GRASSROOTS: Practical policy for Labour from the Small Business Forum conference fringe

12/10/2012, 11:19:09 AM

by Philip Ross

The Labour Small Business Forum is a network of Labour members and supporters who work for themselves or in a small business. We recently held a fringe at Labour party conference with a simple goal: to not just to talk round the issues but highlight some practical proposals for the party for small business, proposed by small business.

We had the best SME line up at conference with around 50 people attending. After my introduction in which I stressed the importance of modernising the way we work and supporting emerging firms and freelance working, John Walker the national chairman of the Federation of Small Business picked up on comments about IR35.

This regulation, which means freelancers who work for one client are treated as an employee for tax purposes, despite not having the same rights as an employee, has long been an issue for contractors.

John agreed that it was a complicated and unwieldy tax that has not been resolved and was a bar for going into business. He went on to reiterate the familiar problems that small businesses have with getting hold of finance from the banks. Confidence in financial institutions is a problem and he made reference to the mis-selling of interest rate swaps to many of his members.

As a policy call he suggested that it was hard for small firms to initially grow and take on people and backed an NI holiday for firms that did this, in line with the party’s policy.

He was followed by Dr Jo Twist of the UKIE (the trade association for the UK’s games industry), her points neatly dovetailed with his as she talked about the phenomena of crowd-funding which was a way that investors could lend to companies directly using the internet as a platform and thereby circumnavigating the banks.

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UNCUT: On tax, Labour must remember: “It’s not our money stupid, it’s theirs”

11/10/2012, 08:00:20 AM

by Peter Watt

So the battle of the speeches is over.  All three leaders made pretty good speeches.  Nick Clegg, who I have a soft spot for, probably had the toughest job of all but seemed to go down well in the hall at least.  But the real battle was Miliband versus Cameron.

Trying to be non-biased, I think that Ed Miliband just won the battle, although David Cameron   wasn’t far behind.  They were both very similar in that they were both very personal, focused on values and were policy light.  They were also both used as opportunities to attack the other; both with some force; and both speeches were passionate and effective.

But in truth, Ed Miliband managed to use his speech to build much needed confidence in him from his party.  Critically he also managed to persuade a sceptical press that he really could win an election.   It may or may not have been a game changer but it was certainly a very significant event in the slow run-up to the election in 2015.  For that reason I think that he won the battle.  But he has not yet won the war.

There were two very significant passages in the speeches.  The first from Ed:

“A tax cut for millionaires. Next April, David Cameron will be writing a cheque for £40,000 to each and every millionaire in Britain. Not just for one year. But each and every year.”

And the second is from David Cameron’s speech in response:

“I sometimes wonder if they know anything about the real economy at all.  Did you hear what Ed Miliband said last week about taxes?  He described a tax cut as the government writing people a cheque.  Ed… Let me explain to you how it works.  When people earn money, it’s their money.   Not the government’s money: their money.  Then, the government takes some of it away in tax.  So, if we cut taxes, we’re not giving them money – we’re taking less of it away.  OK?”

Put aside the silly looseness in language from Ed over the “each and every millionaire” line, these two passages hold the key to one of the central battles of the next election – Labour’s competence on the economy.

Unless and until Labour really does understand the tax point then they will struggle to convince people that they are not profligate “tax-and-spenders”.   The truth is that too many people in Labour really do think that taxation is an inherently good thing.  That somehow taxing people, the state taking peoples’ own money from them, is somehow morally right.

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UNCUT: Cameron breaches Labour’s Maginot line

10/10/2012, 03:10:56 PM

by David Talbot

The battle lines for 2015 have begun to be drawn. As Labour’s foot soldiers marched to the beat towards the feted middle ground last week in Manchester, its gun batteries trained their aim onto unfamiliar territory with audacious talk of a Labour “one nation” prime minister. The Tories, retreating in disarray, have receded to their ideological redoubt, and Labour skirmishers have at last engaged with hostile middle England in a first serious advance on the mission to Downing Street.

Or so the Labour hierarchy would have you believe. But they have made a serious tactical error.

The infamous Maginot Line was a fortified defensive line built by the French to protect the Franco-German border. It was a formidable defensive structure, and a feat of military engineering and strategising far beyond the era in which it was built. It lies between 12 to 16 miles in depth and stretched from the Swiss Alps in the south to the Channel in the north. The defensive structure was completed after ten years, just before the outbreak of war, and is estimated in today’s money to have cost the equivalent of nearly €50 trillion.

