UNCUT: The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part III – Disappointment of the year: Mayor Sadiq Khan’s lack of solidarity with London’s Jewish community

04/01/2025, 09:30:28 PM

Sadiq Khan – or Sir Sadiq, as we will soon be calling him – has suffered a lot of brickbats during his two-and-a-bit terms in office. Some, like Trump’s criticism, have been playing to the worst, prejudiced instincts of their own bases and should be immediately dismissed.

Others are more justified. For example, what are the great achievements he can point to, after eight years in charge of Britain’s capital? Activists, we can be sure, shuffle awkwardly when asked this on the doorstep. “Not being Boris Johnson” is not that much of an accolade for a politician who has now been hovering at or near the top of politics in Westminster and London for nearly two decades.

For example, in this election year, knife and gun crime was up 20% year on year in his beat, but he got elected anyway. In his role as Greater London’s Police and Crime Commissioner, he has political oversight of the Met. One imagines that that means achieving some key policy goals that matter to Londoners, but these days it all seems to be more about providing officers to support the “LGBTQ+ Community”– an increasingly fractious and disunited “group” these days, in any event – and having police officers dancing at Pride, than tackling actual crime on the streets.

But the biggest oversight in Khan’s oversight is surely the fact that, for the last year and a quarter, there have been pretty much weekly demonstrations, coordinated by the dreadful Palestine Solidarity Campaign: a far-left grouping, often mentioned in dispatches at Uncut over the years for their anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than their standing up for the rights of non-aligned Palestinians.

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UNCUT: In defence of the Labour government’s first few months: A decent start that is underestimated because of endemic political ADHD

02/01/2025, 08:48:23 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Disappointment. That’s the tenor of much commentary about the Labour government’s first few months. Criticism for a lack of radicalism is to be expected from the left but there’s been a chorus from centrist voices. For example, here’s Duncan Robinson from the Economist

Starmer’s Labour as the apogee of “not a good look” thought

www.economist.com/britain/2025…

[image or embed]

— Duncan Robinson  (@duncanrobinson.bsky.social) 2 January 2025 at 09:32


Setting aside gripes from the Socialist Campaign Group that the top 100 companies on the FTSE have not yet been nationalised, there are two elements to the mainstream critique: more could and should have been done on policy, such as tax or planning reform and that there’s a missing vision thing. Underpinning both, on occasion, is a wistful view of how much better things were in 1997 after a few months of Labour government.

Both aspects of criticism have a kernel of truth but are currently being wildly exaggerated while the nostalgia for 1997 is a function of rose-tinted spectacles revealing a grand design that was distinctly absent at the time.

On policy, more can always be done but it is equally important to get it right. The Lansley NHS reforms of the Cameron-Clegg coalition are testament to the dangers of ‘go big or go home’ without having a clear plan. They were an ill thought-out mess which few in the NHS wanted and even fewer defend today.

It was patently obvious that precious little policy had been developed by Labour in opposition and areas like planning and tax are much easier to get wrong than right. If there has been no progress in these areas in the next year then there maybe a better case for complaint. In the interim, since attaining office, there have been plenty of policies that will have long term impact. From employment rights to housing targets to new rules on onshore wind farms, there have been substantive announcements. Combined with action to stop madness such as the Rwanda policy, almost £1bn spent for zero impact, and new funding of the public services in the budget, this is surely a reasonable start.

On the vision thing, more often than not, it is a vibe, retrofitted to government policy based on what has worked. In 1997, there were big immediate achievements like the Minimum Wage, Scottish devolution and independence for the Bank of England but it would be straining credulity to say there was a distinct ideological thread to these moves other than ‘modernisation’ or just ‘making stuff work better’.

