Negative Spin….
It’s been quite clear during the closing stages that a negative spin-operation has been going on in the leadership battle. Behind closed doors the David Miliband campaign seems to have been briefing heavily against the Ed Miliband campaign in quite poisonous terms. As soon as Ed received union backing it began; the ‘Old Labour’ bogeyman was revived with gusto. Ed was the ‘unions man’ and before long it would be beer and sandwiches at Number 10. The Conservative press is what has been used to effect this; witness todays story in The Times which implies the GMB are effectively blackmailing the Labour Party into electing Ed Miliband. In right-wing papers from the Times through the Telegraph to the Mail the same story appeared under lurid headlines.
Of course, if this was the case it would be outrageous and deeply uncomradely. However, what Paul Kenny actually said was pretty textboox stuff and something numerous union leaders have been saying for a fair amount of time. Here is a quote:
“If the new leader offers us more of the same, many unions – including our own – would have to consider where we are at.
“Ed Balls and David Miliband represent where we’ve been. They are not without talent. I would not rubbish them. But if the direction of the party went off chasing right-of-centre ground…”
He then went onto say something positive about Ed Miliband:
“Ed Miliband is not ashamed of Labour’s core values. It’s not about a big society. It’s about a fair society.”
Unsurprising he should since the GMB is supporting Ed. Notice how the top sentence, a call for a change in policy direction, is mish-mashed with the other two to equate to attempted extortion. Maybe it’s a coincidence that David Miliband’s ‘chase the centre ground’ article first appeared in another bastion of the Conservative press, the Daily Telegraph, on the other hand maybe it is not. It would all look so much less seedy if in articles and speeches the elder Miliband hadn’t been painting his brother in exactly the same terms. Indeed, the article cited is an attempt to fasten a cloth-cap to Ed Milibands head. Meanwhile, I notice The Guardian has an article which claims David Cameron sees David Miliband as the greatest threat:
A well-placed source told the Guardian: “David Cameron said the candidate he hoped for was Ed Miliband, and the candidate he most feared was David Miliband.”
I really can’t imagine, having recently become a proud parent, either of the Milibands are of especial concern to Mr Cameron at this precise moment in time. However, we can agree that the timing, the closing stages of a tight-race, is rather fortuitous for the David Miliband campaign. How generous of the Prime Minister to help-out. Sunny Hundal’s cynicism on Liberal Conspiracy is, I believe, well-placed. Really, do we want to go back to this? Is it not these very actions which show the vapid nature of the politics and policies on offer and precisely this orange pith approach to politics that was found so cruelly wanting at the polls in May?
Joe Glenton is a hero….
Military websites drip with contempt. For many serving and ex-soldiers, this is the tale of a weak man whose words and actions give comfort to the enemy and, in the words of one, “mock the lives of every British soldier who has fought and died under our nation’s flag”.
Glenton, however, is far from alone in going AWOL. The Independent reports that there has been ‘more than 17,000 episodes of troops going AWOL since 2003. This figure tells its own story not just about the stress that the resource situation puts on British soldiers but also about how those actually fighting judge the worthiness of the conflict. No doubt amoung the 17,000 there are plenty of people who have felt the same way that Glenton did:
Glenton has said that he felt ashamed when he reflected on “the futility” of his time in Afghanistan: “When I joined, I was proud of being a soldier, but after I came back I couldn’t see what we had given to the country.”
His mother describes the choice that faced him:
Mrs Glenton said: “He was torn between his conscience and his loyalty to his colleagues.
I think it is telling that in sentencing Glenton Judge Advocate Emma Peters made no reference to the ethical dimension to Glenton’s actions:
“There are many soldiers in the army who have extremely unpleasant experiences, who watch friends die or suffer appalling injuries, but they have to return and do their duty.”
In other words Glenton is not allowed the luxury of forming an opinion about the worthiness of the operation he is engaged in or questioning it. No doubt military types will say this suppression of critical facilities is ‘necessary’; however, given the cases of torture and serious allegations that have been levelled against the British Army it is this critical facility that is needed and should be cultivated. Regardless of your position on the Afghan war; the imprisoning of Glenton is wrong and an affront to the cause that allegedly Britain is supposed to be fighting for in Afghanistan.
Time to halt the tidal wave of anti-terror powers….
