(HT John Rentoul & Guardian Politics)
Archive for 2010
Kevin Meagher calms down after Conservative conference
08/10/2010, 11:58:41 AMOK, my fists are now unfurled. I have emptied my soul of expletives and invective. Bad thoughts have passed. The rage has subsided. The television, though battered and bruised, will live on. I’m like this every October. For one week, my usually ultra-rational impulses give way to a visceral tribalism. Undiluted exposure to the Conservative party conference does that to me. It elicits a physical reaction as a mixture of loathing and, well, more loathing, rises in my throat.
It’s not one thing in particular. It’s the all-embracing awfulness of it. It’s the platitudinous “debates” – grainy facsimiles of actual democratic discussion. It’s the perfunctory applause and standing ovations (an unfortunate habit that Labour has adopted). It’s the lame jokes. The wretched, simplistic homilies with their sneery nouveau riche morality.
It goes without saying that the Conservative conference is a platform for banality. But it provides endless visual and aural stimulation to someone looking to have his basic political orientation rebooted once a year. That is important. Politics is not only knowing what you are for; it is knowing what you are against too. (more…)
Shadow cabinet: the early reaction
08/10/2010, 12:49:04 AMThe top 3 are all members of Team Balls – Balls himself, wife Yvette Cooper and former housing minister John Healey. MPs backing Balls were decisive in swinging the leadership election to Ed Miliband in the fourth round and have now had a huge influence on the shadow cabinet election. Of the top 10, as the ToryPressHQ Twitter feed has mischievously noted, not a single MP put Ed Miliband down as their first choice in the leadership election. Of the “gang of four” – the quartet of ex-cabinet ministers who backed Ed Miliband – three managed to get elected (John Denham, Sadiq Khan and Hilary Benn) and one (Peter Hain) did not. How will the Labour leader reward the three who survived, if at all? And poor Peter Hain. – The New Statesman
Yvette Cooper topped the poll last night as Labour MPs elected the “new generation” of senior frontbenchers who will serve under the party’s new leader, Ed Miliband. Ms Cooper strengthened her claim to a senior post, possibly as shadow Chancellor, by winning the votes of 232 of the 257 Labour MPs in the Shadow Cabinet elections. She was one of eight women elected by Labour MPs for the 19 places up for grabs. Mr Miliband is expected to announce today which portfolios the winners will get. John Healey, Labour’s housing spokesman and a close ally of Gordon Brown, came a surprise second, finishing above Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, who both contested the party’s leadership election. – The Independent
Ms Cooper won the most votes, gaining 40 ballots more than the number two, John Healey, and handing her a strong claim to the role of shadow chancellor. Her husband Ed Balls, who lost out in the party’s leadership election, came third. He later tweeted: “We both v happy with the results.” But three former Cabinet ministers crashed out. Peter Hain lost by three votes in a major shock to Westminster. Ben Bradshaw and Shaun Woodward also lost out and all must now fear their careers in frontline politics are over. – Sky
Ben Bradshaw’s failure to make the shadow cabinet is not such a surprise, despite his manifest talents; he didn’t have enough support on the left of the party. More of a shocker is Peter Hain, former Welsh secretary, not reaching the final 19 (by a whisker) despite having been deputy chair of Ed Miliband’s election campaign. Others who might have made it but did not include Chris Bryant, Diane Abbott (who tends to rub other MPs up the wrong way) and Emily Thornberry, who may still make it to the front bench before long. Hain missed out by just three votes while Thornberry fell short by just one. As for who came in the last three, they were Mike Gapes at 12 votes, Alun Michael at 11 and Eric Joyce with just 10. – The FT (more…)
The new shadow cabinet: who are they and what do they mean
07/10/2010, 08:51:32 PMDouglas Alexander (160 votes)
Reponsible for Gordon Brown’s election campaign and David Miliband’s leadership campaign, wee Douglas (as he used to be known when he was GB’s Parliamentary amanuensis in the early nineties) is not looking very lucky at the moment. But he got on the shadow cabinet without running much of a campaign and will expect a better job than he might otherwise have got, in token of the new leader’s magnanimity.
Ed Balls (179 votes)
Won the leadership campaign by a mile, but lost the election by a similar distance. It’s widely considered to be a toss-up between him and his wife, Yvette Cooper, for the shadow chancellorship, which he has made no secret of wanting. With David Miliband all but out of the picture, one could argue that the tone of Labour’s next five years will be set by what Ed M decides to do with Ed B in the next few days. And what Ed B decides to do back.
