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Those unconscious phrases which reveal so much…

09/06/2010, 03:55:36 PM

One war-weary Labour old stager just sent Labour Uncut a text message from an idle moment. It was one of those absent, unsolicited little updates that the Twitter-literate now do without thinking.

On this occasion, quite without realising how quickly he’d become accustomed to a new world which is mad, this MP described himself as “sitting in the IPSA queue with several other MPs”.

That’s what they do these days. Between legislating and agitating and holding the executive to account. They sit in the IPSA queue.

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Barry Gardiner’s elephant

09/06/2010, 02:21:42 PM

Since they got (back) to Westminster, Labour MPs have been assaulted by a relentless barrage of vote-begging letters from their Parliamentary colleagues. There are or have been elections for the leadership, the deputy speakerships, all party groups, backbench committees and a host of select committee chairs. There are shadow cabinet and select committee membership elections to come.

Everybody is sick of it. Most of the letters are dull and unremarkable. There has generally been no reason to inflict them on Uncut readers.

There are two that stick out, though.

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The Diane Abbott interview

09/06/2010, 01:05:45 PM

UPDATE: Diane Abbott has secured 33 nominations and will be on the Labour leadership ballot paper.

This was the second in our series of crowdsourced interviews with the leadership contenders.

Diane spoke to us last night at her office in Westminster, where everyone was keenly monitoring her leadership support with hours left until nominations closed.

She was completely unphased by your questions, which included her son’s private education, the demographic of her leadership opponents and how much she is paid by the BBC.

Q. (From Derek) You and John McDonnell both have solid socialist credentials, but isn’t there a danger that in standing you will split the left vote? I don’t really want the wishy washy alternative of the other 4 candidates. What are your thoughts?

A. There always was a tendency to say that if women stood it split the vote. I think that there is the politics that I’m on the left, and have as good a voting record on left wing issues as John McDonnell, but there’s another issue which is about gender. It’s not so much that I stood against John, but that John stood against me.

Q. John McDonnell’s come out and said that if it means getting a woman on the ballot, he’ll stand down. In that case, do you wish he’d never stood in the first place?

A. I think it would have been easier if he hadn’t stood. If he was committed to gender issues it would have been easier if he hadn’t. Initially, it was very difficult for either of us to gain momentum. If there’d been just one of us standing then that person would have gained momentum much quicker. (more…)

Posted in Inside | 9 Comments »

Today’s news, yesterday.

09/06/2010, 12:52:52 PM

As Diane Abbott makes it onto the Labour leadership ballot paper, we can’t but remind readers of what we reported – when nobody else was – this time yesterday:

“What passes for a PLP establishment machine in these days of interregnum is making serious efforts to get Abbott onto the ballot paper. MPs who haven’t yet nominated are being asked if they will lend her their support, in order to secure a less indefensibly homogenous choice for party members.”

Acting leader Harriet Harman then nominated Abbott that afternoon, with David Miliband adding his name this morning and Jack Straw weighing in the crucial 33rd nomination as today’s 1230 deadline loomed.

Creaking, chaotic and late, what’s left of the machine got it done in the end. And you read it here first.

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How the ward was won: Paul Cotterill

09/06/2010, 10:48:36 AM

In the district elections of 2007, a team of just four activists helped to secure a Labour victory within a safe rural Tory seat never before held by Labour. We saw a 44% increase in the Labour vote since the last time the seat was contested in 2003.

It would be easy to be overly triumphant, and to make claims that ‘all local campaigns should be run like this’. In fact, we followed the general campaigning guidance issued from the Labour party centrally and regionally. But we do believe that other specific lessons might be learned from what we managed to achieve.

First, we had a different approach to the press. The standard Labour campaigning message is that all opportunities to raise the profile of the party, and especially the candidate in the local press should be seized. In the Bickerstaffe campaign this was not done, and there were no press releases or calls to the press of any kind.

