Posts Tagged ‘Wayne David’

Losing an election is a deeply personal experience

14/06/2016, 10:01:29 PM

by Leighton Andrews

I had many conversations with other Labour candidates in the run-up to May, and while most of us enjoy campaigning and talking to voters on the doorstep, I think we all felt that this had been a long campaign and we were keen for it to be over.

It had been a long Assembly term – the first time, of course, that the Assembly session had lasted five years rather than four. I have already said that I felt that I had been in a four-year campaign, and that is mentally wearing: it was a treadmill with only one goal in sight.

Jim Murphy wrote about the experience of losing your seat in the New Statesman in January. He said:

“One of the personal downsides of defeat as an MP is immediacy. You make a speech in the middle of the night from a packed stage in a largely empty hall. Each word is offered from behind a fixed smile as you pretend to be delighted that someone else will be leaving with the job that you arrived with.”

Wayne David, who lost the Rhondda Assembly seat in 1999, faced a much worse situation, with the verification on the night but the count delayed until next day. He knew from the verification that he was out, went home and worked out what he was going to say.

He told Matthew Engel in the Guardian subsequently ‘The body reacts in a physical way. I completely lost my appetite. I didn’t eat for four days and lost ten pounds in weight. I suppose it’s a bit like bereavement.’

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Despite a “concession” the lobbying bill is still a shambles

10/09/2013, 12:45:14 PM

by Wayne David

This afternoon, the house of commons is considering in committee the second part of the so-called lobbying bill. This is the part which puts restraints on the campaigning ability of charities and third sector organisations to campaign in the run-up to general elections.

The government is seeking to get this bill on the statute book as quickly as possible and with as little debate as they can get away with. Their aim is get this restrictive legislative agreed in time for the 2015 General Election.

Even though the bill was only published just before the summer recess, charities and campaigning organisations – from the WI and Oxfam, to the British Legion and Friends of the Earth – responded quickly to the threat which they faced. MPs were inundated with emails from concerned charities and even the impartial Electoral Commission came out strongly and criticised the poorly drafted legislation.

At second reading the government had a ‘bloody nose’ with many Conservatives as well as Labour MPs attacking the Bill. The leader of the house, Andrew Lansley, has indicated that the government will make a ‘concession’ to try to placate the groundswell of opposition. He has said that the government will not now seek to redefine what already exists in legislation with regard to what can be “reasonably” regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success.

This move is welcome, but it only loosens the stranglehold that charities are facing. The concession does not go nearly far enough because the bill is fundamentally flawed and requires a whole host of changes before it can even begin to be considered as acceptable. In short, it is still a shambles. The Electoral Commission has made the very good point that the government should open up an immediate dialogue with all those affected by the bill “before putting amendments before Parliament”.

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Getting it right on House of Lords reform

09/07/2012, 07:00:43 AM

by Wayne David

Tomorrow the House of Commons will vote on whether to give the government’s House of Lords Reform Bill a second reading. Labour will vote in favour because we believe in principle that the House of Lords should be democratically elected. This was a commitment we expressed in our general election manifesto and it is a view we still hold firmly.

But this is not to suggest that this is a “good” bill. Far from it. The government’s proposals are poorly thought-out and need to be radically improved.

One of the biggest weaknesses in the bill is its failure to set out how the House of Commons and the reformed chamber will relate to each other.

At present, the primacy of the House of Commons rests upon the Parliament Act, a set of “conventions” and the fact that the House of Commons, because it is elected, has a legitimacy which is lacked by the House of Lords. The government has said that the Parliament Act will remain in force but that it believes that the existing conventions will simply continue and post-reform the relationship will be unproblematic.

This view flies in the face of virtually all informed opinion and it defies common sense: once you have an elected second chamber without clear rules, or explicit conventions, it is inevitable that the members of that chamber will feel that they have a democratic authority to challenge the House of Commons.

The result will be that the two chambers could be locked in endless conflict, resulting in government grinding to a halt.

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Electoral registration is too important to be a lifestyle choice

19/10/2011, 02:24:51 PM

by Wayne David

It has been described as the biggest change in our voting system since the introduction of the universal suffrage in 1928. So far, however, it has failed to appear on hardly anyone’s political radar. This needs to change because if the government are able to get away with what they are proposing, it will have a hugely negative impact on British politics, with millions of people being unable to vote.