This is the comparable psychological position the Labour party are now staking their ground upon. The party’s grey beards have assumed that, much like the French army, the Conservatives would become unsteady under fire and surrender without trace when grapeshot thinned the lines. This is a first-class misjudgement. The Conservatives are headed through the Ardennes.

Miliband stole the Tories’ one-nation clothes precisely because David Cameron had forgotten to look after them. The Labour leader was executing a classic New Labour move straight from the Tony Blair’s playbook. But unlike the Blair years the Tories will not move ever-rightwards to placate the rabid tenancy and pander to their core. Cameron, frankly, is far too astute for that. Revitalising the “compassionate conservative” model that launched his leadership some seven years ago, the Conservative leader resolutely refused to fall into Labour’s lazy caricature. Moreover, he fought back and punched through Labour’s lines. Tough language on Labour’s Achilles heel – the deficit – will cut through to the nation’s conscience far more than any high-minded seminar on a 19th century Disraelian ideal.

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UNCUT: It’s been a dreadful conference for the Tories but they will still leave Birmingham happy

10/10/2012, 07:59:31 AM

by Atul Hatwal

One wonders if the Tories can see how their conference has looked to the rest of Britain. Once upon a time in the mid-2000s they used it as a platform to speak to the country. It was an opportunity to demonstrate how they had changed. There was talk of voting blue to go green, civil liberties and hugging hoodies.

The rank and file might have been unhappy but the message to the general public couldn’t have been clearer: “we are not the same old Tories, we have changed, we live in the modern world.”

These last few days have been like looking at the photo negative of days gone by: cutting workers’ rights, slashing benefits and battering burglars.

The pre-briefing about this conference focused on the Tories new magic word “striver.” In itself it’s a good idea; aspiration and hard-work will never be out of political fashion.

But the Tories seem to have got confused.

Tough messages on law and order and benefits might be perennially popular but without some balance in other areas like civil liberties or the economy it all begins to look decidedly familiar. More red meat vicar?

It’s as if the Tory political managers have given up on ever returning to those halcyon days when the words “progressive” and “Conservative” were routinely used in the same sentence. They have meekly accepted their slide back into the comfortable embrace of the past.

For the Tories, uniquely of all of the parties, the only audience that matters at their conference is not out in the country, but sat in the hall.

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GRASSROOTS: Want to engage young people? Lower the voting age to 16 and build up citizenship education in schools

09/10/2012, 02:41:49 PM

Last week Lucy Rigby won the “top of the policies” vote at Pragmatic Radicalism’s event at Labour party conference. The winning proposal tackled the question of how to engage young people in politics

Most people with even a vague knowledge of politics know that the way we do politics – in this country and others – is in deep, deep trouble.  Turnout, in every type of election, is low – which, amongst other things, raises all manner of questions about legitimacy.  People feel disengaged from politics, particularly young people.

You don’t need to be a canvassing enthusiast to be all too familiar with phrases such as “they’re all the same” and “voting doesn’t change anything”- that’s just the standard office view (on the few occasions politics is talked about).  There doesn’t seem to be much of an explicable connection between physically putting an ‘X’ in the box of a candidate in constituency Y, and the prime minister that appears on the television a day later.

In essence then, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the mechanics of our democracy is in crisis.  It’s the responsibility of our generation to solve it.

First then, let’s enfranchise 16 year olds.  Currently, a 16 year old can get married, fight for their country, pay income tax and national insurance and become a director of a company.  But they can’t vote.  That’s not fair and it doesn’t make any sense.  Let’s change it.

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UNCUT: Bring me the head of David Cameron

09/10/2012, 07:00:39 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Kill the body and the head will die, so goes the old boxing maxim. The spine that is the chief whip is banished from conference. The lifeblood that is the party chair does not know who he is. The minister for Murdoch, now minister for the NHS, has distracted from efforts to restore vitality to the body Tory with his views on the bodies of women.

The Tories are taking a pummelling. It has become, to mix metaphors, as easy as shooting fish in a barrel to attack Tory ministers. What is more challenging and much more consequential is to have these attacks stick on the man responsible for these ministers. Up until now the prime minster has displayed a rather Teflon ability to evade calculability for the rolling omnishambles over which he has presided.

Several shadow ministers have been heard to bemoan over the TV and radio lately that the rule for blame allocation in this government is ABC: Anyone but Cameron. Damaged ministers are kept in post for as long as possible to soak up as much opprobrium as possible – otherwise, it might attach to the prime minister. Hapless junior ministers, as far as possible from association to Cameron, are sent out to try to explain u-turns. No humiliation is too great for these dispensable shock absorbers. Their reputations only matter insofar as they impact upon the prime minister’s standing.

