clawsfour

The essence of the Labour Party

Research on the PoliticsHome website shows that people think that Labour is divided, corrupt and - most importantly - doesn't know what it stands for.

As I have said elsewhere, it is the lack of clear purpose and vision rather than the lack of policy initiatives which lead to this conclusion and it is the conclusion which will be the most damaging to Labour at the next election. Of course, people don't expect Labour politicians to be financially corrupt and it challenges the perceived wisdom when a Labour MP bends or breaks the rules. We all know that divided parties don't win elections.

But the bottom line is people don't vote for parties where they don't know what's on offer. And policies just don't hack it. Even with the mighty midget pledge card of 1997, few people could say what we would do on day one. But they had a view about our direction of travel. What we stood for. What were our core principles and beliefs.

And that is why it is refreshing to see the closing words of the speech that launched Tony Blair's career in parliament again, published with all other speeches by They Work for You.

The aim would be to harness the considerable resources of the constituency and the region and to let them work to create a better standard of living for the people. 

After all, that is the essence of Socialism.

I am a Socialist not through reading a textbook that has caught my intellectual fancy, nor through unthinking tradition, but because I believe that, at its best, Socialism corresponds most closely to an existence that is both rational and moral. It stands for co-operation, not confrontation; for fellowship, not fear. It stands for equality, not because it wants people to be the same but because only through equality in our economic circumstances can our individuality develop properly. 

British democracy rests ultimately on the shared perception by all the people that they participate in the benefits of the common weal.

After all, that is the essence of the Labour Party. And still worth voting for.

Torygraph loses its cherry

In Labour's 1997 manifesto there was something tucked away about judging a country by how it cared for its natural world. Another measure of economic and political priorities could be gleaned from the Theatre critics it would appear.

Just in case you've forgotten why you must never, and I mean never, vote Tory, the Torygraph gives us this little gem in its arts pages with the review of Chekov's 'The Cherry Orchard';

But there is little hope in Chekhov's play, unless you are a rabid Marxist, which sees a family we have greatly come to care about heading for the most desperate of futures.

Which translates as, "In a credit crunch, let's support the land-owning classes, even if by their wilful negligence they have brought themselves to the brink of ruin, and by the way we don't give a stuff about the people who who used to have jobs working for them."

The Torygraph is enough to make anyone into a rabid Marxist, and given that I'm really only a lovable leftie, that's saying something. Grrr.

Cameron doesn't sack Osbourne shock.

According to the Times, George Osbourne 'flipped' his second home.

The Shadow Chancellor bought the Cheshire farmhouse close to his constituency ten months before winning the Tatton seat in June 2001.

Instead of taking out a mortgage on the property he funded the purchase by increasing his borrowing on the London home where he and his wife had lived since 1998.

After his election he designated the London house his “second home” with the Commons authorities, even though it was his main residence, so that he could claim the mortgage interest payments on his expenses.

Two years later Mr Osborne took out his first mortgage on the house in Cheshire and made that his official second home. He has since claimed up to £100,000 of taxpayers’ money to cover interest payments on the farmhouse, which is situated on the edge of Peak District National Park.

The arrangement also enabled Mr Osborne to reduce the loan on his London home, which he later sold for £1.45 million, to less than £200,000.

Tory Leader Cameron, of course, wouldn't dream of sacking a Bullingdon Club colleague.

The Times also carried an informative piece about the Bullingdon Club.

The Bullingdon Club of 1992: pictured are (1) George Osborne, (2) Harry Mount, (3) Chris Coleridge, (4) Lupus von Maltzahn, (5) Mark Petre (6) Peter Holmes a Court, (7) Nat Rothschild, (8) Jason Gissing

The Bullingdon Club - immortalised in Evelyn Waugh's 1928 novel Decline and Fall - projects an image far from the classless, centrist Conservative Party that Mr Osborne and Mr Cameron have so painstakingly developed.
Famous for trashing restaurants and other riotous behaviour, the society was described in a 2005 article by the Oxford Student, the university's official student newspaper, as drawing "its membership from Oxford's super-rich, enticing them to a life of secrecy, champagne drinking and ritualised violence".
Its habit for rioting, although toned down from its notorious past, reemerged again in December 2004 when police arrested all 17 of the club's members for wrecking the cellar of a 15th Century pub by smashing more than a dozen bottles of wine into its walls. Four members - including Princess Diana's nephew Alexander Fellowes - spent the night in prison.
While many of the society's rituals remain secret, joining the Bullingdon Club is known to involve putting up with having your room trashed beyond recognition and seeing your drinking tested beyond all sane boundaries. And there is also the small matter (and indeed, for its wealthy members, it is only a small matter) of buying the uniform, which costs around £3,000 in total.

