Workers of the world unite- ok yah!

The Conservative Party is to ‘rebrand’ itself as the ‘Workers’ Party’ in an attempt to shed its posh image.

The party will keep its official name but MPs will be encouraged to refer to themselves by the new moniker in public statements.

In a speech delivered yesterday party Chairman Grant Shappps said ‘Sir John Major campaigned for what he called a ‘classless society’, and I would argue that is the society we are fighting for in government today, a Britain where it doesn’t matter who your parents are, where you can go as far as your talents and hard work will take you and where work rather than benefits is what pays.’

The rebranding follows a series of polls showing that the Tories are, surprised expressions please, are struggling to win support amongst low earners; well fancy that with an old Etonian leader and a cabinet of chinless wonders.

Tory MPs in marginal seats are less than impressed by the narrowness of the party leadership, several have complained that David Cameron will never win over working class voters because he has surrounded himself with fellow public schoolboys. As one told the Financial Times recently, ‘there are six people writing the manifesto and five of them went to Eton; the other went to St Paul’s.’

Influential back bencher Robert Halfon, who has pushed for the rebranding so the party can ‘never again be allowed to be called the party of the rich’ also wants to reduce membership fees to £1 to attract new members and replace its current green tree logo with a ladder to symbolise the party’s ‘moral mission’ to workers.

Responding to the plan Labour shadow Cabinet Office Minister said the Tories would be ‘better off renaming themselves the Millionaires Party.’ He added that he thought it wrong of them to ‘pose as the workers’ party when you’ve made working people worse off while cutting taxes for the wealthy’ and that under the Cameron government ‘for the first time more than half of households in poverty are in work.’

He concluded that ‘Labour has always been the workers’ party- the clue is in the name.’

When this story broke I felt obliged to check the calendar, nope it wasn’t the first of April; it wasn’t an outtake from a lost episode of The Thick of it either, a sharp pinch proved I was still awake and so the only logical conclusion was that it was for real.

If so it is certainly evidence that the Cameron government has lost its way; and possibly its reason too.

There is something rather distasteful about a party that has presided over rising levels of inequality, snatched benefits away from disabled people and sat back smugly as the lines grow outside food banks seeking to portray itself as the Workers’ Party.

In fact if you look at it in the context of some of the other things they’ve done since taking office in 2010 the whole thing starts to look distinctly Victorian.

Robert Halfon’s suggestion that the party replace its current logo of a green tree with a ladder to symbolise its ‘moral mission’ looks more than a little offensive when viewed alongside the rhetoric about ‘strivers’ and ‘scroungers’ so beloved of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. Combine this with the wholesale assault on public services and you get a picture of a Britain very different from the utopia described by Grant Shapps.

A place where the rich live in comfortable isolation and the poor know their place, which is out in the cold with only hymn singing and glum stoicism for comfort. This isn’t an inspiring vision of the future, it’s a return to ideas of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor that should have been banished to the history books long ago.

Incidentally Labour have no cause to be smug either, they are the party of working people only by default. They survive largely through the political inertia of former industrial towns where they used to weight rather than count votes for the Labour candidate, even when that person made a donkey in a hat look like Ghandi.

In fact it is hard to see the three dead brands under which our complacent and disconnected political class operate representing anyone other than themselves.

Maybe it is time for the silent support that has kept them going into their current curious afterlife should switch to smaller parties; maybe even to a new party entirely.

Wherever it goes what we need is a ground up political movement rooted in the concerns of those struggling hardest to get by behind which the workers and everyone else can unite.

Gove plan to punish unruly kids with sport backfires.

More than eight thousand people have signed an online petition against plans by Education Secretary Michael Gove to give teachers ‘guidance’ about using ‘extra physical activity’, running around a playing field for example, as a means of disciplining unruly students.

The petition was set up by former head of Conservative Future Gavin Megaw, leading athletes, including former Olympian Paula Radcliffe, who described the proposal as ‘totally ridiculous,’ and teaching leaders have all joined in condemning the new guidance.

Introducing his petition Mr Megaw writes ‘as a father, school governor and keen runner, I was shocked to find out about this guidance suggesting an outdated form of punishment.’