It’s no surprise that a man whose only motivation for being prime minister is that he wants to be prime minister is deploying a vain and self-serving strategy. But shallow egotism is not the only motivation for Number 10’s approach. They see Cameron as the Conservative’s strongest resource, which they must preserve over all others.

Even if – as has transpired – the economy tanked and deficit grew, Conservatives reassured themselves with the view that the country would never vote for Ed Miliband and had become content with the idea of Cameron – so natural, so smooth, so born to rule – as their prime minister. Now two things are changing, which worry these Tories.

First, Miliband is starting to look and act a bit more like a prime minister. He leads a party united and determined to make a concerted pitch for the electoral centre ground: two preconditions of electoral success that Tories had assumed Miliband would never satisfy.

Second, Cameron seems less imperious. It’s not that Boris Johnson has won two elections, while Cameron has won none. It’s not that Johnson strikes an easier bond with the Tory faithful. It’s not that a time beyond Cameron has long been in sight. But all of these things matter. It’s that events appear the master of Cameron and his incompetent ministers.

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UNCUT: If Labour has the guts on Europe, it can derail Tory conference and David Cameron’s leadership

08/10/2012, 07:00:49 AM

by Atul Hatwal

For an opposition party, so much is out of its control. Governments do, while oppositions’ talk. Only when the government fumbles an issue does the opposition become temporarily relevant. Even bad governments eventually manage to pull themselves together, work out a policy to announce and seize back the initiative.

The issues which cannot be fixed are few and far between.

But when it comes to Tory governments, there is always Europe. On this, the political gift which keeps on giving, Labour has a unique opportunity; the party just needs the guts to take it.

David Cameron’s backbenches are already fractious. Over 100 backbenchers have voted against three line whips on issues ranging from privatisation of the forests to Lords reform to, well, Europe.

But, what has been missing is a consistent, structured shadow opposition on the backbench that marshals the discontented.  Yes there have been revolts, but each insurrection has had a different cast of central characters.

This could all change. The dog days of the 1990s, with a permanent caucus of committed Tory rebels coordinating the chaos, are just one announcement away.

It would be from Ed Miliband and simply state: the Labour party backs an in-out referendum on Europe.

The moment Labour swings behind this referendum, Cameron would be forced to follow suit. The idea that he could resist the pressure from the press and his own side is inconceivable.

From the moment Cameron caved in on this, he would be on the run. A political turning point comparable to Brown’s decision not to call an election in Autumn 2007.

The dynamic on the Tory backbenches would be transformed.

The personal animosities between the modern generation of Eurosceptics such as Douglas Carswell, and the older vintage like Bill Cash would have to be subsumed into the common unifying struggle: to secure the Conservative party for withdrawal.

David Cameron would back staying in Europe, he’s already said he would. A sizeable minority, perhaps even a majority of his own troops, would be opposed. Everything the government attempted would be viewed through the prism of the struggle on Europe.

It would mean the Tory backbenches would once again have a single rebel campaign structure with a full whipping operation and cohesive political leadership.

The conflict would be binary. All or nothing. Either the Conservative leadership would shift to the rebels’ position, or the rebels would inflict defeat after defeat on the government’s programme.

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UNCUT: US campaign diary: a poor debate performance from Obama but Romney needs a lot more to change the game

05/10/2012, 04:29:37 PM

by Nikhil Dyundi

So Mitt Romney did well and president Obama phoned in his performance. It was unexpected and the Republicans are good for their positive headlines, but is it a game changer?

Simple answer: no.

There was no defining exchange, no zinger and no nightmare flub that can recast a candidate in an instant. We’ve already had one of those this electoral cycle. Rick Perry is a case study in what makes for one of those defining moments and unless I missed something, President Obama didn’t end up saying “oops” as he forgot one of his central policies.

If anything, the debate was just boring. Too many words from both candidates, too few answers, just charges repeated ad infinitum while the chair palpably failed to drive the exchanges with the vigour and verve that would have made for good TV.

Out in the country, opinions have already been formed. Nothing on Wednesday makes Mitt Romney less of the vulture capitalist. It’s impossible to undo weeks of dreadful headlines and little attempt was made by Romney to even address his negatives with voters.

The full impact of the debate will take time to percolate through the rolling 3 day samples of the tracker polls, but the one pollster who did a post-debate tracker –Ipsos Reuters – seems to validate this view.

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UNCUT: How will Cameron respond to One Nation Labour?

05/10/2012, 11:38:36 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Damian McBride is right. Jon Cruddas is too. Even Phillip Blond is.

