As Labour begins to put the detail on top of the core narrative of securing the recovery, protecting frontline services and building the new industries of the future, we are already starting to see a Tory party run fast out of ideas as well as direction.

For Young Fabians, sometimes unfairly derided as being a little shy to campaign on the ground, this is a time to step in and do some scrutiny of the Tory parties policy and detail. That’s why we’re re launching, Young Fabian Policy News and have included a brand new feature ‘Opposition Policy Watch’ to look at some of the thinking coming from the Tory right and put it to the test.

If you’d like to contribute to future editions of Young Fabian Policy News please get in touch and if you’d like to receive further information from the Young Fabians, you only need to join.

The press are right to say that this election will be a big choice, a big battle of competing ideas and visions. I think Labour has done the thinking and the graft in policy terms, I don’t think that the Tories have and it’s up to all of us to expose that.

But whilst it is true to say that Labour is winning the battle of ideas, we must also win the argument on the doorstep. There is no substitute for hard graft and thinking in the policy sphere, but there is also no substitute for knocking on doors and speaking to voters to communicate those ideas and I know that Young Fabians across the country will be helping Labour campaign on the ground as well as win the battle of ideas.

When I was younger, I LOVED Blue Peter. I mean really. What better to my childish sensibilities then DIY toys and projects, animals, exotic travel and Christmas and holiday specials, all wrapped up with an awesome theme tune and presenters that I either wanted to befriend or have my first kiss with (when I was old enough to understand what that was).

But there was always one bit of the show I completely dreaded. Every time they had a feature on some new museum exhibition opening, or some games expo with the toys of the future they would always end the piece with the same line to camera ‘and that exhibition opens this weekend in London’.

London, bloody London. As a boy growing up in the north of England, unless you were also from as parochial a town as I, (Preston – home of the mighty PNE!) you can not understand how angry and frustrated this made me. ALL the coolest stuff happened in London. It had every band, every gallery, every exhibition, every free event etc etc etc. And there was just no way for me to access it, stuck as I was in my little northern town.

So cut to now, I’m a grown man in a professional job, and appropriately enough I no longer watch Blue Peter. However, working and being active in Politics, I still find myself having similar sentiments to that I had when I was a child; why is everything scheduled to take place in London? Though I have felt this particularly strongly, through talking to other YF members, potential members, and perhaps most importantly ex-members, I know that I’m not the only one.

I now live in Manchester, and proud I am of it. We have an enormous amount of interesting and cutting edge things going on. But the point remains that almost all political activity is in London. All events, talks, conferences revolve around the Westminster bubble, in US terms, our very own ‘beltway’. But unlike myself as a child, I now have the ability to do something about this.

At the Fabian National Conference in January, I challenged the Young Fabian executive as to why they didn’t do more outside of London. I wanted to know why, as a fully paid up member of the Young Fabians, I couldn’t attend events without travelling the length of the country.

To their credit, the Exec responded to this challenge overwhelmingly positively. When I suggested that they might want to consider doing something to coincide with the Greater Manchester Fabian Society Conference which is happening this Saturday, March 13th, they immediately said yes and asked if I would help arrange something. And it’s been my pleasure to do so.

So at 3:30pm-5pm immediately after the Greater Manchester Fabian Society Conference, there will be a Young Fabian Social in Spirit bar on Canal Street in Manchester. And i’d love to see you there!

If you live outside of London, this is your chance to show that demand does exist for events in other areas, and your chance to come and shape what format they could take. We will have a number of Young Fabian exec members there and will be having an informal chat about what YF activity outside the SE might look like. It promises to be a fun and interesting event, and the more people we have there the better it will be.

So I can’t wait for Saturday, and the first tentative steps of national, and not just South East, Young Fabian events.

(note: Blue Peter badge wearers will get a free drink from me….)

Though much has been made of the lack of female MPs – which, despite being significantly higher now (126) than when Labour took office (60) is still 200 short of 50 per cent of the Commons – the lack of ethnic minority MPs and candidates has often been overlooked.

There are currently only 15 ethnic minority MPs, 13 Labour and two Conservative; 13 male and only two female; no female Asian MPs; and no Liberal Democrat non-white MPs.

That number is expected to rise following the election, albeit slightly. After polling day, a report on Tuesday’s Daily Politics revealed, there could be double the current figure.

If the result is the same as in 2005, the DP calculated there would be 30 ethnic minority MPs – 21 Labour, eight Conservative and one Respect.

However, if there was a 6.9 per cent swing to the Conservatives – the swing required for a bare majority – there would be 23 ethnic minority MPs, 13 Labour, nine Tory, one Respect and once again no Lib Dems.