The Times tells us that the government will rush forward emergency legislation after its orders to freeze the assets of terrorism suspects were found to be illegal. One thing that struck me was the emotive language used by the government;
The Treasury argued that refusing a suspension “would give rise to the risk of those assets being dispersed and used for the purpose of terrorism, with the attendant risk of causing serious and irreparable harm to the national interest of the United Kingdom.
Notice how the *assumption of guilt is attendant* to the application of the orders. In other words these people are assumed to be guilty but have never been proved so in a court of law. Indeed, it seems there is not even enough evidence to warrant them being arrested and convicted. So, why then should they be subjected to punitive measures that are unproven in their justification?
Traditional notions of justice and its very foundations are being turned on their head by the government in its quest to exponentially increase the states power. It is assumed traditionally that people are *innocent until proven guilty* not the other way around so, it follows that punitive or restrictive measures cannot be undertaken until guilt is proven beyond reasonable doubt. If these people are guilty then why can they not be arrested and convicted and if they cannot then it is wrong to punish them?
It maybe argued that they are left to ‘roam free’ in order to facilitate greater intelligence gathering but this practice is risky and ultimately should not be part of the strategy when combating terrorism. It is precisely this strategy that allowed the bombings of July 7th to happen; the intelligence agencies ‘lost track’ of some of those who ultimately participated. None of them would have been greatly inconvenienced by having their assets frozen; in fact, such an action is likely to drive people further underground and further from a position where they can be observed. So, once again this power is unnecessary and potentially counter productive like just about all the actions the government has taken in this ‘war’ without an end.
Conservatives local government agenda in chaos….
Left Foot Forward has this piece which highlights a ‘fresh headache’ for David Cameron as plans for ‘easyJet’ councils have been ruled illegal. If you want a flavour of what a Conservative national government would look like then you have to look no further than these proposals which would;
have seen provision of key services slashed, with wealthy residents able to jump the queue for planning applications and rubbish collections.
However, The Times reports;
after a High Court judgment last month, the London Tory-run council has had to rethink plans to cut the number of live-in wardens in sheltered housing.
So, giving people choice equates to allowing the rich to jump the que; this is not exactly surprising and should be seen as a blueprint for Conservative Party policy nationally. Indeed, Barnet Council is now looking to an incoming Cameron government to pass the necessary legislation to allow its proposals to be implemented.
However, Conservative councils are more than willing to spend money where needs be as Leeds City Council proves with its more than £ 8 million spent on consultants. The justification for this use of consultants is interesting because it rather nails the myth that the private sector and schemes like PFI provide more ‘cost-effiecent’ solutions than the state could ever provide;
“They [the consultants] have also been utilised to provide specialist professional technical, financial and legal expertise in the development, negotiation and delivery of major Private Finance Initiative contracts. Consultants have also been used to provide specialist services and to carry out a number of specific assignments, such as carrying out specific research projects and providing specialist advice on major transactions and operations.
Remember this is the council that insisted on so savagely cutting refuse workers salaries to the point of forcing strike action. It remains to be seen what effect the judgement will have on Conservatives in local government but one would hardly expect them to be discouraged. It is little wonder that Labour has started to capitalise on this weakness with its Tory Stories website. It is just a shame that here in Leeds we are narrating and aiding a ‘Tory Story’ of our own….
Is the Cabinet revolting?
The Times thinks that they are though not in the way my pithy headline suggests. Incidentally, the first trite comment in reply to this wins nothing. It says that there is a widespread dissatisfaction over Gordon Brown’s desire to make electoral reform a centrepiece of the next Labour manifesto;
It is understood that five senior figures spoke out against Brown’s proposal to hold a referendum on changing the way MPs are elected.
Those who expressed doubts included Ed Balls, the schools secretary, Andy Burnham, the health secretary, and Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary.
Coffee House joins in saying this represents a dilemma for Brown. Tellingly, it says that if the rebels succeed in changing Brown’s focus it says the Conservatives will be relieved. It’s logic, that following the expenses scandal constitutional reform could capture the imagination and no politician would want to be caught defending the ‘status-quo’ is as impeccable as the logic of the doubters is flawed.
Electoral reform is something that Labour should have done a long time ago and it shows a radicalism that moves beyond economics and makes changing the state form the issue. In other words, it should have been something that the Labour Party, especially its left-wing, should have been pushing for consistently. However, it has been hide-bound by its view that radicalism and redistributive radicalism should be confined to economics.