Hilary Benn (128 votes)
A minister for nine years, including seven in the cabinet, Hilary Benn is more experienced than he seems. It says a lot not just for his longevity, but for the way he colonised his two main briefs, that it’s hard to imagine him shadowing other than DEFRA or DECC.
Andy Burnham (165 votes)
Very well liked and quite well respected before the leadership campaign, Andy Burnham emerged even more popular but probably less highly esteemed. His campaign lacked ideological bite, but the man himself is a straight-down-the-line Blairite right-winger. As such, he will be an important pole in Ed Miliband’s big tent.
Liam Byrne (100 votes)
Hasn’t lived down the “no money left” note yet. But he will. Much younger than he looks (he turned 40 last weekend), he is an over-achiever with a Harvard MBA and fast-tracked ministerial career. Sees himself as a future leader. Took soundings this time over a possible Byrne bid, made the right choice on finding no real market. It’s not quite in his script that the new leader is the same age as him. Or that he had to work extremely hard to scrape onto the shad cab. But he did. Liam does not do failure. Which is why we need him. (more…)
To Autumn, a poem by Chris Bryant
07/10/2010, 04:08:28 PMTo Autumn
(for National Poetry Day, with dutiful accord to Keats and Shakespeare inter alia)
I
Season of trysts and pomp-full conferences
When politicians, in three hordes uncouth
Assemble in up-market hotel foyers
To gossip, flirt, conspire and take the hand
Of every willing voter in the land;
To argue for their version of the truth,
To battle for the future of our schools
Our hospitals, police and uncared youth;
Just sometimes to put forward their pet scheme
For rescuing Britain; and perchance to dream
Of greasy poles they yet aspire to climb.
II
But now the champagne flutes are passed their time –
And late-night, lightweight, internecine strife.
The autumn parliamentary term commences
With all eyes fixed on Osborne’s pending knife.
Statistics, figures, numbers stride the land,
Brought forth by each to stay the other’s hand.
Some worship at the shrine of deficit reduction,
They see a chance to slash the state, scot-free,
They eulogise the Big Society
But in their hearts they make a grand deduction:
Let Alexander, Clegg and Cable take the rap.
III
It’s true, perhaps the sea of faith was full once;
The faith that all our dreams could be enacted by
The simple, legal application of the democratic will;
That honest, good and independent people
Could change the world by sheer determination;
That work for all would pay a living wage,
That poverty, ill-health and destitution
Would be abolished – here and in every nation.
But now the voters issue a redacted sigh
Their trust in politics of every hue in rage
They fear that they will pay a hefty bill.
IV
Which leaves us with the task we set ourselves:
To live within our means but go for growth;
To struggle for the cause of common sense,
Since rapid, ill-considered, swingeing cuts will lead us hence
To double-dip recession, not to economic health.
The songs of Spring still stir our anxious bones,
With echoes of the age-old oath
(Albeit in a voice and accent of today)
To fight for freedom, fairness, and the common wealth.
The people watch, the media barons neigh
And gathering members twitter on their phones.
Chris Bryant is Labour MP for Rhondda
Philip Cowley finds the incumbency factor alive and well in 2010
07/10/2010, 02:20:12 PMThe first obvious evidence of what (at least to me) was one of the more surprising aspects of the election results came at just past 2am on 7 May, when Labour held Gedling. It was the first obvious manifestation of something which the 10pm exit poll had claimed to detect, but which I wanted to see for myself before I believed it: evidence that hard-working Labour incumbents – in this case, Vernon Coaker – could survive against the swing.
The Conservatives would end the election having taken almost a clean sweep of seats from Labour in their top 100 targets. But of the nine they failed to take, eight were held by an incumbent Labour MP. (more…)
Child benefit and middle class single mums: the sums, by Lesley Smith
07/10/2010, 12:39:34 PMMuch guff has been talked about the effect of the loss of child benefit on the so called aspirant middle class. Yes, a family with one earner taxed at 40% and one at 0% will be hit. And, yes, it’s a grand less towards the school fees. But the tax system already looks after happy couples. (Two people, two tax allowances). And Cameron and Osborne knew that there was little appetite to defend them.
So who does lose out? And does it matter? Well there’s not much sympathy for working single mums who’ve managed to go up the income scale. Sure, they’re not the worst off. One blogger points out that the median income for working single parent families is £21,035 a year (compared with a median of £32,158 a year for a two parent family with one worker.) (I’m assuming this is gross.)
But single parents earning £45k aren’t an urban myth. And nor are they leading the life of Riley.
