Tag: Labour Party

COULD CORBYN ACTUALLY WIN?

 

TORIES WIND UP LABOUR GRASSROOTS.

 

Tory papers, perhaps out to make trouble, are reporting this weekend that veteran left winger Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in private polling for the Labour leadership.

I don’t think it will happen but the speculation has been fuelled by the sort of thing that happened on the Victoria Derbyshire debate on BBC 2 this week. In front of an audience of potential, former and current Labour voters three of the four candidates faced a struggle to convince the audience that they were worth voting for. Time and again Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall set out their policy stances, but back came the same response that they weren’t inspiring people to vote Labour. Only Jeremy Corbyn got real gutsy rounds of applause when he called for a fight against austerity.

Sadly Liz Kendall seems to be trailing badly with her pro business stance and insistence on cutting the deficit. Andy Burnham is campaigning against the London based elite that he says has run the party for years, but he’s burdened by his past record on letting private firms into the health service. Yvette Cooper is banking on saying little, relying on her Cabinet experience as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The problem for these three is that they are swimming against a left wing tide in the party that we have not seen since Michael Foot was elected leader in 1980. It was not a rational response to the election of Margaret Thatcher then, and is unlikely to be the right response to Cameron’s victory now. However the activists in the party have a right to express their views and elect who they want. Corbyn is catching that mood and the other three candidates are struggling with their various policy nuances, but with the basic belief that the deficit must be reduced and the Tories have caught the public mood on benefits.

Harriet Harman has hardly put a foot wrong in her long career. She has always kept in touch with the party mood and been popular with her commitment to women. It was therefore quite startling that at the very end of her time in front line politics she should have advocated a humiliating cave in to the Tories welfare reforms.

It posed one of the most difficult questions of our time, what is Labour for? Corbyn has his answer, fight austerity, support large families and ban nuclear weapons. The other three candidates have more complicated answers because they believe that is where Labour has to be to win back middle England.

Middle England, the elusive prize for Labour. What would they feel about Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour Party? They would be more comfortable with a telegenic Burnham or perhaps a woman leading the party for the first time in Kendall or Cooper.

Meanwhile the Tories drive support to Corbyn with their latest proposals on strike ballots and having to opt into levy payments to the Labour Party. That goes down well in Middle and South East England where the tube strike wrecked havoc with people’s lives last week. But it angers grass roots Labour who feel they want to lash out, perhaps elect Corbyn and to hell with the consequences.

THE CHANCELLOR IN THE IRON MAIDEN

 

LABOUR’S DILEMMA.

The Chancellor’s economic bondage fetish continues! During the election he bound himself in pledges not to increase income tax, national insurance and VAT by law. Last night at the Mansion House he pledged a new fiscal framework to achieve permanent budget surpluses.

This is a major development in the finances of the nation. In only seven of the last fifty years have governments run a budget surplus. George Osborne is convening the first meeting in 150 years of the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt.

Business is likely to welcome this determination to tackle the national debt but its political implications are profound. Labour has always believed in the need to run deficits during difficult times to boost the economy and support public services. How will they respond to this? If they support it, the prospect of a Labour Party coming to power with ambitious visions for the NHS, housing and social care will be almost impossible. If Labour oppose Osborne, he will say it is evidence Labour are committed to running deficits and never tackling the National Debt currently running at 80% of GDP.

This move shows the Tories are determined to press home their advantage at a time when Labour is engaged in a tepid leadership election to which I will return in later blogs.

EURO HONEYMOON OVER.

It is a good job the Chancellor is able to divert attention from Tory divisions on Europe. I thought the “better off out” brigade now disguised as Conservatives for Britain might have come to have a little more respect for David Cameron after his election victory. Not a bit of it. We are back to the nineties with these Tory backbenchers making impossible demands on banning freedom of movement in the EU so that they can campaign to get Britain out.

MANDELSON ON NORTHERN DEVOLUTION.

Peter Mandelson is hoping to be elected Chancellor of Manchester University shortly and wants that institution to play its part in the Northern Powerhouse.

During the campaign he has made some painful observations about how Labour was completely outflanked on devolution during the last few years.

