Posts Tagged ‘Peter Watt’

We don’t see it, but our arrogance stops us from listening

10/05/2015, 03:45:36 PM

As Labour considers what went wrong last Thursday, and leadership contenders jockey for position, we’re re-posting a piece from December 2010 by former general secretary Peter Watt. Four and a half years on, almost word for word, it’s as relevant today as it was then – Atul Hatwal (ed)

by Peter Watt

Understanding this year’s defeat is, as we all know, central to bouncing back electorally. A lot has been written about the need to listen and the need to reconnect to voters. And the launch of the policy consultations in Gillingham last weekend was an attempt to listen and learn the lessons of defeat.

But there is an arrogance at the heart of our politics that is going to make it difficult to really understand why we lost. It is an arrogance that says that we alone own morality and that we alone want the best for people. It says that our instincts and our motives alone are pure.  It’s an arrogance that belittles others’ fears and concerns as “isms” whilst raising ours as righteous. We then mistakenly define ourselves as being distinctive from our opponents because we are morally superior rather than because we have different diagnoses and solutions. It is lazy, wrong and politically dangerous.

If you think that I am being harsh, just think about what we say about our opponents. We assume that they are all in it for themselves, that they are indifferent to the suffering of others. In fact, that they are quite happy to induce more suffering if it suits their malign ends. What we don’t think is that they may want the same things as us, but just have a different approach. Instead, we cast high-minded aspersions on their morality and humanity. (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Farewell to blogging

13/05/2013, 01:45:47 PM

by Peter Watt

Well it had to happen at some point I guess.  After nearly three years and (I think) just under 150 posts I am giving up political blogging.  I have in all honesty been treading a fine line for a while now as I have tried to balance the competing pressures of my “day job” and my blogging.  It seems a long time ago now but the person who asked me to write for Uncut first was John McTernan; but I said no as I was still unsure as to whether or not I wanted to raise my head above the parapet.

My book had caused a bit of a stir earlier that year and I decided to keep my head down.  But then Tom Watson asked me to write a post when he was guest editing the site.  My first post was during the leadership contest and was advice for the incoming leader – something of a recurring theme!

Originally I wrote the occasional post and then one every other week before finally agreeing with Sion Simon that I would write a weekly post for Thursday mornings.  Sometimes they flowed easily and at others they were a complete nightmare.  At times I felt I could’ve written on a whole range of issues and at times I struggled to find any subject at all.  But I am pleased to say that I have not missed a post since; and that includes writing posts on holiday and over Christmas.   I’m not absolutely sure that my wife Vilma is as pleased about this as I am.

I have enjoyed the variety of people from across the political spectrum that have commented on, tweeted or messaged me about my posts.  It’s funny how sometimes I wrote things that I was really pleased with and no one seemed to notice.  At other times I would rush off something that I was unsure of and it would seem to hit the mark.  Occasionally people seem to feel that they could be rude as opposed to simply disagreeing with me.  It bothered me a bit at first but not anymore.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

What is One Nation Labour?

09/05/2013, 07:00:14 AM

by Peter Watt

One Nation Labour, what exactly is it?  Well according to Ed Miliband on the Labour party website:

“Today, our country risks becoming two nations, with a million young people out of work, the gap between the richest and everyone else getting worse, and hard work not rewarded.  My core belief is in leaving this country a better place than I found it, and that when people join together, we can overcome any odds. We did it during the second world war and we did it when rebuilding the country afterwards. That is the spirit Britain needs today.”

I have quite a bit of sympathy for this.  We certainly needed to refresh our thinking and move on from new Labour which for much of the public had become tainted by ‘spin’.  With the Tories appearing to lack any sort of central purpose or vision other than deficit reduction, it was good to see the Labour Party trying to develop a fresh single organising thought.  The Party wanted a new sense of purpose and Ed’s espousal of One Nation Labour seemed really promising.

Over the last few months there has been some welcome associated rhetoric around challenging vested interests that threaten the living conditions of hardworking families.  So energy companies are challenged to reduce their prices.  Payday lenders are rightly targeted and there is talk of giving local people a bigger say in shaping their high-streets (I’m not quite sure what this means but I think if I did that I would support it!).  Certainly banks and some bankers had become greedy and there is a tiny percentage of the population that has got very rich and who seem very good at avoiding paying tax.  So far so good for ONL.

