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Posts Tagged ‘Labour’

Stop shouting at me – I’m on your side

16/07/2011, 02:00:18 PM

by Emma Burnell

I regularly read the blogs of people I disagree with. I think it’s vital to do so not only to challenge your own perceptions, but also to work out how best to frame your arguments. I also regularly read blogs of people I agree with. Sometimes these are the same people. Politics can be a bit like that. Some days the person I’ve had a blazing Twitter row with about the necessity of trident, the very next day I’m nodding in agreement with about the campaigning future of the Labour Party. Modern communications are both fun and confusing that way.

Like real life, people have different moods online. Some days I’m feisty and argumentative, others I’m contemplative and receptive. Sometimes I just want to have a laugh. Because I’m political that laugh will often be at the expense of the Tories or their allies.

There has grown up on all sides of the Labour party a filtered response to all other parts of the party. I know because I get both sides of it. Those on the right of the Party get called Blairites and those on the left Trots. Then they all go about their business with not a single idea improved through debate, a mind changed or a voter won over. This leaves me in despair when people I know to be interesting and highly intelligent are losing the opportunity to actually try to change a mind. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 3 Comments »

Labour, the natural party of opposition

10/06/2011, 12:00:26 PM

by Dave Talbot

Right on cue, exactly six months into David Cameron’s premiership, the ancient British roar of “Tory scum” reverberated through Whitehall’s hallowed halls. In honour of the coalition’s deal on higher tuition fees, protesters spilled through Westminster’s streets to rediscover their hatred of the Tories once more. After almost 13 years of opposition and apathy, the Tories could once again hold their heads high – hated again. It was back to politics as usual. Labour prime ministers for the past 13 years were anomalies, you understand, and not to be repeated. No sir, the Conservatives are back.

That is a charicature, but the masked point is a serious one. The Conservatives are quite suited to power. Indeed, from 1911 to the present day, the Conservatives managed to keep Labour out of office for all but 33 of those years. Never underestimate the Conservatives and their desire for power – nor their capacity to acquire and hold it. They believe in their divine right to rule. When Cameron, Osborne and Co. state that grand old maxim of British politics -that the Conservatives are here to clear up after the misfortune of Labour government – they truly mean it. They unapologetically look at politics through the prism of power.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 9 Comments »

Sleepwalking to irrelvance, part 1

13/05/2011, 12:00:03 PM

by Lisa Ansell

After a year in which Labour believed it could be all things to all people, last week’s election result brought home the pickle the party is in. Gleeful delight over a Liberal Democrat implosion, and debates about a voting system many didn’t want or care about are fun, but Labour’s results show the British political map is being redrawn. David Cameron faced taunts that with deep seated anger at a Labour government, he couldn’t achieve a convincing lead. Labour’s problems are much much deeper.

With ‘Cleggmania’ long forgotten, the assumption that everyone fed up with the Labour party would duly return home out of anger with Tory-Lib Dem government were misguided. This should have been no surprise. Support in Scotland collapsed, and with it the support that would have facilitated the move to the left that many within the party yearn for. Those precious southern swing voters successfully poached by Blair have left Labour, travelled through the Lib Dems, and, dependent on which side of the fence they were on to begin with, have settled back home as Conservatives, or are cast adrift. Any gains to be made from anger at the government have already been made. Conservative support has consolidated, the Liberal Democrats have rendered themselves unnecessary. Cameron has a clear message, solid support, funds to fight an election.

Labour’s most secure support came from the north of England, where the perception of Labour as opposition to the cuts was the driver for campaigns. Towns like Barnsley and Oldham, where hordes of Islingtonites had failed to suppress dismay at the lack of facilities, while they informed residents that Labour was the only option for them. Towns where the inequality that Labour was comfortable with is demonstrated clearly, where Labour’s cuts are already hitting hard.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 32 Comments »

Using unpaid interns is wrong – there must be a better way

06/04/2011, 03:36:04 PM

by Sabrina Francis

The recent talk of social mobility and interning reminded me of my secret shame. My name’s Sabrina Francis and I was an intern.

I interned on and off for nearly three whole years. The reason I’ll always feel slightly ashamed is that when I was in the throes of my intern adventure there was no high profile campaign – or talk of the unfairness of the PPE brigade stealing all the jobs – it felt like there was just me. I felt like a failure trapped in an endless cycle of interning followed by the crushing disappointment as I realised the organisation I’d given up my time for were never going to employ me. I’d simply just slotted into a place on a conveyor belt of graduates desperate to get a foot in the door.

During all of Clegg’s grandstanding and showing off about the Lib Dems starting to pay their interns “at once”, what’s been on my mind is that as a party we seem to be nowhere on this issue. The Labour party runs on unpaid work. Just a quick glance on Work4MP.org throws up Labour MP after Labour MP offering only expenses to someone who will end up playing a large part in the running of their office.

What has happened to us? How can the traditional party of the people, the working class, be knee deep in practices that hold others back and go against the very spirit of meritocracy? I know IPSA are making it hard for MPs to adequately fund the staff they need and I also know that some MPs use internships as a way to offer opportunities to people that might not usually get them. However, the facts are quite simple: you cannot intern unless you live in London and have the money to support yourself while you’re not earning. They must know this is wrong. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 4 Comments »

Half a minute Harris

29/03/2011, 11:00:04 AM

Episode 5: A distraction from the main event

You can catch up with previous episodes here:

Episode 1: Welcome, Uncut readers, to the mind of Tom Harris

Episode 2: Should we abstain on the welfare reform bill?

