“And all the sons I might have had mean nothing, for I have a son.” So wrote James Baldwin.
And so it is with the leadership. While Diane and the boys spend the summer in a four month penalty shootout, Harriet has quietly slipped on the captain’s armband.
If the coalition collapses in August – which is very unlikely, but not impossible – it will be Harriet who leads Labour’s reponse. Read the rest of this entry »
Monday June 7th, 1pm – GMB Hustings, Southport
Monday June 7th, 7pm – Parliamentary Labour Party Hustings, London
Wednesday, June 9th, TBC – New Statesman Hustings, London
Friday, June 11th, 6pm – Labour Party Youth Hustings, London
Saturday, June 12th, 2.25pm – Compass Hustings, London
Sunday, June 13th, 12pm – Glasgow Hustings, Glasgow
Monday June 14th, 7.30pm – Fabian Hustings London
Tuesday, June 15th, 10.30pm – BBC Newsnight, London
Wednesday, June 16th, TBC – BAME Labour Hustings, London
Saturday, June 19th, 12pm – BAME Hustings, Leicester
Saturday, June 26th, 11am – Newcastle Hustings
Tuesday, June 29th, TBC – Oxford Hustings
Wednesday, June 30th, TBC – Lambeth Hustings, London
Thursday, July 1st, TBC – New MPs’ Hustings, London
Friday July 2nd, 11am – Unison Hustings, Leeds
Saturday, July 3rd, TBC – Unite Hustings, Leeds
Sunday, July 4th, TBC – Cardiff Hustings
Monday, July 5th, 7.30pm – Christian Socialist Movement Hustings, London
Wednesday, July 7th, TBC – Local Government Association Hustings, Bournemouth
Thursday, July 8th, TBC – Sky News Hustings, North East
Saturday, July 10th, 11am – Southampton Hustings, Southampton
Saturday, July 10th, TBC – Unite Hustings, London
Monday, July 12th – South East Hustings, Greenwich Theatre, London
Wednesday, July 14th, 2pm – CWU Hustings, London
Thursday July 15th – TBC – Local Government Association Hustings, London
Friday, July 16th, 7pm – London Hustings
Saturday, July 17th, TBC – Unite Virtual Hustings
Saturday, July 17th, 3.30pm – Unions 21 Hustings, South West
Sunday, July 18th, TBC – Birmingham Hustings
Monday, July 19th, TBC – BAME Labour Hustings, Wembley, London
Monday, July 19th, TBC – Socialist Societies Hustings, London
Tuesday, July 20th, 3pm – Usdaw Hustings, Manchester
Saturday July 21st, TBC – Tribune/Howard League Hustings, London
Sunday, July 25th, TBC – Women’s Hustings, Leeds
Tuesday, June 29th, 7.30pm – Oxford Hustings, Oxford Town Hall
Saturday, July 31st, 11am – Co-Op Hustings, Manchester
Monday, August 2nd, TBC – Radio 5 Live Hustings, South East
Saturday 5th September, 10am – Sky News Hustings, Norwich
Monday 13th September, TBC – TUC Hustings, Manchester
Thursday, September 16th, 10.30pm – BBC Question Time, London
Hat tip to John Prescott (http://twitter.com/johnprescott)
Just four months before his ascent to the cabinet, David Willetts published a book that showed how his baby boomer generation “stole their children’s future – and how they can give it back.”
So there is great piquancy in his clearest indication yet that students could be forced to pay higher tuition fees – a move which would condemn subsequent generations to a grim financial future.
In The Pinch, Willetts explains that the baby boomers have attained a position of power and wealth at the expense of their children. Yet his comment that the current cost of students’ degree courses are a “burden on the taxpayer that had to be tackled” shows that he himself holds no remorse.
He has not pre-empted the recommendations of Lord Browne’s independent review into whether fees should rise from £3,225 a year. But he did say that students should consider fees “more as an obligation to pay higher income tax” than a debt.
Ed Miliband leans left
“Ed Miliband has delivered the most personal speech of the Labour leadership election, coming clean about his early life and political inspirations. The speech also marks out clear territory on the left of the party where he will base his campaign, with demands for a limit on the gap between rich and poor and rules on pay differentials in the private sector.” – Politics.co.uk
“FAT cat bosses in the private sector should have their salaries pegged back to tackle inequalities in British society, Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has argued.
A Government plan to ban public sector bosses from getting paid more than 20 times the salary of their lowest paid employee should be extended to the private sector, he said in an interview with the Yorkshire Post.” – The Yorkshire Post
“The government must do more to reduce the pay gap between rich and poor, Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband has said. He called for the coalition’s public sector High Pay Commission to widen its scope to look at the private sector, saying wage differences were “high”.” – The BBC
“I came away from my meeting with Ed feeling inspired and excited. He has the personality, passion and drive that is needed to make an excellent Labour leader and Prime Minister. It is common for politicians to talk about “listening to the voters”, but I’m not sure we always hear what they are trying to tell us. I am confident that Ed is someone who doesn’t just listen, but really hears voters concerns. And acts on those concerns.” – Rachel Reeves MP, Yorkshire Post
So the 80s revival doesn’t only stretch to big hair and cheesy music. Unilateralism is back and it’s just as toxic as that other political revival, mass unemployment (coming to a community near you shortly.)