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Posted in Grassroots | 2 Comments »

Wednesday News Review

09/06/2010, 07:39:06 AM

Count down

Abbott hoping to make the final cut

“Diane Abbott received a boost to her candidacy for the Labour Party leadership when Harriet Harman, the party’s deputy leader, nominated her yesterday. Ms Harman said she was doing so in the hope of helping to ensure there is a woman on the ballot paper, and will not cast her vote in the election this September.” – The Independent

“Mr Balls, the shadow education secretary, called on supporters to back Miss Abbott during an event held by the GMB trade union, saying that it was important for a woman to be in the race.” – The Telegraph

“BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said the three candidates so far are all Oxford-educated men in their 40s, and none of them are from the party’s left – unlike both Ms Abbott and Mr McDonnell. On Tuesday, acting Labour leader Harriet Harman said she was nominating Ms Abbott because she did not want to see a “men-only” contest.” – The BBC

“Speaking on Tuesday Mr Burnham said he was confident he would gain the seven nominations he still needed, while Ms Abbott and Mr McDonnell – who failed in a bid to challenge Mr Brown for the party’s leadership in 2007 – did not appear close to a deal to transfer MPs to the other to ensure a left-winger made it on to the ballot.” – In the News

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NEC chair’s letter to PLP chair

08/06/2010, 09:46:00 PM

PLP chair Tony Lloyd has this evening emailed all Labour MPs attaching a letter to him from Ann Black, chair of Labour’s ruling national executive committee.

In it, she reports “widespread concern among party members that this leadership election should allow the broadest possible debate”.

This will add to pressure on the 44 Labour MPs yet to declare to nominate Diane Abbott, and on John McDonnell to stand aside in her favour. The deadline for nominations is 1230 tomorrow (Wednesday).

This is the full text of Ann Black’s letter to Tony Lloyd: (more…)

Posted in Inside | 2 Comments »

PLP leadership hustings: laughometer

08/06/2010, 06:45:26 PM

We did a laugh count at last night’s PLP leadership hustings.

Tiny chuckles weren’t recorded.

To score you had to get a proper laugh from a significant portion of the room.

David Miliband 1

Ed Miliband 4

Andy Burnham 3

Ed Balls 1

Make of it what you will.

Posted in Inside, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Don’t cut growth: Andy Westwood says that Labour got it right

08/06/2010, 04:43:31 PM

‘We’ve got to get the economy moving’ urged David Cameron ad nauseam during the election campaign. But beyond his condemnation of the ‘jobs tax’ and his desire to shrink the size and the role of the state, the detail was nowhere to be seen. He claimed then that what government spent or did was not the same thing as the economy – visibly incredulous as Gordon Brown warned about endangering the recovery by cutting expenditure too quickly.

A few weeks into the coalition government and the headlines are still about cuts, because in Cameron’s words ‘growth won’t be enough’. That may be because he has yet to give it any serious thought, or it may be because they just prefer to talk about the deficit. But there’s a third possibility: it may be because the Tories and Lib Dems don’t want to admit that they have retained Labour’s new industrial policy.

Key to this was the formation of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and ‘NINJA’ – the ‘New Industries, New Jobs’ white paper jointly written and conceived by Lord Mandelson and John Denham. Which document was published in Budget week exactly two years ago, providing a narrative for a more optimistic economic future amidst the fast developing recession in 2008.

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Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

PLP leadership hustings

08/06/2010, 03:55:32 PM

A private meeting of hundreds of MPs is not really a private meeting. But meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) are slightly more so than entirely public gatherings.

Several MPs tweeted from yesterday’s PLP leadership hustings: John Woodcock, Rachel Reeves, Douglas Alexander and Denis MacShane, for instance.

But these were tiny snaphshots, in some cases only of their favourites.

The note below is a fuller record. There are many public hustings to come. But the tone of the leadership cadre is always slightly different at the PLP than anywhere else.

We have provided this note for that reason.

Nominations close at 1230 tomorrow. There are currently 42 MPs still to declare or nominate.

This is a not a transcript. It is an amalgam of several contemporaneous notes taken for their own use by people present at the meeting. If some candidates have more remarks recorded than others, it is because they said more things that people wrote down.

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