First, thank you for the many messages from across the country. The chair Ellie Reeves thanked those NEC members who led campaigning, and the party staff who as always went above and beyond. The meeting paid tribute to Mike Creighton, former south-east regional director, to John Mills and to David Williams, former general secretary of COHSE.
Keir Starmer sent apologies as he was working on the European trade deal, including a statement to parliament. His deputy Angela Rayner regretted the loss of hardworking councillors and thanked them for their service. She highlighted progress on breakfast clubs, employment rights, saving steel at Scunthorpe, ending no-fault evictions, investment in housing, building safety regulations, and £1 billion to tackle homelessness.
Responding to questions, she said the police had to balance the right to peaceful protest with maintaining public order. She was urged to be bold on electoral law by making it easier to register and vote in person or by post and bringing back preferential voting for mayors (though this might have lost Doncaster and North Tyneside), and promised new legislation which would include votes at 16.
READ MORE: Revealed: Labour’s financial woes as party unable to balance books this year
The right to buy was under review, and more social and council homes were in the pipeline. I said that constant references to “working people” excluded those of us who have not been a “working person” for years. Angela preferred “working class” and stressed that Labour governments supported everyone: pensioners benefited from the triple lock and low interest rates, and councils were allocated money to alleviate fuel poverty. Others were worried that far-reaching and progressive reforms were not cutting through to ordinary workers and trade unionists.
Education and Equalities
Bridget Phillipson, secretary of state for education and minister for women and equalities, ran through her to-do list at breakneck speed. Reforming children’s social care was essential to protect the most vulnerable, alongside early intervention to support families, expanding childcare and breaking the link between background at birth and lifetime success. She hoped to follow previous Labour governments in tackling the terrible scar of child poverty through the over-arching strategy promised in the manifesto.
Thousands of new nursery places were being established and mental health support in schools was improving. She was working in partnership with trade unions representing teachers and support staff, and pleased that the chancellor had approved the pay rises recommended by the pay review body.
READ MORE: ‘Progressivism or bust: Why Blue Labour is the wrong answer to Reform surge’
Some employers needed to do more to develop skills and she aimed to make apprenticeships more accessible, providing construction workers for Labour’s housebuilding programme. Parents needed more information from Ofsted, schools must be inclusive, and further work on SEND (children with special educational needs and disabilities) would be published later this year, after consulting with parents and disability organisations.
Universities contributed to the public good but must be financially sustainable, and offer training and retraining as well as higher education. Finally, in addition to specific pledges such as halving violence against women and girls, commitment to equalities must run through everything we do. While detailed guidance was awaited following the recent supreme court decision on sex and gender, all of us have a duty to treat everyone with dignity and respect. Hate crime must always be taken seriously.
Members welcomed the sea-change in employee relations, but raised fears about the threat to jobs posed by AI (artificial intelligence). Bridget responded that used for routine tasks, AI could free up time for things that only humans could do. Others asked for councils to have a greater role in overseeing local education, and for limits on profiteering by private care providers. The sheer volume of work was truly impressive, and we must get better at turning it into simple stories about transformed lives …
One Year On …
… because unless we do, the chance of a decade of national renewal, and reversing 14 years of Tory decline, will be lost. No-one tried to sugar-coat the results: despite hitting our fundraising targets and working flat out Reform now has direct influence over many thousands of working people’s lives through a new MP in Runcorn & Helsby, two mayors and control of ten councils. The next test will be the Scottish by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse, followed by elections in Wales, Scotland, London and other English councils in 2026. The collapsing Tory vote helped Reform, and they now benefit from first-past-the post, winning 41% of the seats on 31% of the vote and matching Labour’s “efficiency” in the general election. What goes around comes around …
Messages from Below
General secretary Hollie Ridley outlined measures to ensure the party’s financial stability and enable us to contest all these elections on multiple fronts. However there are underlying political issues. My correspondence from dozens of members identified the following:
– unpopular national decisions, led by withdrawing most winter fuel payments three weeks into government. Keir Starmer’s apparent rethink has left pensioners unsure about who will now get it back and when. We look set to repeat these errors with cuts to PIP (personal independence payments):
“After the government shot itself in the foot the next step was to try to hit the other foot with welfare reform that attacked the disabled.”
