Uncut « Labour Uncut

A chance to do the right thing

15/06/2011, 03:30:04 PM

by Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan and Jim Murphy

When the government does the right thing it is important that we support it, basing our judgement at all times on actions and not words. We are dismayed at the government’s decision, announced yesterday, to abolish the chief coroner’s office (CCO), a decision with damaging consequences for ordinary people up and down the country. We hope the government’s new-found capacity to listen will soon again be on show.

Legislation in 2009 received cross-party support in establishing a CCO, seeking to deal with some of the difficult issues that arise from complex fatalities through a system based on independent expertise. Tragically, it’s often military inquests which require such a service and this is therefore an issue close to the heart of many bereaved military families. But it’s not just families of military personnel who suddenly suffer tragedy that brings them into contact with the coronial system. Abolition of the CCO is opposed by various charities and organisations including CRY (cardiac risk in the young), which supports bereaved families who have lost loved ones suddenly through undetected cardiac problems. Sue Ainsworth, whose son Jonathan tragically died suddenly at the age of 21 last year, has joined CRY in calling for the creation of the CCO, following failings in the inquest held into Jonathan’s death. Sue said:

“Currently, the coroner is not answerable to anybody so if there’s any delays, and any inequalities in the system, you have not got any comeback at all”.

The job of a chief coroner is to ensure that families and friends of all victims are sufficiently involved in the coroner’s investigation; improve training; add quality controls and independent safeguards on inquests; and add consistency of oversight, leadership, independence and expertise to the coroners who are dealing with military inquests.

Establishing such a system is a central obligation under the military covenant, the bond between the nation, the state and the services which says that no member of the service community, including dependents, should suffer disadvantage arising from service and that special provision should at times be made to reflect their sacrifices. That is why, in government, we legislated for a coroner’s office. Scrapping it undermines the covenant which the government claim to want to uphold. Indeed, the Royal British Legion has called this act “a betrayal of bereaved armed forces families and threatens the military covenant.” (more…)

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Commons sketch: PMQs

15/06/2011, 02:00:47 PM

by Dan Hodges

Ed Miliband arrived at PMQs with his leadership in crisis, his party in despair and his political fortunes at such a low ebb even his brother had been forced to leap to his defence. Poor David Cameron. He didn’t have a prayer.

It started well enough. He’d read Ed Miliband’s grafter’s speech. Graft? He’d show Ed Miliband and those feckless malingers how to graft. “Welfare costs are out of control”, he told Margot James. And he was going to put things right. There was a bill going through Parliament that very night that was going to take those work shy idlers and get them back down the chimneys were they belonged. Oh yes.

Ed Miliband rose. There was a huge cheer, from both Labour and Tory benches. The Labour benches prevailed. “He’s our leader”, they were saying. “How dare you attack him. That’s our job”.

For one heart-stopping moment, Ed paused. Had he finally cracked? Was this the end? “Screw it. David, you’re on”.

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Labour’s faerie weekend

15/06/2011, 01:16:55 PM

by Rob Marchant

It was a strange Midsummer Night’s Dream weekend. There seemed to be dark shadows of plots in every corner. The “Balls papers” of leaked memos reminded us that no-one plots quite like the Brownites; the ghost of David Miliband’s never-uttered leadership acceptance speech was rather unhelpfully leaked to the press, neatly exhuming the Miliband-fratricide stories. And the Labour body politic ended up starting the week a little jittery.

So jittery, in fact, that by Tuesday, and after Ed Miliband had made rather a good fist of pulling it all back together, our esteemed Uncut columnist, Dan Hodges, was still being accused of disloyalty for complimenting the party leader (work that one out if you will). I put it down to the faeries.

But through all this night gloom, we started to see some solid rays of realism gleaming through, in Ed’s Monday speech to the Coin Street neighbourhood centre in London. He even managed, with some success, to put down Sky’s John Craig for asking stupid questions.

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The dawn of hope?

14/06/2011, 04:09:12 PM

?by Nick Pearce

Ed Miliband used his speech yesterday to bring the contributory principle back into the heart of Labour thinking on welfare reform, which got Frank Field and Labour bloggers very excited.

Although the Labour leader didn’t mention it, it was fitting that he referred to the principle of contribution this year, since 2011 is the centenary of the great 1911 national insurance act, which brought in unemployment and sickness insurance (those were the days when a progressive alliance really did achieve bold reforms).

It is less clear, however, that the contributory principle can really serve to underpin a modernisation of the welfare state for the twenty first century. It only now covers around 10% of working age benefits, and it is being scaled back further under the government’s plans to cut employment support allowance.

Where it still has real purchase is in respect of the basic state pension, for which the earnings link has been restored. But even here fairness and equality for women have demanded an extension of the notion of contribution to cover caring activities, as well as work (while the government plans a single-tier flat rate state pension for which a contributory record would not strictly be necessary).

