Why should Corbyn accept last-minute changes to Labour Party organisation?
![Jeremy Corbyn arrives at Labour HQ in Westminster for the party’s NEC meeting [Image: Yui Mok/PA].](https://voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/160920-Jeremy-Corbyn-NEC.png)
Jeremy Corbyn arrives at Labour HQ in Westminster for the party’s NEC meeting [Image: Yui Mok/PA].
He knows his opponents are. They know he is almost certain to retain the leadership of the Labour Party with an increased mandate when the election results are announced on Saturday. That’s why they want to push through changes to the way the leader is elected, and to the way the shadow cabinet is appointed, at today’s (September 20) National Executive Committee meeting.
But he won’t see the need. A new NEC comes into operation after the party conference, with more members who support him. He can afford to wait until the votes are on his side.
And he has the better arguments. Why return to the ‘electoral college’ system of voting in a leader when the current, ‘one member, one vote’ system has boosted party membership – and funds – enormously? That doesn’t make organisational or financial sense.
And, while he is not opposed to elections for shadow cabinet members, Mr Corbyn is also right to say that all the current proposals are last-minute affairs that have not benefited from proper consultation and due process. A rushed decision is often a bad one.
Also, delaying these matters until after conference may derail some of the anti-Corbyn resolutions that are being tabled by the right-wingers of Labour First, all of whom lost their places in the NEC during the summer elections.
Say what you like about Mr Corbyn – at least he has found a way to make committee meetings interesting.
A crunch Labour meeting aimed at reuniting the parliamentary party seems set for deadlock after it emerged that Jeremy Corbyn will reject all the immediate changes proposed by his deputy.
Earlier on Tuesday, Tom Watson urged Labour to “put the band back together” by adopting elections for shadow cabinet positions, which he sees as a way to tempt back discontented MPs who left Corbyn’s frontbench over the summer.
However, a source close to the Labour leader said that while Corbyn supported shadow cabinet elections as part of a wider examination of democracy in the party, he wanted to postpone the consideration of any changes until after the party’s annual conference.
That conference will start in Liverpool on Saturday with the announcement of the results of the leadership vote, which is expected to deliver a victory for Corbyn over his challenger, Owen Smith.
Source: Corbyn ‘likely to reject any party changes at Labour meeting’ | Politics | The Guardian
ADVERT
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
Labour’s membership is changing and because of it the Labour party is changing. As far as Corbyn is concerned polls show that Jezza scores a truly hopeless -36 approval rating among older pre-2015 Labour members, and a fantastic +72 points among later joiners. Only new members skew support for Corbyn displacing the influence of more long-standing members hand over fist. Eventually I suppose there will be a churn of members with older disenchanted men and women leaving the party with many newer members also following suit once the novelty of Jezza wears off and they see that Corbyn is not the next Prime Minister and that their dreams of a better society being brought into being because of him are even less likely to be realised with him as leader than very many others.
We really could be witnessing the death of the Labour party as a political force.
I won’t enjoy saying “I told you so” after the Tories are returned to power with a much bigger majority after the general election in May 2020. Although when I do I wonder what you will say and who you will blame as the catastrophe unfolds. My bet would be anybody and anything other than than Jeremy Corbyn himself.
We’ve already got the PLP rebels to blame for Labour’s misfortunes – mostly because they are demonstrably responsible.
As for the rest of today’s package of nonsense from you: I’ve already told you about those polls. Stop trying to use them against Mr Corbyn! When they start accurately reflecting the public point of view, we might start taking them seriously again.
I suppose you think Survation is impartial, don’t you?
Its Great to see the members backing Jeremy and all the older people I know are backing him to me it looks like the polls have been doctored and I would not put it passed it seeing what is going on in the end it will make the party stronger and go on to make Jeremy the next PM
I think that when EVERY poll says pretty much the same thing consistently on trend it’s time to sit up and take notice. Almost all of the polling organisations are private companies whose livelihoods are based around securing accurate results not catspaws of the Tory party. It really is the silliest thing to convince yourself that polling companies bias their results one way or another with their reputations on the line; most go out of their way to try to produce the best and most accurate results possible.
But all the pollsters are knocked sideways by their own weightings, which are based on previous election results that are not relevant to the way people vote any more – as I have already told you more than once. Do you have a problem comprehending that?
The raw data – provided by the same companies – is much more revealing than the glossed-over versions that have had their spin added.
When do the new NEC members take their positions ? Is it straight after the conference?
Yes.
Tim how wrong you are about the older voter many of them do agree with Corbyn I never thought I would but I have voted Labour all my voting life and I see it as it’s well over due that the Party has someone who cares about the people over corporate greed and I know plenty more over 60 that feel just the same , Don’t under estimate the power of the people you might just end up eating your words .
I’m a pre-2015 member (1974 actually) & fully support Jeremy (last year & this), as do most of the older members I know. My wife has only just joined, but she was previously, until Iraq, a member almost as long as me. She will be counted as a post-2015 member, but clearly is a long term supporter of Labour (even if she couldn’t stomach Blair’s war-mongering) how many of the ‘new’ members like her, are previous members of the Party? This idea of the latest joiners being different from the established members is just another attempt by the right wing to try & sow dissent between, what they perceive as, different parts of the Party. I think the membership will see through their schemes and unite behind the newly elected leader & MP who fails to do the same will reap the appropriate reward.
Me 2. Hope he gives Owen a drumming and a lesson on how to lead
OK Tim, what would you do? Drive the new members out? I am a long-standing member – 32 years. I have been disenchanted since Tony Blair sucked the soul out of the party and set it on the path of aping Tory policies. An influx of new members would never have been possible without a radical change in outlook and a set of policies that provide a genuine alternative to those that have widened the gap between the haves and have nots in society. And stop reading the papers – they are expressing the desperation of a rich elite that sniffs change in the wind.
Jeremy isn’t daft, He knows their game and won’t abide by it.