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UNCUT: The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part II – Rising star of the year: Josh MacAlister MP

31/12/2024, 04:08:33 PM

Rising Star – Josh MacAlister MP

The Conservative victory in the 2017 Copeland by-election was a harbinger of the red wall collapsing in the 2019 general election. At that general election, all Cumbrian seats turned Tory – except Liberal Democrat Tim Farron’s seat. By the time of the 2024 general election, the most Labour parts of Copeland had merged with the most Labour parts of Workington to form a safely Labour seat called Whitehaven and Workington.

This new seat was won by Josh MacAlister, as all other Cumbrian seats also turned from blue to red – with the continued exception of Farron’s. Two of these victories (Michelle Scrogham in Barrow and Julie Minns in Carlisle) returned to Labour seats with long histories of Labour support. Another – Markus Campbell-Savours in Penrith and Solway – made the holiday location of Withnail and I a Labour seat for the first time.

MacAlister enjoys the largest majority among these Cumbrian Labour MPs. This firm political foundation combines with a strong CV, including establishing Frontline, a graduate social worker training programme modelled on Teach First, and being appointed by the government in 2020 to chair the Independent Review into Children’s Social Care.

“The new government has announced they plan to implement a lot of (the recommendations of this Review),” MacAlister recently told The Big Issue. “What is really encouraging is that the issue is clearly seen as a priority for the government. Prime minister Keir Starmer used time in his party conference speech to announce measures to protect care leavers from homelessness. For too long the sector, and the children and families relying on it, has been overlooked.” MacAlister also sought to help children with a Private Members Bill that will protect them “from the harms that can be caused by excessive screen time, and the use of social media”.

An unusually large number of newly elected MPs were immediately appointed to ministerial roles in 2024 (Alistair Carns, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Georgia Gould, Kirsty McNeill, and Sarah Sackman). Lucy Rigby was elected in July and became Solicitor General in December. Undoubtedly, these are the rising stars of the Starmer era.

There remains much ability among newly elected MPs that has yet to be rewarded with ministerial appointment. Many egos will need to be managed to ensure a harmonious PLP. One of the foremost among these talents is our rising star, Josh MacAlister. Like many who have achieved promotion under Starmer, MacAlister benefits from a clear area of specialism and professional expertise. If these virtues can be successfully applied, there should be no danger of Cumbria turning blue again.

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UNCUT: The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part I – Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

31/12/2024, 02:21:33 PM

Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

Obviously its Keir Starmer. The man just led Labour back to government with an eye-wateringly large majority. Who else could it be?

But there are layers to Keir Starmer being Uncut’s politician of the year. Yes, the achievements demand recognition. Perhaps more interesting though is how this politician continues to baffle and confound Westminster.

Here is a post by John Rentoul from Sunday 29th December, quoting Tim Shipman’s intro in his piece in the Sunday Times. It’s extremely well written and smart intro, perfectly encapsulating the current conventional wisdom on Keir Starmer, the extent to which he is serially misread and why his success will continue to surprise.

There’s nothing factually wrong or incorrect but two issues show how the gaze of the cognoscenti is in the wrong place.

First, there’s the focus on the immediate with the emphasis on the government’s day to day travails. Labour has a near impregnable majority, no election due for several years and a very recent general election where pollsters were, to put it politely, all over the place. But somehow snapshot polls and the horse-race lens still dominate reporting. There’s lots that’s negative that could be written that is material to understanding Keir Starmer’s position, but it would be about policy travails not who’s up or who’s down. The mirroring of Sunak and Starmer in the intro is neat but their respective positions, Sunak at the end of a difficult parliament with an evaporating majority and Starmer at the start of a parliament with a huge majority, could not be more different.

Second, there’s the appearance of Nigel Farage. With his quips and accompanying online malestrom, Farage is Westminster’s ideal of a politician. Yet while he did present a threat from the right to Sunak, he was quite the reverse for Keir Starmer, making a significant contribution to Labour’s majority by splitting the Tory vote. However, the framing is of Farage chasing down Starmer as he did Sunak. Once again there are plenty of threats to Labour, more relevant than Farage. For example, what about the Greens, they have almost the same number of MPs as Reform and actually took seats that were Labour targets.

