In November 2011 Philip Gould, Labour peer and strategist, died from oesophageal cancer. In the final two weeks of his life Philip completed a book and his quest to find purpose and meaning in what he called the “death zone” was also documented by Adrian Steirn in a short film, “When I Die”. This is the film; the book “When I Die: Lessons from the Death Zone” is published today and all proceeds from the book will go to the National Oesophago-Gastric Cancer Fund.
by Peter Watt
Does anyone know what is going on out there? Really? Until a month ago it was all so much simpler.
The Tories didn’t really have a coherent tale to tell but then nor did anyone else so it didn’t really matter all that much. They bumbled along making mistakes and generally looking incompetent. But crucially voters had been persuaded that they were dealing with an out of control deficit that Labour had caused.
And that was the end of the discussion.
Anyway, they had David Cameron and he looked and sounded prime ministerial, made tough decisions and even diplomatically bashed the Germans and French. No matter how bad it got, he was their trump card. And Labour, not to put too fine a point on it, had its own problems: perceptions of economic incompetence and a leader who was still finding his feet as far as voters were concerned.
But then came the budget and suddenly the Tories and David Cameron are wobbling.
All that bravado and self-confidence appear shaken to its core. Instead of charting a route to sunnier times the budget looked elitist, favouring the rich. And worse it looked muddled as its measures unravelled and established more and more losers.
Ed Miliband gave one of his finest performances in the Commons after Osborne’s budget speech. The discomfort on the faces of David and George was there for all to see, and on the benches behind them you could see doubt.
Over 4 weeks later the budget is still the issue of the moment, and at issue is the Government’s credibility. George Osborne appears to have disappeared and no one on the Government side seems overly keen to defend the finance bill. Certainly not David Cameron; he seems intent on avoiding answering any of Ed Miliband’s questions at successive PMQ’s.
Ed’s victories at the despatch box have rattled Cameron. And the more rattled David Cameron gets the less prime ministerial he looks and sounds. His attacks become more and more sneering, dismissive and personal and his lack of attention to detail becomes ever more obvious. It’s not attractive.
by David Talbot
You would be forgiven for thinking that the only segment of the United Kingdom that is to vote this May is London. But on May 3rd elections will take place in 180 councils across the country, with 5000 seats up for grabs. Over the Easter break I duly volunteered to distribute leaflets in my home CLP back in rural Warwickshire. Amidst the endless open countryside, hamlets and villages I could not have been more removed from the hectic London political scene.
Until, that is, I stopped in the hamlet of Ardens Grafton and frequented the sole shop. A picture of Ken Livingstone weeping greeted me as I picked up the front page of the Guardian. Much has been said about the authenticity, or not, of the performance since. But with accompanying prose underneath the picture spilling over to page two, and a double-page spread adjoining pages seven and eight, it confirmed, if nothing else, just quite how London-centric our media is. It also focused the mind on the London mayoral election ahead – and what those with serious doubts about Livingstone should do come that Thursday in early May.
I am seemingly in a large rump of Labour voters who do not view Ken Livingstone favourably. YouGov put the figure at 31%, ComRes 17%. In a tight election these numbers are more than enough to secure significant defeat for the Labour candidate.
The charge sheet against Ken Livingstone has been heavily trailed in recent weeks. Commentators ranging from Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian, Philip Collins in the Times, Nick Cohen in the Observer and, more troublingly, the Jewish Chronicle have voiced serious concerns about our candidate. Coupled with the usual antagonists; Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph is his usual obsessed self, and the Evening Standard, who have effortlessly slipped back to where they left off in 2008; vast swathes of the media, and ordinary Labour members, are, to put it politely, at best lukewarm about Livingstone.
Ken Livingstone is the problem of this campaign. To pretend otherwise is to, wilfully, miss the point. At a time when Labour has opened up the biggest lead over the Tories since the aftermath of the general election, Livingstone is trailing the London Labour vote by 6%, whilst Boris Johnson is outperforming the Tories in the capital by 10%.
by Atul Hatwal
With 100 days to go until the Olympics, new figures uncovered by Labour Uncut reveal how public support for the games is slipping while participation in sport amongst 16-24 year olds is falling.
