Political Parties and Elections Bill

One important point is the fundamentally democratic nature of trade unions. Unions decide their policies at their annual or bi-annual conferences. The leadership is then duty-bound to implement those policies and to argue for them in the Labour party and the wider community. At the end of the day, those leaders are elected. Indeed, thanks to previous legislation they must be elected; it used to be possible to be a general secretary for life. One therefore has to give some leeway to organisations to elect their leadership and to allow that leadership to make the case.