Brewer’s Green « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Brewer’s Green’

Labour in key seats retreat

14/01/2014, 06:27:23 PM

On the day ICM’s monthly poll saw Labour’s lead fall to 3 points, news reaches Uncut of a quiet “re-prioritisation” of the party’s list of 106 key seats.

At Uncut towers, we’ve been hearing grumbles from the field for a while that the flow of resources and help from head office has been extremely variable, with certain seats receiving substantially greater support than others.

Now a Brewer’s Green source has confirmed that a new approach is being implemented, saying “some seats are more key than others.”

Partially, this is the Livermore effect. Labour’s new campaign chief, Spencer Livermore, has been in post for just under two months and is focusing his scarce resources to maximise effectiveness.

But underpinning this reappraisal are two broader developments: first, the increasing effort Labour is having to devote to retaining marginal seats it already holds and second, the party’s flagging performance in the south.

At the last election Labour won 17 seats where the majority was only in three figures. Although Labour’s vote in these seats will undoubtedly be bolstered by defections from the Lib Dems, there is a real danger that anti-Labour supporters of the coalition parties will switch their votes to maximise the chances for a Labour defeat – after all, both the Tories and the Lib Dems will be standing on the same economic record.

In 2011, when Debbie Abrahams won the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, it was notable that the Lib Dem vote held up, sustained largely by massive switching from the Tories.

If this type of behaviour were replicated at the next election then Labour could face losing large numbers of seats, with shadow cabinet members like Gloria De Piero, who had a majority at the last election of 192, under threat.

Allied to the need to protect these seats has been a growing realisation that Labour is not making the headway needed in some southern seats and that the party’s finite resources would make more of a difference if committed elsewhere, principally in the northern marginals.

The source who spoke to Uncut highlighted Dover, Crawley and Battersea as examples of the types of seats where Labour is struggling.

This doesn’t mean all support for the lower priority list will be withheld, more that they will not get first call on the resources that are available.

The source suggested Labour’s realistic target list is nearer 60 than 106.

In effect, Labour is now targeting a coalition with the Lib Dems following the next election.

Posted in Inside | 10 Comments »

New revelations expose contradictions in the Labour leadership’s story on Falkirk

19/11/2013, 01:36:38 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Another week and yet more twists in the Falkirk story.

Over the weekend, Unite’s response to the Labour party’s internal report on Falkirk was published by the Sunday Times (£). It sheds more light on Labour HQ’s involvement in the affair as well as revealing an important new allegation of malpractice.

To understand what happened, we need to wind the clock back to last December.

Unite had sent large batches of new Falkirk membership applications to Labour head office for approval. The bulk of these were Unite members joining the party under the terms of the now defunct “union join” scheme. This allowed Unite, or any union, to pay the first year’s membership subscription for any of their members who wanted to join Labour, as long as the application included the new recruits’ direct debit details to cover future years’ subscriptions.

Rapid processing of these applications was required if these new members were to be eligible to participate in the selection. According to party rules, new members can only take part in picking the prospective parliamentary candidate if they have “six months continuous membership of the Labour party (any constituency) at the freeze date.”

The freeze date is the point at which the selection process is declared open. Given the Falkirk selection was expected to take place in May or June, timing was tight for Unite’s surge of new recruits from November and December 2012 to have built up “six months continuous membership”.

There was almost no margin for delay.

But delay is exactly what happened. Suspicious party officials flagged several applications, worrying that party processes were being manipulated and because direct debit details were frequently missing.

This presented two challenges for Unite and Labour.

First, adding the missing direct debits would have been very time consuming, significantly delaying registration of the new members.

Second, even if these memberships could be somehow quickly readied to be put on the system, late January would have been too late to qualify if the contest was held in the first half of the year.

Labour HQ’s role in fixing these problems reveals the depth of the party’s involvement in backing Unite’s strategy in Falkirk.

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Posted in Uncut | 9 Comments »

Labour’s head office in “chaos” as Livermore begins his first day in charge

18/11/2013, 07:00:54 AM

This morning, Spencer Livermore will step across the threshold of Labour’s Brewer’s Green HQ and formally take charge of Labour’s general election preparations.

As we previously reported, Ed Miliband’s personal appointment of the former Gordon Brown protégé as campaign director effectively sidelines the party’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, the party’s chief official, who was appointed by the party’s National Executive Committee in 2011.

Ahead of Livermore’s arrival, the atmosphere at Brewer’s Green is tense, with one well-placed insider describing it as “chaos” as the fallout from the botched Falkirk selection continues to play out in the media spotlight.

“There’s a total breakdown of trust between the general secretary’s team and the leader’s office,” says the insider.

“The staff are completely paralysed. It’s like a sitcom being played out before us”.

Yet this is a sideshow compared to the potential calamity next spring as Ed Miliband seeks to drive through his landmark changes to the way affiliated trade unions fund the party.

Miliband is staking everything on getting a new opt-in arrangement where millions of ordinary trade unionists choose to support the party, rather than have union chiefs wielding their chequebooks on their members’ behalf.

Party sources claim that Miliband sleepwalked into announcing the reforms without really understanding their full implications.

“Virtually the entire staff understood you’re ending the collective link but even the most senior advisers to Ed didn’t realise” says one insider.

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Posted in Inside | 6 Comments »

Behind the scenes, Labour HQ is in tumult

14/11/2013, 04:04:27 PM

More upheaval at Labour HQ. It is barely a month since the latest restructure saw general secretary Iain McNicol supplanted by the new campaigns director, Spencer Livermore, as manager of the party’s seven executive directors. Now comes the news that the director responsible for fundraising, John McCaffrey, is leaving after just over a year in job and that Chris Lennie, former assistant general secretary, will be returning as a “consultant” to work on external relations.

These latest changes might sound like back-room tinkering, but they are the outward manifestation of debilitating instability behind the scenes in Brewer’s Green. Two points are pertinent.

First, John McCaffrey’s departure could barely be more ill-timed. On the day that the latest electoral commission figures revealed Labour to be £12.3m in debt, the party lost its lead fundraiser.

John McCaffrey was only appointed in June 2012 and had already had a significant impact. Between September 2012 (the earliest it’s reasonable to expect McCaffrey to have made a difference) and September 2013, the party raised £3.5m from individuals, companies and limited liability partnerships. In comparison, for the year September 2011 to September 2012, it was £2.1m.

A 67% improvement in a year is hardly trivial and with the party so deep in debt, it is remarkable that the man who helped drive this growth in donations is on his way out.

John McCaffrey’s ongoing financial importance was underlined in the small print announcing his departure, “John will continue to work with some key supporters for us as a consultant.” Or in other words, some donors won’t give unless McCaffrey is involved, so the party will have to keep paying him.

(more…)

Posted in Inside | 8 Comments »