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Archive for September, 2023

If it’s really ‘no more Mr Nice Guy’ from Sunak, why not remove the whip from Liz Truss?

30/09/2023, 09:10:15 PM

by Kevin Meagher

‘In the next few days, we will all see more of the new-look Rishi Sunak,’ the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg predicted yesterday, previewing the Conservative party conference which is about to start in Manchester.

“’Mr Safe Pair of Hands’ is gone – it’s ‘No more Mr Nice Guy’ now,’ apparently.

Truly, the sort of dismal, by-the-numbers briefing that PMs in trouble always make.

John Major amusingly claimed that when your back’s against the wall, you should ‘turn around and come out fighting.’

Croaky Iain Duncan-Smith was the quiet man turning up the volume.

We’ve been here a million times.

When you’re taking political blows, the inevitable relaunch always looks to project raw power.

The claim of decisiveness is usually inverse to the reality.

The true test of a leader is what they do, not what they claim. A brand – or rebrand – must be founded on substance.

So, in a spirit of ecumenism from across the political aisle, let me suggest how Sunak can transform words into deeds with one simple move.

Remove the whip from Liz Truss.

Madam 49 Jours appears to have de-iced from the political Siberia she was sent to last year – by her own colleagues and the international money markets.

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The poetry of a better world is beyond Rishi being Rishi

25/09/2023, 11:04:00 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Let Rishi be Rishi, say his advisers. Let him try to set up a dividing line with him and hard-working families on one side and Labour on another. Let him talk gibberish about seven bins and attempt to associate Labour with this. Let him make a solemn speech to the nation from Downing Street, supposedly about tough choices for a shared future, when only a changed government, making different choices, will save our future.

The veneer of competence, which Sunak brought to his office when succeeding Liz Truss, was wearing very thin by the speech’s end. This is the latest phase of his benighted reign. There was the relative calm after the chaos of Truss and Boris Johnson. There were the five priorities for 2023 – which, for Sunak’s misfiring administration, are much more stretching than they initially seemed.

Having not stopped the boots, the role of ULEZ in the Uxbridge byelection appeared as a rubber ring. Many Uxbridge voters who will be unaffected by ULEZ voted Tory in misplaced protest. The latest phase of the Sunak is even more firmly rooted in desperate dishonesty than earlier ones.

The 2030 target for electric cars was achievable – because of investment unlocked by clear and consistent regulation. Instead of applying a similar approach to the 2035 target for boilers, Sunak has watered down both targets. Creating a dividing line between himself and the businesses that, with the right regulatory backing, would make such investment, while claiming to stand-up for hard-pressed households.

What would really help such households is to rapidly push green technologies along the S-curve: “a well-established phenomenon where a successful new technology reaches a certain catalytic tipping point (typically 5-10% market share), and then rapidly reaches a high market share (i.e. 50%+) within just a couple more years once past this tipping point.”

We see market trends in green technologies that align with the S-curve. Wind and solar power generation, for example, is now 12% of the global total from less than 1% a decade ago, growing at 20% per year. By effectively banning onshore wind farms in England for the past eight years and botching a recent auction for a major offshore wind farm, the UK is failing to fully take advantage of this emerging era.

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What does a Labour government do when there’s no money to spend? Constitutional and regulatory reform. It’s not perfect but the only answer that’s available

18/09/2023, 10:42:33 PM

by Atul Hatwal

What does a Labour government do when there’s no money to spend? That was the exam question for the draft policy document from the National Policy Forum (NPF), circulated last week. On first appraisal, it’s answer isn’t terribly clear, the NPF document is a hotch potch. The many hands of a committee are evident and reflected in the disparate media reports with a spray of different toplines, from spending discipline to changes on worker’s rights to removal of the commitment to allow EU nationals to vote at general elections.

But step back, look at it overall and a nascent direction of travel is present. One that’s familiar for those with memories stretching back to the 1990s.

Beyond the big economic pronouncements which are primarily about what Labour will not do – no rise in income tax, capital gains tax or new wealth or mansion taxes – the highest profile policies fall into two categories: discrete pledge card initiatives with specific benefits and funding identified and constitutional and regulatory reform.

The pledge card initiatives have been well-trailed, with funding raised from policies such as closing the loopholes in the windfall tax and ending non-dom tax status to pay for improvements like more NHS staff and breakfast clubs for schools. But it’s the second category, about which less has been written, that is more interesting.

When looking back at the 1997-2001 Labour government, what’s remembered is constitutional and regulatory reform. Yes, there were pledge card initiatives, like the New Deal for the young unemployed to move 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work by using money from a windfall levy on the privatised utilities (I can still recite that in my sleep), but few talk about them today.

In the lists of achievements of the last Labour government, the highlights from the 1997-2001 administration usually include the minimum wage, devolution and independence for the Bank of England. None of these constitutional and regulatory changes needed substantive new funding from the Treasury but each has had a significant impact on life in Britain.

The National Policy Forum document includes some of these types of policies such as Lords reform, votes at 16 and a new body to enforce workplace rights. But what is lacking is an overarching narrative that explains why this kind of reform is important to renew Britain, how it means Labour can govern differently to the Tories without lavish funding, a clear focus to give the media topline that is currently missing.

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Labour has big ambitions for a crisis-ridden economy

13/09/2023, 10:57:11 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The British economy, which Labour intends to make the fastest growing in the G7, confronts major and interlinked crises.

The immediate crises of our crumbling public realm. Schools that do not open. Prisons that do not contain terror suspects. Councils that do not balance their books.

