Jonathan Todd « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Jonathan Todd’

Budget 2011: David Cameron is Ricky Hatton’s Mum

23/03/2011, 07:00:02 AM

by Jonathan Todd

The current Spectator cover story claims that Conservatives are as struck by panic as they were in the autumn of 2007 when Gordon Brown seemed set to crush them by calling an election. George Osborne saved their bacon then and they look to him to revive them now. Everyone else is looking at Libya. Hence, the impact of the budget will be dimmed. But Osborne will try to pull a big enough rabbit out of his hat to wrest attention away from the middle east.

Osborne doesn’t begrudge Libya coverage, obviously; particularly not if it leads to his boss being seen as a competent and brave war leader. If – and clearly this is a massive if – a stable post-Gaddafi Libya emerges, then the earlier shambles will be largely forgotten and David Cameron will gain kudos, which will make him harder to dislodge from Downing Street. The resignation of Lord Carrington did little to dent the boost that the Falklands war gave Margaret Thatcher at the 1983 general election.

Osborne’s rabbit isn’t intended to divert eyes from Libya or the spotlight from Cameron. It will seek to disorientate Labour and have our leaders confuse tactics with strategy. Fiscal constraints limit the cards in play, but the cards available are all held by Osborne. He knows that he can use them to establish dividing lines that will set the terms of debate. He was as keen a student of Gordon Brown as either Ed Balls or Ed Miliband. (more…)

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Miliband can own the future in a way that Cameron can’t

22/03/2011, 04:40:10 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The longer Gordon Brown was prime minister, the harder it became, sadly, to picture him in post at the 2012 Olympics. His purchase on the future evaporated. Ed Miliband has to recover this to return to government. He has to convince that he has the answers to the challenges of 2015 and beyond. And personify these answers.

While his speech to the resolution foundation looked towards this, the past is always knocking incessant, trying to break through into the present. As Jim Murphy told the progress political school, in politics, the past is always the context, the future the contest. The spectre of Iraq hangs over Libya. The fiscal management of the last government colours arguments about the approach of this. In many areas – NHS, schools, welfare and, increasingly, foreign affairs – David Cameron presents himself as more heir to Blair than a return to the 1980s. Labour begs to differ. The public is uncertain.

What is not in doubt, however, is that the past has to be overcome to own the future. The 1997 victory couldn’t happen until Labour had outrun the shadow of its discontented winter. Tory detoxification hadn’t removed the stench of Thatcherism before 2010. That foul odour now emanates from Number Ten, in spite of Cameron needing Nick Clegg’s help to limp over the finishing line of the general election. (more…)

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Collaborative consumption – what it is and why it matters to Labour

02/03/2011, 02:00:46 PM

by Jonathan Todd

There is a piece of land registered on Landshare in every postcode in the UK. If you stacked every film shipped weekly by Netflix in a single pile, it would be taller than Mount Everest. The value of goods traded annually on ebay is more than the GDP of 125 countries. Bike sharing is the fastest-growing form of transportation in the world.

Something is going on here. And Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers think they know what it is: collaborative consumption. Defenders of the big society have latched on to the decentralised, networked mega-trend that Botsman and Rogers describe in their book, “what’s mine is yours – how collaborative consumption is changing the way we live.”

After Botsman gave a version of her stump speech at the RSA last month, I asked whether this trend contains any lessons for Labour. She was, understandably, reticent to politicise her baby. The big society shouldn’t be owned by any political party, nor should collaborative consumption, she told me.

Of course, she’s right. The civic institutions that are supposed to make up the big society were around long before David Cameron tried to destroy them. And collaborative consumption is too nebulous a concept for any politician to convincingly declare it their passion. I’m not even sure that it adds up to a unified idea. There are, however, elements of Botsman and Rogers’ argument that hit upon some truths that Labour should absorb. (more…)

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Carry on up the Suez: gutless and incompetent Tories bring shame on us all

25/02/2011, 04:30:59 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The epoch changing events in the Middle East, lest we forget, were precipitated by Tarek el-Tayyib Mohamed Ben Bouazizi. Just over a month later, Karim Medhat Ennarah, an Egyptian protester told the Guardian, with tears in his eyes, that:

“For 18 days we have withstood teargas, rubber bullets, live ammunition, Molotov cocktails, thugs on horseback, the scepticism and fear of our loved ones, and the worst sort of ambivalence from an international community that claims to care about democracy. But we held our ground. We did it”.

