Thanks for the offer, but no thanks...

As a newly elected Labour NEC member I ought to be delighted when other people start calling for the NEC to have more power.

But I will be saying a polite "no thanks" to a suggestion which the Communist Party of Great Britain is supporting and says comes from soft-left faction Compass, that Labour's NEC should elect the Shadow Cabinet: http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004131

They quote Compass as saying: "A more democratic way for the Labour Party to decide who should be in the shadow cabinet, and thus with more of a chance of being in the cabinet once the party gains government, would be for the party’s nominally highest elected body to be given the task".

The CPGB says: "This demand for the party’s national executive committee to be given the job of appointing the shadow cabinet is eminently supportable by Marxists."

Three reactions:

• What business is it of the CPGB how another party's internal democracy functions?
• They seem pretty categorical in quoting Compass as saying "a more democratic way for the Labour Party to decide who should be in the shadow cabinet, and thus with more of a chance of being in the cabinet once the party gains government, would be for the party’s nominally highest elected body to be given the task", even linking to the document they quoted from (http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/compass/documents/Compass%20Transforming%20Labour%20WEB2.pdf) but when you look at the actual document that sentence isn't there. Has someone at Compass retrospectively edited it out because it's too daft even for them? Or did the CPGB imagine this Compass demand.
• There's a good reason for the PLP electing the Shadow Cabinet. They know them and work with them. As an NEC member I don't have that kind of knowledge of the candidates so I don't feel qualified to make that choice.

Nice idea though. Wonder if they had me in mind when they wrote it.