Outcome of Special Conference- Victory for One Member One Vote

Saturday 15th September marked a resounding victory for the One Member One Vote campaign, as CLPs, Women’s Fora and affiliates gathered in County Hall in Cardiff to vote on the two proposed options. Conference is itself an electoral college system, so party units (the CLPs and Women’s Fora) and affiliates vote separately, then the percentages from the two sections are halved and then combined to give the overall result. This final result was 64.1% in favour of OMOV; however, as this is a weighted percentage, it hides the fact that 87% of party units voted for OMOV, meaning that our campaign, led by Cardiff West CLP, has been hugely successful. OMOV will be immediately incorporated into the rule book, meaning that the forthcoming leadership election will be run under the OMOV system.

This system means that all party members and members of affiliated organisations (trade unions, socialist societies and the Co-op Party) who pay the political levy will each have one vote, which will be counted in one section and the candidate with the most overall votes wins. This differs from the system used at UK level in that elections in 2015 and 2016 also included registered supporters, which will not be the case in Wales (the UK Party Democracy Review is also considering the future role of registered supporters).

We now move on to Phase Two of the review, and all the CLPs (approximately 25) involved in Phase One have expressed a desire to continue to work together to further campaign for other democratic changes, which Cardiff West CLP will continue to facilitate.