Moreover, it is not possible simply to withdraw public services or benefits for people who are in need. Children must be housed and educated, whatever their parents have done. Article 3 of the human rights act also places a floor under the welfare state, preventing people from suffering humiliating and degrading treatment through destitution.

Nonetheless, reciprocity is vital to public support for the welfare state and the strength of community solidarity. So Labour is not on the wrong track. But it needs to think about the notion of contribution in broader terms: not just to embrace caring and community activities, but to mean reciprocity across a range of services and entitlements, whether funded by general taxation, National insurance or hybrid state-private insurance policies. Social housing is an obvious candidate for reform in these terms, as Miliband intimated (although need as well as contribution must figure in social housing policy, and the supply of housing must be expanded regardless). Post-Dilnot, social care could become another. Other services – such as childcare – can be seen as part of the social contract, even if earned entitlement does not mediate access to them; after all, the NHS is hugely popular precisely because it guarantees universal access based on need, not worth or desert.

By talking about responsibility from top-to-bottom of society, Miliband has also refused to allow this debate to be focused on the poorest alone. While right-wing think-tanks and others want social justice to be reduced to what happens to an “underclass”, Labour’s leader is keeping the whole of society in view (on which I have more to say in the forthcoming edition of IPPR’s house journal). Quite right.

Nick Pearce is director of IPPR.

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Too many coups spoil the plot

14/06/2011, 08:13:16 AM

by Dan Hodges

As no one in the Labour party appears willing to admit their part in the plot to bring down Tony Blair, I’ll cough. I was up to my neck in it.

I briefed and span. Placed stories. Sowed seeds of confusion and dissent.

Ed Balls says he wasn’t involved. Fair enough. He was the only person outside Downing Street who wasn’t.

Westminster in the months after the 2005 election was like a murder mystery party at the Borgias. Febrile doesn’t come close. No one spoke above a whisper. A discreet alcove couldn’t be had for love nor money. I attended a friend’s marriage and an MP I’d been conspiring with was so terrified of being photographed next to me that he sprinted to the other end of the wedding line.

The Telegraph got excited about some scrawled notes and polling. They’d have had an embolism over the spread sheet that was floating around laying out a provisional “transition timetable” with a series of colour coded “waypoints” that need to be passed in order for Gordon Brown to become prime minister before the 2010 election. Or the breakdown of every Labour MP, identifying their perceived level of support or opposition, graded on a sliding scale. 1 was ultra loyal to Gordon. Tony Blair was a 5.

The catalyst for the final move against Blair was an interview Blair gave to the Times around the end of August, effectively claiming that Blair intended to “go on and on”. I remember because I was in the Rivington Grill in Greenwich (highly recommended), when my mobile went off, and a co-conspirator asked me to start tipping off hacks.

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Let’s capitalise on Tory twitching on the economy

13/06/2011, 01:00:05 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Public debt, said to be the consequence of Labour largesse, is the problem for the governing parties, and aggressive cutting the medicine. Labour contends that this remedy is too tough to close the deficit. As we recover from a global shock of 1929 proportions, slower cuts are required for strong enough growth to generate the tax revenues needed to achieve deficit closure. Lack of growth, as well as the deficit, is the problem targeted by Labour.

Are these well-established positions shifting?

Not as far as Labour is concerned. Some twitching can, however, be detected on the government side.

First, John Redwood wants an improved growth strategy. This is echoed by Liberal Democrat Mark Littlewood. This doesn’t mean the Tories and Liberal Democrats are about to concede, as Labour has protested, that they have no growth strategy. Since the formation of the government they have argued that the deficit needs to be addressed to retain the favour of bond markets and so control upward pressure on interest rates. They prefer this monetary stimulus to greater fiscal support. Yet the comments of Redwood and Littlewood are not insignificant. They acknowledge that the resources of the shrunken state could better target growth.

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Let’s stop fighting non-existent plots and let the leader lead

13/06/2011, 07:00:19 AM

by John Woodcock

The past has its part to play in politics, but the future is the only thing that really matters. This is our chance to show we get that far more than the people who want Labour to fail.

Working for then welfare secretary, John Hutton, I was passionate about Tony Blair’s drive to change the UK’s welfare and pension systems at a time when reform was difficult to sell. I gave my all when Gordon Brown asked me to work for him in Number Ten. I was a vocal supporter of David Miliband in the leadership contest. And before all that I walked David Blunkett’s dog when he was leader of Sheffield City Council and I was the son of one of his more left wing Labour councillors.

All of that helps to inform what I think today. But it is all history. Like so many thousands who want to change the world around them, we remain proud of the myriad of past allegiances developed over the years campaigning for Labour. But we are not defined by them.

