A single issue voter

During the general election I came across plenty of single issue voters and in this Labour leadership election I plan on being a single issue voter myself. My issue is women in the Labour Party and what our next leader plans to do to increase the number of women participating in the Party and standing for election. My experience of being a candidate was of operating in what at times felt like an all male world. Even within the Young Fabians it is a challenge to get young women to stand for election to the Executive, although our Young Fabian Women event the other week showed we have no shortage of bright, young women with lots to offer. I want not just commitments around All Women Shortlists and balancing the cabinet, whilst important, in many ways these just disguise broader issues around the engagement of women in politics. I want to hear the candidates’ ideas around how they will get more women involved in grass roots politics, the role of women at Party Conference and how they will encourage more women to seek selection as parliamentary candidates. That’s my single issue, so far there have been a few promising murmurings from some candidates but I want more. Whoever comes out with a clear plan for getting more women active in the Labour Party gets my vote.

You can be too nice…

I was a candidate in the General Election and at my first hustings my opponent pulled out my chair for me to sit down. He was simply being polite and it was well meant, but straight away it left me feeling that I was somehow (as I was) being treated differently to the other candidates.

At tonight’s leadership hustings all the candidates went to great lengths to talk about their aspirations to widen the appeal of the Labour Party and in particular get more women involved. They were also super supportive and friendly to Diane, but in doing so somehow singled her out as different, as if she needed that extra bit of support. Now I know that people will respond with comments about nominations (indeed, one of the candidates made the same remark tonight), but regardless of how she got there, Diane is in the contest for Labour leader. She has proved herself more than capable of holding her own in public debates and whilst the older brother routine of her opponents is well meant (and probably unintentional) it risks undermining her contribution.

I realise there is no malice involved, and the other candidates are as well intentioned as my chivalrous Conservative, but if we are going to have a serious discussion about women in the Labour Party and about changing the culture of politics, we need to start with the contest itself.

Fair pay please

I want a pay rise.

It’s easy to admit that reading today’s Guardian and realising that there are 170 senior civil servants who earn more than £150,000 left me feeling more than a little jealous (especially when you consider that the national average wage is a paltry £21,320).

To put this in context, these civil servants earn more than the prime minister’s wage with the most expensive being the Chief Executive of the Office of Fair Trading who is in the ‘respectable’ bracket of between £275,000-279,999.

Obviously we are all outraged and of course something must be done. Painfully the Coalition Government say that they are on the case.

Today was just a taster before they seek to publish the job titles and salaries of all civil servants earning over £58,000 next year. If you’re thinking “why are they doing this” then Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude popping up and rattling off something about wanting to “pull back the curtains to let light into the corridors of power” is all you’re going to get.

And it is at that point that I would say “hold on a minute”. I’m with the General Secretary of the FDA union for senior servants who pointed out that “Before this goes further we need to have a serious discussion about what it is ministers are seeking to achieve”; except I’m pretty certain what it is the Government is trying to achieve.

This is a massive case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Coalition Government is not doing this to champion transparency. It is no surprise that the Conservatives want to cut public spending and need an excuse to keep wages down or cut them.

During the election the Conservatives touted their 20:1 plan for the public sector, the highest paid in should get no more than 20 times more than the lowest paid. And they were clear that the scheme would mean that the policy was “designed to drive down high salaries rather than necessarily increase lower salaries”. Now that the election is over, Will Hutton has been appointed to lead this “commission into fair pay (sic) in the public sector”.

But it is duplicitous to call this a programme for ‘fair pay’ when the objective singly ignores the need to raise the pay of those languishing on low pay. If you look at the private sector the case for change is even greater.

If the bar for a well paid job is the prime minister’s salary then how do we feel about the finance director of Greggs earning £260k? When we consider that the ratio of pay in the private sector is as much as 80:1 or more then why have the Government not appointed the chair of a similar private sector ‘ fair pay commission’? Typically the Government (of this current hue at least) is making a misguided distinction between the private and public sectors, instead of treating them the same. The public sector has benefited from pulling in expertise by offering roughly comparable wages to the private sector. But the private sector has been allowed to accrue a ridiculously top-heavy salary structure.

