This Once Great Movement Of Ours

[CumbrianLefty]

Given that this thread was ignored for yesterday's events, any point in it carrying on?

[dead0man]

Given that this thread was ignored for yesterday's events

the sacking of yet another high ranking racist?

[CumbrianLefty]

Obvious trolling not worthy of a response

In a genuine attempt to revive this thread, Kate Green has been announced as RLB's successor in the Shadow Cabinet. As she is a previously highly sectarian anti-Corbynite who managed Owen Smith's flop 2016 leadership challenge, this is unlikely to please the left.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Former head of the Child Poverty Action Group and another Fabian (actually chaired the society for a time). Very much a serious, civic-minded social democrat, which seems pretty clearly to be Starmer's general preference.

[CumbrianLefty]

But also the things I stated, which seems to be what people are noticing more at the moment.

(and as if to illustrate my point, "Owen Smith" is trending on Twitter right now)

[DaWN]

If it helps I'm getting more and more impressed. I'd almost be tempted to vote Labour if I wasn't in a safe seat. Almost.

[EastAnglianLefty]

But also the things I stated, which seems to be what people are noticing more at the moment.

(and as if to illustrate my point, "Owen Smith" is trending on Twitter right now)

"People" are noticing this because "people" are hyper-factional clowns who make up for this by having no discernable interest in policy. Outside of Twitter, this is not going to be news - not least because 80% of the PLP backed Smith and a sizeable proportion of the 20% are no longer MPs anyway.

It is worth noting here that polling shows that only a small fraction of both Labour supporters and the electorate in general have a problem with Starmer's decision: https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1276530854391619585

[CumbrianLefty]

Yes, but that 14% of Labour supporters who don't agree still have votes as well.

I don't mind Starmer doing his own thing, I do mind that certain people in his entourage seem to be "hyper-factional clowns" in their own right who appear to think they are cosplaying Kinnock's "heroic struggle against the left" back in the dear dead 1980s. Hopefully the more sensible elements around him (including, of course, some former Corbyn supporters) will turn out to be more influential, even if less incontinently garrulous with our awful as ever media

[CumbrianLefty]

Yesterday the party's new GenSec David Evans started work, at the same time Thomas Gardiner - one of the last remaining holdovers from the Corbyn days - left. Its all change right now.

[Blair]

I didn't see this thread & would love to keep it going; I use the UK politics one as a surrogate for Labour news as well there's generally always agreement among our UK posters on the actions of our Government! But healthy disagreements & fascinating insights into the Labour Movement.

The appointment of Kate Green was actually what I expected (albeit it was because I thought she was in the Shadow Education team with her old brief) I thought she would get a big job in the first round.

I think her appointment as Owen Smith's chair is actually a valid indicator of her skills; in that she was picked because as Chair she was seen as non-factional & serious. I remember there being active discussion about it needing to be her rather than one of the old brownite hands who actually ran the coup. I think Heidi Alexander was the other co-chair.

It's a sensible choice & hopefully allows Labour to pivot to it's naturally strongest area- child poverty, something covid is going to have a huge impact on.

[Blair]

Can someone explain the drama around STV?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Can someone explain the drama around STV?

It has been pushed for - initially more out of doomed enthusiasm than expectation - by some groups and individuals on the moderate Left for a while. The arguments in favour are fairly obvious: that the existing system (multi-seat FPTP) is the worst electoral system possible and produces perverse and undemocratic results; that factional sweeps (when they occur) leave substantial sections of the membership unrepresented; that the existing system results in giant, tightly-controlled slates and that this encourages all the worst sort of factionalist mentalities. There's also the small matter that it would make it a lot harder for any single faction to control a majority of seats on the NEC. And there's a final issue, and that is that transfers are very important in an STV election, meaning that transfer-unfriendly candidates will find it much harder to get in than transfer-friendly candidates.

[Blair]

Can someone explain the drama around STV?

It has been pushed for - initially more out of doomed enthusiasm than expectation - by some groups and individuals on the moderate Left for a while. The arguments in favour are fairly obvious: that the existing system (multi-seat FPTP) is the worst electoral system possible and produces perverse and undemocratic results; that factional sweeps (when they occur) leave substantial sections of the membership unrepresented; that the existing system results in giant, tightly-controlled slates and that this encourages all the worst sort of factionalist mentalities. There's also the small matter that it would make it a lot harder for any single faction to control a majority of seats on the NEC. And there's a final issue, and that is that transfers are very important in an STV election, meaning that transfer-unfriendly candidates will find it much harder to get in than transfer-friendly candidates.

Ah thanks- I do wonder how the NEC slates will be impacted by this decision.

