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What about the deficit Ed?

04/10/2012, 07:00:26 AM

by Peter Watt

I didn’t see “the speech” as I was working. I experienced it through the lens of twitter as I journeyed home from work at about 7pm. The general consensus several hours after Ed had finished speaking seemed to be that it was a virtuoso performance with even fierce critics saying that the conference hall loved it. I actually didn’t see any of the performance until the 10pm news and the clips that I saw seemed pretty good to me. What’s more, the faithful clearly loved it and the professional commentators either loved it or accepted that Ed had looked prime ministerial.

Wednesday morning’s radio and newspaper reports continued in this vein with Ed being lauded both for the performance and for the political positioning. One nation Labour was seen as a clever and bold move that achieved two things. Firstly it moved Labour tanks onto the Tory lawn. And secondly it was a useful way of packaging Ed’s central message. As he said in his post speech email to members:

“That means a one nation banking system: banks that work for all of us, not gamble our savings in casino operations. It means a one nation skills system: a gold standard of vocational education which leads to many more apprenticeships which give opportunities to those who don’t go to university as well as those who do.

It means building a one nation economy with rules that encourage long-term investment. It means keeping the United Kingdom together, making immigration work for everybody and recognising that at the moment it does not, and standing up for the values of the NHS.”

And, as someone who has written about the need for a vision and for Ed to work hard at being “prime ministerial” I am delighted. Throw in the fact that Ed’s most effective attack lines were on governmental incompetence rather than on usual banal “nasty Tory” nonsense and I couldn’t have wanted for much more!

I know that others have said that it was policy light and that it didn’t actually say much. But to be honest I think that at this stage of the game being seen as a credible potential PM and offering a bit of vision is more important than the odd policy. Of course it was just one speech and was hardly watched by anyone. But it will have increased Ed’s confidence, the Labour party’s confidence in him and will have unsettled an already wobbling Tory Party. All in all, not a bad days work!

And the consequence of all of this is that the media will begin to take the prospect of prime minister Miliband seriously. They will therefore begin to look more closely. Here is the thing that team Miliband need to watch. It is the one thing that he definitely didn’t mention in his speech. In fact it has hardly been mentioned in Manchester at all.

The deficit.

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Conference Notebook

04/10/2012, 02:30:17 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Ed Miliband knocked it out of the park with a speech that had delegates whooping with delight and assembled hacks starting to concede that Labour could be back in the game. Ed put in a similarly assured and fizzing performance at the gala dinner later that night flanked by stars from Coronation Street. But while we all have our spring in our step, no one is under any illusion that we still have a long hard journey ahead.

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My nose for sniffing out conference floor controversies hasn’t let me down. As I thought, Tuesday’s CAC report was almost voted down with Unite supporting the ‘reference back.’ Smartly, conference managers have now agreed to table the emergency resolution from the TSSA and so avoiding the embarrassment of conference not agreeing to the proposed timetable for the day’s proceedings. The swift turnaround from the CAC was sensible theoretically if the report had been voted down a new one would have had to be drawn up delaying the start of conference business on the day of the leader’s speech.

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Every year at conference I see old friends in the bar who I only ever catch up with at conference. It’s like an old family reunion. Last night delegates were delighted that as well as the usual mix of journalists, MPs, shadow cabinet members and so on, we were also joined by Hugh Grant. Councillors and prospective politicians queued up for photos many of which will no doubt, unbeknownst to Hugh, feature prominently on individual election leaflets next year.

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Conference is alive with rumour and gossip of famous names who may or may not be seeking parliamentary selection in the near future. This week we’ve seen more of Labour’s new generation of parliamentary candidates selected in marginal constituencies. Battleground seats like Burton, Lincoln, Harlow, Hastings and Norwich to name just a handful of places that have already selected impressive campaigners fighting hard. Norwich’s Jessica Asato had the smart idea to tour conference with a bucket to raise funds to oust Chloe Smith. That woman will go far but if all candidates follow her lead conference will become even more expensive.

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Labour friends of Pakistan is well attended by Labour MPs all of whom get to say a few words. Rosie Winterton the chief whip walks in and is quickly ushered up to the platform to make a key note address. Not expecting this she tells us that as chief whip she is supposed to remain silent though she’s pleased to have temporarily escaped her advisors who try to keep her under control. The advisors of course have nothing to worry about unlike their counterparts in the government chief whip’s office.

Jon Ashworth is Labour MP for Leicester South and an opposition whip

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A pretty good conference Ed, but neglect your party at your peril

03/10/2012, 02:40:32 PM

by Rob Marchant

It’s been a pretty good conference. It started on Sunday with both Miliband and Balls saying sensible, pleasingly non-contradictory things on splitting the banks and a bottom-up spending review (if only Harriet Harman had got the memo).

