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Archive for May, 2013

Clegg not Cable would make the best coalition partner for Labour

07/05/2013, 11:06:09 AM

by Dan McCurry

If Labour are to form a coalition government with the Lib Dems following the next election, then I would rather deal with Clegg than Cable.

I think Vince Cable is trouble. I’m not talking about the right sort of trouble, such as a deep sense of conviction for the need of justice. I mean the wrong sort of trouble, such as being unpredictable, or so anti-capitalist as to be both divisive and ineffective.

What we want from the Lib Dems is to agree on what our policies are and then for both parties to stick to the common line. With Nick Clegg it’s easy to imagine this happening, but with Cable I wonder if it would be so easy.

Maybe it’s that Telegraph sting that bothers me. The one where the journalists flirted with Vince and got him to speak about the “nuclear option”. We greatly enjoyed reading that story at the time, but now I can’t help feeling uncomfortable about the sheer arrogance of someone who fantasises about destroying the government.

Or maybe it’s banking that bothers me? The reason the share price of these banks has stayed so low is due to the fiddling-about of government policy. Mostly quite pointless stuff. This “ring fence” between retail and investment banking has little consensus to it. Besides, it was mortgage lending that caused the crisis not casino stock markets.

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Labour’s performance last Thursday simply wasn’t good enough

06/05/2013, 02:09:32 PM

by David Talbot

Amid the breathless, endless, commentary on the rise of UKIP, scant attention has been levelled at the only other serious contender for 10 Downing Street come May 2015. Whilst Conservative losses, and substantive ones at that, were long-foreseen they did of course have the furthest to fall, having swept the previous cycle in 2009. The true test was for the much-heralded one nation Labour. Heavy caveats were potted throughout the media by Labour personnel in the days leading to polling day; these elections are taking place in rural, affluent Tory-dwelling shires, eighty percent of the counties holding elections are represented by a Conservative MP, and control of four Councils and two hundred net gains is the target. Well, in their heart of hearts Labour’s strategists will know that last Thursday was not the triumph needed.

Despite matey assurances to the contrary, last Thursday’s results do not readily translate into the sixty seat Labour majority the party is seemingly on the cusp of securing. Although Labour picked itself up off the floor following the dark nadir of 2009, final national voting projections put the party on a mere twenty-nine percent – which is, ironically, exactly the polling figure Labour slumped to in the annihilation of the 2010 general election. That this appears to not be causing considerable alarm amongst the party faithful is troubling, and to say it is not enough for an opposition in mid-term should be so obvious as to be insulting to highlight.

There is no disguising Labour’s underwhelming performance. Despite sporadic advances in battleground seats such as Hastings, Crawley and Stevenage the results do not suggest that Labour will outright win the next general election. Gaining a mere two councils in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, only just, represents a worryingly poor return. Many party activists, somewhat rightly and understandably, are so consumed by the immediacies of their locale that they have swapped the instant gratification of publicising the fruits of their labour for any nuanced analysis of Labour at large. That the party now enjoys a sixty-two seat majority in Durham is indeed joyous, but that it failed to win in Staffordshire or Lancashire, and is still represented in the low single digits in vast swathes of the south, should temper that cheerfulness somewhat.

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David Cameron and Ed Miliband are both sons of Gordon Brown

06/05/2013, 09:58:01 AM

by Jonathan Todd

There is probably a significant degree of cross-party agreement that Douglas Carswell is wrong to argue that the present government is a continuation of the last. Even David Cameron’s critics in the Conservative party would claim that he is an improvement on Gordon Brown, while many Labour party members see Cameron as the worst prime minister since Margaret Thatcher or perhaps even worse.

Yet the evidence that Carswell is not entirely wrong was clearly on display during the last PMQs. Cameron and Ed Miliband, in one sense at least, jostled for the crown of heir to Brown. They did so by benchmarking their success against how much they are spending or propose to spend on particular public services.

