GUEST POST – Get the message

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Here, Young Fabian member Tom Foot makes the case for communicating in a way that both represents the party and resonates with the public.

Yet more contradictory messages for activists! This week an ICM poll revealed that Labour has achieved a net-gain of four points on the Conservatives.

However, a range of answers on ‘character’ suggest that “the Tory leader is now regarded as tougher, more decisive and more internationally respected than Gordon Brown.”

So, what should we take from all this?

I was surprised to hear that people considered Cameron more respected than Brown. Indeed, just two months ago, our Prime Minister was honoured by the UN as ‘world statesman of the year’! I recently heard, first-hand, a US President pleading with his own electorate to accept the notion of economic stimulus – he appealed to the actions of his opposite number here as justification. That is exceptional.

On the other hand, we have David Cameron – isolated in Europe and unknown across the pond. By recognising the worth of both the EU and of ‘tough’ rhetoric, Cameron has worked himself into an awkward ambivalence…a constitutionally empty ‘UK Sovereignty Act’ being symptomatic. That is laughable.

If the problem is not with the policy, it must be with perception. The truth is that it is ‘not what you do, but what you are seen to do’ that will define election outcomes.

There have been times when I have bitterly cursed our leader. I believe him to be an astute, strong and pragmatic man…but in dumbing down complex arguments to the electorate, he has misrepresented the party. If you do not trust the people, they will not trust you. Consider two examples from this summer: the investment ‘cuts’ saga; and the al-Megrahi palaver. These escalated from potential policy victories into unnecessary scandal due to Labour’s coalescence around faulted core messages.

Worse, a narrative has developed: Brown as ‘locked in his bunker’. This phrase has resonance as it speaks to the stubborn streak in Brown that has stopped him from conceding ground when it becomes clear that he must. It is a very damaging phrase, suggestive of a man that has lost touch with the world, a man that could not possibly construct affective ‘tough’ ‘decisive’ and ‘internationally reputable’ policy.

While structuring digestible core messages, we should be mindful that this is a narrative that the Labour Party must shake-off to turn the polls around.

Change EU can believe in?

The final stage of the Lisbon Treaty will be concluded at dinner this evening, as the 27 EU Heads of Government will attempt to divvy up the three newly created figurehead positions of the union.

Being vague in their terms of reference, the positions of President of the Council, Chief Executive of the European Council, and High Representative for Foreign Affairs will ultimately be moulded by their first holders, and so it is vital that the right people get the jobs.

Regretfully it seems the leaders have changed the question they were supposed to answer, and so the toil and political capital expended in birthing the Lisbon Treaty looks like it will have been in vain.

The whole point of the Lisbon process was to streamline the EU and, most importantly, to give it a ‘face’ that would be recognisable across the world and would not change every six months. The President in particular would be able to look the leaders of China, India, the USA and Russia in the eye and speak with the authority of the most important market in the world, on human rights, on climate change, on the important issues that will face our societies. The EU would finally be able to punch its weight.

Instead, it is now expected that tonight the 27 will torpedo their own collective global influence and select Herman Von Rompuy (Rumpy-Pumpy to the sketchwriters) of Belgium as the first President.

As a testament to mediocrity, Von Rompuy is a class act. With no record to criticise, he will be the winner of the ultimate race to the bottom – the lowest common denominator candidate. Instead of a President with the stature that couldn’t be ignored, the position of President will be effectively neutered at birth.

For anyone who cares about the position of the UK and the EU in the world, it will be a travesty if the 27 choose this path. The EU needs to select a strong figure as President if it is not to slip into potentially terminal and irreversible decline.

GUEST POST – Autumn of Change: 20 years on

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Today Marie-Noelle Loewe, Young Fabian member, with a unique perspective amongst YF members on the fall of  the Berlin Wall and what that means for the EU today

I was seven years old when the Berlin Wall fell. I grew up in a small town close to Dusseldorf, which is rather far away from what was then the German Democratic Republic, so my memories of the time are personal rather than political. I remember that my grandmother encouraged me and my sisters to eat our daily fruit without complaining, since “the children in the east didn’t even know what bananas are.” I remember my dad (who had fled East Germany at the age of four) always got rather excited when successful escapes were reported on the news. And I remember that, shortly after 9^th November 1989, a few new classmates joined my school who spoke with a funny accent and had never eaten a Mars bar before.

