Posts Tagged ‘John Woodcock’

In other news…Labour launches transport review

21/03/2011, 01:00:56 PM

by John Woodcock

In other news, Labour is launching a transport policy review today.

Something tells me that global events may deprive the review, Britain Better Connected, of the attention it would otherwise merit.

But the questions it is asking nevertheless remain important:

·         for families facing a cost-of-living squeeze exacerbated by Conservative decisions to impose a VAT hike on fuel and allow an inflation-busting increase on train fares;

·         for the next generation of high-skilled workers essential to our economy, whose future is being put at risk by widespread local decisions to abolish help with travel to college, forced by the scale of the cuts imposed on local authorities;

·         for older people angry that their free bus pass is of little use when the service they rely on has been axed;

·         for motorists who want to drive more greenly and have more public transport options but who, no matter how much the government whacks up duty on fuel, are never going to swap their car keys for a bus timetable or push bike;

·         and for a country that must examine how its transport infrastructure should change over the next decade to deliver the basic objective of sustainable growth in a world where global competition gets ever more fierce and our environmental targets ever more pressing.

We got a hell of a lot right in the major transport decisions we made during our time in government. Improvements in train lines substantially reduced journey times and improved links between towns like mine and larger centres of economic growth (in fact I am benefiting from one such improvement, the west coast main line, as I write this on the way down to London, thanking my lucky stars that I got a seat). Investment to increase the uptake of low emission vehicles like electric cars was an important step in the process of ensuring motoring can meet its environmental obligations in future decades. And we understood that UK businesses and jobs would lose, with no overall gain for the environment, if Britain sent elsewhere the global aviation growth made inevitable by the economic rise of the east.

But in the Labour government’s early years, we should recognise that we did not do enough to combat the wholly inaccurate impression that we were evangelists, determined to force people to travel more greenly rather than making it easier for them to do so. That zeal of the first term has left a lasting impression on many who now suspect that every new transport strategy, from whatever side, is something bad that to be imposed on them, rather than a measure designed to help them.

As well as dispelling that notion for good, the programme we devise for the next decade must be prepared to equip our already straining rail network to accommodate the predicted passenger demand in future years. And, crucially, it must understand the limits of price as a mechanism to change people’s behaviour. Most people have little option but to pay increased charges, be they from higher rail fares or more expensive fuel, increasing the risk that each new hike primarily just makes people poorer rather than reducing carbon emissions.

That is why shadow secretary of state, Maria Eagle, is focussing our review on affordability, on the steps we need to take to make transport more sustainable without pricing those on low and middle incomes out of the travel they need to make the best of their lives. And it is why I will be considering the steps needed ultimately to put a low emission vehicle within reach of the majority of car owners, not just the early adopters with sufficient means to pay the premium.

None of this will compete for space in the news agenda with the momentous and distressing events in Libya and Japan – rightly so. But the transport decisions we take over the next decade will have at least as great an impact on people’s daily lives. Do get involved and have your say.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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Cameron’s brave boasts ring hollow: the Tories are failing to back British business.

07/03/2011, 09:17:34 AM

by John Woocock

David Cameron has faltered abroad of late because under him Britain lacks a coherent foreign policy to guide it, as Douglas Alexander cogently set out in the Observer yesterday.

But yesterday the prime minister’s incoherence spread to the home front. Cameron’s speech to the Conservative spring conference highlighted a weakness in his leadership and the government’s economic position that is worth dwelling on, beyond the two lines of rebuttal to which such orations are usually treated.

The foreign policy section of the speech bad enough. Was there really a single true blue activist in the Cardiff hall, never mind anyone in the rest of the country, convinced by the notion that the key difference between Labour and the Conservatives in foreign affairs is that we do “dodgy deals with dictators” while they are primarily interested in volunteering to build schools in Africa? And if any Cameroon speechwriters read Labour Uncut (They do – Ed.) let me help you out: if you are going to force that kind of absurd contrast on your audience, don’t then segue into a eulogy of Margaret Thatcher’s foreign policy principles. Some would say she ended up being a teeny bit too close to a dodgy regime or two herself, as her friendship with General Pinochet and reluctance to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa showed (which latter Mr Cameron himself adversely criticised back in the days that he wished to project himself as a break from Tory tradition). (more…)

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One sorry doesn’t save the Tory sinners

24/02/2011, 09:35:43 AM

by John Woodcock

There is a scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent, played by John Travolta, testily tells fellow hitman Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) to stop giving him grief about the fact he has just accidently shot  a third member of their gang in the face.

“Did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings”? asks Vincent.

Now I am obviously not making any comparison at all between the drug-fuelled, murderous underworlds created by Quentin Tarantino and environment secretary Caroline Spelman’s disagreeable encounters with forest lovers. No one died, or was ever going to die, as a result of the hopefully now aborted Tory forest privatisation plan.

Nevertheless, there was a concerted effort last week to impose a Pulp Fiction philosophy on those seeking to assess the effect on the government’s credibility of David Cameron’s growing reputation for u-turns.

“A shining example of the new politics”, was how one robustly pro-coalition Liberal Democrat MP described Caroline Spelman’s humiliating volte-face on forests.