Given the unpopularity of Brown, this is curious politics. To make a virility symbol of state spending is even worse policy. To assume that more government is necessarily moving us closer to solutions ignores even in the best of times the reality of government failure.

These are far from the best of times. There is immense pressure on public resources. And this will continue, as Patrick Diamond notes: “Actuarial estimates suggest that an ageing population will have a bigger impact on public finances than the catastrophic effects of the financial crisis.”

This context demands a politics capable of deliberating seriously about the effectiveness and efficiency of public spending and which doesn’t simply seek to win arguments with reference to how much money is being spent in certain areas. Yet the very first thing that Cameron said in response to Miliband’s questioning was: “This Government believes in our NHS and are expanding funding in our NHS.”

Ring-fencing the NHS budget is supposed to be a signal that the service is safe in Conservative hands. One consequence of these politics is that average GP salaries are preserved at £110,000, while the welfare payments of the very poorest are cut, as the DWP does not benefit from the same ring-fence as the NHS.

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Labour is fighting the wrong campaign

05/05/2013, 09:16:02 AM

by Anthony Painter

Since 1993, Labour performance in county council elections on a national equivalent basis is as follows: 39%, 44%, 42%, 36%, 22% and 29%. Thursday was better than the absolutely disastrous 2009 result that came a year before its second worst defeat in the modern political era. But it was a performance significantly worse than a party expecting to be winning a majority in two years’ time should have had.

The comfortable thing to do now is focus on the Tories’ travails and UKIP’s surge. But for anyone who wants to see a Labour Government in 2015, the far more sensible thing is to focus on Labour for a while. It is very difficult to write a piece cautioning the party about its current direction when so many new councillors have just been elected and so many local campaigns were so effective. That tremendous work absolutely needs to be acknowledged. Unfortunately though, the overall picture is extremely worrying. There has been a spooky silence on this fact since Thursday and that ultimately won’t help Labour win the majority it should in 2015.

Labour’s strategy isn’t working and it needs to reassess radically the approach that it is taking. Labour has decided to adopt Obama 2008-style “hopey-change” as a strategy. The problem is that next election doesn’t have a hopey-change feel to it. People want change but it is a desire for change that is sceptical and grounded in perception of what will be effective rather than wispy visions.

The 2015 election has a “please spare us from George Osborne but don’t be silly” feel to it. If it were an American election it would be 1992 rather than 2008. It’s the economy, stupid but that doesn’t mean anything goes. It’s just as winnable for Ed Miliband’s Labour as it was for Bill Clinton’s Democrats (UKIP as the Ross Perot of the UK anyone?) and Neil Kinnock’s Labour in 1992. One won and one lost and in that tale lies the strategy that can take Miliband to Downing Street.

There is time to correct what has gone wrong over the last few weeks. Moreover, Ed Miliband has come back from set-backs before – stronger, wiser, more effective. His conference speeches in 2011 and 2012 barely merit comparison; the latter was vastly superior which got across a similar message.

Labour’s campaign came to abrupt halt in a down-the-line interview on BBC Radio 4’s World at One. It was the moment when its strategic weakness was completely exposed. Hopey-change met stark reality in what was simply a series of very straightforward questions that any opposition hopeful of winning power should be able to take in its stride.

Miliband’s problem is not one bad interview. It’s what lay behind that interview. And the biggest concern is the policy weakness.

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Labour history uncut: Labour plays itself into government and then throws away its wicket

03/05/2013, 06:01:44 PM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

Labour took office in 1924 and there was a lot to do.

Unemployment was stuck above 10%, public debt was out of control and the economy barely seemed to have a pulse.

So the first order of business? Working out what to wear when meeting the king.

Regal tradition dictated that government ministers wore court dress in their regular audiences with the monarch. On the other hand, for some reason, Labour supporters had never really taken to the regency dandy look.

In the absence of a Trotsky and Susannah to advise Labour what not to wear, the new cabinet engaged in delicate negotiations first with itself, and then the palace on the weighty matters of wardrobe.

