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Tuesday News Review

06/07/2010, 07:34:33 AM

#hustings

David Miliband in action at the Cardiff hustings

Pity the Labour leadership contenders. They have made themselves hoarse on the hustings, but there are still three sweaty months to go. Yet they know they can only be a sideshow at this stage in the post-election cycle, when all eyes are on the coalition. It may be some consolation to the contenders to know they are doing their party some good as recruiting officers. At least 25,000 new members have joined up since Labour’s election defeat, a mixture of returners and disaffected Lib Dems. When ballot papers go out to MPs, trade union supporters and activists on 1 September, newcomers’ votes may have a disproportionate influence. – The Guardian

A common theme was the need to acknowledge that the last Labour Government had not only stopped listening to the public but had stopped listening to the Labour Party’s own members. Ed Miliband in a powerful moment declared that, “I do believe our society is too unequal. The gap between the rich and poor is too wide. That’s why I’m campaigning for a living wage, not just a minimum wage and for action on high pay.” This won the vigorously approval of Lord and Lady Kinnock who sat in the front row keen to champion their chosen candidate. – Western Mail

If ever there was a moment for Labour’s rebirth, this is it. The C2 voters who walked away will bear the brunt of Conservative thrift, the once-Blairite middle classes are contemplating the scrapheap, and Lib Dem supporters are appalled that Nick Clegg has become the Trojan horse for Tory cuts. Yet in the greatest crisis to engulf Britain since the war, Labour seems oddly absent. The people’s party has become a travelling circus in which the five leadership candidates perform at endless hustings and get reacquainted with an electorate that told them to take a running jump. – The Telegraph

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Monday News Review

05/07/2010, 06:26:16 AM

Cuts

The Labour party and the unions seized on the 40 per cent figure as proof the Tory-Liberal coalition was about to wage an ideologically-driven war on the public sector. Ed Balls, the Labour leadership contender, said: “These reports will send a chill down the spines of millions of public sector workers and millions of people who rely on our vital public services.” And RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “With cuts of up to 40 per cent in the transport budget we are looking at thousands of job losses amongst the staff who operate and maintain services with dire consequences for passenger safety.” – City AM

Shadow education secretary Ed Balls said the first blow of the axe could fall as early as today with the review of the government’s building schools for the future programme. He claimed rebuilding projects at 750 schools, approved under the former Labour government, were set to be cancelled. Mr Balls, a contender for the Labour leadership, described the government plans for tackling the deficit as “economically unwise and socially deeply, deeply unfair”. “We know from the 1980s and from the 1930s, when we had the Great Depression, that if you try to cut spending and public services really hard and assume that the private sector is going to come along and create lots of new jobs, it doesn’t work out that way,” he said. – Irish Times

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Sunday News Review

04/07/2010, 09:15:18 AM

Electoral reform

“Labour needs a thorough debate about voting reform now that the referendum moment is announced. It would be a mistake for leadership candidates to nail themselves to an alternative vote (AV) or a first-past-the-post (FPTP) mast. AV was spatchcocked into Labour’s manifesto in a desperate last-minute bid to paint some radical hues on to the good ship Gordon Brown. But voters, not unreasonably, asked why it took 13 years for Labour to discover the most timid of all voting reform systems.” – Denis MacShane, The Guardian

“But regardless of what happens on 5 May 2011, it’s clear that one group is already benefitting from the prospect of a referendum: the Labour leadership contenders. Until now, they’ve been distinguished by their indistinguishability on policy grounds. But, now, their different positions on AV have gifted the Labour faithful something, however small, to choose between. David and Ed Miliband have said that they would campaign for a yes vote; Diane Abbot says she would like to see it implemented; Andy Burnham is vigorously opposing it; and Ed Balls has pitched himself somewhere in the middle. It’s one of the clearest, most wide-ranging distinctions we’ve seen so far.” – The Spectator

David and Iraq

“I suspect that David Miliband, who – unlike the two Eds – had a vote in 2003, still agonises over Iraq. Nor, with the Chilcot inquiry reconvened, and the war raised at every hustings and meeting, can it easily be consigned to history. “I’ve done Chilcot. I’ve said if I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have [backed] it.” Is he saying the war should never have been fought? “The way I put it is that if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a war. I’ve set out that if we knew there were no WMD, there would have been no UN resolutions and no war.”” – The Telegraph

