New Labour to Progressive Labour
Listening to the Rt Hon Tony Blair speak on the 15th Anniversary of Progress was a suitable punctuation to a week where politics danced with media and where the freedom of the press and what it means to have a public voice came under the spotlight.
Blair used his public voice at this address to cover ten points of what progressive politics means. He said that we need to get back into the rhythm of change and of developing policies that reflect the way we live in a rapidly changing world where people engage and communicate very differently to the way they did 15 years ago.
He said we need to be open, creative, modern and cutting edge and called for confidence in the way Labour makes progress. He said we should focus not on trying to avoid the mistakes of the past but on how to get the economy going. He said “you don’t create jobs by attacking the businesses that create them” and having tracked the economy that morning said businesses are sitting on £150 billion and we need to encourage them to invest that.
On New Labour, he talked about the dynamic process of politics and how evolution is not betrayal:
“So New Labour is not, was not and never should be about sacrificing the principles of social justice, solidarity and equality to win. It is about understanding that, in a world of change, if we don’t change, our principles become a refuge from the world not a platform to go out and transform it.”
As he answered a multitude of questions he talked about the work he is doing in driving for peace in the Middle East and governance in Africa; as well as how important it is to speak up within the party, as this is the only way for the party to drive forward with its vision.
To read Blair’s speech in full go to:
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/articles/article.asp?a=8488
7th July 2011
The spotlight this week is on the press, the wider media and the extremes they will go to in order to give the public what they want. This week, the printed media have learnt that the public do not want either gutter stories or the gutter techniques deployed to get those headlines on their breakfast table. Or will it? As advertisers pull advertising revenue, will purchasers of the red tops be forced to rethink why they have made the News of The World one of the UK’s best sellers? Do the consumers of these stories have a responsibility too to set the boundaries of what they consider to be fit for consumption? Or are they simply buying what is readily made available to them?
All of this brings us back to the long overdue debate on the boundaries of privacy and what belongs to the public arena. Does the media as the self-appointed adjudicator of content in the public domain, have the right to cause untold and sustained distress on victims of crime and should this be extended to those families where a partner/wife/husband has engaged in a relationship outside of the family? Do children in those scenarios have a voice and do they have rights too?
When the News of the World Royal Reporter Clive Goodman and Private Investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed four years ago, did this make a material difference not to the practice of individuals, whom the employers claim not to have known what their methods were, but to the organisation who employed them? Does the burden of responsibility shift to the employer in the same way that culpability under corporate manslaughter would?
Andy Coulson claimed that he did know not what “dark arts” were practised by Goodman and Mulcaire. Rupert Murdoch reportedly has said this week that he would be “absolutely appalled and horrified” if the allegations of phone hacking were true. All of this has put me in mind of the Sheen Report and its findings on corporate responsibility with regards to the Herald of Free Enterprise which claimed the lives of 193 people:
“All concerned in management … were at fault in that all must be regarded as sharing responsibility for the failure of management. From top to bottom the body corporate was infected with the disease of sloppiness.”
Many questions to be asked, many answers to be found and an inquiry, however it shapes up, may go some way towards absolving some and finding guilt in others but the debate about what the public wants and what it rightfully should know remains untested.
Fundamental to this is whether Cameron will be able to rise from the ashes of a poor choice of employee. David Cameron knew when he appointed Andy Coulson as his Director of Communications, that he had resigned from the News of the World in 2007 under the cloud of phone hacking. So what does this say about the country’s Prime Minister?
7th June 2011
People power seems to be the vogue of the day, whether it is the Localism Bill, the Arab Spring or people in India being encouraged to talk about corruption in the state and post information about the bribes they were inveigled to pay on a burgeoning website snappily entitled http://www.ipaidabribe.com/.
But what does people power really look like and what does it mean for us? Is the increased numbers of women prosecuted for domestic abuse a sign that women have become more violent or that men are now reporting the incidences with greater frequency? Is it a culture of complaint that gets things done and changed for the better? And what infrastructure is the best to ensure that the needs of people at a local level are best met?
The Localism Bill is not due to land on the statue books until November 2012 and whilst this seems a long way off, there is some way to go before the people own the bill that gives them the power. The bill promises to give people greater power over planning, housing and regeneration but in an age of sweeping cuts what will that power really look like?
Professor Richard Sennett, who splits his academic base between the London School of Economics and New York University, described the Bill on The Politics Show as a “total con” that says “you’re on your own but you don’t have any resources to be on your own… I give you the opportunity to do all this for yourself but I don’t give you the cash to do it.”
So, being cast into the world without a penny to make your way, you will be further restricted by the Secretary of State who will rubber stamp some 127 provisions which will limit and frame your activity.
