Kevin Meagher « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Meagher’

Osborne also needs a political Plan B

09/06/2011, 12:00:48 PM

by Kevin Meagher

“When the facts change, I change my mind” remarked the great John Maynard Keynes. Easy for economists. As George Bernard Shaw noted, if you laid them all end to end they still could not reach a conclusion.

Chancellors, on the other hand, cannot readily change their minds. They have to come to a conclusion; and then they have to stick to it. Their personal judgement is indelibly stamped on the government’s macroeconomic policy. They are locked into their strategies and directions of travel. Any deviation risks a fatal leaching of trust and credibility.

Of course, nothing changes with economic policy until it all changes. Which begs the question: does George Osborne have a Plan B in case the economy runs out of puff?

If he does, he’s not telling. Hardly surprising really; chancellors cannot be “a little bit pregnant”. It’s either one plan or the other.

Either way, Osborne is no slouch. He knows the economic outlook is precarious. And whatever else he is, the chancellor is a politician first and foremost. Economics – the dismal science, according to Carlyle – is a second order priority for him. He knows that the ice beneath his feet is thinning and he does not intend to sink.

If growth falters and requires a revision in policy, Osborne cannot afford for it to be on his watch. Although it would kill him to do so, he should heed Gordon Brown’s warning: there are two sorts of chancellor: those who fail and those who get out in time.

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Let’s leave the lapel badges in the 1980s and focus on what matters

01/06/2011, 09:46:17 AM

by Kevin Meagher

Labour’s history is pockmarked with prolonged periods of opposition following ejection from office; none more so than during those 18 wasted years in the 80s and 90s.

The explanation for that generation in the wilderness is familiar enough: the party’s pitch to the country was tone deaf. On the economy, law and order, defence and a hundred other issues Labour had nothing to say that chimed with what people wanted to hear.

The party was more bothered with pleasing its own fissiparous cliques; the wannabe Dave Sparts, the bedsit revolutionaries, the local government crackpots who refused to set a rate, the headbangers of Militant.

The “loony left” were responsible for torpedoing Labour’s reputation and sinking the party’s chances with their puerile antics in Labour councils up and down the country and through their reckless control of the party’s policy-making machinery.

Fringe causes were put before mainstream concerns, with many in the party seriously accepting the flawed logic that stapling together a collection of special interest groups would create a counterweight to Thatcher’s electoral coalition of aspirational voters.

No prizes for guessing how successful that idea was.

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Brown haters remember: what goes around comes around

25/05/2011, 07:00:17 AM

by Kevin Meagher

So George Osborne is to officially nominate French finance minister, Chstistine Lagarde, to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as managing director of the international monetary fund.

In the process, Gordon Brown’s potential candidacy for the role has been banjoed before it even (officially) began. His pitch well and truly queered.

The black spot was pushed across the table to him last month when Cameron said he “might not be the most appropriate person” for a role “work[ing] out whether other countries around the world have debt and deficit problems”.

A bit rich, perhaps, coming from the former special adviser to Norman Lamont on Black Wednesday, but there you go.

Now it is suggested that David Cameron intends to champion Peter Mandelson for the soon to be vacated role as director general of the world trade organisation; suitable political cover, he no doubt thinks, for not backing Brown’s IMF bid.

Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of tribal disdain for your political opponents. In fact, I would go further; it is impossible to hold ministerial office without doing some things badly and having at least part of your record that deserves to have rocks thrown at it.

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Beware Labour’s rainbow warriors

11/05/2011, 07:15:41 AM

by Kevin Meagher

SO let’s get this straight. New Old Labour, in the shape of so-called Blue Labour, wants the party to return to its rosy red roots while new New Labour, in the shape of the soon-to-be Purple Bookers, wants the party to mix red and blue (but that’s old blue, not new Old Labour’s new Blue Labour blue).

Meanwhile, some of the old New Labourites remain green with envy at last year’s leadership result, hoping that Ed Miliband ends up in the brown stuff.

At the same time, old Old Labour sees things in black and white and simply wants to put clear red water between the party and the true blue Tories and their yellow Lib Dem sidekicks.

Have I got that right?

Labour’s efforts at renewal are starting to resemble a Jackson Pollack painting, with tins of political ideas hurled across the canvass.