This amounts to a triumvirate of correctness trapping David Cameron. Precisely the position – as demonstrated by seizing the leadership initiative from David Davis with his no notes performance at Conservative Party conference in 2005, his party’s proposed cut to inheritance tax on the eve of the election that never was in 2007 and his snatching of victory from the jaws of defeat by forming a multi-party government in 2010 – from which he is most dangerous.

McBride has picked up a valuable insight from Gordon Brown, who told him in 2004:

“I’ve already had seven years. Once you’ve had seven years, the public start getting sick of you. You’ve got seven years when you’ve got a chance to get people on board, but after that, you’re on the down slope. I’ve tried not to be too exposed, but it’s still seven years. The only chance was getting in next year before the election. Tony knows that. Every year that goes by, the public are going to say: ‘Not that guy Brown, we’re tired of him – give us someone new.’”

McBride goes on:

“Why does any of this matter today? Well, next Wednesday marks seven years since David Cameron’s ‘speech without notes’ at the 2005 Tory conference, so we will soon get a chance to test the theory again. Cameron obviously hasn’t been PM for all of that time, but he was the most over-exposed opposition leader in history, and has undoubtedly been front line in the public consciousness for 7 years.”

Cruddas has reviewed Britain Unchained, a new book by rising Tory stars, and finds it a revealing take on the party that Cameron now leads:

“Scratch off the veneer and all is revealed: a destructive economic liberalism that threatens the foundations of modern conservatism … It is because this faction is in the ascendancy that Cameron is actually failing; he remains captive to an economic reductionism that could well destroy conservatism – in the proper sense of valuing and conserving the nature and assorted institutions of the country.”

It is this embrace of economic liberalism that has so disappointed Blond, one of the architects of the compassionate conservatism that was the intellectual mooring to Cameron’s years as “the most over-exposed opposition leader in history”. Blond moans of Cameron:

“His failure to maintain a coherent new vision has led to spasmodic appeals to vague progressive notions that have further alienated his own base and suggested that the PM is not a master of his own beliefs … Cameron’s thinking is now out of step with public demands and economic reality. People desperately want a new economic and social settlement. But nothing is on offer from the right, so the left has moved into the vacuum.”

The power of Ed Miliband’s audacious one nation pitch resides in capturing the ground that Blond chides Cameron for abandoning.

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UNCUT: What about the deficit Ed?

04/10/2012, 07:00:26 AM

by Peter Watt

I didn’t see “the speech” as I was working.  I experienced it through the lens of twitter as I journeyed home from work at about 7pm.  The general consensus several hours after Ed had finished speaking seemed to be that it was a virtuoso performance with even fierce critics saying that the conference hall loved it.  I actually didn’t see any of the performance until the 10pm news and the clips that I saw seemed  pretty good to me.  What’s more, the faithful clearly loved it and the professional commentators either loved it or accepted that Ed had looked prime ministerial.

Wednesday morning’s radio and newspaper reports continued in this vein with Ed being lauded both for the performance and for the political positioning.  One nation Labour was seen as a clever and bold move that achieved two things.  Firstly it moved Labour tanks onto the Tory lawn.  And secondly it was a useful way of packaging Ed’s central message.  As he said in his post speech email to members:

“That means a one nation banking system: banks that work for all of us, not gamble our savings in casino operations.  It means a one nation skills system: a gold standard of vocational education which leads to many more apprenticeships which give opportunities to those who don’t go to university as well as those who do.

It means building a one nation economy with rules that encourage long-term investment.  It means keeping the United Kingdom together, making immigration work for everybody and recognising that at the moment it does not, and standing up for the values of the NHS.”

And, as someone who has written about the need for a vision and for Ed to work hard at being “prime ministerial” I am delighted.   Throw in the fact that Ed’s most effective attack lines were on governmental incompetence rather than on usual banal “nasty Tory” nonsense and I couldn’t have wanted for much more!

I know that others have said that it was policy light and that it didn’t actually say much.  But to be honest I think that at this stage of the game being seen as a credible potential PM and offering a bit of vision is more important than the odd policy.  Of course it was just one speech and was hardly watched by anyone.  But it will have increased Ed’s confidence, the Labour party’s confidence in him and will have unsettled an already wobbling Tory Party.  All in all, not a bad days work!

And the consequence of all of this is that the media will begin to take the prospect of prime minister Miliband seriously.  They will therefore begin to look more closely.  Here is the thing that team Miliband need to watch.  It is the one thing that he definitely didn’t mention in his speech.  In fact it has hardly been mentioned in Manchester at all.

The deficit.

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