Labour Uncut

UNBOUND: Thursday News Review

01/07/2010, 07:52:28 AM

Ed M offers freedom and flexibility…

Ed Miliband has pledged greater freedom for the Scottish Labour Party

“Speaking on a visit to the Scottish Parliament, Ed Miliband said Labour should “lighten up” and allow Iain Gray, the party’s Holyrood chief, to draw up his own plans. The former Energy and Climate Change Secretary also gave his backing to handing Scottish ministers limited tax powers but opposed the “full fiscal autonomy” demanded by Alex Salmond.” – The Telegraph

“Labour leadership hopeful Ed Miliband has called for every worker to be allowed to work more flexible hours. The shadow cabinet minister said the state needed to do more to raise people’s quality of life outside work, urging that markets should not be left to decide “what is acceptable”. He said employees in Britain worked “harder for longer” than anywhere else in western Europe. “This is not the good society we aspire to,” he told Labour activists in London yesterday.” – The Scotsman

Nature vs. Nurture

“All of this creates a dilemma for Labour, which Jack Straw pre-emptively tackled in dismal fashion by decrying “handwringing” in the Daily Mail. Those Labour leadership candidates who talk about pushing the political centre ground in a progressive direction now face a great test. Do they revert to the populist fearmongering of the Blair years? Or do they instead engage with the more enlightened debate which Mr Clarke has boldly unlocked?” – The Guardian

“Candidates for the Labour leadership took a more nuanced view of the row. Andy Burnham said it was better to spend money helping people get their lives back on track than to fund private companies to run prisons. Ed Balls pointed out that the government was poised to cut budgets for crime prevention programmes such as youth activities and programmes for teen pregnancy and drugs misuse.” – Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: NEC elections: shenanigans in the grassroots alliance

30/06/2010, 02:51:52 PM

Intriguing news from the east London suburbs. Uncut has learned that Erith and Thamesmead constituency Labour party has declined to nominate sitting member Pete Willsman for re-election to Labour’s ruling national executive committee.

Why does this matter? There are, after all, many hundreds of other CLPs to whom he could look for support.

It matters because Erith and Thamesmead is Willsman’s home CLP, where his personal party membership is held. And candidates must be nominated by their home CLP in order to qualify for election to the NEC’s CLP section. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: New politics? Natascha Engel and the backbench business committee

30/06/2010, 01:35:26 PM

The Commons authorities have published the results of yesterday’s election to the new backbench business committee.

This follows last week’s defeat by Natascha Engel of Sir Alan Haselhurst for its chair.

The Parliamentary Labour Party might like to note it as an example of how easy it is to publish the results of elections.

One could hardly have hoped for a clearer contest between the old and the new. 74 year-old Sir Alan was the Chairman of Ways and Means (senior deputy speaker) between 1997 and 2010. In the new Parliament he was obliged, under the new rules, to give way to a Labour MP. Having first entered Parliament in 1970, he has been MP for Saffron Walden since a by-election in 1977. A gent from the shires, polite and well-liked across the House, he is the old guard incarnate. Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: Cllr Jack Scott endorses David Miliband

30/06/2010, 10:19:07 AM

We now face the very distressing reality: not a consensual coalition, but a typically right-wing, out-of-touch Tory government. The totally superfluous “emergency budget” provides a taste of the bitterness to expect in coming years.

This next stage will be very difficult for our communities. Our many newly elected councillors – of which I am one – can expect a baptism of fire: in the seven weeks since the General Election, Sheffield alone has lost over £120m investment, including the Forgemasters loan. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Wednesday News Review

30/06/2010, 08:46:10 AM

The contest

“This should be the challenge for the Labour leadership election: not an argument about which policies of the Labour government the contenders did or did not support, or even which policies they support now, but a real attempt to identify the basis for a contemporary centre-left political project. This requires some hard thinking, not a retreat into windy rhetoric or comforting certainties.” – The Guardian

“Sylvester is right to argue that the leadership candidates are in danger of looking inwards rather than reaching out to the voters they must win back but that has nothing to do with the voting system Labour is using. In fact, the involvement of more than 3 million people who pay to be affiliated members of the Labour Party makes the contest more open than simply having 140,000 members balloted or allowing 250 MPs to decide.” The New Statesman

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HOME: Caption contest

29/06/2010, 01:10:27 PM

We all have embarrassing photos knocking around, the type your mum gets out when you take a new girl/boyfriend home. We can just see Mrs Clegg making little Nicky cringe when she pulls this one out of the family album when new beau Dave is presented to the Clegg family for the first time.

Captions please.

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INSIDE: Uncut’s open letter to PLP chair, Tony Lloyd

29/06/2010, 12:47:26 PM

Dear Tony,

At last night’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party you told MPs off for leaking information to websites. Passing information to websites, even Labour-friendly websites, is not in the comradely spirit, you said.

A particular example you gave was the reporting of Labour MPs who didn’t vote in the select committee elections. You said that this was definitely not in the comradely spirit.

You framed the point in general terms. We thank you for your delicacy. But Labour Uncut is the website in question. The select committee non-voters was our story. And it is only Uncut which has been publishing reports from PLP meetings and leaked round robin emails sent to Labour MPs. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: Second tranch of PLP select committee elections

29/06/2010, 12:20:37 PM

FAO Labour MPs

At 7pm this evening the deadline passed for nominations to the Labour vacancies on the select committees.

Please find below three key pieces of information:

– the list of nominations where we are proceeding to ballot.

– details of how you submit a short statement (200 words) to the PLP Office so that we can send all statements out together

– information about proxy voting Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: Ben Furber says the web campaigns are as bad as the candidates

29/06/2010, 09:05:45 AM

The web ‘strategies’ of the candidates are failing to impress for exactly the same reason the candidates themselves are: none of them has anything much to say.

I don’t expect more than the simple, flat and un-aesthetic websites and non-existent web strategies of the candidates because I don’t expect much of anything from them.

A leadership campaign can only be as exciting as the candidates themselves, and an online communications strategy can only be as exciting as the campaign. More bluntly put, the candidates aren’t exciting, so the campaigns aren’t interesting, so the web products are boring. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Tuesday News Review

29/06/2010, 07:56:50 AM

Budget fall out

“Is Labour losing out on a star? Yvette Cooper has just impressed the Labour benches with a tour de force of a speech in the Commons in which she picked apart the budget for imposing “savage” cuts that are “nastier” than anything introduced by Margaret Thatcher.” – The Guardian

“Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, who tabled the Budget amendment, has told colleagues he does not want to trigger “nuclear war” in the party. But the Lib Dem leadership will be concerned that a rebellion may grow. Labour has begun targeting Lib Dem MPs with high numbers of poor voters. Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, said it was “shameful” that the Lib Dems had supported “the most right-wing budget I can remember”. – The Telegraph

“Ed Balls, the Labour leadership contender, said last night: “Nick Clegg and Vince Cable warned of a Tory VAT bombshell in the general election but are now helping to deliver it. So it’s encouraging that two Lib Dem MPs have stood by their principles and voted against the most unfair and regressive tax rise of all.”” – The Guardian

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