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Archive for April, 2015

A Labour-SNP deal could hold together for the whole Parliament

29/04/2015, 04:09:08 PM

by David Butler

On current seat protections, Labour, in an informal pact with the SNP, could be back in government in less than two weeks. Any deal would be painful and fraught with risk. Yet it could last the whole Parliament and enable Labour to secure a good deal of its programme.

In our system, the pivot legislator, that MP that decides whether a bill is passed or not, normally sits within at the governing party (or governing coalition as was the case for the previous parliament). Under a Labour minority government, this legislator would be outside the party. To pass a bill, Labour needs to make that pivot legislator, or the party group they are within, prefer the proposal to the status quo. On most policy positions and on basic parliamentary arithmetic, the nearest group containing a pivot legislator will be the SNP. Hence, creating an informal pact with the SNP would maximise our chance of passing legislation.

However, the SNP has a different set of motivations to Labour. They care about sustaining their emerging dominance in Scotland and creating the conditions for independence. For the Nationalists, policy positions are mere instruments for achieving this. Through observing this set of motivations, it is possible to see why they would continue to prop up a Labour government.

Firstly, the SNP will able at to extract returns for Scotland and concessions on policy positions. They would seek to claim credit for any improvements in Scotland under a Labour minority administration, reinforcing their “Stronger for Scotland” rhetoric. Second, they would try to place the blame upon Labour (or Westminster or the lack of autonomy) for any painful reforms and the continuation of austerity. Thirdly, propping up a Labour government will enable them to claim credibility for their “Vote SNP, lock out of the Tories in Westminster” message. Fourthly, SNP MPs can ‘wing flap’, signalling about their ‘true’ position on pieces of legislation through tabling amendments and making speeches, even if they ultimately vote for the bill in question; the longer the parliament, the more wing flapping can take place. Finally, they can work with the thirty to forty MPs that John McDonnell claims will be sympathetic to Campaign Group positions to force Labour to seek Tory, Liberal Democrat and DUP votes on issues like Trident and welfare reform (reinforcing their narrative about Labour not being real progressives).

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Labour’s Scottish election campaign is a disaster

29/04/2015, 03:00:44 PM

by Calum Wright

Scottish Labour’s campaign has been uninspiring, ill-conceived and unsuccessful. A lead in the opinion polls has been squandered and it seems increasingly likely that the SNP will be re-elected with more MSPs than ever. The recent Scotland on Sunday / YouGov poll has given the SNP a 13% lead over Labour in the constituency vote and a 10% lead in the regional list. With just a week until polls open, Iain Gray is relaunching the Labour campaign. As a Labour party member, this state of affairs is above all frustrating: a campaign which had the potential to show Labour rejuvenated instead indicates that lessons have not been learned. Here I will highlight four main areas in which the campaign has come short: the anti-Tory, then anti-SNP, stance; the absence of distinctiveness; the lack of realism; and the leadership problem.

The recurring motif of most of the Labour campaign thus far has been “now that the Tories are back”. The idea, presumably, was to reawaken latent Scottish fear and hatred of the Conservatives, and insist that only Labour could save Scotland from the cuts. The problem with this strategy is first that the Tories are not the main opponents in these elections, the SNP are. Second, there is no clear evidence to show that the Scottish people believe that Labour rather than the SNP are best placed to “protect” Scotland from the Conservative-Lid Dem coalition.

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Back to earth Milifans. Labour’s on track to get just 10 more seats than Gordon managed. That’s good is it?

28/04/2015, 07:12:15 PM

by Samuel Dale

Ed Miliband is having a party. He’s running rings around Boris Johnson, hobnobbing with Russell Brand and joking about the Boston Red Sox.

He is ready. He’s packing his bags for Downing Street along with the bookies, Labour members, some pollsters and an increasing number of political commentators.

Party confidence is growing every day after a well-run campaign has boosted Miliband while a brutally negative one appears to be damaging Cameron.

It looks like we’ve got the Big Mo.

But let’s look at the facts. The FT is projecting Labour on course for 268 seats and that’s before a probable late squeeze that always afflicts the party.

That is a net gain of just 10 from the nadir of 2010 when a monstrously unpopular Gordon Brown was battling the banking crisis and global recession.