But then I get a little sceptical.  Firstly there is the fact that the One Nation rhetoric actually seems to divide the nation into three nations.  Of course there is the really rich ‘nation’ that Labour has a lot to say about; and it generally seems to be about taxing them and their bonuses more and then spending the receipts several times.  Then there is the really poor ‘nation’ who need support that Labour has a lot to say about; and it generally seems to involve opposing any reform of the welfare system.  And finally there is the everyone else ‘nation’ – the hard working lot that, as Ed points out, are not being rewarded very well and who feel a bit let down and put-upon.  And One Nation Labour doesn’t actually seem to say much about them at all.

And then there is this whole issue of challenging vested interests; of stepping in ‘when capitalism clearly isn’t working’ for families already struggling.  So banks, energy companies, pay day lenders and so on are all in the firing line.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Our failure to act in Syria is making the world a more dangerous place

02/05/2013, 08:55:14 AM

by Peter Watt

I remember in the aftermath of the second Iraq war engaging in a discussion with some people opposed to the war.  It was a very hot topic and many people had very strongly held views.  I was then and still am a supporter of the decision to invade Iraq and to remove Saddam Hussein; the people I was debating were not.  But it was in fact a friendly discussion and there was mutual respect despite fundamental disagreement.  I certainly understood their objections and could see their point.

But there was one thing that I couldn’t understand.  I asked whether they could see any circumstances in which there was evidence that a “rogue” country had weapons of mass destruction that we should act forcibly to disarm them.  They said “no”.  I pushed; what if Iran or North Korea for instance developed a nuclear weapon?  Again they said ‘no’.  In fact they said that we had no right to stop them having a nuclear weapon as we and the U.S. had them.  If we or the United States had them (so their argument went) then it was only fair that Iran or North Korea could have them as well if they wanted them.

Now personally I think that this is palpable nonsense.   We and the U.S. are democracies, respect human rights, basic freedoms and free-speech.  To be frank we have every right to both have nuclear weapons ourselves and to demand that others do not.  Something incidentally that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its 190 signatories agree with.

Does that means that I think that our liberal, democratic way of life is better than the totalitarian or unstable alternatives then yes I bloody well do!  And I think that these ideals are worth defending.  And so I just couldn’t see how it was possible to argue that there weren’t circumstances that force may have to be used to ensure that some states did not become owners of the ability to kill millions.

And I think the same is true when it comes to chemical weapons.  Should rogue states be allowed to possess them and threaten their own populations or those of their neighbours?  Again “no.”  And in the last resort we should be prepared to use force if necessary to ensure that this does not happen.  To do otherwise would be irresponsible in the extreme.

Which brings us to Syria.

History will judge us harshly for the way that we have allowed the people of Syria to suffer and to be massacred by the Assad regime.  It will shame us all and we will have to explain to our children how we have stood by and let 70,000 people die so far.  It is not just the immediate and on-going killing.  Who knows what the long term consequences will be for the region and indeed the world of a generation of Syrians so systematically brutalised?

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

The Royal College of Nursing has forgotten about the victims in their response to Mid Staffs

25/04/2013, 07:00:15 AM

by Peter Watt

One of the lessons of the Mid Staffs hospital scandal should be that those involved in the delivery of health care should show some humility.  But humility doesn’t seem to be something that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is familiar with.

Let’s face it, if a single hospital can be found to have between 400 and 1200 deaths caused by poor care between January 2005 and March 2009 then something has gone wrong.  The fact that subsequently a raft of other hospitals are being looked at adds to the strong sense of a system that isn’t working.  As David Cameron rather too eagerly reminded Ed Miliband at PMQs yesterday, this happened under a Labour government at a time of rapid growth in spending on the NHS.  This wasn’t a time of cuts – quite the contrary.

The Francis report was a comprehensive review of what went wrong at Mid Staffs and its conclusions were damning.  Blame was shared across a number of fronts:

  • A bullying culture in the NHS so that those expressing concern were silenced and others were too fearful to speak;
  • A focus on healthy finances rather than the health of patients;
  • Regulators not regulating properly – in fact not noticing that anything was wrong;
  • Managers not managing effectively;
  • The disorganisation of reorganisation after reorganisation.

So there were plenty who should be a little humble from the Labour party itself to the department of health.  But there is another group who need to take a good long hard look at themselves: nurses.  Because one of the other key problems identified was that there were nurses who were not good enough.

Now this obviously does not mean that all nurses are poor or that they do not care about patients. I had a message from a friend the other day who had just finished a 12 hour nursing shift with only a twenty minute break.  So there are thankfully plenty of dedicated, caring and compassionate nurses often working many long hours to ensure that their patients are cared for.

