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It was heartening to see that all of the speeches made at the Labour Party conference mentioning foreign policy confirmed the essential moral and strategic necessity of promoting democracy and human rights when Britain conducts itself abroad.
Part of Tony Blair's legacy will surely be that under his leadership Labour changed British foreign and security policy for the better. Gone are the days of the disgraced 'hyper-realism' of Tories such as Malcolm Rifkind and Douglas Hurd, who described calls for intervention in Rwanda and Bosnia to halt genocide as 'ethical nonsense'. Inaction resulted in the deaths of millions. A global power like Britain has responsibilities to uphold and obligations to discharge in the wider world. When we fail to stand up for those who need our help or to give enough aid, the only result is gross injustice.
It is essential that Labour continues with the implementation of its progressive and values-based foreign policy. Tyrants and oppressors do not make good allies. Democrats and those who stand for universal human rights are our true friends. Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone or whatever other country, it is our duty as progressives to support them, so that their countries can also one day enjoy the benefits that we do. This will build a durable peace, enhancing the security of the world.
Britain - under Labour - is a missionary democracy, and we should be proud of it.
Tony Blair’s valedictory remarks at this year’s conference were a sobering reminder of the wisdom of Heraclitus: ‘the only constant in life is change.’ Since 1997 change there has undoubtedly been, much – if not most – of it for the better. As a country we have had our ups and downs: public investment up, police numbers up, school standards up, unemployment down, crime rates down, inflation rates and mortgage rates down. This is all good stuff and the public wants to see more. The reality, however, is that the improvements we have necessarily seen in the past few years are quick-fix and easy-win in nature. Real, transformational and long lasting change will take much longer. The battle (and it is a battle) to transform our public services is not yet won. Public services in Britain are in the process of being revived but there are still many (of whom a significant number are on the left) who wish not revival but reversal.
Blair was and is a radical reformer and the outcomes of this radicalism are to be found in the ordinary, in the mundane daily miracles that are taking place in our schools, our hospitals and our local communities. It is a radicalism that Labour members can be proud of and it is a radicalism that is beginning, slowly, to change this country for the better. If we are to make the most of this then we need to secure a fourth term at least.>
I’ve never seen someone flirt with 2000 people at once before. Clinton is the best in world in communicating a difficult political message, and he does it with persuasive charm. What higher endorsement can our policies on climate change and global poverty have, than today’s speech from Bill. And he congratulated us on delivering a strong economy with progressive social reform, in contrast with the US.
He emphasised the work we are doing on improving the environmental standards in new homes. This is especially important for my South Swindon constituency where I am campaigning on the issue.
BC reminded us that we have a position of leadership in the world, that in an ever changing world we need to be the agents of change, and that the progress we are making could be easily reversed. He has seen it himself. He described being heartbroken at seeing the progressive programme halted when Bush took over from him. In a globalised world Clinton emphasised the necessity of working together. He reflected America’s disappointment at the way the Tories under Cameron have turned their backs on cooperation with the US by praising TB for maintaining a sometimes uncomfortable alliance.
After this speech it would be unfeasible to see any cooperation with a Cameron government. Support from Britain for his work on poverty and AIDS would rely on a 4th term for Labour.
NB. A quick comment on the Secretary of State for Health's speech to conference. It was a
very different style. Patricia Hewitt was away from the podium, conversational and well received - despite the obvious differences of opinion there are over NHS Logistics.
Clearly we need to do some more talking on this. With £ 1 Billion at stake for the NHS front line it's a crucial debate.
Bill's speech to conference wasn't really a political speech - more of an academic address. Drawing on world politics, international development, scientific endeavour, and bringing it all home to voters in Labour heartlands, Clinton showed some of his best old magic and his best new thinking.
Labour's achievements didn't happen by chance, he said. They happened through the conscious choice of the Labour Party. He warned of the dangers of the Tories. There's no guarantee that future politicans of a different party, however alluring they sound, however much they smile, will do things in the same way. Years of advancement, years of alleviating poverty, years of progress across the arc of social justice can all be swept away - by just a few ballots in a few marginals. 'I know that,' he said, to a ripple of applause in the audience.
Then, looking up and seeminly staring every delegate direct in the eye, he paused, smiled, winked, and said 'yeah', as the audience realised just what he meant and just how much it meant.
Investing money in education now will stop extremism and terrorism of the future. Tackling poverty now will save the world in the future. Addressing AIDS in Africa now will protect out plant in years to come. There is a link, he said, between what happens in a school half a world away, and what happens in every village in England. "In an interdependent world, there is no possiblity of divorce. You just can't do it".
Looking older and more composed than his final days in the White House, he counselled the world to focus on what unites us, not what divides us. It is a message which is important and urgent.
Back in the real world after spending Sunday/Monday/Tuesday in 24 hour party city of Manchester for the Labour party conference everything feels slightly anti-climatic now. The last thing I saw in the main conference hall was Blair's speech. It was one helluva a speech. The man is really a class act. He will be difficult to follow and he will be sadly missed.
On the way out I was asked for a voxpop from a camera crew. A furry mike on a broom was thrust before me. I enthused about what we had heard. 'Why do you think it was so different to Brown's?', I was asked. 'I don't think it was that different,' I insisted. If you look at the content they both reflecting on the past, identifying futire challenges, talking about personal experiences on the doorstep and in their backgrounds'... The guy cut in 'but the reaction was very different', he declared.
Ok Tony has always been the great communicator and this was a shining example of how he does it. The tone that manages to be statemanlike, humble and human all at once, the broad sweep of content, the gags delivered with perfect comic timing. At some moments there was not a dry eye in the house. Gordon is more of a cerebral facts and figures man, the polysyllables from a chap who's fond of neo-endogenous growth theory and the like. His tub thumping zeal, banging at the lectern, forelock a la Henry V (ok wonky parallel that last one) are his trademark. People have said that the man is something of an unknown quantity but he began opening up in his speech with some biographical info and stamping on a rumour of his own - the Arctic Monkeys tag. I found myself in a seat next to Nick Brown for the speech who was guffawing his head off to that one but then I guess he's parti-pris. GB and TB are stylistically different but they're both ultimately for the same thing. The media had been waiting Brown's speech to end up as his David Davies moment. They didn't get it so the 'Cherie fumes off' story and looking for a comparison between GB and TB to create a split was what filled their gossipy vacuum.
One of the jokes directly made reference to the latest installment of Cheriegate. You'll have heard it by now. The one about the zero likeliehood of the missus running off with the bloke next door was potentially risque but actually very clever - astute move in that it stamps on the rumour withour exactly denying it. It's sad that this whole business displaced what was being trailed as the speech of Gordon's life but in the Heat magazine celeb culture times this couldn't go uncommented on and I guess there's never any smoke without fire.
It's not a competetion; both Brown and Blair delivered in their own ways. The context was different - leader in waiting setiing out his stall one day and departing leader assessing his balance sheet the next. Anyway here at my desk with my dayjob stuff beckoning it feels like I am - as the song title went - 'back to life, back to reality'. Blair really was/is a class act - but then again don't get me started on class - that's probably another blog for another day.
Yet again TB has shown himself to be a true star, carrying off his final speech with aplomb. It was full of style and substance.
Truly an inspirational speech and I shed a tear as did many others – including one hard nut MP who cracked at last - and couldn’t speak with all the emotion.
The country and the party have been fortunate to have the Blair/Brown combo over the last 10 years. But in the 24/7 media world you have to go when people are asking for more rather than asking 'why haven’t you left?' It’s the old actors maxim – always leave them asking for more.