When it comes to pay we need to go back to first principles. The strength of public anger was palpable when ordinary people realised what bankers in the city paid themselves in bonuses. The calls for windfall taxes and caps of bonuses were unanimous. And the minimum wage was only ever supposed to be an unbreakable legal floor for pay.

So between the criminal and the down right greedy there is the unfair, yet nobody is certain yet how to define it. I’d like to earn £100k+ and be able to buy that Ferrari I’ve always wanted but the key word has to be ‘earn’. Who am I to say that the Finance Director of Greggs isn’t worth every penny of his £260k, but is that wage really justified even if it is just on the basis of the ‘going rate’?

I wish Labour in Government had done more to tackle the incredible disparity between those who struggle on that minimum wage and those that count their salaries of 6 or more digits. But I’ll settle for a proper fair pay commission now and some real ideas of making pay fairer.

Who will beat Boris?

Many of us are just getting over the General Election and are only starting to get to grips with long Labour Party Leadership Campaign. So it just typical that another political contest has quickly emerged, one just as interesting as the Leaders’.

Yesterday the Guardian broke the story that Oona King is going to announce her desire to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor today.

Admittedly talk of mayoral candidates and campaigns might seem a little premature since Boris’ term runs till 2012. Back in March the NEC decided that the Mayoral candidate contest would start straight after the General Election. Despite wanting my fair share of the summer sun, I think that the real lesson from the General Election should be that the campaign do better the earlier they start. For me, the battle to win back the Capital cannot start early enough.

So far it has been taken for granted that the last Mayor, Ken Livingstone, will run. In fact some have argued that he’s been running a re-elect Ken campaign ever since he left office. Even so, Ken will have to face up to the many obstacles he currently faces. Like the General Election, this Mayoral candidate contest seems, on two levels, to fit the ‘change vs. experience’ model. The winning candidate will need to convince a Labour Party eager to regain political leadership role in the Capital and then convince Londoners; who seem worryingly ambivalent about the progress (or lack of it) that Boris has actually made since 2008.

In general “change is always a more powerful campaign theme than experience” and if one thing Oona immediately brings to the contest it is that offer of  big change for Labour. The Guardian’s Martin Kettle recently commented in public that what Labour needs now is a woman leader and whilst Diane Abbott many not fit everyone’s first choice for a Labour leader, Oona ticks a lot of boxes.

She has remained intensely popular in the Labour Party (as well as outside it) since she lost out to George Galloway in 2005. She is a personable, likeable and importantly human politician. Many in her shoes would have struggled to stay politically relevant. However anyone who was at Progress’ annual conference this weekend (and if you were did you visit our Young Fabian stand to say hello?) will have caught a sense of the buzz surround Oona as she took part in the conference  sessions on campaigning.

Those campaigning skills will be critical and will be helped, if she does become Labour’s candidate, by the already active supporter base that seems to have emerged around her – I overheard more than a few people talking about setting up grassroot campaigns to encourage her to run for Mayor.

That is not to say Ken is a pushover. His career shows just how much he thrives at being the political under dog. Don’t forget, whilst Labour spurned him as their official candidate he still ran as an independent in 2000 and won. Who is to say a third or fourth candidate might not emerge too. It is early days yet.

If anything this contest needs to be a contest of views, ideas and values rather than just a choice about who ‘looks’ like a winner. With transport costs rising, the aftermath of the Olympics to manage and a Capital struggling to balance cuts with investment needs, every candidate will have show more than their fair share of new ideas.

Moreover whoever wins their place in the contest will have to show serious broad appeal. The last Mayoral Election showed real political division in the Capital between inner and outer London, so an ability to unite the Capital could be all the difference.

A Party to come home to…

The events of this afternoon could not have been forecast. For those on the Left, we enter a new world of Opposition. It’s a strange world for many of us and will demand new efforts from Labour.

Yet whilst the UK media spent hours today picking at the bones of negotiations and uncertainty being played out at snails pace in the Westminster bubble, something incredible has been happening. Since Friday the Labour Party has seen an unprecedented number of people join the party.