If we merely smile patiently at Len McCluskey’s “throw out the Blairites” sabre-rattling, and nod appreciatively at Miliband’s firmness in rebutting them, there was really only one cloud on Sunday’s horizon: the mad decision – for it is difficult to describe it as anything else – by the party to extend the quotas in its already-contorted selection processes for MPs. A bewildered delegate might have been forgiven for having missed the part where it was proven beyond doubt that their usually painfully right-on party was systematically trying to block gay, disabled and working class people from being candidates. But more of that later.

Balls on Monday was on good form, doing everything in his power to look like a Brown Mk I Iron Chancellor rather than a flare-wearing tax-and-spender from the 70s: perhaps less policy specifics than we might like, but a solid, combative performance nevertheless.

Then yesterday there was the very smart enlisting of Seb Coe to spread a bit of Olympic love, with the added benefit of leaving an impression that was centrist, non-partisan and statesmanlike. And finally there was the speech. It could have been a repeat of last year’s conference: a much-mocked, divisive and rather inward-looking speech – it wasn’t. Yes, it was occasionally cheesy, but it was a Miliband far more at ease with himself. He isn’t great with a teleprompter, but he really was without notes.

It was a speech which reached out to country rather than party; which tapped the Danny Boyle moment of the Olympics opening ceremony; and which rather effectively rubbed salt in Cameron’s wounds. It was the speech of a man who has woken up halfway into a parliamentary term and realised that if he is serious about winning, then he needs to, er, get serious about winning.

It was low on policy, admittedly, and that could yet be a problem – the next one will be eighteen months from an election. But it was a hugely more assured delivery, and that counted for a lot. Most of all, with its blue background, its quoting of Disraeli and its one nation theme – the imagery all screamed “centre ground”, a clear pre-requisite for looking like a prime minister.

After all, as Paul Richards cleverly noted, Disraeli is what Miliband wants to be – a British, Jewish PM.

At last: the penny-drop realisation of what many of us have been patiently repeating for the last two years: you do not have to be a quasi-Tory to believe that it is essentially Tory, and not Liberal, switchers who will win Labour an election. A very good speech, and perhaps even a great one.

In fact, the whole conference nicely gave the lie to what the Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh said about Miliband’s party on Monday morning: that it was “irrelevant, pointless and doomed”. But, two-and-a-half years in, where does that all leave us? In good shape, or is it true that, as Matthew Norman suggests, our “half-time lead counts for nothing”?

Well, yes and no. We are in the game now whereas, a year ago, we really weren’t. But if you want to be prime minister, you need to cover a few bases. You need a credible policy programme. A credible front bench team behind you. An electoral machine capable of maximising your support in the country. And people need to be able to connect with you, visualise you as Prime Minister, but even that can be worked on (it’s practice, like everything: Harold Wilson, who became renowned for his wit, was famously “not funny” as a junior politician).

But there is a but,. Kavanagh was quite right about one thing: the state of his party is one of the biggest things which stands between Miliband and Number 10, if only he could see it. All the others he is aware of, and mostly trying to address. But not this.

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Ed Miliband’s speech was a political sugar rush that will have minimal lasting impact

03/10/2012, 11:17:52 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Last night Labour party conference was euphoric. Like a child that had just downed a can of full fat coke, the party was humming with nervous, happy energy. Across the bars and receptions the leader’s speech had energised conference.

It was certainly an assured performance. Ed Miliband looked relaxed and spoke in a way people could understand. No abstract flights of theoretical fancy or harping on about capitalism. His address was personal and defined by genuinely impressive delivery. To speak for an hour without notes, with the nation’s media waiting for any hint of a misstep, was a significant achievement.

But, for all the positivity, there was a problem: the content. Conference might have been swept away by the performance, and many journalists might have been similarly dazzled, but as the sugar rush subsides, what was the Labour leader actually saying?

There was no discernible over-arching narrative spanning the hour plus of his words. A “One Nation” motif, yes; a structured argument? No. Plenty of neat phrases yet nothing substantive in terms of policy. There was no detail to illustrate the broader points that would actually give the watching public any idea of what a Labour government would actually do.

Most importantly, the Labour leader didn’t address the fundamental problem that means the party is marginalised on the economy.

Based on this speech, the Miliband analysis is that recession and a rising deficit has almost neutralised the issue. The Tories have failed in their express mission – to reduce the deficit – and Labour’s narrative on growth will carry the day. A steady as she goes approach.

It is a critical misreading of the public mood.

