Posts Tagged ‘Labour’s reset: the path back to power’

Labour has a historic opportunity to replace the Tories as the party backed by business

11/10/2021, 10:32:39 PM

by Jonathan Todd

This piece is part of a new book “Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power”. Click here to download it. The book looks at the barriers for voters in picking Labour, what the party can do in opposition to tackle these issues and the type of policy platform that would attract switchers to Labour at the election

Backing business should be a sine qua non of politics. Yet we now have a ‘fuck business’ prime minister,[1] who won an 80-seat majority against a Labour Party that the CBI characterised as, ‘proposing the biggest programme of renationalisation this country has ever seen at great cost with uncertain returns to the taxpayer’. As a result, Labour was then seen as being ‘at least as damaging’ as No Deal Brexit.[2]

Two political consequences follow:

  1. Such a prime minister offers Labour a chance to develop closer relations with business than the Conservatives.
  2. Labour’s 2019 manifesto is not the package with which to seize this opportunity.

‘I’m acutely aware that among my first tasks is rebuilding the relationship between the Labour party and business,’ Keir Starmer recently said, much to his credit.[3]

Around the same time as Starmer was saying this, the chief executive of the North East England Chamber of Commerce was writing to the prime minister asking him to give his ‘most urgent and personal attention’ to the ‘damage being done to our economy’ by the prime minister’s Brexit. Two weeks after receiving this letter, the prime minister had still not replied.[4]

Doing counterintuitive things often helps parties in opposition. A pro-business Labour confounds entrenched views of the party and confirms that we are under new management.

What Boris Johnson is getting wrong enlarges this opportunity for Labour. Equally, he is getting something right: optimism.

‘Remember that Barack Obama’s breakthrough owed a lot to the slogan, “yes we can.” The left needs to show that it can somehow improve things,’ writes Chris Dillow. ‘This requires not just policies, but the self-confidence to sell them. Johnson shows that politicians can succeed by not being scared of their own shadow. The left should learn from this.’[5]

Labour needs to articulate an optimism about the UK and a sense of purpose about what we can become.

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Revealed: New polling shows most swing voters believe their household finances will be better under a Labour government than the Tories

02/10/2021, 09:18:28 PM

by Atul Hatwal

The full analysis of these polling figures is in a new book “Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power” released this week. Click here to download it. The book looks at the barriers for voters in picking Labour, what the party can do in opposition to tackle these issues and the type of policy platform that would attract switchers to Labour at the election

Exclusive polling conducted for Labour Uncut by Yonder (the new name for Populus) has revealed that a majority of swing voters believe their household finances will be worse under a Conservative government compared to a Labour government.

Traditionally, the Conservatives have won the electoral war of the wallet with voters tending to believe their personal finances will be better off under the Tories than Labour, even when Labour is in the ascendant.

However, this latest polling shows that there’s an 11% majority, 46% to 35% among prospective Labour switchers that disagreed with the statement “I think my household will be better off under the Conservatives than Labour”

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Don’t expect buyer’s remorse – it is going to take hard slog to rebuild the Red Wall

29/09/2021, 08:54:35 AM

by Jo Platt

This piece is part of a new book “Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power” released yesterday. Click here to download it. The book looks at the barriers for voters in picking Labour, what the party can do in opposition to tackle these issues and the type of policy platform that would attract switchers to Labour at the election

People in Leigh call their neighbours in Wigan ‘pie eaters’. It is not a comment on their culinary habits; it refers to the 1926 general strike where Wigan miners were said to have gone back to work sooner than those in Leigh. It is hardly surprising, then, that the parliamentary seat was solidly Labour from 1922 onwards. (And Liberal before that, with the Manchester Guardian owner, CP Scott, once representing the town.)

That was, of course, until November 2019. I was the unfortunate losing candidate – after first being elected in 2017 – as Labour was mown down, not only in dozens of so-called ‘Red Wall’ seats, but in the traditional coal and steel seats that today have Conservative MPs.

Coal and steel seats

For Leigh, read Bassetlaw, Blyth Valley, Bolsover, Redcar, Rother Valley or Penistone and Stocksbridge. These are places where Labour is in the local DNA, but they all fell to the Tories, many for the first time in decades, if not the first time ever. In fact, if it was not for the Brexit party splitting the Conservative vote, things would have been much worse and we would have lost dozens more seats, with even places like Barnsley – the epicentre of the Miner’s Strike – in danger of turning blue. (The absence of the Brexit party helps to explain why we lost the Hartlepool by-election in May.) All of which is an around about way of saying that we should count our blessings. The hole we find ourselves in as a party could have been even deeper.

