Labour Uncut

UNBOUND: Wednesday News Review

08/06/2011, 06:47:33 AM

Cameron’s concessions leave no-one happy

David Cameron tried to buy off critics of his hated health reforms by offering a string of concessions yesterday. The Prime Minister promised hospital medics a say on how NHS cash is spent and put a limit on competition with the regulator made to “support integration” as well as encouraging the NHS and private firms to fight for business. He even ditched the 2013 deadline for medics to take control in a move that will enrage Tories who fear reforms will never happen. But Labour leader Ed Miliband still dismissed the U-turn saying: “They should go back to the drawing board on the NHS. These are botched policies.” And Tory MP Karl McCartney raged at the Lib Dems for helping force the concessions, condemning “political posturing by our flip-flopping coalition partners”. – Daily Mirror

The bartering between Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg over health reforms as the Government prepares to unveil a revised package next week risks deepening coalition tensions. There is mounting anger on the Conservative benches at the stance of the Lib Dems, who have demanded a series of changes despite initially backing the legislation. Tory MP Nick de Bois, who sat on the committee examining the Bill, said sticking to the original time-table was crucial. ‘One of the fundamentals – one of the pillars – of the Bill is… that we can remove the vast swathes of democracy from primary care trusts and returning power to GPs by April 2013,’ he said. ‘Let me be clear, these pillars have to remain. I hope they do. I understand there can be changes, but I don’t want to be in a position when I can’t support this Bill because we have lost those essential pillars.’ – Daily Mail

David Cameron is facing a battle to reassure anxious Conservative MPs after he announced a series of changes to the government’s NHSreforms to win over the Liberal Democrats and members of the medical profession. As Nick Clegg told his parliamentary party last night that the time was fast approaching for the Liberal Democrats to swing behind the reforms after securing major concessions, Tories voiced concerns that the prime minister had abandoned key elements of Andrew Lansley‘s original blueprint. Cameron alarmed his backbenchers after he moved to meet the demands laid down by the Lib Dems at their spring conference in March by announcing the shelving of Lansley’s 2013 deadline, changes to the role of the health regulator, Monitor, and the opening up of GP-led consortiums. A senior Tory MP who warned last month that core “red lines” must not be crossed, warned shelving the 2013 deadline could threaten £5bn of spending on frontline health services. – the Guardian

Oxford Dons have no confidence in Willetts

Dons at Oxford University have delivered a decisive “no confidence” vote in the Universities minister, David Willetts. There were cheers last night when the vote was announced in Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre – the first time a “no confidence” motion had ever been issued in a government minister by the university’s Senate. It was carried by the massive margin of 283 votes to five. During the debate, Abdel Takriti, a tutor at St Edmund Hall, called the Government’s plans for further education – under which student fees would rise to up to £9,000 a year – “ill-articulated and incoherent”. Robert Gildea, professor of modern history at the university, proposing the motion, said proposals to introduce “off-quota places” outside the proposed £9,000 fee cap risked introducing a two-tier system. – the Independent

Oxford University has formally declared it has “no confidence” in the policies of the universities minister, David Willetts, in the first sign of a concerted academic backlash against the government’s higher educationreforms. Lecturers passed a motion opposing the coalition’s policies by 283 votes to five at a meeting of the congregation, Oxford’s legislative body. The university is the first to take a public stand against the raising of tuition fees and slashing of the teaching grant, but the rebellion is spreading. Cambridge is expected to announce a date for a “no confidence” vote, while a petition against the government is gathering force at Warwick University. It is the first time a vote of no confidence in a minister has been passed by an English university, and follows a no- confidence vote by the Royal College of Nursing in the health secretary Andrew Lansley’s handling of NHS reforms. The message of “no confidence” will be transmitted to the government by Oxford University’s council, its governing body. – the Guardian

May talks tough about preventing terrorism

Its new counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, warned that some people who are supportive of terrorist groups and ideologies have “sought and sometimes gained positions in schools or in groups which work closely with young people.” It said that new standards to be enforced by Ofsted should enable schools to take action against staff who demonstrate unacceptable views. The Education Bill will also include a stronger focus on pupils’ “spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.” A “preventing extremism unit,” which will include experts in counter-terrorism, has been established at the Department of Education to stop unsuitable providers setting up Free Schools – a key part of the government’s new education strategy. Applicants will need to demonstrate that they would support UK democratic values including support for individual liberties within the law, equality, mutual tolerance and respect. – Daily Telegraph