That’s after five years in opposition against a fractious coalition that has missed its deficit target, lost the AA credit rating and rained unprecedented cuts on the nation. Just 10 more seats. Ten.

Just 268 seats would be by far the weakest mandate of any prime minister in modern British history. Differently polls tell slightly different stories but let’s use the FT as a barometer for now.

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Voting SNP is like taking a chance on the Lib Dems in 2010. It will hand the keys to Number 10 to Cameron

28/04/2015, 05:05:54 PM

by Ranjit Sidhu

Let’s be frank: Labour deserve the kicking they will get this general election in Scotland. Seven months ago the Labour led No campaign in the Scottish referendum was as negative and moribund of positive messages as the Conservative campaign is in this election. Seven months ago I wrote a piece called “The Three key lessons for the Left from the Scottish referendum” in which I predicted if Labour did not learn from the experience they would be, “20 Scottish MPs lighter come May, putting into prospective how Labour has got itself in such a tizzy about losing a possible 5 seats to Ukip.”

Well they didn’t and now they will, bar a miracle, lose those seats and 20 more for good measure.

Let’s be even more frank: Like the majority in Scotland, I have more than a little sympathy with the SNP anti-austerity economic agenda. Labour have been far too cautious in pushing growth rather than cuts as the positive social and economic way to reduce the deficit. By leaving this economic policy to the SNP they have allowed them to transpose the benefits of this policy that worked so well for the Yes campaign to the current campaign.

There are also similarities with the 2010 election that seem to be positive for the SNP: In 2010 the main two parties are polling low 30s and the Liberal Democrats were gaining the slack and ended up becoming king makers. Now in 2015 the two main parties again are polling low 30s, this time it is the SNP and Ukip gaining votes, and in the media and public mind it is deemed that the SNP will end up the king makers.

So, all the above seems to be in keeping with the tactical voting that Nicola Sturgeon so clearly has been propounding Scotland to adopt: Vote in a strong group of SNP to keep Labour to the left and make sure they “lock David Cameron out of Downing Street” and defeat the “slash-and-burn austerity” policies, right?

Well, there is an clear flaw to this tactical voting and it becomes clearly apparent when you understand that as a first past the post system it will be whichever party has the most seats, be it in a minority, that will have the mandate to form the next government of the UK first.

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Alex Salmond is the Ally Macleod of this election campaign

27/04/2015, 09:23:14 PM

by David Ward

We’re back in the 1970s apparently. Beards are back. A coalition government is slowly dying, and the world economy is in trouble. Another of my 70s favourites was Ally’s Tartan Army, poised to conquer the football world. And Alex Salmond thinks he’ll be writing a Labour government budget according to this video released by the Tories last week.

Now we can all see it’s in a ‘relaxed’ atmosphere where the crowd seem a few pints to the good, and Salmond has slipped into his music hall act. But given he’s spent 23 years in the House of Commons, you’d think Salmond would have realised – he won’t be writing anybody’s budget, anytime soon.

Let’s take the position the SNP are likely to be in, should Labour be the largest party. If they have around 50 seats and their vote bloc is the difference between a Labour or Conservative administration, Nicola Sturgeon has already announced their decision to support Labour.

Under constitutional precedent at this point it would be clear that David Cameron would not have a majority in the house and would be expected to resign. If he chooses he can try to face the house as Baldwin did in 1924, and put a government address to vote. But if Sturgeon fulfils her promise he would lose, and as the next most likely leader, Miliband would be asked to form a government as Ramsay Macdonald was in both 1924 and 1929 in similar circumstances.

There will be no coalition between Labour and the SNP as has been made clear already, so no need for a specific agreement. Instead Labour are free to put forward their own Queen’s speech. Sure this might contain some shared items from both manifestos, but there would be no need to address controversial issues like Trident or ‘ending austerity for the NHS’.

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Labour’s doomed in Scotland and Ed needs to put Sturgeon in her place: so scrap the Barnett Formula

27/04/2015, 07:45:47 PM

Seemingly, there is little Ed Miliband can now do to diminish the threat posed by the SNP’s remarkable insurgency. Poll after poll shows Labour facing a total wipe-out in Scotland. It isn’t a case of just losing badly; this is the stuff of total annihilation.

