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The old cancer at the heart of the student riot

11/11/2010, 09:00:18 AM

by Luke Akehurst

THE SAD lesson of the hijacking of part of Wednesday’s NUS demo – by a small minority who turned it into a mini-riot – is that some of the iron laws of left politics from the last time there was a Tory PM still hold true.

The mainstream left, whether that’s the Labour party, its affiliated trade unions, NUS or other organisations campaigning against the cuts needs to know that the bad guys are not all to our right on the political spectrum.

Idealistically, we might have thought that the sheer horror of the cuts being proposed by the Tory-Lib Dem government would mean all forces on the left in Britain could unite to protest and fight to protect key public services and benefits.

Wednesday’s behaviour killed that idealistic dream as it probably killed the political enthusiasm of some of the 50,000 ordinary students on the march.

On the plus side 49,000+ of them marched peacefully. By any stretch that’s a remarkable political mobilisation. The entire membership of all the student political organisations in the UK plus non-student supporters and non-partisan student union activists does not get anywhere near 10,000 people. So 80% or more of the marchers were “real people” driven to political protest by the government, not long-term political activists.

This should therefore have been a marvellous opportunity to get an entire new generation involved in politics, inspired by participation in a powerful protest that would have got their case all over the media and put fear in the hearts of the Lib Dem MPs who betrayed their erstwhile student voters. This should have been the start of a campaign that would have seen those 50,000 marchers go back to their colleges and work to either stop a government policy in its tracks or failing that contribute to mobilising their fellow students to evict Tory and Lib Dem MPs in university seats in the next general election. (more…)

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Sadly, it’s a graduate tax that is stupid, not Vince Cable

10/11/2010, 03:00:01 PM

by Nick Keehan

With a student demonstration marching on Westminster today, it will be tempting for Labour to throw in its lot with the protesters and embark on wholesale opposition to tuition fees. Before we do, however, we should ask ourselves a question: how stupid do we think Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are?

Really stupid, that is. Not wrong. Not dishonest or unprincipled. Not sanctimonious, smug or irritating. Not ignorant or ill-informed, but stupid. Totally useless and incompetent. So inept and ineffectual that stuck on a sinking ship they would burn the lifeboats.

Whatever else they may be, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are not that stupid. When it comes to tuition fees, however, this is what we are expected to believe. (more…)

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David Cameron’s vulgar obsession with image

10/11/2010, 09:02:41 AM

by Tom Watson

It was Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov who wrote “complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained”.

When the history of the Cameron-Clegg administration is written, Andy Parsons will be a footnote to the coalition chronicles, a fleeting fact in a wider story of ultra-pragmatism and opportunity. He will feature more prominently on photographic bookplates than amid the text.

And yet, in the last week of the sixth month of this unique political construct, Mr Parsons has come to symbolise something more than the unbounded personal ambition of Messrs Cameron and Clegg.

He is an expression of the super-ego of the Prime Minister. And as any Zen Buddhist will tell you, the ego, unlike an Andy Coulson bad news day, is hard to extinguish. (more…)

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Three cheers for Nigel Farage!

09/11/2010, 12:00:33 PM

by Kevin Meagher

NIGEL Farage is back. Yes, that suspiciously French-sounding, irrepressibly upbeat Euro-baiter par excellence swept up 60% of the votes to retake the leadership of UKIP last week.

This is of course the same job he casually abandoned just a year ago. For big talents on small stages, there is always the lure of something better. In Farage’s case, defying Parliamentary protocol and standing against Speaker Bercow in the general election. That did not work out, so it’s back to the old day job: jolly Euro-bashing and all round right-wing populism.

To many, leading UKIP is a dubious honour. This is, after all, a party David Cameron once described as “a bunch of … fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists, mostly.” But therein lies the point: Farage’s enemies are on the right. The two men in British politics loath to see Farage return to lead UKIP are David Cameron and Nick Griffin. (more…)

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Not red Ed, but Scarlet. And Jeremy not even a proper ginga.

09/11/2010, 08:30:39 AM

by Dan Hodges

David Cameron’s message of congratulation to Ed Miliband on the birth of his son will have been especially heartfelt. There will be genuine empathy, of course. But also relief. Hostilities, for the duration of the Labour leader’s paternity leave, are to be suspended.

Both men can use the break. Over the past month, much of the focus has been on Ed. How would the young lion perform in the Parliamentary den? Could he unite a party wounded by election defeat and bruised by a fractious leadership contest? Launch an effective assault on the government’s gruesome prospectus of cuts?

The answers are a) well; b) sort of; and c) not yet. And they are tentative answers. Because Ed Miliband’s start as leader can only truly be judged in comparison with that of his opponent. A comparison that has yet to be fully made.

(more…)

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Let’s not bet the house on what might be the wrong future

08/11/2010, 03:34:04 PM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour has to be the party of optimism. Which should include being optimistic about the ingenuity of business, especially when combined with extraordinarily lax monetary conditions and a low pound. George Osborne anticipates Labour pessimism on this and we should deny him.