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Conference Notebook

02/10/2012, 05:24:06 PM

by Jon Ashworth

Ed Balls wowed conference with a barnstormer of a speech ripping apart the government’s economic credentials. With increased levels of borrowing to pay for the failure of their policy, delegates know Osborne is increasingly the weak link in this Tory government. It was all vintage stuff from Ed who is fast becoming one of our strongest conference platform performers.

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While it seems the back room fixers have helped find “consensus” on the various union composites, there are minor rumblings about the scheduling of an emergency motion tabled by the TSSA. The Conference Arrangements Committee who effectively keep the conference decision making machinery ticking over present the CAC report every morning outlining the timings for day. Some delegates attempt reference back which is defeated – just. Luckily for me I don’t have to worry about CAC reference backs anymore, but this looks like one for conference aficionados to keep a beady eye on.

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The conference book shop appears to be doing brisk trade with memoirs of messrs Straw and Hain flying off the shelf. While both tomes are on my reading list I’m mostly looking forward to reading ‘The Clockwinder Who Wouldn’t Say No’ the biography of the late Leicestershire MP David Taylor by Paul Flynn. I didn’t know David well but I knew he was a hugely principled politician and is who hugely missed in Leicestershire and beyond. We need more like him in politics.

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There is real vibrancy and dynamism on the fringe with big idea being debated with gusto. Jon Cruddas, as you would expect is a popular draw, but my top tip is Lisa Nandy who spoke morning and passionately at the packed Labour Friends of Palestine meeting. That women has stamina, speaking at something like 20 fringe events including one on social media where she had the cheek along with Tom Watson to criticise my ‘dreary’ tweeting. I hope Labour Uncut tweeters will rush my defence….

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Advice for Ed: Ed needs to get in touch with his inner red neck

02/10/2012, 11:36:43 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Raymond Geuss – writing, incidentally, in a book with a cover so starkly evocative that it is almost worth buying for the cover alone – is right about one thing:

“Politics is a craft or a skill, and ought precisely not to be analysed, as Plato’s Socrates assumes, as the mastery of a set of principles or theories. This does not imply that political agents do not use theories. Rather, part of their skill depends on being able to choose skilfully which models of reality to use in a certain context, and to take account of the ways in which various theories are limited and ways in which they are useful or fail. The successful exercise of this skill is often called ‘political judgment’.”

He is, however, wrong about another:

“Any society has a tendency to try to mobilise human inertia in order to protect itself as much as possible from radical change, and one main way in which this can be done is through the effort to impose the requirement of ‘positivity’ or ‘constructiveness’ on potential critics: you can’t criticise the police system, the system of labour law, the organisation of health services, etc., unless you have a completely elaborated, positive alternative to propose. I reject this line of argument completely.”

This might suffice for agitators and academics, but not, ultimately, for someone who wishes to succeed in becoming prime minister.

What this series of blogs have offered are interpretations of theory, what Ed Miliband needs to make the most of party conference is political judgment. Nonetheless, theory, and the policy conclusions to which this theory leads, should be mastered by aspirant prime ministers.

It might seem absurd that someone could ascend to the highest office in the UK without deep reflection upon the country that they will lead, the theory that provides their lodestars and the point on the horizon where this country and these lodestars might meet. Oddly enough, though, the current occupant and arguably every prime minister since Thatcher has not really known why they were there, at least not when they first arrived in Downing Street. Even Thatcherism, as I’ve heard Lord Stewart Wood say at seminars, acquired coherence in retrospect that it did not have in 1979.

Miliband has grey matter to rival all these prime ministers. But it would be delusional to conclude that the lacking of animating mission displayed by these prime ministers is a consequence of their stupidity (though, it may partly be a consequence of them spending more time sharpening their elbows than thinking). What this recent history tells us is that it is a tough job devising and implementing a national mission.

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Advice for Ed: Celebrate the best of British business as well as criticising the worst

02/10/2012, 06:00:35 AM

by Paul Crowe

One of the defining moments of the 2010 general election came when the Tories unveiled their letter from business leaders backing their cut to national insurance (NI) contributions.

It was the ultimate dividing line for economic competence: on one side was a parade of Britain’s commercial leaders, on the other a Labour prime minister, isolated and unsupported.

The issue at hand was irrelevant. A small cut to national insurance contributions was not going to make any difference to the economy given the depth of problems, but the symbolism was catastrophic for Labour. It’s hard to claim to have the answer to revitalising the economy when Britain’s captains of industry are uniformly saying “no you don’t mate.”

There are many flaws with British business and no one would claim that a series of self-interested chief executives, eager to reduce their payroll costs, have a monopoly on the truth for economic revival. But it is a powerful image to voters in the heat of a general election campaign: for those responsible for some of this country’s biggest high street brands to be criticising Labour so publically.