But what is also blindingly obvious is that a report into poor care that causes hundreds of deaths will find that some nurses got things badly wrong.  And they did.  As the Guardian reported of the Francis report:

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

The last few weeks have shown politics at its worst: tribal, divisive and ugly

18/04/2013, 07:00:22 AM

by Peter Watt

Sometimes politics is a noble and even beautiful pursuit where words can capture a moment and inspire.  Just think of Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 or any one of a number of Churchill’s wartime orations.

Then there are political decisions that become once in a generation moments that end up uniting most of the country like the decision to go to war in 1939 or to create a National Health Service in its aftermath.

Other decisions remain more controversial but can still be seen as being decisive moments like the decision to join the EEC, the privatisation program of the 1980’s or the second Iraq war.  The point is that over the years politics has mattered because it involved inspiration and decisions being taken that mattered even if they were opposed.

But in the last few years it has felt that politics has mattered less and less.  Partly this is because the world has changed so that politics seems to have less influence than say global big business or the seemingly uncontrollable economic forces.

And partly it is the advent of the information age where the internet and social media has fragmented the sense of a shared experience.  The reality is that you can set your “virtual preferences” so that you can simply block that which is of little interest or irrelevant.

But politics itself also has to bear some responsibility.  In recent months, in addition to being seen as irrelevant, politics has also been ugly.  And that ugliness will have served to further drive a wedge between them-and-us; between the tiny band of political warriors and the majority more interested in fuel prices, the security of their family and Gangnam style on YouTube.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Why has Ed allowed the unions to stitch up the euro candidate selections? What happened to the new politics?

11/04/2013, 07:00:44 AM

by Peter Watt

There has been a lot of retrospective going on recently.  Obviously the death of Baroness Thatcher has meant that we have all been reflecting on the politics of the 1970’s and 1980’s.  And politics has changed a fait bit since then and Labour politics in particular; long gone are the days when Labour ripped itself apart with splits and division.

Beaten time after time by the Tories, Labour finally realised that it needed to change if it was to win.  First Neil Kinnock, then John Smith and finally Tony Blair and Gordon Brown gradually enforced a degree of central control and discipline within the party.  There was an understanding that controlling process meant controlling the party.  Conferences, policy making and of course selections were all ruthlessly managed.

On the whole the party welcomed it, even if reluctantly at first.  There was a significant minority who always complained of course, but most were prepared to overlook what they didn’t like as we kept winning.

Working for the party throughout this period, we were loyal to the Leadership and we worked hard to keep control.  Centralisation was the name of the day.  But the world moved on and the time for command and control was over.

But at the centre we were slow on the uptake and so the culture of control was hung onto longer than it should’ve been.  As the rest of society was opening up and more open sources of information were becoming the norm in business, online and in the media, the Labour party stubbornly refused to change the way that it ran itself.  Keeping control meant keeping order.

But then we lost a general election and rightly our new Leader demanded a new approach to our politics.  There was talk of reaching out beyond our closed ranks: of allowing creativity and innovation and welcoming the possibilities that there may well be differences in tone and approach in different parts of the country.

As an old school control freak you would expect me to be sceptical.  But no; I am hugely supportive of an approach that begins to break down the barriers to our politics.  I can see just how remote and closed our politics actually is and how unattractive it is to most voters.  I wholeheartedly agree with Ed when he says:

“It’s not just about winning elections… It’s about constructing a real political movement. It’s a change from machine politics to grassroots politics.”

So I welcome the opening up of the party; except that is not what is happening.  The words are all well and good but the reality is that nothing has changed.  Actually that isn’t true.  If anything it is getting worse.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Labour has got itself into a mess on welfare

04/04/2013, 07:00:01 AM

by Peter Watt

I don’t know what Labour’s position on welfare reform is.  I know that the Tories want to cut welfare bills and make work pay.  I know this because they keep saying it and because they have just spent the last few weeks pushing changes to the welfare system that appear to confirm this.  It doesn’t matter at this stage whether the policies will actually achieve this or not because at this stage what matters is that their rhetoric is matched by actions that appear consistent with their words.

But Labour has in the past also talked tough on welfare and that it would like to reduce welfare bills.  The problem is that it is currently fighting a battle in which it is opposing the government’s attempts to achieve this.  So Labour appears confused.

The truth about the current crop of welfare reforms will not be known for some time.  Both the government and the opposition have talked up the changes brought in on April 1.  The government wants the changes seen as being a turning of the corner in the ever increasing rise in welfare payments.

The opposition wants the changes to be seen as evidence of the inherent nastiness, unfairness and cynicism of the government.  The truth is of course somewhat more complex.  The so called “bedroom tax” for instance is probably flawed as there is not enough social housing stock for people to actually downsize to.

