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Posts Tagged ‘Ed Balls’

David Axelrod is Douglas Alexander’s “sock puppet consultant”

16/05/2014, 06:56:40 PM

No, it’s not a term of abuse, well not quite. Rather, it’s a description of David Axelrod’s role according to Westminster murmurings that have reached Uncut’s ears.

For all the fanboy gushing in Labour circles at the coup of hiring Axelrod (although given Axelrod’s core business is as a consultant for hire, Uncut wonders whether it’s quite such an achievement; will the party next be trumpeting how Ed Miliband went to Kwik Fit and successfully secured the services of a mechanic?) the motivation for handing over six figures to David Axelrod seems to have less to do with his counsel and more with the divisions at the top of the party.

The split between Douglas Alexander and Spencer Livermore on one side and the shadow chancellor’s team on the other, is well documented. That Ed Balls didn’t even receive a sign-off on last week’s much derided VAT poster, and the alacrity with which his team were keen to let the world know this fact, speaks volumes for the dysfunction in Labour’s campaign machine.

While Douglas Alexander nominally has the lead on campaign decisions, the political heft of the shadow chancellor means that it’s difficult for Alexander to blithely over-rule Balls.

This is where David Axelrod comes in.

He has been positioned as the swing voter. Prior to each key decision, Axelrod will be consulted, briefed and guided, by, yes, you guessed it, Douglas Alexander. And when the time comes to decide in the meeting, Axelrod will cast his vote with Douglas Alexander.

Axelrod’s American stardust and substantial remuneration mean it’s difficult for the shadow chancellor to simply ignore him. After all, given the party is paying so much money for one person’s advice, there would have to be an incredibly good reason to reject it.

This approach, of hiring a high end consultant to validate existing plans and insulate the internal decision-maker from criticism, is common-place in the public sector. These hires have even got a generic name: “sock puppet consultants.” Now the practice seems to have been imported into the Labour party.

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Posted in Inside | 4 Comments »

With Douglas Alexander in the firing line, cui bono?

01/04/2014, 12:37:22 PM

by Atul Hatwal

As Labour’s internal wrangles have spilled into the papers over the past week, there has been a single thread running through each story. Sam Coates at the Times summarised it well on Sunday when he tweeted,

One common theme in all Labour row stories this weekend (and my piece last week): all involve people having problem with Douglas Alexander

— Sam Coates Times (@SamCoatesTimes) March 30, 2014

Last week Douglas Alexander was vetoing John Cruddas’ expansive policy review proposals. Then on Saturday he was firing Arnie Graf, swiftly followed on Sunday with Alexander falling out with almost everyone involved in Labour’s campaign.

This last story in the Mail on Sunday was particularly jaw-dropping, even by Labour’s standards of red on red briefing. The incredible level of detail, the direct quotes and conspicuous subsequent silence from the principals on several of its specifics, speaks volumes about the splits at the top of the party.

The narrative seems set: Douglas Alexander is the problem.

But is this all rather too easy? Allies of Douglas Alexander and even neutrals are suggesting a rather different view of what is happening within Labour.

The missing element in all of these stories is some important context about the battles behind the scenes as Labour attempts to define its policy platform.

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Posted in Uncut | 9 Comments »

Budget 2014 preview: Increasing the personal allowance is the wrong priority for low earners

19/03/2014, 10:00:11 AM

by Simon Bartram

Today we can expect a lot of boasting from Conservatives and Lib Dems about how they have raised the personal allowance, as if that is a faultless defence against any accusation that the poorest are being hit the hardest.

For the 2013/14 tax year, individuals earning less than £100,000 did not pay tax on the first £9,440. This personal allowance is set to rise to £10,000 for 2014/15, saving basic rate tax payers £112 (20% of £560), and Nick Clegg is pushing for the allowance to be raised still further to £10,500 for 2015/16. The extra £500 increase, this is estimated to cost the Treasury £1 billion.

Since personal allowances have rocketed from £6,475 to potentially £10,500, this must surely be one of the most recognisable changes that the coalition has enacted, and it is a one which they ceaselessly flaunt to demonstrate their egalitarian credentials.

Yet this is a very inefficient way of targeting the lowest earners in our society, given that everyone earning up to £100,000 gains from having a personal allowance (above £100,000 your personal allowance decreases gradually to zero), and, of course, households with two earners will prosper more than single occupant households. Some of those households would already be benefiting from the tax breaks for married couples where £1,000 of the personal allowance can be transferred to a spouse.

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Posted in Grassroots | 5 Comments »

How does Labour get its economic message across?

