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The real Labour lie on immigration

22/04/2011, 08:00:36 AM

by Atul Hatwal

David Cameron’s speech on immigration last week sparked a predictably incoherent response from Labour.

The official line was to not have a line on what Cameron was talking about. Nor was it to have a line on Vince Cable’s response.

Instead, Labour just talked about there being a government split. While several elephants trampled around Labour’s room. Did the party agree with Cameron? Or Cable? Did it want to defend its record?

Questions, questions.

No answers were immediately forthcoming, but some clues on leadership thinking, beyond abject terror at the use of the ‘I’ word, have begun to seep out in the past week.

Up popped Maurice Glasman in the pages of Progress, Labour’s very own pearly king, or at least Lord. He had lots to say about Labour’s “lie” on the levels of immigration, the impact on traditional working class folk and the need to “reconnect” with members of the English Defence League.

Gor blimey guvnor.

Then Ed Miliband chipped in to Nick Robinson. Citing the mythical conversation with the average punter, so beloved of politicians reaching for some authenticity, he said:

“I think we clearly underestimated the number of people coming from Poland…People say to me, look I’m worried about the pressure on my wages of people coming into the country, I’m worried about what it does to housing supply”.

Looking beyond it being unlikely anyone really said that to him, given no-one outside of a think tank actually talks like that, Miliband’s words marked the complete triumph of a new narrative for Labour on immigration. He might have skirted around the topic during the leadership election, but this was the first time he had articulated the narrative as leader of the Labour party.

While the right wail about identity, security and look suspiciously at the Pakistani migrants and their children; Labour has gone down the Duffy road with an invading army of eastern Europeans pushing hard pressed Brits out of jobs.

Increased labour supply at the lower income end of the labour market, driving down wages, increasing unemployment and increasing pressure on public services is the more salon-friendly version of this thesis.

But here’s the problem. Regardless of the way it’s expressed, it’s wrong. Not morally or ethically, but factually. (more…)

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This government’s back-of-the-envelope approach to national security must change

21/04/2011, 04:05:03 PM

by Matt Cavanagh

Con Coughlin’s article in today’s Telegraph will make uncomfortable reading for those Conservatives (and News International journalists) who like to pretend that Cameron’s national security council (NSC) is a genuinely radical reform based on a serious attempt to learn the lessons of the last decade. Coughlin writes:

“To judge by the NSC’s increasingly inchoate response to the challenge presented by Gaddafi’s regime, it seems to me that all it has achieved so far is the replacement of Blair’s much-derided “sofa government” with a new, back-of-the-envelope approach.”

I argued in November that Cameron had persistently over-sold his reforms to our national security machinery, which really amounted to “a tinkering and re-badging exercise”. In the first couple of weeks of the Libyan crisis, the continuing lack of strategy, coherence, and grip was obvious.

The narrative changed when Cameron was able to take the credit for British diplomatic efforts to secure UNSCR 1973, and for being one of the first leaders to call for military intervention. The changed narrative didn’t change the facts – that Cameron’s call for intervention was more a response to immediate domestic pressure than part of a real strategy, and that UNSCR 1973 itself didn’t seem to be part of a real strategy – but it did push these inconvenient facts into the background. At that stage, what mattered was that Cameron seemed to be winning the international argument.

Now what matters is who is winning on the ground. The curiously timed joint letter by Sarkozy, Cameron and Obama, insisting that Gaddafi must go, hasn’t made that outcome any more likely compared to the various possible outcomes which leave him in place – the potential collapse of the revolution outlined by Anthony Loyd in this month’s Prospect, or a protracted stalemate, or a messy negotiated settlement. The letter has, however, increased the extent to which the West’s reputation, as well as Libyans’ future, is on the line.

It might therefore be time to look again, not just at the implications of the Libyan crisis for our defence and foreign policy – reopening or updating the strategic defence and security review (SDSR) – but also at the implications for our national security machinery. It needs real reform, rather than tinkering and re-badging, if we are to increase the chances of our foreign and security policy being driven by strategy rather than emerging out of the interaction between media coverage, domestic politics, and bureaucratic dysfunction.

Matt Cavanagh was a special adviser on defence in the ministry of defence, treasury, and Downing Street from 2005 to 2010.

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Labour needs to stop being the bossing and interfering party

21/04/2011, 08:39:28 AM

by Peter Watt

Last week’s decision to end the so called bin-taxes was clever politics by the government. And as there hasn’t been an awful lot of clever politics recently by the government, I thought that it was significant. What was particularly clever was that the weekend “announcement” was actually an announcement that the ending of bin taxes would be announced in about a month’s time.