At the conference we are mapping out the future for the party and the country, and we’ve got to have the confidence to debate policies and new ideas. TB has been an amazing leader and as his last paragraph says – It’s now up to us to win a 4th term.
As Progress outrider in Manchester, I have taken the opportunity to visit some non-Progress fringe events. Many of them, unsurprisingly and quite heathily, have shared the vocabulary of "renewal", "going forward" and "the future" used at our own Sunday rally.
Yesterday's Work Foundation event at Manchester City Hall, New New Labour, was in this mould, starring some of the putative stars of the party's next generation - Kitty Ussher, Sadiq Khan, Emily Thornberry, Meg Hillier and former Progress chair David Lammy. They had been asked to talk about their backgrounds, their reasons for joining the Labour party and their visions for Labour's future.
All the contributions were interesting and eloquent, and couldn't help but make one optimistic for the party's future, given the speakers' obvious idealism and the number of interesting policy ideas flying around.
Kitty Ussher spoke for many when she said that her commitment to centre-left politics sprang from the idea 'that society was fundamentally unfair' - that opportunity and good health 'depended on things beyond our control' - the town we live in, the social class we were born into, the colour of our skin. All the speakers had had formative experiences in the 1980s, when these maladies had apparently reached their apogee - indeed, Thatcher seemed to be actively denying so many a fair start in life as a 'price worth paying' for economic growth.
The panel agreed that although New Labour had made large strides for the disadvantaged of this country, there was much left to be done on social mobility, housing, poverty, as well as the environment and climate change. To name but a small minority of subjects.
However - trumpeting Labour's achievements was not enough, they agreed. And, as Sadiq Khan and Emily Thornberry said, the party was finding it increasingly hard to get its message across, because - after a decade in power - 'we are the establishment now'. This was how the party was now seen by many of their consituents.
So how to combat this? Tapping into grass-roots feeling, coming across as insurgents on the side of normal people against the system, as 'on your side', as a couple of successful local election campaigns proclaimed. But perhaps a more interesting point, touched on by Meg Hillier and David Lammy, was the question of political language.
This is something that has been troubling me for some time - that the New Labour lexicon has often descended into what Lammy called 'managerialism', when talking about public services for example. Although not expressly mentioned, phrases such as 'fit for purpose', 'rolling out' and 'contestability' simply is never going to engage normal people. New Labour should work hard on communicating its achievements better, for they are considerable in many areas. But the dry, frankly nauseating language of management consultancy is not the way to do this.
Tony Blair's final speech to Labour's annual conference this afternoon offered more than the promised 'road map' for a fourth term. It was, in fact, a speech of much-needed reminders.
First, the prime minister reminded delegates and the country just how much Britain has changed under Labour. The Tories spent 18 years banging on about the alleged failings of the Wilson-Callaghan governments. Today was an opportunity to remember the Britain of Margaret Thatcher and John Major: a country where workers could be legally employed on £1.20 an hour; employees fired for wanting to join a trade union; and three million children lived in poverty .Britain was 'culturally and socially' behind - not a single black face in the government, only one in ten members of parliament were women, and gay people were denied equal rights - while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were treated like colonies, adminstered from Whitehall. Blair reminded his audience of how Labour has banned the things 'which should never have been allowed' '- hand guns, the blacklisting of trade unionists, and cosmetic testing on animals - while it has gone about 'allowing the things that should never have been banned': the right to roam, civil partnerships, and the right to request flexible working.
Second, Blair reminded Labour why and how it had needed to change in the 1990s. It had done so by abandoning 'the ridiculous, self-imposed dilemma between principle and power'. The party had broken the false dicohotomy offered by the Tories between individual prosperity and a caring society by going back to 'first principles and values' and separating them from the 'doctrine and dogma that had been ravaged by time'. The result is a programme built around the recognition - now even supposedly shared by the Conservatives - that 'economic efficiency and social justice are not just opposites but partners in progress'. The prime minister's third reminder, though, was the most important of all: why Labour needs to embrace change if it is to remain in power and defeat David Cameron at the next election. Blair spoke about how the challenges facing the country have morphed over ten years from the 'essentially British' to the 'essentially global': the rise of China and India, global terrorism, immigration, the environment, and the need for energy security. Globalisation, Blair contended, offers huge opportunities - new jobs, advances in science and technology, cheap goods and travel - but also huge insecurity. While some respond to globalisation with calls for 'a fortress Britain' - pulling up the drawbridge with job protection and an end to international engagement - and others adopt a classic laissez-faire approach of submitting to global forces and letting 'the strongest survive', Blair called for progressives to offer an alternative which offers both openess and security, just as they had reconciled aspiration and compassion in the 1990s.
Blair's final reminder, though, was left unspoken: a demonstration to his party why it is that he alone has achieved the three election victories which have eluded every other leader of the Labour party in its history. He'll be hard act to follow.
'In the years to come, wherever I am ... I'm with you. You're the future now. Make the most of it.'
I stood and applauded and did so with sincerity. Today, Tony Blair reminded me why I joined the party, why values are longer lasting than poltical expediency and why I will miss him greatly when he goes. The passage that will stand out for me was:
'The danger in all this, for us, is not ditching New Labour. The danger is failing to understand that New Labour in 2007 won't be New Labour in 1997.'
The fringe here at Manchester is buzzing with ideas and debates - probably more than usual, in fact. First last night, to a Social Market Foundation event on how politicians should respond to media scare stories about scientific developments and emerging scientific news.
David Sainsbury, the minister for science, spoke about the urgent need to move away from talking about the 'public understanding of science' towards 'the public engagement of science'. Citizens being simply passive recipients of worthy and notable conclusions drawn by a scientific elite can produce scepticism in key new developments, and can lead to people beliving - as with the Tories over BSE - that they are being lied to.
Much better to encourage people to review differing scientific opinions, and be able to understand the paramenters within which scientific debate eventually draws consensual or mainstream conclusions. He noted that science stories in newspapers are often reported in a much more sophisticated manner when dedicated science journalists cover the stories; they have the contacts to talk to the best scientists in the country. Public debate about science is less informed when non-specialist journalists attempt to cover the stories, and he pointed to the reporting of issues around MMR as an example.
Then to a joint BBC/British Council debate on global security. Neil Kinnock chaired, and invited David Triesman (Foreign Office Minister), Azza Hammoudi (British Council in Jordan) and Bridget Kendall of the BBC to discuss whether the global insecurity evident since 9/11 is here to stay. David Triesman was interesting when he pointed out that global insecurity did not start with the attacks on New York five years ago. He catalogued host of extremist-inspired bombings and attacks across the world which predate 2001. His reminder that these pre-9/11 incidents must be borne in mind when some people attempt to paint easy and incomplete schemas about the role of Britain's foreign policy was astute and needed.
Kinnock was on good form. He made the audience feel relaxed and at home, and eloquently soothed the sensitivities of several southern-hemisphere commonwealth high commissioners when one speaker inadvertently singled out Canada as 'our most important dominion'.
This was a very different speech from Gordon Brown and I approve of the change - from statistics to people. In speeches he can come over as if he is from planet statistic, but today he let us see the man he is in private.
The Chancellor is the man most responsible for the lowest mortgages we've had in Swindon since the 50s and the highest ever employment figures – but until now he has kept his private life private.
It was interesting to hear today about his family background, and where his values come from. He talked about his father, a man of the church, and his mother, who taught him to give as much as he could back to society. It was interesting to hear where the motivation for family friendly policies like working tax credit, baby bonds and Sure Start come from.
