Entries Tagged 'Politics (general)' ↓

The rise of Dame Bryony Rudkin goes further and faster. The so-right-wing-its-a-puzzle-why-they’re-still-in-Labour pressure group “Labour First” have put her on their slate for the National Policy Forum, at least according to Luke Akehurst, an arms trade lobbyist (and you can’t be more New Labour than a merchant of death).

Will the Campaign for Social Democracy, SDP, Manifesto Group, Tory Reform Group get the treasure of Bridge ward up to yet another place where she does not need to deal with our mundane worries? And what do the Balls backing Ipswich Labour Party think? Will we ever see those photos of her government sponsored trip around South Africa? And why on earth is Bridge Ward News the best source of gossip about the Ipswich Labour Party?

There will be more thrilling instalments as they happen.

Paul Geater spent his weekend covering David Miliband’s visit. He discusses which candidate is being supported. No real surprises apart from David Ellesmere “leaning” towards David Miliband. I suppose the odd looking kids have to stick together, although he did have some choice. Ellesmere, unlike his rather nice parents, exemplifies the “no one likes us” politics of Ipswich Labour that has lost them control of the council, so if Balls can’t attract him then who can he get? Sadly for the Tories Balls looks like he’s dead in the water (I spent some of the Maidenhall fun day trying to persuade Jim Powell of Ed Ball’s merits).

Otherwise its Sandy Martin supporting Ed Miliband, who’s appealing to the hopeless lefties and somehow attracted Sandy, and Adam Leeder … who cares? Already known people are Mama Rudkin (David M), Chris Mole (Balls) and John Cook (Balls – but not interviewed).

I usually ask questions that I know the answer to, but did Paul Geater cover David Cameron’s visit to the North Ipswich lot when he was the front runner for leadership? I genuinely don’t know, but if he found that uninteresting on a week day but Miliband interesting enough for a weekend, well…

EDIT: I’ve also got to point out that Ben Gummer is also endorsing David Miliband

John Prescott was always known for being, well, less academic than was average among Labour MPs. Not able to grasp complex issues, unable to put a sentence together and always blaming his far superior wife for everything from taking short car journeys to accepting peerages – those were his good points. However being the clown has worked for most Liberal leaders in my lifetime, and unlike them Prescott was a clear eyed thug – which you need in politics.

The problem with the clown act is that it starts to become real and the problem with clear eyed thugs is that they become destructive when they stop seeing as clearly. Calling Alan Milburn a “collaborator” is not doing the Labour Party any good, which I have no doubt that John Prescott loves deeply.

Britain needs a sensible opposition to the coalition, otherwise they will do what all unchallenged governments do and grow arrogant. This does not mean comparing them to occupying Germans. Particularly if you are the pro-Lisbon party – do you now see how silly it sounds?

There are sensible voices out there in Labour’s benches. Will Straw is calling for a Labour narrative on the structural deficit, Lord Myners has made an after the event speech in the House of Lords attacking the overspending and Ipswich’s own Kevan Lim attacked his party for the orgy of untruth that they were engaging in regarding the UK’s economic situation.

Do Ipswich Labour Party follow this self destructive course? If so many of them weren’t backing Ed Balls then we’d have less cause to worry.

So John Cook the defeated candidate for Norwich North is back in his old stomping ground of Ipswich, as I predicted he would be before the election. It’s not online but he’s been doing some good old fashioned stirring about the fact that Ben Gummer’s office although functioning (I’ve had some dealings with them) does not yet have a shopfront office, like the Labour MP for Rochdale.

I also understand from a Labour mole (no, not that Mole) that he is now the agent for Ipswich.

Surely his first love was Norwich North? For the life of me I can’t understand why a failed Parliamentary candidate would hang around a constituency without a nominated candidate where the incumbent majority is just over half of his old constituency. That’s a real puzzler. Maybe Chris Mole, David Ellesmere or Bryony Rudkin would be able to answer this? I bet they love a bit of competition.

How would you fancy a Norwich season ticket holder as your next MP?

I have thought long and hard about the lifetime tenancy issue with council housing. I do understand that David Cameron was looking at how to help the poorest, that he was not talking about altering the current tenancies and that it is only a suggestion. But it is wrong and better suited to the corporate boardrooms of New Labour than any party that’s proposing a Conservative ideology.