Not a great first day back from his honeymoon

Ed Miliband returned to work today a married man – and, judging by his animated expressions, it looked as if he was reliving every single emotion he has felt over the last few weeks in the space of a few minutes. The Labour leader tackled the sensitive subject of social care at a press conference this afternoon – but all attention was focused on the sheer number of faces he pulled during his speech. Speaking at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, Mr Miliband described marriage as ‘an important institution’ but insisted that parents did not need to be married to bring up children well. – Daily Mail

At his first press conference since his wedding on May 27, the Labour leader faced questions over his personal popularity and the party’s failure to gain a big poll lead given the economic gloom. “We have succeeded in winning back a section of voters who left us at the last general election,” he stressed. But he admitted that Labour faced a “long task”. “You have got to recognise that we are coming from a long way back,” he said. “We got 29 per cent at the last election, the second lowest share for Labour since 1918.” The party had to address “anger” over decisions made by the last Labour government and lay out a vision for the country’s future. On his personal ratings, he argued that Opposition leaders “early in their time in office” were still building a relationship with the public. – Evening Standard

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UNCUT: Only nationalisation and CCTV can stop abuse in care homes

07/06/2011, 01:00:56 PM

by Dennis Kavanagh

Satan and the sociology professor sat perched on a roof in Srebrenica watching a man with a Kalashnikov taking pot shots at the people running away from him. The professor explained the complex causes of the conflict and the culture of brutalisation that had transformed the once peaceful farmer into a cold blooded killer. In the pause that followed, Satan turned to the sociology professor and remarked, “But that doesn’t quite explain the glint in his eye though, does it”?

That was Radio 4’s superlative Harry’s Game, but had Satan taken up in one of the dilapidated office chairs in Winterbourne View care home I wonder if the same observation would occur to him. In a week that saw Jon Ronson argue in his book How to spot a psychopath that sadists are practically everywhere; we needed only to tune into last week’s Panorama to spot a number of them. The most vulnerable people in our community had been warehoused on an industrial estate in Bristol; though “warehoused” implies some care over the goods stored. This was an oubliette, a forgotten place in a land that wanted to forget about these people. Secret filming by Joe Casey gave these forgotten people eyes and ears and voices, and last week we heard their screams, their pleas for mercy and their howls of pain.

On the left, we often bury unfashionable impulses that would have protected these people. Go on, give into your inner socialists, you know this was about the market. Give into your inner authoritarian; you know secret filming was the only way to tell the truth about what happened.

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UNCUT: Time for Labour’s flat earthers to get real

07/06/2011, 07:00:37 AM

by Dan Hodges

The world is round. It’s a shame, I know. Personally, I’d love a flat world. Think of the excitement of being able to go on “Edge of the World” tours. Sneak up to the boundary; take a peak into infinity.

But alas, it’s not to be. We’re just so mundane. Too damn spherical.

Once upon a time, people thought the world was flat. It had to be. What else could it be? Then, all of a sudden, everyone knew the earth was round. Of course it was. How could anyone have ever though otherwise.

But in between there must have been a transition period. A time when views gradually shifted:

“I was chatting to my mate Ampelius the other day. About this round world stuff”.

“Yeah”?

“Yep. You know what? I think there may be something in it”.

“Get away…”.

And then there would have been the hold outs. The diehards who clung to the earth in all its glorious flatness right till the very end: “I don’t care what they say. It’s flat, and that’s all there is to it”.

What happened to those people? The “circumference deniers”. Were they mocked? Oppressed? Or did they just fade away?

I’ll tell you what they did. They upped sticks and joined the Labour party.

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UNBOUND: Tuesday News Review

07/06/2011, 06:48:09 AM

Where have I heard that before?

