Grassroots « Labour Uncut

The Oona King interview: contains Wire spoilers

26/08/2010, 03:30:48 PM

Oona: cute child not included

There are many signs on the wall in Oona King’s campaign office. One states that you may have “tea, or coffee, and MAYBE a biscuit”. A poster charts the details of hot drink preferences for every member of the office (Oona, decaf coffee with milk). Somebody has hand-drawn a week countdown calendar to the ballot on a piece of A4 paper. It is simple but well organised.

Oona’s office is up a tiny spiral staircase. There are dog-sized seagulls staring in at the window of the boathouse-type affair on Heron Quay, but even their squalling, which occasionally drowns out the recording, can’t do much to mask Oona’s cackling laugh. Had we used the Uncut Laughometer for our crowdsourced interviews, Oona’s would have won on the decibel of her laugh alone.

As the campaign staff whisper around the Newsnight team setting up downstairs, Oona perches in heeled patent red boots on her office chair, next to a picture of her model-cute son and cackles away with her spin doctor. (She can’t show us any pictures of her little girl, she explains, because her phone and laptop were stolen at the weekend).

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Milena Popova on the government’s misunderstanding and misuse of information

25/08/2010, 01:19:10 PM

I have been re-watching the West Wing recently – it is remarkably addictive. Somwhere in between mainlining up to 5 episodes a night, this quote struck me:

“It’s not just about abortion, it’s about the next 20 years. Twenties and thirties it was the role of government, fifties and sixties it was civil rights. The next two decades it’s gonna be privacy. I’m talking about the Internet. I’m talking about cell phones. I’m talking about health records and who’s gay and who’s not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?”

Sam Seaborn says this in the first-season episode “The Shortlist”; so if Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the show, understood this back in 1999, why is it that our politicians and leaders continue to be so woefully ill-equipped for the 21st century eleven years later? (more…)

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Putting pen to paper still gives you the power, writes Keith Flett

23/08/2010, 06:00:19 PM

Keith Flett, socialist historian and letter writer, argues that in the age of social media, a published letter in a newspaper still beats Twitter and Facebook. He should know. In over a quarter of a century, he has had thousands of letters published in national newspapers. We’re grateful to him for sharing his letter writing tips with Uncut readers.

In the age of Twitter, Facebook, blogs, texts and YouTube, why bother to write a letter to the editor? I use all the above formats, but it is only when I have a letter published in a national paper that people stop me to say: “I saw your letter”. They hardly ever say “I saw your tweet” or “I saw your post on Facebook”.

The reason is obvious: a letter in the Guardian or Independent will reach many thousands of people. Other, newer media will reach hundreds if you are lucky. Letters to the editor deliver impact – one of the reasons why those of us who are politically active want to impart our thoughts to a wider audience in the first place. (more…)

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Young people are going to be at the sharp end, says Ken Livingstone

23/08/2010, 03:00:19 PM

Young people are going to find themselves at the sharp end under this government. A key part of what we do in the next few years will be to make a concerted effort to engage with the concerns of our youngest citizens. And to make that more effective we will also need to give our younger members our confidence and a bigger say.

I have appointed a Young Labour member – Veronica King – as my campaign vice chair because we should not treat young members merely as campaign fodder, but listen to them and involve them more. If I am selected by Labour members – and then if elected as mayor – I want to see a flourishing youth structure for under-27s in our party that can help us win. (more…)

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Crowdsourcing the mayoral race: Oona King

23/08/2010, 11:59:14 AM

The chair is back.

After the success of the leadership crowdsourcing interviews, Labour Uncut is embarking upon a new challenge: crowdsourcing the mayoral selection.

First up is Oona King.

What question would you put to Oona if you could? What would it take for her to win your vote?

We’ll be taking your questions to the mayoral candidate this week.

Get your questions in for Oona by adding them below by midday on Wednesday.

Posted in Grassroots | 12 Comments »

Welsh Labour’s quiet victory

22/08/2010, 11:00:36 AM

Welsh Labour entered the 2010 General Election with common expectation it would get a kicking. With 29 out of 40 seats in Wales held by Labour there was clearly only one place to go, and that was down. However, as the campaign wore on more and more Labour sources made it clear to me it wouldn’t be as bad as was being suggested. And they were right. Despite multiple vulnerabilities, Labour in Wales held on to 26 seats. Even more amazingly, Labour did it in Wales on 36% of the vote – a full 1.5% down on the calamity of the 1983 election result.

