"And could Mark Valladares stand by..."

It would be fair to say that I am not a frequent speaker at Federal Conference. I think that, over more than twenty years, I've probably spoken five times. It may have been four. It isn't what I'm good at. However, when word reached me that there was a serious lack of cards for the consultative session on Strategy, I thought, "What the hell, what's the worst that can happen?". Admittedly, I hadn't read the paper. Alright, I'd never seen the paper, or even been aware of its existence, but it did contain a reference to the English Regions.


I know a bit about the English Regions. I've been to a Regional Conference of every one of them, and been the Secretary of two, London and the East of England. And when it comes to a critique of their strengths and weaknesses, I'm modestly well placed to comment. Luckily, most people seemed to want to talk about identity and differentiation, so I wasn't altogether surprised to be called. At the lectern, I found a pair of glasses, evidently left there by a previous speaker, so I tried them on and asked if anyone thought that they suited me. Cheap laugh, it's true, but it broke the ice.


I started with an observation about Regional Executive Committees, a combination of the able, the willing and the grudgingly press-ganged. I noted that they are short of resource, with already busy people trying to handle more tasks handed down from the centre. Squeezed in terms of fundraising capacity between the centre and the Local Parties, manned by individuals who are councillors, Local Party officers or deliverers of candidate selection and approval, there is little resource left. To ask these people to take on a greater role in leading the organisation is, to be generous, optimistic.


Moving on to our internal democracy, I noted our tendency to elect virtually everyone to virtually everything, yet we have no means of holding them accountable other than to vote them out at the end of their terms. Manifestos describing their future ambitions with no reference to past achievements makes it difficult to properly evaluate their worth.


Finally, I questioned the purpose of the English Party. Is it, as I suspect, a vestigal tier of party bureaucracy which could easily have its functions and resources devolved to the Regions, giving them meaning, purpose and credibility? We need a leaner, more effective structure, accessible to members, and I mused as to whether we had that.


And then I was gone. It was a little odd to hear Ros refer to me in her summation in the third person, although she could hardly do anything else. It was even odder to have to collect her later in the evening from an English Party event sponsored by National Express... I didn't stay long...