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Let’s stop fighting non-existent plots and let the leader lead

13/06/2011, 07:00:19 AM

by John Woodcock

The past has its part to play in politics, but the future is the only thing that really matters. This is our chance to show we get that far more than the people who want Labour to fail.

Working for then welfare secretary, John Hutton, I was passionate about Tony Blair’s drive to change the UK’s welfare and pension systems at a time when reform was difficult to sell. I gave my all when Gordon Brown asked me to work for him in Number Ten. I was a vocal supporter of David Miliband in the leadership contest. And before all that I walked David Blunkett’s dog when he was leader of Sheffield City Council and I was the son of one of his more left wing Labour councillors.

All of that helps to inform what I think today. But it is all history. Like so many thousands who want to change the world around them, we remain proud of the myriad of past allegiances developed over the years campaigning for Labour. But we are not defined by them.

Now, we are all part of a party focussed in its determination to support Ed Miliband, renew Labour’s offer to the British people and stand up for those suffering at the sharp end of aConservative economic policy that is selling future generations down the river.

I may not have put Ed first on the ballot paper in the leadership contest, but I am sure of one thing: he won a mandate to lead, and he is going to lead us as a united party into the next election.

Without plotters, wind-up stories about plots will not succeed (so long as people on our side do not fall into the trap of fighting phantoms – mounting a counter-attack against threats that just aren’t there).

So let’s all take responsibility for doing better; as Jim Murphy said yesterday, let’s roll up our sleeves, listen to our changing country, and work harder to think up the new ideas that will re-earn Labour’s right to claim and shape the centre ground of British politics.

Ed has already rightly identified the people any Labour party worthy of the name needs to speak up for: families in the middle who work hard, want to get on, and don’t want to see others get a free ride at their expense – whether at the top or the bottom of the income scale.

His speech today on that subject is important. We should do everything we can to enable it to get the hearing it deserves and give our leader the support he needs to follow it through. That focus on the future is our best bet to ensure the ambitions people have for their own lives are reflected in the ambitions for Britain we put forward at the next election.

John Woodcock is Labour and Cooperative MP for Barrow and Furness and a shadow transport minister.

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Ed Miliband is safe as houses, for now

10/06/2011, 02:00:35 PM

by Dan Hodges

True story. Last party conference before Iain Duncan-Smith is sent to sleep with the fishes. His senior aide is approached by a delegation of Tory grandees. “It’s over”, he’s told. “This is Iain’s last act as leader. You need to help us to help him. We are going to do this properly”.

The advisor is told to station thirty loyal supporters at strategic points around the conference hall. They are handed a copy of key passages from his speech. As soon as the passages are delivered they are to rise and start applauding. The conference will rise with them. The crown will be set down. But with dignity.

Except there’s a problem. Since the speech was distributed there have been amends. Sections have been adapted. Transposed. Duncan Smith begins his valedictory address. Within the first 15 seconds the first clap line appears. The acolytes rise. In moments the hall is on its feet.

The lost leader moves on to a new passage. This was supposed to be seven pages in. Now it is the second paragraph. Again, the cheerleaders rise. Again, so does the entire conference. The quiet man is turning up the volume.

He begins the third passage. It again includes one of the clap lines. The thirty are on their feet. Conference is on their feet. By now the Tory faithful are caught between a quandary and a frenzy. They are applauding every passage of note. How can they stop?

Iain Duncan-Smith received more than 20 standing ovations. Two weeks later he was history. The moral? When the Tories move against a leader, they move. They do it properly, even to the point of ensuring that their victim is allowed an open casket.

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Labour, the natural party of opposition

10/06/2011, 12:00:26 PM

by Dave Talbot

Right on cue, exactly six months into David Cameron’s premiership, the ancient British roar of “Tory scum” reverberated through Whitehall’s hallowed halls. In honour of the coalition’s deal on higher tuition fees, protesters spilled through Westminster’s streets to rediscover their hatred of the Tories once more. After almost 13 years of opposition and apathy, the Tories could once again hold their heads high – hated again. It was back to politics as usual. Labour prime ministers for the past 13 years were anomalies, you understand, and not to be repeated. No sir, the Conservatives are back.

