Licenced Super-Rebels
In a bolshy defence of Gordon Brown, David Aaronovich coins an amusing alternative to the phrase “awkward squad”:
It isn’t just the 20 licensed super rebels, specific only to Labour (the Tories don’t have this hard core of perpetually oppositional MPs who get in on the party’s coat-tails and then spend all their time trying to defeat it)
The rise of these rebels is an interesting development in British politics. The phenomenon of these rebellious MPs seems to have occurred as a side-effect of New Labour’s sizeable majority from 1997-2005: The large majorities gave the Blair Government a feeling of invincibility, which emboldened it to make unpopular policies it might not otherwise have attempted… thereby prompting rebellion. Additionally, it also meant Labour MPs could rebel on principle without bringing down the Government. However, as Aaronovich points out, this has changed in the Brown-era, and these rebels threaten to destabilise a Labour Government. People should know exactly who they are – so we can help or hinder them as we see fit.
As a lunch-time example of citizen-journalism, could we conspirators and contributors and commenters compile a list of who these Super Rebels might be? It strikes me as the sort of recieved wisdom that it would be useful to record in one place. May we have suggestions in the comments, please? I will update this post when we have a long-list. Thanks.
Turning politics into a cartel
Two recent politic stories highlight just how rapidly remaining differences between the only two political parties in Britain capable of forming governments continue to erode. That can only be to the detriment of voter choice.
First off, we read that the Smith Institute – a thinktank linked with Gordon Brown – and the Centre for Social Justice – a thinktank linked with Iain Duncan Smith – are to publish a joint strategy on how to get children out of poverty.
As Guardian reporter Andrew Wintour notes, accurately enough: “The joint initiative suggests the differences between the two parties are much smaller than they pretend.”
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We need a new Manifesto
I have the good fortune to live just down the road from Ripping Yarns, a north London secondhand bookshop that specialises in vintage children’s literature, but also has a neat line in radical books, newspapers and pamphlets. It is run by Celia Hewitt, the actress wife of the poet Adrian Mitchell.
It’s a wonderful place, brimming over with old Rupert the Bear annuals and old copies of the New Musical Express. If you pop in now you can probably still pick up an old copy of Tariq Ali’s 1968 newspaper Black Dwarf.
My best recent find was an orginal copy of the 1967 New Left May Day Manifesto, priced Two Shillings and Sixpence from 41 years ago.
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Make London Votes Count
Make Votes Count have launched: Londoners’ Votes Count, which explains how the different voting systems for the Mayoral elections work, and more.
A weak Prime Minister is good news
For those of us who believe that the current economic climate is exactly the worst time to consider raising the taxes of those on meagre incomes, yesterday’s u-turn compromise by the Chancellor is a victory of sorts.
There were no certainties or specifics, and suspicion surely remains that this ‘compensation package’ will be aimed at the more politically-appealing pensioners and families rather than any single people and under-25s who’ll lose out.
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Good politics v ideological politics
According to the Democrat sponsored strategy think tank, Common Good Strategies much of what passes for debate and argument in today’s world revolves around the politics of division and personal destruction.
The American columnist, E.J. Dionne in his book ‘Why Americans Hate Politics‘ argues that one of the main reasons for people being turned off politics is because it (political debate) seems irrelevant to them, they feel that they are being manipulated because they are always being asked to make false choices: you’re either staunchly religious or vehemently secular, pro-business or pro-unions, pro-growth or pro-environment, for civil liberties or against them, a progressive or a dinosaur.
The truth is, of course, that most people don’t think like this, most people don’t live their lives in this way, and most people long for a politics where we have genuine arguments, vigorous disagreements, where we don’t claim to have a monopoly on what is right or wrong, where we don’t demonise our political opponents. Most people want their politicians to engage in what Barack Obama has called a “fair-minded” approach to politics; politics that understands that truth and certainty are not the same thing.
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28 days: A game of bluff
It should come as no surprise that, in an effort to push its plans to extend pre-charge detention to 42 days, the home office has started citing the number of terrorist plots in Britain. Playing to the gallery in the News of the World this Sunday, Jacqui Smith said: “There are 2,000 individuals [the intelligence services] are monitoring. There are 200 networks. There are 30 active plots. We can’t wait for an attack to succeed and then rush in new powers. We’ve got to stay ahead.”
