Love Activists please go home

Love Activists

After occupying and desecrating the wonderful building that is the former Bank of England Liverpool HQ on Castle Street and attempting to spoil the party of the amazing spectacle that was the three Queens by camping out at the Pier Head, the time wasters and laggards who call themselves ‘Love Activists’ well and truly shot themselves in the foot last Friday as they barnstormed an event that was raising money for the Jamie Bulger foundation.

The excuse from this sad bunch of individuals for an outrageous and unforgiveable act of violence was that they ‘didn’t know’ the Titanic Hotel was hosting a charity night. They thought it was a Labour Party function.

Well, that’s ok then, because we all know how supportive and committed Liverpool Labour Mayor Joe Anderson has been to the government’s austerity programme.

Of course, their excuse, and their claimed cause, is pathetic. In my view they neither care or are concerned about the memory of James Bulger as they are playing politics with the reputation of a city that has spent more than a decade now revising attitudes that painted it as a basket case full of Militant, anti-establishment loonies.

How many of these protestors are from Liverpool or have any genuine connection with the city? How many of them are genuinely homeless? And how many of them are claiming welfare benefits from addresses outside of our city boundaries?

It is time for law enforcement agencies in the city, principally the Police, to sort this lot out, and run them out of town. This week they have occupied the former bar MelloMello – where next?

The police claim they can do nothing, their hands are tied. As someone who witnessed Miners being stopped, searched and turned around on motorways in the eighties as they tried to support their colleagues picketing activities during the Miners’ Strike, I find that very hard to understand.

The barrage of laws that have been introduced in recent years in the name of combatting terrorism allows the police an unhealthy range of powers to deal with almost any incident.

Surely good and legal reason can be found for getting a grip of this small bunch of malcontents who are, quite literally, dragging our city’s name into the gutter.

Labour needs to move left like FIFA needs 5 more years of Blatter

Labour

It never ceases to amaze me how little politicians, journalists and commentators learn from history.

Post the General Election we have had our very own political editor, Jim Hancock, virtually declaring the death of the Labour Party and urging a realignment of the left, which would constitute some form of bizarre arrangement with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and even the Scottish National Party.

We then have the group of ideological, infantile lefties suggesting that Labour’s loss was due to the fact that it wasn’t left wing enough!

Finally, a whole range of ‘experts’ are suggesting that the UK is now Tory forever, and Labour faces a lifetime of opposition as the nation turns blue.

Jim’s argument isn’t new. Indeed it was one articulated by trendy London modernisers throughout the eighties and early nineties as we appeared to be in the middle of a nightmare scenario that would deliver us a Thatcher led administration for eternity.

Proportional Representation and deals with other anti-Tory parties seemed the only way back for Labour to this relatively influential group of individuals. Then along came Tony Blair, a landslide election victory and ironically many of these figures went off to become special advisers to New Labour Ministers.

Also worth noting, following Blair’s three, count them, three consecutive General Election victories, the same commentators who are writing Labour off today were doing the obituaries for the Conservative Party.

The ‘not left wing enough’ claptrap is something I have been brought up on throughout my time as a Labour Party member and politician. When I was 16 I sort of sympathised. By 1983, a year when Labour presented a Manifesto that is now remembered as the longest suicide note in history, I quickly abandoned the fantasy politics of the left.

It wasn’t simply my desire to see Labour actually win. It was the fact that I was knocking on the doors of people in Skem who were virtually laughing in my face as I asked them if they would be voting for a party that was advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament, wide scale nationalisation, and taxing the wealthy ‘until the pips squeaked.’

If we couldn’t convince traditional Labour supporters of our case, then our case was wrong, and we needed to change it.

The modernisation of the party, and the drive to drag it back to a centre left policy and strategy position was a long and arduous one. Labour had nearly got there by 1992, but a combination of Neil Kinnock’s leadership and, more damagingly, a ‘tax bombshell’ that was being offered by the then Shadow Chancellor John Smith, done for them.

Blair and New Labour reminded the party that it was in the business of politics to win, not to protest. It wasn’t anti enterprise or anti aspirational- indeed it needed to embrace the notion of celebrating entrepreneurs and wealth creators, for without creating wealth, how could you redistribute it?

New Labour also did the sums. From official and independent treasury figures it recognised that taxing people at 50% was gesture politics of the highest order. From the day HMRC started to record tax collection figures they have proved positive that they take more revenue when the top rate of tax is 40% than when it is 50% or higher.