The two-child limit and the benefit cap push another 100 children into poverty every day. We have upset farmers over inheritance tax, businesses over national insurance, internationalists over cuts to aid and the fishing industry over the new Brexit deal. Next in line are people who like cash ISAs and people on basic pensions paying income tax for the first time because thresholds have been frozen for so long.
READ MORE: Full list of Labour candidates for Holyrood
– failure to communicate positive achievements – the minimum wage, public sector pay rises, workers’ rights, breakfast clubs, more NHS appointments, settling strikes (for the moment) – and no simple, clear, optimistic narrative. Bring back Alastair Campbell;
– lack of visible improvement in daily lives. People need to see lower bills, secure, safe and affordable homes, prompt medical treatment. Losses are upfront and immediate, gains are longer-term and incremental. Few understand the chancellor’s fiscal rules, but Donald Trump’s threat to defund NATO and the need to increase defence spending provide good reason to revisit them. The world has changed;
– confusion about which way Labour is facing. Activists dislike seeing asylum-seekers dragged off in handcuffs, and are disturbed by language about an island of strangers and the “incalculable damage” done by past migration. For instance: “I no longer want to be associated with the Labour Party. I am from immigrant stock. Born and brought up here – 59 years old this year, and now feel unwelcome. I am brown. I am already feeling the `Island of Strangers´ speech in my own life.”
Words and Consequences
Further, this language is not authentic and will not work: “Performative cruelty to step up with the anti-immigration agenda. Reform will always win on that. They will always claim they can be crueller and more punitive.”
People do not believe us when we try to talk tough. They do believe Nigel Farage. They also believe that Reform will raise the tax threshold to £20,000, just as they believed Brexit would save £350 million a year for the NHS. Untrue, unfunded and undeliverable, but that didn’t help in 2016. We risk losing votes on all sides;
– and on a practical level, Reform had the money for large-scale direct mailings with national material and effective social media operations. Anecdotally significant numbers of people classified as non-voters and missed by our targeting did in fact vote, and voted Reform;
– finally candidates must be in place earlier, including in Scotland and Wales, to keep up with other parties. This is a problem for areas still awaiting decisions on new council and mayoral boundaries.
Responding to the discussion Hollie agreed on the need to improve communications. She said that members are the lifeblood of the party and our role is to appreciate, mobilise and engage them. I believe they are overwhelmingly loyal and committed to supporting Labour in government, but they do expect to be heard. They have been patiently and quietly feeding in views, and there may still be time to turn the situation round. But at the moment they are not optimistic.
Chair’s Update
Ellie Reeves stressed that our values and our delivery in government must be used to counter the threat of Reform. Progress towards Keir Starmer’s missions included growth at 0.6%, cuts to interest rates which lowered the cost of mortgages, falling energy bills, more teachers and GPs, refurbishing surgeries, rescuing British Steel, rolling out breakfast clubs and 300 more school-based nurseries. The national policy forum (NPF) had launched six consultation documents with a closing date of 8 June, and 400 submissions had already been received.
I am still concerned that NPF representatives only see material relating to their own policy commission, and cannot communicate with local parties. The joint policy committee, which steers the NPF, has met just once since the election with no further dates set. When the NPF was established in 1998 all members discussed the entire political agenda, and meetings twice a year fostered a sense of collective endeavour. From 2012 until 2023 all contributions were published on the website, and though I understand that comments sometimes got out of hand, it would surely be possible to allow us, and local parties, read-only access. There was, I think, a commitment to bring policy commission reports to the full NEC again, but the NPF has to work to re-establish its relevance.
MPs’ representatives said that the government had to make difficult decisions which were not always what they wanted to do, but were right for the country. Strong concerns were again expressed about the contents and the language of Labour’s recent statements on immigration, and the potential to divide rather than unite. Ellie said Keir Starmer had assured MPs that he was proud of Britain’s diverse communities, and hoped that we could all work together.
Every Child Matters
On the positive side the Breaking Down Barriers commission has had some interesting discussions with experts, focusing on early years. The key takeaways are first, tackling child poverty is essential to underpin other forms of intervention, and second, achieving the government’s missions will cost money. I would like to know if this is reflected in other commissions. However since the meeting I was disturbed to see this, which suggests that Labour’s flagship child poverty strategy, originally planned for this spring, will not be published before the autumn. It was expected to include a recommendation to scrap the two-child benefit cap, and delays will see thousands more children fall into poverty while we wait. I am trying to find out if any of this is true. But the risk of defeat calls for speeding up, not slowing down, and authentic commitment to core Labour principles might even gain votes.
