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Should politics 'russell re-brand' itself?
Take two people called Russell and Jeremy in a hôtel room in London, and ask one of them to put the world to rights.
Fringe meetings for Labour Party conferences for as long as I can remember have run panel discussions about how we can engage more people in the political process. For virtually of these fringe meetings which I have attended, almost invariably is the fact that political parties introduce policies for which people didn’t vote almost every parliament.
These issues remain dormant on the mainstream media for months on end, and yet continue to enrage people in the social media. Many issues under the umbrella of social justice continue to cause anger and resentment: these include the closure of English law centres, or the NHS reforms. The media continues to be skewed against such issues. For example, the flagship programme on BBC1 every Thursday, “Question Time”, regularly features a candidate from UKIP, a party which as yet has failed to elect a single MP. They have never featured a candidate from the National Health Action Party, and yet the running of the NHS continues to be a totemic issue.
Blaming the media would be like a bad tap-dancer wishing to blame the floor. And yet protest votes are not easily dismissed. Recently, in France, the right-wing National Front has taken the lead in an opinion poll before elections for the European Parliament, in a development that has truly shocked the French political establishment. The survey, which gave Marine Le Pen’s party 24 per cent of the vote, marked the first time that the party founded in 1972 by her father has led before a national election. The centre-right Union for a Popular Movement, which led in the previous equivalent poll, stood at 22 per cent and the Socialists at 19 per cent.
Part of David Cameron’s problem is that the initial friendship towards his Conservative Party was lukewarm to begin with. The intervening years (2010-2013) have seen a Party which just appears ‘out of touch’, which makes Sir Alec Douglas-Home look trendier than a hip-hop artist. But likewise, Russell Brand is not a ubiquitously popular man himself. Whilst some people feel he stands up for their views, irrespective of his reported wealth, others find him narcissistic and nauseating.
Russell Brand is however successful at being famous, and this is a peculiar British trait. He often begins his set by talking about his love for fame: ‘My personality doesn’t work without fame. Without fame, this haircut is just mental illness.’ He has found his way of getting his name in the news, and in the tabloids. His comedy is not even that popular, but at least he has the ear of the British media. The National Health Action Party would have loved ten minutes with Jeremy Paxman, although it’s quite unlikely a ten-minute video with Clive Peedell would become an instantaneous viral hit.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the UK Labour Party almost seems to have re-discovered its mojo. The triangulation of the past appealed to those in Labour who felt they could win simply by appealing to floating Tory voters. But it is a strategy that ran out of steam in 2010, leaving abandoned Blairite commentators to become embittered and self-consumed in a passion of self-destruction, while spitting bullets at Ed Miliband. Labour’s traditional supporters did not come out and vote, while floating voters saw through the cynical vote-grabbing exercises. Labour did not appear particularly ‘socialist’ any more.
Russell Brand didn’t mention the deficit once. Russell Brand did not have to appeal to his fans to say that there will be no return to the days of lavish spending. He did not have to say that he had learnt lessons from the past.
And yet deep-down voters do have excuses, if not reasons, not to vote Labour. There are some people who believe that Ed Miliband will need to identify Labour’s mistakes – the blind eye to a City running wild; an over-reliance on both high finance and a house-price bubble; or being ‘weak on welfare’.
And yet we are in a society which is absurdly superficial. Should Russell Brand have to bite the bullet for riding the crest of this banality? This strange Universe is not just occupied by reality TB stars. Many famous people are famous for being famous. Nicole Kidman is famous for being famous. Arguably, Nicole Kidman famous for divorcing Tom Cruise. At the same time when Russell Brand was selling what he sells best, that is Russell Brand, Cher was on BBC1 on ‘The Graham Norton Show’. And nobody sane can claim that Cher is the world’s best singer.
This does not necessarily mean that Labour should ignore the polls, although Labour will invariably say it ignores the polls when they are bad. From level-pegging to an 11-point lead in 10 days, Labour has plainly had a good conference, in terms of public opinion polling. After a difficult summer, YouGov’s poll put Labour at its highest level, 42%, since June. 30% now said Ed Miliband is doing well as party leader – his best rating since May. When people were asked who would make the best prime minister, Miliband (25%) was now within three points of David Cameron (28%). That was the narrowest gap since Miliband became party leader three years ago.
