Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader, will be heavily involved in a campaign across the party to gather support for the reforms that Miliband insists will be implemented by the time of the next election.
A succession of union leaders including Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite – the party's biggest funder – have already warned him the reforms could bankrupt the party. The unions are sure to press him for policy concessions in return for seeing their power base so severely disrupted. But Miliband told a meeting of party workers in London on Monday: "We're going to open up policy-making, clean up the lobbying industry, and take the big money out of politics. And we want to let people back in."
He said the 3 million trade unionists should be given a "real choice about joining Labour – and then have a real voice inside the party".
McCluskey met Miliband last Monday to discuss the reforms and remains sceptical about whether they will work. The GMB has also put intense private pressure on Miliband to drop the proposals, saying they were unacceptable. Miliband proposed a fortnight ago that in future union political levy-payers should choose individually to opt in to affiliating Labour, rather than leaving union leaderships to decide how many of its political levy-payers to affiliate collectively to Labour – currently at the cost of £3 per affiliation.
The changes could have a knock-on effect on future union voting power at conference. McCluskey and Paul Kenny, the GMB general secretary, have warned that less than 10% of its political levy-payers will, in these circumstances, wish to affiliate to Labour – a scenario that could create a huge hole in the party's finances on the eve of the 2015 election.
Miliband may have to increase the fee of the new category of union supporter affiliating to the party above £3 to plug the funding gap. Such a rise may deter union members from affiliating.
Privately, key union figures are deeply sceptical about the plans and fear Miliband's team has not thought them through, including a new requirement that constituency Labour parties will be able to contact union political levy payers directly in their area.
The unions say they are data protection issues, especially in an era where employers are blacklisting union activists. Miliband hopes to put the reforms to a special conference next March, probably in London, giving him a six-month battle to force the measures into the party rulebook. An interim report prepared by the former party general secretary Lord Collins will be put to the main Labour conference starting on 22 September in Brighton in an attempt to ensure the issue will be discussed without dominating.
Critics of Miliband fear he is picking a possible fight with the unions over an issue the public care little about, and as a consequence, even a victory for the Labour leader will do little to deflect the repeated Tory charge that he is weak.
Miliband is also facing hostility from constituencies unhappy at his plans to run primaries for the Labour candidate for London mayor. He has suggested permitting anyone registered as a party supporter up to the day of the London selection contest to vote.
Johanna Baxter, a constituency representative on the party's national executive, has written: "What is proposed is a 'closed' primary in which members and 'registered supporters' can vote.
"My concern is about non-members having a say in selecting our candidates and the impact this could have on our membership. We need to ensure members still see a value in their membership."
Miliband, at his meeting with party members in London, announced that he had asked Harman and Phil Wilson, the Labour MP who helped Tony Blair change clause IV, to lead a party effort to win support for his reforms.
In addition Jon Trickett, the shadow Cabinet Office minister and advocate of more working-class Labour MPs, alongside Rachel Reeves, the shadow Treasury secretary, will examine what other reforms are needed to the party constitution.
The weakness in the union-Labour relationship was underlined on Monday by a new poll showing only one in eight say they will join Labour if asked and only three in 10 members of Unite would contribute to the union's political fund if they were asked.
The union currently pays £3m a year to Labour in affiliations. Unite members are asked whether they want to opt out of the political levy, and in 2011-12 nearly 492,000 of the 1 million members did so.
Miliband claimed at a Labour party meeting to discuss his reforms that the poll findings were grounds for optimism. He held out the prospect of a new era of open politics, saying it would be transformative if the party went from 200,000 to 700,000 members over the next three years.
The survey commissioned by former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft suggests most Unite members do not think large donations to Labour are a good way of advancing their interests.
The poll was conducted among 712 Unite members between 10 and 17 July 2013. It found that 49% of Unite members said they would vote Labour in an election tomorrow, 23% would vote Conservative, 7% Liberal Democrat and 12% Ukip. 40% said David Cameron would make the best prime minister, just behind Ed Miliband (46%). Nick Clegg was third with 13%. A total of 12% said they would pay to join the Labour party as an individual member if contributors to the political fund were no longer affiliated automatically, while 73% said they would not do so.
According to the poll, 61% said neither Ed Miliband nor Len McCluskey really represented them or the things they cared about. Only 16% correctly identified a photograph of the Unite leader. It also indicated that 86% of Unite members supported the government's £26k benefit cap and 57% opposed Unite's call for an anti-austerity campaign involving strikes and civil disobedience.
Original Article
Source: guardian.co.uk
Author: Patrick Wintour
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