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22/01/2011, 02:00:45 PM

In case you missed them, these were the best read pieces on Uncut in the last seven days:

Uncut brings you the Johnson resignation and Balls promotion

Alan Johnson for the life and for the leaving of it – bravo!

Alex Hilton claims only electoral reform can save democracy in his Uncut debut

Dan Hodges thinks the NHS reforms are Cameron’s operation Barbarossa

Tom Harris’ frank open letter to the boss (Ed not Bruce)

Tory MP and all round comedy character Chris Kelly hits back at Cry baby jibes

John Spellar wants Labour to worry about the real middle

The Uncut editorial: neither Cameron nor Coulson are the real story

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GRASSROOTS: We need to keep our sense of class, while embracing them all

22/01/2011, 11:28:54 AM

by Emma Burnell

The Labour party has always understood and been uniquely informed by the class struggle and the struggling classes. This is not to say that we are solely a party of the working class – that has never been true. But our strength has been in the finding of common interests between the working and middle classes, and formatting policies that allowed both better lives for themselves and better dreams for their children.

This was considerably easier when the social strata of the UK was more clearly delineated. To paraphrase the Frost Report, the upper class wore bowler hats and the working class knew their place. But if class ever was that clear-cut, it certainly isn’t now. It’s a more elusive beast, shadowy and ill-defined by a combination of our jobs, education levels, property ownership and history. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Saturday News Review

22/01/2011, 09:58:25 AM

Coulson falls on sword

Andy Coulson, one of the key members of David Cameron‘s inner circle, has resigned as Downing Street’s director of communications, saying the wave of allegations that he was involved in illegal phone hacking when editor of the News of the World made it impossible for him to continue. “When the spokesman needs a spokesman, it is time to move on,” Andy Coulson Coulson said in a carefully crafted statement which had been in preparation for 48 hours. Downing Street insisted his departure was not precipitated by any fresh piece of damning evidence that would undercut Coulson’s claim he was unaware that phone hacking was prevalent at the News of the World under his editorship. Officials said the steady drip of allegations, and the likelihood that they would continue through civil court cases and possible police inquiries, was taking a toll on Coulson’s family and making it harder for him to focus. – the Guardian

Mr Coulson said the claims, which concerned his time as editor of the Sunday tabloid, meant he could not give the Prime Minister the “110 per cent needed”. The departure was a blow to Mr Cameron, who said that his aide had been “punished for the same offence twice”. Mr Coulson stood down as News of the World editor in 2007 soon after a reporter from his paper was jailed for phone hacking. The Prime Minister reluctantly agreed to accept the resignation on Wednesday evening, but it was not announced until yesterday because they had to finalise a timetable for his departure. The timing led to claims that the Government was trying to “bury bad news” while Tony Blair was appearing at the Iraq inquiry and the furore over Alan Johnson’s resignation was still dominating the news schedules. – the Telegraph Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Bloomberg speech shows Balls can find what he needs in Keynes

21/01/2011, 05:55:27 PM

by Anthony Painter

Following his very well received Bloomberg speech, I cautioned back in September on Uncut against a “no retreat, no surrender” political strategy. Ed Balls is now shadow chancellor. He faces a number of challenges. One of which is how to respond to the Bloomberg speech.

Actually the speech – if followed to its logical conclusion – provides a powerful political narrative that in some ways resolves one of Labour’s current problems: how does it free itself from the perceived failures of its past?

The speech had a core argument that was anything but deficit denial. It was actually a different strategy for dealing with the deficit. Counter-intuitively, but based on completely sound Keynesian economics, Ed Balls argued that, in these circumstances, government should pursue an expansionist fiscal policy. The result will be an economy that grows more quickly and creates more jobs. The government’s counterargument is that in an open economy there are limits to the degree to which you can do this. Furthermore, they said, by May 2010 the UK was breaching those limits (there was scant evidence for this as tracking long term interest rates demonstrates; though the argument was of risk rather than immediacy). Read the rest of this entry »

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HOME: Editorial: Neither Coulson nor Cameron is the real story

21/01/2011, 01:27:13 PM

Andy Coulson has now resigned from two massive jobs for something he says he knew nothing about.

On 23 November, Tom Watson predicted on Uncut that Andy Coulson would resign “within the next few weeks”. In the end, it was eight weeks. They moved the date back in response to Watson’s article.

On 12 January, Watson revealed on Uncut that the working date within Downing Street for Coulson’s departure was now 25 January. He has resigned on 21 January. The opportunity of a Friday combining Blair at the Chilcot enquiry with the aftermath of the Johnson resignation all but obliged them to bring it forward by the width of a weekend.

And Rupert Murdoch is due to be in London next week. He is sick of the scandal swirling more and more distastefully around his (distasteful) family business. He believes that it has been mishandled by his minions. Did he send word that the Coulson embarrassment (the only easy bit to fix) should be cleared up before he arrives?

Many people – including the prime minister’s official spokesman, on the record – dismissed Tom Watson’s intelligence as rubbish. It was not. Watson was telling the truth; Cameron and his people were brazenly lying.