That is a charicature, but the masked point is a serious one. The Conservatives are quite suited to power. Indeed, from 1911 to the present day, the Conservatives managed to keep Labour out of office for all but 33 of those years. Never underestimate the Conservatives and their desire for power – nor their capacity to acquire and hold it. They believe in their divine right to rule. When Cameron, Osborne and Co. state that grand old maxim of British politics -that the Conservatives are here to clear up after the misfortune of Labour government – they truly mean it. They unapologetically look at politics through the prism of power.

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Why Labour is not being heard on the economy

10/06/2011, 08:21:39 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Labour did a good thing last week.

On Sunday, Ed Balls re-launched his proposals for a £2bn tax on bankers’ bonuses to fund action on youth unemployment and a new house building programme.

Politically, the policy draws exactly the right dividing lines. Greedy bankers versus young unemployed and aspiring home-owners.

In economic terms, it focuses funds just where they are needed, helping reduce the costs of economic failure and getting the housing market moving again.

And by putting down amendments to the finance bill, Balls will ensure a parliamentary vote on the plan, giving the opportunity to pressure individual Tory and Lib Dem MPs and expose whose side they are really on.

The initiative has all the elements of a policy which could cut through the white noise of political debate to resonate with the public.

But it hasn’t.

Not that there was anything wrong with the proposals. Or the media coverage. The public just don’t seem to be listening, much as when the proposals were originally launched in March.

In his Q&A session at the GMB conference on Monday, rather than being on the front foot, Balls had to explain why Labour wasn’t doing better in the polls.

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Osborne also needs a political Plan B

09/06/2011, 12:00:48 PM

by Kevin Meagher

“When the facts change, I change my mind” remarked the great John Maynard Keynes. Easy for economists. As George Bernard Shaw noted, if you laid them all end to end they still could not reach a conclusion.

Chancellors, on the other hand, cannot readily change their minds. They have to come to a conclusion; and then they have to stick to it. Their personal judgement is indelibly stamped on the government’s macroeconomic policy. They are locked into their strategies and directions of travel. Any deviation risks a fatal leaching of trust and credibility.

Of course, nothing changes with economic policy until it all changes. Which begs the question: does George Osborne have a Plan B in case the economy runs out of puff?

If he does, he’s not telling. Hardly surprising really; chancellors cannot be “a little bit pregnant”. It’s either one plan or the other.

Either way, Osborne is no slouch. He knows the economic outlook is precarious. And whatever else he is, the chancellor is a politician first and foremost. Economics – the dismal science, according to Carlyle – is a second order priority for him. He knows that the ice beneath his feet is thinning and he does not intend to sink.

If growth falters and requires a revision in policy, Osborne cannot afford for it to be on his watch. Although it would kill him to do so, he should heed Gordon Brown’s warning: there are two sorts of chancellor: those who fail and those who get out in time.

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We need to diversify our funding base

09/06/2011, 07:00:50 AM

by Peter Watt

We recently saw the publication by the electoral commission of the list of donations by all political parties in the first quarter of 2011 (Q1). The Labour party received £2,882,765 of which £2,507,372 was from trade unions. This means that almost 90% of Labour’s donations in Q1 came from affiliated trade unions. Now whichever way you cut that, it cannot be a good thing. There are two aspects that are specifically worthy of scrutiny. One is political and the other is financial.

Politically, it is a mixed picture. We share history, and over the years the trade unions have proved that they are more than fair weather friends. The affiliated trade unions are members of the party in their own right. Their membership (affiliation) fees mean that trade union members are in theory a constituency of millions of working people with a stake in the party. These members should act as a constant reminder of life in the real world. And, of course, their organisations and ours are enshrined in our constitution with ties at every level of the party.

Over the years, our opponents have unfairly characterised the relationship as one of master and servant, with Labour’s union paymasters demanding and getting their policies. The reality has been somewhat different. In fact, as one union general secretary said to me recently, “if that really was the case then the pound for pound return has been pretty fucking poor”. No. Affiliated trade unions are members of the party because they continue to believe that a Labour government will, on balance, always be better for their members than the alternative.

But we need to be honest. The relationship between the party and the unions has not been right for some time. It isn’t really a direct relationship between the party and millions of trade union members. The relationship is mediated by a small group of senior figures. While for many in the party, the trade union link is just a source of patronage and funds when they are seeking selection. Which comfortable status quo means that millions of trade union members are mainly represented by the millions of votes cast on their behalf by trade union general secretaries at party conference.

