Ed Miliband « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Ed Miliband’

Ed’s right, small state socialism can still be radical – but Labour needs to govern better next time

02/07/2013, 07:00:11 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Whisper it, but governing is the boring part of politics. Ironic, really, given so many would-be ministers would scramble over broken glass on their hands and knees for the sniff of a chance of becoming a parliamentary under-secretary for paperclips and sustainable date-stamps.

It’s not that governing – sitting behind a desk and running things – is pointless or unrewarding; it’s just that it’s hard and time-consuming and politicians are easily distracted by the thrill of the chase. Tony Blair, of course, famously did sofas rather than desks. So Labour’s approach to government for 13 years was, crudely, to announce things then throw money at officials and assume change had been made. Job done.

This approach was tested to destruction. For public services to improve, more state spending was always needed. To make them improve a lot, spend a lot. As a result, ministers often overspent and over-legislated, but, paradoxically, under-governed too. Of course you have to put money into the Whitehall fruit machine to make the lights come on, but you still need to know which buttons to press. That’s what governing is all about.

When the buzz of the press launch has faded and the television cameras have gone away, all that is left is the spadework of navigating bills through parliament, rolling-out new programmes, retraining staff to implement the changes to policy (which invariably takes a fiendishly long time), listening to the gripes of one lobby group or another and sitting in meetings. Lots of meetings. All this slog takes time and commitment and, frankly, a few Labour ministers found themselves bewitched by the Age of Spin last time around and didn’t do the hard work that real change demands.

Take the police. Measurable crime halved under Labour (for a variety of reasons, not least the longest unbroken spell of economic growth in 200 years) but anti-social behaviour, the bureaucratic term for describing thoughtlessness and thugishness, flourished. Police numbers also swelled, while Parliament passed twenty odd pieces of criminal justice legislation. Although the police had everything they could possibly need from Labour ministers, they still barely made a dent in tackling anti-social behaviour.

Not enough was demanded from them. In fact, unlike other public services, police performance targets were actually scrapped, apart for the single watery invocation to ‘raise public confidence’. Yet ministers didn’t ask why there had been a catastrophic loss of public trust in the first place. No chief constables were sacked for poor performance. The focus, especially after 9/11 was on security and no-one much bothered what the plod was doing – or not doing – on other fronts. It’s only now we get a sense of the rottenness at the heart of parts of our police force.

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Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »

Labour is headed for trouble in next week’s spending review

18/06/2013, 04:30:24 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Next week, George Osborne will finally spring his long prepared spending review trap.

Here is the chancellor’s basic choreography: the Tories announce an eye-wateringly tight spending round, Labour opposes and the Tories attack Labour for being unreformed spendaholics.

Alternately, Labour back the government’s spending plans, in which case, the Tories attack Labour for being reluctant converts to fiscal responsibility and, as a happy sidebar, Labour’s Keynesian prescription for boosting spending to revive the economy is effectively de-funded.

Either Labour play to the stereotype of profligacy that lost the last election or become me-too Tories.

Ed Balls’ big speech a few weeks ago was intended to unpick this problem and re-position the party. The commitment to aggregate Tory spending plans covered the party’s fiscal flank while Ball’s retained the Keynesian differentiation with his £10bn capital spending boost, funded through increased borrowing.

On paper, it went some way to neutralising the chancellor’s likely attacks.

But there’s a problem.

Now Labour has shifted to a more politically realistic position on spending, it needs to robustly assert this new line.

It needs to use every opportunity to publicise the new approach. To make the progressive case for adhering to overall Tory spending totals (while having different individual priorities) and ensure the public knows that a major change has just taken place.

Otherwise, next week, the Tories will hammer the party for running scared of its own policy. They will paint Labour as insincere and irresolute on spending. The taunts about whether Labour believes what it says will turn the party’s economic drama into a political crisis of leadership.

