Kevin Meagher « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Meagher’

Cameron needs to put some stick about

11/09/2012, 07:00:57 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Is he a “man or mouse” asked Tory MP Tim Yeo of his own leader and Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago, questioning whether David Cameron has the cojones to press ahead with a third runway at Heathrow.

“Mouse” seems to be the answer judging by how our beleaguered PM is weakly responding to attacks from his own side at the moment – both real and surreal.

This weekend we were treated to the frankly bizarre tale of Zac Goldsmith, the maverick nimby Tory MP for leafy Richmond Park, openly plotting to inveigle Boris Johnson back into the House of Commons by threatening to resign his seat and trigger a by-election if David Cameron ends up supporting that third runway.

Then there’s the tale of Tory backbencher Bob Stewart who admits he was approached by a couple of fellow MPs this summer to act as a “stalking horse” challenger against the Prime Minister – a modern day Sir Anthony Meyer.

Perhaps most significantly is a report yesterday by Gary Gibbon, political editor of Channel Four News. He reckons there is a “grouping” of Tory MPs that regularly meets “in the office of a Tory former minister and privy councillor” with the aim of one of its number becoming a “challenger” to Cameron, perhaps after next May’s local elections.

What’s going wrong? The prime minister’s troops – and indeed his officer class – are lining up to attack him in a way that would have been utterly unthinkable under any previous Tory Leader. We have clearly come a long way since Lord Kilmuir intoned that “loyalty is the Conservative Party’s secret weapon”.

But loyal to what? There is no sense that Cameron has spawned an age of hegemony in the way Thatcher or Blair both did. By dabbling across the ideological divide – a support for gay marriage here, a bash the welfare scroungers there, David Cameron ends up trusted by no-one.

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Villiers should learn from her ancestor in approaching Northern Ireland job

05/09/2012, 04:03:17 PM

by Kevin Meagher

While the British political class pores over the cabinet reshuffle, Belfast underwent yet another night of rioting, the third in a row. Sixty police officers have been injured so far this week. Here politics is visceral. The ups and downs of Westminster village life are quite superfluous.

Territory remains at the heart of every problem in Northern Ireland. While the meta-issue of sovereignty remains an irreconcilable difference, it’s that recurrent micro-issue of parading which is fuelling this latest crisis.

The “right” of protestant loyal orders to march through predominantly Catholic communities is a long-running sore, partly relieved by the creation of the Parades Commission (one of our more idiosyncratic quangos) to adjudicate on whether the most contentions marches can go ahead.

The commission is now reviled by unionists. So much so, that a banned parade in north Belfast still went ahead last weekend, causing much of the subsequent trouble we have seen. Loyalists (less respectable unionists), without the leadership to exert influence in mainstream politics, assert their territorial claim the old fashioned way, by taking to the streets. This in turn creates a fertile climate for dissident republicans to burrow into Sinn Fein’s urban powerbase, as an emboldened Catholic population refuses to have sand kicked in its face any longer.

A little local difficulty? Hardly. There is a real risk that the rioting in north Belfast, will escalate into a wider conflict. Later this month loyalists will be back in force to the same spot, expecting to march past Catholics in commemoration of the 100^th anniversary of the Ulster Covenant (where half a million Ulstermen signalled their opposition to Home Rule). Dissident republicans will be looking to stop them, undermining Sinn Fein for good measure.

Enter Theresa Villiers as the new secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Hers is a unique in-tray. There’s not really any policy in the Northern Ireland Office, it’s all raw politics; navigating a pathway through brittle egos, vested interests and implacable enmities. It’s a role where you are always going to upset someone. Northern Ireland is, after all, a small place with too many politicians.

Unlike Tony Blair, David Cameron lets his secretary of state do the talking. All parties complain that they no longer get face time with the British prime minister, which makes Villiers’ appointment all the more important. The buck really does stop with her.

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The fact is, Labour leaders and their chancellors always fall out

29/08/2012, 01:19:27 PM

by Kevin Meagher

We all know the tale. An ambitious chancellor plotting with cabinet colleagues to unseat a sitting prime minister who was responsible for an historic election victory.

Blair and Brown? It could equally apply to Sir Stafford Cripps’ attempts to oust Clement Attlee in the late 1940s. Labour history has a habit of repeating itself like that.

