Kevin Meagher « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Meagher’

The week Uncut

06/02/2011, 10:30:09 AM

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

Atul Hatwal says don’t believe the hype, Labour isn’t surging ahead

Richard Burden thinks the small change to AV could make a big difference

But Michael Dugher says the whole debate is a waste of time and money

Sally Bercow wants exploitatively high-cost lending to stop

Kevin Meagher says choosing office over power has destroyed the Lib Dems

Anthony Painter asks if the movement for change is the right direction

Andy Dodd takes a look at the big society and finds a hollow sham

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Choosing office over power has destroyed the Lib Dems

02/02/2011, 07:00:55 AM

by Kevin Meagher

If a general election were called right now, just one in ten voters
would plump for the Liberal Democrats, according to the latest brace of
opinion polls.

That’s not strictly true, though. YouGov’s tracker poll actually has them on eight percent. It is ComRes that has them scaling the dizzying double-digit heights of 10%.

Either way, this state of affairs represents a not insignificant problem
for our deputy prime minister; the first mate on the deck of our ship of state. Unfortunately for him, however, the party he leads is holed below the waterline and is still taking in the wet stuff.

Of course, polls yoyo up and down. But these dreadful numbers are merely a
symptom of the Lib Dems’ essential malady: they simply have no clear purpose any more.

Like their Edwardian counterparts who went the way of the dodo in the early
1900s, they now cease to have what marketing gurus call a USP – Unique Selling Point.

By joining with the Conservatives, they have trashed their brand as Westminster’s good guys. It is an irrecoverable loss. Their identity and independence is shattered. The price of joining with the “nasty” Tories is losing the “nice” party label. There is no splitting the difference on that point. (more…)

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Cameron reaches a crossroads

26/01/2011, 03:00:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

David Cameron was fond of claiming that Gordon Brown “failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining”. Now his chancellor blames the economy’s 0.5% retraction on the snow.

Of course the wintry weather did growth no favours. But George Osborne’s feline political skills eluded him big time yesterday. Did the figures come as a surprise? Caught on the hop? Blaming the elements is reminiscent of the howlers Norman Lamont used to make when he was chancellor. “Je ne regrette rien“, George?
Perhaps he just realised he had nowhere to hide. After all, a government that has removed the roof tiles is to blame for yesterday’s atrocious growth figures.
This deterioration in the economy is theirs and theirs alone. Q2 and Q3 growth was reasonable; evidence of Norman Lamont’s infamous “green shoots” breaking through.

But these have been choked off by the £6 billion worth of cuts the government made last year and the endless sabre-rattling about cuts to come which has squashed consumer confidence.

George Osborne has not made the laws of economics redundant. Poleaxing tentative growth with a slew of tax rises and spending cuts as the economy crawls out of recession was always going to lead to this. Labour was right last May: the Tories cannot be trusted to secure the recovery. (more…)

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In its proponents’ own terms, AV is just soft porn and repeats of Minder

18/01/2011, 07:00:03 AM

by Kevin Meagher

At this time of year, it’s chilly up there on the moral high ground. But that isn’t stopping Yes campaigners for May’s referendum on the alternative vote (AV) donning their bobble hats and clambering up to pitch their tents.

They are doubtless buoyed by a poll in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday which showed 61 per cent of the electorate “could be persuaded” to make the change from first-past-the-post to AV.

This led some chap called Jonathan Bartley from the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, to write to former Labour deputy leader, Margaret Beckett (who is President of No to AV) to demand “in sorrow rather than anger” that they hear “truthful and honest arguments” for the retention of FPTP in future.

That’s you told, Marge.

For huffy Yes-ers like Mr. Bartley, those staying loyal to our current first past the post (FPTP) system are “defending the indefensible”. FPTP, they argue, is “an analogue system in a digital age”. A strange comparison, I would have thought. Digital television is full of soft porn, repeats of Minder and shopping channels auctioning crappy jewellery. (more…)

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The week Uncut

08/01/2011, 02:30:23 PM

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

David Cameron forgets his candidates name in Oldham East & Saddleworth

Tom Watson reveals details of the secret Lib Dem “Operation Detach”

Sally Bercow says Dave’s bottle-out on fox hunting is a broken pledge to cheer

New evidence brings new questions for the director of public prosecutions

David Seymour asks: where is the left when the country needs it?

Lib Dem candidate would have unsuccessfully lobbied himself on tuition fees

Dan Hodges brings us a personal tale of unrequited love

Kevin Meagher reckons Cameron’s a class act & it’s high time we took him out

Atul Hatwal thinks BAME Labour is a waste of everyone’s time

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Cameron is a class act, a worthy opponent. So we must nail him now.

