Labour Uncut

UNCUT: Conference Notebook

04/10/2012, 02:30:17 AM

by Jon Ashworth

Ed Miliband knocked it out of the park with a speech that had delegates whooping with delight and assembled hacks starting to concede that Labour could be back in the game. Ed put in a similarly assured and fizzing performance at the gala dinner later that night flanked by stars from Coronation Street. But while we all have our spring in our step, no one is under any illusion that we still have a long hard journey ahead.

******

My nose for sniffing out conference floor controversies hasn’t let me down. As I thought, Tuesday’s CAC report was almost voted down with Unite supporting the ‘reference back.’ Smartly, conference managers have now agreed to table the emergency resolution from the TSSA and so avoiding the embarrassment of conference not agreeing to the proposed timetable for the day’s proceedings. The swift turnaround from the CAC was sensible theoretically if the report had been voted down a new one would have had to be drawn up delaying the start of conference business on the day of the leader’s speech.

**********

Every year at conference I see old friends in the bar who I only ever catch up with at conference. It’s like an old family reunion. Last night delegates were delighted that as well as the usual mix of journalists, MPs, shadow cabinet members and so on, we were also joined by Hugh Grant. Councillors and prospective politicians queued up for photos many of which will no doubt, unbeknownst to Hugh, feature prominently on individual election leaflets next year.

*******

Conference is alive with rumour and gossip of famous names who may or may not be seeking parliamentary selection in the near future. This week we’ve seen more of Labour’s new generation of parliamentary candidates selected in marginal constituencies. Battleground seats like Burton, Lincoln, Harlow, Hastings and Norwich to name just a handful of places that have already selected impressive campaigners fighting hard. Norwich’s Jessica Asato had the smart idea to tour conference with a bucket to raise funds to oust Chloe Smith. That woman will go far but if all candidates follow her lead conference will become even more expensive.

********

Labour friends of Pakistan is well attended by Labour MPs all of whom get to say a few words. Rosie Winterton the chief whip walks in and is quickly ushered up to the platform to make a key note address. Not expecting this she tells us that as chief whip she is supposed to remain silent though she’s pleased to have temporarily escaped her advisors who try to keep her under control. The advisors of course have nothing to worry about unlike their counterparts in the government chief whip’s office.

Jon Ashworth is Labour MP for Leicester South and an opposition whip

Posted in Uncut | 1 Comment »

INSIDE: An exclusive conference invitation

03/10/2012, 03:30:23 PM

by I.A.M. Special

An email from Tom Watson. A “Special invitation”. It continued this was an invitation to a “special Campaigners’ lunch” for key campaigners to share ideas with Tom Watson and Ian McNicol. Just to make it clear, “This is a special event by invitation only”.

There was definitely a whiff of exclusivity: maybe even food while sitting on a chair.

And so across the country hundreds of people put the date in their diary. And on that special day wedged themselves into a heaving Barbirolli Room at the Radisson. They patiently queued for spring rolls and carrot cake which they held in their hands, plates having long since run out. Then they took turns to look longingly at jugs of iced tap water unaccompanied by the glasses needed to drink from it.

They shouted loudly to all their chums, who’d also been invited. And they listened as Tom Watson treated the special, if thirsty, with a never before told tale of how it was him that did all the dishes in the McNicol/Watson bachelor household. They whooped and cheered “Milton Keynes” and then “Edinburgh” for doing something very important and probably special. And as they took our bottles of warm water from their bags and swigged they reflected on all those ideas and best practice they’d swapped. And that somewhere, surely, there were some members that hadn’t been invited.

Posted in Inside | 1 Comment »

UNCUT: A pretty good conference Ed, but neglect your party at your peril

03/10/2012, 02:40:32 PM

by Rob Marchant

It’s been a pretty good conference. It started on Sunday with both Miliband and Balls saying sensible, pleasingly non-contradictory things on splitting the banks and a bottom-up spending review (if only Harriet Harman had got the memo).

