Uncut « Labour Uncut

John Woodcock finds glimmers of hope amid the grey

25/10/2010, 09:00:00 AM

And so we charge on into the new landscape. It is cold and bleak. And it is dominated by the comprehensive spending review.

While I am not as pessimistic as some Uncut contributors (you, Dan Hodges) about how the announcement played out last week, we shouldn’t for a moment think it was a good week for the Labour party, or, more importantly, for the country.

Even accounting for a little slanting of questions and selective reporting of the answers, the YouGov poll in last week’s Sun was sobering. Taken after the CSR announcement, it suggested that 47 per cent of respondents blamed the last Labour government for the programme of cuts compared to 17 per cent who blamed the Tory-Lib Dem coalition that is making them, and 20 per cent who cast a plague on both our houses. Sure, respondents didn’t get the option to blame the bankers – but even accounting for that bias, the figures suggest that the Tory message machine is having some considerable success. (more…)

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The lessons from Tower Hamlets, by Jessica Asato

22/10/2010, 02:00:27 PM

Were you out campaigning in Tower Hamlets yesterday?

I thought not. You’re not alone; lots of Labour campaign stalwarts stayed away. They took one look at the situation and thought that their precious holiday could be saved for a more deserving campaign.

Even without knowing the complex saga of Tower Hamlets politics, trying to elect an imposed candidate who came third in a party selection seemed like electoral suicide. It was. Despite a valiant ground campaign which I witnessed yesterday, our candidate Helal Abbas was beaten solidly by Lutfur Rahman on 51% of first preferences. I can’t remember the last election day in which I felt so outnumbered by the sheer presence of opposition campaigners. Rahman’s supporters drove round in cars plastered with his literature and quite happily flouted electoral rules by crowding round the entrance to polling stations with leaflets. The few of us who did make it there were stretched thin. It won’t count as one of my happier campaigning experiences. (more…)

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The CSR was a political disaster for Labour, says Dan Hodges

22/10/2010, 09:00:17 AM

We fell into a trap. The CSR saw us out-thought, out-spun and out-positioned. First casualty of Osborne’s cuts: the Labour party.

There will be others. Those set to lose their jobs, their benefits, their housing. We will weep for them. Some of us will march for them. Though, wisely, not our leader. We will rage at the injustice.

It will achieve nothing. Neil was right. He has got his party back. A party of protest, not influence.

Wednesday was a slow motion car crash. For months people have been warning that our failure to articulate a coherent position on deficit reduction would cost us dear. Dismissed as siren voices, they were ignored. So we drove, unblinking, into the wall. (more…)

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A popular alternative to the Tories’ seedy foreign policy, by Nick Keehan

21/10/2010, 04:28:28 PM

The spending review leaves no doubt about the government’s priorities when it comes to foreign policy: those diplomats and civil servants remaining at the foreign office after it has undergone budget cuts of 24 per cent will focus on championing British companies abroad and increasing business links and market information for UK exporters. The foreign office will become, in effect, a consultancy and PR firm for business, underwritten by the UK taxpayer.

In this, the spending review simply reaffirms what the foreign secretary has been saying since entering the job in May. In his speech to a Tokyo audience in July, “Britain’s prosperity in a networked world”’, William Hague made it clear that promoting trade and commercial interests would be at the heart of Britain’s foreign policy. The government would “inject a new commercialism into the work of the foreign office and into the definition of our international objectives”; it would give “significant new emphasis to helping British business secure new opportunities”; and it would use its political influence “to help unblock obstacles to commercial success”.

Not any old obstacles, obviously. There would be some red lines which the government would “never, ever cross” in pursuit of British interests, as David Cameron told the Conservative party conference. Under the Tories, a devolved Scottish government would never again exercise its constitutional right to release a convicted foreign terrorist on compassionate grounds, for example. Cameron said this in a very stern voice, lest it seem like a cynical platitude which he doesn’t have the power to deliver.

If the obstacles to your commercial success include only an indictment for genocide, however, you are in luck. (more…)

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It is wrong to hate Margaret Thatcher, says Kevin Meagher

21/10/2010, 12:29:14 PM

SO the Iron Lady has started to rust. Lady Thatcher will remain in hospital – needless to say a Bupa one – to treat her bout of flu. Her son, Mark, says his mother is “in good order”, an unusual formulation, usually reserved for descriptions of used cars.

Some will sneer at her predicament. Her detractors are measured in tens of millions. But she is a sick, elderly grandmother suffering, as her daughter Carol confirmed two years ago, from dementia. Whatever her faults as a politician – and they are legion – she deserves compassion now.

This is not to diminish the appalling policy choices Margaret Thatcher made in her 11 years as prime minister. Thatcherism and the Tory party which propagated it are enduringly loathsome. But we should not hate her. (more…)

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Labour’s relationship with the unions is not set in stone, says Peter Watt

21/10/2010, 09:00:42 AM

As Tony Blair once said, “I didn’t come into politics to change the Labour party. I came into politics to change the country.”

