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Jon Cruddas, MP for Barking and Dagenham. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
Jon Cruddas, MP for Barking and Dagenham. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

Jon Cruddas sets sights on Labour chair

This article is more than 13 years old
Influential leftwinger outlines fundamental rethink of Labour values but refuses to endorse candidate for leader

The influential Labour backbencher Jon Cruddas will announce he wants to run for chair of the Labour party, while continuing to dodge questions of who he backs for Labour leader.

Instead of endorsing a candidate, the MP for Barking and Dagenham will use a speech to activists in central London to set out his own plans to shake up the Labour party.

Aides say that Cruddas has ambitions to help the Labour party through the most fundamental rethink of the party since the abolition of clause IV in the early 1990s.

Most leadership contenders have agreed with a suggestion mooted by David Miliband that the currently appointed position should be elected by party members as part of a package of reforms to make the party more sensitive to its activists.

Cruddas will take the leadership contenders up on their offer, saying: "I want to see a more democratic party with an actively involved membership, a conference that is strengthened and its agenda setting opened up. We need to turn the party outward to the communities we seek to represent. We must create a party rooted in a culture of organising."

If elected he appears likely to set about redrawing the Labour party's constitution: "We need a new statement of our identity, our essential purpose, what we are for, to build a new language anchored in the ordinary lives and sentiment of the people. A new chair that is elected by conference, a new commission on party structures and a renewed culture of organisation, a comprehensive review of policy under a joint secretariat of party chair and party leader, in a root and branch deliberation about Labour's future politics and policy strategies. We must democratise the national policy forum."

Cruddas has occupied a central role in the debates of the last few years as Labour struggled to renew itself in government. He was offered a junior ministerial post by Gordon Brown in 2007 after he impressed people with the quality and near-success of his campaign to become deputy leader of the Labour party.

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