Now, we are all part of a party focussed in its determination to support Ed Miliband, renew Labour’s offer to the British people and stand up for those suffering at the sharp end of aConservative economic policy that is selling future generations down the river.

I may not have put Ed first on the ballot paper in the leadership contest, but I am sure of one thing: he won a mandate to lead, and he is going to lead us as a united party into the next election.

Without plotters, wind-up stories about plots will not succeed (so long as people on our side do not fall into the trap of fighting phantoms – mounting a counter-attack against threats that just aren’t there).

So let’s all take responsibility for doing better; as Jim Murphy said yesterday, let’s roll up our sleeves, listen to our changing country, and work harder to think up the new ideas that will re-earn Labour’s right to claim and shape the centre ground of British politics.

Ed has already rightly identified the people any Labour party worthy of the name needs to speak up for: families in the middle who work hard, want to get on, and don’t want to see others get a free ride at their expense – whether at the top or the bottom of the income scale.

His speech today on that subject is important. We should do everything we can to enable it to get the hearing it deserves and give our leader the support he needs to follow it through. That focus on the future is our best bet to ensure the ambitions people have for their own lives are reflected in the ambitions for Britain we put forward at the next election.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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Ed Miliband is safe as houses, for now

10/06/2011, 02:00:35 PM

by Dan Hodges

True story. Last party conference before Iain Duncan-Smith is sent to sleep with the fishes. His senior aide is approached by a delegation of Tory grandees. “It’s over”, he’s told. “This is Iain’s last act as leader. You need to help us to help him. We are going to do this properly”.

The advisor is told to station thirty loyal supporters at strategic points around the conference hall. They are handed a copy of key passages from his speech. As soon as the passages are delivered they are to rise and start applauding. The conference will rise with them. The crown will be set down. But with dignity.

Except there’s a problem. Since the speech was distributed there have been amends. Sections have been adapted. Transposed. Duncan Smith begins his valedictory address. Within the first 15 seconds the first clap line appears. The acolytes rise. In moments the hall is on its feet.

The lost leader moves on to a new passage. This was supposed to be seven pages in. Now it is the second paragraph. Again, the cheerleaders rise. Again, so does the entire conference. The quiet man is turning up the volume.

He begins the third passage. It again includes one of the clap lines. The thirty are on their feet. Conference is on their feet. By now the Tory faithful are caught between a quandary and a frenzy. They are applauding every passage of note. How can they stop?

Iain Duncan-Smith received more than 20 standing ovations. Two weeks later he was history. The moral? When the Tories move against a leader, they move. They do it properly, even to the point of ensuring that their victim is allowed an open casket.

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Labour, the natural party of opposition

10/06/2011, 12:00:26 PM

by Dave Talbot

Right on cue, exactly six months into David Cameron’s premiership, the ancient British roar of “Tory scum” reverberated through Whitehall’s hallowed halls. In honour of the coalition’s deal on higher tuition fees, protesters spilled through Westminster’s streets to rediscover their hatred of the Tories once more. After almost 13 years of opposition and apathy, the Tories could once again hold their heads high – hated again. It was back to politics as usual. Labour prime ministers for the past 13 years were anomalies, you understand, and not to be repeated. No sir, the Conservatives are back.

That is a charicature, but the masked point is a serious one. The Conservatives are quite suited to power. Indeed, from 1911 to the present day, the Conservatives managed to keep Labour out of office for all but 33 of those years. Never underestimate the Conservatives and their desire for power – nor their capacity to acquire and hold it. They believe in their divine right to rule. When Cameron, Osborne and Co. state that grand old maxim of British politics -that the Conservatives are here to clear up after the misfortune of Labour government – they truly mean it. They unapologetically look at politics through the prism of power.

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Why Labour is not being heard on the economy

10/06/2011, 08:21:39 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Labour did a good thing last week.

On Sunday, Ed Balls re-launched his proposals for a £2bn tax on bankers’ bonuses to fund action on youth unemployment and a new house building programme.

Politically, the policy draws exactly the right dividing lines. Greedy bankers versus young unemployed and aspiring home-owners.

In economic terms, it focuses funds just where they are needed, helping reduce the costs of economic failure and getting the housing market moving again.

And by putting down amendments to the finance bill, Balls will ensure a parliamentary vote on the plan, giving the opportunity to pressure individual Tory and Lib Dem MPs and expose whose side they are really on.

The initiative has all the elements of a policy which could cut through the white noise of political debate to resonate with the public.

But it hasn’t.

Not that there was anything wrong with the proposals. Or the media coverage. The public just don’t seem to be listening, much as when the proposals were originally launched in March.

In his Q&A session at the GMB conference on Monday, rather than being on the front foot, Balls had to explain why Labour wasn’t doing better in the polls.

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