Labour Uncut

UNCATEGORIZED: Friday News Review

13/05/2011, 06:51:09 AM

C’mon Carwyn

Carwyn Jones will today unveil his new Cabinet after swearing an oath of office and formally taking the reins of government. A list of up to 12 Labour AMs nominated as ministers was sent to Buckingham Palace yesterday to receive the Queen’s approval, which is expected to arrive today. Mr Jones will then reveal the make-up of his new Labour-only Cabinet after winning 30 seats in last week’s Assembly Election, making them by far the largest party but with no majority. Mr Jones announced on Tuesday that he would be going it alone as head of a Labour-only Government rather than seek a deal with any other party. He said yesterday: “I am honoured to serve the people of Wales as First Minister and begin our ambitious programme to create a fairer, more prosperous country in these challenging times.” – Western Mail

We’ve gone six years back

Households may have suffered their biggest drop in take-home incomes for 30 years, a leading economic think-tank has warned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that analysis of new official figures suggest it was “entirely possible” that median incomes dropped by 3% in 2010-11. Such a fall would leave income levels back where they were six years earlier, the IFS said. The IFS’s analysis is based on household income data for 2009-10 just released by the Department for Work and Pensions. It shows that median incomes continued to grow by 1.6% – following similar sluggish growth the previous year – despite the effects of the recession. However, the IFS warned that these increases were likely to have “more than unwound” in 2010-11 as the long-term effects of the recession are felt and higher inflation erodes living standards. It said that data already available for the first 11 months of 2010-11 showed earnings fell by 3.8%, while its own forecasts pointed to a fall in median incomes of around 3%. – Daily Mirror

The first of many

The Liberal Democrat group in Rochdale has announced changes to its leadership. Councillor Wera Hobhouse will take over from Councillor Irene Davidson as the Leader of the group and Councillor Zulfiqar Ali will take over from Councillor Dale Mulgrew as the Deputy Leader of the group. Councillor Hobhouse has been a Councillor in the Norden since 2004 and Councillor Ali has been a Councillor for Central Ward since 1998 and is the outgoing Mayor. The move comes following a difficult year for the Lib Dems. Towards the back end of 2010 seven members broke away and formed the short-lived Independent Alliance group. A further three Councillors have since defected to the Conservative party. The group also suffered heavily on election night. – Rochdale News

Physics could be the next to suffer

Deep funding cuts could put the UK’s prominence in astronomy and particle physics at risk, MPs have said. The Science and Technology Committee says astronomy funding will fall by 20% over four years – the science budget’s average real-terms cut was 14.5%. The MPs say some of the resulting cuts are likely to deter leading scientists from working in the UK. The government says it has protected the science budget but cannot make individual funding decisions. Committee chairman Labour MP Andrew Miller said: “If you don’t invest in big science at the level it needs, it’s going to have a big impact on our competitiveness and pre-eminence in areas that are important to the country.” – BBC News

Clegg fires independence warning

Nick Clegg has warned Alex Salmond not to “misinterpret his mandate” by believing the SNP’s landslide victory in the Holyrood election was an expression of support for Scottish independence. The Deputy Prime Minister also did not rule out completely Westminster instigating its own Scottish referendum.That would almost certainly pre-empt the one planned by the First Minister well into the second half of the five-year Holyrood Parliament, ie from 2014 onwards. He said: “I’m not personally – at the moment – persuaded that what we want to do is try and develop some sort of Gunfight at the OK Corral, where we threaten each other with referendums. I’m not sure that is the best way to proceed.” However, Mr Clegg, appearing before the Commons Constitutional and Political Reform Committee, seemed to suggest the door on a Westminster referendum had not been entirely closed. – Daily Herald

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UNCUT: We must learn to make hard choices, or fail

12/05/2011, 05:42:56 PM

by Rob Marchant

There are four types of election result. Ones that are undeniably good. Ones that are undeniably bad. Ones that are on balance good, but look otherwise. And those that are on balance bad, but look otherwise.

