Posts Tagged ‘Jon Ashworth’

Whip’s Notebook

22/02/2012, 07:00:01 AM

by Jon Ashworth

So we’re all back after our constituency week and I’m spending my time as a dutiful whip touring the tearoom, smoking room and the various other nooks and crannies hidden away in the palace of Westminster to catch up with fellow members of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

The first day back after recess always has that back to school feel and we’re all eager to swop stories of what we got up to. Talking to colleagues, I’m struck by the extent to which unemployment is affecting all our constituencies in similar ways.

Last week we learnt that unemployment, youth unemployment, over 50s unemployment all rose again across Leicester South. I’m not surprised. In recent months, I’ve found more and more people turning up at my advice surgery desperate for any guidance I can offer to help them find work. Almost every Labour MP I’ve spoken to this week tells a similar story.

And yet we have a government that is completely failing to show any grip and put in a place any strategy to deal with the unemployment crisis so many areas of the country now face. I’m well aware it’s so clichéd to remind Labour Uncut readers that Norman Lamont twenty years ago famously said “unemployment is a price worth paying” but I’ve become convinced that the government’s complete lack of action in tackling unemployment suggests that David Cameron probably harbours that attitude even he is not so gauche as to say it in the way his former boss did.

Take for example when I asked Cameron at PMQs when he had last met a young unemployed person, I was amazed he couldn’t answer. What’s more neither he nor George Osborne could tell me when they last visited a jobcentre plus office. Instead of organizing Downing Street summits on the wretched and disastrous health bill, where are the Downing Street summits on youth unemployment? Where are the meetings out in unemployment hotspots to find out what needs to be done?

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Whip’s notebook

07/02/2012, 07:00:19 AM

By Jon Ashworth

Before I became an MP I was for many years a bag carrier, which meant a lot of marching at the side of Gordon, Harriet or Ed through Westminster corridors while trying to look serious, doing my best not to drop the wad of briefing papers and most of all desperately hoping I wouldn’t get us lost.

As a diligent member of the leader’s political office, I would usually take advantage of the opportunity to get their view on some upcoming vote at the NEC or some whipping issue causing anguish. Often a backbench MP or fellow (shadow) minster would need a word with Gordon, Harriet or Ed and so Gordon, Harriet or Ed would assure me they would speak to them “in the vote”.

I never really knew what this meant until I became an MP myself.

Now of course at one rudimentary level I knew it meant they would speak to them as they go through the voting lobbies. But I never really appreciated the whole voting lobby experience. It’s where us MPs all congregate, gossip, catch-up and have that quick word with a colleague we’ve been looking out for. We’re all busy people so it’s often where my good friends and parliamentary neighbours Keith Vaz, Liz Kendall and I get together for a quick conflab about any pressing Leicester issue.

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Whips notebook: where’s the business in the business statement?

24/01/2012, 08:31:42 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Earlier this month we learnt that the prime minister has completed angry birds. On every Thursday we learn what business the government will bring to the Commons over the next week. At first sight these two events should not be connected, but I’m beginning to wonder if they are.

The prime minister revealed his adroitness at the startlingly popular ipad game in a Sunday newspaper interview a few weeks ago. The marvellously patrician Sir George Young – leader of the House of Commons and lord privy seal – reveals the government business through a weekly statement on the floor of the Commons every Thursday at about 11.30.

This weekly business statement is one for real parliamentary connoisseurs. It has often been the backdrop to dazzling displays of wit and repartee such as Robin Cook versus Eric Forth. Parliamentary historians will recall that Michael Foot’s mastery in the chamber came into its own through his time as leader of the House. In more recent times Harriet Harman and Alan Duncan was always an entertaining joust. (more…)

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Whips notebook: part two

06/01/2012, 11:03:04 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Just before the Christmas recess we won a vote. It was at the end of a debate on the economy and our quick thinking and experienced chief and deputy chief whip forced a division when the government was least expecting it. There was panic on the faces of government whips, with one senior government whip, with the rather splendid title of comptroller of Her Majesty household seeming especially agitated.

It was no wonder that the government whips were so hot under the collar. When the final scores on the doors were read out by the Labour whip (who just so happened to be me) only 79 government MPs voted, compared to 213 from the opposition. Of course winning a vote is nothing to get carried away with. Defeating the government on what was effectively a procedural matter doesn’t really change anything, though it does make the government look like a bit of a shambles and puts a spring in the step of a Labour MP.