When he talked about a 'moral compass', I sat up and listened even more carefully, as it reminded me of my own upbringing, and I believe it will resonate with people in my constituency of South Swindon.
It was good for Swindon that he talked about the new plans for social exclusion that Hilary Armstrong announced in my part of the town two weeks ago, and that he is continuing a commitment to improving the skills of young people and giving them more opportunity to do voluntary work.
All this is good news for Swindon from a chancellor and potential PM who’s now revealed what makes him tick.
The delegates around me really liked the speech - all the nonsense about it being a David Davis moment was shown up as mere media hype. It was really interesting that Gordon only mentioned the Tories once (to great acclaim - bring them on!) He was absolutely right to do this. It was a meaty, forward looking speech, that affirmed the great partnership with TB.
Every year people at conference talk about how Tony will follow Gordon's speech. And every year we get an equally excellent but very different one - watch this space for reaction to TB!
Having only picked up my pass at 10.30 (the focus for a five pint conversation if ever there was one) I arrived just in time to take my seat for Gordon's 'make or break' speech. It started with a well phrased apology, with Gordon, sincerely I felt, saying 'where over these years, differences have distracted from what matters I regret that, as I know Tony does too'.
He then proceeded to lavish praise on Tony Blair before moving to map out the priorities for a Brown led Government. He listed the Middle East, combating global poverty, the threat of international terrorism, the need for even greater investment in education, the environment, citizenship and the reform of parliament.
He was assured, relaxed and prime ministerial. Most members I spoke to aftrewards felt he got it just right and that the dividing lines between Brown and Cameron - substance not style, integrity not outright opportunism and policy rich versus policy light - were clearly drawn.
The next set of major elections facing the Labour Party will be in Scotland and Wales in eight months, so to the Scottish reception last night. It was hosted by Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for Scotland (when he's not being Secretary of State for Transport) and Jack McConnell MSP, First Minister of Scotland.
Both Douglas and Jack highlighted the importance of fighting the nationalist parties in these elections. Douglas' analysis was stark: the choice before the voters in both cases will be a choice between Labour-led executives seeking third terms, and political parties who base their values around the 'politics of difference'. Nationalist parties instinctively eek out differences in people, after all; that is their raison d'etre.
But the lessons of fighting the 'politics of difference' in Scotland and Wales are not lessons confined to Holyrood and Cardiff bay - they are lessons that can be learnt across the UK. It reminds us - and must remind us - of the importance of unity, the importance of Labour having broad appeal right across the spectrum of British voters - and, above all, the imperative to remember what unites our communities, not what divide them.
Although we're only in the second day of conference, the overriding discussion and debate in the conference hall, the fringes and the bars is just that. Unlike opposition parties north and south of the border, the debate here in Manchester not how the Labour Party can best divide communities - but how we can bring communities together and provide the best possible services to them.
I'm looking forward to hearing three more days of debate about just how we do that.
I knew this would be an interesting conference when at the first event (West Midlands Regional Reception) on Sunday a delegate said she wanted to thump me as an MP for distracting the Party from the real job – getting on with policy and making the country better for our people.
Things could only get better!! And they did. We discussed globalisation, pension reform, the environment, and manufacturing in the West Midlands. We also thought about what we have achieved, for example in Stoke-on-Trent: new and refurbished schools, Sure Start Children’s Centres, Job creation, bringing new skills training to those coming out of our traditional industries such as the Pottery industry.
I was very proud to see our delegate, Ann, up on stage to receive a Merit Award on behalf of Stoke-on-Trent South CLP for the work in re-engaging with our residents and the impact that has on beating extremism. That work goes on. It is not enough to change laws and make decisions that help our residents if we don’t go out and tell them what we’ve done.
Looking ahead to this week in Manchester I hope we have discussions about the things that matter to people: more jobs, beating crime, better pensions, greater improvements to our health service, and creating a democracy where every voice matters – yes, even the one that wanted to thump me – good job it wasn’t JP!!
'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows' Bob Dylan sung. In this vein, does anyone else think it's funny that Hurricane Gordon has been downgraded to Depression Gordon? The pressure of getting that speech right for Monday must be immense.
New Labour’s third term in office (heralded by Tony Blair as a radical, reforming phase of his government) is in danger of running out of impetus, ideas and desire. What the party requires (and Gordon Brown will surely need) are some passion-rousing policies for a fourth term that will unite the movement’s natural supporters and signal a shift towards a more radical and egalitarian agenda. One such initiative would be the abolition of selection by both ability and aptitude in state schools once and for all. Getting rid of selection in England’s schools (there is no selection in Wales or Scotland and it is on the way out in Northern Ireland) would produce an immediate improvement in the overall exam performance of the nation’s children, reduce poverty and inequality in many of our most deprived inner-city areas and overtly and transparently attack privilege that all too often masquerades as excellence.
Progressive politicians must surely be of the view that it is now time to address the archaic and socially exclusive policy of academic selection. A recent DfES statistical comparison of the GCSE and GNVQ results of all grammar school pupils with those of the top 25% (of 'grammar school ability') in comprehensive schools indicated that the comprehensive schools had done slightly better overall. There is also evidence that fully comprehensive systems reduce the gaps in attainment between children of different abilities and between children from different social class backgrounds. Selective systems cost more to run, increase social exclusion and limit choice of schools for parents and pupils. The long - term effects on pupils failed by the system cannot be quantified. It is often forgotten that all primary schools are comprehensive as are all FE institutions.
The familiar claim that grammar schools offer an 'escape from poverty' to clever children otherwise denied real educational opportunity, has relied heavily on highlighting individual successes without establishing how representative they are. In the past, the most academically selective schools were also the most socially selective. The surviving grammar schools are in the main schools for the middle-classes. In England in 2002, the proportion of children eligible for free school meals (an imperfect but commonly used indicator of social disadvantage) was much lower in selective than in non-selective schools in every one of the 36 Local Authorities which retain at least some grammar schools. In the 15 LEAs with around 20% or more of their pupils in grammar schools, the average percentage of children eligible for free school meals in those schools was 1.8% compared with an English average of 18.1%.
Since comprehensive education was introduced, barriers to achievement for many young people have been removed. The annual government statistics of school attainment, examination results, and participation in further and higher education offer clear evidence of a 'levelling-up' over the last 25 years. In some areas of England it is reasonable to regard comprehensive schooling not as a 'failed experiment' but as an experiment which has not yet been tried. Supporters of the progressive movement want selection to be abolished, not grammar schools. The schools themselves would remain pretty much as they are now. They would have the same buildings, the same governors, the same headteachers and staff, the same resources, the same curriculum, uniform and largely the same funding. The only real change will be in the academic profile of the pupils attending the school.
The idea of ‘choice’ in education is all too often ill-defined. Parents can exercise a preference in terms of schools: few can exercise any real choice. A selective system of schooling does not lead to diversity of provision it simply leads to division. Selection is not the creation of choice rather it is the denial of choice for the many. A selective system (be it based on ability or aptitude) does not help promote a diverse system of schooling; it simply helps perpetuate division in society as a whole. Selective schools are not escape routes from poverty, they do not offer good value for money and they do not help raise standards overall? Who knows, perhaps it will be a case of fourth term lucky.
A few weeks ago, Red Pepper, a newspaper in Uganda, printed a list of prominent Ugandan figures who are gay, including students from the Makerere University, as well as a list of underground gay venues. In its article the newspaper said:
To show the nation how shocked we are and how fast the terrible vice known as sodomy is eating up our society, we have decided to unleash an exclusive list of men who enjoy taking on fellow men from the rear.
