Uncut « Labour Uncut

The Tories are creating a Mid Staffs of the criminal justice system

01/05/2013, 04:18:10 PM

by Dan McCurry

The government’s reputation for incompetence shows no signs of abating, as they mimic the management ethos of Mid Staffs hospital and apply it to the criminal defence service.

These are government proposals which are to be applied to solicitors’ firms providing advice in police stations and courts. They propose the removal of choice of solicitor from the service user, in order to create a greater economy of scale and drive down costs. But, by doing so they will remove the competition which drives up standards and establish a local monopoly, rarely the most effective model to promote efficiency.

Consider this scenario. Your son has been arrested after his friend got into a fight. Your son was there when the fight happened, but wasn’t a part of it. However, he then prefers to say nothing to the police, because he doesn’t want to get his mates in trouble. The police interview will be much quicker if the lad makes no comment. The solicitor advises him to speak, but he doesn’t push the issue when the lad objects. As a result, your son refuses to answer police questions and this leads to a £10k trial where the young man is acquitted after he gives his account at court.

In the above scenario, the legal adviser gets paid regardless and cannot be criticised, on paper. He or she has also generated a fee from a trial. Your son’s A level results are effected by the several months of stress and distraction. You and your son cannot influence whether this solicitor gets more work or not, since there is no longer any personal recommendation. There is no competition.

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We are about to see who really runs the Labour party. Let’s hope it’s not Len McCluskey

01/05/2013, 08:57:15 AM

by Rob Marchant

Recent weeks have not exactly been glory days for Labour. The latest chapter, Monday’s car-crash World At One interview – with Miliband refusing to answer whether Labour would increase borrowing, thirteen times – made for excruciating, if compelling, radio; worse, yesterday’s official admission that Labour will do just that – increase borrowing – has left it exposed. As Nye Bevan might have put it, it enters “naked into the parliamentary chamber”.

But among the various pieces of bad news, there is one which particularly stands out, because it seems not only bad, but irreversibly so.

It is now a week since Len McCluskey’s extraordinary intervention, where he proposed a radical reworking of Labour’s programme, including the sacking of three shadow cabinet members. Not to mention the Labour leader’s robust and accurate response that McCluskey “does not speak for the Labour party”.

While the parliamentary lobby has moved on from the story, those familiar with the party’s organisation and history are still feeling the impact; a storm in a teacup it was not. And if Labour’s strategists are worth their salt, they might care more about McCluskey than about one bad interview; perhaps more, even, than a bet-the-farm gamble on increasing the national debt, two years before an election.

Why? This not just a textbook spat between union leaders and party leadership, in time-honoured fashion. One that burns brightly in the run-up to conference season every year and then fizzles out.

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Poor Ed is stuck between two marauding elephants

29/04/2013, 07:31:39 AM

by Kevin Meagher

There’s an old African saying that when the elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. If that’s the case, these past couple of weeks have left Labour’s lawn fit for a spot of crown green bowling.

First to start a ruck by waving his proboscis about was Labour’s emeritus leader Tony Blair, chiding via the pages of the New Statesman, that Labour risks settling back “into its old territory of defending the status quo” and blowing the next election.

A couple of weeks of tit-for-tat followed before Len McLuskey, tusks a-gleaming, charged headlong at Tony’s hindquarters also telling the New Statesman this week that if Ed Miliband listens to Blairites in the party he is consigning himself to the “dustbin of history”.

Both hulking mammals have the same motivation; to bruise but not wound Ed Miliband and make it clear their respective herds are not to be taken for granted as we pass the 60% marker for this parliament. They are both concerned about the shape of Labour’s offer to the voters in 2015. McLuskey denounces any prospect of offering “austerity-lite”, claiming it will lead to certain election defeat. Blair, in stark contrast, warns that to “tack left on tax and spending” will lead to “strategic defeat”.

Yes, Labour’s got to be pragmatic in how it approaches the next election (Blair) but it’s got to win for a purpose too (McLuskey). This is the age-old conundrum for the democratic left. It’s one that pits those with a simplistic (and now outdated) assumption that the party can offer the bare minimum to core Labour voters because they have nowhere else to go, with those who are reluctant to countenance the bloody business of compromise at all. Despite the dust that has been kicked up these past couple of weeks, both sides are sketchy about details.

