Many issues have been swept under the carpet at Labour conference 2024 through the “priorities ballots” deciding which “topics” reach the floor, and by bureaucratic manipulation. (78 motions ruled out, not all under the reintroduced “contemporary motions” requirement, and not all left wing, but including among them the text proposed by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement and submitted by Rushcliffe CLP).
But as we write it looks like the platform will be unable to avoid two big political fights.
One is on Winter Fuel Payments and taxing wealth, around a composite from the Unite and CWU unions.
The latest guess is that the conference organisers will seek to downplay it by relegating it to the final session of conference on Wednesday morning. They may try other tricks, too.
The other is on migration and asylum, or, as it is headlined in the agenda, “Border Security Command”, which looks like being debated on Tuesday 24 September.
There is a sharply right-wing composite from a few CLPs, endorsing Labour government asylum and migration policy and stressing its most punitive and indeed murderous aspects. The alternative, from Rushcliffe CLP has, as noted above, been ruled out of order on spurious grounds (“covering more than one subject”).
But latest reports are that the Fire Brigades Union, Unison, and Unite are set to vote against. Vigorous speeches from those unions could well mobilise many delegates from CLPs and other unions, including right-wingers with some moral sense, to vote against. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement and Labour Left Internationalists are leafleting conference on Monday afternoon (despite driving rain) and Tuesday morning (forecast to be dry).
In 2022 and 2023 the right won the CLPs’ Priorities Ballot on topics for debate by telling delegates to prefer bland “topics” in order to maximise “unity” and minimise unfavourable media coverage.
In 2021 the right had attempted to get their own motions onto conference agenda, and failed badly. Getting policy through conference is not usually the right’s “thing”. They prefer to focus on getting the leadership to carry out right-wing policies, and the conference to shut up and be compliant.
This year, however, the right, or a section of the right, are bolder. They are seeking a debate on clear-cut right-wing motions. With an effort, it is possible that they will be defeated, or at least that a big protest vote will be cast.
The motions under the “Growth Mission” topics are also very right-wing, but in a blander way than the “Borders” motions.