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Why the eurozone crisis is lethal to Labour

11/11/2011, 07:51:38 AM

by Atul Hatwal

The eurozone crisis is an unmitigated disaster.

I know, hardly breaking news. But I’m not talking about the impending threat to global capitalism. Worrying as it is, rivers of words have flowed on that topic. It’s Labour’s electoral prospects that are the concern here.

On the face of it, the crisis should have improved the party’s standing in relation to the Tories.

The government’s economic strategy is in shreds. Growth has been flatlining for months, domestic demand is anaemic and now the fate of the mythical export led recovery rests in the hands of reticent eurozone members who have demonstrated a singular inability to get ahead of the markets.

Many of Labour’s criticisms have been vindicated and now, of all times, the public should be taking a look at Labour as a realistic alternative.

But they’re not.

And the longer the crisis continues, the less likely that becomes.

For all the catastrophic implications of the crisis for the government and it’s economic approach, the underlying narrative of what is happening in the eurozone is kryptonite for Labour.

The common story running through all the tribulations on the continent is that the markets destroy countries with high public spending.

Regardless of the economic realities of the situation – we’re not Italy or Greece, never were, never would have been under Labour, and besides, we’re not in the euro – the crisis is confirming the visceral fear of runaway spending within the British voters’ psyche.

It’s why they voted the last Labour government out of office and is a fear that has since remained at the forefront of their considerations.

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A three point plan for opposition

10/11/2011, 02:35:08 PM

by Peter Watt

Being in opposition can be thankless and getting the tone right can be tricky. Right about now it is doubly so. Which is why I was taken by an interesting article over at Labour List penned by Mark Ferguson. In “Labour can’t afford to look smug“, Mark argues that Labour risks looking smug in the face of the current dire economic situation if they appear to take every bad headline or statistic as vindication for their proposed approach. As he says, if we look smug:

“…then all we do is ensure that at best the public think ‘a plague on all your houses’ and at worst, we end up looking smug about a crisis that many people think we caused”.

Now I didn’t agree with some of the underlying assumptions in the post, but on this central tenet he was spot on. We do sometimes and inadvertently sound quite pleased at the poor economic outlook and the public hate it. And so I started thinking about what exactly the strategy for opposition should be for Labour right now. And I have come up with a cunning three point plan. (more…)

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These days the attack dogs are too nice. Where’s the modern Peter Mandelson?

09/11/2011, 07:30:56 AM

by Dan Hodges

Michael Dugher is not the new Peter Mandelson. We know this because last week Dugher told us so.

He didn’t just come out and issue a bald statement to that effect, obviously. That would just have been plain odd:

“Which senior former Labour politician aren’t you going to be tonight Michael”?

“Well, tonight Matthew I’m not going to be Peter Mandelson”.

No, the new shadow minister without portfolio was responding to a tweet from “eyespymp”, the voyeuristic web site that tracks and broadcasts the movement of our Parliamentary representatives as the go about their daily lives.

According to our eyespy eavesdropper, Dugher was overheard “telling someone he’s going to be ‘Ed’s Mandelson’”. To which the member for Barnsley East responded with a characteristically blunt: “Load of bollocks. I’m currently at home with my kids”.

The kids’ gain is Labour’s loss. A new Peter Mandelson is exactly what we need. A Prince of darkness. Master of the dark arts.

Ed’s got lots of masters of the pastel-coloured arts. Tom Baldwin is an accomplished spinner. But he’s not a real attack dog. He tries. He affects a kick ass, access denied, off the guest list, card marked, co-operation withdrawn, lead-lined boots demeanor. But his heart’s really not in it. He’d hate anyone to know it, but he’s actually quite nice.

Then there is Stewart Wood, another shadow minister without portfolio, who is Ed’s “political mastermind”. Wood has a sharp mind, and a few tricks up his sleeve. He’s got a reputation in Westminster for being a straight shooter. Though if he has to, he knows how to bend the odd bullet round the wall. But he’s also got a serious flaw. Again, he’s quite nice. In an interview he gave to Suzie Mackenzie, Gordon Brown’s biographer, Mackenzie recounts:

“Wood acknowledged that the routine rudeness – the ‘just Gordon’ behaviour – had begun to trouble him. It became ‘more important’ after Brown became prime minister. He suggested that the ‘apologies’ they made for Brown had gone on too long. ‘How you deal as an individual with human beings is a core part of the job’, he said”.