He goes on to say using physical exercise as a punishment sends ‘the wrong message that physical activity is a negative action and not something to enjoy.’

Peter Franklin, a former advisor to the Conservative Party urged Michael Gove to think again and scrap the recommendations saying to politics.co.uk, ‘resolution in the face of entrenched opposition to reform is something to be admired in ministers’, adding that ‘when mistakes are made admitting to and putting them right is a sign of strength not weakness.’

Forced physical activity is one of ten new punishments recommended by the Department of Education as part of a drive, as Mr Gove puts it, to ‘get tough’ with unruly students.

It is not unusual for civil servants to describe foolish and potentially ideas dreamed up by the ministers in their care as ‘brave’; with his track record and bull in a china shop approach after almost four years in place Michael Gove must think he’s Hercules by now.

Even by his standards this latest ‘wheeze’ reeks of the desperation of a politician who knows he has risen as far as he ever will. His career has no second act, all he can do is get as much exposure as possible out of his dwindling time in the spotlight.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Michael Gove has given up on making a serious attempt to reform the education system, instead he seems intent on picking fights with the teaching unions and playing to the sillier sections of the tabloid press.

The trouble is by this stage of his career, rather like a heavyweight who could have been a contender back in the day, most of his fights end in inconclusive draws. When it comes to playing the populist card he more often than not ends up looking out of touch and increasingly odd.

As a means of dealing with unruly students extra physical exercise is a non-starter, any teacher worthy of the name will tell you the worst behaved students are often the ones most in need of help. It is hard to see how they will be able to build the bond of trust necessary to get it from a teacher, often the only adult who offers them a semblance of stability and positive values, if he or she is under official instructions to behave like the games teacher from Kes.

Yet again Michael Gove has turned an attempt to play to the gallery into a pratfall. It is starting to look increasingly like to only way to bring about real education reform is for someone to give the current Education Secretary a note excusing him from playing political games indefinitely.

Politics Forum, Monday 24th February 2014.

Just as They’re Starting to Make An Impact Labour Get Side-tracked by Navel Gazing.

The influence of trades unions over the election of a future leader of the Labour Party is to be reduced under plans announced by Ed Milliband.

The move is part of an attempt to ‘shake up’ the relationship between the party and its long term backers in the union movement in response to the embarrassment caused last year when UNITE were implicated in an attempt to ‘fix’ the selection of a candidate to fight the Falkirk by-election.

Mr Milliband described the move to a ‘one member one vote’ system in an interview given to the Guardian as ‘the right principle for the twenty first century.’ The reforms were, he said, about giving ‘people from all walks of life a bigger say in the Labour Party’ and that he wanted to ‘hear the voices of ordinary people’ in the party’s debate on policies.

There would, he recognised, be ‘financial consequences’ for the cash strapped party, but Mr Milliband said ‘when it is the right thing to do- you should do it.’

Under the plans from the end of 2014 new union members will have to opt in by paying a £3 fee to affiliate to the Labour Party, existing members will be moved over onto the same terms in a phased process over the next five years. MPs will retain the sole right to nominate leadership candidates with the margin of support needed to get onto the ballot paper rising to 20%, registered supporters who are not full members of the party will also be allowed to vote in leadership elections in return for a small fee; the unions will retain 50% of the votes at the party conference.

Labour veteran Alan Johnson told the BBC the changes were ‘absolutely the right way to go’. Glasgow West MP Ian Davidson was not so supportive saying ‘there’s been nobody in my constituency coming along and saying to me at this time of economic crisis what we need is a reorganisation of the Labour Party.’

Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party Grant Shapps told the BBC that under the plan trades union affiliated members would outnumber ordinary party members after the changes, making it ‘even easier for the union barons to buy Labour’s policies and even easier to pick the leader.’ He accused Ed Milliband of promising to stand up to the unions and then being too weak to deliver.

Sometimes you really do have to wonder about Ed Milliband, his intellect is obvious; but his common sense seems to be non-existent.

