Cleaning Up Politics
Here's a very fair minded piece by Matthew Parris in the Times which pays tribute to the efforts of Ed Miliband to forge a new relationship between the Labour Party and the trade unions - while explaining the need for change in the first place.
Put simply, the present system of 'inertia selling' is indefensible and in any other walk of life he trade unions would be up in arms demanding urgent action to protect the consumer - in this case their own members who are used to raise money for a political party that only a minority of members support.
In Scotland, this madness stand out even more like sore thumb because for years the SNP has been the most popular party with the voting public - and that has to be true, broadly speaking, amongst all categories of Scottish voter including those who are members of trade unions.
So cleaning up politics is the task that Ed Miliband has set himself - and it will be interesting to se whether he pulls it off in the teeth of opposition from so many powerful vested interests.
I salute Ed Miliband’s big, brave mission
By Matthew Parris
For different reasons Blairites and Tories want Labour’s leader to fail in his bid to reform the union link
Something odd is happening. Somebody is trying to do a big, brave, right thing in politics — and the world wants to look the other way. A young leader of the Labour Party is vowing to tackle a massive abuse in his party, an abuse nobody can seriously defend. It skews the party’s relationship with the trade unions, compromises Labour in the eyes of millions and is a stain on the party’s reputation. To confront the challenge that Tony Blair funked is noble, but it is Herculean.
Ed Miliband’s first hurdle is that, though simple and profound, the reform he seeks takes a couple of minutes to understand. Two thirds of all trades union members belong to unions “affiliated” with the Labour Party. Their procedures vary somewhat, but all more or less (Unison rather less) herd a member towards a form of membership (also called “affiliate”) of the Labour Party unless he or she explicitly opts out.
By failing to opt out, some three million trade unionists end up with this “affiliated” Labour membership, an estimated half (for instance) of the Unite union unaware they’d done it, according to a poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft. It found that if members had been asked to opt in, only 30 per cent would have complied; and only one in eight would have wanted to join the party as proper members. One in four would vote Conservative. Only half would vote Labour.
In truth, union members’ “affiliate membership” is a ghost status, invented as a smokescreen for the direct payment of huge sums by the trade union, not by individual members. But their £3 annual payment for affiliate membership will be added to their union dues and paid over by their union to Labour in a regular lump sum. This, together with discretionary donations made by the unions themselves, adds up to about a third of the party’s entire income. The essentially anonymous affiliate “members” get no party voting rights themselves.
The union, however, gets a “block” vote on motions at Labour conferences. “Block” voting commands 50 per cent of the overall vote and an individual union’s share of the block depends on the number of affiliated members on its books. This terracotta army is marshalled by the union, “voting” as a collective. Their money, the “political levy”, has been harvested by simple inertia.
Elsewhere, “inertia selling” is illegal. Since 1971 it has been an offence to supply unsolicited goods or services and then demand payment, essentially what Labour and the trades unions are doing. It is this practice that Mr Miliband has vowed to abolish.
The response? Westminster and Fleet Street seem able only to sneer: Ed Miliband doesn’t mean it, can’t do it, and if he did he would bankrupt his party. He has met a barrage of scepticism and defeatism. A big proposal; an anaemic response.
Where are the Labour moderates who should be praising Mr Miliband’s courage? Where are the Tories who for more than half a century have screamed that Labour was “in hock to the unions”? Where are the media, especially the Tory-inclined newspapers? Strident over the years in condemning Labour’s union links, they now damn Mr Miliband with faint praise.
Why? I’ll tell you. Labour’s modernising moderates and their media friends, and the centre-right and its media friends, don’t want Mr Miliband to succeed. For different reasons they’d both prefer the union albatross to stay firmly round his neck.
I’ll deal briskly with the tepidity of Labour modernists. Most of them didn’t vote for Ed in the leadership contest and have been in a colossal sulk since 2010. Many are unreconstructed Blairites. Some secretly want Labour to lose under Mr Miliband.
