What Ed Miliband said about party reform on the Marr Show

Ed Miliband told Andrew Marr he was “determined” to push through changes to the Labour Party – trade union link:

You’ll have to be a bit patient about the changes that we’re going to be making. Let me tell you where we’ve got to. I want to change the relationship with individual trade unionists in the Labour party; I want them to be able to make an active choice about whether they’re affiliated to the Labour party so they can have a real voice in what we do and we can be a party of working people.

The changes are going to happen, I’m determined they do happen. We’ve got our special conference in March, at which I want to agree the changes that we make. And that will have implications for the way the Labour party works.”

He added that these changes would also affect other aspects of the party’s structures: o

We’re going to be talking to people right across our party as these discussions are going on, but I think nobody should be in any doubt: we are going to change our politics; we’re going to change the way our politics works, not just when it comes to the role of individual trade unionists, I want to change MPs and second jobs, which I think is a real issue for our country; I’ve always said that there will be implications for other structures of the party, but this is a big change that we’ve embarked upon and, as I said, discussions are continuing about this but I can tell you there will be change, there will be big change.”

He confirmed that the leadership elections were under review as part of the changes.

“I think that we do need to look at those rules and that is something that is being looked at as part of this review and it always has been.”