With 90% of all donations now coming from trade unions, it is simply not credible to claim that they are not in a stronger position to demand greater compromise on party reform and on policy. If they pushed hard enough, it would be all but impossible for Ed to refuse. And if Ed wanted to do something that they really they didn’t want him to do then could he just ignore them? No.

Meanwhile, our opponents have done a very good job in the minds of the public of painting us as a party of the trade union vested interest. And they have linked this to notions of political extremism and economic excess. Whether this is fair or not is one thing. Another is why are we not capable of attracting a broader base of financial support in the first place? Why are successful companies and individuals not beginning to support us again? Because while it is great news that 70,000 new members have joined leading to an extra £1 million or so into the coffers, that is simply not enough to arrest the long term decline in our income. Particularly when you think that the party costs roughly £25 million per year to run.

Which leads to the second issue worthy of scrutiny – the financial implications of the party receiving 90% of its donations from the trade unions. The first thing to say is that it is simply not sustainable.

Remember that we are committed to paying off £2 million a year in debt before we pay anything else. Of the £2.8 million received between January and March this year, £1 million came from Unite, £500,000 from GMB and £400,000 from Unison. In other words, it would only take a decision by one of their conferences to withhold or reduce funds and the impact would be pretty serious. Any organisation with the levels of debt that the party has, and that is so reliant on a single source of funding, can only be described as vulnerable.

Second, the overall reduction in the amount we have available to spend each year because of our narrow funding base is being masked. It is being masked by the tax payers’ money that we now receive because we are in opposition. A combination of Short, Cranborne and Scottish Parliamentary money took our income from £2.9 million to £4.6 million in the first quarter of this year, meaning that we will be in receipt of the best part of £7 million this year from the taxpayer. So while our income this year is likely to be about £23 – £24 million in cash terms, without the taxpayer we would be looking at income of about £17 million. In other words, we can barely afford to fight an election and we almost certainly can’t afford to win one.

Finally, and most seriously, there is the threat of party funding reform. Quite simply, if the government decides to implement its proposed cap of £50,000 on all donations to political parties, then the Labour party is in dire trouble. The money received from trade unions would go from £8 – £10 million per year to a maximum of £750,000. And yet there is every sign that that is exactly what the government is going to do. And I’m not sure that another “defend the link” campaign is going to be enough on this occasion.

So all in all, 90% of donations to the party coming from the trade unions exposes some pretty serious political and financial weaknesses that we need take seriously. If it’s not happening already, I hope that we are talking to the other parties about agreeing some sort of consensus on party funding reform. I hope that we are looking at why we don’t appear to have been able to diversify our income and attract back large numbers of successful wealthy individuals and companies. And I hope that we are looking at how we can further increase the amount that our members give.

If not, then we may well have a bit more to worry about than Refounding Labour and poor attendance at local party meetings.

Peter Watt is a GMB member and former general secretary of the Labour party.

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Labour needs relentless focus on private sector growth

08/06/2011, 07:00:36 AM

by John Denham

Over the last few months, Ed Miliband has set out three key challenges facing the country:

The problems faced by the “squeezed middle”, on low and middle incomes, who feel that the rewards of working hard are too little compared to those whose stellar salaries are not matched by results.

The threat to the British promise; our expectation that our children will enjoy better lives than we have done, because we cannot now pay our way in the world and create opportunities for them.

And the need to strengthen our communities, recognising that in myriad ways, not least in the way workplaces and working lives have changed, our confidence in a society of strong social institutions is being eroded.

We cannot deliver for the squeezed middle, revive the British promise or deliver strong communities without building an economy which looks and feels very different, with more opportunities to get better jobs.

We have developed an economy that is dangerously dependent on too many low skilled jobs. We cannot promise a better future for the next generation unless we can pay our way and create the skilled, well paid jobs which make the most of, and properly reward, their skills and abilities.

In building a different and stronger economy, the growth and jobs we need will be private sector growth and private sector jobs. The next Labour government will need to have a relentless, single-minded focus in creating the conditions for private sector growth. That means creating the conditions in which companies compete within fair markets and make profit by being the best in those competitive markets.

