And so it begins

Four hours after Ed Miliband announces that Labour’s London Mayor Candidate will be the subject of a “Primary”, the Evening Standard reports  that Lord Andrew Adonis is considering running for Mayor. Adonis is an ex-Government Minister, who has never fought an election, and is Labour’s leading evangelist for executive directly elected Mayors and the leading evangelist for academy schools. He was made by Tony Blair, and is a leading thinker  on the right of the Labour Party and currently Chair of Progress, the Sainsbury funded think tank and caucus . …

Clean Politics, a bit of Ed, a bit of me

Ed Miliband makes his speech; the autocue is here at Labour List. This speech more than most, one must read his words, everyone else will add their spin. So, here’s mine, by my reading, the key points for change are,

  • Affiliation Memberships by Trade Unions are to be based on consent.
  • A new code of conduct for candidates in internal elections and selections, (we have one now; so who’s fault is it that it isn’t good enough?)
  • Limiting expenditure  including  gifts in kind and 3rd party expenditure internal elections and selections (Good idea, the devil’s in the detail).
  • Regulation of CLP/TU teaming agreements (again an incremental reform; I’d like to see the evidence that the current agreements are being abused.)
  • He proposes that MP’s should be prohibited from having second jobs, (Yes please,  and include the Mayor of London in this proposal.)
  • He proposes that unspecified measures should be taken to clean up lobbying and conflicts of interests in Parliament (Perhaps the Labour Party should expel the worst offenders, and include Peers in the list.)
  • He proposes that Labour’s candidate for London Mayor is to be chosen by supporters, not members. (Why would we want the advice of people who won’t join?)

He also refers to the opening out of policy making since his election as Leader. This is delusional, moving policy initiation to a ‘bit bucket’ on the web is not extending policy making. …

#lab12 conference diary

#lab12 Despite being a member of the Labour Party for 38 years, I have never been to conference before; I have just returned from Manchester, where I attended for 2½ days. It was rather fun, jolly useful and thanks to some of the people I met, inspiring.

I got there late-ish on Sunday and met up with my comrades from Lewisham Deptford CLP, including @vickyfoxcroft, @joe_dromey, @joeperryuk, @mjrharris and @Len_Duvall in a bar near the conference centre. I had been disappointed that the conference and fringe running order had not been sent to me until after I bought my train ticket. This meant I missed part one of the shenanigans and the debate on “Refounding Labour” which I had wanted to attend. After the Lewisham meetup, I moved on to the New Statesman party. I think as a subscriber, I should have had an invite, I didn’t, but anyway, I got in OK. I met up with one of their staff, and expressed my views that I didn’t want to pay to read Dan Hodges and could they stop publishing his stuff. I was advised to write to the Editor, Jason Cowley, with that view, but I can’t find his email or twitter handle! Poor show! …

Labour’s Lost Mayor

sack boris projected

This article was started just after the election in May 2012, and only finished over the Xmas break of 2013, nearly 20 months later. Some of the tenses may thus be a bit odd. I have backdated this in the blog to the time I started it. However RSS feed consumers and Facebook will publish this as at today. The article talks about the candidates, Labour’s manifesto, the role of London Mayor, how Labour sought to hold Boris to account for his record and character and briefly questions whether London is a coherent political entity. I have tried to ensure the article is contemporaneous to the time of the election. (I didn’t quite manage it.)

As I’ve said, I have been busy over the last year campaigning for Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London and for a Labour group on the London Assembly. Now we have the perfect vision from hindsight others have been writing about the London election, Labour’s victory in the Assembly and failure to win the Mayor election. I thought I’d join in. Many blame the candidate, but I feel the issues are deeper than that and that lessons need to be learned. …

London votes tomorrow

Tomorrow/Today we elect a Mayor and Council in London.

Labour’s candidate is Ken Livingstone, he is fighting to replace the right-wing tory, Boris Johnson.

I was planning to summarise my feelings but if you check out my internet spore, I think you know how I feel. Nicky Gavron, a GLA Assembly Member summarizes brilliantly, why Ken is right for London, and Johnson is wrong in her blog article, Ken v Boris.

Vote Labour for London
Johnson has been a disgrace as London Mayor, I don’t even thinks he wants to be Mayor, and Ken has always been a great public servant and Londoner. Once again, read Gavron’s article.

The key powers of the Mayor are Transport, Police and Planning. Ken’ll reduce the fares, bring stability to the Police and use the planning powers in the interests of Londoners to build affordable housing.

Johnson will increase fares at above inflation, sack policemen and Comissioners and built 56 houses in the last six months.

There’s only one sensible choice. Vote Labour for London. …

Something’s got to change! (In London)

Should have been out on the #labourdoorstep tonight with people, but had family things to do. So I watched last night’s London Mayor debate on bbc iplayer.

