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“I’m part of the union, till the day I die.” Harry Harpham’s tub-thumping socialist send-off

17/02/2016, 02:40:44 PM

by Lucy Ashton

“I’m part of the union, till the day I die.”

The rousing anthem by The Strawbs began yesterday’s funeral service for Sheffield Brightside Labour MP Harry Harpham, who was struck down by a fast-paced cancer just months after entering Parliament last May.

Despite the reserved surroundings of Sheffield Cathedral, this was a tub-thumping, socialist send-off for a former deputy council leader with 20 years local government service under his belt and a passionate trade unionist.

Before the service, members of the National Union of Mineworkers erected large NUM banners at the front of the altar and every mourner was asked to wear a 1980s-style Coal Not Dole yellow sticker.

Labour stalwart and South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Alan Billings led the service, in his role as an Anglican priest, explaining that the Cathedral had been chosen because it was big enough for the hundreds of mourners.

Any suggestions that this was a religious service were dismissed when the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil was played.

Yet there was a spiritual element as the congregation shared their socialist views, ethics and memories.

Harry, whose real first name was Robert, was the eldest of seven children and leaves two brothers and four sisters.

His brother Rick fondly recalled their loving family but said Harry also had another family – NUM colleagues who had become lifelong friends after Harry spent 15 years down the pit and fought alongside them during the miners’ strike.

And the ghost of the 1980s hung over proceedings as Rick urged mourners to punch the air and yell: “Miners united, will never be defeated.”

Harry, 61, was a gregarious and incredibly friendly man and his service also remembered his role as a loving and beloved father and grandfather.

His daughter Annie – who brought her wedding forward last December so Harry could walk her down the aisle – spontaneously abandoned her planned speech and instead sang a beautiful cappella of Blooming Heather to her father.

It wouldn’t have been an authentic Labour party occasion without the Red Flag, played by the Cathedral organist who also happened to be a party member and wanted to pay a final tribute to Harry.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attended but the final words were left to David Blunkett, who Harry was agent to for many years before succeeding in the Sheffield Brightside seat.

“Harry was my friend. He would always greet me by saying ‘hello comrade’ and that’s how I’ll always remember him.”

Harry’s final journey, in a casket covered with red roses and a flag from his beloved Manchester United FC, was to John Lennon’s Working Class Hero, a truly appropriate song.

Donations in memory of Harry Harpham can be made to Cancer Research UK online via his funeral director at www.JohnHeath.co.uk

Lucy Ashton is former political editor of the Sheffield Star

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Maybe Bernie Sanders should go and join the Tories

16/02/2016, 05:39:43 PM

by Samuel Dale

The far left has a new champion: Bernie Sanders. The plucky outsider who identifies as a socialist and is taking on the establishment with huge crowds and a popular uprising.

A pure-breed, straight-talking full-throated leftie. He’s going to trounce Hillary Clinton and take the presidency.

But I’ve looked through his economic policies and – I don’t want to upset you – but Sanders has more in common with George Osborne than Jeremy Corbyn.

Here’s 12 worrying policy similarities:

1.Wall Street tax. Let’s look at Sanders’ central campaign theme – the greed of Wall Street. He wants a so-called “tax on Wall Street speculators”. While Osborne opposes a financial transaction tax, he introduced a bank levy on balance sheets in 2010, raising nearly £3bn a year.

2. Break-up banks. Sanders also wants to break up banks that are too big to fail, going further than the current Volker rule in the US and ring-fencing rules in the UK that merely separate investment and retail arms within one company. Sounds radical but it is also the policy solution favoured by former Conservative Chancellor and Osborne mentor Nigel Lawson. Osborne has also introduced a rule that means banks can be broken up if the Treasury believes they are undermining the ring-fence.

3. Interest rate caps. Sanders backs a cap on credit card interest rates of 15%. Osborne has already capped payday loan rates.

4. The minimum wage. Sanders wants to increase the rate from just over ($7.25) £5 to just over £10 ($15). George Osborne I increasing the minimum wage from £7 to £9 an hour. And he is making it a rule that the minimum wage can never be below 60% of the average wage.