The Prime Minister’s “five guarantees” on the NHS will prove as worthless as his “cast-iron guarantee” on Europe. He went back on the promise of a referendum and David Cameron’s already broken, by our count, three of his health promises. The PM’s come up with a handful of guarantees because he needs a short-term fix to a problem called Andrew Lansley. We haven’t forgotten his enthusiastic, 100% backing for the Health Secretary’s scheme to turn the NHS into a giant market. Mr Cameron’s five guarantees are as worthless as that discarded referendum pledge. – Daily Mirror

Making a passionate case for reform, the Prime Minister will reassure people that the NHS is safe in his Government’s hands – and he will claim the proposals are gaining support. He will offer to be “personally accountable” for five “guarantees” – that the NHS will remain universal, that “efficient and integrated care” will be improved, not broken up, that the Government will keep waiting times low and funding will increase, not fall. A survey by PoliticsHome.com and YouGov today finds widespread backing from voters, including Labour supporters, for the reforms – but 59 per cent agree that “deep down, Conservatives want to fully privatise the NHS”. – Daily Express

The Prime Minister is fighting to rescue the Coalition’s Health Bill and will use a major speech to try to convince his critics that he wants the best for the NHS. He will point to reports showing that the standard of care in some hospitals is severely lacking, reports which show “elderly patients left unfed and unwashed”. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, dismissed Mr Cameron’s five pledges. He said: “David Cameron is the first Prime Minister in history to be forced to set out five pledges to protect the NHS from his own policies. Yet, he has already broken two of those pledges. The number of people waiting 18 weeks for treatment has gone up and he has not protected the health service budget. – Daily Telegraph

Salmond’s double independence blow

Alex Salmond’s hopes of a smooth transfer of powers to an independentScotland have been dealt a blow after a cabinet minister said a second referendum would be needed on independence. Michael Moore, the Scottish secretary, said there was a “strong likelihood” that if the nationalists won the first referendum, then the British government would have to hold a further plebiscite to allow Scotland the chance to vote on the precise terms of any independence deal agreed by both countries. His remarks deeply irritated Salmond, the first minister, who has repeatedly insisted there is no legal requirement for a second referendum, since the first vote – likely to be in 2015 – would be based on a detailed proposal from the Scottish government. – the Guardian

Unions have held a mini-summit over their fears for the Scottish ship building industry being undermined by the threat of Scottish independence. Representatives of GMB, Unite and Ucatt – the unions that represent thousands of workers on the Clyde and Rosyth – yesterday warned MPs that even the possibility of independence could see contracts awarded to yards in England. The issue is set to be raised today when Defence Secretary Liam Fox answers questions from the Scottish affairs select committee. Under EU rules, defence contracts do not have to go out to open tender, which means governments usually award them to home yards. – the Scotsman

The GMB flexes its muscles

The Business Secretary was heckled, booed and jeered by angry delegates at the GMB conference in Brighton. One unfurled a banner saying: “Vince Cable not welcome – stop attacking workers’ rights.” The LibDem Cabinet minister’s comments were branded inflammatory. And one union boss warned that the grass-roots reaction to his threats would be: “Bring it on.” Paul Kenny, general secretary of the 700,000-member GMB, accused him of showing “a remarkable lack of understanding” about the impact of the cuts on ordinary people. He described Dr Cable’s remarks about strike laws as “ill-judged” – and claimed his speech may even have increased the chance of widespread disruption. He said: “The GMB and other unions are still in negotiation. My view is that his speech has been very unhelpful. And I think people’s reaction on the ground is going to be, ‘if you’re going to threaten us, bring it on’.” – Daily Mirror

Vince Cable was licking his wounds last night after a miscalculated speech ended in union activists subjecting him to a torrent of heckles and catcalls. The Business Secretary intended to deliver a friendly warning to the GMB conference that a summer of industrial militancy could play into the hands of right-wing Tories agitating for fresh anti-strike legislation. Instead, to the dismay of senior Liberal Democrats, he was cast in the role of union-bashing hard man telling them to act responsibly or rue the consequences. Union leaders accused him of threatening human rights and protested that his intervention had soured the atmosphere ahead of talks with ministers over resolving a dispute over cuts to public-sector pensions. It was the fourth time in a fortnight that ill-considered words by the Business Secretary have angered colleagues. – the Independent

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UNCUT: Knife crime: Cameron’s pre-election lies and subsequent betrayal

06/06/2011, 03:00:54 PM

by Matt Cavanagh

Five years ago, shortly after he became Conservative leader, David Cameron made a speech in which he called on politicians to “stop making incredible promises that the public do not believe they will keep”. He announced a “taskforce” that would help him sort out this problem. The man he asked to chair it was Ken Clarke.

