Thanks to all the people I met, those who voted for Ken and the Labour Party, those who campaigned with me, and those who didn’t but remained polite.

It was a close run thing in the end, and I even had my hopes raised between 16:30 and 21:00 when what became three Labour “constituencies” had yet to declare but it wasn’t to be.

I met several people, who just cheered us on in Brockley, but also one in New Cross, who while saying he had voted for Ken, thought he needed,

to remember where he came from

and those who are still there. I did challenge him, as I personally recognise this criticism of many of Labour’s leaders, I didn’t think it included Ken Livingstone. I promised to repeat it, and I shall remember this advice when choosing our next candidate.

Labour’s candidate is Ken Livingstone, he is fighting to replace the right-wing tory, Boris Johnson.

I was planning to summarise my feelings but if you check out my internet spore, I think you know how I feel. Nicky Gavron, a GLA Assembly Member summarizes brilliantly, why Ken is right for London, and Johnson is wrong in her blog article, Ken v Boris.

The key powers of the Mayor are Transport, Police and Planning. Ken’ll reduce the fares, bring stability to the Police and use the planning powers in the interests of Londoners to build affordable housing.

Johnson will increase fares at above inflation, sack policemen and Comissioners and built 56 houses in the last six months.

There’s only one sensible choice. Vote Labour for London.

Should have been out on the #labourdoorstep tonight with people, but had family things to do. So I watched last night’s London Mayor debate on bbc iplayer.

I can’t believe that Boris stated the Thatcher Government had to abolish the GLC and that Ken’s original Fares Fair was in some period of pre-history. If he want the pensioner vote he’d better get his London history right, but then he’s not a Londoner. The comment/fact that Boris isn’t a man for detail shone through on the transport/police debates. He hasn’t a clue. He’s increased fares and cut the police. He claims that the money isn’t there to meet Ken’s Fare deal; only TfL who work for him say this, every independent expert says that its do-able. I hope so, every time I pass an oyster card reader, I am reminded of what Johnson’s making me pay.

Londoners have the second worst air quality in Europe, and the highest public transport fares in the world.

In the words of the song, “Something’s got to change!”

You get three ballot papers, vote Ken for Mayor, vote Labour for your local GLA Councillor, and vote Labour for London.

Here’s the law. The HMRC insist that people once known as sole traders incorporate themselves and run fully regulated companies so that the might of the Companies Act applies to their record keeping.  As a reward, or inducement, unlike those of us who pay PAYE, they are allowed to evaluate and pay their tax bill a year in arrears. The HMRC also take a view as to whether these “Companies” are in fact “disguised employment”.  If you fail their 13 tests, and are deemed to be in “disguised employment”, then all the company revenue  is considered “income” and taxed under income tax rules as earned income.

Ken passes these tests because

• he employs staff
• he receives money from multiple customers
• and err, I have no access to his (or Boris’s) tax records, and so have no idea how many other tests he passes and fails

So, the HMRC consider him to be a genuine service company and he’ll pay tax on

• the company profit, Corporation Tax
• any dividend income, income tax as unearned income
• any salary or non salary benefit, income tax as earned income
• any employer’s national insurance (NI) liability on himself and his staff
• any employee NI contributions on his own salary

Frankly,  I find it difficult to believe that the Daily Telegraph don’t pay Boris Johnson using similar vehicles. I can’t believe that they’ll put their hands up for the employer’s NI on £250K if they could legally avoid it. Also the disguised employment rules make paying a class 1 NI stamp on two wages a bit tricky!

It should also be noted that the Civil Service rules, which I assume do not apply to the Mayor of London,  demand that public servants are beholden to one wage, that paid by the taxpayer; this is in order to eliminate any suspicion of conflict of interest. I think we know who breaks the Civil Service rule; even if it is merely chickenfeed.

The predecessor party to the Greens was founded in 1975. In 2010, they won their first MP’s seat.  It took ‘em 35 years. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were exiled in 1834, Kier Hardie, Labour’s first MP was elected in 1892, a 58 year interregnum. (Let’s face it,  he and his supportershad a bigger struggle since there was no universal suffrage in the UK until 1928, or 1948 or 1972, depending on how you want to count these things!) If you don’t get it right, it’s going to be a long wait.

It’s a fantasy to believe that the Pirates will replace the Greens or Reds, and certainly not one at a time. I suggested that the Pirate Party needs to consider alliances and keep its eye on the prize which in the short term in the UK is about the repeal or reform of the Digital Economy Act. They should also keep their demand for the shortening of copyright and the permitting of personal use rights on the table. It’s a major blow to our friends in the Liberal Democrats, and all opponents of the Digital Economy Act that despite their victories in their Party, this will not be part of the “Great Freedom” bill. We should all be honest and recognise that the supporters of digital liberty are loosing.

We i.e. digital freedom campaigners need all the friend we can find, which is why I find his welcome to Harriet Harman in her new role as Shadow Spokesman on Culture, Media and Sport churlish. If we want to win the Labour Party, even some of it, or the Trade Unions to our cause, you need to do better than that, and if you don’t want them on your side, tell your supporters the truth, they’ll be waiting for another 50 years in the UK.

