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Avoid labels unless you can define them
In Labour, we have an obsession with trademarks or brand names. We invented ‘New Labour’, and then had trouble defining the moment of its precise dissolution partly because we couldn’t define what it was. Tony Blair’s ‘fans’ continue to cite that he never lost a General Election, but do not seem to concede that Margaret Thatcher was so deeply unpopular that he could have achieved very much more. Certainly, we need now to examine what exactly Labour is doing. It has coined the term ‘the progressive left’, but it threatens to be a repackaging of an ill-defined concept.
The attractive notion for Labour, including socialists, is that there remains a body of voters who vote against the right, including Labour and Liberal Democrat voters. It is then easy to call them ‘left’ and ‘progressive’. As a pendulum of national feeling, the latest by-election was useless, although many congratulations to Dan Jarvis for winning the Barnsley by-election with approximately 15,000 votes (10X the LibDem vote, at least). But it is too early to write off the ‘progressive left’.
The reason for this in my opinion is clear. Labour has made massive mistakes in civil liberties, although it did enact the Human Rights Act to enshrine in law the European Convention of Human Rights. The problems with human rights have come from the legislature misapplying the Convention, not the Convention fundamentally itself, in my view.
Also, it can’t be ignored that the Gini coefficient of inequality shot up under Tony Blair, following Margaret Thatcher, not ameliorated by Gordon Brown whose moves on corporation tax was very inequality-friendly. Labour and the Liberal Democrats, as personalities, i.e. Ed and Nick, do not hold the solution to forming the ‘progressive left’. The party members do. We need to take account of those people on the left who don’t feel that such massive and fast cuts are unavoidable. We need to articulate the fact that we do not make an assumption of marketisation. In other words, if we are to maintain the NHS as measurable-outcome driven, we need a proper formulation of the measurable outcomes in wellbeing which must be developed for assessment of healthcare interventions in dementia and other care of the elderly. If not, we cannot simply assume marketisation.
If Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow (the Liberal Democrat health and social care minister) can, with the Liberal Democrat party, define that it agrees and will vote with marketisation for the next five years, for example, then good for them. Otherwise, they should acknowledge that there is a ‘progressive left’ – but we should avoid using the title unless we can define it with precision. The reality is that many innocent LibDem councillor candidates may take the hit for the unpopularity of their national policies, but in that case such candidates should really take a long hard look at where their party is heading. And for that matter – so should we, in Labour. For example, we are only just kept afloat by Union money – the overriding consensus is that we don’t listen to the Union members enough. If we become elected, we should not misuse the privilege of power, as we have done so so often in the past.
Cameron's Big Society is nearly dead.
Laura Kuenssberg tried to trip Ed Miliband with her pathetic little trick of saying that Labour had no plans about deficit reduction. Her message is simply a disgusting lie. Labour said it would not have cut the deficit as fast or as deep. Ed’s answer below couldn’t possibly be clearer. And on Laura Kuenssberg’s head be it when growth grinds to a total halt, unemployment shoots up and we still have no growth strategy (and the people in collusion with her such as George Osborne and David Cameron). The reason the public aren’t impressed because Nat Wei has left the Big Society as its Big Architect – maybe this fits in better with his work schedules with McKinsey’s, if he’s still working there, assuming of course any companies he works for do not have ongoing contracts with the Big Society. And it is a sham – as legal professionals may not be able to volunteer for community legal centres because of an annual cut to legal aid of the order of £2bn a year, in schools because of the illegal scrapping of BSF, or in SureStart centres because they’re being scrapped. A disaster – a contemptible one at that.
If we are serious about left progressive politics, we should appear to mean it.
It is easy to blame the demise of ‘left, progressive politics’ on Nick Clegg. This vehement dislike for Nick Clegg is inadvertently encouraged by the spin and media factories of the Liberal Democrats to argue that a majority of people voted for a Coalition – this is not true, as no-one can vote a priori for a hung parliament (as such). I would argue that people wished to vote anti-Cameron instead, in favour of a left progressive agenda. In fact, the last thing they wanted was a Tory Lite in the form of Nick Clegg – but that’s what they’ve got.