For the rest of the world, the events in Berlin of course marked the end of the cold war, bringing more significant changes. 40 years of isolation ended for millions with the collapse of the ‘Iron Curtain’, marking a new area of ‘freedom to’ rather than ‘freedom of’. This month, celebrations are taking place all over Europe to celebrate the Autumn of the Nations: the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia which ended the rule of the Communist party; the bloody end of the Socialist Republic of Romania whose citizens had suffered under the oppressive rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu for almost 20 years. What started in Poland spread through Bulgaria, East Germany, Romania and so on. By 1991 the Soviet Union had collapsed and fourteen of its former satellite states had denounced communism.

Our generation should remember these images when we think about what Europe means for us. We should remember that the Union is more than a single market; it is also a union of ideas – 20 years on, the values of freedom and democracy, European values, prevail through the nations formerly behind the ‘Iron Curtain’. These are the values which gave birth to the project; the European Union.

Offline and online, blog launch a success

On the evening of the state opening of parliament, the Young Fabians saw the long-awaited official opening of this blog. The launch last night went successfully with YF members and others engaging both online and offline. John Wood from the TUC‘s Touchstone blog, Progress‘ Jessica Asato, and LabourList Editor, Alex Smith, joined our panel discussion in the House of Commons, whilst there was tweeting-a-plenty using #yfblog.

From the Webbs to the Web set out to look at the potential in the web for sharing ideas and developing policy in the twenty-first century. We heard about the good – Alex Smith: ”It’s no longer the case that the right are streets ahead online; in fact the reverse is now true.” – and the bad – Jessica Asato told us that a clear majority of posts as well as 90% of the left wing blog rolls are made up by men. 

It was agreed that events like the one taking place remained important and that online politics can’t exist alone - and in a sign of old and new together, tweeting even stopped for a brief period of Chatham House rules discussion. (This wasn’t the only example of the power of new media combining with old media today.)

There was consensus that wiki-policy-making – blank page policy built up in the same way the wikipedia website is - should be given a go. It was suggested that both men and women need to change the space in an antagonistic and personal blogosphere if they truly believe in equality and social justice. And we heard the proposal, nay request, from Jessica Asato for an online policy aggregator to be put together, allowing anyone to search by word or phrase and be a mouseclick away from every think tank’s ideas.

Some good comments came from the floor, including a discussion of what makes a good blog post. The words short, dirty, measured and thoughtful came up. I suspect this one achieves very few, if any, of those four …

An old-fashioned meeting, some very modern tweeting, and a new blog for YF members. The guest posts on the blog will continue for the remainder of the week including blogging Labour MP, Tom Harris. We hope you’re enjoying it and will soon take part – watch this space for details of how the next stage of YF policy development will move online. All-in-all, progress.

Next up, avatars of the YF Executive … (that’s a joke by the way for anyone still considering standing for co-option this weekend)

GUEST POST – The web offers more voices and more diversity; meaning more opportunities for innovative solutions

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Ahead of our launch in parliament tonight, Young Fabian member, Anna-Joy Rickard, argues that we must use the web to bring new people with new ideas into our fold.

Developing new ideas and pushing frontiers of thought – a long-standing mandate of the Young Fabians – must involve hearing the wide variety of voices that make up the mix of modern day Britain. This means more people making the brave leap to being involved in politics.  I say brave because let’s face it, if you don’t come from a family which openly discusses and debates political issues, and you don’t study politics at sixth form or uni, then joining a party, going to seminars and events, and expressing thoughts that contribute to policy development, is a long way from your comfort zone.
 
Even choosing the party you resonate most with is quite a task when you try to distinguish spin from fact, and all the grey in-between. And when this search involves conversations with people who already ‘get it’ and are extra confident about their views it can be pretty intimidating.
 
In steps the web. If I search to figure out something on the web I can go at my own pace, I can do it anonymously until I want to be ‘me’, I don’t have to reveal how much I don’t know until I do know something, and I can find my way quickly to the issues that interest me most.
 
Websites, blogs, social networking sites etc. have the potential to facilitate my peers to make the leap from feeling politics is distant, complicated or irrelevant to seeing that everyday things they care about are political. More than that, when they find something they connect with, at a touch of a button they can engage with it.
 
So what does that mean for people who live and breathe politics every day? Websites need to be written for outsiders as well as insiders. They need to have links to the basics as well as the complex, and direct people to history & context as well as to the cutting edge. Most of all they need to encourage visitors that their opinions, their solutions for their cities and communities, and their awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of our nation should be expressed, and developed and refined by sitting alongside others’ views.  More voices and more diversity mean more opportunities for innovative solutions. Let’s make the most of the web to achieve this.

