labour – Page 7 – davelevy.info

On points of order

The platform introduced a new process; points of order need to be justified at the speakers desk, before being allowed to put to conference and the chair. I can understand that; some people are quite irresponsible in the points of order they make, however the rules say,

Point of order – Any delegate may raise a legitimate point of order during a debate. Any such point of order shall be heard at the conclusion of the current speech.
The Chair shall retain the power to rule what is and is not a legitimate point of order, and to instruct a delegate to end an illegitimate point of order.
A point of order will be ruled illegitimate if it does not immediately and directly identify which of these standing orders is in question.
Labour’s Rule Book A9.I.4.C

i.e. the Chair determines if a Point of Order is legitimate not an employee of the party, not even the GS. The power to raise a point of order is an important part of the power relationship between the floor and the platform.

The fact is they aren’t very good; they allowed one point of order on ‘the last speaker was talking rubbish’ and two on ‘the chair is not calling people like me’. They denied me a point of order on the conduct of card vote 13, and they also denied a point of order to a delegate who wanted to remind the chair that delegates have been instructed that they can only indicate they wish to speak if seated and to raising their empty hand. The ‘must be seated rule’ is an accessibility issue and people used to wave the most ridiculous of things, including an inflatable red dragon and in one case their baby. The third point in the rule is in my mind sufficient protection against abuse.

On speaker selection, there is no perfect way, there are more people that want to speak than there are slots and the debate is improved if recognised experts such as TU speakers, or in 2018, Richard Corbett, the leader of the EPLP, and even PPCs. However, in 2018 and I believe 2021, the conference provided accessibility stewards, with uniform tee shirts and great big signs to stand beside disabled speakers who wished to speak. This wasn’t done this year. I have no doubt that more can be done to ensure that, “… speakers are a fair representation of Annual Conference, and that there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of protected personal characteristics.” A9.I.4.E.ii …

Justice Crime and Democracy

Onto Tuesday 26th, the motions on PR, parliamentary sovereignty related to the ministerial code, powers of the electoral commission and prohibiting second jobs, and the abolition of the House of Lords were all carried. The words of the composites are published in CAC 2 Addendum.

The Justice agenda was introduced by Emily – she just doesn’t give a shit, the shortest front bench speech, in which she promised to end criminal impunity and address criminal system failures including the decimation of legal aid.

Steve Reed’s speech was a confirmation of the common speech design, loads of stuff on how awful the Tories are, chuck in an announcement if you have one and finish on everything will be better with a Labour Government, led by Sir Kier Starmer, peppered with the slogan, “Labour: On your side”.

Reed had a side diversion into “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”, they i.e. the front bench seem to be considering some form of early action to disrupt social inheritance of criminal behaviour, it all reminded me of the “Precrime” unit from Minority Report, brought to you be the people that developed “Prevent”, by which I mean the spooks and civil servants. I have commented on this, see below. …

Kier in conversation with Gary Neville, of the Couch

Lucy Powell interviewed Gary Neville who is it seems an important footballer and manager, and Kier Starmer who is an aspirant prime minister and Arsenal Fan. The video is here, and here are some noted I made,

“In a football team, we need to align personal goals with those of the team and it’s the same in politics” It’s a shame that the PLP four years ago weren’t able to operate according to that dictum.

My notes say, that Banker’s bonuses were capped at 100% of salary unless approved by shareholders in which case 200% bonus can be paid, taking most of them into the disputed supertax bracket. What I find astonishing is that banks would want to pay more than 200% of salary as a bonus. As others have said, it encourages risk not business building investment.

Starmer says we are the party of fiscal responsibility and aspiration; the Tories don’t talk of aspiration. One thing I would say about Starmer, is that he is one of the few British politicians that understand the anger felt by people who work hard and yet still can’t pay their way. Strangely the only other one I have heard attempt this is Rebecca Long Bailey and neither do anger well. It’s important that that anger and sense of justice is articulated. Starmer’s right, the Tories have walked away from this; it’s something that Thatcher had, but Rees-Mogg’s Party can’t. …

Promises from Rachel Reeves

Conference was addressed then by Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor. ( video | text ). I have used diigo to mark out the exciting quotes from the text. The rest of this post is from my contemporaneous notes.