Last week, Ken Clarke’s department released figures showing how he and Cameron are getting on with one particular promise Cameron made loudly and often while in opposition: that anyone caught carrying a knife would go to jail.

In fact, Clarke had already let slip back in December that this promise had been abandoned. But the latest figures show that, never mind everyone caught carrying a knife going to jail, in fact, a smaller proportion are going to jail now than under Labour. This was greeted with predictable outrage by the Sun, Telegraph and others who have campaigned for tougher sentences on knife crime.

Tory MPs have also reacted angrily, blaming either Clarke, the Liberal Democrats, or the judges. But on this issue, the blame must go to the top. Back in 2008, it was David Cameron who personally led the Conservatives’ attack on Labour’s response to the moral panic over knife crime then gripping the country. He encouraged the media and the public to believe it was the job not of judges but of politicians, and in particular the prime minister, to ensure that people caught carrying a knife were getting the punishment they deserved. He made his position clear in July 2008, in an exclusive interview with the Sun: “anyone caught carrying a knife will be jailed under a Tory Government, David Cameron vows today. The Conservative leader declares automatic jail terms for carrying a dangerous knife is the only way of smashing the current epidemic gripping broken Britain”.

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UNCUT: Much obliged, m’lord Ashcroft

06/06/2011, 12:00:28 PM

by Rob Marchant

On discovering, via Tim Montgomerie’s Saturday piece, that Michael Ashcroft has commissioned a report into the future of the Labour party, one’s immediate reaction is that it was exceptionally kind of him. After all, as Montgomerie points out, the party is not exactly awash with cash at the moment to do its own polling. Really a very public-spirited action by the noble Lord.

All right, perhaps Ashcroft is not really bankrolling a report for our benefit. It is of great political value to the Tories to show Labour to be out of touch and polling poorly. But you know what the smart thing for us to do would be? It would be to read it very carefully anyway. And the article is a good starting point. It is uncomfortable reading, naturally, but it is always a position of strength to listen to adverse criticism, especially when it’s based on the opinion of ordinary people. And it is always a position of weakness to ignore it.

Wisdom from the Daily Mail, you say? Free your mind. Montgomerie is an intelligent Tory: strip out the partisan from the adverse criticisms made in the first half of the piece, and what’s left is a pretty objective, if ruthless, analysis.

At the very highest level, there are two things any politician needs to get right in order to attain or keep power: the policy thing; and the non-policy thing. It would be great if we were elected purely on our policies; but to think so is dangerously naïve. There is a range of other factors which can make a big difference. Aside from public perception of the leader, we have public perception of other key figures, historical context, current economic situation, expectations of the future and so on. And these things tend to apply irrespective of political stripe.

The policy thing you can never get much out of through a Tory prism. Montgomerie himself is a full-blooded Tory on touchstone issues such as Europe; therefore such issues, irrespective of whether the public is bothered about them, are talked up, as we would talk up ours. No, we can mostly skip the policy part.

However, on the non-policy areas, the piece makes for some interesting points. First it reinforces what the personal attack line will be: it characterises Ed Miliband, simply, as odd. Now, the Red Ed approach was always too glib and too visibly inappropriate to stick, but Odd Ed – well, it’s cleverer and more effective. Instead of angrily rejecting the personal attack – after all, a fact of political life – we should do what grown-ups do: calmly clock it; analyse it; and deal with it.

None of us can do much about the way we look or sound; but Ed does need to work on how he comes across on television. More personable bloke from the pub, if you like, and less policy wonk or visionary Martin Luther King. Reagan, Clinton and Bush Jr. all had one thing in common: they were people the American public felt they could have a beer with. There is something important in that attack line that needs to be neutralised.

Next, the low personal poll rating is brought up, as per last week’s poll. Again, this should be a concern, but it is not an insurmountable one: there is still time to change it. More importantly, he admonishes Labour for giving the impression of returning to being a party of protest, of student politics. That stings, but it’s also credible, if we review with realism the overall impression left by the March 26 demo (and, while there are undoubtedly other factors, it is at least an interesting coincidence that the month following the London demo was the month our poll lead there abruptly evaporated).

