Uncut « Labour Uncut

The new leader must learn a lesson from Cameron, says John Woodcock

27/09/2010, 09:55:23 AM

At a time when we are all rightly focussing on how to unite behind our new leader, I just need to say how bloody gutted I am for his brother.

I thought David Miliband was excellent before this contest began, and he rose significantly in my estimation as it progressed.

The Labour party, and ultimately the country, still need him. And, just as much as him, they need the people he inspired through this contest, and the ideas has brought alive.

But while I am so sad for David, I am filled with hope about the leadership that Ed will bring. A win is a win; and whatever the Tories may try to spin, the maths behind his victory and the manner in which he got there are ultimately likely to be of little interest to the public. What will matter to them is how he leads and how we respond from here. (more…)

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Ed must be a leader, not a prisoner, says Dan Hodges

26/09/2010, 01:32:19 PM

I was wrong. The heart ruled the head. It’s Ed, not David, whom the party sees waving from the steps of Downing Street.

There is a ritual that is enacted at moments like these. Critics become tribunes. Opponents cheerleaders. Cries of warning morphing seamlessly into honeyed words of praise.

That is as it should be. Politics is not a spectator sport. Ignore the gnashing of tabloid teeth. The party has a new leader, and he has been elected fair and square. A presumption of loyalty and support are, or should be, part of his inheritance.

But so should be honesty. Cant is no foundation for unity. Nor is suspension of disbelief. Those of us who stood against Ed Miliband’s election have an obligation to state why. (more…)

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David Prescott on a crowdsourced “shadow communications agency” for the new age

25/09/2010, 10:30:40 AM

So we’re more than £20 million in debt. £16m in the red with a further £11m in loan repayments.

Short money of £4.5m a year will help the shadow cabinet and their spads with their transition from government to opposition, but we won’t be able to touch a penny of it for party campaigning or reducing the debt.

So Labour’s going to have to think smarter and, well, cheaper if it’s going have any impact against the Tory-Lib Dem government.

But here’s the good news – campaigning isn’t expensive as it used to be.

Take our Go Fourth campaigns against RBS, that private members bill against the minimum wage and abolishing NHS Direct. (more…)

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What really goes on at Labour party conference, by Dan Hodges

24/09/2010, 02:00:57 PM

At the opening of North by North West, Cary Grant’s character, Roger Thornhill, is abducted from his friends and family, transported to a remote location, and persecuted by his captors. Confused and disoriented, they pour alcohol down his throat, question and abuse him, and demand answers about his work with government. Finally, his ordeal complete, he is thrown out onto the road, left to negotiate his own hazardous route back to safety and sanity.

Roger Thornhill would have felt right at home at Labour conference. As a party we proclaim a passionate commitment to reform of the Parliamentary process. The insane working hours. The drinking culture. A building unfit for purpose. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to internal policymaking we think the best solution is to entomb the entire Labour movement for a week in a cramped, sweaty, municipal arena, deny them food and sleep, ply them with booze, then refuse to let them out until they’ve discovered the new Jerusalem.

Soon after our victory in 1997, I asked a Downing Street aide whether they planned to follow through on Tony Blair’s stated desire to downsize conference, or even make it a biennial event. “Daren’t”, came the reply. “Party wouldn’t stand for it”. Abolish Clause four. Invade Iraq. Privatise public services. No problem. Touch the free spread at agents’ night and you’re history.

(more…)

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Chris Bryant reports from the Khodorkovsky trial

24/09/2010, 09:58:59 AM

Russia can often seem surreal. Layer upon layer of history. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin, Yeltsin – and now Putin/Medvedev.

For all the oligarchic bling in all the shops, the red stars on the top of the Kremlin towers suggest Communism is still alive and the very walls of the fortress themselves seem to invite kremlinology. Who really pulls the strings? Is it the President, Medvedev, who is organising the probably accurate smearing of the Moscow mayor, which has dominated the state-run media for the last two weeks? Or is it Putin? And why are they doing it now, when mayor Luzkhov’s term runs out soon and he is barred from standing again? All too often, the labyrinthine political chicanery and the extraordinarily tight circle of the very well-heeled elite reminds one of communism, but without the ideology.

At the heart of the parabola of surrealism lies the legal system. Torture is endemic according to Amnesty International. Many prisons would be better termed ‘penal colonies’ or indeed ‘gulags’. Thousands are infected with HIV and have little or no medical care. And the criminal justice system is regularly used to settle political scores.