One way that Labour could redefine itself is as a party of constitutional radicalism; something that as Coffee House rightly notes has been made a big issue by the expenses scandal. This would give it a clear point of demarcation with the Conservatives and cause us our own problems. The Cabinet ‘rebels’ are unlikely to push a point too far with the polls looking occasionally better for Labour so Brown, in theory can call their bluff. My expectation is that he will but if he does then he should be prepared to dealiver…..I doubt the electorate would take Labour breaking a promise on electoral reform promise as lightly as they did last time this time around.
Injunction against BA strikes is a democratic disgrace
And, hot on the heels of the last post, we have proof that class defiantly still does matter in the decision of the High Court to block the proposed action of BA Cabin Crew. I am going to use The Times for my quotes for this piece because it can hardly be said to be a paper that would be naturally sympathetic to the strikers aims. However, according to the reporting of this paper it can be seen that there are clear grounds for the decision being branded a ‘disgrace’ in democratic terms.
According to The Times the action was backed by a majority of “nine-to-one”; a quick excursion into the realm of maths tells us that of the 13,000 cabin crew balloted 11,700 voted for the action. Furthermore, it reports that the grounds for the denial is the acceptance of some 800 ballots from crew who had already accepted voluntary redundancy. So, if they are subtracted then that produces a vote for action of 10,900; 800 invalid ballots and 1,300 against. Democracy therefore does demand the action be allowed to go ahead.
However, the judge presiding felt otherwise;
Mrs Justice Cox said it seemed clear from the evidence that the union was aware, or certainly should have been, that the ballot of 13,000 cabin crew included a substantial number of those who were shortly due to leave, but she added that there was no evidence to suggest that there was a clear decision to include them.
However, it is clear from other parts of the report that the judge ruled on far more than the law requires her too;
Mrs Justice Laura Cox said that a 12-day strike over the busy Christmas period would have caused more damage to both BA and the public than at any other time of the year.
(…)
There was “insufficient evidence” to support the allegation of intransigence on the part of BA, adding that she did not consider it right to describe the breaches in the case as technical.
In other words it is made quite clear in these passages that she was influenced in her judgement by her own subjective view not of the law but which party to the industrial dispute she felt had the most valid case. So, in short the law moves from being a neutral player in industrial relations to its arbiter and that is quite wrong though not unexpected to the cynical.
Nobody should doubt whose side The Times is on. It offers this unsubstantiated caveat to the facts its forced to report as is;
Cabin crew have privately admitted that they had not anticipated the severity and length of the industrial action when they voted in favour of strikes on Monday this week.
Given the above it is hard not to see Derek Simpson’s point when he accuses the High Court of representing BA’s interests. Current legislation is not neutral in these matters and does not place the law above industrial relations; if it did then the strike would be going ahead. Legislation that is supposed to be ‘balanced’ is fundamentally unbalanced and must be changed so democracy is not the victim of such a fundamentally unjust though possibly technically ‘correct’ ruling like this again.
March election anyone?
Speculation is rife that the General Election will instead of being in May be in March with the 25th being the supposed date of choice. It’s hard to tell if the shocking conclusion to The Thick of It fuelled this speculation or in fact is the result of this (as well as a desperate writing gambit to bring Malcolm back) but that is largely an irrelevant issue. Politics Home finds that a majority of voters favour a March election which is as unsurprising in the case of Conservatives as it is that Labour voters are less keen (with our voters evenly split on caring less).
Non-aligned voters are heavily in favour of March as they strain at the leash in the expectation of being able to pass judgement on their local representatives expense claims. Presumably they are also thinking how potentially torturous (or complicated in some cases) having two sets of elections at the same time could be. Mark Pack is adamant there won’t be an early poll but Mike Smithson has put his money where his mouth has and thinks there and thinks the winding down of governmental poster activity justifies his outlay;
The government’s main communications arm, the COI, is said to be pulling all outdoor advertising from after the end of February. This could be just precautionary but the convention, as I understand it, is that there is a big restriction on advertising by government during election periods – and you can see the reason why.
I think the taking of such a precaution could hint at a possibility not a certainty; it surely must be on Gordon Brown’s mind that the poll ratings are improving and that this is probably a trend with an expiry date for a government looking for its fourth term. It is the fact that Prime Ministers are like the rest of us mere mortals and can toy with ideas that leads to the trend Daniel Finkelstein of The Times observes;
In every election I have been involved in, there has been a last-minute rumour about an early poll date. And every one has involved a mad dash to get things ready, all those little practical details that you were going to get round to but hadn’t. Followed by anticlimax.
