Kevin Meagher « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Meagher’

Cameron’s holiday from political common sense

08/04/2011, 03:50:36 PM

by Kevin Meagher

So Dave and Sam have bid “Adios!” to miserable old Blighty and jetted off to Granada for a sneaky break to celebrate the missus’s 40^th.

In our belt-tightening times, Downing Street spinners are keen to point out the first couple flew by easyjet and that they are staying in a “mid-market” hotel.

Of course, if you’re a couple of minted minor blue-bloods, staying in a three-star family hotel is more “downmarket” than “mid market”. Still, I can’t quite see them draped across a couple of sun loungers like the middle-aged swingers in Benidorm.

Or perhaps that’s precisely how Dave expects to reconnect with beleaguered Brits. Taking a budget holiday that may still be just about affordable to many. Not the swinging bit.

But when he’s finished there’s the return to think about. Will he come back like Jim Callaghan, tanned and refreshed from an economic summit in Guadeloupe in 1978 and utter something to rival: “Crisis, what crisis?”

Of course Sunny Jim never actually used that particular formulation. It was paraphrased tabloid-speak. But it was the symbolism that mattered. As it does now. In a week that saw “Black Wednesday”, when the full putrid blast of the coalition cuts hit the public for the first time, there’s a question mark over Cameron’s political common sense.

What does he think people will make of his little jaunt? “Good on the multimillionaire politician who’s just trebled my kid’s tuition fees. I’m sure all that doctrinaire right-wingery takes it out of you. Put your feet up son”. (more…)

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What are Labour councils for?

31/03/2011, 01:00:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Socialism, Herbert Morrison once helpfully summarised, is what the Labour party does. A partial assessment to be sure, but is there a more reliable compass for what Labour politicians in office should find themselves doing?

In a few short weeks, local authorities up and down the country will go red as voters give their verdict on 12 months of dismal Tory-Lib Dem cutbacks and recession. But what, when faced with reducing expenditure by a quarter, will Labour councils offer by way of a response?

Labour today launches its campaign for those elections with a blizzard of statistics and weblinks playing out the familiar annual ritual of showing that Labour councils are better value than Tory ones. The Tories will, naturally enough, produce rival spreadsheets next week showing the reverse. Plus ca change.

To accompany the usual political riffs, the party has also published a document entitled: Labour: Your voice in tough times. It suggests that: “…every Labour councillor you elect will be your community’s first line of defence against the damage being done by a Conservative-led government and its Liberal Democrat allies”. (more…)

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The worldwide Irish AGM – St Paddy’s day

17/03/2011, 02:30:43 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I have a picture above my desk; a copy of a Punch cartoon from the 1840s. It depicts a monkey-like figure, in ragged clothes, a crumpled hat on its head, long arms thrashing around in the air. The creature smokes a small pipe, a menacing grimace for a face. Underneath, the caption reads: “The Irish hod-carrier. Lower than a Negro”.

It may not be pleasant. And, indeed, it may be a work of its time; but as the son of a bricklayer – and erstwhile hod-carrier myself – that picture is a constant reminder of who I am and where I come from. The struggles and insults that Irish people have endured for generations; depicted, as we were, as sub-human creatures of uncertain temperament.

It helps explain the indifference of a British ruling class to the Irish famine of the late 1840s, where a million people starved to death and a million more were forced to flee the country. But similar views were fashionable on the left too. Check out Friedrich Engels’ The Conditions of the Working Class in England. This otherwise estimable tome sees poor Irish immigrants to Britain blamed for the “filth and drunkenness they have brought with them”. Engels adds: “The lack of cleanliness…is the Irishman’s second nature”.

March 17 – St. Patrick’s day – is another reminder of who I am, though a happier one.

It may have become popularised in recent years by Guinness’s tawdry marketing – those ridiculous drinking hats a throwback to depictions of the Irish in those wretched Victorian political cartoons – but St. Patrick’s day still means something more significant to the Irish wherever we are scattered. (more…)

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Why Sheffield hated having the Lib Dems for the weekend

14/03/2011, 11:30:16 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Last May, I stood on the periphery of a throng of hyped-up students, Lib Dem activists (you can always spot them) and passers-by outside Sheffield City Hall waiting for Nick Clegg to disembark from his general election battlebus.

I had come to witness the true scale of Cleggmania as the Lib Dem leader arrived back in the city he represents to make his final speech at an open air rally. After an encomium – for the benefit of the television cameras – about “the new politics”, the crowd melted away and the rest, well, is history.

Fast forward ten months.

The hope and pluralism that the public felt Clegg personified have given way to anger and resentment towards him. “I agree with Nick” was a sentiment the apolitical, urban middle classes took to their hearts. His fall from public affection has been dramatic and real. No one seems to agree with Nick any more. He is the corporeal representation of that most loathed characteristic of the modern politician: career over principle.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems rejoice at opinion polls that put them in double digits; with neighbouring Barnsley the scene of their sixth place in the Parliamentary by-election just a week and a half ago.

