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Archive for 2012

Stop taking liberties

03/04/2012, 07:00:31 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Last week we learned that the government, in its benign munificence, wants to have access to all our emails “on demand”. We are, it seems, all now assumed to be terrorists or master criminals until proven innocent. Our calls, texts, internet searches and other electronic messages will be fair game for the prying eyes of our securocrats.

A one-off sortie across the demarcation that separates personal liberty from an ever-encroaching state? Were that it were so. The past week has been an utterly dreadful one for Lady Liberty.

Take into consideration, if you will, the case of 21 year-old Liam Stacey. He was jailed for 56 days last week for posting racially offensive comments on Twitter following the collapse of Bolton Wanderers player Fabrice Muamba. No need to recite his vile ramblings, but let’s say he stood out from the crowd in not wishing the footballer a swift recovery.

Sentencing him at Swansea Magistrates’ Court, District Judge John Charles told Stacey: “In my view, there is no alternative to an immediate prison sentence.” Wow, really? No other means of punishing this stupid, half-pissed student for tweeting his brainless racist tirade without locking him up and ruining his life?

His university was no less draconian. He faces being booted off his course, despite being in the third year of a biology degree, at the whim of some po-faced university commissar. Will his own parents be obliged to disown him next?

When we hurtle past “reaction” and crash headlong into “over-reaction”, nothing should come as a surprise. Like any other sentient human being, I abhor racism and as a Wanderers fan was doubly aggrieved at what Stacey posted. But when did boorishness come with an automatic jail sentence?

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Back in the real world, it’s still the budget, stupid

02/04/2012, 03:17:59 PM

by Ian Lucas

As the dust settles on a tumultuous couple of weeks it is becoming clear that outside the Westminster bubble, only one event has truly cut through to the general public: the budget.

With the cut in the 50p rate of tax and the imposition of the “granny tax”, this was truly a Budget for “the premier league” – those top rate taxpayers who had the ear of the prime minister and have benefited directly as a consequence of George Osborne’s announcements.

What is clear is that securing economic growth and new jobs was not a key topic of conversation at the Downing Street dinners. Before the Budget, and after it, the failure of this Government is its failure to build growth.

A cut to capital projects has taken away key Government support for private sector job creation. Whole industrial sectors – such as construction – are suffering as a result, and both large-scale firms and their smaller subcontractors are holding back.

The uncertainty in the jobs market is reducing employee confidence. People are postponing major spending decisions. If you are worrying about your job, you won’t move house. Income for the local economy, agents’ fees, finance to builders is held back.

Worries about jobs are hold back spending; yet the Government has increased taxes on consumers. Every penny more on VAT for central Government is a penny less for local business.

It is necessary to reduce the deficit. But the most damning statistic for the Government is that it is borrowing £147 billion more than predicted – because the economy is not growing and more people are out of work.

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Complaints over postal votes in Manchester Central selection

02/04/2012, 07:00:04 AM

Party members in Manchester Central are complaining that they risk being disenfranchised in the selection process to choose Labour’s candidate for the forthcoming parliamentary by-election because party bosses are refusing to allow postal voting.

The unusual move is said to be due to the selection’s tight timescale, caused by the resignation of former minister and parliamentary Labour Party chair, Tony Lloyd, who hopes to become Greater Manchester’s first elected police and crime commissioner this November.

However eyebrows are being raised by some members who question why the process is being hurried along, especially if it makes it difficult for elderly and housebound members to participate.

They have written to the party’s North West regional office warning that some people risk being disenfranchised as a result of the postal vote ban.

They also worry that the seat contains economically diverse communities and that there may be a differential turnout between the more prosperous city centre wards and places like Newton Heath and Moss Side – some of the poorest communities in England.

Four candidates were shortlisted last week to succeed Lloyd, including Ed Miliband’s deputy chief of staff, Lucy Powell, Patrick Vernon who runs a health charity in London and Manchester councillors Rosa Battle and Mike Amesbury.

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Revealed: Secret ministerial transport memo

01/04/2012, 08:00:53 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Labour Uncut can reveal the existence of a secret government contingency plan to transport ministers to meetings around Whitehall in the event of a fuel shortage.

Ministerial cars will be mothballed for the duration of any fuel strike in order to show “we’re all in this together”. Instead ministers who need them will shuttle between appointments across Whitehall by… sedan chair.

The novel idea, brainchild of Chancellor George Osborne, will see unemployed young people specially trained to carry ministers around. The ability to carry a sedan chair may also be used as a means of qualifying for DLA in a tightened ‘fitness to work’ test.

