Labour Uncut

GRASSROOTS: The Lib Dems have betrayed the country and we must wipe them out

10/01/2013, 03:53:25 PM

by Andrew Sumner

I’m with Pete Bowyer on this one. The Lib Dems behaviour over the past few years has been shameful. Actions must have consequences. Their betrayal of the British people must not be rewarded with a cosy coalition with Labour. What will the public think to see the apologists for Osborne’s austerity climbing into bed with Labour and securing their own jobs while thousands have lost theirs?

If we are serious about opposing this government then the Lib Dems are every bit as much to blame as the Tories. Those who back a Lib Lab pact can talk about issues like House of Lords reform or constitutional change but these are for the chattering classes. On the things that really matter, on jobs, the health service, education and welfare, we couldn’t be further apart from the Tories’ current partners.

Besides, in practical terms, it’s difficult to see how they walk back from the disgraceful policies that they have done their level best to pass in the House of Commons. So no, we shouldn’t be playing nicely with the Lib Dems, we should be fighting them and doing our best to wipe them out.

Andrew Sumner is a Labour activist

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UNCUT: Let’s not risk coalition part II

10/01/2013, 03:33:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

In 2015 I want to see a majority Labour government. I certainly don’t want to see a majority Conservative government. I can live with a Labour-Lib Dem government.

This, in essence, needs to be the calculation as Labour approaches the next general election. Opening up a dialogue with the Lib Dems around themes of mutual attraction is an act of utility; a contingency in the event of another inconclusive election result.

After all, a valedictory Tony Blair warned that the age of tribal politics is behind us with “rampant cross-dressing” increasingly the norm. There is plainly more that unites Labour and Lib Dems around issues like Europe and House of Lords reform than divides the two parties, so why not look for areas of overlap?

Especially when it has the potential to drive a wedge between the coalition partners. So an insurance policy for the future and a means of peeling the Lib Dems away from their cruel suitors in the bargain. What’s not to support here?

The alternative – sitting and waiting for the outcome of 2015 – risks repeating the mistake of 2010, as Labour’s team went naked into the chamber to negotiate with Clegg’s people, before a better-prepared Cameron swept in with his “big, open and comprehensive offer”. The rest is history.

Surely we aren’t going to risk a repeat?

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

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UNCUT: We should attack the Lib Dems not cave in to them

10/01/2013, 02:50:00 PM

by Pete Bowyer

With David Clark et al’s letter to the Guardian today, Labour’s defeatist tendency is once again on the march, prematurely calling for a Lib-Lab coalition following the 2015 general election.

After a year in which the Lib Dems fortunes have sunk to an all time low, and Labour has established a clear, if soft, lead in the polls, it is perverse that we should be preparing the ground now for a future coalition with a toxic political party. Just ask the Tories!

Those of us who have long confronted the Lib Dems on the ground in local politics, have become weary of the suggestion that they are a truly progressive force in British politics. Here in Lambeth, their short-lived, single term coalition with the Tories saw council tax rise by almost 40%, social housing conditions deteriorate and severe cuts across the board in local services.

Ironically, many of the signatories to the letters are fully signed up members to “the 2015 Election is already in the bag” brigade, which makes you wonder how confident they are in their own predictions. Those of us who are not quite so complacent, believe it is incumbent on all party members to campaign for a majority Labour government, rather than throwing our opponents a political lifeline.

If, in the event, we fail to achieve one, the parliamentary arithmetic will dictate next steps. The instincts of most Labour party members would be to proceed with a minority government initially, and call an early second election to establish a clear mandate as soon as the opportunity arose, a strategy which David Cameron was extremely foolish not to follow in 2010.

In the meantime, we should continue to attack the Lib Dems, not cave in to them.

Pete Bowyer is a councillor in Lambeth

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UNCUT: Labour needs to remember how to make an argument

10/01/2013, 07:00:47 AM

by Peter Watt

So, after five hours of heated debate the government got its way and parliament voted to limit annual increases in working-age benefits to 1%, for the next three years.

Only a handful of Lib Dems rebelled. But put aside the rights and wrongs of the argument for the moment. Just consider the arguments used in the first big political battle of the second half of this parliament.

To be effective an argument has to be heard, resonate, be noticed and be believable. It critically has to be understood. I spent much of Monday and Tuesday listening to party spokespeople making their arguments in advance of and in the aftermath of the welfare vote. I was struck by just how hard it was for Labour to get to the point and to make their argument. The government spokespeople on the other hand seemed to get to the point quickly. I wonder if this is why? When you go to the respective websites and try to get a distillation of the arguments you find:

Government argument:

“Today Labour are voting to increase benefits by more than workers’ wages. Conservatives: standing up for hardworking people.”

Labour argument:

“Labour will today challenge the government to back its plan for a compulsory jobs guarantee for the long term unemployed as new figures from the IFS show 7 million working people will be hit by the government’s ‘strivers tax’. The new report from the IFS shows that 7 million working families will lose out under the government’s real terms cuts to tax credits and other benefits. It follows Children’s Society research which shows that a second lieutenant will lose £552 a year, a nurse could lose £424 a year and a primary school teacher could lose £424 a year. Labour will oppose the bill and call for the government to bring in a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give people out of work for 24 months or more a job which they would have to take up or lose their benefits.”

