Uncut « Labour Uncut

Party reform: In the hands of the many, not the few

08/08/2011, 10:11:16 AM

by Rob Marchant

So, we are having a debate about the role of unions in the Party. Perhaps Ed, as my Uncut colleague Peter Watt suggests, is on a hiding to nothing: he is paddling against a strong current of realpolitik that dictates that this cannot change, at least whilst the party is taking ninety per cent of its donations from unions.

But, this aside, perhaps we should examine something more important: rather than whether Ed will win, we should look at whether or not Ed is right.

Firstly let’s frame the debate: every time we try to have a debate about the right level of involvement for unions in party decision-making, the familiar refrain comes out from all corners of the labour movement: “man the barricades, someone is trying to break the link!” The siren goes up, we all rush to the defence of the link, the devilish intruders are repulsed, and the debate stops again.

But breaking the link is essentially a straw man: no serious, contemporary party figure is suggesting that we should do such a thing. Most of us are members of, and support, unions, even if we don’t always agree with everything they do. And how would we survive, let alone campaign? It is natural that, in part-funding the party and being linked to its decision-making mechanisms, unions should have a say.

However, the more nuanced debate that needs to be had is: how much of a say? Because, on the other hand, the current system does beg the question of whether or not it is right that three leaders, whose interests are naturally sometimes directly aligned with those of the party, and sometimes not, control a very sizeable block vote.

So, are we comfortable with that? Because perhaps we shouldn’t be, and it’s quite possible that the upcoming, wholly independent study into party funding may not be, either. Why? (more…)

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Life, love and loyalty: in defence of nepotism

06/08/2011, 11:00:13 AM

by Michael Merrick

Relationships are a good thing. Even disciples of Hobbes and Rousseau will admit as much. The social sphere is, by its very nature, social. That is, it depends on relationships. And the more vibrant and diverse the relationships, the more vibrant and diverse the social sphere.

The more positive and virtuous those relationships, the more positive and virtuous the social sphere. This means that any resurrection of the social sphere as a safe and positive place of interaction (which includes economic interaction) must in some sense build upon an appraisal of the relationships we share with one another.

Nepotism is an important part of this drama.

Yet whenever the issue is discussed, particularly by those who place themselves on the left of the political spectrum, we are given naught but murky tales of powerful upper-class types jealously seeking to protect their social and professional circles from penetration by working-class oiks, often by treacherously bestowing opportunity and privilege solely upon their unworthy and less than capable nice-but-dim nephews and nieces.

Understandably enough we consider this an injustice. We shout loudly, we hold our banners and hone our slogans, we turn the pursuit into one of universal social justice for the working classes and wrench up the rhetoric against these evil nepotistic enemies of the people.

And in so doing, we get it entirely wrong. We get our accounts of human relationships wrong, we get our account of society wrong, and we get our account of nepotism itself wrong. We deny what is good and to be cherished in human relationships, in preference of a cold atomism only possible within a sanitised concept of the social sphere.

For nepotism is the natural by-product of healthy relationships. It is the urge and instinct toward fraternity. It is the outward manifestation of solidarity, the mortar that binds society together as a complex construction of personal and social relationships. It is the external expression of love and loyalty, the social and filial fulfilment of duty and responsibility. It spreads opportunity horizontally and vertically and it strengthens bonds of friendship, family and community.

Camaraderie spreads through it, comradeship flourishes within it, solidarity courses through its veins. (more…)

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The shadcab mini-makeover – It’s not just the party’s policies that are getting refreshed

05/08/2011, 08:00:40 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Step back Gok Wan. Take a break Trinny and Susannah. Competition is on the way.

Although the identity of the new makeover maestro remains secret, what we do know is that they work with the Labour party and they are operating at the highest levels.

A few weeks ago the news section of the Labour Party website got a facelift. But it wasn’t just the site that changed its look. At the same time, a small number of the file photos of Labour’s top team were also miraculously transformed.

Amongst the lucky few, the leader of the Labour Party went through a metamorphosis.

Before the change, Ed Miliband’s manic grin and staring eyes were reminiscent of a crazed teddy bear. The composition of the picture and the stark white background made it look like something from a school year book:

“Ed Miliband, student most likely to join the U.S. postal service”

What a difference a simple snap makes.

In the new picture the grin is gone, the colours are more sobre and the little dab of white in his hair is in shot to lend gravitas. And then there’s the expression. He’s looking the viewer knowingly in eye, measured and focused. It’s an expression that’s strangely familiar.

Ah yes – Blue Steel. (more…)

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Will the right face its 1989 moment?

04/08/2011, 02:00:36 PM

by James Watkins

1989 was a bombshell for many people on the left. Any hopes that a communist utopia would flourish went up in a puff of smoke when the peoples of eastern Europe turned against their governments.

In Britain, the impact of 1989 was profound. The Communist party went into freefall, various factions split into further factions, Marxism Today went off the shelves and a further spur was given to the changes in the Labour party.

