Labour Uncut

INSIDE: Timetable for elections to the PLP Parliamentary committee

14/10/2010, 08:00:49 PM

We have been asked about the timetable and process for the election of the six members of the PLP Parliamentary committee. This is the group of backbenchers who meet weekly with the leader to keep him in touch with the views of the PLP rank-and-file.

The last time we were in opposition, the Parliamentary committee was the shadow cabinet. Standing orders have now changed to allow it to continue as a backbench body.

The timetable for the election is set out in the email below, from Martin O’Donovan, the PLP secretary.

(Tony Lloyd was elected unopposed as PLP chair).

From: O’DONOVAN, Martin
Sent: 12 October 2010 14:26
Subject: Reminder: PLP Chair and Parliamentary Committee elections

FAO Labour MPs

Dear Colleagues

Please find below a reminder of the timetables for the election of a PLP Chair and the new Parliamentary Committee:

PLP Chair
Nominations opened yesterday, and please note that nominations close TOMORROW (Wednesday) at 6pm. Full timetable is as follows:

Open nominations 9.00am Monday, 11 October
Close of nominations 6.00pm Wednesday, 13 October
Appointment of a proxy 7.00pm Monday, 18 October
Ballot 10.00am to 5.00pm Tuesday, 19 October

Parliamentary Committee
The timetable is as follows:

Open nominations 10.00am Wednesday, 20 October
Close of nominations 5.00pm Monday, 25 October
Appointment of a proxy 7.00pm Monday, 25 October
Ballot 10.00am to 5.00pm Tuesday, 26 October

Best wishes

Martin O’Donovan
Returning Officer and PLP Secretary

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INSIDE: Fiona MacTaggart’s email to Tory MP Mary MacLeod

14/10/2010, 06:30:04 PM

It is expressed with subtlety and elegance, but the message from Fiona MacTaggart to new Tory MP, Mary MacLeod, is clear: if you’ve got more than a tokenistic interest in the cause of women in Parliament, join the Labour party.

From: MACTAGGART, Fiona
Sent: 13 October 2010 15:11
To: MACLEOD, Mary
Subject: APPG women in parliament

Dear Mary,

Thank you for your invitation to become a founding member of an APPG women in parliament. I am writing to decline the invitation and to explain why.

AS you are a new member you may not be aware of the existence of the women’s Parliamentary Labour Party, which I chair, and which has been a powerful force for change on issues ranging from women’s representation in our party to hours and facilities in the house.

My experience of non party groups, such as the 300 group, on these issues has been that they have not been able to have the same impact as party based networks and I would be reluctant to support a move which risks over time diluting the effective work which PLP women have accomplished. Now that there are a greater number of women on the Coalition government benches I would really welcome a stronger voice for you within your party and my belief is that this is the best strategy for advancing the cause of women in parliament. Our party based groups can then work together within our parties and across parties, and also with the women in smaller parties. I have been acutely aware that every political group which only has one representative, is represented by a women and have tried to include them in appropriate activities.

I would have hoped to discuss this with colleagues at a PLP women’s meeting but unfortunately your email was sent 10 minutes after the end of our last meeting and we are not due to have another one for nearly three weeks, a longer gap than we normally have, because that meeting is due to elect a new chair following my appointment to the front bench.

In the meantime I would like to meet you, with other officers of the PLP women’s group to discuss how PLP women can best work with women in other parties. We have already done so on specific issues, eg IPSA and its impact on women and families.

I am circulating this response to colleagues to make them aware of my response.

Yours ever

Fiona Mactaggart Chair PLP women.

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UNCUT: Pat McFadden on the Browne report

14/10/2010, 04:05:16 PM

Student finance always combines policy with highly combustible politics. And so it is with the parties treading round the Browne Review as if it was an unexploded land mine, accompanied by headlines about degree costs running into tens of thousands which alarm students and their parents alike.

But first, step back. Many similar headlines were around in 2004 when legislation increased fees to £3,000. Since then participation has continued to rise, including from low income groups, confounding predictions that fear of debt would put off prospective students. Upfront fees were abolished, making higher education free at the point of use for students. Graduates paid but only when they were earning. And safeguards were built in to write off debt if graduates took time out of the labour market to have children or had low lifetime earnings.