5. Sanders wants to invest $1 trillion over five years towards rebuilding infrastructure. Osborne is building HS2, a new south-east airport (eventually), the Northern Powerhouse (hopefully) as well as boosting councils to spend more on such projects too. (more…)

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The sale of the ‘i’ tells us the Indy’s owners aren’t serious about its online future

15/02/2016, 08:00:58 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Grim news last week with the closure of the Independent. Yes, I know it’s going to be continuing online and there will be some sort of future but not one that’s recongnisable to any regular reader of the Indy.

The sale of the ‘i’ tells us all we need to know about what happens next.

The print run of the Independent was always going to end. Last year I wrote a piece predicting its likely print demise in 2016 (along with that of the Guardian, the FT and Star by 2020). The long term sales trends were and are painfully clear.

Dailies cease print 2020

However, contrary to the plan outlined by the Independent’s owners, scrapping the daily and Sunday newspaper needn’t have been the end of print for the Indy.

Keeping the “i” as a print outlet would have retained a physical presence for the brand and the lucrative print advertising revenue stream. The website could have been refocused, extending its long reads and deeper analysis along-side the inevitable clickbait and hourly reportage of whatever is trending on social media.

The combination of tabloid print with a website that had greater in-depth coverage would have been a genuinely interesting model, bringing together the strengths of both formats – print prestige, influence and revenue with mass online views and deeper pockets of analysis.

(more…)

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Government doubles down on boundary review proposals. Labour’s problems just got worse

11/02/2016, 02:13:42 PM

by Greig Baker

Sometimes when my 4yr old gets told off, she misbehaves even more – thinking that if she’s in trouble already, she might as well go the whole hog. The government has taken the same approach in its boundary review for Parliamentary constituencies. The Cabinet Office’s newly published details show the government is not looking to compromise. Instead, it is upping the ante, in the hope that while many of its own backbenchers will be unhappy, the reforms are an even bigger problem for Labour – and one that, perversely, the Labour leadership might be quite happy to have.

The politics to the boundary changes is threefold…

First, the government is sticking with a maximum 5% variance in constituency size, above or below the average, which means a greater number of seats will change. This makes it more likely Cameron will stay on for as long as possible, so that he takes the flack for the reforms and leaves his successor to smooth ruffled Tory feathers. It’s also the reason Corbyn might welcome the review, as it lets his team get cracking with deselecting more of those pesky, voter-friendly, centrist Labour MPs.

Second, and vitally, the reforms will be based on the number of voters actually on the electoral register – not the local population. This is a major disadvantage for Labour and will be one of the government’s sweeteners for angry Conservative MPs.

And the third factor is probably the one the ‘essay crisis’ Prime Minister has paid least attention to – the government admits the boundary reforms will unbalance the cross-community representation in Westminster currently offered by Northern Irish MPs. Without knowing exactly what the new Northern Irish constituencies will look like, the government could be risking its relationship with unionists here, which is no small beer given the precarious nature of a Parliamentary majority that only just scrapes into double figures.

In the next 24 months we’ll find out whether these proposals are workable, or if the government has just consigned itself to the naughty step.

Greig Baker is Chief Executive at The GUIDE Consultancy

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The campaign to keep Britain in the EU is predictable, condescending and by-the-numbers

10/02/2016, 03:27:13 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Those hoping that Britain remains a member of the European Union following June’s expected referendum unquestionably now have a fight on their hands. The polls are jittery, with most showing the country is finely balanced over the question of whether or not to quit the EU. It’s all to play for.

Unfortunately, the campaign to galvanise the country behind the simple proposition that our best bet for a stable and prosperous future is to remain a member of the EU hardly seems equal to the challenge.

Or, to be more specific, the official ‘remain’ campaign, Britain Stronger In Europe, is a predictable, condescending, by-the-numbers, flat-pack, top-down, Westminster-standard, one-size-fits-all affair that risks ushering Britain out of the EU due to its all-purpose dreariness.