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Saturday News Review

03/07/2010, 09:11:03 AM

Electoral reform

“Labour leadership contenders David and Ed Miliband said they would campaign for a “yes” vote if they were in charge. But rival Andy Burnham yesterday dismissed voting reform as a “peripheral issue”. He said: “It is not my party’s job to prop up the Liberal Democrats by helping them win a referendum that is important to them.” The expected timing of the vote, on the same day as the Holyrood parliament elections, has caused fury in Scotland.” – Scottish Daily Record

“Mr Cameron always intended to turn the tables by pushing Labour out to the left. The coalition with the Liberal Democrats wasn’t planned, but it may make his task easier. The candidates in Labour’s leadership election could make the same mistake as the Tories after 1997, as they fish for Labour votes, apparently forgetting that they will soon need to appeal to the wider electorate.” – The Independent

“Labour has backed the introduction of AV for Westminster, but some Labour MPs still see the referendum plan as a chance to embarrass the Coalition. Ed Balls, a candidate for the Labour leadership, also criticised the suggested date. “Holding it on a day when some parts of the country have elections but others do not will lead to unfair differential turnout,” said Mr Balls. A May 5 referendum would also be in defiance of advice from constitutional experts. Earlier this year, the House of Lords Constitutional Affairs Committee concluded that there should be “a presumption against holding referendums on the same day as elections” because of the risk that voters would be confused and results distorted.” – The Telegraph

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Friday News Review

02/07/2010, 07:05:49 AM

The candidates

Andy Burnham calls for Labour to be the party of "aspirational socialism"

“Andy Burnham today calls for Labour to exhume its socialist roots and become the party of “aspirational socialism”, running on ideas that include the large-scale purchase of private accommodation by councils. He also redoubles his campaign for a 10% inheritance tax on estates to pay retrospectively for care in later life, which is aimed at swing voters in the south.” – The Guardian

“This week, Ed Miliband backed the idea of extending the right to request flexible working to “every worker, not just those caring for families”. This is an idea first proposed in 2007 by Beverley Hughes. Back then, Hughes argued that “everyone has a life outside work, not just parents . . . many people make valuable contributions to their communities in their non-work time”. When you read that quotation now it feels like a “big society” argument, yet the coalition is going in the other direction.” – The New Statesman

“This week Ed Miliband put a revived “21st-century social democracy” at the heart of his own leadership campaign. Miliband has always seen himself as a social democrat, even in the years when the term was almost as unfashionable as socialism in Labour circles, and in this week’s speech he called on his party to “turn the page on New Labour orthodoxy”, with a different kind of economic model based around industrial policy, stronger regulation and the promotion of “responsibility” in the boardroom.” –The Guardian

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Thursday News Review

01/07/2010, 07:52:28 AM

Ed M offers freedom and flexibility…

Ed Miliband has pledged greater freedom for the Scottish Labour Party

“Speaking on a visit to the Scottish Parliament, Ed Miliband said Labour should “lighten up” and allow Iain Gray, the party’s Holyrood chief, to draw up his own plans. The former Energy and Climate Change Secretary also gave his backing to handing Scottish ministers limited tax powers but opposed the “full fiscal autonomy” demanded by Alex Salmond.” – The Telegraph

“Labour leadership hopeful Ed Miliband has called for every worker to be allowed to work more flexible hours. The shadow cabinet minister said the state needed to do more to raise people’s quality of life outside work, urging that markets should not be left to decide “what is acceptable”. He said employees in Britain worked “harder for longer” than anywhere else in western Europe. “This is not the good society we aspire to,” he told Labour activists in London yesterday.” – The Scotsman

Nature vs. Nurture

“All of this creates a dilemma for Labour, which Jack Straw pre-emptively tackled in dismal fashion by decrying “handwringing” in the Daily Mail. Those Labour leadership candidates who talk about pushing the political centre ground in a progressive direction now face a great test. Do they revert to the populist fearmongering of the Blair years? Or do they instead engage with the more enlightened debate which Mr Clarke has boldly unlocked?” – The Guardian

“Candidates for the Labour leadership took a more nuanced view of the row. Andy Burnham said it was better to spend money helping people get their lives back on track than to fund private companies to run prisons. Ed Balls pointed out that the government was poised to cut budgets for crime prevention programmes such as youth activities and programmes for teen pregnancy and drugs misuse.” – (more…)