Is this people empowerment or a cynical attempt to disguise an abnegation of responsibility as an increase in choice? The notion of people power looks good on paper but leaves more questions about the reality of its application where the people may choose but will not have the resources and infrastructure to implement those things that communities and people need at a local level to ensure coherent planning, decent housing and the regeneration of our communities. Sustainable and self-assisting communities are already taking a retrograde step as key community enablers such as Sure Start fight for their ability to continue to deliver the required standard of a much valued and needed service that does the very job of enabling people power. The Bill gets its second reading in the House of Lords on the 7th June. Decide for yourself and start shaping the community you want, let’s face it, you’re on your own.
21st May
Two women die per week as a result of violence against them. This tells us that there is an ongoing need for both their protection and the punishment of the perpetrators. Kenneth Clarke’s comments this week that there will be a reduction in sentencing by 50% if a rapist pleads guilty were both ill advised and ill informed and demonstrated once again that our society has along way to go in the way that it ensures a woman’s basic right to live, to be protected and to live without the fear of attack.
In The Guardian this week, David Gee, recently commended by the President of the Association of Chief Police Officers as the UK’s leading authority on rape was reported as feeling ‘”despair” when he heard Kenneth Clarke appear to suggest some rape cases were more serious than others, and accused the justice secretary of ignorance of the subject and the law.’ When the law makers fail to protect, uphold and enforce the law then a soft route into anarchy is the next step.
The Progress Conference entitled “Winning Back Britain: New Ideas for New Labour” was the highlight of the week as a plethora of the thinking left in politics and the media took to the stage at the TUC Congress Centre to debate Crime, Democracy, Public Services and the way forward.
Ed Milliband, advocated hope, not the Tory’s “shrivelled pessimism”. He talked about the need to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, for example with not having adequately modelled and planned for immigration from within Europe but most importantly urged the Party to build on the great achievements such as reducing child poverty. Cutting the deficit is essential he said, but in a way that supports growth in the economy and acknowledged that people are working longer and harder for less.
The break out sessions gave a chance to freely think through current issues and future planning and the current phase in opposition is essential in planning policy for the future. To ensure your voice and opinions are included in the debate participate in Peter Hain’s consultation “Refounding Labour” at:http://www.campaignengineroom.org.uk/refounding-labour/news/refounding-labour-launched
14th May 2011
Last week, Local and District Elections saw some very encouraging signs of Labour support across New Forest West as we saw an increase of Labour votes in comparison to 2007 and significant losses for the Liberal Democrats at District level.
This week, Home Secretary, Teresa May’s “Watershed” moment talks of relieving the Police of bureaucracy through postal charging of crimes. I see a landscape of returned letters marked as “addressee not known” or “gone away” and an endless letter trail chasing the letters sent out and not replied to. Who will issue those letters? The Police. Who will chase those letters? The Police. A Watershed moment becomes a floodgate of unanswered mail written by the very service we want to see out in the communities catching criminals.
Turning to another much valued public service, “privatisation” of NHS services is being badged as giving patients greater choice. We all recall the BBC Panorama programme “Dying to be Treated?” where Independent Sector Treatment Centres were scrutinised particularly with regards to the irony of Public Health expert John Hubley’s bleeding to death at their hands. Whilst all may not be perfect in the NHS, regulating a plethora of providers, private and charitable, will lead to the requirement of only more regulators and how many of these new providers will fall through the net of scrutiny and quality? As we saw in the programme, smaller centres will not have the aggregated mass of expertise and equipment required to deliver a truly first class health service and how will we, the discerning but largely non medical public, know how to rate one service over the other? Perhaps the coalition will take a leaf out of Michelin and award stars.
Still with health and the issue of choice is actually being removed by the Coalition’s “Safe and Sustainable” initiative as it seeks to reduce the number of specialist centres treating children’s heart conditions. Four options identifying a cluster of hospitals across the country to provide this essential and often hugely complicated service are being proposed and Southampton General is in only one of the four options. This alarmed and perplexed attendees at a public consultation on Wednesday hosted by LINk. If Southampton closed this service, families will be forced to travel either to London or Bristol to access this life saving treatment which seems bizarre as the service rates as the second best in the country. To submit your views visit www.specialisedservices.nhs.uk/safeandsustainable
Finally, the impact of jobs cuts and redundancies are beginning to bite as Basics Banks run out of food to give to the needy as was reported on BBC Radio Solent this week. We were also told that they would normally provide food for single men and now they are seeing more families. A year on and the Coalition seems to have lost its grip on sustaining and delivering the services the public need and have driven even more people onto the breadline.
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