George V did everything he could to support Britain’s gold braid industry

The problem was indicative of Labour’s broader challenge: how to achieve respectability in office (and help win over the millions of voters who still viewed Labour as communists in flat caps) without sacrificing the radicalism that distinguished the party.

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UKIP’s barbarians have smashed through the castle gates

03/05/2013, 01:47:23 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Amid the whirl of results from South Shields and the English counties, we learned two important things about how the government (Conservative bit) will now approach the next election.

The first is that the Downing Street communications grid is back in operation. The underperforming political machine has been fine-tuned and a new focus has clearly been brought to bear.

Too late to have had the desired effect in the local elections, but we have nevertheless seen a carefully crafted slew of announcements this week, weaponised to help sharpen up the Conservatives’ brand. On Monday it was a crackdown on prisoners’ perks. On Tuesday it was talk of reducing immigrants’ access to public services. On Wednesday, aid cuts to South Africa.

This improvement in the Tories’ political operation and the themes they have chosen to concentrate on is a direct response to this week’s second notable development; they are now terrified about the damage UKIP can now do to them on their right flank.

Once breezily dismissed by David Cameron as a collection of ‘fruitcakes loonies and closet racists’, UKIP has now moved from an existential to actual threat, eating up traditional Tory support and splitting the centre-right vote elsewhere. Many Tories didn’t think this day would actually come, but it is clear UKIP’s barbarians have at last smashed through the castle gates.

Today’s result does not feel like a sudden spike. It’s more like the atrophying of our political system where room is now being opened for new players to capitalise on voters’ unease around issues the mainstream parties simply refuse to engage with.

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Good results for Labour but the UKIP surge augurs ill for Ed

03/05/2013, 09:59:45 AM

by Atul Hatwal

This morning Ed Miliband will be luxuriating in the breathing space afforded by the local election results. After a torrid couple of weeks where the Westminster narrative has palpably shifted against him, yesterday’s gains will disrupt the flow of negative stories, temporarily at least.

Not only is Labour on track to do well but UKIP – the new ball of wool for the media kitten – has performed sufficiently strongly to occupy days’ more column inches of reflection and dissection.

The Labour leader deserves his moment of respite. Winning lots of new councillors will revitalise local constituency parties up and down the country and help rebuild a Labour campaign machine that rusted and fell apart over thirteen years in power.

But Ed Miliband should be under no illusions: as good as Labour’s results are likely to be when all the results are declared, they will accentuate the irreconcilable conflict at the heart of his political positioning and no number of smiling photo opportunities with new Labour councillors can avert Labour’s strategic dilemma.

On one side of Ed Miliband is the public. Contrary to the self-affirming assertions within Labour’s online echo chamber of activists and wannabe MPs that the centre ground of British politics is moving left, yesterday’s elections demonstrate something very different.

Whatever is said about UKIP, one thing is clear: disillusioned voters using it as a vehicle for protest are not headed left. There are plenty of left wing options for the type of nihilistic anger harnessed by UKIP but the voters didn’t pick any of them. It wasn’t the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition that surged yesterday.

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Our failure to act in Syria is making the world a more dangerous place

02/05/2013, 08:55:14 AM

by Peter Watt

I remember in the aftermath of the second Iraq war engaging in a discussion with some people opposed to the war. It was a very hot topic and many people had very strongly held views. I was then and still am a supporter of the decision to invade Iraq and to remove Saddam Hussein; the people I was debating were not. But it was in fact a friendly discussion and there was mutual respect despite fundamental disagreement. I certainly understood their objections and could see their point.

But there was one thing that I couldn’t understand. I asked whether they could see any circumstances in which there was evidence that a “rogue” country had weapons of mass destruction that we should act forcibly to disarm them. They said “no”. I pushed; what if Iran or North Korea for instance developed a nuclear weapon? Again they said ‘no’. In fact they said that we had no right to stop them having a nuclear weapon as we and the U.S. had them. If we or the United States had them (so their argument went) then it was only fair that Iran or North Korea could have them as well if they wanted them.

