Tag: New Labour

BUDGET BETTER GO WELL.

TAX AND SPEND

I think the fevered talk of plots to dislodge the Prime Minister is exaggerated. Whoever is PM on Brexit Day better stand by for massive criticism either for paying the Europeans too much or keeping us too close to the EU. Better to leave Mrs May to take the flack is surely the wise course for aspiring leaders. Reports that some Tory MPs want to go into opposition to refresh the party are ridiculous.

All that said the government is in a fragile state and is relying on Philip Hammond to deliver a good budget next week. I’ve got a lot of time for Phil The Till. When you look around the Cabinet table and see charlatans like Johnson and Gove, there is something reassuring about the grey man with his spreadsheets. He knows Brexit is a dangerous threat to the economy. He knows we are spending billions servicing our debts. Yet he is bated for exuding gloom when he should be apeing Johnson’s unfounded cheerfulness.

On Wednesday the Chancellor ought to loosen the purse strings to help with housing, the NHS, and elderly care. He needs to address our woeful productivity and skills record. But he should be bold enough to put up some taxes to pay for it and go back on a manifesto promise to raise the 40p income tax threshold to £50,000. The elderly should have to pay some National Insurance to begin the task of tackling intergenerational unfairness.

Unlike many commentators I don’t think a General Election is at all likely so now is the time in the political cycle to take a risk with incurring the wrath of those opposed to any tax rises.

But Phil Hammond faces strong opposition in his own party. Former Minister Nick Boles wants the Chancellor to scrap his deficit reduction target. He believes it is fine for the annual deficit to remain at 2.6% indefinitely. This in the face of an Institute for Fiscal Studies warning the deficit could be on course to be £20bn higher than expected by 2021/22.

GORDON BROWN.

The former Prime Minister has been in the North this week to boost sales of his memoirs. I had a lot of time for the granite integrity of this Scottish son of the manse. His one great achievement in No 10 was in October 2008 when he showed global leadership in the middle of the economic crisis.

His great flaw was his undermining of Tony Blair in his desire to be Prime Minister. Why did he want the job so badly? When he got it, he didn’t know what to do with it. Was he a continuity man for New Labour or something else?

He claims his differences with Blair were over policy and he had nothing to do with the personal attacks. The fact is Brown could have reigned in his spin doctors Damian McBride and Charlie Whelan who were constantly briefing against the Prime Minister.

Blair should have sacked Brown after the 2001 General Election, but it’s not just weak Prime Ministers who find it hard to dismiss troublesome Cabinet colleagues.

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SINGLE MARKET CHALLENGE TO CORBYN

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT.

Jeremy Corbyn does not take easily to adulation. This weekend he would probably prefer to be tending his allotment than hearing “Oh! Jeremy Corbyn”, ringing out from the Brighton conference centre.

But Labour’s surprisingly good performance (they failed to win for the third time by the way) in June’s General Election has confirmed Corbyn in the leadership for years to come if he wants to stay. Except for Alison McGovern’s Labour Campaign for the Single Market, most moderate Labour MPs have become political zombies. They remain because of an admirable sense of loyalty, hoping the tide will turn. I fear they will be disappointed.

In Brighton at the weekend we will see the hard left not only buttress the current leadership in power but take steps to make the left revolution permanent. Corbynistas are set to take control of the Conference Arrangements Committee and National Constitutional Committee. Most people have never heard of these bodies but the former used to be used by New Labour to keep embarrassing subjects like unilateral nuclear disarmament off the agenda. The latter body came into existence after the expulsion of Militant in 1986, but would be unlikely to expel similar people today. “No enemies to the Left” is likely to be the guiding principle.

But Corbyn’s people are looking beyond the day when Jeremy returns to his marrows. The percentage of Labour MPs needed to nominate a leadership candidate is being reduced so that in future left wingers will not need misguided moderates like Frank Field and Margaret Beckett to put them on the ballot paper.

Don’t expect a huge row on the conference floor about all this. The outside chance that the Tories might implode under Brexit strains and Labour come to power in yet another General Election will probably ensure good behaviour.

BREXIT REVOLT?

If there is to be trouble for Corbyn, it is likely to come from the Wirral South MP Alison McGovern and her attempt to get the party to commit to staying in the Single Market for ever. The Shadow Brexit Secretary Kier Starmer won a surprising partial victory in getting the Eurosceptic people around Corbyn to commit Labour to the Single Market during the Brexit transition period. McGovern wants to go further with all the implications that has for continued freedom of movement. McGovern belongs to the Blairite Progress faction in the party which has recently suffered a huge financial blow from the total withdrawal of funding by Lord Sainsbury.

LIB DEMS STICK TO THEIR GUNS.

While Labour try to walk the tightrope between Remain and Leave supporters, Tory Cabinet infighting was patched up just ahead of the Prime Minister’s Florence speech. But that was after Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson repeated the lie over a £350m Brexit windfall for the NHS. Let’s remember we do not send £350m to the EU each week. After the rebate and European aid is considered the figure is £161m.

Meanwhile I was in Bournemouth with the Lib Dems. They were celebrating the EU with flags and yellow starred berets. They also reaffirmed their commitment to letting the people vote on the Brexit deal.

It would have been easy for the new leader Vince Cable to have taken the party’s poor election showing as an excuse to abandon this policy which shows no sign at the moment of being popular.

However, talking to representatives, I detected a hope that public opinion will undergo a massive change when the consequences of the botched Brexit talks become apparent. Let us hope that change of view is lead by the North, the area that was sadly deceived by the Boris bombast and which has most to lose from leaving.

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COULD LABOUR HOLD ON IN BY ELECTIONS?

LABOUR COPING.

