Labour Uncut

INSIDE: Shadow Cabinet bun fight begins

14/09/2010, 11:32:02 PM

Following on from last week’s ballot of the PLP on the process for selecting the shadow cabinet, its make up, and whether to elect the chief whip, the decisions have all been accepted in a yes/no ballot today.

After the PLP voted in favour of a minimum 31.5% of the shadow cabinet being women, it has been set out today that each MP must vote for a minimum of 6 women and 6 men for their ballot to be valid.

The nominations for the shadow cabinet will kick off from the Sunday of conference, with the coronation of the leader likely to be a side show to those MPs plotting and scheming to ensure they make the final shoot out for the big jobs. Many are already hard at it, canvassing support, buying pints and calling in past favours – Paul Waugh appears to owe John Healey one or two.

The winners and losers will be announced on the 7 October, when the real fun will start for the new leader as they try to make the best of what they’ve been given.

From: O’DONOVAN, Martin
Sent: 14 September 2010 17:32
Subject: YES/NO BALLOT ON THE SHADOW CABINET ELECTIONS

FAO LABOUR MPs

The result of today’s ballot was as follows:

YES – 113

NO – 24

The PLP has now AGREED the changes from last week’s ballot and the standing orders will be updated accordingly.

We will now proceed to a postal ballot to elect our Shadow Cabinet, as set out in the below timetable. As agreed at the PLP last night, the election of 19 members of the Shadow Cabinet and the election of the Chief Whip will be held simultaneously.

Please bear in mind that all ballot papers need to be returned to the PLP Office by Thursday 7 October at 5pm.

BALLOT PAPER

A reminder that, in order to cast your vote in the Shadow Cabinet election, PLP members must cast a minimum number of 6 votes for women and 6 votes for men otherwise it will not be a valid vote.

TIMELINE FOR ELECTING OUR SHADOW CABINET

(Saturday 25 September   pm         New Leader elected)

Sunday 26 September      11am     Nominations open for Shadow Cabinet

Weds 29 September        5pm        Nominations close

Thursday 30 September 9-12       Ballot papers available in PLP Office at Conference. After this time they will be sent in the post to the same address as your ballot paper for the Party Leadership election.

Mon 4 Oct–Thurs 7 Oct    10-5     PLP Office open for MPs to vote in person.

Thursday 7 October       5pm         Start counting votes in PLP Office

Thursday 7 October       9pm         Announce results of election

Monday 11 October                       Parliament returns

Weds 20 October                            Comprehensive Spending Review

If you have any questions on the above please email me or call me on the numbers at the bottom of this email.

Best wishes

Martin

Martin O’Donovan
Director of Unit and PLP Secretary

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GRASSROOTS: We must make sure the country is with us on the union fightback, says Ruth Smeeth

14/09/2010, 05:19:39 PM

For the 18 years of the last Tory government, the trade union movement faced attacks on its legitimacy, relevance and role in society. Most of these attacks were based either on ignorance of the role that unions play, or outright hostility to the position of organised labour in the UK. So when we finally beat the Tories in 1997, we faced a mixture of hope and optimism as activists in the labour movement.

From 1997 unions had a clear role in both the British political establishment and the workplace. Amongst other things, they secured the adoption of the European Social Chapter, re-instatement of the GCHQ workers, legal rights to join trade unions, the adoption of a maximum working week and new legislation for agency & temporary workers. These incredible achievements were hard fought and necessary for the development of the kind of society that all in the labour movement both want and require.

The 13 years since 1997 should, however, have been about more than just securing changes to employment and health and safety laws in the UK. They should have also been a period of reflection for the trade union movement. Our leaders should have been working together to ensure that whilst the going was good under a Labour government, they prepared for the future should the situation change.

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GRASSROOTS: They won’t even give you the time of day now so what hope for the future?

14/09/2010, 11:45:02 AM

As elections go, the Labour leadership contest might go down as one of the dullest ever. If ‘none of the above’ had occupied a slot on the ballot papers, I am sure it would have romped home.

As the two front runners are both related, we have even been robbed of the fun of a bit of viciousness and proper negative campaigning.

All polls point to the Milibands being way ahead of the rest, which has castrated the battle and is making the scramble for second preferences the only lively aspect of the race.

David’s campaign are so desperate they are now relying on the ‘Tories fear him’ argument, and Ed seems to be saying anything to anyone to get a vote, which is never a good sign for a future leader. Let’s see which way he jumps when the inevitable strikes come along.

The entire list of candidates lacks the depth of the party. Call me an inverted snob, because I am, but the fact that all the leadership contenders are Oxbridge educated is a bloody tragedy for Labour.