There are three reasons why this is wrong.

Firstly it puts a terrible disincentive to find work. Iain Duncan Smith has quite rightly talked about the benefit system not penalising people for working. Well, losing your home is a penalty in most people’s book.

Secondly it degrades communities. People invest in their community when they know they will set down roots. If they know that they may not have a choice then they will simply leave.

The third is one that should really make any Tory think again about this. It will give Labour councils the power to evict people, and more to the point Labour councillors. Do we really want a return to the days of “take that poster down or you’ll lose your house”? Labour councillors used to treat Bridge as a vote bank, and would refuse to help people looking to buy their home. What would they be like if they had the power to throw Tory council tenants on the street? Or even the potential to influence this?

Middle class Labour councillors are irritated by middle class Tories, like me, but they really despise working class Tories. To any Tory councillors reading this, do you want John Cook, Sandy Martin or David Ellesmere influencing housing decisions about your voters who live on council estates? You know the Labour group dislike you, but that’s nothing to council tenants who display what Orwell called “wrongthink”.

There is an alternative, and it was tried in the 1980s, council house sales. This will cement people into their community far more effectively, and improve the quality of the housing stock. And this time allow the proceeds to be used to build new council housing (with a right to buy). You can also look at schemes such as rent to mortgages and self management of estates. These are clearly definable policies which cut down the power of government in people’s lives, increase the stake that people have in their community and vastly improve the quality of people’s accommodation.

All of these options are far more “big society” than giving Labour councillors the power to elect a new people.

I predicted that the no-one likes us, we don’t care attitude of Ipswich Labour would mean that some of them would swing behind Ed Balls, and look here both Chris Mole and John Cook (the ex-agent here, and an important player still in the Ipswich Labour Party) are backing the Conservative’s best hope.

While it’s understandable why Chris Mole would back a public school boy who’s keen to hide his privileged background, it’s a bit of a puzzle with John Cook. John Cook attacked his Tory opponent in Norwich North for hesitating if asked whether she would have been tempted by New Labour in 1997. “She talks a good script, but I don’t know where her politics are coming from.” He added: “I couldn’t ever have been anything other than Labour.”

Now that’s not in itself a wrong thing, although it could explain why they seem to be having an uphill struggle in Ipswich at the moment, but Ed Balls was something “other than Labour” and in fact was a member of the Conservatives when at University, in the middle of the 1980s. He may have claimed in that article to have ridden both horses (politically) but that’s hardly tribal Labour.

Was this overlooked because John Cook is a Norwich season ticket holder and so is Ed Balls? And you wonder why those two lost when Labour candidates with lower majorities in 2005 won.

I can understand the Conservative case for letting Turkey into the European Union. It will destabilise the EU and will lock Turkey in with the West like it locked France in when De Gaulle, er, took France out of NATO. Is the European Union really less powerful than it was when we joined it and there were only twelve members? Maastricht, Lisbon and the Single European Act would argue that it hasn’t.

So letting Turkey in will fail in any geopolitical gambit.

And what about the practical effect on us here? Bridge ward, particularly the Old Stoke part, has been a magnet for Eastern European immigrants. This has clearly put wages down and rents up, and it also has had an effect on school rolls – although its not really affected the doctor’s surgeries.

Turkey will be more of the same. Much more. The rural heart of Turkey is both poorer and more populous than Eastern European countries. And did I mention illiteracy? There is also the issue of an increasingly more militant Islam. We’re assuming that Turkish kids will be immune from this, because the Turkish upper middle class used to be. That’s one massive assumption.

The Conservatives canvassed on the basis that they would listen to people’s concerns on immigration and take them seriously. If the Conservatives simply put a cap on skilled immigration and then drown this out through a far larger increase in the amount of people allowed in through EU accession they will not be forgiven or forgotten. David Cameron’s guff that Turkey was always improving and so there wouldn’t be anything to worry about on immigration sounds a bit like Tony Blair assuring us that there would only be a few thousand people coming in from the EU accession states. We could put Blair’s mistake down to ignorance, Cameron won’t have the same excuse.

