Britain

Professionals discuss logistics

On Friday, Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg came to visit Bath.

The event was to be held in the Chapel Arts Centre (a performance space underneath a chapel).

An interesting discussion ensued between a resident and the Lib Dem Cllr organising the event, in the forum of the local newspaper.

Greg says:

Why is this in a venue that does not have wheelchair access!!!! – Unbelievable, that just sums up how the government treats disabled people! Hoe can wheelchair users get to join in if they can’t even get in to the venue!

Lib Dem Cllr responds:

You’re right that the venue doesn’t have full wheelchair access. This was a consideration when I booked it yesterday. However, the nature of the steps and doors means that it is possible to carry a chair and passenger into the venue without too much trouble. Our volunteers will certainly help as necessary. I appreciate that this isn’t elegant, but I am grateful to the Chapel Arts Centre for being able to accomodate us at short notice. Send me an email to info@bathlibdems.org.uk if you’d like to plan specific access requirements.

Greg replies:

it’s good to see your comment, and would be possible if you use a manual wheelchair, but I have tried to access places with similar access in the past with my heavy powered wheelchair (as many people who have muscle and neurological conditions rely on due the the needs created by their disability) and this just is not practical and safe to do, and attempts have unfortunately ended in accidents in the past to both wheelchair user and people trying to lift chairs that are not made to be lifted up steps.

Then in a subsequent article, said Cllr continues to put his foot in it by calling the venue change a “pain”:

I’m glad Nick Clegg came to Bath and I’m proud that he’s continuing the same town hall meetings as he did before the election.
It was a pain having to move venues, but I’m really impressed that over 250 Bath locals came to take part so it was worth doing.
Incidentally, I earn about £21,000 per year (two jobs) and don’t consider myself poor. In fact, half of all workers in Britain earn less than £21k – it is the median average income. I find it quite reasonable.
Thanks again to everyone who came along to share their views. I’ve been canvassing this morning as a Liberal Democrat and I didn’t get booed once!

It’s an amusing thread (if you’re not a Lib Dem, which according to the latest polls, that’s 91% of the population), much better than the loonies on Have Your Say!

Ed Miliband is listening

From the Guardian, January 3rd, 2011:

[Ed Miliband] immediately instituted a language change that grumpy Labour backbenchers were impressed by. It was to be referred to as a “Tory-led government” not the more cuddly “coalition”.

From this site, July 29th, 2010:

It is this appropriate to treat the Coalition not as something strange but as something that is all too familiar; this is a Tory Government in all but name. It is up to Labour to call it as it is.

Seems like I’m getting on well with the Ed’s in the Shadow Cabinet.

University of Bath under occupation

My university, the University of Bath is now the location for one of the many student protests against Higher Education cuts and the raising of tuition fees.

I stopped by the protest and helped them to write a press release for their blog, here.

They’ve also sent a letter to Lib Dem Don Foster MP, whom I interviewed last Friday. (To be broadcast between 1800 and 1900 Wednesday on 1449AM radio)

–

Hadleigh Roberts, a presenter for the current affairs program “Buzz” on the URB campus radio noted:

“The general feeling of this protest is more than an insular concern about student personal debt. Evidently, the impact of this policy is something that will be felt by students, but also has a huge impact on the quality of life of people today, and the life chances of generations in the future.

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In the shadows of the Shadow Cabinet

I think the positioning of people in the shadow cabinet shows that Ed Miliband is off to a rocky start.

By losing brother David, he has immediately lost a key ally in the cabinet, but I don’t want to comment on family matters.

What caught my eye is where the “top jobs” went.

Shadow Chancellor: Alan Johnson
Shadow Foreign Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Shadow Home Secretary: Ed Balls

The Balls-Cooper household must have had its roof blown off. Johnson has been put there because of general competence, likeability and political neutrality (say “moderate”) to keep Balls away from his ‘dream job’. Steady Al won’t cause any trouble for Ed M.

Balls, as a now-scorned political operator, has been kicked to the Home Office, where he’ll be so busy on the job he won’t have time for anything else.

Cooper, who would have been my pick for the Treasury, has been sent to the Shadow Foreign Office, a political wasteland where she will have to chase after journalists herself. Nobody bothers interviewing the Shadow Foreign Sec. They only ever got Hague on because he was Hague and de facto Deputy Tory-in-Chief. The only thing she would be able to kick up a fuss about will be Europe, which is a vote-loser anyway. There aren’t any treaties in the offing and no elections in sight. It’s off the agenda.

He even put Diane Abbott in a junior position. (Tent pissing out.)

At least he’s put 22 new MPs in the line-up so they can get trained as fast as possible.

Overall we’re not off to a good start, which is bad for Ed, bad for Labour and very bad for Britain.

Am I talking Balls or is he talking me?

Ed Balls, one of the Labour Leadership contenders, has published an article on his website (here) in which he talks about a few traps the Labour Party should avoid. A week is a long time in politics, apparently long enough to forget my Countering the Coalition series.