Not everything is accurate about the analysis. For example, Montgomerie adversely criticises Miliband’s failure to reform his party, and here he is wrong: it is simply not possible to reform a political party in eight months (although if he means challenge the party, that is a different matter). But one final adverse criticism is insightful:

“By the early stages of his leadership, David Cameron had been sending mega-watt messages to voters on issues such as the NHS, the environment and fighting poverty — whether you agreed with them or not, they all energetically suggested that he was a very different kind of Conservative”.

The vital subtext here is this: Cameron was prepared to bypass the conventional wisdom of his own party to tell the public what they needed to hear: that his party had changed.

And here is the crux of the matter. Cameron did it. Blair did it with clause four. Thatcher did it against the wets. Once done, all of their positions became secure. All of our leaders, in winning power from opposition, have to do it, usually shortly after becoming leader: it is difficult to argue that Ed should be an exception.

A message of change has been there, yes. But it has been muted, a little fuzzy and, most importantly, directed more at the party and core Labour supporters than at the wider public and swing voters. The public can’t see what’s changed and, if they see anything, they likely see a swing to the left, away from them.

All of this non-policy analysis by the Tories is interesting and useful, precisely because it is largely dispassionate: they have no reason to be nice. It may not all be right, but we could do much worse than to go through it carefully in search of learning points. Because sometimes your worst enemy will tell you the home truth that your best friend won’t.

So, thank you, Lord Ashcroft, for all your hard work on our behalf. You’ve whetted our appetite, now if you could just send the full report to Labour Uncut, we’d be much obliged. We’ll pay the postage.

Rob Marchant is an activist and former Labour Party manager who blogs at The Centre Left.

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UNCUT: The government’s NHS changes tell you everything you need to know about the Tories

06/06/2011, 08:29:05 AM

by Michael Dugher

When Parliament returns this week after the half-term recess, the spotlight will once again return to the battle over the government’s changes to the NHS. The so-called “listening period” is at an end and we will see if Andrew Lansley has really listened, or if the pause to the health and social care bill was merely a cynical, cosmetic exercise designed to shore up Nick Clegg’s position and maintain the coalition as a going concern. John Healey, Labour’s shadow health secretary, has done a brilliant job exposing the true nature of the government’s proposals for the NHS. He will table nearly 40 amendments once the bill comes back to the Commons to test the government’s willingness to listen and think again. But the government’s approach to the NHS tells us everything we need to know about the Tories and Labour’s attack might similarly apply to other areas of government policy too.

First, the changes to the NHS demonstrate that the Tories are reckless. Like in other areas – the so-called strategic defence and security review leaps to mind – the changes were rushed, careless and ill-thought through. The new bill is the largest legislative document in the history of the NHS. With its 136 clauses, the original text of the bill was so large that the chief executive of the NHS, David Nicholson, joked that it was “the only reorganisation you can see from space”. The coalition agreement stated that it was the government’s intention to “cut the bureaucracy at the heart of the NHS”. Yet the British medical association (BMA) claimed that the changes will “replace one bureaucracy with a perhaps even more dangerous one”. As John Healey has highlighted, the usual process for sound public policy, namely that of consultation-legislation-implementation, has been reversed.

David Cameron has tried desperately to “detoxify” the Conservative brand. He knew that central to the old image of the Tories as the “nasty party” was consistently polling so badly in the “who do you most trust to protect the NHS” question. Cameron has also read Tony Blair’s book. Blair once famously said: “Every time I’ve ever introduced a reform, I wish in retrospect I had gone further”. But when it comes to the proposed changes to the NHS, the Conservatives are guilty of seriously over-reaching themselves. They simply do not understand that the national health service is a cherished institution for the British people. We all want to see improvements – big ones – but all governments must proceed with care.

