Labour Uncut

GRASSROOTS: Green industry should be at the heart of Britain’s growth, says ffinlo Costain

10/10/2010, 12:49:13 PM

In his first speech as Labour party leader Ed Miliband said, ‘No plan for growth means no credible plan for deficit reduction.’ He’s right. But where will growth come from?

When Miliband was energy and climate change secretary the answer was clear: it would come from delivering a low carbon economy in Britain. But the framework for that transition, set in place by Labour when in government, is now under sustained attack by the treasury, despite David Cameron’s pledge that his would be Britain’s ‘greenest-ever government’.

Many fear that the comprehensive spending review on October 20th will be the death knell for the renewable heat incentive, the green deal, the green investment bank, essential port development, and even the department of energy and climate change (DECC) itself.

Politicians such as shadow energy minister, Emily Thornberry, representatives from greenpeace, friends of the earth, and the TUC, as well as business leaders from the micropower council and the federation of master builders have articulated the need for concerted pressure to ensure the Tories and Lib Dems live up to their pre-election and Coalition Agreement promises.

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UNBOUND: Sunday News Review

10/10/2010, 08:28:14 AM

Diane gets health gig

Ed Miliband gave defeated Labour leadership rival Diane Abbott a key job as shadow public health minister yesterday. The appointment of Ms Abbott means all the new leader’s challengers have been given posts in his top team – apart from his brother David, who decided not to run for a frontbench job. She will serve under the newly-appointed Shadow Health Secretary John Healey. A source close to Mr Miliband said: “Ed believes Diane Abbott will bring passion, formidable communication skills and combative political abilities to this key role.” Mr Miliband also appointed Kevan Jones and rising star Michael Dugher as shadow defence ministers. – The Mirror

Ed Miliband has recruited failed Labour leadership challenger Diane Abbott to his shadow ministerial ranks. Ms Abbott, a left-winger, came last in the contest to succeed Gordon Brown and she also lacked the support needed from fellow Labour MPs to be elected to the shadow cabinet. But Mr Miliband, who is still appointing to the lower ranks of his first shadow team, has made her shadow public health minister. – Sky

“We’re all in this together”

David Cameron and George Osborne were the guests of honour at a lavish £25,000 party – just hours before they unveiled savage spending cuts. The Prime Minister and Chancellor joined more than 60 senior Tories at one of Britain’s top restaurants for the exclusive event[…]His guests enjoyed a four-course meal washed down with champagne and up to 24 bottles of Pétrus – dubbed “the most expensive wine in the world”. Just hours earlier Mr Osborne had delivered his “we’re all in this together” message at the Tory conference – announcing his plans to axe child benefit payments to 1.2million families. – The Mirror

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UNCUT: Dan Hodges deconstructs the new shadow cabinet

09/10/2010, 09:00:35 AM

ANOTHER HURDLE cleared. The lot of the new leader. Evade the obstacles, real and imagined.

First conference speech. Check. First shadow cabinet. Check. First grilling by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby. Tough one. But check.

As with every other make or break moment Ed Miliband will face over the next few months, yesterday’s was definitive. “It will test his maturity and decisiveness”, warned the Independent.

Well, unless he was planning to order the shadow cabinet to turn up to their first meeting in fancy dress, or delay the announcement till boxing day, Ed was always likely to scrape home this time. An examination of his leadership skills? Yes. But the reintroduction of shadow cabinet elections ensured that it was a straightforward multiple choice, rather than a full blown thesis.

Put aside the hype. Ed Miliband played a relatively weak hand well. Read the rest of this entry »

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GRASSROOTS: A Labour activist at Tory conference, by Amanda Ramsay

08/10/2010, 04:00:10 PM

Tory activists flocked to their annual political pilgrimage in Birmingham this week, for David Cameron’s first party conference as Prime Minister. Despite 13 years of opposition leading to a coalition rather than a Conservative government, this was a big moment for Tory activists. But for a paid-up member of the Labour party, the prospect of attending my first ever Tory conference filled me with dread. Politics is nothing if not tribal and the prospect felt so alien.

Once in Birmingham, the atmosphere was much the same as the intoxicating buzz of most Labour conferences in recent memory, other than 2010 perhaps, the leadership election having engulfed proceedings. However, there were some distinct differences about the Conservative version.