So why has there not been a “1989 moment” for the right? For in 2008, the confidence in laissez-faire markets should have gone up in a puff of smoke when the markets failed – and the only thing that held economies together was the intervention of the nation states.

The 2008 moment went against everything that Friedman, Hayek and other free market thinkers had been advocating. This was clear, conclusive evidence that rolling back the state and giving free rein to markets does not lead to a natural equilibrium in the economy. Former US federal reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, said he was “surprised” by this. One former Tory Parliamentary candidate told me at the time that if free markets led to the collapse of all the banks and the mess that this would lead to, then so be it. This was the confused and muddled state the right was in back in 2008. (more…)

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More members alone won’t pay the bills

04/08/2011, 08:00:11 AM

by Peter Watt

I feel the need to return to a favourite topic of mine – the funding of the Labour party. Why? Well because this week has seen two developments. First, the publication of the party accounts for the year ending December 2010. And second, the announcement that Charles Allen, former ITV chief executive, has been asked by Ed Miliband to lead a commercial and management review of the party.

Taking the accounts first. At face value the accounts are a mixed bag. On the one hand, they show just how fragile the party’s finances are with a balance sheet showing a deficit of almost £7.5 million. For the financially illiterate, that means we owe a lot more than we have. The reason that we are still solvent is that we are able to meet these obligations as they become due by making sure that we have enough cash year-on-year.

On the other hand there is clearly real improvement in the overall year-on-year position. Sound financial management, some purchasing of property and a sensible strategy of rescheduling debt has ensured healthy surpluses in the last few years. Ray Collins, Roy Kennedy and the Victoria street team should take huge credit for ensuring that the balance sheet improved from a deficit of over £27 million in 2005, in the aftermath of that year’s general election, to the 2010 position.

One contractual consequence of the debt rescheduling, is that the party has to pay off at least £2 million of debt every year. This enforced discipline lead to a policy of “if we don’t have it we can’t spend it” at the 2010 election. The result was, incredibly, that in an election year we reduced party debt. At this rate, the party will have a balanced balance sheet in the next couple of years. (more…)

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USA: checks and balances in the age of chaos

03/08/2011, 09:47:33 AM

by Jonathan Todd

“I don’t want to talk to anyone about anything right now,” she exploded. With tears in her eyes, she retreated to a back room.

This was how the Democratic congresswoman Barbara Jordan, an eloquent contributor to the committee that voted to impeach President Nixon, reacted to a request for comment immediately after the vote. This request came from Michael Sandel, later a distinguished philosopher, then a newspaper intern.

Sandel recalled this encounter when the House began impeachment proceedings against President Clinton in 1998. While Barbara Jordan’s explosion demonstrated that even Democrats opposed to Nixon recognised the magnitude of impeachment, partisan passions against Clinton overrode any such recognition on the part of many Republicans 24 years later. 13 years hence, and the trends evidenced by the contrasting attitudes of Democrats to Nixon and Republicans to Clinton have hardly dissipated.

Many Republicans today would throw a tea party on the White House lawn, rather than discretely sob, if president Obama were impeached. This is in spite of the fact that impeachment should only properly occur when the constitutional system is seriously threatened. No matter that such a threat is inherently a matter of national tribulation; glee could be expected from those who seem consumed only by tribalism. The “Nazi Socialist Communist Muslim” would have got his comeuppance. (more…)

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Can Labour’s Cooler King make it over the wire?

02/08/2011, 12:43:18 PM

by Dan Hodges

Every Christmas evening my family and I would settle down for the same ritual. Excitement, mixed with anticipation, blended with hope.

Could this, we wondered, be the year Steve McQueen finally makes it over the wire?

In the days before satellite television lured us out of our cosy viewing habits with “Ice Road Truckers” and “Extreme Animal Attacks 2”, the film the Great Escape was a festive staple. Cruel Gestapo hoods. A brutal execution of heroic allied officers. The perfect accompaniment to the season of peace and goodwill.

Though it was on every year, familiarity did not breed contempt. Instead it produced intrigue. Would James Garner check the fuel gauge before shepherding Donald Pleasence on his doomed flight to safety? Might Gordon Jackson hold his tongue when the suspicious German ticket collector wishes him “good luck”?

But most tantalising of all, what fate would befall Captain Virgil Hilts, ‘The Cooler King’, McQueen’s perpetually incarcerated US fighter pilot? Every year he would gun his stolen BMW motorbike towards the snow capped mountains of neutral Switzerland. And every year his heroic bid for freedom would fall agonisingly short.

For the first year of his leadership Ed Miliband has been the Labour party’s Cooler King. Trapped by an inconclusive mandate, imprisoned by his own insecurity, held hostage by a party unable to come to terms with electoral defeat and the reality and demands of opposition.

No longer. Labour’s leader has awoken to find the cell door ajar, the guard towers deserted and the searchlights extinguished. Suddenly he sees the prospect of making his own great escape. (more…)

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Murdoch – sympathy for the devil?

