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Jonathan Todd on the long march from Manchester to a new socialism

01/10/2010, 05:00:48 PM

Manchester, so much to answer for. And questions remain. We know that David Miliband, Nick Brown and (we hope) Red Ed will not be in Ed Miliband’s top team. This really was a “turn the page” election, but the next chapter brings questions as well as answers.

Let’s start with the positives. Simply having a new leader is a step forward. We’ve opposed an ambitious and fast moving government with one hand behind our back. Having a renewed ability to adopt clear positions, particularly on the deficit, liberates us. It is even better that these positions be taken by a leader with Ed’s verve and fluency.

It is imperative that the party unites as he does so. However, there is speculation that this won’t happen. Patrick O’Flynn of the Daily Express tweeted of Nick Brown’s exit as chief whip that it “just leaves him free to be chief whip for Ed Balls”. These big PLP beasts, as well as any disgruntled David Miliband supporters, must remember David’s exhortation on Monday: “No more cliques; no more factions; no more soap opera.” (more…)

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Leadership is not a game, says Dan Hodges

01/10/2010, 09:43:19 AM

If a week is a long time in politics, then at Labour party conference it’s a lifetime. Remember where we came in. Excited. Hopeful. Enthused. And how we leave. Fractious. Edgy. Uncertain.

It was not supposed to be like this. An emboldened party, united behind its new leader, was meant to stride out, strong in mind and purpose, to take the fight to the government. Instead, we have hit a wall. Political reality has intruded. This was the week we finally realised that the 2010 general election had been lost.

For many of us – dare I say, those if us who are part of Generation Ed – politics has been a long, yet steady, march towards the summit. Kinnock, Smith, Blair and even Brown. All were part of a clear evolutionary process. They represented order. Now, with the election of Ed Miliband, the natural order has been disturbed.

This is not, of itself a negative. It needed something to jolt us out of our post election stupor. We have been. Ed’s victory has caused a convulsion.

On Saturday we were a movement in denial. The build up to the leadership announcement was spectacularly misjudged. The video of our achievements in office seemed to taunt the public; ‘See what you’re throwing away. You’ll be sorry’. Gordon’s speech seemed to taunt us all; ‘I will be loyal. Had you been loyal, we wouldn’t be in this mess’. (more…)

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We must look beyond London for the shadow cabinet, says Jamie Reed

30/09/2010, 03:39:01 PM

As the Parliamentary Labour party elects the new shadow cabinet, Ed Miliband has some difficult choices to make. An overly crowded field will probably deliver some surprises, but Labour’s big guns deserve to be given the chance to take on the government, build their shadow teams and prosecute Labour’s cause.

Ed Balls and Andy Burnham have strong claims to whichever briefs they would most like as former leadership contenders. Alan Johnson remains one of the party’s best assets. Yvette Cooper is a formidable and essential component of Labour’s future. Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward remain popular, well known in the country, experienced and heavyweight. The shadow cabinet would be poorer without them.

49 candidates is too many, but there is some real quality on the slate. John Healey and Vernon Coaker are ‘must-haves’: strong intellects with good communication skills. Stephen Timms, Ivan Lewis and Iain Wright have a great deal to offer and despite his alter ego as an internet celebrity, Tom Harris has a unique understanding of some of the dragons progressive politics must confront. (more…)

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Renewal Eds are better than red Ed, says James O’Keefe

30/09/2010, 09:59:04 AM

There were two winners of the leadership contest: both the Eds. We are a meritocratic party and these two merited their respective victories – they ran the best campaigns and both achieved the best outcomes that their teams could reasonably have expected.

More importantly, they were also best in that they connected better by recognising the dual essences of what the party requires at this time: authenticity and renewal.

Authenticity because weaved into the DNA of both these campaigns was an understanding of the need, and a willingness, to push out of the constraints of the New Labour campaign doctrine that served us so well for the last decade: they were prepared to say things that the Daily Mail and the Murdia (Murdoch media) wouldn’t like but that the party has been subconsciously pleading for.

This was writ large in the new leader’s conference speech on Tuesday. (more…)

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We must plan to do more for less, says Jonathan Todd

29/09/2010, 02:30:48 PM

“Facing a new world with new challenges, we need to think again about how we can best serve the people we seek to represent”.

So argues an email which Ed Miliband sent to Labour party members last night. As Ed acknowledged in his conference speech yesterday, one of this new world’s realities, even if we were to now have a Labour government, is the necessity of cuts; and one of the challenges, therefore, is to deliver more for less.

Deficit reduction, however, has simply brought into sharper focus an inescapable trend. An ageing society makes ever less viable established means of financing and delivering pensions, health and social care. Innovation will remain a precondition of improved public services beyond the correction of the structural deficit, which all major parties are committed to achieving over this parliament. Successful adaptation to our cold fiscal climate isn’t simply about muddling through coming years but of making sustainable for the long-term, given profound demographic shifts, vital public services. (more…)

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The last thing we need is a membership drive, says Peter Watt

29/09/2010, 09:30:45 AM

Rites of passage often involve the adherence to certain rituals that help mark significant moments in life. Think of weddings and think exchange of rings, the best-man’s speech and embarrassing dancing. The point is that the rituals happen almost without thinking and often invoke feelings of familiarity and security.

