On Saturday, Labour will hold its Special Conference on Ed Miliband’s party reforms, an event that was originally anticipated as a make-or-break moment for his leadership. But happily for Miliband, there’ll be no need for a John Prescott-style figure to plead with the trade unions to back him at the eleventh hour. After being approved by 28 votes to two on the NEC, the reforms are likely to be overwhelmingly endorsed when the party gathers at the Excel Centre in London (one Labour source predicts a 75-80 per cent vote in favour). Given the anxiety that they initially provoked, on both the left and the right of the party, this is no small achievement.
Ahead of the conference, Miliband has been holding meetings with party members to outline the vision behind the changes, the latest being in Leeds last Friday. Speaking at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, accompanied by Rachel Reeves, Miliband was in confident form, contrasting the potential for Labour to once again become a “mass movement”, with the Tories (“a party for a few at the top with a declining membership”) and with the Lib Dems, who, he quipped, “are thinking of hiring a telephone box for their next party meeting – if the telephone box will have them”.
Content from our partners