For starters, the exhibition itself had a bizarre array of interest groups, hard to imagine at a Labour conference: the British fur trade association, countryside alliance and Carlton club to name but three. Harvey Nichols also had a stand as did Crombie, offering made-to-measure clothing for ladies and gents. I don’t think we have a Harvey Nicks at our conference. Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: The full shadow cabinet

08/10/2010, 01:30:30 PM

Labour’s New Shadow Cabinet:

Leader of the Opposition

Rt. Hon. Ed Miliband MP

Deputy Leader and Shadow Secretary of State for International Development

Rt Hon Harriet Harman MP

Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

Rt Hon Alan Johnson MP

Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Minister for Women and Equalities

Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP

Shadow Secretary of State for the Home Department

Rt Hon Ed Balls MP

Chief Whip

Rt Hon Rosie Winterton MP

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HOME: P(M) Diddy: Cameron raps

08/10/2010, 12:51:45 PM

(HT John Rentoul & Guardian Politics)

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UNCUT: Kevin Meagher calms down after Conservative conference

08/10/2010, 11:58:41 AM

OK, my fists are now unfurled. I have emptied my soul of expletives and invective. Bad thoughts have passed. The rage has subsided. The television, though battered and bruised, will live on. I’m like this every October. For one week, my usually ultra-rational impulses give way to a visceral tribalism. Undiluted exposure to the Conservative party conference does that to me. It elicits a physical reaction as a mixture of loathing and, well, more loathing, rises in my throat.

It’s not one thing in particular. It’s the all-embracing awfulness of it. It’s the platitudinous “debates” – grainy facsimiles of actual democratic discussion. It’s the perfunctory applause and standing ovations (an unfortunate habit that Labour has adopted). It’s the lame jokes. The wretched, simplistic homilies with their sneery nouveau riche morality.

It goes without saying that the Conservative conference is a platform for banality. But it provides endless visual and aural stimulation to someone looking to have his basic political orientation rebooted once a year. That is important. Politics is not only knowing what you are for; it is knowing what you are against too. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Shadow cabinet: the early reaction

08/10/2010, 12:49:04 AM

The top 3 are all members of Team Balls – Balls himself, wife Yvette Cooper and former housing minister John Healey. MPs backing Balls were decisive in swinging the leadership election to Ed Miliband in the fourth round and have now had a huge influence on the shadow cabinet election. Of the top 10, as the ToryPressHQ Twitter feed has mischievously noted, not a single MP put Ed Miliband down as their first choice in the leadership election. Of the “gang of four” – the quartet of ex-cabinet ministers who backed Ed Miliband – three managed to get elected (John Denham, Sadiq Khan and Hilary Benn) and one (Peter Hain) did not. How will the Labour leader reward the three who survived, if at all? And poor Peter Hain. – The New Statesman

Yvette Cooper topped the poll last night as Labour MPs elected the “new generation” of senior frontbenchers who will serve under the party’s new leader, Ed Miliband. Ms Cooper strengthened her claim to a senior post, possibly as shadow Chancellor, by winning the votes of 232 of the 257 Labour MPs in the Shadow Cabinet elections. She was one of eight women elected by Labour MPs for the 19 places up for grabs. Mr Miliband is expected to announce today which portfolios the winners will get. John Healey, Labour’s housing spokesman and a close ally of Gordon Brown, came a surprise second, finishing above Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, who both contested the party’s leadership election. – The Independent

Ms Cooper won the most votes, gaining 40 ballots more than the number two, John Healey, and handing her a strong claim to the role of shadow chancellor. Her husband Ed Balls, who lost out in the party’s leadership election, came third. He later tweeted: “We both v happy with the results.” But three former Cabinet ministers crashed out. Peter Hain lost by three votes in a major shock to Westminster. Ben Bradshaw and Shaun Woodward also lost out and all must now fear their careers in frontline politics are over. – Sky

Ben Bradshaw’s failure to make the shadow cabinet is not such a surprise, despite his manifest talents; he didn’t have enough support on the left of the party. More of a shocker is Peter Hain, former Welsh secretary, not reaching the final 19 (by a whisker) despite having been deputy chair of Ed Miliband’s election campaign. Others who might have made it but did not include Chris Bryant, Diane Abbott (who tends to rub other MPs up the wrong way) and Emily Thornberry, who may still make it to the front bench before long. Hain missed out by just three votes while Thornberry fell short by just one. As for who came in the last three, they were Mike Gapes at 12 votes, Alun Michael at 11 and Eric Joyce with just 10. – The FT Read the rest of this entry »