02/08/2011, 09:05:22 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Ever since that bright Friday morning on 10 April 1992 I have maintained a blood oath. As I woke following Labour’s fourth consecutive general election defeat – robbed by Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid snipers at The Sun – who picked off our leaders and traduced our policies with heartless precision – I swore revenge.

So, in the spirit of “think global, act local”, I have never bought a copy of The Sun from that day to this. As an occupational hazard I read it from time to time, as I do The Times, but my conscience is clear; I never shelled out cash for either paper.

Rupert Murdoch is deprived of my few shillings in protest at his malign impact on our public life. The only flaw in my otherwise spotless moral universe is purchasing The Sunday Times. I have not worked out a way around that one yet (well it is the Sunday papers, after all).

But there’s no Sky TV in the Meagher household. Even though, following BSkyB’s acquisition, I now miss out on the oeuvre of cult US cable station HBO, I will not budge. My nineteen year boycott of (nearly) all things related to the Dirty Digger remains resolute.

I am not alone. For many on the left Murdoch is a member of the pantheon of the detested; up there with Thatcher, Tebbit and Powell. The late Dennis Potter even called the cancer that was killing him “Rupert” as a reminder of the man he despised for his coarsening effect on British popular culture.

But does there come a point when there is no more hate left to give? Over these past few weeks I have come to realise that my spleen is all vented out. I am content, rather, to win on points. The octogenarian Rupert Murdoch will now go to his maker under the cloud of an investigation of one kind or another.

He will be lucky to fend off investors who are tired of his antics and the way he runs his business like a personal fief; or US authorities who take a dim view of companies bribing public officials in whatever jurisdiction. The end game for Rupert Murdoch seems nigh.

(more…)

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The weasel the government sneaked through during the phone-hacking frenzy

01/08/2011, 10:02:12 AM

by Michael Dugher

It’s fair to say that local government finance is not something that sets hearts racing. The complexity – or incomprehensibility – of the subject turns off even the most ardent policy wonk. In fact, some of you reading this article are already thinking about abandoning doing so, with a view to logging on later when hopefully Dan Hodges has written something more interesting. So when Eric Pickles made a statement in Parliament about local government business rate retention during the height of the phone-hacking frenzy, it was not surprising that the majority of the media gave it little attention. However, despite the lack of interest, these proposed changes that have slipped under the radar are extremely important and could be the government’s most damaging reforms to date.

At the moment, local businesses pay rates to the council, which are then pooled nationally before being redistributed to less affluent local authorities using a complex formula. This system generated over £19bn last year and is used to pay for crucial public services like the police and fire brigade. The government wants to change this. From 2013, it wants to “re-localise” business rates, meaning that councils will get to keep the money they receive from local businesses within their patch.

The government says this is all about “localism”. Eric Pickles claims that enabling councils to retain what they gather from businesses within their area will incentivise them to foster a more competitive business climate. The idea is that councils will try that much harder because they will be the ones that reap the rewards. Pickles has gone as far as saying that it will empower poorer councils to stop having to use their annual “begging bowl” in Whitehall.

(more…)

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Sunday Review

31/07/2011, 01:30:31 PM

Revivial: the struggle for survival inside the Obama White House by Richard Wolffe – reviewed by Anthony Painter

The American constitution is a wonderful construct for a nation of reasonable men and women. The problem is that the political representatives who currently populate the nation’s capital are not, in the main, reasonable people. There is an exception to this- the president. But how can you lead as a reasonable man in a political system stacked with checks and balances which allow unreasonable people to obstruct reasonable endeavour?

The answer as Present Obama has discovered since new intake entered Congress in 2011- with Republican control of the House of Representatives- is with enormous difficulty. It is like attempting to lead while restrained in manacles. And despite extreme restraint it is the president who will be called to account for the political madness that is now engulfing Washington as the battle over raising the debt ceiling reaches its insane climax.

Birmingham born Richard Wolffe’s Revival: the struggle for survival inside the Obama White House is the second book about this presidency from the de facto official biographer of the Obama White House. Renegade: the making of a president was the first in a series in which there will surely be more to follow. At the centre of the latest book is a discussion about the revivalist (idealist) instincts of the president versus the survivalist (pragmatic) instincts. I’m not sure that it is much of a spoiler to say that Obama ends up as both. Survival is necessary but not sufficient in the making a great president.

Familiar personalities drift into the story during the early months of 2010 which is the period on which the book concentrates. Those who remain from the campaign such as David Axelrod or return such as David Plouffe tend to embody the president’s revivalist trait while the survivalists tend to be Washington insiders such as Rahm Emmanuel. The president’s first chief of staff gets a bit of a rough ride. One of his colleagues says of Emmanuel: “It’s all tactics and no strategy. That’s something the president feels very strongly he’s missing. How do I get from here to where I want to go?” We are never quite told where that destination is. (more…)

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