Labour Uncut is interviewing Ed Miliband about his leadership bid.
What should we ask him? What would your vote depend on? Here’s a chance to have your say in a crowdsourced interview.
Add your questions to this thread as a comment, by 6pm on Monday 19th July.
The referendum on whether to adopt the alternative vote (AV) system for House of Commons is taking place on May 5 2011. It is an important moment in British politics, which will see two coalition partners pitted against each other. It may be easy to think Labour will therefore have a limited role. Actually, the party has to face some tough decisions on its strategy and policy but must avoid being a bit part player in what will be a pivotal moment.
The first, and most important, question is whether electoral reform, however incremental, is the progressive and fair course of action. By allowing second preferences the alternative vote system will stop the scandal of wasted votes endured under the first past the post system. This means that in a Conservative and Liberal Democrat marginal seat one could still make clear one’s support for Labour but vote Lib Dem second to keep the Tories out and vice versa. This seems progressive – an advance for electoral fairness and an enfranchisement of those in safe seats who wish to make their true choice but not hand the seat to a party they want to keep out.
Looks like Michael Ashcroft’s cash hasn’t reached Walsall. The re-run of the Bloxwich West by-election will take place tomorrow, and the poor cash-strapped Tory candidate has had to re-use her leaflets from May 6. Good for her you might say, saving on paper, and after all the only thing that needed to be changed on the front page was the date.
But it’s not just the council candidate who is cash strapped. After Michael Gove took his knife to the Building Schools for the Future programme Walsall schools are cash-strapped too. Luckily for the council candidate you can gloss over the loss of £200million schools investment you were previously claiming credit for, that you’re government has just pulled, with some subtle editing. Click on the picture below to see the Tories make that investment disappear. Now that’s magic.
Across Europe, we are seeing the loss of influence of progressive, social democratic parties. It is time for Labour to be at the forefront of restating the values that re-engages those of us on the left.
This requires more soul searching and honesty than at any time in recent memory. No longer should Labour party members act solely as fundraisers and canvassers. The collective ideas, skills, experience and knowledge of members must be more readily tapped into.
We are no longer a party of government, so the process of renewal and reaffirmation of values needs to involve all party members in a way not seen over the past 15 years.? ?Honesty requires the leadership to be more transparent and committed to revisiting some of the conventional wisdom that leads people to say that there is not much to choose between the Conservatives and Labour. (more…)
In 1997 my entire family voted for Tony Blair. We were genuinely thrilled as we celebrated the landslide. I was 21 and optimistic after a lifetime of Conservative government.
Fast forward to 2010 and only half of us still gave Labour our vote, with my mother making it very clear that this was their last chance. Interestingly, of the Labour voters, two of us are now members. We both got involved in the election campaign and felt passionately that Labour was the right party, on policy across the board and particularly to get us out of the recession.
But what about the rest of my family; what went wrong? (more…)
Labour Uncut is interviewing David Miliband about his leadership bid.
What should we ask him? What would your vote depend on? Here’s a chance to have your say.
Add your questions to this thread as a comment, by 12 noon on Sunday 11 July.
Agreeing wholeheartedly with a politician from an opposing party on a matter of serious policy can leave one feeling rather uncomfortable. This is particularly the case when one’s own party has been spectacularly wrong on said policy over many years. It was this unpleasant feeling that hit me when I heard that Ken Clarke, the Tory justice secretary, had launched an assault on the “bang ‘em up” prison culture of the last twenty years. (more…)
We now face the very distressing reality: not a consensual coalition, but a typically right-wing, out-of-touch Tory government. The totally superfluous “emergency budget” provides a taste of the bitterness to expect in coming years.
This next stage will be very difficult for our communities. Our many newly elected councillors – of which I am one – can expect a baptism of fire: in the seven weeks since the General Election, Sheffield alone has lost over £120m investment, including the Forgemasters loan. (more…)
The web ‘strategies’ of the candidates are failing to impress for exactly the same reason the candidates themselves are: none of them has anything much to say.
I don’t expect more than the simple, flat and un-aesthetic websites and non-existent web strategies of the candidates because I don’t expect much of anything from them.
A leadership campaign can only be as exciting as the candidates themselves, and an online communications strategy can only be as exciting as the campaign. More bluntly put, the candidates aren’t exciting, so the campaigns aren’t interesting, so the web products are boring. (more…)
Today’s budget was a typically Tory affair. Fresh from wielding the axe, George Osborne sat down to ecstatic cheers from Tory backbenchers delighted at his assault on the state. The Lib Dem response was somewhat more muted. According to the Guardian, only one of their 37 backbenchers waved his order paper in approval.
Amongst the Lib Dem membership I imagine the response was even frostier. Lib Dem federal executive member, Richard Grayson, writes on Comment is Free that his party’s leadership has “abandoned the party’s centre left roots”. He is wrong – they have no roots to abandon. (more…)
