This one is easy. The levy being strictly optional (the pro-Cameron
media lie through their Blairite teeth on that point, as they do when they
still talk about "block votes"), all levy-payers and other affiliated
members should be declared individual members of the Labour Party, and
that would be that.
Since the introduction of opting out, there have been eight Conservative
Prime Ministers. Eight. None of them has changed the law to require opting in,
even though that would always have bankrupted the Labour Party
overnight. Something about it just cannot be done. I do not know what
that something is. But it obviously exists.
Declaring levy-payers to be individual members would be little more
than a semantic change, and would merely constitute a move from a less
efficient to a more efficient means of the doing the same thing. A
thing which already happens, anyway.
You only pay the levy is you choose to. Anyone who says otherwise is
either lying or cannot read a basic form. There is no conceivable reason
to pay the levy unless you are already a Labour supporter. By paying
it, you already even get a vote in Leadership Elections. You are a
Labour Party member. Entirely by choice. You ought to be classified as
one. Problem solved.
It is not a lie.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't know the significance of the difference between 'opt-in' and 'opt-out' you've never studied behavioural economics. Or much else.
Its the whole reason we protest about dead people's organs being taken without their family's consent, on an 'opt-out' basis.
Len McCluskey rightly admits barely 10% of his members would pay Labour any money, if it was 'opt-in'.
And they are perfectly free to opt out. They always have been.
ReplyDeleteMaking donating to Labour the default option for the whole union makes them less free.
ReplyDeleteIf Labour thinks it has many supporters among the working- class, then they ought to be happy to let anyone who wishes to donate, "opt- in".
We all know why they're not keen on that.
It's Ed Miliband who wants to change it, although while he might accept your point, I don't. The thing is still voluntary. And none of eight - eight - Conservative Prime Ministers ever attempted to alter the arrangements.
ReplyDeleteThat's because the Tories want to keep Labour going for the same reason Labour needs the Tories to survive (as Peter Kellner explained) because both of them fear what might replace their current pretend 'adversaries'.
ReplyDeleteMr Kellner rightly says "the Tories are a useful bulwark against the kind of party that might emerge from their collapse."
And the Tories feel the same about Labour.
And that was true in 1951, was it?
ReplyDeleteSilly boy.