The most dangerous, obviously, are the last. There is a risk that, like an alcoholic, you don’t notice, or don’t accept, that there’s a problem.

And, excluding Scotland, we had a night that looked good. We won back a bunch of seats in the English local elections and scraped home in Wales. A mixed bag, perhaps, but respectable.

Now, Scotland was clearly a disaster and deserves a separate post all to itself (let’s be fair, it seems a problem all its own, unconnected to Labour’s national strategy). Wales, again, is a separate case. As for the positive results in England, three possible explanations come to mind.

One: a vindication of Labour policies. It’s not. This one’s straightforward: we don’t yet, by common consent, have defined policies. Ergo, it can’t be a vindication of them.

Two: the first electoral vindication of Ed Miliband as leader. It’s not. That’s not because he’s not a popular leader: it’s just too early to say. And that’s for the simple reason that most of the population, outside the Westminster and party bubbles, will still have no idea who he is and what he stands for. That’s the reality of having a relatively unknown figure suddenly come to prominence. Therefore, this cannot be reasonably seen as a vindication of his leadership.

Three: discontent with the Coalition. The only reasonable explanation: discontent was manifested with the Lib Dems in particular, Nick Clegg reprising his now-familiar role of lightning conductor for the Tories.

However, we also need to be aware of the difference between, on the one hand, giving the Coalition a bloody nose; and, on the other, giving it its marching orders. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: The NHS doesn’t need Tory reorganisation, but it does need reform

12/05/2011, 07:00:43 AM

by Peter Watt

I am furious about the Lansley NHS reforms, but not just because of their well documented failures. We all know the arguments against them: another top down reorganisation, competition on price not outcome, cherry picking by the private sector and all that. The Tory-Lib Dem government is, of course, engaging in post-May 5 good cop, bad cop role playing in an attempt to dig themselves out of their hole. I have no doubt that their instinct for survival will lead them to deal with the worst excesses. The Tories, in particular, are rightly terrified of an NHS-led electoral backlash.

But right now, that is not what’s making me so angry. What is making me angry is the real danger that this row will set back the cause of vital NHS reform for years.

Under Labour, the NHS made some significant progress. We introduced choice for patients and gave them statutory rights about what they could expect from the NHS. A variety of suppliers were introduced into the health market and improved commissioning lead to reduced unit costs, greater numbers of treatments, improving health outcomes and shorter waiting times.

And budgets were increased considerably. In fact, you could argue that budgets were increased faster than the reforms could cope with. The result is that there is undoubtedly room for significant efficiency savings.

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UNBOUND: Thursday News Review

12/05/2011, 06:53:52 AM

£60m, a drop in the Future Job Fund’s ocean

David Cameron and Nick Clegg will be together at an event later to launch a government drive on youth unemployment. The prime minister and his deputy will announce a £60m package to boost work prospects and vocational education. They will commit in their appearance in London to tackle “structural barriers” to young people starting a career. It comes as the coalition is under more strain after the flagship policy of directly elected police commissioners was defeated in the House of Lords. – BBC News

The Government has announced a £60m funding boost to help youth employment. As nearly 700,000 14- to 18-year-olds are currently not in employment or full-time education, it is hoped the cash will help boost apprenticeships and reform vocational education. The announcement comes as 100 large companies and tens of thousands of small companies across the country have responded to the Government’s call and pledged to offer work experience places. In total the coalition will provide funding for up to 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years, and funding for 100,000 work placements over the next two years. The £60m will be spent over the three years and fund more early access Work Programme places, increase the capacity of Jobcentre Plus to support teenagers who are not in education, employment or training and pay for a new £10m per year Innovation Fund to help disadvantaged people. – Yorkshire Post