Beyond the headline achievements, Keir Starmer is Uncut’s politician of the year because of how he has got to the top of the greasy pole: he is not of Westminster, he doesn’t do what’s expected, he doesn’t play the game, he rarely chases headlines, he isn’t attentive to the lobby and commentariat, but yet…he sits atop the biggest Labour majority in decades and has bent Westminster to his will.

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UNCUT: Nigel Farage is a malign influence on British politics but he’s also Labour’s greatest electoral asset. He splits the Tory vote, drags them too far right and unites the left

28/12/2024, 09:03:00 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Nigel Farage is a grifter and political huckster. He infects politics with prejudice and, as his conduct over summer demonstrated, cares not a jot about the real consequences of his posturing. But he is also the man who could help cement a new voter coalition for Labour that sustains the party in power over multiple general elections.

Three interlinked factors make Nigel Farage a unique electoral gift to Labour: Britain’s First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system, the idiocy he engenders within the Conservative party leadership and his toxic – for the majority of voters – personal brand.

Britain’s FPTP voting system has ensured that the choice at constituency level has usually been one of two parties for as long as Britons have gone to the polls. The identity of the two parties might vary in different parts of the country – for example, in Scotland, the SNP are normally one of the two, in parts of England, the Lib Dems are in the mix – but it is mainly Tory versus Labour.

FPTP’s iron law of two means that if one of the duopoly somehow has its vote divided by a new entrant, then the other party tends to win big. In the 1980s, the SDP detached a section of Labour’s support and helped the Tories register triple digit majorities. In 2024, Reform was the Tories’ version of the SDP.

Currently there is a mania sweeping the Conservative party that Reform could replace them in the top two. To an extent, anything is possible, yet this scenario is extraordinarily improbable. The last time a party was replaced was when Labour supplanted the Liberals 100 years ago, but it took an utterly unprecedented level of self-harm from the Liberals to hand Labour their position.

The Liberal party split into two, each faction led by a former leader who had been prime minister with unbounded personal acrimony poisoning any chance of rapid rapprochement.  Both versions of the Liberals wilfully acceded to being junior partners for different governments, first with the Tories in 1918 for Lloyd George’s National Liberals and then with Labour in 1924 for Asquith’s Liberals. It was a near unique set of circumstances where each faction legitimised Tories and Labour as the senior party and very publicly obviated the point of voting Liberal to potential supporters of any hue, whether from the left or the right.

This is the level of upheaval required to be replaced as one of the main two parties under FPTP. Now, ask yourself, is anything vaguely comparable likely in the next few years – are the Tories going to split in two? Are the factions going to support Labour and Reform? Kemi Badenoch might be a dreadful leader but she’s not going to preside over that. Probably.

Rather than the Tories being replaced nationally, much more feasible is that Reform win handfuls of seats at the next election, establishing footholds in groups of constituencies where they are competitive with the Conservatives. This future, where the split on the right is perpetuated is one where versions of the 2024 election are rerun again and again with Labour taking seats that would have previously been lost, because the vote on the right is split.

It is a future made more likely by the madness that engulfs Conservative leaders when dealing with Nigel Farage. The choice for Tory members at the leadership election might have been between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, but in terms of attitude to Reform the options were Farager or Faragerer, with the same underlying basic pitch: ‘Nigel was right, the Conservative government was wrong and as a senior Cabinet Minister in that government I failed to make a difference’ It is baffling that anyone would seriously mount this type argument, entreating right-wing ex-Conservatives to switch back to proven failures, while the impact on more centrist ex-Conservatives who moved to Labour or the Lib Dems (17% of their 2019 voters), voters who recoiled from the bouts of performative right-wing grandstanding of recent Tory governments, seems to have been entirely ignored.

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UNCUT: The assisted suicide Bill is an ethical Rubicon. Let’s not cross it

29/11/2024, 09:18:22 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Tellingly, the House of Commons website carries a warning about the research briefing on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, due to receive its Second Reading in the House of Commons today.

