From: O’DONOVAN, Martin
Sent: 15 June 2010 11:56
Subject: Elections to Labour vacancies on Select Committees
Importance: High
FAO Labour MPs
Please find below the agreed procedure for electing Labour members to the Select Committees, as agreed at last night’s PLP meeting. This is a pretty complex procedure, I’m very happy to answer any questions you may have. (more…)
There was uproar at last night’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Many senior MPs are unhappy with the arrangements for electing select committee members.
Select committee chairs were elected last week by a ballot of all MPs. Now the members of the committees are to be elected, within their party groups, according to the proportion of MPs that that party has in Parliament.
Senior former ministers such as Hazel Blears and Keith Vaz (re-elected as chair of the home affairs select committee) spoke up against the way the election is being organised. (more…)
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…)
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
After several requests, we’re publishing the formal timetable for the leadership race below.
This is the information sent to MPs by Labour’s General Secretary Ray Collins.
| May | |
| Monday, 24 May |
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| June | |
| Monday, 7 June |
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| Wednesday, 9 June |
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| Thursday, 10 June |
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| Friday, 11 June |
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| Sunday, 13 June |
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| Saturday, 19 June |
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| Saturday, 26 June |
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| July | |
| Sunday, 4 July |
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| Saturday, 10 July |
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| Friday, 16 July |
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| Sunday, 18 July |
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| Monday, 19 July |
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| Tuesday, 20 July |
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| Thursday, 22 July |
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| Sunday, 25 July |
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| Monday, 26 July |
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| Saturday, 31 July |
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| August | |
| Monday, 16 August – 22 September |
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| September | |
| Wednesday, 8 Sept |
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| Wednesday, 15 Sept |
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| Monday, 20 Sept |
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| Tuesday, 21 Sept |
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| Wednesday, 22 Sept |
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| Saturday, 25 Sept |
|
I sent out this letter to every Labour MP today, explaining why I am standing for the Labour leadership. I signed each letter personally. It took ages.
Dear colleague,
As a Party, we have just come through one of the toughest elections in a generation. Thirteen years of governing took its toll. We need to renew. We lost touch. We need to reconnect. Our ability to broadcast our values to our core root disappeared.
That’s why today I am putting myself forward to be considered for leader of our Party.
I realise I am not the most experienced candidate in the field, having only become an MP earlier this month. If you believe that having been a minister and dealing with the pressure that that brings, day in day out, makes you more suitable for the role of leader, then I am not your man. (more…)
Next Labour
Ben Bradshaw backs David Miliband
“David’s breadth of leadership skills and experience, combined with his clear vision of where he wants to take the party and Britain also, offers our best chance of winning again in Norwich, Swindon and Milton Keynes, without which there won’t be another Labour government.” – Ben Bradshaw MP, The Observer
“The issue has been forced because of the doomed coalition talks in the last days of the Labour government which revealed a deep chasm between the “progressive” and the traditional wings of the party. That division wasn’t just about whether to do a deal with the Lib Dems, it was about a divergent approach to politics.” – The Scotsman
“It is more eyebrow-raising that the denigration of New Labour has also been joined by the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, a quartet who served their political apprenticeships in the courts of Blair and Brown and then ascended to the cabinet. They are jostling to criticise the government of which they were very recently prominent members.” – The Observer
“Perhaps the Labour front bench believes that having been mercifully released from the death grip of G Brown, it is now under no obligation to accept responsibility for his errors: that expunging the chief perpetrator was itself an absolution.” – The Sunday Telegraph
Talent show
“David Miliband threw caution to the wind last night by calling for a full television debate between all candidates for the Labour leadership, in a move that could help boost his rivals.” – The Observer
“Labour leadership contender David Miliband is challenging his rivals to a TV debate. The former Foreign Secretary made the suggestion in a letter this weekend to the five other candidates.” – The Sunday Mirror
Old, New Labour
Campbell tells of power struggle at heart of New Labour
“The full extent of the explosive feuds at the heart of New Labour are revealed today in a new book by Alastair Campbell.Tony Blair’s former spin doctor discloses furious shouting matches between the ex-PM and Gordon Brown that left both men “with purple faces”.” – The Sunday Mirror
“Whilst many of us want to concentrate on the future and the rescue of our economy, the next few months will also see some reappraisal of the Labour years. For the first time we will be able to debate them without the choking blanket of spin coming from Downing Street.” – John Redwoods Diary
Baby boom
“Both the Prime Minister and Opposition leader could be on nappy-changing duty within months if Ed Miliband wins the race to succeed Gordon Brown” – The Mail on Sunday
“The family theme to Labour’s leadership contest took a fresh twist last night as it emerged that Ed Miliband is to become a father for the second time later this year.” – The Independent
Labour Uncut interviewed Ed Balls on Tuesday evening. We couldn’t ask all the questions you submitted. 
There were far too many. We gave Ed the option of whether or not to answer questions – in this Labour leadership interview – from people who clearly weren’t Labour members or supporters. He chose to answer, and we’ve included several.
Ed’s is the first of our leadership candidate interviews. We were impressed by his focus and presence. It will be great if the rest are as good.
Q. (From Alex R) When the leadership candidates say that they were guilty of ‘not listening’ enough in the last government, how and why were you not listening? What steps would you take to listen sufficiently if you had another opportunity?
A. I think our problems about not listening started much earlier than the last Parliament. I think one of the great frustrations that we had in the election campaign, and in my case the year before, was that many of the things people were upset about, like public housing, the impact of unskilled immigration on terms and conditions, the obstacle of upfront tuition fees for young people going to university – these were issues we’d actually addressed. We’d put in place controls on immigration; John Healy was leading a big expansion on public housing; we’d got rid of upfront tuition fees. But the public weren’t hearing at that time what we were saying and it takes time for policy decisions to feed through to the reality of peoples lives.
I think the truth is that the time when we weren’t listening enough was probably during the second term in Government. My election campaign for the last 18 months has been all about repeated public meetings, listening to people and their issues – and lots of other MPs who were successful in their campaigns did the same thing in this last couple of years. If we’d been doing that five years earlier we’d have made different and better policy decisions at an earlier stage.
So your politics can’t be about telling communities what you’ve concluded; it’s got to be about asking them, listening to the voices of people who need us on their side and responding. That’s what I mean by listening. (more…)
The next leader of the Labour Party will be a man. Everybody knows that. And not because it is obvious who will win. It isn’t. But because there is only one woman candidate, who is not even trying to win.
Dismal though this is, it might work for women MPs’ interests in the end.
Under the rules as they stand, the number of votes which MPs must cast for women in shadow cabinet elections is four.
The last time one of these arcane contests was held, in 1996, four women out of 19 seemed rather progressive. Now, it seems pretty lame. (more…)
Ray Collins did two things last week which politicians don’t usually do. First, he expressed an unfashionable view to a difficult audience because he thought it needed saying. Then – once he realised that he’d overdone it – he apologised even though he didn’t have to.
He might reply that he is not a politician. That he is foremost a trade unionist, and that as Labour’s General Secretary he is merely an appointed official; the servant of the party.
In fact, he is a skilfull politician who has wielded an influence as general secretary not seen since Tony Blair wrested it from Larry Whitty and never gave it back. (more…)
