NEC Report – 28 November 2023

 The November NEC meeting is always the Away Day, a more strategic meeting that looks at the year ahead. We met this time in at Labour Central, the party’s back-office hub in Newcastle upon Tyne. On the day previous to the meeting I was one of a number of NEC members to go canvassing for Sam Rushworth, Labour’s candidate in the target marginal seat of Bishop Auckland.

 

There are a number of business items that have to be signed off at the start of the Away Day, so we began the day by rattling through those: the NEC Aims and Objectives, terms of reference for and membership of all our committees and sub-committees, and dates for all our meetings in 2024.

 

Angela Eagle reported as Chair of Equalities that the proposed relaunch of BAME Labour was on a pathway to happening now that various constitutional issues had been resolved.

 

I asked about the panel reviewing our position on standing candidates in Northern Ireland (we have a legal commitment to review this once in every parliament) and was told it would report early in the New Year.

 

Gurinder Singh Josan proposed that coopted representatives on the Equalities Committee should only be from affiliated socialist societies, not campaigns and groups that are not formally affiliated to the party. This was agreed, but with the proviso that it would not affect groups already invited to the meetings.

 

A timetable for elections to the Labour Students and Young Labour National Committees was agreed. Nominations will open this Friday, 1 December. Nominations will close on Friday 23 February. The ballots will run from 7 March to 29 March. CLPs and Young Labour branches can nominate for the Young Labour committee, whereas nominations in Labour Students are made by individuals who have registered as students with the party and verified their student status. The final date for students to join, pay off arrears and register their student status to participate in the ballot is Friday 15 December.

 

This is a different timetable to the one for all the other national ballots (CLP reps on NEC, NPF, etc) which was signed off at the Organisation Committee. For the main set of ballots nominations open on 12 January and close at 11.59 on Friday 28 June. These are also the dates for the opening and closing of registration for Annual Conference delegates.

 

Annual Conference will be held from Sunday 22 September to Wednesday 25

September 2024, with the deadline for contemporary motions being 5pm on Thursday 12 September and for emergency motions being 12 noon on Friday 20 September.

 

It was agreed that, because it was a General Election year, the 2024 National Women’s Conference would follow the same format as 2023, a one-day conference on the Saturday before (21 September) and using the same venue as Annual Conference in Liverpool. After discussion, it was agreed not to make any recommendation to the Women’s Conference Arrangements Committee about the number of motion topics the National Women’s Conference could debate. It was agreed to consult the National Women’s Committee, Women’s Conference Arrangements Committee and women in the party more widely about whether they preferred a separate two-day conference or to continue the current arrangement in 2025 and subsequent years.

 

After this initial business we spent the rest of the day hearing detailed presentations from key staff about the General Election.

 

General Secretary David Evans said we had made big organisational changes to be election-ready and there was no complacency about the challenge.

 

Deputy National Campaign Co-ordinator Ellie Reeves MP said she believed the Tories were in the process of changing strategy to a “better the devil you know” theme from an earlier attempt to frame Rishi Sunak as a change candidate. They want to make the election a referendum on Labour rather than a referendum on their performance in government. They will try to deny Labour has changed.

 

Ellie said the by-election results recently had been brilliant, including in Mid Beds where there had been an attempt to say Labour could not win and that we should leave it to the Lib Dems. A highly visible garden poster campaign had helped show we were competitive. Each byelection took up an incredible amount of our resources but provided invaluable training opportunities for staff and activists. The results have sown doubt and division among the Tories. They don’t however predict the future, and there is still a huge task for Labour.

 

Our themes are that:

·         It is time for change.

·         The Tories have failed and will fail again.

·         Keir has changed Labour.

·         We have a long-term plan for the country.

 

We have a strong, funded policy offer based on:

·         Fiscal stability thanks to our fiscal rules

·         700,000 extra dental appointments in the areas of greatest need, and 2 million extra NHS procedures and operations.

·         Our five-point plan to tackle crime and shoplifting.

·         Breakfast clubs in every primary school.

·         Setting up GB Energy.

·         The New Deal for Working People, including the bans on zero hours contracts and fire and rehire.

·         1.5 million new homes built over the course of the next parliament.

 

The Tories will argue change means risk, so we need to provide reassurance to voters that the change we are offering is one they can trust. They will try to rehabilitate their record, so we need to remind voters how awful they have been as a government, and the threat they pose if re-elected. They will deny Labour has changed, so we need to be disciplined, particularly on our fiscal rules. They will try to make the election a referendum on Labour, so we need to bulletproof our policy offer and avoid making ourselves the focus of the election.

