Uncut « Labour Uncut

The man behind the (temporary) moustache: Dan Hodges interviews John Healey

07/12/2010, 11:59:09 AM

It’s eight fifteen in the morning, and John Healey has a date with destiny. For a month Labour’s shadow health secretary has been sporting a moustache proud enough to stand comparison with a Sopwith Camel ace or Clement Atlee. But today the “mo” must go.

“It’s my contribution to Movember, the campaign to raise prostate cancer awareness. I was pretty shocked when I took over the health brief to discover the mortality rate from the disease. It’s treatable, but so many men leave it too late”.

A worthy cause. But down in the depths of the House of Commons barbers the fundraising for the prostate cancer charity hits a snag. Kelly the hairdresser bears bad tidings.

“I’m sorry Mr Healey, but I won’t be able to do it. I can’t use a razor”.

No razor. In a barbers?

“No. So sorry. Health and safety”.

John Healey elevates a quizzical eyebrow. “I’m going to have to raise this with Lord Young”. (more…)

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If abandoning Gordon is wrong, junking his ideas is just stupid.

07/12/2010, 07:00:04 AM

by John Woodcock

So, Gordon Brown’s book Beyond the Crash is out today.

The former prime minister’s account of the global financial collapse deserves to make a significant impact on Britain’s collective understanding of what has happened to its economy in, and since, the crisis. It ought to cast in a different light a still-towering figure whose reputation has been trashed by all-comers since election defeat in May.

I say “deserves” and “ought”, rather than “will”, because the truth is that political orthodoxy has shifted so starkly since the election that Gordon’s account may struggle to achieve what it should – at least in the short term.

In the heady days of the London G20, when Gordon was rightly being lauded for his role in crafting an effective international response to the global meltdown, it would have been almost inconceivable that the ideas he was championing would fall off the UK radar in such a short time. (more…)

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He is right to take it slow, but Ed needs to earn his carpet slippers

06/12/2010, 08:00:42 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Of course some people are asking questions about Ed Miliband’s nascent leadership. This is the Labour party. We love a good moan. In response to a poll in 1997 that showed 93% of voters were satisfied with Tony Blair, professional New Labour irritant, Bob Marshall-Andrews, quipped: “look, there’s seven per cent. We can build on that”.

So there’s nothing new in the anti-leader muttering that is going on. And it is going on. Ed Miliband has huge expectations to meet. Frustrations to assuage. Why isn’t Cameron toast already? Why hasn’t Clegg been destroyed? Why have we not landed more blows over the cuts and the splits?

It’s all still early days. It is unwise to draw definite conclusions after the first five minutes of a football match. Yet commentators do so anyway. Just as they do in politics. Of course, until Ed establishes his own clear, compelling direction, the armchair managers will continue to chirrup. It may be pointless and energy-sapping, but it is not unexpected. Few have the patience for what he is embarking on.

The truth is that Ed Miliband has taken to opposition far better than many of his colleagues. He realises that a five year stretch in opposition is just that: an unfathomable eternity for Labour hacks with political attention deficit disorder. Especially those now hooked on winning elections and running things. (more…)

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You don’t build the future by trashing the past

03/12/2010, 02:30:54 PM

by Will Straw

With Labour still recovering from its second worst defeat in 90 years, now is the time for a thorough reassessment of what the left stands for. The policy review and reforms to party structures that Ed Miliband has announced should be welcomed. Before ink is spilled on the “blank sheet of paper”, time should be taken to debate and consider a range of different perspectives on the future direction of the left.

The five-point plan set out in Neal Lawson and John Harris’ essay in this week’s New Statesman should therefore be welcomed. But by trashing new Labour’s record with little consideration of the many achievements that 13 years in power delivered, Lawson and Harris risk alienating a group of reformers who could, in other circumstances, find common cause with their mission. The Labour party could easily unite around a programme dedicated to defeating inequality, building a new model of capitalism, localising public services, tackling climate change, and creating a more pluralistic politics – as Lawson and Harris suggest. But their approach is not the way to get there.