The war on red tape claims its first victims

Unions have rounded on the government over plans to water down workers’ rights to “make it easier for businesses to grow”. Lib Dem minister Ed Davey will announce the new areas of employment legislation up for review at the Institute for Economic Affairs as the government attempts to clear away restrictions for employers. It will consult on cutting compensation payments for discrimination, reducing the current 90-day timescale for firms to consult over job losses, and changing the Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment Regulations (Tupe) which protects the pay and conditions of public sector workers transferred between companies. One law firm has warned that the move will disadvantage women and ethnic minority workers. The government is already simplifying the employment tribunal system, looking at extending the period before an unfair dismissal claim can be brought and reviewing the system for managing sickness absence. – the Guardian

Workers are set to receive less protection against redundancy, dismissal and workplace discrimination as the Chancellor George Osborne tears up sections of employment law so businesses can dispose of their staff more easily. Mr Osborne has proposed imposing a cap on awards given in cases of discrimination and abuse in the workplace on the grounds of race or gender. Employers will also be able to sack people more quickly. As well as introducing fees and new rules to prevent “vexatious” claims at employment tribunals, the Government wants to review the unlimited penalties currently applied in employment tribunals, simplify the administration of the national minimum wage and reform the consultation period for collective redundancies. Mr Osborne attacked the trade unions as “the forces of stagnation” who “will try to stand in the way of the forces of enterprise”. The Chancellor’s words were criticised by the unions and Labour Party. John Denham, the shadow Business Secretary, said: “George Osborne’s only idea for growth is to make it easier to cut pay and pensions, dismiss employees without giving time to plan for the future, and make working life more insecure. Successful companies have a workforce that is confident, dedicated and fairly rewarded.” – the Independent

Lords ‘rip the heart’ out of policing bill

Rebel Liberal Democrats scuppered flagship Tory plans for elected police commissioners last night. Former Met chief Ian Blair sided with Lib Dem peers to inflict a bruising Lords defeat on David Cameron. The introduction of elected police chiefs – with the power to hire and fire chief constables – is the Prime Minister’s flagship law and order policy. The Tories say it is vital for making police more accountable to the public. But peers voted to change the plan so that commissioners are appointed by policing panels – not the public – leaving the plan worthless. Liberal Democrat Baroness Harris of Richmond, who led the revolt, said the proposals ‘put so much power in the hands of one person’ that they posed ‘great risks to policing’. The independent peer claimed there was nothing to stop a police commissioner ‘just announcing that he has got rid of the chief constable, or that he wishes to get rid of the chief constable or he has no confidence in the chief constable.’ Analysis of division lists showed there were 13 Lib Dem rebels. The Government’s position was supported by 36 Lib Dem peers. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said: ‘The Lords have ripped the heart out of this deeply flawed flagship Bill’. – Daily Mail

David Cameron suffered a major set-back last night after his flagship plan for elected police commissioners was chucked out in the House of Lords. Peers instead backed a rebel Lib Dem move that would see the commissioners appointed rather than directly elected. The PM wanted to see commissioners elected from May next year to replace police authorities in England and Wales. They would have the power to hire and fire chief constables and set forces’ budget and “strategic direction”. But under Lib Dem Baroness Harris of Richmond’s amendment, the chiefs would be chosen by a police and crime panel and not by the public. She raised deep fears over plans that would pose “great risks to policing”. – Daily Mirror

Change or lose

Ed Miliband has been given an astonishing warning by a senior shadow Cabinet minister that he is on course to lose the next election. Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis, who backed David Miliband in the Labour leadership contest, said the party was seen as one of the ‘North, benefit claimants and immigrants’. His remarks are the most serious internal criticism of Mr Miliband since he became Labour leader last September. They reflect growing anxiety among a rump of Blairite MPs that he is appealing only to core voters, rather than reaching out to swing voters who will decide the next election. They are calling on Mr Miliband to change his strategy after results in last week’s local elections that were worse than those of Michael Foot – Labour’s least successful leader ever. Mr Lewis said the elections showed that so-called ‘squeezed middle’ voters were not yet returning to the Labour fold. In a provocative speech to the modernising group Progress last night, Mr Lewis warned that southern voters see Labour as standing up for other people. – Daily Mail

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GRASSROOTS: Where next for the democracy movement?

