How much each vote is worth in the Labour leadership contest?
Thanks to some reverse engineering, we’ve been able to work out the relative strength of the eight voting blocs in the 2013 Labour leadership ballot. Presumably, they’ll be much the same next time.
The relative strengths are:
- 5,392 members – 1 vote each
- 497 SFWU members who voted – 1 vote each
- 23 Maritime Union delegates – 3.8 votes each
- 39 Dairy Workers Union delegates – 6.9 votes each
- 23 Rail Union delegates – 8.3 votes each
- 29 Meat Workers Union delegates – 22 votes each
- 35 EPMU delegates – 29 votes each
- 34 caucus members – 159 votes each
Some observations.
- Only 2% of the total SFWU members cared enough about the Labour leadership to vote
- Despite their significant power less than half (35/80) EPMU delegates bothered to vote
- If we assume that say two thirds of the paid up party members voted, Labour has up to 8,000 members
- The EPMU delegates and Meat Workers delegates are relatively powerful.