Uncut « Labour Uncut

Why don’t we try to find out why we lost?

05/04/2011, 07:00:15 AM

by Dan Hodges

We’re off. Boots on the ground, leaflets through the letterbox. The Labour movement is marching again, back on the campaign trail.

But while we throw ourselves body and soul into the battle to wrest our town halls and regional assemblies from the government’s grasp, a question. As we enter this election campaign, does anyone know why we lost the last one?

I don’t. Like every one else, I have my own pet theories. Assumptions. Random thoughts, shot through with the lack of objectivity and rationality to which we all succumb when the political party we’re close to relinquishes power.

The very first piece I wrote for Labour Uncut was my analysis of our defeat. “The Labour right must shoulder the blame”, ran the headline. Hmmmm. Fair to say I’ve been on a bit of a journey since then.

That’s not to say that there aren’t things in that article I still believe to be valid. The failure of banking regulation. Trident. Tuition fees.

“It was not the ‘usual suspects’ of the left”, I roared, “but the undisciplined out-riders of modernisation doing the damage”. A journey indeed.

(more…)

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Osborne’s fear of credit rating agencies is costing Britain jobs

04/04/2011, 04:00:53 PM

by James Watkins

Whether voiced by George Osborne at the dispatch box or by Andrew Neil on the This Week sofa, the message is the same: it is too late to change course on the massive deficit reduction plans, otherwise the markets would be spooked. This new line is a response to the growing success of the belated Labour campaign that the cuts go “too far, too fast”.

So how does Labour now move from the government’s line that the cuts are needed to tackle the “mess” of the Labour years to the fatalistic line that it is too late to change course. The heart of the counter attack is to expose the fallacy that the views of credit rating agencies should always be heeded.

Credit rating agencies are necessary. To oversee levels of debt and economic performance, independent and well run credit rating agencies have their place. The markets cannot function properly if risk is not independently checked. Otherwise business judgements would be made in the same way as playing poker in the dark.

But the credit rating agencies have not been as good at their job as they have at their PR. Between 2002 and 2007, an estimated $3.2 trillion in loans were made to US homeowners whose poor payment records were known. These loans were bundled up in securities – or investment packages – that were sold across the world. As the respected economist, Joseph Stiglitz, said

“I view the rating agencies as one of the key culprits. They were the party that performed the alchemy that converted the securities from F rated to A rated”. (more…)

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We learnt from our mistakes. The Tories are set to emulate them.

04/04/2011, 12:11:44 PM

by John Woodcock

The mythical cost free, universally popular, radical ideas box has been mentioned in this column before.

Though it was coined by Thick of It scriptwriters satirising the last Labour government, the box is enjoying a new lease of life under the new Conservative-led regime.

Iain Duncan Smith whipped it out live on Sky yesterday morning when discussing his proposals to merge the basic and state second pensions, due to be set out in the House of Commons today. (As an aside, I am not sure Labour in government was ever able to get away with quite the level of blatant pre-announcing to the media that ministers now routinely carry out before Parliamentary statements). (more…)

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20 minutes is too long without my smartphone

04/04/2011, 07:00:56 AM

by Sally Bercow

Not being a sporty sort, the most exciting thing I’d read about the Olympics – by far – was that they would usher in the use of mobile phones on the London Underground. Hurrah – an end to the frustration of losing my signal every time I take the tube. I’ll soon be able to tweet and text as I trundle round the Circle. I shall do my Ocado shop from the (relative) comfort of the Jubilee line. No more shall I have to time my tube journeys around people who (allegedly) only have 10 minute “windows” to take calls in their frightfully high-powered days.

And then Boris goes and announces last week that the project to install an underground 3G network has been shelved, at least for now. It seems that it’s too technically complex to complete in time for the Olympics and some reports suggest there was a ding-dong over funding (the mobile networks and the Chinese telecoms company huawei had been expected to pick up the tab, estimated at around £100 million).

I was gutted. By any standard, it’s a crushing blow. How are we meant to morph into David Cameron’s “nation of entrepreneurs” if we can’t even do business on the run, for goodness sake? Mobiles on the tube will boost London’s economy. How much harder will it be to “drive growth” if you can’t stay in range and in touch with the world 24/7? Just think how useful it would be to text your clients and reassure them that, ever the true professional, you are en route but hampered by signalling problems. Other cities – Paris, Hong Kong, Barcelona – have sorted it, why is London such a dinosaur? Never mind the much-maligned civil service, the tube is a strong contender for the “enemy of enterprise” crown. (more…)

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The media were right about the march

01/04/2011, 12:22:22 PM

by Rob Marchant

There is surely no need to add to the articles on last Saturday’s demo which focus on the actions of UK Uncut and the black bloc. Although it seems uncertain whether these groups were not, in the end, a sideshow to the principal lessons from it all. Perhaps trickier to explain was the laying of any remaining blame, as many did, squarely at the feet of “the media”.

Politicians who complain about the media are, as Enoch Powell once sharply observed, like sailors who complain about the sea. But, although we are not all politicians but mostly activists, this is precisely the conclusion we have largely reached regarding the demonstration last weekend. It’s understandable. It seemed grossly unfair, to those who had in good faith given up their Saturdays for a decent cause, for a peaceful demo to be linked to the violence and disruption of a few idiots. But, the trouble is, it wasn’t unfair.

