Labour Uncut

UNCUT: In defence of political fixing

23/01/2014, 07:00:27 AM

by Kevin Meagher

If the glamorous world of political power is an aphrodisiac, the grubby underbelly of politics is probably something like a retching motion. That’s to say, it isn’t pretty, as a cast load of dubious characters are coughed forward into our midst. A few crooks. Quite a few oddballs. Plenty of lechers. Mostly, they are men (although there are a few are women too). They are all part and parcel of our political life.

So nothing about the allegations swirling around Lib Dem peer Lord Rennard is particularly unusual or new and no-one, in any party, should react too smugly as this sorry state of affairs unfurls.

And I say that from the start, allegations. I don’t know what Rennard did or didn’t do. Neither does the police, it seems, who found there was no case to answer after investigating complaints from several women Lib Dem activists about unwanted moves they say he made on them.

Neither, did the party’s internal investigation, conducted by Alistair Webster QC, which has triggered this latest crisis. That’s because while he concurs with the earlier police investigation, Webster concludes, in a frankly brilliant circumlocution, that Rennard should still apologise:

“I viewed Lord Rennard, from the weight of the evidence submitted, as being someone who would wish to apologise to those whom he had made to feel uncomfortable, even if he had done so inadvertently.”

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UNCUT: Letter from Wales: Nothing is independent in the Crachach run Welsh media

22/01/2014, 09:58:54 PM

by Julian Ruck

The Welsh-speaking Crachach (or Taffia depending on your point of view) are up to their usual old tricks again. You know, keeping it in the family, jobs for this life and the next and not what you know but who you know.

The Silk commission is looking into the devolution settlement and the powers of the National Assembly of Wales. Also on the Commission’s radar is the much debated control of the Welsh media.

Not long ago, I interviewed one Lee Waters, director of the ‘independent’ Welsh think tank, the Institute of Welsh Affairs. The purpose of the interview was to explore the abject lack of diversity and indeed equal opportunity that appears to exist in Welsh governing institutions. There was also the question relating to whether or not the push for Welsh language nationalism was having a negative impact on the Welsh economy.

Mr Waters immediately accepted that there was a problem here ie that Welsh institutions are run mainly by white, Welsh speaking, middle class and Welsh educated personnel. However, he followed this up with the more facile excuse that “Wales has the same problems as all other Western societies.”

So then, one can conclude that in his view, a white Dai Berlosconi or a white Dai Chirac is fine because everyone else is at it? The nasty Tories also came in for some passionate opprobrium from the independently minded Waters too. Quite obviously a man who prides himself on apolitical inclination if ever there was one!

A simple case of denial perhaps? But then the Welsh Crachach are resilient if nothing else

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GRASSROOTS: If Ed is serious about banking reform, its a British investment bank that is needed

22/01/2014, 02:18:11 PM

by David Butler

The case for banking reform is one that, on the centre-left, does not require extensive repeating. The banks were central to the crash and have not been seen to have redeemed themselves. In particular, lending to small and medium enterprises has fallen substantially in the post-crash environment and was not particularly healthy pre-crash. It is into this sea which the good ship One Nation Labour (formerly known as Responsible Capitalism), under her captain Ed Miliband, sailed.

Small and medium-sized enterprises suffer from an inadequate supply of finance. The impact of this was captured in IPPR’s Investing for the Future report. SMEs are usually reliant on loan-funding and are unable to sell bonds or access other sources of capital available to bigger businesses. The report contends that banks have gradually been switching their activities towards loans and investment that offer bigger yields and more immediate profits, which has squeezed loan-funding to SMEs. Due to information asymmetry, banks have used a ‘tick box’ approach for making decisions on loan funding, which has result in a further structural shortage as many potentially good SMEs are shut up of the one-size-fits-all criteria.

Current government schemes to encourage SME lending do not appear to be successful. In the footnotes of the IPPR report, the authors quote an article in the Financial Times which claims that of the £100 billion in low-cost capital created by the government, banks plan to use up to £80 billion to replace existing loans backed by market-price capital. It is clear that simply giving cheap capital to private sector banks will not help. This has been matched by the continue fall in lending to SMEs captured by recent Bank of England figures. This lending problem is a constraint on future prosperity and do nothing to relieve the cost of living crisis. A new approach is needed. Ed Miliband believes that more competition will provide the answer.

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UNCUT: Labour needs to stop fiddling and get on with the big stuff

22/01/2014, 07:49:35 AM

by Rob Marchant

The opportunity for Labour to score party points against the Tories on the economy is clearly diminishing. While that is difficult rather than disastrous, our reaction is important.

Last week, FT’s Janan Ganesh tweeted a characteristically shrewd observation: influenced by campaign groups, Labour seemed to have furthermore abdicated responsibility for forming a competing macro policy. It had therefore embarked on a series of eye-catching micro initiatives with social aims – intervening in energy markets, stopping payday loans and so on – but had gone quiet on the economy at large.

While many of these measures are fully respectable and positive in themselves, they are hardly a substitute for a robust macro policy, clearly distinguished from the coalition’s. And the obvious danger is that while the coalition looks strategic, we look, to put it bluntly, like tinkerers rather than players.

