Peter Mandelson « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Peter Mandelson’

Tuesday News Review

21/09/2010, 08:07:34 AM

Liberal rebellion

Clegg’s speech was overshadowed by a massive revolt over the coalition’s schools policy. Party members overwhelmingly passed a motion opposing plans to create more academies and free schools, which are free from local authority control. The motion, which took party leaders by surprise, said there was a risk that the new schools would increase “social divisiveness and inequity in a system that is already unfair”. The defeat is particularly troubling for the Liberal Democrats because members are supposed to set official party policy at conference. That means the party leadership is in the uncomfortable position of promoting a policy that has been vetoed by grass roots members. – City AM

Liberal Democrat councils are on a collision course with Nick Clegg by campaigning against the creation of “free schools” in their communities. Following a rebellion by party activists against the Coalition’s flagship education policy, the conference voted to boycott the new schools because they increased “social divisiveness and inequity”. A succession of activists, including many councillors, protested that allowing parents to set up new schools beyond town hall control would benefit better-off families to the detriment of those in poorer areas, and could also lead to selection by the back door. In a snub to the party leadership, they convincingly defeated an attempt to water down a motion critical of free schools. – The Independent

Former MPs and PCCs back David and Ed (Balls)

The poll of former Labour MPs and prospective parliamentary candidates by Channel 4 News found overwhelming support for David Miliband, with former chancellor Ed Balls just pipping Mr Miliband’s younger brother Ed Miliband for second place. Channel 4 News spoke to former MPs who lost their marginal seats in May and to candidates who lost, despite standing in seats where there had been a sitting Labour MP.They all aspire to win back the seats Labour will need to secure if the party is to return to government. – Channel 4

(more…)

Posted in Unbound | No Comments »

Bring back Peter Mandelson, says John Woodcock

13/09/2010, 09:00:07 AM

So, another Labour Party election process is getting underway as the finish line finally comes into view for the main race.

And now we know that the whole shadow cabinet will be elected, those of us in the Parliamentary party who aren’t putting ourselves forward are girding our inboxes ahead of the ballot in conference week.

Having myself been clogging up said inboxes during the select committee elections earlier this year, it ill behoves me to complain about people having the temerity to communicate their qualities to their colleagues ahead of this enormously important vote. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 12 Comments »

Blair’s book gesture is testament to the quality of its author, says Paul Richards

17/08/2010, 08:00:56 AM

Tony Blair’s autobiography A Journey would have made its author a very rich man. Or should that be an even richer man. The advance was £4.6 million. There’ll be a lucrative serialisation in a Sunday newspaper. It will be translated into many languages, and sell around the world. Already 14 territories have secured translation rights. There is little doubt that with an early release as a paperback Blair’s book will hit the non-fiction best-seller lists and stay there for many weeks. It will probably rival Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father as a best-seller by a politician which cuts through to the mass market.

All of which makes his decision to donate every penny to the Royal British Legion both remarkable and laudable. For most leading politicians – Prescott, Mandelson, Thatcher, Clinton, Wilson, etc – a memoir is partly the chance to set the record straight, but mostly the chance to make a wad of cash for the retirement fund. Blair has shown that he is a cut above your average politician. He wants his book to tell a story, not make a mint.

There are plenty of people who will say it’s just ‘blood money’, motivated by guilt for sending British troops to war in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. The professional, irreconcilable Blair-haters are always swift to ascribe motives to Blair’s every move. It must be quite a responsibility to possess the ability to read Blair’s mind so accurately all the time. They will never accept, unlike the British Legion, that this is simply a fantastically generous donation to a good cause. The grubby motives they will ascribe, and ill-grace with which they will react to the donation, say more about them than Blair.

(more…)

Posted in Grassroots | 3 Comments »

The week Uncut

25/07/2010, 12:57:50 PM

It’s all about momentum. And team Ed M think they’ve got it. Miliband Jnr has hit his stride and has Miliband Snr in his sights. He picked up the backing of Unison this week and now looks certain to be backed by Unite on Monday. But will it be enough?

Miliband Snr has got lots of pieces of paper with the Queen’s head on and fancies his chances. And the bookies seem to agree. Abbott, Balls and Burnham have been written off, long shot outsiders; the real money is falling on the Milibands, with David the odds on favourite.

The race is on the home straight. The Coalition is getting shaky, the sooner the Opposition is in place the better. Rumours of Ed Balls dropping out have been denied by his team. Diane has managed a whole week without picking on the boys and Andy Burnham is looking like the closest runner to the Milibrothers.