There were also less welcome consequences of the 2004 changes. Charging no real rate of interest on loans had the unintended side effect of limiting student numbers because it costs the state more to borrow the money for the loans than it gets back in repayments. So although participation has gone up, universities are still held back from taking on as many students as they would wish because it is too expensive for the government. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: Tony Lloyd re-elected unopposed as chair of the PLP

14/10/2010, 10:33:56 AM

As the email below notes, Tony Lloyd has been re-elected unopposed as chair of the PLP.

The last time Labour was in opposition, the “parliamentary committee” was the elected shadow cabinet. Standing orders have now changed, though, such that the parliamentary committee continues to exist as it did in government: six elected backbenchers who meet the leader weekly, with the PLP chair, to represent backbench opinion.

This cements Lloyd’s position as the most powerful and influential PLP chair of the modern era.

He also chairs the weekly meetings of the PLP and mediates the increasingly fractious relationship between MPs and IPSA.

Lloyd ran unsuccessfully for the office he now holds several times over many years. He was then part of the soft-left resistance to the Blairite autocracy. He was loyal to Brown, though, and will be pivotal to Miliband.

FAO Labour MPs

Dear Colleague

At 6pm this evening nominations closed in the election for the Chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Nominations were received for one candidate, Tony Lloyd MP.

Tony Lloyd MP has therefore been duly re-elected to serve as Chair of the PLP.

Best wishes

Martin

Martin O’Donovan
Returning Officer and PLP Secretary

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UNCUT: Far from being the left’s embarrassing secret, the state is actually its trump card, says Anthony Painter

14/10/2010, 08:54:51 AM

What weird contorted, politically arrogant logic comes to the conclusion that David Miliband should join the Tory-Lib Dem coalition, as Nick Boles attempted to argue yesterday? While setting on a course that gives Margaret Thatcher a run for her money in terms of its social and economic destructiveness, the government has finally been lifted from the ground with the hot air of its own rhetoric. The definition of socialism is what a Labour government does and anything this government does is progressive reform – by definition. Why? Well, because it’s a progressive reformist government, duh.

With Labour’s leadership election out of the way, the fog of war is starting to clear. David Miliband and all those on the left who know that the state must change – be more personal, more local, and more innovative – equally know that the type of reform offered by the Tories and Lib Dems is anything but progressive. David Cameron and Nick Clegg know that as long as they can be seen to be taking it out on relatively high earners as well as the least well-off then the progressive fig leaf will stay in place.

So high rate taxpayers lose £1billion of child benefit. Others much lower down the earnings ladder lose up to £15billion a year. There is a £9billion hit for 3.5 million disabled people over five years according to the think tank, Demos. Progressive. Then there is the pupil premium: the government’s get out of jail free card when it comes to fairness. Or so they think. It conveniently ignores the fact that there already is a pupil premium. It goes to local authorities. Meanwhile, investment in creating the school buildings of the future for many is cut. Progressive. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Thursday News Review

14/10/2010, 08:22:58 AM

The boy done good

Ed Miliband was the undisputed winner in his debut appearance opposite David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday. The new Labour leader scored a direct hit on the PM’s muddled policies when he went on the attack over coalition plans to scrap child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers. He said Cameron’s proposals to cut child benefit for people earning over £44,000 were unfair for middle-income families. And he showed he had nerves of steel in the bearpit of British politics when Cameron flannelled on an answer. The Tory leader tried to turn the question around on the Doncaster MP by asking if it was fair that the poor in his constituency should pay for his child benefit. Without realising it, Cameron had walked into a trap. Miliband retorted: “I may be new to this game but I thought I asked the questions and you answered them.” – The Daily Record

ITN News

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INSIDE: David Cameron is all talk and no trousers, says Karen Butler

13/10/2010, 05:00:51 PM

He looks the part. He sounds the part. So what is it about David Cameron that makes him a less fearsome opponent than perhaps he should be?

There are plenty of attack lines that we like to believe about DC. He seems intellectually lightweight, incurious even, and sometimes astoundingly short on detail. He doesn’t seem to have any real beliefs or ideology and he rarely stands up well to interrogation. But these things can be hidden, even from himself, behind the pomp and the power, the celebrity and the blow-dried, well-suited veneer.