In the last parliament, the Labour government secured cross-party agreement for the introduction of individual electoral registration (IER). With the support of the independent electoral commission, the Labour government brought forward reasonable measures to modernise electoral registration and reduce the possibility of electoral fraud. The Tory-led government has taken these proposals, but then infused them with its own distinctive venom. The result is a set of proposals which profoundly undermine the nature of the country’s democratic process.

Under the government’s white paper and draft bill, which are to be discussed in the Commons today during a debate called for by Labour, it is proposed that the move towards IER should happen quickly. The result will be electoral confusion as the introduction of IER will coincide with both the general election and the next parliamentary constituencies boundary review. Right from the start, there will be a question mark over the new boundaries, as no sooner will the boundaries have been established, then they will be reviewed on the basis of a new and potentially very different electoral register. (more…)

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Saturday News Review

25/09/2010, 08:16:36 AM

Down to the wire

Speculation is increasing that Ed Miliband, who began the race as a distant second favourite, could snatch victory fromEd (left) and David Miliband. While most MPs say it is too close to call, David has lost the runaway lead he enjoyed four months ago. his older brother, David. Voting closed on Wednesday in the complicated electoral college race, where MPs and MEPs have one-third of the vote, with rank-and-file party members and up to three million trades unionists who pay a political fee to Labour sharing the rest. While the result is still unclear, it is evident that the older Miliband has lost much, if not all, of the early lead he enjoyed in the race. The race has been notoriously difficult to poll, but British bookmakers Betfair declared the younger Miliband as favourite for the first time yesterday morning, at 11-10 against 10-11 for his sibling, the shadow foreign secretary. – The Irish Times

All I can report is the state of speculation just hours before the big moment, which is that Ed has won. Apparently, David’s lead among the parliamentary third of Labour’s electoral college was not big enough to compensate for his relative weakness among the other two sections, which are ordinary party members and affiliated trades-union members. Of course, all this could be absolute guff – Westminster’s rumour mill is generally more active than accurate – so don’t place any large wagers based on these whispers. We will know one way or the other very soon. – The Economist

Harriet: Don’t Walk away

Critics over the decades have derided the MP for Peckham as Harriet Harperson because of her feminist views. But the mum-of-three has won a reputation as one of Labour’s toughest fighters. Now she has a carefully thought-out message to whichever of the two Milibands emerges defeated from the brother-versus-brother battle to succeed her: Don’t walk away. Ms Harman, who is steelier and tougher than she comes across on TV or at the Commons despatch box, says the new party leader will be handed an “unprecedented” opportunity to get back into government. – The Mirror

What next?

LABOUR needs to give its membership a greater say over policy and recognise the growing popularity of community-based politics, Shadow Wales Office Minister Wayne David said last night. The Caerphilly MP said the party was mature enough to move away from the days when the leadership imposed policy – and discipline – from the top. During the Blair and Brown era Labour was often criticised for failing to consult the party on major policy changes and for using the party’s National Executive Committee to keep a tight grip on candidate selection. – The Western Mail

The new leader will have to be brave, including on policy. Bravery will involve talking again about genuinely devolving. Not a gesture, which actually results in more of the decision-making happening in Whitehall and Westminster; but, for instance, the establishment of regional and local banks. The idea (and Iain Duncan Smith is at least willing to think about this) of devolving the welfare budget – within sensible bounds of consistency – across the UK, so that money can be applied to preventing and redeeming, and not merely ameliorating, poverty. – David Blunkett, The Yorkshire Post

LABOUR risks its reputation for economic management if it is not “straightforward” on the need to make savings in the public sector, one of David Miliband’s key allies warns today ahead of today’s leadership election. Jim Murphy, the former Scottish secretary who has run the elder Miliband’s campaign, acknowledged that today’s decision, due at 4pm, was on a knife-edge, with bookmakers now placing younger brother Ed as the odds-on favourite.But Mr Murphy said that whoever wins today, the party needed to stop “talking to itself” and also to stop “shouting at the public”. Instead, he said Labour needed to accept that voters had decided it had taken a wrong turn. – The Scotsman

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Shadow cabinet: vote for Wayne

16/09/2010, 12:27:17 PM

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