Only the week before last, we saw the backlash against Fiona Twycross, Progress and Labour First candidate for Labour’s policy forum. An email from sent out an all-member email just before the ballot papers hit the doormats. Writing at LabourList, Mark Ferguson proclaimed that this signified:
a return to the fixing culture that in the past threatened to overwhelm the party – a culture that is rotten to the core and cares nothing for real party democracy or a level playing field for all candidates.” Continue reading
What exactly does “putting members first” mean? Sure, it gives the impression of warmth towards your voters in elections to Labour’s national executive and national policy forum. But first before whom?
Today, Labour’s national executive committee has been meeting. In the wake of complaints about certain candidates for internal elected office having access to all-members contact details, by fair means or foul, I wondered whether consideration was given to a comradely gesture. 
Labour councillors will receive additional ballot papers to elect their representatives on Labour’s national executive and policy forum. In the election for two NEC representatives, Jay Kramer of Hastings Borough Council will contest with Dave Sparks, leader of Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, and Ann Lucas of Coventry.
Excellent election results and rising polls have brought a mood of unity and created space and time for serious work on policy. Francois Hollande’s victory shows that austerity is not the only option, and Labour must start to develop an alternative agenda, rejecting the Tory politics of resentment and division in favour of policies which are fair, principled and credible: on housing, crime, transport, health, schools, higher education, manufacturing, tax, defence, social care, equality, employment rights and the environment. We must tackle the tabloids on welfare, crime and immigration: people who want to be really nasty to scroungers, yobs and foreigners will vote Tory anyway, so we might as well take the moral high ground and give ourselves something worth fighting for. 