A few days later the newspaper sported the headline ‘Jinja Cops Hunt For Gays’ in which they called on the public to track down all ‘sodomites’. This story was followed up a day later with the headline ‘Kampalas Notorious Lesbians Unearthed’. The story included a list of lesbian and bisexual women with a call for readers to send more names to the paper for ‘outing’.
In the wake of the outings has come a campaign of state sponsored homophobia by the Ugandan Authorities. Many men on the list have been arrested and charged, others have been forced to flee or go into hiding. There are also reports that some of those arrested were taken to be tortured. See the Human Rights Watch website.
To this end the National Union of Students (NUS) LGBT Campaign, Amnesty International and other partners have organised an emergency demonstration outside the Ugandan Embassy, 58/59 Trafalgar Square, London (map here) at 4pm on Friday 22 September.
We should all, as individuals and groups, LGBT or otherwise, protest against the intimidation, arrest and torture of LGBT people in Uganda. We will be handing a letter of protest to the Ugandan Ambassador calling on his Government to respect the provisions enshrined in the Ugandan Constitution giving citizens rights to equality and freedom and the clauses of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) monitored by the UN, which allows the right to privacy, free from discrimination.
Please join the struggle for LGBT rights across the World and make your views known to the Ugandan Ambassador on Friday.
The central argument of Luke Akerhurst’s comment posted yesterday on the Progress blog was correct; the defeat of Sweden’s Social Democrats does highlight the need for New Labour to renew in order to remain in government. Quentin Peel goes further in today’s FT arguing that David Cameroon will be carefully garnering every lesson he can from Frank Reinfeldt’s victorious centre-right coalition victory. But we should not labour the point.
The differences between Sweden and the UK are marked. The reason the Social Democrats have ruled for 65 of the last 74 years and, more to the point, 12 of the last 16 is indeed due to their very ability to implement renewal and continue implementing progressive policy. For example they successfully managed to implement choice based education while avoiding a system dominated by divisions based on academic ability. Contrary to much assumption the centre-left government have also built a relatively healthy business environment while retaining the traditional strong welfare state.
The centre-right achieved their wafer thin victory through successful coalition building, as opposed to the left that failed to unite behind the Social Democrats. Furthermore, The Alliance for Sweden coalition could afford to move further to the left as it does not have a substantial conservative support-base that it has to placate unlike David Cameroon’s Tories. Furthermore the issue of a significant liberal middle ground alternative was not available for Swedish voters meaning many swing-voters who usually opt for the Social Democrats had little option but to vote for the centre-right. David Cameron has done an excellent job on the PR level of pulling his ageing party toward the centre ground. However the core difference between Sweden’s new government and David Cameron’s prospective one is substance.
Mr Reinfeldt’s coalition has pledged to cut taxes but only for the lowest earners. And while he will almost certainly cut restrictive corporate taxation this will not overly impinge on the fiscal structure put in place by 12 years of Social Democrat Rule. The point is that unlike Reinfeldt, Cameroon has and will not accept the fundamental social changes the New Labour government has put in place over the last 9 years. His concessions to the left of his party and his tit-bits to potential left-leaning swing voters are, at present at least, illusory or miniscule.
In Sweden however, Reinfeldt won on a pledge to retain the core principles of the incumbent Social Democratic government while simply tweaking at the current system. The argument that Swedish social democracy has died is a myth, as it was a myth the last time the Social Democrats were voted out. In the years to come progressives in the UK must insure that social democratic values are instilled within our country and that the Tories have to do more than posture if they ever want to win ground from Labour.
The Tory party's enthusiasm for David Cameron knows no bounds as yesterday's results of the ballot on the Built to Last aims and values statement reveals. Even the 92.7 per cent Soviet-style endorsement of the document couldn't disguise the fact that only one in four party members could actually be bothered to vote. But more revealing still, however, is the fact that party membership has actually declined since Cameron became leader. At 247,394, the total number of eligible voters in the Built to Last ballot was 6,295 fewer than in the Tory leadership election last December.
As Tim Montgomerie, editor of the Conservativehome website, bluntly told the Independent: 'A lot of people are not enthused by the agenda David Cameron has set out. The fact that only around 20 per cent bothered to vote for it shows that. There is no excitement for David Cameron.' Perhaps most unhumiliating of all for the Tory leader: the Daily Telegraph, house journal of the Conservative party, completely ignores the election in today's paper.
Over on the Huffington Post, George Lakoff, one of the leading Democrat sages of the day, puts up a very handy list of 12 traps for progressives in the US to avoid ahead of the mid-term elections. I think it is possible to oversubscribe to Lakoff’s political model, yet his work is hugely valuable as a challenge to the most sacred assumptions of modern politics. He depreciates the whole process of gauging what issues people care about most by polling and focus-grouping, then constructing and communicating policies that answer those concerns. What else, you might ask, is politics about?
Instead he argues that people have both progressive and conservative world views and values within them and either can be addressed and drawn out by the way in which a subject is framed. Enough précis! It’s a useful read at this time when there’s been a mass outbreak of public political cogitation from all parties.
And now Labour has wrapped a cold towel round its head and joined the Liberal Democrats and Cameron’s Conservatives in the speculation about today’s issues, tomorrow’s problems, modern values and the world-we-leave-out-children, it’s right to remember that parties in government have to ponder things in a different way than opposition parties.
Labour has to be very careful of the year zero approach. If, after 9 years of government, they sound like they are only just working out the right way to conduct business the voters are going to wonder, rightly, quite what they’ve been up to over the last decade. Renewal, that much discussed and little defined term, must connect to the work that has gone before. If the record of government is thrown away and new PM is pushed largely on their new ideas and personal background, that radically levels the playing field for opposition parties at the election and it squanders the incumbency advantage. When Al Gore threw away the record of the Clinton years he was vulnerable to Bush’s charge of ‘8 wasted years’ – see Cameron trying that here. Governments should never presume on a grateful electorate, but equally they can’t give the impression that they were on the wrong track until about last week, and have just now seen the light.
Finally the way governments should ‘think’ is by enacting policies and communicating them as part of a succession from previous policies and approaches. Not by stopping in the middle of the motorway and popping the hood to ponder the engine for a few years. The duty and the advantage of government over opposition is enacting ideas.
The Hungarian prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, currently in the news for admitting that he 'lied' and his government 'screwed up' in a leaked recording of a meeting with MPs, has his own blog, we notice.
The last post was made on Sunday, before the riots in Budapest that were provoked by his remarks began. But, as no one in the Progress office is fluent in Hungarian, we can't divulge whether the prime minister is as candid online as he is on tape. Any Hungarian speakers out there, we would be delighted if you could enlighten us.
The woman on the right of the screen does look pretty cross, however. Perhaps Gyurcsany knew what was coming ...
Progress will be in Manchester next week, to host four events on Labour party conference fringe.
The Progress rally is without doubt the major fringe event of the opening Sunday. Our chair, Stephen Twigg, will be joined by eight excellent speakers, including our honorary president, Alan Milburn, EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, and six senior ministers - Douglas Alexander, Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell and David Miliband. They'll all be drawing together the major themes for the coming week in what will be a very exciting event. See you in the Usdaw marquee, room 3 at 6pm on Sunday!
Monday and Tuesday will see three further events, including seminars on two subjects that Progress has conducted recent well-attended events on - anti-Semitism and the threat posed by David Cameron's resurgent Tories. And the final event, on the Tueday evening, will be a question time session, allowing you to quiz some well-known Labour figures and members of the progressive community. See the events section of this site or the conference guide for more details!