Bravo to the Conservatives for finally admitting openly that this mass sell-off of our English heritage, of which they had been extolling the virtues for months, was in fact bonkers. Shame on Labour for not having the good grace to join in the choruses of “For she’s a jolly good fellow” ringing out from the government benches behind the newly repentant environment secretary.

Now it has to be said that the way Ms Spelman baldly admitted she had been wrong and the tone she adopted in doing so were indeed striking last week. And they fairly disarming.

But the public are not daft. Yes, when faced with a government doing something they rightly hate, they would of course rather it changed its mind. But nothing beats not wanting to do it in the first place: having the good sense to realise from the outset what is totally beyond the pale.

And there is something else that fundamentally undermines the notion that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are taking a further stride into a new dawn with each successive u-turn. That is the fact that a Spelman-style mea culpa is actually the exception rather than the rule so far.

Compare her approach to that of defence secretary the previous day on an equally important issue – the military covenant between government and the armed forces. Liam Fox point blank refused to admit that he had backed away from the Tory commitment to enshrine covenant in law, ignoring all evidence to the contrary presented by respected groups like the Royal British Legion.

It was more Vicky Pollard: “I never”, than Spelman: “I’m sorry”. All supplemented with wild attacks on Labour to the effect that we never apologised, so why should they? (They were clearly too busy getting to grips with the levers of power to listen to our four month long leadership contest, when at times we seemed to do little else).

But the real test will come in how open David Cameron and George Osborne are with the public if they change course in the budget to tackle the lack of growth in the economy. Will the new politics extend to George Osborne standing up to admit that the economic masochism imposed in the first nine months of Tory-led government is not in the country’s long term interests after all?

I very much doubt it.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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I love New Labour and am proud of what we did

07/02/2011, 11:30:24 AM

by John Woodcock

The thing is, I love what New Labour has stood for and I am deeply, deeply proud of what we did in government.

And I just don’t buy into the idea that that should be a controversial thing to think or to say. In some Labour GCs, maybe (though probably fewer than many think). Perhaps even for the dwindling number of journalists still interested in finding Labour splits, who may wrongly think that puts me at odds with my leader.

But not with the public who voted for us.

We must indeed focus on the future, not get trapped in the past – even our more recent past. But I am no longer going to use that obvious fact as a device to dodge saying what I really think about the changes we pursued to make our country better.

Why come out with this now? It is not as though this were an unfamiliar debate after a four month long leadership campaign.

Because while the old battles on particular reforms are thankfully over and familiar slogans now stale, keeping astride the centre ground is essential as we renew.

Ed Miliband showed that with his excellent speech on the British promise on Friday.

But we need to keep saying it: we cannot assume that anything is a given in a policy process where we rightly re-examine the basics to come up with new perspectives.

So I am not going to hedge anymore.

We have so much to do to ensure that Labour, or New Labour, or Even Newer Labour, regains the trust of the British people.

We must go on learning where we went wrong. But we had better be sure of what we got right too.

Robustly siding with individual users of public services against vested interests who do not want those services to change; understanding that crime is a massive issue in poorer neighbourhoods and must never be ceded to the right; believing in the power of public investment but refusing to impose punitive taxes to resource it.

Those fundamental instincts were, among others, central to the coalition of support that New Labour assembled.

Whatever we call ourselves, a party that drifts away from those instincts will struggle to win back the right to change Britain.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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Alan should return, but Ed will excel

24/01/2011, 07:00:11 AM

by John Woodcock

Much of what has been written about Alan Johnson since Thursday has read like the obituary of a man who has stepped off the political stage for good.

That need not be the case; I hope he will want to return to the front line before too long.

Commentary pondering whether Alan’s relaxed temperament made his exit inevitable is as poorly-founded as the assertion that a man who excelled as a minister for a decade could be fairly labelled gaffe-prone after a single slip.

Worse is the suggestion that his comeback is unlikely because he will be in his mid-sixties by the next election and therefore past it. It is sad that the generation of politicians which banned age discrimination and abolished the compulsory retirement age seems under pressure to be ever more fresh-faced and youthful (not that fresh-faced youth is a bad thing, you understand).

But while sad for Alan, we are all looking forward to seeing Ed Balls get stuck into George Osborne in the way he did Michael Gove.

Ed excelled in the leadership campaign for his early recognition that it was often those just above the cut off level for targeted support who were among the most disillusioned with Labour by the end of our third term in government.

We will need those instincts in the tough months ahead.

It is, of course, essential that we speak up for current and future generations of college students set to be deprived of vital financial support; that we are angry on behalf of firms who are crying out for a better skills base and can ill-afford to see young people put off from further and higher education.

But we know we must also heed the message on the doorstep from slightly better off families whose children did not generally qualify for extra help. They were cross about that, and rightly demand that we prove we are on their side too.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness.

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Fixed term parliaments means maximum two-term prime ministers

17/01/2011, 07:00:55 AM

by John Woodcock

David Cameron’s days as prime minister are numbered. But Ed Miliband is not going to last in the top job as long as Tony Blair did.

