evidence of a better democracy at work?

I suspect this is the UK version of IOKYAR--It's OK if you're a Republican. Thus, in the US, Republican politicians these days seem to get free passes on all manner of things for which a Democrat is excoriated.

The electorate votes in three equally weighted blocks, with different qualification rules. The first block consists of Labour Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament. The second group consists of the membership of Constituency Labour Parties. The third (and most problematic) group, is the membership of affiliated organisations which are mostly trade unions.

It is possible to qualify for and exercise more than one vote. Dennis MacShane MP claimed to have five votes.

The system is not as totally undemocratic as it used to be, since the affiliated organisation leaderships no longer cast the votes as a block for the whole organisation.

I am not certain that it is still the case, but it may be, that each of the affiliates purchase a number of votes which is not necessarily related to the number of individual members paying the political levy (which the members of the trade unions with a political fund do, unless they individually go to the trouble of opting out). It may therefore require an individual vote in the affiliates section to be weighted, so the appropriate number of votes can be cast on behalf of a particular organisation.

It seems to me that the simplest reform would be to abolish the electoral college and give a single vote to all party members and those people in the affiliated groups who opt to become individual affiliated members of the party (ie the qualification to vote becomes a personal one rather than as part of a collective membership). Until something like my suggestion is implemented the Labour leadership election system will continue to be open to criticism.