Huge investments in our schools, the NHS and other public services that had been neglected over an eighteen year period; the introduction of the minimum wage; Trade Union rights for workers at GCHQ; civil partnerships; an outward looking, pro –European stance; the regeneration of our major provincial cities; plus devolution of powers and the establishment of the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. These are among a list of New Labour achievements that the ‘left’ prefer to ignore, as they associate Blair and his government with one issue and one only – Iraq. It is easy politics, but it’s lazy and not particularly clever either.

A further lurch to the left is the greatest way to make Labour irrelevant for another decade. The party needs to remember that ‘if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you always get’. Poor leadership, offering tax rises, and having a narrative that is perceived as left wing leads to election defeats. Fact. New Labour – played three, won three!

I‘m not advocating a total regurgitation of the five pledges, a New Labour offensive and a re-run of 1997. That would be nearly as daft as what the left is saying. But Labour needs to find a way that reconnects it with those that matter, the electorate. And it needs a leader that understands that too.

Some will accuse me of being a middle class professional who has no understanding of the ‘working class’. But as the son of a trade unionist bus driver, who spent six months on the dole, and worked for years as a Welfare Rights adviser I’d say that’s bollocks.

Want Devolution? Then get an Elected Mayor!

Whitehall

So, it couldn’t be clearer. If city regions and county’s want what Manchester has in terms of devolved powers and additional resources, then they will have to adopt a governance model that includes an elected mayor.

George Osborne has thrown down the gauntlet to the likes of Leeds and Liverpool, who had indicated outright opposition to such a proposition; and he has provided counties such as Lancashire with the opportunity of genuinely getting involved in the Northern Powerhouse project.

It didn’t take Leeds long to accept that, with a majority Tory government in situ for the next five years (and way beyond that if the Labour Party continues to act as it is at the moment), a more pragmatic approach to the ‘metro mayor’ idea was required. The chairman of the Leeds Combined Authority, Peter Box, has conceded that it is something that must be explored, and I would expect progress to be made fairly quickly in terms of a West Yorkshire deal with central government. I am certainly looking forward to hearing the thoughts of Leeds City Council chief executive Tom Riordan at our forthcoming City of Leeds Business Awards evening on the 4th June.

Liverpool has remained virtually silent on the issue post-election, with city mayor Joe Anderson continuing his call for the other local authority leaders from across Merseyside to accept reality, but his comments seemingly falling on deaf ears. Unless and until the leaders from Halton, St Helens, Wirral and Knowsley demonstrate a more mature and practical response to the Osborne agenda than has thus far been the case, then the Liverpool City Region risks being side-lined from this hugely important agenda; and an increasingly frustrated business community may just start to agitate far more vociferously than has been the case so far.

For Lancashire, the chancellor’s latest speech in Manchester on the ‘devo’ subject last week gave the county some clarity and, hopefully, the reason for a collective and cohesive response to a debate that, up until now, had appeared to focus exclusively on city regions.

A ‘One Lancashire’ model, based on the boundaries currently operated by the Local Enterprise Partnership, is what Ministers prefer. Time will only tell if Lancashire’s political leaders do a ‘Leeds’ or do a ‘Liverpool’.

Burying heads in the sand, hoping for a different Whitehall policy on local government and devolution was barely credible before the General Election – it is beyond stupid now.

Politics just got Interesting

Politics Interesting

As the old saying goes a week is a long time in politics, but it will take longer than seven days for political pundits and commentators to get over the shock General Election result witnessed on May 7th – and it will take the Labour Party much, much longer than that.

It was a devastating result for Ed Miliband and his team, made worse by its unexpectedness, but had we all looked at the campaign less tribally and more objectively, then the Tory victory, actually, should not have come as that much of a surprise.

No party in modern times that has gone to the electorate offering tax increases has been successful at the polls; wheeling out a cross dressing celebrity to campaign in Glasgow and getting the leader to have a cup of coffee with an elitist hippy shouted ‘out of touch Londoners’ to even the most traditional of Labour supporters; and the less said about the ‘Ed Stone’ the better.

Labour must now get itself up and dust itself off as quickly as it can practically do – and if the party has any sense they will leave the Blair/Brown days behind, jump a generation and take a risk of one of its up and coming young guns to lead it into the 2020 General Election. Labour needs a leader that can beat Boris – not someone who can go head to head with Cameron.

Talking of the Prime Minister, there was probably nobody more surprised, and relieved, than him when the ballot papers had all been counted.

