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Cameron is a class act, a worthy opponent. So we must nail him now.

04/01/2011, 03:00:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Ed Miliband was right in his New Year message. 2011 is a year of consequences. This is the year Labour really has to nail David Cameron. Once and for all. For five years he has slipped through the party’s fingers with one failed attempt to characterise him after another.

First we had “Dave the chameleon”. Cameron was a chancer; all things to all people. Then we had the toff-bashing fun of the Crewe by-election: a stunt that grew into the entire campaign, with predictably calamitous results. Then we had “Mr 10%” – the amount that a pre-election Cameron was said to want to cut from public spending. A line which no less an authority than Douglas Alexander recently lamented had been quite useless.

Tony Blair once chided Cameron that he would not withstand the “big clunking fist” of Gordon Brown. But Cameron has instead shown that he has a decent chin. Then we had Brown’s repeated charge that he was “all style, but no substance”. That is not a crime in modern politics; as, indeed, Blair testifies. (more…)

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Mind the pay-gap: Lib Dem chutzpah’s not enough

04/01/2011, 07:00:55 AM

by James Watkins

To be fair, it took some chutzpah. At the Lib Dem conference in September, the equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, declared that it was time for “a new politics which has equality at its heart”. She continued that there would be “an equality for the future which is driven by the liberal principles of the past”. And, in a particularly impassioned part of the speech, delegates were urged to watch the film Made in Dagenham. And while watching to reflect on “the women to whom equality in the workplace is still a pipe dream”.

One of the last great acts of the Labour government was to require businesses employing 250 or more people to undertake gender pay audits from 2013. However, the minister has said, “We want to move away from the arrogant notion of government knowing best to one where government empowers individuals, businesses and communities to make change happen”.

With this strange policy contortion – of condemning the gender pay-gap but not wanting to get the facts – the “equality of the future” seems to have slipped away to a parallel universe. (more…)

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BAME Labour is pointless – because Labour’s leadership can’t be bothered with minority communities

03/01/2011, 03:30:04 PM

by Atul Hatwal

If BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) Labour mattered it would be a headline writer’s dream. “Who’s to BAME”? “BAME blame game begins”; “Labour mess: BAME to blame”. The list of blame-based headlines would give a ready top line for each new problem to afflict Labour’s gaffe-prone successor to the black socialist societies (BSS).

But, unfortunately, BAME Labour barely merits reporting. It has been in existence for three years and under-performed even the low expectations that greeted its birth.

A quick look at the website shows an organisation ossified in the past. There’s an announcement about the formation of BAME Labour (presumably dating back to 2007), a plea to back Gordon in the wake of the MPs expenses furore (that’s summer 2009) and the “Obama scholarship free training course for aspiring BAME candidates”, upcoming in April 2009. Whether president Obama managed to send a supportive message to recipients of the scholarship in his name remains unclear. (more…)

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Parliament is still the family’s enemy

03/01/2011, 07:00:18 AM

by John Woodcock

My new year’s resolution is to be a good dad to my two-year-old daughter.

Readers of a zingy political website understandably might ask why this should be of any interest to them. Bear with me.

The resolution, and my decision to share it, is driven by an issue I had not properly considered before becoming a Member of Parliament: namely, the difficult relationship between family life and elected politics in Britain.

It is not that I think I have been a rubbish dad so far, though the explosion of fury from my daughter when she is denied a second slice of chocolate cake would make any parent doubt himself.

But since being elected last May it has been unexpectedly difficult to balance the schedule of Parliamentary life with giving the time and energy that a loving little girl deserves and a partner sharing parenting duties should have the right to expect. The life of an MP is not an obvious case study for the good parenting handbook: shuttling up and down the country every week; late votes and meetings that can snatch away even the promise of a call back home before bedtime; events and campaigning that you want to get stuck into when you are back home in your constituency rather than spend the weekend at the zoo. (more…)

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On the eve of greatness, a memento mori for English cricket

02/01/2011, 01:25:06 PM

by Dan Hodges

A few years ago, Kevin Pietersen nearly killed me. It wasn’t personal. I was looking for my sandwich; he was looking to hook Brett Lee into row 20 of the Peter May stand at the Oval. I didn’t find my sandwich, but he found the stand.

Two seats to the right, and I would have been a tragic footnote to England’s historic 2005 Ashes triumph. I sometimes wonder if there would have been a moment’s silence for me in Trafalgar Square; a poignant pause before Vic Flowers led Andrew Flintoff in a drunken rendition of Jerusalem. Knowing Vic and Freddie, probably not.

Tonight, England’s cricketers take to the field for the most important cricket match since that fateful, near fatal, day. “What madness is this”, goes the cry. “The cricketing Rubicon was successfully forded a week ago, in Melbourne. We saw the cheers, the tears, the cream of English youth dancing the sprinkler in front of delirious men dressed as Arthurian knights and Camilla Parker-Bowles”.

