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Whether Ed Miliband has gone far enough in initiating a reform of Labour’s structures, however, remains much less certain. Most of the Labour leader’s speech focuses on local parties and in particular on parliamentary selections. The question of how future leadership contests are conducted and in particular the role of trade unions within them needs to be addressed as a matter of fundamental importance.
The speech makes only one reference to the mechanism for electing the Labour leader: Miliband indicated that future contests should have clearly defined spending limits. The 2010 Labour leadership contest did have an expenditure threshold. But this constraint did not appear to take into account benefits in kind offered by trade unions during the contest. Such support in the form of texts, emails and the like was substantial. Equally important, the rules governing trade union participation in future leadership elections need to be specified much more clearly.
In 2010, trade union leaders coordinated their nominations knowing that around 50 per cent of levy payers would follow their recommendation. They restricted access to their memberships thus limiting the capacity of other candidates to campaign for support in their ranks. They attracted media attention by sending out ballot papers in the same packaging as explicit recommendations about which candidate to back, placing them in separate envelopes in order to stay within the letter of the contest’s rules.
These features of the leadership election contest demand attention. The capacity of trade unions to shape the outcome by offering benefits in kind for any candidate must be curtailed. The role of nominations must be reconsidered: Labour’s largest three trade unions account for 75 per cent of the affiliated membership. That represents 25 per cent of the entire electoral college: a coordinated nomination gives that candidate around 12 per cent of the vote before the campaign has begun. All candidates must have full access to all voters. Ballots should be distributed in a neutral manner. These are the basic dictates of a democratic election.
Working within the format of the electoral college and its existing rules, Ed Miliband ran an excellent campaign in 2010. But the circumstances of that election made a clash with the trade unions inevitable at some stage. For some time, the Labour leader has needed to demonstrate his independence. The requirements of a general election victory in the United Kingdom demand that he establishes a clear distance from those who backed him three years ago. But the current situation also provides him with an opportunity to reform a flawed process.
If Labour is to be a democratic political party then it needs a democratic procedure by which to elect the leader. The current mechanism falls woefully short.
Mark Wickham-Jones is an author for British Politics journal and professor of politics at the University of Bristol.
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