Hope to see you in Manchester ...
It's a bit early to do a detailed analysis of the defeat of Sweden's Social Democrats and what that means for Labour in the UK. But the immediate lesson that leaps out is that when confronted by a centre-right opposition that ruthlessly triangulates and moves into your political territory, and is led by a charismatic young leader, you cannot win just on your record in power, however good it has been and however well you have run the economy. Unless you refresh your vision for the future, and have visibly renewed yourself in office, voters will just say 'thanks very much for everything you've done, but we'll give the other lot a go all the same.'
Whoever ends up leading the Labour party into the next general election must accept the brutal truth that as a movement we under-polled our full support in 2005. In 2009 we will need to mobilise every single Labour sympathiser and this, surely, will place a new imperative on internal party reform. If one takes a seat-by-seat analysis of the 2005 election result it shows just how much local campaigns made a difference. For example in seats where MPs were being replaced by new candidates the overall performance of the defending party was demonstrably and significantly worse than average. Therefore one might argue that as important as the election of a future leader undoubtedly is, the issue of how we renew and rebuild the Labour Party itself is just as vital.
However we need to accept that we will never communicate the full measure of our radical, progressive ambition – epitomised by our commitment to end child poverty or to build an international consensus about debt relief – through a media that is distorted by cynicism, and twisted in its search for bad news. Just as, nationally, Labour must hold the radical centre, so must local parties become centres of radicalism in their communities, often becoming the first port of call for those who are ambitious to change where they live, and a network through which we engage progressives in every corner of these islands in our national – and international – campaign for social justice.
It is clear, surely, that a sharp swing to the left will NOT bring us electoral success. Nor, as Liam Byrne MP pointed out in his Fabian pamphlet last year, will binning the reform manifesto on which we successfully stood in 2001 and in 2005. Yet it’s equally true that in 2005 we didn’t poll our full support.
Radical party reform is vital if we want to mobilise every single Labour sympathiser in 2009.
Hello all,
I am delighted to be able to join the Progress blog. I think its very important that everyone participates in the debate on the future direction of the Labour Party as we seek to renew ahead of the next general election. This website is already proving to be an excellent forum for party members to discuss ideas.
Yesterday, I made a speech on the importance for Labour to focus on supporting strong, stable families in the years ahead. The speech was part of the government's Social Exclusion week, which has been led by Cabinet Office Minister Hilary Armstrong.
The family has been uncomfortable territory for the centre-left after decades in which the right have used talking about the family to stigmatise lone parents and rail against changing modern families. There are indeed difficult questions for us as we consider new ways to support families in the years ahead, but I think its essential that we do confront those questions head on.
I would really appreciate your thoughts on my speech.
Thanks,
John Hutton, Work and Pensions Secretary
Alan Milburn, honorary president of Progress, yesterday set out a far-reaching ‘empowerment’ agenda for the next 10 years of New Labour.
He argued that the central issue for the Labour party to grapple with is that of the citizen’s relationship with the state. ‘The purpose of politics today,’ he said, ‘should be to help people take greater control of their lives so that they become as empowered as citizens as they have been as consumers … I want to change the distribution of power in society.’ In the speech, Milburn tackled the issues of greater wealth disparity, and called for ‘more to shift the focus beyond the traditional welfare solution of correcting the symptoms of inequality – such as lower wages and family poverty – towards an approach that deals with the roots of disadvantage before they become entrenched.’
Specifically, he argued that:
• Welfare reform needs to be ‘back on the agenda with a vengeance’ with ‘incentives and sanctions’ to reduce the number of lone parents unable to work, partly by requiring them to actively seek work. He praised President Clinton’s welfare reforms, the subject of a recent Will Hutton Observer piece.
The party must adopt a series of tax breaks to spread asset ownership in shares and housing to tackle inequality.
• State subsidies should allow parents to move children from a failing school, with the money transferring directly to their new school.
• Government funded by local communities, who themselves decide the rate of taxes through local referendums.
• Local health service and police could also be more accountable to the community they serve through elections. Community run mutual organisations could take over the running of children’s centres, estates and parks.
• Voting reform for the Commons, power for Parliament to be able to vote on wars and a directly elected Lords.
• The views of public service workers, and not just national inspectorates, should form the core of performance league tables.
Running through his speech and policy suggestions was the fundamental belief in the empowerment of individuals and communities. He sees this as the progressive cause that has been central to the Labour party for over a 100 years: ‘We need to forge a new contract between state and citizen where government provides opportunities and citizens strive to take them. Where the top down paternalistic statism of the last century gives way to a new bottom up agenda of empowerment that is in tune with the needs of this.’
What do you think of Alan’s speech? Do you agree with his view that the citizen/state relationship is key to renewing New Labour and what do you think of the specific policy suggestions he makes? Post your comments at the bottom of Alan's speech and he will respond next week.
The events of the past week seem to demonstrate that all of those old cliches are true: a week is a long time in politics, all political careers end in tears and the Harold Macmillan maxim that it is "events dear boy events" that are the driver of politics. As Robert Philpot pointed out in his earlier post these are turbulent times indeed to be holding a conference on anything Labour-flavoured.
It was with this backdrop then and with two days to reflect after seeing the PM for real at Progress on Saturday that we held our own symposium at Kingston University where I teach, entitled 'New Labour in Power - 10 Years On' gathering together a group of academics, journalists, practitioners and people who happily straddle divides.
The brief was to reflect on our anticipations of a decade ago and see how far we had been proved right and wrong. If we rewind to "1996 and all that" the event was a re-run of a conference organised by Kingston people back then which culminated in a well known and well received book
The day covered lots of the areas that tend to slip off the agenda when considering big P politics -we had contributions on the moral imperatives of Blairism, the feminisation of politics and on ethnic minority issues as well as more straightforward policy areas. We finished up with Clare Short MP and Fiona MacTaggart MP both resopnding to the day and providing their own projections for the next ten years. Clare's short sharp shock concentrated on the critique that she has honed in recent times. Fiona also spoke passionately - about the need to renew 'politics'.
The world has become an unpredictable place. I have no crystal ball for what comes next but if we're answering the question 'how was it for you?' this was always going to be about walking the tightrope of expectations management. After all New Labour was always an alternative to itself and as Fiona MacTaggart pointed out the left are never satisfied. As conference co-organiser Brian Brivati has remarked history will be kinder to Blair than the crazed atmosphere of the moment where naysayers seem to dominate the news agenda.
Universal, egalitarian socialism: not quite (admittedly) but I'd say Labour's record as the party of progressive social transformation is pretty much intact. Yes 'could do better' is an obvious thing for the school report but much has been done. It is regrettable that Iraq will be what this governement will be remembered for. As part of my presentation I flashed up a slide of a poster with Labour's last 'Forward not back' election slogan that had been defaced to read 'For war not back'. It would be foolish to reduce 10 years of acheivements at home with this reminder. Indeed other New Labour actions abroad have been laudable. Surely a government department established with a mission statement to accomplish worldwide poverty allieviation is a historical landmark. Clare Short's comments on Monday testify to the fact that, backed by significant money, DFID has become in relatively a short space of time an important player on the world stage. Bono and Chris Martin would have to agree that it's all steps in the right ... sorry, correct ... direction.
The domestic implications of foreign policy will be crucial in the next 10 years. They already are - witness all the European directives that this government has trumpeted as its own such as increased maternity and paternity leave. Look also at the disturbing rise of Muslim extremism - a multi-faceted phenomenon. For voters it will be quality of life issues that determine where they put their cross which in large degree ammounts to the economy (stupid). Anyway I began with a load of well-worn sayings so I'll end with another. I think it was Disraeli who said that 'politics' is an inexact science. As is the way with all cliches the saying is not entirely without foundation.
