Uncut « Labour Uncut

An open letter to Ken Livingstone

08/03/2012, 01:00:47 PM

by Jonathan Roberts

Dear Ken,

I write as a Labour party and trade union member. I have spent many evenings in dusty, cold community centres with left of centre colleagues arguing over the minutes of last month’s branch meetings. I have walked more miles than I care to remember on the Labour doorstep. I have stuffed so many envelopes that I feel as though I’ve single-handedly kept my postman in employment.

I do it because I believe Labour values can help people. But I am not, now, doing any of these things for you.

Your supporters will say I’m disloyal to the Labour Party, but don’t seem to mind you campaigning against our candidate in Tower Hamlets.

Your supporters cheered you when you called tax avoiders “rich bastards”, but they don’t seem to mind the £50,000 you have allegedly avoided yourself.

Your supporters criticise Boris Johnson as a “part time Mayor” for churning out a weekly article for the Telegraph, but they don’t seem to mind that you were an MP and a writer for the Independent during substantial parts of your own Mayoral tenure.

Your supporters sing about how you speak the truth, but don’t seem to mind how independent fact-checking organisations regularly describe your claims as “fiction”.

Your supporters were delighted when you announced you would reintroduce the EMA for London, giving hope to thousands of kids, but they don’t seem to mind that the Mayor has no power to reintroduce EMA at all. Nor do they seem to mind you making a promise you knew full well you would be unlikely to deliver on.

But do you know what Ken? I mind. I do. Your relentless cynicism and negativity is matched only by your hypocrisy. And I mind all three.

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Mould appearing in the rose garden

08/03/2012, 08:00:54 AM

by Peter Watt

When the Tory Lib-Dem Coalition was formed, I remember the then hopeful Labour voices saying that it wouldn’t or couldn’t last. That the internal contradictions would bring it down. But David and Nick were cleverer than that. They agreed a shared programme for government, rules for managing disagreement and a divvying up of jobs. And not only that, but they also passed the Parliament act 2010, that for all intents and purposes bound them together until the formal start of the next general election, 2015. And the truth was that Labour didn’t have a clue what to do about it or what to say to attack it.

Labour said that it was a Tory lead government propped up by hypocritical Fib Dems. They taunted the government for its disagreements and obvious internal tensions. But the public weren’t bothered by all that. On the contrary, they looked at the “rows” and instead saw two parties coming together in the national interest trying to cooperate. Because the glue that bound the government together was the deficit. The public understood that they didn’t both agree on everything, but despite that they were prepared to put that aside to help dig the country out of a hole; a financial hole that Labour had dug. And that was pretty much how the story has run since the love in the rose garden.

Of course there have been difficulties: the AV referendum, student finance and almost every word uttered by Vince Cable have all put tension on the partner’s relationship. And Nick Clegg must be pretty miffed that he seems to have taken more than his share of the personal popularity pain, while David Cameron remains, well, prime ministerial. But dealing with the deficit and a sense of sink or swim together has kept the show on the road.

Because the deficit and its reduction is a very necessary policy objective, it is not a political cause. In other words, it is not a story that tells of the sort of country that you want to deliver. And perversely this has been useful up until now as the two parties would almost certainly not have been able to agree on what the story would be. And anyway the public have not been worried about any lack of a visionary story. On the contrary, they have just wanted to be reassured that their government was doing all that it could to avoid Britain becoming Greece. Deficit reduction may not have been a compelling story, but who needs a story when you’re worried that the banks will run out of money?

But just recently there have been signs, just signs, of a growing tension at the heart of government. And at its heart, this increase in tension between the partners is caused by this lack of a shared vision. Because deficit fatigue is kicking in for the public. It doesn’t mean that they don’t care about it anymore because they do. It’s just that it has been said so often that it has almost become meaningless.

Saying that you are in favour of reducing the deficit is like saying that you are in favour of motherhood. Who isn’t? Oh there are arguments about how fast and all that. But no one is seriously saying that we shouldn’t reduce the deficit. So instead people are focusing on the quality of their lives, the price of goods and the security of their jobs. And the political strategists know that they quickly need to start telling a story that addresses these fears and hopes about the future.

