Uncut « Labour Uncut

Protest or power? We can’t have both.

16/11/2010, 10:30:03 AM

by Dan Hodges

My old generalissimo at the GMB, John Edmonds, used to have a nice line on demos. “If we’re going to have a march, lets make sure it’s a public demonstration of our strength, not our weakness”.

Watching the pictures of Millbank Tower being invaded by a hoard of rampaging journalists, the odd student anarchist in tow, I was reminded of those words. In terms of numbers and organization, last Wednesday’s protest was impressive. It has been a while since the unions managed to get 50,000 on the streets in support of a single issue.

Nor did the unfortunate dénouement at Tory HQ appear to undermine public support. A Sunday Times poll found that 65% of those questioned backed the demonstration, an even higher number than opposed the government’s policy on tuition fees. The issue dominated the media, captured the Parliamentary agenda, and energised the movement. A triumph of direct action.

But a counter-productive one. Set aside the violence, indefensible though it was. What was alarming wasn’t the spasm of aggression. Or the lack of awareness of potential damage to a wider cause. It was the sheer enthusiasm. The love of protest. (more…)

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The moment to stand up and be counted

16/11/2010, 07:00:12 AM

By Len McCluskey

Millions need trade union help and protection as never before. This is a moment for us to stand up and be counted.

We are in a deep economic crisis. Hard-won pay, conditions and pensions are under threat from Cameron and Clegg.

The government is making ordinary people pay for the bankers’ crash with the most savage public spending cuts ever seen – that’s you, your parents, your children and their schools, your neighbours in difficulties, your daughter’s chance of a home of her own on the line.

And jobs are being blitzed. Over a million more people will be on the dole because of Osborne’s plans. Another “lost generation” looms for young people. The anger students have already expressed is increasingly shared across the country. (more…)

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Poor communities will be cut more than rich

15/11/2010, 05:07:53 PM

by Michael Dugher

After the comprehensive spending review, the institute for fiscal studies said that the government’s policies will hit the poorest families harder than the better off. It said that the tax and benefit changes were “regressive”, and would have a greater impact, relative to income, on people at the lower end of the scale. David Cameron says “we’re all in this together”, but as various reports will show in the coming weeks, how badly affected you are depends on where you live.

Key to this unfairness are the cuts in funding to local authorities, who all face reductions of seven per cent a year. But this will not mean that all local authorities will face equal cuts in their budgets. The reductions in central government grant will clearly have a much bigger impact on those councils who serve more deprived areas. In areas like my own in Barnsley, needs are higher but the council tax base is lower. If you are more reliant on central government funding and raise less funding locally, you will not have the capacity to recover funding shortfalls. (more…)

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Politicians can’t hide on Twitter

15/11/2010, 12:02:55 PM

by India Knight

If it weren’t for social media – Twitter, specifically – I would never have known that Kerry McCarthy shares my fascination with Jacob Rees-Mogg (though it’s a thin line, isn’t it, between fascination and, um, the baser longings? Just saying). The world would still turn. The stars would still glint away in the sky. Labour politics would still feel a bit like we’d travelled back to some doleful time in the Eighties, with Neil Kinnock droning on tragically about the rightful order being restored and all being well. But the world – my world, at any rate – would be a drabber place. I love that McCarthy tweets from the chamber with barely-concealed trepidation whenever Rees-Mogg stands up to speak. The juxtaposition of the solemnity of the business at hand and of normal human behaviour delights me every time.

Prior to this, I was dimly aware of the existence of the member for Bristol East, but being a punter rather than a lobby hack or a politician, that was pretty much it. I’d never have read her blog, for instance, or any other MP’s, a) because nobody was holding a gun to my head and b) because I thought that reading politicians’ blogs – as opposed to political ones – would be as jolly as hunkering down for a riotous night in with some fabian society policy reports and a macramé project. (Obviously, I realise that this is some people’s idea of the most terrific fun, and I can only apologise for my own lamentable shallowness).

It’s a hackneyed old chestnut that politicians are “all the same”, but it’s a tenacious chestnut that not only endures but has recently grown, richly fertilised by ye olde expenses, to mega-chestnut, Chestnut of Doom proportions. Politicians of all parties are broadly perceived as, variously, pompous, monomaniacal dullards, disengaged freakazoids, Pooterish nobodies or hideously corrupt – sometimes, treat of treats, all four at once. (more…)

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Liar, know thyself

15/11/2010, 09:00:20 AM

by Eric Joyce

Upon reading the dozens of bitter and bileful comments below Peter Watt’s thoughtful Uncut piece on the Phil Woolas episode, I was struck by how many people there are around of unimpeachable personal integrity, their lives un-marred by a single personal error of any significance.

