NEC Report – 24 January 2023

The January NEC meeting was the first one held at Labour’s very impressive new HQ in Blackfriars Road in south London. The overall feel was the most united, friendly, and focused externally on winning the election that I have seen since I re-joined the NEC in 2020.

 

The meeting opened with a minute’s silence for Holocaust Memorial Day, and the solemn tone continued as we noted the obituaries of former MP Alice Mahon and former NEC Chair and AEU stalwart Brenda Etchells.

 

David Evans presented an upbeat General Secretary’s report. He said we had to capitalise on the opportunity presented by our poll lead with a modern campaign machine. He was focused on sharpening our comms, print, digital and field operations. He believes the current support the party has is conditional and provisional and there is still a lot of work to be done to convert poll leads into cast iron commitments to vote Labour in the May 2023 local elections and the General Election, whenever it comes. We have to have a positive, optimistic, future-facing offer for voters, and will be shaping that through the National Policy Forum this summer and the Annual Conference in October. The task force structure for fighting the election was in place, and LOTO was now integrated completely as one team with party HQ. Staff training was being provided on management and leadership skills. The regional comms teams were being enhanced. Interviews were taking place for 11 digital trainees. We were advertising soon for an additional of trainee organisers.

 

David outlined Project Victory, the plan for May’s local elections, where 8,000 council seats are being contested. The new requirement to provide ID in order to vote was something Labour had opposed as it is a fairly obvious Tory attempt at suppressing turnout, but we need to campaign in a way that doesn’t put voters off by suggesting it is too difficult, and to get more people signed up as postal voters, as this is unaffected by the new law. Selections of council candidates are proceeding faster than in previous years.  71 parliamentary candidates have been selected and this will rise to 100 by the start of the local election campaign. 57% are men, 43% women. 20% are BAME, 10% disabled and 10% LGBT+. There is no complacency about any of these diversity stats. The 10,000 backlog of disciplinary cases has been cleared and the new independent aspects of the complaints process are up and running. Preparation for Annual Conference is underway. Membership is still at levels that are high in historic terms. There are 407,328 members, of whom 25,000 are in arrears. Labour Hub is replacing the existing log-in systems for all campaign tools. The new membership portal will give greater reporting, analysis and ability to fundraise from and mobilise members. The new membership hub is intended to be rolled out in early February, subject to testing. There will be investment in the Organise system for emailing members to make it more effective. The party is in a relatively strong financial position, with growing commercial income, and large and small donations. A two year pay deal and deal re. the pension scheme has been agreed with staff. Lord (Waheed) Ali has taken on a senior role in donor relations. The winter raffle raised a record £400,000. The party has moved into its new Blackfriars Road HQ and our accommodation in the regions and nations is also being reviewed.

 

Keir Starmer then gave his Leader’s report. He described the party as being in reasonably good shape, with a united PLP taking the arguments to the Tories, and polling looking good for the time being, but it was going to be a long year, with a General Election unlikely in 2023. We need to be disciplined and focused and ready for the greater scrutiny we will face. It is almost certain that Annual Conference will be the last one before the General Election. We need to strike the balance between maintaining our confidence but not being complacent. We have to fight like we are 5% the Tories, every vote needs to be earned. There had been a busy and positive start to the New Year for Labour. Keir’s New Year speech had been focused on hope, change and the need for a decade of national renewal. He had visited Northern Ireland with Peter Kyle and Angela Smith on the 25^th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, to try to push for progress on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Attending Davos with Rachel Reeves had been a statement about Labour wanting the UK to play a greater part on the global stage. The discussion about the NHS was about the need to reform and restore it. It needs to offer a different service as well as being better funded. Other policy announcements had been about getting the over-50s back into the labour market, and Bridget Phillipson’s announcements about childcare and skills. Keir referred to the stories about Tory sleaze and said he could not understand why Sunak did not sack Zahawi. The Shadow Cabinet will be out across the country on 28 and 29 January for the national campaign weekend.

 

Angela Rayner gave her report as Deputy Leader. We had two excellent new MPs from the North West, Sam Dixon and Andrew Western, following the Labour wins in the City of Chester and Stretford & Urmston by-elections. The morale of activists and voters is high, they are convinced Labour can win and make a difference. On 9 February we hope to get Ashley Dalton elected as the new MP for West Lancashire. Angela condemned the “levelling up” grant awards as not being targeted on the basis of need, but on protecting Tory MPs in marginal seats. She was leading the opposition to the Procurement Bill and the new anti-strike legislation. The latter would not resolve the current disputes, which are driven by pay not keeping pace with the cost of living. She also lambasted the Tories over voter ID requirements, aimed at making it harder for people to vote them out of office, and sleaze.

 

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney spoke about the local elections on 4 May, now less than 100 days away. We have to use them to demonstrate we are on course for a majority, and to improve all aspects of our campaigning. They are the largest set of elections in the cycle and the last or second to last set before the General Election. They are only in England, and not in London. 8,000 seats are up for election in approximately 240 councils. Morgan described three categories of key council: traditional swing councils that are more Tory than the ones up last year, areas where we have been going backwards and need to recover, and a small number of Labour councils facing insurgencies from the far right or independents. When last contested in May 2019 the results across the country had been 28% Conservative, 28% Labour, 19% Lib Dem. The Tories had lost 1,330 seats in a good year for the Lib Dems, which led to Theresa May resigning. This is therefore a tricky set of elections for Labour as the Tories are defending a position that was already a low point. Labour was seeking to present a positive offer, build campaigning capacity across the country, improve turnout, present Keir as candidate for PM, and get in shape for the General Election. Our strapline was “Build a Better Britain”. Themes would be cost of living, NHS waiting lists and sager seats. We need to get headline stories on the TV news so that there is greater awareness of our team and policies. We will be using digital channels to get content to voters who might make a difference. Regional comms is a priority as we need coverage in the regional and local media, which voters trust more than the national media. We were deploying the trainee organisers, have an increased campaign budget, and total integrated campaigning. We would overcome the voter ID challenge by increasing the number of postal voters, this is the proven way to increase turnout. By the end of the month selections in target councils should be complete. We needed a campaign that was far more targeted on the key swing wards in key swing councils. We need to persuade members in areas like London without elections to show solidarity and travel and campaign in target councils. Every Shadow Cabinet member has a target council they are supporting. We are trying to select candidates faster every year and always aim for 100% coverage so everyone can vote Labour. We mustn’t underestimate the Tories, they are still the most efficient election-winning party in the world.

 

Finally, Anneliese Dodds gave an update on the National Policy Forum. There are ongoing discussions with the unions about how many amendments each NPF member can submit, and what the threshold should be for an alternative position to be put to Annual Conference (i.e. what percentage of NPF members need to back the minority position).

 

I also wanted to report on a key decision at the Organisation Committee the previous week. We agreed that CLPs will change boundaries to match the new parliamentary constituencies agreed by the Boundary Commission immediately after Annual Conference. Details of how this will work are online here: https://labour.org.uk/activist-hub/governance-and-legal-hub/clp-hub/clp-reorganising-faq/