I enter into evidence its chairman, Lord Stuart Rose. The Tory peer and former CEO of Marks and Spencer was caught out the other week, unable to correctly remember the name of the campaign group he’s supposed to be leading.

All rather embarrassing but hardly surprising given ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ is the kind of instantly forgettable blandishment we have come to expect from the pro-European aisle in British politics.

He may be business class royalty, but Lord Rose has little feel for political campaigning, grandly claiming he is set to win “by a substantial margin” while describing the EU as “maddening…bureaucratic…and sluggish.”

With such a ringing endorsement it’s a good job he used to sell knickers and not holidays.

(more…)

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Thanks to Corbyn, I might not vote Labour. Here’s how the Tories could win my vote in 2020

05/02/2016, 03:06:31 PM

by Samuel Dale

I have a confession to make. If David Cameron was Conservative leader in 2020 fighting an election against a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour then I would have no choice. I’d vote Conservative for the first time in my life.

I wouldn’t duck the choice with a vote for Tim Farron’s ludicrous Liberal Democrats. Farron has done nothing to build on some of Nick Clegg’s smart, centrist positioning while detoxifying the party from its shambolic U-turns and dreadfully naïve politics when in coalition.

Nope, it’s Tory or Labour at a general election. It’s about choosing a prime minister and there is no doubt that Cameron is better than Corbyn.

We are all familar with how Corbyn has gleefully abandoned Labour moderates and centrists. His pacifism and masochistic foreign policy, opposition to Trident renewal, business policy, monetary policy, income tax levels and much more beside, make him unpalatable to me.

So how can the Tories capitalise. Cameron won’t be leader in 2020 and Corybn may not be either. The real question for Conservatives is, how much do they want my vote and thousands like it. Blairite, pro-EU liberals comfortable with high levels of immigration and capitalism but worried about inequality. Corbyn has opened the space, can they take it?

The Conservatives have made no secret of their desire to (occasionally) pitch to people like me since their May election victory. It’s not easy to prise away Labour tribalists but are making good progress.

(more…)

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Harry Harpham, a working class hero

05/02/2016, 09:03:23 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Betty Boothroyd famously said she was Labour because she was born with coal dust under her fingernails. It wasn’t a metaphor with Harry Harpham, the Labour MP for Brightside and Hillsborough, who sadly died yesterday.

Harry was a proud former coal miner, an all-too-rare breed in the modern Labour party, and had participated in the Miner’s Strike of 1984-5. An MP for the first time at 61 when he was elected last May, Harry was about as far from the identikit modern Labour MP as it was possible to be.

As a mature student, he graduated from the University of Sheffield and was elected to Sheffield Council in 2004. By the time he stood down last year, he had become one of the city’s civic fathers, ending up as deputy leader of the council.

As the cabinet lead for housing, Harry oversaw the implementation of the £700 million Decent Homes programme in the city, a massive undertaking as Sheffield has twice the national average number of council homes, and successfully brought council housing back under municipal control from an arm’s length company.

Loyal, hard-working and well-liked, Harry was a natural fit to succeed his friend and mentor, David Blunkett, when he stood down from the Commons last May. For Brightside and Hillsborough, the quintessential northern working class constituency, Harry was a round peg in a round hole if ever there was one and his victory was widely welcomed.

The shock of his death is amplified because of the matter-of-fact way he continued working after receiving a diagnosis of cancer shortly after last year’s Labour conference. Harry threw himself into his new responsibilities and most people simply had no idea how poorly he was.

When he did confirm his illness before Christmas, he was typically understated, not wanting to make “a big song and dance about it”. He was full of praise for the NHS treatment he was receiving.

The additional tragedy of his untimely death is that he would have certainly gone on to play a bigger role in the Westminster party. He literally personified the party’s working class roots.

Never forgetting where he came from, or the struggles he and people like him had overcome, Harry was also intensely practical and had quickly been appointed parliamentary private secretary to Lisa Nandy as shadow energy secretary, despite his illness.

Harry died peacefully surrounded by his family and his friend and colleague, Councillor Bob Johnson, described him as a “brave working class man to the end.”

