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Tackling the Tories’ lies, one by one

06/03/2011, 11:46:19 AM

by Dan Johnson

Yesterday, Sayeeda Warsi listed the Tory-Lib Dem government’s top “achievements”. Labour needs to take them on one by one and expose them for the lies they really are.

“We’ve scrapped the jobs tax”

They haven’t scrapped national insurance. They didn’t impose an increase on employers like Labour would have done, but they increased the employees’ contribution despite their video here asking people what they would spend the additional money on.

“We’re cutting corporation tax”

This, they have done, even on the banks – despite a Labour amendment to keep a higher rate for banks for a few more years.

“We promised we’d protect NHS spending – and we have”

They are not protecting the NHS. The measly increase will not cover the real rising costs due to an aging population. They are going through a wasteful reorganisation that isn’t wanted by patients or doctors.

“A cancer drugs fund”

Money that doesn’t go anywhere near to covering the huge costs involved.

“A regional growth fund”

With significantly less money than regional development agencies and a much narrower focus.

“More loans to small businesses”

The dodgy use of figures continues into government: they are letting the banks off scot-free with no real commitment to lending.

“Tax breaks for new businesses”

Unemployment continues to rise and there is no strategy for growth 10 months into this government’s term.

“We’ve taxed the banks”

Yes, but less than Labour did last year. Which is effectively a tax break for banks.

“Capped immigration”

Sort of. And in a way that the CBI, business leaders and universities say is damaging to the economy.

“Put a block on more power to the EU”

Meaningless legislation that even the Tory backbenchers think doesn’t work.

“50,000 new apprenticeships”

Following on from Labour’s policy, but scrapping EMA and tripling tuition fees.

“200 new academies”

More schools outside of local government’s control, leading to a two-tier system, rather than Labour’s policy of getting the worst schools to improve.

“Cut ministerial pay”

By a tokenistically tiny fraction, saving a tiny amount compared to the costly measures this government is instituting. Still not implemented.

“Blocked a third runway”

A third runway supported by business groups, whose scrapping will push Britain further down in competition with French and Dutch airports.

“No more sofa government, no more spin government”

Nine months of Andy Coulson till their shame won out.

“A national security council”

With few powers and even fewer meetings. COBRA has been shown to work time and again.

“More power to local councils”

Frontloaded cuts and removal of ring-fencing will mean the most vulnerable will suffer the worst.

“Our freedoms restored”

The freedom to have deteriorating public services, run-down schools and hospitals.

Dan Johnson is the Labour party candidate in Stainsby Hill, Thornaby in the local elections this year.

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Multiculturalism: a nice piece about Nick Clegg

04/03/2011, 03:30:32 PM

by Anthony Painter

Nick Clegg showed Cameron how it’s done when it comes to entering the fray on the fraught politics of identity. In Luton, as opposed to Munich, at a calmer time, as opposed to the day of an EDL homecoming rally, with balance, as opposed to lecturing and hectoring, with the intention of contributing to the debate, rather than simply catching headlines, Nick Clegg gave his textured analysis of how the politics of identity is bending our culture and lives.

His reading of the Searchlight Fear and Hope report published earlier this week was spot on. He understands that the middle ground of identity politics is occupied not by liberals, as our traditional notions of the centre would support, but by the culturally concerned and economically insecure. David Cameron erected the straw man of “state multiculturalism”, which doesn’t exist in anything other than the popular mythology of 1980s municipalism. Nick Clegg knocked it down and instead made a cogent case for a diverse but not divided version of multiculturalism built around strong and shared values. (more…)

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Half a minute Harris

04/03/2011, 01:55:13 PM

Welcome, Uncut readers, to the mind of Tom Harris

What did you think? That he’d go gentle into that good night?

Or find another format to rage?

Having folded away his macbook and given up his celebrated blog last November, Tom Harris is back. But only once a week, only on Uncut, and for strictly thirty seconds.

Tune in on Wednesdays from next week to hear why he’s right, you’re wrong, and it isn’t like you thought it was.

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Why Dan Jarvis’ election can help Labour serve our communities

04/03/2011, 12:00:01 PM

by Jim Murphy

The election of Dan Jarvis to Barnsley Central is great news for Labour and for Dan personally. Dan is a good friend and an exceptional man. He will bring something new to Parliament and will be an asset in our ranks.

It’s excellent news for another reason. I have said before that I believe Labour would be strengthened by having more former armed forces personnel in our party, as councillors and in Parliament. Dan, who served for 15 years in the parachute regiment, was an army major and saw action in Afghanistan, will bring insight few others can to defence and security policy.

