Episode 5: A distraction from the main event
You can catch up with previous episodes here:
Episode 1: Welcome, Uncut readers, to the mind of Tom Harris
Episode 2: Should we abstain on the welfare reform bill?
Episode 3: How’s that working out for you Polly?
Episode 4: Student visas… I’m with Theresa May on this one
by Dan Hodges
By the time you read this I will just have completed my morning’s shopping. First, I’m popping into Fortnum and Mason. Unlike the majority of public school anarchists who were trashing the place on Saturday, I can’t afford a full hamper, so I’ll probably settle for a nice jar of strawberry jam. Then I’m planning to wander down to Topman. Not too sure what I’ll pick up there, seeing as I haven’t been in a Topman since Mark Harrison’s fifteenth birthday party back in 1984. I think I bought something grey. To me grey was, and still is, the new black. I was part of the south east London greyblock.
These are, I concede, small gestures. But there are times one has to take stand. Fight the power. Face up to the man.
At the moment I’m a lone voice. But I have high hopes of blossoming into a fledgling movement. UK Half Cut. Or Half Baked. Something like that.
Meanwhile, as I await the flood of applications to my new, organic, grassroots protest group, (I hope I can get a few grandmothers who have never protested before; the BBC love those), I must proffer an apology. (more…)
by Michael Dugher
Political strategy, like Robert Burns’ best laid schemes of mice and men, can “oft go awry”. The thing that really tests prime ministers, governments and oppositions too is what Harold Macmillan once famously called “events”. A week ago, Ed Miliband convened a special meeting of the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP) to discuss that day’s vote on support for military action in Libya. Despite the Conservative and right-wing media’s ongoing efforts to caricature him as “Red Ed”, a prisoner of the left-wing trade unions, he spoke very firmly in favour of military action arguing that, despite the huge reservations and concerns that many in the PLP held, Labour and Britain must support the will of the international community as spelled out in the UN security council resolution. What is more, he carried the meeting. And he managed to unite MPs as diverse in their ideological perspective as Michael Meacher and John Spellar – a remarkable (if not unprecedented) achievement.
At the PLP meeting, Labour’s former shadow foreign secretary, Gerald Kaufman, warned Labour MPs of the need to get the party’s response to the Libya crisis right. No two set of international circumstances are the same. But as a member of the shadow cabinet at the time, Kaufman said that Libya was as big a political test for Labour as the Falklands had been in the early 1980s. He reminded colleagues – many barely out of nappies at the time – that Labour’s response to the Falklands was “all over the shop”. He said Labour put itself on the wrong side of the argument with the public, looked unpatriotic, and even allowed the Conservative government to get away with some disastrous defence decisions in the run up to the conflict. Kaufman argued that Libya was not the Falklands, but that there were lessons for Labour. He was right. (more…)
by Ray Filar
“Same old taxes, same old Tories”. Ed Miliband’s response to the chancellor’s “budget for growth” last week was characterised by an aggressive, knowing ennui. It was as if Miliband had cast himself as an aging prima donna reclining on a (red) velvet chaise-longue, warning her child away from an only seemingly reformed no-good suitor. “I know what they’re like, you know what they’re like”, he seemed to be saying. Don’t be fooled by “friendly” George’s marriage proposal, also known as his budget for “growth”. He’s still the same man who stole your money to buy a dead puppy as a present for your sister.
The presumption Miliband and his speechwriters are making is that we do know what the Conservatives are like; that we will easily remember what they’re like if we cast our collective minds back to 1997 when they were last in government (or when they last proposed to us, depending on how long this analogy can be dragged out). This message was clearest during one of the speech’s defining moments, in which, against a supportive background of taunts and cheers from buoyed-up Labour ministers, Miliband described Osborne as embodying the “hubris and arrogance of the early 1990s, the same broken promises…he’s Norman Lamont with an iPod”. (more…)
by Sally Bercow
The nuclear emergency at Fukushima, which is still unfolding, has thrust nuclear power back in the spotlight. Many people have jumped on the renascent anti-nuclear bandwagon (welcome, Angela Merkel) and, quite rightly, nuclear safety assessments are now underway in many countries, not least our own (the government’s chief nuclear adviser will deliver a report in September).
While recognising that it’s foolhardily “off message” for a wannabe Labour politician, I confess I have long been against nuclear power. And not because it’s got the “scary” word “nuclear” in it (a patronising, cheap shot the pro-nuclear lobby often resort to making). Indeed, I know that, statistically speaking, nuclear power is pretty safe, despite the catastrophies of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Actually, for the record, although I’m unequivocally anti nuclear power, when it comes to defence I’m certainly no unilateralist (Britain needs to maintain some form of nuclear deterrent – albeit not the absurdly expensive and over-the-top Trident system).
The reason I’m against nuclear power is two-fold. First, I don’t trust the industry and second (and far less subjectively), I believe that it’s a tremendously expensive distraction – preventing us from realising the enormous potential of renewable energy. (more…)
by Anthony Painter
“We must recognise that the consequences of large-scale military operations…are inherently difficult to predict and control. Therefore, they must be avoided, excepting only when our nation’s security is clearly and directly threatened”.
