What do the proposed Labour leadership election rules mean?

Update on 10.56pm, 22nd September: Labour's NEC have agreed new leadership rules, but they differ from the below in a vital way. Rather than requiring 10% of MPs/MEPs AND 5% of CLPs AND Unions representing 5% of affiliate members, the NEC's proposal would require:

• 10% of the PLP

Plus EITHER:

• 5% of CLPs

• 5% of affiliated organisations, at least 2 of which must be Trade Unions who represent at least 5% of the affiliated membership (currently estimated at 3.9m).

The important word here is "either". The upshot is that the trade unions would not have the ability to solely veto a candidate; candidates can be nominated if they gather the backing of 25 MPs, plus either 30 CLPs or one big trade union.

These rules would have allowed Andy Burnham to remain on the ballot in 2010, with Ed Balls and Diane Abbott still excluded. Yvette Cooper would have made the ballot in 2015, as she recieved 25% of PLP nominations plus 17% of CLPs. Liz Kendall, however, would have been excluded.

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Within the last few days, more details have emerged about Labour’s soon-to-be-finalised Democracy Review. It is looking very likely that one of the proposals presented to Labour Conference by the National Executive (NEC) will be a change to the rules for electing the Labour Party Leader. Specifically, the changes being proposed would affect how candidates are nominated (the voting system would apparently remain unchanged). 

The current system 

Under the current rules, in the event of a vacancy, Labour MPs can stand to be Leader of the Labour Party if they gather written nominations from 10% of MPs/MEPs. As Labour currently has 257 MPs and 20 MEPs, a candidate would need to gather nominations from 28 MPs/MEPs. This number has shifted over the years (12% in 2010, 15% in 2015, reduced to 10% in 2017) but the key point is that the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) has retained the absolute sole right to nominate candidates for Leader, with other sections of the party only permitted to offer “supporting” (i.e., non-binding) nominations.  

The proposed system 

The nomination system that will be debated by the NEC on Saturday would retain the requirement for candidates to be nominated by at least 10% of the PLP. However, it also adds two new requirements in addition to this PLP threshold. To be on the ballot, candidates would have to receive nominations from at least:

• 10% of MPs/MEPs
• 5% of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs)
• 5% of affiliated organisations, at least 2 of which must be Trade Unions who represent at least 5% of the affiliated membership (currently estimated at 3.9m).

There are only 4 out of 14 affiliated Unions who represent at least 5% of this 3.9m total: UNISON (34.6%), Unite (31.9%), GMB (15.7%) and USDAW (10.9%). Together these four Unions represent 93% of Labour’s affiliated Union members. Thus, in practice, leadership candidates would need the support of at least one of the big four (plus any other union, large or small) in order to be on the ballot. 

The consequences 

The possible effects of this proposed system have been raised most strongly by the Labour left, who believe that it effectively rules out the possibility of there being a successor to Corbyn who shares his political outlook. It is worth taking a look at the effect on previous elections.

Table showing nominations by affiliates, CLPs and the PLP/EPLP in 2010, 2015 and 2016. 'Union %' indicates the percentage of affiliated members represented by the unions who nominated that candidate.

As the table above shows, the proposed rules would impose a much more prohibitive threshold upon candidates. Neither Ed Balls, Andy Burnham nor Diane Abbott would have made the ballot in 2010, all falling at different hurdles. Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall would both have been blocked from the ballot in 2015, with Cooper failing to pass the Union threshold, as she gathered support from Unions representing a mere 1.3% of affiliated members. Even David Miliband’s position in 2010 would have been precarious; he was only nominated by two trade unions, and if he had failed to gather that second union nomination, then under the proposed rules Ed Miliband would have been elected unopposed!

Conclusion

Some critics have depicted the changes as giving the PLP a veto over candidates, but this is a mischaracterisation. In fact, the biggest beneficiaries by far would be the big trade unions. The proposed changes would give the five biggest trade unions – UNISON, Unite, GMB, USDAW and CWU – an effective veto on who is allowed onto the ballot for Labour leadership elections, as together they represent 97% of affiliated members.

The question is – what does this mean for Corbynism? After all, Corbyn himself easily passed the threshold in 2015 and 2016, winning nominations from Unions representing over 70% of affiliated members; given this, the objections from the Labour left might seem confusing to the casual observer. But they are right to be concerned.

It is historically very unusual for the affiliated unions, especially the large unions, to back the Labour left’s candidate in a Labour leadership election. In 2010, Diane Abbott received nominations from unions representing just 1% of affiliated members. But in 2015, all candidates except Corbyn had made clear they did not want any support from trade unions, nor did they agree with the unions’ policy priorities. Corbyn, on the other hand, welcomed the unions’ support and his domestic and economic policy priorities dovetailed perfectly with the unions’. When combined with grassroots pressure on union leaderships from pro-Corbyn union members, this led to the unusual spectacle of the biggest unions almost all lining up behind the Labour left’s candidate. 

But with Labour’s shift to the left, and with ‘soft left’ MPs realising that their politics might actually win over the membership, we are unlikely to see a situation in which a sole Left candidate faces off against multiple centrists. More likely is a scenario in which a Left candidate, a soft left candidate and two or three centrists attempt to gather nominations. And given how high the threshold would be under these proposed rules, I think Momentum is more than justified in worrying that a candidate from the Labour left would be in real danger of not reaching the union threshold, as the big unions could (as they did in 2010) line up behind the ‘soft left’ candidate. 

So for now, the future of the Labour left rests in the hands of the NEC and Labour Party Conference.