Uncut « Labour Uncut

James Ruddick says the Tories are storing up glory by trashing our past

08/07/2010, 09:51:41 AM

The next election is already being lost. And the one after. And indeed the one after that. John Kennedy once said: “We can’t know where we’re going until we know where we’ve been.” Well I’m old enough to have been here before: it was the summer of 1979 and Margaret Thatcher was busy rewriting the last Labour government as the Worst Moment in History.

She succeeded – big time – and her rewrite kept Labour out for a generation. It didn’t matter that the disasters which had led to the fall of the Callaghan government – the biggest since World War II – were not Labour’s fault (there had been an international oil crisis, then a US gold crisis, then another oil crisis, then European stagflation). (more…)

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John Woodcock says Ed Miliband is wrong about flexible labour markets

07/07/2010, 08:59:30 AM

As this Labour leadership contest goes on, candidates are jettisoning more and more baggage from 13 years in power in the hope that it will make their leadership balloon soar higher.

Much of this is understandable and necessary. We won three elections on the bounce, but we lost what is always the more important one – the last one. And we need to learn why we lost in order to ensure that we can win the most important election of all – the next one.

But the latest sandbag offered to the wind this week – the belief in a flexible labour market – is one that should stay firmly in its place. (more…)

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Ken Clarke’s not wrong on prisons; he just doesn’t mean it, says Nick Palmer

06/07/2010, 09:00:12 AM

The response to Ken Clarke’s recent speech has been bemusement all round, and no doubt the old stager likes it that way.

The right has always argued for locking more people up, led by the tabloids and urged on by David Cameron and others during the campaign. How pathetic that Labour only added 20,000 prison places in 13 years. How disgraceful that we were letting some prisoners out early because of overcrowding. Why not use prison ships? Army camps? Offshore islands?

Meanwhile, the left has long been uncomfortable with Labour’s record on this. How disgusting that we were pandering to the Daily Mail. How appalling that we had the highest imprisonment rate in Europe. Why weren’t we rehabilitating prisoners instead of having them fester in jails? (more…)

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Jon Bounds is not impressed by Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom

05/07/2010, 09:36:37 AM

As a principle, asking people what they think is a good thing, but ask them in the wrong way and all you’re doing is storing up resentment. It looks like Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is piling up the anger.

If you’ve ever been on TV or radio and the producer has developed an interest in your breakfasting habits as you’re sitting down, it’s because just asking people ‘to say something’ doesn’t work — they mumble, go quiet, and generally say nothing of even enough use to check that the sound levels are right.

So it is with consultation. Ask too tight, or loaded, a question and you do nothing but make people angry, but make the question too wide and you’re going to have a hell of a job finding anything useful. (more…)

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We need a growth plan, not regional economic vandalism, says Rachel Reeves

02/07/2010, 10:52:28 AM

On Tuesday, Nick Clegg announced that at least £0.5bn was to be cut from the budget for regional economic development and at the same time abolished the regional development agencies (RDAs). In their place will be a ‘regional development fund’. In creating this new body, the government broke its promise – with no consultation or debate – that regional development agencies would remain in areas where they were popular.

This is devastating news for businesses across the country, with the coalition government seemingly evermore determined to risk plunging the UK back into recession. (more…)

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Dan Hodges warns Labour against the new pluralism

01/07/2010, 02:46:44 PM

A couple of days ago I received a breathless missive from my old comrades at compass. “Treasury Spending Review – Take Action”, it boomed. “The public service cuts, benefit freezes and raising indirect taxes announced in the budget will increase inequality”, before adding helpfully, “but there is an alternative”. With mounting excitement I scrolled down to learn more of this bold fight back against the Lib/Con assault on the poor, the dispossessed and the vulnerable.

Nothing. No thunderous denunciation. No elegant polemic eviscerating the injustice. Just a standard template inviting me to contribute to a treasury consultation.

There I was preparing to rage against the machine. Instead, I’d run slap bang into the new pluralism. (more…)

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10 lessons for Labour from England’s hopeless World Cup.

28/06/2010, 03:01:46 PM

1. Don’t blame external factors.

OK, so the Lampard goal that never was is damn irritating. But the truth is that England were ordinary at their very best throughout the tournament and no more. They were downright awful yesterday.

Equally, for Labour, its performance in the general election was very poor. It could have been worse; it could have ended up in third place. England could have failed to qualify for the second round. But to blame money, the media, the credit crunch for Labour’s defeat and then fail to face reality will be fatal for 2015. (more…)

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Kate Williams gets suckered into facing Nick and Dave

28/06/2010, 09:00:15 AM

So I get a call to go on the Politics Show, for this post budget debate thing with Clegg and Cameron.

This producer guy – we’ll call him “Ian”, because that’s his name – wants a “mum”, and I bite because I have some things to say about the budget, and this and that; plus I score high for both vanity and gullibility in personality tests.

I don’t make a fuss about the mum-in-inverted-commas thing. (more…)

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We’re not the story. Get used to it, says Dan Hodges

25/06/2010, 10:28:03 AM

Two chance Westminster meetings this week set me thinking about one of the big tactical problems facing Labour.

The first involved a discussion with two Labour supporting members of the Parliamentary lobby, the elite squadron of registered press hawks who follow politics from an exclusive eyrie in the House of Commons.

From debating great matters of state (why Fabio Capello should persevere with Emile Heskey), the conversation drifted to the merits of their key contacts. Routine enough, except that the names were suddenly unfamiliar. Where once were Charlie, Dugher and Damian, now it was Andy, Gaby and Henry. This was the beltway equivalent of the wrong picture coming into your head when you hear the words “prime minister”. For me, it was almost worse. (more…)

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As the Tories go to war on the public sector, Nick Palmer asks where does Labour stand?

23/06/2010, 12:05:44 PM

As covering fire for its cuts, the coalition is deliberately whipping up division between public and private sector workers (and between both of these and people on benefits). The Mail and the Express are leading the charge with crude comparisons of public and private sector pay and conditions (for entirely different types of job). The message is being backed up in successive speeches by Cameron and Osborne. This was heralded by a menacing warning by Cameron in 2009:

Let me make it clear to everyone who works in the public sector: we will honour existing pay deals, including any three year pay deals. But many of them end next year.. (more…)

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