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UNCUT: Blair was always the cynical grit in Labour’s oyster – which we still need, says Kevin Meagher

14/09/2010, 09:00:58 AM

“A cynic”, the American critic Ambrose Bierce noted, “is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.”

Tony Blair has been called a lot worse than a blackguard. He may well be a ‘faulty visionary’. He is, however, certainly a cynic; a 100% signed-up viewer of the motives of men as inherently base and self-interested.

As he briefly floated in and out of our parochial little orbit last week, our emeritus PM, now peacemaker-at-large and aspirant bookseller, had no shortage of cynical observations to dispense.

In his new memoir, A Journey, he breezily trashes signature Labour policies like the ban on fox-hunting and the freedom of information act. The former, in his view, unworkable, the latter too unpredictable. In a familiar riff on the obsolescence of ‘left’ and ‘right’ he even concedes that he does not consider himself on the left any more. He goes on to warn that voters do not want the state becoming a “major player” in the economy and that a drift leftwards will consign Labour to two terms in opposition. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Tuesday News Review

14/09/2010, 07:00:51 AM

'Visibly tense'

The Final Countdown

The leadership candidates now have one last televised hustings on Question Time this Thursday to put their case to become Labour leader to members. I hope they all take this final opportunity to proudly defend our record and put forward a more positive agenda that builds on our achievements not trashes them. – Prescott blog, The Guardian.

David Miliband was visibly tense, his brother Ed seemed a bit subdued, Ed Balls was witty and relaxed (yes, really!), Andy Burnham rather tetchy and Diane Abbott… Well, she was just Diane. – Sky Blog, Sky News.

“For many Labour people this hasn’t been an easy election to call. All of the candidates are of the centre left, they are all Labour. That isn’t the issue here. The big question is who are the Tories afraid of? Who is the best candidate to stand up against Cameron at the despatch box? Who has the best chance to beat Cameron in an election? For me the best choice is David Miliband and that is why I will be supporting him as next Labour leader.” – Lancaster Guardian.

Diane on women

“One way of illustrating this is to examine the Budget’s impact on women and families. The figures are frightening. The bulk of the impact will be felt by women. Some 72 per cent of the cuts will be met from women’s income, as opposed to 28 per cent from men.” – Diane Abbott, Morning Star.

Burnham on Blair

“Tony Blair was right to position Labour as pro-business, pro-job creation and pro-wealth creation,” [Burnham] says. But he says the party attached itself too much to big companies and sold its soul. “In wanting to appear pro-business we lost our sense of ourselves,” he says. – FT.

Labour’s visionary leader

Labour’s challenge is to find a visionary leader who adapts the party in the light of profound socioeconomic change, to ensure social justice while maintaining Britain’s competitive advantage. In the case of all five candidates, their previous experience of government or lack of it will count for little. – Anthony Seldon, The Guardian.

From the outside…

Plenty of Lib Dems are watching the current Labour leadership race, hoping that someone congenial like David Miliband carries the day, so that they can forge a nice, progressive Lib-Lab coalition at the next election. – The Economist.

Cuba

Cuba has announced radical plans to lay off huge numbers of state employees, to help revive the communist country’s struggling economy. The Cuban labour federation said more than a million workers would lose their jobs – half of them by March next year. – BBC News.

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INSIDE: Ed Balls’ change of heart

13/09/2010, 07:13:33 PM

Well that didn’t last long. Last month Ed Balls, that well-known shrinking violet, that hider of lights under bushels, wrote a piece in The Times entitled: “The traps to avoid if Labour is to win back votes”.

He wrote:

First, we risk falling into Mr. Cameron’s trap by focusing our fire too much on the Liberal Democrats. Yes, they have ditched their manifesto and sold their principles for power — and done so on the backs of the unemployed, public sector workers and the poorest in our communities.

But while we must win back voters lost to the Lib Dems, we must not let the Tories off the hook. Even if Lib Dem ministers are wheeled out by Downing Street to defend the most unpopular decisions, we must not forget this is fundamentally a Conservative Government. The reason why the fiasco over school building cuts and the rushed Academies Bill is so damaging for the Government is that a senior Tory is in the frame. So Labour must focus its fire on the Tories, not just on the Liberal cannon fodder shielding Mr Cameron.

That advice seems to have lasted a whopping 39 days. Ed “Cannon” Balls has fired off a furious broadside at Lib Dem education minister, Sarah Teather, who miraculously seems to have found an exemption for schools in her constituency from suffering the fate of other schools across the country with the scrapping of Building Schools for the Future programme. Funny that.