And so that is forcing the arguments out into the open about what sort of country that the coalition wants to see. How big and how active should the state be? Who should pay what and how much into the national coffers? What is the best way to create growth? What is the relationship between the public and private sectors? And inevitably the cracks have begun to open as we have seen this week in the run up the budget. Arguments about a mansion tax, the 50p tax rate and the break-up of RBS.

The tensions inherent in the coalition are there for all to see as outriders from both parties take to the airwaves to promote one view or the other. And more and more often we are seeing MPs from one coalition party condemning the other party. Presumably this will only get worse as we enter the latter half of the parliament. The cooperative strength of the early days of the coalition could quickly become a weakness caused by splits and indecision. There does still seem to be a strong relationship between the big four in the Cabinet (Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander). And it does seem more likely than not that the Coalition will soldier on. But it also looks like it is quickly going to become an uncomfortable partnership.

So Labour has an opportunity to begin to tell its own story as the tensions within the coalition slowly simmer. But only if it is able to begin to tell its own credible story about the sort of country that they want to see. And only if they remember that people’s deficit fatigue does not mean that Labour have won the argument and that in fact people still blame Labour for causing it.*

*Even if Labour thinks that that is unfair.

Peter Watt was general secretary of the Labour party.

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A trip to Stockholm for London Labour

07/03/2012, 01:00:22 PM

by Rob Marchant

This week’s revelations about Ken Livingstone’s tax affairs are not shocking. They are not even very surprising. But they are important in another sense: in the direct contradiction they highlight between word and deed.

Now, as many readers of Labour Uncut will know, its contributors are not generally renowned as class warriors. But, as a politician, it is simply staggeringly unwise to show yourself in the light that Livingstone has just done. As Nick Cohen notes in the Observer:

“Livingstone…is now the champion of the suffering 99% and enemy of the despised 1%. “Cameron’s problem is too many of his team have become super-rich by exploiting every tax fiddle,” he cried. ‘No one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in our parliament, unless they are paying their full share of tax.’ He was talking about himself.'”

Let’s be clear: tax avoidance is not tax evasion. It is not illegal. Some people may even call it smart financial management. But don’t tell everyone it is morally reprehensible and then do it yourself. It’s not the tax avoidance itself, it’s the hypocrisy that will kill you, because people will cease to believe that you do not simply think that it’s one rule for you and another for everyone else. Or that you tell one thing to one person, and another to another

Livingstone’s 1999 failure to be endorsed by Labour’s NEC as its mayoral candidate was, frankly, badly handled. Unlike other countries where regional devolution has a long history, Labour was too green to realise that there are limits to how much you can get a regional politician to toe the party line. They have their own electoral base and can merely pay lip-service to the party, while doing just as they like. As Ken duly did, and as Boris is now doing. Fair enough.

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Gay rights and testy cardinals: respect and tolerance is a two-way street

07/03/2012, 08:00:24 AM

by Kevin Meagher

In case anyone failed to notice, Cardinal Keith O’Brien does not mince his words. The leader of the Scottish Catholic church (and until the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nicholls is given his biretta, the UK’s highest-ranking Catholic), believes the concept of gay marriage is an attempt to “redefine reality,” a “madness” and “grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right”.

Wow, all that came from a single paragraph in his piece in the Sunday Telegraph, setting out his position fairly unequivocally ahead of an imminent government consultation on extending civil marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

But aren’t the rights of a gay couple already well-enshrined in the civil partnership legislation, as the cardinal also points out? Why, then, the push to rebrand it as marriage?

Ah, but this is an issue about parity of esteem, comes the response. Love and commitment – regardless of sexuality – deserves respect and equality. So is this a rather overblown argument about the definition of a single word? On the face of it, yes, but, as ever, what lies behind this rumpus is more significant.

This is just the latest skirmish is a much wider conflagration between faith and politics which is now raging. It is a cold war too, fought using proxies; this time it is gay marriage, next time it will be something else. The fighting is often disproportionately fierce, and, like the Little Endians and Big Endians in Gulliver’s Travels, fought over seemingly esoteric issues.

