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Old habits, comrade

Sep 21

Posted by Aidan in Holyrood | 7 Comments

I was probably quite naive about Refounding Labour. I thought it started out well, the editable, visible wiki format for the consultation was great. The Murphy-Boyack Scottish Review seemed genuinely engaged.

It’s all gone badly wrong. Despite the heroic efforts of the likes of Johanna Baxter, the UK Review seems destined to be a stitch up of epic proportions. Details of proposals are leaking out slowly, the NEC only agreeing final recommendations on the Tuesday before Conference votes on them on Sunday evening with the delegates having had the full proposals in their hands for a matter of hours.

Never mind having time to consult with their constituency parties to get a considered view, they’ll barely have had time to read them. Presumably it’ll be a take-it-or-leave-it vote as voting on it chapter by chapter would take too much time from the important conference business of drinking. This is a classic party stitch up. The only real consultation and feedback is being on unofficial blogs. In the words of the great philosopher, good grief.

Now, I did some phone banking for Ed during the leadership campaign because I thought he had the ruthless streak we needed. So far, he hasn’t disappointed on that front – the move to appoint the shadow cabinet directly for instance. But every single move is undermining the democratic structures that are left in the party, which is precisely the opposite of what was promised. I want ruthless but I want ruthless in the right direction, damnit!

The Scottish Review is similarly vexing. The consultation wasn’t as good, with preliminary changes happening soon after it started, and the final Scottish Executive Committee meeting happening before they’d have had time to print off submissions from the last day.

The first set of changes bringing in a candidates contract was fair enough, but not exactly uncontroversial in some quarters. The 2nd tranche, looking at internal party structures was broadly good but the way that it’s being handled is.. disappointing. More importantly, there’s a lot of vagueness and how those changes sit in the context of the wider review recommendations still to come is important. How will the political strategy board work with the policy making process? Will policy forums still exist? Will the new Holyrood oriented CLPs (a good move, particularly given the inherent instability of Westminster boundaries if those changes pass) be able to choose from a range of structures from delegate only to all member, one member one vote? Will the Scottish Labour Leader have authority over MPs and MEPs on non-devolved issues that affect Scotland? Who knows!

The Scottish Review seems to be on inputs only with members having very few, if any, way of influencing the outcome. The full report is unlikely to be published in time for the special conference to agree the rule changes. It’s not clear if the conference will vote on the proposed package as a whole or if the individual changes will be voted on separately. There is very little time for people to reflect on the changes, most parties will have 1 branch meeting and 1 constituency meeting before conference. Half a dozen bullet points on a webpage do not a full and inclusive discussion make.

Worse, the changes to the leadership rules seem to have been prejudged, the first hustings will take place on the day of the special conference itself so if they don’t pass god knows what’ll happen. Tom Harris might find himself all dressed up with nowhere to go. The member’s reps on the SEC and NEC have done good work (which I appreciate), but this is the sort of high handed, authoritarian, centralising, control freakery which people found so objectionable and which stops members engaging with the party and lead us to two epic defeats. Have we forgotten that? Are we still too bloodied and dazed, slumped in the corner that we think pugilistic party management is the way to go?

Maybe I’m expecting too much. Maybe I’m too used to full and frank debate in decision making, where some says weigh more than others but everyone has a say and everyone has a vote. But Clause IV says Labour is a “democratic socialist” party and this feels profoundly undemocratic. That’s important, there are things in the review which won’t work and people will find objectionable at the time and after the fact. But if they’ve had a proper chance to consent to them, those changes won’t be resented as much as if they’re imposed from on high.

Also in the Running

Sep 21

Posted by Guest Blog in Holyrood | 10 Comments

Another guestpost  from the fabulous and multi-talented Kirsty Connell, a former Labour candidate.   Thanks Kirsty!

Now the Scottish Labour Party has new structures to start to play with, the next stage for its political rehabilitation is the biggie: choosing a new leader, one able to work with new powers and a base far beyond what their predecessors enjoyed.

A candidate to take on the might of Salmond and his SNP majority, and to galvanise and rebuild the Labour movement in Scotland, against the forces of Independence and Conservatism. A tall order. Too tall for Tom, certainly. But too tall for even this post to attempt.

Like back in 2007, however, far more can be garnered about the state of the Labour Party from looking to those manoeuvring in what is deemed the lesser race.

With Brown back then as the only candidate for leader, the party was left to exorcise some of its Blair-era demons with the Deputy Leadership campaigns, albeit beneath the behemoth of Brown’s inevitable leadership juggernaut. From Jon Cruddas on the working left to Hazel Blears for the Blairites, Hilary Benn for the intellectuals and Alan Johnson for the moderates, to the eventual Unite-backed victor Harriet Harman and Peter Hain for – well, it’s a broad church – the party could test some new directions and try on some old and new policies for size, before plumping for the counterpoint to Brown who held the traditional backing.

