David Talbot « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘David Talbot’

Could Ed Miliband become the accidental prime minister?

29/05/2012, 07:00:53 AM

by Dave Talbot

As the results of Labour’s leadership election were read out, a collective sigh of relief echoed through the Tory ranks. The prevailing thought in British politics was that David Cameron had already won the next general election.

The Labour party had been demonstrably stupid. The party that had governed for thirteen years had chosen to be comforted, rather than challenged. Ed Miliband would never walk through the door of Number 10, except only as a guest. The party, so the commentariat thought, had chosen the wrong Miliband – and would suffer the electoral consequences.

For many months the analysis held true; the public just couldn’t see the junior Miliband as PM material, the party’s economic reputation was in tatters and barely disguised mutterings of discontent began to ripple through the parliamentary Labour party.

The elephant in the room was Miliband himself. His personal ratings were absolutely dire. At one point only 4% thought he’d be good in a crisis, and 5% a natural leader. Just as Cameron had to prove that the Tories cared, Miliband needed to show he wasn’t a geeky loser. Voters told Tory focus groups that they thought the Labour leader was odd, weird and strange. More odd Ed than red Ed.

How the wheel of political fortune turns. Miliband, for so long uncomfortable in his own skin and unsure of his position, has overtaken the man seemingly born to rule. Cameron’s poll ratings have slumped alarmingly, whilst Miliband’s have increased by 22% – a dramatic shift by any standard. Having triumphed in the local elections, a consistent poll lead has also emerged. It is not quite a transformation from Wallace to Winston, but the shift is in the right direction.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 32 Comments »

Break out the nose pegs and vote for Livingstone

18/04/2012, 03:12:48 PM

by David Talbot

You would be forgiven for thinking that the only segment of the United Kingdom that is to vote this May is London. But on May 3^rd elections will take place in 180 councils across the country, with 5000 seats up for grabs. Over the Easter break I duly volunteered to distribute leaflets in my home CLP back in rural Warwickshire. Amidst the endless open countryside, hamlets and villages I could not have been more removed from the hectic London political scene.

Until, that is, I stopped in the hamlet of Ardens Grafton and frequented the sole shop. A picture of Ken Livingstone weeping greeted me as I picked up the front page of the Guardian. Much has been said about the authenticity, or not, of the performance since. But with accompanying prose underneath the picture spilling over to page two, and a double-page spread adjoining pages seven and eight, it confirmed, if nothing else, just quite how London-centric our media is. It also focused the mind on the London mayoral election ahead – and what those with serious doubts about Livingstone should do come that Thursday in early May.

I am seemingly in a large rump of Labour voters who do not view Ken Livingstone favourably. YouGov put the figure at 31%, ComRes 17%. In a tight election these numbers are more than enough to secure significant defeat for the Labour candidate.

The charge sheet against Ken Livingstone has been heavily trailed in recent weeks. Commentators ranging from Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, Philip Collins in the Times, Nick Cohen in the Observer and, more troublingly, the Jewish Chronicle have voiced serious concerns about our candidate. Coupled with the usual antagonists; Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph is his usual obsessed self, and the Evening Standard, who have effortlessly slipped back to where they left off in 2008; vast swathes of the media, and ordinary Labour members, are, to put it politely, at best lukewarm about Livingstone.

Ken Livingstone is the problem of this campaign. To pretend otherwise is to, wilfully, miss the point. At a time when Labour has opened up the biggest lead over the Tories since the aftermath of the general election, Livingstone is trailing the London Labour vote by 6%, whilst Boris Johnson is outperforming the Tories in the capital by 10%.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 14 Comments »

Two years, two David Camerons

04/04/2012, 03:22:51 PM

by David Talbot

Another day, another big society re-launch. The surest sign that this government is in trouble is when they wheel out the big society for another spin round the news cycle.

It was all so different just three weeks ago. Then, a confident Cameron stood next to President Obama in the rose garden at the White House. Under the Washington sun the two leaders peppered each other with lavish praise. It harked back to the mood and setting of where this government began.

Almost two years before, Cameron strode out with the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, basking in the warmth of the Downing Street rose garden. The easy rapport between the two men was as self-evident as it was the government’ initial strength.

Though their first press conference has long-since passed into Westminster legend, the political significance is not to be underestimated; Cameron had risked his career – Clegg his party.

