Posts Tagged ‘Steve Richards’

For this campaign and beyond, Labour needs to articulate a vision of freedom. The manifesto was a good starting point

16/06/2024, 10:41:51 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“There is a sort of sea change going on now and I would argue it is to the left,” claims Steve Richards on the latest edition of Not Another One, a new podcast and one of the most welcome developments of this general election.

The guide to this possible leftward turn sits, to some extent, in the Labour manifesto 2024. But, as Phil Collins observes, “a manifesto is only an opening gambit.”

1945 brought a Labour government of bigger and more enduring change than any other. Yet, as Collins notes, “Labour’s 1945 manifesto had just seven pledges. In 2019 the manifesto contained one hundred and sixty.”

What Labour did have in 1945 was an argument about freedom. “For once,” writes Richards in Turning Points, “a Labour leader won a case about ‘freedom’ … It was only through the ‘power of the state’ that people had become free … Future Labour leaders who lost elections might have fared better if they had been as nimble as Attlee in claiming the vote-winning term ‘freedom’ for their party.”

The freedom to be homosexual under Harold Wilson in the 1960s and the freedom to smoke-free pubs with Tony Blair in 2000s are relatively rare examples of Labour leaders embedding change through arguments about freedom.

“Freedom is a complex term, but one that (Margaret Thatcher) seized and defined in her own terms, a talent that has usually eluded Labour prime ministers,” laments Richards in Turning Points.

Isaiah Berlin’s famous Two Concepts of Liberty essay lurks behind these grand Labour and Tory battles. With Tories usually emphasising the negative (freedom from) and Labour the positive (freedom to).

(more…)

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It was the risk not the spending that Labour got wrong

11/01/2011, 04:15:34 PM

by Anthony Painter

Ed Miliband is in a bind. He is tied to a fiscal policy that the public believes was profligate and irresponsible. His strategy so far has been to defend that record to the best of his ability. That is not enough. It may be time to switch tack.

The debate is homing in on the question of whether Labour was spending too great before the 2007 turbulence. And actually if you pull out the figures the answer is marginally on the side of ‘defend the record’- on the face of it. Current spending was in deficit ahead of the crisis though not catastrophically so- 0.3% of GDP in 2006-2007. The public sector net debt was lower than in 1997 at 36.6%.

None of this looks irresponsible in fiscal terms. Public sector productivity and inefficiency tell a slightly different story- there is no doubt that the money invested in public services post-2001 failed to raise output as it should have done. Steve Richards in his articulation of the case for the defence in the Independent this morning acknowledges that fact:

“Labour failed to address inefficiencies in the public sector and some of the additional investment was wasted needlessly, but the overall spending was necessary at the time, as Blair discovered then and some senior Tories discover now.”

So the case for the defence seems to exonerate Labour for imprudence but is more ambiguous on wastefulness. (more…)

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Breakfast at the Cinnamon: a recipe for cash

22/06/2010, 11:26:32 AM

The cinnamon club is an up market Indian restaurant next door to the department for education, just across the road from Westminster Abbey.  At 300 yards or so, it is one of the closest restaurants to the House of Commons. Once, it had a Michelin star.

At any sitting, its large, airy dining room will be more than smattered with political big fish, their media parasites and the big business interests who put the oxygen in the tank.

At breakfast, while the ladies who lunch are still painting their nails, the political wildlife are the only ones there.

This morning was typical.  Steve Richards of the Independent was with John Pienaar of the BBC.  Anyone who knows Pienaar will not be surprised that he was wolfing a full English.  Richards, still digesting a big lunch in the House of Commons with David Miliband yesterday, was more restrained. (more…)

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