Horrific campaign

Let me return to the 2019 campaign. Our experience on the doorstep was just awful. In fact, horrific is the word I would use. It was a hot reception – and, also, an icy one. Hot in that everyone seemed angry. (more…)

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Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power – Free download

28/09/2021, 09:37:17 PM

Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power sets out what’s needed to win the next election. Drawing together contributions from elected representatives, former senior Labour officials and expert commentators, it looks at the barriers to voters’ backing Labour, what the Party can do in opposition to break these down and the type of policy platform that will attract the switchers needed to put Keir Starmer in Downing Street. Click the link below to download your free copy

Labour’s Reset – The Path Back to Power

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We need to have an honest conversation with the public about social care

28/09/2021, 10:07:45 AM

By Joanne Harding

This piece is part of a new book “Labour’s Reset: The Path Back to Power” which is being released today. The book looks at the barriers for voters in picking Labour, what the party can do in opposition to tackle these issues and the type of policy platform that would attract switchers to Labour at the election.

‘If you neglect physical infrastructure, you get roads full of potholes and buckling bridges, which prevent your economy functioning properly. The same is true if you fail to invest in social infrastructure.’ These  were the words Liz Kendall used as she addressed a conference of directors of social care back in April this year. I think we can all agree that social care has been neglected by successive governments for years. The question is what could and should Labour do to truly address what I believe to be one of the most difficult policy challenges of our times. One of the fundamental issues with social care is that people do not really understand what it is. It is incredibly difficult to define as it ranges from supporting a person to wash and eat, to administering medication, to safeguarding, protection of liberty and to end-of-life care. It is inextricably linked with health by virtue of some of the elements of personal care, yet it is so much more than health.

However, it does not have the same branding as the National Health Service (NHS) that we all recognise and hold dear to us as a beacon of all that is good. Politicians talk about health and social care, yet they continue to leave it out in the cold when it comes to policy and funding conversations. This lack of focus on social care is reflected in public attitudes – in polling conducted by Yonder for Labour Uncut, when respondents were presented with a list of 11 different policy and just 6% of voters picked social care as the highest priority.

It does not attract the same attention as a hero workforce and life-saving and ground-breaking treatments do. Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, social care encompasses every single one of these things and more.

Labour therefore has a role to play in changing the narrative among its members and the wider public. Maybe then, we can have a more honest conversation about the areas I feel we need to tackle if we are to reform and transform social care.

Funding reform

This will surely be considered the most contentious and difficult element of our policy work. If we truly want a publicly funded social care system in England, we need to establish how we are going to pay for it. Projected  growth on spending for social care is simply not in line with predicted growth pressures, which are rising at 3.7% annually in real terms. More than 1 million people aged 65 or over will require varying degrees of social care support by 2035; this is up from 783,000 individuals in 2015. As people live longer and advances in medicine and assistive technology support people to live with chronic and long-term health issues, greater strain will be put on an already creaking system.

We know we cannot simply stand still as we will have a predicted gap of £3.5 billion to fill by 2025 to maintain our existing standards of care, which are frankly failing too many people. Age UK reports that 1.5 million people living in the UK have an unmet care need and if current trends continue, this could grow to 2.1 million. Furthermore , the government have offered  short-term bungs over the years to paper over the cracks. Relying on a council tax precept and business rates cannot possibly be a sustainable funding model for an infrastructure that is so vital to a healthy society. It also creates inequity in local authorities that will be living with greater health inequalities and higher levels of poverty. Current provisions are  truly a postcode lottery.

Johnson’s statement to the House of Commons last week has done nothing to reassure those of us who live and breathe social care that reform is coming anytime soon. The  majority of the income generated by a regressive national insurance rise will not really go towards funding social care. For three years, all of the money will go towards easing the NHS backlog; in fact, only £5.4 billion of the £36 billion will head in the direction of social care. Councils may well be forced to raise council tax yet again in order to meet demand. Social care is in crisis right here, right now. The Tory Party’s talk of funding and reform are actually just warm words.

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Labour is losing women. It could cost the party the next election. It doesn’t have to be this way

22/09/2021, 09:45:33 PM

by Nicole Lampert

This piece is part of a new book “Labour’s reset: the path back to power” which Uncut will be launching at Labour conference next week. The book looks at the barriers for voters in picking Labour, what the party can do in opposition to tackle these issues and the type of policy platform that would attract switchers to Labour at the election.

