All politics is global

In this member post, Young Fabian member Debbie Moss reflects on last week’s China-EU Year of Youth roundtable event to which the Young Fabians were invited.

All politics is global.  This was the predominant lesson from last Friday’s roundtable event hosted by the Chinese embassy to celebrate the China-EU Year of Youth.  As one of the speakers commented, out on the door-step we almost invariably campaign on domestic issues.  When faced with questions about jobs and cuts to local services, we seek to explain how Labour would do things differently – cutting more slowly, investing in growth and protecting the most vulnerable.  But in today’s globalised world, our economy, and therefore the prosperity and wellbeing of British people, are inexorably linked with that of other countries.  If Labour is to continue its legacy as the party of internationalism we must integrate this into the narrative we present to voters.

On Friday, our Chinese hosts elaborated on two very welcome, interconnected themes.

First, China’s intention to play its part as a peaceful, responsible member of the international community, promoting trade as well as cultural, educational and other exchanges with Britain and Europe.  Second, China’s desire to be seen to be concerned not solely with increasing its GDP (an image often portrayed in the Western media) but also with social justice, human rights and the environment.

Pre-empting Western concerns about China’s one-party state, lack of democracy and use of capital punishment, officials often repeated that theirs was still a “developing” country, implying at times that China was moving teleologically towards more or less European norms in these areas.  Equally though, we were told that China would chart its own course rather than develop according to any Western programme.  Do China’s leaders believe their country will and/or should one day adopt human rights policies like those in Europe? It was hard to tell.

There are some areas though, on which we already agree.  There was consensus among Chinese officials and young people from across the British political spectrum on the importance of our “partnership for growth” as championed by David Cameron and President Hu Jintau.  Trade is of course a key plank in our bilateral relationship with the world’s second largest economy and solutions to the financial crisis must be as global as the problem.  It was reassuring too though to hear support for the presence of the 100,000 or so Chinese students studying in the UK.  I hope that young Conservatives and Liberal Democrats can play a role in influencing their leaders in Government whose controversial proposals to limit immigration, including student immigration, threaten to undermine the excellence and international standing of our universities.

I could not agree more with Nick Maxwell on the need to foster relations between British and European citizens and their Chinese counterparts.  This plays an essential role, complementary to that of diplomatic exchanges.  Meetings of ministers and ambassadors can achieve many things, but cannot alone facilitate the shared understanding and respect between peoples which our Chinese friends rightly emphasised throughout the event.

The discussion shed light on diverse areas of policy: domestic as well as foreign.  Above all, young British speakers as well as those who identified as Chinese-British spoke of the frustrating lack of Mandarin teaching in our schools.  This resonates for those of us who frequently experience embarrassment when traveling in Europe or around the world, as we realise that our language skills pale in comparison to our hosts, who often converse confidently in English and/or other foreign tongues.   To prepare our young people for the globalised 21st century, surely our education system must do more to prioritise language teaching.

Labour’s current policy review is a unique opportunity for fresh thinking.  Hopefully it will have a strong international element.  The party’s new vision for Britain must take account of our role in an increasingly interconnected global community.

Radical welfare reform?

In this member post, Young Fabian member Timothee Vlandas dissects Cameron’s claim that proposed changes to the welfare system are “radical”.

“The most ambitious, fundamental and radical changes to the welfare system”

With these words Cameron described the recent proposals by the Liberal-Conservative coalition to reform the welfare state. The changes have been widely criticised because of their potential impact on current recipients. While disagreements are likely over what ought to be the standard of living of people not in work and how much their choices are to blame for their situation, it is less contentious that children should, by and large, be spared from these debates.

One way to assess whether they are likely to be is to look at the probable impact of welfare changes on child poverty rates. But before looking at the possible evolution of poverty rates, it’s worth having a quick look at the long term picture.

Child poverty rates were between 10 and 15% during the 60s and early 70s. Thatcher once said: ” Let our children grow tall, and some taller than others if they have it in them to do so.” On 4 May 1979, Thatcher became Prime Minister, a post she would hold until 1990, while overseeing a rise to nearly 30% of the child poverty rate during that time.

When Major stepped down and Blair took over in 1997, it was around 25%. Blair arguably managed to bring it down slightly above 20%, hardly a huge change, though one should take into account that this occurred in the context of rising median incomes, and hence higher poverty thresholds.

With this brief historical perspective in mind, let’s now turn to the question of the likely impact of the coalition’s tax and benefit reforms on child poverty rates. A recent Institute for Fiscal Studies Briefing Note looks at these issues. The estimated impact, as summarised in the IFS note, is to reduce poverty for working age people without children while increasing by about 100,000 poverty for those with children.