The Tory-Lib Dem notion is that support for market-led growth means that the ideal state is one in which government does as little as possible. In truth, markets are inevitably and unavoidably shaped by what governments do, and by what government doesn’t do.

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Only nationalisation and CCTV can stop abuse in care homes

07/06/2011, 01:00:56 PM

by Dennis Kavanagh

Satan and the sociology professor sat perched on a roof in Srebrenica watching a man with a Kalashnikov taking pot shots at the people running away from him. The professor explained the complex causes of the conflict and the culture of brutalisation that had transformed the once peaceful farmer into a cold blooded killer. In the pause that followed, Satan turned to the sociology professor and remarked, “But that doesn’t quite explain the glint in his eye though, does it”?

That was Radio 4’s superlative Harry’s Game, but had Satan taken up in one of the dilapidated office chairs in Winterbourne View care home I wonder if the same observation would occur to him. In a week that saw Jon Ronson argue in his book How to spot a psychopath that sadists are practically everywhere; we needed only to tune into last week’s Panorama to spot a number of them. The most vulnerable people in our community had been warehoused on an industrial estate in Bristol; though “warehoused” implies some care over the goods stored. This was an oubliette, a forgotten place in a land that wanted to forget about these people. Secret filming by Joe Casey gave these forgotten people eyes and ears and voices, and last week we heard their screams, their pleas for mercy and their howls of pain.

On the left, we often bury unfashionable impulses that would have protected these people. Go on, give into your inner socialists, you know this was about the market. Give into your inner authoritarian; you know secret filming was the only way to tell the truth about what happened.

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Time for Labour’s flat earthers to get real

07/06/2011, 07:00:37 AM

by Dan Hodges

The world is round. It’s a shame, I know. Personally, I’d love a flat world. Think of the excitement of being able to go on “Edge of the World” tours. Sneak up to the boundary; take a peak into infinity.

But alas, it’s not to be. We’re just so mundane. Too damn spherical.

Once upon a time, people thought the world was flat. It had to be. What else could it be? Then, all of a sudden, everyone knew the earth was round. Of course it was. How could anyone have ever though otherwise.

But in between there must have been a transition period. A time when views gradually shifted:

“I was chatting to my mate Ampelius the other day. About this round world stuff”.

“Yeah”?

“Yep. You know what? I think there may be something in it”.

“Get away…”.

And then there would have been the hold outs. The diehards who clung to the earth in all its glorious flatness right till the very end: “I don’t care what they say. It’s flat, and that’s all there is to it”.

What happened to those people? The “circumference deniers”. Were they mocked? Oppressed? Or did they just fade away?

I’ll tell you what they did. They upped sticks and joined the Labour party.

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Knife crime: Cameron’s pre-election lies and subsequent betrayal

06/06/2011, 03:00:54 PM

by Matt Cavanagh

Five years ago, shortly after he became Conservative leader, David Cameron made a speech in which he called on politicians to “stop making incredible promises that the public do not believe they will keep”. He announced a “taskforce” that would help him sort out this problem. The man he asked to chair it was Ken Clarke.

Last week, Ken Clarke’s department released figures showing how he and Cameron are getting on with one particular promise Cameron made loudly and often while in opposition: that anyone caught carrying a knife would go to jail.

In fact, Clarke had already let slip back in December that this promise had been abandoned. But the latest figures show that, never mind everyone caught carrying a knife going to jail, in fact, a smaller proportion are going to jail now than under Labour. This was greeted with predictable outrage by the Sun, Telegraph and others who have campaigned for tougher sentences on knife crime.

Tory MPs have also reacted angrily, blaming either Clarke, the Liberal Democrats, or the judges. But on this issue, the blame must go to the top. Back in 2008, it was David Cameron who personally led the Conservatives’ attack on Labour’s response to the moral panic over knife crime then gripping the country. He encouraged the media and the public to believe it was the job not of judges but of politicians, and in particular the prime minister, to ensure that people caught carrying a knife were getting the punishment they deserved. He made his position clear in July 2008, in an exclusive interview with the Sun: “anyone caught carrying a knife will be jailed under a Tory Government, David Cameron vows today. The Conservative leader declares automatic jail terms for carrying a dangerous knife is the only way of smashing the current epidemic gripping broken Britain”.

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