Obviously, I’m not claiming to have a monopoly on ideas, but see if you can spot the difference.

Countering the Coalition 6: Conclusion, a Soft Opposition

This is without doubt a new era in politics. The end of a Labour decade, the Liberals are back in government, and of course the start of a coalition.

The Education Secretary’s disastrous mishandling over the Building Schools for the Future program posed the question of how long the government’s honeymoon will last and there are multiple factors worth considering in response. The fact that this is a coalition opposed to a single party gives the coalition a certain novelty aspect, particularly so as it follows 13 years where Labour has had extremely large majorities, meaning that the public will be more inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

However, the conditions that prolong the government’s honeymoon like the ‘time for a change’ feeling are likely to dissipate very quickly. As cuts begin to impact on frontline public services people will inevitably become less sympathetic, in addition to this we have had a few minor political scandals with David Laws and Chris Hunhe, and now a larger competence-based scandal surrounding Michael Gove, which will accumulate and test the public’s patience.

Labour has to act in two stages, the immediate term and then a deeper approach. The timing of this falls along two parallels, primarily with the duration of the government’s honeymoon period and secondarily the long process of the Labour Leadership election.

The Tory strategy is almost crass in its execution; Labour left us in this mess, but we are clearing it up. They gibber about the deficit and they panic over national debt, completely neglecting the economic recovery and, even more surprisingly, forgetting the massive global financial crisis that Labour had to deal with to stop the economy collapsing.

True or not, fair or not, their criticism has a bold simplicity. Our argument is more evolved than theirs which means it is more difficult to understand and therefore less popular. It operates under what I call the “Garden Shed Principle,” which is to say that normal people understand how their household finances work, and how to use bank overdrafts, and so it resonates when Cameron uses such an analogy. Nobody knows whether saving the banks is worth trillions and billions because nobody can really understand whether it is value for money. Yet the anger was so much more explosive during the expenses scandal because people know the price of a garden shed, and when an MP claims several thousand pounds for a duck house, they can see the injustice.

The solution is to disarm the government of the argument. The Tories are in the same mode as they were before the General Election in that they are trying to frame the debate around what happened in the past instead of policies for the future. We have to move the debate forward by “accepting and moving on.” Harriet Harman as acting leader is in the perfect position to act as a lightning rod and clear the ground ready for the new leader to make a fresh start without so much baggage left over from the credit crunch.

A strategy of Soft Opposition currently seems the most appropriate for Labour. My example to follow is how Zapatero conducted his party before becoming the President of the Spanish Government in 2004. His prescription was to be as calm and constructive as possible, even going so far as to offer pacts to the government of the time, which under Aznar was as equally dangerous as ours is now.

Zapatero was famous for this almost bipartisan style of opposition, for which the British public seem to have an appetite at present. Although some would suggest that the Socialist victory in Spain was as an indirect consequence of the Madrid bombings, the evidence showed a firm, slow but steady improvement for the PSOE in the polls. This is exactly the kind of foundation we need to lay over the next four years.

In contrast, the bland and non-confrontational style of Zapatero in opposition, which I must say suits perfectly all five Labour Leadership contenders, made his attacks against the government much stronger. Labour will look so much more competent and even statesmanlike than Cameron did when he was constantly on the offensive like the noise of WWI artillery.

To conclude this series, I hope that I have demonstrated some of the key features of the new government and set out a plan for Labour to proceed in opposition. The coalition showed that the Tories could not win a majority by themselves even in such favourable conditions. Labour needs to use this to our advantage in order to shrink both the Tories and the Lib Dems into a co-dependent state. The Tories lose their teeth and the Lib Dems lose their independence.

The coalition will survive for the duration of the Parliament; the conditions are right for it to last because we have seen just how willing the Lib Dems are to throw away their principles. The government is structurally sound because the Tories do not depend on the Lib Dems to be in power, but for the Lib Dems this is their only chance.

The fact that the coalition will go the distance is good for Labour as we can occupy a broader space on the centre-left. It is important to stick the other two parties together, which is why we are better off referring to John Major’s government and its divisions over the callous spending cuts of Thatcher.

In doing so, we must move away from the line that the Lib Dems betrayed their voters. If the voters feel betrayed, we cannot mock them if we want their support, this is why it is better to dismiss the Lib Dem leadership as useful idiots or even hostages in some cases, while we concentrate are arguments against a typical Tory government.

However, we do need to understand that the game we play with the Lib Dems has changed, or perhaps it would be better to say ‘exposed.’ This is why we have to resist the obvious temptation to mock their hypocrisy.

Finally, Labour needs to accept responsibility for its record in government and act accordingly. We have to show that the party is not bitter and can be constructive, but that we are always ready to right for those who need help. It is a case of picking battles carefully.

The coalition does not represent New Politics, but as the Labour Party it is our duty to come up with new ideas.