The left has sacrificed the interests of the working class to trendy concerns in favour of windmills and against church going, the Conservatives promised to listen. Letting Turkey in to the EU is not listening.

David Miliband got an unimaginable boost to his campaign when our very own Dame Bryony Rudkin announced that she would anoint him as her candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party. Former councillor John Cook, who seems to find any excuse to come down to Ipswich, is spreading the gospel for wounded candidate Ed Balls (as is Tory Councillor Paul West).

So who are Ipswich Labour party supporting? Ipswich Labour Party’s strength and abiding weakness is that they have stayed tribal when the rest of the country is far less tribal than it was a generation ago. This is why they didn’t see Ben Gummer’s challenge until it was too late. However it also means that they should be able to keep the whole show on the road and not implode after government as other Constituency Labour Parties seem to be doing.

Ed Balls image as a “no compromise with the voters” candidate should appeal to the Ipswich Labour Party. That is, however, the Ipswich Labour Party’s problem.

Sorry it’s late but Ben Gummer will be in the Spread Eagle on Fore Street (near St Pancras church) today from 8pm onwards. Ask him awkward questions.

I’d just written an email to James Ball at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism on the Channel 4 story about Ben Gummer and then realise that they were the ones who originally commissioned the piece. Silly me:

Dear Mr Ball,

On your website you say that you want to get emails from any “journalist, campaigner or member of the public with a story you think the Bureau should be investigating”. I have a rather puzzling investigation.

There have been two investigations done on Channel 4 about expense investigations. These have covered six MPs, Zac Goldsmith, Ben Gummer, Gavin Barwell, Dan Byles, Sarah Teather and Phil Woolas. Four of these were Conservative, one Liberal Democrat and one Labour. That’s not that interesting.

What is interesting is the identity of the second party. In Croydon Central, Ipswich, Warwickshire and Brent Central the second party was Labour. In the other two it was Liberal Democrats. It seems very odd that there are no Conservatives in second place. Was Channel 4 and whatever third party outfit they were using biased on this? And how unusual was it?

I did a quick count of all the seats that had a majority of less than 4,092 (185 seats) where the Conservatives were second (75 seats). 4,092 is one more than the highest majority among these six (Zac Goldsmith with 4,091). Now the probability of any one of these seats at random having a Tory runner up would be 40.54%. So getting a non-Tory is a perfectly respectable 59.45% chance. To get two non Tory runners up and no-one else would be a lower but credible 35.22%. Three non-Tory runners up would be 20.7%, four would be 12.2% and five would be 7.15%. This would be very hard to justify as a fair representation. However six non Tory runners up would actually have a probability of 4.175%. Just under a one in twenty four chance.

Perhaps it was only the Conservatives who overspent, but I got an email today from the Sunlight Centre who said that they “have this week begun a new investigation into the election spending of Zac Goldsmith, Chris Huhne and Ed Balls.” In two of these cases the second place candidate was a Tory and in one they were not. Which one did Channel 4 and Anthony Barnett cover?

I must declare an interest on this (on which more later) and I am a constituent of Ben Gummer and I even wore one of the now famous Tee Shirts. I do like Mr Gummer but even his biggest fans would not claim that he was more newsworthy than Chris Huhne and Ed Balls, one of whom is a cabinet minister and one of whom was a cabinet minister in the recent past. Why have they not been covered?

On declaring an interest, I have watched the two broadcasts and read a lot of the articles on this and the main journalist is a Mr Anthony Barnett. It is not made clear that he was a director of the broadly anti-Conservative Charter 88, a writer for the Labour supporting New Statesman and on the editorial board of the Marxist New Left Review. It makes the one in twenty four chance look very odd indeed. I also notice that he has shared a platform with Chris Huhne in his role as the Co-Director of the Convention on Modern Liberty. Perhaps conflicts of interest of this one time soft left campaigner and new born journalist could be investigated?

I understand that the (non-partisan) Sunlight Centre have scooped you on all the major stories on MPs expenses, so perhaps this would be a story where you could scoop them?

Yours,

James Spencer

UPDATE:

Welcome to readers from ITN (the producers of Channel 4 News), the Labour Party and the Channel 4 Corporate division. You may want to see Panscourer’s post on this. He chides me for being mild.