Posts Tagged ‘England’

The Road to Wigan Pier, redux

12/06/2016, 10:33:58 AM

In a series of posts, Uncut writers look at the constituencies featured in Labour’s Identity Crisis, England and the Politics of Patriotism. Here, Rob Marchant gives his perspective on Wigan.

As someone who is half-Indian, Lisa Nandy MP – author of the book’s piece on Wigan – is pretty well-placed to comment on modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural Britain. And as “a Wiganer by choice”, in her own words, she clearly has a grasp of the problems facing Labour in our northern industrial towns. For example, in Wigan as in many other such towns in 2015, UKIP was close to beating the Tories to second place.

Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier spoke about the conflict between the need for Labour to be able to help and transform such communities and, often, resistance to Labour from within those very towns and villages themselves. Eighty years on, a comparable conflict is starting to return and those communities are no longer the heartlands that Labour can take for granted.

When I spent time around Wigan around the millennium, what struck me was the tightly-knit nature of the communities – often keenly competitive – in each separate town within the borough. Whilst their solidarity was their strength, there was always the danger that solidarity could tip over into insularity: a fear of the outside. It is easy to see how they could come to feel threatened by, say, immigration, or any other laws imperiously imposed from the other end of the country. And let alone the EU, also the current source of much of that immigration.

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Revealed: Ed’s night-time dash to casa Brand driven by postal ballot panic

02/05/2015, 06:28:36 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Uncut has learned the real reason for Ed Miliband’s sudden night-time visit to Russell Brand’s Shoreditch home: panic caused by the early tallies of postal ballots being fed back to party HQ, from marginals around the country.

Labour is behind and urgently needs to reach out to new voter groups. Russell Brand was a means to that end.

Postal voting started in mid-April. Over 5 million are expected to cast their ballot in this way and over the last week, local teams from all parties have attended postal vote opening sessions in each constituency.

Although the parties are legally not allowed to tally votes at these events, they all do and the constituency teams then dutifully pass their field intelligence back to HQ.

These are not opinion polls results or canvass returns but actual votes, hundreds of thousands of votes, from across Britain. Numbers have been flowing from each marginal to party strategists to give the most accurate picture of the current state of play.

Labour insiders familiar with the latest figures have told Uncut that the picture for Labour in marginal seats, where it is fighting the Tories, is almost uniformly grim.

Seats that canvass returns had suggested were strong prospects for gains are much more finely balanced and those that were close are swinging heavily to the Tories.

The tartan scare is working with the fear of McLabour shifting large numbers of wavering Lib Dems and Ukippers into the Tory column.

National opinion polls and Lord Ashcroft’s last swathe of constituency polling have seemed to indicate a shift towards the Tories recently, but Labour insiders say the effect on the ground in marginals is much bigger than picked up in polls so far.

Labour has already squeezed the Greens as much as possible for votes, and is coming up short. Despite a superior get-out-the-vote operation primed and ready for next Thursday, Labour cannot bridge the gap by organisation alone.

With just a few days to go until the election, Labour desperately needs new voters.

This is why Ed Miliband suddenly changed his plans and went to Russell Brand’s home to be interviewed.

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Labour needs to remember England

02/05/2015, 10:21:30 AM

by Renie Anjeh

Just over a week ago was St George’s Day. Crowds of people displayed their love of England with pride in the knowledge that the general election was just a fortnight away. All the polls presage another hung parliament. Few pundits are brave enough to predict the result. One thing is clear and that is that the outcome will be unclear.

It is very likely that the parliamentary instability which will ensue which may even lead to an election in the autumn.

The reason why the country is on the verge of political pandemonium is because the election result will not be decided in the land of St George but the land of St Andrew.

Since the referendum, the SNP has upended the political landscape north of border, placing them in pole position to be the kingmakers at this election.

2015 could be the first time that nationalists have held the balance of power in over a hundred years. As Jonathan Todd pointed out, the reason for this political earthquake is because the Scots are thinking about “who will get the best deal for Scotland?” rather than “who is best to lead the UK?”

Obviously this is catastrophic for the Labour party. Labour has always had a close affinity with Scotland. Keir Hardie was a Scot. Many of Labour’s greatest big beasts came from Scotland: Donald Dewar, Robin Cook, Alistair Darling, George Robertson, Gordon Brown, John Reid and John Smith.

Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader, was born in Edinburgh and educated at Fettes College. However, Labour has not had the same relationship with England.