In other words, on Gordon’s words we all hang and in turn his words and mind will hang on the cynical calculation of when his party will fare best in the polls. He missed a moment and a window this time and I am not sure those around him would let him do so again; however, there is such a thing as famous last words. Of course, the majority in the Politics Home poll are right and Parliament should have fixed-terms but if that happened a whole cottage industry in election speculation and hype would simply cease to be (and journalists and bloggers would have to think of more original copy than they do now). You might well feel this is probably a good thing (and most likely be right) but in that case we should enjoy the show while it lasts….
Will the poll erosion become a slide?
Another poll comes and another poll shows that the Conservatives lead in the opinion polls; if not sliding then certainly eroding. The question then becomes whether this will become a more decisive slide and the ‘game’ really is back on. I would tend to think that Conservatives are still in a strong position but the shallowness of their advantage is being exposed by recent events.
As UK Polling Report points out;
In recent weeks we’ve seen a couple of polls showing a 10 point lead that on a strict uniform swing would have produced a hung Parliament, but in practice they’d probably have produced a Tory majority.
So, Cameron need not panic yet but the definite trend is a turn downwards in his parties poll ratings. This will also change the media narrative as has been made apparent this morning in The Times who ran an editorial saying that Cameron had yet to make a compelling case for a Conservative government and The Guardian which said that the prospects of a Conservative landslide seem to have vanished.
Problems arise from this alone in that if the mood music changes more brittle Conservative support may flake away as the narrative changes from how awful the government is to asking what the opposition will do about it. Another problems is that accusations like those that appear on Conservative Home that Cameron’s problem is his neglect of the ‘Conservative base’ will become louder and louder.
Conservative Home takes much succor from the findings of the Populus poll that the Conservatives do not favour the rich and the privileged but their case becomes less convincing when you consider that a YouGov survey found 52% felt the exact opposite. Indeed, the Populus findings are likely to my mind to be due to either the questioning or the sample that was taken so unrepresentative.
I think Labour’s ‘class warfare’ does resonate with certain sections of voters more than others and that is natural. For those sections it doesn’t it will presumably be pinning its hopes on a marked recovery in economic optimism. This is essentially not a bad idea; to rally the core vote with stirring rhetoric and election broadcasts and worry the middle classes that Cameron and Co are untested.
It may well pay dividends but the test will be for Labour to then time an election right; leave it too long and fatigue will set in, go too early and they will still be too far behind. I still think forming an overall majority is beyond them because of the fatigue factor so the question is will it strengthen voices within the Labour Party who want to move them closer towards us?
Why are people not convinced by climate change?
The front page of today’s Times carries a poll which finds only 41% of those polled believe climate change is happening and that it is man-made. However, a third of those polled were not convinced that it is the result of human behaviour and further 15% don’t accept it has been happening at all. I think 41% is a reasonable proportion but it is hard to escape the conclusion that Iain Dale reaches; that people are simply not convinced.
The Times leader rather unwisely dismisses the sceptics as ‘global village idiots’ however, it would seem axiomatic to me looking around that the presence of man and things like huge, gasping cities would have some effect on the surrounding environment and to say it wouldn’t is slightly unrealistic. Furthermore, the leader rightly points to the overwhelming evidence;
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 600 experts. It concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is due to the observed increase in man-made greenhouse gas concentration. Concentrations of CO2 have increased by more than 35 per cent since industrialisation began, and they are now at their highest for at least 800,000 years.
None of the main political parties have made the issue their own the leader says and this is the reason why people are not convinced. However, this is a bit disingenuous when it is hard for any political party to convey such sophisticated information in a sound-bite culture and it also assumes people are willing to digest it. People are unlikely to want to be told they can no longer consume as they have; they can’t enjoy the freedom offered them by a car etc and politicians know this so they soft-soap the message. Something that is as much down to them as it is the culture of the voters they are talking too; people don’t like to be told bad things. Denial then becomes a defence mechanism.
What will make them less likely to want to digest this message is the lack of viable alternatives. So, with the car example, people won’t like being told they can no longer have it, or have to pay more for it when the alternative is spending large amounts of time in a cramped and unreliable bus. If politicians are to get the message across then they have to have something positive to offer alongside warnings about the potentially dire consequences of climate change.
Moments of Clarity 
Recent Comments