No use crying over supporting nominations
July 26, 2010 at 3:15 pm 5 comments
The past few days in the Labour Leadership race have produced a number of spats on Twitter about supporting nominations. First a number of Ed Miliband supporters accused supporters in rival camps of sour grapes over the decision of Unite to nominate their man and today the decision by Labour Students‘ National Committee to give their supporting nomination to David Miliband has reignited tensions.
For the sake of transparency, I am a strong supporter of David Miliband and a member of his Youth Committee. I think the Labour Party led by a Miliband will be in a strong position, but (for a variety of reasons that I expect I’ll outline elsewhere before the ballot) I think the Labour Party led by D Miliband will be in a stronger position in terms of ideas and organisation to win the next election.
The criticism being levelled at Labour Students is futile and misdirected on a number of counts. First, Labour Students has followed the process undertaken by most affiliates in deciding whether to provide a supporting nomination and to whom. Each of the 19, elected voting members of Labour Students’ National Committee were given the option to vote for each of the leadership contenders – or to provide no supporting nomination at all. They chose to nominate David Miliband and their supporting nomination will appear on the Labour Party website and, I suspect, in the magazine that will be distributed to all Labour Party members with their ballot. As a recent ‘graduate’ of Labour Students I find it somewhat depressing to see otherwise reasonable and good minded people attacking their own organisation on process, simply because they disagree with the decision. I didn’t notice the same individuals attacking their trade unions or socialist societies who made supporting nominations through exactly the same method *cough* Unite *cough*. I disagree with the recommendation of my trade union, but I have no problem with the process they followed.
Secondly, supporting nominations actually don’t matter very much! In spite of what some anti-union newspapers would have their readers believe, the supporting nominations of trade unions, socialist societies or Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) do not result in a block vote for their chosen contender. There is also a debate to be had about how far supporting nominations influence their members. During the 1994 Labour Leadership election, Tony Blair gained hardly any supporting nominations from the unions but received a significant number of votes from ordinary members. In the 2007 Deputy Leadership election there is evidence to suggest that union nominations offered more sway (best set out by Patrick Wintour in the Guardian).
That’s not to say that supporting nominations are entirely useless. The process gave my CLP, Ilford South, a great excuse to have an all member meeting to discuss the leadership election, encouraging new members to attend for the first time and speak in open debate.
But supporting nominations really aren’t worth squabbling about. Rather than crying over supporting nominations, campaigners could best use their energies by taking a deep breath and moving on to trying to win the next supporting nomination or, more crucially, the votes of ordinary members.
Entry filed under: Labour Leadership Election 2010, Labour Party. Tags: David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Labour Students, Twitter.
1.
Issy | July 26, 2010 at 3:52 pm
I think it is worth pointing out that Harriet Harman won the deputy leadership election without the endorsement of any trade union. I believe Hilary Benn was also nominated by the most CLPs.
2.
Stephen Brown | July 26, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Wes, I thought you had a big enough gob not to need a blog
3.
Neil | July 27, 2010 at 11:04 am
ZING!
4.
Joe | July 26, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Hi Wes I posted on Jamie McMahon’s link to this but I’ll repost the gist.
Also as a graduate, I think this isn’t quite right in terms of the comparison to the UNITE process. Firstly, UNITE did consult their branches, Labour Students didn’t consult their Labour Clubs. Secondly UNITE has a political committee that is elected to make relevant political decisions on behalf of the Union’s members. People are elected to its committee on platforms clearly expressing where their different political beliefs lie, and are frequently representatives of different factional groupings eg Workers Uniting http://www.workersunitinggroup.com, United Left http://www.unitedleft.org/ Its quite clear what sort of policies or what types causes/people representatives will support when they elect such individuals and as such they have a mandate. On the other hand, Labour Students has one national committee, where the idea of factionalism is scorned by many particularly on the basis of ideology and people stand usually on a platform of their experience in activism and how they can best do things that are less ideological and more technocratic, if obviously important, like organising events etc. Clearly when decisions like this are made, there is a legitimacy issue because if you have elected people to run things efficiently and effectively that doesn’t necessarily translate to what you believe in terms of key strategic decisions that are in large part based on diverse beliefs, like a leadership election. As such it would make sense to either 1) consult the wider membership 2) not be so against the idea, institutionally, of having elections decided at least to an extent about ideology and political belief, or 3) both.
BTW – I don’t mean this as a general anti-nols thing, I mean it constructively and I think it highlights why so many people within the nols mainstream seem a little bit pissed off about the whole thing.
5.
Jamie | July 26, 2010 at 6:39 pm
You make good points Wes. My personal preference is for Ed Miliband, and so while as a Labour Student I was somewhat disappointed that he wasn’t endorsed, but in reality it changes very little. Many people like myself will have already made up their minds as to who to vote for in the election – supporting nominations such as Labour Students’ are really just recommendations. There’s no need for supporters of any candidate to criticise the process of Labour Students’ nomination simply because they don’t like the result – other nominations for their own preferred candidates would have been made in the same way. As I say, while I was disappointed Ed Miliband wasn’t nominated, I respect Labour Students’ decision to nominate David Miliband and so should others. I can’t be the only person worried that party members appear to be growing more hostile towards each other as this leadership contest continues.