government Committees – Has the NEC scored an own-goal?“, it seems we won’t find out. This article was written late last year after Conference changed the rules to introduce the ⅓, ⅓, ⅓ based LGC. …