With current deputy Johann Lamont to officially announce her candidacy by the end of September, the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Labour Party position will presumably be vacant and thus contested. As back in 2007, the three likely sections of the party where the candidates could emerge from will show far more about Scottish Labour than the leadership contest itself.

Much like the probable eventual leader, the first constituency where the Deputy Leader could appear is from within the Holyrood parliamentary party, first elected pre-2011. Whoever it is, they’ll be described as a ‘safe pair of hands’, a ‘known quantity’, probably with the gravitas of having served as a Minister in a previous parliament and almost certainly with a safe seat, safe being frankly any constituency Labour still holds in Scotland.

Electing this candidate as Deputy Leader would be undoubtedly the safest choice for Scottish Labour, resorting to small steps instead of giant strides in progress back towards electability. Any candidate fitting this mould would have to be asked why they weren’t, given their experience, standing for Leader itself. Awkward. With Scottish Labour electing its leadership team from within this scion it will need a lightning bolt of Frankenstein proportions to revitalise the beast.

The second likely constituency for a Deputy Leader candidate is again from the Holyrood party, but elected in 2011. More daring, more exciting, more willing to embrace change and not rely on what went before, but the pressure on any individual, if elected as the heir-presumptive, could kill a fledging career. Scottish Labour probably can’t afford any more sacrifices this term.

Of course, one candidate for Deputy Leader is very openly being speculated upon, and his position, as a new-ish Scottish Labour MP would help embrace the new structures, while releasing some the pressure from Holyrood as it wrenches itself through the reforms. It also helps that Anas Sarwar is bright, articulate, capable and quite photogenic (although not as photogenic as Humza Yousaf, memo to Daily Express...).

Given the need for reforms to percolate through the party conferences, the new leader won’t be elected until December. An ongoing game then, but don’t forget to keep half an eye on what’s going on on the sidelines.

God help Glasgow

Sep 20

Posted by The Burd in Democracy, Elections, Parties | 12 Comments

Hot on the heels of dissent in the ranks of the SNP come tales of woe from within the ruling Labour party in the City of Glasgow.

There’s a lot at stake. A resurgent SNP has taken the prized political scalp of the City Council as its number one target in next year’s local government elections. It signalled the seriousness of its attempt by appointing Cllr Alison Hunter as the opposition group leader after James Dornan won election to the Scottish Parliament in May.

Yet, there are internal problems over the campaign strategy, essentially over the number of candidates to field. One group advocates a 40 candidate approach while, it has been rumoured, a group backed by Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Depute First Minister (from whose constituency Cllr Hunter hales), want more candidates to stand. It has resulted in bad tempered city association meetings and resignations. For what it’s worth, the Burd reckons the latter strategy – of more than 40 candidates – is the right one. In some wards, a carefully targeted 1 – 2 voting scheme could pay dividends. Labour has managed to get more than one candidate from wards elected in the past. But the way the party is behaving it will be lucky to win any wards at all.

The party is undergoing a purge, removing dead wood in the form of sitting councillors to make way for fresh faces. But newspaper reports suggest the scale of the scalping is causing deep divisions with some who have been dumped threatening court action over claims of procedures not being followed properly. And worst of all, the party might find itself embroiled in financial irregularities with allegations against former Shettleston MSP Frank MacAveety, hoping to return to active politics as an elected member, currently being investigated by police. It might come to nought, but the publicity will be damaging to a party already in the doldrums and still recovering from the resignation of its energetic reformist council leader, Stephen Purcell.

God help Glasgow. For in amongst this morass, the city faces huge economic and social challenges. Even during the boom years, Glasgow featured in all the “worst of” rankings. Lower life expectancy, high levels of poverty, long term economic inactivity, huge social dislocation – these are Glasgow norms. And things are about to get worse. The city council’s budget will be hit hard by cuts coming downstream from Westminster via Holyrood. Services are bound to be affected. And measures like changes to benefits through the welfare reform bill will cause unprecendented strain on families and individuals. If folk who have not worked in 20 years are thrown off the new universal credit after 12 months, where will they turn to prevent themselves and their families becoming destitute and homeless?

The ropey economic recovery will also require careful stewardship to ensure that Glasgow, with its lower skill base and more fragile base, is not impacted disproportionately. Investment means new jobs are still being created but it is hard to tell if it amounts to growth or simply displacement. And in amongst it all is the prospect of the city showpiece of the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Glasgow has a chance to shine on the global stage and the city has to be ready for its big moment.

