Keir Starmer is right.
The Labour Party needs to change how it chooses our leaders. However, I disagree on what needs changing.
Keir has proposed a new nomination threshold for Labour leadership elections, doubling the amount of support needed from MPs for a candidate to reach the ballot – currently 10% – up to 20%.
But MPs having more power to select who Labour members get to choose from in leadership elections just means that there will be more deals and promises made to get support.
When I stood for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party last year, I was surprised at the number of agreements that took place. Some were made over 12 months before a contest even began.
When I was seeking support from colleagues, often I was told ‘so sorry, I have pledged my vote to someone else’.
Or, I was asked whether I would fight for them to get a position in the shadow cabinet. I didn’t feel it was right to make those kind of promises. But for some, that’s their politics I suppose.
One MP came to see me with his list of questions, how I felt about unions, race relations, etc. I spoke to him for over an hour, thinking I was persuading him to vote for me and he took notes of my answers. I was shocked when the person he was actually supporting then started parroting my responses.
Looking back, I was very naïve. I often say I either win or I learn, and I really have learnt a lot over the last year and a half since. I have had time to reflect on Labour’s democratic processes for electing its leader and deputy leader. And not only am I more informed, I have concluded that we need reform.
As a candidate for the deputy leader election, I had a vision of how to take the party forward. I, perhaps foolishly, thought every member would get to hear it. Energy, commitment and good ideas were not enough.
Now I know how the system works, it is not something I want to repeat but I feel it is important to expose how expensive the process is, in the hope that these barriers be removed as they may deter future candidates from standing.
I had raised £30,000 through donations and fundraisers and that had to last me throughout the whole four month campaign.
Equipped with my leaflets, I enthusiastically travelled to as many hustings as I could; the cost of doing this alone tested my campaign budget and my credit card.
I was sitting in a community hall in Leicester several weeks in when it dawned on me that we were not going to win. I had been listening to party members and they were complaining that they hadn’t received a text from me.
They wondered why I couldn’t be bothered to send them a message asking for their vote as they had heard from every other candidate. The truth is I didn’t have the money.
Later, my core team sat me down and explained that we could not afford to send texts to Labour members, even at 2p per text it would have cost at least £15,000 to send just one message to members, and candidates needed to send at least two; one asking if they can have their vote and a second with a thank you.
Tens of thousands of pounds – something we simply did not have. My heart sank. I had been second in the polling until then and, just like that, I had been priced out of the race.
If we only elect people who have lots of money, or access to it, what does that say about us as a political party?
Texts were not the only thing that some candidates cannot afford; I didn’t have enough money to write to every eligible voter as this could cost as much as £454,000.
My team and I also could not meet the costs of an app, rumoured to cost £13,000, so instead we organised traditional small, localised sessions contacting people directly via phone calls.
Why did it cost so much? Why were candidates excluded from using the already established party systems to communicate with members?
This is not about me – I am not complaining about how my campaign was run. It is how it has always been done, but I got into politics to make things better. This is about the inner workings of the Labour Party and the financial aspect of running internal leadership campaigns.
There is no justifiable reason why candidates spend thousands of pounds to get elected. That money could be better spent elsewhere selling Labour’s vision for change to the country.
When we are looking at reforming politics and including the excluded, we in Labour need to get our own house in order and consider what stops people from participating in the first place. Some people just don’t have the funds or the connections to become a candidate. If Labour really want to connect with ‘ordinary’ people then we must remove the financial burden.
Money talks in American politics, and I am worried that we are rapidly moving towards an American-style system in the UK.
In the beginning of the Labour leadership campaign there’s a battle to secure nominations from fellow MPs and, for me, that was an eye-opener. I believe that the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) should not be the sole gatekeeper of who can stand. Even after securing the PLP nomination, next you have to acquire a place on the ballot through nominations from constituency Labour parties, unions and socialist societies.
Candidates are then faced with a £2,500 charge for the membership list and the same amount again for the affiliates list. Shockingly, this is £5,000 for access to the party’s excel spreadsheet of contacts. How can the party justify this price? It is enough to put off any working-class candidate from running in future.
The party and affiliates put on a series of hustings across the country. Each candidate must pay for their travel and accommodation. To keep costs down, my campaign hired a small van to travel around the country in. It added to my authentic grassroots campaign, and I had fun connecting with members, but it was tiring.
As a democratic process, Labour must take a serious look at how it can improve its internal processes and implement good practice. Making the system fairer and less expensive ensures that we have a broader selection of candidates. You should not need a lot of money to stand for an internal Labour Party election. We have already read reports of Labour MPs having declared tens of thousands of pounds.
Right now, we are faced with an erosion of Britain’s democracy with an elitist class at the very top, determined to hold onto power at any cost. We are also in the midst of a fuel crisis. It could be seen as a hollow challenge to the Government unless we ensure that as a Labour Party we are better and more ethical at every stage of our own process.
If we only elect people who have lots of money, or access to it, what does that say about us as a political party? We should be investing in ideas and a vision to change society. I was thrown out of Parliament for calling Boris Johnson – our Prime Minister – a liar, it was a nerve-wracking thing to challenge the system, but I think that’s what our politics needs; real honest plain speak.
At every Labour conference I host a Jamaica party, the Jamaican motto is ‘out of many one people’ and everyone comes from all sections of the party. It is about the members connecting, singing, and dancing and seeing each other as comrades and not enemies. That’s the party I want to see and help build, where we don’t fight each other and instead we focus on fighting this cruel, corrupt and lying Government.
That is why I am challenging the Labour Party internal system. Our democracy is on the brink of extinction, with this authoritarian government, the world is on fire, petrol stations, supermarket shelves are empty. If this isn’t a wake-up call to do things differently, so that Labour can win the next election, then what will it take?
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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