 

We need to remind voters that:

·         The Tories crashed the economy, and you are paying the price through higher mortgage interest rates.

·         Taxes have gone up 25 times, you can’t trust the Tories on tax.

·         The Tories crashed the NHS, there are record waiting lists.

·         They have caused political chaos – 5 PMs, 7 Chancellors, 15 housing ministers.

·         Crimes are not prosecuted, and prisoners released because there are not enough prison places.

·         If they win again, they will just carry on the same way.

 

Keir is:

·         A professional, serious leader.

·         He puts the country first.

·         Strong – he tackled antisemitism, changed the party, and is strong on defence.

·         Former prosecutor-in-chief.

·         Someone with a working-class back story.

·         A patriot who is ambitious for Britain.

 

Our key messages are therefore:

·         It is time for change after 13 years.

·         Keir has changed the Labour Party and is now ready to change the country.

·         We will put country before party.

 

Ellie emphasised that being trusted on the economy and national security are essential tests that need to be passed before voters will give us permission to talk about growth, the NHS, opportunity, safer streets and clean power.

 

Morgan McSweeney, Campaign Director, presented next. He said it was clear the Tories were planning a spring General Election from all their actions. They were dramatically increasing the national spending limit and the limits for donations not being publicly declarable.

 

Labour needs to gain 125 seats for a majority and perhaps a quarter of all the seats in the Commons (over 160) for a working majority. This requires double-digit seat gains in every nation and region.

 

In 2019 we had lost our way morally as well as electorally. We have gone from that to the best local election results in 26 years in May 2023. More important than the scale of the council gains was the map of where they had happened, we won in places where we had been in long-term decline, with our highest swings in the most Leave-voting wards, the most Tory wards and the most working-class wards. We have redistributed our vote towards the seats we must win, when it had become over-concentrated in cities and university towns in a way that produced a very inefficient return in terms of number of MPs won. There are no no-go areas for Labour. In Scotland there has been an incredible turnaround.

 

Morgan stressed that polls don’t predict election outcomes, they are a measure of progress. They can change very fast before and during an election campaign. Any problems people have with Labour are not priced in until the campaign starts, so we need to get rid of them now. We can’t allow the media to say the election is already done as then the Tories will be allowed off the hook of defending their very weak 14 year record and will run with a narrative that Labour is weak and too much of a risk to take. They have a strategy based on defending 80 seats and attacking 20.

 

Postal votes will be essential as they increase propensity to turnout, we need to ask every Labour voter if they will switch to voting by post.

 

We have to have a ruthless focus on our core battleground seats, the ones that will give us a majority, resourcing them with everything we can. Other battleground seats, that help build that majority, will get what resource is needed. Non-battleground seats will be twinned and asked to support the battleground ones.

 

Candidates are very important compared to in the past, they make a big political and organisational difference to their constituency campaign.

 

If the General Election is on the same day as the local elections, our targeting will prioritise winning a parliamentary majority.

 

Next we heard from David Evans again about the work that had been done rewire Labour’s structure, processes and culture. We had had to start by restoring the party’s belief it can and should win and had the authority to lead. We had encouraged risk-taking and innovation in the byelections. Everything has been speeded up but still needs to be speeded up more. We have a medium-term plan for beyond the General Election so we don’t just stop after Polling Day.

 

Hollie Ridley, Executive Director of Nations and Regions, presented on the Win 24 field operations strategy. We have to change the behaviour of voters, that requires understanding them first, persuasive storytelling, building trust and influence, and finally turning changes of belief into the action of voting Labour.

 

As well as securing switchers direct from other parties, we have to reinforce recent switchers, increasing the turnout of existing Labour voters, and tactically squeeze the minor parties by emphasising that only Labour can beat the Tories.

 

We have taken tactics around personal candidate contact with key switcher voters pioneered in previous elections in Hove and Ilford North and spread these to all battleground seats. We need high quality doorstep conversations, where emails and phone numbers are collected so that the conversation can be followed up with a personal letter and a call from the candidate.

 

We are using real voices as endorsers to show voters other people like them are voting Labour.

 

Hollie described the metrics we are using to measure performance of candidates and CLPs.

 

Gail McDade Director of Mobilisation, presented on the measures we had in place to mobilise members, mapping what they can do, and exporting activists into battleground seats. We are identifying and re-engaging pre-2015 key activists who dropped out of activity during the Corbyn years and Covid.

