Delete all … insert

I was asked where the “rule” that an amendment cannot be destructive came from. I have to say, that I don’t know but I haven’t read Citrine, so I googled it and came across, “The vest pocket Chairman” by Heathwood and Horseman hosted by libcom.org. They quote Citrine as saying,

Amendment. An amendment should be a proposal seeking to improve a motion—not merely to improve the wording but to propose a better course of action. Amendments should not be negative nor merely destructive.

Lord Citrine, in his A B C of Chairmanship,* divides amendments into five categories. These are :-

(a) Those adding words to the original motion.
(b) Those deleting words from the motion.
(c) Those deleting words and substituting others.
(d) Those deleting most of the motion and substituting a counter-proposal.
(e) Those which amend an earlier amendment.

The rules for moving and discussing an amendment are the same as those for moving and discussing a motion, except that, as a rule, the mover of an amendment has no right of reply to the discussion.

An amendment must be relevant to the terms of the original motion, and must not be frivolous. An amendment should offer a concrete alternative proposal to that contained in the motion.

An amendment should not negative the motion. Anyone wishing to do that can do so simply by voting against the motion.

I have also found the following words,

Direct Negative. An amendment which proposes the direct opposite of a motion is a “Direct Negative” and should not be accepted. The proper course for movers of a direct negative is to oppose the motion.

and

Negative Motion. A motion in the negative cannot be accepted. All motions must be positive.

This article permits omnibus motions.

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I have uploaded the document here … as my blog seems more long lived that many other web resources. …

What now for Labour?

From Composite 1, #lab16

…. believes that unless the final settlement proves to be acceptable then the option of retaining EU membership should be retained. The final settlement should therefore be subject to approval, through Parliament and potentially through a general election, or a referendum.

This is Labour’s Conference Policy .. frankly I’d take any means of remaining now that we know the only terms available are unacceptable but I believe a lot of people would be very unhappy if Parliament instructed the Government to Revoke the A50 notice without a popular vote despite the fact that this Parliament’s mandate is more recent than the  Referendum. …

Three things about TIG

A couple of thoughts on the new “The INdependent Group of England” (TINGE).

The word Independent has a specific meaning under electoral law and there are no barriers to its use; if they seek to use such a name in a general election they will find the space crowded and there will be restrictions on what they can do.

Much has been made of the argument, “they stood on Labour’s manifesto”, it’s unlikely that the Labour defectors did; there was an ‘shadow’ election address which despite it being blessed by Southside, didn’t mention the manifesto or even the Labour Party.

“The Independent Group” doesn’t say the same as “Social Democratic Party”, Owen Jones looks at the political foundations of the latter and compares it, unfavourably, to today. The vacancy of their ideology and policy portfolio is illustrated in Chris Leslie’s interview in the New Statesman. The arrogance and the politics make it hard to remain disappointed. …

History, tragedy & farce

History, tragedy & farce

The splitters have been joined by one more Labour MP, and three Tories. Paul Mason comments with sense on the New Statesman, “To save his project, Jeremy Corbyn must bring Labour’s old guard on side“; it would seem that he agrees with me, it’s important to minimise the split, and constrain it to careerist malcontents. In a video, Tom Watson argues correctly that this is not a time for anger or glee and that we need to remember our, or Jeremy’s, promise of a kinder gentler politics. We must convince other doubters that only Labour can make the changes in society that are needed. This article looks at these responses and also examines the history and electoral impact of the foundation of the SDP last time, and its predecessors, specifically in the light of Dick Taverne’s decision to resign immediately and defend his seat. …

The Magnificent Seven, not!

The most important news yesterday was the announcement by Honda that they were leaving the UK. I don’t know if this could have been stopped short of revoking Article 50, but that’s 3,500 jobs going in Swindon plus those in the UK supply chain. However the noisiest story was the resignation from the Labour Party of 7 MPs. I am disappointed that its come to this, and sad to see those I know go. The story was made more poignant by the re-admission of Derek Hatton to the Labour Party, much to the excitement and condemnation of the right-wing commentariat. He was expelled, or auto-excluded, 34 years ago. The remainder of this article, see below/overleaf, examines the pointlessness of the split, the need for a “kinder gentler politics” on both sides of the factional divide, the other seven expelled/suspended MPs and finishes by looking at the politics and personalities of the SDP spit and comparing it with that of today. …

Emergencies

Emergencies

More on emergency motions, mainly about the Labour Party’s rules, but may apply to other Labour movement organisations.

An emergency motion can be accepted after the convening notice for a meeting has been published. This means that attendees or potential attendees will not know that a motion is planned, especially if the relevant officers do not formally or informally publicise receipt of a proposed emergency motion. In both AMM and Branch & Delegate (B&D), an emergency motion can be proposed by one member. Emergency motions permit the weakening of the notice rules.

To be deemed an emergency there is a two part test; basically is it late for good reason, and can it wait?

To be deemed an emergency, it must prove that it is relevant to an event that occurred after the convening notice was published otherwise the proposer should/must have given the membership notice of their motion via the Secretary. i.e. the proposer needs to justify why no notice could be given. This is worse in a B&D GC;  an emergency motion can be proposed by a delegate without reference to their nominating organisation and other delegates cannot get mandates for the emergency motion, particularly if no notice has been given.