Ed Miliband is the one who keeps on saying that he wants ‘to tell you a story’. After the recent coverage of Ralph Miliband, paradoxically people appear to have warmed to the narrator as much as the story. In Russell Brand’s case, there is a curious mixture of some people liking the narrator as well as the story.
And yet for all of Russell Brand’s themes, such as global warming, inequality, or dominance of corporatism, for Brand it is simply entertainment. For many viewers, it is simply entertainment. Life is far from entertaining from some who have deeply suffering in this Government. Social injustices, such as in the personal independence payment or Bedroom Tax, have literally taken their casualties, and the myth of ‘the record number in employment’ has been blown out-of-the-water.
Russell Brand can be thanked for his form of escapism. But at the end of the day it is superficial crap, and not the solution to more than thirty years of failed triangulation in UK politics.
Is it right for Labour "not to do God", nor even social justice?
Perhaps religion and politics don’t mix, but there is a certainly an appetite for moral and religious matters amongst some of the wider electorate at large. For ages, right wing critics have emphasised that the right wing “does” religion too, and the left does not have a monopoly on moral or religious issues. A fewer number on the left likewise feel that the right does not have a monopoly on business or enterprise, as they pursue, despite all the odds, the movement of “responsible capitalism”. In amidst all the turmoil of the implementation of the recommendations of the Leveson report, or furore about whether there was an ‘excess number of deaths’ at Mid Staffs (and if so, what to do about it), the Catholic Church elected a new Pope. Pope Francis has said that he wants “a poor Church, for the poor” following his election as head of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics on Wednesday. He said he chose the name Francis after 12-13th Century St Francis of Assisi, who represented “poverty and peace”. Spectators of UK politics will be mindful of the speech made by Margaret Thatcher on her election, for the first time, as Prime Minister outside Downing Street in 1979. Pope Francis urged journalists to get to know the Church with its “virtues and sins” and to share its focus on “truth, goodness and beauty”. He takes over from Benedict XVI, who abdicated last month. The former Argentine cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, 76, was the surprise choice of cardinals meeting in Rome to choose a new head of the Church.
Changing the subject from religious figureheads to Mr Blair is interesting from the perspective of how the English political parties have latterly approached the issue of religion. There is a doctrine that religion does not play a part in politics, and particularly not when going to war with a non-Christian country. Tony Blair is reported to have said he had intended to echo the traditional closing remark of Presidents in the United States, in one of his speeches. These presidents typically sign-off television broadcasts by saying, “God Bless America”. For much of his time in office, Mr Blair was accused of adopting a “presidential” style of leadership, and became close to former American presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush. His former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, once famously declared “we don’t do God”, when the then Prime Minister was asked about his beliefs.
Wind on a few years and you find the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby warning that changes to the benefit system could drive children and families into poverty. He said society had a duty to support the “vulnerable and in need”. His comments backed an open letter from bishops criticising plans to limit rises in working-age benefits and some tax credits to 1% for three years. The Department for Work and Pensions said meanwhile stuck to their tried-and-tested line that changing the system will help get people “into work and out of poverty”. Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that Archbishop Welby was “absolutely right” to speak out and described the proposals as “immoral”. So is this the beginning of a divide between the Church and parliament? Probably not a big enough divide who wish to see the disestablishment of the Church altogether.
Many recently would have been alerted by a tweet that used the hashtag ‘blacknoseday’. The sentiment behind it is in fact interesting. David Cameron, alleged to be the man responsible for cutting welfare benefits for the most needy in society, played a cameo role in a Comic Relief video. Nonetheless, Comic Relief made a record amount of money, it is reported. There is a further accusation that Cameron is encouraging us to donate to the charity by waiving VAT from sales of the song and covering this loss to the exchequer with money from the Overseas Budget. So now those people overseas who would have won direct government funding are relying on the UK population downloading a One Direction track.