 

It was emphasised that our best quality data comes from doorstep conversations and we use that to identify what types of voters are potential switchers and direct our digital and direct mail communications to those voters.

 

Andy Whyte, Director of Governance and Legal, presented a paper on the remaining parliamentary selections, which was agreed. The procedures we had agreed for non-battleground seats in May were not streamlined enough. We have therefore approved a new process for non-battleground seats that are also not notionally held by Labour. The existing process will continue in the remaining few battleground seats that have yet to select, and in any retirement seats and other notionally Labour-held seats. All of the seats that the new process applies in will be advertised very soon for applications to be sent in. People who expressed an interest in any of the 94 seats advertised in a batch in the summer will be specifically asked if they want to convert that into a formal application. Applications will be considered by panels of two NEC and one REC member who will include at least one trade union representative.  The panels can hold interviews if necessary. There will be at least one panel in every region, more where there are many seats to deal with. The panels can create a shortlist of one, who will be deemed selected, if there is only one candidate, or run a contest between a shortlist of candidates, lasting two weeks, and culminating in a vote at a hustings. This route to shortlisting is faster than the previous model. Due diligence will be conducted after shortlisting on the provisionally shortlisted candidates. Selections in these seats will take place early in the New Year.

 

In the Q&A, the suspension of the Croydon East selection was raised. David Evans said that it had nothing to do with online speculation about the Anonyvoter voting system, and was a one-off case, unique to Croydon East, that didn’t affect any other CLP’s selection. It was serious enough to have led to suspension of the process while a through investigation was conducted.

 

We ended the day with a report from National Policy Forum Chair Anneliese Dodds MP. She said the Clause V manifesto sign-off process should be smooth as the full NPF process had been completed, unlike in the 2017 and 2019 elections. NPF elections were being held in the summer, so there would be no NPF reports to Annual Conference 2024. We agreed a trade union amendment to the effect that the July NEC meeting would decide whether the qualifying date for contemporary resolutions to Annual Conference would be 1 August, or the date of the General Election if it had already happened (contemporary resolutions have to relate to events that have happened after a certain date, usually the date of publication of the NPF reports, but there are none next year). We ended the meeting by voting to fill NEC vacancies on Policy Commissions, and to re-elect Gavin Sibthorpe of the GMB as NEC Co-Convenor of the Joint Policy Committee.

NEC Report – 26 September 2023

The September NEC met in Glasgow, and before the meeting we went out canvassing for Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election.

 

We welcomed Ellie Reeves MP back onto the NEC after a seven-year absence, in her new role as Deputy National Campaign Co-ordinator.

 

Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) Chair Harry Donaldson gave the CAC report.  The CAC had met on Monday to make rulings on the validity of the 323 motions submitted to Annual Conference, and group them into topics for the Priority Ballot. Appeals regarding motions would be held by the CAC on Thursday. The deadline for submission of emergency motions was noon on 29^th September. 1,012 CLP delegates and 280 union and socialist society delegates had registered. Total attendance at Annual Conference including visitors would be 16,177. The party was receiving £1m in income from fringe events, of which there will be 850. There were 237 exhibition stands, generating a further £1.85m in income. For the first time there would be SME Sunday, as well as the business forum held on the Monday of Conference. The Conference charity would be the Glioblastoma Research Group at the UCL Cancer Institute, in memory of Margaret McDonagh.

 

We then received the draft grid of what would happen in each session of Conference. It was noted that no “reference backs” had been received on the National Policy Forum (NPF) reports.

 

The following were appointed as Assistant Chairs of Conference: Luke Akehurst, Nesil Caliskan, Abdi Duale, Wendy Nichols, Ellie Reeves, Gavin Sibthorpe.

 

We then considered constitutional amendments (rule changes). Those agreed included the following:

 

·         To define clearly that “supporting the campaign of an individual that stands in opposition to, or declares an intention to stand in opposition to, a Labour Party candidate in a public election” is a prohibited act leading to expulsion.

·         To abolish the rights of CLPs to initiate disciplinary action, as this contradicts our national, independent processes and can lead to inconsistent or unfair decisions or vexatious cases.

·         To return to the pre-2018 system whereby the only motions that can be submitted directly to Annual Conference are “contemporary” ones relating to issues “not substantially addressed in the reports of the NEC and NPF to Annual Conference”. This is because policy motions should be sent direct to the NPF for consideration as part of its policy making cycle. This was taken to a vote and passed by 19 votes to 7.

·         To clarify that the default structure of a CLP is delegate-based, with All Member Meetings (AMMs) as an alternative where there are geographical or other reasons why a delegate-structure would not work.

