A contribution to the discussion arising from – or which should arise from – the “Restore Labour Democracy” initiative. We discussed this at the Labour Left Internationalists committee on 19 April 2026, and decided to publish it as a first draft. We expect further contributions and amendments.

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A draft Charter for Labour Democracy

The Restore Labour Democracy and Reset Labour statements are both circulating and gaining signatories.

The Restore Labour Democracy statement, backed by several trade union leaders, focuses on CLPs’ right to choose their own candidates and the withdrawal of the whip from members of the PLP.

The Reset Labour statement also refers to “genuinely open parliamentary and other selections” and “ending the suspension of MPs”, but additionally to “local members… engaging in meaningful debate and participation” and “democratic policy-making” which, like Mainstream’s objective of working “to ensure the Labour Party is democratic and that the voices and views of all members are heard, respected and heeded”.

What follows is a proposal for a charter for democratising Labour, spelling out clearly some things that are only implied in these statements.

Two preliminary points are important.

There is no single blueprint for how Labour ought to function. Its functioning is always an outcome of the struggles inside the party at different times, with a changing rule book and relationships of power as those struggles develop. The suggestions here are about what we could fight for now, based on working-class norms of collective decision-making and accountability of “higher” bodies to “lower”.
Also, the wording of rules is not the end of it. Much depends on how rules are used by members, CLPs, and unions, and how members, CLPs, and unions allow party officials to use, or even flout, the rules.

The role of Mandelson and Labour Together in the run-up to the last general election was not to change rules, but to manipulate, rules or no rules.

Equally, even the current rule book offers, on paper anyway, many more opportunities for members’ input than any “alternative” (Greens, Your Party, etc.). At present, all too often the party membership “self-suppresses” by not using avenues that exist in the rulebook, for example to refer back sections of NPF reports or to challenge rulings-out by the Conference Arrangements Committee.
Making the party mechanisms live and well-used is inseparable from working to improve them.
Labour Left Internationalists stands for “making conference the party’s sovereign decision-making body”, with party conference determining party policy and manifestos. The Campaign for Labour Democracy is as clear, calling for “a real policy-making Annual Conference”.
It is better for party health and democracy that the leadership argue their case before members when they disagree with a motion, than that they suppress it.
To bypass what the Reset statement calls “meaningful debate and participation” on policy, the National Policy Forum (NPF) was established under the Blair leadership. It is increasingly obvious to party members that the NPF “experiment” has failed. There are no minutes, there is no transparency, and those members and party units that have dutifully submitted ideas every year cannot find out what has happened to them.
There is no rule that justifies the motions to party conference being released only at 8am on the day of the priorities ballot at conference. This serves only to allow factions within the party – at present, the leadership faction, “Labour to Win” – to control delegates’ votes in that ballot and to exclude the CLPs and affiliates from any discussion about priorities.
The rules about “ruling out” motions have not changed, but in recent years as many CLP motions have been ruled out as accepted into the ballot. They are “referred” instead to the NPF or NEC, never to be heard of again.
It was usual at one time for motions to be circulated two months before conference, allowing the membership as a whole (through branches, CLPs and affiliates) to be part of the process. They were issued “forthwith” (as the 1982 rule book put it) after being received 12 weeks before conference, and affiliates could then send in amendments. If that could be done in 1982, it can certainly be done now, with email and electronic text processing).
Motions are grouped for prioritising into “topics”, again released only on the morning of the ballot. The topics are frequently manipulated. In 2025, for example, there was a topic, “water”. But motions calling for public ownership of water were separated out into another “topic”, “corporate structures”.
Even once policy is passed, in recent years the Labour Party has failed to report outcomes of votes. In 2024 the conference resolved that in the October budget Labour would “reverse the introduction of means-testing for the Winter Fuel Allowance” and “commit to public services and infrastructure, ensuring any public expenditure gaps, at a minimum, are restored through taxing wealth and that there are no further cuts to welfare provision for working people and pensioners”.
In 2025 the conference voted for “ensuring that any gaps in public expenditure are remedied through a system of progressive taxation where the wealthy pay their fair share, introducing a wealth tax on the richest to raise revenue for public services and support struggling households.”
It also voted to “retain the five-year route to Indefinite Leave to Remain and halt any moves to retrospectively extend the qualifying period”, and for “enabling workers to challenge bad employers without the threat of deportation”.
In neither year were motions passed on the final day of conference ever published on Labour’s website or in any other way reported to members.
Reset Labour and Mainstream demand that “The Labour leadership must listen to the views of Labour members and affiliates” and that “the voices and views of all members are heard, respected and heeded”. By a democratic sovereign conference, or how? There is a fudge there. Both statements need discussion and clarification.
The democracy of conference is central. To achieve the aims of the Reset and Restore statements, and Mainstream, sufficient detail must be set out clearly, along with other democratic reforms needed.