In their essay, Lawson and Harris write:

“New Labour stayed in office for 13 years because the world economy was so strong and the Tories were so weak. But even in such benign circumstances, the poor got poorer and the planet burned … The only plan they had was to stoke a finance-driven, lightly regulated economy, and then surreptitiously take the tax skim to fund social programmes”.

What a simplistic view of Labour’s time in office. Few saw the financial crash coming; even fewer set out the remedies in advance of the Lehman’s collapse. Adverse criticism of new Labour around 2003 was primarily concerned with the war in Iraq and the marketisation of public services; not the reregulation of the City. Basel I and II passed without a murmur. Where was the compass paper in 2005 calling for a ban on short selling or a British uptick rule prior to 2007? Twenty-twenty hindsight is a fine thing but those who call now for a new form of capitalism should be more realistic about the collective hubris of the boom years. (more…)

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The Battle for Barking: good television – bad politics

03/12/2010, 12:00:19 PM

by Dan Hodges

The Battle for Barking, broadcast on More4 earlier this week, made for compelling viewing. Award-winning documentary maker, Laura Fairrie, spent a year “embedded” with the Margaret Hodge and BNP campaigns as they fought house by house, street by street, for control of the constituency and the council.

I was in Barking for part of that campaign as well. My job was to manage the press on behalf of Hope not Hate. I spent some of that time dealing with Laura Fairrie.

She’s a talented documentary maker. And a brave one. At best, the BNP are instinctively suspicious and hostile towards the media. At their worst, they turn violent.

Laura Fairrie didn’t infiltrate them as such. She wasn’t filming under cover. What she did was much harder. She got them to accept her. Then trust her. By then end, they had come to like her. There’s a telling moment at Griffin’s campaign launch when the BNP’s Bob Bailey asks for questions, and says, “Let’s start with Laura”. It’s said with undisguised affection. “They’ve had such terrible experiences with the media and film makers”, Laura told the Guardian. (more…)

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Luke Akehurst reports from his first meeting of Labour’s NEC

03/12/2010, 07:00:35 AM

by Luke Akehurst

I approached my first full NEC meeting on 30 November with some trepidation, expecting a baptism of fire.

Six and a half hours later I emerged from Labour’s 39 Victoria Street HQ feeling euphoric and more optimistic about Labour’s fightback than at any point since the “election that never was” in 2007.

I apologise now that I will not be providing a verbatim report of key debates, unlike that provided by another NEC member after the September meeting. The papers are clearly marked “confidential”, much material is financially or politically sensitive (in the sense of providing useful intel to other parties) or relates to specific individual staff or members, and colleagues have a right to make their points in confidence without seeing them broadcast.

Within those constraints, I’ll try to paint as full a picture as I can. (more…)

Posted in Grassroots, Uncut | 3 Comments »

Labour’s lost estates

02/12/2010, 02:34:47 PM

by Atul Hatwal

In the seven months since the general election one of the few areas for genuine consensus within the party is a re-discovered desire to reach out and listen.

But if the party is serious about getting to the parts other big conversations have failed to reach, then the bandwagon is going to have to roll through a couple of tough neighbourhoods.

On one side of town, is a place, let’s call it, “white town”. Generations of white working class, big estates, low incomes, traditional Labour vote bank, rife with all the problems that decades of deprivation bring.

As Labour’s straight-listening express trundles through this area, immigration will be the hot topic. And what comes back won’t be pretty.

It was on Labour’s watch that the rightward drift in the debate on immigration happened. A succession of ministers were happy to bow to the Littlejohn platoons and show how ‘sound’ they were on immigration.

In the past few years, talk of “white working class” issues (you know, those special issues, that Asian or Afro-Caribbean working class families living in the same areas don’t have and can’t understand) with its relentless whistles have turned parts of the PLP into a Westminster version of one man and his dog.

And over the summer our leadership candidates fell over themselves to pay their respects at Mrs. Duffy’s doorstep. David Milliband even made it inside for a cup of tea.