According to a leaked memo entitled: ‘Contingency Ministerial Transportation: Safari Old Ploy’, Ministers will be carried around as if they were on safari. “It is important” the memo says “that we do not give rise to the impression that ministers are behaving like Roman emperors.”

The original plan was for rickshaws, but Osborne vetoed this move, claiming they would need a road fund license. Also, it is believed the Chancellor in fact has his own sedan chair, which he is eager to use in public.

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How Ed can fight back after Bradford West

30/03/2012, 01:43:02 PM

by Samuel Dale

If ever there was a wake-up call, this is it. Not since 1987 when Labour lost the Greenwich by-election to the SDP has the party faced such a devastating loss.

Last week there were some positive signs, Miliband’s good performance in response to the budget or harrying of the Tories over donorgate and pastygate shouldn’t just be forgotten. But now more than ever this needs to be harnessed and turned into something tangible and lasting. A narrative that can run until the next election.

He is capable of doing it but there is one problem. It’s the economy, idiots. Labour still lacks credibility and until it regains it, sporadic good polling and Tory slip ups will remain shallow and electoral success a far off dream.

In all of the soul-searching that is to ensue next week Ed Miliband has a chance to address this core problem. The biggest issue is the impression that Labour was profligate with the public purse and that caused the crisis. It’s not true but it’s the impression.

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Is this the beginning of the end for Ed Miliband?

30/03/2012, 07:55:37 AM

by Atul Hatwal

This morning it’s a cold new world. But as the shock passes and the harsh reality of George Galloway’s crushing victory begins to sink in, the questions will become louder and more insistent. Two in particular will dominate: How could this happen? And what does it mean for the leader?

The party briefers will try to box this result as a freak. They will cite the combined effect of the swing from Labour towards Respect among the British Pakistani community and the collapse in Tory vote as a localised one-off.

They will be wrong.

The vote demonstrates two critical points: first, hell will freeze over before large numbers of Tories switch to Labour. After the week the Tories have had, it’s not surprising their vote was down. But Labour picked up no Conservative switchers and remains toxic to swing voters.

The reality is, for too many people, Labour under Ed Miliband is not a viable alternative. The polls on leadership and economic competence have been unrelenting since he became leader.

Earlier this month the Guardian’s ICM poll placed David Cameron and George Osborne 17% ahead of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls on managing the economy 42% to 25%. Meanwhile YouGov’s latest March figures on peoples’ preference to be prime minister had David Cameron 20% ahead of Ed Miliband 38% to 18% – that’s double the lead he held at the same point last year.

Second, the British Pakistani community has sent a clear signal to a party that has long taken their vote for granted: no more. Labour has spent two years since the general election agonising about Mrs.Duffy, Englishness and what are euphemistically called “white working class issues”. Well, congratulations, this is the result.

Simply cranking the handle on decaying community political machines and expecting the sheep to file through the pen will not work forever. When George Galloway condemned Labour’s use of “biraderi” or clan-based politics last night, he was right.

At some point Labour as a party will have to engage with its former ethnic minority supporters rather than just assume they will be there, regardless of whatever the party does.

But in one sense, there really is no excuse for such total and utter shock. This isn’t the first time that a feeling has taken hold in a formerly Labour supporting electorate that the party is no longer upto leading or even interested in the local community.

What just happened in Bradford now happens in Scotland as a matter of course. For Alex Salmond read George Galloway and the pattern begins to look a little more familiar.

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Time to learn from the union link in funding politics

29/03/2012, 07:18:41 PM

by Ian Stewart

Every time there is a donor scandal in British politics, Whether its Ecclestone or an oligarch’s yacht, the same old arguments for state funding rise, Lazarus-like from their tomb. No doubt since Sunday, Lib Dems have been muttering to their dwindling band of friends that all this will go away if we had a system like Germany.

It is a tempting argument, well made by Mary Ann Sieghart earlier this week in the Independent. Many inside progressive politics are no doubt swayed by its siren call. Yet like so many centrist arguments favoured by political nerds, this one has some gapng holes:

Hole 1: Germany has had state funding since the 1950s, yet corruption and bribery still happen. The massive “Lockheed scandal” of the 1970s forced politicians and Luftwaffe Generals to resign over the purchase of the starfighter warplane. Germany now apparently requires companies to state what they have spent on buying political influence, so that they can levy a “bribes tax” (hmm… thinking about this one…)

Hole 2: The old Soviet Bloc had state funding for its token “Opposition” parties in the GDR, Poland et al. Anyone see any good that came of that? No? Lets move on…

Hole 3: Politicians are about as popular as leprosy. Do we want more of our taxes spent on them?

Hole 4: The state is not always neutral. State funding of political parties could take away some of our independence and ability to propose radical new policies.