This goes some way, too, to explaining the tepidity of the centre-right media. They’ve already decided that Mr Miliband’s going to be a flop and they’ve told their audience so. They are not consciously deceiving their audience, but have persuaded themselves that, as this Ed doesn’t match their template, he either doesn’t mean it or cannot see it through. The skinny youth with a sling who slew Goliath wasn’t called Ed.
How about the Tories? Oh dear, I’m going to have to tell you something horrid. In its dark heart the Conservative Party would much rather Britain’s alternative government clung on to an indefensible link with trade-unionism. They know the toxic potency in millions of minds of the image of the raised fist of organised labour. With relief they sink back into the comforting upholstery of aready-made rhetoric about trade union barons, winters of discontent, beer and sandwiches at No 10, union militants, red firebrands, secondary picketing, Spanish practices, scuffles at factory gates, injured police horses, Bob Crow and Arthur Scargill. For a Tory attacking a Labour leader, the gibe “your trade union paymasters” is as valuable as it is cheap. Besides, there’s truth in it.
Now I’m going to remind you of something even more horrid. The Conservative Party has no interest in a national debate about big donations to political parties. For the Tories, a continuing financial link between Labour and the unions is a useful distraction.
The great, unresolved, sheepishly ignored issue of party funding may be seen as a line of dominoes. The last domino in the line is resistance to full-blown state subsidy. The first domino in the line is the one Mr Miliband wants to knock down: unsolicited affiliate membership of a political party. The next, a cutting-down-to-size of the union vote at party conferences and for the leadership, will follow irresistibly. Mr Miliband understands this, which is why he was wise, not cowardly, to avoid the question when he addressed the TUC in Bournemouth this week.
Next would be an overall cap on the amount that individuals and organisations may donate to a political party. “Affiliated Labour members” are a very big figleaf behind which the unions hide their enormous total contribution to the party. Remove it and the spotlight will fall on the other way they donate: by direct, discretionary awards, arguably even more threatening to a party’s independence. But then we’re straight in to the biggest question of all: the reliance of both major parties on a small number of very large donations.
For this evil there can be no justification beyond familiarity and long practice; but objections will sharpen as the contribution from large numbers of small donations, and the national membership of political parties, continue their relentless decline. Once that domino falls — and given that a national political party is expensive to run — the only one left standing is our reluctance to ask the taxpayer to go beyond helping oppositions with their research costs and subsidise political parties generally.
And this is a proposal no politician has the stomach to touch. But follow the dominoes back and you’ll reach the point where Ed Miliband stands today. His courage is remarkable. His logic is impeccable. But it leads finally into a dark valley where neither side wants to go. His battle will be lonely, but I salute him.
For different reasons Blairites and Tories want Labour’s leader to fail in his bid to reform the union link
Something odd is happening. Somebody is trying to do a big, brave, right thing in politics — and the world wants to look the other way. A young leader of the Labour Party is vowing to tackle a massive abuse in his party, an abuse nobody can seriously defend. It skews the party’s relationship with the trade unions, compromises Labour in the eyes of millions and is a stain on the party’s reputation. To confront the challenge that Tony Blair funked is noble, but it is Herculean.
Ed Miliband’s first hurdle is that, though simple and profound, the reform he seeks takes a couple of minutes to understand. Two thirds of all trades union members belong to unions “affiliated” with the Labour Party. Their procedures vary somewhat, but all more or less (Unison rather less) herd a member towards a form of membership (also called “affiliate”) of the Labour Party unless he or she explicitly opts out.
By failing to opt out, some three million trade unionists end up with this “affiliated” Labour membership, an estimated half (for instance) of the Unite union unaware they’d done it, according to a poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft. It found that if members had been asked to opt in, only 30 per cent would have complied; and only one in eight would have wanted to join the party as proper members. One in four would vote Conservative. Only half would vote Labour.
In truth, union members’ “affiliate membership” is a ghost status, invented as a smokescreen for the direct payment of huge sums by the trade union, not by individual members. But their £3 annual payment for affiliate membership will be added to their union dues and paid over by their union to Labour in a regular lump sum. This, together with discretionary donations made by the unions themselves, adds up to about a third of the party’s entire income. The essentially anonymous affiliate “members” get no party voting rights themselves.