This is what worries me about the future. I am still keen on the growth of left progressive politics. Labour conceded a long time its mistakes on the erosion of civil liberties (e.g. periods of detention in terrorism, ID cards), but needs to be aggressive in demonstrating that it had over a period of centuries a commitment to civil liberties, in fact. The Tories simultaneously argue that there has been an erosion of civil liberties and that the Human Rights Act is too ‘liberal’. The Liberal Democrats strongly indorsed the Human Rights Act (1998) before they got into bed with the Tories for political opportunism; the Tories violently opposed the Act, preferring an unenforceable aspirational Bill of Rights instead.
The future includes aspiring Councillors like Lisa Harding. Here is her website:
http://lisaharding.mycouncillor.org.uk/
There is no doubt about Lisa’s commitment to her Party (the Liberal Democrats), nor indeed to her local constituency.
Indeed, a friend of mine on Facebook wrote as follows,
Really, really interesting that was. Thank you. If all councillors showed this much enthusiasm for the history of the place they are representing we’d all be a darn sight better off. Well done Lisa Harding.
There’ll be a cold day in hell before the Lib Dems ever get a vote from me. But with people like this on their team, they should be very proud. I shalll mail this to Mr Clegg and voice my approval after work 
I will not go as far as to say the Labour Party as a whole should ‘work with’ the Liberal Democrats. After all, we know the rather unpleasant diatribe that Tim Farron and Nick Clegg have produced against Labour’s spending during the world recession. However, I would really like an appreciation that a progressive left agenda can be worked out on human rights. Take for example the disaster that was waiting to happen between the Tories and Lib Dems on control orders. And also – for any chronic patient in the NHS or any parent sending their kid to school in the state sector – such demonisation and vilification of the State won’t be tolerated any longer. The ‘Big Society’ has failed, and there is a reason for that.
Eric Pickles predicts victory at Oldham East. Deluded or daft?
Eric Pickles suggesting that Labour “has the jitters” means if that if he is this out-of-touch with election campaigns (his supposed area of expertise), running the country can’t be going too well.
EricPickles
Out campaigning with Kashif Ali at #OES by-election. Word on the ground is that Labour has the jitters http://bit.ly/fKTon7
12 Jan Favorite Undo Retweet Reply
John Denham's letter to Sir Gus O'Donnell
Dear Sir Gus,
I am writing to you following the decision of the Prime Minister that Business Secretary Vince Cable will play no further part in the decision over News Corp’s proposed takeover of BSkyB, and the transfer of this responsibility to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
There are two issues that still need to be addressed, and which I am asking you to investigate. Firstly, whether there has been a breach of the Ministerial Code by Vince Cable, and secondly, whether Jeremy Hunt is a fit and proper person to rule on the proposed News Corp takeover of BSkyB given previous comments he has made.
I am sure you will agree that this episode is of fundamental importance to the integrity of the conduct of government, which you have an important role in protecting.
The Ministerial Code
Vince Cable’s reported comments that “I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win” raise serious questions about his objectivity and his openness during the previous stages of the decision-making process on the proposed News Corp – BSkyB takeover.
As you know, the Seven Principles of Public Life set out in the Ministerial Code published in May 2010 require that Ministers carry out their duties with objectivity and openness.
Objectivity
In carrying out public business, including making public appointments, awarding contracts, or recommending individuals for rewards and benefits, holders of public office should make choices on merit.
Vince Cable’s comments that “I have declared war on Mr Murdoch” call into question whether the decisions he has made as Business Secretary in relation to Rupert Murdoch’s business interests were made objectively and on merit.
Openness
Holders of public office should be as open as possible about all the decisions and actions that they take. They should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the wider public interest clearly demands.
By revealing in private that he sees himself as being at “war with Mr Murdoch” and that “His whole empire is now under attack”, Vince Cable has suggested that the public reasons he gave for his Ministerial decisions on this issue may not have been his true reasons.
Mr Cable’s comments also call into question his ability to rule on competition issues involving other businesses, which remains part of his brief, or to take forward the review of competition policy. Businesses will find it difficult to have confidence in a Secretary of State who says one thing about competition issues in public and another in private.
The next steps
I now turn to the decision to ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to take responsibility for this issue.
It has been brought to my attention that Jeremy Hunt’s own personal website describes him as follows:
“like all good Conservatives Hunt is a cheerleader for Rupert Murdoch’s contribution to the health of British television”
It quotes him as saying:
“Rather than worry about Rupert Murdoch owning another TV channel, what we should recognise is that he has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person”
Jeremy Hunt has also been quoted as saying that the proposed merger does not amount to “a substantive change”.