Mr Ten Per Cent

Back from a couple of days off (very nice thank you) to find that in one bound the Tories have revealed the truth behind the mask.  

I've been saying for some time that as soon as the microscope turned toward Tory policy, the real choice at the next general election would become clear.

Well the Tories have helpfuly set out the choice for themselves. Andrew Lansley, who has form in terms of opening up the Tory secret agenda, has blown the gaffe. And Alan Johnson, Labour's new Home Secretary, has kindly written to me (along with one or two others I imagine) to make sure I didn't miss the news.

Bella

Today the Tories finally admitted just how much they want to cut from our public services. I’m writing so that you have all the facts because we need to get this message out there in our communities up and down the country.

I think a lot of people listening to the BBC this morning will have been shocked when they heard David Cameron’s health spokesman Andrew Lansley stating that the Tories would make 10 per cent spending cuts in the vast majority of government departments. It wasn’t a gaffe – even though Mr Lansley seems to have gone to ground at the minute, he hasn’t been sacked for revealing the truth about the Tories’ plans.

I’ve only been Home Secretary for a few days, but I can already see what an impact a 10 per cent cut in that budget would have. Looking at the figures in my department, it would mean front line police officers would be subject to real cuts next year, leaving our streets much less safe. And I’m sure there would be similar risks when those kinds of cuts hit public transport or the skills and science budgets.

Labour’s investment in police officers and community support officers is vital to making our streets safer. Since 1997 there are over 14,000 more police officers and nearly 16,000 community support officers. We now have 3,600 neighbourhood policing teams across the country - one for every community. We know that there is no appetite in this country for cuts that would undermine the fight against crime.

It’s up to everyone in our party – MPs, ministers, activists and trade unionists – to make sure that we get this message out to the country. It's time to tell David Cameron - Mr 10 Per Cent - that no one wants his Tory cuts.

Best wishes

Alan

A sure start needs a sure touch

Almost exactly 8 years ago I was sat on a wall in Brighton waiting to see Tony Blair go to a Sure Start centre in a general election campaign. I was chatting to a couple of young mums who had also heard the man was coming.

I asked if they used the Sure Start centre. They told me that one facility had changed their lives. Both had got jobs. Both had moved out of squalid bedsits into flats. One was about to get married. They jeered the handful of Tory protesters gathering across the road.

Tony Blair always said he had to fight hard to demonstrate his Labour credentials. He was not born to the red flag. Not a socialist. But he had, has, an absolute instinct for what mattered to the ordinary people, the working class if you must, of Britain. Even with the middle east conflicts, whatever one thinks now, the general position of siding with the oppressed against the oppressor is one that fits easily with the Battle of Britain spirit.

Today, because of that instinct of what is fair for the many, of what is right and just, there are now 3,000 Sure Start centres that have helped 3,000,000 like those mums I shared that wall with.

It is tears of frustration that I shed now, tears for the generation that will miss out on a sure start or a new start because the Parliamentary Labour Party is no longer connecting. No longer connecting with 'their' people in the way their former leader did so effortlessly. Seemingly.

The row over expenses is an issue that needs dealing with. The difficult policy decisions over the right of settlement for mercenaries is deservedly subject to high profile public scrutiny. The future of the post office and other public services are big issues. But the reason the Tories are making the running is because Labour has forgotten that they are representatives of the people, not delegates isolated from the people.

Unless Labour regains that earlier sure touch, then for many millions of people the Sure Start will turn into a bitter dead end. And it will be the fault of each and every member of the parliamentary Labour Party.

Hole. Digging. Stop.

The British people have developed a great affection for the Brigade of Gurkhas. Also employed by the Indian Army, Singapore Police and the Sultan of Brunei, in other circumstances they would be regarded as mere mercenaries.

It is certainly true that employment as a Gurkha by the British army is regarded as a highly prestigious and well paid employment with great additional benefits. All of which are known by the Gurkha on recruitment. However, as Time magazine pointed out, the overseas recruitment on an army of Nepalese is not without criticism in Nepal itself:

..rebel leader turned Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has openly expressed his antipathy for the practice of young Nepalese men serving in foreign armies as mercenaries for hire. Once in office, he announced that he would discontinue Gurkha recruitment, an undignified and degrading legacy in his eyes.

It was an unpopular opinion. The job is a popular and lucrative post in a country where unemployment hovers around 42%, and his announcement spurred vehement street protests late last year from old, new and future Gurkha recruits. Dahal promptly reneged, announcing in a February meeting with a visiting delegation of British parliamentarians that the recruitment of Nepali men into their forces had bolstered ties between the two nations, and that he was not in favor of stopping recruitment. But behind closed doors, Nepalese officials still squirm at the thought of their countrymen being paid for fighting another nation’s war. 