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The Labour party’s double standards on all women short-lists

06/03/2012, 07:00:01 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Last week Ben Cobley wrote for Uncut about all women shortlists. It wasn’t a reactionary rant. He wasn’t dressed in a batman costume, sitting at the top of Big Ben when he wrote it. The tone was measured and the points reasoned.

While most comment, on both sides of the discussion was similarly nuanced, some of the responses were pavlovian, at best. Little effort to engage with what had been written, just a standard rehearsal of long established positions.

Yesterday, Luke Akehurst gave us one of the better versions of the conventional case for AWS over at Labour List.

In theory, I should support what Luke is saying.

I believe in all women shortlists. I see the logic of why AWS is needed – a second best solution in a third best world. And not enough has been achieved to achieve greater women’s representation. 81 female Labour MPs out of a parliamentary Labour party of 258 still leaves Labour nearly 50 MPs short of achieving equality.

But Luke and similar defenders of AWS lose me.

In his piece, Ben raises the rhetorical question – why only shortlists for women? Surely the same logic could be applied to other groups?

He’s right.

Ben is consistent in the way he draws his conclusions. All types of discrimination are wrong, therefore preferential shortlists should be ended.

If only the official party line, which backs positive action to tackle inequality, were similarly rigorous.

For of all those who manned (so to speak) the barricades in defence of AWS, equality seems to stop at gender. Zero discussion about ethnic minority or disabled communities. Equality is a principle worth fighting for, but not worth applying equally.

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Whip’s Notebook: Top down NHS reorganisations, Hulk Hogan and Oliver Letwin

05/03/2012, 07:00:22 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Last week the leader of the House of Commons and lord privy seal Sir George Young (who by the way reads my posts for Labour Uncut or at least his special advisers do and then lets him know if I say anything interesting) announced the likely date for the Queens Speech.

Get your diaries out because the next Gracious Address is set to be May 9^th.It didn’t come as much of a surprise to Labour MPs as Politics Home’s brilliant Paul Waugh revealed weeks ago. But MPs are always the last to hear these things anyway.

It means we will have had one of the longest parliamentary sessions on record even though we’ve hardly been scrutinising any legislation at all in the Commons in recent months. Instead we’ve been spending our time on innumerable backbench business debates with countless one line whips. All important stuff of course but rather odd when you consider we are elected to be legislators and we’ve not been doing much actual legislating.

Take the controversial Health and Social Care Bill. So despite it being one of the biggest issues in my postbag (actually inbox, nearly everything I get is by email but us MPs like to say “postbag”) and I suspect colleagues’ postbags (inbox) too, MPs have only had the opportunity to debate this monstrous bill in recent weeks because Andy Burnham tabled an opposition motion on the NHS Risk Register and asked what’s known as an urgent question on Nick Clegg’s health amendments as well last week.

So effectively Andrew Lansley in recent weeks has only come to the Commons to defend his policies because Labour has forced him to. Last month at health questions, genuine Lib Dem rebel Andrew George had a question on the order paper asking the Secretary of State whether he would withdraw the Health and Social Care Bill. Did Mr Lansley step up to answer it? No his loyal deputy Simon Burns was sent into the breach instead. “Frit” was the inevitable heckle from the more boisterous Labour MPs.

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What is Labour’s message on public service reform?

02/03/2012, 08:00:03 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Step back for a moment. There’s lots going on in politics with the welfare and health reform debates raging, and it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture. Now, ask yourself this question :– what’s Labour’s narrative on the Tories?

What is the common thread that runs through Labour’s positions on these two issues; ties them together and explains to voters why the Tories are wrong.

In politics it’s easy to lurch from issue to issue and get sucked into the detail of the day to day battle. Like a primary school game of football there’s a scrum of politicos, journalists, bloggers and tweeters charging around the Westminster pitch en masse chasing the day’s story.

But out there in the real world, voters aren’t players in the micro-drama of news cycle politics. They aren’t interested in the minutiae that concerns the political class, life’s too short. They are spectators, with at best a passing interest in the game on the pitch.

