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It is wrong to hate Margaret Thatcher, says Kevin Meagher

21/10/2010, 12:29:14 PM

SO the Iron Lady has started to rust. Lady Thatcher will remain in hospital – needless to say a Bupa one – to treat her bout of flu. Her son, Mark, says his mother is “in good order”, an unusual formulation, usually reserved for descriptions of used cars.

Some will sneer at her predicament. Her detractors are measured in tens of millions. But she is a sick, elderly grandmother suffering, as her daughter Carol confirmed two years ago, from dementia. Whatever her faults as a politician – and they are legion – she deserves compassion now.

This is not to diminish the appalling policy choices Margaret Thatcher made in her 11 years as prime minister. Thatcherism and the Tory party which propagated it are enduringly loathsome. But we should not hate her. (more…)

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Labour’s relationship with the unions is not set in stone, says Peter Watt

21/10/2010, 09:00:42 AM

As Tony Blair once said, “I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour party. I came into politics to change the country.”

And that is why opposition sucks. We all joined the party so that we could play our part in turning our values into practical policies. We want to actually be able to improve the lives of people and their families, raise aspiration, work to strengthen the economy and so on. And you can only actually do that in government. For 13 years we felt that we were making a difference – making a difference at our local party meetings, making a difference at national policy forums and making a difference at party conference.

Oh I know that we complained that we were ignored (and probably we were, although not as much we claimed) but ministers of the crown came to our fundraising dinners, spoke at our events and circulated around the policy discussions and fringe at our conferences. It felt that we were both important and that we were involved in doing something important. And I guess that we can admit this now – we enjoyed it. Even the wine was better at conference when we were in government. (more…)

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Anthony Painter sees life’s winners making losers by the million

20/10/2010, 05:09:18 PM

Spending cuts at this rate are unnecessary. Everyone who isn’t a Machiavellian Osborne-ite or an ethically empty Liberal Democrat frontbencher knows that. These strutting macho men (and Teresa May and the other one in Defra) in their 40s are ripping apart the ties that bind and the life chances of millions. They gleefully gamble on growth because they always have been and always will be winners, no matter what the level of unemployment. At least now there is no doubt where these self-imagined Flashmans are coming from.

It’s one thing to take to hack away at the roots of the good society with cockiness and bravado. It’s another to dissemble, dodge, and mislead every step of the way. They know what they are doing. They are sure they are right- when are they anything but right?

So why not tell it straight? This spending review document takes spin into a new stratosphere. New Labour? Communications amateurs. These guys are something else.

You don’t have to delve very deep into the document before you discover all the tricks of presentation that the modern politician has at their disposal. By the second page of the executive summary we are told that the UK is to remain a world leader in science despite only maintaining the cash budget over the next four years. I’ll remove your leg but in cash terms you’ll still have two. Sure Start the same: maintained in cash terms. Perhaps Gideon would be willing to exchange his trust fund for its 1950 cash value? It’s the same after all.

(more…)

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Tom Watson says goodbye to Walworth Rd

20/10/2010, 08:43:50 AM

So “Walworth Road”, one of Labour’s triumvirate of famous headquarters, is to be converted into a hostel for London’s visiting back packers. The planning permission was approved last week. Where once journeying ideologues stomped their feet, hedonistic global consumers will now rest their heads.

Little do those weary wanderlusters know what history they will be inhaling as they bunk up for the night. Backpackers should take comfort that many political journeys have started and spectacularly ended in that great building.

Labour’s rose took root in Walworth Road. And the party’s long and jagged march with the command economy ended there on the day that new Labour took its first tentative steps towards Millbank glory.

Political movements and ideas reached their terminus in the tiny roof conversion that doubled as a boardroom. The Militant tendency was filleted in that building. The decision to close the New Socialist magazine was taken there – a brutal response to the editorial team defiantly calling for tactical voting shortly before the 1987 election. And the longest suicide note in history – our 1983 manifesto – was drafted there.

The Walworth Road I first entered in 1984 was very much like a hostel. You were met at the front door by two striking miners and their table full of Davey lamps and buckets of shrapnel. A huge imposing portrait of Clem stared beneficently down at you in the foyer, as you fumbled with the intercom to persuade Lesley, the grand dame of the reception and secret Conservative voter, to let you enter the main building. The famous, the powerful and the pompous could be left in that little room for an eternity if they crossed her. My God, I admired Lesley. (more…)

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We must be honest so that we can be distinctive on the deficit, says Jonathan Todd

19/10/2010, 02:30:34 PM

SOCIAL and economic debates on tax and spend run through the messages George Osborne will project tomorrow: his actions are fair (the social debate), best for the economy (the economic debate), and necessary, which intersects both debates. Clarity, and Labour’s cause, is aided by disentangling these strands.