And are Labour much better? Today, Dr Eoin Clarke’s peaceful rallies against the Bedroom Tax went very successfully, but against a background of discontent within Labour amongst activists. Shadow Cabinet member Helen Goodman MP, who served in the Department of Work and Pensions in the last Labour administration, said in a TV interview that that “We’ve said that the bedroom tax should only apply if people have been offered a smaller place to live and turned it down”. It appears that, time and time again, Labour have made half-hearted criticisms of welfare cuts, but Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne has already said that Labour will make further cuts to the welfare budget if Labour wins in 2015.
Furthermore, Labour will not yet commit to reversing specific changes contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, the shadow justice minister said this week. However, Andrew Slaughter MP promised a future Labour government would ‘rebalance the justice system’ in favour of those seeking civil redress. It would also make more savings from criminal legal aid. The challenge for a future Labour government will be to ‘rebalance the justice system so that it can be seen to give access to justice to all… irrespective of their means’. And in the near future Labour wishes to back Iain Duncan-Smith on some retroactive changes to the law over workfare also. The DWP has introduced emergency legislation to reverse the outcome of a court of appeal decision and “protect the national economy” from a £130m payout to jobseekers deemed to have been unlawfully punished. The retroactive legislation, published on Thursday evening and expected to be rushed through parliament on Tuesday, will effectively strike down a decision by three senior judges and deny benefit claimants an average payout of between £530 and £570 each. Apparently, Labour will support the fast-tracked bill with some further safeguards and that negotiations with the coalition are ongoing.
So is it right for Labour “not to do God”, nor even social justice? All of this appears to be screaming out for Labour to say to its membership, ‘Go back to your constituencies, and prepare once again for a hung parliament.’ Laurence Janta-Lipinski, a pollster from YouGov, has recently revealed his survey which has Labour on 43 percent, the Conservatives on 34 percent and the Lib Dems and Ukip both on 8 per cent – suggested a Labour majority. However, he said that unlike in 1995 and 1996, “Labour are not so far ahead in mid-term to be assured of victory”, and “anyone predicting an election at this time is on to a loser. This far out before an election, I wouldn’t feel comfortable predicting a Labour or Conservative government or a hung parliament because all three of them are still possible. There is a good chance of a hung parliament at the next election. Realistically, it is the best the Liberal Democrats can hope for. Vince Cable is probably right to prepare for a hung parliament.”
There is a real sense now of Labour making its own destiny, where bad luck meets lack of preparation. Having laid the groundwork for the privatisation of the NHS, it might be time for Labour to cut its losses, and to concentrate on its ‘core vote’, or even its ‘founding values’. And it can look this time for Margaret Thatcher ironically for inspiration.
"The Spirit Level Democracy" and inequality – Labour must get serious on this
Where to start with the “Spirit Level Democracy”? How about, I’m proud of it and I will start following them on Twitter shortly at @SpiritLevelDoc. We’ve all been shocked by the impact of inequality.
I am reminded of Prahalad’s “Bottom of the Pyramid” when I watch this video. In economics, the bottom of the pyramid is the largest, but poorest socio-economic group. In global terms, this is the 2.5 billion people who live on less than US$2.50 per day. This field is also often referred to as the “Base of the Pyramid” or just the “BoP”.
Several books and journal articles have been written about this, but the issue of inequality is also extremely potent, as a superrich protecting their shareholder dividend see workers as a nuisance but an evil necessity in generating profit – that’s why many would just like to offer them no worker protection, and brainwash them into thinking that Unions are an irrelevance. This is a superb video, which I recommend you to watch.
The video mentions, “The bigger the income differences, the gap between rich and poor, the worse the social differences. Inequality matters. We’ve all been astonished about the impact of inequality.” At Ed Miliband’s last ever hustings in his bid to become Leader of the Labour Party, which I attended and supported, I shook Ed’s hand. While this photo was taken, I said to Ed, “You do realise that Tony Blair’s “The Journey” doesn’t even have the word ‘inequality’ in the index?”. Ed smiled for the pic, and simply said, “You – are – joking!!”
I know that Ed does genuinely care about this. The video cites, “I do believe that this country is too unequal, and the gap between the rich and poor, it harms us all, and it’s something that Governments must tackle” @Ed_Miliband.
