‘What a disgrace!’- Feeble Ed ducks the fight that could save Labour from irrelevance

This week pubic sector workers across the UK went on strike and, despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail to persuade us otherwise, the world didn’t come to an end. There were no scuffles on the picket lines and a march through London organised by the TUC resulted in just thirty arrests, rather less, I imagine, than on an average Saturday during the football season.

What happened instead was that, as Brendan Barber of the TUC put it at a rally in Exeter, people came together to protest quietly and peacefully about ‘The living standards of low and medium paid public sector workers being hammered in the name of reducing the deficit. Meanwhile those who caused the crisis go scot free.’

An event further from an orgy of militant anarchism it would be hard to imagine, participants in the London march even picked up their own litter. As the late great Gil Scot Heron might have put it the revolution won’t tidy up after itself.

Let’s knock two myths propagated by the right wing media and the coalition on the head before we go any further. The public sector workers who took to the streets on Thursday weren’t doing so to defend ‘gold plated pensions’; because for the most part they don’t have the sort of gold plated salaries that would produce such pensions. As for the wider public not supporting their cause, I’d say there is more concern and anger over the way private sector employers failed to invest in their pension funds when times were good and then pulled the rug from under the feet of their staff when they turned bad.

There is much in this strike to support, not least since it turns on the issue of fairness which is at the root of how the British see the world, and yet Labour leader Ed Milliband has chosen to stay on the sidelines.

In a speech to the conference of the Local Government Association (LGA) given on the day of the strikes Milliband said that he ‘understood the anger of workers who feel they are being singled out by a reckless and provocative government’, but the he believed that taking strike action was a ‘mistake’ and that it would not help public sector workers to ‘win the argument’ over pensions.

The responses from the unions were swift and angry; Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers said with the sort of irony that could chill the most riotous of classrooms that it would have been ‘nice if Ed Milliband had felt he could have supported what we’re doing.’ Mary Boustead of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) said that the Labour leader’s response was a ‘disgrace’ and that he ‘should be ashamed of himself’; before adding ‘I’m glad we’re (meaning the ATL) not affiliated to Labour.’

Later in his Birmingham speech Ed Milliband condemned the government for declaring their final position while negotiations were still ongoing and described their attitude towards public sector workers as ‘high handed and arrogant.’

Too little, too late; as a sad sounding John McDonnell MP put it the public sector unions had ‘expected more’ from the Labour leader; once again Ed Milliband had failed to deliver. It probably didn’t help that he made the point that he didn’t support the strikes five times in a weirdly robotic TV interview that brought back unwelcome memories of Gordon Brown’s odder moments in front of the cameras.

Trades unions, by their very nature, are able to organise large scale campaigns that capture the attention of the media and the public alike, on this occasion they are linked to a much wider movement than seems at first apparent. Thursday’s strikes were about more than how much public sector workers get paid in retirement, they were about the sort of society we want to live in. Do we want a society where people work together for the common good or one where the market drives us into endless and divisive competition?

All across the country individuals and communities are taking action to defend services they see being threatened with destruction by a government that is making cuts in line with the dictates of a flawed ideology rather than sensible economics. These may attract less attention than Mark Serwotka leading 100.00 civil servants out on strike, but they still share a common cause.

What is needed is an organisation capable of drawing these disparate strands together into a single coherent campaign. That could and should be the job of the Labour Party.

So why isn’t it? In part it is because the Labour Party as reinvented by Tony Blair and his followers feels awkward around the unions, they’re happy to take their money but don’t want their political input. The largest share of the blame though rests with Milliband himself, as has been the way with weak leaders since the dawn of political time he lets the headlines of tomorrow’s newspapers dictate his policies.

Real leaders do exactly what the name suggests; they lead the way. Sometimes that means walking head first into a storm of criticism and fighting battles that are hard and often thankless, what it doesn’t mean is sitting on the fence while your aides find a way of triangulating things to get the Mail to say something nice about you.

In an interview given to the New Statesman PCS leader Mark Serwotka said of this dispute and, I suspect the struggles of the unions in general ‘if you fight in life, you’re not guaranteed to win. But if you never fight, you lose every time.’ That sounds like advice Ed Milliband should take to heart, he should either gird his loins for a fight to defend the things so many people believe to be under threat from a government composed of individuals who are too rich to care; or step aside and let someone else take on the job.

Ed has beaten David to win the party leadership; now he must win over the country.

After a race that felt like it would go on forever Ed Milliband has beaten his brother David to take the role of leading the Labour Party.