Both the Left & the Right seemed to be preparing ultra slates; Progress & Labour first had joined together, and were exepected to hand 2-3 seats to parts of the non-aligned 'Starmerism' & Momentum are undergoing their own NCG (?) election which I assume then picks the slate?

I know there was lots of debate about how much Momentum would overtly rely on the either the crank vote (LRC & CLPD) and the ultra crank vote but surely this saves them doesn't it?

I'm never particuarly passionate about internat party reforms in the sense of having strong opinions other than what is the best route to achieving the aims of having a competent party; I don't think there is an ideal structure that never changes but equally it does seem that Labour faces the prospect of wholesale NEC changes everytime we have a leadership switch; of course which side claiming it's a response to previous changes.

My only thought is that these 'CLP' seats would almost make more sense if they were halved in number & the remaining ones were given to various organised affliated factions to fill?

[EastAnglianLefty]

I'd not be surprised to see full slates run, certainly on the left and probably on the right, as a) it's not uncommon for people to totally fail to understand the rules; b) they'll figure it's the best way to avoid vote leakage; and c) it's easier than having the argument about which slate candidates have to stand down.

I rather suspect first preference votes are going to show some high-profile slate candidates with high votes and some others at 0.X%. This may be a problem if there aren't transfer surpluses to redistribute.

Eddie Izzard and Ann Black probably have a reasonable shot at getting 10% of first preferences and hence being elected on the first ballot. I'm not sure anybody on the left slate is both well-known enough and popular enough with the hard-left to do the same.

That said, turnout for the NEC is consistently tiny, so the most you can hope for is very poorly informed guesswork.

[Blair]

For more kremlinolgy it appears that Momentum Renewal have won control of the Momentum; looking at the slates it appears that Renewal is the more progressive (?) of the two, with Forward Momentum being dominated more so by the harder, lexiteer strand- I think, and the Labourlist article quote confirms that I think?

Labour MPs such as Ian Lavery, Paula Barker, Sam Tarry and Charlotte Nichols, plus Tribune‘s Ronan Burtenshaw and Novara Media‘s Aaron Bastani, had all signed up to back the Renewal initiative.

But the candidates selected by FM – said to include key workers, shop stewards and community organisers – were described by the campaign as “representing a break with the current leadership faction”.

I don't understand this area of the party that welll; although I suppose it's hard to analyse an election where I imagine what 10-20K people at the most voted? And these things often have feuds going back years; but it's being written up as an anti-Lansman move?

[CumbrianLefty]

Lots of people will welcome a move to STV for internal elections. The issue here is that it is coming in for the CLP section (one of the main strongholds of the left recently) and not for anywhere else in the NEC, which will continue to pick its people by FPTP. These areas "just happen" to be more right wing.

[EastAnglianLefty]

That one is a complete red herring, as there's no reason to believe any other section would return a different factional balance under STV.

I think the union section is still done by general secretaries using bloc votes, but the representation is divided up broadly proportionally to the size of the unions anyway, with a small boost to the (generally much more left-wing) smaller unions. If the left wants to take control of the union section, it doesn't need STV for that, it just needs to get Unison back on side.

There are only three PLP representatives, and 3 quotas requires 75% of the vote. Corbynites don't have 25% of the PLP, so they'd be shut out anyway.

And there are only two local government representatives, but the position of the left in local government is if anything even weaker than in Parliament.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's also the position for the Socialist Societies, but a) it is one seat only and b) the only ones with large memberships are the Fabians and the JLM...

[CumbrianLefty]

That one is a complete red herring, as there's no reason to believe any other section would return a different factional balance under STV.

I think the union section is still done by general secretaries using bloc votes, but the representation is divided up broadly proportionally to the size of the unions anyway, with a small boost to the (generally much more left-wing) smaller unions. If the left wants to take control of the union section, it doesn't need STV for that, it just needs to get Unison back on side.

There are only three PLP representatives, and 3 quotas requires 75% of the vote. Corbynites don't have 25% of the PLP, so they'd be shut out anyway.

And there are only two local government representatives, but the position of the left in local government is if anything even weaker than in Parliament.

There's actually a decent case to be made that STV would make the union section at least *slightly* less of a carve-up than it currently (and blatantly obviously) is. And that the parllamentary/council results would not be altered by STV *as things currently stand* is no reason not to do it.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I agree with all of that and certainly don't see much reason not to just nod it through for the local government section. The MPs section is a slightly harder sell, but if a leader is serious about trying to make the party more democratic, it ought to be possible to bounce them into it.

However, I have no idea how you could convince the unions to agree to STV for their section (and it's not really feasible nor defensible to impose it on them based on everybody else's votes.) For starters, switching to STV but still letting union leaderships rather than affiliated union members cast the votes would be a total nonsense, but no general secretary is going to give up on that bit of patronage.* Secondly, there is an issue that the current stitch-ups do actually serve to give smaller unions a larger voice on the NEC than they would otherwise have, which is probably net positive.