At a time when the city needs strong and energetic leadership, the two biggest parties, vying for the right to rule, are fighting among themselves. We are less than eight months out from the election, and neither of them have all their candidates in place nor evidence of a campaign strategy in the pipeline. To be sure, the SNP’s problems are fewer than Labour’s and it has the bounce to be expected from an outstanding performance across the city.

Perhaps the internecine troubles over candidates point to an obvious solution, that of allowing city folk to participate in candidate selection through primaries. Seeing as the parties are having a little difficulty working out how many and whom, handing the whole process over to the public might work? There have been others touting the use of primaries for candidate selection for Holyrood, mainly I think from the Labour camp. Not only would such an innovation sort a little local difficulty, it would provide a useful road test of a different way of selecting candidates that might result in quite different candidates being put forward.

And Glasgow might just get the candidates and councillors it deserves, rather than the ones the parties think it does.

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Scotland’s Plan MacB

Sep 19

Posted by Jeff in Economy | 44 Comments

The latest round of budget manoeuvring is seemingly already underway with the SNP firing an opening salvo towards London in a bid for the Treasury’s purse strings to be opened up a little bit more. With a belief that the UK coalition is cutting to deeply and too quickly and John Swinney afforded little flexibility in the block grant that he has available to spend, certainly this side of the Scotland Bill dawdling through Westminster right now, one can understand why the Scottish Government is keen to increase its spend. The key argument though appears to be something that is called ‘plan MacB’. I don’t know if this is a name given to the plan by the First Minister himself or a hackneyed branding by the media but, either way, it seems to involve recognition that Scotland’s economy and employment is currently outpacing the rest of the UK and that is largely down to the advanced capital spend in the current year’s budget.

Now, we can’t keep on continuing to spend tomorrow’s budgets today, that’s how we got into this mess after all, but there is certainly an argument for keeping the economy going while the volatility in the markets continues (and, despite my being on holiday, I did see that the FTSE has been battered down by 2% in this morning’s trading).

Now, forgive my basic understanding of ecnomoics but I understand that there are two opposite ends of the strategy spectrum. At one end is to spend less, hope the private sector fills the gap and save money in order to pay down the debt and/or deficit. At the other end, we could spend more and invest more in order to keep employment high, growth high and risk money that we don’t really have in order to bring in bigger tax receipts and keep the economy moving.

It’s fair to say that Scotland voted for the latter when they largely backed Labour in 2010 and they backed the latter again in 2011 when they largely backed the SNP. George Osborne and, by association, the Liberal Democrats have backed the former strategy which was working well for a while but has gone off the rails somewhat over 2011, whether you wish to blame snow and strikes or not.

Opposition politicians talk about the grudge and grievance of the Scottish Government’s positioning when they disagree with Westminster and I heard Alastair Carmichael make the tiresome soundbite ‘they’re not a Scottish Government, they’re a national embarrassment’ yesterday which is just nonsense really, just words. However, in this instance, it is surely the case that, despite limited powers, the SNP’s pointed deviation from London’s direction is to be welcomed and while there is something of a cross-your-fingers punt at play here with Salmond’s decision, a bet that backs jobs and economic stability and less cuts is surely the one to go for.

That said, I do still worry, a worry that I had before the election, that the SNP is regularly committing to spending money that doesn’t exist and when the flush is busted, London will get the blame but it will be Scots that suffer. It remains to be seen whether this will be the case in the years ahead but a narrative that involves spending more money rather than addressing the painful cuts that will probably need to be addressed at some point, while squaring off the SNP’s manifesto pledges, will be a difficult act.

However, at a broadbrush level, there is little doubt that Scotland has a preference for Salmond’s strategy rather than Osborne’s and I think it won’t be long, whether through convincing arguments, fiscal autonomy or A.N.Other, before the unfortunately entitled ‘Plan MacB’ is simply called Scotland’s ‘Plan A’.

What ever happened to England?

Sep 18

Posted by Jeff in Society | 35 Comments

I don’t really know how far back I started thinking of this post, months at least, but I do know when the tipping point was.

A few weeks ago I was merrily travelling back to London from Edinburgh on the East Coast rail line when the English-accented train conductor checked my ticket. As I had been sure I was booked on the 3pm I wasn’t prepared for his response of: “This ticket is for the 2:30pm. You’ll have to buy another one. That’ll be £146.”

Now, I can put to one side as off-topic the ludicrously extortionate charge of £146 for getting on a half-empty train when you’d paid to be on the half-empty train 30minutes in front of you. I can incorporate that financial blow better than some but that works out as three full days of work on the minimum wage (on top of the £60 for the original ticket). I can also look past the factor that some people are just doing their job and, to an extent, following rules and guidelines can’t realistically be avoided.

