Rebecca Long-Bailey « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Rebecca Long-Bailey’

The Uncuts 2020 (part II)

31/12/2020, 05:45:35 PM

Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

Politics is a trade conducted exclusively in the moment so it’s worth restating the position at the point Keir Starmer became leader. Just over a year ago, Labour crashed to its worst defeat since 1935, collapsing to 203 MPs and trailing the Tories by just over 11% in the popular vote. Few alive had seen the party laid so low.

Nine months on from the leadership election, Labour is currently level pegging with the Tories, Starmer himself is consistently ahead of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives have yet to work out a consistent line of attack on him. The process of returning Labour to electoral contention will be a work of years, but the early progress under Labour’s new leader is evident.

Keir Starmer’s resolution in winning back the Jewish community’s trust and tackling anti-Semitism with Labour has combined moral and political imperatives, establishing the clearest possible dividing line with the previous leadership (albeit, helped unintentionally by the hard left’s inexplicable decision that this is the hill to die on).

British politics in 2020 has spawned many losers. Boris Johnson has squandered the public’s trust following his victory and is vulnerable, Ed Davey isn’t yet a blip in the opinion polls and even Nicola Sturgeon faces unprecedented challenges with the burgeoning civil war within the SNP between her’s and Alex Salmond’s factions. Against this backdrop of political struggles and reverses, Keir Starmer is the one British party leader who has made significant progress over the year.

Nothwithstanding the recent intra-party challenges over Brexit, he enters 2021 with a level of momentum and an expectation of further progress.

Shortest-lived Frontbencher Award: Rebecca Long-Bailey

Perhaps against the better judgement of some of his more seasoned colleagues, in April Keir Starmer opted to appoint a few of the younger Corbynites to frontbench roles, in a “unifying” play to move on from the Corbyn years. Despite his best efforts, it didn’t last.

By June Rebecca Long-Bailey, the Momentum-anointed candidate to replace Corbyn as leader, had gushingly tweeted a Guardian article by resident hard-leftie-luvvie Maxine Peake, where she regurgitated an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. While Peake herself later distanced herself from her own words as a mistake, Long-Bailey somewhat loftily refused to withdraw the tweet and apologise herself. This went down in the LOTO’s office like a lead balloon.

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We need a commitment to radical devolution from the Labour leadership candidates

29/02/2020, 08:50:49 AM

by Alex Croft

Winning back Remain and Leave voters. Rebuilding the ‘Red Wall’. Appealing to Britain’s working-class. Just some of the claims from the Labour Party leadership candidates as the campaigns to replace Jeremy Corbyn heat up.

As the ballots land this week, Boris Johnson’s Government is busy veering left on major issues facing the country – speaking to parts of the electorate in the North of England which put their trust in the Tories for the first time. HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail for example – two critical components of the UK’s future transport network – have been spun as evidence Boris Johnson is delivering on his election promise to ‘level up’ the country.

During Labour’s time in office the North received record levels of investment, including devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The leadership candidates should be shouting loud and proud about how they are going to build on the successful elements of devolution and rectifying the parts that do not work for some parts of Britain.

‘Taking back control’ and the ‘left behind’ towns have become synonymous with the UK’s decision to leave the EU. But what is the magic potion required to build the coalition of voters needed to win the next General Election? Labour’s leadership contenders should commit to full throttle fiscal devolution – giving the North a ‘Barnett’ type formula so local leaders make decisions which are in the best interests of local people. For too long working people have been tired of Ministers and bureaucrats making decisions from behind their desks in SW1, which have a major impact on places like Merseyside. Devolution will help the party get closer to people – making sure their ideas or concerns are listened to rather than ignored by elected representatives. Giving voters the power to create their own destiny is an ambition which should not be scoffed at or, indeed, underestimated.

Local leaders in the North West have always banged the drum for greater decision making. Metro Mayors, Mayors and Leaders have all expressed a burning desire for more powers from Whitehall. After all, how it can be right that outcomes for residents in the Liverpool City Region are produced over 300 miles away in Westminster?

Keir Starmer, Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey promise to possess the recipe for all of Labour’s woes. But if the party wants to face up to its worst election defeat since the 1930s, giving people the chance to have a proper say over their own lives – through radical fiscal and economic devolution – would be a step in the right direction. All of the candidates should follow Labour’s lead locally by making that commitment.

