Statement on the Labour left slate for the NEC

This was sent to me and I agree wholeheartedly with it. I'll be voting for the Momentum slate in the interest of left unity, but we need to do much better in future.

We feel that there should be a much more transparent and democratic process engaged in for the selection of the NEC Left Slate in the future. It is no longer sufficient that a handful of Executive members of Left organisations meet as the CLGA and choose who we are told to vote for: the grassroots members of these organisations should have the ability to choose who they want on this slate. Having the Executive members of the CLGA organisations select members to put forward for these positions excludes ordinary members from the process. The current system whereby a small group comprising the CLGA decides the final slate by “consensus” is no longer representative of the grassroots Left.

We are proposing that Momentum lead the democratisation within the Left by putting in place the following system for choosing the next NEC Left Slate:

Anyone who is a member of any one of the CLGA organisations and who is eligible to stand for the Labour Party’s NEC is able to put themselves forward for election. They must submit a brief bio and at least one nomination to indicate support from either a branch (or another local organisation) or the Executive of one of these organisations. To facilitate a fully democratic decision-making, all the CLGA organisations must circulate the details (bios & nominations) of all the candidates to all their members, as it is not simply the ability to vote for these candidates, but the opportunity to have full knowledge in which members are making informed choices.

The selection of the final slate is compiled by allowing each member of all the CLGA organisations to vote for the 9 candidates, using a Single Transferable Voting system. Since individuals may be a member of more than one Left organisation within the CLGA, the ballots are issued to members based on Labour Party membership numbers, so that an individual only gets one vote. The 9 candidates receiving the most votes are deemed to be the “left slate” and will be advertised by all the participating groups as such. This selection process should ideally be run by an independent scrutineer such as the Electoral Reform Society.