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INSIDE: The new shadow cabinet: who are they and what do they mean

07/10/2010, 08:51:32 PM

Douglas Alexander (160 votes)

Reponsible for Gordon Brown’s election campaign and David Miliband’s leadership campaign, wee Douglas (as he used to be known when he was GB’s Parliamentary amanuensis in the early nineties) is not looking very lucky at the moment. But he got on the shadow cabinet without running much of a campaign and will expect a better job than he might otherwise have got, in token of the new leader’s magnanimity.

Ed Balls (179 votes)

Won the leadership campaign by a mile, but lost the election by a similar distance. It’s widely considered to be a toss-up between him and his wife, Yvette Cooper, for the shadow chancellorship, which he has made no secret of wanting. With David Miliband all but out of the picture, one could argue that the tone of Labour’s next five years will be set by what Ed M decides to do with Ed B in the next few days. And what Ed B decides to do back.

Hilary Benn (128 votes)

A minister for nine years, including seven in the cabinet, Hilary Benn is more experienced than he seems. It says a lot not just for his longevity, but for the way he colonised his two main briefs, that it’s hard to imagine him shadowing other than DEFRA or DECC.

Andy Burnham (165 votes)

Very well liked and quite well respected before the leadership campaign, Andy Burnham emerged even more popular but probably less highly esteemed. His campaign lacked ideological bite, but the man himself is a straight-down-the-line Blairite right-winger. As such, he will be an important pole in Ed Miliband’s big tent.

Liam Byrne (100 votes)

Hasn’t lived down the “no money left” note yet. But he will. Much younger than he looks (he turned 40 last weekend), he is an over-achiever with a Harvard MBA and fast-tracked ministerial career. Sees himself as a future leader. Took soundings this time over a possible Byrne bid, made the right choice on finding no real market. It’s not quite in his script that the new leader is the same age as him. Or that he had to work extremely hard to scrape onto the shad cab. But he did. Liam does not do failure. Which is why we need him. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: To Autumn, a poem by Chris Bryant

07/10/2010, 04:08:28 PM

To Autumn

(for National Poetry Day, with dutiful accord to Keats and Shakespeare inter alia)

Season of trysts and pomp-full conferences
When politicians, in three hordes uncouth
Assemble in up-market hotel foyers
To gossip, flirt, conspire and take the hand
Of every willing voter in the land;
To argue for their version of the truth,
To battle for the future of our schools
Our hospitals, police and uncared youth;
Just sometimes to put forward their pet scheme
For rescuing Britain; and perchance to dream
Of greasy poles they yet aspire to climb.

But now the champagne flutes are passed their time –
And late-night, lightweight, internecine strife.
The autumn parliamentary term commences
With all eyes fixed on Osborne’s pending knife.
Statistics, figures, numbers stride the land,
Brought forth by each to stay the other’s hand.
Some worship at the shrine of deficit reduction,
They see a chance to slash the state, scot-free,
They eulogise the Big Society
But in their hearts they make a grand deduction:
Let Alexander, Clegg and Cable take the rap.

III

It’s true, perhaps the sea of faith was full once;
The faith that all our dreams could be enacted by
The simple, legal application of the democratic will;
That honest, good and independent people
Could change the world by sheer determination;
That work for all would pay a living wage,
That poverty, ill-health and destitution
Would be abolished – here and in every nation.
But now the voters issue a redacted sigh
Their trust in politics of every hue in rage
They fear that they will pay a hefty bill.

Which leaves us with the task we set ourselves:
To live within our means but go for growth;
To struggle for the cause of common sense,
Since rapid, ill-considered, swingeing cuts will lead us hence
To double-dip recession, not to economic health.
The songs of Spring still stir our anxious bones,
With echoes of the age-old oath
(Albeit in a voice and accent of today)
To fight for freedom, fairness, and the common wealth.
The people watch, the media barons neigh
And gathering members twitter on their phones.

Chris Bryant is Labour MP for Rhondda

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