While not as detrimental as one could have feared, it is hard to see anything ambitious in such a forecast. In fact, what makes these proposals to further retrench the welfare state so absurd is that it is already so limited in comparative terms. The child poverty rates is just the more extreme manifestation of the deficiencies of the British welfare state.

The UK has one of lowest net replacement rates of unemployment benefits in the EU15. With only 54% of previous net earnings replaced by unemployment benefits in 2004. Only Ireland had a lower replacement rate. The average duration of its unemployment insurance was only 6 months, the lowest in the EU15 together with Italy (OECD).

This is made worse by the lowest employment protection legislation in Europe. Against this backdrop, very little is spent on active labour market programs such as training schemes to help the unemployed get back into jobs.

Overall, an excessive welfare state is therefore not the problem. In 2007, the UK spent 20.5% of its GDP on public social expenditures, behind most other European countries: Germany (25.2%), France (28.4%), Italy (24.9%), Austria (26.4%), and Belgium (26.3%). By the mid-2000s, only Italy and Portugal had higher inequality after taxes and transfers (OECD).

A truly ambitious reform of the welfare state would address the shocking level of child poverty and provide the basis for a fully developed social insurance system.

• Timothy blogs at euwelfarestates.blogspot.com.

Finding a cure

In this member post, Young Fabian member Louie Woodall suggests a cure to the current NEET epidemic.

Unemployment is rightly termed a social disease, and it is rapidly turning into an epidemic within one of the most vulnerable and important groups of all: the young.

Figures released on 13 April were stomach-turning: more than 1 in 5 people aged 16-25 are now out of work; within just a few months, the number of jobless young could reach 1 million.

The prognosis for the economy is bleak. Research by the London School of Economics suggests that the average ‘NEET’ (young person Not in Employment, Education or Training) costs the state £97,000 over their lifetime. More importantly, there are shocking implications for the future health and wellbeing of an entire generation of Britons. A survey conducted by the Macquorie Group Foundation/You Gov between 26-29 November 2010 revealed that those young people who were unemployed were twice as likely to suffer debilitating physical and mental health conditions, including self-harm and panic attacks. Research undertaken by The Young Foundation also publicised that NEETs are more likely than their peers to have mental health problems, learning disabilities and a dependence on substances.

This epidemic is virulent and wide reaching; touching the poor school drop-out and middle-class graduate alike. An effective cure must therefore consist of a variety of interlocking programmes that serve to prevent and protect all those at risk.

First, the inoculation. The most consistent predictors of NEET status are poor school attendance (recurrent truants are seven times more likely to be NEET at 16); belonging to a home where no-one works; exiting the care system; and being a teenage parent. Remedying and reducing the incidence of these predictors at an early stage in a child’s life is key to solving the problem.

The solutions are varied, and there’s no harm in trying them all.

An increase in alternative education environments, such as Studio Schools, after-school clubs and community youth centres, could help cultivate those children and teens floundering in our regimented state schools. Employment schemes that target jobless parents should be broadened. A reconstituted care scheme that prioritises the support of those undergoing the transition into adulthood, and a more comprehensive network of state services that seeks to both reduce incidences of teen pregnancies and improve the range of support options available to young mothers and fathers, would also tackle the NEET disease at its very roots.

Second, the antidote to the current wave of youth unemployment. Interestingly, arguments that suggest youth unemployment is attributable to sloth and a range of perverse disincentives in the welfare system seem wide of the mark. NEETs in Leeds interviewed by The Guardian in January claimed they had a real desire to work, and that they wanted to have a purpose, to have a reason to wake up in the morning. Similarly, a survey of NEETs in Bedford reported that when asked, young people listed possession of a job as their uppermost need.

Therefore, the problem must be understood as the product of economic and institutional failure. The Adam Smith Institute suggests that the National Minimum Wage prices young people out of employment, as businesses are reluctant to shell out between £4 and £5 an hour for unskilled labour. Furthermore, the leap from the Youth National Minimum Wage to the National Minimum Wage, for which Britons become eligible at 21, has been highlighted as a reason why those under this magic number are disinclined to seek employment. Why not do something radical, and standardise the Minimum Wage across all ages?

On institutions, the evidence suggests that those services attempting to meet the needs of NEETs are overstretched, understaffed, and ill-equipped to provide the lengthy, one-on-one support needed to ensure a successful transition into full-time work. Some services are bureaucratic labyrinths to the uninitiated, and some choose not to seek available state help because of the complexity of its workings and/or previous experience of disappointment.

