Competence matters - so do the basics

Labour want to run the country - they have to get better at running the Labour Party first.

Buy me a coffee

I’ve written before on the need for the Labour Party to have fewer internal elections. Politically it does us absolutely no good to keep fighting internal battles.

So far, it seems I may not be voting in this year’s NEC election. Not because I don’t want to - though, admittedly, before it seemed I couldn’t I was wondering how to electronically spoil my ballot. There is nothing like being told that you can’t have something to make you want it more. And at various stages since ballots opened a few weeks ago, I have been led to believe I would be unable to vote.

Firstly I didn’t receive my ballot. I waited patiently for about a week before mentioning this on Twitter. Where among other respondents NEC candidate Abdi Duale told me there was a link to go to that opened a few days hence where I could request a new ballot. Abdi (I hope he won’t mind me telling you this) also DMed me the link almost the moment it went live. So far, so much good candidating!

So I went to the portal, which looks like this.

I entered my email address went through CAPTCHA and waited. I added the CES address to my safe senders’ list and waited. Nothing. Not a holding response, not a ballot, not a sausage.

And yes, I checked my spam constantly. There seem to be a lot of confused and lonely young women out there who believe I am their perfect partner. I am also delighted to tell you I have won many many lotteries I have no memory of entering. What I don’t have is a Labour Party NEC ballot.

I waited 2 days. Then I tried again. Nothing.

I tried a third time. Nothing.

Then I sent an email. After a day or so I got a response directing me to this same website. No mention of any problems with my membership.

I tried a fourth time.

I also had a Twitter response from Ann Black who offered to look into this for me. I emailed her with my membership number and she said she would try - though obviously couldn’t reissue the ballot herself (to which I lightheartedly responded that that would probably be very poor practice if she could - as a candidate!).

I emailed again and finally got this response.

This is the first I have ever heard of being in arrears. I haven’t been written to about it or called or asked to pay up what I - apparently owe. I responded by saying as much.

I also then called the Labour Party member services team. At this point, 19 days after I had first tried to use the Reissue Portal I finally spoke to a human being. Adam from Member Services.

Adam told me that my membership hadn’t been paid for a significant period. Going back through my records it seems that the Labour Party stopped taking my long (long long) established Direct Debit from my account. I mistakenly told Adam this might have been because I changed banks - I couldn’t remember when that had happened. But checking, that’s not the case - this account has payments taken from either side of the break and I have never cancelled the Direct Debit.

I asked Adam - whose job is in MEMBER SERVICES remember - to tell me what the process should be if a member falls behind in their payments. Should the Party write to them etc.

Three times Adam point blank refused to answer that question and finally, abruptly ended the call with me. Not what I would call service - even with my apparently questionable membership.

About an hour after I got off the phone with Adam, I received a final email from the Party.

That was 18 hours ago. What I have not yet had is a ballot. I will update this post if this arrives.

This is, of course, just my story. As is my wont, I shared some of the ups and downs of it on Twitter. It turned out that it was very much not just my story. A number of people got in touch through replies and DMs to say it has happened to them too. This highly unrepresentative sample of people have had the same issue and either been locked out of a process or are the few tenacious (bloody-minded) enough to care about the process enough to pursue it.

So clearly this is a known issue (someone might want to inform Adam so he can run a better script response next time). An issue that could and should have either been fixed in time or at the least had a process of a standard response to cut down the frustration on the part of members.

As I have said before I don’t think this internal election matters very much. But if I had just voted and gone on my way, I wouldn’t have been forced to look quite so far under the hood of the administration of the Labour Party and been quite so alarmed at what I have seen.

My experience probably only scratched the surface. But the Labour Party reportedly lost 91,000 members last year. Am I one of them? It also lost significant membership income - a drop of £3.2 million - of which presumably my situation is a small contributor. If the party is haemorrhaging money, you would think it would at least ask a member who had fallen (accidentally, unwittingly and unknowingly in this case) into arrears to, you know, pay up! Surely the cost of writing to such members would be recouped in the money made back from fees being brought up to date.

This experience highlights something that worried me during the long-running saga of the Forde Report: namely that there is no one who has the will or skills to run the Labour Party as an organisation. The party machinery is all about politics and not about making sure the boring but vital job of running the party with a semblance of professionalism.

These NEC elections are - once again - a case in point. With candidates running on slates that reflect their political allegiances within the Party’s factions: Labour to Win, Momentum, Closed Labour etc. I don’t want to hear where you stand on the conflict in Palestine - I want to know what your approach to being on the management board of a significant national organisation is. I don’t even care where you personally stand on the complexities of discussions that balance gender identity with sex-based rights. But I do want to know how you will approach those who disagree over these topics in a way that is fair, even-handed and conforms with the law.

The Labour Party wants to run the country. We are starting to put out some excellent policies that would see us through the current crisis and make sure we are better off in the long term.

But the Party have a history of good policies that we are not trusted to deliver. That is one of the reasons that Keir Starmer has made ‘competence’ such a key value throughout his leadership and it is right to do so. We cannot change anything if we don’t have the right combination of competence and policy.

But that competence has to be reflected in the party not just its projected leadership. And it is not. Not at all. This long-winded and personal example is just one indicator of that. So much that was in the Forde report was then and remains true. So much that members experience - from out-of-date unworkable and unresponsive technology to staff unable or unwilling to share with you the rules that guide contentious decisions or even how basic processes should be run.

Labour today are 15 points ahead in the polls. The Tories are currently competing as to who can wield the biggest knife to their future prospects (the winner is previous record holder Michael Gove, of course). Labour may well end up in power and I pray that they do.

But if they want to do something with that power. If they want to hold on to that power. If they want to truly earn that power they have to prove they have the ability to run things.

We are a long way from that state of being. So too are the Tories. But when was being as bad as them ever good enough?

UPDATE 22.08.2022: My ballot arrived this morning. I have now voted.

Pay my membership arrears!

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I run a political and communications consultancy called Political Human. Please get in touch if you are looking for political or media consultancy advice, strategic communication and campaign planning, ghostwriting, copywriting, editing, training or coaching.

You can read some lovely things that some of my clients have said here.

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What I’ve been up to

I saw the absolutely exceptional Monster at Park Theatre. Abigail Hood is definitely on my ‘one to watch’ list.

There will be an update on news about Triggered soon. Watch this space. Plus the third piece is really taking shape. All very exciting.

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A final appeal. This newsletter takes quite a while to think about and write. I know things are really tough all over at the moment, but if you can spare some cash to say you’ve appreciated it, I can’t tell you how much that would mean to me right now.

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Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.