Grassroots « Labour Uncut

We need ideas as much as we need footsoldiers to deliver them

31/10/2010, 05:29:50 PM

by Adrian Prandle

As rival leadership campaign activists settle back into normal routine and the commentariat gets back into the groove of marking PMQs performances, Ed Miliband faces the job of leading Labour.

There are reasons for optimism: encouraging opinion polling, the shadow chancellor’s assured response to the CSR announcement, growing confidence, and no disasters worse than a leaked briefing. The party can be fairly happy with a stable month.

But let’s not forget the scale of the task facing Ed. It is the responsibility of party members to remind him of all aspects of the job with which he has been entrusted. Leadership (of this party, at this moment in time particularly) is more than just PMQs. The diversity of challenges right here, right now doesn’t allow for the eye to be taken off the ball; and our leader must be many things at once. From being a respected, popular and credible figurehead, to being the driver and organiser of a passionate, innovative and exciting campaigning force, to developing policy that can be understood and that will change lives. (more…)

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Labour has become too focussed on winning

30/10/2010, 04:34:04 PM

by Simone Webb

Reading Jessica Asato’s article on negative campaigning yesterday, I felt deeply uncomfortable. While delighted that we won the Kentish town by-election, the tactics described in the article worried me. I don’t disagree with negative campaigning if it’s confined to revealing the flaws in opponents’ arguments or criticising their actions in power. But the deception and trickery involved in dressing our leaflets up as Tory leaflets or, later in the article, using “ever so in-accurate bar charts” seems to me to be wrong on several levels.

First, it’s the idea at the heart of it: the idea that Labour needs to win, almost at any cost, even by trickery. Now, I believe people are better off under a Labour government. I wouldn’t be a party member otherwise. However, I also believe that people have a fundamental right to make an informed choice about which party they elect into power. If Labour party candidates are distributing leaflets which are even superficially deceptive, or show inaccurate data, or mislead the voters, then they are misinforming the electorate. (more…)

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Another country, another campaign room: lessons from the US mid terms?

29/10/2010, 09:00:46 AM

by Dave Roberts

I spent the spring working on Jim Knight’s valiant but ultimately doomed campaign to hold Dorset South for Labour. Then summer saw me on the Ed Balls leadership campaign. Equally valiant. Equally doomed. Now, with the US mid term elections only a few days away, I’ve taken flight from grey and damp Britain for the campaign trail in sunny South Florida. I am working in the area stretching along Florida’s south east coast from Fort Lauderdale northwards, where the incumbent Democratic Congressman, Ron Klein, is facing a huge challenge from former army Colonel and Tea Party favourite, Allen West.

I want to understand how the Democrats organise on the ground, and to see if there is anything that Labour could learn. Many in the UK have written about the Obama election. Yet few have looked at how the more humdrum mid-term elections are organised. In many ways, though, it is these elections – especially at a congressional district level – that have more in common with a British general election. These elections are numerous, local and personal. They are often contested against a backdrop of national issues and questions over the national leadership, for which the candidate has little or no responsibility, but will be held accountable. (more…)

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The government has made a shameful start on asylum

27/10/2010, 02:00:18 PM

by Susanna Bellino

On the day of the spending review, an optimistic refugee council set its Facebook status thus:

“Not much mention of asylum in today’s spending review, except that the home office is to save £500m by cutting IT and building costs, but will invest more in asylum casework. Could this be good news?!”

Sorry to burst your bubble, refugee council, but probably not.

The UK has had an ambiguous relationship with asylum seekers, to say the least. On the one hand, we like to appear liberal and sympathetic to their plight and the existence of such organisations as asylum aid and the refugee council demonstrate this. But on the other hand, headlines in the Daily Mail (Up to 80,000 bogus asylum seekers granted “amnesty” and Somali asylum seeker family given £2m house… after complaining 5-bed London home was “in poor area”) suggest that we are a nation that prefers to acquire its morals from right-wing tabloids rather than the universal declaration of human rights.

And despite the pre-coalition Liberal Democrats stance as the ‘fair’ party, things aren’t likely to change. The government has already been accused of deserting its promise to end the detention of children in immigration centres – a change that would have signaled one of the Lib Dem’s few influences on policy and demonstrated that the government was at last sympathetic to the cause of asylum seekers.

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Scrapping EMA really hurts me and my friends, says Simone Webb

23/10/2010, 11:17:02 AM

Of all the cuts announced in the comprehensive spending review, the one which hit me most emotionally was the abolition of educational maintenance allowance. I have seen many arguments levied against it, from supporters of all political parties, but I have felt its impact strongly: not just in my own life, but in the lives of so many friends and acquaintances who rely on the money they get every week.

