Atul Hatwal « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Atul Hatwal’

The twelve rules of opposition: day 11

04/01/2012, 01:00:54 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 11 – What gets measured gets managed

Labour’s favourite pearly peer, Maurice Glasman, popped up last week with his latest sage intervention. This time he was attacking the monopoly of Oxbridge graduates at the top of British politics.

Ignoring, for a moment, the alma mater of Ed Miliband, the man who saw fit to enoble Lord Glasman, and the piquancy of a peer of the realm railing against elitism, he nearly had a point.

Glasman was right to identify an issue with the background of the current crop of political leaders, but an Oxbridge education is not it.

My Uncut colleague Rob Marchant put his finger on it when he tweeted that the real problem was that so many them had never had a proper job.

There’s nothing wrong with having only worked in the Westminster village per se. Many politicos work extremely hard and achieve great things.

Few can doubt Ed Balls’ pivotal role in ensuring that Labour did not enter the euro, which, in hindsight was one of the party’s most valuable legacies from government.

But life as a journalist or political adviser has its limits if the ultimate destination is Parliament.

This new caste of politicians has become increasingly proficient in the Westminster game of snakes and ladders, at the cost of broader experience. The specialised gene pool from which they are drawn has led to professional inbreeding.

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The twelve rules of opposition: day ten

03/01/2012, 03:00:13 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 10: Stories, stories, stories

It’s not often that there is unanimity between the pixels of Uncut and Liberal Conspiracy, but on one issue there is total agreement – the need for Labour to be more prolific in generating news stories.

In May last year, Sunny Hundal posted about how the shadow cabinet seemed half asleep. The big stories revealing the levels of public sector job cuts, crony appointments to quangos and costs of over-running departmental programmes were all driven by pressure groups.

Precious little research that quantified what the government was doing was coming from the shadow cabinet.

Based on an analysis of Labour press releases as part of Uncut’s monthly work effort league, since Ed Miliband became leader, his shadow cabinet (excluding the leader and deputy leader) have proactively generated 70 stories between them.

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The twelve rules of opposition: day nine

02/01/2012, 04:39:58 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 9: Your strength is your weakness

No-one likes to be unpopular. When a party loses an election, its members and activists do not just feel unpopular, they experience utter rejection at the hands of voters. All those leaflets delivered, doors knocked and phone calls made. For nothing.

What most oppositions do next is no surprise. The retreat into the comfort zone is as understandable as it is likely.

Each party has issues on which they lead, even in the throes of defeat. For example, Labour has the NHS, while the Tories are preferred on immigration. The temptation is to return to these subjects, where the sunshine of public support is still felt, as the mainstays of campaigns in opposition.

It recharges the batteries of a beaten party to do something popular again. For people to see a party stall in the high street and not avert their eyes is sustenance for activists’ political soul. (more…)

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The twelve rules of opposition:day eight

01/01/2012, 02:09:52 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule Eight: Play the man not the ball

The man in question is the prime minister.

As 2012 dawns, for Labour to be a successful opposition, the party will need to change its approach to David Cameron.

Elections revolve around two issues:- the economy and leadership. A central battle in every campaign is the contest between the parties to define each other, in the eyes of the voters, on these twin topics.

Currently, the Tories have a clear story that addresses both economy and leadership. In their narrative Labour are a party addicted to spending, oblivious of debt and led by an ingénue called red Ed who is in the pocket of the public sector unions.

Labour’s response is that the Tories are dragging the country back into recession, condemning a generation of the young to long term unemployment because they are cutting too far and too fast.

Spot the missing link?

Beyond the question marks on Labour’s economic critique (see rules 1, 2 and 3), half of the party’s argument is missing.

The public are hearing nothing from Labour on Cameron’s leadership. (more…)

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The twelve rules of opposition: day seven

31/12/2011, 12:00:17 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 7 – My enemy’s enemy is my friend

It’s new year’s eve, a time to look forward to 2012 with hope. For her majesty’s opposition, it was a bad 2011 and if ever a political party needed to see some light at the end of the tunnel, Labour does now.

While most of the rules of opposition take a while to implement, rule 7 offers the potential to change the political weather sooner, rather than later.

It’s based on a simple fact of political life. Oppositions do not bring down sitting governments. Government backbenchers do. (more…)

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Atul’s twelve days of opposition: day six.

30/12/2011, 02:00:21 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule Six: Use the leader’s life to show their human side

“Show don’t tell’ is normally advice for fiction writers. It involves minimising the exposition and letting readers or viewers experience the story through the character’s thoughts and actions.

Increasingly, it also applies to politics.