One of the major things that saved Labour was the inability of the Conservatives to take medium range targets in Wales. Thus Labour held urban targets like Newport West and Bridgend with more comfort than had been speculated. There was certainly a swing against Labour, but the party machine was in much better fettle than it had been for several years. In the local elections of 2008 and the Euro election of 2009 Labour’s collapse was sharper in Wales than in other parts of the UK. That was not true in 2010 – Welsh Labour did leagues better than its English counterpart.

Look no further than Blaenau Gwent to prove this point. In 2005 Labour lost its once safest seat in a bloody and brutal scrap with People’s Voice, formed when the late Peter Law broke with the Labour Party over all women shortlists. In the 2006 by-election cause by Peter’s death and in the Assembly election of 2007 Labour was soundly beaten; while in 2008 it lost control of the local authority for the first time ever. This year the rot wasn’t just stopped, it was reversed in stunning fashion. Incumbent People’s Voice MP Dai Davies got under 20% of the vote and Blaenau Gwent – the seat once held by Michael Foot and Nye Bevan – returned to Labour with a 10,000+ majority for Nick Smith MP and a bloody nose for his opponent. Last week People’s Voice announced it was being disbanded. Game, set and match to the red quarter.

Blaenau Gwent may have been the most stunning illustration of Labour effectiveness, but it was also mirrored in holding the Liberal Democrats in bay in Swansea West and Newport East, keeping the Conservatives out of the Vale of Clwyd and Delyn, and stopping Plaid Cymru in their tracks in Llanelli and Aberconwy.

Why did this happen? I’d suggest three factors played a role. One was Peter Hain. His persistent message of saving Wales from the Tories may have grated with the other parties, but it obviously worked with the electors from Gower to Cardiff West to Clwyd South. He repeated the mantra as a constant and his message was simple and, quite simply, plausible to the electorate.

Secondly, Labour had used the previous six months to overhaul its operation and deploy its resources – and by damn they are more scarce than in the past – to best effect. A new communications team made a real impact. Assembly Members and MPs worked together more effectively than in the past, too, and there almost a sense of popular resistance to the trends the polls were showing. At its best the Welsh Labour machine is a tank regiment and, though the machinery has shown significant rust and decay, in the heat of battle it is still the mightiest political army in Wales. In May Welsh Labour found the form that in 2001 allowed it to lose 200,000 votes across Wales but shed no seats.

The third reason? Labour is the luckiest party in Wales. End of.

Daran Hill is an independent political consultant who runs Positif Politics. He is a Trustee of the Bevan Foundation and a co-editor of www.waleshome.org, the leading Welsh political website.

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Counting the graduates in the dole queue, it’s clear that our system isn’t serving the young, says Claire French

21/08/2010, 10:00:02 AM

Last summer, tens of thousands of young people fresh out of school went straight onto the dole. Student loans were paid late, occasionally months after the autumn semester began. By all accounts, it’s going to be worse this year. With increased numbers of applicants and an under-cut of 10,000 university places by the coalition government, there is severe competition.

Having graduated this summer, I too am feeling the pressure of swathes of graduates leaving university with a respectable degree and no job. Finding myself with no other option than signing onto job seekers allowance while looking for employment, I find myself wondering how we have reached a state where so many young people – having attended university or not – having no other option than to look to the welfare state for help?

Higher education would supposedly become more accessible and universal after the introduction of top-top fees near the beginning of the Labour administration. In reality from applying for university places through UCAS to landing their first job – many young adults are now fighting harder than has been fought before. The threat of soaring youth unemployment is leading to what some commentators call the “lost generation”.

With the projected number of young people missing out on a university place this Thursday standing at around 150,000, it is time to seriously question the new Labour 50% university target. Educating the future workforce to a highly competitive standard is obviously important for the economy and our global position. At this time of austerity, is not feasible for hundreds of thousands of young people to be signing on to job seekers allowance because they cannot afford to take a gap year, or because they leave university with no other option.