He leaves a wife, Gill, herself a Labour councillor in Sheffield, and children Annie, Kieran, Dan, Emily and Victoria and grand-daughter Layla Grace.

Harry Harpham, Labour MP for Brightside and Hillsborough (21 February 1954 – 4 February 2016)

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The Tories are within 4 points of Scottish Labour. What a time to try to “outflank the SNP from the left”

04/02/2016, 05:03:37 PM

by Rob Marchant

Uncut has not spoken much about Scotland recently but, as the gaze of Britain’s political machine turns briefly northwards, as it does every four years, that will change.

It is right that it will, and this time it should not be brief. This is not just because the Holyrood elections are almost upon us. It is because Labour’s short-to-medium-term success, and perhaps its very survival, depends on a Scottish turnaround.

Why? Let’s just look at the basic electoral arithmetic. As Lewis Baston pointed out in an outstanding analysis at LabourList, because of its wipeout in Scotland, Labour needs a bigger swing than it had in the 1997 general election to win in 2020.

That is, a bigger swing even than its best-ever post-war result.

It would be a tall order for a party even at the height of its popularity and which had not for the last five years neglected swing seats in the South East which it had won in 1997 and needed to win again.

And this was all chasing the frankly imbecilic notion that it could squeeze into power on the back of a leftish “progressive majority”, consisting of discontented Lib Dem and Green voters turning towards Labour.

Now consider a party which, on top of that, has its most unpopular leader since records began.

It is not merely a tall order. It is impossible. It is difficult to overestimate the extent to which Labour’s comfortable hegemony in Scotland has provided Labour’s electoral safety net during its postwar opposition years. We are now living a historical anomaly for Labour.

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No-one wants nukes, but unilateralism remains a naïve and dangerous pipedream

03/02/2016, 09:24:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

The hashtag meme #earliestpoliticalmemory, doing the rounds on Twitter the other day, got me thinking. Mine was probably my mother taking me on a ‘Women Against the Bomb’ sit-down protest on the steps of Bolton Town Hall when I was five or six.

Since then, I’ve held a pretty mainstream view that abhors the existence of nuclear weapons, but like most political pragmatists, I cleave towards multilateralism as a response; that is to say: ‘We’ll scrap ours when you scrap yours’.

The obvious flaw, of course, is that no-one wants to make the first move. And, so, nearly thirty years after the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons endure.

But if we scrap ours first, will the Russians, Chinese, Americans, Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians and others be equally willing to bash their missiles into ploughshares?

Anyone who thinks they would should reflect on how hard it is to get buy-in from many of the same countries for concerted action on global warming, or dealing with terrorism. The moral clarity with which unilateralists see the issue simply is not shared by the hard men of Russia and China. Gesture politics counts for little alongside realpolitik.

Unilateralism is therefore a well-meant but hopelessly naïve position. A quixotic non-engagement with hard reality.

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Britain’s EU referendum must be fought on the future

02/02/2016, 10:45:36 PM

by Callum Anderson

As David Cameron edges closer to a final agreement with the European Commission and the other 27 Member States, both Leave and Remain campaigns struggle to wrest control and momentum ahead of a possible plebiscite this summer.

Whenever the referendum takes place, Britons will have to make their biggest decision for more than a generation. One that should be definitive and non-reversible. One that will ultimately decide Britain’s place in the twenty-first century.

Opinion polls – if we still trust them – have been highly volatile and are likely to remain so, with challenges such as terrorism and the migrant crisis looming large.

It, of course, goes without saying that Britain Stronger In Europe, backed by organisations such as British Influence and Labour’s In for Britain, must continue to make a positive case for Britain’s membership in the EU and call out the myths spread by the Eurosceptics.

The economic benefits – jobs, trade and investment – must be messages unceasingly repeated to citizens on the doorstep.

Equally, as Jim Murphy articulated superbly last summer, Britons must be reminded that the EU has not only been a free-trade area but also responsible for one of the great moral triumphs of our time: the establishment of democracy and the rule of law in the south and east of Europe.

(more…)

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