Archive for January, 2016

Labour’s right had better focus on conference

07/01/2016, 10:28:09 AM

by Rob Marchant

The reshuffle resembled nothing more closely than the careful rearrangement of deckchairs on the Titanic. While it is mildly good news that the Corbynistas do not yet feel confident enough for their own Night of the Long Knives, it is hardly going to change much.

So it is now time to look forward to the year ahead and plot – er, think about – a strategy to bring the party gradually back to some semblance of electability and political normality. 2016 is likely to be critical for the future of the party, in that it will most likely determine whether a Corbyn leadership actually has legs and can stumble on until the general election of 2020, or will fizzle out long before.

While common sense would indicate the latter, there is also a strong correlation between the time taken for that meltdown to happen and the cumulative damage wreaked on the party.

Meanwhile, British politics in general this year is likely to be dominated by two stories: the first half by the Scottish elections and the second by the start of the build-up to the EU In-Out referendum, assuming it does not happen earlier. Sadly, there is very little which Labour can do about either.

The Scottish elections are likely be a terrible story for Labour whatever happens: it is clear from the polls and the general election result that it will lose many tens of Holyrood seats (if not all of them, as nearly happened for the Westminster election).

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Corbyn’s reshuffle shows how he wants to imprint his ideology on the party

06/01/2016, 09:00:08 PM

by Frazer Loveman

It’s quite hard to write anything original about the Night, then day, then night again, of Corbyn’s Knives, given that most topics were covered during the interminable, day and a half long re-organisation of the Labour top team.

In the longest re-shuffle since the emancipation of women (thanks to the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush for that gem) Corbyn made the grand total of two sackings, both of ministers with limited name recognition among the general population, while appointing one who is most notable for a Twitter gaffe.

It does make you wonder quite what the point of this reshuffle was. It was previewed two weeks ago as a ‘revenge’ reshuffle, with Corbyn planning to purge those who had disagreed with him over Syria.

This, actually, made a fair deal of sense. Corbyn, to his credit, had attempted to create as broad a tent as possible in the shadow cabinet in order to appease party moderates, but the idea of allowing dissent within his top team unravelled the moment Hilary Benn took the dispatch box during the Syrian airstrikes debate.

It stood to reason then, that Corbyn would want to bring his own people into the shadow cabinet, to bolster his position as leader. Again, fair enough, at least then the Labour Party could finally resemble a united front, whether the moderate sections of the party liked it or not. Corbyn is leader with, as we’re constantly reminded, a large mandate and he’s quite at liberty to mould the party in his image.

But, in the cold light of day, the new shadow cabinet doesn’t seem overly different to the old version.

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Careful, if we break the Labour party we might not be able to fix it

06/01/2016, 06:56:15 PM

by Kevin Meagher

As 2016 begins, could Labour be in worse shape? The party lies listless in the water, utterly riven, from stem to stern. Not just by personalities and policy, but by basic questions of what it is and what it is for.

Is it a professional political party, seeking to appeal to the largest number of voters needed to secure a parliamentary majority, or a movement of disparate radicals interested in “making the case” for change? The former requires compromise and hard-headed-realism, the latter, though, refuses to be cowed by the accommodations and reversals of electoral politics.

Behind in the polls, untrusted on pretty much every major measure of public opinion, the party is behaving as though the 2015 election never happened. The basic calculation that you need Tory voters to switch in sufficient numbers in order to have any chance of winning an election, questioned by the Millibandites with their 35% strategy, has now been entirely abandoned by the Corbynites.

‘If you build a socialist alternative, they will come’ is their new approach. But they aren’t, and they won’t. certainly not in sufficient numbers to stand a chance in 2020, once the Conservatives have finished loading the deck against Labour, with everything from individual electoral registration and boundary changes, through to the financing of the opposition front bench, sharpened to a fine point in order to stab the Labour party to death.

This comes as the pollsters settle on an explanation as to why they got May’s result so calamitously wrong. It seems they were polling too many young people and not enough older ones. In other words, they systematically underscored the impact of those who crave stability and moderation, not agitation and radicalism.

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This is now Corbyn’s front bench. Good. He’ll be solely responsible for the failure to come

06/01/2016, 12:43:17 PM

by Atul Hatwal

This is now Jeremy Corbyn’s front bench. Hilary Benn might still be in post but he’s been politically emasculated and the sackings of Michael Dugher and McFadden along with the demotion of Maria Eagle have delivered a clear message: deviate from leadership orthodoxy and you’ll be next against the wall.

We won’t be hearing any more from Hilary Benn on Syria. Little from anyone in the shadow cabinet on Trident. Talented shadow ministers such as Kevan Jones, Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty have already walked the plank. The Corbyn line has become the Labour line.

Good.

Clarity was needed. Since Labour’s leader was elected, large numbers of moderate Labour party members have been engaged in a collective act of self-delusion: that Labour can present itself as a centrist, electable party with Corbyn at the helm.

The attempts of several members of the shadow cabinet to rein in Corbyn’s exigencies on foreign affairs, defence and the economy are laudable but futile and ultimately counter-productive.

The Syria vote was regarded by moderates within the PLP as some sort of triumph but while parliament ultimately voted the right way to take on the fascists in Isis, it was a political disaster for Labour.

Here was the main opposition party so riven that it had to opt for a free vote on the most important decision a country faces – whether or not to go to war. What does that say to the voters of Britain about Labour’s capacity to lead?

Trident has been another red line for many front-benchers but in the end it’s another pointless fight.

