Labour Party delegates have rejected a motion that called to extend voting for a new Labour leader to paid-up party members.

The motion was rejected with 620 votes against (79 per cent) and 165 votes in favour (21 per cent).

A total of 793 party delegates cast their vote last Friday. In total there were seven invalid votes and one abstention.

This means that on 5 June, the new Labour leader will be chosen by 900 delegates, as is the norm of our European political partners as well as most of the democratic world.

At face value, the proposed amendment to overhaul the present mechanism appeared to be a viable and laudable one but analyses showed that it was too idealistic and not practical. In a strange kind of way it even carried a potential risk of suffocating the principle of checks and balance that are so essential in a modern democracy. I shall expand on this later.

Amendments to statutes have a tendency to develop unforeseen difficulties when not expected and become apparent after a long period of time. Any new statute and\or amendment need time to simmer and therefore too risky to go through such a process immediately prior to implementation of such amendments.

We are talking about an amendment that has not been adopted by any political party in Europe, except for Italy. In Britain, the Mother of Parliaments which is seen as the role model of democracy, the leader and deputy leader are elected by an electoral college made up of the constituency Labour committees, the affiliated trade unions, and the parliamentary group. This system was approved at the 1993 Labour Party Conference and first used in July 1994, after the death of John Smith, when Tony Blair was elected leader and John Prescott deputy leader. Before 1981 the parliamentary group had elected the leader and deputy leader annually.

The National Executive Committee, which is second only to the Party Conference as the supreme body of the British Labour Party organisation, is elected each year at the party conference. Since 1972, the leader and deputy leader have been ex officio members.

The annual party conference is the ultimate court of appeal in the British Labour Party’s organisation, at least outside Parliament. It elects the National Executive and debates and votes on policy (though a two thirds majority of the votes cast is required to ensure decisions are included in the party programme), and the National Executive is answerable to it for the way it has implemented policy and supervised the running of the party in the preceding year.

One might argue that our political ambience is somewhat different to that of Britain, but from the beginning my view was that it would be foolhardy to attempt such an enormous overhaul where our longer established European partners, as well as most of the democratic world, feared to tread.

Logistically, the proposed system would have created a nightmare with regard to its cost, human resources and the most critical element – security. I shudder to think of the martyrdom we would have had to endure and the political mileage derived by the PN if there was the least suspicion of an irregularity.

The question of checks and balances referred to above would have been put at risk had the amendment been approved. Modern democracies and reputable institutions provide for a separation of power where several branches are created and power is shared between them. At the same time, the power of one branch can be challenged by another branch. This is what the system of checks and balances is all about.

Our general conference is the highest authority in the Labour Party with the incumbent responsibility to dismiss any party official including the leader. If the power to the delegates to elect a new leader was rescinded and given to party members, it would follow that our new and subsequent leaders would be above the general conference and in a position to dictate to it. In an extreme case of conduct unbecoming, or any other reason, the party leader would then only be made to step down by the vote of the party members. A near to dictatorial situation and a painful process to go through.

Charles J. Buttigieg