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Posts Tagged ‘Ed Miliband’

Predistribution is just a meaningless word in place of actual policy

07/09/2012, 07:00:01 AM

by Atul Hatwal

There’s a great scene in I’m Alan Partridge where our hero has just been told by his BBC boss that he hasn’t got a second series. Alan frantically scrambles to come up with something, anything else that might be commissioned.

“Arm-wrestling with Chas and Dave”; “knowing M.E. knowing you” and “inner city sumo” are just some of the suggestions he rattles off.

Nothing.

“A Partridge amongst the pigeons?”

The boss’s interest is piqued. “What’s that?” he asks.

Alan blurts out the truth, “it’s just a title.”

Armando Iannucci is a political doyenne because of the Thick Of It, but often politics more closely resembles his work with the redoubtable Alan.

What “a Partridge amongst the pigeons” is to primetime viewing, predistribution is to economic policy.

In case you missed it, predistribution is the new silver bullet. It’s how Labour can square the circle of a limited government spending while still bearing down on inequality.

Rather than rely on tax-payer backed redistribution, predistribution seems to entail regulating the market so outcomes are more equal and redistribution isn’t needed. At least, not on same scale as in the past.

The most frequently cited example is tax credits: if wages were higher we wouldn’t need to spend state funds on tax credits.

As an idea, predistribution has been floating around for a while, but was anointed by Ed Miliband this week, first in his interview with the New Statesman and then at the Policy Network economic wonkathon yesterday (rather snappily entitled “the quest for growth: ideas for a new political economy and a more responsible capitalism,” though judging by the substantive output, finding Spock might have been a more attainable quest).

Already, think tankers and policy pointy heads are feverishly bashing out articles on what it means and how this is the big idea Labour has been waiting for.

Let me help. Sit back from the keyboard and take a deep breath.

It means nothing.

It’s just a title, and, in practical political terms, there’s nothing behind it.

In his speech yesterday, Ed Miliband tried to sketch out how his vision of predistribution would remove the need for redistribution spending:

“Our aim must be to transform our economy so it is a much higher skill, higher wage economy.”

Hmm. That sounds familiar. Where have we heard those words before?

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This shoddy reshuffle is just a distraction, understanding aspiration is the key to the next election

05/09/2012, 07:00:15 AM

by Rob Marchant

Who’d be David Cameron right now? Mired in political treacle, this week he is trying to divert attention away from his problems with a reshuffle, and wrest back the initiative by lots of serious-sounding pronouncements about economic growth which is proving highly elusive. The public doesn’t seem to be very impressed by him or his coalition at the moment but, then again, neither does his increasingly restive party.

David Cameron’s first problem is that, although he tries to entice his backbenchers with some right-wing soundbites and a few reshuffle sops such as the promotions of Chris Grayling and Owen Patterson, he is forced to tread a line between the centrist husky-hugger and the Thatcherite Brussels-basher, with the result that he is believed by neither side. And, as Iain Martin points out, his hardline economic approach is not necessarily even shared by the Tory right.

Next, it is also useful to note that that Tory right is not what it used to be, either: the “squires from the shires” of yore are a lot less representative of the average backbencher than the self-made businessman or the corporate exec who worked his way up. The hinterland of this new breed is meritocratic, not noblesse oblige; and they do not necessarily think that this Etonian deserves his place in history, after a few years in public affairs and a lot more as a Westminster insider.

Indeed, talking of the right: on observing the US elections, the Daily Express’ sharp political correspondent, Patrick O´Flynn, last week reflected what Cameron could learn from them: that the “first UK party to choose as leader a decent, self-made, down-to-earth, pro-striver leader will get massive momentum”.

He’s right, but the observation is not just for right-wingers. There’s a universal lesson, in that the British electorate is clearly fed up with career politicians, and would like to elect people who they see as appreciating their aspirations.

A simple fact seems to lie unaddressed by politicians: people still want to get on in life, just as they always have done. And they want politicians who understand that. It’s called aspiration, and in Labour we used to understand it.