Unless she has stumbled on a lottery ticket, a single mum on £45k is out at work and shelling out on childcare, paid out of already (higher) taxed income. (Funny that an accountant is tax deductable but a nanny is not.) So her net income is far, far lower than that of the couple who generate the same income but only pay 20% of it to the tax man. (And she’s up half the night cooking and cleaning as she hasn’t time in the day or money to pay). (more…)
A reckoning deferred: Dan Hodges on Cameron’s cagey week
07/10/2010, 09:00:14 AMPolicy chaos. MPs in a panic. A rattled prime minister, with fear in his eyes.
It’s been a dangerous couple of days for the Labour party.
Conference season is a game of two halves. Attack. Counterattack. You roll out your programme. They hit it. You assess where the blows have fallen hardest. Recalibrate. Then you roll out your programme again.
Not this year. By accident, and by design, the Tories have played to different rules.
This should have been the week that Cameron and co. blew some sizeable holes in “Red Ed” and the “new generation”. Instead, they spent the best part of their conference blowing holes in each other.
Their semi-disintegration on child benefit was selfishly dispiriting. I couldn’t weep for the single mothers about to lose their benefits. Or the families facing hardship. All I could think was: “did we really lose an election to this shower”? (more…)
Thursday News Review
07/10/2010, 07:15:58 AMChild benefit backlash
George Osborne’s announcement on cutting child benefit for those on higher tax rates was meant to signal that the party is willing to hurt even its own people in the pursuit of fair cuts. But it caused outrage in the ranks among back-benchers, and seemed only to confirm that David Cameron and his inner circle had in reality bought into the Lib Dem view of life and were “essentially anti-marriage”. In fact it has turned out to be the Conservatives’ 10p tax moment – similar to the fury caused when Gordon Brown scrapped the bottom rate of income tax to help fund a basic rate cut to help the better-off. – The Scotsman
The collateral damage from the Government’s ham-fisted plan to withdraw child benefit from higher-rate taxpayers has been severe. It has overshadowed the first party conference in 14 years at which the Conservatives can celebrate being in power. David Cameron was forced to spend much of yesterday touring the broadcasting studios on a firefighting mission; George Osborne had to write to all Tory MPs explaining that he had no alternative but to use such a blunt instrument because a fairer mechanism based on household incomes would “create a new complex, costly and intrusive means test”. Both men hinted that tax breaks for married couples or even a transferable tax allowance would be introduced by the end of this Parliament to soften the impact of the benefit withdrawal. – The Telegraph
Cameron’s big moment
David Cameron pressed all the essential pulse points for committed party members, slating a lengthy list of Labour’s failings, pledging to roll back the power of the state, emphasising fairness, promising to create an environment in which the Tory virtues of entrepreneurship and self-reliance would thrive and describing Baroness Thatcher as Britain’s greatest peacetime Prime Minister of the past century. It all received the standard standing ovations but will have done nothing to reassure the wider public, particularly floating or Liberal Democrat voters apprehensive about the cuts to be set in motion by the public spending review in two weeks. – The Herald
Liverpool FC is a big society, say Jonathan Todd and Alison McGovern
06/10/2010, 05:30:10 PMAs Ed Miliband was unveiled as Labour’s leader in Manchester ten days ago, Liverpool were drawing with Sunderland 30 miles away. Which disappointing result was of secondary concern for many compared with protesting against the club’s misrule by Tom Hicks and George Gillett.
Yet even with the possibility of administration hanging over the club, Jeff Stelling of Sky told the protestors to “concentrate on what’s happening on the pitch.”
But this “let them eat cake and drink warm lager” attitude misses the point.
As the clock ticks down to the club effectively being publicly owned, we should ask whether David Cameron has a better grasp of the issues at stake. In spite of the ownership bid from New England Sports Ventures, Robert Peston continues to see control of the club by the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as a live option. RBS, 84 percent publicly owned, could assume ownership on 15 October when loans taken out with them expire.
While it may be that RBS avoids this outcome by finding new owners capable of servicing the debt in the next week, an RBS takeover is close enough that questions must be asked about how they would conduct themselves as custodians of the club. A publicly owned bank taking on such a role raises new issues.
These issues are larger than the club; even than a club as great as Liverpool. They cut to the core of what we want our post credit-crunched country to be.
There is a worry that the practices which contributed to our troubles may be returning to the financial sector. This concern undermines the hope that there may be opportunity in the financial crisis; opportunity to re-evaluate what kind of economy and society we want to be and to recalibrate ourselves accordingly. (more…)
