At Labour’s latest conference, one thing stood out: the party no longer believes in democracy. Members and trade union affiliates voted to back, first the findings of a UN commission of inquiry that Israel is committing genocide, and second that the government must do all it can to prevent it.
It is now two weeks since this motion was passed, but still the Labour government refuses to recognise the genocide in Gaza and allows the supply of weapons to Israel.
Over the past 40 years in parliament, I have witnessed at first-hand the democratic deficit in our political system. For too long, top-down political parties have disempowered their membership and crushed internal debate. Now, Your Party will try to do something unprecedented in British politics: forge a mass, democratic party from scratch.
When we launched, we announced that members would decide the policies, the strategy and even the name. In the meantime, we called it Your Party. It was an apt choice because it expressed the essence of what we are trying to build: a new kind of political party that belongs to its members.
In November, we are hosting our inaugural founding conference. This will be the moment that members come together to decide the direction of the party, the models of leadership, and the strategies we need to win. We want our conference to be participatory, open and democratic. Members will be chosen at random to come to the conference in person and debate our founding documents. Then, every member will get the final say online through one member, one vote.
This conference will not come out of the blue. It will be the product of a series of mass, regional assemblies up and down the country. More than just rallies, these assemblies will be an opportunity for communities to come together to discuss and debate the key questions facing the future of our party and our country.
A democratic party isn’t an end in itself. It will provide the space for people to organise, together, for a radically different society. When highly centralised political parties answer to nobody but themselves, you get policies that nobody asked for. You get privatisation of our public services. You get austerity. You get 4.5 million children living in poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. When political parties are democratically accountable to their members, you get policies that the British people want and need.
I’ll go further: undemocratic parties produce undemocratic societies, where a small section of society owns the resources we all need to survive. Democratic parties produce democratic societies; where wealth and resources are owned by us all. Take public ownership, for example. Currently, a small number of companies control the production of basic resources, to the detriment of us all. Everyone relies on these services, yet it is unaccountable shareholders who decide how they are run. Public ownership means giving communities the power to decide how to run the services they provide and consume. This is the heart of socialism: the extension of democracy into every sphere of life. And that is at the heart of Your Party.
For too long, people have been shut out of our political system. We are doing things differently: we are putting power in your hands. Those who want to stand in the way of transformative change want to suppress the rights, voices and power of ordinary people. Their greatest fear is democracy – because democracy is our greatest strength.
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