In the intervening period, the most that William Hague could do to respond to the beauty and bravery of these protestors was to mouth almost exactly the same measly words as Hosni Mubarak about an orderly transition. Britain managed to be dismissed as at best irrelevant, as Krishnan Guru-Murthy noted, both by the Mubarek regime and by those risking their lives to overthrow it.

Our Garibaldi, David Cameron, wasn’t content. He set off on a crusade for freedom. He was the first western leader to visit post-revolutionary Egypt. All very noble. But are arms really the first thing required in the birth pangs of democracy? And is the most fundamental right of British citizens not protection from indiscriminate violence? (more…)

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Cameron and Osborne are not for learning. King should know better.

24/02/2011, 11:30:48 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“Is not the lesson from the noble Baroness Thatcher that, when you have set an economic course, you should stick to it – ‘there is no alternative'”?

So asked Jacob Rees-Mogg at PMQs recently. The IFS cautions “a Plan B might be needed, potentially involving some reduction in the size and pace of cuts in the structural deficit”. But David Cameron knows best. He did not demur from the insufferable Rees-Mogg.

But for what did Thatcher think the grinding unemployment and dislocation of the 1980s was a price worth paying? Low and stable inflation. The NUM was, she thought, the enemy within and the wage/price spirals of the 1970s were part of the damage they wrought. She was right that high inflation is no basis for a dynamic economy. But her policies didn’t deliver this. In his memoirs, Nigel Lawson concedes that he should have raised interest rates in 1986. Instead, with a general election looming, he offered tax sweeteners. Inflation topped 8 per cent by 1988.

It wasn’t until Labour took politics out of monetary policy by making the Bank of England independent that the inflation dragon was slain. Now politics is back at the Bank and so is inflation. Not that Mervyn King’s grovelling praise for George Osborne’s ideologically-driven deficit reduction strategy has caused inflation to be persistently above target. But that that is not his job. The governor’s remit is to run monetary policy to defend this target. It isn’t to provide cover for Osborne’s politics. (more…)

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A centrist critique of David Marquand’s annual compass lecture

14/02/2011, 03:30:28 PM

by Jonathan Todd

The chair of last Thursday’s annual Compass lecture, Neal Lawson, closed proceedings by asking the speaker, David Marquand, to return in 10 years time, when Marquand will be 86 years old, to reflect upon developments in the intervening period. He also expressed the hope that at this time the respondents to Marquand’s address would be the most powerful people in the land: Ed Miliband as prime minister; Caroline Lucas as chancellor; Francesca Klug as home secretary; and Evan Harris as health secretary.

Earlier, Lawson had praised Marquand for arguing that, as social democracy will never reach its final terminus, the journey towards social democracy is more important than conceiving of its end. “The goal is nothing; the movement everything”, quipped Eduard Bernstein, the grandfather of social democracy, over 100 years ago.

Lawson would doubtless claim that much more openness and collaboration between parties of the left is part of this journey. But his imaging of the 2021 cabinet indicated where he wants this to be heading. It may cause people to wonder what exactly the parties of Miliband, Lucas, Klug and Harris stand for if they agree on as much as Lawson believes. (more…)

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Wanted: leadership in the western world

03/02/2011, 12:00:57 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Francis Fukuyama is best known for confusing the period between the falls of the Berlin Wall and Lehman Brothers with the end of history. This was to be defined by the global triumph of liberal democracy and market economies. He recently conceded:

“The most important strength of the Chinese political system is its ability to make large, complex decisions quickly, and to make them relatively well, at least in economic policy”.

China is neither liberal nor democratic, but its state-directed model of capitalism is reshaping markets across the globe. Nonetheless, everyone from George W. Bush to Will Hutton is confident of the model’s limitations. It is thought that history hasn’t ended yet, but that it will, and on the lines that Fukuyama proclaimed.