Hole 5: Why should a Labour supporter help fund the LibDems/Tories/UKIP/BNP/Respect… or indeed anybody else? Why should a Scottish Labour supporter fund the SNP? That’s what Brian Souter is for.

Hole 6: For Labour, it further weakens the trades union link, and Progress are in favour of it.

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The missing name from the Manchester Central shortlist

29/03/2012, 08:00:46 AM

Two men and two women were announced yesterday as the contenders for Manchester Central shortlist. The particulars of Lucy Powell, Rosa Battle, Mike Amesbury and Patrick Vernon have been detailed elsewhere, but Uncut has heard whispers from unhappy local members interested in a missing name: Mohammed Afzal Khan.

The first Asian Lord Mayor of Manchester and a local councillor since 2000, Khan has built up a formidable base of local support. His desire for a parliamentary seat is longstanding but Khan is rapidly becoming Labour’s nearly man of the north.

Initially he was a front runner for Oldham East and Saddleworth following Phil Woolas’s departure, but in a surprise move did not even make the short list, despite being a partner in a law firm in Oldham and having strong local backing.

Then there was the Labour selection for Manchester’s police and crime commissioner (PCC). As a leading local Labour politician, a senior lawyer and a former police constable, Khan was interested and this should have been his break-through.

Until that is Tony Lloyd indicated that he would be prepared to relinquish his ultra-safe seat to become Labour’s PCC candidate in November’s election. At this point the political calculus changed and the central machine whirred into action.

A prize such as Manchester Central is rare and with Ed Miliband’s Manchester-based deputy chief of staff, Lucy Powell, looking for a seat, the choreography was clear: Lloyd to PCC and Powell to Central.

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The Youth Contract must be the beginning not the end

28/03/2012, 12:30:17 PM

by Richard Darlington

Any day now, the Government will formally launch the new Youth Contact and from April, 160,000 job subsidies and an extra 20,000 apprenticeships will begin to come on stream to help young people who have been out of work for more than a year. The new scheme cannot come soon enough and it will fill the policy vacuum left by the abolition of the Future Jobs Fund, more than a year ago.

Since that decision was taken, youth unemployment has risen to the highest since records began in 1986/7.

Last month, the latest stats show that more than a million (1,042,000) young people (aged 16-24) are now unemployed, the second highest since comparable records began in 1992, and a rise of 67,600 in the last year.

Most worrying of all, there are now more than a quarter of a million 253,000 young people (aged 16-24) who have been unemployed for more than a year. There has been an increase of 24,900 over the last year in this group, that would have been helped had the Future Jobs Fund not been abolished.

But it is not just work, but training, where too many young people are losing out in record numbers. There are now a total of 958,000 young people (aged 16-24) who are NEET (not in education, employment or training), up 19,000 over the last year and a record high of 15.9 per cent for a fourth quarter.

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Time for Ed and Cam to grow up on funding

28/03/2012, 07:00:23 AM

by Peter Watt

The cringe inducing video of Peter Cruddas promising supper with Sam and David with comic buffoonery was still leading the news. The nod and a wink about the promise of policy input into (something called) the number ten policy committee of course took this to another level. At a stroke it went from being just another “cash for access story” to “cash for policy” – the real daddy of political sleaze. Having said that, I was actually still quite optimistic on Sunday, maybe this time there would be a political deal; maybe this time our politicians will sort it out; maybe this time there would be legislation fundamentally reforming the funding of political parties?

But by Monday evening the optimism was dashed. Once again the ugly head of tribal politics intervened. Ed Miliband and Francis Maude stood at the respective dispatch boxes and shouted at each other. It was horrifically depressing. Neither of them in my view did politics any favours, despite the supportive bellowing from their respective benches behind them. The public, to the extent that they were watching, must have thought, “WTF was that” because it certainly wasn’t edifying.

None of the parties has much to boast about here. Each has their list of scandals involving party and MP finances. It is all too easy to get dragged in, as I very well know. Some scandals involve people trying to personally gain while some involve mistakes, or are the result of playing within the rules but not within the spirit of them. All though, involve a further nail in the coffin of the reputation of politics, as a sceptical public do not draw any distinction as to the motives. I know that I certainly regret my part in the succession of stories that have damaged politics.

Now if someone decides to feather their own nest and act corruptly there is probably not much that we can do about it, but there is something that we can do to reduce the risk of other funding scandals. Because the harsh truth is that the current system encourages the parties to push at the boundaries of the legislation passed ostensibly to clean up politics. Just as people perfectly reasonably employ accountants to help them avoid tax, so political parties employ people to maximise the income that they can receive. After all, why should they turn a gift horse away? So loop holes are found and exploited. Legal? Yes. Acceptable? Certainly not to the public.

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