17/03/2014, 04:35:39 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“The last Labour government,” The Times front page last Friday reported Ed Balls as saying, “didn’t regulate the financial services in a tough enough way.” They reported this as “the closest to an acknowledgement of personal responsibility” for the 2008 financial crisis. Yet, given that Balls has said similar things in the past and is silent on whether the last government spent too much, it seems a relatively mild contrition.

Apparently, there are a range of views within the party as to how Labour should address a central Tory attack: “Why hand the keys back to the guy who crashed the car?” “Senior figures close to Tony Blair have been urging a more aggressive rebuttal”, The Times report. “Ed Miliband’s allies want to focus voters’ attention on the future.”

If Blair is advocating an aggressive rebuttal, I imagine he means on behalf of the 1997 to 2007 government, rather than the Gordon Brown administration. It’s a stretch to imagine Balls running on a “Tony was right, Gordon was wrong” campaign.

The debate over how Labour wins the economic argument was also considered in the book that Uncut launched at party conference. “We might change the conversation,” I wrote, “in which the Tories present us as addicted to spending by changing what people think of our past (“It was the banks, not us”) or what people think we think about our past (“It was partly us but we’ve learned our lesson”) or what people think about our future (“Here’s why it will be different next time”).”

Thus, Balls seems to want to say “It was partly us but we’ve learned our lesson”, while Miliband appears to want to argue “Here’s why it will be different next time”. In these terms, the approach advocated by Uncut is closest to that of Milband. “Because there is a limit to how much repositioning Labour can credibly make this side of the general election, we focus on the future.”

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Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

Letter from Wales: This is not the way to show Labour will only spend carefully

07/02/2014, 09:54:12 AM

by Julian Ruck

Cameron’s Tories are for a small government and to hell with the consequences, Ed’s Labour is for a more benevolent government with a steady eye on cost.

Welsh Labour is for an out and out free for all and to hell with cost.

I would ask readers to note that last month BBC Wales reported that the Welsh government has employed 400 extra civil servants in the last two years while the number employed across the UK fell.

The number of civil servants employed by the Scottish government also fell.

So much for Carwyn’s restraint on public spending then. It’s business as usual at the Senate and “Come on boyos, it’s only taxpayers’ dosh and while we’re at it, let’s go and watch some rugby at one of our subsidised boozers in Cardiff Bay!”

So, how does Carwyn and his Team Druid justify yet another manic departure from Westminster Labour policy?

You tell me, but apparently and according to a Welsh government spokesperson it’s all down to “a successful apprenticeship programme which has seen over 150 young people trained for future employment, many of whom have successfully gained permanent employment within the Welsh government.”

In other words there’s no private, engineering or manufacturing sector in Wales because no-one will invest here without being bribed with taxpayers’ money, so we in Cardiff Bay will take up the slack and really make the Welsh public sector the biggest in Europe. Apart from anything else, at least we keep any criticism under wraps because who is going to bite the hand that feeds it? What’s an extra 400 civil servants for some apprenticeships anyway?!

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Posted in Uncut | 25 Comments »

If Labour wants to tackle inequality, it’s a land value tax, not the 50p rate that’s needed

29/01/2014, 08:48:37 PM

by Callum Anderson

Anyone who read Oxfam’s report this week, which revealed that the 85 richest people in the world possess the same level of wealth as the poorest half of the global population, would have been shocked at the magnitude of global inequality. Things aren’t much better here in Britain. Just 189,000 families (roughly 0.6 per cent of the UK population) own two-thirds of the UK’s 60 million acres.

The what-who-how much elements of taxation are ones which have always been fiercely contested by Labour, Conservatives (oh, and Lib Dems) alike. However, as wages stagnate, the gap between rich and poor grow larger by the year, Labour should grab the initiative in this debate. However, instead of pursuing a somewhat one-dimensional tax policy in calling for the return of the 50p tax rate post-2015, the two Eds could, and must, be bolder in laying out a plan that not only yields the most revenue, but also begins to adequately address the inequality that stains our society. But one thing is clear – heavily taxing income is likely not an efficient way of doing this; instead, it is wealth that any future government must concentrate on.

As that great redistributionist, Winston Churchill, put it speaking in the House of Commons in 1909:

“Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived … the unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.”

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Posted in Uncut | 19 Comments »

Reverse the child benefit cut and the politics of the 50p rate become irrelevant

29/01/2014, 12:46:12 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Of all Gordon Brown’s decisions – both good and bad – the most questionable, perhaps the oddest, and certainly the most irritating, was to award a peerage to Digby Jones and invite him into his government as trade minister.

What on earth was Gordon thinking? Jones – a corporate lawyer and former head of the CBI – is also a blowhard’s blowhard and has snapped at the hand that once fed him ever since. He can be relied upon as a rent-a-quote Labour basher these days and was at it again, jowls a-quivering, at Ed Balls’ pledge to restore the 50p top tax band for those earning over £150,000 a year. Reaching new heights of self-parody, he claimed:

“In the last few months we’ve got, oh, ‘if it creates wealth let’s kick it’ – really go for energy companies, really go for house-building, bankers, this time it’s going to be the high-earners.