The first problem with this approach is the way successive home secretaries have cynically exploited such figures to push through controversial legislation on terrorism. After all, this is at least the fourth anti-terrorism bill since 2001, and each has been controversial in the way our government has tried to extend its powers. Shadow home secretary David Davis articulated it best when he responded yesterday by saying: “It is a sign of desperation that the home secretary is citing as ‘new’ evidence details given in a speech by the head of MI5 five months ago.”
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Left behind
So glad to hear that the world can’t get enough of the mayoral election, but I for one am finding the whole scene awesomely depressing:
It’s a cold little night in Bethnal Green, and yours truly and about 20 other people – mostly OAPs, it appears – are sitting in a near-empty hall in Oxford House on Derbyshire street, readying ourselves for a London assembly candidates‘ hustings.
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Politics and the transfer market
With recent reports suggesting that the government might introduce the Alternative Vote (AV) system for elections to the House of Commons, the issue of how preferences transfer between parties is becoming a hot political topic.
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At first they came for…
Well done those Parisians, for having managed to extinguish that Olympic flame a few times. But I can’t help feel this is like the last gasp before the world learns to shut its mouth in front of China.
But before I get onto that, I have a question. Who still supports that anti-terrorist legislation then?
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Dirty local politics
A letter dropped on the doormat yesterday. If you live on an estate (that’s council, not country), you may have had something similar.
RE: Proposed Removal of Recycling Bins on [road]
I am writing to inform you that we have received several complaints regarding the misuse of recycling bins on [estate]; due to the area round the bins becoming an eyesore. Currently we have placed this area on our weekend hot spot list and therefore a lorry removes all items round the bins on a Saturday morning. During the week the cleaner also has been instructed to ensure this area is tidy. Despite these efforts users of the recycling bins are constantly leaving recycling items outside the bins causing an eyesore.
We would like to offer an opportunity for residents who live near where the bins are situated to voice their opinion on this issue of whether they will be in favour of the bins being removed.
Yours faithfully
I live about 5 houses away, less than fifty yards. Overleaf there’s a few lines of space for me to fill in my views (and it would appear that I may not continue on a separate sheet…). It would be a waste of space, I guess, to use them to comment on the death of the comma in local govermnent communications. So,
I am not in favour of their removal. My 4-year-old puts her rubbish in the bin. Are we now outsourcing recycling policy in Hackney to a few slobs who can’t even manage that?
But maybe I’m just an old idealist. Can you come up with something better? You’ve got 2 sentences, 3 short ones tops, and an impeccably left-liberal brief. I may even nick yours; the posting deadline is Monday.
Immigrants on benefits
Let’s say it nice and loud, people – IMMIGRANTS DO NOT COME TO THIS FAIR NATION TO TAKE THE PISS. It is simply inhumane to create a society where there is no safety net for those in need – even those who weren’t born here.
Kitchen worker Vanildo Fernandas, 29, was waiting for a bus on Fulham Palace Road late one night after work in October 2006 when two complete strangers walked up to him and tried to kill him with a couple of knives. He still isn’t sure why they did that; maybe for for the hell of it?
“Maybe for a robbery?” Vanildo’s wife Claudia, 37, asks a couple of times. She doesn’t really buy the robbery theory, though.
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Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner…
… that I’d rather not support Ken Livingstone for Mayor? Somehow I just can’t muster any massive enthusiasm for Livingstone, nor do I feel the chilling terror of his major opponent (Tory buffoon Boris Johnson) that the Mayor’s re-election campaign appears to be trying to instil in the electorate. To hear the statements coming from some of Livingstone’s supporters you’d think that this was a race between Che Guevara and some kind of combination of Adolf Hitler and Satan, and I just can’t see what is effectively a council election on steroids in such apocalyptic terms. I also, try as I might, just can’t bring myself to like the oleaginous Livingstone, who is still trying to morph himself from his previous status as a grinning celebrity chat show guest, to having some kind of political gravitas. Ironically of course, Johnson is a product of the same media clowning circuit that Livingstone is. Bojo versus Bozo – what an appetising choice for the people of London. continue reading… »
Why Brown’s Iraq inquiry pledge – to me! – matters
I very much welcome Gordon Brown’s commitment to an inquiry ” to learn all possible lessons from the military action in Iraq and its aftermath” – even aside from the unusual experience of this very welcome political development coming in correspondence between myself and the Prime Minister. (Naturally, one also expects that other Cabinet ministers will take note.