I can’t believe that Boris stated the Thatcher Government had to abolish the GLC and that Ken’s original Fares Fair was in some period of pre-history. If he want the pensioner vote he’d better get his London history right, but then he’s not a Londoner. The comment/fact that Boris isn’t a man for detail shone through on the transport/police debates. He hasn’t a clue. He’s increased fares and cut the police. He claims that the money isn’t there to meet Ken’s Fare deal; only TfL who work for him say this, every independent expert says that its do-able. I hope so, every time I pass an oyster card reader, I am reminded of what Johnson’s making me pay. …

The London Mayors and their tax affairs

There has been some complete shite written about Ken Livingstone’s tax affairs; he has replied in this article at the Huffington Post.  Here’s the law. The HMRC insist that people once known as sole traders incorporate themselves and run fully regulated companies so that the might of the Companies Act applies to their record keeping.  As a reward, or inducement, unlike those of us who pay PAYE, they are allowed to evaluate and pay their tax bill a year in arrears. …

Goodbye and good riddance to the News of the Screws

Goodbye, News of the Screws. It came as a bit of a shock to hear that Murdoch has closed the News of the World, but typical of our times that I first heard of it on Twitter. The twitterati and today’s print press are all predicting the launch of the Sun on Sunday, and now that News International doesn’t own the “Screws”, it hopes it’s free to be able to buy the outstanding public shareholding of BSkyB.

Plus ca change, plus la meme chose!

It seems that firing 200 people is a small price to pay to get hold of BSkyB.

The Government, at the time of writing, are stating that they are constrained by law from taking into account if News Corporation are ‘fit and proper’ to own the UK’s largest private broadcaster. But just because the News of the World has gone, doesn’t mean that the investigation into these crimes should or will stop. News International management and management systems permitted these acts to occur and couldn’t allegedly discover them when originally asked by the police and courts. Is this a fit and proper organisation to own BSkyB? The least the Government should do on the BSkyB takeover is delay the decision and ask Ofcom to investigate if News International is a fit and proper organisation to own BSkyB.

Furthermore, the wrong doers need to be brought to court, and if guilty punished. Part of the wrong doing is, like after the Watergate burglary, the cover up. There are allegations that police officers were paid corruptly by News International, and questions as to the direction of the Met’s early investigations.

The tsunami of public outrage is caused by the allegation that agents of News International illegally hacked a murder victim’s phone, deleted messages and hacked the phones of war heroes, their families and the families of victims of the 7/7 Al-Queda attacks in London. If they’d stuck to royalty, politicians and celebrities, then Boris Johnson’s comments that this was a storm in a teacup stirred up by the left wing media &  the Labour Party, an issue he dismissed as “Codswallop” might have held, but this is not the case. In fact, News International’s paying off of the first twelve celebrities, authorised by their European chairman, James Murdoch, might have been, and now seems  more clearly to be a cynical attempt to close off  judicial enquiry.

So we need to ask, “What did James Murdoch know about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s, the 7/7 victim’s and the War Heroes’ and their families phones?”, when he paid off Sienna Miller and some of the other famous victims.  Was it a genuine attempt to apologise to the wronged or a cover-up?

The investigating police force in this sordid affair is London’s Metropolitan Police, which has not exactly uncovered themselves in glory. The Metropolitan Police is led by an appointed Commissioner and supervised by the Metropolitan Police Authority, whose members are appointed by Boris Johnson, the tory Mayor of London. Ken Livingstone, Labour’s candidate for Mayor next year, has 10 questions to ask Johnson about if he has acted on his view that what has become this great scandal is still “#Codswallop”. The de-facto chief executive, the Deputy Mayor for Policing, Kit Malthouse, is appointed by Johnson; he was elected to the London Assembly as a Conservative. The Tory leadership of the MPA will argue that they have no right to interfere in operational issues, but Johnson appointed both the Deputy Mayor and the Commissioner. He needs to answer Ken’s questions.

The worrying thing about Livingstone’s fears is that the Met are the only police force in the UK with such a political/democratic oversight. Given the example of the last two years, and what we are about to find out, we, as citizens, need to ask if we want any more ‘democratic’ control of the Police. The Coalition Agreement’s  Crime & Policing section proposes more of this sort of thing, with police oversight undertaken by ‘directly elected’ individuals. This must at the least be re-considered.

The actions of News International have placed the questions of personal privacy,  journalistic standards, corruption and police supervision at the centre of today’s politics.

It’s not over yet, and shouldn’t be. …

On Mayors

Andrew Adonis reviewed Vernon Bogdanor‘s latest book, “The Coalition and the Constitution” in the New Statesman last month.  Adonis believes that Bogdanor argues that the fact of Coalition is a more significant change than the proposed reforms, which he summarises as Alternative Vote, so-called Fixed Term Parliaments and House of Lords reform. I’ve not read the book, so am not sure if focusing on Clegg’s quote, “the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832” is from Bogdanor, or Adonis, but neither think the plans meet this hype.

They suggest  that A.V. & Fixed term parliaments are not major game changes, and Bogdanor also looks at the reform of the House of Commons, the reduction in MPs and the equalisation of constituency sizes.  He argues that these latter reforms, while hyped as anti-Labour will particularly disadvantage the Liberal Democrats. The Government plans for House of Lords reform have now been published, so their impact can be estimated, and we now know that the next elections will be held under First Past the Post electoral system.

Adonis departs from a review of Bogdanor’s ideas by looking at the extension of the idea of executive mayors. He argues that this, “has great democratic potential”. I don’t really see it myself. …