For the public, the net result will be little different to if Labour hadn’t changed its fiscal stance. Perhaps worse, when taking into account the collateral damage to Ed Miliband’s personal ratings from any squirming on policy.

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Posted in Uncut | 7 Comments »

Remember how Clinton sealed the deal for Obama last year? Blair could do that for Miliband

17/06/2013, 08:00:16 AM

by Dan McCurry

I was once in a rock band for whom stardom beckoned. We were 16 years old and practiced in the music room at school, playing ‘60s music. The lead singer, John O’Dea, was a mod whose hobby was to beat up punks and skinheads. He was quite embarrassing. The reason he had something to prove was that back in ‘80s, the mods had a reputation for being soft.

One day John wrote some lyrics to a song called “Bollocks to a tramp”, and although we didn’t want to encourage him, the words were good so we added a guitar riff and it rocked.

Up the west end every Saturday,

The Mods, Punks and Skinheads all come out to play,

They really make me sick,

I could hit ‘em with a brick,

Say bollocks to a tramp,

Bollocks to a tramp,

Punks and Skins are tramps,

Say BOLLOCKSSSSSSSSS!!!

We got our first gig at a Mod all-dayer at the Ilford Palais. The crowd went crazy with 2,000 mods cheering at every line, and we were invited everywhere. Unfortunately the band fell at the first hurdle when the bass player got jealous and wanted to take over the vocals, so arranged for O’Dea to be kicked out. At the next gig, we opened with the bass player singing Bollocks to a tramp, and the audience sat all the way through, then clapped politely at the end of it. The magic was gone and the band soon split.

When Labour got rid of Tony Blair, I reflected on the sacking of John O’Dea. Even though I was politically closer to Gordon, I didn’t think it was a good idea to make the bass player into the Prime Minister when we had a star singer in Tony Blair.

Bill Clinton was another star. It’s questionable as to whether Obama would have won last year’s election without his help. Tony Blair could do the same thing for Ed Miliband, but Miliband wants to put space between Labour’s past and present.

Economic consensus has changed since the time of Clinton and Blair. We used to agree that aspiring to owning a house would lift people out of poverty. Even George W. Bush saw sub-prime mortgages as a way of ending poverty. The idea was that people instilled with aspiration lifted themselves up.

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Posted in Uncut | 18 Comments »

Labour is losing the fight for the political narrative

12/06/2013, 04:38:45 PM

by Sam Fowles

Ed Miliband’s “party of work” rhetoric may have stuck an important blow in the battle with the Conservatives but he’s lost a march in the war.

At first glance last weeks economic policy speeches from the Eds (Balls and Miliband) set out sensible policy and may even go some way to helping Labour win back our lost “credibility” on the economy. But only at first glance. While the desire to remove Cameron and co from office at the earliest possible opportunity (and by any means short of a military coup) is understandable, it’s mistaken. Miliband’s speech was an attempt to gain economic credibility on Tory terms. And, as any good general knows, you never fight a war on the ground your enemy chooses. Ask anyone who’s invaded Russia.

By buying into the Conservative’s narrative Miliband risks creating a situation where economic credibility only ever means one thing. And, worse, leaving the Conservatives to decide what that thing is. He’s surrendered control of the narrative and that is political suicide, perhaps not for himself, but certainly for his party.

This Conservative party has pursued two distinct and important narratives.

The first is that economic credibility means cutting in the short term. It doesn’t matter that this policy has actually failed in its stated goal of bringing down the deficit, what matters is the electorate believes that cuts = responsibility.

The second narrative is a classic tale of the “internal enemy”. In this case there are two: the unemployed and immigrants. Again, it doesn’t matter if either of these actually are a threat to the “hard working people of Britain”. What matters is that the electorate believes they are and thus turns to their friendly neighborhood Tories for protection. Putting immigrants aside for the moment (and how I wish the press would), by trailing their economic policy by telling us what they’d cut and defining themselves against those “who refuse to work” the Eds have indirectly bolstered both of those Tory narratives.

