WeeklyWorker

13.10.2010

Little democracy on display in Ed's Labour Party

Jim Gilbert discusses the new shadow cabinet and demands a greater role for the NEC

Our new Labour Party leader recently picked his shadow cabinet, including 19 from those who came out ahead in the parliamentary Labour Party poll. Naturally, it is Ed Miliband who decides who gets what position. The result in part is rewarding favours done and in part an attempt to reach out to the various factions that make up the PLP. For example, Diane Abbott, who though she only got 59 votes, has been appointed one of four junior shadow ministers in the department of health.

Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet has 25 members - besides himself as leader, there is Harriet Harman, the deputy leader,  Rosie Winterton, the chief whip, the PLP chair, Tony Lloyd, the 19 elected by the PLP and two from the House of Lords. Ten elected members of the shadow cabinet voted for David Miliband in the leadership contest, though one of them, Angela Eagle, cannot be regarded as a part of the Blairite ‘no turning back party’.[1]

Nor are they a ‘new generation’. “Ed Miliband’s new shadow cabinet team has an average age of 50 compared to 51.25 for their Coalition counterparts” Political Scrapbook has calculated.”[2] Sociologically more telling, 10 members of the shadow cabinet were privately educated, with the same number being Oxbridge graduates; this compares with 15 and 19 respectively in the coalition cabinet. So no great difference there, then. Giving only the impression of change, Ed Miliband’s choices represent a slight nudge to the left compared with the cabinets of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

When it comes to the intra-party affiliations of the shadow cabinet, the new leader has endeavoured to follow Sun-tzu’s precept: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” Blairite Alan Johnson as shadow chancellor neatly reverses the Blair-PM/Brown-chancellor paradigm. But for how long? Whether the Blairite New Labourites are still a force in the party remains to be seen. Darling, David Miliband, and Straw may not have stood for the shadow cabinet, but they have weight and are no doubt keeping their powder dry for battles ahead. Moreover, as Morning Star editor John Haylett correctly stated recently, “Those Labour MPs who cheered Gordon Brown to the rafters and hooted with laughter when he announced that tens of thousands of civil service jobs would be axed have not gone away.”[3]

Labour Uncut contributing editor Dan Hodges noted that, “... commentators have remarked how the appointment of David Miliband’s and Ed Balls’ supporters to senior roles represent a move away from the tribalism of the past. That may well be the aspiration. But only 9 of the 45 initial shadow cabinet candidates, and 5 of the 19 candidates who were successfully elected, made Ed their first choice in the leadership ballot. The hard truth is that there simply weren’t enough Ed Miliband supporters to go around. And those that were elected were deemed too junior to be entrusted with major briefs.”[4] Hodges is clear, though, that the most contentious shadow cabinet appointment is also the most indicative, embracing as it does the acceptance of the ‘necessity’ of cuts: “Only Johnson’s appointment is truly politically significant. On one level it provides a clear insight into the path Ed intends to  follow as he scouts for stable ground on deficit reduction. As one former Downing Street aide said to me: ‘It shows he’s not going to have any truck with the deficit deniers’.”

But need it be that way? Compass (‘Direction for the democratic left’), which promoted Ed Miliband for leader, carried out its Transforming Labour survey in April. Over 86% of the 1,500 Labour Party ‘stakeholders’ polled, which included 700 members, responded by declaring that members should have a greater say in the party. The report Compass produced subsequently calls for a return of annual conference’s policy-making role, among other basic democratic demands. It broadly recognises that party members are disenfranchised, especially in relation to the powers of the leader of the party: “Apart from a leadership election, there are virtually no formal mechanisms left for the membership to hold the leadership to account. This means the leader can do whatever they like free from any robust checks and balances. This must change. Members must have mechanisms to hold the leadership to account. A more democratic way for the Labour Party to decide who should be in the shadow cabinet, and thus with more of a chance of being in the cabinet once the party gains government, would be for the party’s nominally highest elected body to be given the task.”[5]

This demand for the party’s national executive committee to be given the job of appointing the shadow cabinet is eminently supportable by Marxists. How can it be democratically acceptable that a body that is not elected by the party membership, the PLP, decides who will constitute the shadow cabinet? Without question this must be a job for those elected by members and affiliates, in other words, the NEC. Similarly, it is essential to get away from the idea that the party is somehow the leader’s fiefdom, wielding the power to decide who holds which portfolio, in or out of government. This has to be decided by the party’s leading elected body, not the leader and not the collection of individuals who happen to have made it into the commons. As the Compass survey indicates, there is a widespread hunger in the Labour Party for a greatly extended internal democracy that must be given form and built upon. It is an area of struggle that the left in the party has to make its own.

This discussion of internal democracy needs to be further opened up. Indeed, apart from the matters already mentioned, one key question to be addressed in fighting for a much more democratic Labour Party is to divest itself altogether of the post of leader. Democratically elected committees, including at the very top of organisations, not excepting parliamentary oppositions and governments, are incomparably more likely to be responsive to and representative of the membership. We do not need a ‘king’, president, or supreme leader to rule over us.

Notes

  1. Ed Miliband (leader of the opposition); Harriet Harman (deputy leader and shadow secretary of state for international development); Alan Johnson (shadow chancellor of the exchequer); Yvette Cooper (shadow secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs and minister for women and equalities); Ed Balls (shadow secretary of state for the home department); Rosie Winterton (chief whip); Andy Burnham (shadow secretary of state for education and election coordinator); Sadiq Khan (shadow lord chancellor, shadow secretary of state  for justice with responsibility for political and constitutional reform); Douglas Alexander (shadow secretary of state for work and pensions); John Denham (shadow secretary of state for business, innovation and skills); John Healey (shadow secretary of state for health); Caroline Flint (shadow secretary of state for communities and local government); Jim Murphy (shadow secretary of state for defence); Meg Hillier (shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change); Hilary Benn (shadow leader of the house of commons); Maria Eagle (shadow secretary of state for transport); Mary Creagh (shadow secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs); Angela Eagle (shadow chief secretary to the treasury); Shaun Woodward (shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland); Ann McKechin (shadow secretary of state for Scotland); Peter Hain (shadow secretary of state for Wales); Ivan Lewis (shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport); Lady Royall of Blaisdon (shadow leader of the house of lords); Tessa Jowell (shadow minister for the Olympics); Liam Byrne (shadow minister for the cabinet office); Lord Bassam of Brighton (lords chief whip); Lady Scotland of Asthal (shadow attorney-general). Jon Trickett MP also attends shadow cabinet meetings as shadow minister of state - cabinet office.
  2. politicalscrapbook.net/2010/10/shadow-cabinet-age-comparison/
  3. www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/96218
  4. labour-uncut.co.uk/2010/10/09/dan-hodges-deconstructs-the-new-shadow-cabinet/
  5. Chapter 3. ‘Transforming the national party’ in Transforming Labour: A charter for party renewal clients.squareeye.com/uploads/compass/documents/Compass%20Transforming%20Labour%20WEB2.pdf