In 2011, the numbers who were either opposed or indifferent to the games rose from 33% to 36% compared to 2010/11, while the numbers backing the Olympics dropped from 66% to 63%.
The fall in public support is the first to be registered since 2008/9 and means that more than a third of the country no longer backs the games.
Any drop in public support will worry the government which has committed hundreds of millions of pounds in officials’ time and marketing resources to promoting the games to the public.
Public support was critical to London winning the games when it topped 70% and the government will be vulnerable to charges that their stewardship of the Olympics since 2010 has seen support steadily leach away.
Among those who back the games, one of the main reasons given is the anticipated benefit for the country’s health. 26% of those who are strongly supportive of the games cite either the positive impact on promoting fitness or the benefit of the games for children as the reason for their backing.
However, the latest survey figures also reveal that participation in sport among 16-24 year olds has fallen by 4% since 2009/10. The period of decline coincides almost exactly with the arrival of David Cameron’s government in May 2010.
Labour Uncut understands that Lucy Powell’s victory in the race to become Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Manchester Central was won on the first ballot.
Powell topped the poll on the first round of voting with 93 votes.
Local councillor Mike Amesbury came second with 55. Fellow Manchester councillor Rosa Battle was third with 24 while London charity chief Patrick Vernon came fourth with 11.
The party’s refusal to allow postal voting was threatened by legal challenge last week, forcing party officials to relent and allow proxy voting instead.
However turnout appears to have suffered with just half the membership voting.
by John Healey
Today I’m bringing a Ten Minute Rule Bill as a first step towards closing a legal loophole meaning mums who have babies through surrogates aren’t entitled to any maternity leave or pay.
I’m doing so on behalf of two Rotherham women who came to see me at one of my constituency advice surgeries in January.
Amy Bellamy was seven months pregnant with twins for her cousin Jane Kassim. Jane had been told at 15 she could never carry children and Amy had selflessly offered to be a surrogate.
When Amy became pregnant it was the news Jane and her husband had longed for. Implntation of Jane’s fertilised eggs had failed twice, so they were elated when the third attempt was a success. Then they found out they were expecting twin girls!
Like any other mother Jane started to prepare for the birth.
She asked her employer for maternity leave, but was stunned to find out that she had no legal right to maternity leave or pay. She had fully expected to take up to 52 weeks off and get 39 weeks’ pay, just as mothers who have their own babies or adopt are able to do.
I was also astonished to find this gap in the law when I checked the facts.
Maternity rights are to help mothers and their newly born babies through the earliest months of the child’s life, when time together is most needed.
Mums like Jane need this support just like any other new mother. They nearly always start to care for their baby full-time soon after the birth. It’s unfair and unreasonable to deny mothers whose babies are born through surrogates the rights that those giving birth themselves or adopting automatically have.
by Atul Hatwal
The Lord Ahmed affair neatly encapsulates Labour’s problem with minority communities. It illustrates the dangers of a decades old neo-colonial deal that the central party has concluded with several so-called community leaders.
This isn’t just an issue for the Muslim community, a trip to Leicester, Southall or Harrow would reveal similar arrangements with the Hindu and Sikh communities.
The key to the deal is votes. This is what the community leader brings to the table.
Ahmed has long been one of Labour’s gatekeepers to the Pakistani community in the north. His position in the early 1990s as one of Labour’s leading Muslim councillors combined with his links to Mirpur in Pakistan (where the vast majority of Pakistani migrants to the northern mill towns originally came from) made him a kingmaker across northern parliamentary seats with large Pakistani communities, particularly when it came to Labour candidate selections.
He sat atop the pyramid of biraderi or clan based community politics which traditionally delivered result-swinging vote banks, happily doing the bidding of the central machine for several years.
In return for these votes, the party bestows two privileges on the community leader: establishment legitimacy that distinguishes them from other local leaders and a free hand within their community to do what they will – as long as nothing bad leaks out into the national news.
