Labour’s new deal for Europe

ec-london

This is a comment on A new deal with the EU is exactly what Britain needs. Here’s how Labour will achieve it | Nick Thomas-Symonds | The Guardian  – www.theguardian.com, I have made it with the help of diigo, where the headline comment on my bookmark, part generated and part selected from the article says, ‘via Comment is free | guardian.co.uk, subtitled, nonsensically, “This isn’t about politics – it’s about pragmatism. Working with our allies will make British people safer, more secure and more prosperous.”‘.

The article says nothing new and repeats the isolationist nonsense fantasies of Labour’s triangulators that Brexit can be fixed. It includes the phrase “honour the referendum” despite the fact that it was nearly nine years ago, and we’ve had three general elections since then.

Quotes and comments

We are equally confident in what the UK can offer in return. It is a politically stable country, and the government has a huge mandate, with more than four years left to deliver our policies. This stability has already inspired the confidence of businesses across the world, unlocking tens of billions of pounds of long-term investment.

  • The statistics aren’t in yet to substantiate investment numbers,

Labour is rising to meet the challenges in this new era of global instability.

This is not about ideology or returning to the divisions of the past, but about ruthless pragmatism and what works in the national interest.

When it comes to security, Nato is the cornerstone of our defence.

  • Really? A fantasy of the Labour Right, NATO’s gone, for at least four years, but Trump’s isolationism has not come out of the blue.

All of this will be framed by the very clear red lines we set out at the election. We won’t return to the arguments of the past: there will be no return to the single market, the customs union or freedom of movement.

  • Well, it won’t work then. There isn’t a deal in which the UK wins at the expense of the EU. If only because, the queue of member states asking for their own opt-outs would be 25 long.

We will only agree an EU deal that meets the needs of the British people and respects the 2016 referendum result.

You can’t do both if you believe honouring the referendum means staying out of the EU but the referendum mandate was dishonestly won and is now nearly nine years old; I estimate that about 4½ million voters have died since then. …

On Labour’s industrial policy

a factory billowing smoke into a cloudy sky

I wrote an article on Industrial Policy which was published in Chartist Magazine. In the article, I try to describe the white paper, and probably my conclusion is best summarised with this quote, which I lifted from an article in this blog,

The big unasked question is whether investment/innovation industrial policies can work. Some economists including Meadway, Graeber, Dillow and Edgerton question the effectiveness of industrial policy, especially that aimed at innovation and start-ups, not least because of the need to combat climate change. Meadway & Graeber argue that the climate crisis is or should be changing the nature of the questions of economics. Dillow argues that the multiplier effect of investment is low and that identifying the successful future is too hard. Edgerton argues that the goal of policy should be a better life, not more jobs and that investment needs to be directed at health and education, both of which can offer comparative advantage.

I also comment in my review of the Autumn statement.  …

Hard-a-port to avoid the rocky shore

Hard-a-port to avoid the rocky shore

I wrote a piece of Mike Phipps, Labour Hub, called, Labour in crisis must change direction, published on 30 Dec. It was a comment on the More in Common poll run on behalf of the Times, reporting that if there were an election tomorrow, Labour would lose 200 seats including those of Angela Rayner, Yvette Cooper and Wes Streeting. The Independent reports that they would be joined by Ed Miliband, John Healey and Bridgit Phillipson.

The rest of this blog shows a chart as to how the Commons would look, highlights the false start, identifies real earnings as the true indicator of economic policy success, looks at the example of Germany, and the threat of Reform UK. I conclude, "The big problem Labour faces is it designed its manifesto to win the election, not run the country. It’s still triangulating and refuses to recognise that triangulation reinforces & legitimises the politics of their opponents. This is particularly so on the issue of immigration and racism." Some are suggesting that a change of leader is needed, what’s needed is a change of direction that genuinely puts the country first. It remains, “the economy stupid”, but the economy is real wages/incomes." For more use the Read More button ...

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 ...

Democracy is about policy too

Democracy is about policy too

 In a meeting last night, of my Union branch, and we were being spoken to by an MP, who argued that he stood on a Manifesto, and that this represented the Party’s view and its contract with the voters. My problem is that the Manifesto, while agreed by the National Policy Forum was not agreed by the Party and there is little doubt that the Party opposes austerity, wants to rejoin the EU and opposes racism in our immigration policy.

It made decide to redouble my efforts in support of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and to this time focus on how we make policy, and how we hold a leadership accountable to it. I mean, mandatory re-selection was meant to be part of this, but the 2019 selections and triggers show this may not be enough.

Today’s problem, is that the PLP is representing the leadership to the members and not the other way round. …

The missing courage of the ICO

The missing courage of the ICO

I note from Jim Killock’s pinned repost of a post by David Erdos on X, that the media and the ICO have issued a report, dated March 2024, on journalistic practices and the Data Protection Act 2018. This was produced as part of response to the Leveson Report, itself, spawned by the Millie Dowler & celebrity phone hacking scandal. Erdos makes the point that the ICO did not make use of its investigatory powers, which he refers to as §17 powers nor that the story was followed by … err! … the Press.

Additionally, over the last week, the ICO announced its report into its investigations into the Labour Party and its compliance with GDPR/DPA. Again, they weren’t asking the big questions and say more about the mitigation actions than the compliance failures. This allows the Guardian to run a headline focusing on the failure to respond to DSARs, in fact the Guardian focuses only on late response, and not on failure and everyone is silent on the refusals.

I would like to know what measures the Party took to ensure that their IT sub-contractors met their obligations as data processors, what measures the Party took to ensure their DPO was qualified[1] according to Article 37 of the GDPR, why no compensation has been offered/mandated to victims of the breach, what measures Labour took to ensure the completeness of any DSARs, what measures the Labour Party took to ensure that only appropriate staff had access to personal data and what measures the Party took to ensure that democratic rights of members weren’t adversely effected by the breach? It would seem the ICO have not asked these questions; this is exceedingly disappointing.

Regulatory capture is a well-studied phenomenon. However, it’s simpler if one is the government rather than a private business or an NGO. It seems pretty clear that the ICO is frightened of the major political parties which since human rights law is designed to protect citizens from governments, rather spoils the point of having one. NB the GDPR has a lot to say about the importance of the independence of both Data Protection Officers and also the national data protection supervisory authority.

[1] The data protection officer shall be designated on the basis of professional qualities and, in particular, expert knowledge of data protection law and practices … n.b. Data Protection practices require an expertise in cyber security. …

Power, Influence and Policy in the Labour Party

Power, Influence and Policy in the Labour Party

I have been published on Labour Hub. In the article, I reflect on the powerlessness of Labour’s ordinary members, and look at the long term plans of Labour’s right and PLP starting from Evan’s 1999 report proposing the destruction of membership rights and diminishing of the CLP influence. I look at the introduction of all-member meetings and registered supporters and their later repeal together with the reforms enhancing conference power and their repeal. I also look at Labour's failure to use IT platforms for policy, and underinvestment in supporting staff posts. See overleaf or check out the original article... ...