As ‘Your Party’ struggles and spats its way to getting started, I’ve read some of the current arguments about this and that slate for Executive Committee elections, and I think this might be a key issue. What are slates for?

When loads of us joined the Labour Party to support the Corbyn movement, many of us knew very little of the history of the Labour Party – some had hardly any political background at all – they just recognised an opportunity to wrestle politics away from the slick careerists, and bring it back to what we actually needed – but how was such an inexperienced bunch to know who to vote for in internal elections? All the candidates were pretending to be jolly nice, democratic socialist types.

We had real, serious enemies in the Labour Party too – the ‘Ergon House’ crew for a start, those Labour MPs from organisations like Labour Together and Friends of Israel, who were working their socks off trying to prevent the Corbyn movement making the party work for the people so, slates drawn up by known socialist activists with more experience of the party were really helpful.

Track record

But do we have enemies like that in Your Party? Surely not in anything like the numbers we did in the Labour Party. Surely, if we’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that we need to judge political candidates on their records as activists and, let’s face it, their political skills and insight. I won’t vote for anyone who hasn’t been standing up for the NHS, for the anti-austerity fight-back, or for Palestine but a shouty activist is not necessarily a good, committee-based manager. I worry that we’ve picked up some of that populist, ‘anti-expert’ thinking. A strategist is not necessarily a corrupt, confidence trickster.

Independents

How to see your way through it? Well, given the toxic goings on we’ve experienced from all the political parties in recent years, I think we should be giving our attention to independents – that is, the kind of people who aren’t that keen on being on anyone else’s ‘slate’.

Jeremy Corbyn, the original figurehead of this whole movement, is now an independent MP and was not at all happy when he heard his name was on one of the slates. Sam Gorst, a well-known activist councillor from Liverpool, where they have an independent socialist group working sensibly on local issues, made NOT being on a slate a central topic in his candidate statement. Michael Lavalette, too, one of the independent Preston councillors, has disavowed his presence on someone else’s slate.

What matters to you

Those are not recommendations as such, they’re just the first examples I found, looking around social media, and I’d be happy to vote for any of them. We all get different options though, according to where we are in the UK but when I place my votes, this is what I’ll be looking for – we have a huge crop of well-known activists from the Corbyn years and in my case (I daresay you have your own special interests) I’ll be looking out for socialist feminist activists I know and trust. Again, a couple of examples, I’m not telling anyone what to do…

I’m not going to be led into any of those rows, I’m going to ignore the slates, and vote for people with a good track record. If I don’t know their track record, I’ll ask people who know them, not be led by sloganeers and slate-wavers.

Ego and identity politics

Finally, although we all have our personal interests, I don’t want anyone on the EC who has a particular axe to grind and has prioritised that over getting the party rolling. We need people who will steer the party towards campaigns most people want and need, such as access to health and social care. We do not need those who’ve made knee-jerk judgements of fellow party activists, or made a habit of threatening to call in lawyers the minute things don’t go their way.

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NB One of the things we learned at conference is that most people don’t want the party to be called ‘Your Party’. It’s really not a workable name. It’s just that the vote for alternative names was split too many ways. Another of the things we learned is that where a few years ago, all lefties automatically voted for anything with ‘trans rights’ in the title, because it sounded ‘progressive’, this time, just over a third said ‘no’. People are increasingly aware that there’s something wrong with that whole ‘trans liberation’ agenda. Yes, support trans people – support anyone who’s struggling – that’s socialism – but let’s not have any more truck with the splits and spats that identity politics inevitably creates.

That is why intelligence and strategy are high on my list of priorities. Conference votes can be railroaded, and they can be misleading. Let’s choose some people for the EC who have the brains to steer us through all those mazes, and get this party on the road in a way that works for everyone.

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