None of the above addresses the second part of the test which is to qualify as an emergency, the motion must be such that being delayed to a meeting at which notice can be given and mandates issued would nullify the impact of the motion.

This is why organisations need a test as to the bona fide nature of the “emergency” requiring the passage of a motion.

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It should be noted that the very low threshold required to place an emergency motion on the order paper can lead to abuse. Because emergency motions are taken before motions that have been submitted in good time, a small minority can hijack the agenda of meetings by persistently submitting emergency motions. This denies those that have behaved well the opportunity to see their motions and ideas debated. (My local GC has motions that have been waiting for nearly two years, and it took months to discuss abolishing the Mayor and even longer to vote to oppose blacklist and for the council to embargo companies that use them.

A final thought, since motions of no-confidence, be it in an MP or a CLP EC have no effect in the rules, can they ever be considered emergencies? They will always fail the 2nd test. …

Labour’s new Red Lines

Labour’s new Red Lines

Here’s Labour’s new Brexit Red Lines on Brexit, which includes the text, and here is Paul Mason, Stephen Bush and Paul Cotterill.

Mason and Cotterill think it’s a move towards remain or a final say, and this is especially true if the Tories reject the offer. Mason feels that it puts the Tories in a difficult position but if they reject the offer, it puts Labour’s parliamentary Brexiters in very difficult position. Cotterill feels it’s the on ramp to a 2nd referendum and is especially excited by the requirement that the commitments to be made in the political declaration are to be backed by legislation. Bush considers it to be move towards soft brexit which maybe very attractive to the Labour sponsors of Common Market 2.0. He also says, that with the exception of free movement, it is specific and achievable and so, is on the Brexit off-ramp in a way that the six tests were not. He also notes that the new Red Lines are silent on free movement, which he argues is a better position than that previously held.

Is this good or bad?

I think I am with those who think it’s clever and resets the question in Parliament, which needed to be done. It interrupts May’s attempts to run down the clock and offer the Parliament or even the people a choice between her deal and no deal. It increases the odds of a final say between, May’s deal and Remain. In terms of an outcome, it’s nearly acceptable, although it now moves into the pointless end of the spectrum.

My one true fear is that it means Labour accepts the withdrawal agreement which will throws those Brit’s living in the EU under the bus, and the will permit the Tory government to implement another Windrush by placing EU citizens in the UK, having lived here for months or years under the same hostile environment applied to other alien immigrants and subject to uncertainty about their rights to remain. For me this might be a price too high!

There’s more below/overleaf …  …

Sovereignty

While I suspect that Labour’s Democracy Review team changed the sovereignty relationship between CLP ECs and GC/AMMs for good reasons, the number of stories of ECs suppressing the membership’s ability to make policy and run their parties being legion and in some places it seems not to have stopped but making it work will be difficult as the amount of time required to hold the new officers and committee to account is significant. My last EC spent hours discussing the Facebook usage policy 🤔, and since everything is factional, stuff gets discussed at detail twice.

I almost wonder if it was deliberate; the GC/AMMs will spend so long discussing administration that they won’t have time to discuss policy or hold the leadership and the PLP to account. …

Fiscal credibility, ptui!

Yesterday, I went to a meeting on Brexit, Free-movement and immigration; conversation in the bar afterwards segued from, “why did a Corbyn led PLP argue to abstain on the Tories Immigration Act?” via a  post match analysis of Lewisham Deptford’s Brexit/Anti-Brexit meeting to consider the radicalism of Labour’s 2017 Manifesto and the development of macro economic policy since then; it doesn’t do so well when compared with the Corbynomics of 2015. One of the key developments since then has been the development of Labour’s Fiscal Credibility Rule, which promises to only borrow to invest.

To those who think this is smart, I ask why so-called current account spending on education is not seen as “investing” in Human Capital, but this is not it’s main problem.

However, I awoke this morning to see one of Richard Murphy’s tweets where he is contending with Jonathan Portes & Simon Wren Lewis, the rule’s author’s it would seem. It got a little testy. Anyway, here’s Richard, detoxifying, or not the twitter spat, and making the point that the Fiscal Credibility Rule is not based on Modern Monetary Theory. because it acknowledges the monetary constraint, and not the real world one. Murphy refers to his earlier piece, A challenge to Simon Wren-Lewis on modern monetary theory and Labour’s fiscal credibility rule in which he critiques the Fiscal Credibility Rule. My precis of his position is that the rule is based on a neo-classical approach, fundamentally legitimises austerity and fetishises debt reduction. I had a look for the Portes/Wren Lewis original position and assume that “Issues in the design of fiscal policy rules” is it.

My research took me to this, which Bill Mitchell claims to be his last words on the Fiscal Credibility Rule, the article contains the following powerful line,

The problem is that this reinforces the narrative that deficits and public debt are in some way ‘bad’ and as I note below this will not turn out well.

One of the problem’s exposed by Bill Mitchell’s article is that it suggests that the Fiscal Credibility Rule is a bit like Lord Buckethead’s nuclear deterrent policy, it only works if the secret is kept, in this case that Labour does not believe that the Fiscal Credibility Rule is a necessary macro-economic constraint even if the economists that wrote it do so.

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To some extent, this article is just a reading list, there’s not so much of me in it., but I have promised myself a precis of Chapter 7/8 of Fazi and Mitchell’s Reclaiming the State, which is a relatively simple and short exposition of MMT. …