Just when he was starting to land some serious blows on David Cameron over the cost of living crisis, taxation and the fact that despite the, alleged, recovery being in full swing many people are still splashing like mad just to stay afloat; he goes and delivers a sucker punch to his own jaw. It is hard to imagine anyone outside the Hampstead dinner party circuit being all that excited about an obscure plan to reform how the Labour Party is organised, especially one that will take five years and probably lead to financial disaster.

Even if that doesn’t happen the plan still won’t work, the power of the unions has declined massively since its heyday in the seventies, you can debate forever whether or not that is a good or bad thing; it is still a demonstrable fact. Politics abhors a vacuum and the space vacated by the union barons has been filled by those on the staff of the party’s regional offices.

It is over mighty regional officials not union barons who have exerted a virtual strangle hold over the selection of candidates, foisting a slate of prospective MPs on reluctant constituency parties who are so robotically similar they make automated checkouts look like free spirits. At the same time they have allowed the grassroots organisation of the party to atrophy through a mix of impotence and inertia because they fear any perceived challenge to their power.

Ed Milliband is to be praised for wanting to give grassroots party members a real voice in how Labour makes its policies; unfortunately he will probably never get to hear it because a lot of backroom functionaries who have never had to stand for election don’t like what they’ve got to say.

David Cameron hates tax but the public are getting the fairness message.

David Cameron used a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses today to say that he doesn’t like taxes, I mean he really doesn’t like them; hates them in fact.

What he said was ‘I’m a tax cutting Tory. Frankly I don’t really like any taxes.’ Who’d have thought it eh? People who will get the most awful shock if they ever find out what bears get up to in the woods I’d imagine.

Here’s the kicker though, as Citizen Dave puts it ‘You can only keep taxes down if you’re prepared to take difficult decisions about spending,’ so there you have it, if you don’t want to be squeezed until the pips squeak a lot of poor people who don’t vote Tory will have to have the services they depend on cut to the bone, and they say politicians are professional cynics who play to the electorate’s most base instincts.

He also promised that his would be ‘the first government in modern history that at the end of its term has less regulations in place than at the beginning.’ This, he assured his audience would let small businesses get on with ‘what you do best enterprising, innovating and most importantly creating jobs.’

Personally I doubt Mr. Cameron cares a fig for small businesses, if he did he’d do a lot more to stop a handful of large companies hovering up government contracts and take a tougher line with corporate tax avoiders. The purpose of the speech was to respond to the announcement made by shadow Chancellor Ed Balls that were Labour to win the next election they would reinstate the 50p tax rate for high earners.

Earlier he had described the policy as an ‘anti-business, anti-enterprise, anti-growth measure, politically convenient but very, very bad for the economy.’ He didn’t go so far as to call Ed Balls the anti-chancellor, but the message is if given control of the economy it would only be a matter of time before the sun fell from the sky and life as we know it came to an end.

Defending the proposal on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show yesterday Ed Balls said reinstating the 50p tax rate for high earners was ‘a fair way to get the deficit down. The phrase is we’re all in it together that is part of the policy.’ He denied the policy marked a return to 1980’s style old Labour and was instead a response to the ‘failure’ of George Osborne’s austerity policies.

Criticism of raising taxes for the highest earners came from a number of other business figures, Digby the Lord (gawd almighty) Jones, briefly a trade minister in Gordon Brown’s government described is was ‘lousy economics’ based on a desire to ‘kick’ anything that creates wealth. Xavier Rolet, Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange said it would discourage businesses from investing in the UK.

The public though seem more supportive, back in 2012 when the Chancellor announced the top rate of tax would be cut from 50 to 45 pence 55% of voters wanted to keep the higher rate; a snap poll by Survation for the BBC showed 60% would like it brought back.

On one level the argument over the 50 p tax rate for high earners is a storm in a teacup, the sum raised is paltry in public finance terms, anyway any plutocrat deserving of the name will in all probability have a good enough tax lawyer on hand to sidestep the whole thing.

Anyway it probably won’t return because Labour still don’t look capable of winning the next election outright. If, as looks ever more likely, 2015 produces another coalition there is a good chance of David Cameron managing to string one together from a mixture of UKIP newbies dazed by their good fortune and the battered remains of the Liberal Democrats.

