The extent of the financial and organisational challenges facing Ed Miliband’s Labour party have been revealed in a new internal review document circulated to senior party managers, and obtained by Total Politics.
According to the “Labour Party Management and Commercial Review Phase 1” the party has struggled to set a budget for 2012, is failing to meet its fundraising targets and has a lack of transparent financial governance structures.
The document, dated 1 November, reveals how “In the short term the party needs a full budget produced for 2012. The party must stick to this budget and remain determined to stick to a zero based budgeting approach”.
It adds: “The Party’s finances require far greater transparency and clarity of information. There needs to be a willingness to share this information with a wider range of stakeholders and the creation and rigid implementation of a strategic financial plan that runs through until 2015”.
The paper reveals the ongoing fundraising problems facing the Labour party in the wake of its 2010 election defeat, and says, “The Party needs to strategically review how we raise funds. The Party should bring together all fundraising and commercial activities. Develop a strong professional fundraising approach across the whole of the Party”. Specifically identified are a requirement to “review the 100 high value donors and create a plan to improve engagement” including ways to “ increase the Shadow Cabinet’s involvement in fundraising activities”; a need to improve legacy donations, described as “a much under utilised form of giving – currently being far better implemented by our rivals”; and ways to “look to develop our micro giving strategy. We do not maximise our small donation giving and need to build a strategy that involves greater sophistication and co-ordination of ‘ask’”.
The document also highlights issues in communications, “The Party must produce a more integrated communications function that develops and delivers the Party’s core narrative and message across all communications channels”; policy, “The Party must create a clearer structure for policy development and subsequently a strategic framework within which the party’s other operations work’; and research, “Opposition research needs a greater focus and resource allocation accordingly, when done well will slow and hamper the Government allowing the opportunity for Labour’s message to be delivered”.
The review also highlights problems with Labour’s field organization, warning bluntly that, “To win the next election and implement an ‘Access All Areas’ strategy the party cannot just make a few token changes to the way it operates and organises. Our field operations need to be strengthened. Going forward – the party must look to create a national field structure that builds capacity at a very local level”.
The review, commissioned by new General Secretary Ian McNicol, also recommends a wholesale restructuring of the Labour party’s Victoria Street operations, with the abolition of the two existing deputy general secretary posts and their replacement with six executive directors.
It also calls for a review of the relationship between the party and the governing National Executive Committee, claiming “The relationship is currently unsatisfactory and one that does not allow the National Executive Committee to always carry out their functions as effectively as possible”.
*UPDATE*
The Labour Party have got back to us and a spokesperson said:
“We are in the process of setting a budget for 2012 and are working to focus our recourses on winning the next general election and holding the Tories to account.”
Comments
Ian / December 01 2011 12:44pm
Wow Dan, what a scoop! You've excelled yourself....oh wait, the 2 deputies have already been let go!
Behind the times as always, although it's nice to see you branching out and listening to the New Statesman's advice, you know, when you threw your toys out of the pram and resigned.
Clr Ralph Baldwin / December 02 2011 12:42am
Well that was interesting no sympathy for nepotist with no financial sense.
You cannot trust them with an economy when they operate a prostitute internal system.
They are gong nowhere, except Portcullis House/Westminster dreamland.....lets leave them there to decline.......they have had more chances than a cat with nine e lives they deserve no sympathy.
What goes around, comes around.....
.
Clr Ralph Baldwin / December 03 2011 5:33pm
Hmm NEC may well be tightening their grip here I wonder if they will auction off and sell prospective Parliamentary positions that might be what they mean when they talk about the NEC "doing it's job effectively"..
But then the PLP has begun wandering down a road that only leads to the party declining further hence the lack of en masse support and reliance on taxpayers and Unions. Not that this would worry the Leadership which would prefer single big doners over large numbers of people as it can get back to "business as usual" as soon as possible of being a Corporate Interest Party that enables the MPs to become celebrities or lobby fodder with pretensions towards political class snobbery.
Apthey is the order of the day and also the creation of more political "career" positions as these idiots attempt to emulate a profession without any regard to the professional processes and methods in genuine professional sectors.
What we are seeing then is a clumsy attempt to appear as though these people understand professionalism when they can't even get basic accounting right and to continue to move the Labour Party away from the public as the Leadership continue to find jobs for their mates and pals.
Political parties need to be treated far more harshly as they are not essential bodies in our democracy and easily replaced as we saw in Scotland with the rise of SNP and rejections of the corrupt parties and with the rise of UKIP as a consequence of democratic decline of the EU settlement that supports the unsustainable political class and unelites.
What this shows more importantly is contempt, especially towards the members of the Labour Party who want to believe their leaders give a damn about them and are blinded to the trust of the hubris and arrogance of a contemptuous group of losers who could not even hold down a real job.
Labour is far from being ready to compete in a General Election and has to prove to people it is serious about Progressive positions on issues such as Equality (rather than fixes) and is not merely another Party of corruption, privilege and irrelevant in the hearts and minds of people who will default to Tory if no better option is fielded.