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The two Ed’s don’t get on? Good.

31/08/2012, 03:31:10 PM

by David Talbot

The psychodrama returns. A brooding, man of Brown, the shadow chancellor has taken against the young upstart Labour leader. Beadily eyeing what should be his, he uses secrecy, intellect and sheer aggression to domineer over his colleagues and undermine the leader he so clearly has scant respect for. Tentatively reported at the weekend, but now repeated as fact, the hierarchy of the Labour party is once again locked in a totemic struggle. Ed Miliband and Balls are said to be in the early skirmishes of something the Labour party has historically excelled at: vicious internal warfare.

We have, of course, been here before. Comparisons with the machinations that so undermined Labour’s thirteen years are inevitable. That the new cast are the support acts from the previous scene make the comparisons that much easier. Ed Balls displays a startling resemblance to the man he once so slavishly served. He is Gordon Brown’s man and Gordon is his man. Much of the words used by those oft-quoted “senior Labour party figures” are scarily similar to Brown; “high maintenance”, “secretive” and “domineering” to name just a few of the more praiseworthy adjectives.

It is, though, easy to admire his intellect, his work load, his ability to once organise a famously disorganised chancellor and, most recently, his uncanny knack of visibly infuriating the prime minister. But most of all he is a direct and influential. He has taken the eminently sensible step of vetoing shadow cabinet members committing to future spending plans.

For once the Brownite trait of an iron grip is to be praised wholeheartedly – Balls knows that the public retain a deep suspicion that the Labour party only knows how to govern by spending a grotesque level of money that simply isn’t there.

Not unsurprisingly, though, he is struggling to come to terms with the arrangements that now find him bequeathing his position to a man he long regarded as his junior.

But he is not stupid; he knows that to destabilise Miliband to such an extent that outright election victory is jeopardised will destroy him and deny him the position he so craves – to be a Labour chancellor.

His ambition can surely soar no higher. He tested his leadership credentials in 2010 and was roundly routed.

The accusations laid so heavily at Ed Balls’ door are the exact opposite directed to Miliband. Meek, insecure, deferential – it could be suggested that Miliband needs some balls.

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Self-interest not the national interest is driving each party’s economic policy

31/08/2012, 07:00:13 AM

by Peter Watt

For three successive quarters our economy has contracted. And this week there is yet another report painting a gloomy picture for the foreseeable future. This time it’s the CBI reporting that they expect the economy to contract by 0.3% this year. The CBI’s director general, John Cridland, said:

“At present I believe the economy is flat rather than falling but, nonetheless, momentum seems to have weakened and the latest official figures put the UK in recession for the second quarter of this year.”

And so it goes on; it’s hard to remember when the economy was doing anything else other than struggling or worse. Behind the headline numbers jobs are under threat, family budgets are squeezed and uncertainty stalks the land. And on top of an economic contraction we have public finances that are in a pretty dire state. No party expects an end to the current public sector budget squeeze until 2017 at the earliest. In fact, after the most recent government borrowing figures even that looks optimistic. In July 2011 the chancellor had a surplus of £2.8 billion and in July 2012 he had to borrow £600 million!

Some experts are saying that he may end up borrowing £30 billion more this year than last when the OBR had been predicting a significant drop in the amount needing to be borrowed. Not quite the progress that George intended.

So now is the time for strong and bold leadership and honesty with the public about what our increasingly dire economic position means. And yet none of the parties seem capable of either.

Firstly the government is increasingly wrapped up in its own navel gazing and appears rudderless. For months now it has seemed bereft of any sense of purpose other than deficit reduction. But now that this seems to be failing the lack of a vision is telling. You would really struggle to say exactly what the government is for and what it wants to do. There are exceptions; you might not agree with Michael Gove or Iain Duncan Smith but you at least know what they intend to do in their departments.

But beyond that, what are the government trying to do? They chop, change and squabble giving the impression of being all over the place. Policy is announced and then reversed and the briefings and counter briefings are now endemic. Who’d be a government whip right now?!