Strange as it may seem, I have never been a fan of the political memoir. They are invariably poorly written, historical distortions that lack any sort of reflection and are instead an exercise in settling scores and re-justification. They are aimed at cementing the author’s “place in history” rather than helping a nation to reflect on its history and improve itself in the process. They always fail in this objective. There is one noble exception: Bob McNamara’s In Retrospect: the tragedy and lessons of Vietnam.
The former secretary of defense – with personal responsibility for escalating the Vietnam war under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson – could have fallen back on the domino theory or some such to defend his actions. Instead, right up front, he is brutally honest:
“We were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why”.
Two things made me re-read In Retrospect. First, the launch of military action in Libya. Remember that Vietnam started as a smallish operation with 16,000 military “advisers” to train the South Vietnamese to defend themselves and ended with 543,400 troops in Vietnam by 1973. These things can acquire a deadly logic all of their own. Second, Tony Blair’s piece in the Wall Street Journal expanding an aggressive view of the role of the west in North Africa and the Middle East- failing to heed McNamara’s warnings. (more…)
By Dan Cooke
In other news this week, concerns were raised about standards of governance in the Republic of Bullingdonia.
The ruling party, with a strong traditional base in the south east of the country, imposed a shock 12% tax hike on the country’s oil and gas industry. This is overwhelmingly based in the state’s northern province where the governing party recently won only one of all 59 constituencies in the recent general election.
Critics charged that, while the government of Bullingdonia claimed to be promoting growth, the levy would undermine the competitiveness of one of the country’s leading industries and that the lack of consultation on its introduction would undermine the certainty needed for international investment. While the ruling party argued they were fulfilling a manifesto commitment to a “fair fuel stabiliser”, it was pointed out that such plans never previously envisaged a levy on the oil industry. (more…)
by Atul Hatwal
Ofgem research contradicts government claims that costs will not be passed onto consumers
As George Osborne and Danny Alexander struggled to deny that increased taxes on North Sea oil would simply be passed on to consumers on petrol forecourts, it emerged that these taxes would also hit hard-pressed households’ energy bills.
Wholesale costs faced by the big household energy suppliers, who are involved in energy exploration and production in the North Sea, are set to rise when these new taxes are levied.
New research released by Ofgem this week revealed how these increased costs will feed through into household energy bills.
The report, entitled “Do Energy Bills Respond Faster To Rising Costs Than Falling Costs“, was sneaked out on Monday. It details how energy suppliers don’t just pass on an increase in the wholesale costs of energy, they hike customer bills by almost 10% more than the original cost increase.
Applying Ofgem’s analysis to the changes announced in the budget, all households that use energy from the major suppliers facing higher oil and gas taxes will be hit, regardless of whether they benefit from the cut in fuel duty.
The result will be millions of non-drivers subsidising motorists’ petrol costs through their energy bills, raising new questions about David Cameron’s claim that this would be the “greenest government ever”.
Even worse, Ofgem’s analysis shows that when energy suppliers’ wholesale costs decrease, they don’t pass on the full benefit to consumers. Instead, they pocket over 60% of the difference, leaving prices much higher than before the initial increase.
This means that the fuel stabiliser is likely to permanently ratchet up energy prices for consumers. (more…)
by Rob Marchant
On Saturday, Ed Miliband will be speaking, but not marching, at one of the biggest anti-government demonstrations for many years. Activist Luke Akehurst writes passionately and eloquently about the need for all of us involved in the Labour movement to march, and, on the face of it, it is an obvious way to capitalise on the unpopularity of the Tories. But there is a big difference between it being right for individual members to be involved, and it being right for the leader of the Labour party to speak there.
Ed is in an uncomfortable position – “walking a tightrope”, as the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan puts it. He’s not wrong: look, and you can find at least five compelling reasons for his not being involved in the demo.
One: Labour didn’t organise the demo, the TUC did. Who knows what other people will say? Who can say what they will do? Things do not bode well regarding the other speakers. “Keep your sleazy hands off our kids”, Unite’s Len McCluskey told the progressive London conference, in a message directed at the metropolitan police (not very good political judgement, it would seem, considering the met themselves now stand to lose heavily from the cuts and could have been a useful ally against them). And if, like the earlier student demo, there are police clashes, heaven help us. (more…)
by Peter Watt
There has been, rightly, an awful lot of attention given to the government’s health and social care bill. It proposes opening up the delivery of NHS services to any willing provider and the introduction, in some instances, of competition on the basis of price rather than outcome. Controversial stuff. Especially as the Conservatives promised no “top down reorganisation” during the election.
But there is one aspect of the bill that hasn’t been much commented on. It is misleadingly named. It is a “health” bill, certainly, but it is not a “social care” bill at all. This is not a pedantic point. The bill does not cover the social care system, which provides care and support to hundreds of thousands of people across the country in their homes and in residential settings. Last year, social care cost the state in the region of £27 billion. And individual families billions more on top. Many people do not realise that social care, unlike health, is not universally free.
Basically, if you have assets of more than £23,500 then you have to pay. If you become old and infirm, and need help staying at home, you will probably pay. If you need to move into a residential home, you will probably pay. With the average cost of a room in a nursing home at £36,000 pa, it won’t come cheap. (more…)
