Labour members are preparing to descend on Brighton for this year’s party conference, its first full in-person conference since 2019 due to the pandemic.
This year’s Labour Party conference is expected to be particularly fraught, as party leader Sir Keir Starmer attempts to push through changes to the method by which it elects its leaders.
Sharon Graham, recently elected as the new leader of trade union Unite, has said she will stay away from this year's party conference in protest.
But just what is the Labour Party conference, and what is its role?
What is the Labour Party conference?
The Labour Party conference is the party’s main annual conference and, officially, its supreme decision-making body.
Constituency parties across the UK send delegates to the conference to vote on policy proposals and changes to its internal rule book. Party conferences have been the scene of many battles and controversies in the past.
However, just because a policy is voted through at the Labour Party conference, that doesn’t mean it automatically goes into its next manifesto.
Party manifestos are decided by MPs, trade union leaders and members of its National Executive Committee at what’s known as a Clause Five meeting. These are held shortly before general elections.
When does the Labour Party conference take place?
Labour Party conferences usually take place in late September or early October.
Sometimes, however, a special conference may be called, usually to deal with a particular issue. These can be held at any time of the year.
Welsh Labour and Scottish Labour both have their own annual conferences.
This year’s UK Labour Party conference takes place from Saturday 25th September to Wednesday 29th September.
What’s on the agenda at this year’s Labour conference?
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wants to make a host of changes to the party’s rule book at this year’s conference.
The most controversial of these is his proposed return to the electoral college system for electing party leaders.
Under this system - first introduced in 1981 and replaced by Ed Miliband in 2014 - one third of the vote went to MPs, another third to affiliated trade union members, and another to ordinary Labour members.
The electoral college was replaced by a ‘one member, one vote’ (OMOV) system in which all votes carried equal weight.
But the first leader elected under OMOV was left-winger Jeremy Corbyn. While Corbyn won two landslide victories among ordinary members in 2015 and 2016, most MPs opposed him.
Starmer was himself elected via OMOV in 2020, but bringing back the electoral college would make it extremely difficult for another left-wing candidate to become Labour leader again.
This is because giving the Parliamentary Labour Party - only a small minority of which backed Corbyn - one-third of the vote would likely provide it with an effective veto.
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