It was called the big conversation and it wasn’t! Conversations happen between two sides, where both sides have a chance to speak, and both sides listen. Cynically I’d say that,  a meeting of this nature is about control of the microphones.

Conference and its fringe might get me to cough up the £200+ that it’d cost to travel to Liverpool, not to mention any overnight accommodation that I’d need, but this open day isn’t enough to make me do it. I know many people that live up that way who are committed to the Labour Party, I hope I am wrong and that you can get there and make a difference.

Personally, I think its an insult to conference, and an excuse to ignore the elected and mandated delegates. I voted for a delegate to represent me, you can listen to them. I would have preferred that the effort in running a national open day, had been spent in getting the unrepresented Constituency Labour Parties to conference. Mind you, my Union has also done very little to attempt to find out what I think, so even Conference will struggle to represent me, but it’ll do a better job than a bunch of self selected, if keen individuals with the will to pay the travel bill. Let’s hope the new leadership’s willingness to listen makes it worthwhile, and lets me abandon the cynicism.

I should be listened to because I am a member not because I can get to Liverpool.

However, at least they’re not charging for entry, which is a big deal; visitors tickets to confernce need to be bought.

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,

• One man (sic), one vote for Party Leader,
• Prohibiting MP’s from standing for the Constituency Section of the National Executive Committee
• Inhibiting CLPs from sending the same person to conference in consecutive years
• Prohibiting CLPs from proposing policy at conference,  this is a result of the creation of the National Policy Forum, which now proposes policy to Conference
• Individual Balloting for the Constituency Section of the NEC
• Individual Balloting for the membership of the National Policy Forum

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.

This blog article has a short URL of http://is.gd/tawmaW

oooOOOooo

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!).

“congratulations cameron, congratulations murdoch, your lies have denied the country a democracy. #yes2av #vote2011 #libdems #tories #labour”

and the second, which I can no longer find says something like

“Nick Clegg , you #fail HAHAHA etc….”

You get the idea. There is a very short term view here. I hope some of my Labour friends understand what they’ve done. It’s a huge mistake. First past the post is not democratic, it’s also not helpful to our cause.

• MPs representing communities should have the support of the majority of their voters,
• AV may nationally exaggerate the size of popular majorities, but it is likely to constrain the power of unpopular minorities and this is a good thing,
• the choice of government should not be taken by a small number of swing voters in middle English constituencies, and I mean English,
• AV is harder to ‘game’, people will be able to vote for their first choice, it gives more people a reason to vote and we’ll all see the real attraction and support of each of the parties,
• AV means that more people’s vote will count,
• many MPs will need to appeal to more than their tribal support,
• the British system asks people to vote for an MP, not a government, the voting system should support this,
• ‘First Past the Post” is dying, we use other systems for the European parliament, executive mayors, the Greater London Authority and in Northern Ireland, it’s time to move on.

I shall be voting for AV today, it’s not my first choice, but its better than what we have, why don’t you join me?

On issues of tribalism I was unhappy to receive a No2AV leaflet, with a picture similar to the one on the left.  I have tried to scan the original to share with you, but my scanner isn’t good enough. Interesting that they have Cameron’s back to us. Are they hoping that Labour and other left wingers will forget that the coalition is Tory led by the simple ruse of having him turn his back on us?. (It won’t be the last time!) The leaflet is decorated with text in UKIP’s Purple and Yellow. (Did they have some ink left over from the General Election?). The text suggests that we should oppose AV because of broken promises and back room deals, and that we, the voter, should punish the dishonest. It’s merely another attempt to keep the interests of the Tory party out of the debate. How stupid do they think we are? Why should we punish only Clegg and the Lib Dems for a deal they did with the Tories!  Anyway, outside London we can punish them both in the local & national elections by voting against them.

The biggest lie is that the current system is in democracy’s interest. If you vote on the merits of fair voting, you’ll support change, otherwise you have a party agenda, and the Tory Party agenda at that.

“Labour still thinks short-term and tactically, not long-term and strategically. It is obsessed with the wrong target, with battering the Lib Dems, with punishing Clegg for the coalition and the cuts, and using those votes to propel itself back into an overall majority. The first part of that may well happen, starting with the local and devolved elections. The second part, though, is much less certain. It depends on breaking the coalition quickly and winning an early election. But that isn’t going to happen, even if AV goes down.

If everyone in Labour thought straight they would see there is a powerful argument for saying that the coalition will be more weakened by a yes vote than a no. If you want to weaken the coalition you want the Lib Dems to be bolder in standing up for themselves against the Conservatives on a range of policy issues. That is more likely with the security of AV, which favours the Lib Dems because it is fairer, under their belt.

You also, however, want to weaken Cameron’s standing in his own party and strengthen the influence of the more rightwing Tories to create mayhem. A yes vote would be a lightning rod for these angry Tories. That’s why, if you want to harm the coalition, vote yes to AV. If you want to make the British establishment fear Labour again, vote yes.”

I understand how, in particular many Londoners, who will not have a chance to use their vote  may wish to vote in the referendum to punish the coalition partners but this isn’t a vote of confidence in the Government. Voting No won’t save the NHS or stop further privatisation, or reverse the cuts.

Use your vote in the referendum to change our politics, vote “Yes”, that’s what I shall be doing.