New members, people returning to the party, whatever – since this afternoon it has reached such a frenzy that the Labour Party’s servers couldn’t handle the new member every 15 mins that were joining.

If this is some sort of strange new modern form of political protest then it will probably be short lived. It could be the shock of a new Conservative Government, a knee jerk reaction similar to Clegg’s debate performance. But if it isn’t then the Party will have to get it’s house work done quickly if it is to be a suitable home for a new politicised force.

The challenge will be to provide a political home to those that want to make a difference, to give a voice to those who have been left voiceless and a vehicle for those who want to fight for fairness. It will have to be a home for new ideas that will push forward the values on which the party was founded and find new ways to reach out to people everywhere.

Even in the ashes of a Government ended, the Party seems to be getting started again. I can’t wait to make it the best Party ever.

But that’s work for the morning, tonight let’s give the last word to Gordon.

A Clegg-Cam deal could consign the Lib Dems to history

With it looking more and more likely with each passing hour that the Liberal Democrats will do a deal with the Conservatives, huge opportunities have opened up for the Labour Party – opportunities which if seized could propel us back into power in a matter of months.

The Fabian Society has today published a briefing paper outlining the potential for a revitalised Labour party to take full advantage of the discord, disillusionment and downright anger amongt Liberal Democrat voters – many of them Labour supporters who switched tactically – and win a second election within the year, in the event of a highly unstable Lib-Con alliance falling.

The reasearch shows that 18 of the Lib Dems’ 57 seats are prey to a Labour surge were just one in four Lib Dem voters to switch. If one in ten switch, the most achievable aim, eight seats will fall – Norwich South, Bradford East, Brent Central, Manchester Withington, Dumbartonshire East, Birmingham Yardley and Edinburgh West.

The Liberal Democrats are also vulnerable in Lib-Con marginals. In the south west of England, where 13 of the Lib Dems’ 57 MPs were returned, the Tories finished second in all but one of those contests. A swing of only 2.5 per cent from the Lib Dems to Labour would see the Tories take six of those seats, with a swing of 5 per cent resulting in the Lib Dems losing all but two of their seats in the region.

As I argued on these pages two weeks ago, it just doesn’t make sense for the Liberal Democrats to join forces with the Conservatives. On a whole range of policy issues, from Europe to equality, from climate change to the economy, in opposition to fox hunting and the Tories’ regressive inheritance and marriage tax plans, the Lib Dems are much much closer to Labour than they are Tory, their activists and those who voted tactically even more so.

But it is on electoral reform that they are most at odds with the Conservatives. As the graph below illustrates, the Liberals were even more screwed by the first-past-the-post system this time than in each of the past three elections, losing five seats in return for an increase in their vote of nearly 850,000:

The ball now firmly in his court, wooed by everyone, the world at his feet, it’s the moment he’s waited his whole life for, but in his haste for power, and his desire to “do the right thing” – even though he’d be doing nothing of the sort – could Nick Clegg be opening his side up for attack from left and right, and from within, and in so doing signing his own political death warrant and consigning his party to another 90 years in the wilderness.

It’s high stakes poker with the dice loaded in his favour; the question is, will he roll ’em or be rolled?

A reminder of what this election is all about

Yesterday all three party leaders attended the Citizens UK May Day assembly. The biggest meeting of the General Election campaign, it is testament to the power of community organising to influence the decision making process. The meeting was attended by 2,500 people from 160 community organisations including churches, mosques, synagogues and trade unions.

I was fortunate enough to visit a Citizens UK meeting a few months ago. I had become interested in community organising following my time on the Young Fabians trip to Ohio for the Obama campaign. Barack Obama had been a community organiser in Chicago before running for the presidency and had talked on many occasions about the role that it can play in engaging communities in the issues that affect their lives.

At that meeting I was struck by just how powerful community organising can be. The room was rammed full of residents, passionate about bringing about change in their local communities. I met Muslims, Jews, Christians, Trade Unionists and many others. Few belonged to a political party but all were deeply involved in politics.

