SWEEPING new attacks on democracy and equality within the Labour Party were set to be pushed through by Sir Keir Starmer today.

Rule changes placed before the national executive (NEC) would remove the right of constituency parties to submit policy motions of their choice to Labour’s annual conference.

They also sought to drop the obligation for local parties to elect BAME, LGBT, youth and disabled officers, despite the party being mired in allegations of indifference to racism against black people.

The rule changes would hand power over policy formulation back to the party’s opaque National Policy Forum (NPF), where it was placed while Tony Blair was leader.  

Only “contemporary” motions on matters not covered in the voluminous NPF reports will be allowed at the party conference.

“All stakeholders, including the leadership and unions, recognised how well the NPF process worked this year and that should be the definitive route through which party makes policy,” NEC right-winger Luke Akehurst controversially claimed.

The move on equalities officers was said to be justified by the small size of many local parties, something that reflects membership loss since Sir Keir became leader.

A Momentum statement said: “These proposed changes represent yet another attack on the rights of Labour members from a Starmer leadership which is patently hostile to party democracy. 

“From parliamentary selections to policy-making, the anti-democratic clique at the top of the party view members not as the lifeblood of the party but as a problem to be managed.

“Worse still, they are showing a cavalier disregard for minority communities.”

The NEC also tightened up rules to make it clear that party members who support independents standing against official party candidates would face expulsion, as they already do if they support another party.

North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll has announced that he is standing for re-election after Labour officials blocked him from seeking selection as the party’s candidate. 

And it is widely expected that Jeremy Corbyn will stand again to be MP for Islington North, despite being told by Sir Keir that he cannot represent Labour. 

The rule change means that those who support either would be excluded from Labour, which was already widely assumed.

All of the changes, which require endorsement by the forthcoming party conference, come as the latest polling shows a drop in the Labour lead over the Tories. The latter are up 5 percentage points to 28 per cent, but Labour remains 16 per cent ahead on 44 per cent.