11/05/2011, 05:00:07 PM

by Emma Burnell

The question of electoral reform is now closed for a generation. Anyone who disagrees with this statement is part of the much wider problem that the democracy movement has.

The movement likes to believe that it listens and that it represents “the people”, but, generally, what that has meant in my experience is that people who agree with the aims of the movement get a hearing as to how their aims might be achieved, while those who question the priorities of the reformers are dismissed as dinosaurs and not engaged with to understand their reticence. And while the movement certainly represents some of “the people”, who deserve a voice as much as anyone else, the inability to grow from a niche to a mass movement demonstrates clearly that it is not the voice of all the people.

At the moment, the blame game is moving quickly. So far we have the mendacious No campaign, the toxicity of the Lib Dems and particularly the childish tantrums of Chris Huhne, the intervention of the prime minister and the split in the Labour party. All of which did – of course – play a part in why the Yes campaign failed. But for my money, the biggest reason the campaign failed is because it was run by people who don’t know the electorate and don’t understand what they want and what they fear. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Everybody is ignoring us, because we are weird

11/05/2011, 02:30:54 PM

by Anthony Painter

As Kevin Meagher noted on Uncut this morning, the canvas on which Labour is currently painting by numbers is wearing rather thin. A bit of blue, a bit of purple, some red, something of a strange colour called ‘new’, finish it off with a bit of a flourish. Stand back and marvel at the complete, er, mess.

In the meantime, the Conservatives emerge largely unscathed from their first electoral test since the general election. OK, they emerged completely unscathed. And Labour has spent the year talking to itself and in the seminar room (in fact, the last four years). Now the results of the experiment are about to be unleashed. There will be a deafening silence across the land.

There is a narrative of failure that has come to dominate: Labour became too statist, technocratic, detached, captured by the market; it lost its soul. All of this is true. But it’s not why Labour lost. The cause of defeat is much simpler than that. People didn’t trust Labour anymore. They’d seen enough and decided enough was enough. They wanted a new government and new prime minister. They just weren’t over-enamoured with the alternative.

But we are very educated people on the left. We read social history. We have consumed the political classics from Aristotle to Rawls and beyond. We have framed and conceptualised every single action of every human on this planet. We inhale public policy as if it were shisha. And you know what? We’re weird.

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UNCUT: Time for Labour to stand up for the hardest hit

11/05/2011, 11:30:38 AM

by Julianne Marriott

10,000 people are marching past Parliament now. If you were here, though, it would not be the march’s size that would catch your attention. Nor the distance; it will only really be a few hundred metres. Yet for many of those marching today, that short journey is more like a marathon.

And this march looks different too. It is slow. It includes lots of wheelchair users, people walking with sticks and others with guide dogs. Many are living with constant pain, on gruelling medication regimes, distressed by being in a crowd.

Scores of the walkers have fluctuating conditions, including cancer, dementia, arthritis and MS. Which means that many marchers can only be here because they are “having a good day”. Lots of people have a carer with them and wouldn’t have been able to come alone. They may have had to pay their carer, or they may be a family member, who’s had to take a day off work.

These 10,000 people are the hardest hit. Their incomes, independence and integrity are being systematically undermined. And today, a year to the day since that seven page initial agreement was signed, they have made a difficult and exhausting journey to Westminster to tell their story.

After the march, over a thousand people will queue for two hours to make their way into Westminster Hall. They hope that their MP will give them 15 minutes. And in that quarter of an hour they need to paint a picture of their lives now, and what effect of the welfare bill will have on them.

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UNCUT: Beware Labour’s rainbow warriors

11/05/2011, 07:15:41 AM

by Kevin Meagher

SO let’s get this straight. New Old Labour, in the shape of so-called Blue Labour, wants the party to return to its rosy red roots while new New Labour, in the shape of the soon-to-be Purple Bookers, wants the party to mix red and blue (but that’s old blue, not new Old Labour’s new Blue Labour blue).