I think we have to accept that the union movement has both good and strongly-held reasons for wanting limits to internal democratisation (the good reasons aren't necessarily strongly-held and vice versa, of course.) How we elect the NEC is always going to be a fudge and at the end of the day if things are going well we shouldn't notice it too much anyway. I'm inclined to say that if we can't fix the entire thing, it's probably just best to bank the victories we can win and move on.

*Also, on a cynical but nevertheless cautionary note, let's remember that nobody really thinks Unite's official membership figures are credible. This is bad and it will probably come back to bite them at some point. Having already lived through the Falkirk scandal, it would probably be best if the way that one gets revealed isn't through an NEC election blowing up in the Labour Party's face.

[Blair]

I did see someone joke that you know the Labour party is unhealthy when everyone is learning the NEC rules!

I assumed the Trade Union NEC places are the direct appointment of the general secretaries; of course much like with the Shadow Cabinet appointments there are certain senior figures the General Secretaries would want to appoint & others they wouldn't... my favourite fact was that the role of Deputy Leader only exists in Labour because the Unison rep serving as Chair decided to rule Lansman motion to abolish it as out of order; which meant it needed a 2/3rds majority & failed.

We also need to remember that the Scottish & Welsh Leaders also have the personal power to appoint NEC reps (a stitch up by Tom in 2016 iirc)

I think Al explained it to me before but the actual unions on the NEC is decided in some sort of weird pre-conference ritual & I seem to remember someone saying that if UNISON/GMB/USDAW get their sh**t together then one of the smaller unions will get booted off & replaced by community.

[Blair]

In more NEC news the Starmer Slate has been announced.

It's 6 people from 'Labour to Win', including the two sitting NEC reps. Luke Akehurst (former NEC & figure of some hilarity on the right) is running on the ticket; I couldn't bring myself to vote for him last time...

They're also backing three non 'Labour to win' choices; Paula Sheriff (a popular ex-MP who ran for the NEC by-election), Teresa Griffin (an ex-MEP who was stiched out of Liverpool seats in both '17 & '19*) and Anne Black. The obsessives on here will know about her, I actually voted for her in the last NEC election despite not always agreeing with her because she is actually the type of NEC member you need during times like this...

The thing of note is that they didn't back the full 'tribune' slate (the reborn MP faction, not the reborn magazine) as they left Liz McGinness; who is by far the best corbynite out of the three.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think it would pitch itself as the Starmer Slate, but I'm not convinced that's terribly accurate. It's the traditional Progress/Labour First slate, it's just that Akehurst knows that there's going to be a benefit in appearing less factional this time. It's still a slate designed more around hostility to the left than it is around positive support for Starmer.

[Blair]

I think it would pitch itself as the Starmer Slate, but I'm not convinced that's terribly accurate. It's the traditional Progress/Labour First slate, it's just that Akehurst knows that there's going to be a benefit in appearing less factional this time. It's still a slate designed more around hostility to the left than it is around positive support for Starmer.

A discredited & unpopular faction hitching itself to the new powerful hegemon to help it push through internal changes & cement it's power- sounds familar!

But yes it's a slate that is opposed to Momemtum; rather than the left! Anne Black is just one woman but she is of the left & I think a lot of the right would (and did!) walk over hot coals before supporting her.

And I should have mentioned that for his faults Akehurst knew very early on that Starmer was the only horse in the race to rebuild the party & didn't engage in the stupidity of Jess Phillips campaign. Or the Draft Yvette effort.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I think it would pitch itself as the Starmer Slate, but I'm not convinced that's terribly accurate. It's the traditional Progress/Labour First slate, it's just that Akehurst knows that there's going to be a benefit in appearing less factional this time. It's still a slate designed more around hostility to the left than it is around positive support for Starmer.

A discredited & unpopular faction hitching itself to the new powerful hegemon to help it push through internal changes & cement it's power- sounds familar!

But yes it's a slate that is opposed to Momemtum; rather than the left! Anne Black is just one woman but she is of the left & I think a lot of the right would (and did!) walk over hot coals before supporting her.

And I should have mentioned that for his faults Akehurst knew very early on that Starmer was the only horse in the race to rebuild the party & didn't engage in the stupidity of Jess Phillips campaign. Or the Draft Yvette effort.

Yes, but this is because Akehurst's foundational political principle is that the hard left need to be driven out of the Labour Party and if at all possible fired into space. His actual domestic priorities seem to be right in the mainstream of the soft left (he didn't just back Starmer, he also backed Ed Miliband for leader) but that comes second to grinding the CLGA into the dirt.