Fiona's point was on re-connecting was crucial though. This presents all the mainstream political parties with a central challenge. We need to reverse the pervasive tide of apathy that seems to be engulfing voters - the 'don't cares'. The people who believe that political class is all the same and different from themselves may fall into the hands of the political extremes if they percieve that the established political parties are failing to listen to there concerns. Chettering class types concerned about the environment could go green or even blue. The white working class in east london is showing a worrying propensity to vote for the BNP but the dissatisfaction that they are playing on represents a serious opportunity for UKIP or other english nationalist parties to try to plug that gap. It could be said extremism breeds extremism and at a Progress event on the BNP Bath University's Roger Eatwell made an intersting connection between The BNP and Muslim extremists. The recruiting arguments of both are sometimes not dissimilar.
For more blogging background to the meeting see
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_brivati/2006/08/new_labour_ten_yeas.htm
This week's news that Nigel Farage had been elected as the new leader of the UK Independence Party, received, to say the least, less media coverage than the leadership machinations of a certain other party the week before. And rightly so.
But it seems premature to consign UKIP to the dustbin of fringe parties with one notable electoral performance (in their case the 16 per cent and third place garnered in the 2004 Euro elections), only to slide back into obscurity thereafter. What with the rejection of the European constitution, any chance of Britain joining the Euro very much receded, and expansion seemingly weakening chances of a federal 'super-state', Europe is seen as very much a dormant issue in British politics.
But there is reason to think that this might not remain so, as well as cause to think that UKIP might anyway be able to move beyond 'single-issue' status.
Firstly, the issue of immigration is once again moving up the list of voters' priorities. Not only that, but it is now explicitly linked to expansion of the EU, what with the government's admission that economic migration from accession countries - notably Poland - has been much higher than it had predicted. In 2004, EU withdrawal and strict immigration controls were easily UKIP's best-known policies.
Secondly, the two main parties' attempt to neutralise the issue of Europe by simply not talking about it. The BNP's recent success showed that seemingly 'fringe' parties of the right can reap electoral dividend, by portraying themselves as an anti-establishment voice willing to address issues neglected by the political mainstream. As Denis Macshane demonstrates in the latest issue of Progress, Labour seems reluctant to exploit clear Tory divisions on Europe for fear of reviving what it sees as a particularly tricky issue. But it is likely to be revived at some stage anyway, whether we like it or not.
Thirdly, with the election of new leaders in several major EU states, fear of deeper European integration may return. See, for example, Nicolas Sarkozy's recent proposal of a new 'mini-treaty', drawn from the embers of the European consitution.
Lastly, there are signs that UKIP may be attempting to broaden its appeal by exploiting the gap supposedly left by Cameron's Tories on school selection, immigration and tax. But that might not be all that good for Labour. UKIP's vote in 2004 consisted of a significant number of ex-Labour votes, and it was UKIP who recently pushed Labour into fourth place in the Bromley and Chiselhurst by-election.
Today's excellent Guardian op-ed
by Jonathan Freedland rightly ruminates on the tragedy that Al Gore
failed to make it to the White House in 2000. After watching An
Inconvenient Truth, the former vice president's cinematic wake-up call
on global warming released in Britain this weekend, Freedland writes: you
curse the single vote on the US supreme court that denied this man -
passionate, well-informed and right - the presidency of the United
States in favour of George W Bush.
But Freedland's
attempt to draw some political lessons for Britain only tells half the
story. He is right, of course, to warn Britons of the danger of
allowing the pundits to turn the next general election into a
personality contest between David Cameron and Gordon Brown. Like Bush
in 2000, Cameron is already ahead of the chancellor on the 'affability
index' but, as Freedland suggests, 'we should choose the man of
substance, no matter how he looks in a fleece or how breezily he can
talk about his iPod.' Americans failed to six years ago and we've all
paid the price since.
But let's not forget that the blame for what happened in 2000 also
rests partly with the left and, most critically, with the strategy
adopted by Gore and his advisers. It wasn't, for instance, just the
pundits, as Freedland suggests, who argued that the vice president and
Texas governor were 'Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee' on policy and thus
ignored the very evident dangers of allowing Bush to slip into the Oval
Office. This was a position - Michael Moore being its chief
cheer-leader - that was adopted by significant sections of the American
left, and led millions to vote for Green candidate Ralph Nader.
We should also remember, too, the role that Gore played in his own
downfall. While it's true that an apparently relaxed, sunny personality
does wonders on the campaign trail, it wasn't just the vice president's
'stiff, unnatural, oddly robotic' personality that dashed his chances.
Personality counts for much in US politics, but not all - how else to
explain the millions of votes garnered by Richard Nixon on three
occasions?
The real error on Gore's part was that, fearing that association
with the Lewinsky-tarnished Bill Clinton would harm him significantly
with some voters (a miscalculation in itself given the president's high
approval ratings throughout his second term), the vice president sought
to disassociate himself from both the considerable achievements of the
administration of which he had been a part, and the New Democrat agenda
which had helped the Democrats to victory in both 1992 and 1996. In
those elections, Clinton successfully assembled 'metro-wide'
coalitions, which recognised the importance of both traditional
Democrat voters - in urban areas, for instance - as well as floating
voters in the suburbs. Gore's abandoment of this approach and adoption
of a populist 'people against the powerful' message cost him dear. Yes,
he narrowly outpolled Bush across the country and, yes, he
successfully mobilised the support of a higher percentage of union,
black and liberal voters than Clinton had four years previously. But,
to his great detriment, the vice president shed huge numbers of
critical swing voters - suburbanites, Catholics and independents - who
had backed the Democrats in the two presidential contests of the 1990s.
Elections are won and lost in what the American historian Arthur
Schlesigner once termed the 'vital centre' of politics - for some on
the left, that's the really inconvenient truth about Gore's 'defeat' in
2000.
David Frum, a former speech writer for George W Bush, has suggested that the politician that David Cameron most resembles is... George W Bush.
Frum argues that in his determination to split the difference, to appeal to everybody, to use flowery language to avoid tough choices, to evade rather than take a stand, David Cameron is coming most to resemble is the George W. Bush of vintage 1999-2000.
What do you think?
Yesterday was a really significant day for all of us in the Labour movement. Significant because at an event in the morning, at the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, we launched the government’s Social Exclusion Action Plan. I was joined by Patricia Hewitt, Ruth Kelly, Beverly Hughes, and Pat McFadden to launch the document, which stands testament to this government’s determination to extend the opportunities presented by life in the UK today to those who are in danger of being left behind.
I really do hope you will take some time to read the document for yourself and post you thoughts here, I’ll check back later in the week to hear what you’ve got to say.
So far you’ve probably only heard some of the more sensational interpretations offered by the media, like the so-called ‘baby ASBOs’. What’s sad about those headlines is that it missed the point of what is a really important aspect of our approach to tackling social exclusion; early intervention. This means that we want to get in early to offer individuals and families who have the potential to slip into harmful patterns of behaviour the targeted and tailored support that will help them to fully exploit their own potential. As a Labour government, we can’t stand by if a child’s life-chances are being written off in the first two years of their life.
We are talking about a very small percentage of the population, less than 2.5, and in order to fully engage them we will have to be bold, determined, and persistent. It won’t be easy, and at times we will have to take tough decisions. Some people simply don’t trust the state and go out of their way to avoid it. This could be for understandable reasons, but we must find ways of engaging with them too. This is where use of the charitable and voluntary sector will be a key factor in our work.