It was a return to the bad old days of the 1980s when to be in business meant being a Tory.

I run a business and in my day to day work I deal with a variety of board members across many companies, large, medium and small. Politics isn’t at the top of most businessmen and women’s list of concerns, the general view is that this is a global recession and it is the global economy that will determine our future.

But, on those occasions when discussion does turn to domestic politics, it does not make for happy listening for a Labour party member.

Today’s Labour party is seen as resolutely anti-business. There is general uncertainty about our commitment to tackle the deficit and some very specific fears about the party’s eagerness to believe the worst about business; to regulate, to break-up and to tax.

In terms of our support in business, Labour certainly hasn’t improved since the election in 2010 and if anything is now in a worse position.

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Time to get off Tony Blair’s foreign policy bendy bus

01/10/2012, 05:00:35 PM

by Jonathan Todd

I’ve tried to watch West Wing but, pace Westminster, always found it too hackneyed to endure. It may be an equally unutterable thing to say, at least within the beltway, but Armando Iannucci’s the Thick of It is becoming tired and predictable.

While we may be too gushing in our praise for Malcolm Tucker et al, Iannucci’s Time Trumpet never got the recognition it deserved or – in a case, given that Iannucci is one of the writers of Alan Partridge, of life imitating art – a second series.

Time Trumpet is a spoof documentary that purports to look back on 2007 from 2031. Tony Blair features near the start of the first episode. Iannucci’s commentary says:

“And we look back at this madman and how he ended up 20 years later dementedly wandering round the bins of downtown Baghdad.”

A dishevelled chap, the Blair of 2027, then appears and mumbles to himself:

“Further down the bendy bus, have your money ready please.”

All of which may be offensive to Blair and his most ardent supporters. While I am a Blair fan – he is, after all, the longest serving Labour prime minister ever, responsible for a tremendous amount of positive change – I cannot stop myself finding Time Trumpet hilarious.

We shouldn’t take ourselves or our heroes too seriously. And nor should we think our heroes beyond reproach.

We should – more than five years after he ceased to be party leader – be capable of having a mature debate about Blair. In some senses, this debate has already been had. Hopi Sen is right that it is Gordon Brown’s time as leader, rather than Blair’s, that has been under scrutinised and debated within the party.

However, debate about Blair has often generated more heat than light. Calm consideration has been particularly lacking around one part of Blair’s legacy in particular, a part that the Labour Party continues to live in the shadows of, foreign policy.

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Time for policy in the pub with the Guardian’s Michael White

01/10/2012, 02:46:37 PM

How is your conference going? Seen the speeches? Bit on the long side sometimes aren’t they.

Here’s the antidote: policy in the pub. Pragmatic Radicalism are bringing their unique version of a policy slam to Labour conference. The format is simple: 20 speakers have just 90 seconds to speak on a policy proposal of their choice, followed by two minutes of Q&A.

At the end of the session there is a vote for the top policy, prizes and the winner will go on to set out their idea in all it’s glory in an article right here, in the hallowed pixels of Labour Uncut.

Yes, wow indeed.

The fun kicks off at 6pm at the Lass O’Gowrie pub 36 Charles Street, Manchester M1 7DB with Michael White, assistant editor of the Guardian, in the chair, keeping the show on the road. Last year this was one of the best attended fringes at conference so get there early.

Policy, Michael White and a pub: what’s not to like?

See you at the Lass.

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Conference Notebook

01/10/2012, 01:19:30 PM

by Jon Ashworth

An eminent philosopher gave us an exhilarating, thought provoking and at times brain aching lecture on the floor of Conference yesterday. It was certainly a departure from the usual Sunday Conference afternoon though I concede the jury is still out on twitter as to whether it succeeded. But it was definitely popular in the hall. Just fancy, a party Conference discussing big ideas, whatever next?

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For ten years I spent the Sunday evening of conference locked in soul destroying conference rooms in, often, soul destroying compositing meetings. Usually these gatherings would go on till the early hours of Monday morning but I’m told this year they were all done and dusted in a few hours, it was never like that in my day!

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Freed from any need to be in an arid room trying to hammer out a political compromise, I’m able to explore the Sunday night receptions. Deciding to give the rival Compass and Progress rallies a miss I head to Labour Friends of India where I’m joined by many friends and colleagues from Leicester. Brent MP Barry Gardner excels as the compere without compare and I get the chance to say a few words. Sadiq Khan joins us and tells an anecdote about a senior shadow cabinet member who addressed this gathering a few years ago with the opening line “it’s great to be here at Labour Friends of Israel…” Moments later a shadow cabinet member arrives to address us and makes the same mistake.

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