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We should recall Parliament, but Douglas is sitting on his hands

20/04/2011, 11:30:32 AM

by Tom Watson

There are few issues more important for our Parliament than sending British troops to a hostile country to support an unknown opposition fighting a raggedy civil war against a brutal dictator.

Questioning him on Friday 18March after the government statement on Libya, David Winnick asked the prime minister:

“despite all that the prime minister has said about reservations – no ground troops and so forth – does he recognise that in the country at large there is bound to be great anxiety that we could be dragged, through escalation, into a third war in nine years? Therefore, will the prime minister make sure that there are daily – or at least very regular reports to the House of Commons, so we avoid a third war”?

David Cameron replied:

“…there should be regular statements updating the House. The point the honourable gentleman makes about no ground troops and no occupying force is vital. That is in the UN security council resolution; it is the reassurance that we can give to people that that is not part of our aims – it is not what the UN wants, it is not what the Arab league wants, it is not what Britain wants. That is clearly a limitation on our ability to act, but it is absolutely right, and I think people will be reassured by it”.

I read in today’s papers that we are sending troops to Libya, or as the government describes them “military liaison advisory teams”.

Yesterday, a number of Conservative MPs called for Parliament to be recalled. The government has not responded. While driving my children to a well known West Midlands theme park, I’m sure I heard Douglas Alexander on the radio agreeing that there was no need bring MPs back to discuss the matter.

I’m getting prematurely long in the tooth but I feel Douglas has made a mistake. He should have pressured a government minister to come to the House. It would have allowed MPs who worry about our Libya campaign to seek assurances that this does not represent mission creep. Personally, I don’t need to ask those questions. I know it is.

A recall would allow me, and others, to test the wisdom of David Cameron. David is very good at saying things. He’s a good wordsmith. He emotes. But he always leaves me with the sense that he’s basically just a bullshitter. It often feels like he is not fully formed in his views. You have to be up close to this set of ministers to get the full picture. Press statements are not enough.

It’s the psychology of our current crop of leaders that gives the game away. Unlike David Cameron, William Hague is a transparent politician. You always know what he is doing and thinking, even when his words suggest something different.

When William Hague said that sending “military liaison advisory teams” does not represent “boots on the ground”, I thought “oh my God, we’re sending in ground troops”.

Maybe Douglas knows a different William Hague and David Cameron. I would imagine he’ll be given special briefings on privy council terms. He probably accepts telephone calls, made by arrangement between their respective private offices for mutually beneficial times in their busy diaries.

Maybe that’s why he said on the radio that on this occasion he was satisfied by the government explanation of the need to send in special military liaison teams. Despite this, he shouldn’t be so quick to sit on his hands when backbenchers express legitimate concerns.

A recall of Parliament is a pain for all concerned. We should have one all the same. We’re sending in troops, for God’s sake. And look where that got us last time.

Tom Watson is Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

Addendum

West Bromwich, 18.25

On re-reading this article, I find that, not for the first time, I’ve been too harsh on Douglas Alexander. He’s not making the calls, Hague is. He’s got the difficult task of reacting very quickly to a fast changing policy. So I regret the harsh tone of the piece. Sorry Douglas. To be fair, I should have said how he completely exposed coalition incompetence in the early days of the conflict over the evacuation. But I’m seriously worried about mission creep. And parliament hasn’t been consulted. Ministers should be held to account.

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What will the Guardianistas do if we defy them and vote “no”?

20/04/2011, 07:00:14 AM

by Dan Hodges

I’m starting to feel sorry for the Yes campaign. Genuinely. They’ve got some good staffers. People with a sincere commitment to their cause.

But they haven’t got a prayer. And the reason they haven’t got a prayer is too many of their own supporters don’t actually care whether they win or they lose.

Watching the Yes campaign from afar is like watching the Labour party in the late eighties. By then, the harder edges of dogma and ideology had been blunted. There was a realisation that the principle meant little without power. But while there was an intellectual acceptance of the need to secure office, the hunger was lacking. We wanted to win. But not quite enough.

It’s the same with those who are supposedly fighting for a change in our voting system. They’re not actually fighting at all. They’re pontificating. Posturing. Striking a pose.

Get hold of yesterday’s Guardian leader. “Reformists have just 16 days to transform things”, it warns, “by countering a campaign of unremitting negativity, whose garish posters are explicit in saying that because the NHS matters, democracy doesn’t, and carry the implicit message ‘vote no or the baby gets it’”.

It then points out, “Dismal as the pitch is, it is making in-roads”. No shit Sherlock. You mean negative campaigning actually works? Who’da thunk it? (more…)

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Yes, MPs work hard. But who for? Themselves.

