Letters

Submitted by AWL on 29 May, 2019 - 10:20

“If Labour stands for anything, it should call for yesterday’s [23 May] election results to be annulled based on clear evidence of the disenfranchisement of large portions of the population”, writes Urte Macikene on the Labour for a Socialist Europe website.

“At my polling station in Lambeth... I could see my name on the electoral register, but it was printed in bright red with a strike through the middle. I could call the council to complain, the staff said, but as the Town Hall was closed, there was nothing to be done other than lodge a complaint the next day.

“My experience is one of many similar stories emerging throughout yesterday’s polling day across the UK”.

There must have been hundreds of thousands of EU citizens denied their vote. Some of them had received polling cards, and were still denied their vote. The official story is that EU citizens who want to vote in Euro-elections in the UK should be sent a letter asking them to complete and return a form at least 12 days before polling day. The form gives up their vote in their “home” country so they don’t vote twice. That whole process could not be done instead by ticking a box online. Even in its own terms it was botched.

The official Electoral Commission more or less admits that, blaming it on “the very short notice from the government of the UK’s participation in these elections”. The Commission also comments that the “process could be made easier for citizens, and the Commission made the case for doing so following the last EU elections in 2014”, but the government did nothing.

Dian Oscar, London

Too late for a Labour special conference?

I’ve supported the call for a special conference of the Labour Party over Brexit in the past, but at this point I don’t understand how a special conference is feasible. Wouldn’t we do better to put energy into calling for a debate in CLPs and unions in the run up to the regular conference in September? Or to support the call for a ballot of Labour Party members on the issue, raised by Paul Mason’s Left 2030 group?

Celina Broadwell, Lambeth

Problems with ballot

The good thing is about the call for a ballot of Labour Party members over Brexit is urgency. The bad thing is it legitimises policy-making by plebiscite rather than deliberative democratic processes, including conferences. In general plebiscitary methods are not democratic, in my view, which is why they’ve been often advocated by Blairites and bureaucratic Momentum types, to undermine real control by members under the rhetoric of democracy.

I know that’s not the intention here. But immediately there is the problem: who drafts the ballot question? Who then gets to interpret the result?

Sade Haase, Lewisham

Any which way

Whatever the arguments about membership referenda as a way of making policy, the petition for a ballot of members is a useful one, as signing it demonstrates strength of feeling amongst membership and that we should support it. There is nothing wrong with supporting both balloting and special conference.

The point is that the membership is crying out to be consulted any which way on Brexit policy.

Christina Dahms, Devon

Even the Tories

We’ve had the break-off of Labour-Tory talks on Brexit. Then May said she planned to get things through by early July. Then she quit to be replaced, almost surely, in July, by a new Tory leader with a “harder” Brexit line. Labour has crashed in the Euro-elections, losing some votes to the Brexit Party and a vast number to the Lib Dems.

These events have revived the issue of a Labour special conference over Brexit. At some point, of course, it will ceases to make sense to agitate for a special conference rather than just to prepare for the September conference. But between now and September we will have a new Tory prime minister, with a new Brexit policy. It is hard to see how that new prime minister will deal with the problems which brought down May — Tory splits, and the difficulty of getting a Parliamentary majority for any Brexit formula. All the options look unlikely.

But going for a quick general election is one of those unlikely options. And the outcome is sure to be an option which looks unlikely now. We can’t accept Labour’s response to the new Tory direction, and to a possible general election, being determined by opaque cabals in and around the Leader’s Office. Logistically, a special conference is not difficult. Even the Tories are having a sort of special conference, the National Conservative Convention, on 15 June, as a result of a rank-and-file revolt.

Labour can organise special conferences. The event at which Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership victory was announced, on 12 September 2015, was constitutionally a special conference. The reason why it debated no politics was political, not logistical. The “Collins Review” was dealt with by a special conference, on 1 March 2014. The difficulty, and the argument, is political.

Alan Gilbert, Islington

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