Atul Hatwal « Labour Uncut

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Looking to 2014, not 1974: the case for spending limits

23/05/2011, 07:00:17 AM

by Rob Marchant

During the last two weeks, pieces by Uncut columnists Atul Hatwal and Peter Watt seem to have caused something of a controversy in Labour circles by suggesting that Labour keep to Tory spending limits. Peter’s piece was followed by a passionate defence of the current position by LabourList’s Mark Ferguson; not to mention a more wild-eyed, man-the-barricades-the-Tories-are-coming, ad hominem attack from Owen Smith.

So before making our minds up, perhaps we might take a cool, detached look at the case for change. The question of tax and spending limits is not new: indeed, it was raised on these pages back in March. However, given that spending is arguably the most critical question to answer before the next election and will quite possibly decide its outcome, it is important to construct the case clearly and calmly, brick by brick.

Historical evidence on beating incumbent governments: Since 1974, from the table below, no party has challenged an incumbent on a tax-raising platform, and won. In contrast, we challenged three times 1983-1992 on such a platform and lost each time.

UK changes of government after 1974

Year	Winning Challenger	Manifesto pledge
1979	Tory	Pledged to cut taxes, although raised VAT and arguably did not carry out the pledge. Cut spending.
1997	Labour	Pledged to keep to Tory spending limits for two years, and did. Pledged balanced budgets and no increase in income tax for 5 years, and kept them.
2010	Tory (in coalition)	Pledged not to raise NI and cut spending to reduce debt.

The tough questions: a. by 2014, why do we think that a political approach which hasn’t worked electorally in 40 years will work for us then? Especially when, in the political climate of the 1970s, people were demonstrably warmer to the idea of higher taxes in return for a larger public sector? And b., if it was felt necessary to do this in 1997 (growing economy) to get elected, why do we think raising taxes in 2011 (stagnating economy) a good idea? (more…)

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The shadow cabinet goal of the month competition

20/05/2011, 07:00:01 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Readers pick from Alexander, Balls, Burnham, Denham and Healey for May’s title

In a month of electoral clouds for Labour and deeper questions about the party’s overall gameplan, there were still moments of hope from the shadow cabinet.

Each of this month’s contenders for readers’ goal of the month is from action in the chamber. They are, in alphabetical order, Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, John Denham and John Healey.

1. Alexander lays a trap

Sometimes it isn’t the bravura performance or the cheers of the crowd that make a performance notable.

It’s the content that counts.

Douglas Alexander doesn’t particularly skewer or embarrass William Hague in this clip. This wasn’t the Commons as a bear-pit. Instead, he uses the chamber for the most important function of all – holding the government to account on matters of war and peace.

Since the start of the Libya intervention, the absence of any sort of strategy has been painfully obvious. Alexander’s questions are ticking timebombs. William Hague flannels through his responses, but there’s only so long he can do this.

And judging by his tone and body language at the despatch box, he knows it.

A couple more of these exercises in foreign office evasion from Hague and he will find them edited together into packages constantly replayed on the news to illustrate the government’s obfuscation on their drifting mission.

With these questions, Alexander teed up Hague for the first part of the package.

(more…)

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Labour’s plan B: concede and move on, and more

13/05/2011, 07:00:33 AM

by Atul Hatwal

These are conflicted times for the Labour party. As the impact of last week’s election results has sunk in, two opposing camps have emerged.

On one side is the leadership and its loyalists. The official line is that the current strategy is working. In this interpretation, last week’s results were pretty good. 800 odd new councillors, an 8% increase in the national share of the vote and a Labour administration in Wales are indeed positives.

Not everything is perfect, ahem, Scotland, but things are basically going to plan.

On the other side are those unhappy with the current strategy. This is a big tent. In it, among many others, are Dan Hodges, Sunny Hundal and Rob Marchant and, based on his speech to Progress, Ivan Lewis, the shadow culture secretary.

For this camp, last week was a disaster. At a time of unprecedented government cuts, Labour managed to lose the popular vote in both England and Scotland and virtually no Tory voters from the general election switched to Labour.

Plan A is failing and unless something is done soon, Labour faces a dismal return to the 1980s.

Cards on the table, I’m no fan of plan A. My own post last week puts me slap bang in the middle of the unhappy tent. But over the past week, reading the different despairing takes on Labour’s performance, one thing has leapt out.

There’s no plan B.

Not in the sense that we are doomed and nothing can save the party, but that the focus of analysis has been on why it went wrong rather than what can put it right.

(more…)

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The clouds in last night’s silver lining

06/05/2011, 10:01:59 AM

by Atul Hatwal

As Ed Miliband surveys the results after his first major test as leader he will have mixed emotions. Great in England, good in Wales, bad in Scotland and rapidly forgotten on AV.

