The AV referendum in context

Excerpted from a longer piece being prepared for the Socialist Party's 2011 conference

The AV referendum is not going to be the question that determines whether Britain progresses to socialism or slides to barbarism; it will probably not even be a question whose outcome threatens the Coalition. In discussing how socialists should vote on AV we must remember that the mere fact of the referendum's proposal points to deep shifts within the British state.

Ed Miliband: not the trade unions' choice

A refresher, since I didn't understand it myself until recently: the Labour Party is a federal organisation, composed of affiliated trade unions, various think-tanks and talking shops like the Fabian Society, a few special interest groups like Labour Students, and the Parliamentary Labour Party, each of which gets to vote in the Labour leadership election with various weightings and privileges. The ballot is done by ranked preferences. Having seen the results broken down by affiliated organisation from the Labour leadership election, I decided to pull them apart a bit and see what I could learn about what the trade union voice was actually saying. I discovered one thing:

When trade unionist voters in the Labour leadership election were enthusiastic at all, they were enthusiastic for Diane Abbott — not for Ed Miliband and not for anybody else.