The Gini coefficient (also known as the Gini index or Gini ratio) is a measure of statistical dispersion invented by the Italian statistician Corrado Gini, and published for the first time in 1912. The Gini coefficient can measure the inequality among values of a frequency distribution (for example levels of income). A Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality where all values are the same (for example, where everyone has an exactly equal income). A Gini coefficient of one (100 on the percentile scale) expresses maximal inequality among values (for example where only one person has all the income). The “Gini coefficient” has got steadily worse, since Margaret Thatcher came to power, but depressingly even during Tony Blair’s government. Here is a graph of that coefficient against time, sourced from this website.
Please share this video: source
“The gap between rich and poor is at its highest level for 30 years. Over the last year there have been protests from Cairo to New York to London – now it’s time for action, and a documentary is the most powerful way we can raise awareness and mobilise people. It has been published in over 20 countries, has sold over 100,000 copies in the UK and won first prize in the Bristol Festival of Ideas. Lynsey Hanley in the Guardian said, It’s impossible to overstate the implications of (this) thesis”, The Economist stated “It is a sweeping claim, yet the evidence, here painstakingly marshalled, is hard to dispute”. The New Statesman listed it as one of their top ten books of the decade. It’s impact has been so great that it has provoked numerous attacks from organisations that support low taxes for the rich such as the Taxpayers’ Alliance (“we oppose all tax rises”) and Policy Exchange (“the most influential think tank on the right”)”
The Labour Party in the UK is supposed to represent the hopes and life of workers. Gordon Brown and Tony Blair bent over backwards to woo the top 5% earners and the City and generally, and frankly the top 5% don’t give a toss about Labour. They are more than satisfied with their tax cut, given at a time of austerity when the disabled and poor are being disproportionately punished. I hope that Ed can genuinely stop this horrifically contemptible recent record of my party.
Labour is the party of the lazy super-rich, and the public hate us for it
In his critique “Who Runs Britain”, Robert Peston calls on something called the Gini coefficient – a measure of income inequality that boils down the distribution of income in Britain into a number between zero and one. Zero corresponds to a world where all households have an identical income; and a Gini of one means all income goes to a single person. Under Thatcher, Gini soared. It dipped a bit under Gordon Brown’s stealth taxes, but was soaring again towards the final throws of the last Labour administration. Peston thinks this is an awful thing to happen under a Labour government, and, actually I am very much inclined to agree.
A critical issue for Labour is why the super-rich became super-richer, and Labour shows any motivation in stopping this socio-economic fervour. A select group of quangocrats are earning up to £5,000 a day for part-time work on state agencies, authorities and commissions. Among them are quango ‘kings and queens’ who jump from state job to state job with the help of Government patronage. Those “non-departmental public bodies” on the Cabinet Office list total 742 across the UK. However, Wales and Scotland have devolved responsibility for some of their own which are not on the list. The Taxpayers’ Alliance, claims the figure is actually 1,162.
Cue the Public Bodies Bill. Now the QUANGO is in the sights of those debating the Public Bodies Bill in the House of Lords. A QUANGO is a Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation. It is an organisation that is funded by taxpayers, but not controlled directly by central government. It is uncommon for the House of Lords to reject a piece of legislation at the second reading, and as far as possible the House of Lords will approve a statutory instrument passed in the other place.
The government reviewed 901 bodies – 679 quangos and 222 other statutory bodies. Of those 192 will be axed or their functions taken over by other bodies. The future of other bodies is still under consideration but 380 will definitely be kept.
It is argued that Labour presided over a big expansion in the public sector. When Labour came to power in 1997 there were 857 “non-departmental public bodies”. According to the Cabinet Office, that number fell to 827 in 2007 and 790 last year. But their expenditure is soaring, from £37bn in 2006-07 to £43bn last year, with the taxpayers’ contribution rising from £30.8bn to £34.5bn.The Conservatives and Lib Dems have accused it of effectively setting up a “quangocracy” – a tangle of self-aggrandising, free-spending organisations with little accountability and, in some cases, little real purpose.
Dan Lewis, the research director of the Economic Research Council think-tank, said: “The quango was a late 1990s Blairite policy solution. You give it a good name, you set up a fancy website, people are given good titles, it starts off well. And then it starts to lose its way. We need to look closely – if we are going into a nasty recession – [to check whether] they are engaging in activities which private companies are doing already or whether they are even crowding private sector activity. I hope very much that David Cameron, soon after taking office, orders that the Cabinet Office quickly restore a full annual quangos report in a clear and accountable break from the past.”