The Citizens UK assembly serves as a pertinent reminder of what this election is all about. In recent weeks there’s been a great deal of talk about which party is up and which party is down. But this election isn’t about the parties. It’s about the people. With polling day now on the horizon it’s important to remember that.

James Green is Anticipations Editor and Labour Parliamentary Candidate for Cheltenham. He blogs at www.jamesgreen.org.uk.

Vote for substance. Vote Labour.

As we enter the final two weeks of the General Election campaign all is still to play for.

Labour were the underdogs at the start. Now, following the Leader’s Debates, all bets are off. We are in unchartered waters. The only thing that’s certain is that this will be a transformative General Election.

Labour have been talking about the big issues from the outset and that is what we must continue to do. The twin crises of MPs’ expenses and the credit crunch provide the backdrop for this General Election campaign. People want substance not spin. They want practical measures to fix our broken politics and bold action to secure the economic recovery. Rarely has the outcome of an election been so important.

Labour are on the right side of these arguments. On political reform we are have pledged in our manifesto to hold a referendum on changing the voting system. This could herald the most substantial reform to Britain’s electoral system since women got the vote. On the same day we’ll hold a referendum on a fully elected House of Lords. My view is simple – if people make our laws they should be elected. And we’ll set up a Royal Commission to lead the way to a written constitution. People demand more than soundbites when it comes to constitutional reform. Labour’s manifesto is rammed full of substantial policies.

Yet, despite their rhetoric, on all these issues the Tories fall short. They talk about giving people greater power but refuse to back Labour’s plans to change the voting system. They talk about being progressive but blocked Labour’s efforts to remove the final hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Gordon Brown put it best when he said “the future will be progressive or conservative, but it will not be both.”

And on the great challenge of our time, securing the economic recovery, the Tories would put the long-term future of Britain’s economy at risk. The growth figures released last week showed that, while we are coming out of recession, the recovery is still fragile. If we make the wrong decisions and cut too early, as the Tories would have us do, we could risk falling into a double dip recession. Yet the Tories promise a new tax giveaway seemingly every week. Taking £6 billion out of the economy in National Insurance is the wrong thing to do. As is giving a £200,000 tax cut to the country’s 3,000 richest estates. The Tories priorities aren’t Britain’s priorities.

The decisions that are made in the next Parliament will shape life in Cheltenham and across the country for a generation. We need to make the right calls. The Tories were wrong on the recession and they are wrong on the recovery. They were wrong on the causes of our broken political system and they are wrong about how to fix it.

There is a real choice at this election. Vote for substance. Vote Labour.

Liberals would be mad to coalition with the Consevatives

As the Liberal Democrats maintain their rating in the polls, with Nick Clegg flying high having lived up to heightened expectations in the second leaders’ debate on Thursday night, attention has inevitably, even more so than last weekend, turned to the question of who the Lib Dems would join forces with in the event of a hung parliament.

So what is new, what have we learnt in the past seven days that we didn’t know before, and where does this leave Nick Clegg and his party, whose approval he must gain were he to enter into government – 75 per cent of Lib Dem MPs AND 75 per cent of the federal executive OR two thirds of delegates to a special conference OR 50 per cent of the entire membership – the so-called “triple lock” which could take months to pick.

But I digress; assuming the general election results in a hung parliament, who should the Liberal Democrats join forces with? Well, of course you’d expect me to say Labour, and so I will – Labour makes sense not just for us (obviously), but for the Liberals themselves. On some of the key dividing lines, they are much closer to Labour than they ever will be to the Conservatives: on Europe, climate change, equality, the Tory flagship marriage and inheritance tax plans and on the biggest issue of all – the economy.

Ken Clarke, in an interview with the Telegraph, has today revealed for the first time that the Conservative Party was drawing up plans for a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The shadow business secretary said:

“Our starting point would be to say to the other two parties ‘you know you have got to control the deficit and debt’, and have a plan our creditors believe for getting rid of the structural deficit over the next parliament. If they just sit there and say ‘that’s just your party platform’, my own view is that the economic consequences of abandoning that would be catastrophic.