And the thing about a Tory narrative is: it’s always going to make the Tories look best.

Allowing one side of the political spectrum to dominate the narrative means the political debate becomes about perception rather than truth. Margaret Thatcher is talked of as a model of fiscal responsibility by both the left and right. Yet she squandered billions in North Sea oil revenues on a short term tax cut rather than securing the long term economic strength of the country by investing it.

Why is she not ridiculed for so dramatically putting ideology before country? Because her party told us that cutting spending equals fiscal responsibility and she cut spending. Then they kept telling us the same thing in the face of all contrary evidence and eventually Labour stopped arguing.

The internal enemy narrative is a classic ploy for right wing parties. When we feel threatened by forces within our own community we look to protect ourselves and our families in the short term and thus turn to conservative parties.

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Posted in Grassroots | 10 Comments »

It’s not the despair Ed, it’s the hope

12/06/2013, 10:20:06 AM

by Rob Marchant

So, a week in which, to the great surprise of practically everyone, last week the two Eds came up with a set of policy announcements – or at least, position statements – to “get their retaliation in first” in advance of the government’s spending review. U-turning on a range of issues which they previously stood up for since January 2010 when they first formed their leadership tag team. This could just have been the week when history will remember that it all changed.

Could, not necessarily will, as we shall see.

But good things: child benefit, for example, where Balls has finally accepted the self-evident reality that if he does grant it to rich people, he will have to find a couple of billion from somewhere else, something which will hurt much more. Or the pretty-much-confirmation, by Ed Balls to Andrew Neil, of adherence to Tory spending limits, something which, ahem, Labour Uncut suggested two years ago.

The thing is, we should all be delighted. At the very least, it looks like Labour are finally getting serious about winning, they have paid attention to the polls showing that it’s not where it needs to be, as well as the election results which backed them up. It would, really, be entirely churlish to be critical at this point.

So, as regards the rest of this piece, the nice people can go home and you others, this one’s for you: all you churls out there.

One criticism is that, although the symbolism of the change is hugely important, the change itself doesn’t necessarily go far enough and is flawed in places (such as the house-building programme, as John Rentoul argues here). There are plenty more areas where things need to change.

But, fair enough, it’s a start. As the veteran MP – and welfare specialist – Frank Field brilliantly put it: “Today Ed Miliband said ‘I’m in a hole and I’ve stopped digging’. He’s now got to get us out the hole.”

The second is simple: that this may just be too little, too late. If this is the turning point, it comes more than two-and-a-half years into a parliamentary term. In other words, we now have less time to spend changing people’s perceptions than the time we have already spent letting them form the wrong ones. It will be hard. But it is possible.

The third is: do they really believe in this stuff, or are they just saying it because they think it’s what people want to hear? If they don’t truly believe it, they’ll convince no-one in the long run. Hopi Sen generously extends his belief metaphor to include the coalition as well, but it’s clear who’s the least likely to be believed:

“…with the best will in the world…any British politician standing up and swearing fiscal responsibility is, at best, like a reformed alcoholic declaring teetotalism. Even if you believe their sincerity, you don’t want to give them the key to the drinks cabinet, just in case.”

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Posted in Uncut | 15 Comments »

At last, some Labour pains

10/06/2013, 07:37:34 AM

by David Talbot

Labour might still easily lose, in 2015, an election it really ought to win. If that is indeed what happens, the reason, as so often with the Labour party, is that it will have operated in the world it so dearly wishes it to be, rather than the cold, rather more sobering, reality.

It will be because it didn’t understand what voters told it in 2010. It will be because unveiling daft posters, available, incidentally, at the not very One Nation price of £35, and talking of the “same old Tories”, lamenting their cuts and their rich friends, is far easier than undertaking a soul-searching examination of why the party was so comprehensively buried in 2010. It will be because it preferred to spend time in the seminar room, talking to nobody but itself, pontificating wildly on the politics of Neverland. This will be, as always, most soothing for the Labour movement. It will have its high-mindedness, and its piety, and it will lose.