“I am amazed he’s going to keep it at 50[p]. I’d expect if he [Balls] becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer we could be looking at 55, 60 on the excuse he gave today.”

But the outriders for the wealthy like Diggers can’t have it both ways. If raising the 45p rate to 50p is an inefficient way of raising revenue, the contention of august institutions like the Institute for Fiscal Studies, then the well-heeled clearly aren’t losing out very much, so it can hardly be catastrophic.

The economics of making those with the broadest shoulders pay the most to reduce the deficit, Ed Miliband’s phrase to describe the move, is sound enough, but the politics of tax rates are, of course, tortuous stuff for Labour.

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Posted in Uncut | 4 Comments »

Growth has returned, but Labour can still win on the economy if it can answer these five questions

28/01/2014, 10:39:00 AM

by Jonathan Todd

The return to solid GDP growth (at least compared to recent years) was always going to present Labour with a challenge. However, notwithstanding the immediate favourable headlines that the government has garnered from today’s figures, the present economic debate still contains numerous positives for Labour.

First, the 50p tax – enjoying 60% support – is popular. Second, the Balls fiscal consolidation plan is also. Polling for Labour Uncut prior to Labour party conference explored how voters would respond to Labour promising to keep most of the present government’s spending plans but to borrow more for public works such as building homes. Balls’ position now amounts to this and our analysis at conference revealed its appeal. Third, left popularism – otherwise known as bashing the banks and big energy – is, by definition, popular.

Inevitably, growth tips the balance towards the government on the economy, but if the public back Labour on the answer to the following five questions, the party can still win the debate. If, however, the public back the Tories, then Labour will need some new responses, and fast.

Balls v Big Business? Who will win?

It sounds like something the Ricky Gervais character Derek might ask but it’s a variation on a Huffington Post headline. The Post story noted coverage in the Financial Times (‘Businesses blast 50p tax plans by Labour’) and the Daily Telegraph (‘Bosses blitz Labour’s 50p tax rate’).

‘Big Business backs New Labour’ now seems a less likely story. Yet it was as recently as 19 December last year that Balls was quoted in the Financial Times as describing financial services as: “A massive advantage for Britain. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Having served with distinction in the prawn cocktail offensive, we might wonder whether Balls’ heart is really in battling big business.

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Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

NICs currently penalise 3.4m of the lowest paid workers. This must change.

27/01/2014, 12:51:14 PM

by Joe Anderson

The rise in zero-hour contracts since 2010 is well-documented. The ONS estimates that the percent of people in employment on zero hour contracts has increased from 0.57% in 2010 to 0.84% in 2012. Ed Miliband is therefore right to call for a ban on their exploitative use. What, however, has not been often discussed is how the National Insurance system inflicts extra hardship onto workers on zero-hour and many other flexible contracts.

Unlike income tax, class 1 National Insurance contributions (NICs) are calculated on a weekly—rather than annual—basis. Whilst this may seem like a subtle difference, it has profound effects for those whose earnings vary significantly on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis, such as those on zero-hour contracts.

The class 1 NIC primary threshold in 2013/14 is £149, meaning employees earning over £149 in a given week are liable to make NICs. Yet, a significant number of people earning less than £7,775 per year (the annualised equivalent of the weekly primary threshold) will still be compelled to pay NICs. The reason for this is because if they earn more than £149 in any week (or £646 in any month, if paid monthly), they will be required to pay NIC, regardless of their annual income.

To illustrate the perverse effects of this anomaly, consider our conjectural protagonists, Jack and Jill.

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Posted in Grassroots | 3 Comments »

Shadow cabinet league: Khan still top as Benn barges into top ten

21/01/2014, 02:42:44 PM

by Alan Smithee

Early on in a season, a league table often struggles to reflect the true strength of teams. Sometimes teams remain high up in a table due to a superficial good start. However, one cannot tell truly until after a good handful of games have passed. The same is true for Uncut’s shadow cabinet table. However, with December’s results’ in, there are still some useful hints at work rate and the tactics used.

Within the top five, Sadiq Khan remains at number one, fueled by large numbers of written questions and heavily reactive media activity. His impressive performance has continued to cover a broad policy spectrum and, even if it does not pay major immediate political dues, will leave Khan well set up to manage and modify the penal system. The same formula is used by Chris Leslie, Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna. Flint has continued to use the energy price freeze pledge and rising bills to hammer the government on the cost of living. Andy Burnham however has focussed his guns in the media sphere working reactive and proactive to attack the failings of government NHS reforms.

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