Labour’s annual conference has long been a machine operation designed to showcase the Leader’s speech and to suppress any serious discussion of other controversial matters (and the Tory party conference is, if anything, even more orchestrated). It is done to convey a contented and anodyne impression for the television cameras, and the result is of course ineffably bland and boring.
The economic debate was a good example. Some 60% of the allotted time was taken up by shadow ministers like directors giving the company report to shareholders, about 10% was devoted to the moving and seconding of lengthy resolutions, and the remaining 30% to the floor. However those speakers from the floor weren’t drawn at random, they were in every single case selected beforehand.
Labour’s constituency branches are increasingly wondering what the point of sending delegates is at all – last year, a whole quarter of constituency branches (CLPs) voted with their feet, and didn’t turn up at all. That’s a quarter of CLPs disenfranchised from numerous votes – but proper participation in conference requires mandating of conference delegates by local members as well as just turning up. What this means is that decisions on how delegates vote should, where possible, be taken by the wider membership rather than delegates themselves. 
The election for the two constituency party representatives on Labour’s conference arrangements committee (CAC) is hotting up. After the local elections, the two candidates backed by the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance 
The briefing meeting by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (CLPD) was very well attended this morning, with around 200 people crammed into a basement bar, just a few hundred yards outside the entrance of the Party conference in Manchester. Keynote speeches were given by Jon Trickett and Michael Meacher, as well as Ken Livingstone, Ann Black and Mick Whelan, ASLEF’s general secretary.