How you deal with human beings? That’s all very good. But it’s hardly Prince of Darkness material is it?

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The Sunday Review: Japan

06/11/2011, 01:57:32 PM

by Anthony Painter

Japan has a big society and blue Labourish solidarity. At the end of the 1980s and early 1990s it was seen as a competitor global economy to the US. Its ability to eschew individualism and embrace collectivism in pursuit of the long-term common good exemplified everything the Anglo-Saxon west wasn’t. This all went pop when its asset bubble burst and we haven’t heard much from it since – other than as a warning of what can go wrong.

Then, earlier this year, its east coast was decimated by a tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear reactor melted down as a consequence. Seemingly in a wave of sympathy, it was awarded the Guardian‘s long-haul tourist destination poll first place, with Tokyo taking top city spot. Germany, having weathered the financial storm better than most other major economies, now gets the most attention as an alternative social and economic model.

Japan has endured two decades of low growth as a consequence of a financial crisis which continued to have after-shocks throughout the 1990s and 2000s. But it has largely managed to adjust somehow – despite a rapidly ageing society, which in part contributes to ongoing low growth.

If the shorthand for conservative Labourism is “flag, faith and family”, then Japan’s motto can be summed up as “flag, firm, and family”. Its history can be summarised as a quest to maintain national independence.
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By all means let’s be tough on crime, but let’s also be principled

04/11/2011, 01:00:40 PM

by Matt Cavanagh

During my years working on prisons policy, I used to think that if the government was being attacked at the same time from left and right, that wasn’t a bad place to be (at least if we were being attacked from the right for being too soft, and the left for being too hard, rather than from both for being incompetent). When I see the new government finding itself increasingly in this predicament – attacked from the right wing media, former home secretary Michael Howard and Conservative backbenchers for being too soft, and from the Guardian and the left for being too hard – I am instinctively inclined to sympathy.

Where does Labour stand? When the sentencing bill was first published in June, Labour was very critical – and justifiably so. This was the Cameron government at its worst: the familiar pattern of early nonchalance, followed by last-minute panic, with a hasty, botched result. Not for the first time the mess was covered up by a bravura performance from David Cameron, good enough to fool the media on the day, but merely delaying the unravelling – as some of us predicted at the time.

In contrast to this, last week’s final changes to the sentencing bill looked like government, if not at its best, then certainly in decent working order. A substantial disagreement between two ministers, May and Clarke, each with a legitimate stake in the policy, was carefully brokered by Downing Street into a coherent and balanced package. Media coverage predictably focused on the Cabinet “split” and the “humiliation” of Clarke, who was seen as the loser – gleefully by the right wing media, sorrowfully by the left. In fact, this was a genuine compromise. Clarke lost some battles, but won others, more than his disillusioned liberal friends gave him credit for. He successfully defended the distinction between adult and youth sentencing for knife crime, even if at a lower cut-off age, and insisted that new mandatory life sentences for second convictions for the most serious violent and sexual offences – the so-called “two strikes and you’re out” sentences – would be very tightly defined. The main reason Clarke was seen as the loser was because he was so unguarded about his bargaining position; in other words, because he showed the kind of honesty the media say they want from politicians, but tend to punish when they get it.

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October shadow cabinet league table

04/11/2011, 09:09:24 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Back in June, based on a review of the first year’s performance in the shadow cabinet league, and the underlying politics of the party, I predicted four shadow cabinet exits – Meg Hillier, Anne Mckechin, Shaun Woodward and Tessa Jowell. Sure enough, the first three have departed, while Jowell has been moved down from Cabinet Office to shadow the Olympics and is expected to leave after the games next year.

The new shadow cabinet is four weeks old today. Contrary to Harold Wilson’s phrase, a week is not a long time in politics, and neither is a month. It takes years to build, or bring down, reputations.

Despite the anarchy at the top of the last Labour government over a period of years, Gordon Brown’s reputation for economic competence was remarkably resilient at the time. As is David Cameron’s despite his government’s economic record.

So the first month performance of the new shadow cabinet is unlikely to dramatically redefine the political landscape. But there are some hints at what the coming year might hold.

At the top, in amidst the familiar faces picking up from last term, Caroline Flint and Andy Burnham have pushed their way into the top six while three of the shadow cabinet newbies – Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umunna and Jon Trickett have staked out positions in the top ten.