Remember, put aside the merits of the respective arguments, and judge them on their effectiveness.

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UNCUT: The polling facts about Labour’s mid-term lead

09/01/2013, 12:02:49 PM

by Rob Marchant

Much has been made during 2012 of Labour’s solid poll lead, which has been of the order of 10% ever since the government’s disastrous Budget. For some it seems difficult to refrain from mentally converting this into a line on Peter Snow’s election night model of the House of Commons, showing a majority for Labour.

What this fails to account for, quite apart from the changed circumstances which may prevail in two years’ time (and which may be much more attractive for the Tories, as Peter Kellner cheekily points out here), is that incumbents tend to have a dip at mid-term anyway. Quantifying this effect would obviously help us to make more accurate forecasts, to the extent that this is possible.

Last week at Uncut, Atul Hatwal showed the numerical arguments against a win for any party which failed to establish a poll lead on the economy. In a complementary way, we can try and allow for this mid-term effect, to try and get a better idea of where things might end up, all other things being equal.

There are various ways of trying to gauge it*. A year ago, an excellent piece of analysis was carried out by Leo Barasi (and for which I am indebted to John Rentoul for pointing out) on post-war polls both eighteen months into a parliament and two years out from the next, which concluded, rightly, that Labour’s prospects were numerically better than many seemed to think.

Interestingly, this conclusion now looks a little less secure, not because Barasi’s model has changed or become less applicable, but because the polls have actually improved for Labour in the last year and therefore many commentators, who were very negative at the end of last year, have gravitated towards a much warmer view of Labour’s prospects.

To revisit the second part of that analysis – that of two years out from the next election – is now both timely and illustrative, which we do now in this graph:

It is interesting to look at the regression line but the data points, too, tell a story. It is also useful to apply a little political history to the figures.

First, the most striking thing to note is that over four-fifths of postwar oppositions have had a lead in the polls at this point, two years out from an election. Irrespective of whether they go on to win or lose. So having a lead in itself is hardly remarkable: in fact, allowing for outliers**, they almost all do. It is the size of the lead that counts. Conclusion: don’t get excited about being ahead in the polls at this point. It seems to be a necessary, not a sufficient condition. Not being ahead, now that would be something.

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UNCUT: Forget strivers vs skivers, it’s the uncosted spending that will hurt Labour on welfare

09/01/2013, 07:00:51 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Yesterday Labour voted against the welfare uprating bill after a debate in the House of Commons dominated by the four horseman of the welfare apocalypse, “scrounger,” “shirker,” “striver” and “skiver.”

These are highly charged, emotive terms, laden with implicit meaning. The focus of the debate in the run up to the vote has been on the values inherent in these words. The Tories are slapping a tax on strivers. No, Labour wants to sign a blank cheque for scroungers. Back and forth it has raged.

But amidst the sound and light about who was actually on the side of the hard working majority, the real impact on voter perceptions, and damage to Labour, has received comparatively little attention. Only yesterday, as the Tories rowed back from the sharper exigencies of their scrounger rhetoric did they alight on the most pointed attack on Labour.

Voters were already pretty clear that Labour will by and large try to protect benefits for the less well-off while the Tories are tougher on cheats. The values debate will not have altered this perception, except maybe to entrench it for both sides: the Tories cut with too much relish and Labour is more likely to fall for a hard luck story.

The one incontrovertible fact of Labour’s vote against the welfare uprating bill is that the party has now backed higher spending on benefits than the government.

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UNCUT: Labour history uncut: Labour sets a new record for by-election losses

09/01/2013, 12:21:31 AM

by Pete Goddard and Atul Hatwal

“Do something!”

This was the message to Ramsay Macdonald from the unhappy troops in his the party. Having become leader in 1911, Macdonald had arrived to find the workers of the nation ready for a Millwall wave of industrial unrest rippling across dockers, miners and rail-workers. This was like a Mexican wave, but with less cheering and more broken noses.

It left Macdonald in a tricky position as, at the same time as being the representatives of the working man, he was determined to establish Labour as a “respectable” party (as opposed to a Respect party, which is something different). Consequently, he was less than keen to be seen to be on the side of rioters and militant strikers.

As part of his plan to establish Labour, Macdonald had operated an informal electoral pact with the Liberals since 1903, each giving the other a clear run at the Tories. For Labour it had helped build the parliamentary party to 42 seats.

With the Liberals now in government, it also meant Labour could get scraps of their legislation through in return for continued support.

While this did rather make them the dog at the Liberal party banquet, that was of more practical benefit than being the starving man outside, watching everybody else eat.

But on the other hand, who wants to be a dog, aside from people with a burning desire to lick their own genitals? Certainly not the party rank and file, who quite reasonably felt that being on the side of the workers sort of came with the job description for Labour – the clue is in the name after all.

If all Labour was doing was backing the Liberals, what was the point of setting up a different party in the first place?