Episode 3: How’s that working out for you Polly?

Episode 4: Student visas… I’m with Theresa May on this one

Posted in Uncut | 1 Comment »

The coalition’s new clothes

11/03/2011, 04:40:38 PM

by David Seymour

One of the first rules of politics is that the big lie is the one you get away with. If you tell a little fib, bend the truth a bit, you will be savaged, mocked and denigrated, while the utterer of the breathtakingly dishonest outrage will escape unchallenged. Rather like the foolish citizens who were embarrassed to point out in the emperor’s new clothes that his majesty was actually walking around stark naked because they thought there must be something wrong with them not to be able to see his finery, no one wants to be the first to stand up and boldly proclaim that a monstrous untruth is just that.

The government’s big lie is that the cause of the historically large deficit is entirely due to Labour’s profligate spending on public services. That simply is not true, but almost no one is contradicting the Tories when they say it. And they say it all the time.

Not only ministers but backbenchers never miss an opportunity to utter the mantra that this is all Labour’s fault. How this big lie works is simple, as most big lies are. All that has to be done is to proclaim it with absolute certainty and ridicule anyone who dares to contradict. It is crucial for the big liar that serious analysis is avoided. So let’s analyse how we got this size of deficit. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 11 Comments »

Let’s learn from the Tories and detoxify our brand

21/02/2011, 09:05:51 AM

by Peter Watt

There has been much debate since the general election about whether the toxicity of the Conservative brand led to them falling short of an overall majority. Proponents of this theory hold that while David Cameron had gone some way towards detoxifying the Conservative brand, he had not gone far enough. The result was that, although the public had decided that they certainly didn’t want a Labour government, they hadn’t yet decided that they wanted a Conservative one.

If this was the case, and I suspect that it was, then this latent brand toxicity remains a problem for team Cameron. The government is currently being defined by one (economic) policy – cuts. Everything it does and says is, however unfairly, seen through that prism. Welfare reform – driven by cuts; public service reform – driven by cuts; “big society” – masking cuts. No matter how hard he tries, David Cameron simply can’t seem to get any other story up about what his government is for, or its vision. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 40 Comments »

It was the risk not the spending that Labour got wrong

11/01/2011, 04:15:34 PM

by Anthony Painter

Ed Miliband is in a bind. He is tied to a fiscal policy that the public believes was profligate and irresponsible. His strategy so far has been to defend that record to the best of his ability. That is not enough. It may be time to switch tack.

The debate is homing in on the question of whether Labour was spending too great before the 2007 turbulence. And actually if you pull out the figures the answer is marginally on the side of ‘defend the record’- on the face of it. Current spending was in deficit ahead of the crisis though not catastrophically so- 0.3% of GDP in 2006-2007. The public sector net debt was lower than in 1997 at 36.6%.

None of this looks irresponsible in fiscal terms. Public sector productivity and inefficiency tell a slightly different story- there is no doubt that the money invested in public services post-2001 failed to raise output as it should have done. Steve Richards in his articulation of the case for the defence in the Independent this morning acknowledges that fact:

“Labour failed to address inefficiencies in the public sector and some of the additional investment was wasted needlessly, but the overall spending was necessary at the time, as Blair discovered then and some senior Tories discover now.”

So the case for the defence seems to exonerate Labour for imprudence but is more ambiguous on wastefulness. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 12 Comments »

‘No’ campaign releases Labour names

29/12/2010, 07:55:11 AM

Following on from the Labour ‘Yes’ campaign publishing its supporters in an open letter to the guardian – the ‘No’ to av camp has published a list of 114 Labour MPs who are ‘backing’ the ‘No’ campaign:

David Anderson, Blaydon

Ian Austin, Dudley North

Adrian Bailey, West Bromwich West

Gordon Banks, Ochil and South Perthshire

Margaret Beckett, Derby South

Stuart Bell, Middlesbrough

Joe Benton, Bootle

Clive Betts, Sheffield South East

Hazel Blears, Salford and Eccles

David Blunkett, Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough

Russell Brown, Dumfries and Galloway

David Cairns, Inverclyde

Ronnie Campbell, Blyth Valley (more…)

Posted in Inside | 6 Comments »

Let’s not bet the house on what might be the wrong future

08/11/2010, 03:34:04 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour has to be the party of optimism. Which should include being optimistic about the ingenuity of business, especially when combined with extraordinarily lax monetary conditions and a low pound. George Osborne anticipates Labour pessimism on this and we should deny him.

We know that the cuts are too deep and fast. We know that the best government response to economic challenges isn’t brutally to minimise government, but strategically to target the state’s resources to maximum effect. Having emphasised these points, we can be confident that the public know that we know this.

But in stressing these points we should avoid creating a blind spot: that our only economic expectation for coming years appears to be unremitting disaster. This would have us seem to be talking the country down, which is never a good thing, and undermine our claims to optimism. Also, if this expectation turns out to be false, it would leave us – to apply Peter Mandelson’s one club golfer analogy – on the 18th green of this parliament with only the driver of big government in our club bag. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »