With over 800,000 people signing up for the new party, we have to wonder how many will actually join and become fee-paying members. I suppose that this partly depends on what the fees are and how seriously many of these signees that their initial enthusiasm. However, even if only one in four of them actually become members of the party when it is founded, that would still be a membership of 200,000 thousand, which is still pretty huge, and if only one in twenty of them become activists, that is 10,000 of them across the country.
Of course, the whole thing can still go tits up before the founding conference, and after that, factional infighting might bring things to a standstill and we could see all the energy and enthusiasm bleed away. But let's assume that at first, at any rate, nothing like that happens, and maybe, the longer nothing like that happens it could be less and less likely to happen. You can see I'm trying to temper my optimism here.
So, you have a membership and a leadership, on what basis does one have a leader or leaders and what is the role of the party membership in defining what the leaders do? Transform, as an example, frequently send questionnaires asking to vote on party policies. Think about this, a party membership who can vote on policies, not just at an annual conference, but as an aspect of regular party activity. And if the elected leaders act on what the membership have voted for, that's a massive step forward in terms of party democracy. We can compare this to the Labour Party, which, a few years ago, voted by quite a majority I seem to remember, for proportional representation. This is actually Labour Party policy, but not, as far as I can see, government policy. Apparently, the leadership can ignore its own party policies. How is that democratic? It's certainly very top-down rather than bottom-up, an established elite who use the membership for their own pursuit of power.
Of course, a bottom-up, membership led party isn't without problems, but if the new party manages this, it will be interesting to see how it overcomes these problems as time goes on.
Then the leaders, so the only people who have been mentioned so far are Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Both splendid people I'd say, but they present a few problems along the way.
1. Nobody else has been mentioned, nobody else is likely to be able to present a coherent platform in time for the founding conference. This makes it look like a done deal.
2. Corbyn is now 76, by the next general election he will be nearly 80. The performance of octogenarians in political leadership hasn't been glorious. Would anybody regard him as a potential prime minister by then? He also has a bit of a reputation as a ditherer, I honestly do not know if this is justified, it could be either a rumour from the Labour right or the result of his endlessly having been in conflict with the right while leader, trying to find an acceptable compromise, I don't know.
3. Sultana is the only other MP with substantial experience, at least so far. We may yet see other disillusioned Labour MPs joining. She is obviously intelligent, energetic, principled and she projects herself very well. The way she announced the new party suggests she could be a bit of a wild card, only time will tell. Her greatest disadvantages with some of the public are things that never should be, that she's a woman and a Moslem. Of course, they will act as advantages with others, so that may balance out.
In terms of operating within Westminster, it is both inevitable and proper that Corbyn should be their leader in the House of Commons and Sultana, if you like, an understudy, ready to take over when needed. But there's no need for either of them to be the party's national leader, in fact it might not need one, other forms of leadership are possible, I'm not going to worry about this just now, simply indicating that there are other possibilities to having a single, central, party leader. We'll have to see what options are put forward in the founding conference, and what is voted for.
A last thought on the members. many of the people who have signed up to the project were Labour supporters under Corbyn, it seems that many others have no previous political affiliations, I have no sources for this offhand, I read it somewhere, I'll try to check later and incorporate the information, if you have any confirmation - or evidence to the contrary - I'd greatly appreciate it.
No comments:
Post a Comment