Arnie Graf: Labour was so out of touch it 'didn't know a single worker on the minimum wage', says Miliband's former campaign adviser
Ed Miliband's former advisor said the party was out of touch with its supporters in a revealing article
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Your support makes all the difference.Arnie Graf, the American community organiser who worked as an advisor to the Labour party between 2011 and 2013, has written a revealing article on why he thinks Labour failed at the General Election.
In an article published on LabourList, Graf claims that Labour lost because of a disconnect between the party's leadership and its local representatives, unncessary work placed on organisers, and weak relationships with the voters it claimed to represent.
In the piece, he recalls one moment when Miliband's team found themselves struggling to find a single minimum wage worker for him to talk to during a press event.
The team needed to find someone on minimum wage for Miliband to talk to at a coffee shop, and were growing increasingly nervous as the date approached and they were unable to find anyone suitable.
Finally someone was found, after Graf spoke to a local party organiser, and the coffee shop talk went ahead without a hitch.
However, he writes that afterwards, he had an "awful feeling in the pit of my stomach", and said it was "stunning" that the Labour party did not have a good relationship with a single minimum wage worker.
The article will make interesting reading to voters and supporters, following an election in which Labour managed to only win 30.4 per cent of the vote, in comparison to the Conservatives' 36.9 per cent.
The election was a bad one for Labour, and saw them lose 48 seats across the country, many of them in Scotland, where it only managed to retain one constituency.
As well as detailing the coffee shop incident, Graf points out what he sees as flaws in Labour's organisation.
He writes that many of the party's local organisers are bogged down with administrative work, resolving local party disputes, and door-knocking - important work, but work that he claims comes at the expense of building meaningful relationships with voters and communities.
Calling for change within the party, Graf finishes his article by recommending that party leaders need to meet regional organisers much more often, that the disconnect between the central party and its grassroots organisers must be narrowed, that at least half of local organisers should be allowed to spend their time building relationships with communities and voters, and that organisers should start leadership training sessions, allowing them to build better campaigns.
In his own words, Graf has a "deep caring and concern" for Labour, and believes that serious changes must be made for the party to win an election.
Graf's views on community organisation are no secret - in 2013, he made it clear to Ed Miliband that Labour neeeded to re-organise itself to focus on people, not bureaucracy. However, his LabourList article is the first to directly address the failures of the General Election campaign.
His article was received well on Twitter, unusually breaking into the UK's trending topics.
Labour supporters, members and MPs were quick to comment on Graf's revealing article, with party deputy leadership nominee Tom Watson saying it was "what I've been talking about at every meeting since 7 May."
Mirroring the party's divide over the next leader, others disagreed - with Ilford North Labour MP Wes Streeting saying "we lost because of leadership and economic credibility, not because organisers were given wrong goals."
The Independent has contacted Labour for a comment on Graf's article.
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