·         That changing from a delegate-structure to AMM or vice-versa can only happen by a two-thirds vote at a CLP AGM.

·         To clarify that a CLP Trade Union Liaison Officer (TULO) must be a member of a Labour Party-affiliated union and elected by and from union delegates to the CLP, where they exist.

·         To reduce the number of voting officers on a CLP Executive Committee from a minimum of 14 to a minimum of 6 (Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Women’s Officer, TULO and Vice-Chair, Campaigns & Membership). The other posts are not being deleted; they revert to the status they historically had of being “Functional Officers” without voting rights. Larger CLPs that want to can get approval to keep them as full voting Officers. This will hopefully make it less onerous for CLPs to fill such a large number of roles, produce a streamlined EC that can take decisions faster, and de-factionalise elections for practical roles like fundraising and social media, and equalities roles, by removing them from the “numbers game” around factional control of the EC. We agreed an amendment from Unison to the effect that if none of the six Officers self-identifies as BAME, the BAME Officer becomes a 7^th voting member of the EC. The amended proposal was agreed with only Ann Black abstaining.

·         That vacancies on the National Women’s Committee should be filled in the same way as vacancies in the equivalent section of the NEC are.

 

David Evans then gave his report as General Secretary. He thanked Pat McFadden and Ellie Reeves for making a flying start in their new roles as National Campaign Co-ordinator and Deputy, and paid tribute to everything Shabana Mahmood had achieved in the National Campaign Co-ordinator role. He thanked field staff for the superb work they were doing in the three parliamentary by-elections. We were more than in play in all three. The Scottish result could be defining. The Tories will do anything to stay in power, including voter suppression measures such as the introduction of ID requirements and more complicated postal vote application forms. Next, they will bring forward statutory instruments to raise the election expenditure limit from £19m to £30m.

 

David reported Annual Conference will bring in £5.2m in commercial income, not including the business day. There are already 200 delegates registered for Labour’s Business Conference on 1 February 2024, which has secured £600,000 in sponsorship. Membership of the Rose Network (donors of over £1,000 a year) was now 614, of whom 147 are in the Chair’s Circle because they give over £5,000 a year. A lottery licence has been acquired and the first draw will be on 3 November. The lottery has 1,400 members and £150,000 of annual income before it has been hard launched.

 

The Party HQ will move 500m to the new premises on 20 October and be operational the following week. The East Midlands, North West, Scotland, South East, and Yorkshire & The Humber offices are also moving to better premises.

 

The Party now has 379,543 members, of which only 11,760 are in arrears. At 3% this is the lowest arrears rate for a decade. An Autumn recruitment campaign is being launched. Membership rates for 14-19 year olds, students and members of the armed forces, are being raised to £12 a year, as £1 a month is the minimum direct debit the party system can draw.

 

Following the work of the Forde Working Party, the new enhanced code of conduct was being circulated to all members.

 

A diverse intake of eight interns identified by Patchwork, which recruits interns from underrepresented groups in the workplace, had been with the party during the summer.

 

Staff were being send on leadership training provided by the Civil Service College, and management training provided by ACAS.

 

An Away Day was being held with all the Labour Metro Mayors and the priority councils for the May elections were being brought together.

 

In memory of Margaret McDonagh, a Leadership Academy in her name was being set up to foster excellent staff leadership.

 

Angela Rayner then gave her Deputy Leader’s Report. She said our policies on the Future of Work are polling well. She has now been appointed as Shadow Deputy Prime Minister and Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. There had immediately been some very tough issues to deal with, such as the Government intervention in Birmingham City Council and Sunak’s announcement he would scrap the nutrient neutrality planning rule. Local government as a sector was reeling from 13 years of cuts and dwindling reserves. Angela’s team were working with the LGA Labour Group to support the worst affected councils, including Birmingham. We had opposed Sunak’s u-turn on landlord energy efficiency regulations, as this will lead to tenants facing higher energy bills. Angela was preparing for Women’s Conference and Annual Conference as she will give the opening speech at both. Her “Rayner on the Road” camper van tour was visiting marginal constituencies.

 

Ellie Reeves gave a detailed and confidential report on strategy and progress in the three parliamentary by-elections of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth. Hundreds of members were being mobilised in each of them, and we had very strong candidates. New campaign techniques are being piloted with great success, especially in Mid Bedfordshire which is very rural so requires a different model of campaigning to urban areas.

