?Acting Leader of the Opposition
Rt Hon Harriet Harman QC MP
Acting Shadow Deputy Prime Minister
Rt Hon Jack Straw MP
Lord Philip Hunt (DPM issues in Lords + ECC)
FCO
Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Ivan Lewis MP
Chris Bryant MP
Baroness (Glenys) Kinnock
Baroness (Liz) Symons
Baroness (Christine) Crawley
Electoral reform
“Labour leadership contenders David and Ed Miliband said they would campaign for a “yes” vote if they were in charge. But rival Andy Burnham yesterday dismissed voting reform as a “peripheral issue”. He said: “It is not my party’s job to prop up the Liberal Democrats by helping them win a referendum that is important to them.” The expected timing of the vote, on the same day as the Holyrood parliament elections, has caused fury in Scotland.” – Scottish Daily Record
“Mr Cameron always intended to turn the tables by pushing Labour out to the left. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats wasn’t planned, but it may make his task easier. The candidates in Labour’s leadership election could make the same mistake as the Tories after 1997, as they fish for Labour votes, apparently forgetting that they will soon need to appeal to the wider electorate.” – The Independent
“Labour has backed the introduction of AV for Westminster, but some Labour MPs still see the referendum plan as a chance to embarrass the Coalition. Ed Balls, a candidate for the Labour leadership, also criticised the suggested date. “Holding it on a day when some parts of the country have elections but others do not will lead to unfair differential turnout,” said Mr Balls. A May 5 referendum would also be in defiance of advice from constitutional experts. Earlier this year, the House of Lords Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded that there should be “a presumption against holding referendums on the same day as elections” because of the risk that voters would be confused and results distorted.” – The Telegraph
This week’s prime minister’s questions posed at least two questions for Labour: first, how to react to Ken Clarke’s prison proposals. Second, whether to take up David Cameron’s invitation “to engage in this debate (on deficit reduction), rather than playing this pathetic game of pretending there wouldn’t be cuts under Labour.”
Some Labour contributions to PMQs and Jack Straw’s article in the Daily Mail suggest that we are about to attack Clarke from the right. Steve Richards, who chaired Wednesday’s leadership hustings in Lambeth, has since dismissed this as madness. Different views have been expressed on Labour Uncut. But what did the candidates have to say to Lambeth on this?
This is the laughometer from the Coop leadership hustings in Brixton on the evening of Wednesday 30 June.
As usual, 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.
Diane Abbott – 2
David Miliband – 1
Ed Balls – 1
Ed Miliband – 1
Andy Burnham – 0
Taken by an experienced laughometer operator, these are by far the lowest scores so far. Lambeth is clearly not for laughing.
On Tuesday, Nick Clegg announced that at least £0.5bn was to be cut from the budget for regional economic development and at the same time abolished the regional development agencies (RDAs). In their place will be a ‘regional development fund’. In creating this new body, the government broke its promise – with no consultation or debate – that regional development agencies would remain in areas where they were popular.
This is devastating news for businesses across the country, with the coalition government seemingly evermore determined to risk plunging the UK back into recession. (more…)
The candidates
Andy Burnham calls for Labour to be the party of "aspirational socialism"
“Andy Burnham today calls for Labour to exhume its socialist roots and become the party of “aspirational socialism”, running on ideas that include the large-scale purchase of private accommodation by councils. He also redoubles his campaign for a 10% inheritance tax on estates to pay retrospectively for care in later life, which is aimed at swing voters in the south.” – The Guardian
“This week, Ed Miliband backed the idea of extending the right to request flexible working to “every worker, not just those caring for families”. This is an idea first proposed in 2007 by Beverley Hughes. Back then, Hughes argued that “everyone has a life outside work, not just parents . . . many people make valuable contributions to their communities in their non-work time”. When you read that quotation now it feels like a “big society” argument, yet the coalition is going in the other direction.” – The New Statesman
“This week Ed Miliband put a revived “21st-century social democracy” at the heart of his own leadership campaign. Miliband has always seen himself as a social democrat, even in the years when the term was almost as unfashionable as socialism in Labour circles, and in this week’s speech he called on his party to “turn the page on New Labour orthodoxy”, with a different kind of economic model based around industrial policy, stronger regulation and the promotion of “responsibility” in the boardroom.” –The Guardian
A couple of days ago I received a breathless missive from my old comrades at compass. “Treasury Spending Review – Take Action”, it boomed. “The public service cuts, benefit freezes and raising indirect taxes announced in the budget will increase inequality”, before adding helpfully, “but there is an alternative”. With mounting excitement I scrolled down to learn more of this bold fight back against the Lib/Con assault on the poor, the dispossessed and the vulnerable.
Nothing. No thunderous denunciation. No elegant polemic eviscerating the injustice. Just a standard template inviting me to contribute to a treasury consultation.
There I was preparing to rage against the machine. Instead, I’d run slap bang into the new pluralism. (more…)
Next Wednesday is an opposition day in the House of Commons. This means that the opposition gets to choose the subjects for debate. Labour’s ‘usual channels’ have yet to determine what next week’s motions will be.
Uncut would like to venture a suggestion: the debate should be about prisons. The motion should be strongly worded, along the lines of Jack Straw’s article in the Daily Mail. The thesis can be summarised thus: prison works; bang ‘em up.
Our view is not based on the rehabilitative efficacy or otherwise of prison. It is tactical. (more…)
Agreeing wholeheartedly with a politician from an opposing party on a matter of serious policy can leave one feeling rather uncomfortable. This is particularly the case when one’s own party has been spectacularly wrong on said policy over many years. It was this unpleasant feeling that hit me when I heard that Ken Clarke, the Tory justice secretary, had launched an assault on the “bang ‘em up” prison culture of the last twenty years. (more…)
Ed M offers freedom and flexibility…
Ed Miliband has pledged greater freedom for the Scottish Labour Party
“Speaking on a visit to the Scottish Parliament, Ed Miliband said Labour should “lighten up” and allow Iain Gray, the party’s Holyrood chief, to draw up his own plans. The former Energy and Climate Change Secretary also gave his backing to handing Scottish ministers limited tax powers but opposed the “full fiscal autonomy” demanded by Alex Salmond.” – The Telegraph
“Labour leadership hopeful Ed Miliband has called for every worker to be allowed to work more flexible hours. The shadow cabinet minister said the state needed to do more to raise people’s quality of life outside work, urging that markets should not be left to decide “what is acceptable”. He said employees in Britain worked “harder for longer” than anywhere else in western Europe. “This is not the good society we aspire to,” he told Labour activists in London yesterday.” – The Scotsman
Nature vs. Nurture
“All of this creates a dilemma for Labour, which Jack Straw pre-emptively tackled in dismal fashion by decrying “handwringing” in the Daily Mail. Those Labour leadership candidates who talk about pushing the political centre ground in a progressive direction now face a great test. Do they revert to the populist fearmongering of the Blair years? Or do they instead engage with the more enlightened debate which Mr Clarke has boldly unlocked?” – The Guardian
“Candidates for the Labour leadership took a more nuanced view of the row. Andy Burnham said it was better to spend money helping people get their lives back on track than to fund private companies to run prisons. Ed Balls pointed out that the government was poised to cut budgets for crime prevention programmes such as youth activities and programmes for teen pregnancy and drugs misuse.” – (more…)
