Miliband seeks shadow cabinet rule change
Labour leader Ed Miliband wants to change the rule which allows Labour MPs to elect the shadow cabinet, set to cause controversy within the party.
Miliband wants to scrap the elections due next year and instead appoint his shadow team for the period leading up to the next general election.
The change would have to be approved by Labour’s party conference this September in Liverpool.
Speaking at Labour's national policy forum in Wrexham on Saturday, he will formally announce proposals which would scrap the ballot held every two years in opposition.
Miliband will then address his party on Monday at a meting of the Parliamentary Labour Party and will ask its chairman Tony Lloyd to organise a debate and a vote on the proposals.
The party has voted on which men and women take the top jobs while the party is in opposition for more than 50 years.
In a letter to Labour MPs, the party leader says shadow cabinet elections have no place in a modern party preparing for government.
"We should behave in Opposition as we would in government," he writes. "The only election the shadow cabinet should be thinking about is the general election."
Elsewhere today, prime minister David Cameron attends the second day of the European Council summit in Brussels.
Yesterday Cameron succeeded in limiting the UK’s contribution towards a second financial bail-out for Greece.
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