On another level though it is hugely informative since it suggests a new and possibly more positive direction for our political culture.

For a start it shows that David Cameron is more than a little rattled, not so much by anything the none dynamic duo of Milliband and Balls have done so much as his inability to convince the public that his government really do share their pain. Despite loud protestations from George Osborne that the recession is coming to an end and blue skies are around the corner most people feel no better off than they were a year ago.

More importantly public support for taxing high earners more marks a significant sea change in attitudes towards fairness. Suddenly working out a fairer way to share wealth is no longer a lefty project, it’s the common currency of conversations in pubs and at bus stops across the land.

In response all David Cameron can do is fall back on tired lines about keeping taxes low and cutting red tape that even a tame audience must have heard ring hollow dozens of times before. He looks and sounds like the leader of a government that has run out of ideas before the end of its first term in office.

Promising to tax high earners more isn’t a magic bullet and there is a strong possibility Labour might even do some nifty footwork and move away from the whole idea when it comes to writing their manifesto. However, now the fairness genie is out of its bottle it will be impossible to put it back in again.

If the Labour Party want to be relevant again and to stand a real chance of winning power outright in 2020 they need to find a way to make a vaguely well intentioned aspiration into a workable policy; then hunker down behind it and get ready to take flak from vested interests with everything to lose. Change is always possible; but bringing it about is never easy.

Cameron offers cash for fracking as IDS lives down to expectations

The government is to let councils that allow fracking to take place within their boundaries to keep 100% of the business rates generated. Chancellor George Osborne is also set to offer shale gas extraction companies the ‘most generous tax breaks in the world’ in return for setting up shop I the UK.

This isn’t a bribe though, oh dear me know; perish the thought. They don’t have to go to the trouble of bribing anyone, not since planning minister Nick Boles announced last month that fracking sites could go ahead without local people being consulted or even informed.

In a written statement reported by politics.co.uk Mr Boles says the current rules meant a ‘disproportionately large number of individuals and businesses’ need to be informed that drilling is about to take place in their neighbourhood. The cheek of people, fancy their wanting to know someone is going to be fracking around with the ground under their feet; the only thing they need to know is their place.

A spokesperson for Friends of the Earth described the move as ‘a new low in the government’s attempts to curry favour with local people.’

Lawrence Carter of Greenpeace said Mr Cameron was telling councils to ‘ignore’ the risks of fracking ‘in exchange for cold hard cash.’

Even by the not very high standards of the Cameron government this marks a new low for political cynicism. The Prime Minister knows only too well that it won’t be prosperous Tory councils in the leafier corners of the home counties who will be tempted to take a gamble on the risks fracking may pose for the future in return for a slug of desperately needed cash now; it will be bust ones in the struggling North where his party Hs few votes to lose.

The people living in areas where fracking will take place though have lots to lose; almost everything in fact.

Leave aside the environmental impact of fracking, over which scientists are still arguing the whole project is being sold to them on the basis of a huge con trick. The promised jobs bonanza is unlikely to materialise, shale gas extraction companies will bring in their own specialist staff from outside and once the reserves are used up they’ll pack their bags and go away again. As for the money generated by the business taxes so generously handed over to councils, their accountants are doubtless already planning some clever weaves and turns through to tax laws to minimise the sum paid, and we all known how brave the government is when it comes to standing up to corporate tax dodgers.

Anyway, is cheap gas really worth the potential damage to the environment caused by fracking? Probably not, with a little imagination and some courage the government could produce similar results from investing in green technology and renewable power; what a shame they are sadly lacking in both.

What are we to make of the antics of hapless French president Francois Hollande, just as he was about to announce a plan to revive the flagging Gallic economy he has been engulfed by a tsunami of scandal over his extramarital activities.

Viewed from this side of the Channel it is surprising that nobody has even suggested that a senior politician who turns his private life into a sort of Brian Rix farce might think about tendering his resignation. Were a British Prime Minister to be even suspected of playing away he would be out on his ear quicker than the Daily Mail can say moral panic.

