2010 « Labour Uncut

Archive for 2010

Deadline for leadership nominations extended.

20/05/2010, 03:42:46 PM

As reported exclusively on Labour Uncut yesterday, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee has now confirmed that the deadline for nominations in the leadership election will be extended. The initial timetable, according to which nominations would have both opened and closed next week, provoked a wave of protest at all levels of the party.

At today’s meeting of the NEC procedures subcommittee, therefore, it was agreed to extend the deadline for nominations till June 9.

One NEC member told Labour Uncut “It was never a conspiracy. All the fuss in the first meeting was about making sure it went long. We just dropped this part of the ball, and now it’s been tidied up. That’s all.”

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Alex Halligan wants the unions in the race

20/05/2010, 02:29:09 PM

We need trade unions as a country and as a party. Trade unions have consistently been the biggest contributors of activists, of finance and of dedication since Labour’s formation at the turn of the last century.

With the leadership battle already well under way, the question for the rank and file is quite simply: who will represent the interests of working people?

The union vote will be very important in the coming contest. Unions carry nearly 30% of the electoral college vote; whoever wins would be wise to seek their support. A North West TUC official claimed that the big trade unions “all have a different choice in terms of their preferred candidate.”

Pressure from the grass roots is reaching fever pitch. The flurry for branch nominations has already begun. Demands are being mounted upon the ruling committees of the sixteen affiliated unions. A Unite regional organiser said that his union “is actively encouraging members to participate in choosing a new party leader.” (more…)

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Campaign update – and why we need a serious woman

20/05/2010, 12:14:25 PM

In the PLP section of the leadership contest, David Miliband is powering ahead. Labour Uncut is listing 30 declared PLP nominators so far. But even a rival campaign manager told us that “he’s way over that; they’re weighing them in”. His Parliamentary campaign team is led by Jim Murphy and Douglas Alexander. Murphy, who sealed his reputation with his handling, as Europe Minister, of the Lisbon Treaty ratification, is a real politician’s politician. Likeable but ruthless, serious but funny, he is abstemious but has a slightly edgy air.

With David Miliband permanently on the terrace and in the tea room schmoozing people – neither his natural environment nor his métier – his campaign will profit from Murphy’s people skills as well as his machine ability.

Ed Miliband, currently showing 15 declared endorsers, is also thought to have comfortably surpassed the 33 MPs needed to get on the ballot paper. Former Cabinet Ministers Sadiq Khan and Peter Hain are the most active on his behalf in the tea room. Strangely similar characters from quite different backgrounds and generations, both are natural organisers. Ed Miliband’s coalition, though, still looks the most inchoate. It makes the least sense. Perhaps a group that includes Stephen Pound, Helen Goodman, Emily Thornberry and David Hamilton will turn into a big tent party. Let us hope it does not prove a messy mishmash. (more…)

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Hopi Sen asks the leadership bright boys some hard questions

20/05/2010, 09:52:52 AM

In the leadership election campaign, there will be a lot of talk of telling ourselves “uncomfortable truths”. Quite often, these “uncomfortable truths” will be a rhetorical trick to tell the audience what it wants to hear. Like that it’s all someone else’s fault, or that the party lost its way and got out of touch.

So I thought we should perhaps make a habit of proposing some uncomfortable truths that the Labour party, and even the candidates themselves, really don’t want to hear.

Here are two to start us off.

Don’t throw the machine away. Mend it.

The current crop of leadership contenders are the products of the most ferociously successful political machine in Labour party history. It was a machine that won three general elections, reduced the old left of the Labour party to irrelevance and made the country we live in a fairer, more open and safer place to live.

These are not bad things. (more…)

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Thursday News Review

20/05/2010, 08:03:55 AM

Andy Burnham joins the race

“As Labour debates its future, we must avoid looking like we are disowning our past. Everyone owes a debt of thanks to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But it falls now to my generation to rebuild Labour for new times. Politics has changed. Our job is to reconnect Labour with people who want something different from it. We also must bring back those people who have lost faith with us. I believe I can reach them. That is why I am today asking for the support of my colleagues to go forward as a candidate to lead the party I love and have served for 25 years.” – Andy Burnham, The Mirror

