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Archive for April, 2013

Why has Ed allowed the unions to stitch up the euro candidate selections? What happened to the new politics?

11/04/2013, 07:00:44 AM

by Peter Watt

There has been a lot of retrospective going on recently. Obviously the death of Baroness Thatcher has meant that we have all been reflecting on the politics of the 1970’s and 1980’s. And politics has changed a fait bit since then and Labour politics in particular; long gone are the days when Labour ripped itself apart with splits and division.

Beaten time after time by the Tories, Labour finally realised that it needed to change if it was to win. First Neil Kinnock, then John Smith and finally Tony Blair and Gordon Brown gradually enforced a degree of central control and discipline within the party. There was an understanding that controlling process meant controlling the party. Conferences, policy making and of course selections were all ruthlessly managed.

On the whole the party welcomed it, even if reluctantly at first. There was a significant minority who always complained of course, but most were prepared to overlook what they didn’t like as we kept winning.

Working for the party throughout this period, we were loyal to the Leadership and we worked hard to keep control. Centralisation was the name of the day. But the world moved on and the time for command and control was over.

But at the centre we were slow on the uptake and so the culture of control was hung onto longer than it should’ve been. As the rest of society was opening up and more open sources of information were becoming the norm in business, online and in the media, the Labour party stubbornly refused to change the way that it ran itself. Keeping control meant keeping order.

But then we lost a general election and rightly our new Leader demanded a new approach to our politics. There was talk of reaching out beyond our closed ranks: of allowing creativity and innovation and welcoming the possibilities that there may well be differences in tone and approach in different parts of the country.

As an old school control freak you would expect me to be sceptical. But no; I am hugely supportive of an approach that begins to break down the barriers to our politics. I can see just how remote and closed our politics actually is and how unattractive it is to most voters. I wholeheartedly agree with Ed when he says:

“It’s not just about winning elections… It’s about constructing a real political movement. It’s a change from machine politics to grassroots politics.”

So I welcome the opening up of the party; except that is not what is happening. The words are all well and good but the reality is that nothing has changed. Actually that isn’t true. If anything it is getting worse.

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Thatcher’s legacy and the politics of blame

10/04/2013, 03:17:33 PM

by Jonathan Roberts

The past couple of days have been absurd. As a centrist, I have looked on with quiet respect, but also with head in hands as ideologue after ideologue lined up to offer their views on Lady Thatcher’s legacy.

I say at the outset that, for those so inclined, the time to celebrate was not this week, it was in 1990 or 1997. Ed Miliband, Neil Kinnock and others have rightly offered generous and respectful words on Mrs Thatcher’s passing, and it is my view that anyone who has expressed joy at the death of this frail old lady cannot realistically claim moral superiority, nor can they claim to be a particularly nice person – regardless of the anger they may still feel.

Like many other commentators, I was merely a child when Thatcher left Number Ten for the last time. Being the son of two council workers I was not one of those who directly benefited from the Thatcher years, nor was I one of those who directly suffered. So it is with that relative impartiality that I offer these thoughts.

The fundamental position of the left is that Thatcher destroyed the concept of society and abandoned countless decent, hardworking people to the scrapheap. The position of the right is that she rescued the country from militant trade unionism and gave people the opportunity to be free from state reliance.

Both of these positions are true.

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The real lesson of Thatcher for Labour

10/04/2013, 11:18:29 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey wrote in the Observer, the day before Margaret Thatcher’s death was announced, under a headline of “Labour plans radical shift over welfare state payouts”. But did their article tell us anything about the party’s commitment to the contributory principle that Liam Byrne didn’t tell us in his speech on William Beveridge over a year ago? And did their article tell us anything about our jobs guarantee that had not already been announced?

In short, the Observer splashed on a story devoid of new content at the end of the week in which George Osborne audaciously – but predictably – used the conviction of Mick Philpott to attack again on welfare. We must presume that Labour felt this attack strong enough to wish to respond to but lacked any new policy with which to do so.

Then Thatcher died and decisively moved the news agenda on. Perhaps we should be grateful to her for obscuring Labour’s lack of substance on this central and contentious issue. But is there anything else that Labour should be grateful to Thatcher for?

We should all, according to the words spoken by David Cameron on Downing street on Monday, be grateful to her for saving the UK. Her alienation of Scotland may yet, though, come to be seen as having contributed significantly to the breakup of the union.

While the decline of some industries may have been inevitable, her dearth of industrial policy stripped whole regions of alternative futures. Local government was gutted of capacity to respond to these changes, as power was concentrated in Whitehall by a government that claimed it did not believe in the role of the state. Ballooning welfare payments also meant that this state was hardly minimal.