People will therefore either be worse off or have to move to smaller premises in the private sector which will of course cost the state more in housing benefit.  But other aspects of the changes seem reasonable like the benefits cap; even if the government is crudely talking up the tiny numbers of families able to actually claim hundreds of thousands in benefits.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

Our politicians should tell the truth about immigration: it’s good for Britain

28/03/2013, 07:00:01 AM

by Peter Watt

The immigration debate is very much alive again.   UKIP in particular have attempted to tap into the rise in concern amongst some of the issues.   Lurid headlines warn of hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians about to pour across the sea, hot on the heels of the Poles and the Lithuanians.  And in response the three main party leaders have followed suit as they all seek to be tough on the issue.  The result is a lot of heat and not a lot of light.

The debate focuses on a number of key themes:

  • Does immigration benefit or costs the economy?
  • Do immigrants get preferential treatment?
  • The extent to which we can “control” our borders as members of the EU.
  • Is there an increase in pressure on public services?
  • The alleged abuse of asylum status.
  • The extent to which immigration changes communities and people’s attitudes to this change.

The answers are complex and much debated in homes, streets and indeed by our politicians.  The truth is that of course we are economically benefitting from immigration.  On the whole those arriving are younger and are employed.  They pay taxes and don’t really need to access health services and rarely claim benefits.  But also that there are some areas where there has been pressure on local services that were initially ill prepared like GPs and schools.   The impact of “changing communities” is however harder to gauge.

Personally I am completely unconcerned that the number of accents that I hear in shops or on the bus has increased massively.  I like the fact that my children have friends from a huge variety of different backgrounds – certainly they aren’t worried! And I am very proud of our history of welcoming those fleeing persecution.  I suspect that many people feel the same as me.

But I also know that there are plenty of people who are increasingly wary of the changes that they see.  They worry about losing control of their way of life and feel that their area is being “taken over”.

They are nostalgic about the good old days and feel strongly that someone is to blame for letting this happen because they sure as hell weren’t asked.  For them, the proliferation of eastern European accents is a manifestation of their worries and reinforces a sense of powerlessness in the face of change.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

And the real winner of yesterday’s budget is…Nick Clegg

21/03/2013, 07:00:58 AM

by Peter Watt

For many in the Labour party one of the few pleasures of opposition has been that they have been able to indulge in a much loved pastime – Lib Dem hating.  It is a visceral thing that stems from the scars of countless bloody local election battles.  “They don’t fight fair and once you’ve got them they’re bloody hard to get rid of,” as one hardened Labour activist from a marginal seat said to me a few weeks ago.  Their ranks are seen by many in Labour as a cynical but ragbag mix of the politically directionless, the anarchic and a sizeable chunk that are basically Labour or should be.  Oh, and of course the odd orange Tory!   Lib Dem politics is dismissed as opportunistic as opposed to Labour’s politics of principled idealism.

So the anger and betrayal was very real for many on the left when Clegg took the Tory shilling.  Indeed according to the polls, many formerly Lib Dem voters felt the same as they quickly switched to Labour.  Clegg went from hero-to-zero in weeks as he became Cameron’s Poodle and was widely ridiculed for having sold out his and his Parties principles for a stint in a Ministerial car.  My particular favourite Calamity Clegg joke is:

“Q. What does Nick Clegg stand for?

“A. When David Cameron walks in the room.”

It may be cruel but it sums up the view of Labour party activists across the country.  And to be fair, he did seem pretty determined to confirm this view as he was outmanoeuvred on the AV referendum and then clumsily supported the increasing of tuition fees allowing himself to be branded a hypocrite.

His party’s polling numbers went into free fall and Clegg’s personal ratings fell further still.  He and his party often looked a bit amateurish and they were blamed over and over by Labour politicians for propping up Cameron’s cuts.  The possibility of House of Lords reform came and went as once again the Tories scuppered a favourite Lib Dem policy.   And then UKIP started occasionally, and then consistently, pipping the Lib Dems for third place in the polls.  The consensus within the Labour Party has been that Nick Clegg lacks principle, is a busted flush, a bit of a joke and that his party should and will dump him before the next election.

But I think that this view is wrong and that Labour has let its own prejudice cloud its strategic judgement.  Nick Clegg entered government with two very clear aims.  Firstly to prove that the Lib Dems could be a responsible party of government prepared to take tough decisions.  And secondly to deliver as much of the Lib Dem manifesto as possible.

And on both he has succeeded.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon