Archive for September, 2010
Shadow cabinet: vote for Tessa
24/09/2010, 05:55:25 PMPeter Wheeler’s alternative conference guide
24/09/2010, 03:38:42 PMWhat really goes on at Labour party conference, by Dan Hodges
24/09/2010, 02:00:57 PMAt the opening of North by North West, Cary Grant’s character, Roger Thornhill, is abducted from his friends and family, transported to a remote location, and persecuted by his captors. Confused and disoriented, they pour alcohol down his throat, question and abuse him, and demand answers about his work with government. Finally, his ordeal complete, he is thrown out onto the road, left to negotiate his own hazardous route back to safety and sanity.
Roger Thornhill would have felt right at home at Labour conference. As a party we proclaim a passionate commitment to reform of the Parliamentary process. The insane working hours. The drinking culture. A building unfit for purpose. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to internal policymaking we think the best solution is to entomb the entire Labour movement for a week in a cramped, sweaty, municipal arena, deny them food and sleep, ply them with booze, then refuse to let them out until they’ve discovered the new Jerusalem.
Soon after our victory in 1997, I asked a Downing Street aide whether they planned to follow through on Tony Blair’s stated desire to downsize conference, or even make it a biennial event. “Daren’t”, came the reply. “Party wouldn’t stand for it”. Abolish Clause four. Invade Iraq. Privatise public services. No problem. Touch the free spread at agents’ night and you’re history.
Ed Miliband and the Tribune rally
24/09/2010, 11:29:13 AMStraws in the wind? Uncut notes with interest Ed Miliband’s sudden announcement that he will be rubbing comradely shoulders with the cream of the left at this Tuesday’s Tribune rally.
According to a report on Twitter, Ed is now scheduled to appear with other Labour luminaries Neil Kinnock, Ken Livingstone, (no mean achievement to get those two sharing the same platform), Dave Prentis and Lisa Nandy. It would be a bold appearance for a newly crowned leader, coming hours after his maiden conference speech. Ed’s aides will be only too aware of the headlines accompanying his triumphant arrival, supported by robustly captioned photos of comradely badinage between him, the doyen of the London radical left and the leader of one of the nation’s largest unions.
Another interpretation is that it represents an insurance policy in the event of a defeat. During the campaign Ed built an impressive following amongst the centre-left, and his appearance could be part of a strategy of embedding his coalition in the event the result goes against him. It could make him a formidable political force, regardless of how the shadow cabinet chairs are shuffled.
Alternatively, he may just fancy some political banter and a glass of wine after a long election. Whatever the reason, he’s sure to draw a crowd.
Chris Bryant reports from the Khodorkovsky trial
24/09/2010, 09:58:59 AMRussia can often seem surreal. Layer upon layer of history. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin – and now Putin/Medvedev.
For all the oligarchic bling in all the shops, the red stars on the top of the Kremlin towers suggest Communism is still alive and the very walls of the fortress themselves seem to invite kremlinology. Who really pulls the strings? Is it the President, Medvedev, who is organising the probably accurate smearing of the Moscow mayor, which has dominated the state-run media for the last two weeks? Or is it Putin? And why are they doing it now, when mayor Luzkhov’s term runs out soon and he is barred from standing again? All too often, the labyrinthine political chicanery and the extraordinarily tight circle of the very well-heeled elite reminds one of communism, but without the ideology.
At the heart of the parabola of surrealism lies the legal system. Torture is endemic according to Amnesty International. Many prisons would be better termed ‘penal colonies’ or indeed ‘gulags’. Thousands are infected with HIV and have little or no medical care. And the criminal justice system is regularly used to settle political scores.
I went to see one such case this Monday. The courtroom, on the third floor of a tired Moscow building, was tiny, panelled with cheap varnished plywood, its parquet flooring scuffed by decades of rearrangements of the furniture. At the front, a dais with the double-headed Romanov eagle and the flag of the Russian Federation limply hanging from a thumb tack and a piece of sellotape. To the left a sort of tank, made of reinforced glass and chunky steel, in which stood the two defendants, Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Healey: This is the wrong decision at the wrong time, announced in the wrong way
24/09/2010, 09:15:50 AMFriday News Review
24/09/2010, 08:24:01 AMNot so secret talks
Aides to the former Foreign Secretary are said to have attended a planning meeting with his brother’s supporters to discuss a possible role in the event that he loses. The overture is being seen as a signal that the elder Mr Miliband, long regarded as the front-runner in the race to succeed Gordon Brown, is bracing himself for defeat. But members of his camp told The Guardian that he was simply taking sensible precautions. In the event that he wins, the move could also be regarded as a timely olive branch to avert a damaging fraternal rift. – The Telegraph
Senior advisers to the two Miliband camps held a secret planning meeting at which they discussed what role each might play in the other’s shadow cabinet when one of them loses the knife-edge battle to becomeLabour leader. It is understood that Jim Murphy, one of David Miliband‘s two campaign managers, attended the meeting with members of the Ed Milband camp to map out how they would handle Saturday’s dramatic leadership result. David Miliband’s campaign said they regarded the discussions as just exploring sensible precautions. The Ed Miliband campaign took the willingness of his older brother’s camp to discuss the consequences of defeat as a sign they are bracing for Ed seizing the leadership in the final lap. – The Guardian
Is it Ed’s?
Until now I’ve been saying that I thought it was a 50-50 chance between the Miliband brothers and that that an EdM bet was the better value because his price was longer. Now I’m changing my view – I believe that Ed Miliband has a better chance of winning. There are two main reasons – firstly the progress his campaign seems to have made in the MP/MEP third of the electoral college. Here it only took a very few changes of mind or alteration of the positioning of the Milibands on the AV list for there to be a big impact. Last night SkyNews was reporting that a former minister was saying that the EdM deficit here was down to just 14 votes. Whether that was on first preferences or after the lower preferences had kicked in we do not know but there’s a sense that progress has been by the younger brother. – Political Betting
Shadow cabinet: vote for Ben
23/09/2010, 05:38:20 PMShadow cabinet: vote for Hilary
23/09/2010, 05:16:40 PMKevin Meagher looks back at the coalition’s first year in office
23/09/2010, 05:01:00 PMBritain, June 2011.
The loss of last month’s referendum on the alternative vote has left the Tory-Lib Dem government reeling. The 90% No vote capped a miserable first year in office for deputy PM, Nick Clegg, and few were surprised at his resignation. Widely blamed for the fiasco, Mr Clegg had never really recovered his popularity following the embarrassing incident when apprentices angry at the scrapping of the future jobs fund tried to throw him into a smelting pot on a visit to his Sheffield constituency.
In a year that saw many dramatic reversals of fortune, Lembit Opik swept back into the Commons, agreeing to take over as interim Lib Dem leader. “I’ve grown up and can give my party exactly what it needs” he smirked, standing on a segway next to his latest fiancée, the recently-divorced Katie Price, as they posed for a double-page spread in the launch edition of Frisky Boy magazine. (more…)
