Haigh, precedent and Forde & factionalism

Haigh, precedent and Forde & factionalism

So Louise Haigh has resigned from the Government. I note that the offence which led to the resignation was spent, and she had previously disclosed it to the party. The fact that an offence can be spent, is designed to allow people to rehabilitate themselves. In any other organisation, punishing someone for a spent offence would be a crime, actually in the government and Labour Party it’s a crime. So much for “law makers can’t be law breakers”.

Also, while writing my incomplete review of the Forde Report, I uncovered the following quote,

We are also concerned that the provisions which allow for individuals to have membership removed or denied on the grounds they have committed prohibited acts could be exploited for factional purposes.

Haigh was probably pushed to go because she stood up for policies that Labour’s nomenklatura oppose, such as criticising and regulating private sector transport providers, renationalising the railways and further enabling municipal bus services. To me it is certainly evidence that Forde’s fears were justified and remain so.

The language used by Sky News, “Had Ms Haigh been an ally of the power brokers in Number 10, this row is arguably one she could have ridden out.” is almost certainly true and her treatment will come to be compared with others treated more leniently.

Image Credit CC 2024 DTP BY-NC-ND from flickr. …

Not a good day

Not a good day

Not a good day for progressive politics yesterday, Trump smashes Harris, and in Germany, Scholtz fires his finance minister, Linder, probably signalling the end of the ‘Jamaica’ coalition. I am with those that say the lesson for liberal centrists is not to piss off your base and keep your eyes on the real value of wages/household income. If “it’s the economy stupid”, then the economy is real wages !!! There are big lessons for UK politics here.

For more check out articles by Adyta Chakraborty, Bernie Sanders, and Phil Burton Cartledge. …

A budget that “needs improvement” &“exceeds expectations”

Rachel Reeves in front of No 10/1 with a red box

The budget headline is a £127bn deficit and current account stabilisation where the Tories had planned further reductions in expenditure. I am on the side of those who say, it’s not too bad and could have been worse. It, in the words of most performance management systems, “Exceeds expectations”, although most of those were set by themselves. There remain some unsolved problems and some risk but I think this response from Jeremy Corbyn and the Green Party misses the mark, it is not austerity light. There's much more, overleaf ...

Are there any public sector efficiencies to find?

Are there any public sector efficiencies to find?

In order to prop up the markets, Kier Starmer wrote an article in the FT, once again extolling the need for public sector reform. His article covers more than that, it seeks to address innovation & growth, and public sector reform, yet misses the implications on industrial policy, university investment and local authority services. I explore these themes in more detail overleaf ...

Growth, institutions and Brexit

Growth, institutions and Brexit

Several commentators on the UK budget, including the OBR, have suggested but there’s insufficient growth stimulus planed. The OBR predict that the economy will grow slightly less than under previous plans; I don’t know how this can be when the proposed deficit is £89bn. They also however predict that the effect of Brexit his -4% of GDP and yet no one in parliament, except for Ed Davey has mentioned this as a growth opportunity.

The OBR and the Bank of England are both institutions designed to protect economic policy from democratic control. Time to abolish one and reform the other. …

Come back when you’ve something to say

Come back when you’ve something to say

I wrote a piece for Brexit Spotlight on Starmer’s visit to Brussels . Earlier this month Keir Starmer’s went to Brussels to meet the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in a much–heralded start of a “reset” of the United Kingdom’s relationship with the European Union (EU). A genuine re-set of relations was always going to be a challenge given the red lines established by the Labour Party in the UK General Election.

The article looks at the development of Labour’s policy towards the EU and the development of the “Red Lines”, or the three “Noes” as some European politicians are calling it. I acknowledge that Labour’s leadership have attempted to broaden the conversation by raising Defence and Security, although I believe this is basically an attempt to trade the UK’s relative but shrinking strength in military capability for ‘single market access with opt-outs’.

The announcements on both sides were lukewarm towards progress although they agreed to meet again. I finish the article by saying, it has hardly been an ideal beginning to the ‘reset’, even if the red lines established by the Labour Party were always going to inhibit a fuller and more meaningful collaboration. Indeed, the Independent reports that the meeting was:  

“… a blow to the Prime Minister, the EU repeatedly pointed to Britain’s existing arrangements with the bloc – Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework and Boris Johnson’s Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) – calling for the ‘full and faithful’ implementation of those deals. It could suggest there is little room for any major new agreements until existing plans are fully in place. Currently parts of the TCA are not in place, such as repeatedly delayed Brexit checks on EU imports.”