With the NHS at breaking point, our prisons in meltdown and the government’s plan to solve the housing crisis widely criticised, the Tories don’t deserve any success in next week’s by elections.

The fact that the seats of Copeland and Stoke Central are in play is due to the literally incredible Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. It’s all so different from twenty years ago, when Labour swept the Tories out of Wirral South in a by election which was a foretaste of the Blair landslide to come months later.

Things have reached such a pass that two talented, but vastly inexperienced, Greater Manchester MPs are being suggested as successors to the hapless Corbyn. Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey (Salford) and Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner (Ashton) have been MPs for less than two years and are virtually unknown on the national stage.

This speculation was provoked by a survey in Manchester that showed diehard Labour supporters giving Corbyn dire ratings. That supports what I am picking up from my sources within the party.

So why do I think Labour might hold on to both seats? The greatest threat to them comes in Copeland where Corbyn’s equivocal attitude to nuclear power and nuclear weapons is toxic in an area that depends on both for jobs. The Labour majority is slim. The seat includes the genteel town of Keswick as well as the more industrial coastal strip around Sellafield and Whitehaven and voters tend to punish parties when the sitting MP walks off the job as Jamie Reed did. That said the Labour candidate, Gillian Troughton, has made clear her support for all things nuclear, has distanced herself from Corbyn and is campaigning hard against plans to transfer maternity services from Whitehaven to Carlisle.

Theresa May visited the constituency this week. Prime Ministers don’t usually do that if they think their party is going to lose. That said Copeland/Whitehaven has been Labour territory since 1935 and they could cling on.

WHY VOTE UKIP?

Tristram Hunt was imposed on Stoke Central in 2010 when that was the way things were done by New Labour. It was no surprise when he found the attractions of the ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum more attractive than representing the people of the Potteries, who voted heavily to leave the EU. Hunt’s departure has given UKIP the perfect chance to show that they can appeal to Labour voters fed up with the metropolitan values of the Jeremy Corbyn Labour Party.

But there are big risks for UKIP. Their new leader Paul Nuttall has had to put his neck on the line and fight the seat when his inclination may have been to give it more time before trying for parliament. He has quickly found out that being a candidate leads to unwelcome publicity. So it has proved as it has emerged that he did not lose close relatives in the Hillsborough disaster. His brand is that of a plain speaking scouser which might not play well in the Potteries. UKIP’s main challenge thought is to offer credible policies for the working class on other issues than Europe. The government is forcing a hard Brexit on us, so what’s the point of voting UKIP?

It may be that the disillusionment with politics that was so strong last June will give UKIP their first northern seat, but Labour still have a chance.

Follw me @JimHancockUK

2015: TORY TRIUMPH,TERROR AND REFUGEES

The year has been book ended by acts of terror that reminded us that however much progress we make in computerisation, medical research or space travel, mankind’s capacity for violence is still there. The murderous Parisian attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo came in January, the one on the Bataclan Theatre in November. In between the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees tested the European Union to its limits. Linking the terror and the refugees was the widening war in Syria. It led to a decision that the UK should bomb Daesh with as yet unknown consequences for British politics.

What we do know is that in all likelihood 2015 saw the establishment of Conservative government in Britain until 2025. The run up to the contest in may was marked by squabbles over the TV debates and a skillful March budget by George Osborne where he determined that the Tories would fight the election on their Long Term Economic Plan. It was effective in reminding voters of the recovery that had taken place already and casting doubt on their Labour opponent’s economic competence. Ed Miliband made little headway with his plans for a mansion tax and freezing energy bills. However the Tories believed until the close of poll on May 7^th that they had not done enough to win a majority. They were helped over the line by the surge in support for the Scottish Nationalists. The prospect of Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond running the country drove wavering voters into the Tory camp.

General Elections are always a time when the old guard hand on to new faces so 2015 saw northern legends like Jack Straw, David Blunkett and William Hague leave the Commons along with lesser lights like Grimsby’s Austin Mitchell and Salford’s Hazel Blears. The Class of ’15 will take time to build their reputations but quick out of the blocks has been left winger Cat Smith in Lancaster and William Wragg, the new Tory MP for Hazel Grove.

The year has also seen the final passing of two of the twentieth century’s leading Chancellors, Denis Healey and Geoffrey Howe. A miserable year for the Liberal Democrats was compounded by the death of their former leader Charles Kennedy.

General Election victory led to Tory hubris in the summer with plans for new laws curbing the unions, extra surveillance powers and cuts to tax credits. On the latter measure, by the autumn the Prime Minister was reminded that although he had a majority, it was only a slim one.

The most surprising consequence of the General Election was the victory of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, the most unlikely holder of the post since the 1920s. A combination of reckless decisions by some MPs in nominating him was followed by a surge of support motivated by years of frustration at the approach of New Labour. The Oldham by-election has entrenched Corbyn’s leadership with most of the parliamentary party in frustrated murmuring revolt.

It has been a bad year for the European Union. The long drawn out crisis over Greek debt followed by the divisions over the refugee migration may help turn Brits against the EU in such numbers that we vote to leave.

Devolution has moved on erratically across the North this year with deals being struck in Sheffield and Liverpool but Leeds and Lancashire still mired in disputes with North Yorkshire and Wyre Councils before packages can be agreed. Tony Lloyd was installed as interim elected mayor of Greater Manchester and as the year ended it looked as if Joe Anderson would head up the Liverpool City Region in succession to Phil Davies of Wirral.

But for devolution and the Northern Powerhouse to mean anything to ordinary people, it has to achieve things that matter. It looks as if transport might be the first such activity. After “pausing” the electrification of the Leeds-Manchester line in the summer, the government ended the year with substantial announcements on rail investment.

Have a peaceful Christmas.