The further education system over emphasises the importance of a university degree. The Labour party continues to predict that 40% of jobs will be filled by graduates by 2020. Those who are less than taken by the idea of being indebted suffer from the current lack of apprenticeships and unskilled work.

An undergraduate university degree is no longer a foot-in-the-door in today’s tough labour market. As areas of the private sector begin to advertise for more graduate jobs than last year, the public sector is tightening its belt – with huge redundancies being made and cuts to department budgets around the country.

The Guardian last week reported that only “36% of final-year students expect to find a graduate-level job this summer”. High numbers of graduates from some institutions are left out of work and not in education for more than six months after leaving university (up to one in four).

For many university leavers, a degree is not enough to land a paid, graduate-level job. Employers expect candidates to have skills and knowledge that is best demonstrated through previous work experience. For individuals without well-connected parents this can be a battlefield.

Internships – an increasingly popular form of learning in the professional workplace – pose a number of problems, foremost because many remain unpaid. Firstly, the majority of placements are located in London. Secondly, the nature of ‘the internship’ is to provide free labour to an employer in return for training. For applicants who need to pay for travel, accommodation and other outgoings this poses a problem. Campaigns such as Intern Aware and Internocracy work for fairer conditions, including a wage for interns.

Worldwide, the outlook for people aged between 15 and 24 years old is bleak. The global youth unemployment rate is sitting at 13%, 81 million people in real terms. It’s a big number that we need to address, and the current system just can’t cope.

Claire French is an aspiring journalist and writes at www.clairefrench.co.uk

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Could we, or should we win again? Paul Bower on his difficult relationship with Labour

20/08/2010, 03:00:32 PM

I left the Labour party in March 2003 when the bombs began to fall on Baghdad. This ended a formal relationship that began on 4 May 1979, when I joined the day after Thatcher was elected. My Labour leanings had roots in my childhood in a small Sheffield terrace with no bathroom. One of my earliest memories is of my dad explaining to me why Harold Wilson and not Alex Douglas Home should lead the country. My dad died in 1968. He was a toolmaker in a family firm where conditions were Dickensian. Health and safety was non-existent and there was no sick pay or pension. He didn’t trust politicians, but he told me that Labour were our best hope. He suffered from a series of lung diseases and his life was saved by the NHS on at least three occasions starting in 1949. If Nye Bevan and Clem Atlee had not created the NHS I would not have been born.

In between working with bands like ABC, The Human League and Heaven 17 I campaigned vigorously for Labour. In the 1983 election I argued with voters who looked at you incredulously when you explained that Michael Foot should be Prime Minister. In 1985 I played a small in part setting up Red Wedge, the collective of radical musicians, comedians, writers and film makers who attempted to engage young people with politics and encourage them to listen to what Labour had to say. We supported Neil Kinnock’s efforts to bring the party into the modern world without losing its passion and principles. We liked Neil.

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Our new leader will need to ‘fess up, stop spinning and start inspiring, says Sally Bercow

20/08/2010, 11:30:10 AM

At a drinks party recently, I got chatting to someone who said that if Labour is to win the next election, it needs ‘rebranding’. This chap did something in marketing, so he would say that wouldn’t he. Nevertheless, it was rather depressing to hear, and in my view it is wrong to boot. Our party is not a packet of sweets or a jar of coffee awaiting new packaging; in fact that is precisely where the last Labour government went wrong – by substituting idealism and vision with spin. Our new leader must break decisively from the past; he (for it will be a he) cannot simply change the advertising agency (although he should definitely look at that), rehash what’s gone before and embark on a rebranding exercise.

Encouragingly, all five Labour leader candidates seem to appreciate this – at the moment. However, the persuasiveness of the spin doctors, advisers and pollsters that will flock around our newly elected leader should not be underestimated. They will bandy about empty phrases like ‘progressive centre left’ whilst arguing that Britain is fundamentally a deeply conservative country and so Labour dare not move more than a milimetre to the left of the Coalition. As a result, the temptation will be to tinker at the edges and carry on much as before, banking largely on the Con-Libs becoming increasingly unpopular. This will not wash. It does not, however, mean lurching drastically to the left on every issue. What it does mean is fashioning a new approach based on three concepts.