Alex Croft is a campaigner and former political adviser to Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram.

Posted in Grassroots | 12 Comments »

Labour’s leadership contest is a disaster

20/02/2020, 09:44:55 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Does the Labour party ever want to win an election again? I ask in all seriousness because its acting to all intents and purposes as though the answer is, to invert Ed Miliband’s maxim, ‘Hell, no!’

This pained, drawn-out saga – which will not see a new Labour leader announced until April 4 – would better be described as a ‘lack of leadership contest.’ It long ago descended into a dreary, insular and circular exchange. Platitudes are issued, hands are wrung and virtues and signalled.

But are voters convinced?

Hardly. The whole thing serves as a rolling reminder of why Labour was trounced for the fourth time back in December and unless something radical changes the script for a fifth defeat will already have been written.

Broadly, there are three problems with Labour’s leadership contest.

The first and most obvious is that candidates are playing to the gallery. It almost goes without saying, but Labour members are not representative of the country. This much was true enough in the Blair years, but in the Age of Corbyn the gap has become cavernous.

As a result, the internal discussion skews towards pleasing activists rather than talking to the country at large. No-one in the real-world cares about mandatory selection of MPs or any of the other obscure preoccupations of activists.

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Keir Starmer is Labour’s last best hope

28/01/2020, 11:13:25 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Bookmakers have Keir Starmer as the 7/19 favourite to be the next Labour leader – a 73% probability. In a party whose membership was swollen by Jeremy Corbyn, and which was largely loyal to him, Starmer did not enter the race as Corbyn’s presumed heir apparent. With early personal branding, Rebecca Long-Bailey carried this torch.

“No surrender, a 4-day week, and a 3-day bender,” proclaimed her supporters. Dancing on the political graves of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Zarah Sultana derided “40 years of Thatcherism” in her maiden speech in the Commons. Long-Bailey said “no surrender” by having Sultana speak at her campaign launch a few days later. It takes the same defiance to think a 4-day week a sensible policy commitment from Labour – from the perspective of hard-pressed workers, it challenged free broadband as the most otherworldly of Labour’s 2019 pledges.

You’d need a 3-day bender for this continuity Corbynism to make sense. After which, the breweries will be nationalised, and the beer will be free. Or, at least, Labour might commit for it to be so. But incredible commitments from opposition change little. They might get some in opposition more drunk, but the real effect is to help keep the Tories in government in perpetuity.

Such folly should, therefore, be debarred by rule 3 of our rule book (“promote the election of Labour Party representatives at all levels of the democratic process”). But the extent to which the membership has an appetite for continuity Corbynism remains unclear. If that appetite remains unsatiated, it will carry Long-Bailey, now benefitting from the formidable endorsement of Unite, to the leadership.

We cannot consistently criticise both Long-Bailey for making insufficient accommodation with the electorate and Starmer for being too accommodating of the membership. Yet there are those who see Starmer’s campaign launch video as overly tailored to traditional Labour themes. This would be a valid criticism if this were a general election and he were seeking to convince the general public. Starmer is calibrating his message to his audience – precisely what the uncompromising Corbyn was criticised for not doing and the “no surrender” mindset threatens to maintain.

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‘Aspirational socialism.’ Again.

20/01/2020, 09:55:39 PM

The big mistake political campaigners often make when they come up with slogans for their candidates is hubris.

They assume that the pithy little phrase they have dreamt up to encapsulate their candidate’s credo is an original. A gem they have found in the rough which they will polish until it shines.

To her detractors, she’s the ‘continuity Corbyn’ candidate, but it seems Rebecca Long-Bailey might be drawing inspiration from more mainstream Labour figures.

On Saturday, during the leadership hustings in Liverpool, she referred to her beliefs as “aspirational socialism.”

It’s a neat little line, combining, as it does, the ‘S’ word, which pleases the grassroots, with something vague and modern sounding. Who could be against people having aspirations? Rather than levelling down – the traditional criticism of left-wing politicians – it implies levelling-up. ‘You can still do well, but we just want more people to do well.’