She started by promising to be Britain’s first green chancellor and promises net zero carbon for electricity by 2030. She promises a real living minimum wage, resurrecting NEDC, where Govt, business and the unions can talk about the economy. She promises that business subsidies will be training focused, business rates are to be abolished to allow the high street to compete with their online competitors, although I wonder where local authority income will come from.

She promised a new sovereign wealth fund, forty years too late, but that’s not her fault.

She spoke of responsible finance, and I add that while I wasn’t so concerned last week, a stricter approach may be needed now that the debt to GDP is nearing 150%. We all need to remember that only growth can reduce debt, but she did promise “No return to austerity”.

She finished the speech with a full and comprehensive promise to invest in NHS jobs, to which I say good, but ask who’s going to do them; many of the vacancies are Brexit related as nurses, cleaners, doctors and research scientists have gone home to Europe and won’t return until the hostile environment is repealed.

She briefly mentioned the plan to ‘Fix Brexit’, which gives me the excuse to repeat or preview that on immigration and labour supply, they have a cakeist view, but left hanging is that she recognised our loss of competitive advantage in science and bioscience, underling the urgency with which we have to rejoin Horizon Europe.

She was silent on currency, and some may consider the plan a version of autarky. It’s a bit hard to judge from a 35 minute speech. …

On the Economy

The bulk of motions on the economy were tabled by Unions, and focused on wages, infrastructure and working rights. Several of the Union motions call for renationalisation of the basic utilities, mail and rail, but not gas or water. I wrote a speech but wasn’t called. This is sort of what I planned to say.

“We are in an economic crisis, a crisis of living standards and possibly the first one caused by a government since the discovery of … Keynesianism.
Reinforced by Brexit, we have declining inward investment, the highest inflation in a decade, imports are up, exports catastrophically down, we have a possibly unsustainable balance of payments deficit again, it’s been in deficit for decades and a labour shortage impacting agriculture, social care, and the NHS and also stagnating wages.
The currency is taking a fall due to confidence, this increases the price of energy and food.
My dad, once said to me, that, “governments take thousands of decisions every day and under the Tories everyone is wrong”. it is not enough to seek to get only some of these decisions right, to compete with this ERG government on the basis of competence allied to debt fetishism. We need to offer hope and then deliver on that promise.
One thing that Kier Starmer has right is the growing anger that hard work is not enough to allow an even reasonable standard of living. it is a struggle to pay for rent or a mortgage and heat one’s home and even, although I hate the phrase put food on the table. We must offer people hope of a better economy and society.
I finish by saying this is a crisis caused by this Brexit government and planning to fix it neither offers hope nor is truthful.
Flirting with monetarism and offering little hope on even trade friction with the European Union jeopardises the loyalty of many of those who voted for us in 2017 & 2019.
Dave Levy, from my notes

Apart from the attempt to fix Brexit, I think we’ll offer more than I had feared. …

Benefits and Pensions

Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow spokesperson for the DWP spoke, his words are here. He promised that, “we’ll reform, overhaul and replace the Tory Universal Credit system. We’ll treat people with dignity, not burden them with impossible debts, support children not punish them and we’ll reinstate a principle Labour has championed since the days of Barbara Castle but ditched by the Tories, the financial independence of women should be protected in our social security system too.”

He finished with,

So, friends, this is our mission:
Full employment and decent pay;
Security in retirement;
A better world for our children;
Because as Nelson Mandela said:
“Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity but an act of justice.”
Let us rise to that cause and build a future of opportunity, fairness and justice for all.
Jonathan ashworth MP at Labour Conference 22

…

Energy and Ed

Ed Miliband introduced the Economy debate, speaking on his shadow portfolio, Energy. This was an excellent speech, it made me sad we couldn’t get him in, it reminded me of what we may have lost. ( video | text ). He called for a windfall tax, and the adoption of renewables. He claimed, now, “It’s cheaper to save the planet than destroy it”.

The speech listed a list of opportunities, detailed Labour’s opposition to fracking and called out the appointment of Jacob Ress Mogg, a climate change denier as Business Secretary. …

The Finance Report

I attended Labour Conference as a delegate and I got to ask some finance questions, I only had a minute, so couldn’t ask them all and they took a while to answer, so the video is longer than necessary and the answers from the platform were not particularly comprehensive, but I was able to speak to Dianna, the outgoing Treasurer who gave me better answers in a personal (corridor) meeting.

