WHAT HAPPENED IN WARWICK?

It takes a certain tenacity to have stuck with Labour in recent years. Foolhardiness, maybe. One of our hopes when Blair was still around was that the "Big Four" trade union leaders would somehow help the members "re-claim the Party." How vain that hope was now becomes absolutely clear.
The BBC website reports that the National Policy Forum - and the unions - approved the disgraceful, puniitve welfare reforms proposed by James Purnell. The NPF also approved ID cards, 42 days, more Academies. In other words, the whole right-wing package.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me what happened to the hundreds of amendments tabled by the CLPs on rather more progressive lines. The ones, presumably, which ended in the bin. And what, precisely, have people like Woodley and Prentis actually achieved in return for their backing of Tory policies on welfare? Not much, it would appear. The "concessions" on the minimum wage and parental leave are just sops which leave the bigger picture unremittingly New Labour.
The problem with the National Policy Forum, as we knew beforehand, is that it is a stitch-up. I was pretty sceptical that many of the left-of-centre amendments to policy positions would get through but it was worth a shot. However, that particular exercise appears to have been a complete waste of time. So what to do?
We need to campaign for an OMOV procedure to the NPF. Without that, the Policy Forum will continue to be a New Labour cabal. We need to publish the list of amendments which were proposed on Trident , trade union rights, etc and make it clear to people that many thousands in the Party support them. And we have no option but to carry on campaigning . It's clear the union bureucrats are following Brown into the abyss. We don't have to join them.