Well, for someone deeply committed to Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution, Long-Bailey clearly practices what she preaches when it comes to recycling.

‘Aspirational socialism’ was used by Andy Burnham in his 2010 leadership campaign. The one where he came fourth in a field of five.

Perhaps, though, there’s an older vintage?

Here’s Long-Bailey’s predecessor as MP for Salford, Hazel Blears, back in 2010: “New Labour is about aspiration and ambition, which is absolutely how I come to be doing what I do, because my parents were ambitious and aspirational for me.”

Continuity Corbyn or Version 3.0 New Labour?

Posted in Inside | 5 Comments »

Rebecca Long-Bailey is not ‘continuity Corbyn.’ She’s just been a good sport

31/12/2019, 08:00:15 AM

by Kevin Meagher

As campaign launches go, it was inauspicious. Rebecca Long-Bailey’s piece in yesterday’s Guardian was her first public attempt to flesh out both an analysis of the party’s disastrous election defeat and to tentatively suggest why she is the person to repair the damage.

How did it go? As I say, inauspicious. There was some stuff about upending ‘the broken political system’ and uniting communities ‘in all their diversity’ through ‘progressive patriotism.’

But she is still ‘considering’ whether to stand for leader. (It might have been wiser, then, for those advising her to set some clearer expectations about her strategy and timeline?)

Hey-ho.

What was interesting, however, amid the bromides about having an ‘honest discussion about why we lost and how we can win,’ is what she didn’t say.

There wasn’t a single reference to Jeremy Corbyn in the piece, less still to him having ‘won the argument,’ if not the actual, you know, election.

There was no attempt to justify the party’s manifesto, widely seen, to misquote Mario Cuomo, as an attempt to ‘govern in poetry’ with a string of unaffordable and outdated commitments.

‘There are many lessons to learn from the defeat,’ she said, ‘but it’s clear we didn’t lose because of our commitments to scrap universal credit, invest in public services or abolish tuition fees.’ (Code for ‘our expensive programme of nationalisation was a disaster?’)

Creditably, there was nothing that sought to gloss over the failings of the election defeat.

What she did say is that Labour cannot ‘blame Brexit alone’ (code, presumably, for ‘yes, Jeremy was an issue on the doorstep’) and the party ‘must recognise that it’s no good having the right solutions if people don’t believe you can deliver them.’ (Translation: ‘No-one believed our grandiose policies could be paid for’).

(One interesting footnote is that she didn’t use the word ‘socialism’ once – a de rigour affectation in Labour politics since the 2010 defeat).

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The Uncuts: 2019 political awards (part I)

30/12/2019, 08:50:15 PM

Politician of the year: Boris Johnson

In this supposed period of Labour reflection, many would concede that Boris Johnson faced a weak opponent in Jeremy Corbyn. And that Corbyn was foolish, given the leverage afforded to him by Johnson’s lack of a Commons majority, to allow Johnson a general election at the time and on the terms that he desired.

But you can only beat what is in front of you and Johnson did this comprehensively. With Mandelsonian message discipline (get Brexit done) and a Blair-like pitch for the centre. “We were elected as New Labour and we will govern as New Labour,” said Blair in 1997. Substitute One Nation Tories for New Labour and you have the key ingredient of Johnson’s acceptance speech.

This is easy to mock. But what was Labour’s slogan in 2019? And what was our pitch to mainstream Britain?

Perhaps we should see these things as less New Labour and more essential requirements of any political success, which Johnson much more effectively provided than Corbyn.

Johnson has no time to rest on his laurels: a Catalonia-type standoff with Scotland is pending; a trade deal with the EU, on the timescale that he insists upon, will require compromises that he has not yet acknowledged. But he now enjoys a majority large enough to make Mark Francois as marginal as Corbyn was in the Blair years.

Johnson is deadly serious, like a contemporary Disraeli, about using this new authority to sufficiently deliver for the north and the Midlands that the new blue wall keeps him in power for a decade. It is time, finally, for Labour to stop underestimating him and start – without descending to clichés about London coffee bars and northern towns – taking the steps to stop him.