The Labour party cannot win in this state of deluded comfort, revelling in the opportunities for moral indignation that austerity affords, whilst simultaneously saying nothing of note to the nation.

If there was a pain-free option, the Labour party would, of course, take it. In this make-believe world of Labour thinking, when, not if, Labour are elected in 2015 the party will have to impose no cuts, spending will be allowed to increase on nice things like the health service, and grateful voters will at last acknowledge they made a dreadful mistake in 2010 by voting for those ghastly Tories. This inability to face the truth is deeply worrying for those, which now include, seemingly, the Labour leadership, who believe the party has spent the past three years either saying the wrong thing or nothing at all.

On the great issues of the day too often there has come has come either silence from the Labour party or scorn from the labour movement. By wallowing in the trough of political invective, the Labour party doesn’t seem to have realised that it long ago lost the argument.

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Posted in Uncut | 14 Comments »

John Mills, tax and dishonesty

07/06/2013, 08:41:55 AM

by Dan McCurry

On the issue of taxation abuse, we need to move on from the oversimplified distinction between legal avoidance and illegal evasion.

At the moment some avoidance has shocked people, while other avoidance, such as my tax free savings, is not an abuse. In order to sort out the difference between good and bad avoidance, I suggest people concern themselves with whether the avoidance was dishonest or not.

In the case of George Osborne’s complaint about a Labour donation, we need to ask, was John Mills dishonest in his method of avoiding tax in this donation? If he was, then Labour is in trouble, if he wasn’t then we are not. Mr Mills chose not to sell the £1.5m of shares and give the cash to Labour, as that would have been taxed as a capital gain. By giving Labour the shares, then Labour will be taxed on the dividends, but only liable to the capital gains if they are sold.

I have some of my savings in an ISA as a tax efficient method of building a pension. I can invest £11,250 per year in my ISA and this will be exempt from taxation both on the dividends and on the capital gains. The same applies to a donation I might give to charity that can be given with “Gift Aid” so that the tax paid amount is passed on to the charity. Is that dishonest? No.

This is quite different from the case of Jimmy Carr who passed his money to an Isle of Man, company who then provided him with same amount back but called it a loan. A loan isn’t taxable, so he avoided tax. Now, any sensible person would describe that as completely dishonest, but because tax law is based on a set of rules, he wasn’t prosecuted.

Criminal law is a different set of law and can take precedence if policy makers wish it to. If the authorities wished to prosecute him for fraud, they could have done so, but if they had, then they would probably have to prosecute everyone else who has done similar, and that is a prospect that can be frightening to the people who run this country.

Fraud is when someone commits a dishonest act which makes a gain for himself, or a loss to another.

The other problem that exists with tax is that countries tend to have bilateral treaties with each other.

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Posted in Uncut | 13 Comments »

Councillor complains that Liverpool MP made his life “unbearable”

05/06/2013, 07:00:48 AM

The spat between Liverpool Wavertree MP Luciana Berger and one of her local councillors is hardly in the same league as the epic battles fought within the Liverpool Labour party – (remembered this month as its thirty years since Militant seized control of the city council) – but it’s a strange little row nonetheless.

To recap, a messy war of words between Berger and one of her local councillors, Jake Morrison, has poured forth into the public domain – largely thanks to Morrison publishing the contents of a letter of complaint he received from Berger last Friday.

In it, Berger, the upwardly-mobile shadow minister for climate change, complains to Morrison about “your complete lack of team work and respect for other members.”

She alleges he “ignored” emails about a training session with Ed Miliband’s campaign guru, Arnie Graf, and that he is the only councillor in her constituency who doesn’t “engage with my office”.

The letter was copied to Liverpool Mayor, Joe Anderson and the party’s chief whip.

