Let’s build a better Labour Party, so we can build a better Britain

We all know there has been a growing mistrust in politics and political parties in our country for many years now. There have been repeated scandals about cash for access, honours, and expenses. Turnout in elections are falling and the lives of working people are getting worse.

Under my leadership, Labour has begun to change: opening up our party and policy-making to people outside, as well as re-connecting with your communities.

If we’re going to turn Britain round, we have to build a new way of doing politics. One that is more open, more trusted and gives more people a say in the future of our country. One that takes the big money out and allows the people of Britain back in.

And I know the Labour Party – the party of working people, not the party of privilege – has a special responsibility to stand for a better politics.

Britain’s working people don’t get to have cosy dinners in Downing Street, like David Cameron’s big donors. Britain’s children don’t have corporate lobbyists looking after their interests, like the big tobacco companies do. Britain’s families don’t get enormous tax cuts, like the hedge funds and the millionaires.

That’s why they need a party that is open to them. That is on their side.

That’s why we need historic change in Labour’s relationship with the millions of working people who are in trade unions currently automatically linked to the Labour Party.

These three million people such as shop-workers, nurses, engineers, bus drivers, construction workers, people from public and private sector should be at the heart of everything Labour does.

I want to hear their voices louder and clearer than ever before.

That means enabling the men and women in trade unions to make an active, individual choice on whether they become part of our party, not seeing them affiliated automatically.

It is time Labour also heard each trade unionist’s own individual voice.

This change will be better for trade unionists, better for Labour and better for Britain too.

All of our country’s history shows that change does not come just from a few people at the top. Change doesn’t just come from Prime Ministers, or party leaders, or great business people, or general secretaries.

Change comes when individual people come together to demand it.

Let’s build a better Labour Party, so we can build a better Britain

Ed Miliband invites you to build a better Labour Party: a party that is rooted in the hopes of the British people, that reaches out to every community in the country, that has members and candidates from every walk of life.

Ray Collins will produce an interim consultation which will be discussed at this year’s Labour Party Annual Conference and then Ed Miliband will ask the NEC to convene a special spring conference to vote on the changes.

That consultation document will focus on the following four areas:

1) The use of primaries in the selection of Labour candidate for London Mayor and in other circumstances

2) The conduct of parliamentary selections to ensure fairness and transparency

3) The development of a new relationship between the Labour Party and individual members of our affiliate organisations

4) Constituency development agreements between affiliate organisations and constituency Labour parties.

Have your say following Annual conference

Following the presentation of the Collins document at Annual Conference there will be a major consultation exercise ahead of a final decision at the special spring conference.

We will be asking each and every Labour Party member to have their say in that consultation and there will be opportunities for discussion and debate across the country and online, about how we will build a better politics together.

Have your say now

In the meantime, if there is anything you want Ray Collins to consider in preparing his interim consultation, he wants to hear from you.

You can have your say by:Visiting: labour.org.uk/abetterlabourpartyEmailing: abetterlabourparty@labour.org.ukPosting your response to: A better Labour Party, Labour Central, Kings Manor , Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE1 6PAPlease ensure your response reaches us by Friday 13 September.

The next steps and how you can have your say

Ed Miliband has asked Ray Collins to consult on how these reforms can happen.

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