And that is why opposition sucks. We all joined the party so that we could play our part in turning our values into practical policies. We want to actually be able to improve the lives of people and their families, raise aspiration, work to strengthen the economy and so on. And you can only actually do that in government. For 13 years we felt that we were making a difference – making a difference at our local party meetings, making a difference at national policy forums and making a difference at party conference.

Oh I know that we complained that we were ignored (and probably we were, although not as much we claimed) but ministers of the crown came to our fundraising dinners, spoke at our events and circulated around the policy discussions and fringe at our conferences. It felt that we were both important and that we were involved in doing something important. And I guess that we can admit this now – we enjoyed it. Even the wine was better at conference when we were in government. (more…)

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Anthony Painter sees life’s winners making losers by the million

20/10/2010, 05:09:18 PM

Spending cuts at this rate are unnecessary. Everyone who isn’t a Machiavellian Osborne-ite or an ethically empty Liberal Democrat frontbencher knows that. These strutting macho men (and Teresa May and the other one in Defra) in their 40s are ripping apart the ties that bind and the life chances of millions. They gleefully gamble on growth because they always have been and always will be winners, no matter what the level of unemployment. At least now there is no doubt where these self-imagined Flashmans are coming from.

It’s one thing to take to hack away at the roots of the good society with cockiness and bravado. It’s another to dissemble, dodge, and mislead every step of the way. They know what they are doing. They are sure they are right- when are they anything but right?

So why not tell it straight? This spending review document takes spin into a new stratosphere. New Labour? Communications amateurs. These guys are something else.

You don’t have to delve very deep into the document before you discover all the tricks of presentation that the modern politician has at their disposal. By the second page of the executive summary we are told that the UK is to remain a world leader in science despite only maintaining the cash budget over the next four years. I’ll remove your leg but in cash terms you’ll still have two. Sure Start the same: maintained in cash terms. Perhaps Gideon would be willing to exchange his trust fund for its 1950 cash value? It’s the same after all.

(more…)

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Tom Watson says goodbye to Walworth Rd

20/10/2010, 08:43:50 AM

So “Walworth Road”, one of Labour’s triumvirate of famous headquarters, is to be converted into a hostel for London’s visiting back packers. The planning permission was approved last week. Where once journeying ideologues stomped their feet, hedonistic global consumers will now rest their heads.

Little do those weary wanderlusters know what history they will be inhaling as they bunk up for the night. Backpackers should take comfort that many political journeys have started and spectacularly ended in that great building.

Labour’s rose took root in Walworth Road. And the party’s long and jagged march with the command economy ended there on the day that new Labour took its first tentative steps towards Millbank glory.

Political movements and ideas reached their terminus in the tiny roof conversion that doubled as a boardroom. The Militant tendency was filleted in that building. The decision to close the New Socialist magazine was taken there – a brutal response to the editorial team defiantly calling for tactical voting shortly before the 1987 election. And the longest suicide note in history – our 1983 manifesto – was drafted there.

The Walworth Road I first entered in 1984 was very much like a hostel. You were met at the front door by two striking miners and their table full of Davey lamps and buckets of shrapnel. A huge imposing portrait of Clem stared beneficently down at you in the foyer, as you fumbled with the intercom to persuade Lesley, the grand dame of the reception and secret Conservative voter, to let you enter the main building. The famous, the powerful and the pompous could be left in that little room for an eternity if they crossed her. My God, I admired Lesley. (more…)

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We must be honest so that we can be distinctive on the deficit, says Jonathan Todd

19/10/2010, 02:30:34 PM

SOCIAL and economic debates on tax and spend run through the messages George Osborne will project tomorrow: his actions are fair (the social debate), best for the economy (the economic debate), and necessary, which intersects both debates. Clarity, and Labour’s cause, is aided by disentangling these strands.

Deficit reduction strategies need not only beginnings (start this year, next or when?), endings (completed in this parliament or next?), and content (tax and cuts mix?), but, crucially, they must also say what this content means for tax and spend in each year of this parliament. Political debate has so far failed carefully to pick over budgetary consequences from year to year.

There are opportunities for Labour in this examination. The government plans that cuts will account for three-quarters of the deficit reduction by 2014. However, next year, half the fiscal consolidation comes from tax rises. That spending cuts are intended to take greater strain over the longer-run has obscured the fact that 2011 sees ominous tax rises: increases in VAT and national-insurance. (more…)

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Ed Miliband’s Israel problem, by Dan Hodges

19/10/2010, 09:00:28 AM

Ed Miliband has an Israel problem. Or, depending on your perspective, Israel has a problem with Ed Miliband.

The response to the foreign affairs section of his conference speech was dominated by Iraq. His brother’s angry reaction, which in truth reflected David’s personal antipathy towards Harriet, as much as his distaste for that particular passage, led the news bulletins. But it was the section on Israel that reverberated.

“The new generation must challenge old thinking”, he said. And duly hurled down the gauntlet. There needed to be international pressure on Israel over the ending of the moratorium on settlements. The attack on the Gaza flotilla was wrong. Israel must accept and recognize, in actions not just words, the Palestinian right to statehood. The Gaza blockage must be lifted. He would “strain every sinew to make that happen”. He would, of course, always defend Israel’s right to exist in peace and security. (more…)

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