If we merely smile patiently at Len McCluskey’s “throw out the Blairites” sabre-rattling, and nod appreciatively at Miliband’s firmness in rebutting them, there was really only one cloud on Sunday’s horizon: the mad decision – for it is difficult to describe it as anything else – by the party to extend the quotas in its already-contorted selection processes for MPs. A bewildered delegate might have been forgiven for having missed the part where it was proven beyond doubt that their usually painfully right-on party was systematically trying to block gay, disabled and working class people from being candidates. But more of that later.

Balls on Monday was on good form, doing everything in his power to look like a Brown Mk I Iron Chancellor rather than a flare-wearing tax-and-spender from the 70s: perhaps less policy specifics than we might like, but a solid, combative performance nevertheless.

Then yesterday there was the very smart enlisting of Seb Coe to spread a bit of Olympic love, with the added benefit of leaving an impression that was centrist, non-partisan and statesmanlike. And finally there was the speech. It could have been a repeat of last year’s conference: a much-mocked, divisive and rather inward-looking speech – it wasn’t. Yes, it was occasionally cheesy, but it was a Miliband far more at ease with himself. He isn’t great with a teleprompter, but he really was without notes.

It was a speech which reached out to country rather than party; which tapped the Danny Boyle moment of the Olympics opening ceremony; and which rather effectively rubbed salt in Cameron’s wounds. It was the speech of a man who has woken up halfway into a parliamentary term and realised that if he is serious about winning, then he needs to, er, get serious about winning.

It was low on policy, admittedly, and that could yet be a problem – the next one will be eighteen months from an election. But it was a hugely more assured delivery, and that counted for a lot. Most of all, with its blue background, its quoting of Disraeli and its one nation theme – the imagery all screamed “centre ground”, a clear pre-requisite for looking like a prime minister.

After all, as Paul Richards cleverly noted, Disraeli is what Miliband wants to be – a British, Jewish PM.

At last: the penny-drop realisation of what many of us have been patiently repeating for the last two years: you do not have to be a quasi-Tory to believe that it is essentially Tory, and not Liberal, switchers who will win Labour an election. A very good speech, and perhaps even a great one.

In fact, the whole conference nicely gave the lie to what the Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh said about Miliband’s party on Monday morning: that it was “irrelevant, pointless and doomed”. But, two-and-a-half years in, where does that all leave us? In good shape, or is it true that, as Matthew Norman suggests, our “half-time lead counts for nothing”?

Well, yes and no. We are in the game now whereas, a year ago, we really weren’t. But if you want to be prime minister, you need to cover a few bases. You need a credible policy programme. A credible front bench team behind you. An electoral machine capable of maximising your support in the country. And people need to be able to connect with you, visualise you as Prime Minister, but even that can be worked on (it’s practice, like everything: Harold Wilson, who became renowned for his wit, was famously “not funny” as a junior politician).

But there is a but,. Kavanagh was quite right about one thing: the state of his party is one of the biggest things which stands between Miliband and Number 10, if only he could see it. All the others he is aware of, and mostly trying to address. But not this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

INSIDE: Conference diary

03/10/2012, 02:17:08 PM

Having been described as “the real deputy prime minister” when he was serving Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell has always appeared content not to follow in his boss’ footsteps and take up a place on Westminster’s green benches.

But at a fringe meeting on behalf of charity Addiction Dependency Solutions at the Royal Exchange Theatre the other night he didn’t rule out doing so in future.

The king of spin also revealed local party panjandrums urged him to stand for the London Mayoral nomination last time around before it became a face-off between Ken and Oona King.

Are we going to see Campbell take the plunge next time? As a lifelong devotee of its football team, who better to take the marginal Burnley seat from Lib Dem incumbent, self-syled “Mr Burnley” Gordon Birtwistle?

*****

Someone who is running for the Labour nomination for London mayor is Christian Wolmar. The doyenne of transport journalists (ok, struggling to think of any others) has recently launched his bid and has been wasting no time putting himself around the conference fringe.

He was in action at the Pragmatic Radicalism fringe meeting on Monday night where speakers had 90 seconds to pitch a policy idea before taking questions from the floor in a lively session chaired by the Guardian’s veteran political commentator Michael White.