Only a fortnight ago I and many others were predicting an early demise for Dave, as predators such as BoJo and Theresa May eyed his job. The election victory has bought him some time, but he will be more aware than anyone that he has a difficult balancing act of chastising his swivel eyed backwoodsmen and keeping his modern Conservatism agenda on track.

The EU in/out referendum was a panic promise too far, as he must surely realise when now analysing the UKIP performance, but he must go ahead with this folly now, risking the ire of both business and his own Europhile MPs.

His majority is far from huge, and therefore the chances of him going through the lifetime of this parliament without experiencing his own ‘bastards’ moment is highly unlikely. However, he has two big advantages over John Major. First, he has already announced he will not be fighting the next election, so on a personal level he has nothing to lose. Second, the official opposition will take some time to recover from what was a massive and unexpected setback.

Devolution remains a big part of the chancellor’s agenda, so opportunities for the north will offer themselves; whilst the whole issue of the Union, in light of the SNP’s surge, will keep the new government busy on many a front – and give us all plenty to talk about, and keep us interested over the next five years.

As for Farage and Co, and the almost extinct Liberal Democrats, for me, they got what they deserved.

Five Things we’ve learned from The Election Campaign

Election 2015
  1. Ed Miliband isn’t as daft as he looks

Before the campaign it was generally acknowledged, even by some of his closest allies, that as far as profile and image were concerned, Ed Miliband was hardly ‘A’ list Hollywood. However, more in hope than expectation, they hoped that his intellectual capacity and his genuine ‘niceness’ would win over sceptics. To a large extent, he has. Even if you don’t like his policies, or find him the least attractive political leader you have cast your eyes on, Miliband is hard to dislike. He has had a good campaign, articulating his party’s case in a firm, direct and effective manner. The Conservatives personal attacks on him, in particular the crass ’back stabber’ accusation, backfired on the Tories spectacularly. Even if he doesn’t get the keys to Number 10, Ed has done a decent job.

  1. The case against voting reform is weakening

The big argument that is always used against changing our existing ‘first past the post’ electoral system is that it provides a process that results in strong, single party government. However, we are heading for a second consecutive hung parliament, and if voting intentions continue to be as transient among a new generation of voters in the future as they appear to me now, then the days of one party government are well and truly behind us. At least a new proportional voting system would give voters in cities like Liverpool and Manchester, where they weigh rather than count the Labour vote, a reason to visit their local polling station.

  1. UKIP are as daft as they look

I have now lost count of the number of candidates and members who have been removed, suspended and expelled from a party whose main influence has been to drive the Conservative party to the right on the issue of Europe, and the Labour Party to run scared of this issue of immigration. It must be with regret that Cameron and Miliband now look at the past five years and wonder why they didn’t apply a far more robust and aggressive strategy to rebut some of the utter crap that UKIP has been allowed to get away with on both of these key areas of policy. That the wheels would fall off the Farage bandwagon was inevitable in my opinion, and they will be lucky to retain their existing two parliamentary seats, whilst Farage is looking less likely to win in the constituency of South Thanet, where the voters appear to have more sense than the owner of the Daily Express!

  1. Cameron won’t be Tory Leader for much longer

His admission that he would only want to be Prime Minister for one more term of office may have been honest, but it was also a mistake. As soon as those words and that statement was broadcast, David Cameron was a dead man walking. Last weekend’s newspapers were packed full of stories about the runners and riders for the Tory leadership, with Dave’s campaign considered by many a Tory donor to lack energy, focus and passion. That ‘Team Cameron’ have attempted to address that this week by taking off his tie and rolling up his sleeves is, I fear, too little too late. His failure to deliver the Conservatives an overall majority, which is what they really crave, is what will cost him in the end though. Boris, Teresa May and George Osborne are the early frontrunners; but don’t rule out a ‘dark horse’ emerging from the pack. Cameron beat more favoured candidates – and who can forget John Major’s surprise succession of Maggie?

  1. If a week is a long time in politics – 5 week’s is a lifetime

The campaign has been too long, a bit boring even for political anoraks like me – and it appears that it has failed to have much, if any, influence on people’s voting intentions anyway. A piece of advice for all the parties for the next election – which may be far sooner than was planned – keep it short. Less is sometimes more!

And finally my prediction for the 7th May: I’m sticking with what I have been saying for some months now. Conservatives the biggest party, but lacking a credible coalition partner to be able to form a government for more than a few months; and the spectacle of a second election highly likely as many Labour MPs’ would find it hard to stomach any sort of arrangement with the SNP.