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Posts Tagged ‘Sadiq Khan’

Shadow cabinet league: Sadiq Khan strides ahead

25/04/2014, 10:46:55 AM

by Alan Smithee

Last month for Labour was defined by two events: the Special Conference and the Budget. The former was a triumph for Ed and the latter a disappointment. This is the story of his leadership – for every positive leap, a stumble follows. It has been much the same for his shadow cabinet colleagues, a month of minor triumph and minor disappointment but not much more.

As he did in the London Marathon, Sadiq Khan strides far ahead of his colleagues.

His speech on prison reform did not please the hang ‘em and flog ‘em brigade but sketched out a liberal-pragmatic path that fits with Khan’s other pronouncements.

March was another solid month for Chris Leslie. His strong performance on rebutting government claims surrounding the budget showed his continued importance to the shadow treasury team.

For Hilary Benn, the month of March was marked by the death of his father. As a result, it seems glib to comment on his shadow cabinet activity, other than to note his rise continues with a step up to third from fifth.

It was a relatively quiet month for Caroline Flint on the media front, counterbalanced by her good usage of written questions. Her questions, as per usual, focussed mainly on energy but she also found time this month to probe on climate change too.

Yvette Cooper impressed last month with a considered speech at Demos on the balance of security and liberty in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Her extra-Parliamentary work underpins her position near the top of the table; she rarely tables questions to ministers.

Rounding off the top six is Rachel Reeves. As in previous months, Reeves has continued to score points against IDS over the trials and tribulations of universal credit. She also struck a good balance between positivity over improving labour market statistics and highlighting the lack of quality jobs and issues with youth unemployment.

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Shadow cabinet league: Khan remains the boss

28/03/2014, 05:15:01 PM

by Alan Smithee

This column returns, bronzed with liver aching, from a brief absence. Thankfully, the shadow cabinet has not taken a similar sojourn. As we enter the New Politics™ era, the shadow cabinet remains important to delivering a Labour victory in 2015 and harrying the coalition in the meantime.

Two MPs have established a commanding lead at the top of the table. Sadiq Khan and Chris Leslie have consistently performed well. Khan has excellent in consistent reactive media work and producing a gargantuan amount of written question. His continued focus on Oakwood Prison and the disturbance in January shows a commitment to scrutiny rather than questions based on cynical opportunism.

Leslie, who does the donkey work in the Treasury team, has produced similar levels of questions and has been able to generate a number of attacks on the Government. His speech on the zero-base review helped flesh out Labour’s pledge, key for offering fiscal credibility.

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Shadow cabinet league: Khan still top as Benn barges into top ten

21/01/2014, 02:42:44 PM

by Alan Smithee

Early on in a season, a league table often struggles to reflect the true strength of teams. Sometimes teams remain high up in a table due to a superficial good start. However, one cannot tell truly until after a good handful of games have passed. The same is true for Uncut’s shadow cabinet table. However, with December’s results’ in, there are still some useful hints at work rate and the tactics used.

Within the top five, Sadiq Khan remains at number one, fueled by large numbers of written questions and heavily reactive media activity. His impressive performance has continued to cover a broad policy spectrum and, even if it does not pay major immediate political dues, will leave Khan well set up to manage and modify the penal system. The same formula is used by Chris Leslie, Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna. Flint has continued to use the energy price freeze pledge and rising bills to hammer the government on the cost of living. Andy Burnham however has focussed his guns in the media sphere working reactive and proactive to attack the failings of government NHS reforms.

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The shadow cabinet league: Sadiq takes an early lead

04/12/2013, 12:53:58 PM

by Alan Smithee

Rebooting a franchise is always a tricky task; for every Batman Begins, there is a Phantom Menace or Superman Returns. This reboot is rather cheaper and less sexy than your average Hollywood blockbuster, having been calculated on open-source software. As it is the first month back, it is hard to draw major conclusions from such a small data of pool. However, there are data points that bear discussing.

Shadow cabinet work rate table – November 2013

Storming into a surprise lead is Sadiq Khan, shadow justice secretary. Much of his media comment and written answers that underpinned his high score have been under-the-radar. He has constantly hammered away at the DoJ on prisons, focussing on rising costs and issues with places. His mayoral ambition seems to be drifting, but he has mastered the skills of opposition and could well turn up a political gem with his relentless digging.

