Inside « Labour Uncut

Nicola Blackwood MP – the heir to Peter Lilley

08/09/2010, 03:30:14 PM

Reported straight by the BBC at the time, the vocal outburst with which new Tory MP Nicola Blackwood celebrated her election has been strangely little remarked since.

We think this is a shame. Unlike most MPs, Ms Blackwood apparently trained as an opera singer. Which probably explains her unusual lack of reticence.

Peter Lilley’s sung party conference turns provided some of the most cringe-making moments of the old Tory era. Though he still sits (somewhat surprisingly given his sharp intelligence and massive experience) in Parliament, he is now an elder statesman. He rarely sings any more.

Perhaps Ms Blackwood, in which case, may take up the baton?

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The busy schedule of Marcus Jones, MP for Nuneaton

07/09/2010, 02:12:31 PM

It’s not easy being a new MP.

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Gove made me ashamed to be a Conservative says senior Tory councillor as she joins Labour

04/09/2010, 10:01:26 AM

The Deputy leader of the Conservative Group on Sandwell Council has quit the party and joined Labour saying the behaviour of gaffe prone Michael Gove made her “ashamed to be a Conservative.”

When Gove announced the cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme early this year he said he was halving the number of projects – more than 700 schools. But according to the first list published Sandwell was safe.

However the following day discord erupted. Gove had got his facts wrong. The department was very sorry but some of the schools would not be receiving the investment. How many? All of them.

Gove then promised Council Leader Darren Cooper that he would visit Sandwell to meet with parents and apologise for the cock up. The Department for Education later cancelled Mr Gove’s visit to Sandwell citing “diary pressures.”

On resigning from the Conservative Party and joining Labour Cllr Elaine Costigan said:

It is now absolutely clear that the Labour Party is the only party that cares about places like Sandwell. This community has been treated with utter contempt by the government over the slashing of the school building programme and when Michael Gove backed out of his promise to come and apologise to the parents, pupils and staff he had so badly let down, I felt ashamed to be a Conservative.

I am delighted to join the Labour Party, now the only party fighting for the ordinary hardworking people of this community.

(more…)

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Tom Watson’s letter to Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson

03/09/2010, 02:20:04 PM

Sir Paul Stephenson

Commissioner

Metropolitan Police Service

New Scotland Yard

Broadway

London

SW1H 0BG

03 September 2010

Dear Mr Stephenson,

I write as a Member of Parliament, a former cabinet office minister and a member of the culture, media and sport select committee which took evidence last year from Andy Coulson and Les Hinton about the News of the World’s illegal phone hacking operations.

The Metropolitan Police’s historic and continued mishandling of this affair is bringing your force, and hence our democracy, into disrepute.

Former assistant commissioner Brian Paddick has requested a judicial review of the Metropolitan Police’s investigation (or lack of it – we do not know) into his phone being hacked by newspapers while he was a serving officer. This is extraordinary.

Indeed, it would appear that the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) may have deliberately withheld from this serving senior officer the information that his phone had been hacked. Please confirm whether this is true.

The phone of a serving Metropolitan Police commissioner was also on a list of numbers intended to be hacked by newspapers. It has been reported that an MPS investigation established that his phone had not been hacked. Please confirm whether this is true.

If it is, please confirm whether the phone of every other name on any list found of numbers intended to be hacked was also investigated.

If not, please confirm who decided, according to what criteria and on what authority which names to investigate and which to ignore.

Today it has emerged that another senior MPS officer, Michael Fuller, was also on Glen Mulcaire’s list. Please confirm how many MPS officers were on lists of names to be illegally hacked, which were investigated and which were notified.

Much anger and concern centres on your force’s failure to inform people that their names had been found on these lists. Please confirm exactly how many names were on Mulcaire’s and any other lists.

Many Members of Parliament were on these lists. The Metropolitan Police has strongly implied that all Members of Parliament so targeted had been informed. This was not true. Please confirm how many Members of Parliament were on the lists.

Please confirm who decided which Members of Parliament to notify, according to what criteria and on what authority.

Please confirm, in all other cases, who selected which victims should be notified, on what criteria, on what authority and who else had any requisite knowledge?

Please confirm who went to seize the materials, where are these materials stored, and what processes do the Met go through when answering letters and enquiries about these materials?

The New York Times allege key evidence was withheld from the Crown Prosecutions Service. Please confirm that all evidence was provided to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Your conduct of this matter is being scrutinised all over the world. So far, it is bringing shame – as has News International – on our country.

I await your early response.

Yours sincerely

Tom Watson

Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East

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Down the pub with the Labour leadership contenders

02/09/2010, 03:16:46 PM

On Monday the Mirror’s James Lyons had a brilliant interview with the leadership candidates. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s here. If you are a Labour member, please, please read it before you vote.

We inferred from the attempts at ridiculous clever answers to almost every question that this was a set of questions emailed to the candidates rather than done on the spot. We asked, and it was a mix. See the David Miliband tattoo callback, which only works if you know what the next question is going to be. Very clever. Not very funny.