The majority will have opinions on issues like health or welfare reform but what matters most is how a party’s various policies combine in a to give a clear idea of what they stand for, and equally importantly, why the other side are the wrong choice.

The big picture.

So back to the question, what’s Labour’s narrative to frame the Tory picture?

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Your chance to help stop legal loan sharking

01/03/2012, 12:00:57 PM

by Stella Creasy

Legal loan sharks are the Japanese knotweed in Britain’s consumer credit market. These invasive companies flourish by exploiting the demand for credit from families who find their incomes squeezed by the rising cost of living, wage freezes and unemployment and so are forced to borrow to make ends meet.

The government’s refusal to act against this industry means Britain is fertile ground for their loans at interest rates which can run to 16,000%. Yes you read that decimal point correctly.

In the payday loan world, offering money without credit checks, without advertising the costs and without any responsibility for the consequences is common place. When it comes to these companies, the impact of the extortionate rates they charge on the people they lend to comes second place to the profits they can make.

The chief executive of Wonga paid himself £1.6m last year, whilst Provident Financial posted a pre-tax profit of £162m in the year Britain went back into recession. As quickly as regulators try to address poor practices, another firm springs up ready to benefit from Britain’s dubious honour of being one of the few countries in the world where there is no limit on what you can charge for credit.

For nearly two years I’ve been calling for Britain to introduce total cost caps on the charges these firms can levy, putting a ceiling on the amount any loan could mount up to and giving consumers respite from the spiral of debt these firms can create. Twice now the government has voted against such measures, but as the evidence grows of the damage this is causing to millions of Britons they need us to not flinch from seeking every chance we can to make progress in championing the case for better regulation of these companies.

Such a moment of opportunity is upon us again.

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Workfare: fair work with a clear benefit

01/03/2012, 08:00:37 AM

by Peter Watt

Once again Labour has discovered its self-destructive sense of self-righteousness. It seems that sometimes we really can’t help ourselves. This time the issue is workfare where some in the party seem determined to reinforce the image of Labour as the party of the workshy.

But let’s get real. We need to start being honest and stop sending mixed messages. We have said that we are in favour of supporting people into work and of investing in supporting the long-term unemployed. We have said that we support reforming the welfare system so that welfare is not a lifestyle choice. And we have said that we must support hard working families who are struggling as costs go up. But then we go and spoil it by seeming to take pleasure in attacking companies who agree to take on the unemployed as part of a package of back to work support.

But “hang on”, I hear you say. Of course we oppose workfare. It makes people work for nothing. It compels people to work against their will. It allows bloated profit makers to exploit poor people as they don’t have to pay them for their work. And it forces people who would otherwise have to be paid out of a job. Quite frankly we might as well put the unemployed in orange boiler suits, spray “soap-dodger” on their back and make them dig ditches.

Except of course it isn’t true. (more…)

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Where is Labour’s Steve Hilton?

29/02/2012, 01:20:18 PM

by Peter Goddard

“We need a new brand.”

It’s a question marketers often dread from a customer. This is because, nine times out of ten, what they are really asking for is a new logo, a strapline and a colour scheme.

This is not a brand. Marty Neumeier in The Brand Gap defines a brand as “A person’s gut feeling about a product, service or company,” which is as good a definition as any.

Because the brand is, in fact, this relationship with the customer, it is vastly more likely to be the defined by a customer’s experience with your organisation than by your “look and feel”.

Of course, your logo is part of this. If your brand is your personality, your logos and straplines can be likened to your clothing. An outfit may be useful for forming a first impression, but eventually you will be judged by your actions.

This is something clearly understood by Steve Hilton, the nearest politics currently has to a new master of the dark arts since Peter Mandelson’s glide back into the shadows.

Hilton managed to turn around the popular view of the Conservatives as the nasty party and re-invent David Cameron as an electable prime minister. Whether it was hugging a hoodie, doing aid work in Africa or talking about “voting blue and going green”, something worked.

Enough voters changed their gut feeling about this Tory leader to put David Cameron in number ten.

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