The Tories think what we’re proposing is an example of the ‘nanny state’, and that we should leave voluntary organisations to deal with social exclusion. I say that this government will leave nobody behind and will never shirk from our responsibility to share the benefits of the social and economic progress since 1997 equitably.
I’ve been struck by how often we express our outrage, amongst ourselves and in the media, about the extreme wealth and privilege handed down from one generation to the next by those at the very top of the income scale. But the research clearly shows that deprivation and under-achievement is equally inter-generational. Thousands of people in our country will literally inherit a life with countless obstacles and barriers to taking advantage of the opportunities most of us take for granted. The Social Exclusion Action Plan launched today is our attempt to break this cycle once and for all.
I started my professional life as a social worker, back in the 1970’s. The people I worked with back then, and the lessons I learned, have remained at the forefront of my mind throughout the process of pulling the Action Plan together. It’s important to remember that underneath all of the grind and gossip that is politics in the media age, there remain plenty of people who are motivated by a desire for real change for the better, and that moving into politics is an extension of work in the and for communities. I hope that the Action Plan we launched today will help you remain focussed on why we are here in government, why we’re working so hard after almost a decade, and why the country needs a Labour government more than ever before.
The Chancellor’s five economic tests became Britain's iron rule on entry to the single European currency. In that spirit, here are five tests that Gordon Brown needs to meet before he can win the Labour leadership contest, yet alone build a platform for a Labour fourth term.
1. Announce a debate on Labour’s future direction. Labour organisations as diverse as Progress, the Fabians and Compass want a debate on ideas and issues, not on when Tony hands the keys in. Leading a dialogue about the next decade of new Labour would give you the opportunity to flesh out your political values to an uncertain audience, scuppering those who want to paint you into a political corner.
2. Don’t ask for Tony’s endorsement. Blair may have been the most successful Labour leader of all time, but the popularity of every Prime Minister expires. Be confident and be yourself. The public may still chime with new Labour values, but they want a leader with a different style to Blair’s. Don’t fret over every comment page which criticises your puritanical values: a serious hardworking approach will be welcomed, if it is genuine. Pretending to be a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, or a life long England fan will not.
3. Hold back your troops. Constant infighting, backstabbing and behind the scenes briefing damages your chances of winning the leadership as much as it damages Blair. If Labour MPs think Iraq affected perceptions of the government, then a full scale civil war in Labour ranks will only add to public disregard. Inheriting a bloodstained crown will surely mean the kingdom is short lived. A No 10 adviser once called Brown 'a Shakespearean tragedy' – it is crucial that such prophecies are broken.
4. Don’t drift to the left. The temptation must be immense, but elections, even Labour party elections are won from the centre. The early period of office will define your premiership. Labour needs to reconnect with those areas of middle England that went Tory at the last council elections in order to win the next General Election. The great challenges of globalisation, energy security, the war on terror, pensions and individual prosperity will not be addressed from the extremes of politics.
5. Hit Cameron where it hurts. The Tories are supposedly relishing the prospect of Cameron going head to head with Brown over the Despatch Box. But Gordon should too. Cameron may be the first Tory leader in recent times with a strategy to win back power, but he has no policies. Gordon has experience, is seen as trustworthy, and serious. Cameron is all spin, while the British public increasingly see spin as the new sleaze. Cameron must be exposed – not only is he shallow, but fundamentally he has not changed the Tory party. His frontbench has none of the talent that Gordon Brown’s Cabinet will have.
Gordon Brown can use his much anticipated speech to party conference to establish his modernising credentials. He must show that he, not David Cameron is the natural heir to Blair. No-one expects him to announce his leadership manifesto now, but he must signal a willingness to engage with the kind of policy debate that every Labour party member, whether on the left, right, Blairite or Brownite wing wants to see.
This valet is far too humble to offer advice about the best way to make the eventual transfer of leadership into a postive experience for the Labour party and the government. But it is worth noting that the press are reaching a single view on the subject. Grave newspaper leader after grave leader cites the example of David Cameron's election as being a way in which a political party can renew itself, find direction and a new generation of policies. These are, of course, the same newspapers that criticise the same David Cameron for having no policies. There are also the same newspapers that covered the many previous Conservative leadership contests with howling derision, hoots and raspberries.
My point is not that contests are a good or a bad thing. But that we should be aware of exactly why the newspapers for so wedded to them. I don't think it's that they sell newspapers - it's that a leadership contest, played out in the public eye, gives the fourth estate the opportunity to insert itself as a fourth college in labour's leadership election. Newspapers delight in standing proxy for public opinion. They delight in assigning one candidate or the other 'the big mo' - often based on nothing more scientific than who they've had lunch with that week.
Am I too harsh? Contests really are the flavour of the week across the political spectrum. The Observer is all for them, two weeks running. As is both the Sunday and the Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph states that; "there is no better way for a politician to reveal his true mettle than in the heat of a hard-fought election."
However, there is a stark contrast between these nobly framed battles of ideas and testing of mettles, and the way in which newspapers actually cover leadership fights. The same Telegraph writing about the LibDem race back in January, casts an eye over the candidates, and notices that Sir Menzies Campbell is Scottish. It recommends that that party 'avoid the celtic scenario' and looks at Oaten and Huhne. In later editorials it notices that Huhne was a federalist in the European parliament. By that stage, sadly, Oaten had self destructed. So all it could do is wish other candidates were in the race... That is reminisant of Charles Moore's infamous endorsement of David Trimble as Tory leader in an earlier race .
Did the venerable Observer manage to stay focused on the issues when covering leadership races? In the Lib Dem race it wrote off Campbell as a figure of stability with no great analysis of his policies. Instead it embraced Chris Huhne, while admitting it had little idea what he stood for, saying: 'there is a problem. Huhne broke from the pack of new Lib Dem MPs to run for the leadership, but then his courage failed him. He has squandered his time in the spotlight talking up his experience as an MEP and fiddling around the margins of tax policy.' It wants to hear more from him.
Anyone feel renewed by that level of debate? If there is to be a contest, it must take place in the public eye, not in the media bubble. The newspapers will largely ignore policy announcements and instead chatter about background, personality, history, hair loss, children, partners, dress sense, handwriting, horoscopes... Al Gore may be popular with the left-wing press now, but in 1999 and 2000, he was dismissed as a 'beta male' and derided for wearing 'earth tones'.
If a contest is the road taken, I beg the whole Labour party to cancel their newpspaper subscriptions for the duration.
It’s not often that one enters rather than leaves the Middle East in order to escape hostility, yet that is the situation Tony Blair finds himself in. The Prime Minister visiting both Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas can at least focus his mind on something substantive rather than the rabid politicking of the last week.
But as with so many of Blair's foreign policy initiatives the Middle East Peace Process looks like floundering. Blair's visit does seem to have garnered some success. It now seems that Olmert and Abbas will meet without Israel insisting on the release of any of the three captured Israeli soldiers. But for Blair to build any substantial legacy in relation to Israel - Palestine he must de-couple himself from the Bush government. The rigid, monolithic support offered to Israel by the US in the recent war with Hizbollah only serves to reiterate the lack of nuance or pragmatism in the Bush government's policy toward the Israel - Palestine crisis. Blair should use his position over the next year to promote the value of a negotiated settlement as opposed to the US support of Israeli unilateralism.