Labour Uncut readers don’t need reminding that winning the central argument on the economy is vital to Labour’s future electoral success. In squaring up to George Osborne our shadow chancellor Ed Balls has a formidable opponent. (more…)

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Whip’s notebook

17/11/2011, 01:00:13 PM

by Jon Ashworth

It got no publicity, not even in my local paper, but a month ago I joined the front bench as a whip. I never expected it. Indeed, on the day Ed called me I was out shopping with my wife and baby in Leicester’s High Cross Centre. I didn’t notice numerous missed calls on my mobile till much later that afternoon. When offered the job, though flattered, I wasn’t even sure whether I should accept it – after all I’ve only been an MP for five minutes (well 6 months), I’m no expert on Parliamentary procedure and still trying to find my way around the Commons.

But here I am a month or so later: a member of her majesty’s opposition whips office, working with Sadiq Khan’s justice team.  That means not only am I busy reading up on my Erskine May, beginning to understand what a programme motion actually is, I’m also trying to get to grips with the government’s legislation on justice issues.

The other week was my first big moment whipping our side on the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill in the Commons for report stage and third reading (i’m even talking like a whip now). We had three days for debate and scrutiny in the Commons before sending it off to be considered by their Lordships. It ought to have been a reasonable amount of time but the government introduced something called an instruction motion at the start of proceedings, allowing the government to effectively introduce pages and pages of new clauses, new schedules and new amendments – in other words reams of new policy which hadn’t been debated, discussed or seen by anyone previously. Consequently, huge sections of the bill were never properly scrutinised by the House.

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Come and help Leicester South deliver Britain’s verdict on Cameron and Clegg

25/04/2011, 07:51:20 AM

By Jon Ashworth

With the working-class council estates of Eyres Monsell and Saffron Lane, diverse communities closer to the city centre, traditionally Tory wards on the outskirts and liberal-leaning voters in the areas around the university, Leicester South really is a microcosm of Britain.

Its politics have mirrored the country’s, too. The seat has changed hands no fewer than five times since the seventies. It’s been represented by MPs from all three major parties over the last twenty years with the Lib Dems winning the 2004 by-election.

And when it goes to the polls in the by-election on 5 May it will have the opportunity to speak for Britain again.

The decision by Sir Peter Soulsby, the area’s respected and hard-working MP for the last six years, to stand down to contest the election for the city’s first directly elected Mayor has given local voters the chance to cast the nation’s verdict on a raft of the Conservative-led government’s unpopular policies.

Over the last two weeks, both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have traveled to Leicester and stood on the very spot outside De Montfort University at which Nick Clegg chose to pledge his opposition to tuition fees.

“It was here a year ago that he made his promise he would be the voice of young people,” the Labour leader told a crowd of young people inside. “The full gravity of the betrayal has today become clearer. Today we learn that 70% of universities are going to charge £9,000 tuition fees”.

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A postcard from the Leicester South by-election

11/04/2011, 03:30:39 PM

By Michael Dugher

Last week Ed Balls launched Labour’s by-election campaign in Leicester South. He did so from the same spot at De Montfort university where Nick Clegg, a year ago during the general election, restated his opposition to tuition fees and said that the Lib Dems had “real momentum…particularly with young voters”.  He went onto pose the question: “Who do you trust to deliver the change and fairness you want”?  If a week is a long time in politics, the last year feels like an eternity.

The Leicester South by-election was caused by the resignation of the sitting Labour MP, the respected and popular Sir Peter Soulsby, who will contest the first ever mayoral election in Leicester. For the small but dedicated group of Labour staff, this will be their third by-election in less than six months. Some of the hard-working organisers have barely had enough time to wash their smalls since leaving Barnsley.

But Barnsley Central is a very different type of constituency to Leicester South.  Barnsley Central is a traditional Labour heartland seat, a stronghold that Labour has held without interruption since the inter-war years.

Leicester South, on the other hand, is a city seat that has changed hands on a number of significant occasions. In February 1974, the Conservatives won the seat with a 1,700 majority. Eight months later, Labour took it back with a 1,300 majority. When the Tories were riding high under Mrs Thatcher in 1983, Leicester South again narrowly elected a Conservative MP, with a majority of seven. Despite big majorities for Labour in the 1990s and in 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war in 2004, Leicester South was the scene of a major by-election win for the Lib Dems, as they took the seat with a majority of over 1,600. At the subsequent general election in 2005, Labour regained the constituency with a majority of more than three thousand. (more…)

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