At this historic moment, when recent dramatic events in North Africa and the Middle East are rapidly reshaping the security landscape, Labour must be central to the debate on future defence policy. There is a major challenge now for the UK on how we best position ourselves to help shape events around our values and priorities – democracy, freedom, human rights. It is not enough for Labour to point out that the government response has been lacking (shockingly so). We must ourselves grapple with challenging global defence issues if we are to be a credible and serious alternative government, not just an effective opposition.

I wanted to be shadow defence secretary because I believe defence should be natural Labour territory. A start must be to tackle the ill-informed old orthodoxy that the Tories are the party of the forces and Labour is the party of the NHS. In truth, we must be credible on both, especially when Tories are no longer credible on either. (more…)

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The trend beneath the Barnsley triumph is that Labour’s poll lead is soft

04/03/2011, 07:00:40 AM

by Atul Hatwal

What a result in Barnsley. To increase the numerical majority in an already safe seat as the turnout halves, this is the stuff of psephological fantasy. For the Libs to come sixth, losing their deposit, is the dark matter of disreputable dreams.

So, what does it tell us about the national picture? About voting intentions in the next general election? About how we’re doing?

To be honest, sadly, it tells us nothing.

By-elections are almost entirely beyond interpretation at the best of times. A by-election in a highly atypical constituency, caused by extraordinary circumstances, fought by asymmetrically effective candidates and teams is entirely so.

The polls, by contrast, are just starting to have tracked long enough since Miliband took over to show trends. The latest YouGov tracker poll posted a Labour lead of 5% and it was as high as 9% earlier in the week. On Wednesday, Anthony Wells, YouGov’s resident polling guru, assured us that Labour’s lead is “still going strong”.

So perhaps Barnsley really is a sign of things to come?

No.

Progress is being made, but nagging doubts remain about a Labour poll lead that feels very 1980s. Something doesn’t quite sit right.

Systematic polling evidence to back-up these doubts has been patchy. Underneath the headlines there have been individual questions that cast doubt on its solidity, but not enough to build a narrative that describes where voters really are.

This changed last month.

In the mass of polling conducted by YouGov for the Sunday Times and the Sun, some of those questions that are asked infrequently, but which shine a light on voters’ core motivations, were finally repeated. It means a consistent pattern of questions can now be tracked back over the past few months.

These questions fall into three areas: the impact of cuts on voters’ wallets; support for the Tories’ approach to the deficit now it is being implemented, and voters’ views on whom they prefer for PM.

The results are unequivocal and give some hard numbers to quantify that intuitive doubt.

The top line on the graph shows that for all the angst and outrage on cuts as covered in the media, at a time of global downturn, most people are pretty sanguine about their personal prospects. (more…)

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Axing libraries is cultural vandalism and a false economy

03/03/2011, 07:00:41 AM

by Sally Bercow

Being partial to an Indian, I’m rather fond of The Cinnamon Club in Westminster, although its astronomical prices (multiply your typical curry house bill by four) mean it’s necessarily a rare treat. Admittedly, I’m biased – I was mid tandoori pigeon when my partner (now husband) popped the question in the Cinnamon Club nine years ago. Nevertheless, as a quick Google search will testify, the restaurant has attracted rave reviews for its gourmet Indian cuisine, its service and, not least, its magnificent venue.

The Cinnamon Club has Westminster city council to thank for its success, even if only in small part and inadvertently at that. In 1998, the Tories shut down and sold off Westminster library in Great Smith Street, one of London’s oldest public libraries. The grade II listed building was then beautifully renovated and The Cinnamon Club arose, phoenix like, in its magnificent, imposing space. In the meantime, Westminster council relocated the library (now known as St James’s) just up the road and it has proved hugely popular with local residents, workers and schools alike.

Last night, however, Westminster council voted to close St James’s Library, as of September this year. I’ve no idea if another destination restaurant will eventually arise from its ashes and, although I like eating out as much as the next person, frankly I don’t care. Like councils up and down the country, Westminster is committing an act of civic vandalism; closing libraries (over 400 are under threat nationwide) will inflict tremendous – and irreversible – damage on local communities.

The sad fact is that, thanks to the Tory-led government – in the shape of Eric Pickles – local authorities are being forced to cut too fast and too deep and, in doing so, many clearly regard libraries as an easy target. “Aha” cries your defensive local councillor “but if not libraries, what would you cut instead”? (more…)

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Collaborative consumption – what it is and why it matters to Labour

02/03/2011, 02:00:46 PM

by Jonathan Todd

There is a piece of land registered on Landshare in every postcode in the UK. If you stacked every film shipped weekly by Netflix in a single pile, it would be taller than Mount Everest. The value of goods traded annually on ebay is more than the GDP of 125 countries. Bike sharing is the fastest-growing form of transportation in the world.