This is an area where ‘The Big Society’ needs to step in, and there are some encouraging steps in the right direction. Make It Happen is a government-sponsored programme helping graduates to establish their own firms, while the Calman Trust recently secured £16millon for a training hotel in the Scottish Highlands, designed to both teach and employ jobless youngsters.

If, as David Cameron insisted in PMQs in January, “the long term structural problem of youth unemployment” is one which the government has “to get a grip on”, it needs to start now, and it needs to recruit those outside parliament – you and me – to lend a hand.

The trouble with G.O’D.

The Guardian reports today that Sir Gus O’Donnell – head of the Civil Service – blocked an attempt by Gordon Brown to launch a judicial inquiry into the phone hacking affair because of the general election.

Given recent revelations, that looks like particularly poor judgement.

And it raises another important question: is Sir Gus O’Donnell too political to be head of the Civil Service?

On the one hand, you might agree with his analysis that it would “inappropriate to hold a judicial inquiry so close to a general election”, as the Guardian reports – any such inquiry would likely have become a campaigning issue due to (a) the fact former Editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson , was a key part of David Cameron’s so-called ‘inner circle’ and (b) Labour had lost the support of the News of the World (and the Sun).

On the other hand, the appointment of Andy Coulson – and his retention even when the evidence of widespread phone hacking continued to drip into the public sphere – calls into question Cameron’s judgement. It is entirely appropriate for political opponents to highlight this.

More fundamentally, the proximity or otherwise of elections should not be used to insulate politicians from poor decision making, and nor should it be used to obfuscate the judicial process – remember, victims of phone hacking were subject to illegal acts for which some reporters have already been imprisoned.

This is the second time in 10 months that Sir Gus O’Donnell’s advice has been called into question – the first related to his role in the coalition negotiations last summer.

Is it now time for him to go?

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

Cameron and the spirit of Stanley Baldwin

In this guest post, Young Fabian member Laurence Turner reflects on the historical comparisons made with the current coalition government.

Nick Clegg would have us believe that we live in an age of reform comparable to the 1830s, but in truth it feels more like the 1930s.

On May 12th, David Cameron announced that the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had ‘overcom[e] political differences to forge a new government in the national interest.’ This was powerful rhetoric, but the words were of a different age. They could easily have been uttered by a triumphant Stanley Baldwin almost eighty years earlier.

As historical actors, Baldwin and Cameron strike a similar pose. Both modernisers, both easy media performers, both leaders of anti-Labour coalitions. It seems from his speeches that Cameron is taking Baldwin’s style of leadership seriously, and so should we.

Like Cameron, Baldwin transformed the Conservative Party from a sectional organisation, ill-equipped to appeal to a changed electorate, into the dominant force in British politics. Most importantly, he successfully established his Party’s ‘non-political’ credentials and, by way of contrast, associated his opponents with the stigma of factionalism.

Of course, ‘non-political’ appeals are by their nature political, and inclusive rhetoric can be one of the most effective means of excluding and marginalising opposition groups. Baldwin spent almost ten years building a contrast between the ‘National’ Conservative Party and a ‘Socialist’ Labour Party – a strategy which provided the National Government with its rhetorical clothing.

There is a present danger for Labour here.

As Philip Williamson has argued, after 1931 ‘appeals to national interest, national unity, equal sacrifices, and responsibility overwhelmed those to socialism, social justice, and class’. The proof is striking: the National Government ticket won the 1935 General Election with 53.3% of the vote. Labour must engage more meaningfully with values and ideology, but if we phrase our appeal too narrowly then we will be similarly outmanoeuvred. The Left’s intellectual renaissance during the thirties needs to be emulated today, but that in itself was small compensation for a decade of Tory ascendancy.

Cameron and Clegg will try to emulate this achievement. The Left must develop the arguments needed to prevent this from occurring. History provides us with one small example: how can this be the ‘New Politics,’ when even the rhetoric has been lifted from the era of the Great Depression?

Of course, the parallel is inexact, and the contrasts are encouraging. Labour is not so hopelessly fractured as in 1931, and Cameron – though he has taken to coalition life well – does not seem as formidable an opponent as Baldwin. In terms of grand vision, for example, the Big Society is weak stuff compared to the enduring appeal of the Property Owning Democracy.

The spectre of The National Government does, however, help us to define the scale of the challenge that must be overcome if we are to see a genuinely progressive government back in Number 10.