So Macdonald subtly shifted strategy. He didn’t turn his full rhetorical fire on the government, but he did change the approach on by-elections. After 1911, Labour’s leadership exercised a little more willingness to run candidates where a Liberal was standing.

Partially Macdonald’s hand was forced by pressure from within the party, but there was also merit in gauging Labour’s strength. Even if they didn’t beat the Liberals, a strong electoral showing might strengthen his hand when negotiating with the government – after all the Liberals weren’t even the largest party.

So, between 1911 and summer 1914, out of 50 by-elections in Liberal seats, Labour contested an unprecedented 14 seats.

“Say ‘cheese’? Whilst workers are starving? Never.” ’William Cornforth Robinson, Labour candidate in the 1911 Oldham by-election

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UNCUT: Teachers, if you don’t like being measured, fix the problem yourselves

08/01/2013, 07:00:03 AM

by Kevin Meagher

As schools started back yesterday for a new term, it must have felt like another upward trudge with a boulder for our leather elbow-patched Sisypeans. We know this, after all, because a recent poll found 55 per cent of teachers describe their morale as “low” or “very low”.

The gripes are familiar enough. As well as the usual complaints about pay and working conditions, 77 per cent of teachers in the poll commissioned by the national union of teachers thought academies and free schools were taking education in the wrong direction; while 71 per cent said they rarely or never felt trusted by the government, (up from 54 per cent in April 2010).

But it’s the issue of school standards that still seems to grate most. Last November, Sir Michael Wilshaw, the new chief inspector of schools, presented Ofsted’s annual report. It found that schools in England are getting better – although there is still a long way to go before the nation catches up with the best in the world. There are also wide variations in the performance of schools across different local authority areas, leading to serious inequities for children in some parts of the country.

The product of nearly 25,000 inspections across schools, nurseries and colleges, it is a rigorous and useful reminder of the challenges we face in making all our schools the best that they can be. However Sir Michael’s analysis of the problem is not entirely shared, it is fair to say, by the teaching unions.

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UNCUT: On welfare, Labour needs to be the party of work

07/01/2013, 07:59:11 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Labour debating the Conservatives on welfare is not a clash between two settled bodies of opinion. As public opinion evolves, so does internal debate within both parties. Casualties will come from “friendly fire” and the fog of war is thick.

There are those within Labour who think that George Osborne has snookered our party with the welfare uprating bill. In contrast, others think Osborne has overplayed his hand and we will be rewarded for principled opposition to the bill.

The latter are in sympathy with the rhetorical question of John Harris: If every Labour politician cannot oppose Osborne’s strivers and skivers plan in its toxic entirety, what exactly are they here for?

The former both dismiss this as naive and discount the capacity of the more nuanced opposition that Gavin Kelly has articulated and which Labour’s guarantee of a job for those out of work for 2 years is a variant of.

This guarantee seems a step away from the Harris position, which rejects absolutely the welfare uprating bill, and towards a position that argues the bill is unnecessary as there are better means of reforming our welfare system. Taking this step has the advantage of reducing the extent to which we seem to defend a discredited status quo. Equally, it will disappoint those attracted to a more visceral rebuttal of Osborne.

While there is diversity of opinion within Labour, it would be mistaken to think that the Conservatives are united. Indeed, they are at war, if a Peter Oborne piece from just before Christmas is to be believed. Soon after Christmas a cabinet minister was speaking in less than glowing terms about Iain Duncan-Smith’s universal credit. “The information technology for the new system is nowhere near ready. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

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UNCUT: Sunday Review: “the Victory Lab: the secret science of winning campaigns” by Sasha Issenberg

06/01/2013, 08:00:52 AM

by Anthony Painter

Sometimes you find yourself picking up a book with a degree of scepticism and ambivalence. This was one such occasion. Issenberg’s pacy Moneyball-style look at the evolving statistical and psychological science of winning campaigns had potential for ‘overstatement of case’ written all over it. It didn’t help matters when the final sentence of the introduction argued that this new application of science had enabled campaigns to ‘start treating voters like people again.’

And yet, I ended up convinced by Issenberg’s argument against my own expectations. The techniques and approaches he outlines within the Victory Lab, if applied with imagination, have the potential to re-engage millions in democracy – up to a point. His core contention is that voting is a behavioural act. As he eloquently puts it:

“What if voting wasn’t only a political act, but a social one that took place in a liminal space between the public and private that had never been well-defined to citizens? What if toying with those expectations was key to turning a person into a voter? What if elections were less about shaping people’s opinions than changing their behaviours.”

There is an old rational choice puzzle that all undergraduate students of political science are presented with. Why do people vote when, from an instrumental point of view with a low chance of influencing the outcome, it’s an irrational act? Rationalistic models of human behaviour have shown themselves in economics, politics and in psychology to be completely inadequate. Issenberg reaches instead for the behavioural science of the likes of Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Robert Cialdini, and Richard Thaler – all names that will be familiar to those who have been following these debates.

The answer to the rational choice puzzle is, of course, because human beings aren’t just instrumental calculating machines. Any (political) science that can’t cope with that insight is for the birds.

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