It is not that I have been afflicted with a career-limiting combination of nostalgia for past Labour leaders and naïve over-enthusiasm after a single by-election win.

My predictions on the longevity of the current prime minister and his would-be successor stem in fact from a little-considered consequence of fixed term parliaments: namely, that they may well unintentionally place a US-style two-term limit on anyone’s stay at number ten. (And before anyone starts, I am not saying that I think Mr Cameron is on course for a win in 2015. He is not).

But let’s assume for a moment that governments will not generally collapse mid-term and trigger unexpected early elections. For all the trauma currently being experienced by the Liberal Democrats, those at the top are strapped into their ministerial priuses so securely that it is very hard to see them breaking away early. (more…)

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John Woodcock’s sober predictions for 2011

20/12/2010, 07:00:02 AM

by John Woodcock

For those who wish to ensure that festive cheer does not cloud their senses, here are some fairly sober predictions for 2011:

1. Labour councillors and activists will pull out all the stops for the May elections and make significant gains. So far – so optimistic. But this success will make some think we are already at the “one last heave” stage. When in fact we will only be making our way out of base camp. As the cuts begin to bite, it will be tempting to mistake the uncertainty felt towards the Tories for people renewing their bond with Labour. Such a misinterpretation is likely to be our biggest barrier to having the conviction to make the difficult decisions needed to win back the public’s trust.

2. Ed Miliband will not be among those falling into that trap. In one crucial respect, he will continue to think about the cuts programme in the same way as does the Tory leadership. While the public’s perception of what is happening now is hugely important, both David Cameron and our leader understand that cuts will have been implemented at the time of the next election. So the main debate, as the country goes to the polls, will be where we go from 2015. Not whether there might have been a better way of getting from 2010 to 2015. (more…)

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If abandoning Gordon is wrong, junking his ideas is just stupid.

07/12/2010, 07:00:04 AM

by John Woodcock

So, Gordon Brown’s book Beyond the Crash is out today.

The former prime minister’s account of the global financial collapse deserves to make a significant impact on Britain’s collective understanding of what has happened to its economy in, and since, the crisis. It ought to cast in a different light a still-towering figure whose reputation has been trashed by all-comers since election defeat in May.

I say “deserves” and “ought”, rather than “will”, because the truth is that political orthodoxy has shifted so starkly since the election that Gordon’s account may struggle to achieve what it should – at least in the short term.

In the heady days of the London G20, when Gordon was rightly being lauded for his role in crafting an effective international response to the global meltdown, it would have been almost inconceivable that the ideas he was championing would fall off the UK radar in such a short time. (more…)

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The cost-free, universally popular, radical new ideas box

22/11/2010, 08:49:59 AM

by John Woodcock

It is no secret or surprise that ministers and advisers in the last government got hooked on seeing themselves satirised in The Thick of It. But there was one line in particular that summed up the exasperation of office so well that it was quoted back in Whitehall meetings: the line where an irritated adviser responds to a request for an agenda-setting new policy by sarcastically rummaging around in his “radical, cost-free, universally popular” ideas box and declaring it to be empty.

Partly, that just demonstrated how knackered the last administration had become and highlighted Labour’s need to renew and recharge. But The Thick of It did not simply dramatise the Labour government’s decline; the scene mentioned also points to the difficulty faced by any political party when the proposals it seeks to generate to win support actually need to be put into practice.

It is a problem the Tories and Liberal Democrats are facing in spades as they move from opposition to government.  Suddenly, the stuff that sounded so catchy on a single-sided press release doesn’t seem quite so realistic when in charge of the department tasked with implementing it.

Tuition fees are the obvious example, of course. Vince Cable even had the chutzpah to explain that he would never have advocated scrapping fees if he had known he was going to be in a position to do something about them – a line beyond satire. (more…)

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The government is playing fast and loose with Britain’s security

08/11/2010, 09:00:34 AM

by John Woodcock

David Cameron and Nick Clegg look more like a political yin and yang with every day that passes. The unseemly deal we have just witnessed between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on Trident and tuition fees highlights the way the two leaders have intertwined their fate.

We should be in no doubt about what has happened – the Lib Dems have spectacularly broken their word on higher fees in return for securing a delay on renewing the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

On one level, this is simply base horse trading upon which the dynamics of coalition politics have shone a light. But it is initially hard to understand why Nick Clegg should have been prepared to swallow such humiliation for himself while his coalition partners seem relatively unscathed. Until, that is, you consider the less obvious but potentially equally severe damage to Cameron’s reputation from messing around with Trident renewal in the way that he has.

The reaction from key Conservative backbenchers on this has been derisory and unremittingly hostile. They point out that the UK’s ultimate means of defending itself is the last issue on which a prime minister should have been prepared to trade. They worry about the extra cost and risk piled on the project by delaying the build timetable and punting the ‘main gate’ investment decision to the other side of a general election.

As the MP representing the thousands of workers in Barrow shipyard whose economic future depends on continuing orders, and as part of an opposition which wants Britain to remain credible on protecting its citizens, I am not afraid to say that I share those concerns. (more…)

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