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Dave Howells’ take on Dave Cameron’s big moment
06/10/2010, 04:03:44 PMThe big week uncut: what next?
03/10/2010, 02:00:39 PMAs Dan Hodges noted in Friday’s column (below), Labour reached the end of a long road in Manchester. If anyone needed closure on the New Labour project, we had it last week.
It was a journey which had begun where it ended: at Labour party conference.
Neil Kinnock’s 1985 speech in Brighton marked the start of a fight back which took 12 years to come to fruition and 13 more to end in failure.
Neil was the father of New Labour, but he was never part of it. With the passion that he showed in that brave and beautiful speech, he knew that we needed it. But he wished we didn’t. He would have preferred it the old way. By the end, he even knew that what we needed wasn’t him. (Just as he knew that it wasn’t John Smith either). But he could only be himself.
That is why he is so attached to Ed, who isn’t New Labour either. Ed was a contented but never ideologically committed member of the outer circle. He often notes that he wasn’t factional. This was helped by his not being political either.
There is nothing new or unusual here. Blair and Brown, for instance, were fellow travellers in Peter Hain’s Tribune group during the 1980s. It was a necessary accommodation with the prevailing orthodoxy.
Nor is it a weak position. It was Stalin who issued the Blairite dictum that “theory guides practice, but practice is the criterion of ideological truth”. And, whatever he was, Stalin was not weak.
Ed Miliband’s ruthlessness is beyond question. If he has a lack which comes to seem weak, it will be consistency, not cruelty.
Many whom one would call New Labour or old right very actively campaigned for Ed Miliband. And it is those influential individuals, not the facile nebula that is the term ‘the unions’, who are mainly responsible for Ed Miliband’s victory.
Which term (responsible) is apt in two senses: both cause and obligation.
So it is to them, as much as to Ed himself – and to his brother staked out in Primrose Hill-les-Deux-Eglises – that we pose the week’s overwhelming question: after New Labour, after permanent revolution and endless victory, what next?
Jonathan Todd warns of Osborne’s traps on the economy
David Prescott on David Miliband’s big speech
Kevin Meagher looks at the new leader’s in tray
Siôn Simon sketches Ed Miliband’s big speech
Peter Watt says the last thing we need is a membership drive
Jamie Reed MP looks beyond London for the shadow cabinet
Dan Hodges responds to Labour’s extraordinary week in Manchester
Sunder Katwala on Labour’s top baron: BAME voting in the leadership election
Ed Miliband is the new leader of the Labour party
25/09/2010, 04:53:28 PMEd Miliband is the new leader of the Labour party.
He lost the MPs and members sections to his brother, David, but won by a large margin in the union and affiliate section.
We will be publishing a report direct from the conference hall shortly.
‘The road to Manchester’ a mixtape
23/09/2010, 12:00:10 PMThe votes are cast. All that’s left is to jump in the car, hop on the train or fire up the battle bus for one last leadership road trip.
We asked the leadership contenders for their desert island discs. The eight tracks they couldn’t live without. They tell you something about them, about where they’re going and where they’ve been. So what better mixtape for the leadership groupies’ journey to Manchester?
Grab yourself a couple of TDK 90s, squeeze into the car share, and hit the road.
Uncut – The road to Manchester
(You need Spotify to access this playlist. Unfortunately a few songs aren’t listed.)
The candidates’ selections were:
Harry Belafonte – Scarlet Ribbons
The Beatles – Things We Said Today
The Temptations – Ain’t Too Proud to Beg
Bob Marley – Exodus
Buju Banton – Driver A
D:ream – Things Can Only Get Better
Paul Roberts – Reflections in the Water
Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Nkosi Sikelel ‘IAfrika
Elvis Presley – Can’t Help Falling in Love – (live, Madison Square Gardens 1972)
Joshua Redman – Blues for Pat (Wish)
Herbert Howells – Like as the hart (St Paul’s cathedral choir, Hyperion)
Spandau Ballet – True (12? version)
Bach – Partita No. 2 in D Minor for violin – Itzhak Perlman, EMI
Dolly Parton – I will always love you
Handel – Ariodante Act 3, Dopo Notte atra e funesta (Janet Baker, Philips)
Billy Bragg – Saturday Boy
How soon is now – The Smiths
There is a light – The Smiths
The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn – The Pogues
Dirty Old Town – The Pogues
Ten Storey Love Song – Stone Roses
Every day is like Sunday – Morrissey
Bones of you – Elbow
Protection – Massive Attack
Sting – Englishman in New York
Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army
Fritz Kreisler – Liebeslied
Sibelius – Violin Concerto
Shostakovich – Symphony No.10
James Taylor – How sweet it is (to be loved by you)
Elton John – Your Song
The Beatles – All you need is love
Paul Robeson: The Ballad of Joe Hill
Billy Bragg: A New England
Josh Ritter: Good Man
Hard Fi: Stars of CCTV
Housemartins: Caravan of Love
Robbie Williams: Angels
A-ha: Take on Me
Beethoven: Ninth Symphony
Bold predictions in the internet age, by Siôn Simon
21/09/2010, 01:49:35 PMDan Hodges announced this morning that David Miliband has won the Labour leadership. Which is not literally true; it is a bold prediction, presented in the form of what Frank Johnson used to call a conceit.