Delving into Details
The only comfort revealed by further analysis of voting patterns is that results were even worse for the Tories, overtaken by Reform almost everywhere. Reform was least successful in my home county of Oxfordshire, winning only one out of 69 seats on 20% of the vote. The LibDems took control, predictable (and predicted) after Labour gave them a free ride in five of the seven parliamentary seats last July. The picture would be clearer after the marked registers have been processed but it seems that Reform gained most votes from people who supported the Tories in the general election, plus a chunk of habitual non-voters, while 2024 Labour voters were more likely to stay home.
Overall we are in a period of unprecedented volatility, with multiple parties in contention across the nations and regions and trust in politics and politicians was generally low, easy to lose but harder to win back. As one member commented to me privately:
“With regards to Reform (and a lesser extent the Greens) I do think that a lot of the support for Reform is that people think the Conservatives are sh*t and Labour are also proving to be sh*t so they are voting for the clowns in protest.”
which may be true, but doesn’t point to a clear strategy for winning a second term.
No Good Options
The recent supreme court judgment and its impact on positive action led to one of the unhappiest debates in my time on the NEC, not helped by the customary but regrettable leaks. After ten contributions a procedural motion to move to the vote was rejected by 15 votes to 10. I voted to continue the discussion so that all members could be heard. Below is the official note of the NEC decisions and the reasons for them.
“Like all other organisations, the Labour Party must ensure all Party procedures comply with the law.
As the governing board of the Party, the NEC was presented with recommendations to ensure compliance with the law as a result of the Supreme Court judgment. NEC members are required to ensure the Party meets its legal and financial responsibilities.
The NEC agreed that the Party’s positive action measures as they relate to women will be interpreted as applying to biological women only in compliance with the Supreme Court judgment. The NEC agreed there would be a wider review of the Party’s positive action measures to ensure the Party continues to support underrepresented groups in compliance with the Equality Act. It was also agreed that the National Women’s Conference would be postponed pending the outcome of that review.
The Labour Party is clear that everyone in our society deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. The Party will work closely with individuals and local parties to implement the necessary changes with sensitivity and care.”
The proposal to cancel the 2025 women’s conference was carried by 24 votes to 5, and the proposal on interpreting positive action measures by 18 votes to nil, with a number of abstentions. I voted with the majority on both elements, though with no sense of satisfaction. Some have said that the judgment has brought clarity, but it has certainly not brought unity or peace.
The decisions have been notified to local parties and where there are specific issues, for instance regarding conference delegates or CLP officers, they are advised to contact regional officers or the governance and legal unit. I am happy to receive messages on this, but cannot go beyond the law or reverse the decision.
No Change
Finally the NEC considered a paper on national structures for BAME, disabled and LGBT+ members. The framework was agreed as part of the 2018 democracy review, but has never been implemented for various reasons including lack of staff, money and time. An internal review estimated the annual cost of additional committees and conferences as £3 million, and this could not be justified given forthcoming electoral challenges and tight budgets. The NEC were asked to defer implementation for a further two years to 2027, the run-up to the general election when there will be no chance of spending on more meetings and conferences.
My view is that the national women’s organisation has not yet succeeded in taking women’s voices into the party mainstream. The women’s conference, except for 2019, has been tacked on to the start of annual conference, and the national women’s committee has little influence. In my experience women were heard more effectively through the NEC equalities committee, itself now struggling to define its role, and other equalities strands should learn from this.
However I disagreed with CLP representatives who said that the only appropriate channels for input were through relevant socialist societies, as members should not have to pay extra to contribute through their own party. Others saw the paper as undermining inclusion and were troubled by the message sent to groups already feeling marginalised, including BAME, LGBT+ and disabled members, already deeply concerned about benefit cuts. Perceptions mattered.
A proposal to withdraw the paper was rejected by 15 votes to 14, and the paper was then approved by 16 votes to 12. After listening to all the arguments I voted for withdrawal and against the paper. But I don’t understand why we were asked to vote not to do something which we were not doing anyway. Instead we should be urgently looking for affordable and effective ways to reach out to all those currently disengaged.
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