On spending, McLuskey urges Miliband to “create a radical alternative” to austerity in order to remain “the authentic voice of ordinary working people”. Does this mean no cuts? Some cuts? Cuts to bits of public spending we don’t like? (The trouble is that a private sector union like Unite has many members in defence industries and won’t want to see cuts here which other unions might happily countenance).

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Labour history uncut: Labour gets ready for government

28/04/2013, 11:05:37 AM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

On December 9^th 1923, the day after the general election, it became clear that civilisation was teetering on the brink of destruction.

Well, that’s what the British establishment seemed to think as the prospect of a Labour government was suddenly a real possibility.

Although the Tories were the largest party with 258 seats, crucially they did not command a majority in the House of Commons and the third place Liberals did not seem willing to sustain them in office.

In the wings, there was Labour, the understudy government breathlessly wondering if tonight was to be their night to take the lead role.

But despite the parliamentary arithmetic, Labour’s turn in the limelight seemed far from certain.

The critics at the Times weren’t happy. The Thunderer called for a coalition between the Liberals and Conservatives in the national interest. The national interest being anyone but Labour.

Some in the Lords favoured a more innovative approach. The large Labour vote obviously meant democracy was broken, so the logical next step was to create a government of “national trustees”.

This would involve simply jettisoning the whole bothersome democratic process and appointing a government of officials certified as independent, fair-minded and not-Labour.

They even had a man in mind to run it all – Reginald McKenna. Home secretary under Asquith until 1916, McKenna was definitely a decent and trust-worthy chap, as evidenced by his two career choices so far: politician and banker.

Reginald McKenna exuded Englishness with his stiff upper everything

Others were more resigned to the impending cataclysm. Over at the English Review, apparently edited by a proto-Melanie Phillips, their view on a possible Labour government was that “the sun of England seems menaced by final eclipse,” which would at least explain the weather that year.

Winston Churchill chipped in too. At this point a defeated Liberal, he declared in his usual understated manner that a Labour government would be “a national misfortune such as has usually befallen a great state only on the morrow of defeat in war.”

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The Royal College of Nursing has forgotten about the victims in their response to Mid Staffs

25/04/2013, 07:00:15 AM

by Peter Watt

One of the lessons of the Mid Staffs hospital scandal should be that those involved in the delivery of health care should show some humility. But humility doesn’t seem to be something that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is familiar with.

Let’s face it, if a single hospital can be found to have between 400 and 1200 deaths caused by poor care between January 2005 and March 2009 then something has gone wrong. The fact that subsequently a raft of other hospitals are being looked at adds to the strong sense of a system that isn’t working. As David Cameron rather too eagerly reminded Ed Miliband at PMQs yesterday, this happened under a Labour government at a time of rapid growth in spending on the NHS. This wasn’t a time of cuts – quite the contrary.

The Francis report was a comprehensive review of what went wrong at Mid Staffs and its conclusions were damning. Blame was shared across a number of fronts:

A bullying culture in the NHS so that those expressing concern were silenced and others were too fearful to speak;
A focus on healthy finances rather than the health of patients;
Regulators not regulating properly – in fact not noticing that anything was wrong;
Managers not managing effectively;
The disorganisation of reorganisation after reorganisation.

So there were plenty who should be a little humble from the Labour party itself to the department of health. But there is another group who need to take a good long hard look at themselves: nurses. Because one of the other key problems identified was that there were nurses who were not good enough.

Now this obviously does not mean that all nurses are poor or that they do not care about patients. I had a message from a friend the other day who had just finished a 12 hour nursing shift with only a twenty minute break. So there are thankfully plenty of dedicated, caring and compassionate nurses often working many long hours to ensure that their patients are cared for.

But what is also blindingly obvious is that a report into poor care that causes hundreds of deaths will find that some nurses got things badly wrong. And they did. As the Guardian reported of the Francis report:

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Three takeaways from Len McCluskey’s attack

25/04/2013, 05:30:17 AM

by Atul Hatwal

In one sense, it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Unite have been absolutely clear about their position and all Len McCluskey did yesterday in his New Statesman interview was to articulate what he and his union have been saying privately for the past two years.