The last time peers referred a bill to a special select committee, against the wishes of the then Labour government, was in 2004 with the Constitutional Reform Bill, which created the Supreme Court and reformed the historic office of Lord Chancellor.
However, government whip Lord Taylor of Holbeach, opposing the Labour move, said the Public Bodies Bill was “not overtly complex or technical and it doesn’t seek to radically overhaul our constitution”. Labour peers’ leader Baroness Royall of Blaisdon noted that the Lords constitution committee had recently delivered a “devastating critique” of the legislation. Baroness Loyall has called on peers to back Labour’s amendment, which would refer the bill to a specially formed select committee in advance of its normal committee stage. She further said the opposition would support a further amendment, from senior Liberal Democrat peer Lord Maclennan of Rogart, that the select committee should report by the end of February to implement the purposes of the bill to maximize public consultation. Lord Maclennan has argued that their scope should not be to look at the merits of the QUANGOs, but look at the broad way how the QUANGOs could be considered.
However, clearly QUANGOs need reforming, and Labour has to distance itself from the idea knocking about that the super-rich need to get even super-richer.
Things mustn't get any worse: the new Labour dream?
“I’m Labour, or I was Labour, and I sympathise, but there’s no fairness, no fairness, it’s absolutely ridiculous. Millions of immigrants have come in and it’s making everything harder”, though there was also a firm and contradictory response: “I don’t think so, that’s all a bit of hot air. A lot of foreign workers do jobs British workers don’t want”.
These were the now immortal words uttered by Gillian Duffy in Rochdale.
2010 was indeed a far cry from this.
The 2015 election makes very grim reading for us. The Fabians’ “Southern Discomfort Again” pamphlet published today provides that,
“At the 2010 Election, there was almost a wipe-out of Labour seats in Southern England, where almost half of British constituencies are located. 13 seats were lost in the South East, 8 in the South West, 11 in the East, 14 in the West Midlands and 11 seats in the East Midlands, a total of 57 seats or nearly two thirds of Labour’s overall loss of 91 seats. Indeed, the Labour party now has no MPs whatsoever in Cornwall, Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, West Sussex, East Sussex, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire.”
The Fabian Society published its long-awaited “Southern Discomfort Again” report today. The survey results and discussion are available here. Lord Giles Radice and Dr Patrick Diamond from Oxford were the co-authors. Lord Radice is pictured here in our meeting at 1 George Street, Westminster. SW1.
Our next election will be in 2015, 18 years away from Tony Blair’s dream of 1997. Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell were possibly at the right place at the right time, with a country absolutely sick to the back teeth of the Conservatives. Note that this is different to the current situation, where the Coalition, according to all the polling evidence, appears to be popular, as it has a credible policy for reducing the deficit, and, overall, the general public support the idea of people working together in the national interest, as evidenced by David Cameron’s populist speeches at Conference. Tony Blair tapped into a mood of optimism, and, more importantly, aspiration; and the county ran with it. The mood in 2011 is very different, and Labour has to recognize this. The buzzword now is ‘insecurity’, both in social and cultural terms. Gillian Duffy’s comments touch on one plank of this; immigration in itself, with its repercussions on employment. Actually, it touches on another plank, housing. Interestingly, Labour has become known as the party of the benefit scroungers, immigrants and the Unions. Clearly, Labour has failed to make the “globalism is good” argument, and the benefits of free movement of Labour was not even attempted by Phil Woolas MP in the last parliament.
Labour would therefore be advised to be sensitive to the feeling of insecurity by their voters. And who are their voters? For the first time, last Election, according to YouGov, the middle classes overtook the working classes in voting for Labour. It would be sensible to highlight the social implication of cuts, because there is the outside risk for Labour (and of enormous benefit to the country at large) that drastic benefit reduction might indeed ‘work’ without seeing adverse effects in unemployment. If the economy goes belly-up (we are assured by Cameron and Osborne, reflecting on Ireland inter alia, that it won’t), Labour will be home-and-dry. If not, it’s going to be ‘quids in’ for all involved in the Coalition; in particular, Nick Clegg MP. They will be able to play ‘well, it was unpleasant, but the country is much more better off now, and we can pay for more nurses and teachers now?’ card.