What really mystifies me though it just what the frankly dull Mr Hollande could have done to capture the affections of two intelligent and attractive women. If nothing else it proves that power, even when ineptly wielded is an aphrodisiac.

It’s that man again, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith I mean, this week he risked accusations of homophobia by calling Labour MP Chris Bryant a ‘pantomime dame’ during a commons debate.

What he said was ‘I know Christmas is over but I think one of the pantomimes left a pantomime dame on the front bench.’ What a rib tickler eh; laugh, I thought they’d never start.

Mr Bryant has previous form when it comes to attracting playground taunts from cabinet members, in 2010 George Osborne also called him a ‘pantomime dame’, though to his credit Boy George did have the grace to apologise.

The standard od witty banter in the commons has never been high, but when someone like IDS sinks to a new low it seems all the worse. Not too long ago he was being touted as if not a ‘good Tory’ then at least one who was willing to try and understand how people who don’t spend their weekends on the grouse moor live.

This cheap crack along with his high handed attitude to the pain caused by his benefit reforms just shows that Tories change their attitudes about as readily as leopards change their spots.

Ambitious Labour Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt wants to give teachers an equivalent status to doctors and lawyers by licensing them to practice. His intentions are good, but the thinking behind them is flawed.

The status of the medical and legal professions has declined massively in recent years but what kudos they still have depends on both having a huge degree of autonomy. Politicians tread carefully around their interests, not least because there has never been a shortage of doctors and lawyers with second careers as politicians.

Their treatment of the teaching profession is far less gentle, its significant feature is a tendency to meddle with anything and everything and then to go on and meddle with it some more for good measure. For that reason a licence to practice won’t be a passport to respect for teachers, it will be just another bureaucratic hurdle thrown in their path.

2014 Through a cracked crystal ball.

It’s amazing what you can find at a car boot sale, only the other day I came across a genuine crystal ball that rather helpfully showed me what might happen over the next twelve months.

January

Flushed with success after their Jade Rabbit probe landed on the moon the Chinese announce plans for a new and even more ambitious space project; they want to send a manned mission to orbit Eric Pickles.

February

In an attempt to prove that he isn’t an out of touch toff David Cameron tells the media he fully understands the challenges facing ordinary voters. Where does one keep the Rembrandt? In the west wing or the south one, it’s a dammed tricky decision; especially when one has several houses and several Rembrandts obviously.

March

In the space of forty eight hours the Daily Express runs headlines claiming that tomatoes cause cancer, can cure cancer and were implicated in the death of Princess Diana before vanishing into a black hole created by its own absurdity; the Daily Mail blames its demise on the EU, or the 1960’s or something like that.

April

NASA announces that it has discovered a race of giant hedgehogs living on Mars all of whom are called Duncan; on the same day the Labour Party announce a slate of distinctive new policies that will win them the next election. The public have no trouble at all working out which of the two is an April Fools stunt.

May

In the wake of the scandals that have rocked it over the past twelve months the BBC decides to apologise for the children’s crusade, the fire of London and more or less everything else that has ever happened and made someone a bit unhappy just to be on the safe side.

June

Ed Milliband actually says something that is both interesting and engages with the public, sources within the Labour Party rapidly step in to say this is clearly an aberration and that normal, tedious service will be resumed ASAP.

July

In an attempt to revive their flagging finances the Liberal Democrats launch a new range of party themed products, the doormat with a picture of Nick Clegg on it is an instant bestseller.

August

The nation’s politicians go on holiday for the whole month, nobody notices apart from the fact that everything seems to work so much more smoothly.

September

Party conference season gets into full swing with the leaders of all three main parties taking to the podium to say that they and only they will do something so wibbly wobbly visionary and wonderful that even though they don’t actually know what it is yet will be pretty damned amazing.

October

At the UKIP conference leader Nigel Farage tells delegates he plans to spend the run up to the next election in his secret hideout under an extinct volcano practicing stroking a white cat and saying ‘Ah, Mr Johnson; I’ve been waiting’ in a suitably menacing tone of voice.