Morrison published the letter on his Facebook page before responding with his own complaint to Ed Miliband about Berger’s behaviour.

He alleges that Berger and her constituency aide, Sheila Murphy, “orchestrated” a campaign enlisting party members in a bid to put pressure on him to quit before his term of office ends after announcing last month that he will not contest his seat at the next election in 2015.

He protests to Miliband that Berger has made his life “unbearable” and that “at every opportunity Luciana has undermined me, rather than supported.”

Sensationally elected to Liverpool City Council in 2011 having only just turned 18, Morrison managed a notable giant-slaying, beating formidable ex-Lib Dem council leader Lord Mike Storey.

At the time, Ed Miliband telephoned to congratulate him.

Morrison says that he wasn’t invited to the session with Graf, but fully supports his campaigning methods, which seek to develop a more meaningful conversation with the electorate rather than just identifying voting intentions – an approach he already uses as a local councillor for the Wavertree ward.

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Posted in Inside | 27 Comments »

Ed Miliband needs to tell us what he stands for

04/06/2013, 09:55:11 AM

by Dan McCurry

So YouGov tell us that Ed Miliband is regarded as “honest but untrustworthy”? What to make of it all? I’m sure his speech on Thursday will sort out all the confusion. What I think he need is to show us what he stands for.

There has been recent comment about whether Labour should reveal it’s policies, with Alan Johnson arguing that Miliband has already “shown too much leg”. Others, including myself, argue that a lack of openness creates a lack of trust. We’re both right and wrong. The confusion is in the distinction between policy, and aims/values.

The media always demand to know what the policies are, but the public want to know what the aims and values are. Policies are a list of promises while aims and values represent what we care about and what kind of a world we want to live in. It’s our aims and values to stick up for the small guy. It’s the aims and values of the Tories to stick up for big business and lobbyists.

Both parties try to present aims and values through slogans. The Tories say “We’re all in this together”, while Labour talk of “One Nation”. The Tory slogan is better because it’s about their intention to reduce the deficit. Ours was created as an attack on Tory hypocrisy, but has since been shown to mean little else.

It seems to me that Ed Miliband is forever working on the manifesto, instead of communicating what he stands for. Welfare is an obvious example. He chose to rise to the bait when Cameron challenged him on welfare, but then failed to put a lid on things when the “bedroom tax” got out of control.

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Posted in Uncut | 17 Comments »

3 years on: Five years’ hard Labour?

03/06/2013, 07:00:47 AM

It’s 3 years since Uncut started so, in a series of pieces we’ve been taking stock of what has changed for Labour since 2010. In the last of the pieces, Rob Marchant looks back at this parliament, and forward to 2015

Obviously, we’re only halfway through the parliament, but what would be a celebration of our third birthday without a look back at the immediate past and a little look to the future.

2010: the year of purgatory. Uncut is born out of the ashes of Labour’s electoral disaster in May. The country still in economic crisis. It takes six months, however, for the party to get itself together and organise a leadership election, in which David Miliband, the seeming heir apparent, is effectively defenestrated. Most of the year is wasted, politically.

2011: the year of innocence. There is the sad departure of Alan Johnson, but a fresh-faced Fotherington-Miliband has skipped into public view. Hullo clouds, hullo sky, says he. We are going to do a new kind of politics. There are good people and bad people, for example in business there are producers (good) and predators (bad). Eh? says the public, a bit confused, and rather more concerned about their jobs and mortgages. Much work to be done.

2012: the Tories’ annus horribilis. A disastrous budget, coalition scandals and the travails of the Murdoch press mark the year. Miliband plays a blinder on the conference speech and the party discovers One Nation Labour. There is hope.

2013: the year of drift. One Nation Labour stays a slogan. The Tories start to recover. Disappointing election results. Trouble with the unions looms. The party organisation, unreformed, falters over controversial candidate selections.

And some thoughts about a possible future:

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Posted in Uncut | 10 Comments »