“The core problem is the debt and the deficit, and the Conservatives have been the most consistently sensible on that. I don’t think it would be in the national interest to resile from that… You’ve got to ask yourself, would either of the other parties be prepared to do that?”

Well, there you have it, leaving aside the Tory leadership’s – and even more so the Tory membership’s – regressive hostility toward Europe, tackling climate change and gay, gender and race equality, on the economy, their plans to withdraw £6 billion from the economy and start slashing public sector jobs (see last night’s Jeremy Paxman interview with David Cameron for more), there will be no compromise.

On the Liberals’ other key platform, their raison d’être in many people’s eyes, constitutional reform and a change to the voting system, it would be utterly incomprehensible for them to do a deal with the Conservatives. The Tories, though, have been panicked into announcing some reform measures – but there are no plans to change the way MPs are elected. The BBC website has more:

“The Tories would not allow an unelected prime minister to hold office for longer than six months, David Cameron is to announce in a speech [today]. Their policy would force a new prime minister without a mandate to hold a general election.

“Mr Cameron will say that three of the last five prime ministers, including Mr Brown, have been unelected, but that Tory John Major won his own mandate after taking up the position. He will also outline plans to select parliamentary candidates through postal primaries.”

The plan for primaries is indeed progressive, the presidentialisation of the office of prime minister less so – we elect parties not prime ministers in Britain, and it is for the party most able to form an administration to decide who the prime minister should be. The party’s mandate is already there; Gordon Brown’s mandate came from the 2005 general election, which Labour won, by 66 seats.

As the graphs below show, since the war, the Liberals have suffered the most from the current first past the post system, Labour and the Conservatives benefitting greatly:

This is more starkly illustrated in looking at the difference between the percentage of the popular vote each party has received and the proportion of seats in the House of Commons they win:

As Jeremy Vine explained on last night’s Ten O’Clock News on BBC One, under the current system, it is possible for a party to finish second in every seat across the land, win more votes than all the other parties combined, get over 50 per cent of the vote, and still end up with no MPs. Fair? I think not.

Under the Tories, with a majority or in coalition, there will be no referendum on electoral reform, no chance for the Liberals to secure a fairer voting system and exert the power their polling figures warrant. Only with Labour can they achieve that fairer future, and realign the left after a centruy in which the right has dominated; better together than apart, for the many, not the few.

Just what is Liberal Conservatism?

This week is set to be the International week of the 2010 Election campaign. So in theory, we should all understand a little more of what William Hague’s Liberal Conservatism is all about. Ahead of the week I’ve just read the Tory manifesto International affairs section and am still puzzled. I’m hoping, but not expecting a little more clarity during the week.

Rightly, the manifesto identifies that more than ever the interests of nation states are interconnected, economically and politically.  But the policy solutions still seem ideologically unclear and unsound.   

While the answers to Britain’s domestic challenges are met with a shrink-state response, the manifesto calls for “a concerted response from the state” in its international chapter.

There also seems to be a glaring contradiction in Conservative policy to the European single currency, varying between forthright hostility to a guarantee for the public to have their say:

“a Conservative government would never take the UK into the euro.”

And later “We will ensure that by law no future government can hand over areas of power to the EU or join the Euro without a referendum of the British people.”

Now, I’m not advocating that now is the right time to join the Euro, but a manifesto is always the right time to be clear what your position is.

The document is unclear of what One World Conservatism is or what Liberal Conservatism would achieve. But from the Tories foreign policy record, I don’t relish the prospect of these ideologies guiding British foreign policy.

Let’s not forget these things as we move into the international week of this election David Cameron went on a free trip to South Africa, funded by a lobbying group founded by a former member of the South African military intelligence to bust sanctions against South Africa. Let’s also not forget that when Labour took office our international aid budget was in decline and we where losing a beef war with Europe. And today in the European Parliament, the Tories lose more legislative proposals than the Liberals, Greens and Communists because of Hague and Cameron’s self-imposed exile from the mainstream grouping.

In the week ahead let’s continue to take a long hard look at the Tories and ask Cameron and Hague, just what is your vision for Britain in the world and where would we be if we took your advice?