19/04/2011, 02:00:23 PM

by Alex Hilton

It’s truly challenging to express incandescent rage in the form of dry, political writing but let me have a go. I am stomach-wrenchingly sick of MPs defending the nobility of MPs in the process of backing the first past the post electoral system.

I’m sorry, Jim Murphy, but I’m talking about you.

Murphy is one of the better MPs. By all accounts he’s intelligent, hard working, serious and responsive to his constituents. But because he is good, does that really mean the rest of them are?

He is the latest in a long list of MPs telling us how hard-working and selfless MPs are. Please listen to me: this is utter tripe. Many MPs really are hard working, some are even obsessive and monomaniacal. But you have to ask who they are hard working for, and it’s usually themselves. It’s not their fault, it’s just how the systems works. (more…)

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Purple bookers try to revive past New Labour glories

19/04/2011, 11:00:48 AM

Leading “Blairites” plan to publish a modernisers’ manifesto, to “reshape politics on the centre left” . It will be called The Purple Book.

by Sunder Katwala

Looking back at the successes and shortcomings of the New Labour years, it could be argued that, if there was a missed opportunity which set the limits to the party’s ambitions for progress, it came with the 2001 general election campaign.

It was an election which Labour was never going to lose. William Hague’s unpopular populism was never taken seriously across the country. Yet New Labour high command could never quite believe that the party was going to win, and was concerned to close down issues which it feared were resonating.

So the posters were purple – a lot done, a lot to do – in a bid to seek a largely mandateless re-coronation of the then very popular Tony Blair.

The result was a landslide – a slow motion replay of 1997, with almost no seats at all changing hands, but on a much lower turnout in a way that did little to shift the centre of political gravity. In retrospect, Labour’s 1997-2001 term stands up well, with a ream of manifesto commitments taken into office delivered in a way that endures, from the minimum wage to devolution.

What always remained elusive was “renewal” in office, though politicians and think-tankers talked of little else. The 2001 campaign may have a good claim to be the most cautious run by any winning party in the post-war period. (The major themes of the second term had been kicked into the long grass. It was a big deal for Gordon Brown to put up national insurance for the NHS, but it was safely “under review” during the campaign. Tony Blair’s big second term idea was to win the European argument, but he planned to begin it at the TUC conference on September 11th 2001, in a speech never given, rather than to take Hague’s “foreign land” campaign head on at the hustings).

Given that 9/11 came to dominate all else within a few months, perhaps events meant that it didn’t matter. But 2001 was probably the moment at which Labour needed to give its argument and vision more positive content.

Instead, Labour emulated Bill Clinton a few years earlier. It was re-elected, but did not seek to realign the political debate explicitly. It did shift policy arguments, but was less confident than Margaret Thatcher in believing that politicians could reshape the contours of public and political debate. (more…)

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Put aside the Cleggphobia and then vote No to AV

19/04/2011, 08:07:12 AM

by Jim Murphy

I have stayed out of the debate about the AV referendum until now. I have surprised myself because instinctively I usually know where I stand on all the big issues, but on this I have found it easy to sit it out. There are so many other more pressing issues – a view that I know those involved in both campaigns share. I have waited in the expectation that the pro-AV campaign would make a convincing new argument. They haven’t, so when the referendum comes on May 5^th I have decided to vote No.

There are many people I know who are voting No simply to spite Nick Clegg, but I’m not one of them. This was a really important point that Ed Miliband rightly raised yesterday. To vote against AV to get back at Nick Clegg is a churlish way to conduct politics. A change in the electoral system could be permanent, but say whatever you want about Nick Clegg one thing for sure is that he is certainly temporary – this is probably his last job in frontline British politics. If last year’s post-election political gamble of switching to the Tories’ macro-economic policies turns out to be as bad economics as it is bad politics then it’s questionable whether he’ll even lead his Party into the next election.

So let’s put all the Cleggphobia to one side. My decision is based on the merits of the case. The main reason I have decided to vote ‘No’ is that the supporters of changing the system haven’t made a convincing enough case that this is the right kind of change. They have struggled to make a persuasive argument about why the country’s politics would be better with AV. It may seem unfair, but in all these constitutional debates most of the burden of persuasion falls upon those advocating change – that is certainly my experience with devolution. (more…)

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Spare a thought for the poor Tory MPs

18/04/2011, 10:02:00 AM

by John Woodcock

Will someone please spare a thought for those poor Conservative MPs? The Liberal Democrats have been so unruly over the last week that the Tories are looking positively collegiate in comparison.

Back when their coalition was formed, Conservative whips no doubt insisted that making nice with a party they despise was a small price to pay for getting the chance to implement a governing programme that remained unmistakably Tory.