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UNBOUND: Monday News Review

06/06/2011, 07:00:56 AM

Cameron to make desperate bid to convince public to trust him on NHS

David Cameron will commit to “five guarantees” on the future of the National Health Service in a speech on Tuesday designed to reassure critics of his controversial health reforms, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. The Prime Minister will promise to keep waiting lists low, maintain spending, not to privatise the NHS, to keep care integrated and to remain committed to the “national” part of the health service. Such is the concern in Downing Street at the damage the issue of NHS reform is causing the Government, that Mr Cameron will put his reputation on the line with a personal pledge to protect its core values. It represents his boldest attempt yet to assuage criticism from his Liberal Democrat Coalition partners and from many health professionals over the impact of the reforms. In his speech, the Prime Minister will admit that he is willing to act on their concerns after listening to the “profession and patients” during a two-month exercise which was held after Mr Cameron called for a “pause” in the Health Bill’s passage. His “five guarantees” are designed to show the Prime Minister is committed to the NHS, and “he is hearing what is being said”, according to one source. Mr Cameron’s promise on integrated care is designed to ensure patients receive continuity of treatment, without having to explain their condition from scratch each time to different doctors. – the Telegraph

We are told that he is in part moved by the polling evidence put before him by Andrew Cooper which shows the public losing confidence in the Coalition’s reliability on the NHS. Hence the panic in No10, where along with the economy and keeping the Lib Dems on board, keeping credible on health is considered an existential pre-requisite. Which explains tomorrow’s announcement, even if the detail is underwhelming. The pledges amount to the same message – the NHS is safe with us – but said with more words. The one about waiting lists has implications for spending, as the four per cent efficiency squeeze imposed by new spending realities are predicted to have dire consequences for what patients will experience. Last week, amid the quiet of the recess, it was evident in conversations with No10 that this issue remains the big preoccupation. Andrew Lansley’s ‘reform or die’ warning, with its prediction of £20bn a year shortfalls, underscored the anxiety (and not just about his job). Health still has the potential to derail all George Osborne’s election plans. Which is why Mr Cameron is wasting no time on his return to address the issue. He’s that worried. – the Telegraph

Lib Dems face wipe out

The Liberal Democrats face losing up to a quarter of their seats when a Tory-imposed plan to redraw the entire electoral map comes into force from September, figures seen by the Guardian suggest. The boundary review to equalise constituencies and reduce their number by 50, agreed by Nick Clegg in exchange for the AV referendum in the coalition agreement, is threatening the biggest upheaval to the Commons of this parliament. MPs have been warned that almost no seat is safe. The issue could force a mutiny in the coalition amid mounting evidence that the Liberal Democrats will fare far worse than predicted and withDavid Cameron facing further tensions with his backbenchers, some of whom are certain to lose their seats. The four Boundary Commissions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are preparing to announce the new electoral map in September. But the most detailed analysis yet of what those new seats might look like, conducted by academics based at Liverpool University and published by the Guardian, suggests the Liberal Democrats will lose the greatest proportion of their seats. Fourteen out of 57 could be wiped off the electoral map. – the Guardian

The Liberal Democrats could lose a quarter of their seats under boundary changes currently being drawn up by the Government, more than four times that of Labour, according to a new study. Academics at Liverpool University found that the Liberal Democrats would lose 14 of their 57 seats, or 24.6 per cent, under the proposed changes. Labour would lose 17 (6.6 per cent), while the Tories would be least harmed, losing 16 seats, or 5.5 per cent. The current review on constituency boundaries was agreed by the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in return for a referendum on the Alternative Vote, and aims to reduce the number of MPs by 50. The study, published in The Guardian, was conducted by Democratic Audit, a research group working out of Liverpool University. It is the most detailed of its kind, and paints a much bleaker picture for the Liberal Democrats than previous studies. – the Independent

Cable warning to Unions

Union chiefs will be warned by a cabinet minister today that a concerted programme of industrial action against the Government’s austerity measures could result in anti-strike laws. Up to one million workers are expected to walk out on 30 June in protest against the spending cuts, and further shows of union strength are planned for the autumn. Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, will tell a union conference that such moves could backfire by playing into the hands of senior Tories pressing for fresh controls on industrial action. Speaking at the conference of the GMB union in Brighton, he will acknowledge that “feelings are running high” in the union movement, but call for “cool heads” on all sides. He will say: “The usual suspects will call for general strikes and widespread disruption. This will excite the usual media comments about ‘a summer’ or ‘an autumn’ of discontent. And another group of the usual suspects will exploit the situation to call for the tightening of strike law. “We are undoubtedly entering a difficult period. Cool heads will be required all round. Despite occasional blips, I know that strike levels remain historically low, especially in the private sector. On that basis, and assuming this pattern continues, the case for changing strike law is not compelling.” – the Independent