A curate’s egg, whatever one of those might be.

While the dynamics of devolved government mean the results in Scotland and Wales are driven by regional factors, and AV is done for a generation at least, it’s the English local elections where the tea leaves for the next general election can be best read.

England is where Labour needs to win the key seats, and its England where Labour has proportionately lost most voters since 1997. Ostensibly, the results give a sound basis for hope.

Not quite street party territory, but at least a couple of glasses of sherry.

On this happy path, the numbers of new Labour councillors elected take Labour back to respectable mid-2000s levels of representation in local government. Gains in a single election on this scale have not been seen since the mid-1990s.

This is not to be lightly dismissed. Revival in local government is an essential pre-requisite for national success.

Then there’s the overall vote share. While not spectacular, it was much improved over the election last year and progress at this rate would lead to a solid Labour majority at the next general election.

But still, there’s doubt.

Can a national result be extrapolated from local elections? Is this really a foundation for victory built by winning back Labour sceptics? Or a house of cards made from passing protest votes?

A few months ago in this column, I highlighted Labour’s poll challenge by looking at three specific questions asked intermittently by YouGov in their daily and weekly polls, and tracked their responses over the previous three months. These questions examined voters’ attitudes to the defining issues for the next general election.

The updated results to Labour’s poll challenge hold the key to interpreting last nights mixed election results.

The three YouGov questions look below topline voting intentions to reveal how voters feel the government is hitting them in the wallet, their view of how the government is cutting the deficit and who they prefer as a leader – David Cameron or Ed Miliband.

The public’s answers over this year have involved responses from tens of thousands of people and give a clear view of the scale of the problem.

(more…)

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The real Labour lie on immigration

22/04/2011, 08:00:36 AM

by Atul Hatwal

David Cameron’s speech on immigration last week sparked a predictably incoherent response from Labour.

The official line was to not have a line on what Cameron was talking about. Nor was it to have a line on Vince Cable’s response.

Instead, Labour just talked about there being a government split. While several elephants trampled around Labour’s room. Did the party agree with Cameron? Or Cable? Did it want to defend its record?

Questions, questions.

No answers were immediately forthcoming, but some clues on leadership thinking, beyond abject terror at the use of the ‘I’ word, have begun to seep out in the past week.

Up popped Maurice Glasman in the pages of Progress, Labour’s very own pearly king, or at least Lord. He had lots to say about Labour’s “lie” on the levels of immigration, the impact on traditional working class folk and the need to “reconnect” with members of the English Defence League.

Gor blimey guvnor.

Then Ed Miliband chipped in to Nick Robinson. Citing the mythical conversation with the average punter, so beloved of politicians reaching for some authenticity, he said:

“I think we clearly underestimated the number of people coming from Poland…People say to me, look I’m worried about the pressure on my wages of people coming into the country, I’m worried about what it does to housing supply”.

Looking beyond it being unlikely anyone really said that to him, given no-one outside of a think tank actually talks like that, Miliband’s words marked the complete triumph of a new narrative for Labour on immigration. He might have skirted around the topic during the leadership election, but this was the first time he had articulated the narrative as leader of the Labour party.

While the right wail about identity, security and look suspiciously at the Pakistani migrants and their children; Labour has gone down the Duffy road with an invading army of eastern Europeans pushing hard pressed Brits out of jobs.

Increased labour supply at the lower income end of the labour market, driving down wages, increasing unemployment and increasing pressure on public services is the more salon-friendly version of this thesis.

But here’s the problem. Regardless of the way it’s expressed, it’s wrong. Not morally or ethically, but factually. (more…)

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The week Uncut

16/04/2011, 10:30:53 AM

In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:

Atul Hatwal presents the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition

Dan Hodges thinks blue Labour needs a spinner

Tom Watson says Rebekah Brooks should resign

Michael Dugher reports back from Leicester South

Stella Creasy says private debt is this government’s public injustice

Nick Keehan reports on Cameron’s immigration speech

Sunder Katwala says Nick Cohen is wrong on religion

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Uncut presents the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition

15/04/2011, 07:00:07 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Readers to choose from Alexander, Balls, Cooper, Healey and Murphy to pick best performance

Back in January, Uncut launched a monthly shadow cabinet league table. It tracks shadow cabinet members’ effort in Parliament and outside in the media. But, effort, while a useful measure, isn’t the whole picture. One frequent comment has been that the table focuses only on process and effort, whereas it is important to looking at results as well.

Fair point.

We present the shadow cabinet goal of the month competition.

The contest has been developed to recognise the successes in the shadow cabinet, based the impact they have had.