It’s been a busy week on Uncut. In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s best read pieces of the last seven days:

Ed Miliband on girls, gigs, baseball, cuts and co-operatives

Alistair Darling on the growth figures that vindicate Labour’s actions

A brutal assessment of the leadership candidates and contest from Dan Hodges

Hopi Sen gives his advice to the man (or woman) behind the man (or woman)

Peter Mandelson on the book, the candidates and the future

Young dynamism and old pragmatism, Shelly Asquith makes the case for Ken

Posted in Home | No Comments »

We were elected as New Labour, we will govern again as New Labour, argues Peter Mandelson

21/07/2010, 01:22:40 PM

In London, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle (and Hartlepool) this week, thousands of party members and the public have heard or will hear the third man speak about his book. They were interested and most bought copies. It seems a far cry from the condemnatory statements made by some of the Labour leadership contestants upon the book’s publication. They hadn’t read it, of course, but since then many others have.

After the party has suffered electoral defeat, it is timely to debate our past as well as our future. The two are linked. And we don’t have to dismiss one in order to make progress in the other.

In The Third Man, I take the reader back over twenty five years of our party’s fall and rise, not simply the thirteen in government and not just that period after the Iraq war until 2006 when relations between our Prime Minister and Chancellor entered a trough and when their policy differences over NHS and schools reform, university financing and pension policy flared.

Political change on the scale we undertook it, in the creation of New Labour, required intense and sustained teamwork and partnership, trust and mutual support, over a long period of time. Tony and Gordon were at the centre of this – in the main – productive and creative activity. But in a truthful memoir and autobiography, when I was personally a part of this relationship over so many years, you cannot explain the good and the bad times without describing what the participants said and did, to as well as with each other. And it is better to tell the story earlier rather than later, before preparing for the next election.

If I have one abiding memory of the period when we were creating New Labour it is the friendship and comradeship amongst all those who made it happen. And that friendship endures, including in the election campaign this year. It has been a happy time and a very successful one. We must have been doing a lot right, although you might not think so to listen to those hastily announcing the ending of New Labour as if you can turn its principles and precepts on and off like a tap.

Millions of voters didn’t think this way and we have to ask – as my book does – why so many of them decided not to support us in this year’s election. Was it because they thought all of a sudden that we were too New Labour? I think not. And that is the central message of The Third Man.

Peter Mandelson is a Labour peer, a former cabinet minister, and author of The Third Man: Life at the heart of New Labour.

Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

John Woodcock argues the defence spending row exposes Osborne’s spin

19/07/2010, 09:19:51 AM

George Osborne may be flavour of the month in Conservative associations and media comment pages, but the latest spending row between him and Defence Secretary Liam Fox has underlined a major weakness that Labour must exploit.

This appears to be an administration intent on learning from New Labour’s mistake of coming too slow to the table with fundamental reform. There is a speed and ferocity with which the Tories, aided and abetted by the Lib Dems, are seeking to embed a new presumption that public spending is bad while eye-watering cuts are wholesome and necessary.

What has been signalled so far surpasses the shrillest of Labour’s pre-election warnings – warnings that were rubbished as scare-mongering. Prior to victory, the Conservative leader gave the impression you could get spending back into balance simply by taking a Kim and Aggie approach to government waste.

Yet for all they could rightly protest to have been deceived, the public are hardly manning the barricades or demanding a re-run of the election. Attitudes may change substantially once the cuts begin to bite, but Labour cannot just sit back and wait for that to happen.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

The man we loved to blame – Dan Hodges defends Peter Mandelson

14/07/2010, 10:11:12 AM

Soon after England’s penalty loss to Germany in Euro ’96, (remember the days when we could still take people to penalties), a pizza advert appeared featuring Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle and Gareth Southgate. Waddle and Pearce, who had missed similar penalty attempts during the 1990 World Cup, were seen coaching Southgate in how to come to terms with his own career-defining failure. The advert rebound as spectacularly as the Aston Villa defender’s spot kick, with many criticising his tasteless attempt to cash in during a period of national trauma.

Gareth Southgate and Peter Mandelson are not two men who naturally meld in the consciousness. But as I watched Peter advertising his new memoirs whilst reclining in a deep leather chair, affecting the air of a Victorian gentleman successfully acquitted of poisoning his wealthy wife, meld they did. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 6 Comments »

Monday News Review

12/07/2010, 07:54:02 AM

Gove faces grilling

Michael Gove faces the Commons for education questions today

Ed Balls piled fresh pressure on Michael Gove, the beleaguered education secretary, by calling on him on Sunday night to answer questions over the withdrawal of funding from the schools construction programme. Mr Balls, shadow education secretary, wrote to Mr Gove demanding to know what advice he had from officials over the need to consult on last week’s decision and whether it had left the government open to legal claims. – The FT

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes, today distanced his party from education secretary Michael Gove over the contentious decision to cancel 700 school rebuilding projects. Hughes said he was not entirely comfortable with the handling of the announcement, adding it would be “a nonsense” to build the new free schools proposed by Gove using cash that could have improved existing buildings. Gove has agreed to meet Lib Dem councillors concerned by his announcement, and the issue is likely to be raised at a Liberal Democrat meeting of its MPs organised by Nick Clegg, the party’s leader and the coalition deputy prime minister. – The Guardian

(more…)

Posted in Unbound | No Comments »

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.

(more…)

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »