Polly Toynbee in the Guardian comments, more eloquently than I on Vince Cable’s Conference speech. She ends her article with the following quote,
…It’s time for grown-up politics from the Lib Dems. A measure of rapprochement with Labour and an end to mendacious attacks is the best way to distance themselves from their Tory captors.
The development of the politics of the Boundary Commission review is moving with immense rapidity. In the area I live, we have a rather awesome local web site called Brockly Central which has reported on the Boundry Commission’s review in an article called “Deptford & Greenwich”. The Tory/LibDem coalition have decided to reduce the number of MPs in the House of Commons. While this may on the face of it be poplar, it’s a ruse to disguise the rewriting of the rules in their favour. …
Vince Cable, the ultimate tight rope walker is up to his tricks again. He spoke to the Liberal Democrat Conference today, having leaked his speech to any one that’ll print it. Much respect to the Delegates! His two pre-event headlines …
The Guardian led yesterday, with a story about itself, How the Metropolitan Police are planning to use the Official Secrets Act to force the Guardian journalists that broke the story about the hacking of ‘Milly Dowler’ phone to reveal their sources. …
Coulson, the former Director of Information for the Conservative Party and Govt. Press Supremo, and currently under arrest, has been spreading it like manure again. It seems he left News International under a ‘Compromise Agreement‘ and continued to receive payments from his previous employer while serving as a senior employee of the Conservative Party. It has been suggested that these payments are a de-facto and thus undeclared donation to the Conservative Party. If true, this would be against the law. …
I don’t want to get into a row with David Blanchflower,who takes issue with the QS University Ranking results 2011 and have no argument with his assertion that Cambridge is not the best University in the World, but unless the U. of Shanghai (UoS) have revised their methodology since I last looked at it while on the EU’s NESSI steering committee, in early 2009 , they
In August, earlier this month, Vince Cable announced the Government’s response to the Hargreaves Review aka the Google review into intellectual property law. Some of the UK’s IT companies, including Google together with many economists, strongly believe that the current intellectual property laws in the UK inhibit innovation and growth and persuaded Cameron to launch a review into the intellectual property laws. The review was chaired and directed by Professor Hargreaves and it published its report “Digital Opportunity, A review of intellectual property and growth” earlier in the year. This article looks at the Hargreaves Review’s recommendations and reactions to the report and comments on Cable’s speech which de-committed the Government from pursuing the web bocking clauses of the Digital Economy Act. …
Andrew Adonis reviewed Vernon Bogdanor‘s latest book, “The Coalition and the Constitution” in the New Statesman last month. Adonis believes that Bogdanor argues that the fact of Coalition is a more significant change than the proposed reforms, which he summarises as Alternative Vote, so-called Fixed Term Parliaments and House of Lords reform. I’ve not read the book, so am not sure if focusing on Clegg’s quote, “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832” is from Bogdanor, or Adonis, but neither think the plans meet this hype.
They suggest that A.V. & Fixed term parliaments are not major game changes, and Bogdanor also looks at the reform of the House of Commons, the reduction in MPs and the equalisation of constituency sizes. He argues that these latter reforms, while hyped as anti-Labour will particularly disadvantage the Liberal Democrats. The Government plans for House of Lords reform have now been published, so their impact can be estimated, and we now know that the next elections will be held under First Past the Post electoral system.
Adonis departs from a review of Bogdanor’s ideas by looking at the extension of the idea of executive mayors. He argues that this, “has great democratic potential”. I don’t really see it myself. …
Earlier this year, the Liberal Democrats at their annual conference voted down their platform position to support the Coalition Government’s NHS “Reforms”. The platform position was proposed by Paul Burstow, the Minister of Health and a Liberal Democrat MP. I am pleased that the left Liberal Democrats are finding their voice, but a historical look at the effectiveness of democratic conferences’ ability to manage their parliamentary parties in opposition, let alone government doesn’t give one much hope.
The NHS revolt is led by some of the most senior Liberal Democrats, but being in Government is new to this generation of Liberal Democrat activists. Its conference and democracy was not built to manage a party of government. Julian Huppert , now an LD MP, and Isabel Fox have twice taken opposition to the Digital Economy Act/Bill to the Liberal Democrat Conference, have twice won their votes and motions, and yet the Liberal Democrats in Government have failed to get repeal of the DE Act into the “Great Freedom Bill”.
However, at the least the Liberal Democrat conference agenda is still under the control of its members and they can criticise and advise their leadership in this public and collective fashion.
One really has to wonder if the Labour Party is still capable of undertaking such an action. Labour Party Conference had a long and proud record of attempting to lead its party and for many years was “sovereign”, subject to the law of the land. (Not a constraint that it understood well!) 1
It’s common currency that Blair proved his electability to the British electorate by taming the Labour Party and the most visible victory was the re-writing of Clause IV. However, this was a fight at the end of long process, one that, it’s often forgotten was started by John Smith; all ‘reforms’ aimed at taming the Labour Party and its membership. These reforms either took power away from the membership, or weakened the leadership’s accountability to the policy of the Labour Party. They include,
The result of these reforms is to take policy development and even debate away from the membership and restrict it to the National Policy Forum. Individual balloting stops the members holding the leadership accountable to policy because successful candidates have mandates of their own. Before 1997, the Parliamentary leadership chucked in some rallies as consultation and listening activities but this stopped soon after they won the election. Labour has turned its conference into a rally to which they now sell tickets to its members. Its policy development now takes place in poorly lit broom cupboard.2
I rejuvenated my involvement in the Labour Party during the last election because a number of its members and campaigners convinced me that the Labour Party was where people that wanted a fair society were. I am delighted to meet new (& old) friends and comrades as I expand my contacts and resuscitate old ones, and proud to meet people that campaign for a better society and use their elected council positions to do their best to protect those at the brunt of the cuts. But in the 70s & 80s, I believed and felt that the Party’s policy belonged to the members of the Party, Unions and affiliated socialist societies, but with the changes made in opposition in the early 90s I am not so sure.
The election in May was not a single election. Many things happened, but one thing that is true is that in many parts of the country the Labour Party on the ground had a better election than the Party in Millbank. The national leadership owe the party on the ground a huge debt that allows us to begin to oppose the Tory led Government from a considerably stronger position than might have been the case. The least they can do is listen to its membership on policy.
Labour’s National Policy Forum was designed to take policy away from conference. It was designed to isolate the policy makers from their mass movement and the people they represent. Its designers wanted policy to be set by the Parliamentary Labour Party, or more truthfully its front bench. Despite their rhetoric, which they backed with successful action to reverse the decline in membership since 1945, the membership, especially individual members weren’t to be trusted with policy. The National Policy Forum was created and Conference prohibited from deciding on policy. The irony is that the Party Blair and Brown recruited in the mid ‘90s probably didn’t need such treatment. Its successor gave Dianne Abbot, the only Left wing candidate 7½% of 1st preferences. It’s a long time ago since Tony Benn won 49% of the Deputy Leadership elections.
When conference was the Labour Party’s policy making body, it was possible to know and be involved in the selection of the conference delegate. The National Policy forum does not have this accountability. I suggest it had zero impact on the policy of the last Labour Governments, which is, shamefully, about the same level of influence as the NEC.
This article was started a long time ago and I have participated in two meetings to discuss this since. In one of them, Ellie Reeves, one of the NEC members responsible for the review made the point that there are two dimensions to the disenfranchisement that members feel, repeated here on YouTube, one is that their ideas disappear into a black hole, there is no commitment to transparency, and secondly that some of the ideas that the Labour government did pursue, such as Privatisation of the Post Office and the Digital Economy Act were never put to the Party. To most Party members, they came from nowhere.
I think the NPF has to go. It was not designed to enhance democracy, nor to ensure that Labour Party policy represented its member’s views. Let’s start with a blank piece of paper and a will to listen to what members want. I hope that that is what Ed Miliband and Peter Hain have promised, a rejuvenation of the party’s democracy, that allows members to be more than cogs in the phone bank.
This blog article has a short URL of http://is.gd/tawmaW
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1. I originally went down a rat-hole about the great and not so great events at Labour’s Conferences and the lessons of the past for today’s activists, I shortened it to make it more readable and focused the article about making Labour Party policy today, but the research, as is often the case with the Labour Party, is hard, as there is little on the internet but it seems to me that a history of Labour Conference is one worth writing.
2. The old jokes are always the best. (No they’re not!). …
I moved into a new flat which had been empty earlier this year and am now being chased by ONS for a Census return. I was not living in, nor renting the flat on the Census date, their web site does not permit one to notify them of the fact the premises was vacant, and I have been visited by an agent of the ONS and informed them that the flat was vacant. NB I had already filled in Census forms about two other address It can’t be that these circumstances are rare, why is it so hard to tell them that the address was vacant, and more importantly, that this is nothing to do with me! …