“Sharp Elbows” award for earliest use of a personal logo in a leadership election

This special award, in leadership election season, marks out Rebecca Long-Bailey for her committed start to campaigning to be party leader, even long before the 2019 general election was lost. (more…)

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »

Labour can’t have our cake and eat it. We need to face our Brexit responsibilities

17/07/2017, 10:23:17 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Gus O’Donnell has stressed what has long been obvious about the Brexit process: “There is no way all these changes will happen smoothly and absolutely no chance that all the details will be hammered out in 20 months.” We are, therefore, starring into the abyss of a ‘no deal’ scenario.

This, according to JP Morgan, would be, “enormously disruptive to (trade) activity in the short run.” How bad? JP Morgan struggle to quantify this because, “there are no meaningful precedents for such an abrupt change.” That no one else has ever thought anything like this a good idea, should be a hint, shouldn’t it?

Living standards are being eroded by a post-referendum fall in sterling. Investment in the UK car industry has fallen by 30 per cent over the same period. Unsurprisingly, other industries are considering relocating out of a jurisdiction that can provide no clarity about the terms upon which it is soon to trade with the world.

Quelle surprise, too, to the supposed revelation that other European countries will encourage this investment to come to them. Immigrants – who might have treated our sick or picked our fruit – are departing these shores as rapidly as money is. Losing money and people is terrible for UK PLC and all our back pockets. With the CBI pushing for the softest of Brexits – inside the Customs Union and Single Market – the pressure from business on the government builds.

In not heeding these business warnings, the Tories are choosing to be the party of Brexit, not the party of business. It can no longer be both. It cannot have its cake and eat it. The ideological purity of Brexit and business pragmatism cannot coexist.

Neither – pace Rebecca Long Bailey – can Labour have its cake and eat it. We cannot sit back, watch this Tory destruction, and pretend that we have some kind of elixir known as “a jobs-first Brexit”. There is no such thing. We should be honest about that.

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Complaints over shortlist in Salford

14/07/2014, 04:48:05 PM

The race to succeed Hazel Blears as the Labour candidate for Salford and Eccles has run into controversy following last weekend’s shortlisting meeting.

Complaints have been made to the party’s North West regional office after the unusual decision was made to shortlist just two candidates, despite other applicants having multiple branch nominations.

Yet, unsuccessful candidates have been told by local officials there is no appeals procedure and no feedback has been given about the decision to proceed with such a small shortlist.

Sarah Brookes, a senior manager for Manchester Airport Group, who was born and actually lives in the seat, had four branch nominations. This would normally ensure a place on the final shortlist.

Meanwhile Sara Hyde, who works as a mentor for young women in the prison system, received two branch nominations.

Under Labour’s internal system of preferential voting, it is usual that at least three candidates are shortlisted for a parliamentary selection.

Instead, members now face a choice at next month’s hustings meeting of either Cheshire solicitor Rebecca Long-Bailey or Salford City Councillor Sue Pugh, chair of the party’s North West regional board and partner of NEC member Peter Wheeler.

At the 2010 General Election, Hazel Blears had a majority of 5,725.

Update: 10:05 15/07/14

Sophie Taylor has also been shortlisted. However we understand she only had a single nomination, raising questions about how Brookes and Hyde could possibly be left off the shortlist.

Posted in Inside | 6 Comments »

Wine buff has nose for victory

08/06/2013, 02:58:02 PM

Julia Tickridge has this afternoon been selected as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Weaver Vale.

The Cheshire West and Chester borough councillor beat off a strong challenge from party organiser Lauren Cassidy, with solicitor Rebecca Long-Baliey coming third. North West Party Board Chair, Sue Pugh was the fourth shortlisted candidate.

The final run off saw Tickridge beat Cassidy by 66 votes to 61.

Tickridge is a languages graduate and formerly worked for chemicals giant ICI in Germany. She also has a background in further education and is a qualified International Wine Challenge judge.

It is believed that just twelve candidates applied for the seat, designated an All-Women Shortlist (AWS) by the party’s National Executive Committee.

However this is the second AWS selection process in the area where relatively few women candidates applied. Nearby Wirral West saw NHS campaigner Margaret Greenwood selected from a field of just a dozen candidates.

The Weaver Vale seat is currently held by Conservative Graham Evans with a majority of just 991.

Posted in Inside | 1 Comment »