Labour should be ready for a long period of opposition, until proven otherwise. I feel that this will give Ed Miliband sufficient time to sort his team out. There are issues to be debated, such as the degree to which ‘creeping marketisation’, much despised by Ed Balls MP, will be avoided by Ed Miliband. As for the psychodrama, one can speculate ad nauseam on whether Ed Balls will support Ed Miliband, but the future direction taken by John Healey and Alan Johnson, for example in opposing NHS ‘privatisation’, will be necessary. There are some of course, perhaps Tony Blair included, who feel that some sort of corporate restructuring and business ethic in the NHS is needed. It may be there is a long haul ahead, which will give time for Ed Miliband to work Angela Eagle MP up from Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury to Shadow Chancellor, in time. As Alan Johnson MP readily admits, he is currently reading a primer on economics, but is possibly the best person to oppose the Comprehensive Spending Review as a politician at this particular moment in time.
We need to consider carefully why we lost an election. Whilst I am an ardent fan, I recognize that 13 years was quite long enough for people who felt that Labour had run out of steam following 2005-2007, and that Gordon Brown, whilst good at leading economics seminars (although he probably lost on the £6bn point, in fact) was not an inspirational leader. I feel that the lower middle classes feel disenfranchised, still have aspiration, but are faced with massive insecurities now, which the left need to address. Furthermore, Labour can’t duck away from the fact that, despite having successfully made in-roads into restoring its reputation, has become perceived as ‘economically incompetent’ again. Ironically, the report on waste in government, which Labour actually commissioned, was published today.
Liam Byrne and Ed Miliband will be trying to make sense of all of this.
Dr Shibley Rahman
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
Insecurity and fairness
The Fabians discussed this morning insecurity and inequality.
Whilst these are huge topics, I was impressed with the amount of breadth and depth of the discussion.
Whatever the economic solution to the global financial crisis is, and whether it will work in this country, we still have an on-going problem that has existed for the whole of this century in England.
The Fabian meeting was a starting-point for discussing some of these issues, this morning at breakfast.
Politically, the issue has been thrust to the front of the Labour agenda through the Fabian Society. Many blame Labour for not doing anything over the banking crisis, as regards the huge salaries of certain CEOs of banks. Economists on the whole appear to believe that the extra revenue that would have be gained from a high rate of taxing the bankers would not make a massive amount to the revenue of the Governnment. At the other end of the scale, despite the welfare state, there are still people living in relative poverty.
I suppose part of the problem for me is that the welfare state is not meant to be simply a desperate measure for those who’ve fallen off the edge of the cliff. It should support the successful, as indeed the NHS does support the acute medical care of all the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet. Labour’s inequality divide, we all know, got massively worse under Blair and Brown, and this is not a record that socialists should be proud of. The recent experience of the Swedes, possibly, is that socialism is not seen as a relevant solution in this global modern economy. Taking this in its wider context, socialism should be for the good times as well as the bad, but the Conservatives attempt to shatter this notion through their repetitive chant that ‘we always fix the broken economy by Labour’.
Fairness is incredibly difficult to define. I have only seen attempts by the Law Lords in cases concerning grounds of judicial review, such as legitimate expectation or procedural impropriety. I actually have never seen it discussed at length in relation to a more obvious candidate, the Human Rights Act. Of course, we are yet to see how the case law of the Equality Act will develop. Insecurity, I sensed, was likely to be exacerbated when voters felt that circumstances were out of their control, akin to learned helplessness in depression. There are two scenarios I can immediately think of where this lack of predictability in events might lead to insecurity; the increasing globalisation of the jobs market (and immigration), and (b) the global financial crisis. Gillian Duffy, and many like her, may feel insecure about her family’s jobs, but in fairness to her (pardon the pun), in law there might be a proportional check on the freedom of movement – and that is a right to work in your domestic country – however contentious that would be.
On Ed Balls.