One – A democratic and sovereign conference

“There is one thing I would like to say, I think it is about time we said it. As long as I hold any position in the parliamentary party – and I know I can speak for my colleagues also – we are not going to take our instructions from any outside body unless we agree with them”.
(Ramsey MacDonald, speaking at, and about, the Labour Party Conference, from Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1928, as quoted in Lewis Minkin, The Labour Party Conference)
The :”outside body”, was, of course, the Labour Party annual conference. Yet even now the rulebook still says:
“The work of the Party shall be under the direction and control of Party conference… Party conference shall decide from time to time what specific proposals of legislative, financial or administrative reform shall be included in the Party programme”.
Labour must respect the democracy and sovereignty of conference.
A charter for Labour democracy should include:
1. Respect for conference as the sovereign policy-making body
2. Abolish the “contemporary” requirement for conference motions
3. Abolish the one-year delay for debating rule-change submissions from CLPs, and the ban on re-raising rule-change proposals within three years. Require the same notice for rule-change submissions from the NEC as from CLPs or unions
4. The motions and proposed rule changes submitted to conference to be released to CLPs and affiliates in good time for them to be able to discuss them
5. Topics for motions either to be announced well in advance of the motions deadline, or decided transparently. As the 2018 CLPD “Charter for a Democratic Conference” put it, “the criteria for motions should be flexible and fair”.
6. Motions “ruled out” to be circulated too, with reasons given for ruling out.
7. All conference decisions to be published. (“Charter for a Democratic Conference”: “Conference decisions and all papers should be available online to party members”)
8. Require the PLP and Chief Whip to report to the conference, including on MPs’ discipline, with the conference able to confirm or reject PLP disciplinary decisions
9. Establish democratic stand-alone Women’s Conference, Young Labour, and Labour Students conferences. Women’s conference, and women’s posts in the party, to be trans-inclusive.
10. Abolish the National Policy Forum. Whilst the NPF exists there should be transparency for members about its functioning, including reports-back from elected members and minutes. When conference decides to “refer back” a section of an NPF report, the NPF should be obliged to respond in writing to the next conference, and be open to challenge. When CAC refers conference motions to the NPF, the NPF should be obliged to report its responses to the next conference, and be open to challenge on them.

Two – A strong and democratic trade union link

Full Labour Party democracy also requires democratic reform in the trade unions. But changes in the Party’s own rules are also necessary.
11. Respect for conference, where the trade-union vote is strong, as the sovereign policy-making body
12. Restore adequate trade-union representation on the NEC. Elected representatives of affiliates and of CLPs should have the overwhelming majority on the NEC, as they used to have. At present they have only 22 seats out of 39. The NEC should publish minutes.
13. Restore Labour local government democracy, opening the way to trade-union input into Labour councils’ decisions.

Three – Democratic and open selection of parliamentary candidates

The run-up to the 2024 general election saw multiple manipulations of the selection process, with the NEC having prepared a couple of years previously by removing CLP’s established long-listing rights.
14. CLPs to have rights of long-listing, shortlisting and selection for parliamentary candidates, with clearly defined rules and processes. We support the rule changes proposed by Momentum, at https://bit.ly/4txnTA5, to bring back that right for CLPs whilst protecting the rights of the Co-operative Party and Labour’s affiliates
15. Mandatory reselection of MPs, as of council candidates
16. NEC and party offices must respect party rules – protect the integrity of the selection process, remain impartial and intervene only in the circumstances of a demonstrated breach of rules or in the event of a CLP being unable to fullfil the task.