 

Morgan McSweeney reported as Campaign Director. He repeated David’s concerns that the Tories will ask the Electoral Commission to raise the General Election spending limit to £30m. This shows they have that much of a war chest, they are in the final run-in to calling the election, and they don’t view it as a lost cause. The electorate remains very volatile – swing voters can swing back. Rutherglen and Hamilton West on 5 October will be a seminal moment which could set Scotland on a new course. The Scottish Labour Party has been transformed organisationally and politically. Annual Conference is hugely important as it is almost certainly the last one before the General Election. We are taking no votes for granted. The two by-elections on 19 October are in very stretching seats for Labour. Winning Tamworth would imply the Tories would only hold 47 seats. It is their safest by-election defence in this Parliament. Mid Bedfordshire is now a three-way marginal but has been Tory since time immemorial, any result is possible there.

 

We have to be ready for a May General Election. The Tories will be saying “net zero will cost you” and behavioural economics suggests that is a powerful message as a loss is twice as painful as any countering gain offered. We have to highlight the opportunities decarbonisation presents in terms of cutting bills, creating jobs and providing energy security.

NEC Report – 25 July 2023

 The NEC meeting on 25 July started with obituaries to Margaret McDonagh, Glenda Jackson and Bob Kerslake. 

Our first major item of business was to review reports from the Forde Report Working Group regarding actions complete, actions not being progressed, and actions underway from Forde’s recommendations, and draft codes of conduct, aimed at improving party culture, for members and people in leadership positions at every level of the party. It was noted that training on the new codes of conduct and on recognising and avoiding anti-Black racism and Islamophobia would be rolled out, starting at a role-holder weekend in September, and to the wider membership in 2023, and the codes of conduct would be built into how the newly reconstituted CLPs on the new boundaries will work. A competitive process to find the third-party training providers on anti-Black racism and Islamophobia was being launched. We agreed the codes of conduct in principle but sent them to the Forde Report Working Group for consultation, from where they will go to the NEC Officers’ Group for final sign-off.

Anneliese Dodds gave a report as Chair of the National Policy Forum (NPF). She said the final-stage NPF meeting in Nottingham from 21-23 July had been a very successful weekend. She thanked Head of Policy Development Adam Terry, who had completed the process and was now moving overseas, for his incredible work, and Margaret Beckett for the inspirational speech she gave at the NPF dinner. Labour was united and ready to deliver, and all our commitments met our fiscal rules. NPF representatives had had to give ground to achieve compromise and consensus. Staff were now consolidating the final report and ensuring that all the text correctly reflects what was agreed. 

David Evans gave his report at General Secretary. The Labour victory in Selby & Ainsty changes the weather for any Tory MP with a majority under 24,000. There will be an evaluation and review of both by-election campaigns so that lessons learned can be incorporated into the campaigns in Tamworth, Mid-Bedfordshire and Rutherglen & Hamilton West. Learning from the local elections was also being implemented, particularly the need to focus on the right voters in the right places. Our data was a lot better and the trainees that had been recruited were now in the field. 119 parliamentary candidates have now been selected and a residential training weekend for them had been held in Stratford-on-Avon, where the organisational strategy and what that means they need to do as leaders in their CLPs had been shared. 

The Win ’24 strategy was about identifying target voters and then building trust and confidence with them and finally persuading them to vote Labour rather than Conservative. It would be rolled out over the summer. The General Election task forces at HQ are updating their plans and there is already a plan ready for a snap General Election. May 2024 still looks like the most likely election date. The Boundary Commission had now provided final new constituency boundaries and the membership system would switch to these after Annual Conference. A new version of “Organise”, the system for emailing members, had been launched. 

Annual Conference would be from 8-11 October and there was greater interest in and scrutiny of what we were doing than ever before. The number of exhibitors, the income generated, and the likely number of attendees were all at record levels.

On fundraising, our target is to match the Tories and we are more or less doing that. There are now 590 people in the “Rose Network” (donating over £1,000 a year). Phoning members was achieving a 20% conversion rate to donating. The party had completed its application for a lottery license. 

Membership now consists of 385,324 fully paid-up members, and 13,871 in arrears. The level of arrears is at a historic low. 

The party has tested the market for office rental and decided to leave Blackfriars Road after Annual Conference, to move just 100 metres to a long-term HQ, suitable both for the General Election and a party in government, in Rushworth Street. The new building is cheaper, bigger, and of higher quality and specification. 

The party is looking to hold the September NEC meeting in Scotland.

