Labour leadership « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Labour leadership’

Cllr Jack Scott endorses David Miliband

30/06/2010, 10:19:07 AM

We now face the very distressing reality: not a consensual coalition, but a typically right-wing, out-of-touch Tory government. The totally superfluous “emergency budget” provides a taste of the bitterness to expect in coming years.

This next stage will be very difficult for our communities. Our many newly elected councillors – of which I am one – can expect a baptism of fire: in the seven weeks since the General Election, Sheffield alone has lost over £120m investment, including the Forgemasters loan. (more…)

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Wednesday News Review

30/06/2010, 08:46:10 AM

The contest

“This should be the challenge for the Labour leadership election: not an argument about which policies of the Labour government the contenders did or did not support, or even which policies they support now, but a real attempt to identify the basis for a contemporary centre-left political project. This requires some hard thinking, not a retreat into windy rhetoric or comforting certainties.” – The Guardian

“Sylvester is right to argue that the leadership candidates are in danger of looking inwards rather than reaching out to the voters they must win back but that has nothing to do with the voting system Labour is using. In fact, the involvement of more than 3 million people who pay to be affiliated members of the Labour Party makes the contest more open than simply having 140,000 members balloted or allowing 250 MPs to decide.” The New Statesman

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Ben Furber says the web campaigns are as bad as the candidates

29/06/2010, 09:05:45 AM

The web ‘strategies’ of the candidates are failing to impress for exactly the same reason the candidates themselves are: none of them has anything much to say.

I don’t expect more than the simple, flat and un-aesthetic websites and non-existent web strategies of the candidates because I don’t expect much of anything from them.

A leadership campaign can only be as exciting as the candidates themselves, and an online communications strategy can only be as exciting as the campaign. More bluntly put, the candidates aren’t exciting, so the campaigns aren’t interesting, so the web products are boring. (more…)

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Monday News Review

28/06/2010, 08:06:43 AM

On your bike mark II

“Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls said yesterday Mr Duncan Smith was going further than Norman Tebbit. Mr Balls said: “The remarks suggest that he’s thinking of taking away the housing tenure, the right to a social house and saying you’ve got to move. “So actually he’s going further than saying on your bike. It’s on your bike and lose your home.” – The Mirror

“Labour leadership candidate Ed Miliband – who is backed by former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain – said the proposals were a retreat “back to the 1980s”. He said: “[What] he is saying to whole parts of the country is: ‘we have no hope as a government of getting work into your area so you are going to have to move out of your communities’. And that is frankly disgraceful.” – Western Mail

Cable cracks

“I hear from one of the other panel members that Vince Cable was deeply uncomfortable defending the VAT rise and the Budget and coalition in general on BBC1’s Question Time last week. I’m told that Cable, who has just been distancing himself from his party’s “VAT Bombshell” poster during the election, “simply got through it by a form of meditation.” – James Macintyre, New Statesman

“Up to half a dozen Lib Dem MPs are understood to have unofficially met Labour counterparts late last week to discuss co-ordinating their opposition. Two early day motions protesting about the rise have attracted the support of almost 70 Labour MPs and Lib Dem MP Bob Russell has already threatened to vote against the Budget.” – The Daily Mail

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Sunday News Review

27/06/2010, 07:33:10 AM

All you need to know about the candidates in one place

“On 25 September the result of Labour’s leadership election will be announced at the party’s annual conference in Manchester, but what will this change of management herald for a new New Labour? We invited David Miliband, Ed Balls, Diane Abbott, Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband to talk politics, purse strings and the perfect night’s television.” – The Observer

Daily roundup highlights Liberal meltdown

“Nick Clegg is suffering a fierce public backlash over the coalition’s VAT rise, with almost half of Liberal Democrat supporters saying the tax U-turn makes them more likely to desert the party. A YouGov/Brand Democracy survey, which will alarm already restive Lib Dem MPs, shows 48% of those who voted Lib Dem at the election are now less inclined to back them again as a direct result of the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%.” – The Observer

“A senior Lib Dem MP confirmed that a number of disgruntled colleagues had “talked tactics” with Labour opponents over the possibility of at least obstructing key measures, including the increase in the rate of VAT from 17.5 to 20 per cent.” – The Independent