Moderate PLP-ers can talk about Labour’s policy being settled in favour of Trident at conference last year, but what will happen after conference this year, or next?

Within this parliament, party policy will be changed at conference to oppose Trident.

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From big tent to bivouac?

06/01/2016, 07:49:39 AM

Yes, Michael Dugher is a gutsy street fighter (as many of his colleagues pointed out yesterday). Yes, too, he is a rare working-class presence at the top of Labour politics; but there is a deeper significance behind his dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet yesterday.

If such a standard bearer from the old right-wing of the party is surplus to requirements, then Jeremy Corbyn’s “big tent” has suddenly become a bivouac.

And given Corbyn’s serial rebelliousness for three decades, to level a charge of “disloyalty” against Dugher for three of four interviews where he has extemporised on the state of Labour politics is fairly astonishing.

To put it mildly, Jeremy Corbyn does not have an embarrassment of riches to choose from.

Fifty per cent of the current frontbench would never get near the dispatch box under normal circumstances. A tough and experienced operator like Dugher should have been viewed as an asset.

Why could Jeremy Corbyn not reach out to him if, indeed, he had crossed a line? Or did he intimidate Corbyn’s inexperienced back office team?

Whatever, it is a sad day – and a worrying development – if a scion of the old Labour right wing – the backbone of the party – is no longer welcome at the top table.

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Bored of the reshuffle? You should be. It’s already occupied more news cycles than any in history

05/01/2016, 03:19:56 PM

by Atul Hatwal

It’s the never-ending reshuffle. This farrago started yesterday morning and is still going over a day later. Current estimates are that it will run past tomorrow and end as a four day marathon by the time the junior posts are announced.

Journalists have been moaning about the length of time its taken and they’re right.

More than they know.

In the old days, Before Twitter (BT), the news cycle used to last 24 hours. Now its shorter, much shorter. According to this academic study of the 2012 US Presidential election, by Professor Daniel Kreiss, it’s gone down from 24 hours to 2 hours.

This means a single day, After Twitter (AT), is now equivalent to 12 days of BT news cycles.

If the Corbyn reshuffle goes on for four days that will be 48 news days in old money – almost 10 working weeks worth of stories.

No wonder people are moaning.

Obviously the elapsed time will remain 4 days, but the frustration and ennui of journalists (and many of their readers) is a vivid illustration of just how news has changed.

And as for Jeremy Corbyn’s team, allowing a negative Labour story like this to dominate double digits of news cycles, it is wholly unprecedented.

Another first to chalk up for the Labour leader.

Atul Hatwal is editor of Uncut

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Doesn’t anyone check what Cameron says?

02/01/2016, 08:00:36 AM

by Kevin Meagher

David Cameron famously doesn’t believe in “green crap”, but that didn’t stop him recycling his New Year message slogan.

His pledge to focus on knotty social problems in order to build a ‘Greater Britain’ is a neat enough line, until you remember its unfortunate antecedents.

It was the title of Oswald Mosley’s 1932 tome extolling his vision of a British fascist state.

Meanwhile, the campaign group formed in the early 1960s by Britain’s most notorious post-war Nazi agitator, John Tyndall, was called the Greater Britain Movement.

Okay, it’s a small gaffe in the grand scheme of things. But it’s emblematic too of just how slack Cameron’s Downing Street ‘chumocracy’ is. It’s the kind of mistake that would never have been made under Blair or Brown (or, indeed, Thatcher).

It reemphasises how Cameron is beatable, but also how Jeremy Corbyn’s team should be much sharper in exploiting these kinds of miscues.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut

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Will Corbyn show Danczuk mercy?

01/01/2016, 01:18:39 PM

There has been a phoney war going on in the Labour party for a few months now.

Jeremy Corbyn repeatedly stresses that he has no hidden agenda when it comes to the deselection of MPs on the right of the party.

To put it bluntly, no-one on the right of the party believes him for a minute.

Leopards do not change their spots, goes the theory, and the hard left is as obsessed about sectarianism and party control as it ever was.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell attended a meeting of the Momentum group last month where the deselection of Chuka Umunna was openly discussed.

Meanwhile, the clumsy briefing about a New Year shadow cabinet reshuffle, with the demotion or sacking of Corbyn’s critics, notably the widely-liked and respected Hilary Benn, has done little to assuage centrists that the leadership isn’t coming after them.

An act of magnanimity towards Danczuk, one of his most vocal foes, would be a visible manifestation that Corbyn actually means what he says about tolerating differences of opinion.

Needless to say, though, some leadership acolytes can’t disguise their jubilation at Danczuk’s predicament. Enter Ken Livingstone:

“I just find it so bizarre because he [Danczuk] put himself at the centre of the investigation into sex abuse of young girls and so on in his area, to have fallen into this, I find it hard to believe. I can’t say too much because I’m on Labour’s NEC and might have to take the final decision about whether he’s allowed to resume his party membership or whether we expel him.

“I don’t see how you can be sexually attracted to somebody that young, there’s something really disturbing [about it].”

Is he acting as an outrider for Corbyn? If so, the leadership should be careful about prurience being the reason for sacking one of their MPs.

Having threatened to stand against Corbyn as a stalking horse in the event of poor elections results in May’s Scottish, Welsh, London and local elections, Danczuk now finds himself at the mercy of his leader.

The smart move by Corbyn would be to admonish him for his recklessness and quietly drop the suspension and readmit him. He has broken no law and if sending a few racy tweets to a fellow consenting adult is now a capital offence in Labour politics, there will be plenty more MPs following Danczuk out of the exit door.

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