All of these baleful legacies remain to be dealt with. Yet Martin Amis spoke for many on Monday when he told Newsnight that she was “a necessary prime minister”. Thus, the real question for Labour is not whether we have anything to be grateful to Thatcher for but why, even after all the suffering endured by areas within which our movement is woven most deeply, this view is widely held.

Is it because the rest of the country lacks the compassion to care for these communities? Has Thatcherism or capitalism itself made our fellow citizens spiteful and capricious? The truth is closer to home than that.

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Dear Labour MPs, Thatcher was the enemy. Use today to explain why

10/04/2013, 07:00:50 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Every Labour MP I’ve ever met – every one – has got to where they are in politics by trading on their hatred of Thatcherism. Many affect back stories of hardship to impress selection meetings. The more honest express vicarious regret at what she did to industry/ the north/ working-class communities.

However I fear Parliament’s quite unnecessary recall today will see MPs of all colours – Labour included – at their oleaginous worst. Hyperbole will heap upon cliché in praise of Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy and person. Inevitable, really, given the session is to pay “tribute” to her.

But amid the mawkishness from the government benches, Labour MPs will also get an opportunity to chip in and there are only two contributions, as far as I can see it, they can honestly make.

The first is to issue regret that a former Prime Minister has died and express sympathy for the family. Fair enough, but that doesn’t take long. Poor Ed Miliband finds himself like a comedian with a ten minute act and three minutes’ worth of material. Perhaps he can segue into a riff about her fortitude in foreign affairs, but given her love of dictators and hatred of Nelson Mandela, it’s a delicate subject. Love of freedom? Again, a tricky one given her Shoot to Kill policy in Northern Ireland and the government-backed assassination of solicitor Pat Finucane.

However one thing Ed must avoid is drifting into psychobabble about her complex personality. It doesn’t strike me as particularly useful to ponder why she was kind to a few acolytes and monstrous to so many others. Tony Benn’s memory of her attending Eric Heffer’s funeral and crying over an old political adversary should be filed in the ‘gloriously irrelevant’ folder. All sorts of people blub at funerals; Tony is such a sucker.

Similarly her legacy as the first woman PM is a footnote given Thatcher did so little to advance women in public life and seemed to despise women campaigners, whether they were the desperate mothers of the Hunger Strikers, Women Against Pit Closures of the mothers of the 96 killed at Hillsborough. Not one iota of sympathy was ever offered to these groups – or many others.

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Cameron needs to show the Conservatives have moved on from Thatcher

09/04/2013, 03:18:09 PM

by Mark Stockwell

The events and policies that defined Margaret Thatcher’s premiership politicized much of the current generation of politicians. The legacy of her time in office, and the manner of her departure from it, continue to cast a long shadow over British politics and in particular over the Conservative Party.

By a somewhat macabre twist of fate, I found myself marking the occasion of Thatcher’s death at a recital of Fauré’s Requiem. Predictably, the wall-to-wall retrospectives of her political career have been divided between those who would have the angels lead her into paradise, and those who would condemn her to punishment in the infernal lake. Perpetual light on one side; the darkness of the abyss on the other.

The left has for the most part observed a self-denying ordinance against open outbreaks of glee. But there’s a strong sense that this is primarily for reasons of self-preservation and concern as to how voters will react, rather than out of any genuine respect for her achievements. Once a period of grace has elapsed, I confidently expect some metaphorical dancing on the grave. (Some have already rather distastefully alluded to Elvis Costello’s ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ – but she’s going to have the last laugh there by being cremated.)

Meanwhile, the entire Conservative Party has lined up to heap praise on “the woman who saved Britain”. This reaction is reasonably genuine – but it, too, is based on somewhat selective recall. Yes, the country had become almost ungovernable by 1979 and radical surgery was needed but if Thatcher hadn’t been removed when she was and the poll tax scrapped, there’s a fair chance we’d have gone full circle.

Thatcher’s political legacy to the Conservative party is also decidedly mixed. It’s hard to argue with three decisive general election victories, and no defeats. And the policies she pursued, the economic reforms she put in place, have continued to make the political weather. But the coalition she built with the voters in the 1980s was unsustainable once Labour got its act together and addressed its ongoing problem with the middle class. New Labour was the product of Thatcherism – but it was also its electoral nemesis.

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Why I hated Margaret Thatcher

09/04/2013, 08:58:20 AM

by Kevin Meagher

This is the point where I am tempted to begin by arguing that you should love the sinner, but hate the sin and critique Margaret Thatcher’s record rather than her personally. But despite the haughty entreaties of the party’s panjandrums yesterday not to let the side down with sentiments of ill will towards her, I don’t think there’s any point being a hypocrite about it: I absolutely hated Margaret Thatcher.