“Andy Burnham will become the fifth Labour MP vying for the leadership of the party when he declares his candidacy today. Writing in the Daily Mirror, the former health secretary will claim to be the candidate who can reconnect Labour with aspirational blue-collar workers. He will formally launch his campaign in his Leigh constituency in the north-west.” – The FT

“Andy Burnham will join the race to replace Gordon Brown, saying Labour “had our fingers in our ears and our hands over our eyes” over election issues including immigration. The former health secretary will announce his candidacy at the People’s History Museum in Manchester this afternoon, bringing the number of candidates to five.” – The Guardian

“He will say the ex-PM’s decision to axe the 10p tax rate – which hit the low-paid hardest – sent out the signal that Labour “didn’t care” about ordinary people. Mr Burnham, 40, will also call for a clean break with the Blair/Brown era by claiming the party has lost touch with its core voters.” – The Sun

Diane Abbott enters the fray

“Backbench MP Diane Abbott has joined the race for the Labour leadership. The Londoner told the BBC her bid was “serious”, saying there was little between the other candidates and she would be offering Labour a choice. The 57-year-old Cambridge graduate, who became the UK’s first black woman MP in 1987, said she was getting support from both MPs on the left and women MPs.” – The BBC

“Left-wing Labour MP Diane Abbott announced today she was running for the party leadership, becoming the first woman to enter the race. In a surprise move, Ms Abbott said she was confident of attracting the 33 nominations needed to get her on to the ballot paper.” – The Independent

“Diane Abbott has thrown her hat into the ring, announcing that she will stand for Labour leadership. The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington told the BBC‘s Today programme that her bid was “serious”, and would offer Labour a choice, given the similarities between the other candidates. This unexpected addition certainly brings something different to a race which, until now, was populated entirely by white, Oxbridge educated men in their 40s — Ed and David Miliband, Ed Balls, John McDonnell, and Andy Burnham.” – The New Statesman

“Diane Abbott’s announcement that she will stand for Leader of the Labour Party has set off a fire cracker at the heart of a hitherto staid affair. Because of her TV pundit status, and her controversial career, the media will go nuts over her. Only John McDonnell has reason for dismay: she will take Campaign Group MPs’ nominations from him, and probably ensure that neither of them will get onto the ballot paper.” – LabourList

“Ever since it became clear that a Labour leadership race was in the offing, people have been urging me to run. The declared frontrunners are hugely talented, but the danger is that they are “hoovering up” all the nominations and sucking the air out of the contest. This is pivotal moment for the party, and there is a long summer of hustings ahead. And many people believe that we need the broadest range of candidates in the race. Otherwise, many issues that Labour party members (and the public) want to debate will be off the table.” – Diane Abbott, The Guardian

The contest

“Last night, the party was considering demands for candidates to be given more time to raise the support of 33 MPs, which they need if they are to feature officially in the contest. MPs and activists had protested that next Thursday’s 12.30pm deadline would stop candidates such as Mr McDonnell from running. A change of heart now looks possible after Ed Miliband, the former climate change secretary and leadership contender, supported the demands. “MPs/members annoyed about short nominations timetable: I have to say I agree,” he wrote on Twitter.” – The Independent

“The three former Cabinet ministers have remarkably similar backgrounds: all studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford in the 1980s and completed their education at Harvard before becoming advisers to Mr Brown or Tony Blair. But Mr Balls hinted that his roots were more provincial than those of the metropolitan Milibands, who have spent recent years “travelling around the world” as Cabinet ministers responsible for foreign affairs and climate change.” – The Times

“It says something about the Labour gene pool that all the serious candidates for the leadership are white Oxbridge-educated men in their forties who were special advisers in 1997. They are, as John McDonnell — the leftwinger who is standing but won’t win — put it “the sons of Blair and sons of Brown”.” – The Times

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Leadership nominations deadline likely to be extended

19/05/2010, 05:45:23 PM

The deadline for submitting nominations for the Labour leadership is likely to be extended. Well placed sources have told Labour Uncut that at its meeting tomorrow, the procedures subcommittee of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee will reconsider the decision, announced yesterday, to open nominations next Monday and close them on Thursday.