Something is going on here. And Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers think they know what it is: collaborative consumption. Defenders of the big society have latched on to the decentralised, networked mega-trend that Botsman and Rogers describe in their book, “what’s mine is yours – how collaborative consumption is changing the way we live.”

After Botsman gave a version of her stump speech at the RSA last month, I asked whether this trend contains any lessons for Labour. She was, understandably, reticent to politicise her baby. The big society shouldn’t be owned by any political party, nor should collaborative consumption, she told me.

Of course, she’s right. The civic institutions that are supposed to make up the big society were around long before David Cameron tried to destroy them. And collaborative consumption is too nebulous a concept for any politician to convincingly declare it their passion. I’m not even sure that it adds up to a unified idea. There are, however, elements of Botsman and Rogers’ argument that hit upon some truths that Labour should absorb. (more…)

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The other referendum that nobody but politicians cares about

01/03/2011, 03:23:28 PM

by Dave Collins

2am, Friday 14^th January 2011. Dog-tired, dishevelled and slightly drunk, I am sitting in the back of a pub near with a handful of comrades in similar states of exhaustion. It has been a long day. Half-full glasses and damp winter clothing abound. We await Debbie Abrahams and her retinue. The young woman across from me, trying to sustain flagging conversation, asks “So what exactly are you folk in Wales voting on”? I stare into my beer and consider how to reply… Some oaf knocks a drink over. Once the debris has been sorted, reparations offered and accepted, the conversation moves on…

This is what I should have said:

The v2.0 government of Wales act (2006), was a political compromise, but it was also an innovative attempt to build a partnership approach into Welsh lawmaking. Parliament would assent in principle to the assembly having the right to legislate in defined matters within the devolved fields, but then the precise formulation and effect of the law was left to the assembly to determine. It might have been a neat halfway house system, which addressed the West Lothian question in a novel way, had the political will existed to make it work. But the ink was barely dry before the formation in June 2007 of a Labour/Plaid Cymru assembly government, centrally committed to triggering the fallback provision, also in the act, of dispensing with the Parliamentary approval requirement for laws within the devolved fields via a further referendum. Essentially this was a move to v2.1. (more…)

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When it comes to tax, it’s the politics, stupid.

01/03/2011, 12:00:46 PM

by Rob Marchant

Not content with the questionable strategy – not to mention gift to David Cameron – of our insisting on the extension of 50% tax band indefinitely, Ed Balls has now indicated in a Progress interview that he is also thinking about lowering the threshold of the band. It was one of his leadership campaign pledges.

Doubtless, we could usefully use the money to invest in public services. But before we get into the classic Labour argument of how much money you can make, or not make, by taxing the rich, let us pause for thought and consider the following argument.

It. Doesn’t. Matter.

The question now is political, not economic. It is about perceived competence. About being in opposition, not government, and its impact on the way we do things and, most importantly, about our electoral future. These are things that both Blair and Brown keenly understood, and that is why they were successful. (more…)

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Ed’s not going to take down Gaddafi with a sustained blast of the Reith lectures

01/03/2011, 07:00:52 AM

by Dan Hodges

Libya has turned into the first international crisis of David Cameron’s premiership. And he’s flunked it. When an ash cloud stranded thousands of British holidaymakers, the previous government deployed the Royal Navy. With the Middle East aflame, and hundreds of British workers in peril, this government turned to the heavy metal band, Iron Maiden. Bruce Dickinson, the group’s lead singer, is also marketing director and chief pilot of charter airline, Astraeus, one of the first to land at Tripoli to begin a belated evacuation. The RAF heroes of 633 squadron have been pensioned off for the heroes of flight 666.

At times like this, there is frequently a populist rush to judgment. “Something must be done”, goes the cry, even though operational and political realities make the situation far more difficult and complex. This is not one of those times. Ministers had sufficient warning of the spreading unrest in the region in general, and Libya in particular, yet they clearly had no coherent strategy in place for the evacuation of British nationals.

In fact, it is amazing that there appear to be no settled contingency plans for the rapid deployment of military or other assets to remove our citizens from areas of potential instability. It doesn’t need a doctorate in international relations to tell you that Colonel Gaddafi is a fruit cake with the potential to tip his country into chaos at the drop of a pair of his designer shades. Surely one of our chaps in the FCO should have twigged that a guy who calls himself “the Brotherly Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya” is worth keeping a wary eye on. (more…)

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