Right up to the present day, it seems. The Independent on Sunday’s John Rentoul has stirred a hornet’s nest by reporting supposed tensions at the top of the party. “Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have been getting on particularly badly recently, although each has long found the other trying” he wrote the other day.

Clashing styles and disagreements over banking reform are cited by those following up the story.

A similar pattern (psychodrama?) has been played out down the decades. The relationship between Hugh Gaitskell and Harold Wilson, respectively leader and shadow chancellor in the late 50s, was such that Wilson even stood for the leadership against Gaitskell in 1960. That would be the equivalent of Ed Balls launching a bid to replace Ed Miliband right now. Let that then be the marker for talk of splits at the top today.

When he was eventually in the prime ministerial driving seat, Wilson fared little better. He didn’t get on with his chancellors, Callaghan, Jenkins and Healy. Mind you, as an expert economist himself, who served as Sir William Beveridge’s researcher when the great man was drawing up his famous report on the welfare state, it’s perhaps not surprising he thought he knew more than the occupants of Number 11. He did.

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The great cause as far as disabled people are concerned remains equality – not assisted suicide

23/08/2012, 01:40:09 PM

by Kevin Meagher

The suffering and death of Tony Nicklinson has been painful enough to watch as an outsider, let alone to experience what it must be like as a family member or friend of this once active and independent man.

His fight to reform the law to allow ‘assisted suicide’ – rejected in the high court last week – was heartfelt and passionate. It clearly gave focus to his bleak and tortured existence after suffering from “locked-in syndrome” for eight years following a massive stroke in his early 50s.

But his passion and sincerity were misplaced. The law should not be liberalised and, if anything, should be strengthened to prevent the slide towards legislation that creates circumstances in which the life of a sick or disabled person can be deliberately ended.

This sentiment will rankle with some who, moved by Nicklinson’s terrible plight, would have granted him the scope to end a life he plainly no longer wanted to live.

“I wouldn’t want to live if that happened to me” is a response most of us will have uttered at some point, usually as a response to the sight of someone with profound physical or mental disabilities.

The impulse is perhaps strongest among those who live successful, rewarding lives. Baby-boomers like Nicklinson personify a generation that takes personal autonomy and choice for granted, unhindered by others’ boundaries.

In this view, the thought of being humbled by disability or disease destroys the very thing that animates a well-spent life – individual freedom.

But let’s be clear what is at stake. Whether we call it euthanasia or assisted suicide we are talking about killing human beings. We are forced to cross a Rubicon. Unlike war, where death is a by-product of other strategic goals, in this instance death is the point.

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The obituaries are premature. Cameron’s not finished yet

16/08/2012, 02:44:12 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Received opinion, that fluttering butterfly, often dazzles and deceives.

Two bits of conventional wisdom are doing the rounds at the moment; both are hopelessly wrong. The first is a feeling that this government will fall before 2015. The second is a prediction of David Cameron’s early demise.

First the government. A poll in the Guardian the other day shows only 16 per cent of voters expect the coalition to last until May 2015 – just half the 33 per cent who had said the same thing to pollsters ICM two weeks before.

With coalition rows about House of Lords reform and parliamentary boundary changes dominating the airwaves before the summer recess it’s hardly surprising that onlookers question its longevity.

But soundings off from within the government are just that, exuberant rows. No terminal schism is in the offing. There is nowhere for either partner to go. This remains the immutable truth of British politics. Any early collapse of the government would precipitate a general election where both parties would suffer.

The Lib Dems flirt with electoral annihilation and struggle these days to sustain a clear lead over UKIP. They are in no shape to go to the country and need to play for time. What is more, most of the politically painful aspects of the coalition’s programme are now in the past. For Nick Clegg’s troops, things can only get better.

The second fallacy is that David Cameron might not see out his term of office, shaded out by the golden lustre of his Eton contemporary Boris Johnson or knifed by his right wing critics who see his hybrid government as insufficiently Conservative.

A YouGov poll from last weekend shows Labour’s lead at 12 per cent. But when party labels were replaced by party leaders’ names the gap shrunk to six per cent. As John Rentoul at the Independent notes, the most interesting thing about the poll “was how much of an asset David Cameron still is to his party”.

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Sorry Tessa, there’s no justification for spending more on elite sport

10/08/2012, 07:00:03 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The Olympics provides us with an interesting quandary. Is spending money on our top athletes really a good return for the country?