In Ahmed’s case, Tony Blair elevated him to the peerage. Lord Ahmed was the nation’s first Muslim peer. The party coddled and respected him and asked few questions about what he said or did within the community.
Until of course news of his offer of a “bounty” on President Obama’s head surfaced. Within hours of the story hitting the news, as per the deal, he was in trouble.
But the reality is that Ahmed has held and espoused similar views for several years. In this particular instance, whether he did or did not say what is claimed about Obama is irrelevant. He should have been suspended and potentially expelled because he was sharing a platform with and supporting Hafeez Saeed: an international terrorist who heads Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group which killed over 150 people in the terror attack on Mumbai.
by Kevin Meagher
When it came to public services there were always two New Labours: Tony’s and Gordon’s.
In Tony’s, public services needed “reform”. This meant structural change, private sector involvement and tough performance management. Convincing his reluctant party this was necessary gave him those famous “scars on his back”.
In Gordon’s version, the paramount consideration was pumping in extra “resources”. “Prudence with a purpose” would deliver catch-up investment. The water of public finance would be liberally sprinkled over parched schools and hospitals. More would lead to better. A lot more would lead to a lot better.
Throughout their decade-long rule, these discrete emphases of the Romulus and Remus of New Labour became intertwined; two narratives wrapped around each other. Twin approaches to governing.
But what would have happened if they had developed sequentially rather than simultaneously? What if Labour had explored the limits of investment first before embarking on reform? Would we have ended up with a better sense of how to govern and an understanding of the limitations of public spending?
Conversely, we might also have recognised that reform cannot be a perpetual condition – and should be a reluctant expedient – followed by a decent period of consolidation – rather than a panacea, or even worse: a test of a minister’s modernising credentials.
Instead, reform and resources got bundled up together. We were spending money on things we were also changing at the same time. We kept pressing the buttons on the dashboard harder and faster in order to get a response. As we thudded away, we over-governed and under-evaluated.
by Peter Watt
Yesterday morning Ed Miliband used his slot on the Andrew Marr show to outline some eye-catching new proposals on funding political parties. It sounded good and it almost was, but it could end up being a disaster.
First let’s expose some myths.
The Labour party does not receive the majority of its income from the trade unions. In an average, non-general election year, income comes roughly from the following sources:
This gives a “definite” income of about £20 million per year. In addition the Labour party gets:
This gives a potential income of £27 – £30 million per year. Clearly in the run up to an election you would expect an increase in donations. So Ed’s cap of £5000 per year will hurt. Under his proposal this will impact between £2 and £5 million per year and more in the year before an election.
by Anthony Painter
The other day a bus passed by me adorned with an ad from the campaign group, Stonewall. On a bold red background, white writing declared: “Some people are gay. Get over it.” The “get over it” was in black lettering. I thought “uh-oh, that’s dumb”.
To understand why I thought that, you need to read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.
For many years, Haidt has deployed the tools and insights of psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and economic theory to understand the nature of human morality. He essentially breaks our moral instincts down into categories: harm; fairness (which is actually about reciprocity); respect for authority; commitment to an in-group; sanctity and purity which is associated with religious and tribal ceremony; and, for this book, he has added a sixth – liberty/oppression.
Those who believe in equality for homosexuals are generally motivated by reducing harm and liberty from oppression. Cards on the table – I happen to be one of the people with this instinctive moral sense. I am closer to a left-wing (liberal in Haidt’s terms) than a conservative morality. The problem is that there are different moral senses too. Those who are adamantly against homosexuality – a minority in recent years in our society – may feel that they threaten their group which may be a church, for example, or there is something impure about homosexuality. They may also feel that legal changes to advance equality oppress their liberty to reject homosexuality.
And this is why I felt discomfort at the “get over it” message. Presumably, the objective of a campaign is to persuade. This slogan almost seemed designed to mock, belittle and entrench positions against it. It seemed likely that there would be a reaction.
On Thursday, the reaction came. A group promoting “gay cure” therapies bought ad space and mimicking the original ad, deployed the slogan: “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” The entire notion of “gay cure” is harmful and oppressive.