But last week on Uncut Dan Hodges articulated one of those truths that is both surprisingly new yet instantly recognisable: Cameron is a bottler.?? The child benefit row saw Cameron fail to withstand even a single day of rightwing criticism – something that his strategists will not just have been expecting but banking on, following their clever move to dare Labour’s new leader to defend benefits for the wealthy. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Siôn Simon on Ed Miliband’s first PMQs

13/10/2010, 01:14:18 PM

All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Not for a moment have I missed sitting on the green benches. Not for a wistful split-second have I wished that I had the choice again. As I’ve watched them twist and turn in the Westminster wind, and remembered how it feels, there’s been nothing but relief that it isn’t me any more.

Until today. Ed Miliband’s first prime minister’s questions was a great parliamentary moment. A performance of such assurance and aplomb on the first day of such an inexperienced leader that it will be long remembered.

All new party leaders begin by promising an end to the punch and judy style of traditional PMQs. They never mean it. Substantively, Miliband doesn’t mean it either. It’s not a debate; it’s a fight; and he wants to win. But presentationally – and may the ghost of Frank Johnson forgive me for the phrase – he just changed the game.

At a stroke, by simply willing it, he halved the heat and pace of what has always been a stupidly uproarious affair, and effortlessly took control.

At first he seemed so slow that one feared the worst. But he held his nerve and within a minute was completely in command of the occasion. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Tom Watson promises Ed Miliband that he’ll stop behaving like a child

13/10/2010, 10:03:38 AM

Ed Miliband is more like the early Tony Blair than either he or Tony would publicly admit. He is patient with his colleagues, considerate and engaging. He is irritated by complacency and policy inertia. And he is murderously ambitious for electoral success.

As Neil Kinnock once famously said “to lead a political party, first of all you have to establish whether the political party wishes to be led”. Ed’s got to put the band back together. Re-pitch the big tent.

And with what was a sublime re-shuffle – respect for defeated opponents, dignified exits for distinguished big beasts, early promotion of a cadre of new MPs – I think the band might soon, for the first time in many years, be playing in harmony.

He’s made some spectacularly audacious and very clever appointments that make it just possible for this happen. Anne McGuire joining the team as his PPS is an act of genius. She’s canny and well-respected by MPs. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Wednesday News Review

13/10/2010, 07:07:50 AM

First meeting for generation Ed

Ed Miliband has geared up for his first face-to-face clash with David Cameron since he was elected Labour leader by meeting his Shadow Cabinet for the first time. The Opposition leader will face intense scrutiny when he takes on the Tory leader at Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons later today. The showdown will be seen as a key test of his abilities, after he narrowly won victory ahead of his brother David last month. Yesterday’s meeting of his front-bench team was the first since their appointments on Friday. In just over a week’s time they will spearhead the Opposition response to the Government’s swingeing public spending cuts. In a sign of the crucial role he will play, Alan Johnson, a surprise choice as Shadow Chancellor, sat opposite the new leader. – The Herald

So the shadow cabinet election winners are mastering their briefs. But spare a thought for those who saw hopes and dreams go up in smoke. In Scotland activists ran a tight operation. Ann McKechin wanted to be shadow Scottish secretary, and that’s what she got. But in Wales things became a little more complex. Distinguished as he has been, supporters of Peter Hain thought it was time he moved on to something more challenging than the Welsh secretary brief – again – and thus all sorts of other Welsh MPs were encouraged to stand. Ideally, there would be someone else to take the Welsh portfolio, leaving Hain free to take another plum brief. But it didn’t work out that way. So many stood – Chris Bryant, Huw Irranca-Davies, Ian Lucas, Wayne David, David Hanson and Kevin Brennan – that none made the shadow cabinet. Hain has been co-opted back as shadow Welsh secretary. Best-laid plans. Oh well. – The Guardian

ED Miliband’s top team met for the first time as his surprise pick for Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson sparred for the first time with opposite number George Osborne. The nine-strong “Yorkshire mafia” were among those taking their seats at the Shadow Cabinet table yesterday as Mr Miliband addressed his team ahead of today’s first appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions since becoming leader. – The Yorkshire Post

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