If you come from a working class background and especially if you live in Scotland, South Wales, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, or Tyneside, your view of Thatcher may well be equally visceral.

If, however, you come from a professional middle-class background and live in London and the south of England, you probably look askance at all this intense criticism of her. You may well think Thatcher was, overall, good for the country – as quite a few people in the Labour party will freely admit these days.

But for me (and I dare say a good few others) there was something particularly heartless about Margaret Thatcher; unforgivably so in fact. Not at an individual level, it seems, given the many tales yesterday of her personal kindnesses to friends and staff; but she knew who she despised and for them she simply had no mercy.

It always seemed as though she had her own hit list of groups in British society against which she wanted to define her ideology. Miners, steelworkers, trade unionists, local councils, benefit recipients, gay people the Irish, the Scots, the entire north of England – all were in her sights.

It was an animosity that went beyond the political; this was personal to her. She was utterly impervious to even a hint of empathy for those on the receiving end of public spending cuts, monetarism and de-industrialisation. People on the Right never seem to understand just how galling it is for decent British working people to be referred to as “the enemy within” by their own prime minister.

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Austerity isn’t inevitable. Labour needs to be bolder on the alternative

08/04/2013, 01:07:55 PM

by Matthew Whittley

We have grown familiar with Tory backbencher’s frustration at the reality of coalition government that prevents them from delivering the yet deeper cuts to social security that a Conservative manifesto would likely call for. So much so that it’s easy to forget just how radical this government has been on welfare. The austerity driven assault on the poor has started to gather pace, with the first raft of welfare reforms already implemented.

This month, the vital link between benefits and inflation will be broken. With inflation remaining at close to 3%, the 1% cap on the uprating of benefits will make it even harder for those families already struggling to keep pace with the rising cost of living. Furthermore, the ending of full council tax rebate is forcing two million low-income households to contribute hundreds of pounds to their council tax – a tax that, until now, they have been considered too poor to pay.

This appears to have gone largely under the radar. One cut that has attracted substantial media attention is the introduction of under-occupancy charges for 660,000 social housing tenants – what’s been dubbed the ‘bedroom tax’. Those with a spare bedroom are having to deal with cuts to their housing benefit of, on average, £56 a month. As well as reducing the housing benefit bill, the government argues that this policy has been designed to make the best use of housing stock. Unfortunately, there aren’t anywhere near enough small properties to move people into.

This is especially the case in the North. Teeside based housing association Coast and Country Housing, for example, has 1,800 tenants classed as under-occupying, but they have only two one-bed properties available to let. People are being sanctioned for not moving into smaller houses that don’t exist.

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George Osborne has a point on Philpott. Labour is dangerously out of sync with public opinion

08/04/2013, 08:41:46 AM

by Ben Mitchell

For the past 18 months or so I’ve spent quite a bit of time defending Ed Miliband: a decent man with a broad vision about how our political system needs to be changed to work for the many instead of a privileged, sheltered few. I’ve applauded the leadership’s disassociation from the worst excesses of New Labour – its authoritarianism, ruthless attacks on civil liberties, reckless liberal interventionism. He has taken on powerful elites in a way few have dared to.

But over the last few months an immaturity and amateurish streak has taken hold. Beginning with his breathtaking naivety in fully endorsing the Leveson Report in its entirety with barely any time to take in the executive summary, let alone digest all 1,987 pages. Wanting to be on the side of the victims of hacking and new best mate to UK Celebs Are Us, clouded his judgement and put Labour on the wrong side of press freedom. But at least he had public opinion on his side. Even though Leveson and press regulation will barely feature come polling day.

Not so welfare. As Dan Hodges pointed out last week:

“The “debate” over welfare playing out over the last few days has reminded me of where we were with the debate on immigration a decade ago.”

We are in the embryonic stages, meaning hyperbole, misinformation, accusations and counter-accusations shout down the moderate and measured. Mick Philpott, doting father of 17, misogynist, benefit-scrounger extraordinaire, and now guilty of the manslaughter of six of his children puts us firmly in hysteria territory. Vile product of Welfare UK? Of course not. But a man entitled to handouts totalling up to £50,000 a year according to some reports is evidence of a benefits system intent on self-harm.

There was nothing remotely controversial about George Osborne musing that:

“There is a question for government and for society about the welfare state – and the taxpayers who pay for the welfare state – subsidising lifestyles like that, and I think that debate needs to be had.”