First, if Labour is to start to regain the public’s trust we have to be brutally honest about where we got it wrong and (dare I say it) where the coalition might be right. ‘Fessing up to a few oversights; even ones as significant as being too soft on the bankers and allowing the state to become too controlling, will not cut it. Our new leader should own up lock, stock and barrel – even though they might find it a bit awkward because they sat in cabinet at the time. With a bit of luck, the new leader will admit to Labour’s mistakes in areas including civil liberties, ID cards, prisons, housing (or more accurately the desperate lack of it) and the digital economy, then duly consign those policies to the scrapheap.

Simultaneously, and this does not come naturally to the more tribal amongst us, we will earn the public’s respect if we stop trying to score points for the sake of it and actually admit it if the Coalition has a case. It is simply not credible for the new leader to roundly condemn every single one of the coalition’s policies and planned cuts.

Second, on the back of such unflinching honesty, our new leader can go into battle. He must defend the last Labour government, who left a better, fairer, more tolerant country with transformed public services and an economy saved from depression. He must expose the chronic iniquity and manic ideology of the coalition’s policies and seek to thwart or temper them. And, most importantly of all, he must set out a clear, attractive and viable alternative.

Third, beyond adopting this new honest approach, Labour needs to develop a new programme. This should be done not by pandering to media prejudice, by shifting according to fluctuating opinion polls or by becoming overly cautious. Instead, we must craft an inspiring credo, driven by progressive Labour values, which has the potential to improve the lives of the mainstream majority in a way and on a scale that this right-wing government cannot imagine, let alone deliver.

It is time to rediscover our principles, our values and our idealism. An unerring focus on social justice – fighting for a fairer, more equal Britain – coupled with economic dynamism should be at the heart of our new programme. This focus on social justice will mean taxing the rich more, reducing the gap between the haves and the have-nots, creating more affordable housing, reducing the ugly disparities in educational achievement and thereby paving the way for a more socially mobile Britain.

Economic dynamism will mean an explanation of how we would reduce the deficit (by credible spending cuts and bold, but fair, tax rises) and over what timescale. In addition, we must develop a clear plan for growth and an active industrial policy (investing in manufacturing, green industries and apprenticeships), so that we can create a broader, more balanced economy, rather than the skewed, misshapen and city-driven creature of neo-liberal economic theory.

Labour’s new programme must not be imposed from the top but fed and informed by people in communities across the country who have something to tell us and hold our fate in their hands. Never again must we allow ourselves to become so aloof and out of touch. This means listening to and engaging with our councillors, activists, trade unionists, rank and file members and, above all, those who either deserted us in the polling booths or didn’t bother to turn out at all.

Every government runs into trouble and the coalition will be no exception. The biggest mistake would be simply to wait for them to lose the next election. Instead, Labour needs to ‘fess up, stop spinning and start inspiring millions of voters by fighting for a fairer, less divisive and more equal Britain.

Sally Bercow

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Battle of the stats: Oona King’s campaign manager rebutts Steve Hart

19/08/2010, 08:00:29 PM

This article is a response to an article from Steve Hart based on his pamphlet ‘Who can beat Boris?’

Beware those bearing false statistical comparisons and wishful thinking. Steve Hart’s argument that Ken Livingstone is more popular than Labour is based on a flawed set of assumptions that, don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Steve claims that in 2008 Ken Livingstone out performed London’s MPs in the 2010 general election; and in so doing, he makes a totally false comparison. The mayoral election in 2008 was a London-wide election that was effectively a two-horse race – and voters understood it this way. The Liberal Democrats (and smaller parties) weren’t competitive and many voters simply voted with a major party without going through the charade of transferring their vote.

The general election in London was, in contrast, effectively more than 70 local races. Many of which the Liberal Democrats were competitive in – either where they already held MPs, in say Steve and my own constituency of Hornsey & Wood Green or Richmond or where they were hopeful of taking MPs: Islington South or Hampstead & Kilburn. This meant their vote was motivated to stick with them, rather than to stop their least favorite as was the case in the 2008 mayoral election.

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