And it it also true that there has been a great deal of breath-taking hypocrisy from the Conservatives. as Domic Lawson in the Times said recently,

It was the Conservatives who took away the right of most residents of Hong Kong to settle in Britain: they refused to change that policy even after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 caused many of us to argue this was potentially inhumane. 

In 1994 Michael Howard, then home secretary, exempted only individuals who could demonstrate that they had assets of at least £1m – which obviously did not include any of the then Hong-Kong based Gurkhas. 

Howard ... denied hypocrisy, arguing that when he made his dispositions about Hong Kong 15 years ago, the Gurkhas were not British subjects but citizens of Nepal. That is precisely the government’s point. The 1947 tripartite agreement between Nepal, Britain and India (many more Gurkhas serve in the Indian army than in our own) decreed: A Gurkha soldier must be recruited as a Nepali citizen, must serve as a Nepali citizen and must be resettled as a Nepali citizen. You couldn’t get much clearer than that.

These warriors would have understood the deal when they signed up. And a very good deal it was, which explains why year after year almost 20,000 young Nepalese would apply for the 230 new places available in the brigade.

But at the end of the day, the British love the Gurkhas (usual caveats about not wanting to live next door to one will probably apply if you scratch under the skin a little) and today's judgement of some test immigration cases is just bonkers. It may be due process. It may get overturned. 

But surely joined up Government should be just that. Surely someone would have told Gordon when he met Joanna Lumley that these cases would be determined today. Surely someone could have said given the Commons vote, no announcement will be made on these cases until the procedures have been reviewed.

I'm no great fan of the Gurkha's right to residency campaign. But surely when in a hole, it is always best to stop digging. 

Now look under the stone that is Lord Ashcroft's donations

18 months after the Electoral Commission called in the Metropolitan Police to investigate the donation made by David Abrahams to the Labour Party by proxy, the Crown Prosecution Service has delivered its judgement on the investigation. Unfortunately not on their own web-site but let's assume Sky have got it right. It is now - CPS Press Release.

They point out the rules have been broken - constituting a criminal offence - but that the people investigated, including Peter Watt who was forced to resign as Labour General Secretary over the issue, did exercise due diligence.

This issue revolved around the fact that David Abrahams - a permissible donor - gave money to other permissible donors, who then gave money to the Labour party. This was done by Abrahams to protect his identity - failed. There is no doubt that donors must make full disclosure of the fact that they are using third parties to make a donation. David Abrahams did not. However, it was his money. He was a legitimately allowed to make a donation. The people he gave the money to were legitimately able to make a donation.

So having spent an extraordinary amount of tax-payers money to discover that an offence has been committed for which no-one was to blame, perhaps the powers that be could now get on with the investigation into Lord Ashcroft who it is alleged is an impermissible donor using overseas money to find the Tory Party.

As the Daily Mirror first revealed, the Electoral Commission started an investigation into the peer last year.

It followed claims £4.76million had been transferred from the Central American tax haven of Belize to Lord Ashcroft's UK-based company Bearwood Corporate Services.

The firm is one of the biggest donors to the Tory party, giving £4.74million since 2003.

Electoral law says donations can only come from UK-based companies. Tory vice-chairman Lord Ashcroft, said to be worth more than £1billion, has used the money to bankroll Tory candidates in marginal seats.

And no doubt those who accused the thoroughly decent Peter Watt of acting criminally will now be queueing up to apologise. (update - statement form Peter Watt reported here)

I know it's old but.....

...and I'm not talking about Eddy Izzard.

YouTube if you want to. Absolutely.

Oh F............

Just close your eyes and listen. The script almost completely reflects my view of the half time scores in Championship today. Let's home for better in the next 45 minutes.

Grayling handbagged by Livingstone

As my regular readers will know, I'm not a great fan of Ken Livingstone.

However he has probably delivered a knockout blow to Tory Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling on a Newsnight discussion about the inadvertent leak of sensitive information by the Assistant Commissioner, and head of counter terrorism, Bob Quick.

It is a joy to watch. So get to iPlayer and watch it again (as soon as it appears there). And someone with more technical know-how than me put it on YouTube so everyone can see it.

The killing blow was leaving Grayling spluttering and unable to answer the charge that only Al-Quaida would be happy with his position on the the leak. 

This isn't cheap jibes about second home allowances. This went to the heart of who do you trust to run the country.

Future Home Secretary? Not any more.