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

by Kevin Meagher

Ed Miliband was right in his New Year message. 2011 is a year of consequences. This is the year Labour really has to nail David Cameron. Once and for all. For five years he has slipped through the party’s fingers with one failed attempt to characterise him after another.

First we had “Dave the chameleon”. Cameron was a chancer; all things to all people. Then we had the toff-bashing fun of the Crewe by-election: a stunt that grew into the entire campaign, with predictably calamitous results. Then we had “Mr 10%” – the amount that a pre-election Cameron was said to want to cut from public spending. A line which no less an authority than Douglas Alexander recently lamented had been quite useless.

Tony Blair once chided Cameron that he would not withstand the “big clunking fist” of Gordon Brown. But Cameron has instead shown that he has a decent chin. Then we had Brown’s repeated charge that he was “all style, but no substance”. That is not a crime in modern politics; as, indeed, Blair testifies. (more…)

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The week Uncut

18/12/2010, 10:30:18 AM

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

Tom Watson offers a Christmas toast to the leader

Michael Dugher says replacing nanny with nudge is no joke

Dan Hodges interviews the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy

Stella Creasy says together we can make the government act on legal loan sharking

Peter Watt says that we don’t have the time to be rational

Kevin Meagher thinks Coronation Street is a Tory conspiracy

Tory local government leader lets slip contempt for the north

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Coronation Street is a Tory conspiracy

17/12/2010, 07:00:20 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The cobbled streets of Weatherfield have never been fertile ground for Labour.

In fact, the residents of those pre-WW1 terraces do not seem to have any political opinions at all. Neither do they gossip about the weather, football, or indeed, television. But that’s Coronation Street for you. A tale of everyday folk that’s nothing like the tale of everyday folk.

As it chalks up its half century, the truth is that Corrie has always been slyly political. Rather than a paean to Labourism, however, it is a bastion of petit bourgeois Tory values.

The small businessman does no wrong. The humble worker is always the pig-headed architect of his or her own woes. The poor are usually loveable buffoons. Simpletons like Tyrone. Bone-idle shirkers like Jack Duckworth. Harridans like his wife Vera. Feckless dole dossers like Les Battersby. (more…)

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He is right to take it slow, but Ed needs to earn his carpet slippers

06/12/2010, 08:00:42 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Of course some people are asking questions about Ed Miliband’s nascent leadership. This is the Labour party. We love a good moan. In response to a poll in 1997 that showed 93% of voters were satisfied with Tony Blair, professional New Labour irritant, Bob Marshall-Andrews, quipped: “look, there’s seven per cent. We can build on that”.

So there’s nothing new in the anti-leader muttering that is going on. And it is going on. Ed Miliband has huge expectations to meet. Frustrations to assuage. Why isn’t Cameron toast already? Why hasn’t Clegg been destroyed? Why have we not landed more blows over the cuts and the splits?

It’s all still early days. It is unwise to draw definite conclusions after the first five minutes of a football match. Yet commentators do so anyway. Just as they do in politics. Of course, until Ed establishes his own clear, compelling direction, the armchair managers will continue to chirrup. It may be pointless and energy-sapping, but it is not unexpected. Few have the patience for what he is embarking on.

The truth is that Ed Miliband has taken to opposition far better than many of his colleagues. He realises that a five year stretch in opposition is just that: an unfathomable eternity for Labour hacks with political attention deficit disorder. Especially those now hooked on winning elections and running things. (more…)

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The Lib Dems are in a race to destruction – with the church of England

29/11/2010, 03:00:07 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Poor old Rowan Williams. He is a decent man who deserves a break. Instead, all he gets is to see the Church of England fall apart on his watch. Last week’s general synod saw yet further attempts to bandage the gaping wounds in the Anglican communion. They go deep: divisions over fundamental points of theology; a pervasive sense that they have lost their way and are on the cusp of being eaten up by a larger rival.

Nick Clegg, the cherubic but rather less devout leader of the Liberal Democrats, faces parallel problems: simmering internal discord and an existential crisis about his party’s future. But Clegg does not deserve a break. He is the architect of the afflictions that beset his tribe.

Just as women bishops were inevitable once the general synod voted to allow the ordination of women clergy back in 1992, so, too, it should be a short journey of logic for the Lib Dems to realise that supporting a right-wing Tory government leads to VAT hikes, benefit cuts and scorched earth public services.

Despite the pervasive threats to his organisation, Rowan Williams’ emollient circumlocutions keep the show on the road. Clegg’s line to his own party, however, is now much tougher: welcome to coalition politics. Compromise is now a way of life. Deal with it.?And for hitherto allies on the left, Clegg is equally disabusing. He used his recent Hugo Young Memorial Lecture to slam the door in the face of Labour ecumenists. “Old progressives” he opined, “emphasise the power and spending of the central state”. In contrast, shiny “new progressives” focus on “the power and freedom of citizens”. (more…)

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