In the Q&A, David said six of the regions and nations were also moving to improved premises. He noted that the rules will be fully applied to anyone found to campaign for a non-Labour candidate in any region. He noted we have 100 extra staff in the field compared to 18 months ago. 

Keir Starmer then gave his report as Leader. He said the NPF had agreed a good policy package that combined the mutually reinforcing strands of reform and responsible economics. This would feed into the manifesto and ultimately to implementation in government. 

He thanked the staff and activists for their work in the by-elections. Selby & Ainsty was an incredible result, an unprecedented size of Tory majority for Labour to overturn. It was number 237 on our target list. The strategy of getting direct switchers from the Tories had been vindicated. Uxbridge & South Ruislip was disappointing. ULEZ had prevented us winning despite 1,000 activists on the day. Our 66% contact rate means we had detailed data on what issues were affecting voting behaviour. We have to learn from our successes and failures. The strategy we have is correct, but we can be tripped up by issues. Three more crucial by-elections are on the way. Peter Kyle is doing more work as the lead MP in the Mid-Beds campaign than any of the Tory MPs representing the seat have ever done. We are using all these by-elections to improve our campaign operation, but they do divert time and energy. 

Keir said Annual Conference will be a very important platform to showcase the incoming Labour Government as it is the last one before the General Election. Unusually, Labour has the last slot of the major parties this autumn.

Angela Rayner gave her report as Deputy Leader. She thanked Anneliese and staff for the positive NPF weekend. Her own policy brief on workers’ rights had come out of the NPF with a policy offer that would radically transform the lives of working people. We have not watered anything down, we made policy together. We need to be government ready as the workers’ rights policies need to have the mechanisms and legislation prepared so they can be achieved as a priority within our first one hundred days in power. We would campaign hard on the New Deal for Working People.  She praised the team on the ground in the by-elections as being absolutely fantastic. 

Finally, Morgan McSweeney reported as Campaign Director. He said the last eight days had been extraordinarily important. They had started with the residential weekend for parliamentary candidates. Our organisational and political plans had been set out to them and training had been provided. The quality of the candidates is inspiring. A new ground campaign methodology has been launched: “Pathways to Persuasion”, which will result in higher quality voter contact. 

Then there were the by-elections. The amount of work was incredible: 300,000 leaflets delivered, 17,000 contacts on polling day, 9,000 volunteers, £350,000 in online donations. 

Selby was one of the best results in Labour’s history. The biggest margin we have ever overturned in a by-election since WW2, and the second highest swing. There were no local specific reasons to cause a fluke result, it is a largely rural constituency. It shows that it is “utter bollocks” that only the Lib Dems can win in this type of seat. We exuded hope and optimism and kept our focus on the voters.

We mustn’t gloss over Uxbridge. It was not a fluke either. It was not good enough. ULEZ was the main issue of the day in Uxbridge because the cost was linked in voters’ minds with wider cost of living issues. We can’t have a mindset that says we can win through organisationally even if we have unpopular policies. Our green agenda needs to be about cutting bills, creating jobs and energy security. 

Morgan said he had been studying complacency in campaigns, particularly the case studies of the losses in 1992 in the UK, 2016 in the USA and 2019 in Australia. These had each subsequently led to lessons being learned and wins in the next election, but we don’t have the luxury of another learning experience of losing a winnable election, we have to skip straight to winning. None of those case studies were about inexperience, or laziness, or thinking it was in the bag. They were all about ducking the difficult conversations about political problems. Problems need to be fixed now; it is too late to do it during the short campaign. 

Finally, there had been the NPF, where we chose the path of difficult decisions. We need to combine hope and realism and learn from both Selby and Uxbridge. We have to listen to the voters on ULEZ. The alternative is to pretend we didn’t hear it, or were unlucky, or were never going to win Uxbridge. 

NEC Report – 23 May 2023

 

The NEC met on 23 May for the first time since the local elections, with spirits consequently high.

 

The first main item of business was to sign off the assignment of incumbent MPs (except those that have failed a trigger ballot or have outstanding disciplinary issues) as candidates for new seats following the boundary review. In all except one case contests between MPs had been avoided. However, the abolition of the current Wirral South constituency means that both Alison McGovern MP and Mick Whitley MP wish to stand in the new, redrawn Birkenhead constituency, so a selection contest using an OMOV ballot between the two will proceed. Some members raised anecdotally that they had heard (literally during the meeting) that Wirral West MP Margaret Greenwood had announced her retirement, and this created an extra vacancy in that area, but as this hadn’t been notified formally to the party we agreed the paper as it was with a proviso that it could be changed if the two MPs indicated a different stance after any news about Wirral West.