But beware. The abiding lesson of Labour’s fraught history is that internal groupings have always been little more than artillery to support the militias fighting the party’s periodic civil wars (an oxymoron, to be sure, given the incivility of Labour’s periodic bloodletting). Their very existence is evidence of competing groupthink within the party, usually wrapped around titanic egos grappling for control.

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Ma’am, show we poor lefties you care

28/04/2011, 09:48:50 AM

by Kevin Meagher

WELL that’s gratitude for you.

The news that both our former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been missed off the guest-list for Wills and Kate’s nuptials, while Conservatives John Major and Margaret Thatcher are included, takes the biscuit.

It seems Tone and Gordo (unlike Thatcher and Major) are not Knights of the Garter and as such get bumped from the official invite list. If it was a full state occasion then they would get the nod. But it isn’t (apparently), so they don’t.

After that little favour we did the Royals 14 years ago, you would think they could show a bit more appreciation.

If you recall, it was a bit more than lending them a lawnmower of feeding the cat while they went on holiday. Our Tony saved the Monarchy from the car crash of their reaction to the car crash that killed Diana.

The royals’ dismal, off-key response to the tragic death of Princess Di in 1997 whipped up more public vituperation against the Monarchy than anything we have seen since the ghastly Edward VIII ran off with Wallis Simpson back in the days of black and white newsreel.

But how quickly they forget. Now they are on the up with a popular royal wedding (involving the only consistently popular member of the clan) all we get is a right royal “stuff off”. And not just to one Labour ex-Prime Minister, but two.

The first may well have been carelessness, a second is a definite snub. Ok, spouses would need to go as well so that takes up four seats. And Westminster Abbey can be a bit pokey, but when the place is going to be full of dodgy geezers (“bums” in the Daily Mail’s diplomaticspeak) then squeezing in a couple of former prime ministers is not a big ask; especially as Conservative former PMs are invited.

Blimey, even the Mail’s Stephen Glover is incensed at the effrontery of it. Quite right. 1,900 people are invited including, as Glover puts it: “some pretty unsavoury foreign leaders, as well as some rackety private individuals”. It would be equally appalling if the boot had been on the other foot and Maggie and Major had been left off.

Please. If they can find room for ‘film-maker’ Guy Ritchie then I hate to suggest it, but the bar is set pretty low. (more…)

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Three kinds of leader in the age of the insurgent

25/04/2011, 12:00:58 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Like bad luck, musketeers and Neopolitan ice cream, our political leaders come in threes. Consolidators, new brooms and insurgents; a trio of broad headings that sums up the different approaches to party leadership -Tory, Labour and Liberal alike.

First, we have consolidators. They are elected to lead divided parties, offering a familiar, reassuring presence, often at a moment of peril and self-doubt. They provide a small “c” conservative choice for parties turning in from the world. Michael Foot, Iain Duncan-Smith and Ming Campbell fall into this category. Their election is often a mark of intellectual defensiveness for their party, sometimes at the fag end of a period in office. Douglas-Home, Callaghan, and Gordon Brown also fit this bill.

Consolidators are kept on a short leash by their party; sometimes only too willingly. Their guiding belief is “hold what we have”, which really means that the party believes it is right, regardless of what the electorate has decided. Although never leader, this is Tony Benn quipping that Labour’s disastrous 1983 election result was “eight and a half million votes for socialism”. (more…)

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The show goes on: bring back Prezza

20/04/2011, 03:30:23 PM

by Kevin Meagher

John Prescott was supposed to have gone to seed with the passing of the Blair era. His future lay in regaling well-heeled passengers on cruise liners about his forty years in Parliament. But the old sea dog keeps coming back into port. So much so that his retirement from the frontline is barely discernable.

Labour’s Emeritus Deputy Leader has been busy. He led the Go Fourth campaign to get Labour ready for last year’s general election. He has become an unlikely star of Twitter, supplying a constant stream of characteristically pithy opinions. In fact, he has transcended politics altogether and entered popular culture.

He had a cameo role playing himself in the BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey. Then he popped up presenting a documentary about class with wife Pauline. Now he’s sending himself up in that advert for a price comparison website (which he says helps fund his office in the House of Lords).

And when he’s not busy leading the charge against AV, he’s rattling cages about the phone-hacking scandal; jousting on Channel Four’s zeitgeist-y 10 O’clock Show the other week with former News of the World hack Paul McMullen.