GUEST POST – The interests of the people: much more than just a Labour Party press release

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Young Fabian member, Vincenzo Rampulla, offers his analysis of why – irrespective of the politics – the content of today’s Queen’s Speech is significant.

What’s the Queen Speech for? Apart from the obvious republican argument that it is an anachronistic pantomime, sentimentalising the empty role that the Queen has in our modern democracy (well, at least she’s not an MP eh?), is it merely to give Dennis Skinner an opportunity to abuse Black Rod on TV? Even so, why has the Government even bothered this year, months away from a General Election?

Both Cameron and Clegg have pre-figured this year’s event with comments like “little more than a Labour press release on Palace parchment” and “displacement activity”.  Yet the opportunity for the Government to set out an agenda that will focus on and tackle what people are actually concerned about has been grasped. The fact is that the General Election has not been called yet and we need to keep on governing in the interests of the people.

Whilst expenses and political reform are vitally important issues that need tackling, people should be reassured that the Government don’t think they are more important than welfare, poverty and education. This Government is a Labour Government and this year’s speech has set out why people should vote Labour.

It’s genuinely reassuring that whatever the polls might say, Labour are sticking with fairness and equality as the focal points of their political project. A new Crime and Security Bill will make parents more directly responsible for anti-social behaviour of their children and tackle gang violence, both issues that blight many communities across the country.

Legislation to improve social care provision, an end to child poverty and the carry-over of the Equality Bill all show that Labour is committed to the long-term improvement of people’s lives, not just short term quick fixes. Yet a Financial Services Bill, a Fiscal Responsibility Bill and a Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill still mean that the Government hasn’t ignored recent public anger.

If next year a Conservative Government is returned I wonder if legislation to improve the entitlements of agency workers, commit to international development and prohibit cluster munitions would even be considered as part of a Cameron-drafted Queen’s Speech. I genuinely doubt it. And that’s why the Tories shouldn’t be given the opportunity.

GUEST POST – Some class action in Queen’s Speech

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Next up is Jon de Beer, Young Fabian member, delving beneath the headlines for highlights in the Queen’s Speech.

The Prime Minister’s announcement of a Financial Services Bill in the Queen’s Speech should be welcomed and is a bold move in the face of a City that is getting back to business as usual. I’m sure that Fleet Street will focus on a supposed end to the banking ‘Bonus Culture’ or curbing irresponsible credit card lending, but what really struck me was this from Mr Brown,

“…this also means empowering consumers to hold banks to account by taking collective action to get redress when many people feel that they have been badly treated.”

I am intrigued into what this might actually mean. Are we in for US style class actions where a collection of stakeholders can bring a joint lawsuit against a company? These class actions allow for many synergies in terms of lower defence costs, access to higher calibre lawyers and the lack of need for multiple case re-trials. Their ultimate benefit however is that of holding companies and their management to account as the barrier of standing alone against a large corporation is removed.

It will be interesting to see how the Government will implement this. In the US a class action is a relatively risk free enterprise as it is unusual in the case of a loss to pay the other sides costs. However this is not the case in English law as anyone who has been on the losing side of a libel case will tell you. One option could be to force the bank to pay for the litigation itself. This option would be fair, providing the number of stakeholders needed to bring a class action wasn’t set too low, and in the case of shareholder class actions, the company’s capital is mostly their money anyway.

As always we will have to wait for the policy details, but what is glaringly apparent is that the Financial Services Bill wants to create a ‘stronger, fairer Britain’ and I’m sure we are all in collective agreement that the Conservatives will be against it.

Centralised localism

“I am a strong localist, for one simple reason. I know that the small, the personal and the local work with the grain of human nature and not against it. But this is not some romantic attachment to the patterns of our past. Localism holds the key to economic, social and political success in the future.”

David Cameron, Conservative Localism Policy Paper

The attempt to deselect Conservative Parliamentary candidate Liz Truss has received a disproportionate amount of media coverage compared to its political significance. In part this is because of our insatiable desire to gossip about people, rather than process, or policy. Scandal, power struggles and personal attacks all characterised an unfortunate episode in the Conservative’s preparations for the next national poll.

Yet the most interesting aspect of the events surrounding the attempt to deslect Liz Truss was not her affair, or Sir Jeremy Bagge’s vitriol. Rather, it was the way the Conservative party entrusts internal decision making to its local parties and how this fits with their commitment to localism.

Cameron rightly believes the candidates representing his party at the next general election should be reflective of the electorate. In practice, this means more women and ethnic minority candidates. Yet it is clear he doesn’t trust his party to deliver that outcome – A-lists and primaries, a novel way of controlling candidate selection from the centre, demonstrate this.