 

Parliamentary candidates who have already been selected in target seats are also being assigned to new seats, but in every case there is an obvious successor constituency.

 

It was noted that there is also a contest between two incumbent MPs (Gerald Jones MP and Beth Winter MP) for the new Merthyr Tydfil & Upper Cynon constituency but that this was a delegated matter for the Welsh Executive Committee.

 

Concerns were raised about the Copeland selection proceeding on the old boundaries rather than the new Whitehaven and Workington boundaries, as members in the town of Workington can’t participate. It was noted that this was unfortunate but that the process was already under way so could not be changed.

 

We then agreed a paper on the procedures for selection in non-priority constituencies, defined initially as those with a Tory majority of over 40%. This category of seats will involve a review by an NEC panel of any due diligence concerns about applicants, but then move straight to shortlisting by a panel consisting of three members of the relevant CLP. They may either run a contest if there are multiple suitable candidates or announce a shortlist of one if there is only one suitable applicant. The NEC representative has to sign off the final shortlist and can refer it to the Chair of the Organisation Sub-Committee for final adjudication.

 

David Evans then gave his report as General Secretary. He said the party had used the local elections as a testbed for the General Election campaign and drawn key learnings from the experience. The results were hugely encouraging but there was no complacency about the General Election. The results were not inevitable, they reflected political and organisational choices over the last three years. The organisation had worked well but there would be a thorough evaluation process.

 

David reported that Simon Mills had stepped down as Executive Director, Finance after very good stewardship that left the party with no debt and no deficit. It was testament to Simon’s hard work that he was being replaced by two people, having become responsible for all the functions based at the Labour Central office in Newcastle. Chris Tidswell would join from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) and be Chief Financial Officer. John Lehal would be Chief Operating Officer and oversee key service functions. Scott Hardy has been appointed as the new Regional Director for Yorkshire and the Humber.

 

David said the General Election organisational strategy would be about persuasion of swing voters, not just GOTV of Labour supporters. We had to consolidate support which is currently provisional and conditional.

 

Over the summer there will be residential training for field organising staff and candidates, and regional events for the volunteer leadership of each battleground CLP.

 

Further professional development of staff was being pursued with leadership training for those at director level and above, and management training for everyone with a managerial responsibility.

 

The party now has 395,811 members, of whom 17,233 are in arrears. At 4.3% this is the lowest ever recorded level of arrears. 48,295 of the members have joined in the last 12 months and 15,000 of those since the start of 2023.

 

Annual Conference was set to be a major commercial success, with 220 exhibitors registered, bringing in £1.7m in income. There was a waiting list for fringe space, and sale of that has already raised £700,000. The summer raffle had raised £280,000.

 

David stated that he had reminded staff of the standards expected and procedures for reporting complaints, after recent distressing news about harassment in Parliament.

 

In local government, Campaign Improvement Boards had been invaluable in resolving longstanding issues.

 

There is almost certain to be a recall petition and by-election in the SNP-held seat of Rutherglen and Hamilton West, and this will be led by Scottish Labour but be a big priority for the UK Labour Party.

 

Campaign Director Morgan McSweeney then reported on the local elections. The campaign had been framed as “Build a Better Britain”. This was the biggest set of local elections in the four-year cycle but did not include London, Scotland and Wales. Labour gained a net 536 councillors and 22 councils and the Tories lost over 1,000 councillors despite most of the seats they were defending having last been fought in 2019 which was a year so bad for them that it led to Theresa May resigning. Labour’s margin of 9% over the Tories in projected national vote share was the best for 26 years, since 1997, and the best for an election not coinciding with a General Election since 1996. We are now the largest party in local government, winning back the Local Government Association Chair. Our votes were where we needed them in marginal seats, not stacked up in large majorities in wards in big cities and university towns. Labour was up 8% in Conservative wards compared to 6% in Labour wards and 4% in Lib Dem wards. Our vote is becoming distributed more efficiently. Labour improved most in Leave-voting areas. We were up 3.7% in the most Remain areas, but up 7.8% in areas with a Leave vote of 58-63%. This is important because the Leave vote is distributed in more parliamentary constituencies (it “won” 77% of them) than the very urban-concentrated Remain vote. We are reversing a trend that has been long-term of piling up a vote among graduates in big cities and university towns that can’t deliver a parliamentary majority.

