Norwich North was lost, not only because of the expenses scandal or the pain of recession or unpalatable policies, but also for another very important reason. Too many potential Labour voters feel the Government isn’t listening to them and that there’s nothing they can now do to influence it (other than of course to go on a voters’ strike and lose a byelection). This is bad for any political party, but it’s particularly bad for Labour because it has always been seen as a party in which (unlike the Tory party) the activists, members, participants and voters had a real say over its aims, procedures and programmes. By joining the party at the local level, there was a strong and rewarding feeling that one was contributing, even if only to a very modest degree, to influencing events which cumulatively across the country could bring about real change. Not any more. The party has been hollowed out to a shadow of its former self, the activists have deserted, and the remaining core of loyal supporters have become house-trained to their own impotence. Not a way to run a railroad, let alone a political party governing the country. So is it now too late to restore the party democracy which is an essential ingredient of electoral success?

There are several dimensions to internal democracy in the Labour Party, all of which need repair. One important one is the way that the annual party conference has been transformed, initially by Blair, from a decision-making body embracing delegates from all sections of the party into a mere showpiece for the leader’s speech, and then most recently by Brown in ending the right of CLPs and unions to put forward resolutions for debate and vote at all. This wholesale removal of the democratic purpose of the annual conference is being reviewed this year, and should be without question reversed. That would send one significan signal for the revival of a demoralised party.
Second, the centralisation of power, which Thatcher began in the 1980s and which Blair in his party leadership period 1994-2007 took much further, needs to be steadily unwound. Parliament, the NEC, the party conference, and now even the Cabinet, are little more than ciphers within a power structure utterly dominated by No.10. Of course it is true that Gordon Brown is now hugely weakened and being forced to succumb on issue after issue, but that is very different from an ordered redistribution of power reinvigorating the role of all the other associated organs within the party hierarchy.
Third, the shenanigans by which party control is enforced need to be exposed and stopped. Parliamentary selections are fixed by suborning regional party staff (improperly and in defiance of party rules guaranteeing party staff freedom from factional pressure) to support the candidate favoured by the leadership, often parachuted in from London or the South-East, both by giving privileged access long before other candiates to membership lists and also by leaning on party members to vote for the favoured candidate. MPs are regularly pressurised by the Whips into supporting the leadership line even when it is contrary to party policy, constituency wishes and general Labour Party principles. New delegates to party conference are drilled to support the platform line even if it is quite contrary to the constituency mandate. And the NEC has been transformed from the custodian of the party conscience to a loyalist organ obedient to the leader.
It is all these practices which have turned off the party. If the party is to revived as a fighting machine, the restoration of internal democracy will do more to achieve this than any other single matter, including policy changes.

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