The 12^th of May will see that modest milestone pass, two years to the day that Clegg and Cameron announced the creation of Britain’s first peacetime coalition since the 1930s. Cameron, against a visibly decaying Labour party, had failed to deliver an outright Conservative majority. At his weakest he had made a “big, open and comprehensive offer” to secure a parliamentary majority, and his position as Conservative leader.

He produced a masterful political coup, not so much a coalition as a political chokehold on the Liberal Democrats. He needed them badly, but never showed it. Without them he might have stumbled on for a few months, and then risked the uncertainty of another election.

Those few days must seem like a life time ago given the past two weeks. The Budget, the funding scandal and the manufactured fuel crisis have risked destroying years of work under project Cameron.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 4 Comments »

Still searching for a way to hurt Cameron

30/01/2012, 10:36:39 AM

By David Talbot

After months of agonised internal debate about how to deal with David Cameron, Labour finally decided its strategy and unleashed the much-anticipated attack.

David the chameleon made his first appearance in a Labour broadcast in April 2006. This version of David Cameron was clearly intended to display a creature that was willing to turn any colour in order to win votes.

Labour revealed it would use the theme relentlessly, even after polling day. It was to be followed up with mobile phone ringtones, pod casts and downloads for iPods. Labour had finally found the attack that would destroy this young upstart, who was the first Tory leader in a decade to move the polls in favour of the Conservatives.

Sadly for Labour, the attack failed to chime with the electorate. The party went on to lose over 300 seats, whilst the Conservatives had their best set of local election results since 1992.

Thus began Labour’s convoluted attempts to develop a line of attack that actually inflicts damage upon David Cameron. The chameleon attack failed because Cameron was desperate to emphasise that the Tories had changed, and Labour pushed the message for him.

Contempt no doubt drove much of Labour’s early attempts to tarnish the now-prime minister. Who was this hitherto-largely-unheard-of Tory to take on the might of New Labour?

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 4 Comments »

Sunday Review on Tuesday: The Purple Book

20/09/2011, 04:57:33 PM

by David Talbot

It is hard to recall now, but 2 May 1997 was a gorgeous spring morning. It felt as though it might have been 26 July 1945, the day that ushered in the first majority Labour government. The country seemed fresh again; there was a sense of something about to be born, a new world, a new start, a new Britain – a new Labour. Even the Conservatives, if you could find one, did not seem to resent the new era or begrudge this young, charismatic prime minister, who had led the Labour party out of 18 years exile to a stunning victory. It was, however, the beginning of his end. The triumphal procession of 1997 led to excited hopes that could never be fulfilled. It was, as George Dangerfield said of the Liberals in 1906, a victory from which Labour never recovered.

But we bought it, all thirteen and a half million of us. Those were the heady days of the new deal, taxes on the profits of privatised utilities, the minimum wage, sure start and five millennium villages (no, me neither). With British troops in Kosovo, even the wars were better.

Now, of course, it is different. The narrative of disillusionment and betrayal is almost beyond challenging. To speak well of him, these days, is to invite scorn, ridicule and worse among Britain’s self-appointed liberal intelligentsia. It is difficult to recall a former prime minister that was last faced with such rancour – much of it, it should be said, coming from his own side. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 4 Comments »

Who’s the nasty party now?

04/09/2011, 12:30:34 PM

by David Talbot

As Tory activists gathered in Bournemouth in October 2002, for what was regarded as a critical make-or-break conference for Iain Duncan Smith, few were thinking about his newly appointed chairwoman, Theresa May. But whilst Duncan Smith was wasting everyone’s time, meekly proclaiming himself “the quiet man” of politics, May delivered a speech to a stunned audience that would have profound ramifications for British politics.

In a particularly hard-hitting passage, May said it was time for the Conservatives to face up to the “uncomfortable truth” about the way they were perceived by the public as the “nasty party”. Her description of a party that had sunk into corruption, incestuous feuding and outright bigotry, was devastating precisely because it was accurate. If you didn’t dislike the Conservatives, you simply weren’t trying.

It left an indelible mark on the party. Cameron’s entire strategy, since his election as leader in 2005, could been summed up by self-conscious efforts at “decontamination”. Hence an acceptance of the critique from the left about the party, and total and absolute submission to their fundamental framing of the terms of British political debate. Cameron didn’t get to be leader of his party without grasping, from personal and political experience, that the 21st century Tories could never afford, whatever other battles they might be prepared to fight, to be seen as the nasty party. And Labour desperately wants to revive this sobriquet that Cameron spent years of his leadership escaping.

