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On the Bill of Rights: response to Sadiq Khan MP on Labour List.
Sadiq Khan’s article in Labour List is entitled “Papering over the cracks of a divided government”, here.
I think a central issue in this must be whether there are any meaningful moves to get rid of the Human Rights Act. Many agree that the problems with it have not so much been with the literal legislation of it, but its interpretation.
A number of different reasons have been proposed for extending the Human Rights Act to a Bill of Rights. These have been discussed by the legislature, and include,
i) To provide a means of balancing rights with responsibilities;
ii) To provide a framework for our shared national values as part of the Prime Minister’s “Britishness” agenda;
iii) To educate the public, by providing greater clarity for people about their rights and responsibilities;
iv) To provide greater ownership of the protected rights than is the case with the HRA;
v) To include some recognition of the importance of social and economic rights such as health and education; and
vi) To protect the weak and vulnerable against the strong and powerful.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights (21 July 2008, 29th report) said at that point the following:
We regret that there is not greater clarity in the Government’s reasons for embarking on this potentially ambitious course of drawing up a Bill of Rights. A number of the Government’s reasons appear to be concerned with correcting public misperceptions about the current regime of human rights protection, under the HRA. We do not think that this is in itself a good reason for adopting a Bill of Rights. As we have consistently said in previous Reports, the Government should seek proactively to counter public misperceptions about human rights rather than encourage them by treating them as if they were true.
This must surely be a purpose of whatever government is in power and office now, surely? For example, Tom Hickman, of Blackstone Chambers, amongst other witnesses, to this Committee has apparently strongly disagreed that a Bill of Rights should be enacted purely because of perceived deficiencies in the HRA, if those deficiencies could be remedied by amending the Act itself.
I believe that the Labour and Liberal views could be reconciled, if Labour were to make its position much more in favour of civil liberties. The aforementioned Committee cites in the Report that:
We believe it is important that any UK Bill of Rights includes strong legal protections for freedoms such as freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom from unwarranted intrusions on privacy, all of which are essentially negative liberties from state interference. For this reason, we believe any bill of rights should be called a UK Bill of Rights and Freedoms.
I have intuitively felt that a more natural political pact might have been between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, but I have long lost this battle. The fact that we are at least having a discussion about this, in an open way, must be good. I think we should, as a party, think about the direction in which we need to move on civil liberties (given the problems we had with ID cards, detention without trial, etc.), rather than our short-term electoral motives.
Source: here.
Tory Story 3 – Some New Year's resolutions for Labour
By Shibley Rahman / @shibleylondon
Opinion polls consistently return the verdict that Labour is economically incompetent compared to the Conservatives. Many would indeed agree that Labour didn’t get its economic messages across competently in the 2010 campaign. Labour tried to explain its economic strategy through a series of university-style tutorials, and sloppily allowed various ‘facts’ to go unchallenged. Ed Miliband and his team will have to learn from these mistakes.
This article looks at just three assumptions of the Tory Story on the economy. The true success of the Tory Story is its simple but misleading messages. The story has various components: for example, NI is “the jobs tax” but VAT isn’t, Britain is going bankrupt, and government debt is like a credit card debt. Perhaps Labour new year’s resolution should be to stop these corrosive myths from going unchallenged. Rebuilding the trust and confidence of the electorate in Labour’s economic strategy is a marathon not a sprint, so the sooner we get started the better.
Will the VAT have no effect on jobs?
To shift the limelight onto NI as the “jobs tax” is also to present an attractive story to the voter that a VAT hike presents no threat to jobs. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) in May 2010 forecast that as many as 163,000 jobs could be lost in the next four years if VAT is increased. They said that, in its first year, a VAT rate of 20% would reduce the deficit by £11.3 billion, but by the end of that first year there would be 30,000 fewer jobs in the UK, across all employment sectors, than if there had been no increase. The BRC has, instead, urged the government to prioritise public spending cuts over tax rises to tackle the budget deficit, as well as to aim to half the deficit over four years rather than the proposed three. Voters will be looking carefully at the unemployment count, while the expert economists forensically examine the GDP statistics, over the course of 2011.
Is government debt like a credit card debt?
David Cameron and Nick Clegg have consistently likened government debt to credit card debt (like paying for your weekly groceries). This is a plausible common-sense approach based on the electorate’s instinct for belt-tightening, and the hardships they will be experiencing in difficult times. The analogy is clearly weak, but analysis of that is way beyond the scope of this article. Given that the public appear to like this comparison, it might be useful to explain also what might go wrong in such terms. The biggest threat for the UK in 2011 is that unemployment goes up and therefore benefit payments go up, while tax receipts go down. This would be like credit card bills beginning to “flood in”, while you are unable to deposit any money into your bank account.
Is Britain going bankrupt?