Most importantly there aren’t many government MPs left who really believe that George Osborne is the man to save the country’s economic, and their political, bacon. David Cameron appears bemused but is caught in the contradictions of the coalition. But the one thing that still binds the coalition is the central plank of their coalition, their stated core purpose, deficit reduction.

To challenge their hitherto agreed approach right now maybe sound economics but risks exposing the schisms within and between the parties. It risks further damage to that which keeps them all in government – their shared parliamentary majority.

Yet that doesn’t stop the deputy PM announcing wild and ill thought emergency taxes on the rich. He might have thought that it would make him look in tune with the concerns of those who once voted Lib Dem but everyone else just laughed!

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The fact is, Labour leaders and their chancellors always fall out

29/08/2012, 01:19:27 PM

by Kevin Meagher

We all know the tale. An ambitious chancellor plotting with cabinet colleagues to unseat a sitting prime minister who was responsible for an historic election victory.

Blair and Brown? It could equally apply to Sir Stafford Cripps’ attempts to oust Clement Attlee in the late 1940s. Labour history has a habit of repeating itself like that.

Right up to the present day, it seems. The Independent on Sunday’s John Rentoul has stirred a hornet’s nest by reporting supposed tensions at the top of the party. “Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have been getting on particularly badly recently, although each has long found the other trying” he wrote the other day.

Clashing styles and disagreements over banking reform are cited by those following up the story.

A similar pattern (psychodrama?) has been played out down the decades. The relationship between Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson, respectively leader and shadow chancellor in the late 50s, was such that Wilson even stood for the leadership against Gaitskell in 1960. That would be the equivalent of Ed Balls launching a bid to replace Ed Miliband right now. Let that then be the marker for talk of splits at the top today.

When he was eventually in the prime ministerial driving seat, Wilson fared little better. He didn’t get on with his chancellors, Callaghan, Jenkins and Healy. Mind you, as an expert economist himself, who served as Sir William Beveridge’s researcher when the great man was drawing up his famous report on the welfare state, it’s perhaps not surprising he thought he knew more than the occupants of Number 11. He did.

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Chilcot remains the test of Labour’s new unity

03/08/2012, 07:00:40 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The ripples in Labour’s millpond have stilled. An eerie, becalmed peace is left. Nothing succeeds like success and Ed Miliband has reached the summer recess with reason to feel quiet satisfaction. His frontbench team has become more effective, the government benches less so. His party is united, the coalition fractious and sclerotic.

The prime minister will have his work cut out ahead of the party conference season, repairing relations with his backbenchers, keeping the Lib Dems sweet and removing Boris Johnson’s tanks from his lawn as a seemingly smooth-running Olympics emboldens the London Mayor in his bid to one day replace Cameron.

Ed Miliband, in contrast, can kick back and plough through his summer reading list uninterrupted. Labour’s opinion poll lead remains, if not spectacular, then the next best thing: consistent. Miliband has developed themes around responsibility and fairness which continue to resonate. He has also been lucky in his opponents too. His ‘predators’ speech at last year’s Labour conference, much maligned at the time, is vindicated with every new detail that emerges from London’s square mile, with allegations of HSBC laundering drugs money the latest seamy instalment.

But Miliband has started to make his own luck too. Tales of chaotic organisation and accusations of gauche appearances in the media and at prime minister’s questions are no longer made. The Labour machine, replete with a new top team of senior directors, is beginning to purr once again. Candidates for November’s police commissioner elections – the next big electoral test – are already in place while the Conservatives struggle to fill the roles.

Meanwhile, prolonged recession is hardening the public mood against ministers’ hoary claim that they are “dealing with the mess Labour left”. Their excuses have rapidly declining purchase as the economy flatlines. The writing is on the wall when even the IMF starts inching away from George Osborne’s deficit-masochism.

Voters’ acceptance of belt-tightening was only ever going to be short-term. Each tale of corporate and banking excess tests the patience of a frustrated public which contrasts its own sacrifices with our mangy corporate elite’s lack of restraint.