Can we stop fighting the Tory Party of the 1980’s?

Every time I hear that clip of John McDonnell saying he would go back in time and assassinate Margaret Thatcher I shudder.

I know many people will say that I’m too young to remember Thatcher and so I wouldn’t understand the way some people in the Labour Party like the ill-judged McDonnell or other long-standing Thatcher opponents such as Ken Livingstone still feel about her and the politics she represented. Perhaps it’s ok if they are allowed to continue to hate her, fight her, and moan about her. Its conversely similar to the way some web-savvy Tories still talk about her.

But the rest of the Party – those who actually want to return to government and win the confidence of voters again – must now stop fighting the Tory party of the 1980’s.

It’s not just the mobile phones which have changed since 1980’s, it’s the politics and also our society which has moved on, and so Labour should too. We’ve got to accept that this new coalition has shaken up our politics and it’s made people think that there is a new centre-ground in British politics which is a natural space for the Conservative Party and their Liberal Democrat colleagues.

But to show where this coalition is failing – and it already is – we need to do more than simply point out the mad right-wingers who still dominate the Tory backbenches. We need to stop arguing that Tories are all toffs with baronets who want to destroy the state and privatise everything in sight. Otherwise people won’t want to listen, we know that because we’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work.

Crewe and Nantwich showed us that, remember the Labour activist dressed-up in a DJ and top-hat? I think that’s a campaign to forget.

What I’d like to see now from all the Leadership candidates is a new and confident message about the modern conservative party under David Cameron which shows how their ideology is driving the desire to cut spending. The contest to be the next Leader of the Labour Party should help us reframe our view of the conservative party and find a way to really hold them to account and challenge them, not fall back to our old arguments about class and Thatcher.

David Chaplin
Chair, Young Fabians

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?

Tory Manifesto launch: “Do it yourself Government?”

There’s been a flurry of manifestos being launched today – UKIP, Plaid Cymru but the main event was obviously the Conservatives manifesto launch this morning at Battersea Power Station.

As Anthony Painter has pointed out the Tories have form when it comes to Battersea Power Station, broken promises and unfinished enterprises.

As for the manifesto itself, if Labour was supposedly looking towards North Korea for inspiration for its manifesto cover then Cameron was perhaps looking for the Thatcher touch. In hardback and costing £5 from all good stories that would sell such things, the Tory manifesto is a hefty 131-page tome. This is probably where a couple of short videos could have come in handy to explain what the booklet is about!

Don’t worry, you can even listen to audio recordings of it.

If the launch was supposed to convey a vibrant party entering into the election with energy and conviction then, perhaps, having a launch where members of the shadow cabinet were rolled out to individually give their five minute pitch for a Conservative Government was not the best approach. In fact the BBC online seemed to get bored with in and cut the live feed till the Cameron main event. It all seemed a bit 2005, they even continued with then slightly pained ‘rent-a-crowd’ behind Cameron.

Ideas like the National Citizen Service (that will be £800m please) and the marriage tax break plan (but big KC doesn’t seem to think much of it) all point to a party going backwards in order to seem current.

Ok, what about the manifesto itself? Well the big idea is ‘The Big Society’, it is the centrepiece of the Conservatives agenda which underpins all their policies. Except it isn’t very new or very well developed. Sunder over on Labourlist has pointed out that this all sounds less ‘SamCam’ and more blue rinse Thatcher.

The idea is that the Government is going to do less, but you’re going to have to make up the shortfall. If you want a good school, run it yourself. If you want public services, start your own. The Tories seems enamoured with the idea that ordinary people have endless time and resources to invest in the running and providing leadership of services. And it fails to address the key question of what happens if people just decide not to get involved? Or worse?

All the parties talk about localism but the Conservatives are not talking about alternatives, they are talking about substitutes. It isn’t the only place where the policies seem weak. The Conservatives’  politics around democracy and young people look especially lacking when compared to any of the other major parties.

The rest of the manifesto is, as the FT has pointed out, a rehash of previously announced policies:

• Sack your MP. Tories would give power of “recall” to let electors throw out MPs. Parliamentary Privilege Act to stop MPs evading prosecution.
• See how government spends your money. Central government job vacancies to be published online. All major contracts of £25k-plus to be published on line. In local government all items and contracts over £500 to be published.
• Pensioners. A promise to protect the winter fuel payment; free bus passes; free TV licences; disability living allowance and attendance allowance; and the pension credit.