Now personally I think that this is palpable nonsense. We and the U.S. are democracies, respect human rights, basic freedoms and free-speech. To be frank we have every right to both have nuclear weapons ourselves and to demand that others do not. Something incidentally that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its 190 signatories agree with.

Does that means that I think that our liberal, democratic way of life is better than the totalitarian or unstable alternatives then yes I bloody well do! And I think that these ideals are worth defending. And so I just couldn’t see how it was possible to argue that there weren’t circumstances that force may have to be used to ensure that some states did not become owners of the ability to kill millions.

And I think the same is true when it comes to chemical weapons. Should rogue states be allowed to possess them and threaten their own populations or those of their neighbours? Again “no.” And in the last resort we should be prepared to use force if necessary to ensure that this does not happen. To do otherwise would be irresponsible in the extreme.

Which brings us to Syria.

History will judge us harshly for the way that we have allowed the people of Syria to suffer and to be massacred by the Assad regime. It will shame us all and we will have to explain to our children how we have stood by and let 70,000 people die so far. It is not just the immediate and on-going killing. Who knows what the long term consequences will be for the region and indeed the world of a generation of Syrians so systematically brutalised?

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The Tories are creating a Mid Staffs of the criminal justice system

01/05/2013, 04:18:10 PM

by Dan McCurry

The government’s reputation for incompetence shows no signs of abating, as they mimic the management ethos of Mid Staffs hospital and apply it to the criminal defence service.

These are government proposals which are to be applied to solicitors’ firms providing advice in police stations and courts. They propose the removal of choice of solicitor from the service user, in order to create a greater economy of scale and drive down costs. But, by doing so they will remove the competition which drives up standards and establish a local monopoly, rarely the most effective model to promote efficiency.

Consider this scenario. Your son has been arrested after his friend got into a fight. Your son was there when the fight happened, but wasn’t a part of it. However, he then prefers to say nothing to the police, because he doesn’t want to get his mates in trouble. The police interview will be much quicker if the lad makes no comment. The solicitor advises him to speak, but he doesn’t push the issue when the lad objects. As a result, your son refuses to answer police questions and this leads to a £10k trial where the young man is acquitted after he gives his account at court.

In the above scenario, the legal adviser gets paid regardless and cannot be criticised, on paper. He or she has also generated a fee from a trial. Your son’s A level results are effected by the several months of stress and distraction. You and your son cannot influence whether this solicitor gets more work or not, since there is no longer any personal recommendation. There is no competition.

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We are about to see who really runs the Labour party. Let’s hope it’s not Len McCluskey

01/05/2013, 08:57:15 AM

by Rob Marchant

Recent weeks have not exactly been glory days for Labour. The latest chapter, Monday’s car-crash World At One interview – with Miliband refusing to answer whether Labour would increase borrowing, thirteen times – made for excruciating, if compelling, radio; worse, yesterday’s official admission that Labour will do just that – increase borrowing – has left it exposed. As Nye Bevan might have put it, it enters “naked into the parliamentary chamber”.

But among the various pieces of bad news, there is one which particularly stands out, because it seems not only bad, but irreversibly so.

It is now a week since Len McCluskey’s extraordinary intervention, where he proposed a radical reworking of Labour’s programme, including the sacking of three shadow cabinet members. Not to mention the Labour leader’s robust and accurate response that McCluskey “does not speak for the Labour party”.

While the parliamentary lobby has moved on from the story, those familiar with the party’s organisation and history are still feeling the impact; a storm in a teacup it was not. And if Labour’s strategists are worth their salt, they might care more about McCluskey than about one bad interview; perhaps more, even, than a bet-the-farm gamble on increasing the national debt, two years before an election.

Why? This not just a textbook spat between union leaders and party leadership, in time-honoured fashion. One that burns brightly in the run-up to conference season every year and then fizzles out.

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