Wolmar’s call for “a visionary transport system for London” faced questioning from the merry crowd in the Lass O’Gowrie pub, but frustrated by some wag asking a daft question he batted it aside.

“That is not what you do” advised White. “You take the idiot question and you love it to death!”

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Inside | No Comments »

UNCUT: Ed Miliband’s speech was a political sugar rush that will have minimal lasting impact

03/10/2012, 11:17:52 AM

by Atul Hatwal

Last night Labour party conference was euphoric. Like a child that had just downed a can of full fat coke, the party was humming with nervous, happy energy. Across the bars and receptions the leader’s speech had energised conference.

It was certainly an assured performance. Ed Miliband looked relaxed and spoke in a way people could understand. No abstract flights of theoretical fancy or harping on about capitalism. His address was personal and defined by genuinely impressive delivery. To speak for an hour without notes, with the nation’s media waiting for any hint of a misstep, was a significant achievement.

But, for all the positivity, there was a problem: the content. Conference might have been swept away by the performance, and many journalists might have been similarly dazzled, but as the sugar rush subsides, what was the Labour leader actually saying?

There was no discernible over-arching narrative spanning the hour plus of his words. A “One Nation” motif, yes; a structured argument? No. Plenty of neat phrases yet nothing substantive in terms of policy. There was no detail to illustrate the broader points that would actually give the watching public any idea of what a Labour government would actually do.

Most importantly, the Labour leader didn’t address the fundamental problem that means the party is marginalised on the economy.

Based on this speech, the Miliband analysis is that recession and a rising deficit has almost neutralised the issue. The Tories have failed in their express mission – to reduce the deficit – and Labour’s narrative on growth will carry the day. A steady as she goes approach.

It is a critical misreading of the public mood.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 5 Comments »

UNCUT: Conference Notebook

02/10/2012, 05:24:06 PM

by Jon Ashworth

Ed Balls wowed conference with a barnstormer of a speech ripping apart the government’s economic credentials. With increased levels of borrowing to pay for the failure of their policy, delegates know Osborne is increasingly the weak link in this Tory government. It was all vintage stuff from Ed who is fast becoming one of our strongest conference platform performers.

******

While it seems the back room fixers have helped find “consensus” on the various union composites, there are minor rumblings about the scheduling of an emergency motion tabled by the TSSA. The Conference Arrangements Committee who effectively keep the conference decision making machinery ticking over present the CAC report every morning outlining the timings for day. Some delegates attempt reference back which is defeated – just. Luckily for me I don’t have to worry about CAC reference backs anymore, but this looks like one for conference aficionados to keep a beady eye on.

**********

The conference book shop appears to be doing brisk trade with memoirs of messrs Straw and Hain flying off the shelf. While both tomes are on my reading list I’m mostly looking forward to reading ‘The Clockwinder Who Wouldn’t Say No’ the biography of the late Leicestershire MP David Taylor by Paul Flynn. I didn’t know David well but I knew he was a hugely principled politician and is who hugely missed in Leicestershire and beyond. We need more like him in politics.

******

There is real vibrancy and dynamism on the fringe with big idea being debated with gusto. Jon Cruddas, as you would expect is a popular draw, but my top tip is Lisa Nandy who spoke morning and passionately at the packed Labour Friends of Palestine meeting. That women has stamina, speaking at something like 20 fringe events including one on social media where she had the cheek along with Tom Watson to criticise my ‘dreary’ tweeting. I hope Labour Uncut tweeters will rush my defence….

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

UNCUT: Advice for Ed: Ed needs to get in touch with his inner red neck

02/10/2012, 11:36:43 AM

by Jonathan Todd

Raymond Geuss – writing, incidentally, in a book with a cover so starkly evocative that it is almost worth buying for the cover alone – is right about one thing:

“Politics is a craft or a skill, and ought precisely not to be analysed, as Plato’s Socrates assumes, as the mastery of a set of principles or theories. This does not imply that political agents do not use theories. Rather, part of their skill depends on being able to choose skilfully which models of reality to use in a certain context, and to take account of the ways in which various theories are limited and ways in which they are useful or fail. The successful exercise of this skill is often called ‘political judgment’.”

