End of the Argument?

[epriezka]

I'll pm Pete and see what the deal is with an account. See if we can get it opened soon as.

I know Pete's a Scot, but one of the reasons to open a separate bank account is to take some of the burden off our national treasurer. If somebody else is specifically responsible for managing the Scots campaign fund, then Pete can start moving towards what he should be (overseer-of-finances-in-chief), instead of what he currently is (overburdened-lone-person-who-manages-everything-to-do-with-finances).

By the way, Hamish, I appreciate you're not suggesting you will make more work for Pete, but I'm just flagging that decentralization of finances goes hand-in-hand with regionalization of campaigns. If the Scots can take a lead (without killing Pete in the process) then it will help the national movement to grow more quickly because other regions will have an example to follow when taking on more of their own admin/management burden.

[epriezka]

Then I would like to know why the PP is in any way relevant to regional elections for bodies that have no bearing on our aims.

Two things quickly come to mind:
1) Campaigns help us raise awareness in the party. Brand familiarity is good.
2) Getting someone elected will give us credibility. It will also get us a lot of publicity.

John, I think you're right to ask the question so people are clear about why we fight any election we fight. However, I think there are very strong arguments for PPUK to fight elections at every level. The key argument goes as follows:

- It's kind of tempting to be optimistic and think volunteer organizations come together and work because lots of volunteers are really keen etc, but life doesn't seem to be like that
- If you look at the local parties for the Lib Dems, Tories, Labour, Greens etc, the rule seems to be that if you want a strong local volunteer org, the best bet is to have somebody in full-time or part-time responsibility being a political champion and focus point for their effort e.g. somebody on the council
- That local champion acts a catalyst for recruiting more volunteers and building local campaign capability
- Building local presence does not happen overnight, but over a period of many years
- The importance of local campaign presence (as opposed to national campaigning) seems to have become steadily greater over recent decades. Parties are winning MPs in locations where they first build up a strong council team. By the same token, defeat at council level seems to preface the ultimate demise of the party's MP. Evidence from the general election: significantly weaker swing to the Tories in Scotland where Tories have much lower presence in other tiers of government; Lib Dem votes only reliable at returning MPs in regional strongholds like Cornwall; Greens winning first MP in Brighton where had established strong council presence over long time. There even appears to be a cycle emerging: when the Tories were in government, they lost more and more council seats to Labour, and those became footholds for Labour's victory in the General Election, but as soon as Labour were in national government, the tide went the other way, allowing the Tories to steadily build up grassroots campaign ability whilst Labour MPs increasingly found themselves lacking local campaign support as their local parties got weaker and weaker.

[Hamish]

I'll pm Pete and see what the deal is with an account. See if we can get it opened soon as.

I know Pete's a Scot, but one of the reasons to open a separate bank account is to take some of the burden off our national treasurer. If somebody else is specifically responsible for managing the Scots campaign fund, then Pete can start moving towards what he should be (overseer-of-finances-in-chief), instead of what he currently is (overburdened-lone-person-who-manages-everything-to-do-with-finances).

By the way, Hamish, I appreciate you're not suggesting you will make more work for Pete, but I'm just flagging that decentralization of finances goes hand-in-hand with regionalization of campaigns. If the Scots can take a lead (without killing Pete in the process) then it will help the national movement to grow more quickly because other regions will have an example to follow when taking on more of their own admin/management burden.

Obviously it's not fair to burden him. I'll do it if needed, but I'd obviously need to contact him for details and suchlike, and how to open an account. Seeing as he's treasurer, I assume he's the best one to help me/whoever.

[epriezka]

I'll pm Pete and see what the deal is with an account. See if we can get it opened soon as.

I know Pete's a Scot, but one of the reasons to open a separate bank account is to take some of the burden off our national treasurer. If somebody else is specifically responsible for managing the Scots campaign fund, then Pete can start moving towards what he should be (overseer-of-finances-in-chief), instead of what he currently is (overburdened-lone-person-who-manages-everything-to-do-with-finances).