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Sunday review on Thursday: The not-the-London-Labour-mayor hustings

28/11/2013, 01:14:49 PM

by David Butler

When is a husting not a husting? When it is a Progress Campaign for a Labour Majority event on winning in London. That all the invited panellists, including the curiously absent Sadiq Khan, are considered potential nominees for Mayor of London was just pure coincidence.

The event was less a tale of two Londons (or One London Labour or whatever today’s vogue is) but of two de Blasios. David Lammy and Diane Abbott sought this mantle both through reference to New York’s Mayor-elect and through the language and policies on offer. Lammy provide a toned down version of de Blasio’s message, whilst Abbott raised the rhetorical and policy stakes, offering a clear left-populist platform. This, and her potential support from the remnants of Ken’s old machine, makes her a serious contender within a party and electorate to the left of the national norm. Even Andrew Adonis and Tessa Jowell, neither of whom particularly fit the de Blasio mould, referenced “two cities” and “One London” respectively.

However, in many ways, it felt like a London housing policy seminar that happened to have a different title. Both Abbott and Lammy announced support rent regulation, albeit with Lammy obfuscating by calling for “fair rents”. Lammy subsequently redeemed himself with an eminently sensible proposal to build housing on the Green Belt. Jowell warned about the impact of the mansion tax on “asset rich but cash poor” families, a rather surprising move in the circumstances; worrying about those who do well out Britain’s over-inflated housing market should not be high up her priority list. As expected, Adonis had the more innovative ideas proposing to explore shared equity schemes and a “housing bank” to take a stake in future developments in order to prevent land banking.

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Isn’t it time Labour stopped facing both ways on Islamist extremism?

20/02/2013, 11:33:32 AM

by Rob Marchant

In the Labour party, we have, last week, been shocked at how one of our members of Parliament, Sadiq Khan, can receive death threats from freaks who believe they are licensed to make him vote against gay marriage by force including, apparently, murder. And Khan is apparently not the only one: Labour List reports that “Rushanara Ali, Shabana Mahmood, Anas Sarwar…are all believed to have been similarly targeted”. Bravely, none of them wavered in their commitment to their own values, of equality for all under the law.

Yet, at the same time, we have other MPs, who invite a preacher who laughs about taunting his Jewish high school teacher with a swastika, who thinks being gay is a “great crime” that signals “the start of the collapse of every society, and who is convicted of funding a terrorist organisation, to speak at the mother of all parliaments.

In the Labour party, we are shocked to read in the Observer at how supporters of extremist group Jamaat-e-Islami throw stones at a crowd of people in London’s East End, demonstrating against the theocracy which is killing their homeland, Bangladesh. They stone a crowd containing old people and children. Many of those demonstrating are Muslim women, who rightly reject this misogynistic cabal who would happily bring Sharia to the East End.

Yet, at the same time, we last year campaigned to re-elect a candidate who, as former Mayor, in 2004 welcomed to London a particularly vile preacher. A preacher who, apart from his views on rape and wife-beating, feels entirely comfortable with the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation.

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Time for policy in the pub with Sadiq Khan

09/07/2012, 07:27:19 PM

The government might be engaged in a slow motion, policy car crash over Lords reform, but could you do better? Really?

OK, it’s highly likely that Stevie Wonder at the wheel of a McLaren, going the wrong way round the Hanger Lane Gyratory System, would be a case study in safety compared to the attempts of this government’s business managers to steer Lords reform through parliament. But how much better could you do?

Well, here’s your chance to show the world. It’s that time of the month again. It’s policy in the pub with the Pragmatic Radicalism funsters. This month, the topic is justice and constitutional reform with our shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan in the chair.

You know the format – 90 seconds on your policy idea, quick-fire questions and then the popular vote. It will all be happening tomorrow night, the 10^th of July, at the Barley Mow Pub (upstairs restaurant), 104 Horseferry Road, Westminster, London, SW1P 2EE, between 1900 and 2100.

