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Archive for June, 2010

Never mind the quality, feel the width

15/06/2010, 10:36:00 PM

Over at the unionstogether blog they are doing a ‘question to the candidates’ every week of the summer. This week’s is on the living wage, which has become rather a surprise campaign theme. It is worth a read.

In a campaign in which no candidate is strong on content, Ed Miliband has chosen to put the living wage “as the centre of my campaign for Labour leadership”. Not “to put it at the centre”, you will note, but “put it as the centre”. Massive difference in that one letter. For Ed M, the living wage is the defining issue of his leadership bid “because it sums up both the Labour party’s values and its activism”.

Although a nice piece of policy, it would ordinarily seem like a pretty flimsy thing to be the defining essence of an entire campaign to lead the major force in left-liberal politics in the United Kingdom. (more…)

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Nick Palmer says the sacred cow of income tax may be unwell

15/06/2010, 02:33:56 PM

One of the curious features of being a Labour MP in the last three elections was that we would often wake up and find out from the newspapers that we were irrevocably committed to something that we had not discussed, but which Tony or Gordon had decided was vital to our chances.

A hardy perennial was the recurrent commitment not to increase the standard rate of income tax. This was part of the New Labour deal: we were not unilateralists; we weren’t going to nationalise the commanding heights; and we wouldn’t put up your income tax.

This probably did help initially in refurbishing our image, but it has become a sacred cow. In these troubled times, we should re-examine the cow to find out how it’s getting on and if, in electoral terms, it is actually still alive. (more…)

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This morning’s email setting out rules for elections to Labour select committee vacancies

15/06/2010, 12:15:42 PM

From: O’DONOVAN, Martin

Sent: 15 June 2010 11:56

Subject: Elections to Labour vacancies on Select Committees

Importance: High

FAO Labour MPs

Please find below the agreed procedure for electing Labour members to the Select Committees, as agreed at last night’s PLP meeting. This is a pretty complex procedure, I’m very happy to answer any questions you may have. (more…)

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Uproar at the PLP: select committee member elections

15/06/2010, 10:06:21 AM

There was uproar at last night’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Many senior MPs are unhappy with the arrangements for electing select committee members.

Select committee chairs were elected last week by a ballot of all MPs. Now the members of the committees are to be elected, within their party groups, according to the proportion of MPs that that party has in Parliament.

Senior former ministers such as Hazel Blears and Keith Vaz (re-elected as chair of the home affairs select committee) spoke up against the way the election is being organised. (more…)

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Rachel Stalker’s personal testimony of the Cumbrian shootings

15/06/2010, 08:59:29 AM

It was a date that seemed so inconsequential in my diary.

At 6pm on June 2nd 2010 the Copeland CLP was due to hold their post-election debrief at the GMB offices on Scotch Street, Whitehaven. It was supposed to be a positive, upbeat and constructive meeting to build on a superb result for Jamie Reed MP who magnificently held onto his “key seat” with a majority of 3,833.

Due to events that were completely beyond our comprehension – and which had barely sunk in – the meeting was relocated to the constituency offices in Cleator Moor. We knew a gunman had been on the loose across West Cumbria and that at least 5 people had been killed. None of us knew that shots had been fired within yards of the GMB offices, which had been our General Election campaign HQ. Most of us were unaware of the extent to which the international media had descended en masse on our remote community. (more…)

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Fabian Hustings: laughometer

15/06/2010, 08:23:14 AM

This is the laughometer from last night’s Fabian society leadership hustings.

Tiny chuckles weren’t recorded.

We maintained our rule that to score you had to get a proper laugh from a significant portion of the room.

David Miliband 5

Ed Miliband 7

Ed Balls 9

Diane Abbott 7

Andy Burnham 6

These numbers are significantly higher across the board than for previous hustings. Last night was a first outing for the Uncut reporter operating the laughometer on this occasion. We have not yet been able to establish whether the leap in laughs was due to operator error, or to the candidates loosening up and getting funny.

Views from those present at last night’s Fabian as well as more than one other hustings would be welcome.

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Tuesday News Review

15/06/2010, 07:36:15 AM

#Hustings

“Mr Burnham stressed his ordinary working class background. Both the Milibands pointed out that they were the sons of immigrants who went to a comprehensive school and even knew people who didn’t sit exams. They didn’t mention their well connected Marxist intellectual father or the influential opinion formers who attended dinner parties at their North London home. Mr Balls revealed he once trotted along to a party conference to look after the kids while his wife did the important business of speaking.” – The Times

“There were some real stand out moments this evening. Perhaps most notable was Andy Burnham’s somewhat surprising decision to come out in support of the Iraq war. Burnham feels that we need “a framework for intervention”, but on Iraq itself he said, “I stand by the original decision.” Whilst at times Burnham appeared to inspire the crowd with his aspirational narrative about his own background, and “ordinary kids without connections”, it is hard to believe that his comments on Iraq won’t draw the most attention.” – Labour List