The union, however, gets a “block” vote on motions at Labour conferences. “Block” voting commands 50 per cent of the overall vote and an individual union’s share of the block depends on the number of affiliated members on its books. This terracotta army is marshalled by the union, “voting” as a collective. Their money, the “political levy”, has been harvested by simple inertia.
Elsewhere, “inertia selling” is illegal. Since 1971 it has been an offence to supply unsolicited goods or services and then demand payment, essentially what Labour and the trades unions are doing. It is this practice that Mr Miliband has vowed to abolish.
The response? Westminster and Fleet Street seem able only to sneer: Ed Miliband doesn’t mean it, can’t do it, and if he did he would bankrupt his party. He has met a barrage of scepticism and defeatism. A big proposal; an anaemic response.
Where are the Labour moderates who should be praising Mr Miliband’s courage? Where are the Tories who for more than half a century have screamed that Labour was “in hock to the unions”? Where are the media, especially the Tory-inclined newspapers? Strident over the years in condemning Labour’s union links, they now damn Mr Miliband with faint praise.
Why? I’ll tell you. Labour’s modernising moderates and their media friends, and the centre-right and its media friends, don’t want Mr Miliband to succeed. For different reasons they’d both prefer the union albatross to stay firmly round his neck.
I’ll deal briskly with the tepidity of Labour modernists. Most of them didn’t vote for Ed in the leadership contest and have been in a colossal sulk since 2010. Many are unreconstructed Blairites. Some secretly want Labour to lose under Mr Miliband.
This goes some way, too, to explaining the tepidity of the centre-right media. They’ve already decided that Mr Miliband’s going to be a flop and they’ve told their audience so. They are not consciously deceiving their audience, but have persuaded themselves that, as this Ed doesn’t match their template, he either doesn’t mean it or cannot see it through. The skinny youth with a sling who slew Goliath wasn’t called Ed.
How about the Tories? Oh dear, I’m going to have to tell you something horrid. In its dark heart the Conservative Party would much rather Britain’s alternative government clung on to an indefensible link with trade-unionism. They know the toxic potency in millions of minds of the image of the raised fist of organised labour. With relief they sink back into the comforting upholstery of aready-made rhetoric about trade union barons, winters of discontent, beer and sandwiches at No 10, union militants, red firebrands, secondary picketing, Spanish practices, scuffles at factory gates, injured police horses, Bob Crow and Arthur Scargill. For a Tory attacking a Labour leader, the gibe “your trade union paymasters” is as valuable as it is cheap. Besides, there’s truth in it.
Now I’m going to remind you of something even more horrid. The Conservative Party has no interest in a national debate about big donations to political parties. For the Tories, a continuing financial link between Labour and the unions is a useful distraction.
The great, unresolved, sheepishly ignored issue of party funding may be seen as a line of dominoes. The last domino in the line is resistance to full-blown state subsidy. The first domino in the line is the one Mr Miliband wants to knock down: unsolicited affiliate membership of a political party. The next, a cutting-down-to-size of the union vote at party conferences and for the leadership, will follow irresistibly. Mr Miliband understands this, which is why he was wise, not cowardly, to avoid the question when he addressed the TUC in Bournemouth this week.
Next would be an overall cap on the amount that individuals and organisations may donate to a political party. “Affiliated Labour members” are a very big figleaf behind which the unions hide their enormous total contribution to the party. Remove it and the spotlight will fall on the other way they donate: by direct, discretionary awards, arguably even more threatening to a party’s independence. But then we’re straight in to the biggest question of all: the reliance of both major parties on a small number of very large donations.
For this evil there can be no justification beyond familiarity and long practice; but objections will sharpen as the contribution from large numbers of small donations, and the national membership of political parties, continue their relentless decline. Once that domino falls — and given that a national political party is expensive to run — the only one left standing is our reluctance to ask the taxpayer to go beyond helping oppositions with their research costs and subsidise political parties generally.
And this is a proposal no politician has the stomach to touch. But follow the dominoes back and you’ll reach the point where Ed Miliband stands today. His courage is remarkable. His logic is impeccable. But it leads finally into a dark valley where neither side wants to go. His battle will be lonely, but I salute him.