So Cameron is committed to localism. Except when local decision makers cannot be trusted to make the right decisions.

While it is difficult for voters to evaluate opposition proposals in the absence of a clear track record of action, they should look to how Cameron’s team implement localism within their own party as a foretaste of what localism might mean in practice under a Conservative government.

Being committed to localism only insofar as it delivers central aims isn’t really localism at all.

Reminder – blog launch event this week

‘From the Webbs to the Web’ will ask how we can best utilise the online world to develop policy and share ideas. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, founding members of the Fabian Society, could not have imagined the electronic resources we now have. But how can the Young Fabians seize the opportunity technology has presented us? Is wiki-policy and collaborative policy-making the future or is the web simply about tweeting to mobilise campaigners?

Speakers include: Jessica Asato, Acting Director, Progress; John Wood, TUC’s Touchstone blog; Alex Smith, Editor, LabourList.

The event will take place on Wednesday 18^th November, 6.15pm for 6.30pm – 8pm in Committee Room 6 of the House of Commons. Please email Adrian Prandle to reserve a place: aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

See the YF website for details of how to participate in the launch if you can’t make the event.

Follow us at twitter.com/youngfabians.

GUEST POST – Brown is in the right direction but the wrong gear on Afghanistan

We are inviting a series of guest posts to mark the official launch of the Young Fabian blog. YF members who would like to contribute should get in touch with Vice Chair, Adrian Prandle, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk.

Today we have Nick Maxwell, Young Fabian member, who looks at what Labour needs to do on Afghanistan, and how far the Prime Minister succeeded in his Mansion House speech last night.

Over the past few weeks, the public have seen the debate around Afghanistan get bogged down in glib comments about MOD bureaucracy and handwriting. They’ve witnessed seeming ambivalence toward a dubious election and the ‘rogue cop’ attack on the very troops tasked to train and build capacity in Afghanistan, making it easy to conclude that the cause is hopeless. Accordingly – following what seemed a hollow Armistice Day – the opinion polls showed the greatest level of opposition to the military commitment in Afghanistan since UK forces arrived. There should be no mistake; the government is on the edge of losing its credibility on Afghanistan and its wider military commitments.

In yesterday’s Mansion House speechthe Prime Minister was right to face down the challenge head on. He took big steps to pierce through the weekly PMQ roll call of the dead and respond to public concerns about Afghanistan. He needs to do more and Labour needs to do more. This speech must be the start of a renewed and sustained effort to explain, not just why British troops are in conflict in Afghanistan, but why a Labour government can be trusted to continue to lead our military obligations. To lose the debate about the government’s leadership in Afghanistan would be a betrayal of our armed services, it would undermine UK efforts to combat violent radicalism and support international development, and serve as a political own-goal against the Conservatives.

The Young Fabian International and Security Policy Forumhas convened vital discussion as part of this debate. To win the debate, the left needs to answer to a very political question, ‘why is the commitment of the military in Afghanistan a key Labour issue?’ This is a challenging question. After all, the left traditionally (and rightly) abhors neo-colonial ambition and leans to pacifism over militarism.

Brown rightly emphasised international and domestic security against terrorism as part of the answer. In addition, I suggest that the answer should cover 3 key elements.

First, as a social and internationalist party, Labour must set out how the UK’s presence in Afghanistan will support the economic and social development of the Afghan people. Building Afghan capacity is a moral imperative, following the disruption that NATO forces have brought to daily life, and is the only route to a sustainable future for the security of Afghanistan. It will require resources.

Second, a Labour government should articulate how it is best placed to work with our international allies, particularly within the EU. The Conservatives have exposed themselves as isolationist in the EU, a position which is damaging for how they are viewed in the US and in China. Given that the EU will shortly have a permanent Foreign Minister, a Labour government should be loud about being best placed to lead a progressive internationalist policy in the UK and the EU.

Third, perhaps most importantly, and disappointingly absent from Brown’s speech, a Labour government should be synonymous with high quality care for our troops – both in the field and on their return home, wounded or otherwise. Care for the military should be a Labour heartland issue. By and large it is working class sons who form the vast bulk of the casualties. This care can be expensive. Labour should be the first to say that the expense is an essential part of the costs of conflict, to be met without hesitation.

A compelling vision for why this country is committed in Afghanistan and why a Labour government can be trusted to lead that commitment will be as important a manifesto issue as jobs and the economy. Failing to articulate that vision lets down all those who have served and are serving in our armed forces and is an open door to defeat at the ballot box.