This follows anguished protest from activists and sharp criticism from senior Labour figures like Jon Cruddas. According to Left Foot Forward, Cruddas said: “I’ve just found that our National Executive Committee has agreed that it should only be nine days until we all nominate which the [leadership candidates] should be. Now I’ve known David Miliband for 20 years, I’ve known Ed Balls for 20 years but I don’t know what they stand for. And I’ve known them. If you’re a new MP who’s just walked through the gates, you should be given more time. It will disenfranchise the party. It’s not good for the MPs themselves, the candidates, because they won’t be able to fully explain where they’re coming from. So I think the NEC should reconvene and change this timetable.”

It appears that, in the form of the procedures committee meeting tomorrow, that’s exactly what is going to happen.

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Vernon Coaker on why he is Ed Balls’ campaign manager

19/05/2010, 02:49:45 PM

The Labour leadership contest provides our party with an exciting opportunity to debate the future as well learn from the past and reflect on the 2010 General Election result.

It has also been inspiring to see a party which, while disappointed with the result, is not dispirited or downhearted. A party which will not allow our proud record of 13 years in government to be trashed and one which will hold this new coalition to account for their actions in a responsible but determined way.

So the person that we select for our leader has to be someone who will stand up for our record but also recognise our shortcomings. Someone who sees this election contest as a way of re-energising our thoughts and views about how we tackle the issues that matter: immigration, housing, welfare reform. Someone to stand up for the decent, hard-working majority.

Such a person will need to be strong and willing to face down the Tories and Liberal Democrats as they attack us, but also able to listen and connect with real people in real communities up and down the country. (more…)

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Update: the teams behind the leadership campaigns

19/05/2010, 11:06:59 AM

We summarised the core teams here yesterday. David Miliband made a point of saying in his formal launch speech that his named spokesperson would be Lisa Tremble, and that there would be no unattributable briefing. Cynics in the other camps have raised their eyebrows.

His organisation and logistics will fall to Joe Carberry, the widely liked godson of Peter Mandelson. (The Dark Lord himself is ‘keeping out of it’, as is Alistair Campbell).

The weird temptations of one more campaign have lured several former Downing Street staffers. Stewart Wood, Gordon Brown’s DCMS and foreign affairs guy, has joined Polly Billington spinning for Ed Miliband. Into which camp Rachel Kinnock has also wandered. Whereas the woman who used to share an office with Dr Wood in Downing St, former Head of Broadcasting, Nicola Burdett, has reportedly signed on to spin for Balls. At whose strategy meetings she will encounter the familiar face of Michael Dugher, now MP for Barnsley East but till very recently a top spinner in the Brown Downing Street.

For those who assume otherwise: I doubt that any of these ex-staffers will be paid for any work on this campaign, though many will be working full time. As they will have been on the general election. Which they won’t have been paid for either. They do it because they can’t help themselves.

So far, the Brown Downing Street is splitting between the two Eds. But there are many yet to declare.

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Jude Hanlon looks through the letterbox

19/05/2010, 11:05:51 AM

As well as being political activists my husband and I run our own computer support company. Recently we’ve been doing a lot of research into effective and unusual marketing techniques, and we’ve been exploring the crossover between business and political marketing.

The two problems with political marketing are getting it picked up – then getting it read. And then having enough credibility and persuasion in your content to get the reader to vote for you, and then getting the rest of their household to vote for you as well.

This spring the big hurdles were “they’re all the same” and “we never see anyone”, along with the general ennui which always underlies local elections. (more…)

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Jon Bounds on the half-appearance of the internet election

19/05/2010, 08:05:32 AM

Will the General Election in May 2010 go down as the first ‘internet election’? No. The unusual — if not entirely unexpected — result has seen to that, but it was an election in which people using the social web changed forever the way campaigning works in the UK.

Talk before was of which party could “do what Obama did”; that is, use the internet to harness support, and to fundraise. Well, no one really did — and politics in Britain was unlikely to suddenly start to work like that: we’re too conflicted, too cynical and have too many choices. We sometimes have to make decisions about how to place our cross where the local and national aims seem flatly contradictory — it was never going to be a simple case of joining one Facebook Group over another. The web can handle nuance, even if our electoral system can’t.

There was significant grassroots activity though, and perhaps the best way to see the difference between us and US is to look at the difference between my.barackobama.com (‘Organising for America’) and mydavidcameron.com (‘Airbrushed for Change’). One is a social network ‘lite’, directed at organising and nudging (very much in line with the theories of Richard Thaler) support, the other a crowdsourced Private Eye, with all the mix of clever satire and fart jokes that that might entail. (more…)