‘This briefing discusses issues around suicide which some readers may find distressing,’ it intones in bold writing. It’s grim subject matter to be sure, but there is still a need for candour. We are talking about ending human life, courtesy of the state’s healthcare professionals. What could be more distressing?

The proposed legislation would ensure that two doctors assess each request for an assisted death, ensuring the candidate had a ‘clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life’ and that they have reached this decision voluntarily, without pressure. If both doctors agree, the person may apply to the High Court for approval.

Kim Leadbeater the Labour backbencher promoting the Bill, is merely the latest campaigner seeking to alter the law in this area, following previous failed attempts by former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, in 2014 and former Labour MP, Rob Marris, in 2015.

Nothing about this issue is new.

‘Assisted dying’ – euthanasia in old money – remains an ethical Rubicon for our society, and one with ramifications beyond whether we allow a small number of patients in extremis and bound to expire the option of doing so earlier than nature intended.

For once we redefine the relationship between physician and patient in such a profound way, the door is opened to deeper questions and wider applications.

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UNCUT: Trump’s win points up just how fragile Labour’s position is

08/11/2024, 07:39:27 PM

by Rob Marchant

When Labour folk woke up on Wednesday morning, almost all of us surely felt a sharp pang of disappointment, accompanied perhaps by a much deeper uneasiness about the state of the world. Of course, we hate it in when “our team” loses but this was an election with potentially far-reaching consequences for us in Europe.

Ukraine is surely lost in its current form and Putin emboldened. And we are a facing an isolationist – and possibly even NATO-withdrawing America as our partner, run by a man whose brain is clearly not wired up like most of the rest of humanity, whatever their politics, and could care less for the law of the land, let alone the rules of constitutional democracy.

It is quite probably a truly historic moment, when the world’s tectonic plates shift. Our own country’s security is surely less than it was a few days ago. The only question is by how much.

What the Trump victory also shows is there is a tidal wave of the populist and authoritarian right washing over the Western world, one which Starmer’s government is vigorously swimming against and which is not going away. We can no longer pass it off as some blip of the late 2010s.

While we can be thankful for small mercies – we in Britain have already passed through a half-decade of disastrous populism and reacted against it – we should also recognise the precariousness of the privileged position we have found ourselves in since July.

If, after a very uneasy start, there were still any doubt how much of Labour’s vote were composed of true love for the party’s policy platform and how much simply of being utterly fed up of the Tories, there shouldn’t be after Tuesday’s Democrat meltdown.

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UNCUT: Will Hutton’s big ideas for remaking Britain

27/10/2024, 10:14:48 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“Ideas matter; they are the indispensable precondition for action,” writes Will Hutton in This Time No Mistakes (2024). Hutton is well-known for advancing the ideas that animated early phases of the last Labour government. The State We’re In (1996) argued for stakeholder capitalism. This idea achieved insufficient purchase to avoid Britain now needing to be remade.

“It was a duck-and-weave administration,” laments of New Labour in his latest book, “looking for points of least resistance and choosing not to boast about achievements for fear of upsetting the centre-right ideological consensus, which in fact was in disarray.” This book’s title might be understood as meaning, “listen more carefully to me, incoming Labour government, than your predecessors and avoid their mistakes”.

It is much more ambitious than that. It is not simply proposing that the Starmer government learn the lessons of the Blair/Brown years. It wants the Starmer to absorb “the elusive formula of and for success” that Hutton deduces from the past 100 or so years.

“There needs to be a feasible progressivism that effectively combines an ethic of socialism with progressive liberalism … and is unapologetically optimistic about the possibility of universal progress and justice in the best traditions of the European enlightenment.”