The culmination of all this micro thinking came last Friday, with Miliband’s statement on banking reform.

Now, banking reform is important and, on the face of it, an ideal place for Labour to make a difference. Why? Because we know (i) that it needs reform, and (ii) that the Tories will soft-pedal on anything which affects City friends and donors – that’s the reality. So far, so good.

But this noble end doesn’t mean that this is the right means. Because, here’s the thing: Labour has straight-facedly announced that the centrepiece of its solution is to create not one, but two new high street banks.

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INSIDE: Jim Dowd. Not so relished in South Yorkshire.

21/01/2014, 05:11:34 PM

Pity poor Jim Dowd. A Londoner to his boots and scourge of cheap knock-offs of quality brands. He led the way in the debate on intellectual property in the chamber yesterday, castigating “parasitic” copies of established products.

Tears were welling-up among fellow MPs and onlookers as he laid out the foul calumny that he himself had suffered, just the previous weekend,

“I was in the Hare and Billet pub in Blackheath (in London). And I was having lunch, and I asked if they had any Worcestershire Sauce – everybody knows the famous manufacturers of Worcestershire Sauce.

Now, I’m a simple soul from south-east London, and I thought there was only one Worcestershire Sauce. And the very nice chap who was serving us went away and said ‘certainly’, and he came back with a bottle, and it was shaped like the bottle which I always remembered containing, I think it’s Lea and Perrins, Worcestershire Sauce and their marvellous concoction: same shape, same size, the label was amazingly enough orange with black lettering.

But it was something from Sheffield, from somewhere called Henderson’s – whoever they were.

Now, I’m sure Mr Henderson and his company is a perfectly estimable organisation and I’m sure they pursue an entirely legitimate business, but I couldn’t help feeling at the time that this, of all the colours they could choose for their label, of all the shapes they could have for their bottle, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Sheffield sauce until then, but I thought this is an ideal example of just how easy these things are to do (to copy).”

Damn straight Jim. Who the hell is Mr.Henderson anyway?

What’s that? Henderson’s is a brand that has been established for over 100 years? Really? A great British export, shipped all round the world, you say? 750,000 bottles sold each year?

Paul Blomfield, MP for Sheffield Central, rode to the rescue earlier today to set Jim straight, writing him an open letter on Facebook.

But it was already too late.

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UNCUT: Shadow cabinet league: Khan still top as Benn barges into top ten

21/01/2014, 02:42:44 PM

by Alan Smithee

Early on in a season, a league table often struggles to reflect the true strength of teams. Sometimes teams remain high up in a table due to a superficial good start. However, one cannot tell truly until after a good handful of games have passed. The same is true for Uncut’s shadow cabinet table. However, with December’s results’ in, there are still some useful hints at work rate and the tactics used.

Within the top five, Sadiq Khan remains at number one, fueled by large numbers of written questions and heavily reactive media activity. His impressive performance has continued to cover a broad policy spectrum and, even if it does not pay major immediate political dues, will leave Khan well set up to manage and modify the penal system. The same formula is used by Chris Leslie, Caroline Flint and Chuka Umunna. Flint has continued to use the energy price freeze pledge and rising bills to hammer the government on the cost of living. Andy Burnham however has focussed his guns in the media sphere working reactive and proactive to attack the failings of government NHS reforms.

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UNCUT: Miliband’s reckoning must also reassure

20/01/2014, 02:24:17 PM

by Jonathan Todd

“The next election”, according to an answer that Ed Miliband gave on Friday, “will be a choice between a big reckoning and steady as she goes.” There wasn’t much that Mliband understated in setting out how Britain would change with him in charge. But this was one thing. There is no steady as she goes option.

George Osborne can only make his sums add up with a much reduced role for government outside of ringfenced areas and/or further cuts for the disabled, children and the working poor. That’s not so much steady as she goes as once more into the breach, as the ship heads towards the rapids. Osborne gave the impression in 2011 that the electorate had sacrificed all that he’d ask of them. Now he asks them to keep sacrificing till 2018/19.

His ‘baseline theory’ of politics encourages this strategy. This forces Labour to choose: Match my baseline and all the tough choices that entails or don’t and accept that the full force of HM Treasury will be thrown at undermining Labour’s credibility.

Miliband’s speech was his response to Osborne’s gaunlet. Which he picked up, tossed aside and dismissed as redundant. Deficit reduction alone can’t fix our economy, he told us. Nor alone can it make hard work pay or be a vision for the country, he continued.

Osborne tried to force Miliband to talk about the size of government but he insisted on telling business what to do. His refusal to play Osborne’s game may have had something of Jarvis Cocker’s snapping of a pencil about it (See two minutes in to this). There is, however, nothing scrawny about Miliband’s attitude to business. He is as muscular in articulating what he will require of them as Osborne is unrelenting in shrinking the state. It’s not a nudge – once a buzzword in David Cameron’s circle – that Miliband wants to give business but an unavoidable prod.

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INSIDE: Speedy by-election planned to keep UKIP at bay

20/01/2014, 08:12:31 AM

If you’re reading this after 10am today and were hoping to stand for the Labour nomination for the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election, caused by the tragic death of Paul Goggins, then hard lines.