But the government knows that the local elections and AV referendum (whatever the result) are going to be pretty challenging for them. They know that there is not a lot that they can do to alter that. So they have decided to keep reminding people of what they think the public see as Labour weakness. So they might lose the battle in the next month, but they will keep sowing the seeds of an election victory in 2015. These reminders obviously include playing the blame game on the deficit and attacking Labour’s economic competence. But it also involves something else. Something more personally emotional for many voters. A perceived tendency by the last Labour government to overly interfere in people’s lives. (more…)

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The show goes on: bring back Prezza

20/04/2011, 03:30:23 PM

by Kevin Meagher

John Prescott was supposed to have gone to seed with the passing of the Blair era. His future lay in regaling well-heeled passengers on cruise liners about his forty years in Parliament. But the old sea dog keeps coming back into port. So much so that his retirement from the frontline is barely discernable.

Labour’s Emeritus Deputy Leader has been busy. He led the Go Fourth campaign to get Labour ready for last year’s general election. He has become an unlikely star of Twitter, supplying a constant stream of characteristically pithy opinions. In fact, he has transcended politics altogether and entered popular culture.

He had a cameo role playing himself in the BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey. Then he popped up presenting a documentary about class with wife Pauline. Now he’s sending himself up in that advert for a price comparison website (which he says helps fund his office in the House of Lords).

And when he’s not busy leading the charge against AV, he’s rattling cages about the phone-hacking scandal; jousting on Channel Four’s zeitgeist-y 10 O’clock Show the other week with former News of the World hack Paul McMullen.

Some retirement. But there’s not much effort involved. Prescott’s secret is that the words coming out of his mouth are the same as the thoughts in his head. That nanosecond between brain messages forming into words is detectable to the electorate. They know that politicians apply a filter before saying anything. They sense they are not being told the unvarnished truth. That’s why all MPs are bunched together in the public’s mind as conniving charlatans. (more…)

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We should recall Parliament, but Douglas is sitting on his hands

20/04/2011, 11:30:32 AM

by Tom Watson

There are few issues more important for our Parliament than sending British troops to a hostile country to support an unknown opposition fighting a raggedy civil war against a brutal dictator.

Questioning him on Friday 18March after the government statement on Libya, David Winnick asked the prime minister:

“despite all that the prime minister has said about reservations – no ground troops and so forth – does he recognise that in the country at large there is bound to be great anxiety that we could be dragged, through escalation, into a third war in nine years? Therefore, will the prime minister make sure that there are daily – or at least very regular reports to the House of Commons, so we avoid a third war”?

David Cameron replied:

“…there should be regular statements updating the House. The point the honourable gentleman makes about no ground troops and no occupying force is vital. That is in the UN security council resolution; it is the reassurance that we can give to people that that is not part of our aims – it is not what the UN wants, it is not what the Arab league wants, it is not what Britain wants. That is clearly a limitation on our ability to act, but it is absolutely right, and I think people will be reassured by it”.

I read in today’s papers that we are sending troops to Libya, or as the government describes them “military liaison advisory teams”.

Yesterday, a number of Conservative MPs called for Parliament to be recalled. The government has not responded. While driving my children to a well known West Midlands theme park, I’m sure I heard Douglas Alexander on the radio agreeing that there was no need bring MPs back to discuss the matter.

I’m getting prematurely long in the tooth but I feel Douglas has made a mistake. He should have pressured a government minister to come to the House. It would have allowed MPs who worry about our Libya campaign to seek assurances that this does not represent mission creep. Personally, I don’t need to ask those questions. I know it is.

A recall would allow me, and others, to test the wisdom of David Cameron. David is very good at saying things. He’s a good wordsmith. He emotes. But he always leaves me with the sense that he’s basically just a bullshitter. It often feels like he is not fully formed in his views. You have to be up close to this set of ministers to get the full picture. Press statements are not enough.

It’s the psychology of our current crop of leaders that gives the game away. Unlike David Cameron, William Hague is a transparent politician. You always know what he is doing and thinking, even when his words suggest something different.

When William Hague said that sending “military liaison advisory teams” does not represent “boots on the ground”, I thought “oh my God, we’re sending in ground troops”.

Maybe Douglas knows a different William Hague and David Cameron. I would imagine he’ll be given special briefings on privy council terms. He probably accepts telephone calls, made by arrangement between their respective private offices for mutually beneficial times in their busy diaries.