It is a real shame that the entry of Diane Abbott into the Labour leadership race has pulled the centre of gravity of the debate to the left. (Indeed it’s a real shame that Abbott has entered the race. Just what we didn’t need – another Oxbridge graduate, though this time one with a track record of voting with the Tories.) Read the rest of this entry »
We’re a little concerned that Andy Burnham doesn’t seem to have got the hang of the whole entourage thing. Last night he was hanging round the House of Commons on his own. This afternoon he was waiting for a bus outside Victoria Embankment gardens – on his own.
Come on Andy. Get a grip. As even the most middling hip hop gangsta could have told you, you are nobody if not surrounded by people whose presence in your presence serves no purpose.
Once the special-branch-protected holder of a great office of state, David “Fiddy” Miliband is the modern master of this art. From the black clad men with submachine guns outside his house in Primrose Hill to the PPSes and campaign flunkeys who shepherd him from terrace to tea room introducing him to people he should know, he is never alone.
His brother, Ed “Snoop” Miliband, more unassuming till recently, has learned fast. His appearance at last night’s New Statesman hustings brought squeals from gaggles of ecstatic young Fabianistas. But he can now not be reached through the armour of his entourage.
The Snoop Miliband posse, as you would expect, is lighter-hearted and more charming than Fiddy Miliband’s, which is cool and serious, but underlain with a slight air of menace. Snoop’s boyz will crack a joke and make you feel at ease. Before they kill you.
In truth, there is some way to go before either will be ready for the mean streatz of Compton or Queens. The pimp-stick-wielding bad boyz in Snoop “Ed” Miliband’s krew include London barrister, Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, the Oxford don, Dr Stewart Wood and “Big Sista” Polly Billington, formerly of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Fiddy “David” Miliband’s top homeboyz are people like former ITV corporate affairs director Jim “Smackup” Godfrey and former FCO special adviser Madlin “Mizzlsizzl” Sadler.
It is a long way from Watts to Westminster. And the sad truth is that the Miliband boyz are not so much Straight Outta Compton as relatively recently graduated from Corpus Christi. Not so much Tupac and Biggie as, well, David and Edward.
Let’s hope Andy’s not still waiting for the bus.
Once, it would have been overlooked. But today the new deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats is announced with suitable fanfare on page four of the Times: he gets a single paragraph in the “news in brief” column.
His entire purpose in life is summed up with a single, memorable, sentence: “Simon Hughes was elected as the Liberal Democrat deputy leader last night and given the role of reassuring the party’s unsettled elements.”
It reminds us of a newspaper cartoon published in the early autumn a few years ago. Two Taliban leaders are crouched on the side of a mountain watching a massive battle taking place in the valley below. One says to the other, “I wonder what they’re debating today at the Liberal Democrat conference.”
We’re braced for cuts in Nottingham. As a city, we have rebuffed Conservative advances year after year since David Cameron’s election as leader. But with Cameron now ensconced in Number 10, we’re starting to feel the full force.
The Future Jobs Fund, which has helped 960 unemployed people back in to work in Nottingham alone, was the first to fall. Now we fear for the future of our tram expansion, an expansion set to put thousands into work, millions into the local economy and Nottingham into the picture as the UK’s leading “science city”.
I take what the coalition government is doing very personally. I’d like to voice my opposition to everything they do as loudly as possible at all times. But this is a self-indulgence we cannot afford. Read the rest of this entry »
In Monty Python’s Life of Brian there is a famous scene in which Graham Chapman, pursued by a mob convinced it has found the new Messiah, turns on his tormentors and beseeches them: “You don’t need a Messiah. You don’t need anyone. You’ve got to work it out for yourselves”.
“Yes”, they reply in unison, “we’ve got to work it out for ourselves…tell us more!”
The desperation with which the Labour party is begging senior MPs to furnish it with “a proper leadership debate” has become Pythonesque. “Bestow a debate on us”, we cry. “Empower us.” Read the rest of this entry »
And then there were five
Diane Abbott made it through nominations
“FIVE candidates will fight for the Labour leadership after backers of the favourite, David Miliband, lent their support to less-fancied rivals. Mr Miliband, his brother Ed and former Schools Secretary Ed Balls had already secured the 33 nominations needed before yesterday afternoon’s deadline. But the former Foreign Secretary allowed some of his team to nominate left-winger Diane Abbott and former Health Secretary Andy Burnham, in a bid to ensure a more diverse line-up of candidates.” – Wales Online
“Former ministers Jack Straw, Denis MacShane and Phil Woolas were among the other surprise names to deliver Abbott the 33 MP nominations she needed. Miliband and the others made their move after another leftwinger, John McDonnell, withdrew from the race.” – The Guardian
“The Labour Party now has its final five leadership candidates – and it’s a broader field than initially expected. The left, women and BME voters will now be represented in the race – but most of the diversity is thanks to one candidate only – and she still went to Cambridge.” – Labour List
“The left-wing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington joins David and Ed Miliband, former children’s secretary Ed Balls, and former health secretary Andy Burnham on the list […]But Ms Abbott’s presence on the ballot paper was only thanks to a late flurry of support after fellow left-winger John McDonnell quit the race and called on his backers to get behind her.” – The Scotsman