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Saturday News Review

26/06/2010, 08:07:05 AM

The first out of the blocks

“David Miliband received an early boost in the battle for the Labour Party leadership as he secured the backing of one of Britain’s biggest trade unions yesterday. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw), which has 386,000 members, became the first union to endorse one of the five candidates for the leadership.” – The Independent

“General secretary John Hannett said: “David is a long-time friend of Usdaw and is someone who really understands the needs and aspirations of our members.” – The Shields Gazette

Daily roundup

“Mr Cable told the Standard: “I was angry. I was trying to restrain my anger and give a reasoned response. He was trying to wind me up. “The Labour people are being very provocative but it is having no effect. The coalition is solid. I think the behaviour of people like Ed Balls does not reflect well on them and I don’t think the public find it attractive.” Labour has launched a campaign to embarrass Left-leaning Lib-Dems known to have felt uncomfortable about going into government with Tories.” – Evening Standard

“Despite widespread public unease about the war and the British mission, none of the major political party leaderships oppose the deployment or significantly question the current Western strategy. But is that about to change? The Labour leadership election has seen recently-removed Cabinet members chucking the party’s former policies overboard with gay abandon: the Iraq war, mass immigration and even European integration have all been decried by various men called Ed or Miliband or both.” – The Telegraph

“Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham used the social networking site Twitter to exclaim ‘god bless the Treasury’. ‘Lansley’s on a 1-man mission to turn NHS from order to chaos. They’re right to block him,’ he wrote.” – Healthcare Republic

Welsh issues

“Labour’s leadership election in Wales saw a genuine battle of ideas that was good for the party. One can only hope that now nominations have closed, the same will be true of the UK leadership contest. It matters to Labour in Wales that Labour in Great Britain is in a position to win again at the next general election. But a battle of the bland won’t do it for us. So let’s see the same preparedness to argue out ideas that we had in Wales last year, rather than a rolling-out of platitudes. Hyperactivity is no substitute for deep thinking. A leadership election should not be a form of distraction therapy after a political defeat.” – The Guardian

“Labour leadership frontrunner David Miliband has stepped into the row between Europe and America over Government loans to the Airbus factory in Flintshire. During a visit to the site yesterday he defended the aircraft manufacturer which is embroiled in a bitter row over alleged illegal subsidies for the development of new airliners.” – The Daily Post

Education matters

“Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband believes UK universities could be better funded if graduates were to pay extra tax rather than tuition fees. Writing in today’s Guardian, Miliband says he would consult vice-chancellors and universities to produce a plan to replace tuition fees with a graduate tax.” – The Guardian

“The government’s academies programme is a “Trojan horse for selection”, the shadow schools secretary says today, as he tables an amendment to legislation that, if passed, would block academies from being allowed to cherrypick pupils. Ed Balls claims a mechanism he brought in to allow good schools to expand will now be used by the Tories to give grammar schools the right to do the same, in a “perversion” of the system.” – The Guardian

London leadership

“On Thursday, the Labour party announced that its two principal contenders to be Labour’s mayoral candidate in 2012 would be the former mayor Ken Livingstone and Oona King. Earlier this week, the London Evening Standard reported that Johnson had been “toying with the idea” of running for a mayoral second term and is expected to declare his candidacy in the next few weeks. A spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats said that the party was aware of Öpik’s desire to run, but added that no decision had been made on who would stand as the Lib Dem candidate.” – The Guardian

State of the race

“On the hustings, Abbott has proved the left of the Labour Party has attractive and relevant policies. Scrapping the hugely expensive weapon of mass destruction that is son of Trident can be popular with the electorate and earns loud applause from audiences whenever she raises it. The living wage has been adopted as one of Ed Miliband’s selling points. David Miliband publicly acknowledges that George W Bush was a disaster for Britain and the world. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham concede that Labour lost touch with traditional, working-class voters who are the party’s base.” – Kevin Maguire, Tribune

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Friday News Review

25/06/2010, 07:22:18 AM

Liberal lies and more post budget fallout

“Labour leadership candidate Ed Miliband seized on Mr Hughes’s remarks as evidence that cracks were beginning to appear in the coalition. Privately, LibDems are concerned that capital gains tax was not raised enough for those on high wages.” – The Daily Mail

“What’s really going on is that Paddy Ashdown would love to have been Deputy Prime Minister and he has leader envy. He sits there looking at two nodding Lib-Dem dogs on the front bench and he’s not one of them. And it hurts.” – David Miliband, The Mirror

