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Let’s not get carried away with the Coulson affair, says Dan Hodges

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

Chris Grayling was right. There are parts of Britain that are beginning to resemble Baltimore. Illegal phone taps. Dodgy cops. Dirty pay-offs. Snitches. Political cover ups. Sheeeet! The Wire has come to Westminster.

We’ve had Tommy ‘McNulty’ Watson (a good Parliamentarian if ever there was one), fearless in his pursuit of the chief perp, ignorant of risk or reputation. Andy ‘Stringer’ Coulson, hunkering down in the safe house as five-oh circles and formerly loyal lieutenants sing. David ‘Royce’ Cameron, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, prepping his ‘game face’ as the political challenges mount.

It’s been a week to lift the spirits. The Tories on the back foot. The Lib Dems embarrassed. For the first time since the election, the Tory-Lib Dem government has lost control of the news agenda. Even the met. police may be forced to take a break from their regular Friday briefing in The Feathers and start to feel some collars. (more…)

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Rachel Reeves on the government’s chaotic and contradictory economic policy

08/09/2010, 10:27:18 AM

The chaotic and schizophrenic temperament of the government’s economic policy was further in evidence yesterday when the select committee for business, innovation and skills (of which I am a member) took evidence on the abolition of the regional development agencies (RDAs). We’ve known for months now that the RDAs are going, but we still don’t know what will be formed in their place or the transition plans to get there. Anyone would think the government doesn’t really care…

What we have now is a mess, and that’s dangerous for business and jobs. On the one hand, the government trumpets its localism – devolving decision making from the regions to local authorities. On the other, they centralise – with trade, investment, business support and skills being re-nationalised back to Whitehall. Sir Roy McNulty, chairman of the west midlands RDA, described the policy as ‘a strange type of localism’. Strange indeed, when it includes centralising key functions. (more…)

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Jonathan Todd on the challenge for the new shadow chancellor

07/09/2010, 11:30:53 AM

The Labour leadership election will, finally, end on 25 September. But the identity of the shadow chancellor will be unknown until 7 October, when the results of the shadow cabinet election are announced. 13 days after this the new leader and shadow chancellor will lead our response to the comprehensive spending review. “It is”, as a leadership contender has said, “an incredibly tight timetable for the new leader and their shadow chancellor to map out a policy that might yet determine how we are viewed for the rest of the parliament.”

The general election too quickly gave way to the leadership election. (Which should have started later and been shorter). With the end of the leadership election, the formal involvement in the shadow cabinet election of four of our would-be leaders begins. This is a grueling pace. But the new leader and shadow chancellor will need immediately to demonstrate economic literacy, which means robustly critiquing George Osborne and articulating a credible and appealing alternative economic approach. While this is challenging, there are some relatively simple points that are worth underlining. (more…)

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We lost the 2010 election during Blair’s watch, as well as Brown’s, says Michael Dugher

06/09/2010, 11:57:20 AM

ALL THE LABOUR leadership candidates have dared to disagree with Tony Blair that we lost the last election because we weren’t sufficiently New Labour. In yesterday’s Observer, Andrew Rawnsley lamented this lèse majesté.

Memoirs and diaries, especially from former prime ministers, are important. After ten years in office, with three general election victories under his belt, Tony Blair’s deserve to be read. But what is disappointing is that Blair is so palpably out of touch when it comes to understanding why we lost in 2010 and how Labour can win again in the future.

Much of what Rawnsley writes I agree with. He is quite right that Tony Blair “understood how to communicate with the public; he grasped that parties must constantly renew themselves to keep up with events, the world and the voters”. He is equally right that it is “foolish to fashion the party’s future policies or presentation as if the dateline were still 1994 rather than 2010”. And that Blair understood that “the centre-left wins and holds power only by creating a broad appeal which embraces not just their natural and traditional supporters, but voters without tribal allegiances to Labour”. (more…)

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Tom Watson on what the New York Times says Andy Coulson knew

02/09/2010, 05:48:51 PM

A fresh investigation by the New York Times has produced evidence about the News International phone hacking scandal which contradicts that given to the culture, media and sport select committee, of which I am a member, last summer.

