Greater London Authority (GLA) Assembly Member Murad Qureshi calls for support for the Labour campaign in London.

If you want to know how out of touch the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has become, you simply need to know that he described his additional £250,000 salary for his Daily Telegraph column as “chickenfeed” (BBC HardTalk programme). Apart from the fact that Boris must keep extraordinarily well-fed chickens, he is a Mayor working part time for London, devoting some of his time to external business and self-promotion. In times like this, when a sum equivalent to the Mayor’s chickenfeed is as much as eight or nine average families have to survive on, London needs a full-time Mayor who will devote all their time to helping Londoners facing the squeeze on their living standards.

In 2009 David Cameron instructed his front bench Tory colleagues to ditch their outside interests. Boris Johnson obviously made a point of not meeting this standard. Even after being elected Mayor he continued his part-time columnist position. His Acting Chief of Staff, Nick Boles, told him at the time: “Look, you’ve just got one of the greatest jobs in British public life – you’re the Mayor of London and you’re saying you’re going to … be a part-time columnist.”

When his aides suggested he donated 20% of his Telegraph income to charity, Boris thought it so outrageous that he likened the idea to rape – one of the most abhorrent acts known to humans. Worse still, after promising he would give £50,000 to charity every year, his office admit he barely gave away more than £50,000 over the first three years of this term.

This is why Ken Livingstone has written to David Cameron promising to promote a change in the GLA Act so that the Mayor of London has no other salary. Ken believes the job of London Mayor is one of the most important in British public life and should be a full time one, requiring the full attention of  the post holder. At the same time, Ken has pledged that, if re-elected, he will be a full time Mayor, with no other jobs or paid work for the entire four years of the Mayoralty.

On the subject of an out of touch Mayor, we saw the Mayor’s Deputy for Policing, Kit Malthouse (who incidentally also has an external directorship) being accused of political interference in the phone-hacking case at the Leveson Inquiry. This has opened up more revelations about the nature of the relationship between the Met and the tabloid press. On ITV’s The Agenda Programme, the Mayor commented: “Let’s knock it on its head as fast as we can,” and added that too many police officers are “tying up their time” on phone-hacking and that he wants “the caravan to move on”.

My Labour colleague, Joanne McCartney, has written to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner demanding that he ensures the operation would be unaffected by the Mayor’s comments. A slapdash inquiry may be acceptable to other politicians, closer to News International, wanting to protect their chums. However, the Mayor is in charge of the police force leading this enquiry. When he makes comments like this during a live investigation, he risks legitimate accusations of political interference. In many ways, his comments are not surprising given that, in response to a Mayor’s Question by a Labour Assembly Member, he branded the phone-hacking issue “a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour Party” and “patently politically motivated”.

However, in order to secure a meaningful victory for Ken, we need nine Labour Assembly Members (AMs) to support his policies and strategies – like his promises to save the average Londoner £1,000 over four years on transport fares; to reinstate the Education Maintenance Allowance for the 85,000 or so 16 to 19 year-olds in London; and to provide more support to help the capital’s homes become more energy efficient. Without the requisite number of Labour AMs, we’d have to jump into bed with the Lib-Dems and Greens – and we’re all witnessing the disastrous consequences of coalition government right now!

Unlike almost all the Conservative AMs, Labour members do not have outside business interests which distract them from the work they do on behalf of the constituents who vote for them. Therefore, if on 4th of May we have a Ken victory, this will not only mean London will have a full time Mayor, it will also mean at least nine full time Assembly Members for London.

Jon Lansman, Tower Hamlets Borough CLP, looks at the recent revelations about this shadowy organisation.

Progress is under the spotlight. An anonymous dossier circulated to all CLP secretaries has prompted members to ask a series of questions.

• Is Progress a faction, a “party within a party” or just “a magazine which organises events” as they claim?
• Does it matter that Progress has no internal democracy and doesn’t reveal who really runs the company behind it?
• Does it matter that Progress doesn’t publish any information about its income and expenditure, or its membership?
• Is it reasonable that Progress has raised almost £3 million in single donations over £7,500 since 2001 – more than The Greens, Scttish or Plaid Cymru?
• Is it acceptable that 95% of that money comes from one man – Lord David Sainsbury, who stopped donating to the Labour Party when Ed Miliband became leader?
• Should Progress be required to publish information about its smaller sponsors and donors like Price Waterhouse Coopers, Bell Pottinger, and the British Venture Capital Association?