This is the deadline imposed by the party as it moves swiftly to get a candidate in place before a by-election is called, probably for February 13. A panel of the National Executive Committee meets this Wednesday to whittle down applications before a hustings meeting in Wythenshawe on Friday night.

With some bookies quoting UKIP’s chances of winning the seat as 4-1, Labour is taking no chances. It needs to stop Nigel Farage gaining traction on the ground while ensuring it gets fickle Labour voters to turn out in what is predicted to be a cold February.

The Manchester Central by-election in November 2012 achieved the ignominy of managing lowest turnout in a parliamentary by-election since World War Two with just 18 per cent voting. Lucy Powell, the winner of that by-election, is set to manage the party’s campaign.

The Wythenshawe part of the seat is classic inner-city Manchester, containing five of the eight wards that make up the constituency. The remaining three sit in the neighbouring – and decidedly more affluent – borough of Trafford.

The seat contains the Benchill area, which was once assessed to be the most deprived in Europe and the scene of an infamous David Cameron walkabout where a youth made gun gestures at him.

Uncut hears that the battle for the Labour nomination is likely to be a two-horse race between Manchester councillor Rosa Battle and chief executive of Movement for Change, Mike Kane.

Both have local credentials, with Battle, Manchester’s executive member for culture and leisure, finishing third in the selection process for the Manchester Central nomination.

Mike Kane was born and raised in Wythenshawe and formerly worked as a teacher and as a parliamentary aide to James Purnell and Jonathan Reynolds.

Local sources predict Kane should edge it, with one party member praising his “great back story as a local lad,” while his community organising skills should come in handy pressing the flesh this week.

However there is expected to be no shortage of potential candidates to keep the NEC panel busy. Cheshire councillor Steve Carter, a former parliamentary candidate for Macclesfield is another hopeful.

Paul Goggins had a majority of 7,575 at the 2010 General Election.

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UNCUT: Osborne’s tank tries to churn up Ed’s lawn

17/01/2014, 08:24:49 AM

by Kevin Meagher

He would bristle at the comparison, but George Osborne’s raid on Labour’s turf – promising to support an above inflation rise in the minimum wage – is straight out of the Gordon Brown book of political tradecraft.

The two most political bean-counters British politics has ever produced are both fans of ‘weaponising’ policy to suit their ends; laying clever traps for their enemies to fall into and using the Treasury’s tanks to churn up the opposition’s lawn.

“I want to make sure we are all in it together” said Osborne yesterday, to a chorus of generally disbelieving gasps. The minimum wage should increase “because the British economy can now afford that.”

The Tories used to be “on the wrong side of the argument” about the merits of the minimum wage, but that was all a misunderstanding. Now it’s a shiny, happy, modern party “in touch with the country,” he added.

ITV’s Chris Ship said the Lib Dems were “spitting tacks” as Osborne had veered over the coalition’s central reservation, cutting them out of the equation on a major good news story.

“He’s effectively endorsing the advice I gave to the Low Pay Commission” said Vince Cable on Newsnight last night, trying to sound nonchalant at the very effrontery of it all. Labour people too were miffed at Osborne’s naked opportunism. How dare a Tory Chancellor say anything positive about the minimum wage!

In a funny sort of way, Ed Miliband should take all this as a compliment. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. That Osborne felt compelled to try and spike today’s big speech on the economy and banking reform shows the Tories are irked about headlines proclaiming “I can save the middle class”.

So in the best traditions of “you send one of my guys to the hospital, I’ll send one of yours to the morgue” Osborne’s instinct is to wield his home-made shiv. It’s not pretty, but it is effective.

Gordon would approve.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

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UNCUT: Everyone is talking rubbish about “Europe”

16/01/2014, 10:40:07 AM

by Sam Fowles

I’m trying really hard to remember a time when we could go a whole week without having to have a national moan about “Europe”*. I mean I get it, I really do. All that great food, fantastic culture and nice weather. Not to mention Germany and France’s positively infuriating collective predilection for paying people properly and according them proper employment rights.

Actually I don’t get it. But a collective grumble is one thing, much more serious is that our national debate on Europe is dramatically and consistently rubbish. I’ve (reluctantly) learned to accept that some people have different opinions to me but when did it become acceptable to just make things up when it comes to Europe?

The whole debate pretty much falls into four words: Immigrants, human rights and “reform”. But none of these supposed “problems” with “Europe” are actually based on fact. Cameron and co spent December falling over themselves to prevent the supposed influx of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants abusing our welfare system. UKIP’s website proclaims its ambition to “take back control of our borders”. But if anyone had actually bothered to check, they’d have discovered that recent immigrants are 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than people already living here and have made a net contribution of £25bn to public finances since 2000.

Instead of “Immigration rows out of control” (our Prime Minister’s choice of words) that whole fiasco could be summed up as “everyone freaks out because (foreign) people want to be productive members of society”. By the way, people coming over here, spending money and paying tax helps create jobs, not take them away. It’s called economic growth, look it up, its great.

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