Labour Insiders Fear Rule Changes Could Prevent Leadership Challenges

Labour Party insiders fear that a new set of changes to the rulebook could prevent challengers from forcing a leadership election to be held, PoliticsHome understands.

A number of rule changes being put forward by the party are set to be reviewed at a meeting of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) on Tuesday, before being voted on at the party's upcoming Conference.

Documents seen by PoliticsHome show that the proposals would scrap current rules that state leadership elections should nominally take place at every annual party conference, and that when Labour is in government leadership elections proceed if requested by a card vote at conference.

The rules currently state that "In any other circumstances an election shall only be held when a vacancy occurs".

However, with the rules around party conferences and governance scrapped, this final sub-clause would be changed to simply read: "An election shall only be held when a vacancy occurs".

Under the changes being proposed, the rules around challengers needing to secure nominations from 20 per cent of Labour MPs remain. This has caused confusion among party insiders as there appear to be rules around a challenge but no provision for holding a leadership election subsequently.

Some believe that this would leave no route to leadership challenges, resulting in legal confusion because even if a challenge secured nominations from 20 per cent of Labour MPs no leadership contest would be guaranteed.

Other Labour sources insist that the proposals would enable a leadership election prompted by a valid challenge to take place at any time. PoliticsHome asked Labour for further details on how the rule changes would reflect this.

A concerned party insider told PoliticsHome: “The