We know that the cuts are too deep and fast. We know that the best government response to economic challenges isn’t brutally to minimise government, but strategically to target the state’s resources to maximum effect. Having emphasised these points, we can be confident that the public know that we know this.

But in stressing these points we should avoid creating a blind spot: that our only economic expectation for coming years appears to be unremitting disaster. This would have us seem to be talking the country down, which is never a good thing, and undermine our claims to optimism. Also, if this expectation turns out to be false, it would leave us – to apply Peter Mandelson’s one club golfer analogy – on the 18th green of this parliament with only the driver of big government in our club bag. (more…)

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Hung out to dry by Labour: I know how Woolas feels

08/11/2010, 11:30:59 AM

by Peter Watt

I have a very personal experience of what it is like to be brutally cast asunder by the Labour party. The circumstances were different than those which have led to the position Phil Woolas finds himself in – but I suspect that the personal impact was similar.

I was general secretary of the party when, in November 2007, the Abrahams 3rd party donation scandal erupted. It happened on my watch. I took responsibility and in a blaze of negative publicity I resigned.

I knew that once I’d resigned an important part of the “handling strategy” of the donation story would be to rough me up a bit. I wasn’t naive. I accepted it as part of the rough nature of politics. The more I was damaged in the short term, the less the party was going to be damaged in the long-term. That had to be the right thing for the “greater good”.

What I was not prepared for was the massive toll this took on me, my family and friends. I expected that the party would support me personally, behind the scenes. That they would caveat their attacks. Issue some statements of personal support that recognised my contribution to the party over many years. With a few notable exceptions, what I got was a character assassination. It went beyond being “roughed-up” to being a full blown assault. The personal impact was devastating. (more…)

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The government is playing fast and loose with Britain’s security

08/11/2010, 09:00:34 AM

by John Woodcock

David Cameron and Nick Clegg look more like a political yin and yang with every day that passes. The unseemly deal we have just witnessed between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats on Trident and tuition fees highlights the way the two leaders have intertwined their fate.

We should be in no doubt about what has happened – the Lib Dems have spectacularly broken their word on higher fees in return for securing a delay on renewing the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent.

On one level, this is simply base horse trading upon which the dynamics of coalition politics have shone a light. But it is initially hard to understand why Nick Clegg should have been prepared to swallow such humiliation for himself while his coalition partners seem relatively unscathed. Until, that is, you consider the less obvious but potentially equally severe damage to Cameron’s reputation from messing around with Trident renewal in the way that he has.

The reaction from key Conservative backbenchers on this has been derisory and unremittingly hostile. They point out that the UK’s ultimate means of defending itself is the last issue on which a prime minister should have been prepared to trade. They worry about the extra cost and risk piled on the project by delaying the build timetable and punting the ‘main gate’ investment decision to the other side of a general election.

As the MP representing the thousands of workers in Barrow shipyard whose economic future depends on continuing orders, and as part of an opposition which wants Britain to remain credible on protecting its citizens, I am not afraid to say that I share those concerns. (more…)

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Labour can help with Chinese democracy

07/11/2010, 10:30:41 AM

by James Watkins

THE FEAR of China continues to dominate debate in Britain – from its portrayal as a fire-breathing dragon on the cover of this week’s Spectator to David Cameron’s bizarre claim during the election campaign that Britain may need nuclear weapons because of China. This is not the ideal backdrop for the prime minister’s forthcoming visit to Beijing.

The list of worries laid at China’s door is manifold: from human rights abuses to currency manipulation and from poor working conditions to obstructing climate change talks. At the heart of them all is the fear that a lack of political reform in China will make things even worse.

But if the British government were to take a new approach to China, the prime minister’s visit could be the start of a new direction for Chinese democracy.
At first glance, such a view may seem overly rosy. Since the dissident, Lin Xioabo, won the Nobel peace prize in October, a crackdown on dissidents has been reported. But there are also signs that the Chinese political elite now recognise that political reform is needed. In early October, prime minister Wen Jiabao told CNN that “the people’s will for, and need for, democracy and freedom is irresistible”. (more…)

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The government’s silence on legal loan sharking is putting families at risk

06/11/2010, 10:00:59 AM

by Stella Creasy

LAST WEEK I wrote that loan sharks are circling Britain’s poorest families, excited by the likely effects of the Government’s spending review and lying in wait to prey on people’s increased financial vulnerability. This week, thanks to the hard work of campaigners and opposition MPs, the sharks are now starting to come under threat themselves.

My consumer credit (regulation and advice) bill, which seeks to combat exploitation in the payday and doorstep credit market, passed through its first reading this week. The bill pushes for a range of measures including a cap on the total cost of borrowing money, an expansion of credit union access points through the postal network and a levy to provide funding for debt counselling services to help those in financial difficulty.

It was supported through its first reading by a large number of Labour MPs who believe if the government is intent on pushing their budget on Britain, it will raise the number of families living with the daily misery of debt. We want them to take responsibility for the consequences of their policies– and judging by the growing public concern we are not the only ones.

According to the association of business recovery professionals, four in ten people are worried about their current level of debt, with three million fearing redundancy and two million having taken on more debt in recent months. (more…)

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