The result? All the big problems in British politics are shovelled against David Cameron’s door this summer. A one-time (self-styled) ‘heir to Blair’ he lacks the older man’s panache and luck. This is painfully evident with Blair now returning to British public life in a series of carefully choreographed interviews and appearances.

His re-entry into Labour’s orbit has been especially tentative. His presence at the party’s gala sports dinner recently and the announcement that he will take on a role advising Ed Miliband on the Olympics’ legacy generated a frisson of controversy on Labour’s left, but it was largely synthetic. And predictable. Those who dislike Tony Blair will always now dislike him, whatever he says or does.

His new advisory role is free-form and, in reality, little more than an organising concept for either man. For Ed Miliband the value of a returning Blair is to show that the Labour tribe is reuniting, cynically, perhaps, given the growing sense that David Cameron seems set on emulating Ted Heath as a one-term Tory prime minister; but coming together nonetheless. Talent from across the party now supplicates itself to a leader many did not want but who all now realise is going to lead Labour into the 2015 general election, come what may.

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If the coalition really does fracture after tonight’s vote, will Labour be ready?

10/07/2012, 07:00:35 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Tonight’s the night. The Commons votes on House of Lords reform and a series of dominoes will start to topple.

First, the government’s attempt to limit debate on the House of Lords reform bill through a “programme motion” will be defeated by a coalition of Labour and Tory votes.

It will mean Tory rebels in the Commons can filibuster the House of Lords bill, and the rest of the government’s legislative programme, into extinction. Faced with this threat, the prospect of the government throwing in the towel on House of Lords reform tomorrow morning seems almost a racing certainty.

Second, the Lib Dems will hit back by scuppering the Tories’ plans for revised parliamentary boundaries. It’s hard to see how the Lib Dem leadership could hold their party together without some retribution against the Tories. Again, on balance this seems a highly likely scenario.

Third, notwithstanding many Tories’ secret yearning to bury the new boundaries, there would be an explosion of Tory backbench, even frontbench, rage at their junior partners.

The price demanded by angry Tories would be new, true blue Conservative policies defined by the inability of the Lib Dems to support them. Lists are already being drawn up. The word “Europe” features heavily.

This is where there would be a speculative if not impossible next step. The final domino. Relations would become so strained between the government partners that they mutually lose the will to go on. They row. They snipe. And finally, they vote against each other. It would culminate in the death knell of all broken parliamentary partnerships, a failed vote of no confidence.

In the chaos of the ensuing election, out of the wreckage of the coalition, maybe, just maybe, a Labour government with a small majority would emerge.

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Whip’s Notebook: Cameron is now more focused on party management than running the country

03/07/2012, 07:15:38 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Two weeks ago PMQs served as a reminder of what could have been for a generation of Tory MPs. With Cameron and Clegg both away it fell to William Hague, foreign secretary and also first secretary of state to bat for the government. And what a joy he was to watch. Of course I don’t agree with his answers, but his delivery was assured, witty, measured and a total contrast to the increasingly irritable, bad tempered, stroppy performance we’re now used to from the prime minister.

So far the conventional wisdom on PMQs has been that Cameron is a class act on whom its difficult to land a glove. But despite Cameron’s relative strengths compared to others on the Tory benches, its strikes me as increasingly obvious that the conventional wisdom on PMQs is wrong.

In contrast to Cameron, Ed Miliband focuses on fundamentals at PMQs whether that’s the economy, the squeeze in living standards or the crisis in confidence in the political system exemplified by a prime minister on the run who refuses to report a cabinet minister to the independent advisor on the ministerial code.

Just in the last week, Cameron dithered on whether to hold an inquiry on the Libor scandal before proposing his inadequate, sticking plaster solution of a joint parliamentary committee in response to sustained pressure from Ed Miliband.

By focusing on these big issues, people are again starting to take a look at Labour though I don’t think anyone in the parliamentary Labour party is in any doubt about how much further we need to travel. However the performance of the government is starting reinforce doubts about the Tories and the competence of David Cameron.