The result, announced on the eve of the party’s annual conference in Manchester yesterday, saw Ed Milliband win with 50.65% of the votes cast by MP’s, MEP’s, party members and members of affiliated organisations, David Milliband polled 49.35% with Ed Balls coming third.

David Milliband attracted the largest number of votes from MP’s, MEP’s and party members, but backing from the big unions swung things in favour of his brother by a small majority, prompting some sections of the UK press to dub him ‘Red Ed’ and accuse him of being in the pocket of his union backers. A charge the new leader refutes claiming to be very much his ‘own man’ and pledging to unify the party in the name of a ‘new generation’ that had brought to an end the New Labour project.

Just now everything in the tight bubble of the party conference will be sweetness and light, the defeated challengers have rallied behind him and it is safe to predict that his first speech as leader will be hailed as a triumph. The real hard work will begin when parliament sits again in October and the comprehensive spending review stops being an alarming rumour and becomes a painful reality.

It is then and only then that Ed Milliband will discover the problems and opportunities that face him in his new role.

The problems are clear; the small majority with which he won the leadership means that his position will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future. He might not face a challenge from his brother, the bonds of filial love are stronger than the demands of political ambition, but there is no guarantee that his colleagues will have such strong scruples. There is also the small matter of finding a distinctive identity for a party that has spent too long on the sterile centre ground. Neither problem will be overcome quickly or easily.

If the problems that face Ed Milliband seem to loom large, so do the opportunities. Opposition leaders have the opportunity to travel the country meeting party members and ordinary voter, something that the pressures of business and security concerns prevent members of the government from doing easily. He must take full advantage of this, even if it means initially taking a considerable amount of flack from a core vote that feels it has been taken for granted.

On the subject of the budget cuts it is not enough to simply oppose the government; Labour must go beyond protest politics to provide a credible alternative. In doing so he must not be distracted by the siren voices within his party calling for consolidation on the centre ground or the ‘Red Ed’ jibes thrown about by the media. Many of the ideas once attributed to the ‘loony left’, concern for the environment or fair treatment for minority groups for example, have been accepted by the political mainstream; if a strong enough case is made for an economic system that strikes a fairer balance between growth and equality it too could be accepted by the electorate.

Whatever happened once the euphoria of the conference season has dissipated Ed Milliband will need a thick skin and the stomach for a fight that will be long and in all likelihood dirty. The same goes for the ‘new generation’ of Labour politicians for whom he claims to be the standard bearer.

Dear David, Ed, Andy, Ed and Diane- An open letter to the Labour leadership candidates.

Haven’t you all been busy since May, what with the debates, the back peddling from the decisions made under Tony Blair and writing all those emails to potential supporters you can hardly have had a moment to yourselves.

Ok so your ‘people’ wrote the emails, but you all expressed an interest in hearing my views along with gaining my vote. I can’t promise you the latter, not all of you anyway, politics is a game for grown ups with winners and losers; as you’ve discovered over the past few months, but I can spare you a few ideas about what you might do with the job when or if you get it.

The first thing you will have to recognise, and you won’t like it much, is that Labour lost the election because it lost its way as a party its core support for granted for far too long. You might point to the thirty thousand members the party has gained since the election as proof that things are improving, it is nothing of the sort; the membership gains of recent months are dwarfed by the net losses made since 1994.

The good news is that you can start to really turn things around by following a few simple steps, none of which, I admit, will help you to win the next election, but they will, hopefully mean there is a party in existence to fight it and be an effective opposition afterwards.

First of all you should apologise for the multiple mistakes of the Blair/Brown years; issues like Iraq, civil liberties and the slow dismantling of internal party democracy that have alienated so many people who would naturally turn towards the Labour Party. This won’t be easy, no politician likes to admit to being wrong and in the short term the media will give you a hard time, but in the longer term it will detoxify some truly poisonous issues and allow the party to move on.

At every opportunity you should get out of the Westminster bubble and meet real voters and party members. In the nine years for which I was a member of a constituency Labour party we did not receive a single visit from even a junior minister, it was hard not to draw the conclusion that this was because the party largely took our votes for granted. There is also the impression that needs to be corrected that politicians feel awkward around and are out of tune with the feelings of ‘ordinary’ voters. Politics is about people, real ones not tame focus groups, you might not like what the man and woman in the street says to you, but in many cases it will be worth listening to.

Embrace, don’t fight against the Big Society, it might be a Tory invention but the ideas behind it are ones with which the Labour Party should feel an affinity. Yours is a party built on a desire to empower individuals and communities and much of the anger directed towards Labour in recent years has focussed, rightly, on the leadership’s attempts to gather ever more power in towards the centre.