Four – Rights of CLPs and members

The CLP is the basic unit of party organisation, intended to “unite the forces of Labour within the constituency and to ensure the establishment of, and to keep in active operation, an appropriate organisation and structure”, as the current rule book puts it.
But the CLP role in the party has been undermined by reducing its role in conference and restricting its rights to select parliamentary candidates (see 6 and 7). In and after October 2023 there were multiple reports of CLPs being told that they could not debate motions properly submitted by party branches or affiliates. There are CLPs that have been told that they cannot invite speakers to meetings without the permission of the NEC. There is nothing like that in the rule book, and local strikers and campaigners speaking at Labour meetings is a practice as old as the party.
Meanwhile there is a lack of due process and natural justice in the party’s processes for placing CLPs in “special measures” (and how they get out again) and its disciplinary processes for individual members.
17. NEC and party offices to abide by party rules – CLPs to be able to determine their own business in accordance with the rules and procedural guidelines for CLPs in the party rule book. No interference by party staff in CLP agendas – under the rules only the chair may rule a motion out of order, not a regional office (chapter 9 of the rule book on Regions does not give any regional structure this power).
18. CLPs to have control of campaigns for parliamentary by-elections and in general elections.
19. Labour MPs to be expected to provide reports to their CLPs, attending in person wherever possible. (The section “rights and responsibilities of elected members” in the current rule book gives no mention of this).
20. National and regional conferences to be organised in such a way that CLPs are fully aware in advance of the agenda and motions for debate, with any motions ruled out are circulated in the motions book with reason given for the ruling out.
21. Transparent reporting of the number of CLPs in special measures (under clause I-1-C of appendix two of the rule book)
22. Due process and natural justice for all member “discipline” matters. No expulsion without an in-person hearing and right to submit a defence. No “bans” or “proscriptions” – expulsions only for support for candidates standing against Labour, or racist or other anti-working class action, abuse of party funds, and the like, not for “liking” left-wing pro-Labour social media posts. No suspension unless basic party functioning is at risk. Every suspended member must have a right to a prompt hearing, and the right to campaign in their own defence.
23. Recognition of Young Labour groups to be decided by CLPs, not by Region

Five – A Democratic Labour Party leadership

The threshold for PLP nominations for leader and deputy leader was doubled in 2021 to 20%. In the most recent deputy leadership election the NEC did not even follow the party rulebook. Instead it invented a PLP nominations stage in which candidates had to get 20% before even being considered for CLP and affiliate nominations, rather than nominations in all sections proceeding concurrently.
24. NEC to adhere to party rules. No part of the thresholds under chapter four, II.2.B, comes before any other.
25. Threshold for PLP nominations to be returned to pre-2021. (We support the rule changes proposed by Momentum for this: https://bit.ly/4txnTA5).
26. A democratic PLP – cabinet and shadow cabinet to be elected by the PLP.
27. Labour in government to legislate for abolition or democratisation of those features of the state that provide for leadership power of patronage over the PLP – honours system, peerages, etc.

Six – Democratic Labour Party Regions

Although the roles and responsibilities of the party’s regional structures are set out clearly in chapters 9A and 9B of the rule book, often regional structures either fail to operate or seek to exercise powers they do not have. There have been damaging cases of party regional offices acting with no approval or knowledge of Regional Executive Committees, such as the Yorkshire and Humberside Reform-style “migration updates” social media posts. More generally there is no oversight of RECs by regional conferences.
28. Regional offices to abide by party rules – no intervening in CLP agendas or otherwise stepping beyond their remit.
29. Regional Executive Committees must be required to report to Regional Conferences on their work since the last conference, attendance at meetings, and decisions made, with the opportunity for questions and references back. (Some core business, such as hearing appeals against the withdrawal of the whip by a Labour group and appeals against exclusion from the panel of local government candidates should of course be reported as numerical summary, rather than details or names of cases).

Seven – Democratic local government area parties

At one time, District Labour Parties were an important part of Labour’s campaigning and political life, but the current “Local Government Committee” structure is unworkable in many areas. Worse, the 2024 rule changes removed the LGC responsibility for the local manifesto, and the 2025 rule changes removed CLP observers to Labour Groups. In some areas of the country LGCs are currently not functioning at all, leaving everything to Labour Groups or employed staff.
30. The party’s structures in the local government area, LGC or however else named, to have responsibility for the local manifesto. A return to the District Party model.
31. Those structures to manage arrangements for observers to Labour Groups
32. A local electoral college for choosing leaders of Labour Groups
33. LGCs and branches to have control of campaigns for local elections. (A requirement for “sign-off” by regional officials, not even Regional Executive Committees, at best adds damaging delay).