Judging quality is a subjective business. One person’s barnstorming performance at the despatch box is another’s unhinged rant. And that’s where you, the Uncut public come in.

Five examples of the shadow cabinet at their best have been painstakingly sifted from the past month’s action in the Commons and the media. They are set out here for you to consider and then cast your vote to award the most prestigious title in Labour politics – Uncut shadow cabinet goal of the month.

As with the league, this isn’t intended to be the be all and end all, but it gives a view of recent highlights.

This month’s five contenders are, in alphabetical order: Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper, John Healey and Jim Murphy.

1. Alexander fells the great white buffalo

William Hague came into office with a reputation as a sparkling Commons performer, an elder statesman with experience as a cabinet minister and a general wit and raconteur. He was deputy leader of the Conservative party in all but name.

How the mighty have fallen.

And in that fall, Douglas Alexander deserves his share of credit.

Questionable personal decisions and Foreign Office bungling might have taken their toll on Hague, but without Alexander’s work-rate and scrutiny, the impact on the Foreign Secretary’s effectiveness would have remained unexposed.

The exchange between Alexander and Hague over the bizarre secret mission in Libya which ended with the Benghazi rebels arresting the British party provides a parliamentary snapshot of the moment a big beast was felled.

As ever with the Commons, piercing wit was the weapon.

Alexander’s deadpan delivery of an expertly framed analogy succinctly demonstrated the true absurdity of the situation. It delivered Hague his worst moment in the Commons in over twenty years. (more…)

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The Old Politics case for AV

08/04/2011, 07:44:40 AM

by Atul Hatwal

What a strange situation. Secretaries of state facing-off at cabinet meetings; shadow cabinet members at loggerheads and rival gangs of activists squaring up, hoping one of the other lot will spill their pint.

Who knew electoral systems were so emotive? It’s enough to make you want to shout “leave it, Lee; it’s not worth it”.

Like many, I find myself looking on, bemused. The intensity of the debate on the referendum on the alternate vote (AV) is in equal parts bizarre and disengaging. Babies without incubators, Nazi fellow-travellers and a rag-bag of random celebrities are all part of the carnival of the absurd wending its way across our news pages.

In terms of the actual argument underneath the artifice, the case is finely balanced.

Most people get Cameron’s Usain Bolt analogy and intuitively feel it odd that someone finishing second in a race should end up winning. But, equally they understand that voting is about building legitimacy, and for most voters, a second best choice as MP is better than someone who the majority actively opposed.

As neither side has delivered the killer blow in their initial pitch, the approach of both campaigns has been to just shout louder. A ten-pints-of-lager strategy.

So they continue to brawl, while people, who are only now just beginning to look at the issue, feel a bit like they have walked into a taxi queue at club kicking-out time in downtown Croydon on Saturday night. (more…)

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The March shadow cabinet league table

01/04/2011, 07:00:01 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Murphy surges into second in Uncut Shadow Cabinet work-rate league as Alexander remains on top

Khan climbs from sixth to third while overall work-rate across the shadow cabinet rises 36%

Douglas Alexander remains top of the league as the total shadow cabinet work-rate went up 36% in March compared to February.

(more…)

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Revealed: Fuel stabiliser set to hike household energy bills

25/03/2011, 07:00:01 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Ofgem research contradicts government claims that costs will not be passed onto consumers

As George Osborne and Danny Alexander struggled to deny that increased taxes on North Sea oil would simply be passed on to consumers on petrol forecourts, it emerged that these taxes would also hit hard-pressed households’ energy bills.

Wholesale costs faced by the big household energy suppliers, who are involved in energy exploration and production in the North Sea, are set to rise when these new taxes are levied.

New research released by Ofgem this week revealed how these increased costs will feed through into household energy bills.

The report, entitled “Do Energy Bills Respond Faster To Rising Costs Than Falling Costs“, was sneaked out on Monday. It details how energy suppliers don’t just pass on an increase in the wholesale costs of energy, they hike customer bills by almost 10% more than the original cost increase.

Applying Ofgem’s analysis to the changes announced in the budget, all households that use energy from the major suppliers facing higher oil and gas taxes will be hit, regardless of whether they benefit from the cut in fuel duty.

The result will be millions of non-drivers subsidising motorists’ petrol costs through their energy bills, raising new questions about David Cameron’s claim that this would be the “greenest government ever”.

Even worse, Ofgem’s analysis shows that when energy suppliers’ wholesale costs decrease, they don’t pass on the full benefit to consumers. Instead, they pocket over 60% of the difference, leaving prices much higher than before the initial increase.

This means that the fuel stabiliser is likely to permanently ratchet up energy prices for consumers. (more…)

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