Labour is braced for a battle over the final version of the party’s manifesto at a summit for its most senior figures on Thursday after a draft was leaked overnight.
Recriminations over the leak and the motivations for it are likely to dominate the meeting of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) and shadow cabinet at the so-called clause V meeting on Thursday.
Jeremy Corbyn was due to attend a poster launch on Thursday morning but pulled out to prepare for the talks.
Different drafts appear to have been leaked to the media, with the leaders’ office and other senior figures blaming each other for the breach. The document seen by the Guardian, which is watermarked “DRAFT: CONFIDENTIAL”, is believed to have been initially shown to the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation (Tulo).
A 43-page document was circling on Wednesday night but senior Labour sources have said the draft that will be scrutinised at the meeting on Thursday is longer.
Questions about who leaked the document were raised on all sides of the party, with several newspapers and broadcasters having details overnight, including the Guardian, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Telegraph. Senior insiders say the drafting process involved a very tight group, led by Corbyn’s policy chief, Andrew Fisher, in close consultation with the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell.
Key stakeholders including the political officers of the trade unions were shown a draft – which they could read but not take away. Some unions are understood to have expressed concerns about some of the key pledges, including cutting arms sales and opposing Heathrow expansion.
Shadow cabinet ministers have only been given access to tightly controlled sections of the manifesto, and some continue to have doubts about aspects of it, with just hours to go before it must be signed off.
On Thursday morning both sides of the deeply divided party suspected each other of the embarrassing leak. One senior party insider even suggested one of Corbyn’s allies could have leaked the draft document in a “jujitsu move” that could allow them to claim the general election was lost because of sabotage.
Meanwhile, party insiders say close allies of Corbyn appeared genuinely discombobulated by the leak on Wednesday night, and initially suspected figures on the party’s right wing, including the deputy leader, Tom Watson. But like the rest of the shadow cabinet, Watson is understood to have had direct access only to parts of the manifesto.Labour will launch an internal inquiry to establish the source of Wednesday’s leak, but it will not report until after the general election to avoid further destabilising the party in the runup to the poll.
While a number of different drafts of the manifesto were circulating, insiders say the particular version passed to newspapers had a very narrow circulation list, making it relatively easy to narrow down the ultimate source.
Arriving at the meeting, the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, said he had not seen the document. “We’ll see what transpires,” he said. “A number of the policies are really, really exciting and the British electorate can look at that rather than your obsession with the leadership. I think we can have some interesting ideas. I think the overall policies are going to be in favour of ordinary working people.
“I’m absolutely certain ordinary people want an increase in the minimum wage, investment in infrastructure, nationalisation of the railways. The Labour party is a democratic party, there’s going to be a debate and we’ll see what happens.”
John Cryer, the chair of the backbench parliamentary Labour party, looked grim-faced. “It’s not good news is it?” he told reporters outside the venue.
Andrew Gwynne, the party’s elections chief, said the leak was “not ideal” but had got the party’s policies some much-needed publicity. “It’s not the exactly the morning I’d planned,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“On the plus side, we are all talking about the Labour party this morning and visions of how this country can be better. This is a draft version, there may well be changes.”
This article includes content provided by Scribd. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.
Gwynne said the package of policies, which includes radical plans to take parts of Britain’s energy industry back into public ownership alongside the railways and the Royal Mail, would be “genuinely transformational”.The meeting, chaired by Corbyn, will go through the manifesto in detail and agree a final draft, though tensions over the leak are likely to dominate discussion.
The meeting is being attended by Watson along with all members of the shadow cabinet and the NEC, which includes MPs and representatives from the major trade unions, such as Unite, Unison and the GMB, as well as councillors and Labour members. NEC members were only due to receive a copy of the draft manifesto at 10am on Thursday, two hours before the meeting.
The leaders of the Scottish and Welsh Labour parties, Kezia Dugdale and Carwyn Jones, were also due to be there as well as a committee of backbench MPs. Representatives from Tulo, which coordinates the 14 trade unions affiliated to the party, were also attending.
The manifesto was drawn up by Fisher, a close aide of Corbyn, who joined his team shortly after his first leadership victory in 2015.
A former trade union political official, Fisher has previously been suspended from the party, after a tweet during the 2015 election where he urged voters in Croydon not to back Labour and instead vote for Class War. The seat was won by the Conservatives.
Labour members have been emailed and asked to contribute their views ahead of the party’s national policy forum, which has been convened via conference calls. MPs, councillors, local parties and trade unions have also been asked to contribute.
Revisions are already being made to the draft. The Guardian understands that the original draft had a sentence reading: “Any prime minister should be extremely cautious about ordering the use of weapons of mass destruction which would result in the indiscriminate killing of millions of innocent civilians.” This has now been removed.
The leaked version also pledges the phased abolition of tuition fees, a review of sweeping cuts to universal credit and a promise to scrap the bedroom tax.
An immediate “emergency price cap” on energy bills to ensure that the average dual-fuel household energy bill remains below £1,000 a year is also proposed. It promises “fair rules and reasonable management” on immigration with 1,000 extra border guards and a commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence.
It also makes clear that the party supports the renewal of Trident, despite Corbyn’s longstanding opposition to nuclear weapons. A section on Brexit states that Labour accepts the terms of the referendum result and will seek to unite the country around the deal.
A Conservative spokesman said: “The commitments in this dossier will rack up tens of billions of extra borrowing for our families and will put Brexit negotiations at risk. Jobs will be lost, families will be hit and our economic security damaged for a generation if Jeremy Corbyn and the coalition of chaos are ever let anywhere near the keys to Downing Street.”
However, some in the Labour party may feel the plans do not go far enough, as they only promise a review of Conservative cuts to universal credit and legal aid.
