clawsfour

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.

Sound economics is always sound economics

Another quote for you. Gordon Brown? Alistair Darling? Some lefty economist after the Pre-Budget report?

Now what really gets me is this, that it is very ironic that those who are most critical of the extra tax are those who were most vociferous in demanding the extra expenditure. And what gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get some of the tax to pay for it.

Actually, Margaret Thatcher being very old Labour in 1981, defending her budget (against the even more right wing or her Conservative Party) to the Guardian Young Businessman of the Year Award Ceremony. 

Clear red water

Well if anyone thought the Pre-Budget report was going to be the usual, slightly pointless, Pre-Christmas report about the state of the economy then a quick glance along the newspaper shelves this morning will disabuse you.

The right wing media are mourning the death of new Labour (didn't care much for new Labour previously, I seem to remember) and pointing to a Britain on the edge of bankruptcy. The centre ground cautiously suggest a brave move (although most reserve their positon to change this to a foolhardy move if it all goes wrong). And the left media........ oh, I forgot.

What is certain is that there is now the sharpest political divide since Cameron tried to rest the centre ground from Labour by claiming the inheritance to Tony Blair. Rather than being swept into insignificance by accepting the need to support the government when the country is facing economic difficulties, Cameron has gone for the high risk separation. The Tories have set their stall out against  the economic package announced yesterday in a very stark way. The clash between a government which believes intervention is necessary to help stimulate the economy and an opposition which will leave everything to the markets (just remember the last time they did that) could not be more clear.

And the game is now on for the General Election. if the measure announced by the Chancellor gain some traction in the next 12 months, then labour will be home and hosed. If they fail, then Gordon Brown will have gift-wrapped an electoral advantage to the Tories.

How many judges does it take to...

Lord Bingham has retired. Never retiring he has taken the opportunity to say the advice given that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was lawful was, in fact, wrong.

So, that's Lord Goldsmith 1 v 1 Lord Bingham.

The Guardian, like the child who is losing at conkers, now wants it to be best out of three with a public inquiry. Or best of five, no seven, until they get their nose in front.

There is never any suggestion that an inquiry should be held to identify how decisions to go to war could be taken in such a way that they would command universal support - facile and pointless though that would be. No, the Guardianistas merely want to be able to say that their coffee cup conclusions about the right and wrongs of this war (why not the Balkans, Kosovo, Rwanda) were so, so correct.

There probably should be an inquiry in to all conflicts (although we won't have any spare judges to try criminal cases which would be a bit of a blow) and no doubt there will be here. But let the terms of reference be of benefit to all the people of the UK and to those who will have to take dreadful (in the true sense) decisions on our behalf in future.

Labour can win

And if it's in the Torygraph it must be true.

Although to be fair, as they say in the best football commentaries, it was written by Douglas Alexander - sometimes in charge of Labour's election campaigns. Sometimes not. Even when he is.

Anyhow, I don't often read the Torygraph. And for those of the rest of the world who don't either here is what DA had to say.

Let's be honest, neither David Cameron nor Gordon Brown are instantly recognisable as a British Barack Obama. There haven't been goat herders in Surrey or Fife for a long time. Yet last week's victory was not simply a victory for an extraordinary individual; it was also a victory for a body of ideas. As the Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observes: "This year's presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies - and the progressive philosophy won."
At the core of Obama's campaign was a belief that only progressive politics had the answers to the challenges of the time. Relentlessly, he made the case for government action in responding to the problems faced in the economy, in energy and environment policy, in education and in healthcare.

No going back

The Labour Party needs to urgently fill the vacuum of not having a Labour candidate for Mayor of London.  

That vacuum is being, not filled, but highlighted by the launch of Livingstone's ludicrous campaign to be reselected. Having almost single-handedly lost the last election he now wants to ensure Boris has the easiest ride to a second term. 

Livingstone would do better to heed the tone and message of the defeated US candidate John McCain. If he doesn't stand aside gracefully to allow the considered selection of a new candidate, the Labour Party should once again sweep him aside and start the process now of selecting the best woman or man to take on Boris (and the bitteratti).

It may be true....

..but not now Tessa. Not Now.

Government going through a sticky patch.

Olympic games comes along.

Team GB is doing rather well - very well. It may be that just a little of the Olympic feel good factor will spill over into life in general and people will start to feel better about themselves. And it's then that people start to care more about their neighbours and start voting Labour again.

OK - a bit wishful thinking, but it is certainly true that people don't vote Labour if they think the country is going to hell in a handcart, whether we are in power or opposition.

So, assuming that just a smidgen of Olympic fairy dust was about to fall on Gordon Brown's shoulder, the last thing we needed was for for Tessa Jowell to open her gob and blow it all away.

"There is absolutely no more government cash for Games."

says Jowell. And no Olympic fairy dust for the Government.

No nepotism please. We're British.

I must be just be feeling a little irritable this morning. Not enough caffeine.

Anyhow I've just seen that the blessed Harman is proposing that MPs should not be allowed to employ their own children. This is a direct response to a couple of minor scandals swirling around the Tory party - or rather scandals swirling around minor Tories.

A good plan. Closes the loophole, teaches the Tories a lesson. Win, win. NO IT'S NOT! For goodness sake.

Politicians are held in pretty low esteem - unfairly - we all know that. The way to recover esteem is not to introduce bonkers legislation (see post below for my views on that) as a sticking plaster but to have fair legislation which creates transparency around the activities of MPs.

Banning working age children from working for MPs is just mad. What about step-children or foster children. What about nieces and nephews, spouses, parents. The bloke you met in the pub last week. A long-lost mate from Friends Reunited.

There should be proper audit controls of expenditure of public money. Where a Member of Parliament chooses to employ a member of their own family, they (and their family member) will have to accept that there is likely to be scrutiny form quarters other than just the Audit Office. But to ban people employing a family member is just wrong.

Crikey, next Harman will be saying that the Monarchy shouldn't be hereditary. Hmm - now there's an idea.