The debate has exposed widespread hostility to Progress that goes well beyond the left. The Yorkshire Regional TUC conference on 3rd March, for example, for example, passed unanimously a motion using the term, a “party within a party”, calling on “all affiliated unions within the Region and individual union members of the Labour Party to take all practical steps to oppose the organisational and ideological aims of Progress.”

The motion was moved by the GMB (in spite of a personal telephone appeal by David Miliband to their Yorkshire regional secretary not to do so) and supported by Wendy Nichols of UNISON, a member of Labour’s NEC who is not associated with the left in UNISON.

The dossier itself called for an NEC inquiry and for rule changes to “place constitutional requirements upon Members’ associations in matters of fundraising, governance and discipline” and for limits on fundraising by such organisations, with excess sums to be donated to the central Party.

Michael Meacher in the New Statesman argued that, in respect of Progress, “new rules are urgently needed to bring its fund-raising, governance and political activities wholly in line with Labour’s principles.”

Now the left is understandably wary of encouraging central interference with groups inside the Party. We would not seek any proscription or expulsions on the right of the Party now just as we opposed them on the left in the 1980s. Some may even agree (on this occasion!) with Luke Akehurst who tweeted “attack Progress if you must for its politics rather than attack its legitimacy.”

Others would say that factions always been part of Labour’s history, arguably more a symptom than a cause of division within its “broad church”. They would say Labour has the right to regulate its factions, provided it safeguards its internal democracy and values of tolerance and respect for others’ opinions.

What Labour should expect is that organisations operating within it do so openly and democratically and ensure that their internal workings and finances are transparent. On that, Progress does not deliver – unlike Compass, for example, whose annual report, available on its website, provides details of its membership, structure, funding and donors.

The NEC should therefore consider the issues raised about Progress, whether it demonstrates a need for some light touch regulation and whether a cap, either absolute or proportional, on donations from any single source is desirable.

Jon Lansman reports: The review of policy-making in the Party – covered in the extended consultation period of Refounding Labour – is nearing its end. The good news is that we may even see some changes agreed by conference this year.

The National Policy Forum (NPF) is actually meeting (in mid-June) to discuss policy – a first in the lifetime of this NPF. Party units will have a very limited time (between early May, when policy documents are sent out, and early June) to put in submissions. The outcomes will go to Conference in the autumn and may even include some choices for Conference to make.

Unfortunately, the proposals for restructuring the process which are going to the March NEC are pretty tame.

• There would be a rolling programme of policy development in each five year Parliament, and at each stage (ie, most years) party units would submit a limited number of amendments.
• In framing the amendments, there would be a “duty to consult” with rewards (perhaps greater priority) for “maximising engagement and building broad community support for policy initiatives”.
• While options would be included “where appropriate”, the emphasis is still on consensus, with considerable power given to the Joint Policy Committee.
• All NPF members would be allowed to attend one policy commission even if they were not elected to one.
• No change is proposed to “contemporary issues” or how they affect the process.

There are some essential changes that we should seek.

• The emphasis should change from seeking consensus to identifying options.
• Any amendment from a party unit which receives even minority support should go to full NPF and if it receives 25% there it should go to conference as an option.
• Elections to policy commissions and JPC should be by STV so that they are more representative of all opinion.
• Conference resolutions should feed directly into the process.

Vince Mills sees strengths and weaknesses in the Scottish Labour Party following the election of its new leader.

Perhaps “wither the Scottish Labour Party” might seem like a better title for an article on the shape of the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) after its Spring Conference in Dundee. Or at least such might be the impression of a neutral commentator looking at the half empty Caird Hall that was a persistent feature of the conference for most of the ordinary business of the gathering.  (Mind you the Caird Hall looked like Vatican Square on Easter Sunday compared to the remnants of the Lib-Dems who huddled together in Inverness). The Caird Hall certainly filled up for Johann Lamont’s first speech as leader of the Scottish Labour Party on the Saturday afternoon of conference.

With that new leader, who won with the full support of the unions and the left of the Party and, at least according the polls, with a position on devolution that is supported by most Scots, this conference seemed like the perfect time for the SLP to take back the centre left ground occupied by Alex Salmond’s SNP.

Did it? Here we are going to have to resort to Kremlinology. The usual means of understanding shifts in political direction in Labour – debates pushing particular positions leading to changes in policy – have long since gone. Managerialism has become embedded in the culture. The very structures that could deliver positions for debate that might be embarrassing to the leadership have been stripped out.

