Gordon Brown’s first act on becoming Labour party Leader was to propose an overhaul of policy making, aimed, as it is titled, at “Extending and Renewing Party Democracy”. The seven proposals from Brown were tabled at the NEC meeting on the day of the leadership election conference and will be a focal point of conference this year.

The early priority given to this move was highly symbolic. It demonstrated that Brown understands and values the role that the wider party plays in developing policy and sustaining Labour in government; and that he has listened to concerns raised during the deputy leadership campaign that the current policy making system is imperfect, not least because grassroots members do not feel they adequately input into it.

Reaction to the proposals has been mixed on both left and right of the Party. Some instinctively pro-leadership voices are hesitant about the proposals, fearing that, for instance, balloting members on the Party programme is a hostage to fortune. On the left, the Bennite CLPD has at least engaged with the debate and taken a position that looks at the technical detail of the proposals in a constructive, if not 100% supportive way. In contrast, Labour Left Briefing and John McDonnell’s Labour Representation Committee have responded with a degree of hostility bordering on the hysterical – with LRC describing the proposals as “not just an attack on Labour Party democracy, they are a very serious attack on democracy itself.” Jon Cruddas and the soft left around Compass – having provoked the whole debate – are keeping their powder dry: Cruddas says “the jury’s out in terms of where this is going to go.” The trade unions are in the main are also waiting to see what the lie of the land is.

My view is that progressives in the Party need to support the proposals. The starting point has to be that members are not sufficiently plugged into the current process, and feel alienated and disengaged because of this. It is also that members have something positive to contribute to policy – we need to be seen as part of making the government a success and winning it a fourth term, not an obstacle to that.

The proposals are correctly calibrated in that they reinforce and build on the basic principles behind the Partnership in Power system set up in the 1990s. Judged on outcomes, PiP has been a success. It has delivered policies that have won us three General Elections, see us ahead in the polls deep into a third term, and have vastly improved public services and quality of life compared to the Tory years. In contrast our old policy-making pre-PiP process, based on lengthy compositing meetings and confrontational set-piece debates delivered at best very public scraps between the leadership and its opponents that washed Labour’s dirty linen in public, and at worst wishlists of unpopular and impractical policies that made us unelectable. Where PiP has failed has been in making full use of the potential contribution grassroots members can make to policy making.

Brown’s proposals would replace contemporary resolutions at conference – an anomalous hangover from the days of compositing and confrontation – with a process under which contemporary issues would be properly included in the deliberative work of the policy commissions.

Every member would be balloted on the NPF’s (National Policy Forum’s) final policy documents. This has to be the democratic way forward. Surely, if we can’t devise a policy platform that can win the support of 50% of our members then the problem is with our platform, not the membership? Local parties and Labour groups will be encouraged to consult beyond their own ranks with other stakeholders in the community – the people we aspire to represent.

For the first time the policy forum process at the grassroots in CLPs will be encouraged and supported – the PiP process was always intended to extend to the whole membership but has so far been confined to the tiny elite elected to the NPF.

The NPF will be strengthened and gain both rights to dialogue with ministers and responsibilities to inform members of its work. It will have a proper executive in the form of the Joint Policy Committee.

Annual Conference will get a beefed up role in directing the NPF’s work and elect 12 additional NPF representatives.

Brown’s philosophical position is that members have a positive contribution to make to developing policy. We need to approach the structure based on a paradigm that is about us as members wanting a process that enables us to feed in positive ideas about the policies that will create the more just society we all believe in. We need to reject the depressing cynicism being expressed in some quarters that sees our own Government as the progenitor of a series of policy threats which need to be publicly attacked or vetoed in an arcane theatrical process at Annual Conference – and equally the flip side of that attitude that sees members as trouble-makers whose only objective is to derail the Government.

Unless we put the ‘partnership’ bit of Partnership in Power at the heart of our approach, we will very soon find ourselves losing the ‘in power’ bit too. Brown’s proposals give us an opportunity to create a real partnership between the party in the country and the party in government that will develop policies that are progressive, popular and practical.