Labour council leaders across the North were left with no alternative but to go along with the Northern Powerhouse because of a complete absence of an alternative by Labour. They were reluctant to promise to abolish the Local Enterprise Partnerships but their vision of how the North South divide would be narrowed remained opaque. They should have returned to John Prescott’s vision of regional assemblies holding recreated Regional Development Agencies to account. Only this time they should have given them real powers, like Osborne is giving Greater Manchester.

Mandelson says he was hugely frustrated by seeing the Tories seizing the devolution agenda whilst Labour stood back. The former cabinet minister says Labour had the language but not the policies to rebalance the UK economy.

Labour got this wrong but the Tory plan to allow groups of councils to come together, each with a different model isn’t the answer either to the really big question of how England responds to the call for a federal UK.

 

LABOUR KEEP DIGGING THEIR HOLE.

 

 

LEADERSHIP DISTRACTIONS.

I wonder if anyone in the Labour Party or UKIP has noticed there’s a Queen’s Speech on Wednesday. They are both so busy tearing lumps out of themselves that they will have little time to critique the legislation being proposed by the first all Conservative government in 18 years.

We can expect a hefty programme of legislation if the pattern of the last parliament is anything to go by. The Coalition put through most of its major legislation in the first two years leaving us with a zombie parliament in 2014-15. So we can expect bills on important things like a British Bill of Rights and the right to buy housing association properties. Then there is the Budget in July with the prospect of swingeing cuts in welfare. All this needs the attention of the Labour Party otherwise the Scot Nats will do it for them.

The other danger in Labour taking its eye off the ball is a repeat of what happened in the summer of 2010. While Labour was distracted electing Ed Miliband as leader, the Tories were discovering notes left by outgoing Ministers saying there was no money left and blamed Labour for the financial crisis. It was a charge that stuck right through from 2010 till this May.

UKIP is engaged in an even more damaging internal conflict. Having confirmed Nigel Farage as leader, they have now sacked two of the people who were capable of softening their image as a pack of old lads yearning for Britain as it was in the fifties. Economic spokesman Patrick O’Flynn and particularly policy chief Suzanne Evans provided an alternative to the brash Farage. They were never filmed in pubs but now they are gone from the leadership circle.

NEW FACES.

Last week the Gorton MP Sir Gerald Kaufman briefly took the chair as the new House of Commons met. He is Father of the House because he signed the member’s book in the House of Commons just ahead of Oldham West’s Michael Meacher in 1970. His job was preside over the re-election of John Bercow as Speaker, so not too onerous a task. This is just as well because the MP for Gorton is 84 and will be touching 90 when the next election comes.

But let’s move on from yesterday’s man to the 15 new faces from the north who will be attending their first Queen’s Speech on Wednesday.

A number of prominent councillors have taken the Westminster Way. Kate Hollern, the former leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council is the new MP for Jack Straw’s old seat. Will she enjoy as long a tenure as her predecessors Mr Straw and Barbara Castle who between them represented the town since 1945.

Peter Dowd, the leader of Sefton Council has taken over from the veteran Joe Benton in Bootle whilst Julie Cooper the leader of Burnley Council ousted the Lib Dem Gordon Birtwistle to represent the East Lancashire town.

Justin Madders who led the Labour group on Cheshire West and Chester Council is the new MP for Ellesmere Port and Neston whilst senior Manchester councillor Jeff Smith has made the Labour takeover of Manchester complete by taking Withington from the Lib Dems.

Other new Labour faces include Angela Raynor in Ashton and Rebecca Long-Bailey who succeeded the colourful Hazel Blears in Salford. Then we have the three new Labour MPs who helped to temper a bad night for the party by ousting Tories. They are Margaret Greenwood, Esther McVey’s nemesis in Wirral West and Chris Matheson in Chester. Finally keep an eye on Cat Smith the new MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood. Her early pronouncements indicate she is from the hard left wanting nothing to do with austerity cuts.

Our five new Conservative MPs divided their victories over Lib Dem and Labour incumbents. The most spectacular scalp went to Andrea Jenkyns who defeated Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls in the Leeds suburb seat of Morley and Outwood whilst Chris Green took Bolton West from Labour. The delightfully named Antoinette Sandbach has replaced Stephen O’Brien as the Tory MP for Eddisbury. Sadly the town of Sandbach is in the neighbouring seat of Congleton.

The long Liberal presence in south east Greater Manchester is over with William Wragg becoming the first Tory MP since Tom Arnold in Hazel Grove whilst Mary Robinson took neighbouring Cheadle.