Meanwhile, the Conservative campaign thinks it’s on to something by warning that a minority Labour government, reliant on a bloc of SNP votes, will be a bad deal for England. As a message, it’s an exocet targeted at voters in battleground seats south of the border, where the prospect of the Scottish tail wagging the English dog seems iniquitous.

Ed Miliband can’t fix the first problem; what will be, will be. Scottish Labour is going down in flames. The bigger question for Labour strategists is whether its woes in Scotland are cyclical, the tail-end of the vortex generated by last autumn’s referendum on independence, or a more structural shift. Has the SNP now eclipsed Labour as the social democratic voice of Scots, as they contrast their simple promise to end austerity with Labour’s more complicated (and more realistic) UK-wide offer?

Although Labour’s campaign in Scotland is doomed, it can still use its setback to address its second problem: showing the SNP would not be left calling the shots.

All the party needs is a popular measure that confronts the Tory narrative that Miliband is in Sturgeon’s pocket. Something that shows Labour can make tough choices and, crucially, reassures voters in English marginals that it’s is on their side.

There is a policy proposal that fits the bill, a magic bullet Labour can fire that hits all these targets: scrap the Barnett Formula.

There is no-one in British politics who can make a plausible case for a public spending formula that sees a fifth more spent on Scotland than England. The only reason it has not been amended out of history by now is down to decades of political inertia and a tactical belief that it would add grist to the nationalists’ mill in the run-up to last autumn’s referendum.

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Posted in Inside | 52 Comments »

How Miliband seals the deal

27/04/2015, 11:07:34 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“The Labour leader’s main problem,” wrote Deborah Orr last November, “is that the dialogue he’s attempting to have with the nation is just too negative”. At the Labour spring rally, I worried that this weakness persisted. But tell that to the hen parties of Chester. Or the Milifans. Or even Peter Mandelson.

There is a positivity about Miliband, which the public have not previously known. But the Labour Party has. When, for example, in summer 2010, he drew the biggest crowd to a Labour meeting in Carlisle since the days of Harold Wilson.

If proving that we could be trusted again with other people’s money was the key lesson that you felt Labour ought to take from the last general election, then Miliband’s brother, David, may have then been a more attractive leadership candidate. While David was stronger on this front, he had other limitations. He appeared colder than Ed. The “Ed speaks human” placards may have never wholly convinced but Ed was a warm, even inspirational figure, at least to those holding the placards, during the leadership election.

This Miliband has been submerged for four and a half years and only reappeared in the past fortnight, perversely assisted by a Tory campaign that lowered expectations about him. They told the country that Miliband is useless, he’s shown otherwise. They told the country that the economy is improving, for many what they see around them suggests not. They should have shown us their core strengths of leadership and economy, instead of telling a sceptical public to be grateful.

In turning derision to cheers, Miliband resembles Tim Sherwood, manager of Aston Villa, supposedly David Cameron’s team, while – and, as a Liverpool fan, it grieves me to say – Cameron has something of the Brendan Rodgers about him, at least insofar as, as was demonstrated in defeat by Villa in the FA Cup semi-final, a capacity to squander advantages, possibly induced by nervousness or over-thinking.

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Week 4 of the campaign: the good, the bad and the ugly

26/04/2015, 01:27:31 PM

Uncut’s weekly review of the campaign looks at the events of week 4.

The good

Chuka Umunna’s interview in the Guardian

One of Labour’s most visible performers this campaign has been the shadow business secretary, Chuka Umunna. His polished media performances have ensured that he is on the Labour press office’s speed-dial when the toughest interview bids arrive.

Inevitably in an election campaign, interviews are about the issues of the day. It’s hard to see the person rather than the political position. Chuka’s interview in the Guardian probed a little deeper and offered a glimpse of what makes the man tick.

It revealed a personal biography which is a story of struggle, success, loss and revival. One which shines a light on who he is and the type of politician that he is maturing into.

Chuka’s father’s rise, from penniless migrant to running a thriving business, is clearly enormously influential.

Most immediately, it explains why Chuka is instinctively comfortable with business and able to put businessmen and women at ease with Labour, in a way that other Labour front-benchers cannot.

Yet there is more to Chuka than just being Labour’s business-whisperer.

The duality of being the child of an immigrant and a successful businessman creates a rare perspective. Most politicians lead their lives in a straight line – they are born into a class and remain in that class.

