How different will Labour look at conference in 2014?
In case you hadn’t got the message, Ed Miliband was introduced by Jess Phillips, selected over the Unite candidate in Yardley.
He then launched into his speech promising, not for the first time, a “new politics.”
The difference now is that the recipe for a “different kind of politics” now includes a new ingredient Ed M didn’t seem to think was necessary before: full-blown change in the relationship between Labour and the trade unions.
Whatever else this speech achieves it will break records for fast composition in the leader’s office.
Ed M speeches can often have agonising births. Re-writings can seem endless and much textual exegisis is involved. This one was bashed out at unprecedented speed, just like the policy change.
As it’s not quite cooked, it will be discussed and wrangled over – or “worked through”, in Ed M’s words – in the weeks ahead. But the fundamental is that he wants union members to opt in to paying their dues to Labour, not to be automatically signed up.
When Unison moved to this system after it was formed from a merger with a non-affiliated union, the number of members registering support for Labour halved. Unite could be merging soon with the PCS – also non-affiliated – so could be facing a similar switch in approach anyway.
What Ed Miliband seems to be contemplating is a sort of “Unison Plus” scheme. Union members who opt in to paying money to the Labour party would get some new perks and some sort of membership lite.
This could allow them to vote in parliamentary selections and get any number of emails asking for their views on policy and begging them to campaign or give extra money to the party.
But Ed M doesn’t seem to want to change the 50/50 split between consitituencies and trade unions at conference or the one third share of the vote that unions get in the leadership college.
An aide said: “Ed’s more interested in the engagement stuff than the posturing of percentages.”
So how radically different will Labour look by the next election, at the 2014 Labour conference, say? It could be poorer if Labour doesn’t attract Unite members to sign up to membership lite in anything like the numbers trawled in nets by the opting out process.
It could also look quite similar: Len McCluskey still in the same seat, raising his hand to vote on behalf of his members who may have signed up to support Labour but haven’t got the full membership rights of constituency members.
Some will say that’s not sustainable and Ed Miliband has created a reform that will inevitably, over time, tip into full-scale “one member, one vote” for all associate and full members. But that was not unveiled today and doesn’t appear to be in Ed M’s plans.
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