By the way, Hamish, I appreciate you're not suggesting you will make more work for Pete, but I'm just flagging that decentralization of finances goes hand-in-hand with regionalization of campaigns. If the Scots can take a lead (without killing Pete in the process) then it will help the national movement to grow more quickly because other regions will have an example to follow when taking on more of their own admin/management burden.

Obviously it's not fair to burden him. I'll do it if needed, but I'd obviously need to contact him for details and suchlike, and how to open an account. Seeing as he's treasurer, I assume he's the best one to help me/whoever.

Phone up the co-op bank and ask them about opening a Community Direct account (and then an Instant Savings account). It's well designed for the purposes of a political party, earns a good rate of interest as these things go, can be managed online, the co-op is ethically sound and it's the same account as the national party uses which will simplify things in terms of management, transfers between accounts and having other people in the party who can give advice on how to do things.

Get the co-op to send you the paperwork as I'm (slightly) simplifying how easy it is to open a bank account BUT whatever the co-op needs you to do = good discipline for any organization and stuff the Scots party should aim to do anyway e.g. working out who is responsible for doing what.

Of course, you might shop around and find a better account, but I'd still suggest you get the paperwork to open a co-op account asap and use it as a checklist to get everybody ready/lined-up for some key things they need to do if they're to run a Scots campaign that can stand on its own two feet. Just reading through the co-op paperwork and working out how to answer it (and calling the co-op if you have questions) will be a learning experience that you'll find useful.

[Pete]

I'm going to give hamish a call tomorrow to discuss this further.

Can I assume that there won't be objections to him taking on a role as Deputy Treasurer for Scottish Election (after a membership vote of course)

[epriezka]

I'm going to give hamish a call tomorrow to discuss this further.

Can I assume that there won't be objections to him taking on a role as Deputy Treasurer for Scottish Election (after a membership vote of course)

You're the Treasurer - we should trust your judgement! And anyone who doesn't trust your judgement should also be volunteering to help run the treasury...

[azrael]

I'm going to give hamish a call tomorrow to discuss this further.

Can I assume that there won't be objections to him taking on a role as Deputy Treasurer for Scottish Election (after a membership vote of course)

I'm under the impression that some of the NEC are co-opting assistants from whoever volunteers and deputising them without the need for party vote (happy to be told I'm wrong) which seems an eminently practical approach.

[Pete]

It was decided by the NEC that where account access is given to a deputy, they would be subject to a vote.

[azrael]

It was decided by the NEC that where account access is given to a deputy, they would be subject to a vote.

ahh yes, I can see how that would be different! reassuring to know it's already been thought about

[epriezka]

It was decided by the NEC that where account access is given to a deputy, they would be subject to a vote.

Don't want to be annoying but that doesn't make much sense to me. Consider that a big proper party will have a bank account per constituency party (and more). They won't even try to centrally oversee management of all local funds, never mind have a nation-wide vote for every 'deputy' i.e. local party treasurer. The point of local autonomy is to let people move quickly and be motivated to get off their backsides and do stuff for themselves.

Are you sure that the exec ruling wasn't just that we need a vote for deputies looking after any central party funds? I was in favour of members ratifying national positions of responsibility - including deputies - but at that time the topic of regional (i.e. sub-national) positions had never come up.

Bear in mind that if this is going to be a bank account used only as a fighting fund for the Scots party, then this is a move towards (healthy and normal) decentralization of party admin (as opposed to decentralizing party policy which is where this thread may originally have been headed). Decentralizing responsibility for admin suggests that a nationwide vote of all supporters (Scots and non-Scots alike) is disproportionate. It would make sense for the national exec to stipulate expectations relating to governance of regions but a rule of the type 'all members in a region should be entitled to a vote to ratify appointments to positions of responsibility for their regional party' would make more sense than 'all members of the national party should be entitled to vote to ratify appointments to positions of responsibility for every regional party'.

I mean, if we had 12 regional parties corresponding to the 12 European election regions (Scotland being one of them) do we really expect to have a national vote to appoint each of the 12 regional treasurers?

[Pete]

Of course Eric I agree with you, on a personal level I feel a regional vote would suffice. However if thats going to cause problems that a national vote will avoid them I'm happy for a national vote in this instance.