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For democracy: refer back CAC

The Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC) report no.1 will be the first item on Sunday. Delegates from the many CLPs who have had motions ruled out on spurious grounds will be making their appeals. The only way they can do that is by “referring back” the whole CAC report, and the chair usually pushes through the item very fast. Make sure you’re in place and paying attention, and vote for “reference back”.

“Supporting Families”

The “scrap 2-child cap” motion is on the agenda, under the topic “Supporting Families”. Prioritise that topic.
We’re for delegates also prioritising as recommended by Campaign for Labour Party Democracy:
Higher Education • Corporate Structure (i.e. renationalisation of water) • Orgreave • Taxation • Gambling • British and Scottish values (there’s a motion opposing the flag-waving).
The unions have prioritised these, so CLPs don’t need to vote for them:
Industrial energy Prices – GMB, Community, ASLEF
Guaranteed Hours – Usdaw
Staffing in adult Social Care – GMB, UNISON
Public Spending – CWU, UNITE, TSSA, FBU
AI and our rights – CWU, MU, USDAW
Subsidiary companies and insourcing – Unison
Public sector Workers – Unite
CLPs usually command six priorities, but this year it’s seven as a sop for the outrageous cancellation of women’s conference. We hear “public sector workers” will cover the Birmingham bins dispute and be debated on Wednesday.
As far as we know, EHRC, asylum, Palestine, housing motions worth debate all remain ruled out of order, so aren’t candidates for prioritisation.
The priorities ballot will be 10am-2pm. It’s rushed through, but make sure you read the motions and think about it before you vote.

Israel-Palestine: for real debate

There will be debate on Israel-Palestine at conference, but the devil is in the details.
The Conference Arrangements Committee ruled out “contemporary” motions initiated by UK Friends of Standing Together and Palestine Solidarity Campaign on spurious grounds (like critical motions on housing).
Now leadership loyalists have pushed an emergency motion to applaud what the government is already doing, like recognising Palestine. The CAC is ruling that one in order, and also more critical emergency motions. There will be a debate (we don’t yet know when).
The pro-leadership motion has a pro-Palestinian sheen, but does not even mention calling for a ceasefire (though it implies it). It definitely does not demand stopping all arms sales, giving support to Standing Together and the anti-war movement in Israel, getting the IDF and settlers out of the West Bank.
Vote for emergency motions which include those calls.

No to digital ID

The Blair-Brown government’s drive to introduce ID cards was widely recognised even then as a bad idea.
Keir Starmer’s new digital ID scheme is no better. We won’t have to carry cards? We won’t have to show ID to get health care? Maybe not at first, but then…? And we could have a far-right government soon. It will not clean up the cash-in-hand economy, any more than NI numbers do now or Social Security numbers do in the USA. Instead, restore and extend free movement and give asylum-seekers the right to seek work!
It is just another attempt to placate Reform and seem “tough on migrants”. FBU leader Steve Wright has already condemned it.

McDonnell and Begum reinstated

John McDonnell and Apsana Begum have had the Labour whip reinstated after being suspended almost a year ago for voting to scrap the 2-child benefit cap. We guess the leadership is smarting after its forced u-turns on PIP access cuts and the Winter Fuel Allowance, and wants to “shorten the line” of its defensive fortifications against the unions and the Labour membership. Still, it shows that sticking at it works better than lapsing into despair.

Naming and shaming

The new proposal that people doing “community service” sentences should have their names and photos placarded around has already been condemned by the probation workers’ union NAPO. It will make offenders seeking rehabilitation and their families victims of far-right vigilante persecution.

Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham’s net favourability rating among Labour members is +69, and Keir Starmer’s is -11. Burnham has committed to scrapping the 2-child benefit cap, to public ownership of utilities, and to a wealth tax – and, vaguely, to some restoration of Labour democracy. He has launched Mainstream, which may give some levers for Labour activists to coordinate, and which we’re keen to support as far as it goes.
So how could we not want to see Burnham challenge Starmer?
But we remember Burnham as a loyalist Blair-Brown minister. We know that he is essentially backing the subcontractor bosses in the current Manchester bus workers’ dispute.
So we’re also building a grassroots Labour real-left network.

The test next May

At the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy meeting on Saturday evening, Richard Burgon MP said: “If the Labour leadership shows next May that it can’t defeat the threat from Reform and the far right, then it must stand aside”.
As Burgon said, the threat of a Trump-type government – Reform, or a coalition of Reform with Tories like Badenoch who names Argentina’s Javier Milei as her model – is now a real one, not only to radicals and migrants and trans people, but also to all women, all workers, and to trade unionists.

Conference diary

A few choices:
Sunday: 11am – Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS protest, Lime Street
Monday: 6pm – Socialist Health Association ‘Restore NHS’,  Friends’ Meeting House
6:30 – Labour Left Internationalists fringe meeting, Friends’ Meeting House (see front page)
Tuesday: 12.30 – Labour for Trans Rights rally, ACC 3A
4:30 – Pride in Labour fringe meeting, Central Library
5:30 – Ukraine Solidarity Campaign, the Liverpool Pub, 14 James St L2 7PQ (sponsored by LLI with Chartist and Open Labour)
6:30 – CLPD-Momentum rally, Friends’ Meeting House, followed by Momentum social at the Denbigh Castle

The triple-lock on pensions

In the search for “easier” benefit cuts to balance the books, circles near to government have been talking about ending the triple lock on pensions (pensions rise each year by the highest of 2.5%, average wages or CPI inflation).
Pensioners are much better off than before Pension Credit (2003) and the triple-lock (2010). But, as Ruth Hayes pointed out in the CLPD meeting on Saturday evening, the “gender gap” for pensions is still 48% (compare 7% for full-time wages).
That is a result of women in the past having fewer well-paid, well-pensioned jobs. But the major way the injustice can be at least mitigated is improving public pensions. Defend the triple-lock! Tax the rich!

“A huge disappointment”

A verdict on the Starmer-Reeves record so far… and this time from big business people quoted in the Guardian of 27 Sep.
They’re fed up with the NI employer contribution increase and with the lack of public investment. They’ll be more fed up when the 26 November budget raises taxes again, as surely it will.
Starmer and Reeves “are trying to be all things to all people”, as capitalist Stuart Rose says. Result: a disappointment to all, and the rise of Reform. Labour should side solidly with the working class, not pretend we can schmooze both workers and bosses.

Patriotic national renewal?

More Union Flags, more blather about “the best country in the world” in place of action to make it better and solidarity with workers and labour movements elsewhere striving for common goals?
On all the evidence, it doesn’t convince Reform voters. It just signals that we’re trying to schmooze them rather than convince them of answers on housing, jobs, and public services.
Welsh Labour leader Eluned Morgan is right to say that a real act of national renewal would be ending child poverty.

NCC and CAC ballots

Rachel Garnham, Nicodemus Leo, and Dave Levy are the left candidates for NCC.
Jack Bellingham and Jean Crocker and Barbara Roberts (Disabled Members) are the left candidates for CAC.
Even if you consider yourself not on the left, we’d advocate you vote for them in order to have pluralism on those committees and voices willing to be critical of what’s handed down by the leadership and the unelected staff.

Labour Left Internationalists

Standing for democracy, class struggle, and internationalism in the Labour Party
labourleftint.uk
We’ll be distributing bulletins at the entrances to the cordon, or come and meet people from LLI in the Costa cafe in the Albert Dock.