Labour Uncut

UNBOUND: Monday News Review

12/07/2010, 07:54:02 AM

Gove faces grilling

Michael Gove faces the Commons for education questions today

Ed Balls piled fresh pressure on Michael Gove, the beleaguered education secretary, by calling on him on Sunday night to answer questions over the withdrawal of funding from the schools construction programme. Mr Balls, shadow education secretary, wrote to Mr Gove demanding to know what advice he had from officials over the need to consult on last week’s decision and whether it had left the government open to legal claims. – The FT

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes, today distanced his party from education secretary Michael Gove over the contentious decision to cancel 700 school rebuilding projects. Hughes said he was not entirely comfortable with the handling of the announcement, adding it would be “a nonsense” to build the new free schools proposed by Gove using cash that could have improved existing buildings. Gove has agreed to meet Lib Dem councillors concerned by his announcement, and the issue is likely to be raised at a Liberal Democrat meeting of its MPs organised by Nick Clegg, the party’s leader and the coalition deputy prime minister. – The Guardian

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INSIDE: And Balls just keeps pummelling Gove

11/07/2010, 06:46:15 PM

Uncut is completely neutral in the leadership election. We have occasionally been accused of being closet Balls backers. This is wrong. We are not.

But we have consistently argued for a leadership campaign in which the candidates actually demonstrate some leadership, rather than just pontificate about it.

This means taking the fight to the Tories. Getting on with the war of attrition that is opposition.

Perhaps the reason some have badged us Ballsites is that he has been overwhelmingly the best of the candidates at this.

The letter below is not just a blistering, forensic attack on Michael Gove’s handling of the building schools for the future farrago, it is yet another such attack. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Sunday News Review

11/07/2010, 08:39:01 AM

Miliband: amassing an army of supporters

The Leadership

“The Labour Party can only win power again if we win the battle locally. We need an army of activists, trained and ready to take on the coalition. The Con-Dem cuts don’t just threaten the recovery, they threaten the livelihood of every community”. – David Miliband, The Mirror.

“It would be all too easy for Labour leadership candidates to please their natural supporters by accusing the Lib Dems of being collaborators – a word John Prescott used to describe his former colleague John Hutton, advising the Government on pensions – as if we were now living under Nazi occupation. But that risks driving the Lib Dems further into the arms of the Tories.” – The Independent.

“[David] Miliband’s ideas can only become reality if he is elected leader and if Labour wins the next Election. Clegg, in his statement on political and constitutional reform last week, was addressing the Commons as Deputy Prime Minister. One only has to recall the difference between the aura of power of Tony Blair in 1997, and the lack of authority of successive Tory leaders of the Opposition to see how authority has passed from Labour to the Coalition.” – The Daily Mail.

“David Miliband has surpassed himself with the sorriest excuse for a “nothing to do with me, guv” speech we have heard since Gordon Brown’s departure. The shadow foreign secretary, who always strained every sinew to make it look like he supported Brown when he was in office, is now trying to oil out of his support for the doomed Labour government to help his leadership bid.” – The Telegraph.

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HOME: The week Uncut

10/07/2010, 06:21:52 PM

Another week in the race is over. As the contest rolled into July, five people said the same things they said last week, to some slightly different people, and one man got ready to say lots of things about two people, which a great many more people will read.

It was the week that Burnham didn’t quit, Balls didn’t smear and Michael Gove broke the hearts of millions of children, enraged thousands of teachers, disappointed hundreds of parents, and made one man very angry indeed.

In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s better-read pieces of the last week:

“It was like looking at bambi. So I shot him.” Watson on the moment he lost it with Gove

Ed Miliband’s taste in music causes an argument in the Uncut office*

Bounder doesn’t think Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is big or clever

James Ruddick thinks the Tories are storing up glory by trashing our past

Nick Palmer argues Ken Clarke isn’t wrong, he just doesn’t mean it

John Woodcock on Ed Miliband and why he is wrong about flexible labour markets

*By office we mean Starbucks

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INSIDE: Pete Willsman in the Plumstead Badlands IV

10/07/2010, 01:12:21 PM

Latest update on comrade Pete Willsman’s last ditch attempts to get himself validly nominated for this year’s election to Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC).

At the Erith & Thamesmead executive committee (EC) last night, Willsman’s Plumstead branch (he still appears on the Erith and Thamesmead membership list, though he has now transferred to Oxford East) moved a resolution for the next general committee (GC) that Erith and Thamesmead’s NEC nominations be reopened. It was defeated.