Meanwhile, some of the old New Labourites remain green with envy at last year’s leadership result, hoping that Ed Miliband ends up in the brown stuff.

At the same time, old Old Labour sees things in black and white and simply wants to put clear red water between the party and the true blue Tories and their yellow Lib Dem sidekicks.

Have I got that right?

Labour’s efforts at renewal are starting to resemble a Jackson Pollack painting, with tins of political ideas hurled across the canvass.

But beware. The abiding lesson of Labour’s fraught history is that internal groupings have always been little more than artillery to support the militias fighting the party’s periodic civil wars (an oxymoron, to be sure, given the incivility of Labour’s periodic bloodletting). Their very existence is evidence of competing groupthink within the party, usually wrapped around titanic egos grappling for control.

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UNBOUND: Wednesday News Review

11/05/2011, 06:13:30 AM

A year on

Nick Clegg will risk the wrath of Coalition colleagues by boasting that the Liberal Democrats have blocked a string of flagship Conservative pledges. In a transparent attempt to cheer his battered troops as the Government marks its one-year anniversary, the Deputy Prime Minister will describe the union as one of ‘necessity, not of conviction’. He will reel off a list of Tory manifesto promises – including scrapping the Human Rights Act, replacing Trident in this Parliament, cutting inheritance tax and building more prisons – that have been prevented by the Lib Dems. ‘None of these things has happened,’ the Lib Dem leader will say. ‘They haven’t happened because the Conservatives are not governing as a majority party. They are in a coalition, and coalition requires compromise.’ His remarks reflect intense Lib Dem frustration that they are being punished by voters for ripping up their pledge to scrap university tuition fees, while Tory support has held firm despite their failure to deliver key promises. – Daily Mail

In a speech later today, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg will review the first year of the coalition Government and promise a clear party identity, which he is calling “muscular liberalism”. The Deputy Prime Minister will say he understands the anger over tuition fees, but will again repeat his point that the Lib Dems did not win the election. He will explain that with just 8% of the MPs in the Commons, they cannot deliver on all parts of their manifesto – but in a coalition, neither can the Tories. Mr Clegg believes the Liberal Democrats need to be seen as a distinctive voice within the coalition Government. Mr Clegg claims the Lib Dems are “punching well above our weight” on policy, delivering 75% of their manifesto promises, but he wants his party to be more assertive over the next year. “You will see a strong liberal identity in a strong coalition Government. You might even call it muscular liberalism,” he will say. – Sky News

What a U-turn

Samuel Beckett was once asked why he quit his job as a university lecturer teaching the cream of Irish society. Indeed, the rich and the thick, was his riposte. The Tory minister, David Willetts, was forced into an embarrassing climbdown before the House of Commons yesterday after suggestions that he wanted to introduce a two-tier system in English universities which would apparently favour those with money over those with academic ability. Politicians who fly kites take the risk that they might be struck by lightning. That was what happened yesterday to Mr Willetts. By mid-morning he was back-pedalling furiously on an idea that critics portrayed as a daddy’s chequebook exercise in old-style Tory privilege. In Parliament, Mr Willetts was forced to state categorically that the scheme to allow businesses and charities to fund extra places would not allow rich students unfair access. Public schools, many of which have charitable status, would not be able to buy places, he promised, but he failed to dispel fears that family trust funds and the old boy network would buy preference in a system where almost a third of applicants now fail to secure a university place. – the Independent

It has to go down as one of the fastest U-turns in the history of politics… Blundering David Willetts dropped plans to let rich students buy a place at university just four hours after he announced them. The Universities and Science minister had suggested those from well-off families should be treated like foreign applicants who pay up to £28,000 a year for places. But critics immediately slammed the idea, warning it would create the sort of elitist higher education system campaigners have fought for decades to abolish. Mr Willetts tried to justify the ludicrous idea at 10am by claiming it would free up more college spots for poorer children as the wealthy would not count as part of the strict quota of students because they would pay their own costs in full. But by 2.05pm, he was forced into a humiliating climbdown after his announcement sparked a furious backlash. David Cameron had angrily slapped down the minister, sparking fresh questions about his volatile temper. The university farce is just the latest in a long line of Coalition U-turns that also includes flogging off forests, granting rape-suspect anonymity, Mr Cameron’s vanity photographer and cutting school sport. – Daily Mirror

