In the new Labour years, being permanently on-message was the key to MPs’ promotion and Ministers’ survival. In the name of good media management, collective responsibility to support “the government” (i.e. Leader) was an absolute requirement to avoid internal exile alongside the usual suspects. Participation in decision making was not on offer, even for most […]
Posts Tagged ‘PLP’
MPs rediscover assertiveness
Sep 13th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.Steve Richards in the Independent last week suggested that the House of Commons seemed to have become relevant again. They returned early from the summer, he suggested, with a thirst to hold the government to account. Topical debates were happening in the chamber of the Commons – this week on the phone-tapping saga. Under the […]
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Parliamentary Labour Party considers abolishing shadow cabinet elections
Sep 7th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.The Parliamentary Labour Party last night agreed to ballot this week on changes to its internal democracy – options include abolishing elections for all or part of the shadow cabinet, and, if elections are retained, reducing their frequency. The move will shock many members of the party at a time when all five leadership candidates […]
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Labour in Parliament: in need of reform
Jul 28th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.As the House of Commons rose yesterday for its summer holidays, the record new intake of 232 first time MPs have some grounds for feeling they’ve had some impact. Though only time will tell whether they paid any heed to Nye Bevan’s excellent warning to new MPs that parliament is “an elaborate conspiracy to prevent […]
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Shadow Cabinet elections to be postponed
May 18th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.I hear that it is proposed that Shadow Cabinet elections be postponed until a new leader is in place – which means the end of September if, as expected, Labour’s National Executive this afternoon adopts the longer campaign option. This will involve balloting in August/September alongside that for the National Executive itself and the National […]
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“Democracy” returns to the PLP
May 17th, 2010 by Jon Lansman.A major cultural change is about to take place in the Parliamentary Labour Party – one which will give some indication (though not necessarily a fair one) of the popularity of all the Labour leadership hopefuls. Since it will be many weeks until a new Leader is elected, the brothers Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham […]
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Selection shenanigans
May 16th, 2010 by Michael Meacher.As the race (amble?) for the Labour Party leadership gets under way, the composition of the new PLP is beginning to come into focus. The PLP accounts for a third of the electoral college and any intending candidate must secure public signatures from at least an eighth of all its members (therefore 32 in […]
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Leadership or Impossibilism?
May 15th, 2010 by Bob Clay.There will be many on the Left who feel that the outcome of the general election could have been a lot worse. The Tories and Liberal Democrats could be exposed as the utterly unprincipled opposite of the bringers of ‘new politics’ in which guise the media has promoted them. Whilst they render themselves more and […]
