Uncut « Labour Uncut

The loony libertarians in the government are not confined to the Lib Dems

01/11/2010, 11:33:35 AM

By Michael Dugher

Today David Cameron will chair a meeting of the government’s emergency planning committee, Cobra, as calls grow for a full review of airport security, after a bomb was found this weekend on a US-bound cargo plane at East Midlands airport. All of a sudden, what Harold Macmillan called “events, dear boy, events”, have rather inconveniently intruded upon the government’s review of counter-terrorism laws, and the ultra-libertarian muddle that lay behind it.

The cargo bomb story has understandably dominated the news since last Friday, but its impact is likely to be more enduring. Norman Smith, the BBC Radio 4’s respected chief political correspondent, concludes that two things are now clear. First, that there will be no relaxation in existing passenger security measures – despite last week’s call from the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, to scrap some “completely redundant” security checks and the attack on so-called ‘securocrats’ this morning from the CEO of Ryan Air, Michael Leary. Second, the possibility of any easing in the government’s anti-terror legislation looks increasingly remote, “regardless of the pressure from Liberal Democrats”. (more…)

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Cameron’s European spin too far

01/11/2010, 09:00:15 AM

by Denis MacShane

Having lived through years of European councils, I am not surprised that David Cameron, like his predecessors, is obsessed with the need of all EU leaders to spin their way to “victory” headlines for domestic consumption. Instead of a common news conference where EU leaders would have to declare in front of each other what they had done or decided, each national press corps meets with its national leader to be fed the line.

David Cameron is no different. He went into his own news conference after the EU council with clear objectives.

First, to underline that the European Parliament’s overblown ambition for a six per cent increase in the EU budget was trimmed back.

Second, to throw up as big a smoke-screen as possible about the need for an EU treaty change which, under Cameron’s previous pledges and rhetoric, would require a referendum. Every EU treaty alters the balance of power between national control and an enhanced role for the EU. If that were not the case, there would be no point writing new treaty language. (more…)

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The loan sharks are circling, and the government doesn’t care

30/10/2010, 10:30:25 AM

by Stella Creasy MP

Some facts are already depressingly familiar: the spending review will put half a million public sector workers out of a job; another half a million people in the private sector are expected to be fired as the economy slows. Measures which support family incomes – whether tax credits, child benefit or the child trust fund and the savings gateway – are being stripped away. It is the perfect storm that occurs when liberal and conservative dogma are combined: a government imposing draconian cuts with one hand and taking away mechanisms to help people stay afloat with the other.

Here’s a consequence of the budget less widely publicised: the (loan) sharks are now circling Britain’s poorest families, watching them struggle financially and sensing a business opportunity. Indeed, the dishonestly named Peter Crook, chief executive of Provident, is delighted with the turn in events. It is no coincidence that following the comprehensive spending review his company’s share price rocketed by 5%. Provident offers short-term credit with a typical APR of 272% to those for whom banks and credit cards are out of reach – mainly women, the low paid and those with poor credit histories. It is a company that makes money by locking people into cycles of debt, interest on debt, late payment charges and interest on late payment charges. (more…)

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Negative campaigning: it’s not very nice, but it works

29/10/2010, 03:07:46 PM

by Jessica Asato

Does negative campaigning work and how should Labour people feel about it in the ‘new generation’ era?

I asked myself this question last night while watching the Kentish Town council by-election result in London flash up on Twitter. Labour’s Jenny Headlam-Wells trashed the Lib Dems, who held all three seats in the ward just six months ago. Having spent a few hours coaxing people out of their warm homes to the polling station, I was of course delighted. There are few more satisfying activities than participating in a successful Labour election, particularly when the government is taking us back to the 80s. But something was niggling me.

During the election, the Liberal Democrats accused Labour of underhand tactics for distributing this leaflet. Printed in blue, without a Labour logo, it could be easily mistaken by a voter for Conservative literature. Richard Osley, North London political blogger extraordinaire, called it a “feast of negative campaigning”. My first reaction was that Labour would have failed in its political duty if it had not brought the Lib Dems’ broken promises on tuition fees, VAT, cuts and child benefit to the attention of Kentish Town residents. The fluffy community campaigners cannot hide from the fact they form a government presiding over public sector cuts three times the scale of Thatcher’s. (more…)

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Labour’s secret weapon: an angry army of SDNVs

28/10/2010, 11:00:52 AM

by Kevin Meagher

WE’VE all been there. You are out canvassing. You pass by that council estate or block of flats because hardly anyone there bothers to vote and precious few are even registered. Yet these are the same people to crowd the local MP’s surgery. Who rely on public services. The welfare state. The sort who benefit most from a Labour government.

But the arithmetic of politics is hard. If you don’t vote, you don’t count. And he who shouts loudest wins. That is why the poor are usually ignored. They do not pipe up. And there is not enough electoral mileage in putting their concerns centre stage.

