Brown wins emergency motion vote

No more voting at conference

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7009675.stm

So that's it folks, we're out of the frame.

How on earth can it be OMOV when the party couldn't even mail out the NPF document to all members for the consultation?  So it's one (special) member one vote.

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Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#1)

Yep, it's one member one vote. And the lucky member is... Gordon!

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#7)

Oh good, only 10 years late....

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#2)

Oh get over it. There will still be votes at conference - this just means that they will they'll actually be taken forward and discussed.

You might like the yearly all-or-nothing oppose-the -leadership fun but most of us want to influence the leadership, not dictate to them.

The NPF might not be as 'sexy' as a fight on the conference floor but it's a damn sight more likely to get the leadership to shift than playing Don Quixote.

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#3)

Get the leadership to shift on what?

Can anyone give an example of a substantive policy decision that came through the NPF?

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#4)

Well, that's true if you're hoping that the NPF will result in something the leadership is totally opposed to - renationalising the railways for instance - but that's not its purpose.

Conference motions might have given a loudspeaker to delegates, but it hardly gave them influence did it? The NPF is a far better way for members (as opposed to delegates) to get involved. 

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#5)

How?

I've been to dozens of regional/other policy forums and - while enjoying meeting other members, etc. - have found them completely inadequate as a policy-formulating process.  There are all sorts of interesting discussions in the focus groups which are then wiped away in the 'facilitating' process (far more destructive than compositing ever was) and reports are constructed that takes no account of the strength of feeling of participants or the weight of feeling on any issue - it has no democratic substance whatsoever.  Eventual submissions are restricted to answers to the ludicrously-phrased questions in the policy documents.  It's an incredibly expensive PR farce.

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#6)

I agree Dunc it's the facilitating process that gives the commissioners of the forum the answer they were looking for in the first place. All policy forums in business and in politics are run the same way.

Noticed the new PiP's are now up on the mPurl sites - now that really dis-enfranchises members without broadband internet connections (about 85% of my constituency)  How will these people get their OMOV? 

Re: Brown wins emergency motion vote (#8)

What a strange notion of democracy and deliberative policy making you have JM. Your post suggests that the leadership has some kind of veto on what can and cannot be discussed. Renationalising the railways is a good example actualy. sure the leadership is opposed, with Brown as chancellor using party staff to urge delegates not to vote for the proposal at last years conference on the knowingly false basis that it would put 4p on income tax. (The motion avoided this cost of compensation for private rail operators by calling for franchises to be taken into public ownership as they expired.)

This is a motion that made it through the NPF process (albeit as a minority report) and is one of the reasons I and many others think that the NPF has some virtues - on paper-  going for it. But to decalre that if the leadership is opposed then we should not expect anything other than a two fingered slaute is depressingly samll minded - not least becasue poll after poll after poll shows that the voting public - the very same people you have often cited as being as important as Labour Party members in making policy decisions - have shown that they would be in favour of a publicly owned railway system.

As for the NPF being a better way for members o be involved in policy making, pfooey. Pfooey again I say. I know who my delegates to the conference are. I elect them, can quiz them and hold them accountable, because they are chosen from the ranks of CLP members. NPF members are elected by region, not a party unit with which most members are closely involved. I'm lucky in my CLP to have to NPF members who are assiduous in reporting back  - but it is just a coincidence that they are in my CLP. It is significant thatafter ten years of PiP the acocuntability of the NPF to members is beginning, just beginning to be taken seriously. But with over 650 CLPs and affiliated unions but less than 200 NPF members, who do members go to to find out about NPF processes - and this is quite apart form making sure tohse processes are not abused as Duncan and Curlew  point out, below.