 

TITANS DEPART

 

BIG GUNS LEAVING PARLIAMENT.

This Easter weekend may see a pause in this relentless and everlasting General Election campaign. So it seems an appropriate moment to reflect on the careers of those northern MPs for whom the dissolution of parliament on Monday meant the end of their Commons careers.

The three titans to call it a day are Jack Straw, William Hague and David Blunkett. Straw is the one I knew best. His Blackburn seat has had extraordinary continuity in its parliamentary representation. Barbara Castle was elected in 1945 with Jack replacing her in 1979. Leaving aside his recent fall from grace, Jack Straw has managed to hold the great offices of state whilst still identifying closely with his constituency.

Holding the offices of Home and Foreign Secretary didn’t stop him taking to his soapbox outside Blackburn Town Hall to keep in touch with voters’ views, although he admits to occasionally planting a Labour supporter as a supposed Tory to keep things lively!

His pride in his constituency led to a famous exchange of visits with Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State. In return for Jack visiting Birmingham, Alabama; Ms Rice was introduced to the delights of the East Lancashire town. I interviewed them in a broom cupboard at a local school having told the heavily armed American security guards that there was no room for them too.

That son of Sheffield David Blunkett is also calling it a day. From radical city council leader to hard line Home Secretary, his career has been an inspiration for all disabled people. To read in braille the reams of paper needed to run the Home Office is truly remarkable.

The most surprising retirement to me is that of William Hague. He had politics running through his veins from an early age when as a teenager he reminded the aged representatives at a Tory conference in Blackpool that they wouldn’t be around for much longer. He entered parliament in an extraordinary by election in Richmond (Yorkshire) in 1989. His 19,000 votes were dwarfed by the 28,000 for the Liberals. However those votes were split between the new Lib Dems and the continuing SDP under David Owen which was enjoying its last hurrah. Hague led the Tory Party at its nadir but finished with a flourish as Foreign Secretary and witty Leader of the House.

Salford’s Hazel Blears is leaving parliament but have we heard the last of this flame haired dynamic politician who loves nothing more than getting on her leathers for a bike ride? She unnecessarily split Cheshire in two when she was Communities Secretary and helped destabilise Gordon Brown’s government by her sudden resignation. Nevertheless she has been a force for good and may yet be a candidate for elected mayor for Greater Manchester.

OTHER DEPARTURES.

Two leading northern Liberals are also leaving the House. I use the old title because Alan Beith (Berwick) and Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) were part of the Liberal revival in the 1970s. Beith was one of a number of Liberal by election winners in the early seventies whilst Stunell served on Cheshire County Council before finally taking Hazel Grove in 1997. He was part of the Lib Dem team that negotiated the Coalition and it will be tough for the party to hold the seat following his departure.

St Helens is losing both its MPs. The contrast couldn’t be greater between Dave Watts, heavily identified with the town as council leader, then MP and Shaun Woodward. The latter was a Tory defector parachuted in from Witney who went on to serve as Northern Ireland Secretary.

Two hard working MPs that I’m sorry to see go are Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port) who’s done great work for science and Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton).

Two great champions of devolution for the North, Linda Riordan (Halifax) and Austen Mitchell (Grimsby) won’t be returning to parliament just at a time when more power for our regions might be realised.

Council leaders (Blunkett excepted) often find it difficult to shine at Westminster. That’s been the case with George Mudie. A former leader of Leeds Council, he succeeded the great Denis Healey as MP for Leeds East but only held junior office.

BUT SOME GO ON AND ON.

Michael Meacher(Oldham West) and Gerald Kaufman (Gorton) have already served 45 years each but plan to make it half a century. Kaufman will become Father of the House because he signed the oath of allegiance ahead of Meacher and Denis Skinner when they were new MPs in 1970.

Kaufman will succeed Sir Peter Tapsell who first entered parliament in 1959 when Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister, Hugh Gaitskill led the Labour Party and Winston Churchill was elected for the last time.

CONSTITUENCY FOCUS: PUDSEY.

One of the most marginal seats in Yorkshire, this residential area near Leeds just returned Tory Stuart Andrew in 2010 with a majority of 1659. Fighting the constituency for a second time is Pudsey Town councillor Jamie Hanley. He needs to win to give Ed Miliband any chance of getting into government.