My father – perhaps anticipating a theme – used to warn me that “there is a thin line between brave and stupid”. Dan Hodges is not stupid. Far from it. This is a brave piece.
Frank Johnson, when teaching me how to write newspaper columns, used to enjoin: “Make bold predictions. If you are wrong, nobody will remember. But if you are right you can always remind them.”
I passed this reassurance on to Dan Hodges yesterday.
James Macintyre employs the technique in the New Statesman today. I take the opportunity to do it myself here: on 2 August, before the bookies’ odds had narrowed, I said in Uncut that Ed Miliband was an evens bet:
“Ed Miliband, like his brother, has succeeded in converting his patronage-momentum into real political capital which should have made him an evens bet to be the next leader. It hasn’t – the bookies put David well in front – but Ed is the better value brother, because evens is the political reality.”
I still think this is accurate. It’s close. Lots of people have written how close it is. Not many, especially of those who are paid to call these kind of things, have been brave enough to make the call.
Frank Johnson was the great newspaper prose stylist of his generation and an underestimated editor of the Spectator. He was a deep mine of wise and idiosyncratic advice about writing. “Be counter-intuitive” was at the centre. The word “albeit” and the phrase “the fact that” were banned at the periphery. As they are on Uncut.
And he was right, in his time, about making predictions. But he is wrong in the age, which he largely pre-dated, of the internet.
Rather than test the benevolence of the blogosphere, in which case, I also offer this prediction of mine, written at the 2007 Labour conference.
It turned out to be wrong. As I have often been reminded.
The week Uncut
19/09/2010, 04:20:02 PMWith just a few days of voting to go, the leadership election is drawing to a close. On Saturday the coronation will take place in Manchester and opposition can begin. Well almost. On Sunday the new leader will wake, with a hang over, to the noise of 50 colleagues playing musical chairs with only 19 seats.
The shadow cabinet bun fight is well underway, hats have been thrown into rings. A flurry of letter writing, mass emailing, bulk texting, arm twisting, double crossing and general bad behaviour has already taken place. The three stand out letters so far have come from a talonted Maria, a brooding Tom and a thoughtful Eric.
It was the week that Ed M felt confident, David warned of heroic failures, Andy blamed his tools, Ed B wished the campaign was a little longer and Diane rocked the boat.
In case you missed them, here are Uncut’s best read pieces of the last seven days:
John Woodcock on why the new leader should bring back Peter Mandelson
Shadow cabinet elections are stupid enough without voting stupidly too, says Lesley Smith
Making childish noises at the unions is not the way to lead Labour, says Dan Hodges
As the cold war begins, so do the defections
We must make sure the country is with us on the union fightback, says Ruth Smeeth
We need a more sophisticated response to the big society, says Peter Watt
Blair was always the cynical grit in Labour’s oyster – which we still need, says Kevin Meagher
Big Bob’s had enough shadcabbery already
15/09/2010, 05:42:19 PM
The week Uncut
12/09/2010, 03:37:45 PMThe PLP have spoken. The entire shadow cabinet will remain elected. Whoever is celebrating in Manchester on the 25 September will wake up to the reality of leadership and little control over who makes their front bench team.
Talk of who’ll get what job has begun. Senior MPs are canvassing support to make sure they get in to the shoot out for the top roles. With some of the big beasts ruling themselves out it’s all to play for. The big winners this week were the Whip’s office. If their hype is to be believed, there will still be a Mr Brown at the very heart of the party.
It was the week that Ed B played the drums, Ed M led by a nose, Andy sent out a mail shot, David won the support of an east ender and a deep spacer, and Diane, well, has anyone seen Diane?
In case you missed them, here are Uncut’s best read pieces of the last seven days:
The hacking-gate heroes: four men in search of a scandal
Ed Balls may be winning the economic argument – but he could still be wrong, argues Anthony Painter
Lets not get carried away with the Coulson affair says Dan Hodges
We lost the 2010 election during Blair’s watch, as well as Brown’s, says Michael Dugher
Rachel Reeves on the government’s chaotic and contradictory economic policy
Big business, bad bankers and hard times for Northern Ireland, by Peter Johnson
Jonathan Todd on the challenge for the new shadow chancellor
Phil Davison: the poetry is in the pity
10/09/2010, 11:45:15 AM