The answers are absolute gold. And one set of them really stood out. The candidates were asked:

“Which four people, real or fictional, would you most like to go down the pub with?”

This is the Mirror’s more socialist version of the ultimate dinner party question: “which 6 people dead or alive would you have at your dinner party?”

(more…)

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Lefty weirdos and Tory bigots: Stewart Jackson MP and sex education

31/08/2010, 01:44:42 PM

Hannah McFaull wrote a striking piece on Labour Uncut recently about the future of sex education under the Tory-Lib Dem government. Tory MP Stewart Jackson’s recent comments on the same subject are equally remarkable.

Mr. Jackson tweeted: “Sex education memo to sad tedious sex obsessed Leftie weirdos – you’re confusing me with someone who’s interested.” So: you may be a Peterborough constituent. You may be interested in sex education (some people think it’s important). But your MP is not. So get lost.

Jackson’s row with the ‘tedious weirdo’, which has been picked up by his local paper, began after he tweeted: “Very disappointing news on STD rates in Peterborough. No doubt our liberal friends will tell us we need more sex education – as it’s worked so well!”

This followed publication of figures by the heath protection agency (HPA) showing that Peterborough has the fourth highest number of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the eastern region.

(more…)

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Andy Burnham’s Desert Island Discs

27/08/2010, 02:16:24 PM

In case you missed it: Andy Burnham is a working class Roman catholic from the north of England. Not the midlands. And certainly not the south. The north.

He has no aversion to posh people. Nor to protestants. Not at all. But he is not one of them. And it is important that you know that. Weirdly, Burnham has put his ‘ordinary’ northern origins at the centre of his Labour leadership campaign.

His desert island discs are parodically reflective of this. The only tune he’ll hear in paradise which hasn’t been recorded by either a Manc or a Roman catholic or both will be “Protection”, by the Bristol “trip hop” duo, Massive Attack. (more…)

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Was David Miliband marauding before the gun was fired?

24/08/2010, 05:26:20 PM

THERE was an intriguing little tale in last week’s Independent diary. It’s a story that has been doing the rounds for a while. The question was whether or not David Miliband was running a “shadow” leadership campaign during the general election, when everyone else’s noses were firmly pressed against the grindstone.

The Indy reckons it has proof that Miliband Major was buttering up Labour members in safe seats rather than knuckling down to campaign in nearby marginals. The paper seems to have a copy of his campaign itinerary from 25 April that shows the then foreign secretary touring Burnley, Blackburn, Bolton South East and Manchester Withington, meeting “members and supporters” rather than actual voters.

Miliband’s people say the story is “absolute rubbish” claiming that the itinerary “was put together by the Labour party for David to follow, which he did.” Which is slightly strange. Why would the party put one of the best known faces in the government into safe seats rather than marginal ones? Senior members of the cabinet don’t get told where they must go. Most are willing to go with the flow, but some make demands that would make J-Lo blush. (more…)

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It’s a hard life: The rapidly ageing MP for Barnsley East

19/08/2010, 08:30:23 AM

The strains of public office have taken their toll on many a man.

Remember how Blair greyed; his once youthful, grinning face wrinkling in the heat of coal-face politics. Holding the jenga coalition together, shiny Dave Cameron has followed suit and sagged. Even the political Peter Pan Barack Obama suffered ‘silvering’; ageing prematurely under stress.

But now, news reaches Uncut of an extreme case. The first of the class of 2010 has been hit by the phenomenon.

New MP for Barnsley East, Michael Dugher, was previously known for his boyish good looks. Even after his pit-town upbringing, there wasn’t a crow’s foot in sight. Here is a snap of fresh-faced, dewey-eyed Dugher in all his pre-election glory:

And here he is, sporting a glamorous centre-parting in the reasonably priced £55 Times Guide to the House of Commons 2010:

Poor boy.

(Note to Times guide researchers, if you got confused by the 9th April post; Michael is the one on the left. The one whose picture is plastered all over the rest of the site.)

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David Mirrorband’s banana

13/08/2010, 10:57:43 AM

As momentum starts to shift towards David M in our breathlessly exciting leadership contest, word reaches Uncut of tortured deliberations in the offices of the Daily Mirror. Their inclination to break for the elder statesman of the Miliband clan is, we understand, being tempered by painful memories of the 2008 ‘bananagate’ debacle.

This, you will recall, was when the Mirror produced a major profile piece extolling the virtues of the then foreign secretary as part of a carefully choreographed leadership challenge, only for their support to be undermined by his arrival at conference wielding a banana, rather than a knife, and professing his undying loyalty for Gordon Brown and all his works.

Given that the Mirror is now the only Labour-supporting daily in the land, and is regarded as the greatest editorial prize by all five leadership contenders, the results of this soul searching may have a significant impact on the outcome of the contest.

Sources say that the clever money is on the paper finally taking the plunge for DM, though a commitment to avoiding yellow herbaceous plants of the genus Musa is likely to be the price of their endorsement.

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