Coulson’s official spokesman, Nick Robinson of the BBC, has said – as has most of the rest of the Lobby – that the worst damage this will do David Cameron is to deprive him of Andy Coulson’s expertise. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Into the Portakabin of confusion comes the risky Lord Glasman

21/01/2011, 11:15:27 AM

by Atul Hatwal

The Labour party currently resembles a building site.

Shadow ministerial teams are laying the foundations for policy, in the main, independently of each other. Various consultations are asking party members “what’s to be built on the foundations”, quite separately from the ministerial teams. And at the front of the site, operating out of the political equivalent of a Portakabin, Ed Miliband and the shadow cabinet are trying to hold the government to account.

Into this melee have come two recent arrivals. They bring hope of deliverance from the mud and confusion.

Sat in the Portakabin is the first: Baldberts. Not a character from the Shire or a sixth-former at Hogwarts, but a bionic communications director made from the parts of former journalists Tom Baldwin and Bob Roberts – Ed Miliband has the technology. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Cameron’s operation Barbarossa

21/01/2011, 07:00:08 AM

by Dan Hodges

It was a moving scene. David Cameron fixed the final clasp on his greatcoat, set his tall Shako cap upon his head and slid the brown leather pack across his broad shoulders. There was much he wanted to say to his tearful wife and children, but the words would not come. Instead, he turned and, without a backward glance, stepped into the darkness and was gone.

When the prime minister announced on Monday his comprehensive NHS reform programme, he was announcing the invasion of Russia. Cameron is about to drive his party through thousands of miles of cruel, frozen, inhospitable terrain. They will face fear, famine and deprivation. Experience suffering beyond endurance. And then they will come home, broken, bitter and defeated.

“Every year we delay, every year without improving our schools is another year of children let down, another year our health outcomes lag behind the rest of Europe, another year that trust and confidence in law and order erodes”, he said. Brave words. Defiant words. Utterly, utterly futile words. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Friday News Review

21/01/2011, 06:56:02 AM

Good luck Alan

Alan Johnson quit frontline politics after his wife was alleged to have had an affair with his police bodyguard. And last night Scotland Yard confirmed they were carrying out an internal inquiry into the behaviour of the armed officer, from the elite SO1 close protection squad. The Met’s Department of Professional Standards was called in to probe the claims, which emerged hours after Mr Johnson resigned as shadow chancellor. The officer in question is thought to be a detective constable. He faces suspension – at the least – if bosses decide his conduct has fallen short. The bodyguard is said to have worked for him for more than a year, protecting him and his family during trips at home and abroad. Labour veteran Mr Johnson, 60, had earlier announced he was bowing out from the front bench for “personal and family reasons”. The Westminster rumour mill went into overdrive as sources revealed his 20-year marriage had broken down. Labour leader Ed Miliband described him one of the most popular figures in parliament. He said was an “outstanding colleague” who had also been “a great friend for many years”. He added that the resignation had nothing to do with Mr Johnson’s ability to do the job. In his resignation statement Mr Johnson, MP for Hull West, said: “I have decided to resign from the shadow cabinet for personal reasons to do with my family.” – Daily Mirror Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: Johnson: for the life and for the leaving of it – bravo!

20/01/2011, 06:00:15 PM

Alan Johnson was too normal for the very top flight. The great paradox of his recent career is that the sense of perspective which would have made him a great leader is precisely what made him recoil from the job.

He didn’t even really want to be deputy leader. The famously common-touch polished performer was the overwhelming favourite to succeed John Prescott in 2007. But he ran a lacklustre campaign because his heart wasn’t in it and was pipped by Harriet Harman, whose heart always is.

What people like about Johnson is that he lacks the crazed ambition which is the sine qua non of top level political success. The blinkered focus. The ruthless ambition. His top-flight peers all have it, that restless lust for power that never stops. All day, every day. All night. They text you at 3 in the morning, dead sober. But obsessed. Then at five to six the phone rings and it’s them again. On a point of tiny detail. Which doesn’t matter to anyone else. But is important to them. They’re all like it. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: Johnson to resign tonight as shadow chancellor. Balls to replace him.

20/01/2011, 04:47:45 PM

Uncut has learned, from authoritative sources, that Alan Johnson will resign as shadow chancellor tonight. He will be replaced by Ed Balls.

Johnson, a former trade union leader and home secretary, was neither comfortable nor successful in the role. Dissatisfaction with his performance in the key economic brief had built in recent weeks.

In the end, Johnson has pre-empted any further adverse criticism by tendering his resignation and stepping down from the front bench.

Balls, education secretary in Gordon Brown’s government, was chief economic adviser to the treasury – a post normally held by a top civil servant – during Brown’s years as chancellor.

Pugnacious and relentless, he has taken to opposition better than any other shadow minister.

Miliband declined to appoint Balls shadow chancellor when first constructing his shadow cabinet in the autumn. Balls was neither liked nor trusted by his leader, to whom he was felt to present a threat.

This appointment is believed to signal a new accommodation between the two men.

With Balls shadowing the treasury and the more “user-friendly” Miliband in the top job, Labour is strengthened.

He is likely to be replaced as shadow home secretary by his wife, the shadow foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper. She in turn will need to be replaced in a consequent reshuffle.

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