Andy Coulson – the former editor of the News of the World who is now David Cameron’s director of communications at 10 Downing Street – told the Parliamentary enquiry that he had no knowledge of phone hacking, which was limited to rogue reporters.

Les Hinton, the former chief executive of News International who now runs Dow Jones, assured Parliament that Coulson was telling the truth; and that he himself knew equally little.

The New York Times found otherwise. “The litigation (between victims of phone hacking and News International) again is beginning to expose just how far the hacking went, something that Scotland Yard did not do. In fact, an examination based on police records, court documents and interviews with investigators and reporters shows that Britain’s revered police agency failed to pursue leads suggesting that one of the country’s most powerful newspapers was routinely listening in on its citizens.” (more…)

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Dan Hodges backs a Blairite for the leadership

02/09/2010, 10:00:10 AM

And so it ends. By this week-end, three quarters of the votes in the 2010 Labour leadership election will have been cast. The contest will effectively be over.

We’ve learnt a lot. That a lengthy campaign, far from creating a platform for intensive debate, only deadens it. That a large field of candidates, rather than introducing diversity, allows only a superficial assessment of their merits, (The ‘Newsnight’ hustings would have shamed a secondary school debating class). Most crucially, we know that the last thing a political party should do after being dumped out of office is launch straight into electing itself a new leader.

Over the past months we have been assailed by a conformity of originality. Diane Abbott promised the “turn the page election from the turn the page candidate”. Ed Balls was building a “consensus for change”. Andy Burnham pledged to move the party beyond a “London-centric elite”.

(more…)

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It’s time to offer real alternatives, says John Healey

01/09/2010, 04:10:43 PM

In its first few months the Tory-Lib Dem coalition has all but conquered the media with the message that tackling the deficit trumps everything. We have a government of deficit disciples who have narrowed the terms of political debate to create sufficient cover for an ideological drive to slash public spending and reduce the role of the state.

Labour is right to fight the government hard on this, pressing for impact from the savage spending cuts and regressive tax changes. But opposing the government is only one side to the task of leadership in opposition.

The least people will expect is for us to argue for alternatives and propose new Labour policies. There are economic alternatives to defying the deficit.

(more…)

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We must be in the game, not shouting outside the stadium argues John Woodcock

30/08/2010, 12:58:32 PM

I spent some of my holiday reading accounts of the Thatcher government’s first term post 1979 (I know, my wife Mandy thought so too).

The longest suicide note in history is all well trodden territory. But it is still striking to think how different history could have been; how much more we could have done to protect people who desperately needed us back in those days if we had been prepared to play on the same pitch as the Tories from the outset instead of declaring that they were playing a deeply sinful game and choosing to demonstrate outside the stadium instead.

The Conservative government was able to inflict great damage on many parts of the UK; not least my constituency of Barrow and Furness and home city of Sheffield, because we attacked them for everything instead of acknowledging where they had a point in their basic analysis. We could have offered a tough but progressive alternative, but because we couldn’t even recognise where the Tories were half right, we could not convince the public about where they were going disastrously wrong. And we could not even begin to offer a credible ‘better option’.

What if, back then, we had agreed with the government that many nationalised industries of the time were indeed appallingly run and uneconomic, and needed radical change rather than the attempts at reform (the likes of which had failed through previous decades). Instead of screaming that they were evil privatisers, what if we had been hard-headed about the need to restructure industries but also insisted on a programme of real investment; giving real hope to the people the Conservatives abandoned?

(more…)

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Blair’s hand of history is flipping us the finger – but that’s ok, says Dan Hodges

26/08/2010, 11:37:02 AM

THE TINY BAND which follows my musings on Twitter knows three things: I can’t spell; I regularly Tweet globally matters meant for private consumption; and during the world cup I mounted an isolated and ultimately futile campaign in defence of Emile Ivanhoe Heskey.

To me, Big Emile is socialism personified. The collective before the individual. The selfless work ethic. Dignified persistence in the face of intolerance and prejudice.

There’s also something wonderfully affirming about setting yourself against the majority. Knowing that you, and you alone, are voting online for Emile to start against the USA. That you will be the only person in the bar in a t-shirt sporting the Ivanhoe heraldic crest. Celebrating his sublime flick, whilst the rest see only Gerrard’s finish. (more…)

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