We were very pleased with last week’s budget commitments on child poverty and will be thinking about where else we should now be pressing for progress).
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Obligations and privileges
I’m holding fire on the oath swearing nonsense. I mean, if you think that’s bad how about a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, a Green Paper on which is apparently due in the next few months.
This Bill will set out the rights we enjoy and the responsibilities we owe as members of society.
A Bill of Rights is a constitutional document. Constitutions can be more or less permissive in the rights they afford the citizen. Most have a mechanism by which more rights can be added, or which override previously accepted rights. Offhand, I can’t think of a constitution which sets out obligations to the state as a basic condition of citizenship, on which the enjoyment of rights is conditional.
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Out of the mouths of babes
Here’s another law of politics: all public service tends towards infantilisation. It’s a law in two parts.
I have a seven year-old daughter. She’s not particularly tidy. Most days her bedroom looks like how I imagine how Daily Mail readers imagine how Eastern European migrants live. You see, she can and does make the most stupendous mess without the help, input or consultation of anybody.
But when it comes to tidying that mess? Ah, that’s not a job for a single person at all. No help is begged in making the mess but much is begged in its reversal. There are tears and shouting. A team effort tidies the room but a few days later…
And so it is with government. Or at least this government. Think of all the messes it has made in the last eleven years. Now think of how little clearing up has actually been done. How much mess has been edged away from, swept under the rug of media manipulation and generally ignored? Because all public service tends towards infantilisation. Someone will be along at some point to clean up for them.
Brown and class-less
[This was first posted on comment is free this morning.]
I was recently invited to give a speech at the annual general meeting of the NUJ Black Members Council, which I duly did on Saturday morning. I generally try and avoid preaching to the converted so I began, on the subject of how ethnic minority journalists can break the glass ceiling, by illustrating how race intersects with class.
I started with this:
“Over two weeks, BBC 2 films will give voice to the prejudices, alienation, fears and confusion of white working class Britain – a constituency that rarely finds its voice on the BBC, at a time of sweeping social change. … ‘What we wanted to do was look at these issues in a rounded, non-political way and I think we’ve done that,’ says season commissioner Richard Klein.”
Nick Clegg wants a new political system
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Libdems get so much news coverage in recent years over a conference. Its a given that the Libdems want electoral reform and I support their campaign to do so. But given that they’re not currently in any position to push this through government, will their loud demands make Labour or a future Tory government less willing to follow through, I wonder? [Libdemvoice has a ton of video and blogging coverage.]
On a related note, last week Graham Allen MP (Lab) initiated this debate in Parliament on the same topic. Michael Wills MP (Lab) replied the govt was planning to publish something on this shortly. Hmmm…
All politicans are created equally
Blogger “Guido” has launched an attack on Tom Watson.
Tim has already had a good look at “Guido’s” post, incluing asking some questions regarding Tom Watson’s expenses, but let’s just expand slightly on the way Paul Staines has done his maths:
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The Sun’s attempt to puncture its own emotional balloon
It’s interesting, these days, watching the Sun (No, please, come back!). Last year after the failed patio gas canister bombings it clearly didn’t have the slightest idea how to respond to them: first with hackneyed blitz spirit type defiance; then scaremongering, and the resurrection of its demands to scrap the human rights act; and finally, resorting to patriotism, ordering everyone to fly the flag. This remember is the paper which over the 80s and up until recently was often considered the weathervane of the nation, or symbolic of how a majority of how it was responding, typified by how when it changed from supporting the Conservatives to New Labour that it was considered the final, death blow against John Major.
Since then of course we’ve had the online revolution; now the most visited UK newspaper website is the ‘loony-left’ Guardian, closely followed by the Mail Online. Circulations continue to plunge, with the Sun recently slipping below the 3 million mark, only rising back above it because of price cutting. The real success story of today is the Daily Mail, and by far the most despicable, distorted press coverage of late, directed at asylum seekers and immigrants, has come not from the Sun but from the Express and Mail.
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You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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