Labour must learn that winning an election is a marathon not a lap of honour.

These must be ‘epic' times in which to be a Labour activist. The party's conference in Brighton this week is shaping up to be something of a celebration, rather than the cross between a cat fight and a wake everyone was expecting.

In many respects, it has been more like the sort of conference a party had in the Autumn before an election it is odds on to win, not after one it lost, if by less of a margin than expected.

The announcements of bold new policies have poured down from the platform, with shadow Chancellor John McDonnell pledging to help people ‘trapped’ by sky high credit card interest rates. He called on the government to apply a cap like that imposed on payday loan companies, saying that if they don’t so; then the next Labour government will.

Elsewhere there have been pledges to take PFI contracts back in-house, to renationalise the railways and utilities and to pour billions of pounds into the NHS. Residents of Islington who reported hearing a mysterious rumbling below ground can be reassured what they heard was just New Labour reaching optimal velocity in its casket as every one of the red lines it feared to cross was trampled into the dust.

As for Jeremy Corbyn, until recently the ‘dead man walking' of British politics he has been transfigured into the most unlikely Messiah figure since Brian himself. Every time he steps outside it is into a crowd scene of the sort Cecil B DeMille used to direct as the multitudes press forward to touch the garment of their idol.

Quite how this relates to the cross geography teacher persona he exudes in TV interviews or his low wattage speaking style I don’t know and nobody else seems to care.

Yes, these are glorious days for the faithful, it is a brilliant Indian summer and Labour is the sun warming their hopes.

I hate to be the wicked fairy at the christening, but there is a long way to go and a lot of pitfalls to face before, or if, they get across the finish line. Labour need to learn that winning an election is a marathon not a lap of honour.

Despite all the adulation and the gig at Glastonbury the flaws inherent to Corbyn and the movement he aspires to lead are very much still in place. Cheerfully amateurish chaos is an acceptable way to run your back office if you’re an insurgent disrupting the status quo, it’s a ticket to disaster if you aspire to run the country.

New Labour, for all their cynicism and sense of entitlement, were brilliant at being organised. That bought them a lot of credibility when they were seeking to displace Major's Tories, the tabloids like to stereotype the left as agents of chaos, Corbyn's neglect of the need to be organised gives them an open goal to aim at.

For all the applause, they get in Brighton this week, or from the CLP meetings that suddenly need to book a bigger room for the first time in years, those platform promises might yet become a millstone around the party’s collective neck.

Labour won praise for going into this year’s snap election with a manifesto that was both ambitiously left wing and fully coated. Their next effort will no doubt be less adventurous, the proximity to power always encourages caution.

That is sensible, a government in waiting should talk about what it can deliver, not what it would like to do. If it does want to do bold things, like renationalisation or buying back PFI; then they must be totally up front about how much it will cost and that we will all have to pay.

Labour deserve their moment in the sun, after years spent either gripped by the dead hand of Blairism or floundering in the wilderness, they suddenly look like a party with a purpose. Jeremy Corbyn deserves credit for giving them a sense of direction and for being a conviction politician in a Parliament where many of his colleagues should just be convicted.

Charisma, particularly the fragile sort he has discovered of late, will only take Labour and its leader so far. Particularly if the Tories cling on for the next five years in the desperate hope that something, anything, will turn up.

Labour and the leader they never thought would take them so close to the prize should enjoy this unexpected lap of honour. Then get on with putting in the hard yards they need to if they want to win.

‘Broken’ PIP assessment system isn’t working for people living with MS.

North Staffs Green Party today put its support behind a campaign by the Multiple Sclerosis Society calling for an improvement to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments.

A report published by the Disability Benefits Consortium (DBC) this week has shown that PIP is not working for people living with long term medical conditions and disabilities.

Since the introduction of PIP in October 2013 people living with MS have lost some £6million in benefits.

Figures obtained by the MS Society from the Department of Work and Pensions show that between the introduction of PIP in 2013 and October 2016, 2600 people previously on the highest mobility component of the old Disability Living Allowance have had their payments cut; 800 people claiming the highest care component on the old system have also lost out.

The report shows that over half the people who responded to a survey conducted by the DBC felt that DWP assessors didn’t properly understand their condition. Three quarters of respondents said that applying for PIP had caused them levels of anxiety that made their condition worse.

MS Society Director of External Affairs Genevieve Edwards said’ these staggering figures show how PIP is failing people with MS who need the highest level of support’.

She added that it ‘doesn’t make sense that people are losing money they once qualified for when they are living with a progressive condition’.

North Staffs Green Party Campaigns Coordinator Adam Colclough said, ‘this is another example of the government cutting support for vulnerable people for no good reason, the impact of PIP stress on the physical and mental health of claimants even if they are successful can be hugely damaging’.

The MS society are calling on the government to reform what they describe as a ‘broken’ system.

Adam Colclough said, ‘as a party we are fully behind the MS Society in this campaign and will be supporting them locally in any way we can’.

The campaign is set to last for six weeks.

Discussion paper highlights more roads are not the answer to city’s traffic problems.

Building more roads is not the answer to solving Stoke-on-Trent’s traffic problems says North Staffs Green Party Coordinator Jan Zablocki in a newly published discussion paper.

The paper highlights the local and global impact of traffic congestion and the air pollution it causes, citing World Health Organisation figures showing that globally air pollution causes 467,000 premature deaths every year. In the UK, the Institute for Public Policy Research described the air quality in London as ‘both lethal and illegal’, and linking it to 9000 premature deaths.

The report also highlights the rapid growth in the number of cars on Britain’s roads, up by 680,00 from 31.1 million in 2012 to 37.5 million today. This has caused congestion on A roads across the country with average speeds falling to less than 20mph, in Stoke-on-Trent they are as low as 18.5mph.

Locally traffic congestion has led to air quality levels in the city being in excess of UK and EU safe limits with particular hotspots in Meir, Basford, Weston Coyney and Bentilee. Author Jan Zablocki draws parallels between the health implications of traffic pollution and the levels of illness faced by generations living before the 1956 Clean Air Act.

In the second part of the paper he demonstrates how a fully integrated transport system, linking rails, bus and tram networks through a ‘hub’ on Festival Park along with improved facilities for walking and cycling could drive improvements in public health and strengthen the local economy.

Campaigns Coordinator for North Staffs Green Party Adam Colclough described the discussion paper as ‘an impressive analysis of the problems we have now that leads on to highly credible suggestions as to how we can turn things around’.

He added that ‘in the two parliamentary elections we fought this year sorting out the city’s transport system was a major issue. Only the Green Party has shown the imagination to suggest an alternative to building more roads, we have also, as this paper demonstrates, advanced a clear and workable alternative.’
At the 2017 general election the Green Party campaigned on a manifesto proposing to take the railways back into public ownership, improve regional rail networks and to improve the overall quality and accessibility of public transport. The Greens also pledged to invest in low traffic neighbourhoods, improving facilities for walking and cycling and to tackle air pollution.

Jan Zablocki will be taking part in a broadcast on Staffslive Radio presented by Adam Gratton on Wednesday 20th September at 11.30am during which he will be discussing his paper and the Green Party’s transport policy.