New Britain, new Britcon

New Britain, new Britcon

Gordon Brown’s Commission on the constitution of the UK has finished its report. Much of the press focus on the proposal to abolish/reform the House of Lords but it is much more comprehensive than that. I originally wondered if in its way it is as ambitious as the Chilean constitution that failed to win approval in 2022. On reading it fully I conclude that it is not. They do however, propose a new constitution, with entrenched individual rights, of health, education and housing and a duty of the state to ensure no-one is poor. For all their controversy in this country, these rights are commonplace around the world. I summarise the report, commenting on parliamentary sovereignty, the devolution settlements, money and cleaning up Westminster, and make a comment on their civil service reform processes. There's more overleaf. ...

The Empire strikes back, Labour & Immigration 2022.

The Empire strikes back, Labour & Immigration 2022.

This is a reaction to Kier Starmer’s speech to the CBI where he said, “But our common goal must be to help the British economy off its immigration dependency to start investing more in training workers who are already here.” History repeats itself; I remember that Enoch Powell told his supporters to vote Labour to stop the EU, but then neither Wilson nor the 70’s left, were pandering to racism. This time, the difference is that Labour are courting that vote.

I can no longer forgive this sort of language, pouring over the text of speeches looking for good news is something I promised to stop during Ed Miliband’s leadership. It’s a language designed for the headlines he wants. It’s part of the speech where he is mainly talking about training, and training provided by business. There is absolutely no need to use this language.

This article looks at Zoe Gardner & Jonathan Portes’ reactions and I note that, this approach was trialled by Rachel Reeves in a Sky interview, immediately after Labour Party Conference.

My disgust and anger led to me proposing and winning a motion at my Constituency Labour Party and Union branch. The article quotes the motion and publicises my speech notes. I conclude, by looking at Yvette Cooper’s conference speech and note that neither Cooper, nor Starmer made any promises on the hostile environment.

Attempting to differentiate from the Tories on competence will fail both in winning the election and making things better. Labour needs to offer hope and needs a movement to sustain it through the inevitable push backs that will occur. Pandering to racism won’t do that. I say more overleaf.

Without power, we can not make things better!

Without power, we can not make things better!

It’s also true that without will, we can’t make things better and the Labour front bench’s, with their so-called Labour-to-win outriders, constant return to competence as a differentiator from this corrupt Tory government, their rejection of our core and even peripheral supporter’s interests and a lack of clear opposition to austerity using sound finance as an excuse will lead to a situation where a Labour Government, a Labour Government, will privatise hospitals, privatise schools, make higher education harder to enter for working class people, start the surveillance state, introduce workfare and fail its own people on regional policy, capping this sad litany off by supporting the US in an illegal war.

The front bench owe Labour’s member’s a duty to put a manifesto that is agreed by the Party; but their current vision is one of capture of the Party, funded by donors, with policy designed by psephologically informed experts and ‘clever’ people, appealing to voters and attempting to create an electoral coalition informed by ‘triangulation and jeopardising the loyalty of the young and ethnic minority voters.

Blair once famously said,

Let me make my position clear – I wouldn’t want to win from a traditional leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.

Tony Blair

This is permission for everyone that disagrees with policy to say what they want.

What I want is a manifesto and front bench intent on building a better society not replacing the Tories with themselves; for some, it’s just about red boxes, ministerial salaries and government cars and asking us to be grateful that they’re not Tories because any Labour Government is better than a Tory Government. We need a manifesto that excites the membership and unions who’ll then defend the Government when they are blown of course by the powers of conservatism.

We should hope for and promise more!

I doubt that a Labour front bench will be as corrupt as Johnson, or as vacant as Truss, or as cruel as Osborne but this political strategy, can only fail. If the disgust with the Tories wasn’t as bad as it is, it’s questionable that Labour would win on a centrist and austerity platform and even if they do, the dangers of a Labour austerity government leading to a one term government looms large. All Labour Governments have failed because they forget who put them there. …

Chilling Effect

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Lauren Townsend, a Labour Milton Keynes councillor and cabinet member has been blocked from standing as a Labour MP for her own seat. This was allegedly done for showing support for an opposition party by ‘liking’ a tweet from Nicola Sturgeon on her -ive covid test. Aydin Dikerdem found that candidates who have been approved for the selection have also liked tweets from other party members. As he said, this should be a permitted act of free speech. The decision to bar Lauren is biased, probably improper, potentially based on unlawfully and unfairly obtained data and designed to create a chilling effect. She had been nominated by several unions which should guarantee her a place on the long list, how long will they put up with this?

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What I said about #lab22!

What I said about #lab22!

i have finished my write up of Labour Conference ’22. The articles can be found using a wordpress search on tag:lab22, This tag also includes some articles I wrote before the conference previewing its agenda.

I have written a piece on most of the debates and speeches and added a couple of pieces on left/right power the European Movement meetings and the conduct of the chair[s].  …

Reeves and Immigration

There I am sitting in my living room, considering that maybe Starmer and Reeves domestic policy promises weren’t so bad, playing with my phone when a clip from Sky News comes on with Rachel Reeves, saying that the problem with the Tory immigration policy is there aren’t enough deportations. This is the moral sink that competing on competence takes you. Labour’s Conference Policy at lab19 and lab21 is clear and based on an anti-racist, internationally legally compliant, rights based, compassionate, and humane approach. We must do better than this.  …

Summary impressions of #lab22

Summary impressions of #lab22

 #lab22 was very quite and extraordinarily managed. There was some good chairing by Alice Perry and Dianna Holland, and some dreadful chairing by the rest, Wendy Nichols, Angela Eagle and Gurinder Singh Josan. Does Starmer’s speech sum up what we’ve become?, a mild social democracy domestically (but to the right of Callaghan on public ownership if not on wages and collective bargaining), an atlanticist foreign policy (differing from Ed Miliband & Corbyn), and a vicious internal management regime suggesting continued bad behaviour if they get into government where they’ll control, the Dept. of Justice, Home Office, and the intelligence services.

I make this conclusion from Starmer’s speech; Conference wants more but we’ll see what the front bench does; front benches of both factions have a habit of ignoring what they don’t want. The silence and de-emphasising of benefit cuts is also worrying as is the silence on the hostile environment.

My other fear is that no Labour Government has ever been more left wing than its manifesto, is what they want enough to build a more equal society and do the leadership want that? It could have been worse, many of us were fearing a full on blue labour manifesto and I am not yet cleat that the debt fetishists are in retreat. …

Left Right power

The two key votes on which the relative strength of the factions can be measured are Card Vote 7 reported in CAC2, and in my article, “The Rules debate”, and the vote for the National constitutional committee reported in CAC4.

On CV 7, the pro-CLP vote consisted of 42.2% of the CLP vote, versus 56.8%. For the NCC vote, the Momentum/CLGA candidates got 28.5% of the vote, which was only open to CLP delegates. This is very disappointing and a significant collapse from 2021.

Momentum claim that they won the battle of ideas, we’ll see.

I usually look at the the attendance numbers; for CV7 there were 293,621 votes. The Labour Party reported 432, 213 members as at the qualification date. The reported membership includes those in arrears, which I estimate as 28K. This means that 68% (of the membership) or 72% (of members in good standing) of CLP votes were cast in CV7. Thus I calculate that 101,000 votes missing based on my estimated membership number. This represents about 172 CLPs as far as I can tell and 27% of the membership in good standing. I estimate that 15,000 of those missing will be the London Parties whose delegations were prohibited or Parties suspended. …