That McCluskey is hostile to Labour centrists (or Blairites as anyone out of sympathy with the 1983 manifesto is termed these days) is hardly news.

But the directness of the intervention is notable, as are some of the choice details he let slip. Rather inadvertently, Len McCluskey has presented an insight into the current state of the power politics being played out behind the scenes in the Labour party.

Three points are evident: McCluskey is nervous about his influence with Ed Miliband, he thinks Labour is currently headed for defeat at the next election and his real target was Ed Balls.

First, in terms of influence, when Len McCluskey is getting his way he is as quiet as a mouse. Nothing is said to rock the boat, publicly he is a picture of collegiate harmony.

In January 2012, when the two Ed’s dared to back a public sector wage freeze, he snarled into life. At the time, Ed Miliband pushed back but soon after the exchange a strange calm descended. No further comment came from McCluskey in response to the Labour leader’s apparent slap down.

The reason? Both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls had agreed never to let the words “public sector pay freeze” cross their lips again. McCluskey had got his way and it was back to playing happy Labour families.

The Unite general secretary’s intervention yesterday is a sign that he is not hearing what he wants in his private conversations with Labour’s leaders.

The spending review is scheduled for the 26^th June and will be the pivotal moment of this parliament. For months Labour has avoided the question of where it stands on spending. Will it stick to Tory spending plans (or something very similar) or reject further austerity on the scale proposed by the Tories and the Lib Dems?

The pressure for Labour to give a clear sense of its direction of travel at the spending review will be enormous.

Anything less than a clear sign that Labour will commit to spending more than the Tories, and above all else, provide a generous pay settlement for McCluskey’s public sector members, will be unacceptable for the union.

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Syria: Where is the International Brigade?

22/04/2013, 04:08:27 PM

by Jonathan Todd

There is much to enjoy and admire in the New Statesman centenary issue. I read of George Orwell taking a bullet through the throat, as he fought in the Spanish civil war. And that John Gray thinks: “For the foreseeable future, no one will rule will world”. The transition from the G7 to the G20 reflected the passing of power to the global south and talk of the G2 denotes the centrality of China and the US but maybe G-zero is more apt in a world without predominant power.

Is the sorrow of Syria a harbinger of a G-zero world that no one, whether reluctantly or otherwise, is willing or able to police? Roosevelt, unlike Hitler and Stalin, was as disinclined to involve his country in the Spanish civil war as Obama has been to date in Syria. Yet Orwell walked towards the bullets. Where are the Orwells of today? If the war in Syria is a war for rights and democracy, why isn’t the International Brigade on the frontline?

The truth is that Syria is sucking in Jihadists who don’t believe in rights and democracy, not liberals prepared to stand up for these values, which is one of various reasons why Syria is not a simple war for rights and democracy. Little is simple in Syria.

Last week Channel 4 showed a documentary by Olly Lambert, who had spent weeks living deep inside Syrian territory – with both government and opposition supporters. Both sides think that the other would exterminate them if they did not fight and that they are opposing the sectarianism of the other. Western liberals, thousands of miles from the frontline, might see their kin in those who have risen up against Assad.

But how confident can the Alawites and other Syrian minorities be that these opposition forces, largely Sunni and increasingly under the influence of Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda, will not extract a bloody revenge as soon as they are able? Why wouldn’t these minorities lay down their arms for a future Syria that respected their rights and gave them the vote if this is what the opposition offer?

If the UK were to arm the opposition then we would be risking these arms being used for the persecution of these minorities. Equally, weaponry from Iran and Russia is being used by the Syrian government to persecute their opposition. While such persecution is utterly repellent, it would be to succumb to Bertrand Russell’s fallacy of superior virtue of the oppressed not to be concerned about the sectarian and extremist motives of the opposition.

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Regional VAT, an idea for Ed Balls

22/04/2013, 07:50:07 AM

by Dan McCurry

When I was in Arizona, I kept getting overcharged in the shops. At least I thought I was, until I objected and was told that the extra 7% was the state sales tax. They weren’t including it on the price tickets, because Americans are weird. These days Arizona charges a whopping 9%, compared to Virginia at 5%, and New Hampshire at 0%. There is no strategy between these different rates. This is America. The states just do their own thing.