“Two things in life are inevitable, said Benjamin Franklin, death and taxes. The Conservatives campaigned against “Labour’s death tax” and against “Labour’s jobs tax”. But Labour left it to the Lib Dems to campaign against the Tory VAT tax bombshell. So how will Labour characterise the VAT rise that will bring an end to the New Year sales? They’ve got a little time to work it out…” – The New Statesman

“Labour leadership contender Ed Balls makes clear in today’s Mirror, VAT is a regressive Tory levy on the people of Britain. Mr Osborne’s raid on ordinary, hard-working families was avoidable.” – The Mirror

“The Labour leadership contenders have all declared that they will vote against the legislation to enable “free schools”. But once the genie of choice is out of the bottle, it is a brave socialist who tries to stuff it back in. Parents who send their children to these schools will have reason and motivation to vote Conservative as long as Labour opposes them.” – The Telegraph

Housing takes to the stage

“David Miliband – “For me, community is one of the things that makes life worth living. And while it’s often said how fast moving the modern world is, a sense of belonging to the place where we live is still just as important as ever. That’s my starting point for thinking about housing policy.” – Inside Housing

“Abbott also predicted that, “I am going to see thousands of people in London evicted precisely as a consequence of these housing benefit changes.” Is she right?” – The Guardian

The other race

“Labour nationally is now going through a process of renewal and change to a new generation of leadership. We in London need to do the same and choose a mayoral candidate for 2012 who reflects the modern 21st century London. London is a dynamic vibrant melting pot of different cultures. We need new leadership which reflects that dynamism and vitality. We need a…” – Mike Gapes, Progress

Eyes down under

“When Julia Gillard’s family emigrated to Australia from South Wales in 1966, little did they dream that their daughter would make history as the country’s first female prime minister. Yesterday, after her predecessor, Kevin Rudd, was unceremoniously dumped by his own party, Ms Gillard was sworn in – appropriately enough by the nation’s first female Governor-General, Quentin Bryce.” – The Independent

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Thursday News Review

24/06/2010, 10:55:45 AM

The fightback goes on…

Liberal Lines

“LABOUR leadership contender Ed Miliband launched a withering attack on the Liberal Democrats during a trip to the Senedd yesterday, accusing them of selling out their principles to prop up a right-wing Tory Government.” – Western Mail

“How can the Liberals support a Budget which puts 100,000 more people out of work while raising the only tax that the unemployed have to pay? And what about charities that help the elderly and the poor? The Charity Tax Reform Group says the Budget will cost charities in Britain at least £140million a year in higher VAT bills. That’s equal to the total money raised on the last three nights of Comic Relief.” – Ed Balls, The Mirror (more…)

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Wednesday News Review

23/06/2010, 07:53:04 AM

Labour’s fightback

“While Labour fights a leadership contest and Lib Dems wonder whether they can change the voting system as a reward for their loyalty, Osborne needs to win the argument that his measures are “unavoidable” – a word that recurred in his speech as often as “progressive”. The term is another convenient one, implying that there is no other course and therefore challenge is futile. Margaret Thatcher famously argued in the 1980s that there was no alternative to her policies. Osborne did not repeat the phrase, but “unavoidable” has precisely the same meaning and serves the same purpose.” – The Independent (more…)

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Burnham to manage England website team

21/06/2010, 04:38:22 PM

As reported previously, Andy Burnham’s website was hopeless: no-style over no-substance. So we were pleased when we heard the site had gone fully live and was now populated.

Unbelievably, the site has got worse. Honestly. Gone is the two-tone picture of him looking like Kraftwerk, and in its place his flagship leadership campaign, Save the Future Jobs Fund. A worthwhile campaign which includes a petition. A petition that publishes its signatories online. A petition that lets you choose not to join his mailing list, and publishes this online too. A petition that is signed by twenty people. Which is published online.

We’re all for transparency but come on Team Burnham, you’re making your boy look silly. The Milibands have armies of bright young things, gaggles of them, chanting and tweeting and strategising. They’ve got pictures, they’ve got videos, they’re on twitter, they’re on flickr, and they’re on facebook. Even Ed Balls, who only launched his website last week, has done a better job than Burnham, although the Coronation Street themed banner is a little dodge. Diane Abbott’s website is yet to be populated with any real content – and it’s still better than Burnham’s.

(more…)

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