A Free Left Blog

My relationship with the Labour Party isn’t a loving, happy one. I sometimes say, half-jokingly, that joining the party (or rather rejoining, in 2010) has nearly made me into a Tory. It hasn’t, and won’t. But nevertheless it’s been true for me that while from the outside I could see that all is perhaps not well, from the inside the picture that more intelligent Tories and others paint of Labour sometimes seems painfully accurate. The centralism; the pointless, nit-picking bureaucracy; the lack of feeling for individual responsibility; the reflex instinct to control people rather than let them be free: all are largely true about Labour’s culture and organisation. When you find yourself agreeing more with what some opponents say than what your own lot do, you’re in a bit of trouble. Into that personal context has come The Collins Review into Labour Party Reform , a report prepared by the former Labour General Secretary (Lord) Ray Collins following consultations after the...

  How we do things is who we are The Labour Party’s internal problems are largely down to a lack of ethical standards in the party culture. I joined Labour around three years ago and it has become clear to me that conflicts of interest are rife in party organisation, seemingly at all levels, and are exploited widely by those in positions of responsibility. The way we do things is who we are, and the way we organise processes is often dominated by group- and self-interests rather than commitment to any values or ethics . There is a culture of fixing which encompasses all factions and all powerful groupings within the party, not just the major unions.   The ethical framework this relies upon is anti-ethical, the justification being that it is right to fix and manipulate processes in order to secure the right result. This is anti-democratic and indicative of the poor state of democratic culture and practice within the party. Also, positive discrimination proc...