But might this government’s attack on the welfare state have the perverse effect of politicising people at the bottom of the pile? After all, they are the ones losing out the most with regressive budgets, tabloid witch-hunts and their restoration as the undeserving poor. (more…)

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Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies

27/10/2010, 09:48:06 AM

by Tom Watson

They’re re-running Boys from the Blackstuff on the BBC. We all remember Yosser Hughes, who struggles to keep his children while unemployment erodes his mental health. And we tell ourselves that this is drama and not real life. And we tell ourselves that it is history. We know what unemployment did to a generation whose skills no longer matched the demands of the market.

But that was then. Those of us from Nick Clegg’s generation (he’s one day older than me) remember kids who left school assuming that work didn’t apply to them. There were no jobs for them to do.

Nick Clegg was 16 years old in 1983. I move in unusual circles but I’ve hardly met a 43 year old who’s a Tory. Even the toffs remember how bad it was in the formative years of their adolescence. Not Clegg though; he’s being “morally challenged” but still propping them up. I don’t know what he was doing in 1983, but he wasn’t living in the same England as me. (more…)

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Supine

26/10/2010, 04:30:28 PM

by Chris Bryant

One arm stretched out behind my head, dipped back,
I push the other through the water’s swirl
And past my thigh before the next attack,
Propelling me, with languorous aqueous grace
I could not possibly repeat at pace.
The rhythm of the stroke, as lengths unfurl,
Calms down my daily work obsessions,
Inspires free-style inquisitive reflections,
About what happens when we all cut back.
Above me, on the polycarb’nate roof
A single leaf is twisting in the gale.
Each time I pass beneath, it spins above
And chases some imaginary tail.
When I return next week, will it be there?
And will the baths be open in a year?

Chris Bryant is Labour MP for Rhondda and a shadow justice minister.

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There’s no excuse for cuts. Public spending is the solution.

26/10/2010, 02:00:06 PM

by Katy Clark

Public spending is the way to overcome the economic mess that bankers’ greed created. In an extensive report, Dave Hall of Greenwich university business school nails the lie that cuts are inevitable. The fair way out of this crisis is to restore sustained economic growth. The empirical evidence contained within Dave Hall’s report, Why we Need Public Spending, provides the weapons that our movement needs to win the battle of ideas. There are no economic justifications for these cuts.

During the last Parliament, I voted against our government when it introduced legislation to cut the deficit in half by 2010. I was not willing to vote for such massive cuts and thought that having a fixed timetable was far too rigid, took no account of what future economic challenges we might face and was largely silent on growth. I was blissfully unaware that a debate supporting my concerns was taking place around the cabinet table. Ed Balls was leading the charge against setting a timetable while also arguing that we needed to prioritise policies that deliver growth.

He was right to do so. If history has taught anything, it is that you don’t cut public expenditure during a period of sluggish growth. We need look no further than the Republic of Ireland to see this. During the last two years, a series of emergency budgets have been introduced to supposedly combat the effects of the economic crisis. They each brought additional cuts that went further and further into the bone. Yet, their economy is once again on the brink of recession, having contracted during the last quarter. The real spectre haunting us is the possibility of a decade-long depression and a return to the disastrous economic failures of the 1930s. (more…)

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PMQs is no playground. Parliament matters.

26/10/2010, 09:50:47 AM

by Dan Hodges

Does the House of Commons matter? Not the institution per se. Temple of democracy or den of inequity? On that you pays your money, or Stephen Byers’ cab fare, and takes your choice.

The chamber itself. Amphitheatre. Cockpit. Arena of the absurd.

There is a fashionable perception that Parliament, in all its forms, is now an irrelevance. Purists bemoan the callow tenor of its discourse. Modernists its arcane, anachronistic traditions. The right sees a shell, gutted by the faceless bureaucrats of Brussels. The left an inflexible monument to establishment orthodoxy.

In a way, all are right. And all wrong. What happens in the Commons chamber changes nothing. But it influences everything.

Take last week’s CSR. One of the more widely covered political showpieces of recent years. Wall to wall live coverage on the TV news channels. Six, seven, eight pages cleared in the national broadsheets. Not a Chilean miner in sight. (more…)

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Liverpool FC and Man Utd: the fans’ next step

25/10/2010, 12:00:49 PM

by Jonathan Todd and Alison McGovern

Blood, sweat and tears have spilt recently in Liverpool. Too much by supporters anguished at the financial plight of a great institution and the grim reality of listless defeat at Goodison Park; more by millionaires who gained control of this institution than by the millionaires responsible for this loss.

The illusion that Liverpool FC would emerge fighting fit from the Tom Hicks and George Gillett era was shattered by Everton. While the reds battled to victory against Blackburn yesterday, much needs to improve. But it isn’t only on the pitch that the lessons of recent years need to be learnt.

The promise of New England sports ventures (NESV), the new owners, to listen to supporters is welcome. Talk, however, is cheap. Fans have been left jaded after previous commitments have been reneged upon.

Now this promise should be backed up by institutional reform. This should mean, at least, a fan on the board. More ambitiously, this might mean taking up Rogan Taylor’s proposal that NESV look towards fans holding a significant minority of shares in the club; perhaps, as much as 25 percent. While the dream of full mutualisation and Liverpool FC being owned and run such that it embeds Scouse pride in a similar way to the fan-owned FC Barcelona in Catalonia may be distant, this proposal would have radical consequences. (more…)