Tessa Jowell thinks it is. Yesterday she echoed an appeal by Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy who wants to see continued investment in elite sports.

“Chris Hoy is absolutely right” she said. “It has been the investment in elite training which has created stability for high performance training for those athletes. We have got to make sure that money continues.”

On its website UK Sport says “more than £100 million per annum is being invested directly into the UK’s high performance system’ through a combination of ‘Exchequer and National Lottery funds”.

A further £58 million is spent on “providers of the key services” that underpin elite sports while the “Team 2012” scheme tries to lever-in private funding.

It would be churlish not to concede that Tessa and Sir Chris are right in their analysis: investment in sporting infrastructure and elite programmes has clearly helped Britain to a medal tally few thought likely a fortnight ago.

But apart from the athletes themselves and a small supply chain of trainers and managers, who else benefits from this taxpayer-funded largesse? What’s the return for the county?

I let that theoretical question hang there for a moment because I honestly can’t think what it is. We may all celebrate the achievements of British Olympians and readily pay tribute to their industry and example; but outside the Olympic bubble we continue to face the biggest retrenchment in public spending in a century and an economy in the deep freeze.

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Chilcot remains the test of Labour’s new unity

03/08/2012, 07:00:40 AM

by Kevin Meagher

The ripples in Labour’s millpond have stilled. An eerie, becalmed peace is left. Nothing succeeds like success and Ed Miliband has reached the summer recess with reason to feel quiet satisfaction. His frontbench team has become more effective, the government benches less so. His party is united, the coalition fractious and sclerotic.

The prime minister will have his work cut out ahead of the party conference season, repairing relations with his backbenchers, keeping the Lib Dems sweet and removing Boris Johnson’s tanks from his lawn as a seemingly smooth-running Olympics emboldens the London Mayor in his bid to one day replace Cameron.

Ed Miliband, in contrast, can kick back and plough through his summer reading list uninterrupted. Labour’s opinion poll lead remains, if not spectacular, then the next best thing: consistent. Miliband has developed themes around responsibility and fairness which continue to resonate. He has also been lucky in his opponents too. His ‘predators’ speech at last year’s Labour conference, much maligned at the time, is vindicated with every new detail that emerges from London’s square mile, with allegations of HSBC laundering drugs money the latest seamy instalment.

But Miliband has started to make his own luck too. Tales of chaotic organisation and accusations of gauche appearances in the media and at prime minister’s questions are no longer made. The Labour machine, replete with a new top team of senior directors, is beginning to purr once again. Candidates for November’s police commissioner elections – the next big electoral test – are already in place while the Conservatives struggle to fill the roles.

Meanwhile, prolonged recession is hardening the public mood against ministers’ hoary claim that they are “dealing with the mess Labour left”. Their excuses have rapidly declining purchase as the economy flatlines. The writing is on the wall when even the IMF starts inching away from George Osborne’s deficit-masochism.

Voters’ acceptance of belt-tightening was only ever going to be short-term. Each tale of corporate and banking excess tests the patience of a frustrated public which contrasts its own sacrifices with our mangy corporate elite’s lack of restraint.

The result? All the big problems in British politics are shovelled against David Cameron’s door this summer. A one-time (self-styled) ‘heir to Blair’ he lacks the older man’s panache and luck. This is painfully evident with Blair now returning to British public life in a series of carefully choreographed interviews and appearances.

His re-entry into Labour’s orbit has been especially tentative. His presence at the party’s gala sports dinner recently and the announcement that he will take on a role advising Ed Miliband on the Olympics’ legacy generated a frisson of controversy on Labour’s left, but it was largely synthetic. And predictable. Those who dislike Tony Blair will always now dislike him, whatever he says or does.

His new advisory role is free-form and, in reality, little more than an organising concept for either man. For Ed Miliband the value of a returning Blair is to show that the Labour tribe is reuniting, cynically, perhaps, given the growing sense that David Cameron seems set on emulating Ted Heath as a one-term Tory prime minister; but coming together nonetheless. Talent from across the party now supplicates itself to a leader many did not want but who all now realise is going to lead Labour into the 2015 general election, come what may.

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Promoting gesture candidates should be none of Labour’s business

17/07/2012, 02:19:52 PM

by Kevin Meagher

It seems gesture politics is alive and well, although the latest outbreak has popped up in an unexpected place.