A good way to start this process would be to revive grassroots democracy within the party. Ask any group of former party members what they left and the majority will tell you they were pushed over the edge by the feeling that their concerns relation to policy, often based on an understanding of local conditions unavailable to party mandarins, were being sidelined by a cabal of officials who put advancing their own careers first and everything else second.

I don’t usually make predictions but my guess would be that the winning candidate will be related to one of the losing ones; whoever wins will be taking on a tough job in even tougher times. The only thing they can be certain of is an onslaught of media criticism between now and the next election, at which it looks unlikely they will dislodge a coalition that appears to be stronger than anybody expected.

It is also an important job, for much of its history the Labour Party was the voice of the people who are obliged to live at the mercy of the markets. During the Blair years that voice became muted in the rush to the centre ground, for the good of the people who will be hurt most by the impending cuts the new leader will need to make it heard again. To do so whoever wins the leadership race will need courage and luck, I wish them both; they’ll need it.

What poetry can do and ID cards can’t.

Carol Ann Duffy has been appointed as the first female Poet Laureate, telling the BBC she had accepted the post as a ‘recognition of the great women poets we have writing now.’

The gender of the Queen’s official poet matters less than what the incumbent does with the role. Thankfully Ms Duffy looks likely to continue the tradition established by Andrew Motion of concentrating less on writing doggerel to accompany national events and being instead a roving evangelist for poetry, as she put it in when interviewed on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour she wants to ‘contribute to people’s understanding of what poetry can do.’

She’ll have her work cut out as a pernicious culture of tests drives literature and the idea that people might read poetry, or anything else for pleasure, ever further out of the educational mainstream.


Alan Johnson for PM? According to the Mail on Sunday a number of ‘plotters’ on the Labour back benches are ready to back the affable Health Secretary as a challenger to Gordon Brown.

On the same day Hazel Blears, New Labour’s very own little miss sunshine, wrote an article for the Observer in which she described the attempts made by minister to communicate with the electorate as being ‘lamentable.’ For ‘ministers’ read Gordon the manic micro manager since his dead hand seems to hover over every movement this luckless government makes.

As the government lurches between the self inflicted wound of its ungrateful attempt to prevent Ghurkhas who fought for this country from settling here, the fall out from Alistair Darling’s hike in taxes for high earners and the seemingly never ending scandals over MP’s expenses it is easy to see why Alan Johnson suddenly looks like the man who could bring an end to all their troubles.

He represents, to many party members, the one fixed point of calm and common sense in a government that is fast entering an irreversible tailspin. Are these the qualities a troubled nation looks for in a prospective Prime Minister? Probably not, even Alan Johnson himself seems unsure of his credentials as a potential saviour, telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr show last Sunday ‘I have no aspiration to be party leader. My aspiration was for the deputy leadership and I didn’t even get that.’

Such a demonstrable lack of the killer instinct suggests Johnson would, however much backing he has, be unlikely to seize the crown this side of a general election, however his amiability might make him the best choice to lead a traumatised and fractious Labour Party during its first difficult term in opposition.


Your papers please, the sinister request issued by hatchet faced secret policemen in countless mediocre thrillers came a little closer to being spoken on British streets this week. The Home Office has announced that Manchester will, this autumn, become the first city in the UK in which citizens will be able to, voluntarily, apply for ID cards. The cards will be available to anyone over sixteen and will cost £30.

The cost of the scheme, as shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling pointed out could run to between two billion pounds and, although not compulsory, it sends the message that ‘the government’s plans are quite clearly for a compulsory ID card scheme in the end.’

This current scheme has, of course, one major problem, apart from a few swivel eyed policy junkies few residents of Manchester will bother to take part rendering the already exorbitant costs even more wasteful. There is also the small matter of whether or not a bureaucracy given to leaving the most sensitive information lying around in train carriages like a discarded copy of Metro can be trusted with the personal of every resident in one of our major cities, let alone the whole country.

There is a more serious point to be made about the idea of having ID cards in the first place, for all the claims made by the Home Office that they will help to combat fraud and terrorism there is a real concern they will also change, for the worst, the relationship between the public and the authorities. When every identity is considered to be suspect until evidence to the contrary is produced trust dies and with it the idea that the law and the people who enforce it are there to protect rather than control the public.


Poetry, as I’m sure our new laureate understands only too well, is valuable because it unites people, giving them a sense of place and shared identity that, for all their biometric technology and the undoubted good intentions of many of the people who support their introduction, is something putting an ID card into the pocket of every Briton can never hope to do.