The winning idea will be automatically adopted as the first policy in Labour’s next manifesto.

Alright, that last bit isn’t quite true. But the winner does get a slot on Uncut to share their insight with the viewing public, so that’s nearly as good.

See you in the pub.

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A chance to do the right thing

15/06/2011, 03:30:04 PM

by Tessa Jowell, Sadiq Khan and Jim Murphy

When the government does the right thing it is important that we support it, basing our judgement at all times on actions and not words. We are dismayed at the government’s decision, announced yesterday, to abolish the chief coroner’s office (CCO), a decision with damaging consequences for ordinary people up and down the country. We hope the government’s new-found capacity to listen will soon again be on show.

Legislation in 2009 received cross-party support in establishing a CCO, seeking to deal with some of the difficult issues that arise from complex fatalities through a system based on independent expertise. Tragically, it’s often military inquests which require such a service and this is therefore an issue close to the heart of many bereaved military families. But it’s not just families of military personnel who suddenly suffer tragedy that brings them into contact with the coronial system. Abolition of the CCO is opposed by various charities and organisations including CRY (cardiac risk in the young), which supports bereaved families who have lost loved ones suddenly through undetected cardiac problems. Sue Ainsworth, whose son Jonathan tragically died suddenly at the age of 21 last year, has joined CRY in calling for the creation of the CCO, following failings in the inquest held into Jonathan’s death. Sue said:

“Currently, the coroner is not answerable to anybody so if there’s any delays, and any inequalities in the system, you have not got any comeback at all”.

The job of a chief coroner is to ensure that families and friends of all victims are sufficiently involved in the coroner’s investigation; improve training; add quality controls and independent safeguards on inquests; and add consistency of oversight, leadership, independence and expertise to the coroners who are dealing with military inquests.

Establishing such a system is a central obligation under the military covenant, the bond between the nation, the state and the services which says that no member of the service community, including dependents, should suffer disadvantage arising from service and that special provision should at times be made to reflect their sacrifices. That is why, in government, we legislated for a coroner’s office. Scrapping it undermines the covenant which the government claim to want to uphold. Indeed, the Royal British Legion has called this act “a betrayal of bereaved armed forces families and threatens the military covenant.” (more…)

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The greatest lesson from New Labour is that winners have no time for nostalgia

16/03/2011, 07:00:02 AM

by Tom Watson

It is not true, as some uncharitable colleagues have said, that the people who run Progress are a defeated faction in need of a cause. I think, though, it’s fair to say they belong to a very different organisation to the one that Derek Draper, through sheer willpower, fused into a powerful force at the heart of the Labour party, whose influence endured for more than a decade.

I am one of the few people who has seen the confidential strategy document presented in 1995 to Tony Blair, John Prescott and funder David Sainsbury that led to the creation of the organisation.

I remember the day when Derek took the bus from South London up to Islington so that he could pitch the idea to Tony Blair. While the kids were knocking a football around, Derek sat in the future prime minister’s back garden outlining his plans for the organisation. Tony gave his approval on the express condition that Progress centred itself around the party leader and was not in any way to be seen as, or develop into, a faction. He laid down one more condition – it had to have the approval of John Prescott. (more…)

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Khan is right: prison doesn’t work, but welfare does

07/03/2011, 05:36:49 PM

by David Talbot

In today’s Guardian, Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice secretary, signalled a shift in Labour’s approach to criminal justice. New Labour, Khan argues, made a mistake by “playing tough” on crime and allowing the prison population to soar to record levels during its time in government, instead of tackling sky-high reoffending rates. His central argument is that New Labour relied too heavily on hardline rhetoric and the supposition that rising rates of imprisonment were in itself a desirable policy. His welcome, and overdue, foray represents the first attempt by a senior Labour figure to detail the party’s new direction on penal policy.

No doubt part of the reason New Labour trumpeted this tough stance was the fear that rehabilitation and reoffending would be seen as “soft on crime”, which meant that New Labour did not do anywhere near enough to explore approaches which could have been more effective in reducing crime. First, it involves rejecting the idea of a simple equation between a rising prison population and lower crime; and second, looking beyond the criminal justice system is crucial to reducing crime. (more…)

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