 

Morgan gave examples of key wins in parliamentary marginal areas: Swindon where we have a majority for the first time in 22 years, Dover, which we have not won since 1995 and is a strongly Leave area, and the Mayor of Middlesbrough, part of Teeside where there are seven parliamentary marginals. But as well as making progress against the Tories we also took Brighton with sweeping gains from the Greens with our first majority there since 1999 and took York again with gains from the Greens.

 

There is no need for pre-election “dodgy deals” as voters know what they need to do in terms of tactical voting to beat the Tories. The Greens were up 8% in Tory seats but only 0.5% where they were fighting Labour for the seat. This is a lethal cocktail for the Tories.

 

Leaders usually peak in their first or second year of local elections, but Keir has built up year-on-year: Labour was 12% behind the Tories in 2019, 6% behind in 2021, 5% ahead in 2022 and 9% ahead in 2023.

 

We notionally gained parliamentary seats that are beyond the 200 gains mark, such as Aldershot. We are forming a coalition of Labour support that can win in every type of seat.

 

Our messaging grid had been Cut the cost of living, Cut crime, and Cut waiting lists. To this we had added campaigning around sewage in rivers as the public are very concerned about this. The adverts attacking the PM for his responsibility for the Tory record over the last 13 years had captured media coverage of the campaign and got it back onto our key messages when the Tories had been dominating the media with “culture wars” messaging about trans issues and grooming gangs.

 

For next year’s local elections we would aim to select candidates earlier and spread best practice about how to campaign where the Greens are our main opponent.

 

Keir Starmer then gave his report as Leader. He thanked David, Morgan and Campaign Chair Shabana Mahmood MP for their work. Overall, he was very pleased by the results but there are some pockets that still need to be worked on. The range of places we won was impressive, including Medway, Dover, Plymouth, Swindon, Stoke and Middlesbrough. The trajectory is improving but we need to keep it up and there is a lot more to do. A lot more will be thrown at us in the General Election. Everything we do has to be exceptional to go from the heavy 2019 defeat to government. He had set three objectives in 2020:

1)    Recognise the scale of the defeat and change the party.

2)    Expose the Tories as not fit to govern.

3)    Set out our positive case for change.

The third had been started with policy announcements at Annual Conference last year. This year’s conference is probably the last showcase before the General Election. He had set out our five missions for a purpose-driven government. The one on “NHS Fit for the Future” had been launched on Monday and well-received. The National Policy Forum meeting in July is the culmination of the first full policy-making cycle since 2014. There will be a choice of whether to reach a consensus on key policies at the NPF or slug it out in public at Annual Conference.

 

Returning to the local elections, Keir concluded that our messaging and targeting had been vindicated by the results.

 

Shabana Mahmood gave a very vigorous defence of the attack ads against Sunak. She said:

1)    We have to hold the Tories to account for the whole of their record since 2010, there can be no clean slate for Rishi because he is “new”.

2)    The criminal justice system has been wrecked by the Tories. Labour has to be on the side of the victims of crime.

3)    As a person of colour, she rejects the “dog whistle” charge – the PM’s ethnicity should make no difference to whether we condemn Tory failures around criminal justice.

 

I asked about the process for signing-off power sharing agreements in hung councils. Nesil Caliskan (Local Government rep) explained that there was a far higher volume of requests to form coalitions because the Tory collapse had increased the number of hung councils. Each request is considered on a case-by-case basis. The NEC panel looks at the merits of the proposal from the local Labour Group and the local context. In most cases the panel challenged details and requested further clarification. The panel did not want to sign-off unnecessarily broad and unstable coalitions with lots of small partners if a majority could be attained by Labour plus one additional party. The panel also looked closely at who any Independent councillors were who a deal was proposed with and would not authorise coalitions with ex-Labour councillors as this undermines Labour Groups. Some “Independents” were actually “Tories in disguise”. Post-election agreements, with NEC approval, are very different to pre-election pacts which are against party rules.

 

Angela Rayner reported as Deputy Leader about the meetings with unions and businesses she was holding around the company around a fair deal for workers. Labour’s coalition includes employers who want to do the right thing. She had been campaigning with Anas Sarwar in Rutherglen and spoke at the Scottish TUC, which is not a universally pro-Labour audience. She had enjoyed the “battle of the gingers” vs. Oliver Dowden when she substituted for Keir at PMQs. A Labour government feels closer than ever, the data shows this and the attitude of our activists does too. We must keep focused as this is our real opportunity to change lives for the better. We must also keep in mind how bad five more years of the Tories would be.

 

Finally, under AOB, we agreed that once the current seven selections are completed all parliamentary selections will be conducted using the new constituency boundaries.