Some retirement. But there’s not much effort involved. Prescott’s secret is that the words coming out of his mouth are the same as the thoughts in his head. That nanosecond between brain messages forming into words is detectable to the electorate. They know that politicians apply a filter before saying anything. They sense they are not being told the unvarnished truth. That’s why all MPs are bunched together in the public’s mind as conniving charlatans. (more…)

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Cameron’s holiday from political common sense

08/04/2011, 03:50:36 PM

by Kevin Meagher

So Dave and Sam have bid “Adios!” to miserable old Blighty and jetted off to Granada for a sneaky break to celebrate the missus’s 40^th.

In our belt-tightening times, Downing Street spinners are keen to point out the first couple flew by easyjet and that they are staying in a “mid-market” hotel.

Of course, if you’re a couple of minted minor blue-bloods, staying in a three-star family hotel is more “downmarket” than “mid market”. Still, I can’t quite see them draped across a couple of sun loungers like the middle-aged swingers in Benidorm.

Or perhaps that’s precisely how Dave expects to reconnect with beleaguered Brits. Taking a budget holiday that may still be just about affordable to many. Not the swinging bit.

But when he’s finished there’s the return to think about. Will he come back like Jim Callaghan, tanned and refreshed from an economic summit in Guadeloupe in 1978 and utter something to rival: “Crisis, what crisis?”

Of course Sunny Jim never actually used that particular formulation. It was paraphrased tabloid-speak. But it was the symbolism that mattered. As it does now. In a week that saw “Black Wednesday”, when the full putrid blast of the coalition cuts hit the public for the first time, there’s a question mark over Cameron’s political common sense.

What does he think people will make of his little jaunt? “Good on the multimillionaire politician who’s just trebled my kid’s tuition fees. I’m sure all that doctrinaire right-wingery takes it out of you. Put your feet up son”. (more…)

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What are Labour councils for?

31/03/2011, 01:00:14 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Socialism, Herbert Morrison once helpfully summarised, is what the Labour party does. A partial assessment to be sure, but is there a more reliable compass for what Labour politicians in office should find themselves doing?

In a few short weeks, local authorities up and down the country will go red as voters give their verdict on 12 months of dismal Tory-Lib Dem cutbacks and recession. But what, when faced with reducing expenditure by a quarter, will Labour councils offer by way of a response?

Labour today launches its campaign for those elections with a blizzard of statistics and weblinks playing out the familiar annual ritual of showing that Labour councils are better value than Tory ones. The Tories will, naturally enough, produce rival spreadsheets next week showing the reverse. Plus ca change.

To accompany the usual political riffs, the party has also published a document entitled: Labour: Your voice in tough times. It suggests that: “…every Labour councillor you elect will be your community’s first line of defence against the damage being done by a Conservative-led government and its Liberal Democrat allies”. (more…)

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The worldwide Irish AGM – St Paddy’s day

17/03/2011, 02:30:43 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I have a picture above my desk; a copy of a Punch cartoon from the 1840s. It depicts a monkey-like figure, in ragged clothes, a crumpled hat on its head, long arms thrashing around in the air. The creature smokes a small pipe, a menacing grimace for a face. Underneath, the caption reads: “The Irish hod-carrier. Lower than a Negro”.

It may not be pleasant. And, indeed, it may be a work of its time; but as the son of a bricklayer – and erstwhile hod-carrier myself – that picture is a constant reminder of who I am and where I come from. The struggles and insults that Irish people have endured for generations; depicted, as we were, as sub-human creatures of uncertain temperament.

It helps explain the indifference of a British ruling class to the Irish famine of the late 1840s, where a million people starved to death and a million more were forced to flee the country. But similar views were fashionable on the left too. Check out Friedrich Engels’ The Conditions of the Working Class in England. This otherwise estimable tome sees poor Irish immigrants to Britain blamed for the “filth and drunkenness they have brought with them”. Engels adds: “The lack of cleanliness…is the Irishman’s second nature”.

March 17 – St. Patrick’s day – is another reminder of who I am, though a happier one.

It may have become popularised in recent years by Guinness’s tawdry marketing – those ridiculous drinking hats a throwback to depictions of the Irish in those wretched Victorian political cartoons – but St. Patrick’s day still means something more significant to the Irish wherever we are scattered. (more…)

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