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UNCUT: Badenoch’s maternity pay row signals a trap for the Tories

05/10/2024, 08:43:36 PM

by David Ward

It’s a well-known finding from psychology that people care more about losing a pound they already have than they do about gaining a new one. There’s a reason that relatively well-off pensioners are still upset about losing their Winter Fuel Allowance, and it’s the same reason pensioners still receive the Christmas bonus every year that Edward Heath introduced as a one-off gift in 1972.

Kemi Badenoch’s recent travails suggest that the opposition may soon face a similar dilemma.

The leadership candidate is quite reasonably trying boost her credentials in the contest by taking the fight to her Labour opposite number in the Commons, Angela Rayner.

So it might seem almost a gift to Ms Badenoch that Angela Rayner is closely associated with Labour’s proposed workplace reforms which aim make parental leave, sick pay and other protections available from day 1, strengthen statutory sick pay, and make flexible working the default option from day 1. Badenoch can attack them as ‘anti-business’ with support from the right-leaning press, and make broader points about her values.

Yet as Ms Badenoch found ahead of her party conference, if you make the argument that supporting workers to have flexible hours and conditions is a problem you will be asked what the right level should be, or if there any other workplace entitlements you would change.

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UNCUT: Uncut Review: An Uneasy Inheritance, My Family and Other Radicals by Polly Toynbee

02/09/2024, 09:25:25 PM

By Jonathan Todd

“These days I keep coming across traces of vanished Labour social programmes,” writes Polly Toynbee in her 2023 memoir, “where some academics have kept measuring the results, holding onto proof of what succeeds in improving lives for the future day, if it ever comes, when another government as keen on social programmes revives these attempts.”

I was lucky to interview Polly on stage as part of the Political Therapy series that we run at 1000 Trades on the day that Rishi Sunak called the general election that ended with such a government. It was a great evening – but I wish I had read the memoir more closely beforehand.

We might have spoken more about her family’s connections to the city in which we were speaking. Her father edited, “a small left-wing newspaper … called the Birmingham Town Crier … One of its purposes was to rally the people against the Munich appeasement and to bar the city to its most famous son, Neville Chamberlain.”

A generation later, Polly’s sister was running, “one of the local neighbourhood housing and social assistance hubs the council was opening … She found herself at war with the council, because although they built the hubs they never let go, never devolving power let alone funds to neighbourhood control.” Plus ça change.

We might have discussed Polly’s touchpoints with Labour giants. “That family holiday in Yugoslavia when aged thirteen I stood on the quay and yelled for help and saved the lives of A. J. Ayer and Hugo Gaitskell who very nearly drowned.” There are, too, entertaining reflections on knowing Roy Jenkins, details of Harold Wilson’s role in Polly’s youthful, African adventures, and Peter Mandelson’s interactions when Polly worked, for journalist purposes, as a nursery assistant.

Or even the many salacious vignettes: “eye-popping tales of the unlikeliest ladies of the house screwing a tradesman on the kitchen table”; “the lavish, extravagant, exotic wastrel beloved of the gossip columns for nearly marrying Princess Margaret”; “sitting on the art roof hurling down tiles before she was expelled (from boarding school): she’s now a splendid radical doctor.”

It is, as ever, the narrative tension that keeps the pages turning.

There are tensions between civic and family roles. Of her great grandfather Polly writes: “Paragons of virtue are hard to live up to. Vegetarian, teetotal, donors of a large slice of their income to good causes, unmaterialistic, high-minded with relatively humble tastes, vigorous anti-imperialists, campaigners for all the great liberal causes – yet all but one of their children went to the bad in one way or another.” Generations of her family alternate between alcoholism and teetotalism.

Tensions between faith and science. The Pope asked a celebrated archaeologist and practising Catholic relative to investigate whether some bones should be ascribed to St Peter. Based on her findings, he proclaimed that they should in his 1950 Christmas message. “Great-Aunt Jocelyn was not quite so unequivocal in her verdict on the holy bones, but nor did she refute the Pope’s more or less infallible assertion.” Jocelyn’s religiosity is unusual among Polly’s family – with a turn to Christianity by her father becoming a tension between him and her.

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