And for a while, being civil was made easier by the sight of their new partners soaking up public outrage as the government got on with implementing cuts that “Thatcher only dreamed of”. Not only were the Liberal Democrats locked in the boot of the ministerial Jag (just imagine, if you can, opening a boot and finding an angry Sarah Teather and Julian Huppert inside), but Nick Clegg was gallantly offering to pose as the little statue on its bonnet.

So the vast majority of Tories – many of whom have been denied ministerial office to make way for a Liberal – have spent a whole year biting their tongues and trying to play nice with their new friends.

Then they pop off back to the constituency for the Easter recess and find that the agreement to keep mutual contempt under wraps has been unilaterally cast aside by their junior partners.

Make no mistake, Vince Cable’s open criticism of the prime minister went way beyond the boundary of what would normally be considered acceptable by someone bound by collective responsibility.

It is a statement of the bleeding obvious that Labour’s time in government was not always a model of harmony between ministers. Clare Short repeatedly acted up towards the end. The Eds, Balls and Miliband, are absolutely right to pledge never to go back to the madness of the Blair-Brown squabbles that regularly spilled over into the press.

But even at the height of the bad feeling, no minister openly defied the prime minister like Vince Cable did last week and kept their job. And he was not acting in isolatation. Cable’s salvo came just days after a Liberal assault on the government’s health policy that was triggered by Clegg himself.

It is unclear where the Liberal Democrats go from here, and even whether they will ultimately stick together as a party.

But one thing is clear: Conservative MPs on their return to Westminster are going to be less willing to play the role of happy, Scandinavian-style coalition builders.

If Tory MPs ensconced in their constituencies are prepared to tell the likes of me how fizzing they are about the way the Lib Dems are flouting the coalition agreement, their anger when they get back to the bosom of the 1922 committee will be something to behold.

There is a real danger that the disgruntled Tory right flank may well start demanding the imposition of even more true blue policies to make up for this misbehaviour. The consequences of that for families and businesses across the country could be grim.

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

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Cameron understands that immigration is a class issue

15/04/2011, 03:30:13 PM

by Nick Keehan

Language is important when it comes to integration and community cohesion. Successive governments have therefore sought to make it compulsory for all ministers delivering speeches on immigration to learn how to speak in clichés. If a prime minister or home secretary comes over here and is not even able to use simple phrases such as “open debate”, “impression that their concerns were racist”, “huge contribution to Britain”, “real pressure on communities” and “massive back-log of asylum cases”, there is a real risk to cohesion up and down this country.

And cohesion is important when it comes to immigration. A lack of government cohesion, for example, can lead to mixed messages, and this only undermines sensible and reasoned debate. As the prime minister said in his speech yesterday:

“The last government … actually helped to inflame the debate. On the one hand, there were Labour ministers who closed down discussion, giving the impression that concerns about immigration were somehow racist. On the other, there were ministers hell-bent on burnishing their hard-line credentials by talking tough”.

(more…)

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Private debt is this government’s public injustice

15/04/2011, 12:00:33 PM

by Stella Creasy

When David Cameron proclaimed failure to deal with the deficit would cost us all, he didn’t outline the true price of his austerity programme. Now with stubborn inflation, the VAT hike and pay freezes shrinking wage packets we can see consumers are the ones picking up the tab.

Whilst public debt is down by £43bn, private household debt is up by £245bn – five times as much. With the cuts planned in public spending the only way the government will see improvement in the office for budget responsibility’s forecasts for growth is if this ratio increases. The impact of this shift on the potential for economic recovery and the family fortunes of millions is substantial. And as people struggle to make ends meet, access to affordable credit – and its ugly sister, exorbitant debt – is fast becoming the new inequality in modern Britain.

The British have always had a different approach to personal debt than many other countries – we are a nation comfortable with borrowing in ways at which other cultures baulk. It is no surprise that we have the highest level of personal debt in any G7 country. This in itself isn’t a problem if it can be managed – much of the money owed is housing-related and reflects a culture in which mortgages are routine.

However for many, financial liabilities have recently taken a more worrying turn. Since the recession, nearly a third of Britons are spending more than they have coming in each month. Over four in ten people are now worried about their current level of debt, with four million fearing redundancy and four million having taken on more debt in recent months. 22% of consumers will carry a credit card debt throughout 2011 – with 7% saying they will still be paying for Christmas 2010 after June 2011.

The debts the public are getting into are not about luxuries but the everyday. Recent research shows more than two million people have used credit cards to pay their mortgage or rent, an increase of almost 50% in a year.

Access to money to pay for food and shelter is drying up for many – it is estimated five million people are now permanently overdrawn and eighteen million people have gone into the red at some point in the last twelve months. Nearly eight million of us failed to pay at least one bill over the last year. And it’s not just the poorest consumers in our society who are suffering. According to Experian, “suburban mindsets” – married, middle-aged consumer groups – represent the biggest rise in insolvencies in 2010. This compares to previous evidence that it was mainly an indication of disadvantaged groups.