Watch the clip on YouTube:

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So keep an eye out for the likes of Rushanara Ali, PPC for Bethnal Green and Bow, and Streatham candidate Chuka Umunna, two of Insight PA’s “Parliamentary Candidates to Watch”, two of a slightly-less-small number of non-white MPs, and in the case of Rushanara, potentially Britain’s first female Asian MP.

Sources:

• Social background of MPs, House of Commons Library, November 2005

• Ethnic Minorities in Politics, Government and Public Life, House of Commons Library, November 2008

• Frequently Asked Questions: MPs, House of Commons, February 2010

13 years into Labour Government ‘equality’ is still seen as a peripheral issue by policy-makers at national and local level – an addendum for certain sections of society rather than a mainstream concern. This ‘bolt-on’ attitude is disturbing to analysts who acknowledge that mainstreaming is the solution to delivering genuinely inclusive policies. Policy done right means all citizens can contribute, but – got wrong – means inequality is heightened and barriers to participation erected.

Labour has attempted to ensure better analysis of the potential impact of proposals by introducing measures including ‘Equality Impact Assessments’ (EIAs). EIAs are published alongside consultations/legislative plans and are supposed to highlight risks/benefits of initiatives and how they affect disadvantaged groups.
But the experience of EIAs in practice is variable – even in areas wholly relevant to disadvantaged groups. The Department of Health recently consulted on introducing free personal care. Older people, disabled people and carers (who are mostly women, making gender equality integral) are all relevant to the proposals.

However, the associated EIA suggested consultation respondents should highlight relevant equality issues. This was hardly the upfront analysis intended by EIAs of the needs of the groups this reform could affect. Nor does this approach safely estimate the risks of the intended approach. Dangers include councils tightening access to services they are obliged to provide free – or cutting support to people with lower needs (forcing carers to provide more support, work less and experience greater poverty and fewer opportunities).

Coupled with poor EIA implementation – perhaps causal to it – is little enforcement of how EIAs are undertaken or analysis of implementation outcomes – i.e. whether EIA predictions were correct. Fully centralising equality to policy development requires far greater emphasis on EIAs upfront, as well as monitoring and inspection of outcomes (lead by the Equality and Human Rights Commission) to ensure disadvantaged groups fully benefit from Labour’s fourth term.

Guest speaker was Rt Hon John Healey MP, Cabinet minister for housing and planning. After taking his turn trying to sell fundraising raffle tickets, Healey highlighted the Young Fabians’ span of appeal and the ‘fresh energy’ we bring with our ‘combination of organisation and ideology’.

His view that it’s not what Labour has done but ‘why we’ve done it’ that matters is sound. So we’re about more than just managing Britain through global recession: we’re about a focus on people – their lives, their jobs, their homes, and their families. Which is how, despite a deeper recession, we’ve seen half the business failures experienced in the previous recession during the last Tory government.

He ended with a question, perhaps a challenge. It came from a constituent of his in a supermarket in his south Yorkshire seat: “Mr Healey, Mr Healey – what are you doing to keep the Tories out?”

This is about taking responsibility and doing something. We win the trust, respect and support of people by – as Healey said – combining our ideas and our action. Labour can play to the strengths of its leadership here. It’s not polished presentation that is craved but it is principled action that people see missing elsewhere. As one first time voter, a 20-year-old female studying an FE course, told me on the phone tonight, “Get off my telly, Cameron – why as an MP aren’t you doing something for the country?”

Listen to a podcast of John Healey’s speech plus comments from Young Fabian members at tonight’s reception here.

Today’s OECD report also reveals 62 per cent of women in paid work, with a quarter of all women working part time compared to just 6 per cent for men. Women spend more time doing unpaid work and “spend at least twice as much time on caring than men”, adds the report, with the number of children in a household one of the biggest determining factors.

Another point of note was that public spending on childcare and pre-school services in OECD countries was on average only 0.6% of GDP, the amounts again varying sharply, from 0.1% in Greece to 1.3% in Denmark, with Britain once more in line with the average.

Earlier today, the prime minister described the absence of women from the boards of some of Britain’s top companies as “completely unacceptable”, saying it was “wrong” that only a tenth of directors in the UK’s top 100 companies are women.

His remarks come in the wake of recent evidence from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) showing the movement of women into positions of power and influence had reversed or stalled, reports today’s Guardian:

“It [the EHRC] likened women’s progress to a snail’s pace and said it would take a snail 73 years to crawl from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again before the numbers of women becoming directors of FTSE 100 companies was the same as men.