Deficit reduction strategies need not only beginnings (start this year, next or when?), endings (completed in this parliament or next?), and content (tax and cuts mix?), but, crucially, they must also say what this content means for tax and spend in each year of this parliament. Political debate has so far failed carefully to pick over budgetary consequences from year to year.

There are opportunities for Labour in this examination. The government plans that cuts will account for three-quarters of the deficit reduction by 2014. However, next year, half the fiscal consolidation comes from tax rises. That spending cuts are intended to take greater strain over the longer-run has obscured the fact that 2011 sees ominous tax rises: increases in VAT and national-insurance. (more…)

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Ed Miliband’s Israel problem, by Dan Hodges

19/10/2010, 09:00:28 AM

Ed Miliband has an Israel problem. Or, depending on your perspective, Israel has a problem with Ed Miliband.

The response to the foreign affairs section of his conference speech was dominated by Iraq. His brother’s angry reaction, which in truth reflected David’s personal antipathy towards Harriet, as much as his distaste for that particular passage, led the news bulletins. But it was the section on Israel that reverberated.

“The new generation must challenge old thinking”, he said. And duly hurled down the gauntlet. There needed to be international pressure on Israel over the ending of the moratorium on settlements. The attack on the Gaza flotilla was wrong. Israel must accept and recognize, in actions not just words, the Palestinian right to statehood. The Gaza blockage must be lifted. He would “strain every sinew to make that happen”. He would, of course, always defend Israel’s right to exist in peace and security. (more…)

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The Tories are handing defence to Jim Murphy, says John McTernan

18/10/2010, 04:00:08 PM

The first rule of spin club is that there’s no such thing as spin club. The
second rule of spin club is that there’s no such thing as spin. Why? Because
the members of spin club, if such a thing existed (which it doesn’t), know that spin never stays spun. It always unravels.

David Cameron and Liam Fox are going to find this out the hard way this
week. Presentationally, the run-up to the strategic defence and security review (SDSR) has been almost perfect. Liam Fox’s leaked letter set out the
prospect of cuts that would be so deep they would devastate our forces.
It also set up a villain – the treasury. With the scene set, the prime minister was able to ride to the rescue. And briefings over the weekend suggested that the defence budget had got a great deal – only an eight per cent cut. (more…)

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The Labour right needs a new leader

18/10/2010, 12:30:37 PM

by Siôn Simon

Many and dreadful have been the proclamations of its end, but New Labour is not dead. Uncut, as much as any, has mourned its passing. But to do so was an emotional spasm. Recollected in tranquility, there is hope beneath the hyperbole.

It is true that “New Labour”, whatever that meant, is no longer a dominant doctrine. It had been the ascendant national ideology since Blair became Labour leader in apposition (sic) to a philosophically bankrupt Conservative government in 1994. And it had been dominant within Labour since before it was invented. When Neil Kinnock became leader, in 1985 he opened a philosophical furrow which all his successors have ploughed since.

One of its currencies was linguistic nuance. And only in that coin can one understand the immense significance of Ed Miliband’s conference speech. According to the fragile, case-sensitive lexicon of New Labour, it was the brutal evisceration of a 25 year project. The keepers of the New Labour flame – those of us who have been fighting the fight since the Kinnock years – were devastated. Far more so than has been widely reported or understood. (more…)

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The Tories aren’t winners, so don’t let them write our history, says Michael Dugher

18/10/2010, 09:00:45 AM

Nixon once said that the moment the public begin to complain about the message is the moment that some of the public have heard the message. At 1230 on Wednesday, George Osborne will get to his feet at the dispatch box to announce the outcomes of the comprehensive spending review. Even if the precise measures contained in the review were only finalised late at night over recent days, his script was agreed months ago. With tedious repetition, Osborne will once again blame all of the country’s woes on the size of the deficit. He will say that Labour’s legacy, in terms of the public finances, was the product of reckless irresponsibility, “profligacy” and waste – and that the Tory-Lib Dem government is determined to “clean up the mess” Labour left behind. This, of course, is a complete untruth. But if Labour does not confront this argument, there is a danger that the message will not only be heard, but believed. (more…)

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Where have all the Scots gone, and are they coming back, asks Kevin Meagher?

16/10/2010, 10:00:00 AM

Will a Scot ever lead Labour again? You might think that’s a strange question. Of the 17 men elected as Labour leader since 1906, eight have been Caledonians. This includes Labour’s first five leaders and its last three: Smith Blair and Brown.

But the party is becoming less Scottish. This is an imprecise science; but just think back to Tony Blair’s first cabinet in 1997. Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Donald Dewar, Gavin Strang, George Robertson, Alistair Darling and Derry Irvine. Scots abounded.

Yet the new shadow cabinet contains just three Scots: Jim Murphy at defence, Douglas Alexander at transport and Ann McKechin at the Scottish office. Meanwhile, the biggest casualty of the shadow cabinet elections was Pat McFadden, although he is an anomaly: a Scot representing an English seat. (more…)

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