Archive for December, 2022

The Uncuts: 2022 Political Awards (Part II)

31/12/2022, 04:48:53 PM

Comeback Of The Year: Keir Starmer  

Starmer has spent the last two-and-a-half years quietly playing a long game. While never to everyone’s satisfaction – that would be unfeasible – he nevertheless has addressed most of the issues he had on the table back in the spring of 2020, even largely cleaning up the smell of antisemitism which the Corbyn years had left hanging over the party. Corbynites have left in droves; Momentum marginalised; and, perhaps most importantly, the backroom political pressure exerted by Unite has been dramatically reduced.

This is not so much to do with Starmer directly: a major factor has been the transfer of power between former leader Len McCluskey and his successor Sharon Graham; and also the financial and political impact of multiple investigations (including criminal ones) getting close to McCluskey and his cronies, effectively pulling the plug on the old money-machine which funded Labour’s entryist cabal for so long. But these things might also not have happened, had Starmer not secured a convincing win over the Corbynites.

Starmer has not been perfect, by any means. He has failed to be ruthless with his frontbench, with the result that it is still rather weak in political heft. And his vacillation on women’s rights has created a potential Achilles heel for Labour, which the Tories have already shown themselves keen to exploit. He is still failing to beat Sunak in “best PM” polling.

But Labour’s current strong showing overall under his leadership is an undeniable achievement, when you consider the nadir it faced just three Christmases ago, after the party’s worst defeat in three-quarters of a century.

He now needs to ensure he doesn’t throw it away, which is still eminently possible.

The Order Of Black Wednesday Award: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng

The Order Of Black Wednesday Award is a special prize, awarded by Uncut for wanton, gratuitous attempted or actual destruction of the UK’s finances (for political historians, the award is named after the fateful Wednesday in 1992, when Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont and the then non-independent Bank of England conspired to make UK interest rates jump massively several times in the same day; in the end proposing to hike to 15%, before collapsing out of the ERM, the EU’s currency-pegging system prior to the euro. He resigned in disgrace shortly after and his party lost its reputation for economic competence; not to mention power, in a Labour landslide five years later.)

Close to being awarded during the Johnson administration for the final Withdrawal Agreement, it was felt however by the judges that, although the damage was significant and the policy management cack-handed, it was not of the order required.

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The Uncuts: 2022 Political Awards (Part I)

30/12/2022, 10:33:03 PM

Labour frontbencher of the year: Rachel Reeves

The numbers speak for themselves. At the end of 2021 Rachel Reeves trailed Rishi Sunak in Yougov’s tracker on who would make the best chancellor by almost 20 points, 11% to 30%. Now she is in a statistical tie with the current Tory chancellor, Jeremy Hunt who is on 19% versus 17% for Rachel Reeves.

Clearly the Conservatives have played the leading role in detonating their reputation for economic competence, but how many times have Labour shadow chancellor’s fluffed the opportunity when Tory incumbents have stumbled? Not Rachel Reeves.

Her tenure in 2022 has been synonymous with three changes in how Labour makes its economic case.

First, there is now internal self-control on spending. A shadow minister recently summarised the situation to Uncut, “I wouldn’t dare fly a kite about spending in a briefing or make a speech, that’s not how we work any more.” Not since the days of Gordon Brown as shadow chancellor in the mid-90s and the iron grip of his economic secretariat has a Labour opposition been so disciplined.

Second, Labour is developing self-contained policy initiatives – where revenue raising and spending are balanced – that target Tory fault lines. The windfall tax is just one example where Labour moved early, announced the policy with the government ultimately capitulating, but not before it had repeatedly aired its splits on the issue. This fusion of economics and politics is the essence of successful opposition. David Cameron and George Osborne did it very well (see the 2007 election that never was, following Osborne’s announcement on taking most people out of inheritance tax) and needless to say Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ran the Tories ragged with this approach.

Third, when Labour has had to respond to Tory economic announcements, reversals and general chaos, Rachel Reeves has been more than equal to the task. Her speeches have been authoritative with the right soundbite for the news clips. The rise in Labour confidence in the House of Commons over the year has been evident and the media reporting describes a party that has real momentum on the economy.

Rachel Reeves is Uncut’s frontbencher of the year for the herculean achievement of making Labour competitive again on the economy. More needs to done but after years – well over a decade – of utterly abysmal ratings and constantly trailing the Tories by double digits, the party has solid grounds for optimism heading into 2023.

International politician of the year: Joe Biden

With the catastrophic collapse of Xi’s “zero Covid” strategy and Ukraine’s defiant refusal to welcome Putin, 2022 was a year in which reality caught up with autocrats. Macron and Lula also beat Le Pen and Bolsanaro. But, alas, Italy now has its most right-wing government since World War II and Israel has its most extreme government ever.

The global battle for democracy and democratic values persists. With America being foundational.

Joe Biden was the big winner of this year’s midterms, Donald Trump the big loser. Trump-backed candidates were defeated (to a greater extent than other Republicans), Biden’s party strengthened its hold on the Senate. Trump deepened America’s culture wars, Biden waged economic war for the heartlands – securing massive investment in America’s industrial and green capacity through landmark legislation, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump maintains the fiction that he won in 2020, Biden said democracy was on the ballot in 2022. America’s verdict in both years favoured Biden.

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Labour MSPs should be ashamed of themselves

29/12/2022, 06:54:19 PM

by Rob Marchant

The following piece has been liberally linked with information sources – we would ask that readers check them out, but they are not for the faint-hearted.

It’s certainly been an historic year in British politics but, even in the last few days of the calendar, it seems we still have the ability to squeeze out the last drop of “history”.

In this case, it is one of those occasional moments when parliamentary votes become historic in retrospect, but not in a good way; where the actions of political leaders are so poorly thought-out that they ultimately result in years of embarrassment and regret.

Like the serial 2019 rejections of a half-decent EU Withdrawal Agreement under Theresa May, in favour of Boris Johnson’s final, shambolic one. Or the 2013 Syria vote, where Ed Miliband’s opportunism and Cameron’s bungling unwittingly triggered the collapse of any chance of international intervention to prevent the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Such a moment occurred last Thursday for the SNP, whose vote in the Scottish Parliament to allow that country’s citizens to decide what sex they are with no legally-enforceable proof, it is difficult to see as anything short of disastrous.

To the uninitiated, self ID means, in the name of “trans rights”, that any Scottish male will soon be able to declare themselves female – and any female male – by filling in a few forms and paying the princely sum of £5. They can then get all their government records changed to the opposite sex and, crucially, those who are men can legally insist on access to women’s spaces, in direct contravention of the single-sex exemption enshrined in the UK’s Equality Act.

This is a development that, if most of the public were made fully aware of it, would likely think insane.

However, it is not just the SNP: Labour MSPs also voted for this*, even though they did not need to. Their votes were unnecessary, they could have abstained or voted against and the SNP would still have won. But they were whipped to vote for the bill, because the top team seemed to actually think it was the right thing to do; their collective reputation now in the bin for nothing.

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