As a pure person who has never done anything I later regretted, I felt among kindred spirits. Indeed, if you check out the letters page of any newspaper, you’ll see that such virtue is commonplace these days. While, at the same time, recent research (at yougovstone.com) shows that most people are pretty sure that most politicians are lying most of the time.

So why is it that all politicians, apart from me, are such lying liars? Why are they all, with the same caveat, such cowardly cowards? What’s so wrong with democracy that it only elevates to public office scoundrels and never the pure (me aside)? It’s a puzzle.

It occurs to me that, just for laughs you understand, it might be worth taking a look at these questions through the other end of the telescope. What if it were the case that our democratic system does not systematically and dysfunctionally send just the scum of the earth to Westminster? What, instead, if it were true that many people were living lies and using politicians as a means of exorcising their own demons of guilt and frustration; politicians the vessel for their own imperfections? (more…)

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Lib Dems are trembling over NUS plans to recall MPs

14/11/2010, 04:24:51 PM

by Denis MacShane

The president of the NUS, Aaron Porter, wrote a strongly worded email to all MPs on Friday. In it he said that students would seek to use the proposed Lib Dem law on recall to put pressure on MPs over tuition fees.

The recall mechanism – also advanced on Newsnight on Friday by the thoughtful Tory MP, Robert Halfon – is not yet a draft law so no-one knows exactly how it will work. Halfon was critical of the notion that judges should overturn election results on account of what was printed in leaflets.

In the Woolas case the judges were apparently unaware that there was a local election the same day so the struggle was never going to get above the gutter politics which Lib Dems have for a long time specialised in when it comes to local contests. But Halfon said that, in his view, Woolas should be allowed to contest this seat again.

Now it must be the turn of Lib Dem MPs to tremble as the NUS awaits the new recall ideas becoming law.

In 2005, students angry about Iraq and Labour’s modest tuition fee proposals turned Labour seats like Manchester Withington and Cambridge into Lib Dem seats. But students will be the first to use a recall system to target Lib Dem seats following Nick Clegg’s decision to dishonour the solemn public pledge he gave to the NUS before May.

Calling their opponents liars used to be a Tory speciality. (“How do you know Harold Wilson is lying? His lips are moving” was a favourite Tory remark). Accusing Blair of lying – “Bliar” – was normal discourse. But no-one in politics can recall quite such a spectacular untruth as Clegg’s signature on an NUS pledge poster which we now learn from the Guardian he was planning to betray before the election.

So the Lib Dems’ passion for recall may turn out to be a boomerang. It is also a gift to the BNP, UKIP and other single issue groups who can throw everything at raising the required number of signatures to force a recall election.

How long would Tony Benn have stayed an MP at the height of the media hate campaign against him in the 1980s? MPs like Chris Mullin who bravely defied conventional opinion on the issue of IRA terror bomb convictions could easily have had a recall petition run by the Sun or Daily Mail with a coupon on its front page.

Recall is an expression of the new populism in politics which should raise concerns. The Lib Dems who are experts at local populist propaganda are likely to be hanged by their own dishonesty.

Denis MacShane is MP for Rotherham and a former Labour minister.

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The real reasons Ken wants Lutfur back in the party

13/11/2010, 12:00:13 PM

by Jessica Asato

It is clear that, despite trying to arm-twist some quite senior members of the Labour party into allowing Lutfur Rahman back into the fold, Ken Livingstone has failed the new mayor of Tower Hamlets for the time being. Instead of pushing the issue at the next meeting of the NEC, Ken has recently rowed back – having had the riot act read to him by Victoria Street – and said there’s no timescale. Though the ambition is still there. Earlier this week Ken said “there is a lot to be said for letting this all calm down and seeing how Lutfur performs”. So why has Livingstone gone out of his way to find such common cause with Rahman?

When I last wrote about the Mayoral election, some commenters suggested that Ken was merely being politically pragmatic by supporting Lutfur. This was not an endorsement of Lutfur’s ideological position, but instead a calculated partnership with an eye on the future. They pointed out that his vote doubled in Tower Hamlets during the 2008 London Mayoral election, arguing that the East London mosque and the Islamic forum of Europe (IFE) were key to his success. By siding with the Labour candidate three weeks ago, Livingstone might have alienated these two important lobby interests in the borough, which could create a mass desertion of Muslim voters from Labour’s cause across London ahead of 2012. (more…)

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Guru boogie: who will be godhead to Ed?

12/11/2010, 11:03:28 AM

by Dan Hodges

Earlier this week, I dined with an old comrade. As it does, our conversation drifted to gurus.

“Alastair Campbell. Great communications guru”.