He said:

… it is brazen hypocrisy of Sarah Teather to expect her colleagues to face public anger about cuts to their local school building programmes, while using her position as Michael Gove’s deputy to try to protect herself in her own constituency. She seems happy to go along with the cancellation of over 700 schools in other constituencies, but only as long as hers are protected.

Ouch. Has he had a change of heart about bashing the Lib Dems since writing his Times piece? Was Michael Gove still out for the count on the deck? Or is Sarah Teather’s ‘brazen hypocrisy’ simply too good a target to miss? Even if at 4ft 10in she is a rather small target.

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GRASSROOTS: The nuts and bolts of what we need to do, by Peter Wheeler

13/09/2010, 12:56:09 PM

Over the next couple of weeks, Labour party members will get plenty of voting practice as we vote for a new leader, national executive committee members and members of the national policy forum. In London, members will also be voting for a candidate for mayor.

The key vote will obviously be for our new Leader but that leader is going to need a party behind him which is strong, dynamic and well organised. A party which encourages the efforts of members to build support in their communities and recognises the central role our members play in winning for our party.

It is the national executive which is responsible for ensuring that happens and that’s why the elections are important.

CLP reps are elected for two years and the next two years will be crucial for the party. The conservative coalition could last five years but it would be a big mistake to count on that. The Lib Dems are not exactly known for discipline under fire and it wouldn’t be impossible for Cameron to decide that they had served their purpose and ditch them for an early election if he thought he could win it. I am not saying it will happen, but it could, and we need to factor the possibility in. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNCUT: Bring back Peter Mandelson, says John Woodcock

13/09/2010, 09:00:07 AM

So, another Labour Party election process is getting underway as the finish line finally comes into view for the main race.

And now we know that the whole shadow cabinet will be elected, those of us in the Parliamentary party who aren’t putting ourselves forward are girding our inboxes ahead of the ballot in conference week.

Having myself been clogging up said inboxes during the select committee elections earlier this year, it ill behoves me to complain about people having the temerity to communicate their qualities to their colleagues ahead of this enormously important vote. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Monday News Review

13/09/2010, 07:52:09 AM

Neck and neck

Asked about the poll, David Miliband, the shadow foreign secretary, said on the BBC’s Politics Show: “It’s good that there is a wake-up call for this election. Because too many people have thought that they can get a leader who can unite the party from Dennis Skinner to Alistair Darling, get a leader who the Tories fear, get a leader who sets out a forward agenda but not have to vote for him. The truth is, if you want that leader, which I will be, then the people who are watching this programme need to go into their kitchens, pick up their ballot papers and vote.” – The Guardian

Last night Ed Miliband said he was increasingly confident. “My sense is it’s moving towards me in every section.” But he added: “I don’t think you can ever say this is locked up due to the nature of our voting system.” Voting by postal ballot is now going on with the winner announced later this month. The YouGov poll for the Sunday Times showed bookies’ favourite David Miliband enjoying a narrow lead on first preferences. – The Mirror

LABOUR MPS’ second preference votes are expected to decide the party’s leadership race, following an opinion poll which indicated that Ed Miliband has greater support than his brother David among trades union and party members. More than three million people – including the party’s 270 MPs and MEPs, 160,000 party members and more than two million people affiliated to Labour through membership of trade unions – are entitled to vote in the race, which will be decided at the end of the month. – Irish Times

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HOME: The week Uncut

12/09/2010, 03:37:45 PM

The PLP have spoken. The entire shadow cabinet will remain elected. Whoever is celebrating in Manchester on the 25 September will wake up to the reality of leadership and little control over who makes their front bench team.

Talk of who’ll get what job has begun. Senior MPs are canvassing support to make sure they get in to the shoot out for the top roles. With some of the big beasts ruling themselves out it’s all to play for. The big winners this week were the Whip’s office. If their hype is to be believed, there will still be a Mr Brown at the very heart of the party.

It was the week that Ed B played the drums, Ed M led by a nose, Andy sent out a mail shot, David won the support of an east ender and a deep spacer, and Diane, well, has anyone seen Diane?

In case you missed them, here are Uncut’s best read pieces of the last seven days:

The hacking-gate heroes: four men in search of a scandal

Ed Balls may be winning the economic argument – but he could still be wrong, argues Anthony Painter

Lets not get carried away with the Coulson affair says Dan Hodges

We lost the 2010 election during Blair’s watch, as well as Brown’s, says Michael Dugher

Rachel Reeves on the government’s chaotic and contradictory economic policy

Big business, bad bankers and hard times for Northern Ireland, by Peter Johnson

Jonathan Todd on the challenge for the new shadow chancellor

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