This is as close to “come back when you’re ready to say something interesting”, as the EU gets. …

It’s not just trust!

In a Labour List report Pat McFadden MP, in writing an introduction for a coming report on trust from the SMF, is quoted as saying, “ … cautioned Labour against assuming the magnitude of the majority the party won in July would “automatically” see it win the next election.”

Too right. The Labour List article places the timing in the context of current opinion polls one of which shows Labour with a 1% lead; personally, I prefer to use politico.eu’s poll tracker which suggests it isn’t that close but does show that Labour lost 10% points during the election; 131 of Labour’s elected MP’s have majorities of under 5000 and yesterday, Labour lost a bunch of council seats.

We also have the examples of Pasok, Syrezia, and the slump in support for Labour’s sister parties in France and Germany. All these countries now have significant caucuses of far-right MPs. The cost of Labour’s failure maybe very high.

Rosie Duffield in her letter resigning the Labour whip ( Sky | mirror )  spoke of the efforts of the whole party, and the electorate’s trust,

As Prime Minister, your managerial and technocratic approach, and lack of basic politics and political instincts, have come crashing down on us as a party after we worked so hard, promised so much, and waited a long fourteen years to be mandated by the British public to return to power.

…

How dare you take our longed-for victory, the electorate’s sacred and precious trust, and throw it back in their individual faces and the faces of dedicated and hardworking Labour MPs?!

While Labour’s leadership were telling its members before the election there was no room for complacency, today, there is no room for arrogance or failure to meet the electorates expectations which maybe higher than that which the manifesto promised. …

No more a nation of shopkeepers

No more a nation of shopkeepers

I went on the National Rejoin March. These are the notes I made if I had been chosen to represent Another Europe on the platform.

Now we have a labour government, one that claims to represent its federal party constituents and its voters. Unfortunately, would seem not on the question of European Union. The majority of Labour’s voters and members both support rejoining the European Union.

The LME, Labour’s pro-Europe socialist society, issued a call to attend their Labour Party conference fringe, claiming that in Parliament their membership was larger than the Tory party. It is probably not very helpful; the PLP is in fear of the leadership and so it’ll be sometime, if ever, before the LME members will find their voice and commitment. Their behaviour in the selections and manifesto making process illustrate a supine attitude towards the leadership, who had variously announced, “Not in 50 years” and that they would “Fix Brexit”.

The LME did not call for the rejoining of any element of the European Union, basically opposing joining the customs union and the single market. These Labour’s MPs join those journalists, consultants, and academics for whom their career and reputation is more important than their cause.

The persistent attempt to cleverly design demands that allow the government to claim they’re not rejoining but are in some way improving or resetting our relationship with the European Union is dishonest and will fail.

Even a medium term project to rejoin the Union or the single market requires the Labour Party and its Government to change its mind. Those of us who are still members need the help of those who are not.

The job of left wing, and all rejoiners, is to argue that the UK will not be permitted to rejoin until its ready to be a good citizen and to convince the people and their parliament that it’s an advantage to be members of a united Europe where member states and people act in solidarity.

We must leave the mentality of the “Nation of Shopkeepers” behind us. …

Labour’s “thick” red lines!

Labour’s “thick” red lines!

Why have the Labour Government trapped themselves with so many Red Lines? We have Reeves’ on the economy and now it seems Starmer and Cooper on the EU’s youth mobility proposals, although more accurately, they are red lines on the issue of the EU. It would seem that Reeves is looking for an escape route, although whether they’ll u-turn on the winter fuel allowance and 2-child benefit cap is another matter, but, on the EU, it seems that despite the obvious loop-hole of redefining students as non-migrants, Cooper and Starmer are not prepared to compromise on a youth mobility scheme with the EU despite having similar agreements with 15 countries already. The rest of this blog looks at Rosie Duffield's excoriating resignation letter, and I hark back to a New Statesman article, and quote it, "I can give you a whole cadre of these people who weren’t the Oxbridge elite, the special advisers and all of the rest of it,” one former MP told me, “but they were politicians and they did have a sense of what voters wanted and they had a way of communicating with voters that these guys [the young MPs and special advisers] never did. Just never did. And as a result, it was a profound misunderstanding of what democratic politics was about. It’s not a seminar.” For the whole article, read more ...