November

George Osborne announces an innovative new plan for tackling the deficit, doing Penny for the Guy, the £1.20 raised will really help; honestly.

December

Children around the country are encouraged to visit a strange old man in his grotto and tell him what they want for Christmas; nice to see Vince Cable finding a role at last.

Zac Goldsmith- a genuine maverick with a silver spoon in his mouth.

The government must ‘honour its promise’ to give voters the power to recall their MP if he or she is accused of wrongdoing, so says Tory MP Zac Goldsmith.

Mr Goldsmith put his own Recall Bill to parliament earlier this year and it recently achieved a favourable first reading, sadly his fellow parliamentarians are unlikely to allow it to go much further, in the same way that turkeys seldom offer to help with getting Christmas dinner ready.

Speaking in the Commons this week Mr Goldsmith said that under the proposals put forward by the government an MP could ‘refuse to perform any one of the functions required and still not qualify for recall.’

Were his bill to be adopted a petition with signatures from 20% of the eligible voters in a constituency could trigger the recall process.

What, you might ask, about the possibility of a vexatious recall driven by a constituent with a grudge? A good question and one for which Mr Goldsmith has a perfectly good answer, namely that to trigger a recall would require some 15,000 signatures to be gathered, implying a level of support and organisational ability beyond that of the average malcontent.

Giving voters the right to recall their MP would, he said, ‘go quite a long way to restoring the relationship between people and power.’ The government had, he went on, had ‘made a promise and it needs to honour it’, trying to ‘slip a pretence at recall’ in under the radar would lead to people ‘smelling a rat and it’ll do our reputation even more harm.’

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg supports recall, but only if it is the commons that decides whether an MP is guilty of wrongdoing, at this point I should probably refer you to my earlier comments about turkeys and Christmas dinner.

In June he told the commons that the Goldsmith plan was not ‘without its problems’ and that what was necessary was to ‘strike a balance, give voters, the public a backstop reassurance that if someone commits serious wrongdoing and they’re not held to account they can be held to account by the public;’ then added ‘equally I think we shouldn’t introduce a proposal which would in effect become a kangaroo court.’

Good old Nick Clegg, firmly astride the fence as ever and still managing to frustrate people on both sides; way to go.

I used to wonder what the point of Zac Goldsmith was, he seemed like to political equivalent of the male nipple, often prominent but nobody really knows what its there for. The he took up the cause of reviving our democracy by giving voters the power to recall a corrupt or inept MP and it all became clear; he is that rarest of things a genuine maverick.

By this I mean man of principle who is willing to say awkward things because he believes them to be right, rather than a charlatan who thinks stirring up controversy will get his name in the papers. There have never been enough people like that in politics and just now they’re pretty much an endangered species.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, he is, after all, the son of the late billionaire James Goldsmith, a man who was more like a Bond villain than any real person has a right to be and so troublemaking is in his blood. Back in the nineties Goldsmith senior was a huge thorn in the side of the Major government and helped to turn the perennial Tory squabble over Europe into a near existential crisis.

Goldsmith the younger has taken a more positive route; he has recognised that British democracy is slowly expiring due to a mixture of indifference and perceived impotence on the part of the electorate. Granting them the power to recall their MP would indeed give voters a feeling they have a real role to play.

The current perception of members of parliament is that they live lives of gilded seclusion far removed from the gnawing concerns of everyday life. Their seats are mostly safe and even though they have to provide receipts these days the expenses package more than makes up for the, comparatively, low salary they receive.

As with most stereotypes there is more than a grain of truth in this, very few MPs will feel the cold clutch of insecurity that is an all too common experience for their constituents. It would concentrate their minds wonderfully were they to have to worry even a little bit about being recalled.

Recall isn’t, of course, a magic bullet there are still many other problems that need to be addressed. Like a House of Commons that is too male, white and upper middle class to be properly representative and the mad decision by IPSA to recommend MPs get an 11% pay rise after the next election when most of their constituents will be lucky to have seen 1%, if anything, in recent years.

It is a good place to start though and Zac Goldsmith deserves to be praised for being its most vocal supporter.