“It does seem to me that News Corp do control Sky already, so it isn’t clear to me that in terms of media plurality there is a substantive change, but I don’t want to second guess what regulators might decide.”
Jeremy Hunt, Financial Times, 15 June 2010
Given these prejudicial statements, there must be serious questions about the decision to ask Mr Hunt to carry out this quasi-judicial role. Are you satisfied that he can rule with impartiality on this matter?
In view of the public interest in this matter, I am releasing this letter to the media.
Yours sincerely,
John Denham
The WikiLeaks rap
This was tweeted tonight by Wikileaks: http://wikileaks.ch/Video.html?jhgjj
I am of course not condoning any illegal activity surrounding Wikileaks (currently alleged not proven), simply by posting this which is publicly available on the WikiLeaks website.
Dear Tim Farron
First of all, I wish you sincerest best wishes for becoming the President of the Liberal Democrats, commencing January 2011. I understand from colleagues that you have been a popular choice, and I feel that you have been very good at explaining the difficult issues concerning the country at present.
I am genuinely concerned however that your political interviews recently have demonstrated a lot of political point-scoring surrounding Labour’s past period of government under Gordon Brown. To put this in context, I am a Labour Party activist, a member of the Holborn and St Pancras Constituency Labour Party. To give you an example, Labour is more than aware of its substantial mistakes in civil liberties, which is why it is taking great pains to get this policy right this time. You will be aware that even in your own party there is much unfinished business from David Laws’ “Orange Book”, and the path to be followed by the Coalition must be to see through your policy review on the Human Rights Act. It is not a secret that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats do not ‘see eye-to-eye’ on this; if anything, as you know, the position of Labour was much closer to the Liberal Democrats, notwithstanding the terrible past on civil liberties by Labour.
So the offer of Ed Miliband to the Liberal Democrats on policy is not a plea for help. It remains to be seen whether Nick Clegg’s pledge to revisit Forgemasters will be sufficient to see your party have a succesful outcome in Oldham East, for example. It is a genuine acknowledgement that we must all move the country forward. For example, Labour does wish to distance itself from the Liberal Democrats making more people unemployed and slowing growth, which will be your legacy not ours. Whilst I personally believe that Nick Clegg and the Coalition need each other until 2015, and indeed any criticism might make them stronger, there will need to be a rigorous policy review within your Party, especially if the country returns a ‘NO to AV’ verdict. Such a verdict is possible, because it is unfortunate that people are indeed seeing this vote as a plebicite on Nick Clegg, whose unpopularity is well known.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Shibley Rahman
A brilliant reply by Lorenzo1 to George Osborne's article: "My pledge to public sector workers"
The subtitle of this article by George Osborne was “The shadow chancellor explains why the Conservatives are the true defenders of public servants”. The actual article and comments are located on this website (click here for the link). All of the comments were extremely damning.
They’re all worth-a-read by Osborne himself, especially that of Lorenzo who writes at 6 April 2010 10:58PM,
George Osborne – perhaps the least qualified man to run the economy. A man and a party who have called it wrong and changed their minds so many times it really would be impossible to trust a word they say.
But George, let’s start being a bit grown up and stop peddling that silly little tabloid headline of “Tax on Jobs” – I am sure Andy Coulson (a man of questionable values but no doubt good at conjuring up snappy tabloid headlines from his days at the nasty News of the World) loves you saying it but it really is meaningless. Bit like the scaremongering you lot and the business cronies did over minumum wage. Didn’t cost jobs did it George? And NI? Won’t cost jobs either, prices may go up a tiny tiny amount or god forbid shareholders don’t get all their free money…but come on George, you know it’s not really the detail you get wrong but the whole macro economics thing.
Must be a bit embarrassing to always be corrected by better educated, more knowledgeable and frankly more believable and likable people than yourself. Particularly when you want people to at least think you know what you’re doing. But you don’t. Not a clue. Time to be honest George maybe give politics and economics business a rest I hear Selfridges may be taking on staff…
Shibley's AV poll
Whether you voted for Ed Miliband, David Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham or Diane Abbott, or none of them, please complete this survey. It takes about 10 minutes to complete. There are 22 questions which should be answered YES or NO. You must be a Labour voter to take part. Please do not take part if you are a non-Labour voter.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
For interest, the questions are reproduced here.