“The snail would have to cross the length of the Great Wall of China in 212 years before women would be equally represented in parliament.”

This article was originally published on Left Foot Forward

1) Why aren’t there more women writing online? Gaby says the attraction of guest editing Labourlist was the chance to ”the chance to give new writers and fresh perspectives an airing” and that ”…there are too many women waiting to be invited to blog, where men just pile in.”

If women are not ‘piling in’ then maybe it’s down to the nasty reaction they get when they do take the plunge. Just have a look at some of the comments Stella Creasy’s been left! Those of you who have read the latest edition of Anticipations will have read Jessica Asato talking about exactly the same thing.

Online debate is one place where those parts of society that usually struggle to be heard should be able to find their voice. But changing that won’t happen by chance. What can we do to improve that situation?

2) Actually taking part in political/policy debates is probably harder than we like to admit. I had recently talked to a first-time voter, a 2nd year university student studying Business and French at Durham and right from the start she was at pains to emphasise that “I’m not ‘Political’” and “I know very little about those kinds of things”.

Now people are always saying that, but what shocked me was what she said next:

“I’m really not political, I know it’s really bad to say this but I kinda leave that up to the boys. I don’t feel that I know enough to contribute and they all seem to know what they are talking about.”

Despite this we had a 30mins discussion where it was obvious she did know what she was talking about. In fact it was probably the most intelligent political discussion I had all week! Why should anything be ‘left up to the boys’?

Your average politico?

We need to encourage more women and young people in general to see politics not as a niche activity for all-male social elites or just the ‘geeky’.

We obviously welcome any ideas people want to throw our way.

It is also why we’re encouraging Young Fabians to take part in a first time voters telephone campaigning session tomorrow afternoon at Labour HQ in Victoria. (This is more like telephone research about what first time voters actually care about than canvassing as usual.)

Contact me, Vincenzo Rampulla, for more details at: vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk

Don’t forget – Young Fabians New Members’ Reception this Tuesday at the Old Star.

You’ll be able to meet other YF members, this year’s Exec and Rt Hon John Healey MP will be joining us to give us his take on why youth engagement in politics is so important. More importantly you’ll be able to find out how you can get more involved in the debates we are going to be having over the coming year.

We will also be raffling a specially signed (probably with one of his clunking fists!) copy of the Fabian’s recently published Solidarity Society and a signed copy of Alastair Campbell’s diaries.

Contact me if you’d like to attend – vrampulla@youngfabians.org.uk

In the UK alone, only 10% of FTSE 100 companies have a female director; 25 of these companies have no women at all on their board. Out of the 646 Members of Parliament, only 126 are women. And although the Gender Pay Gap has, according to the Office for National Statistics, narrowed between 2008 and 2009, women in full time employment still earn 17.4% less than men.

Yes, we have come a long way since the Viscountess Nancy Astor in 1919 was the first women to take her seat in Parliament. It’s probably no coincidence that the extension of the franchise to women in 1918 preceded this milestone.

I would like to be clear on this: there are a lot of men out there doing fantastic work to support gender equality in the work place. But every major achievement for women has been brought about by other women. To make our voice heard, we need to stand together, fight for each other, with each other. International Women’s day should not only be an occasion to celebrate what we have achieved so far, but should serve as a reminder that we still have a long way to go to achieve equal representation.

The Guardian today quotes a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which likens the progress of women to positions of power to snail’s pace. According to the report, it be take 73 years before the number of women becoming directors of FTSE 100 companies was the same as men. In this time the snail could have crawled from Land’s End to John O’Groats and halfway back again. The snail would have to cross the length of the Great Wall of China, taking 212 years, before women would be equally represented in parliament.

It is time we gave that snail a little push. Launching YF Women on 18th March will be small step – come and join us to make it bigger. It is up to us.

The Labour Party has come a long way since Foot’s leadership and the dark depths of Thatcher and 1983. I may have disagreed with Foot on policy. But I stand firmly in his camp when it comes to the purpose of politics. Tories may reduce politics to cynicism and pragmatism. For Labour it must always be about ideology, values and mission. Even in our darkest days we never gave up on that. As Gordon Brown said of Foot today, “[he] was a man of deep principle and great idealism.” That is what we all aspire to in the Labour movement.

So what can we learn from Michael Foot? In many ways British politics has changed irrevocably since his day. The stark left/ right divide that characterised the 1980s has been replaced by a cross-party scramble for the centre ground. But when you scratch beneath the surface the differences between left and right remain clear to see. Today is not the day for electioneering. However, Foot’s death serves as a pertinent reminder of what we’re fighting for at the next election.

A rich Labour tradition.