“No. Swore too much. Gurus don’t swear. They hardly even speak. They emit”.

“Peter Mandelson. He was a proper guru”.

“Not a guru. A svengali. There’s a difference”.

“What is it?”.

“Not sure exactly. But there is”.

“OK, got a real one. Gramsci”.

“The guy who used to work for Harriet?”.

“No. The Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci”.

“Oh that Gramsci. Yeah. The Ledg. Dead. Foreign. Funny little glasses. Ticks all the boxes”.

A guru. Wanna make it in politics, Mack? Gotta get yourself a guru. The true guru is part university lecturer, part parent, part deity. A strange creature. Ill defined, he occupies a curious netherworld somewhere between, or rather above, policy, communication and organisation. (more…)

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Smashing things doesn’t prove you’re more angry, just more violent

12/11/2010, 09:00:50 AM

by Jonathan Walker

I’ve been surprised at the number of left-leaning people who seem to celebrate the violence in London this week.

Personally, I agree with the NUS and the Labour party that “the vandalism and violence that we saw on Wednesday is completely unacceptable”, to quote Ed Balls.

But many people I’ve spoken to (including quite a few journalists) seem to believe that violent protestors were representative of the protestors as a whole and even, echoing Guido Fawkes and other right-wing bloggers, that the NUS is secretly pleased about the while thing.

Unlike Guido, however, they don’t mean it as an adverse criticism. They enjoyed watching Tory HQ (actually the reception of a building used by a number of organisations) get smashed up.

One argument used by apologists for the violence is that it got people’s attention.

But getting attention doesn’t always help you win the argument.

The demo prompted earnest debate about the failings of the metropolitan police, not the correct level to set university tuition fees or the merits of a graduate tax. (more…)

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What now after Woolas? Is the campaign playbook facing a re-write?

11/11/2010, 12:00:00 PM

by Dave Collins

FROM the glorious revolution onward, “anything goes” has been the default position for British election literature, subject principally to the deterrence provided by England and Wales’ notoriously plaintiff-friendly defamation legislation. The Oldham East & Saddleworth judgement asks a lot of questions about whether this is going to continue. British political communications could be transformed.

UK election campaigns have a long record of controversy and allegations of skulldugery. A classic was the 1784 Westminster election in which supporters of the prime minister, William Pitt, backed by the palace, organised to oppose the return of star Whig politician, Charles James Fox, in the seat with the widest popular franchise in Great Britain. According to the Wikipedia entry, “both sides spent heavily, campaigned bitterly, allegedly libelled and slandered their opponents relentlessly and resorted to all kinds of tactics, including Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire touring the streets and, according to the opposition, kissing many voters to induce them to vote for Fox”.

Subtle. But does it constitute misrepresentation?

Following Fox’s victory by 6,233 votes to 5,998, a prolonged scrutiny of the votes (similar to Florida’s ‘hanging chads’ dispute in 2004) was used by the high bailiff as a pretext to delay making the return. Until finally, 10 months later, the House voted 162-124 against the government, in effect finding Pitt guilty of illicit intriguing against his leading opponent.

More contemporary controversies include Smethwick (1964), in which the Conservative candidate who defeated Patrick Gordon-Walker ran an openly racist campaign, employed the slogan “if you want a nigger for your neighbour – vote Liberal or Labour”. Victorious PM Harold Wilson promptly elevated Gordon Walker to the peerage and made him foreign secretary, while calling for the new MP, Peter Griffiths, to be made a “parliamentary leper”. Griffiths lost the seat in 1966, being kicked out by the voters rather than as the consequence of legal action.

In 1992 Gerald Malone, defeated in Winchester by just two votes, did go to court arguing that 55 ballots voided for lack of official mark should have been counted. He won the case and the election of Mark Oaten for the Lib Dems was voided. Oaten however went on to win the resulting by-election with a handsome 10,000 majority. This swing against Malone was taken by many as evidence that voters tend to react against attempts to overturn election results via the courts on technicalities and the 1992 Winchester by-election result, together with the costs incurred by both parties, have generally served to discourage similar cases ever since.

In the 1997 New Labour landslide, the election of Fiona Jones for Newark was overturned after she and her (volunteer) agent were found guilty by the high court of failing correctly to declare some costs on the expenses return and thereby exceeding campaign spending limits. Neither Jones nor her agent had expected to win and ran a rather shambolic campaign, directed equally toward the concurrent local elections in which the local Labour party did expect to be able to make gains. Not anticipating victory, they failed to budget for the campaign properly, or to track spending once it had started. Exactly like Phil Woolas, Fiona Jones was initially defended by Labour party solicitors, but dropped like a stone once convicted and disqualified on March 19^th 1999. (more…)