It was said that Willsman had been branch secretary for 15 years. His recent move to Oxford was not cited. Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Saturday News Review

10/07/2010, 08:32:06 AM

And so it begins

The Peter Mandelson memoirs are released this week

At times, Lord Mandelson said, Mr Brown feared that he had “killed” all three men, but, wound up by his lieutenants, was unable to stop the feud, meaning that Mr Blair was forced to devote too much energy dealing with him. The former business secretary said some of the blame for the hostilities lay with the people around Mr Brown who, he said, treated Mr Blair with “unbridled contempt”. – The Telegraph

In an interview published by Saturday’s Times newspaper, the peer said that relations between Mr Blair and Mr Brown were “awful” and “exceptionally bad” between 1994 and 2007, not least because the latter “couldn’t get over” the fact that he was not prime minister. Lord Mandelson also said he wished the pair had “behaved to me and treated me differently” – a reference to his two resignations during the Blair government. – The FT

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UNCUT: Tom Watson describes the moment that he lost it with Gove

09/07/2010, 11:30:45 AM

In the Commons chamber on Wednesday, Labour MP Tom Watson denounced Tory education secretary Michael Gove in terms so furious that he was obliged to withdraw them. It is already becoming a celebrated moment. One in which real anger at this government’s arrogance seemed, for the first time, to be articulated on our behalf.

If you haven’t seen it, you should first watch the video here. Then read Tom’s account, below, of how he got into that state.

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GRASSROOTS: A family story of where Labour went wrong, by Helen Godwin Teige

09/07/2010, 09:36:35 AM

In 1997 my entire family voted for Tony Blair. We were genuinely thrilled as we celebrated the landslide. I was 21 and optimistic after a lifetime of Conservative government.

Fast forward to 2010 and only half of us still gave Labour our vote, with my mother making it very clear that this was their last chance. Interestingly, of the Labour voters, two of us are now members. We both got involved in the election campaign and felt passionately that Labour was the right party, on policy across the board and particularly to get us out of the recession.

But what about the rest of my family; what went wrong? Read the rest of this entry »

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UNBOUND: Friday News Review

09/07/2010, 08:27:14 AM

Show me the money

David Miliband has raised more in donations than any of the other candidates

Since launching his bid to replace Gordon Brown in May, accounts issued by the Electoral Commission show that the shadow foreign secretary has raised nearly £200,000 from major donors alone. He has also drawn in 94 smaller gifts of less than £1,500, which do not have to be declared. In contrast, Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary and his nearest rival, has raked in less than £30,000, and Mr Miliband’s younger brother Ed, the shadow energy secretary, has only £15,000. – The Telegraph

Black Country MP John Spellar has offered a donation of £13,000 to Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls’s campaign – but he doesn’t expect ever to pay it. Mr Spellar is listed as a donor in a new register published by the Electoral Commission which shows how much the candidates have received. Shadow Foreign Secretary David Miliband is in the lead in the cash stakes, with £185,265 in financial support from major backers. – The Birmingham Post

David Miliband brandished his political fundraising abilities today as it emerged he had attracted far more in donations to his Labour leadership bid than any of his rivals. The shadow foreign secretary has so far racked up £185,265 in financial support from major backers, according to the Electoral Commission. That is apart from 94 other donations of less than £1,500 which do not need to be declared and two cash gifts from the Usdaw and Community unions which will be listed in future months. – The Guardian

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INSIDE: Willsman nomination shenanigans III

08/07/2010, 01:45:17 PM

It seems that Uncut was right: Pete Willsman is fulfilling a long standing ambition to move from south east London to east Oxford.

Sources in both constituency Labour parties (CLPs) have confirmed that the veteran left-winger yesterday transferred his party membership from Erith and Thamesmead – the south east London suburb in which he has lived for years – to Oxford East.

Cynics are suggesting that this move has been prompted by Erith and Thamesmead having declined to nominate Willsman for re-election to Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC). Without such nomination from his home CLP, he is ineligible to stand.

On this occasion, cynics are right. After failing to be nominated at their meeting two Fridays ago, Willsman tried to persuade members and officers in Erith and Thamesmead to reconsider their decision. Having failed, he decided to “move” to Oxford East, the (real) home CLP of national Labour party chair and fellow grassrooter, Ann Black. Read the rest of this entry »

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