Jonathan Powell in The New Machiavelli: How to Wield Power in the Modern World, weaves the maxims of the legendary Florentine civil servant to the proceedings he witnessed as Blair’s chief of staff in Downing Street from 1997-2007. It’s part of a surge of well-researched books relating to the disturbing saga of the politics at the top of the Labour party that was so unspeakably vicious that it interfered with the business of government. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 5 Comments »

In praise of… the Guardian

10/07/2011, 05:41:19 PM

by David Talbot

Since early 2008 the Guardian’s daily editorial encomium has praised some 841 men, women, organisations, objects and events. But given the extraordinary proceedings that have marked a seismic week in British journalism, no other entity deserves more praise than the Guardian newspaper itself.

If the paper’s revelations had only concerned lurid journalism it would be disgraceful but not sinister. However, the way that the News of the World, the police, the press complaints commission and some politicians appear to have prevented the exposure of systematic phone-hacking, is a reminder of just how much of a stranglehold the Murdoch empire has over British officialdom. The man is rarely seen, but his presence is always felt. Until now all Conservative and Labour leaders have served a rite of passage to canoodle with the Murdoch apparat with a desperation that demeans them and their office. This political corruption has often been rather more alarming than any duck island, and all together far more destructive.

This is one of the biggest scandals in British public life for decades, but the actions of many a hitherto respected institution has been feeble in the extreme. The Metropolitan police has been disgracefully uncooperative, which yet further highlights their sordid links to the media. Parliament, bar a noble few, so long beguiled by the power of the Murdoch press, has dared not speak out. The prime minister, speaking at the dispatch box on Wednesday, effectively evaded questions as to the complicity of the then News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks in the whole affair. And vast swathes of the British media turned a blind eye, in the knowledge that they too were indulging in the very same practices and fearful lest the forensic focus fall on them and their dealings. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 1 Comment »

Two Eds are better than one

21/04/2011, 01:30:53 PM

by David Talbot

As Gordon Brown succumbed to the inevitable late on that May evening – with an emotional and dignified statement to end his tumultuous premiership – the final chapter of New Labour was being written. A project that had started in earnest in the mid 1990s had met a sorry end. Achieving a meagre 29% of the vote would make Michael Foot blush, but as the former prime minster left number 10 for the last time, two young loyal lieutenants that had served the party since the early 1990s slipped into opposition determined to bring Labour back to the cusp of power.

The howl of indignation across vast swathes of the press and the Blairite bastions at the election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader was an object lesson in frustrated establishment entitlement. His election was not ordained, the media had thrown its weight behind his brother, David, as the continuity candidate – and so had the New Labour hierarchy.

It didn’t take long for the repercussions to start, the Murdoch press predicted imminent disaster, the ever buffoonish Sun labeled him ‘Red Ed’ and disgruntled former ministers began spitting poison around the Manchester conference bars.

The very fact that Ed Miliband won was due in part because he caught a wave of opinion and optimism within the labour movement that was determined to see the party move on from New Labour and its discredited agenda of triangulation, authoritarianism and penchant for privatisation. Miliband offered a new vision and, even in these early stages, there can be no serious doubt that he represents a real and significant shift beyond New Labour politics. The danger is not this breach of the old order, but that the diehard Blairites, who apparently have no clue why Labour lost 5 million votes, continue to snipe and undermine the new leadership. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 2 Comments »

Khan is right: prison doesn’t work, but welfare does

07/03/2011, 05:36:49 PM

by David Talbot

In today’s Guardian, Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, signalled a shift in Labour’s approach to criminal justice. New Labour, Khan argues, made a mistake by “playing tough” on crime and allowing the prison population to soar to record levels during its time in government, instead of tackling sky-high reoffending rates. His central argument is that New Labour relied too heavily on hardline rhetoric and the supposition that rising rates of imprisonment were in itself a desirable policy. His welcome, and overdue, foray represents the first attempt by a senior Labour figure to detail the party’s new direction on penal policy.

No doubt part of the reason New Labour trumpeted this tough stance was the fear that rehabilitation and reoffending would be seen as “soft on crime”, which meant that New Labour did not do anywhere near enough to explore approaches which could have been more effective in reducing crime. First, it involves rejecting the idea of a simple equation between a rising prison population and lower crime; and second, looking beyond the criminal justice system is crucial to reducing crime. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 2 Comments »