She might be a nice old lady, a bit overwhelmed by the media scrum, but the substance of what she said is clear. Immigration is causing unemployment and the burden of immigrant claimants is preventing deserving Britons from getting their benefits.

This summer, not a single one of our princes standing for the leadership had the courage to simply say,

“No, Mrs. Duffy was wrong”.

Not one. (more…)

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Ed’s team: the argument for greybeards

01/12/2010, 12:00:54 PM

by John McTernan

What does Ed most need? A double dip recession? No, the cost to our people would be so great that any political benefit would surely not be worth while. A catastrophic error on the part of the government? Well, first – it’s not in his hands. And, second, there are too many to choose from – benefit cuts, NHS reorganisation, the so-called strategic defence review (aircraft carriers without any aircraft), housing policy, the list just goes on.

No, he needs luck. Napoleon was right when he said that the most important quality he demanded from generals was that they were lucky. How do you get lucky? In the immortal words of Arnold Palmer, you practise. So, how does Ed practise for luck? He plans. And he staffs.

Staff. The most underestimated element of any political machine [disclosure: I am a recovering staffer]. But the flurry of speculation around the promotion of Stewart Wood and the move of Katy Myler back to the private sector speak to a truth. A good team is so often the difference between success and failure for politicians (as, in truth, for leaders in almost any setting.) (more…)

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The enemy within: metal thieves

01/12/2010, 06:45:15 AM

by Tom Watson

Had the Chinese conducted 900 hack attacks on BT’s telecommunications network, we’d be moving resolutions at the united nations.

Were Osama Bin Laden to destroy enough railway signalling to deprive Britain of 20,000 hours of the productive capacity of its commuters, there would be special sittings of Parliament.

And this level of damage is, indeed, being deliberately done to the country’s infrastructure. But because the destruction is being wrought not by spies or terrorists, but by vagabonds and thieves, the home office barely notices.

Metal thieves are eating away at key parts of the UK’s infrastructure. They are doing it day in day out, in towns and cities up and down the land. They’re causing many millions of pounds of damage to businesses and communities. Sometimes, like terrorists, they even blow themselves up. They are the enemy within and they need to be stopped. (more…)

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Don’t call her babe: Dan Hodges interviews Hazel Blears

30/11/2010, 02:04:17 PM

“Hazel Blears? Good luck mate. She’s the most on message politician I’ve ever met”.

“Hazel is a robot. ‘Tony good. Labour good. Tony good. Labour good’. Scratch the surface and you just find another surface underneath”.

"I was asked to go and defend the government in some circumstances when no one else wanted to"

Hmmm. Uncut arrives at our meeting with the woman described by one Labour MP as the bionic Blairite with some trepidation. We like discipline and loyalty – in moderation. But we also like a peek behind the curtain. Will we be able to uncover what makes the bionic Blairite tick?

Let’s kick off with Ed Miliband. She voted for him fourth, behind Andy, David and Ed. According to reports, he offered her a job and she turned it down, although Ed’s office officially denies this. Hazel confirms that she had a meeting with Ed and told him she wanted some time out on the back benches. So what does she think of the new leader?

“I would characterise Ed’s leadership as calm, measured, steady, and actually, a surprise to people. I don’t think you have to come out as a brand new leader with fireworks and pazzaz. When Ed won, a lot of people said ‘Ed’s a blank page’. Well in a lot of ways that’s not bad for us, because we need to reflect on why we got the worst result since 1983. I don’t mind a bit of reflection”.

No fireworks. No pazzaz. This could be a long haul.

“But, if we don’t defend our record nobody will. If you walk round my city, it’s not paradise, it’s not nirvana, but it’s a damn sight better than it was. This narrative the Tories are getting traction with, that it was all a disaster, we bust the bank, spent all the money; it’s at our peril that we let that just be the story. People may accuse me of wearing rose tinted glasses, being gung ho; well sorry I’m not going to be snivelling and apologising for what I think in many ways was a damn fine government”.

A flash of passion. Not synthesised. Real, “I’ll see you out side”, anger. (more…)

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