Chuka’s world was one simultaneously of disadvantage and privilege.

It’s why the rhetorical cadences from Ukip on race and identity are familiar to Chuka from his youth, as they are to anyone from a minority who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s.

What Ukip say today about Eastern European migrants was said about Asian and African migrants from the 1950s through to the 1990s.

The manner in which his father faced this and overcame it, informs the direct and robust way that Chuka addresses Ukip.

Chuka’s father’s achievements and Chuka’s upbringing have given him the self-confidence to challenge Ukip in a way that his party colleagues seem to lack.

The subsequent loss of his father when he was 13 was evidently and understandably a pivotal moment in Chuka’s life.

It also places him in a rather unique category of politicians.

The Phaeton complex describes the behaviour and development of children who experience the loss of (or separation from) one or both of their parents. It seems more than a coincidence that this group is so over-represented among political leaders –Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to name just a few.

Whether Chuka’s future will be as starry as some of the other political Phaetons is unclear yet, but in an election of dry photo-opportunities and endlessly rehearsed lines, the Guardian interview with Chuka offered something more than the standard, and increasingly stale, fayre.

Progress in righting some of the wrongs of the past (more…)

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The Tories’ tartan scare was made in America by Jim Messina

25/04/2015, 09:34:58 PM

by Atul Hatwal

The Tories’ tartan scare is the defining political gambit of this campaign.

Labour advisers see Lynton Crosby’s handiwork. But Crosby is not the only big name consultant, calling the shots in their campaign.

Sitting along-side Crosby, at the top table is Jim Messina, the man who masterminded President Obama’s re-election and will run Hillary Clinton’s campaign for President.

Crosby is a convenient lightning rod for Labour discontent but Messina has had a critical role in framing their strategy.

Unlike the absent David Axelrod, Labour’s own big US name hire, Messina has been a constant presence in the Tory campaign, in person and on the phone.

On Thursday he was in Conservative HQ finalising plans for the fortnight to polling day and giving the Tory campaign team a pep talk on the floor of the war room.

A sign of his status is that he operates outside of the strict media rules that govern all other consultants and advisers. Lynton Crosby’s code of omerta does not apply to Jim Messina who tweets freely about his activities.

Just had a great time addressing staff @David_Cameron Campaign HQ. Thanks team!

— Jim Messina (@Messina2012) April 23, 2015

The previous week he had been in London, reviewing the Tories’ field intelligence and focus group research on the effectiveness of the tartan scare message on their target voter groups – Ukip supporters and centrist and right-leaning Lib Dems. He even hit the phones to see the effectiveness of the messaging for himself.

Just phone banked in London with great @David_Cameron volunteers. Several were Obama vols too. Tx @Team2015! — Jim Messina (@Messina2012) April 17, 2015

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Lutfur Rahman: now let’s see Labour’s ways of working change

24/04/2015, 12:33:31 PM

by Rob Marchant

It is surely hard for any Labour member – okay, Ken Livingstone excepted – to shed a tear for former Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman.

The man who was yesterday unceremoniously turfed out of office, after an unequivocal judgement against him in an electoral court, has become the subject of arguably the worst scandal in local government since Westminster council leader Dame Shirley Porter’s conviction for gerrymandering two decades ago. Criminal charges may yet be brought.

But as we look at it, we have to ask ourselves: what have we learned? It would be good to think that the party leadership is right now taking a few moments to reflect, thinking “how can we make sure this never happens again? How did we ever get here?”

It seems, sadly, that the reaction seems more likely to be “phew – good job he left the party before all this”.

But although Rahman created his own vehicle, the “Tower Hamlets First” party, he was a clear product of the Labour Party as it was in the 2000s (let’s not forget, he was Labour leader of the council for two years before he was an independent mayor). A monster we created. We cannot just congratulate ourselves that we – partially, at least – dodged the bullet.

Think about it. Logically, we can draw three possible conclusions.

One: that he was a one-off. That his rise and fall is a product of his particular personality and not symptomatic of a wider problem in the way Labour deals with ethnic and religious communities. Looking at the problems Labour has had in twelve other constituencies where electoral tampering has also been alleged, previously documented by Labour Uncut, this seems unlikely.

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Posted in Uncut | 25 Comments »