Let’s get the important stuff out of the way first. The proposals Ed Miliband made this morning are useful, right and will improve the Labour party, making it a better and more open place. They should be wholeheartedly and loudly supported. For anyone outside of the Labour party, look away now, that is all you need to know. We are right behind you, Ed.

As a party, let’s reflect a bit though, on what it took to get us to this place. The Hayden Phillips review and the Kelly report on party funding. We could have had effectively had this deal, plus state funding, back in 2007. We could have had it again in 2011.

Primaries, second jobs, party reform of selections spending; all have been kicking around the Labour party for years, neglected. Even mentioning them marked you out as a dangerous reformist sort. Several different leaders have been given the chance to change the structure of the party, and for whatever reason, all decided they had better things to do.

So while Labour have done the right thing and Miliband deserve great praise for making the big decision, as a party, let’s not get too self-congratulatory about it. We had to be dragged here.

Second, we should recognise these reforms will need a wider reform of political funding to work their best. For example, my current understanding of the proposals is that Labour intends to make union members opt in to party affiliation, but leave existing political funds untouched. This would allow unions to make up any reduced affiliation income through donations from their political fund from ‘opted-out’ political funds, if they so chose.

Ironically, that might unintentionally increase the significance of those who get to decide donations. Now, I think the party has anticipated this, because we are supporting a deal with donations limits, which would presumably have to include all ‘non-individual’ donations from union political funds. I can see why you would not want to offer up your biggest negotiating lever of donation caps before getting into the cross-party negotiations, but it means Labour will need cross-party talks to succeed if we are to get a reasonably equitable result. This should make us more eager to get into cross-party funding negotiations, not less (and not least because those negotiations will expose the Tories own funding mechanisms to a scrutiny I very much doubt they can stand up to).

Finally, the real reason these reforms are important is that they open up the Labour party to many more people, whether they are union members who will get to choose to be our affiliates or Labour supporters who will have a say in the choice of many more Labour candidates.

That means we need to think about these reforms, not simply as a way for the Labour movement to manage itself better, but as part of a process where the Labour movement changes so we better speak for and represent those many millions of people for whom Labour traditions mean little. For some, this may sound too much. Why look beyond the Labour movement when talking about the make-up of our party? Yet surely our aim must be not only to better represent party members and union members but to expand the circles of our support much wider? So perhaps it is time to breathe new life into the Labour Supporters’ Network so that this becomes as significant as many of the union affiliates?

Ideally, of course, the trade union movement would offer the party direct links to the whole of society. Right now, though, that is not true, especially in the private sector, let alone retirees, those not in work and so on. So there might be value in a large network of supporters, enabled to vote in primaries, with a voice in party policy, who while they are not party members, represent the ‘party in the country’ in the same way affiliated union members do.

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Hopi Sen is a contributing editor to Progress magazine. He tweets @HopiSen

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Photo: Louisa Thomson