In the UK we pay 20%, and we call it “Value Added Tax”, because we’re not weird. Imposed centrally, we apply this tax at a uniform rate across the country, but if we wanted to, we could charge different rates in different regions, while continuing to collect it centrally.

There is a potential serendipity to Labour’s economic policy, when looking at two of the main drivers of stimulating the economy in Labour’s five point plan for jobs and growth: house building and a VAT reduction.

Mass house building is firstly intended to create demand in the economy, but by solving our chronic housing shortage, we reduce our private sector rents, and thereby counter poverty. It all seems so neat that, however, there is a flaw in this strategy.

The area that needs massive house building is London and the South East, but the economy is fairly frothy in this area, so there is not much of a demand problem. Much of the rest of the country doesn’t needs housing, but does have a lack of demand.

So although there are many infrastructure projects in other parts of the country, the stimulus from house building would mostly effect the south east, which is not where it is mostly needed.

The other policy of Ed Balls is to affect consumer spending through a reduction in VAT.

The problem with VAT is that it can be fiddly. When Gordon gave us a 2.5% cut, I don’t think I’m the only one who was irritated at being given coppers in change for my coffee, and it didn’t take long before the coffee price went back up and the vendor pocketed the difference. Retail prices tend to gravitate to round numbers, meaning that VAT cuts need to be substantial to be worthwhile.

If Ed Balls concentrated his VAT cut on the regions that are not getting a house building boost, then he’d probably be able to double the size of the VAT cut. In simple terms, let’s imagine the counties in north of England have their VAT reduced to 10%.

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Labour history uncut: Mac the knife

19/04/2013, 03:31:53 PM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

“The Liberals must be… destroyed,” declared Ramsay Macdonald, stroking a white cat.

Ok, perhaps not that dramatic, nevertheless it was Ramsay Macdonald’s electoral goal. Labour’s leader had a clear plan of action for 1923. He intended to show the public that Labour was a respectable party, the sort that one day might even make a serene transition into actual, proper government.

To do that, first he had to establish his party as the alternative to the Tories. In a British electoral system that only really had room for two parties, that meant the Liberals had to go.

Oddly, the Liberals didn’t seem to disagree.

They had obliged by splitting into two warring factions under Lloyd George and Asquith. True, there were now moves to broker a reunification under Asquith’s leadership, but rather than a passionate and heartfelt reunion this was an attempt to stay together for the sake of the children. It was all awkward silences and icy stares over dinner.

Margot Asquith reads a scary story for the kids, entitled, "The strange death of Liberal England"

Liberals regularly defied the whip, voting against each other on a range of motions. Meanwhile an aged Asquith seems to have given up trying to lead his party now that sticking it to Lloyd George wasn’t an available option.

It looked like Macdonald couldn’t fail.

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The last few weeks have shown politics at its worst: tribal, divisive and ugly

18/04/2013, 07:00:22 AM

by Peter Watt

Sometimes politics is a noble and even beautiful pursuit where words can capture a moment and inspire. Just think of Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 or any one of a number of Churchill’s wartime orations.

Then there are political decisions that become once in a generation moments that end up uniting most of the country like the decision to go to war in 1939 or to create a National Health Service in its aftermath.

Other decisions remain more controversial but can still be seen as being decisive moments like the decision to join the EEC, the privatisation program of the 1980’s or the second Iraq war. The point is that over the years politics has mattered because it involved inspiration and decisions being taken that mattered even if they were opposed.

But in the last few years it has felt that politics has mattered less and less. Partly this is because the world has changed so that politics seems to have less influence than say global big business or the seemingly uncontrollable economic forces.

And partly it is the advent of the information age where the internet and social media has fragmented the sense of a shared experience. The reality is that you can set your “virtual preferences” so that you can simply block that which is of little interest or irrelevant.

But politics itself also has to bear some responsibility. In recent months, in addition to being seen as irrelevant, politics has also been ugly. And that ugliness will have served to further drive a wedge between them-and-us; between the tiny band of political warriors and the majority more interested in fuel prices, the security of their family and Gangnam style on YouTube.

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