In January 2009, David Cameron suggested that there was a “risk” that Britain would go bankrupt. George Osborne also has repeatedly warned that the country was facing financial meltdown. When asked on the BBC’s ‘Andrew Marr Show’ whether it is possible that Britain would go bankrupt, Ken Clarke said in contrast:
“I don’t think it’s a realistic possibility. Though, I mean I’m as gloomy as most people…I think it’s very important to realise the constraints of a responsible opposition.”
The media and the public seem disinterested in discussing this, but the spin of a bankrupt Britain relentlessly goes on unchallenged. Foreign investors currently fund about 35% of the government’s total debts, and there is currently little sign yet of them losing their appetite for government bonds, or gilts – the German government has had more problems selling its debts at recent auctions than the UK.
The solution
Thankfully, official data from the Office for National Statistics about GDP and unemployment will be hard for the coalition to put a positive spin on. When commentators say “it’s the economy stupid”, they fail to appreciate one further addition to that for 2015, that is, “and its social and economic consequences”.
In the meantime, Ed Miliband and team will have to work hard at identifying the reasons why the public trusts the Conservatives with the economy more. It is undeniably hard to explain in a punchy manner why the deficit grew so big under Labour, but a good start would be to point out that the Conservatives did indeed match our spending plans until the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
I wonder what resolutions Labour will make in getting its message across more successfully in 2011…
This article was originally published in LabourList on 2nd January 2011. It has had 69 comments so far.
@iaindale's "Daley Dozen" never mentions the top Labour blog @LabourList
Iain Dale publishes a “Daley Dozen“. It is not exactly clear what this Daley Dozen is supposed to achieve, but presumably it is meant to represent the best of the blogosphere. Most casual observers have observed that it tends to present far right Tory views, mainly Euroskeptic ones where possible, and it never presents a non-Conservative view unless strongly in praise of the coaliton or highly critical of Ed Miliband. Keen observers have in fact drawn exactly the same decision.
Labour List is edited by Mark Ferguson, by most observers, extremely well. It acts as a hub for intelligent debate about contemporary issues in Labour; it certainly does not indulge in crazy tribalism, and certainly does not shy away from debate. It is a flagship blog for Labour, in producing breakthrough journalism such as this article on Chris Grayling’s crime figures.
It is therefore somewhat surprising that in a sample taken from November 7th 2010 – November 30th 2010, it does not feature once in Iain Dale’s “Daley Dozen”, compiled as the best of the blogs by Grant Tucker and Iain Dale. In fact, 50% of the top 12 Labour blogs haven’t appeared once in this period of about 3 weeks at all.
The Top 12 is as follows, with the figures in brackets the number of appearances in Iain Dale’s “Daley Dozen”.
1 (0) Labour List
2 (4) Tom Harris MP
3 (0) Hopi Sen
4 (1) Next Left
5 (2) Alastair Campbell
6 (4) Political Scrapbook
7 (1) Luke Akehurst
8 (2)Labour Uncut
9 (0) Penny Red
10 (0) Hadleigh Roberts
11 (0) Socialist Unity
12 (0) Anthony Painter
And what was the Daley Dozen of Dozens in this time period? A fairly predictable list, but it was worthy to see Ed Staite, a media analyst, who is described by Boris Johnson as, ““A veteran master of strategy and all round general of the political battlefield – I would recommend him to anyone who wants to win any comms battle” Dale has blogged frequently on how much he will be sad to see Tom Harris MP. It is sad for Dale’s readership that the death of Tom Harris’ blog may mean a relative lack of representation on a regular basis of any Labour blog in the Daley Dozen, if this Daley Dozen is as influential as Iain Dale claims. On a positive note, the pressure is on Political Scrapbook to post articles which attract the attention of Grant Tucker or Iain Dale, being known officially as a’left-leaning blog’. Paul Waugh is well known to be highly critical of Labour, especially Gordon Brown. Finally, congratulations to Stumbling and Mumbling, which describes himself as an “extremist not a fanatic”. This blog (here) looks very intelligent indeed. The full list is as follows. Many congratulations to @WalaaIdris whose entertaining and passionate posts do deserve leading this list, which incidentally consists of 128 blogs in total (not this one, curiously). This is undoubtedly a massive tribute to the ‘Daley Dozen’ that they cover so many blogs in a matter of 3 weeks, with no particular favouritism, when they could have showed much more preference towards certain blogs. However, the fact that LabourList does not appear once is either a reflection on their view of LabourList generally, or the Conservatives, or rather Iain Dale, is very partisan – and very proud of it.
1. Walaa Idris
2. Dan Hannan
3. Tom Harris
4. Paul Waugh
5. Guido
6. Political Scrapbook
7. Norman Tebbit
8. Dizzy
9. Mark Wallace
10. Benedict Brogan
11. Ed Staite
12. Stumbling and Mumbling