The deficit, if not the size, was known when they set a budget. They report regularly to the business board which meets at least six times each year and as when necessary, they report to the NEC on current plans twice/year.

I was told in the Hall that the £6m political publishing was print bills for local elections incurred on behalf of local parties or campaign forums; later it was suggested that there is a corresponding income item, which I need to find. My initial scepticism is based on the fact that I&E statement has an election expense line and that is where I would expect election expenses to be reported.

The increase in the Senior Management Team cost is based on the fact that there are now 10 members of the SMT, up from 6. I wonder what this does to gender parity in the staffing budget.

I managed to ask my three questions within the allotted minute, but there are no supplementary questions permitted and one of the essential points made by Diana was the theory that membership is synchronised with the electoral cycle. I don’t believe this to be true! It would seem to be true of donations but not membership income. This seems to be aligned with leadership, and if so, will be exacerbated by the OMOV elections for the Leadership.

The NEC still have to either fix the decline in membership or find new but legal sources of income and as I have argued, the rich donors weren’t there for Blair, why would they be there for Starmer, although I can think of several very good reasons that became clear as the conference proceeded. …

Labour and Foreign Policy

I have just done the Labour List survey on Labour’s foreign policy advertised and written by the Labour Foreign Policy Group (Who they? Ed). I note that on their question on Brexit, they repeat the political trick used in the corrupted referendum, Do support the Leadership’s attempts to move on and make Brexit work or should we rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market or the EU, or just satisfy ourselves with a ‘closer relationship’.

I believe we need to re-join the Customs Union and Single Market, to alleviate the economic damage caused by the increased trade friction and this is a closer relationship with the EU. I also believe we should re-acquire our political rights i.e. rejoin. The Labour Leadership have a fantasy that the Tories hard Brexit can be fixed, and we can now see the beginnings of the Tories phase III, the repeal of the Working Time Directive, revoking the Banker’s bonus cap and the restarting of fracking. Wake up, we have an equally unprincipled Prime Minister who is an effective servant of the ERG and the UKIP entryists.

With respect to the survey, I wanted to vote for all three ‘No’s but couldn’t as it was a radio button widget answer. This is how they win, it’s called divide and rule and this is why the PR campaign won’t talk about systems until the principle is agreed.

I also said with respect to supporting the Ukraine that Labour should ensure that Russian money is expelled from UK politics and while the Tories and Leave campaigns are the obvious first port of call, Labour needs to make sure its own hands and the hands of its parliamentarians are clean!

I think my first principles would be that a Labour Government must promote democracy and the rule of law at home and abroad, democracies don’t war with each other, …

Labour and the EU

I have written an emergency motion for Labour Party Conference, I have ’till noon on Thursday to get it submitted, so better get a move on, unfortunately doing this from a CLP is a bit tricky . I need to check if it’s on the Agenda but that’s a bit tricky, I am not sure they have published all the motions to hoi-polloi like me yet.

Conference notes the announcement by Liz Truss on 19^th September that there will be no post Brexit trade deal with the USA, and that the Govt is once again postponing (16^th Sept) the imposition of the agreed customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.is a bit tricky, made worse by the direction not fo

Conference further notes that the Tory ‘Hard Brexit’ has led to reduced foreign inward investment, a worsening balance of trade deficit, reduced employment, a labour shortage in many industries, most obviously in agriculture, hospitality and in the NHS, jobs are being offshored to western Europe and sterling is at its worse exchange rate ever with both the dollar and the euro. The labour shortages are compounded by the xenophobia released by the referendum and the Tory’s “hostile environment”.

Conference believes that these negative economic consequences of Tory policy are significant contributors to the cost of living crisis.

Conference believes that to start reversing the damage inflicted by the Tory ‘Hard Brexit’ Britain needs to significantly reduce the trade frictions it has imposed on its imports of goods, services and labour from its biggest trading partner, the EU.

Conference resolves that Labour will call for a closer relationship with the EU in order to alleviate the trade frictions the Tories have introduced, that we will seek to rejoin Horizon Europe and Erasmus+, and that we will repeal the cruel and intrusive hostile environment. …