Labour is losing women. It is losing its female activists, its putative politicians, its core voters. And the trans debate could even see it lose the country at large. Again.

There’s a female MP, Rosie Duffield, who is too frightened to appear at Labour conference because so many trans rights activists – whipped up into a fury by people within the party – have threatened violence against her.

A long-awaited statement yesterday by Keir Starmer was the usual fence sitting – asserting the Party supports the Equality Act which legislates for single sex spaces but adding that trans people should mainly be allowed in them – while also reasserting plans for self-identification. They leadership must have hoped that this would dampen down the row but, in fact, it served to only add fuel to the fire. Did they learn nothing from the Brexit fudge which managed to infuriate both sides and lost them votes from Brexiters and Remainers?

Women’s rights are being removed all over the world; in the last few weeks we’ve seen it from America to Afghanistan. And that is why women will not take this lying down, even from a party that they have always supported.

Sara, whose parents and grandparents were Labour councillors, and has campaigned on doorsteps for the party since she was a child, calls it: ‘The toxic nail in the coffin of my support for Labour. I cannot support Labour because of this.’

Joan, who with her partner made up the only gay couple in her CLP, says: ‘When I asked for help from our Labour candidate in keeping hospital wards single sex, I was told that I was, ‘irrationally prejudiced against trans people.’ I’d rather spoil my ballot than vote for Labour.’

Nicola, a Labour veteran, is almost in tears when she tells me: ‘The Tories are not competent. They are pushing more people into poverty. But I can’t vote for a party that prioritises the interests – political, economic, social – of males over the reality of women’s experiences.’

While Sally, a trans woman, says the debate feels equally poisonous for the trans community. ‘Self ID is a long-term negative for trans people because the barrier to a protected characteristic is too low and Labour needs to recognise that,’ she says. ‘Look at things like Wi Spa in America [when a self-identifying trans woman with a history of sex offences exposed their penis in a room full of naked women and girls]. People are beginning to think we’re all perverts and someone needs to talk about this sensibly.’

I haven’t given any of them their real names because this is the most toxic row that Labour is involved in today. Women don’t feel just ignored but demonised. They are being pushed out of the party and, in the wider world, losing their jobs. A writer friend lost work solely because she followed a gender critical feminist on Twitter. Aside from a brave few, Labour MPs are terrified about speaking up, because they know trans rights activists will then demand they are sacked and the leadership will do nothing to stop the bullying. Even the trans people who speak up against the activism orthodoxy are labelled transphobes.

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Revealed: New poll shows 1 in 4 non-Labour voters considering backing Starmer but they want a decisive break from the Corbyn era – 60% say expel Corbyn if he doesn’t apologise over anti-Semitism

19/09/2021, 09:24:00 PM

by Atul Hatwal

New research conducted for Labour Uncut by pollster Yonder (the new name for Populus) reveals that just over 1 in 4 non-Labour voters (26%) would consider voting Labour at the next election. But Jeremy Corbyn is still a huge negative with 66% of this group worried about the continued influence of Corbynites in Labour and 60% saying his expulsion from Labour, if he doesn’t apologise over anti-Semitism, would make them more likely to vote Labour.

The polling, conducted by Yonder between the 13th and 14th September with 2,010 respondents, revealed that 1 in 7 Conservative voters (14%), over half of Lib Dems (53%) and 1 in 4 SNP (26%) are considering voting Labour. Based on Labour’s current standing in the polls, attracting even half of those thinking about backing Keir Starmer and Labour would send the party into government with a vote share in the mid-forties.

However, Labour’s potential voters want a clear break from the Corbyn era.  A series of statements articulating potential reasons for not voting Labour, drawn from previous research, were put to this group and despite a clear appetite for policies such as higher spending on public services and a higher minimum wage, Jeremy Corbyn and his legacy remain toxic.

A net +39% agreed with the statement “I didn’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister and worry that people like him are still too influential in Labour”

Next week, at Labour conference Jeremy Corbyn will once again be in the spotlight and much of the debate about Labour will be defined through the prism of the former leader.

He’s currently suspended from the parliamentary party for saying that the extent of anti-Semitism in the party was “dramatically over-stated” following the publication of the EHRC report into Labour and anti-Semitism, but he had already been readmitted to the party at the point the report was published and so, as a party member not a Labour MP, will be speaking at various Labour conference fringe events. He’ll have a political and media retinue trailing along after him, distracting from the main conference, in the manner that Boris Johnson used to at Conservative conference in the early to mid-2010s.

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