He is, however, wrong about another:

“Any society has a tendency to try to mobilise human inertia in order to protect itself as much as possible from radical change, and one main way in which this can be done is through the effort to impose the requirement of ‘positivity’ or ‘constructiveness’ on potential critics: you can’t criticise the police system, the system of labour law, the organisation of health services, etc., unless you have a completely elaborated, positive alternative to propose. I reject this line of argument completely.”

This might suffice for agitators and academics, but not, ultimately, for someone who wishes to succeed in becoming prime minister.

What this series of blogs have offered are interpretations of theory, what Ed Miliband needs to make the most of party conference is political judgment. Nonetheless, theory, and the policy conclusions to which this theory leads, should be mastered by aspirant prime ministers.

It might seem absurd that someone could ascend to the highest office in the UK without deep reflection upon the country that they will lead, the theory that provides their lodestars and the point on the horizon where this country and these lodestars might meet. Oddly enough, though, the current occupant and arguably every prime minister since Thatcher has not really known why they were there, at least not when they first arrived in Downing Street. Even Thatcherism, as I’ve heard Lord Stewart Wood say at seminars, acquired coherence in retrospect that it did not have in 1979.

Miliband has grey matter to rival all these prime ministers. But it would be delusional to conclude that the lacking of animating mission displayed by these prime ministers is a consequence of their stupidity (though, it may partly be a consequence of them spending more time sharpening their elbows than thinking). What this recent history tells us is that it is a tough job devising and implementing a national mission.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 2 Comments »

GRASSROOTS: The future is Labour’s to define

02/10/2012, 09:30:39 AM

by Sophie Lambert Russell

Analysts of the 2010 election cannot deny that during the televised debates Nick Clegg charmed his way into the hearts and minds of the British public with his apparent honest approach and sincere appeal to the camera. However, various news outlets are now awash with musings about the next election and it is all too clear that the buzz surrounding Nick Clegg vanished long ago.

The Liberal Democrats have failed to withstand the pressure that comes with being treated as a serious contender in government. An aide who accompanied Clegg during the campaign likened his success to a movie script: “we were like that mousey girl who goes to the prom in films, takes off her glasses, and shakes her hair, and suddenly everyone realises how beautiful she is” he said.

The media were certainly captured by Nick Clegg’s sparkle but this statement does reflect a slight ‘Bambi-ness’ in the Liberal Democrat camp. Since being in power they have failed to push through electoral reform and betrayed a core group of their voters by breaking their election pledge to abolish tuition fees. Jeremy Paxman described this pledge as “the most bare-faced untruth” on Newsnight last week and consequently the party has lost more than half of the support it had in 2010 and Nick Clegg’s popularity is plummeting.

The Conservatives have fared little better. Cameron had the unique experience of not entering his first term in office on the back of a political victory, but as a part of a hastily thrown together coalition. They should have worked harder to shape their message and form popular policy initiatives but like their election campaign, their time in office has been characterised by confusion and inconsistencies with U-turns on removing tax breaks for charitable donations, selling off Britain’s forests, the pasty tax and the third runway at Heathrow.

Arguably, this would not be such of an issue if the Conservatives knew how to handle the press but curiously for the party that brought us Thatcher, ‘the marketing pioneer’, this modern day Conservative party is outrageously media incompetent. Boris Johnson described the commission on a third runway at Heathrow as ‘a fudge’, and fudging is exactly how the Conservatives will make their way through the next election. The government’s media operation resembles one of those old fashioned pinball machines where a policy or a story is catapulted into the political arena where it bounces out of control off any number of levers and whizzing dials while Number 10 are scrambling around trying to bring the story under control and spin it into something positive.