To understand whether there is a change taking place, at least in the Party’s upper echelons, you have to look at who the Leader is promoting, what hints are being offered in key speeches and how the unions’ concerns are being treated.

Let us start with promotions. Neil Findlay, MSP for the Lothians and unapologetic leftist, was given a role on the backbenches. This may seem unremarkable but would have been unheard of in previous regimes. Such has been the strength of the right that there was no need to trouble itself with inclusion – even if in the exclusion of, for example, Elaine Smith (now deputy presiding officer) you exclude the MSP with the largest majority in Scotland, risking the obvious inferences from her Labour electorate.

The speech that Johann Lamont delivered also hinted that things could change. She said: “I know that many of our comrades in the trade union movement left us in May because they felt we had let them down. And so I will work with my trade union colleagues to re-engage with union members and demonstrate that our cause is a common cause.”

At this point you are entitled to ask what the cause is and how it can be delivered jointly. Here the managerialist response kicks in. Unite had considered proposing an emergency motion at conference, the effect of which was to seek a special conference to debate the constitutional question. To accept this may have looked like a challenge to the Leader who, it is well known, favours a one question referendum with a flat No as the response.

Consequently the motion was withdrawn and in its place there was an executive statement, briefed in advance to the press, announcing the creation of a commission to consider Labour’s response to the constitutional issue. It comprises MPs, MSPs, trade unionists – missing out, as far as most left delegates could work out, party members. Missing, or at least unclear,  was how the Party could have a collective role in endorsing or rejecting the conclusions that the commission might come up with.

Suspicions that minds were already made up and that party members’ real role was as a supporting cast were not calmed when, in advance of and subsequent to the conference, SLP members received a helpful reminder from the party leadership that the Scottish Government was having a consultation on the referendum. The message from Scottish Labour not only pointed you to the consultation – it filled the answers in for you.

Here is part of the pre-written response: “There should only be one question in order to give a definitive answer on whether or not Scotland remains part of the UK. I do not support attempts to muddy the water with further questions on other matters. I want the referendum sooner rather than later and do not see the need to wait almost three years.”

Whatever your position on this (I favour a second question), there has been no widespread discussion or debate in the SLP about it. There have only been statements from the leadership. Many members of the trade union movement, including those unions affiliated to Labour, hold a range of positions from independence on the one hand (a small but significant section) to  a variety of positions  up to and, I suppose, including the status quo (although few are actually articulating that position).

The extent to which the new Scottish Labour leadership is really ready for dialogue and change in a way that would upset the SNP’s bandwagon is still in doubt. The left response at Conference was a clear desire for even greater unity. At the fringe meetings of both the Campaign for Socialism and Revitalise the Scottish Labour Party (an informal network of trade union and constituency activists) there was a stark acknowledgement that the left could only survive as an alliance between the trade union movement and individual activists. This alliance could only have an impact through serious organisation and democratic convergence on policy positions and support for left candidates. Consequently there are moves to transform the informal Revitalise into a more formal and better resourced organisation.

Even supposing this succeeds and nudges Labour left, it will not be in time to stop some embarrassing defeats for the Party at this May’s Council elections. Labour may well lose overall control in Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, although the former is more likely than the latter, riven as Glasgow is with disputes and petty jealousies and the organised schism known as Glasgow First. However, in the absence of any electoral project that can offer a serious left alternative, Labour setbacks may provide grist to the mill of those in the SLP trying to grind out a victory over  Blair’s legacy – a managerialist party machine imbued with neo-liberal politics.

Glasgow First?

Former Labour councillors are threatening to stand in the next Glasgow City Council elections as Glasgow First. Seventeen of them were de-selected in the run-up to the last elections. A sitting councillor, Shaukat Butt, has just resigned from the Labour Group and announced that he will stand for Glasgow First in May. His resignation means Labour has lost the majority it has held for four decades. It holds 39 seats against a combined opposition of 40.

Last month Butt helped Labour pass its £24 million cuts budget with a majority of two.  He is reported to have been hoping to stand as a Labour candidate in Govan if he had been cleared of assaulting his wife in a coming court case and subsequently re-admitted to Labour Party.

Though Glasgow First may not take any seats, carrying out cuts to services and savage infighting make victory for Labour in May an uphill struggle given a strong SNP challenge.