Whenever issues regarding the West Lothian Question or the Barnett Formula have been raised, Labour has used constitutional conservatism as an excuse not to address a perceived unfairness.

Many English people fear that Labour treats English identity with suspicion at best, derision at worst even though it has no qualms about Scottish or Welsh identity. Labour has not always been the natural home for suburban and rural areas in England. The result of our long-term problem in England has not been great. 2001 was the last time that Labour won the most votes in England.

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England’s coastal towns need Labour. We mustn’t forget about them

09/01/2015, 11:24:01 AM

by Nathan Bennet

The Labour party should aim to represent coastal towns across the whole of Southern and Eastern England.

We hold seats in Southampton and Plymouth. Many of our target seats are there – Brighton, Hastings, Great Yarmouth, to name just a few. But I’d go further and argue that there’s a case for Labour representation well outside of our usual battlegrounds.

First, let’s debunk the general myth some permeate that there isn’t really a case for Labour in southern England outside our target seats. Bin the North-South divide – the real world is far more complicated.

Look at wages: Labour’s Southern Taskforce have mapped data from the ONS’ Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. We’ve shown that right round the coast of Southern and Eastern England, average wages are below the national average. There are 43 coastal constituencies here where a higher proportion of people earn less than the living wage than the national average.

And it’s not always in the places you’d expect. In Torridge, West Devon average wages are just over £15,000 a year – £7,000 less than the national average. 38.6% of workers don’t earn a living wage. A report by Sheffield Hallam University and CRESR highlighted the dependency of much of the coast on seaside tourism. It employs 140,000 people in the South and East, and towns like Salcombe, Fowey, Southwold, New Quay, and Aldeburgh are heavily dependent on it. Yes they’re jobs, but they’re often seasonal and low paid, meeting few aspirations and offering few chances to get on

Rebalancing these local economies is as important here as in declining former industrial tows. The coalition’s reliance on market forces clearly isn’t delivering. The southern and eastern coastal communities, need an active government, willing to devolve power and resources, reforming the banks to support small business, delivering on real improvements in broadband, and tackling persistent failings in many schools that leave too many children poorly qualified and means that, even in regions of high HE participation, children from the poorer areas are missing out.

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Sunday Review: Visions of England, by Roy Strong

14/08/2011, 12:00:19 PM

by Anthony Painter

In the aftermath of urban riots in the US in the 1960s, president Johnson set up a commission under Otto Kerner to review root causes and recommend responses. On top of recommending hundreds of billions of dollars of government expenditure and conclusively blaming poverty and inequality for the riots, the report hit the headlines with its conclusion:

“Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal”.

What is more: white institutions were to blame for this state of affairs. Not surprisingly, President Johnson ignored it. Ed Miliband should be careful what he wishes for in asking for a public inquiry into this week’s riots. What England’s riots do warn, however, is that the modern English experience is not the same for all. Roy Strong’s new elegy for England, Visions of England, presents an idealised version of the nation. What we saw across England over a few days was a terrorised England. One is England as a dream; one is England as nightmare. Neither feels real.

Sir Roy Strong’s English idyll is passionately bonkers. He asks us to choose an England of pastoral tranquility. Constructed around the iconography of artists, writers, monarchs, and religious thought, Strong would have us revelling as modern John of Gaunts of Shakepeare’s Richard II. This is a blessed plot and it should be revered. (more…)

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10 lessons for Labour from England’s hopeless World Cup.

28/06/2010, 03:01:46 PM

1. Don’t blame external factors.

OK, so the Lampard goal that never was is damn irritating. But the truth is that England were ordinary at their very best throughout the tournament and no more. They were downright awful yesterday.

Equally, for Labour, its performance in the general election was very poor. It could have been worse; it could have ended up in third place. England could have failed to qualify for the second round. But to blame money, the media, the credit crunch for Labour’s defeat and then fail to face reality will be fatal for 2015. (more…)

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Mike Forster looks at the leadership contenders: David Miliband is Brazil.

12/06/2010, 04:59:11 PM

Much has been said on this site and others about communicating with our core constituency in a language they can understand. So thought I’d have a crack at explaining the second-most interesting contest going on at the moment in terms of the first.

True, there aren’t 32 contenders in the Labour leadership contest, but there are parallels with the world cup.

Whichever team wins the football, though, it is unlikely to have much of an impact on your life or anybody you know. Even England winning will only have a fleeting impact, mainly a stinking hangover on July 12th.

Our eventual choice of leader, though, could mean the difference between 5 years of a Tory government or 10, or even more. (more…)

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