Irony

Irony doesn't seem to be something that Kezia Dugdale has a grasp of.  Today she has called for 'an end to control freakery at party conferences'.  She says that

Labour should not be afraid of its members' views - whether they want to debate the future of Trident or welfare reform

 Meanwhile we have the omnishambles that is the Labour leadership contest, with people being denied votes, despite having paid their 3 quid (non-refundable), being trade union leaders or indeed Labour party members.  No control freakery there then.

And where did Kezia get her wizard wheeze from?  Could it be Jeremy Corbyn?  Surely not!  Don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows, do we Kezia?

She also says that

The days of conference control freakery in all political parties in Scotland must come to an end.

Quite how she knows what goes on at other party conferences I'm not sure.  I can speak from experience when I say that any SNP member can propose a motion to their branch for consideration for conference.  If the branch votes in favour of putting it forward it is then passed to a committee who consider all the incoming proposals and select the ones for conference, presumably weeding out similar ones in the interests of time constraints.  When it comes to voting on conference motions, a delegate's branch may mandate how they are to vote on a particular issue, or the branch may allow their delegates to vote as they wish.  If the vote is mandated, it will be as a result of a vote taken in branch  prior to the conference.  Last time I attended as a delegate, we had a free vote on all issues.

I have no idea how any of the other political parties organise their conferences, and I rather suspect Ms Dugdale doesn't either...