This survey is simply an exploration of views on the AV – the Alternative Vote.
Please only complete this survey if you are a Labour voter (although the issues are not party-political, officially).
This survey consists of 22 very brief YES or NO questions.
Thank you for agreeing to do this survey.
The survey will close at 11.59 pm on 10th December 2010.
What is AV?
Put simply, under our current system – sometimes referred to as First-Past-the-Post – the candidate that gets the most votes in an individual constituency is elected as the MP. The party with more MPs than all the other parties put together then forms the government.
Under AV – the Alternative Vote – the voters rank candidates in order of preference and anyone getting more than 50% in the first round is elected. If that doesn’t happen, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second choices are allocated to the remaining candidates. If no candidate at the second stage has a majority of votes, the next lowest candidate is eliminated and their votes are redistributed. This process keeps on occurring until a winner emerges.
QUESTIONS 1-9. Please answer the following general questions.
1. At the beginning of this survey, do you feel that the UK should we have a system of AV?
2. Do you think that an AV referendum is a top political priority, given other recent political events?
3. Would the official Labour party line be relevant to how you vote?
4. Should Labour have specific policy on how to vote in the referendum?
5. Do you think that coalitions break promises?
6. Do you think that Britain should have a system of coalitions?
7. Would AV encourage a hung parliament?
8. Would it worry you if the AV vote encouraged a coalition?
9. Would you consider voting no to AV if Nick Clegg remained as Leader of the Liberal Democrats.
QUESTIONS 10-15 The following reasons have been put forward as reasons to vote for AV. For each reason, do you fundamentally agree with the statement as given?
10. The Alternative Vote is a fairer and more democratic way of electing our parliament
11. All MPs would have the support of a majority of their voters.
12. It penalises extremist parties.
13. It eliminates the need for tactical voting.
14. It encourages candidates to chase second- and third-preferences.
15. It retains the same constituencies, meaning no need to redraw boundaries, and no overt erosion of the constituency-MP link.
QUESTIONS 16-20 And do these issues matter?
16. Does it matter the MPs would have the majority of their voters?
17. Does it matter that it penalizes extremist parties?
18. Does it matter if it eliminates the need for tactical voting?
19. Does it matter that the constituencies are the same?
20. Does it matter whether it encourages candidates to chase second- and third-preferences?
GENERAL QUESTIONS
21. And finally, at the end of survey, do you feel that the UK should we have a system of AV?
22. Are you likely to be influenced by any campaigning on this selective issue?
Thank you for completing this survey.
The UK of Clegg and Cameron (Tory) as reported on the BBC is a shameful disgrace
At the age of 36, as one of the top Queen’s Scholars of England and having obtained the second highest mark in 1996 in Natural Sciences finals at the University of Cambridge, the world’s top university, I find that the United Kingdom created by Nick Clegg and David Cameron a monstrous disgrace. The BBC’s coverage last night was comprehensive, but after alleged smears against Band Aid and FIFA, the BBC are also a disgrace, With an unshamedly better pedigree than all members of the English cabinet, and indeed mediocre gossip (not very bright) Tory or Libertarian bloggers, I must say that this picture of UK plc is an utter disgrace. The only good thing is about those bloggers is that they’re not the BBC, who have maintained a strongly pro-Tory bias and very anti-Miliband bias from BBC’s Nick Robinson and BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The fact – though it is not the fault of the Police – that these pictures were beamed all over the world is really shameful to us as a country, but this is not surprising at all with Clegg and Cameron having pitted disabled people against non-disabled people, students against Vice-Chancellors wishing to make profit in a market-lead higher education economy. I certainly do not condone violence, but these pictures beamed originally by the BBC were revealing. I thank the BBC for them, but the power of the internet is such that people are laughing at us. I am genuinely disgusted, and the sooner both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives get out the better. They could have easily got the money from big corporations and had a much deeper and longer debate. Suffer the consequences. I am hugely patriotic, but I am intensely ashamed of Cameron and Clegg who do not speak for me.
What a contrast to Gordon Brown winning the International Statesman of the Year award 2009, which the BBC would rather vomit at than report. Here is a true intellectual talking about the global crisis. I fear genuinely now for this country.
Dr Shibley Rahman Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st Class; second highest mark), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB, FRSA, LLB(Hons)
This is symbol of what has been projected all over the world regarding UK plc.