I went to see one such case this Monday. The courtroom, on the third floor of a tired Moscow building, was tiny, panelled with cheap varnished plywood, its parquet flooring scuffed by decades of rearrangements of the furniture. At the front, a dais with the double-headed Romanov eagle and the flag of the Russian Federation limply hanging from a thumb tack and a piece of sellotape. To the left a sort of tank, made of reinforced glass and chunky steel, in which stood the two defendants, Platon Lebedev and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

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Kevin Meagher looks back at the coalition’s first year in office

23/09/2010, 05:01:00 PM

Britain, June 2011.

The loss of last month’s referendum on the alternative vote has left the Tory-Lib Dem government reeling. The 90% No vote capped a miserable first year in office for deputy PM, Nick Clegg, and few were surprised at his resignation. Widely blamed for the fiasco, Mr Clegg had never really recovered his popularity following the embarrassing incident when apprentices angry at the scrapping of the future jobs fund tried to throw him into a smelting pot on a visit to his Sheffield constituency.

In a year that saw many dramatic reversals of fortune, Lembit Opik swept back into the Commons, agreeing to take over as interim Lib Dem leader. “I’ve grown up and can give my party exactly what it needs” he smirked, standing on a segway next to his latest fiancée, the recently-divorced Katie Price, as they posed for a double-page spread in the launch edition of Frisky Boy magazine. (more…)

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The government is set to break its promise on Equitable Life, says Stephen Timms

23/09/2010, 09:00:08 AM

Tory and Lib Dem MPs are about to betray a big group of supporters. The government will shortly announce compensation for people who lost out in the failure of Equitable Life ten years ago. Before the election, David and Nick promised the earth, claiming people would get a better deal by voting for them. But – and this is becoming a trend – they are going to break their pledge.

The pledge was drawn up by Equitable Life members action group (EMAG). It was signed before the election by the prime minister, deputy prime minister and chancellor.

But the pledge – like, I fear, many others – will not be fulfilled. EMAG was led up the garden path by Tory and Lib Dem MPs to increase their vote before the election.

The scale of the betrayal became clear in a Commons debate last week. Pre-election, the pledge was signed by all but 26 Tory MPs and all but six Lib Dem MPs. (It was also signed by a much smaller number of Labour MPs – 42.)

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Eric Joyce on his journey to the shadow cabinet elections

22/09/2010, 09:00:27 AM

It’s often said that there are too few MPs with backgrounds other than purely politics. At first glance, the CVs of most former Labour cabinet ministers seem to confirm that. In fact, the Parliamentary Labour party is packed with people with other life experiences, from ex-miners like David Hamilton to teachers, social workers and – OK then – lawyers.

I think this largely unfounded perception of MP unwordliness stems from the way technocratic skills fuse with political patronage in contemporary government. That is not necessarily to be adversely critical; perhaps there is no other way. Tony and Gordon needed people in their cabinet with practical experience of how 21st century government works and naturally turned to people they’d trained up themselves. And while it’s been often remarked that it seems a bit strange for the Labour leadership to be contested by four people with essentially identical trajectories, two of them actually brothers, it’s fair to say that these people and others like them turned out to be very good at the job. (more…)

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David Miliband has won, says Dan Hodges.

21/09/2010, 09:00:32 AM

This Saturday David Miliband will become leader of the Labour party. He will have won a majority of his Parliamentary colleagues and the wider membership, along with sufficient support from unions and other affiliates to secure not just victory but an overwhelming mandate. The New Labour era will be over.

A few months ago I wrote that this leadership contest would tell us more about ourselves as a party than it did the candidates contesting it. It has. Less an election, more an exercise in psychoanalysis, we’ve delved into the deepest recesses of a party’s soul. Remorse, guilt, envy, hatred, love, fear, hope. Above all, hope.

We wept for the supporters abandoned to the government’s tender mercies. Felt shame for the crimes we committed in our own ruthless pursuit of power. Looked jealously upon those who wrested it from us. (more…)

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Give us leadership, not dictatorship, says Michael Dugher

20/09/2010, 11:36:10 AM

For backbenchers, especially for the non-aspirant or the new intake, the election of the shadow cabinet is an entertaining process. Perhaps this is why so many of us voted for it. Wannabe shadow cabinet members clog up the email inboxes of hitherto ignored Parliamentary colleagues with their CVs. Backbenchers eagerly await the ‘personal notes’ from candidates to arrive in the post – handwritten to demonstrate the new closeness of the relationship.

Election friends are easily won. But when the next leader of the party says that he or she is “one of a team, not a team of one”, this time they will have to mean it. Labour needs not just a new leader, but new leadership. A different style and approach is required, including to policy-making and to working with colleagues.

All leaders, and especially aspirant leaders in the middle of a leadership election, talk about the need to do things differently, to be more inclusive, to work better with colleagues, and to more closely engage with the Parliamentary and wider party. The difference this time is that the new leader will have little choice but to do things differently. (more…)

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