With some notable and honourable exceptions, there are many adverse criticisms you could reasonably level at sections of the British media: overall right-wing bias, dumbing down, laziness in fact-checking, toothlessness of the regulator and so on. Fair enough. And, as a party, we should really have no great interest in defending the media – after all they usually have no great interest in defending us. But just this once let’s try, if we can, to step back and be objective about them. (more…)

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What are Labour councils for?

31/03/2011, 01:00:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Socialism, Herbert Morrison once helpfully summarised, is what the Labour party does. A partial assessment to be sure, but is there a more reliable compass for what Labour politicians in office should find themselves doing?

In a few short weeks, local authorities up and down the country will go red as voters give their verdict on 12 months of dismal Tory-Lib Dem cutbacks and recession. But what, when faced with reducing expenditure by a quarter, will Labour councils offer by way of a response?

Labour today launches its campaign for those elections with a blizzard of statistics and weblinks playing out the familiar annual ritual of showing that Labour councils are better value than Tory ones. The Tories will, naturally enough, produce rival spreadsheets next week showing the reverse. Plus ca change.

To accompany the usual political riffs, the party has also published a document entitled: Labour: Your voice in tough times. It suggests that: “…every Labour councillor you elect will be your community’s first line of defence against the damage being done by a Conservative-led government and its Liberal Democrat allies”. (more…)

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The good news and the groupthink

31/03/2011, 07:00:02 AM

by Peter Watt

Less than a year after the horrors of securing a derisory 29% in the general election, Labour is competitive again and is rightly optimistic for the first time in many years.

The party is consistently ahead in the polls, and by-election results are stunning at a Parliamentary and local government level. At the same time, the government seems gaffe-prone: just think forests, Andy Coulson or school sport partnerships. And it is doing things which are unpopular and controversial like introducing spending cuts, raising tuition fees and reforming welfare. Economic recovery is slow at best, inflation is a problem and interest rates look like they are on their way up, pushing up mortgage costs. And all that before the full impact of the cuts are felt and the outcomes of May’s elections and AV referendum impacts the morale and unity of the government. Mutterings in the newspapers about a possible early general election following a coalition ripped apart by its own divisions are nonsense – but they are indicative of unease. And all this less than a year into the government. (more…)

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Labour’s defence policy review: responsibilities beyond our borders

30/03/2011, 01:00:24 PM

by Jim Murphy

Yesterday the shadow defence team launched Labour’s defence policy review with five specific areas of work. Dramatic events around the world and the deployment of UK armed forces make this an important time for debate on defence policy.

For the country, it is a moment to decide on the nature of our involvement in causes beyond our borders in our national interest or for humanitarian ends. For the Conservatives, following the exposure of a weak, narrow foreign policy and a rushed, widely criticised defence review, it is a moment to reflect on whether they remain the natural home of the forces. For the Left it is a moment to decide whether we are bound by the legacies of Iraq or whether we can learn the right lessons and now help shape defence policy around our values.

We all know that the security landscape is fast changing with a myriad of fresh and well-established challenges. The most immediate is Libya. The UK government was right to take the action it did. As internationalists we had both the responsibility and the opportunity to help enforce international law and save innocents from slaughter and have therefore backed the UN decision. But in doing so we will keep asking the questions the country wants answered. (more…)

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Exposed: Osborne’s secret addiction to debt

30/03/2011, 07:00:33 AM

by Dan Cooke

A charlatan chancellor is as predestined to opprobrium as a philandering preacher.

This government has found a vivid and compelling rhetoric to justify its choice to slash services and squeeze the middle. When George Osborne urges the need to pay off the “nation’s credit card” it resonates with the common sense verity that all should live within their means. The polls show every week that this homely paradigm is the bedrock of government support and the stumbling block for Labour breakthrough.

Yet Osborne’s silver tongue is forked. His strictures on the evils of debt are an indictment in his own case. His ultimate comeuppance is as certain as for a televangelist preaching chastity while screwing half his flock.

The final audit of coalition Britain has not yet been written, but the first draft is the revised forecasts of the office of budgetary responsibility. These show the truth about the preacher when the camera is off. They tell a story of more public borrowing and more private borrowing, even as public and private investment is squeezed. And they tell a tale of premeditated deception on debt. (more…)

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A Labour-SNP coalition after May? Stranger things have happened (just).

29/03/2011, 01:00:25 PM

by Sunder Katwala

Could Labour and the Liberal Democrats govern together, despite their current animosities? It would be unwise to rule anything out about what is a very unpredictable electoral environment in 2015. But we might have a Lab-Lib government in five weeks rather than four years, once the Scottish elections take place on May 5.

Who governs Scotland may be the biggest unknown about May’s elections.

Labour, having performed extraordinarily well in Scotland in the British general election last May, remains favourite to top the poll, though SNP first minister, Alex Salmond, remains the dominant public figure in Scottish politics, and the latest polls are neck and neck.

If Labour can emerge ahead of the SNP in the PR election, it will have to decide whether to seek to govern alone or with coalition partners.

The favoured option of many Scottish MSPs and MPs is for a minority government, on the model of that run by Alex Salmond since 2007. A fixed term parliament makes this possible. And there are many MPs and MSPs who wish that Labour had governed alone when it was last in office. Introducing PR for local government has been particularly unpopular with several in the Labour tribe. (more…)

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