Posts Tagged ‘selection’

The Tories are harking back to a mythical ‘golden age’ of grammar schools

26/07/2016, 04:12:25 PM

by Angela Rayner

Conservative Voice, a Tory activist group, has officially launched their campaign to lift the ban on opening new grammar schools, introduced by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair 18 years ago.

If prime minister Theresa May is serious about her recent rhetoric on the steps of Downing Street, when she said that her government would do everything it could to help “anyone, whatever your background, to go as far as your talents will take you”, then she will halt this divisive campaign in its tracks.

Some Tories argue for more grammar schools as engines of social mobility, which propel kids from working-class, low and middle income families up the social ladder. But the facts argue otherwise.

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that amongst those identified as high achievers at an early age, children who are eligible for free school meals or who live in poorer neighbourhoods are significantly less likely to attend a grammar school than their better off classmates.

There are 163 grammar schools left in the country. In 161 of them, fewer than 10% of pupils are eligible for free school meals.

According to research by the House of Commons library, around 2% of children at grammar schools are eligible for free school meals.

So they are not being drawn from the poorest backgrounds.

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Time to put away the needle and thread and stop stitching up selections

11/04/2012, 08:30:59 AM

by Peter Watt

If I was sat in Labour party HQ in Victoria Street right now, staring down the barrel of further financial strife, then I would be tempted to do everything I could to minimise unnecessary expenditure.  And I would be right to do so.  If the reports are true that the party overspent last year by £1.7 million then it is quite a big gun after all!

But if it really is financial strife that has apparently lead to a proposal to ban sitting MPs from standing for election to directly elected mayors or police and crime commissioners later this year, then that is a terrible error.

It is however an error that merely highlights a serious malaise at the heart of our politics, and to be fair, the politics of all of the major parties.

On the face of it, the argument for the decision to ban ambitious MP’s from standing is persuasive.  Each by-election will cost £70 – £100,000 or so.  We might lose to another (popular) candidate.  Why take the risk?

But these reasons are all predicated on an out-of-date thought process.

The assumption is that the only way to win is for the party to impose the “right” candidate. That the campaign must be run using the central party machine which imposes the will of the “experts” on the locals.  And finally that the campaign must then spend on staff, hotels, travel, campaign HQ and lots of flash literature.  All spending money that the party doesn’t actually have.

To be fair, for many years this model served the party pretty well.  As I know well because I have worked on, planned, set budgets for and managed selections (read into that what you will) for more by-elections than I care to remember.  But it is a model that is simply no longer fit for purpose.

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Celebrity stitch-up: the game show coming to a CLP near you

17/11/2011, 07:30:11 AM

by Peter Watt

Hoorah! I am delighted to see that we are well and truly into selection season again. It means that we can expect many more stories of the “it’s a stitch-up” genre.

Because selection stitch-ups are the stuff of activist legend and fantasy. They contain all of the elements that excite: corrupted internal democracy, re-interpretation of rules, officious officials, favours being done for favoured sons and daughters and the rights of the local party being impinged. Lovely. Still, good to see that in Thurrock, at least, the new generation and Ed’s new politics have all come to nothing. Nope, in selections, at least, it all looks like good old fashioned business as usual.

I personally find it all a little bit bizarre. Why don’t we just grow up a bit and either recognise the current system for what it is or if we don’t like it change it.

The current system of selections for parliamentary seats is in theory a model of democracy. Rules and regulations enshrine the rights of local members to select their candidate. But in reality, various powerful factions load the dice in their favour. The leader’s office will have a pool of candidates that it wants selecting. The trade unions another block. There will be groups of candidates that differing factions will see as being broadly okay and will therefore help: all within the rules. And other groups that differing factions will see as broadly not okay, and they will not be helped: all within the rules. Of course not all of the factions will get their way. Not every one of the leader’s candidates will get selected. But proportionately, the impact of the favoured and not favoured will be high. (more…)

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Let’s not let hacking scare off good candidates

23/07/2011, 01:30:15 PM

by Staynton Brown

Why is there such a small pool of people who want to put there names forward for selection?

Our politicians too often seem to have followed an all too familiar career path conveyor belt. From a decent university – to a thinktank –  to parliamentary researcher – to MP. It requires the need to think about one’s future from the earliest age, to manage a life. I’m sure many of the Labour shadow cabinet have followed this career trajectory and benefitted from attending meritocratic excellent state or private schools, with the support of educated parents. Tony Blair made reference to this in his updated paperback addition of A Journey.

Near the top of the list of reasons less people go for selection must be media scrutiny and intrusion. Before the phone hacking revelations, it was still a daunting prospect to know that you may have red top journalists and paparazzi digging into your personal life, forensically scrutinising every decision you have made in your life.

One of the most damaging consequences of the phone hacking revelations is that it ratchets up that climate of fear. Right now there are suspicions Gordon Brown had his phone and bank details hacked into for almost ten years. There have been reports that George Osborne may have been the victim of phone hacking. In fact, if you were in the news as a famous person or you just happened to have suffered from newsworthy personal tragedy, you were seemingly at risk of being a victim of hacking and pernicious media intrusion.

The forthcoming inquiries must be wide ranging, robust, credible and must deliver real change, where lessons are also learned by the Labour party. An unintended consequence of these more devastating revelations is the narrowing of the pool of talent willing to put themselves forward for elected roles in the Labour party, or get involved in Labour party politics. Media scrutiny was almost unbearable before, but these devastating revelations concerning NOTW must surely make many people even more nervous to put themselves forward.

This is not aided by the growth in social media. Many younger people are on Facebook and Twitter, or managing their own blog sites, with their work related reports and opinions automatically placed on the web. The level of self-censorship required in a new information age is a burden many do not want to bare. Especially when, if you raise your head above the parapet, you know they’ll be a media or politically led trawl of every recorded event in your life. It is then followed by the anxiety that you are at risk of the worst sort of subjective historical revisionism.

Without real change, imagine the future of who will make up the Labour leadership, inner circle, central office and aspirant candidates – a smaller coterie of people, carefully stage managing their professional careers from the earliest ages, following the same career paths, resulting in an even smaller group of identikit politicians and public leaders. Homogeneity of experience, culture and background should not define the Labour party.

Those in power and positions of influence might be unconcerned, but the lack of diversity of professional experiences and backgrounds at the heart and centre of our party will eventually damage us.

Staynton Brown is a Labour campaigner and member of Labour Values

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