The contrast in Lib Dem fortunes from those heady days last spring is hard to overestimate. At the weekend, I again stood outside the City Hall, the venue for their spring conference. The free and easy atmosphere of last May was gone; with the square encased behind a six-foot steel fence (supplied, it turns out, by a Sheffield company). (more…)

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Will Hague ride off into the sunset?

09/03/2011, 05:00:53 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Poor old William Hague. There’s no shortage of people on this side of the aisle who have a soft spot for our favourite failed Tory leader. He’s self-deprecating, quick-witted and only ever tribal in that tongue-in-cheek sort of way. But the buck has come screeching to a halt outside his door for the botched incursion into Libya by UK special forces last week. And that buck is not for shifting.

His apparent sanctioning of the “botched” boy’s own adventure has already generated reams of speculation about his future as foreign secretary and dominated today’s PMQs. The cod psychology in today’s papers is equally feverish. Kevin Maguire in the Mirror raises the possibility that there is a darker tale to tell in this story of derring do (or perhaps derring d’oh!), that perhaps the incursion team may have been on a “black ops” mission. (more…)

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Cameron has nothing to say. Clegg shrinks from his besandled assassins.

08/03/2011, 03:00:32 PM

by Kevin Meagher

As conference slogans go, Building a Better Future is a stinker. A dull, vacuous piece of political boilerplate; the ultimate holding statement: “I’ve not actually built anything yet, but it will be great when it’s finished. Trust me”.

Nevertheless, David Cameron thought it an apposite description for last weekend’s Conservative spring conference in Cardiff.

Of course he was not the first to grope for this catch-all formulation. “Building a better future” is the strapline for the Northern Ireland executive’s programme for government, Merton council’s major building programme and a campaign run by the dog’s trust.

In fact there are 66 million Google hits for the phrase.

But it was rather fitting: an empty slogan for an empty speech from a prime minister struggling for definition.

New Labour once had a snappy term for the position David Cameron now finds himself in: “post euphoria, pre-delivery”. In other words, how do you keep the va va voom in your party once the dull grind of governing takes over from the manic energy of electioneering? (more…)

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The week Uncut

26/02/2011, 12:30:25 PM

In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:

Peter Watt thinks our brand’s toxic and we should learn from the Tories

Atul Hatwal brings you the latest shadow cabinet work rate league table

Coach Kevin Meagher is leaving David Miliband on the subs bench, for good

Tom Watson says we must remember the name Mohamed Bouazizi

Peter Mandelson on why there should have been a Granita II

Rob Marchant on faith schools and why a bad idea just got worse

Stefan Stern says Cameron has failed the leadership test

Dave Howells is not happy seeing the sacred cow go off to slaughter

Dan Hodges gets cross with the preachers of “fairer votes”

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David Miliband must stay on the subs bench.

24/02/2011, 04:15:06 PM

by Kevin Meagher

This morning’s Sun reports that Ed Miliband held “hush hush” talks with his brother David following the resignation of shadow chancellor Alan Johnson last month. The paper reports that:

“…during their clandestine conversation, the possibility of him replacing Mr Johnson was raised”.

Quoting an “insider”, the paper reports that “Ed stopped short of offering his brother the job when David made it clear he wanted to stay on the backbenches”. The party denies an explicit job offer was made to David: “The only person offered it was Ed Balls”, insists a spokesman. This does, however, amount to a non-denial denial of the Sun’s allegation that the idea was floated.

But, as we now know, the post was amply filled by Ed Balls. Common sense prevailed. But it is worth stating why the idea of David Miliband taking on the shadow chancellor’s role is a disastrous, indulgent idea. (more…)

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Canny Harold’s lessons for the two Eds

14/02/2011, 07:00:16 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Clem Attlee may be lionised as a great prime minister. Tony Blair revered as an election winner.

But you need to cast a backward glance to the swinging sixties and sagging seventies to see that it is Harold Wilson (Labour leader between 1963 and 1976, serving as prime minister for eight of those years) who has the most to teach Eds Miliband and Balls.

For Ed Miliband, Wilson’s successor-but-seven, there are three main lessons to be learned.

The first is in managing the party. This was no mean feat back in the 60s and 70s. Wilson led during the golden age of Labour dissent. He had to contend with a cabinet containing some of the hugest egos British politics has ever produced: Crossman, Jenkins, Healey, Callaghan, Castle and George Brown.

Wilson sat pre-eminent amid this mass of turbulent, squabbling, brilliance; partly, it has to be said, through the involuntary tactic of being distrusted by just about everyone.

But Wilson used talent effectively. His Gaitskellite chancellors: Callaghan, Jenkins and Healey – each loathed Wilson and were all strong potential replacements; yet Wilson co-opted their brainpower and political brute force for the good of his governments. (more…)

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