How’s the coalition doing these days? Well, considering. Cameron seems confident, and ‘on top of his game’ at the moment. He has a clear idea of how he can lead the country as well as his Party, which is no mean feat. Meanwhile, Labour seems to go on with its neverending shambles which is the leadership election, with Ed Balls revealing today that he disagreed with Gordon Brown and how he could now work with the Liberal Democrats.”
Here is Ed’s latest account of where things went wrong with him at the helm: Indy article
Gordon Brown fudged Labour message, says Ed Balls
“I could have chosen to have broken away in an emphatic and decisive way from Gordon in the last few years, and I didn’t,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.”
Why not? Of course, the traditional arguments are ‘collective responsibility’ and ‘loyalty’, but this admission goes to the heart of how exactly decisions were made in Gordon Brown’s government. The impression that, “If Gordon didn’t like it, tough”, seems to be getting stronger and stronger everyday, with the publication of a new set of political memoirs (e.g. “The Third Man”, or “The Journey”).
“I disagreed strongly with Gordon on the 10p tax rate cut, I thought we should have gone for the election in 2007, I felt that he trimmed and fudged his message to try to keep the Daily Mail happy in a way which meant that people didn’t know where we stood. I said that to him many times.”
Well, there’s disagreement and there’s disagreement isn’t there? As a junior member of the Fabians, I believe strongly that Labour government under both Blair and Brown screwed up on poverty. Poverty and inequality aren’t even mentioned in Blair’s index. Whatever your views on capital gains tax and corporation tax, the issue about the 10p tax (and the top rate of tax) still raises more questions than answers.
So, whilst Kerry is right to emphasise our achievements, we still have a lot of soul-searching to do. For what it’s worth, I don’t feel Ed Balls MP is the right man at the right time. He wasn’t then, and he isn’t now.
Meanwhile, Guido Fawkes has revealed interesting information about Ed Ball’s leadership chances from his research.
39% of Guido’s Readers Want Ed Balls to Lead Labour Party
Here are Guido’s findings.
“Ed Balls liked to tell the hustings that he was the one the Tories feared most, hence the attacks on him from the right-wing media. Guido takes the opposite view, he is the one that opponents of the Labour Party most badly want to win the Labour leadership because he would be as disastrous as his mentor was for Labour. Today”
A view point from Timothee Defaramond as to why David Miliband should be leader
Many thanks to Timothee Defamond for the account below of why voters should strongly consider putting David Miliband down as their no.1 choice for the Labour leadership.
There is one thing that David Miliband doesn’t seem to get nearly enough credit for – his radicalism. And yet it is this very radicalism that makes him the right person to take Labour forward, not only to the next election, but beyond that too. David is the candidate with the vision and ideas that can make Labour once again a party sure of purpose and clear about its priorities, a candidate that can give serious meaning to the left in Britain, and go beyond opposing the coalition’s unfair cuts.
One of the cornerstones of the Labour movement is the idea of equality. But what does equality mean for our society today, and why do we seek to achieve it? In many of these speeches David has tackled this head on. At the heart of our belief in equality is that idea that we should all have the ability to lead a life that we can authentically call our own. To achieve this individuals need power – and empowering individuals and communities is what should be at the core of our commitment to reducing inequalities. Furthermore, it means allowing individuals control over the public services they receive. That is the opposite of the top-down Labour state some party members have come to fear. Finally, we need to remember that we all have a stake in the success of the lives of each other, and that we’ll get the best results through cooperation rather than competition. David’s ideas are incredibly powerful, and putting them at the heart of policy making will make Labour the party that wins the next election.
David is also radical in his approach to the party. He promises to transform it to build “a movement not a machine”. For too long we have ignored the grassroots of the party and as a result lost touch with the very people we are representing. David promises to buck this trend by putting the leader of Labour’s councillors in the shadow cabinet. Furthermore, through the Movement for Change, David wants to allow Labour to be more involved in communities through community organising. Over 700 community organisers have already been trained as part of the Movement for Change, and their successes already show that the Labour movement can be effective even when the party is out of power.
All five candidates in this election are strong, and all will have a bearing on the future of the party. A Yougov poll this week showed David as the public’s favourite choice by far to replace David Cameron. Whatever happens to the coalition, we must be ready to persuade the country it is in their interests to vote Labour, and only one candidate can achieve this: David Miliband.