Commentary seems to be lukewarm with Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 asking whether Tories’ manifesto had been designed by Smythson and the Independent rushing to tell us that Keane’s drummer was ‘horrified’ that they had used on their songs as at the launch. The Institute of Fiscal Studies puts a big question mark over the idea that the Tories won’t have to raise taxes and points to the lack of any further detail on their tax and spending plans for the lent hog the Parliament. Interestingly I could find only Johnthan Freedland on the left who seemed to think that Cameron gave a ‘commanding’ performance and ‘beginning to seal the deal’.

But the real question is why is where is the Party really focused (as Sky points out): both Parties are talking up the economy but, for the Tories, if the idea is to do something about the deficit faster and harder than Labour, then why all these whet spending promises?

The nasty party is back: Pro-hunting, anti-gay and getting personal

The increasingly desperate, deeply personal attack on Gordon Brown launched by the Conservatives is a stark reminder, if ever it were needed, that the old-style nasties never went away, they just kept quiet, hoping to con the public into believing they had changed. They’re back, and as unpleasant as ever.

The new poster campaign, derided as a “waste of money” for being old-hat, ineffective and simply “bad” by Paul Richards on Labour List (and already parodied on the excellent mydavidcameron.com website), may please the salivating hordes of Brown-hating nihilists on the Tory blogosphere, but will do little to appeal to ordinary voters, the kind of people in swing seats who the Tories need to win round to gain a majority.

Taken aback by the collapse of their poll lead, it seems more to do with pacifying their base – a worrying trend of late.

On Tuesday, David Cameron floundered badly in an interview with Gay Times, broadcast on Channel Four News. In it, he failed to commit to supporting the Alli amendment in the Lords which would allow civil partnership ceremonies to be performed on religious premises. He also, as Sunder Katwala blogged on Next Left, defended the Tories’ far-Right allies in the European parliament. Watch it:

Last week also saw Cameron’s European parliament front bench spokesman on international development speak out against the Tobin tax, the tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, in Britain and abroad, raising hundreds of billions each year, saying:

“What did we go and do just now, we voted for a Tobin tax to hammer already weakener financial institutions in the west and give money to a whole bunch of people who will probably steal it.”

And today, The Independent revealed details of a highly secretive, kept-under-wraps underhand campaign by bloodthirsty hunters to target anti-hunt Labour MPs and candidates, spurred into action by Cameron’s promise of a vote on the repeal of the Hunting Act. The Indy reports that:

“Hundreds of hunt supporters are under orders to ride into action in key marginal seats within hours of a general election being called, in the knowledge that David Cameron will allow a return to hunting with dogs if he gets to Downing Street. Documents seen by The Independent show that hunt masters have been rounding up supporters and sending them to the most fiercely contested seats, ahead of a big push planned for the first 72 hours of campaigning…

“Members of the Heythrop Hunt, which operates in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, have been organised to help Richard Graham, a businessman who recently gave up his job to be a full-time Conservative candidate in Gloucester, where the Labour MP Parmjit Dhanda is defending a 4,271 majority… The East Kent Hunt, operating south of Canterbury, urged its supporters to “do everything in their power” to help the Conservative candidate in Dover, Charlie Elphicke, unseat the Labour MP, Gwyn Prosser, who has a 4,941 majority to defend.

“Nicky Sadler, of Vote-OK… said: ‘We are helping some Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru candidates, but no Labour. The majority are Conservatives, because the Conservatives are the only party that has repeatedly said they will repeal the Hunting Act.’”

In many ways, these events serve only to remind us of what we already knew, and hopefully act as a warning sign to those conned by Cameron into thinking the Tories had changed. The most damning indictment is that, despite calling for an election ever since Brown took office, they still have nothing to say on the big issues, no plan for the economy, no eye-catching policies, save for the proposals to give 3,000 of the richest estates an inheritance tax cut while the rest of us endure “austerity”…

They’re running scared. Cameron and Osborne know that if it’s a straight fight over policy, fairness and the future, they’ll lose hands down, so they’ve dragged the campaign into the gutter, just as they did in 1992 and 97, it’s where they feel at home, it’s the only place they feel they can win. I mean, who needs policies when you’ve got bugles, bloodthirsty hounds and posters on your side?! Tally ho!

There’s no substitute for policy thinking and campaigning

As we move closer to election day and the polls begin to tighten one thing is increasingly clear. There is no substitute for good policy thinking. You can spend money on billboards, pollsters, glossy leaflets and even gimmicks, but if you haven’t done the graft and got the ideas and arguments together, you run the risk of the press tearing you apart quicker than voters put the leaflets in the shred pile.

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.