The same is true for the Labour party. Election victories, election defeats and new leaders are all rites of passage with associated rituals. Generally these rituals are benign at worse and even sometimes helpful. The coming together at conferences to show unity, the cries of ‘all Tories are evil’ and trade union general secretaries condemning the government all help the party feel at ease with itself.

But there is another ritual that almost always occurs and that is far from benign; in fact is positively damaging. The membership drive. (more…)

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Conference sketch, by Siôn Simon

28/09/2010, 05:11:53 PM

A glance at Ed Milband reveals his origins. He is dark. Not just his glossy, black hair, but his eyes. And not just the brows or the glinting coals at the centre. The sockets themselves are subfusc.

His beard is light. In some ways he looks girlish. But his full, fleshy lips have a masculine sensuousness. And they are dark.

In short, he is Italian. His original name was Milibandini. His ties are thinner, too, than British ties. But this is also because he is from a New Generation. Only Mr Bradshaw’s ties are thinner than Sr Miliband’s.

Neil Kinnock does not look like this. He is red and freckled. Mr Kinnock is Sr Miliband’s friend. (more…)

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Kill Red Ed. Introduce Real Ed, says Jonathan Todd

28/09/2010, 01:30:11 PM

This afternoon Ed Miliband will introduce himself and reintroduce our party to a country unfamiliar with him and wary of us. The country needs to get to know Real Ed before Red Ed compounds the hostility towards us. This introduction and reintroduction should be made with the narrative which he intends to articulate at the next general election in mind. The first steps he takes as party leader could determine whether or not this journey ends in Downing Street.

A useful political narrative should have three parts: an explanation of where we are; a vision of where we want to get to; and a plan for realising the vision. David Cameron’s general election narrative is predictable. He will describe a country recovered from Labour excess; festooned with the tiny platoons of the Big Society and the ringing tills of prosperity. Rolling back the state, he will argue, took us this far and remains imperative to taking us further into Cameron’s sunny uplands. Hence his commitments to have people keep more of their own money through reduced taxation and his warnings, potentially echoed by almost all of the media, of Labour’s high taxes and big government.

Ed needs to do more than attack this logic. He also needs to promulgate his own contrasting narrative. For his story to have traction he has to confront various realities this afternoon: preparing our movement for the challenges ahead and communicating to the country that the party is prepared to take the steps necessary to meet these challenges.

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Kevin Meagher looks at the new leader’s in-tray

28/09/2010, 09:23:37 AM

THIS week, of all weeks, Ed Miliband will not find himself short of advice. Whatever his critics, myself among them, have said about his campaign, he has executed his strategy expertly. Quite simply, he intuitively understood the centre of gravity in the modern Labour party far better than any of the other candidates.

His appeal to the Guardian-reading, soft left, public-sector urbanites who comprise so much of the party’s grassroots, was perfectly pitched. These are principled, decent people who can be swayed by pragmatic arguments, as they were (initially) by Tony Blair; but ultimately they retain their original, earnestly held views. They saw many of their cherished beliefs battered and bruised during Labour’s years in office and were grateful to have a candidate to vote for in this contest who actually chimed with how they see the world.

The trouble is that their views are not necessarily the views of the broader electorate. Or, indeed, our lost Labour voters. Both Gordon Brown’s former pollster, David Muir and the Open Left team at Demos have made this point in recent days.

So the balance between idealism and hard-nosed electoral reality needs to be better calibrated. And our new leader will not have long to do so. He has to adapt to a fast-changing political landscape with firmness and quickness or risk being on the back foot from the off. To his right-wing media critics he is already “Red Ed” – a rollback to Labour’s Jurassic period. I am sure we can expect some subtle but firm rebranding in this afternoon’s speech.

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Beware of Osborne’s traps on the economy, says Jonathan Todd

27/09/2010, 02:00:54 PM

Ostensibly, Manchester hasn’t greatly changed since Labour conference was last here. The buildings are all in the same place. The distinctive cool and charm remains. The corned beef hash at Sam’s Chop House still does the job.

Yet the British economy suffered a recession which shrank it by 6 percent in the intervening period. This is officially more than half way to a depression and a very big deal. Labour at the general election lost the trust of the people to steer the recovery from this. We won’t return to government unless we again become recognised as the party of economic competence.

The leadership election hasn’t flushed out a fully formed economic offer. Perhaps it was unrealistic to imagine that it could. However, some consensuses emerged. We want tax to play a bigger role in deficit reduction than does the government. But this risks the perception that we are a party of high tax, which is electorally arid terrain. And, while Danny Alexander may have suggested that this won’t happen, it would create a marked contrast between ourselves and the government if they do offer tax cuts in the second half of this parliament, upon which the Tories seem likely to insist.

Another consensus to develop during the leadership contest is that we want deficit reduction to begin later, proceed less aggressively and be more sensitive to GDP growth than does the government. But this risks the view that the party which built up the deficit in government lacks a serious plan for correcting it. That we are, in other words, reckless economic vandals. This is slightly hyperbolic, but isn’t so far removed from how many voters, whose support we need to form a government, see us. Consider, as an illustration of this, that 47 percent of voters in the south of England, according to new research by You Gov and Policy Network, thought that the last government’s spending had been “largely wasted”.

(more…)

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