Additionally both parties seem extremely divided. Vince Cable is regarded by some as waiting in the wings, schmoozing Ed Miliband, ready to take the reins from his younger, less experienced counterpart. Cameron has bigger problems. However much he tries to deny it, it is hardly unnoticeable that Boris Johnson is mounting a campaign to take over as the next leader of the Conservative Party. His popularity is growing and growing after an extremely successful Olympics and his likeability and ability to reach across all sections of society is something that will prove invaluable in years to come.With the coalition floundering and both leaders tainted by its failures, Ed Miliband has real opportunity to score with his ‘real jobs guarantee’ and the renewed drive to engage everyone in the political process. Nick Clegg stated in his speech on the last day of the Liberal Democrat Party Conference that “only the Liberal Democrats can be trusted to deliver a fairer society”… yeah right.

All eyes on Ed please.

Sophie Lambert Russell is a Labour activist

Posted in Grassroots | 1 Comment »

UNCUT: Advice for Ed: Celebrate the best of British business as well as criticising the worst

02/10/2012, 06:00:35 AM

by Paul Crowe

One of the defining moments of the 2010 general election came when the Tories unveiled their letter from business leaders backing their cut to national insurance (NI) contributions.

It was the ultimate dividing line for economic competence: on one side was a parade of Britain’s commercial leaders, on the other a Labour prime minister, isolated and unsupported.

The issue at hand was irrelevant. A small cut to national insurance contributions was not going to make any difference to the economy given the depth of problems, but the symbolism was catastrophic for Labour. It’s hard to claim to have the answer to revitalising the economy when Britain’s captains of industry are uniformly saying “no you don’t mate.”

There are many flaws with British business and no one would claim that a series of self-interested chief executives, eager to reduce their payroll costs, have a monopoly on the truth for economic revival. But it is a powerful image to voters in the heat of a general election campaign: for those responsible for some of this country’s biggest high street brands to be criticising Labour so publically.

It was a return to the bad old days of the 1980s when to be in business meant being a Tory.

I run a business and in my day to day work I deal with a variety of board members across many companies, large, medium and small. Politics isn’t at the top of most businessmen and women’s list of concerns, the general view is that this is a global recession and it is the global economy that will determine our future.

But, on those occasions when discussion does turn to domestic politics, it does not make for happy listening for a Labour party member.

Today’s Labour party is seen as resolutely anti-business. There is general uncertainty about our commitment to tackle the deficit and some very specific fears about the party’s eagerness to believe the worst about business; to regulate, to break-up and to tax.

In terms of our support in business, Labour certainly hasn’t improved since the election in 2010 and if anything is now in a worse position.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | No Comments »

UNCUT: Time to get off Tony Blair’s foreign policy bendy bus

01/10/2012, 05:00:35 PM

by Jonathan Todd

I’ve tried to watch West Wing but, pace Westminster, always found it too hackneyed to endure. It may be an equally unutterable thing to say, at least within the beltway, but Armando Iannucci’s the Thick of It is becoming tired and predictable.

While we may be too gushing in our praise for Malcolm Tucker et al, Iannucci’s Time Trumpet never got the recognition it deserved or – in a case, given that Iannucci is one of the writers of Alan Partridge, of life imitating art – a second series.

Time Trumpet is a spoof documentary that purports to look back on 2007 from 2031. Tony Blair features near the start of the first episode. Iannucci’s commentary says:

“And we look back at this madman and how he ended up 20 years later dementedly wandering round the bins of downtown Baghdad.”

A dishevelled chap, the Blair of 2027, then appears and mumbles to himself:

“Further down the bendy bus, have your money ready please.”

All of which may be offensive to Blair and his most ardent supporters. While I am a Blair fan – he is, after all, the longest serving Labour prime minister ever, responsible for a tremendous amount of positive change – I cannot stop myself finding Time Trumpet hilarious.

We shouldn’t take ourselves or our heroes too seriously. And nor should we think our heroes beyond reproach.

We should – more than five years after he ceased to be party leader – be capable of having a mature debate about Blair. In some senses, this debate has already been had. Hopi Sen is right that it is Gordon Brown’s time as leader, rather than Blair’s, that has been under scrutinised and debated within the party.

However, debate about Blair has often generated more heat than light. Calm consideration has been particularly lacking around one part of Blair’s legacy in particular, a part that the Labour Party continues to live in the shadows of, foreign policy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Uncut | 3 Comments »