Download pdf here.

The topics prioritised

Yet again, the tactic of tucking motions under misleading subject headings, pressure on CLP delegates to prioritise uncontentious subjects, plus giving delegates only minimal sight of the motions before the ballot, has won through. The 2-child benefit cap (tucked under “Support for Families”) has not been prioritised. We have:
High Streets: insubstantial.
Water: calls for public ownership were hived off into another topic (“corporate structure”), so nothing here beyond calls for stricter regulation.
NHS Dentistry: insubstantial, poor substitute for public-service provision of dental care.
Fly-tipping: not helpful.
Public spending: CWU says “any gaps in public expenditure are remedied through a system of progressive taxation” and Unite demands “a wealth tax on the richest”. Let’s hope those words get into the composite.
AI and our rights: insubstantial.
Animal welfare: motions call for “a complete end to animal testing”. That is already notional government policy, and is a worthy aspiration, but science is a long way from doing that without destroying life-saving pharmaceutical research. Government publishing a notional “roadmap” won’t change the science. Oppose.
Staffing in adult social care: we hope the wording to “retain the 5-year route to Indefinite Leave to Remain” (not extend the qualifying period) and for a “visa scheme in social care enabling workers to challenge bad employers without the threat of deportation” gets through. (Though it should be for all workers, not just care workers).
Violence Against Women and Girls: not much here will work without serious funding by taxing the rich (absent). It is good that Pendle and Clitheroe name-checks threats to trans women, but the wording suggests spaces for trans women should be separate from women’s spaces.
Skills: insubstantial.
Industrial energy prices: No mention of reducing energy prices by reshaping the grid under public ownership; expanding renewables and nuclear; reshaping household energy by redesign, insulation, installing heat pumps. GMB latches on to real issue that UK’s industrial energy prices are higher than most countries’ (mostly because of imported LNG) to boost a drive to keep gas in play, with speculative hopes that adapting gas infrastructure to use hydrogen will work well some time in future.
Guaranteed Hours (Usdaw): insubstantial.
Subsidiary companies and insourcing (Unison) – important issue, weak motion.
Public sector workers (Unite): includes support for Birmingham bin workers, but only in muffled terms. It does say: scrap all legislative loopholes that allow local authority and other employers to use “fire and rehire” against their own workforce; and make it a duty for Government appointed Local Authority Commissioners to ensure that disputes are resolved.

Israel-Palestine: for solidarity!

There will be debate on Israel-Palestine 10am Monday, on emergency motions. “Peace in the Middle East 1” is an insubstantial “congratulating the government” text; vote against, so that “Peace in Middle East 2”, including a full arms embargo, does not fall.

Democracy and the CAC process

Of contemporary motions submitted by CLPs and affiliated socialist societies, on a rough count from Conference Arrangements Committee report #1, the CAC ruled 95 in order, and 149 out of order: 19 because they are claimed to “refer to an organisational matter”, and 130 generically because they “do not fulfil the criteria”, i.e. are judged to be “on more than one topic”, not “contemporary”, or “covered” by the NPF report, though this year the NPF report says little good or bad.
The rules are slippery, and have long allowed the CAC to be more liberal or rule out wholesale at will. This year it has gone for ruling out wholesale. That happened a fair bit in the Miliband years, too.
The total number of submissions is disappointing, 244 from over 600 CLPs and dozens of socialist societies. As a minimum, the “contemporary” restriction should be removed, as it was between 2018 and 2023 (and before 1997); motions should be published (online) very soon after the deadline date; the CAC should publish all ruled-out motions (as a number of unions do, for example), to enable informed challenge by conference to the rulings-out; the CAC’s licence in categorising motions by “topic” should be limited. Some more suggestions for cleaning this process up: bit.ly/cac-c

Challenges to CAC

Several delegates challenged the CAC report on Sunday, including those from Glasgow Kelvin and Hackney South CLPs whose Gaza motions had been ruled out.
Horsham CLP challenged the ruling out of their motion on Housing as “substantially addressed” in the NPF Report. We are pleased to offer a fantastic prize to the first CAC member who can give us a page number for any reference to homelessness or the “right to buy”. The Labour Campaign for Council Housing could send a speaker to your CLP: bit.ly/lc-ch.

Liverpool Trans Pride 28 Sep

Hundreds came together before marching through the city, chanting for bodily autonomy, against fascism, and in solidarity with other struggles, from Palestine to anti-racism. Labour promised to “remove indignities for trans people”, yet today more and more of us live in fear, targeted by the EHRC, the Supreme Court, and a political establishment intent on scapegoating us.

Far right on streets: not an emergency?

Oldham East CLP was informed that its emergency motion had not been accepted by the CAC.
Its core calls are for the Government to stop contracting asylum-seeker accommodation to Serco, Clearsprings and Mears, and for safe legal routes for refugees.
On Sunday afternoon a far-right protest of several hundred outside conference focused on farmers’ grievances about inheritance tax (etc.) and objections to digital ID (on conspiracy-theory or “won’t stop small boats” grounds, rather than how such a scheme can be used against migrants by a future far-right government).

Deputy Leader and the Affiliates

Disability Labour, the Socialist Health Association (SHA), and the Socialist Educational Association (SEA) all balloted their members on nominations, and have published their figures. All three nominated Lucy Powell (so the Socialist Education Association did not nominate the Secretary of State for Education). Large numbers voted to nominate neither: 15% of respondents in SHA, 17% of in Disability Labour, 19% in the SEA. You can vote Powell in the actual ballot (in effect now a plebiscite) without endorsing her weak stance by nominating.
Party rules do not say that the MPs go first to sift nominations. Nominations could have been sought simultaneously from unions, CLPs, MPs, even if those without 20% of MPs would finally fail. No wonder many chose not to nominate when they only had the choice of the PLP’s two.

NCC and CAC ballots

The voting is Monday, 9am-4pm. 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.

Membership figures

The General Secretary’s report on Sunday gave no membership figures.
Membership is sagging, if not as dramatically as after 1997 with Blair. The leadership response so far has been to say that they will no longer update the NEC on membership. So? Do we have to wait until the Party gives annual figures to the Electoral Commission, as legally it must? And wait even longer for policies and action which will rebuild membership?

Leadership poll

LabourList finds that 64% of Labour members think Keir Starmer has done “badly” in government so far, and a 53%-31% majority want a change of leader before the next general election.

Conference diary

A few choices:
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

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 meet us at the Costa cafe in the Albert Dock.