Corbyn's proposals to transform Labour party parked for a year

Labour’s ruling body agreed to park some of the most controversial proposals for party reform at a marathon 10-hour meeting on Tuesday, which saw Jeremy Corbyn defeated in a series of close votes.

The national executive committee (NEC) set aside for a year plans for Labour councillors to be forced to defer to new “local government committees” before publishing their own manifesto, and for council leaders to be directly elected by Labour members.

Nick Forbes, leader of the Labour group on the local government association, who sits on the NEC, welcomed the decision as “sensible and pragmatic”. He had warned that the plans would risk “endless infighting as groups within the party are pitted against each other”.

The NEC also agreed to defer a decision about changing the role of the party’s national policy forum, instead opting to kick off a wide-ranging review of the way Labour makes policy.

Another disputed proposal to more than double the size of the conference arrangements committee, which plays a crucial role in determining what is debated at the party’s annual gathering, was rejected. Just one extra seat was created.

One NEC member said the meeting had generally been good-tempered, but estimated that Corbyn himself had been outvoted on more than half of the complex series of proposed rule changes.

Corbyn’s political secretary, Katy Clark, has spent months carrying out a review of party democracy as the next stage in his project to transform Labour into a grassroots-led movement.

As a longtime supporter of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy lobbying group, the Labour leader advocates greater involvement by members in policymaking.

But his critics fear that approach would undermine the role of Labour’s MPs and shadow ministers in developing policy, and weaken their accountability to the electorate as opposed to Labour’s membership.

All the rule changes agreed by the NEC on Tuesday will be put forward to the party’s conference, which begins with a rally in Liverpool on Saturday.

But a bitter battle is yet to come over how Corbyn’s successor will be chosen. Momentum, the campaign group created to back his leadership, is keen to see greater membership involvement, while the trade unions hope to regain some role in selecting which leadership candidates Labour members can choose from.

A complex set of proposals and counter-proposals have been circulated in recent days. The latest iteration, tabled by party general secretary Jennie Formby at the weekend, enraged both Momentum and Labour centrists.

These suggestions – and potential changes to the process for selecting and removing Labour MPs – will now be discussed at another NEC meeting on Saturday as conference gets underway, Labour sources said.

This latest front in the battle for the future of Labour is sometimes pitting the trade unions against Momentum – both of which would generally be thought of as supportive of Corbyn and on the left of the party.

Momentum claimed the latest plan “makes it harder for a socialist candidate to get on the ballot in the future and completely misjudges the mood of the membership”.

The campaign group urged its members to lobby the NEC in advance of the meeting. It claimed hundreds of emails were sent in the half an hour before the meeting started, which it believed had helped to sway the mood towards delaying a decision, and perhaps to allow fresh proposals to be tabled.

One source close to NEC said the democracy review “is going to look very thin at this rate, with many measures just either rejected out of hand or watered down by the NEC”. They added it was “especially embarrassing that local government reform has yet again been kicked into the long grass”.

It is understood Momentum plans to ramp up its campaigning to persuade NEC members to back bolder reforms when the body meets again. “Everything still to play for on selections and leadership threshold,” a Momentum source said. “Seems like lots of members getting in touch did change some minds today.”

The NEC also agreed proposed changes to Labour’s harassment policy, which would see independent figures involved but this falls short of the changes demanded by some campaigners, who have called for a wholly independent process.

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “The Labour party is committed to continually improving our procedures for dealing with sexual harassment complaints.”