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Wednesday News Review

30/06/2010, 08:46:10 AM

The contest

“This should be the challenge for the Labour leadership election: not an argument about which policies of the Labour government the contenders did or did not support, or even which policies they support now, but a real attempt to identify the basis for a contemporary centre-left political project. This requires some hard thinking, not a retreat into windy rhetoric or comforting certainties.” – The Guardian

“Sylvester is right to argue that the leadership candidates are in danger of looking inwards rather than reaching out to the voters they must win back but that has nothing to do with the voting system Labour is using. In fact, the involvement of more than 3 million people who pay to be affiliated members of the Labour Party makes the contest more open than simply having 140,000 members balloted or allowing 250 MPs to decide.” The New Statesman

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Tuesday News Review

29/06/2010, 07:56:50 AM

Budget fall out

“Is Labour losing out on a star? Yvette Cooper has just impressed the Labour benches with a tour de force of a speech in the Commons in which she picked apart the budget for imposing “savage” cuts that are “nastier” than anything introduced by Margaret Thatcher.” – The Guardian

“Andrew George, the Lib Dem MP for St Ives, who tabled the Budget amendment, has told colleagues he does not want to trigger “nuclear war” in the party. But the Lib Dem leadership will be concerned that a rebellion may grow. Labour has begun targeting Lib Dem MPs with high numbers of poor voters. Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, said it was “shameful” that the Lib Dems had supported “the most right-wing budget I can remember”. – The Telegraph

“Ed Balls, the Labour leadership contender, said last night: “Nick Clegg and Vince Cable warned of a Tory VAT bombshell in the general election but are now helping to deliver it. So it’s encouraging that two Lib Dem MPs have stood by their principles and voted against the most unfair and regressive tax rise of all.”” – The Guardian

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Monday News Review

28/06/2010, 08:06:43 AM

On your bike mark II

“Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls said yesterday Mr Duncan Smith was going further than Norman Tebbit. Mr Balls said: “The remarks suggest that he’s thinking of taking away the housing tenure, the right to a social house and saying you’ve got to move. “So actually he’s going further than saying on your bike. It’s on your bike and lose your home.” – The Mirror

“Labour leadership candidate Ed Miliband – who is backed by former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain – said the proposals were a retreat “back to the 1980s”. He said: “[What] he is saying to whole parts of the country is: ‘we have no hope as a government of getting work into your area so you are going to have to move out of your communities’. And that is frankly disgraceful.” – Western Mail

Cable cracks

“I hear from one of the other panel members that Vince Cable was deeply uncomfortable defending the VAT rise and the Budget and coalition in general on BBC1’s Question Time last week. I’m told that Cable, who has just been distancing himself from his party’s “VAT Bombshell” poster during the election, “simply got through it by a form of meditation.” – James Macintyre, New Statesman

“Up to half a dozen Lib Dem MPs are understood to have unofficially met Labour counterparts late last week to discuss co-ordinating their opposition. Two early day motions protesting about the rise have attracted the support of almost 70 Labour MPs and Lib Dem MP Bob Russell has already threatened to vote against the Budget.” – The Daily Mail

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Sunday News Review

27/06/2010, 07:33:10 AM

All you need to know about the candidates in one place

“On 25 September the result of Labour’s leadership election will be announced at the party’s annual conference in Manchester, but what will this change of management herald for a new New Labour? We invited David Miliband, Ed Balls, Diane Abbott, Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband to talk politics, purse strings and the perfect night’s television.” – The Observer

Daily roundup highlights Liberal meltdown

“Nick Clegg is suffering a fierce public backlash over the coalition’s VAT rise, with almost half of Liberal Democrat supporters saying the tax U-turn makes them more likely to desert the party. A YouGov/Brand Democracy survey, which will alarm already restive Lib Dem MPs, shows 48% of those who voted Lib Dem at the election are now less inclined to back them again as a direct result of the increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20%.” – The Observer

“A senior Lib Dem MP confirmed that a number of disgruntled colleagues had “talked tactics” with Labour opponents over the possibility of at least obstructing key measures, including the increase in the rate of VAT from 17.5 to 20 per cent.” – The Independent

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