The economic policy of the government isn’t working with growth downgraded and borrowing up. Living standards are dropping and youth unemployment stubbornly high. It’s hurting but not working.

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Finally, Labour seems to be getting it on immigration

26/06/2012, 12:30:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

My dad’s just turned 67. Like many people these days, he’s still working. But he’s not sat in a cushy office hunched over a laptop; he’s up on a scaffold, or knee-deep in mud and clay in the footings of a house.

He’s a bricklayer; and still finds himself out in all-weather doing the job he’s been doing for 50 years. He can’t afford to retire. When you work in a speculative industry your pay goes down as well as up. In a non-unionised industry, the rate is under constant negotiation. In the 1960’s and 70s it was a good job – paying well above average earnings.

During the 1980s, two biting Tory recessions wiped out construction. Try saving for retirement when you’re not earning enough; keeping the wolf from the door is the name of the game. So work on he must.

That’s partly because the past decade hasn’t been much better for construction workers either. Even during Labour’s boom, the wealth didn’t trickle down to people like him. There were two crushing forces at work: the Labour government’s general failure to build enough homes and the impact of low-cost immigrant labour, following the accession of the Visegrad countries to the EU in 2004.

The first issue is well chronicled – and indeed championed by the Left. Construction of new homes dropped to a post-war low under Labour. Having fallen by two thirds since the heyday of the 1960s, just 156,170 houses were built in 1997-8. By 2009-10, this had nearly halved to just 88,690. Not enough houses mean not enough jobs and flat pay.

Of the second issue – immigration – you will hear ne’er a squeak.

There’s been a self-denying ordinance in even talking about the issue for as long as I can remember. Like actors who won’t say the name of “the Scottish play” for fear of bad luck, the centre-left has been utterly mute on the subject of immigration for years.

Of course there is a familiar form of words about ‘valuing the contribution immigrants make’ but no discourse on the other impacts. The downsides must remain unspoken; such is the paranoia about feeding the far right.

So Ed Miliband’s speech was hugely significant, if only for its topic. Stacked full of caveats and careful formulations, he did, however, manage to throw off the veil that “worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration” does not make people bigoted (“not in any way”). People are simply “anxious about the future” he said.

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Time to fight for the Labour party

15/06/2012, 07:00:07 AM

by Atul Hatwal

A few years ago, a colleague told me a vignette from life in the Labour party in the mid-1980s. She was a member of the proto-modernising group, the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC), and acted as whip for the LCC group in her inner London constituency Labour party (CLP). At each constituency meeting, she said there was a ritual to begin proceedings: the first motion was always to open the window and it was always put to a vote.

The reason? To gauge the relative strengths of the factions present. The modernisers would vote one way, the melange of militant and hard left, the other. The window was irrelevant. It was where the players lined up that counted.

Today, Progress is that window.

All the agonised commentary within the party about the conduct of Progress, its fate and what might or might not happen at party conference, is utterly irrelevant because this isn’t really about them.

Since Ed Miliband became leader, Progress have been a paragon of dutiful loyalty.

Last year at conference, when Miliband veered off into classifying businesses as predators or producers, without having much in the way of evidence either way, it wasn’t Progress that criticised him.

The editorial in last October’s magazine was positively supportive:

“It is rare for the words of a leader of the opposition to change policy; generating headlines is their normal intention. Ed Miliband’s speech to Labour party conference, however, managed both.”

When Labour selected a disastrous mayoral candidate in London, Progress campaigned for Livingstone.

And most recently the key proposals from Progress have focused on how to improve Labour’s organisational machine. Ideas like the fightback fundraiser kitemark are hardly the stuff of left wing nightmares.

No, this is not about the substance of what Progress do. This is a power play by the left. The objective: to flush out those in the shadow cabinet, and at the top of the party, who would publicly back Progress. Those who would stand up and defend a Blairite group with all that is implicit in that act.

Progress is a proxy for the future direction of the Labour party.

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