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Someone somewhere needs to paint a picture

03/11/2011, 07:30:07 AM

by Peter Watt

Boy oh boy do we need a vision. Let’s face it; our politicians look pretty rubbish at the moment. The Eurozone crisis means that to all intents and purposes, they are not free to act, not free to decide and implement and not free to make meaningful decisions. Instead they, and we, are all now waiting for – well whatever the end game is in the Eurozone. All plans for growth are effectively just words. Office for budget responsibility forecasts are meaningless and future treasury planning looks pretty much fantastic. Merkel and Sarkozy’s grand plan to save the Euro didn’t even last six days.

And this enforced paralysis is affecting all of the parties.

George Osborne, for instance, must be dreading his autumn economic statement. What the hell is he supposed to say? “Tax receipts are down, borrowing is up and the economy is stagnating but it would have been worse under Labour”. Well that will have them jumping up and down in excitement in marginal seats across the land. It may be true, or have an element of truth, but it’s hardly the stuff of political legend. (more…)

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The public bodies bill and sausages

01/11/2011, 08:47:52 AM

by Jon Trickett

There is a quote, whose origins allegedly range from Otto von Bismarck to an unknown Illinois state senator, that rings painfully true about the last year of the public bodies bill: there are two things you never want to let anyone see you make – laws and sausages. Quite. The process by which ministers have gone about reducing the number of quangos in the UK has been messy, and in many ways circumvented the norms of Parliamentary process.

I don’t disagree in principle with the aims of the bill. Indeed, in March 2010 we set out almost £500m of new savings by reducing the number of arms length bodies by 123 by 2012/13. Labour inherited 1,128 quangos in 1997 and axed almost 400 of them by the time we left office. There is certainly scope for consolidating them to reduce overheads but retain functions.

But the way in which this process has proceeded has been characterised by the same hasty, ill-thought-through approach to governing that we can see across all government departments. The ideology of cutting without thinking, swinging without looking, with a lack of clear vision or philosophy on the functions of government, pervades the very core of this bill.

The majority of the bodies in the bill were set up as a result of reasoned and detailed debate in Parliament. The only appropriate way to consider abolition is with the same reasoned and detailed debate. Cabinet office ministers claim that detailed debate on each body will come at a later stage, but we know that secondary legislation isn’t typically dwelled on in Parliament to the extent that some of these bodies would deserve.

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Cameron’s history notes 1: Achilles, revisited

31/10/2011, 09:48:16 AM

by Rob Marchant

Last week, David Cameron had a bad week. But it’s important to understand what kind of bad week. He’s had not a defeat, but a sour victory in the Commons against his own rebels. But so did Tony Blair on two memorable occasions – Iraq and tuition fees – when he feared that he might have to resign, and didn’t. These things, although nerve-wracking at the time, are to some extent part and parcel of being a prime minister.

The extent of the defeat, though large, was to be expected over an issue as touchy as Europe and the relative weakness of his electoral position. However, neither does his government look “in office but not in power”, as Norman Lamont described the Major government. And his rebuke by Sarkozy, for trying to interfere in a subject, the euro, which Britain long ago put on the long finger, was also to be expected.

Many have adversely criticised his handling of the Commons vote, saying that he was looking for a fight; but it is hardly his fault that half of his backbenchers defy rationality on this subject. And some believe that, despite the bad headlines, he called it right. (more…)

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Workforce reform will support not attack our public services

28/10/2011, 07:46:15 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The answer, we believed at first, was more spending. Our dilapidated public services had become so because the Tories had run them down during the 80s and 90s. Catch-up investment was necessary. And Labour delivered it with gusto: doubling the amounts spent on education and trebling the NHS budget.

Then we realised that investment was not enough; there was a need for reform of our public services too. So we introduced performance management and targets. Resented by some public sector professionals, they were at least an attempt to iron out the differences in the quality of service provision across the country.

But we never quite got round to the last part of the puzzle in improving public services: workforce reform. This was always a no-go area for Labour ministers, even for the most swivel-eyed Blairites. Where, broadly, Brownites emphasised resources and Blairites structural reform, no-one wanted to be seen to imply that our teachers, nurses and police officers were not doing a good job.

But the evidence shows that too many of them simply are not. (more…)

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