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UNCUT: The Sunday Review: The Master Switch, by Tim Wu

05/06/2011, 05:37:27 PM

by Anthony Painter

The information and communication revolutions of the last few decades have given us access to more content than we could possibly have dreamed of. Imagine what it would have taken to establish Labour Uncut just twenty years ago. You’d need an investor, an office, professional writers, paying subscribers, access to a printing press, and some form of retail and/or mail order distribution. The chances that it would exist are slight.

Labour Uncut is not alone- there is a huge diversity of political blogs and websites providing access to an enormous range of voices. That’s before Twitter or Facebook are even factored in. This is a golden age of access to content diversity. We are fortunate because if the history of the information industries is anything to go buy, these periods of openness are relatively short-lived. The age of the open internet is precious.

It is not the only time such a diverse range of content has been publicly accessible. In the US in the 1920s, radio was a cacophony. It was limited by frequency and amplitude in a way that the internet in the broadband age isn’t but it bears a striking similarity to the internet of today. Local enthusiasts would broadcast their take on the world, local gossip, critical community information; it was a true people’s medium. Alongside that there were the early radio networks: Radio Corporation of America and AT&T’s National Broadcasting Service who merged in 1926 to become what we know today as NBC. Thus, radio of the mid-1920s was a blend of national commercial might and enthusiastic amateurism- much like today’s internet.

Could the two sit together in perpetuity? Of course not. And the big guy won. It wasn’t even a fair fight. The Federal Radio Commission stepped in and, in the interests of clearing the airwaves to enable a higher quality service, all but killed amateur radio. The master switch had been flipped. In Nazi Germany, Goebbels centralised radio in the interests of the creation of bringing ‘a nation together.’ The US did it in the interests of corporate power and customer service. In each case, however, they chose a closed over an open form of information provision and carriage. Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: Labour should lead on constitutional reform

04/06/2011, 01:00:43 PM

The first few years of the last Labour government were radical in a number of ways, and particularly in the way we tried to reform our constitution. We (mostly) swept away the hereditary peers in the House of Lords, threw open a lot of doors and windows onto the workings of government with the freedom of information act and devolved power to Scotland and Wales. This led – not as critics predicted at the time to the formation of a pair of jumped-up local councils – but two thriving institutions that have helped to foster new political systems, a process given expression in spectacular fashion in Scotland a few weeks ago.

As with other areas of policy, we began to lose our radicalism the longer we were in government and our enthusiasm for constitutional reform petered out almost to nothing. We set up a commission to examine electoral reform and then rejected Jenkins’ sensible, moderate proposals for entirely political reasons.· Lords reform was voted on innumerable times and the last proposal – when MPs finally stopped rejecting all of the permutations put to them – got nowhere.

Had we pressed ahead with our plans for a mostly or wholly elected Lords there would have been a second chamber election mid-way though this parliamentary term, giving us a chance to put a new Labour agenda to the public and – in the event of a win – prove to ourselves and to the country that we can be election winners again. A Labour win would have inflicted a mortal wound on the government and provided the perfect springboard from which to launch a general election campaign.

In the end, we didn’t go ahead and now Cameron has assured himself a strong position in the Lords by stuffing the upper house with Tory and Lib Dem apparatchiks. Had we gone ahead with Jenkins’ AV+, then the progressive majority that exists in the country would have been translated into the election results and the progressive rainbow coalition touted last May that was a nice-but-impossible idea would have been entirely workable.

Ed Miliband shouldn’t let his recent unhappy dalliance with electoral reform blunt his aspirations for changes in the way we conduct public affairs, nor convince him that the British public have no appetite for changes to the way we do politics. As a result of the way it was conceived – a Liberal Democrat demand for entering into coalition – the referendum was seen by most through an entirely party political lens and became a referendum on the deputy prime minister and not on the change he was proposing. Read the rest of this entry »

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