One of the arguments I hear most often against EMA is that young people should just get jobs, and make their own way in the world. To begin with, this shows a lack of understanding of just how bad the economic situation is at the moment – jobs are scarce, and likely to become scarcer under this government.

Second, it is hard to imagine that holding a job down while studying hard to achieve good grades in A Levels, or whichever course is being done, cannot affect either the job or the grades. This would not be so blatantly unfair if all students had to take jobs in order to keep afloat, but the practical situation will be that children from higher income families will not have to work during college or higher education, while children from lower income families will. In effect, students from higher income families will have however many more hours a week to study, and will achieve better grades. (more…)

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Criminal justice: Amanda Ramsay says a bad situation just got worse

21/10/2010, 11:30:27 AM

One comprehensive spending review (CSR) commentator dared to ponder: would Labour have landed a more Brown-like ‘clunking fist’ on George Osborne had Ed Balls been the shadow chancellor? No. The man of the moment for Labour was Alan Johnson and he did not disappoint, delivering a deft performance in response to the cuts.

Balls took to the post-announcement airwaves, making his mark as shadow home secretary, characteristically quick to challenge his opposite number, Theresa May, over huge 20% cuts to the policing budget, predicting “massive cuts in police numbers” and a “very dangerous situation for public safety.”
Add the 20% cuts to policing and the massive 23% cuts at the ministry of justice and public order and the social ramifications of the CSR loom enormous. Not that you would know this from either the mainstream or social media discussion.

Ahead of the game, the police federation had already described the anticipated wide-scale cuts in police numbers as heralding “Christmas for criminals”. Labour’s Tony McNulty, a former home office minister, was also quick to conclude that “these cuts, to the crown prosecution service (CPS), courts and probation, will have a huge impact on policing”. (more…)

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Conrad Landin blames Labour for the Browne report

18/10/2010, 11:30:20 AM

Reaction to the Browne report on higher education has focused on the broken promises of Liberal Democrats who pledged to vote against rises in tuition fees. For any opposition party, it is easy to fall into the trap of concentrating exclusively on the Lib Dems’ betrayal of their election pledges. Yes, this betrayal is the one, among many, that I still can’t get over – even more than their U-turn on the fundamental issue of the economy immediately after the election.

But the photos of Nick Clegg holding up his card pledging to vote against fee rises speak for themselves. While the media has devoted so much space to the betrayal that the morality of the rise in fees itself is put to one side. Which is exactly what David Cameron wants. (more…)

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The Tory Lib Dem Government mustn’t be allowed to break their green promises, says Richard Costello

17/10/2010, 11:30:36 AM

He sounded green. He seemed concerned. He even made a pilgrimage to the North Pole. So there is no way we should allow Cameron to get away with dropping sustainability pledges next week. The new shadow BIS team should move quickly to slam the Tory Lib Dem Government’s sham green credentials and prove that Labour is more serious about sustainability than Cameron has ever been.

Industry, NGOs and trade unions are all concerned that the comprehensive spending review will include cuts to feed-in tariffs, a move that could scare off investors from UK renewable energy initiatives including solar power. Green investment, green business and green jobs, which the UK desperately needs, could all move overseas.

Feed–in tariffs guarantee small scale producers of renewable and low carbon electricity a long term and fixed price for their energy that is above market levels. The introduction of feed-in tariffs back in April led to a significant increase in the installation of solar panels and other domestic renewables. Under the original plans, feed-in tariffs were to be set firm for a few years before being reviewed. This timescale was set out to ensure companies and home owners had a clear incentive to invest in solar panels and other renewable energy kit.

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Labour mustn’t leave the countryside to the Tories, says James Watkins

16/10/2010, 03:30:38 PM

If the economic downturn has told us anything, it is that our economy is unbalanced and at risk. When the City of London – which pays 11% of all UK tax – takes a dive, then so do the rest of us.

Some Labour MPs say the economy must be strengthened by a shift to manufacturing. But the rural economy can also bring jobs and prosperity to working people.

The rolling countryside may not seem a hotbed of economic activity. But, according to the government’s outgoing “rural advocate”, the English rural economy has the potential to create £236 billion and £347 billion per annum. And while some peoples’ ideas of the countryside may be all about cows, pigs and sheep, the truth is very different.

Newcastle University’s centre for rural economy has found that farming takes up just 2.6% of rural employment. 80% of rural employment is in distribution and retailing, business and financial services, public administration, education, training and health and – finally – manufacturing. (more…)

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