Maybe that’s why he said on the radio that on this occasion he was satisfied by the government explanation of the need to send in special military liaison teams. Despite this, he shouldn’t be so quick to sit on his hands when backbenchers express legitimate concerns.

A recall of Parliament is a pain for all concerned. We should have one all the same. We’re sending in troops, for God’s sake. And look where that got us last time.

Tom Watson is Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

Addendum

West Bromwich, 18.25

On re-reading this article, I find that, not for the first time, I’ve been too harsh on Douglas Alexander. He’s not making the calls, Hague is. He’s got the difficult task of reacting very quickly to a fast changing policy. So I regret the harsh tone of the piece. Sorry Douglas. To be fair, I should have said how he completely exposed coalition incompetence in the early days of the conflict over the evacuation. But I’m seriously worried about mission creep. And parliament hasn’t been consulted. Ministers should be held to account.

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What will the Guardianistas do if we defy them and vote “no”?

20/04/2011, 07:00:14 AM

by Dan Hodges

I’m starting to feel sorry for the Yes campaign. Genuinely. They’ve got some good staffers. People with a sincere commitment to their cause.

But they haven’t got a prayer. And the reason they haven’t got a prayer is too many of their own supporters don’t actually care whether they win or they lose.

Watching the Yes campaign from afar is like watching the Labour party in the late eighties. By then, the harder edges of dogma and ideology had been blunted. There was a realisation that the principle meant little without power. But while there was an intellectual acceptance of the need to secure office, the hunger was lacking. We wanted to win. But not quite enough.

It’s the same with those who are supposedly fighting for a change in our voting system. They’re not actually fighting at all. They’re pontificating. Posturing. Striking a pose.

Get hold of yesterday’s Guardian leader. “Reformists have just 16 days to transform things”, it warns, “by countering a campaign of unremitting negativity, whose garish posters are explicit in saying that because the NHS matters, democracy doesn’t, and carry the implicit message ‘vote no or the baby gets it’”.

It then points out, “Dismal as the pitch is, it is making in-roads”. No shit Sherlock. You mean negative campaigning actually works? Who’da thunk it? (more…)

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Yes, MPs work hard. But who for? Themselves.

19/04/2011, 02:00:23 PM

by Alex Hilton

It’s truly challenging to express incandescent rage in the form of dry, political writing but let me have a go. I am stomach-wrenchingly sick of MPs defending the nobility of MPs in the process of backing the first past the post electoral system.

I’m sorry, Jim Murphy, but I’m talking about you.

Murphy is one of the better MPs. By all accounts he’s intelligent, hard working, serious and responsive to his constituents. But because he is good, does that really mean the rest of them are?

He is the latest in a long list of MPs telling us how hard-working and selfless MPs are. Please listen to me: this is utter tripe. Many MPs really are hard working, some are even obsessive and monomaniacal. But you have to ask who they are hard working for, and it’s usually themselves. It’s not their fault, it’s just how the systems works. (more…)

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Purple bookers try to revive past New Labour glories

19/04/2011, 11:00:48 AM

Leading “Blairites” plan to publish a modernisers’ manifesto, to “reshape politics on the centre left” . It will be called The Purple Book.

by Sunder Katwala

Looking back at the successes and shortcomings of the New Labour years, it could be argued that, if there was a missed opportunity which set the limits to the party’s ambitions for progress, it came with the 2001 general election campaign.

It was an election which Labour was never going to lose. William Hague’s unpopular populism was never taken seriously across the country. Yet New Labour high command could never quite believe that the party was going to win, and was concerned to close down issues which it feared were resonating.

So the posters were purple – a lot done, a lot to do – in a bid to seek a largely mandateless re-coronation of the then very popular Tony Blair.

The result was a landslide – a slow motion replay of 1997, with almost no seats at all changing hands, but on a much lower turnout in a way that did little to shift the centre of political gravity. In retrospect, Labour’s 1997-2001 term stands up well, with a ream of manifesto commitments taken into office delivered in a way that endures, from the minimum wage to devolution.

What always remained elusive was “renewal” in office, though politicians and think-tankers talked of little else. The 2001 campaign may have a good claim to be the most cautious run by any winning party in the post-war period. (The major themes of the second term had been kicked into the long grass. It was a big deal for Gordon Brown to put up national insurance for the NHS, but it was safely “under review” during the campaign. Tony Blair’s big second term idea was to win the European argument, but he planned to begin it at the TUC conference on September 11th 2001, in a speech never given, rather than to take Hague’s “foreign land” campaign head on at the hustings).