We learn today that the Labour party wants more candidates for elected office to come from a business background. It wants to extend the future candidates programme and get sitting MPs to mentor potential applicants from business. They won’t even need to be party members, just sympathetic to Labour’s ‘values’.

Of course the days when Labour candidates overwhelmingly came from trade unions, local government, universities or public sector management are disappearing. The last decade has shown that people who support Labour now work everywhere.

We should embrace that plurality. It is a success for Labour’s ambition to be a true ‘one nation’ party. And ‘business’ covers everything from executives of blue chip companies through to one-man band start-ups.

All oppositions have to reach out to build goodwill and support and it is right to do so. And Labour’s business reception in the City tonight is a good and useful thing to do.

But the announcement about candidates feels like a piece of crude brand positioning – an attempt to counter the charge that Labour is somehow anti-business. If that’s the real motive then there are better ways of going about responding to it.

If we need a concrete message for tonight’s business reception, how about promising that missives from HM Revenue and Customs will be written in plain English? That would be greeted with hosannas from every small business in the land. Or perhaps reverse the closure of HMRC front counter offices? Or how about a dedicated account manager for each small business?

Meet, talk and discuss with business by all means, but offering special access into the party’s selection processes is as abasing as it is pointless. Abasing because it sends the signal ‘we don’t – cannot – understand business without you’ and pointless because the take-up will be so low.

Do we really think there will be a rush from the executive corridors of Britain to spend evenings in residents’ association meetings or to take pay cuts to serve as MPs?

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Westminster’s Tony Montana needs to learn how to chillax

13/07/2012, 12:17:37 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Those prime ministers whom the gods wish to destroy they first ridicule.

The current incumbent, who once promised to “let sunshine win the day” has a face like thunder these days.

That’s because David Cameron’s once-luxuriant Teflon coating has now rubbed off leaving him mired in a series of presentational sticky patches. He’s getting to know what ridicule is all about.

From his cosy relationship with the Murdoch empire through to leaving his daughter at the pub, the gaffes mount; while his performances at prime minister’s questions are becoming an erratic series of desperate lunges and hacking motions. The rapier has become a bludgeon.

His latest scrape, berating Tory backbencher Jesse Norman who led Tuesday’s House of Lords rebellion against the government, is now Westminster folklore.

What gives the story added comedy value is the tale of four government whips banishing Norman from the parliamentary precinct. Was it for his own good? Did they think Dave would pop a cap in him during a corridor “walk by” if he hung around?

Red-faced, finger-jabbing, insult-waving petulance is not behaviour that adds to the prime ministerial lustre.

As he put it himself when goading his predecessor-but-one, “he was the future once”. It is a telling remark. Slowly, but assuredly, David Cameron is turning into yesterday’s man.

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Cameron’s women problems

27/06/2012, 04:32:39 PM

Treasury minister Chloe Smith last night joined an exclusive club.

No it’s not the Bilderberg Group. Not much chance of an invitation there after her disastrous appearances on Channel Four News and later on Newsnight defending the government’s u-turn on fuel duty.

No she’s just been inducted into the ex-Next Big Things club. It’s a select intake of those of whom great things were expected. But bad news travel fast in modern politics and Twitter was abuzz last night and this morning at the general awfulness of her career-limiting performances.

Of course an individual minister taking a caning in an interview is neither here nor there, but Chloe Smith’s case exposes a deeper problem for David Cameron.

In fact he has two big problems: both with women.

The first is the growing sense that the PM is a bit of a chauvinist. It’s revealed in small things like his silly put-down to Angela Eagle in the Commons (“calm down dear”) and probably not helped by leaving his daughter in the pub the other week.

These are relatively trivial offences, compared to the differential impact coalition cuts are having on women’s lives, wisely picked up early-on by Labour’s frontbench and now used to bring home the very real effects of the government’s programme to women voters bearing the brunt of unemployment, tax hikes and service cuts.

His second problem is closer to home. A government reshuffle is due soon. Unlike most other PM’s Cameron is said not to believe in regular changes, allowing ministers to get to know their briefs properly. A commendable enough sentiment, but the government is in need of fresh faces and to prune the less effective ministers.

In a bid to tackle his problem in communicating with women voters, the logical impulse is to promote more female political talent. But it’s not until you look down a list of government ministers that you realise just how few women there are.

The attendant problem is that the women ministers he currently has are among the least effective performers in the government.

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