Wrong. The Ashes have not been won. Merely retained. (more…)

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Sunday Review: the giving green paper

02/01/2011, 10:30:26 AM

by Anthony Painter

Lying a short reach from my keyboard is a Cadbury’s Twirl. I want to eat it, as I like Twirls. Most connoisseurs of corner shop chocolate bars do. It seems a fairly logical response for me to eat it. But wait. Eat too many and all sorts of bad things could happen. I could become obese. My teeth could rot. I could end up with diabetes and heart disease. These are not nice things.

What we have here is a defective choice architecture. All the benefits of eating the Twirl are in the here and now. The costs are deferred. Our decision-making is flawed. Even the knowledge of the harm that too many chocolate bars will have is not strong enough to override the impulse to consume this Twirl. Even if we are consciously aware of the long-term cost, it is very difficult to overcome the overwhelming short term emotional benefit.

Somehow, I need a short term nudge to prevent long term pain. Essentially, this is what the Tory-Lib Dem government’s Giving Green Paper is about. How can we be nudged to do good to make ourselves and those around us more happy? (more…)

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2011: the year in review

31/12/2010, 01:00:54 PM

by Dan Hodges

2011. What a twelve months it’s been. Tweaking the nose of convention. Hurling itself robustly into the face of popular wisdom. The year of living counter-intuitively.

It started, of course, with the amazing scenes from the Oldham & Saddleworth by-election. Tory activists barring the way to the polling stations for known Conservative voters. David Cameron, in yellow rosette, claiming that his great grandfather was best friends with Lloyd George. Ken Clarke, in sandals, and ill-fitting “Save the Whale” t-shirt, urging voters to “hold your nose, close your eyes, and vote Lib Dem”.

All to no avail. Labour: 25,000; Tories: 15,000; Lib Dems: 133. “A wake up call”, said Nick Clegg.

Oldham & Saddleworth only heralded the start of the electoral drama. There were the unprecedented seventeen by-elections held after Labour MPs convicted of erroneously charging paper clips to their expenses were each sentenced to 13 years imprisonment. Their decision to appeal their convictions was widely condemned by the media. “These paper clip thieving ratbags just don’t get it”, raged Richard Littlejohn. “Hanging’s too good for the scum”. (more…)

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What did you expect?

30/12/2010, 03:30:58 PM

by Chris Bryant

Not inconvenient blizzards bleak

Or frosts to hoar your cheek.

Not passengers without a flight

Or trains congealed all night.

Not journeys inched down icy hills

Or record nightly chills.

Not politicians rosy-cheeked

With eagerness to please.

Not agonising Liberals

Contorted by real power,

Their Tory friends exasperate

By lenient Kenneth Clarke.

The cynic always love to know

That he was right to doubt.

So he has cause to sneer and pout

And say ‘I told you so’.

Too swiftly, we expect the worst

And barely see the joy at first.

The same is true of Parliament.

Yes, we are tribal, venal, vain,

But decent people, in the main.

These truths need our acknowledgement:

We only briefly strut and fret;

Opponents have their honour yet.

And yet the indices of happiness

For us are as for all:

A present prized,

A partner’s hand,

A friend surprised,

A journey planned,

A niece all smiles,

A thank you note,

A fond recall,

A verse that’s a success.

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Foster care: why it matters

30/12/2010, 07:00:50 AM

by Peter Watt

Neil is ten years old. This morning he woke to find that he had wet the bed. His Mum smacked him and told him that he was stupid. It happened most days. His bed was changed only occasionally. He did not wash or shower. He put on the same clothes as yesterday. The same clothes that he had been wearing since the school holidays had started. His trainers had got wet in the snow and had never properly dried.

He knew that today was going to be a bad day. He had heard his Mum and Dad get in from the pub late, arguing loudly. His Mum had gone off to meet his Dad, leaving him to get tea for his brother Arnie, aged seven, and sister Sam, aged three. He had eventually taken himself to bed. He certainly did not want to be up when they got in. Sometimes they would come back with strangers and stay up talking loudly. He was pretty sure that they were taking drugs. When that happened he took his brother and sister into his room, shut the door and hoped for the best. (more…)

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Memoirs of a geezer: self-justification in the age of bad manners

29/12/2010, 08:00:19 AM

by Tom Watson

Anthony Seldon has published a biography of Gordon Brown. I broke a golden rule and agreed to be interviewed, because I admire him and he charmed me into it. My father in law raves about his books. So I relented and talked to him for over an hour in July. It was a mistake.

After a quick skim-read of the pages on which I’m quoted or mentioned, the results do not appear disastrous. But I still feel sullied. And though I hope I’ve not hurt the feelings of the subject, I’m not sure if I’ve contributed to a greater understanding of the times.

Nevertheless, I’m told that Mr Seldon gives a good account of Gordon’s time in Number 10 – as told to him by the great leader’s friends and foes. Yet reading many of the books chronicling contemporary political times is a poor way to understand the period covered. (more…)

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