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.

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.

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)

Happy Birthday Minimum Wage

And that's no April Fool.

The fall and fall of our Ken

There is much which both sad and laughable in the today's Evening Standard trailer for an interview they are carrying with Ken Livingstone tomorrow. The fact that he uses the Evening Standard, his sworn enemy during his time as Mayor, to launch a vitriolic attack on the Labour Prime Minister, the Labour Prime Minister, should in itself be enough to rule out Livingstone as a candidate for Mayor next time round. or at least as a Labour candidate.

Livingstone apparently says he is "as certain as you can be" that he will run for the Labour nomination in 2012 but threatens that he will run as an Independent. Presumably this is "the message of renewal" that he fails to see in the appointment of Lord Mandelson as Business Secretary.

Livingstone continues to be badly advised by the same sycophants who protected him from the truth during the London campaign. He lost the London campaign against Boris Johnson because he refused to engage on the subjects which were of concern to vast swathes of Londoners, but he has now convinced himself that it was all the fault of Gordon Brown.

His attack today, and tomorrow, will do slight damage to Gordon Brown and to the Labour Party, but diminish Ken Livingstone immeasurably.

The authentic voice of Labour

Labour should just pay Alastair Campbell whatever he wants - probably legislation to guarantee promotion for Burnley FC.

Not the last post

So the Royal Mail is about to be sold off, and there is a big row in the Labour Party about it and the everyone is very cross.

Well only if they've not read the Bill, which is actually about ensuring a level playing field for Royal Mail; making sure its future in public ownership is secured; and protecting the universal postal service.

Royal Mail is to be enshrined in legislation as a publicly owned company.  No government would be able to change this status without further primary legislation in the future. That doesn't look like privations to me. 

The fact that the Bill will say Post Office Ltd. is to be owned by government in its entirety, and that no government would be able to change this status without further primary legislation, also doesn't seem to be the usual formula for privatisation.   

Now, of course, there has been a muddle over this for all the usual reasons - a hostile press, a lack of clarity from the government and the usual old labourites who can't wait to get back into opposition and are practising.

In addition to the non-privatisation, the unique selling point of the Royal Mail - letters collected and delivered anywhere in the UK for one affordable price - is to be written into the legislation. The primary duty of the regulator will be the maintenance of the universal service.

Attracting private investment in the publicly owned company and transferring the burden of the pension scheme to the taxpayer will also be a much needed boost for the Royal Mail. 

No doubt there will be some last minute deals to be done to make sure it all hangs together properly, but you sometimes wonder that a little more attention to how these proposals are communicated might not go amiss.

A blog worth reading

Welcome to the blogosphere Alastair Campbell. Blimey, I wish he was sorting out Labour's message now. We certainly wouldn't have got into the British jobs for British workers mess.

Anyhow, he's just started. You can find him here. 

And here's his latest vlog.

Can Labour emulate Tories' 1992 victory?

Well yes, obviously.

But here is a nice piece by Will Woodward, the Guardian's Head of Politics, which poses the question quite neatly. And points to a possible answer.

Times gets its times wrong

There is an interestting but flawed report in today's Times - look it up yourself, posting on the run.

'How Labour failed on its pledge to make poverty a thing of the past,' p18.

I've got no particular quibble with the statistics being tracked. What is wrong is to have an arbitrary break point in a timescale so that a new slant can be drawn. The piece in the Times looks at a timescale of 1997-2003 and 2003-2008. This enables the journalist to claim that certain indicators have got worse during the second period and ignore any improvement over the whole of the period of a Labour goverenment.

Even the periods chosen make no sense. They don't look at different Labour governments or Blair v Brown. One can only assume they have been picked in an arbitrary way to illustrate a conclusion already written.

It would be interesting to see how many of the 56 indicators would support the conclusions of the article when analysed over the whole period. I may try to find out.

Update - I have found out

A quick count of the indicators over at poverty.org.uk does indeed show that 32 of the 56 indicators are showing improvement over the 10 year period and 14 have remained unchanged.

The 10 that are worse are:

• Low-income households who are paying full council tax
• Children in working families needing tax credits to avoid low income
• Young adults in low-income households
• 16- to 19-year-olds not in education, training or work
• Working-age adults in low-income working families
• Value of out-of-work benefits for working-age adults without dependent children, relative to earnings
• Pay gap between high-paid men and women and male median earnings
• Pensioners not taking up benefits to which they are entitled
• People aged 75 and over helped by social services to live at home
• Homeless households in temporary accommodation

It difficult to see how these 10 (six of which do not necessarily reflect on the poverty or otherwise of the people concerned) justify the headline in the Times. Hey ho.