Blair's legacy over Iraq is, sadly, irredeemable. His desire for positive intervention for humanitarian reasons lies dead in the rubble of Baghdad but there is still time for him to make a real difference in the Israel - Palestine conflict. Any positive impact on this issue could eclipse the disaster of Iraq as well as taking away the prime motivating force behind radical Islam. On a foreign policy level the Prime Minister could do little better than to focus his efforts on working towards the creation of viable Palestinian state.
Even if he only lays the groundwork for a future viable two-state solution Blair will have at least left himself with a key foreign policy success in the Middle Eastregion. In an attempt to progress peace in the Middle East Bill Clinton failed to produce real change after 'shooting for the moon' in his final presidential year, bringing Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak together at Camp David only to see the cobbled together agreement fall apart. Yet if Blair can rekindle the feeling of hope rather than despair in the region and push the need for negotiation he could yet succeed where so many other statesman have failed.
Despite the months of preparation and planning, there was no way of forecasting that Progress' annual conference yesterday would have fallen at the end of such a tumultuous week for Labour. As one cabinet aide suggested to me, if this event hadn't existed, somebody would have to have invented it.
Although interest in the event accelerated throughout the week (to the extent that we had, sadly, to turn down countless numbers of people trying to secure a place), the conference was already our most popular ever - a positive signal that there is a great hunger for open debate about the challenges Labour and Britain face over the next decade. And this, rather than an exercise in group therapy, was the real purpose of 2020 Vision: to use Progress' tenth birthday this year and the run-up to the tenth anniversary of Labour's first election victory next May to look ahead to the kind of issues, and politics, which are likely to figure heavily in the next decade.
So, what of the mood of the event? There were strong indications about the anger and sadness that many people in the party feel about the way the prime minister had been treated during the course of last week's events; an overwhelming desire that the vicious infighting at Westminster stops; and a realisation that, if it does not, Labour risks doing irreparable damage to its future electoral prospects, with all that means for those it seeks to represent. People should think, suggested one delegate, of those who really have something to lose - like the mothers on Sure Start - before they engage in another round of hand to hand combat with their party colleagues.
One of the conference's more unlikely (though very sporting) speakers, former Tory cabinet minister Michael Portillo underlined this point when he warned delegates at a seminar examining David Cameron's future prospects that parties which would rather squabble amongst themselves than fight their opponents are usually signalling a loss of appetite for power. This process can take years - he had witnessed it himself at close quarters during the 1990s - but once under way, he argued, it is very difficult to reverse.
But two points - both made by Tony Blair in his morning address - should give Labour cause for hope. First, the party still has an opportunity to 'remake itself', turning away from the 'irredeemably old-fashioned' style of politics it had shown to the country last week and returning to the kind of behaviour it had shown 'when we were hungry for power before 1997'.
Second, Labour is not fundamentally ideologically divided. The vast majority of the party, the prime minister suggested, hold to, or want to be around, the 'modernising, progressive position', whereas the number of people who want to 'go back to the 1980s' are a 'very, very tiny in number'.
The real danger, Blair warned, as he ticked off challenges like international terrorism, energy security and pensions which barely figured on the public agenda ten years ago but are very live now, is 'not that people depart from the modernising, progressive position, but that we don't reasses what that position means for today's world'. It's a very real danger - but one that's all together much more manageable than that faced by Labour in the 1980s when, as the prime minister reminded his audience, many in the party appeared to inhabit not simply different worlds, but often different solar systems.
No one doubts that this has not been Labour's best week! The 'will he?', 'should he?' debate that has surrrounded Tony Blair has been a wonderful spectacle for our opponents but deeply demoralising for our supporters.
Whatever else you can say about Tony Blair, dismissing him as a failure is hardly one of them. In the past few months the government has taken on two of the largest long-term issues facing the country - pensions and energy - and in each case has pushed through a balanced, practical and principled new strategy. Across most of Whitehall there is no shortage of momentum. With the exception of the Home Office, where fire-fighting is, almost be necessity, put above proper strategic planning, ministers get on with governing and tackle big issues thoughtfully.
Until the recent and unhelpful interventions of the few and not the many one might have been able conclude that this is a re-elected government doing its job. The prime minister has been diligent and focused and has been keen to hand things over in good order to his obvious successor - probably by summer of next year. Sadly that is now light years away from the current realities of Planet Westminster.
So let us have a period of calm reflection, let us focus on what we were elected to do and let us unite against our common enemy before it is too late.
mike-ion@hotmail.co.uk
Timing, so they say, is all in politics. If that’s right, the new Progress website should be a winner.
Yesterday we learned that this year’s Labour conference will be Tony Blair’s last as prime minister. We also know that a major debate is underway about what the post-Blair agenda will look like. That is what Gordon Brown called for a year ago. It is what a broad spectrum of Labour party opinion - David Blunkett, Charles Clarke, John Hutton, Tony Woodley - have all called for in recent days.
Progress can be a focus for leading this debate. It should be open and inclusive and rise above personality or faction. I do not believe debate is divisive. We should be more confident than that. We are united in our values. But we do need to update our policies. That is vital for any party wanting to renew itself, particularly one that has been in power for some time. Indeed, it would be faintly bizarre if the Labour party after a decade in government didn’t have a debate about the next decade. It is what party members want and the public would expect. It provides an opportunity to show Labour is in touch and has wind in its sails.
New Labour became a modern centrist progressive party through a genuine process of debate and renewal. New Labour was created around the insight that for progressive values to be realized they had to be applied in new ways. And, notwithstanding obvious problems, Britain feels stronger and fairer as a result. Poverty has declined. Prosperity has increased. Services have improved. Tony Blair has done more than make Labour electable - no small feat given how unelectable we were just fifteen years ago. He has reshaped the political landscape and created a new orthodoxy in British politics expressed in policies like the minimum wage, gay rights, devolution to Scotland and Wales.
This orthodoxy goes beyond individual policies to a political approach that is liberal on economic and social policy, internationalist in foreign policy, marries rights with responsibilities and makes reform and investment in public services a modern route to social justice. It is our reshaping of the centre ground that David Cameron is struggling with his party to come to terms with.
So we have achieved a lot. But we have to be candid too. Ten years is a long time in politics. The world has moved on. Meanwhile the Tories are finally waking from their long slumbers. Winning a fourth term means undertaking a process of renewal just as radical as that which we went through more than a decade ago.
The policy challenges for progressives in 2007 or 2017 are different from those of 1997. How we respond to globalization, not by resorting to economic protectionism but through open markets, free trade and a new accent on skills and employability. How we build genuinely inclusive societies when there are huge pressures going in the opposite direction, notably a widening gap between rich and poor. How we deal with the causes and consequences of global terrorism and get the trade offs right between protecting wider society and defending civil liberties. How we avoid racial conflict in an era of global migration. How we deal with the challenge of demographic and environmental change. And, in particular, how we fulfill the desire people have for greater control in their lives whether through more choice over how services are delivered or through a better balance between work and family life.
These were not the main challenges then. But they are now. For me, at least, they should be answered with a modern more participatory politics in which both local communities and individual citizens share more evenly and directly in power.
In a more informed and inquiring world, our capacity to have a genuine dialogue with the public has to expand. After a decade where New Labour has become associated, often unfairly, with central control, a less tribal, more relaxed and open culture can help re-assemble our coalition of support. That will also require party reform to better connect us with the communities we serve. A different style of politics calls for more innovations like this Progress website to facilitate participatory, open and two-way discussion and debate.
Sadly, the events of the last week, with their connotations of strong-arm, boss-style, plot-filled politics, have harked to the past when the party should be looking to the future. As the debate about policy direction takes hold, and as we contemplate the election of a new leader, we would do w |