Every right-thinking person would have been nodding in approval. I certainly was. Then in blunders Ed Balls with the equivalent of a studs-first two-footed tackle:

“George Osborne’s calculated decision to use the shocking and vile crimes of Mick Philpott to advance a political argument is the cynical act of a desperate chancellor.”

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Our Dalit class had enough problems before Philpott

06/04/2013, 07:00:31 AM

by Kevin Meagher

So which class does Mick Philpott belong to then? I guess he would end up in the “precariat” group, described as the “poorest and most deprived” in the BBC’s new parlour game, the Great British Class Calculator. After this last week it’s hardly a cheap shot to point out that he’s not exactly working class is he?

Hear, hear! snarks George Osborne, keen to insert himself into the furore over whether Philpott’s life on benefits caused his descent into immorality, chirruping the sentiments in Wednesday’s Daily Mail whose notorious headline labelled him a “Vile product of welfare UK.”

“There’s a question about the welfare state, and taxpayers who pay, subsidising lifestyles like that” Osborne intoned the other day, not one to let the chance to make a cheap political point pass him by. Not so much aspiration as aspersion nation.

Perhaps, then, Osborne and Paul Dacre can tell us when the rot set in? Just how many years does it take idling on benefits, as they see it, to warp someone’s values enough before a man will set fire to his own house and kill his own kids? Ten years? Twenty?

Given Philpott stabbed a former girlfriend back in 1978 – relatively speaking, years of full employment and plenty – could it simply be that he wasn’t wired-up properly to begin with and his employment status has nothing to do with his proclivity towards violence and nihilistic behaviour?

Back to class though. Twenty years ago, we talked gravely of “the underclass” to try and characterise those left high and dry by Thatcherism. You know the ones. Britain’s Dalits – our unloved and unwanted countrymen and women who long ago slipped out of the mainstream. Those whose ignorance is supposedly exceeded only by their fecklessness. The untouchables on housing estates we would gladly cross the road to avoid; that’s if we ever ventured into their neighbourhoods to begin with. Which we don’t.

The right now offers them castigation, the left, pity. But belief in true equality – in the equal worth of all – means these people should never have been allowed to sink so low in the first place. However sink they have; left with poorer health and fewer qualifications, living out a prospectless existence amid pawn shops, take-aways, drug-dealers, loan-sharks and bull mastiffs. Reduced to existing in the here and now. Too unskilled to keep pace with the modern world of work and priced out of low-skilled jobs by cheaper, immigrant labour.

No wonder they hate politicians. But given they’re not on the electoral register there’s not much they can do about it. I wonder if any of the parties knows how Mick Philpott votes? I suspect his street hasn’t seen a canvassing team in quite a while. The only time politicians meet these people is when they are pouring out tales of misfortune to them at their surgeries. Our political parties have nothing to say to those at the bottom of the pile because they want nothing from them. Labour long ago gave up trying to mobilise them.

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The reverberations from April 1992 still ring out

05/04/2013, 01:44:11 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Next week sees a grim anniversary for Labour people of my generation. Losing the general election on 9 April 1992 was a gut-wrenching experience and the memory is seared into our collective minds. A government long in the tooth and mired in a recession of its own making couldn’t win a general election, we confidently told ourselves. Only it did.

The argument about how Labour “snatched defeat from the jaws of history” in 1992 is well rehearsed. Neil Kinnock wasn’t trusted. The Sun and the right-wing press were unrelentingly hostile to Labour; and John Major was a newish face who was worthy of a second chance, voters felt.

But a loss is a loss and Major’s unexpected victory had as big a psychological effect on the Labour party as Ramsey McDonald’s ‘betrayal’ for establishing the National Government had on earlier generations.

It seems another age given the three election victories the party would go on to win, but there was serious talk Labour was completely finished after its record fourth defeat. As Tony Blair put it in his autobiography, ‘A Journey’: “The party had almost come to believe it couldn’t win, that for some divine or satanic reason, Labour wasn’t allowed an election victory no matter what it did.”

This defeat and the self-loathing which followed, paved for the way for New Labour’s decade of iconoclasm. Dumb before the shearer, the party more or less acquiesced as reform after reform to party structures and policy were pushed through. As the late Tony Banks succinctly put it, “my constituents will eat shit to get a Labour government.”

But 1992 represented a triumph for Conservative politics too. A party that held its nerve in the face of massive odds prevailed. Just two years previously the poll tax riots were in full swing and 18 months earlier they had dethroned Margaret Thatcher. However their instinct to fight to the bitter end was rewarded with victory. The Tories’ iron nerves triumphed yet again.

So is history going to repeat itself? Will the Tories’ 2015 campaign plan simply re-run 1992?

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