Never mind the anarchy

David Cameron didn’t specify when exactly anarchy broke out in the UK, although he decided to tell us when he got back from holiday, just when he needed to regain the political initiative from a bouncing Brown.

But how much worse have things actually got? As Polly Toynbee notes in today’s Guardian, Home Office figures show that, while there has been an increase in gun and knife carrying, there were more deaths from shootings and stabbings in 1995 than there were in 2006.

Furthermore, the sight of rude youths hanging about on bikes is hardly new. I’ve lived for two years in north Islington, which has one of the worst reported crime rates in the country, and daily walk past the kinds of kids supposedly throwing our country into anarchy. When one of them nearly collided with me on his bike as I crossed the road, he apologised and rode on.

If your only experience of such people is through the lens of the media – library footage of kids jumping on burnt out cars, CCTV pictures of hooded gangs roaming the streets  - it is easy to become paranoid. But day-to-day life in these communities is not like being in a war zone: it is more mundane than that. Which is one of the reasons that bored teenagers get involved in petty crime and confrontations that occasionally escalate into acts of bloody violence, all the more shocking for their rarity.

When Cameron talks about anarchy in the UK it looks suspiciously like he’s playing on people’s fears to make political capital rather than trying to find a solution to why there are problems in the first place.

How much do the Tories care about poverty?

The Tories' Social Justice Policy Group have made it ever so difficult to find their report 'Breakthrough Britain' on the internet for some reason. A press release on Conservatives.com claims to direct you to the website of the group. Except at the time of writing it leads to a typepad page dated August 14 2007 entitled 'Poverty debate' which has absolutely nothing else on it. No report and certainly no discussion.

It seems extraordinary to me that a flagship policy group report has no easily identifiable webpage where any member of the public can see exactly what the recommendations are. Maybe it's because the Conservatives know that their 'Back to Basics' recommendations of re-subsidising marriage simply takes money from the poor to give to the more wealthy? Perhaps it's because, no matter how much they deny it, one-parent families are ignored in Tory solutions to the problems caused by low incomes and family breakdown?  Or maybe it's because in the end, after all Cameron's hand-wringing visits to disadvantaged estates, the Tories just can't bring themselves to care that much about poverty?

Cameron is muddled, timid and invisible says former Tory media adviser

The Tory fight back and the 'save Dave' campaign has begun in earnest today following the Tory leader's return from his sojourn in France (unlike Gordon who has hardly taken a day off since parliament went into recess).

The task confronting Cameron is a huge one. Nick Wood, the former adviser to Hague and IDS, argues that Cameron needs to stop trying to be popular and focus more on being right.

According to Wood

'his (Cameron's) position on tax is muddled, his position on reform of health and education is too timid, and his profile in areas such as youth crime, Europe, immigration and waste of public money is almost invisible.'

There's no better time than now for party reform

Many Labour activists breathe a sigh of relief when August comes around. The vast majority of Branches and GCs skip a month which leaves hard-working branch stalwarts to enjoy the sun rather than continue the often thankless task of drawing up the next agenda and trying to pull unseen members out of the woodwork to attend the next meeting.

These summer months also hold the promise of a real change in the party’s policy-making machinery and the way we communicate with the public following the launch of the Party’s consultation ‘Extending and renewing party democracy’ and the Fabian Society’s pamphlet ‘Facing Out: How party politics must change to build a progressive society’.

Some people with long memories will remember back to the 1999 21st Century Consultation party consultation which, with the exception of a few forward-thinking CLPs, resulted in very little change in the way local parties engaged their members and wider electorate. Now there looks like there might be a potential shift in the way the Party involves members in policy-making as well as ensuring local parties are more outward-looking.

Gordon Brown’s proposals include new rights for members to be consulted by the National Policy Forum (NPF) in policy discussions; a new contemporary issues process at Annual Conference; and making final NPF policy documents subject to a One Member One Vote ballot. This is a bold move to try and overcome the criticisms that submissions through the Partnership in Power process tend to disappear into a black hole and that little real debate takes place at the Party’s Annual Conference. Such a plan is not without its risks – while it’s important that the membership feels able to sign up to government policy, whole programmes of beneficial reform must not be stymied by implacable opposition to individual elements of the government’s yearly programme. A balance needs to be kept between ensuring that members’ views and ideas are used to shape future policy and the need to keep the fast pace of government business rolling.

The consultation also suggests that policy forums in every CLP would be given much better support and that there would be increased briefings for representatives on the NPF. This would be hugely welcome, but I wonder how this can happen without adequate resources. It would be a shame if members’ hopes were raised just to be dashed because of a lack of funding.

It’s the final proposal in the consultation which I find the most interesting. It suggests that there ought to be a duty on local parties, Local Groups and other party stakeholders to consult both their members and the communities in which they are based. The Fabian pamphlet focuses much of its attention in this area, arguing that political parties must change to engage more of the electorate or face inexorable decline. While maintaining the constitutional priority of membership, the report proposes creating a ‘variable model’ of participation in the party building on the principles behind the current Labour Supporters Network. Drawing heavily on lessons from successes in the NGO movement it suggests that the Labour Party needs to centrally support local activity which works with other organisations to build a progressive consensus behind Labour’s most compelling reforms such as Sure Start, tax credits and increased working rights.

All of this will require a lot more in depth thinking, and no doubt there are going to be some tough debates ahead with those in the party who feel this is a road to nowhere, or worse, a deliberate attempt by the centre to stifle debate on the left. It is neither of these things and a vibrant and frank debate about the future of the party could be another refreshing outcome of the new government, as long as this time we really make the change.

Marginal impact

In today’s Guardian, New Statesman editor John Kampfner seems to answer ‘no’ to the question his magazine posed on its front cover a couple of weeks ago: is it already game over in the Brown v Cameron battle?

Kampfner points out that while the Tories have of late appeard to be having a rough ride (by-election failures, poor opinion poll ratings etc.), they have been quietly plugging away behind the scenes, pouring money into key marginals that will decide the outcome of the next election.

‘Elections are won and lost by a democratically unrepresentative number of floating voters in a small number of constituencies,’ says Kampfner. ‘It would not take a large swing for many of these seats to change hands.’

Brown might be ‘gladdening Labour hearts for the first time in a long time’ but what will happen when playing to the party faithful looks like it might risk alienating the privileged (predominantly middle class) minority who live in swing seats?

As Alan Johnson argued at May’s Progress/Fabian Society deputy leadership hustings, if Labour were to adopt a policy of banning of grammar schools it would be greeted with applause by many party members. The downside would be droves of voters in Gloucester and Slough taking their votes to Cameron. ‘If we want to carry out our policies we have to be in power and we have to be aware in deciding our policies what that will do for our chances of being elected to government,’ said Johnson. ‘Real politik’.

Perhaps electoral reform wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.

Home affairs - going nowhere fast

I came across two contrasting home affairs pieces in the media today. First, this morning, on Radio 4, the latest instalment of Mark Easton's excellent history of British postwar crime.

The overarching lesson seems to be that government policy, not least the 'get tough' policies of the 80s and 90s, have had very little impact on the level of crime. Tabloid hysteria has been, as a rule, a terrible text book for tackling lawlessness.

And yet, Jacqui Smith, interviewed in today's New Statesman, cites one David Blunkett as her role model as Home Secretary ...