All the signs point to the fact that pressures on consumers are going to get worse – and that the government is responsible. Credit Action says that of the forty five changes to the tax and benefit system made in the budget, twenty six will have a negative impact leaving households £200 worse off.

As Ed Balls has pointed out, cuts to childcare support will take over £1,500 a year from families alone. At the very time when consumer confidence is desperately needed to pump up withering high-streets, families are finding shopping too expensive and their purses empty.

Loading debt on to households helps the government cut the deficit at the pace they desire, but Labour must challenge them on the costs and consequences to all of doing so. And in an economy where jobs and growth are in short supply, debts like these don’t just mean lower consumer spending, higher levels of bankruptcy or repossessions. 29% of British parents admit they are arguing over their family’s finances, and a third of parents are suffering the stress of sleepless nights because they are worried about money.

There’s another danger lurking too. To cover costs, more and more are turning to sources of credit which may seem like short-term solutions but quickly become long-term problems. People who say they are likely to use an unauthorised overdraft this month has nearly doubled since July last year, from 900,000 to 1.6 million. So too, the payday lending industry in the UK with its 4,000% interest rates has quadrupled in the last 18 months.

Being able to borrow in a way which doesn’t leave a long-term scar on your family finances is the new dividing line within society. Those who can access mainstream credit may scrape by in austerity Britain. Those with little option but legal loan sharks, maxing out their credit cards or racking up unauthorised debts could spend a generation or more trying to become debt free.

Getting more people into paid work, reducing inflationary pressures and recognising the costs of living in the tax and benefits system could ease the difficulties many families are facing. So too would practical steps to improve the affordability of credit. Yet despite overwhelming support from a wide range of consumer bodies, campaign organisations and community groups, such proposals have so far been ignored by ministers.

This government wants to pretend personal debt is solely a private matter, but the social and economic consequences beg to differ. Lack of regulation in comparison to other countries allows the high-cost credit industry to go unchecked in the UK. Recognition of the problems caused by casino banking practices in the city is widespread – but this is only half the battle. We should not forget the financial needs of those in our communities too.

Credit should not be lent in a way that is detrimental to consumers without those that profit from exploiting them being made liable for the consequences. In the forthcoming finance bill I will table amendments to review whether corporation tax or the bankers’ levy could be applied in a way which would disincentivise this behaviour. Please ask your MP to co-sign these proposals. It’s time this government put the fortunes of every family first.

Stella Creasy is Labour and Co-Operative MP for Walthamstow.

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Uncut presents the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition

15/04/2011, 07:00:07 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Readers to choose from Alexander, Balls, Cooper, Healey and Murphy to pick best performance

Back in January, Uncut launched a monthly shadow cabinet league table. It tracks shadow cabinet members’ effort in Parliament and outside in the media. But, effort, while a useful measure, isn’t the whole picture. One frequent comment has been that the table focuses only on process and effort, whereas it is important to looking at results as well.

Fair point.

We present the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition.

The contest has been developed to recognise the successes in the shadow cabinet, based the impact they have had.

Judging quality is a subjective business. One person’s barnstorming performance at the despatch box is another’s unhinged rant. And that’s where you, the Uncut public come in.

Five examples of the shadow cabinet at their best have been painstakingly sifted from the past month’s action in the Commons and the media. They are set out here for you to consider and then cast your vote to award the most prestigious title in Labour politics – Uncut shadow cabinet goal of the month.

As with the league, this isn’t intended to be the be all and end all, but it gives a view of recent highlights.

This month’s five contenders are, in alphabetical order: Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, John Healey and Jim Murphy.

1. Alexander fells the great white buffalo

William Hague came into office with a reputation as a sparkling Commons performer, an elder statesman with experience as a cabinet minister and a general wit and raconteur. He was deputy leader of the Conservative party in all but name.

How the mighty have fallen.

And in that fall, Douglas Alexander deserves his share of credit.

Questionable personal decisions and Foreign Office bungling might have taken their toll on Hague, but without Alexander’s work-rate and scrutiny, the impact on the Foreign Secretary’s effectiveness would have remained unexposed.

The exchange between Alexander and Hague over the bizarre secret mission in Libya which ended with the Benghazi rebels arresting the British party provides a parliamentary snapshot of the moment a big beast was felled.

As ever with the Commons, piercing wit was the weapon.

Alexander’s deadpan delivery of an expertly framed analogy succinctly demonstrated the true absurdity of the situation. It delivered Hague his worst moment in the Commons in over twenty years. (more…)

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