“Trade freely with China and time is on our side”, said Bush. These economic freedoms will, ultimately, it is argued, require political freedoms. This is because per capita western incomes depend upon what Hutton calls the “enlightenment infrastructure” – pluralism (multiple centres of political and economic power), capabilities (rights, education, private ownership) and justification (accountability, scrutiny, free expression).

Hutton made this argument in a debate with Meghnad Desai in Prospect just before the credit crunch. Desai scoffed: “For you, there is only one road to capitalism – the Western one – and only one political system – ours”. The crunch must place at least a question mark next to Hutton’s Whiggish confidence. (more…)

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NHS: Cumbrian case study shows Labour, not the Tories, are the reformers.

28/01/2011, 01:00:32 PM

By Jonathan Todd

Labour’s compassion built the NHS under Attlee and Labour’s investment saved the NHS under Blair and Brown. But it is Labour reform that has kept Cumbria’s community hospitals open and achieved better health outcomes in so doing. These successes are now threatened by Tory incompetence.

Gerry Robinson, the management guru who once tried to “fix the NHS”, bemoaned the lack of piloting contained in Andrew Lansley’s NHS plan on the Today programme last year. The presenter (Evan Davis, as I recall) then misdirected him towards Cumbria. While Cumbria may have much GP commissioning, it has benefitted from Labour reform, not opened a window on Lansley’s future.

The Financial Times reports that Cumbria offers “a glimpse into what the … government’s healthcare revolution could look like”. It may be that Lansley’s spinners have been whispering in the ears of Davis and the Financial Times, but Cumbria isn’t the first domino to fall in Lansley’s revolution. It is benefitting from a flowering of reform championed by Lord Darzi and patiently cultivated by NHS workers. Evolution would have meant more such reform, not a “grenade tossed into the PCTs”. (more…)

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We need to be on the right side of EU disintegration

11/01/2011, 07:00:52 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour modernisers have been largely pro-European since Neil Kinnock made them so. The role of the EU in advancing Labour’s goals has often, however, been vaguely defined. As UK relations with the EU head towards various crunches, this seems likely to be inadequate.

The issues that are most important to people will determine the next general election: the economy, jobs and public services. Nonetheless, debate about the EU is going to get hotter. As this happens, the connections between EU policy and the things that people care most about are likely to become more apparent.

Most immediately, the European Union bill, over the short to medium term the euro-zone crisis and the longer term need for the UK to adapt to the rise of Asia could all bring UK/EU relations to the boil. The first of these pressure-points diminishes UK influence in the EU at the same time as the second poses not only an existential crisis to a currency to which we don’t belong, but a union to which we do and our largest trading partners.

Either disintegration of the euro/EU or consolidation of the euro as both a fiscal and monetary union seem more likely outcomes of this crisis than perpetuation of the status quo. Either way, British business has only just begun the adaptation that it must undergo to prosper in a world whose centre of gravity lies ever more firmly to the east. (more…)

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The globalised middle: social justice is key to more easing, less squeezing

05/01/2011, 03:00:04 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Tony Blair made adaptation to globalisation a Labour leitmotif. Yet the existence of the “squeezed middle” is a symptom that he did not finish the job. Today’s globalisation is more about the rise of Asia than was the case when Blair became party leader. Easing the squeezing requires better adaptation to this Asian age.

It will take more than David Cameron hawking UK PLC from one rising Asian power to the next. The prime minister is listless in the face of power seeping from the over-indebted West to the resource-rich East, so neatly encapsulated by FIFA’s world cup decisions. His PR smoothness is no substitute for leadership in urgent debates about the architecture of globalisation. It seems that his only reason for attending the G20 was, unsuccessfully, to press the flesh for England’s world cup bid.

Perhaps Cameron confused diary entries, and we lost the world cup after he confronted FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, on macro-prudential regulation. After all, the Tory-Lib Dems’ bail-out of the Irish demonstrates that we live in an interconnected age. It exposes their myth: that our economic predicament is solely Labour’s fault. (more…)

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