“Spent 5 hours at Homerton hospital A&E,” a friend messages. “The state of the NHS is just terrifying. Many people were there not because of accidents, but rather long-term health conditions. They turn up at A&E because other parts of NHS and social services (e.g., mental health) are so diminished.”

Our workforce is reduced in size by a health and social care system that fails to keep us fit and firing and in efficiency by other features of our dysfunctional public realm, such as closed schools, late trains, and unsafe streets.

Emma Duncan also linked the public realm and economic performance in the Times this week.

The squeeze on local government services is making Britain look and feel poorer and uglier. Councils have a more immediate and visible effect on people’s lives than anything national government does, and because care swallows up most of councils’ spending, the funding for mending potholes, cleaning off graffiti and clearing up rubbish has been slashed. A grimy, depressing environment is not just bad for morale: it’s also bad for our economy if Britain looks like a developing-world country that’s not worth investing in.

We also act, beyond our vapid bluster of “Global Britain”, like a developing-world country in being unsure of our international position. Britain, to paraphrase Dean Acheson, has lost a tailored and privileged membership of the EU and not yet found a role.

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The Corbynite rump is now decamped to the Greens. Good riddance

11/09/2023, 11:16:24 PM

by Rob Marchant

It was always going to happen that – as former MP and party stalwart Tom Blenkinsop would likely have it – the entryists would ultimately exit, once they could see the battle for the soul of the Labour party had been lost.

The only question was to where. Would it be the SWP? The Lib Dems? The perhaps ironically-titled “Peace and Justice Project” of the man himself, a man who has famously apologised for numerous dictators and terrorists over his long career?

As a result of some admittedly anecdotal and yet still quite convincing evidence, we can now see.

Last Wednesday my admittedly flippant tweet, the gist of which was that a vote for the Greens was ultimately a gift to the Tories, triggered a deluge of responses from hundreds of piqued keyboard warriors over the next forty-eight hours.

“By voting Green, you are sending a very clear signal to the Conservatives.”

Quite. It’s “we want you to stay in government.” pic.twitter.com/roxBd4lpMP

— Rob Marchant (@rob_marchant) September 6, 2023

As you can see in the comments, a few were polite; most were not; a few quite unpleasant and a small, unhinged minority – using anonymous or fake names, of course – had clearly been trawling through my historic Twitter feed, trying to dig up dirt, and then accusing me of various misdemeanours ranging from bigotry to much worse.

I had seen this pattern before, of course, but not for some time – my path had not crossed with the Corbynite Twittersphere in recent months. Of course: Labour’s generous poll lead against the Tories was taking all the wind out of their sails. The argument that Corbyn had in 2019 “won the argument”, after the party’s crushing defeat to Boris Johnson and his crew in that year’s general election, had been farcical at the time; it now seems like an invitation to outright derision. Starmer is unarguably doing far better in the country than his predecessor.

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The big winner in last week’s reshuffle was Labour’s old right, not Tony Blair

10/09/2023, 10:57:09 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Most media reports of last week’s Labour reshuffle described a scene of Blairite triumph: the old master’s grip on the party was being reasserted, his policies and personnel were to the fore, Keir Starmer his willing proxy. It’s an easy story to write, one with familiar beats, but a story that is quite wrong.

It is a symptom of the simplified, bipolar frame through which Labour’s internal politics is viewed: Corbynite left or Blairite right, where all developments are reduced to a zero-sum game of one side winning and the other losing.

What this approach misses is the divide among party centrists between Blairites and the old Labour right, dating back to the early 1990s. There’s certainly much commonality between the two groups across large swathes of policy and on the importance of fighting the hard left, but as that latter threat recedes and the choices of government heave into view, the differences from thirty years ago will become more evident. Last week’s reshuffle marked the clearest possible ascendancy of the old Labour right rather than a move to full throttle Blairism.

Blairites are revolutionaries. Many of the original generation, including Tony Blair, started their political lives on the radical left and moved to the centre; what they retained on their political journey was their restless dissatisfaction with the status quo; social democratic incrementalism wasn’t enough, Britain needed fundamental reform. The focus of this reforming zeal was typically old Labour sacred cows–Labour’s internal structures, the party’s relationship with the unions and public service reform.

The old right is the embodiment of incrementalism. A bit more redistribution, increased public spending and support to bolster the position of unions. This isn’t a faction temperamentally suited to radical upheaval, least of all when it comes to the ceremonies of Labour’s traditions which are intertwined with the union movement and wreathed in emotion and sentimentality.

Think of the contrast between John Smith and Tony Blair.

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Labour still has a problem with black men (and its getting worse)

08/09/2023, 11:06:10 PM

by Paul Wheeler

Writing about the Labour’s party abysmal record in selecting black men as parliamentary candidates is like ‘deja vu all over again ‘(as Woody Allen might have said……)

Way back in 2014 I wrote a comment piece for Labour list. I was criticised for an ‘unhelpful’ contribution to the debate. Well it wasn’t meant to be helpful it was a warning that without action the existing problem about black male representation in the Labour Party was likely to get worse.

Well by 2020 nothing had changed so `I wrote another contribution to the debate- this time for Labour Uncut as Labour List didn’t want to be part of the debate by then – remarking on the continuing failure of Labour Members to elect a black man to the NEC despite excellent candidates putting themselves forward. This time I did end on a positive note in that the dreadful General Election result in 2019 presented Labour with a unique opportunity to correct this historical discrepancy by focusing on the huge number of vacancies in winnable Parliamentary constituencies.

So how does the track record look in late 2023 as we hurtle towards the next General Election? Well, the good news is that Labour members have finally elected a black man to the NEC the excellent Abdi Duale. As for Parliamentary selections well after 150 selections not one….

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