Not because political campaigns are works of fiction, not entirely at least. But as the spotlight at each election shines ever brighter on the leader, each party has a story to tell about why their man or woman understands the needs of the country.

Politicians talk about this incessantly, but there is little as persuasive as showing rather than telling. If a leader has a similar background, has gone through comparable experiences and tackled the same challenges as the typical voter, then these actions speak a lot louder than words.

For a prime minister who has the gravitas of office as well as the ability to make decisions that impact people, their personal narrative become less important the longer they are in office. Their “show don’t tell” comes from the choices they make in government.

But for an opposition leader, who has no means to affect people’s lives, and who will likely be largely unknown to voters, the detail of their personal story is critical.

Rule six entails showcasing the opposition leader’s own story in a way that builds a connection with voters and tackles the negatives that are barriers to future office.

It doesn’t matter if they have had a deeply unremarkable past. It doesn’t even matter if their lives are run through with gilded privilege, voters will be interested and use their impressions of the leader’s home life in determining their choice for prime minister.

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The twelve rules of opposition: day five

29/12/2011, 03:58:14 PM

By Atul Hatwal

Rule 5: Be the change you want voters to see

How does an opposition leader convince the sceptical public that they have what it takes to lead?

Just as defeat means voters do not believe a losing party’s economic prescription, they equally have little faith in the leader to make the big decisions that will determine the fate of the country.

Even if an opposition elects a new leader, they are usually little known by the electorate and tainted with the failure of the past.

Starting from this position of deep public mistrust, the opposition leader needs to demonstrate that they are fit to take that 3am call.

And this has to be achieved without being able to make any actual decisions that will impact voters’ lives.

Making statements on national and international issues is expected, but ultimately it’s merely opining. An opposition leader has as much actual power as a newspaper columnist or a blogger. (more…)

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The twelve rules of opposition: day four

28/12/2011, 11:33:08 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 4: Recruit the right support team

Voters pick leaders as much as parties or policies. And what turns an opposition leader into a prime-minister-in-waiting is no accident.

This process has been completed seven times since the war. Although the politics of the moment have varied, and the individual matters enormously, there are still some common features to each successful transformation.

First, recruiting the right support team. Second, demonstrating leadership in the party. And third, showcasing the biography so voters understand their future leader.

Ensuring these three elements are in place will not overturn natural disadvantages if the leader isn’t up to the job, but they will help maximise the chances of success.

So much of the focus in defining a leader is on the individual, it’s easy to overlook the importance of their back office team.

So easy that opposition leaders themselves frequently miss it. (more…)

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The twelve rules of opposition: day two

26/12/2011, 12:01:56 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Rule 2: Use the government’s tax and spending plans as a bridge back into the argument

All oppositions start their lives with a trust deficit on the economy.

Defeat at a general election is the most stark demonstration of voters’ lack of faith. It is the public sending a clear message that they do not believe that the party has either the policies or the capability to deliver on their promises of a brighter tomorrow.

The pre-eminent requirement for an opposition is to bridge this trust gap, as quickly as possible.

But deprived of power, and the ability to demonstrate how alternative policies would have been more effective than the government’s, the options are limited.

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The twelve christmas rules of opposition

25/12/2011, 07:08:24 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Today is a day for presents. And at Uncut we are keen to join in the joy of giving. So we bring the gift of opinion.

It’s a gift that will keep giving, over the Christmas holiday at least. Each day for the next twelve days, twelve rules that determine how to be an effective opposition will be set out. The rules are drawn from a review of the experience of the seven successful oppositions since the second world war, with an emphasis on the most recent.

This isn’t Labour specific, as the rules are eternal and apply to whoever is unfortunate enough to sit on the wrong side of the House.

Neither is it remotely concerned with the substance of politics, the big changes that will make a difference to the lives of people in the country. For the current opposition, there is a paintbox of pamphlets – red, purple and black – waiting to be read for that and a massive policy review process under way.

Instead, the focus here is the low politics, the process, which most politicians profess to disdain but still somehow provides the content for 99% of political discussion.

The rules are divided into four categories that map the essentials for a short-lived life in opposition – first, adjusting to the limits of opposition, second, building an alternative prime minister, third, hitting the government where it hurts and fourth, how to make it all happen.

There could be more individual rules, or fewer, but whichever way the format is cut, the same basic truths of opposition will always emerge.

Adjusting to the limits of opposition

The transition from government to opposition is traumatic. It’s more than demotion, it’s diminution. Where once you mattered and made decisions that had consequences, opposition is life on the other side of a mirror. Visible but immaterial.

The first three of the twelve rules of opposition help the party deal with the immediate consequences of defeat.

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