“According to the poll, Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, is emerging as a compromise candidate, with the second highest number of first preferences, and the most second and third preferences. In contrast, David Miliband is a “Marmite candidate” – either liked strongly or disliked – and is struggling to pick up second and third preferences.” – The Telegraph

“Emma Burnell asked the candidates for the Labour party leadership “are you a Socialist – and what does the word mean to you?” at the hustings event co-hosted by the Fabian Society, Compass, LabourList, Left Foot Forward, Progress and the Young Fabians at the Institute of Education in London. Gaby Hinsliff challenged the candidates to give a “one line” ideology for this final question of the hustings event.” – Next Left

(more…)

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Eugene Grant says the disabled should still have grounds for optimism.

14/06/2010, 11:51:24 AM

Helen Keller, the deafblind American radical, once said: “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope or confidence”. The first deafblind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree, Keller went on to become an accomplished author, well-travelled lecturer and prolific political activist.

The election feast is now behind us. The first frenzies of the coalition’s honeymoon are done. And yet, thus far, the Lib-Con coalition has offered little in the way of optimism for some of the most disadvantaged in our society: people with disabilities. On the contrary, the approach adopted by the new government appears tainted by cynicism.

First, the pledge from work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith to reassess all 2.6 million incapacity benefit (IB) claimants and move them onto other benefits like jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance (ESA). This is a thorny political issue, which isn’t necessarily regressive.

(more…)

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Monday News Review

14/06/2010, 08:12:48 AM

Glasgow Hustings

Miliband: talking on cuts

“Labour leadership contenders have mounted a concerted attack on the Westminster Government’s plans to revive the UK economy with heavy cuts targeted at the public sector. The five candidates were speaking at a hustings in Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall yesterday attended by more than 600 activists from across Scotland. Leadership favourite David Miliband said it was important “the innocent who benefit from public services or work for public services, don’t pay for the sins of the people who were running the financial services at the time of the economic crisis in 2008”.” –The Herald

“A pledge had been taken by Ed Miliband saying that for the next year, he will consent to the Scottish Labour Party that it can run its own election campaign and autonomously build up its own policies. A need to “lighten up” Labour in London has been viewed by the leadership contender.” – Top News Blog

“David Miliband, his brother Ed, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls all said Scots Labour leader Iain Gray should have a seat on Labour’s ruling body, the NEC. And speaking at a special party hustings in Glasgow, Diane Abbott gave her support to devolution.” – BBC News

The Candidates

“I was teased and bullied right through my school years about my name and stammer and it was merciless. I wouldn’t say it reduced me to floods of tears but it was really tough. I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone. That’s why my kids (Ellie, 11, Joe, eight, and Maddy, six) took my wife’s surname Cooper. I’d never dream of calling them Balls.” – Ed Balls, The Mirror

“Why, after threatening legal action to prevent the publication of details of him and his wife adopting two children in America, does David Miliband go public, describing this ‘incredibly exciting, but nerve-racking’ process? Because he is striving to become leader of the Labour Party and, ultimately, Prime Minister. Telling how he and wife Louise struggled to have a family might endear him to ordinary voters. Which, in turn, might confirm his front-runner status among Labour MPs and party bosses. There is no point in being sniffy about his apparent hypocrisy.” – Daily Mail

Balls: Teased at school

“Earlier this month Ed Balls, the former Schools secretary and a contender to be the next Labour leader, admitted it had been a mistake for Labour not to have restricted immigration from eastern Europe. In 1997, annual net immigration into the UK stood at 48,000, rising to 237,000 a year in 2007 and falling back to 163,000 in 2008.” – The Telegraph

“The Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has claimed that the party’s refusal to rule out increasing VAT was central to its general election defeat. An increase of the rate to 20 per cent is expected in George Osborne’s first Budget next week. Such a move would be “economic madness”, Mr Balls claims, as well as being “the least fair option for raising tax”.” – The Times

The Party

“Labour said more than 2,000 people joined the party in Scotland in the weeks after the election, bringing the total to 20,133. The figure is about 25 times the usual number of new recruits each month.” – The Independent

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Clever politicians are using the social web to make humanity scaleable, says Jon Bounds

13/06/2010, 01:24:52 PM

Despite its sneering disregard for politicians, the biggest hit at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York earlier in the month was Cory Booker. The two main threads of the conference were platforms and tools (some promising, some not) and a desire to discover whether the internet could “fix” politics. The general assumption was that trust in politicians is irretrievably lost and that political mechanisms are broken and need reforming in new ways.

Cory Booker is the mayor of Newark, New Jersey. The mayor of a city in the shadow of a big neighbour, a city of around a million people with a high non-white population, a city often unfairly characterised in the media as dangerous or dull. Philip Roth, who grew up there, has not been kind about contemporary Newark. (more…)

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