MPs to review Scottish defeat

Labour leader Ed Miliband has moved to exert his authority over the party in Scotland following the disastrous Holyrood election campaign. At a meeting of Labour MPs, Mr Miliband vowed “never again” to allow them to be cut out of a Scottish campaign. The Labour leader has also ordered a review panel, to be led by former Scottish secretary Jim Murphy MP and Edinburgh MSP Sarah Boyack, to produce an interim report by June on the future for the party. The review will also involve Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, and shadow Scottish secretary Ann McKechin. The move by Mr Miliband suggests a reversal of a leadership campaign promise to allow the Holyrood party to run itself without Westminster interfering. But it comes as the Labour leader has to explain to his own internal critics how the party lost so heavily in Scotland. – the Scotsman

Tributes pour in

Westminster was in mourning at the sudden death of Labour MP David Cairns, aged just 44, from acute pancreatitis. Tributes poured in to Inverclyde MP, a former Catholic priest, whom party leader Ed Miliband said would be “missed beyond measure”. His death leaves Labour facing a by-election battle against the resurgent Scottish Nationalists in what was one of their safest seats. Popular Mr Cairns won in May 2010 with a huge 14,416 majority – but the same area in last week’s Scottish elections saw Labour win by a wafer thin 1.8 per cent, or 500 votes. Mr Cairns leaves behind his partner Dermot, father John and brother Billy. “David will be missed beyond measure as a former minister, as an MP, as a friend and a colleague by many people,” said Mr Miliband. Former prime minister Tony Blair added: “David was, quite simply, a good man, with time for everyone and a wonderful sense of humour, which made him a delight to be around.” To enable him to enter the Commons,Parliament had to reverse a law dating back to the 19th century which banned former Catholic priests from taking up a seat. – Evening Standard

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UNCUT: False choices about Labour’s recovery

10/05/2011, 03:00:41 PM

by Sunder Katwala

If there has been one thing that has been symptomatic of Labour’s struggle to find a viable future strategy for electoral success, it is the penchant of too many in the party for daft debates about which voters the party does not want.

New Labour began by building the biggest tent British politics had ever seen, and ended by worrying endlessly about whether appealing too strongly to traditional Labour voters or Guardian readers would kill the project off. Meanwhile, the party’s left flank fretted about whether the support of marginal swing voters stopped Labour being Labour in government. If those were the problems, 29% of the vote would have been a solution. Neither Labour’s traditional base nor New Labour switchers saw the point of having Labour in government at all.

Well, here we go again.

The latest daft question: if Ed Miliband and the Labour party want to win the next election, should they seek to win votes from the Liberal Democrats, or from the Conservatives?

Uncut’s own Dan Hodges set up this choice at the New Statesman.

On the one hand, there is the compass analysis. The compass crystal ball has not proved infallible in the aftermath of the last election, but it now seems to mean pessimistically admitting that Labour will probably never ever win again under first past the post, so must negotiate a way to power with the Liberal Democrats.

On the other, we keep the New Labour flag flying by treating the collapsing Liberal Democrat vote as a distraction to be ignored entirely, because the only votes that count are those won from the Conservatives.
Another senior Labour insider put it this way:

“Ed has a clear choice. He can chase after a non-existent progressive majority, or he can try to bring middle and working class Tory voters home to Labour. Or, to put it another way, he can try to win on his own, or lose with Chris Huhne.”

It would be difficult to imagine a sillier debate about “electoral strategy”.

Perhaps the one thing that everybody serious about finding Labour’s path back to power could do is to refuse this framing, and to laugh at anybody who tries to start this debate. Neither Neal Lawson nor Dan Hodges are right about Labour’s route back to power. Read the rest of this entry »

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