What really scunnered me was the abject lack of compassion from the conductor; the stony faced passive patience while I absorbed the news, protested and then got my wallet; the lack of even a flicker of consideration to say, as he could so easily have done’ ‘look, don’t worry about it, but check your ticket next time’. I searched his eyes for any of the above. There was nothing, nothing at all.

The disappointment at that crushing soullessness was compounded the very next day as I sought to return a pair of £70 roller blades for store credit in as-new condition that had been bought a few days earlier but were the wrong size (and the correct size wasn’t available). I had to speak to three different members of staff, increasing in seniority, the third of which I had to go ten verbal rounds with before he’d grudgingly make good on my statutory rights. Staggering out of the store I thought to myself – ‘It shouldn’t be this hard to just get along. I shouldn’t be so constantly disappointed in other people?’.

At what point did so many of us decide that our allegiance, our duty of care, was to ‘the man’ rather than our fellow man? Why do so many of us in this country look like cracking a smile would actually break our faces in two?

I know it’s a cliche to say that London is a glum, joyless, armpit of the nation but living here I have increasingly lost the resistance to believe otherwise and I just wonder, not to mention worry, just how widespread this problem is. Is the UK stuck in a joyless rut? Is it, as I suspect, largely confined to England?

After all, who would choose to be English these days, given tbe choice? What is marking the nation out as being the place to be, the people to be, in this 21st century? It’s not its diet, its sporting prowess, its politics, its equality or its media surely. And it’s certainly not the pride in the badge, wrestling as Englanders are to reclaim their flag from the EDL.

There’s a reason why recent successful English TV is period drama, Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes. Nothing has taken its place since, unless you want to include the gritty Shameless, skinhead-focussed This is England or the long line of tv comedies happy to snidily glorify how rotten everything is out there. Jimmy Carr and Al Murray are not standing at the end of England’s rainbow.

Culturally the warning signs are there too. PJ Harvey won the Mercury Music Prize the other week for her album ‘Let England Shake’, an album that The Guardian describes as ‘an opaque exploration of Englishness delivered in a high, keening voice’. I’ve listened to the CD and heard it live and, as a PJ Harvey fan, I was surprised that it won. I would wager that the delight that someone so talented was taking the first faltering steps at untangling what England is played a part.

It may be a similar story for the admittedly sublime West End show Jerusalem, returning for a second run after sweeping the board at the Tonys. The play is a no holds barred view of what England was and has now become. There is no conclusion as such (how could there be), unless you count the main character getting beaten to a pulp which, metaphorically, isn’t so far from where England currently resides.

This could all get put down as a xenophobic rant, former SNP member kicks out at the English, ‘cybernat on the loose, out of tne way!’ but I really do think there’s a deep existential crisis going on south of the border, more so than anywhere else although maybe I’ve just forgotten that Scotland’s in as just a perilous condition and I don’t know enough about anywhere else to make a fair comparison.

After all, is it fair to take one example of jobsworth twattery and gross that out across a nation? Possibly not but I really do think that there is a linkage at play here. A person not knowing why they are doing the job they are doing, how it fits into the wider context of their country and how that collective whole in turn is not providing the contentment and satisfaction of their dear and pleasant land. Well, from small problematic acorns grow mighty oaks of despair.  

I can only go by the generalisations of the people that I’ve met and worked with but my conclusions thus far are that the English are slightly yobbish, snobbish, rather selfish workaholics that don’t really know how to enjoy their leisure time without indulging in copious amounts of alcohol. Hopefully I have an unreflective sample size but I can only go by what’s before me.

Not that Scotland differs so much, less snobbish and less yobbish perhaps but we’re not even picking the low hanging fruit when it comes to defining our nation. One small example, I think it’s a terrible shame that with some of the best coast, landscape and mountains in our back garden, only a slither of Scots learn how to surf, golf or ski. Cost is not necessarily a barrier. The more people who did them, the cheaper they would be.   

That said, Scotland benefits from having a better grasp of who she was, who she is and what she could be in the future. England is a bit lost when it comes to all three, hence the English cultural scene embarking on a period of questioning introspection.  

In which direction is the collective heave of England going? I would like to know as I’ll be doing a little bit of the pushing for the next wee while. For me, England at its best is wild moors, picturesque villages, fine tailoring, hearty meals at gastropubs, the fading grandeur of beach destinations, the mutual respect for distinctive regions from Geordie to Kerbow, passionate support of a football team that’ll never make it out of non-league, the self-aware pomp of last of the Proms, Fry-esque eloquence, majestic behind-the-curtain diplomacy, fierce pride in the NHS and simply enjoying a cup of tea. 

That’s not a bad start. 

However, there must be an increasingly concerning reason why the English don’t have a word for joie de vivre, fair dinkum, craic or gie’n it laldie.

And, what admittedly may be underpinning all of this, by George I want my money back.