Given that 9/11 came to dominate all else within a few months, perhaps events meant that it didn’t matter. But 2001 was probably the moment at which Labour needed to give its argument and vision more positive content.

Instead, Labour emulated Bill Clinton a few years earlier. It was re-elected, but did not seek to realign the political debate explicitly. It did shift policy arguments, but was less confident than Margaret Thatcher in believing that politicians could reshape the contours of public and political debate. (more…)

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Put aside the Cleggphobia and then vote No to AV

19/04/2011, 08:07:12 AM

by Jim Murphy

I have stayed out of the debate about the AV referendum until now. I have surprised myself because instinctively I usually know where I stand on all the big issues, but on this I have found it easy to sit it out. There are so many other more pressing issues – a view that I know those involved in both campaigns share. I have waited in the expectation that the pro-AV campaign would make a convincing new argument. They haven’t, so when the referendum comes on May 5^th I have decided to vote No.

There are many people I know who are voting No simply to spite Nick Clegg, but I’m not one of them. This was a really important point that Ed Miliband rightly raised yesterday. To vote against AV to get back at Nick Clegg is a churlish way to conduct politics. A change in the electoral system could be permanent, but say whatever you want about Nick Clegg one thing for sure is that he is certainly temporary – this is probably his last job in frontline British politics. If last year’s post-election political gamble of switching to the Tories’ macro-economic policies turns out to be as bad economics as it is bad politics then it’s questionable whether he’ll even lead his Party into the next election.

So let’s put all the Cleggphobia to one side. My decision is based on the merits of the case. The main reason I have decided to vote ‘No’ is that the supporters of changing the system haven’t made a convincing enough case that this is the right kind of change. They have struggled to make a persuasive argument about why the country’s politics would be better with AV. It may seem unfair, but in all these constitutional debates most of the burden of persuasion falls upon those advocating change – that is certainly my experience with devolution. (more…)

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Spare a thought for the poor Tory MPs

18/04/2011, 10:02:00 AM

by John Woodcock

Will someone please spare a thought for those poor Conservative MPs? The Liberal Democrats have been so unruly over the last week that the Tories are looking positively collegiate in comparison.

Back when their coalition was formed, Conservative whips no doubt insisted that making nice with a party they despise was a small price to pay for getting the chance to implement a governing programme that remained unmistakably Tory.

And for a while, being civil was made easier by the sight of their new partners soaking up public outrage as the government got on with implementing cuts that “Thatcher only dreamed of”. Not only were the Liberal Democrats locked in the boot of the ministerial Jag (just imagine, if you can, opening a boot and finding an angry Sarah Teather and Julian Huppert inside), but Nick Clegg was gallantly offering to pose as the little statue on its bonnet.

So the vast majority of Tories – many of whom have been denied ministerial office to make way for a Liberal – have spent a whole year biting their tongues and trying to play nice with their new friends.

Then they pop off back to the constituency for the Easter recess and find that the agreement to keep mutual contempt under wraps has been unilaterally cast aside by their junior partners.

Make no mistake, Vince Cable’s open criticism of the prime minister went way beyond the boundary of what would normally be considered acceptable by someone bound by collective responsibility.

It is a statement of the bleeding obvious that Labour’s time in government was not always a model of harmony between ministers. Clare Short repeatedly acted up towards the end. The Eds, Balls and Miliband, are absolutely right to pledge never to go back to the madness of the Blair-Brown squabbles that regularly spilled over into the press.

But even at the height of the bad feeling, no minister openly defied the prime minister like Vince Cable did last week and kept their job. And he was not acting in isolatation. Cable’s salvo came just days after a Liberal assault on the government’s health policy that was triggered by Clegg himself.

It is unclear where the Liberal Democrats go from here, and even whether they will ultimately stick together as a party.

But one thing is clear: Conservative MPs on their return to Westminster are going to be less willing to play the role of happy, Scandinavian-style coalition builders.

If Tory MPs ensconced in their constituencies are prepared to tell the likes of me how fizzing they are about the way the Lib Dems are flouting the coalition agreement, their anger when they get back to the bosom of the 1922 committee will be something to behold.

There is a real danger that the disgruntled Tory right flank may well start demanding the imposition of even more true blue policies to make up for this misbehaviour. The consequences of that for families and businesses across the country could be grim.

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

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