The polls this weekend reveal clearly that the Cameron-Osborne Tory project is close to imploding. With Lord Ashcroft’s huge trawl of 19,000 voters showing that Labour is on course to win 93 of the most marginal Tory seats, yielding an overall Labour majority of 84 seats at the next general election only 2 years away, [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Policy Review’
Opening up Labour’s policy process
Nov 26th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.On the face of it, Labour’s new all-singing all-dancing policy process is open for business. We’re pleased but it’s got a long way to go before we’ll see if it will make a difference. Will policy-making really become less top down? Will party members, constituency parties, and affiliates really have some influence or will the [...]
Trident: Labour cannot stay silent
Nov 1st, 2012 by Tom King.Labour’s policy review, much needed after 13 years in Government and a drubbing in May 2010, was said to have started from a blank page and would review all our commitments across the board. All, it seems, except Trident. There has been some positive movement, the Britain in the World policy document stated there will [...]
Labour’s policy statements published in secret, members’ opinions suppressed
Sep 18th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.The posting, sometime in the past couple of weeks, of the national policy forum annual report on membersnet, Labour members’ private intranet, reveals that little has yet changed in the way Labour makes its policy since the bad old days of New Labour. No press release, no email to members, no reason why anyone would [...]
Labour’s policy review – time to get your views in
Jun 6th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.Six new (but very short) policy statements (which you can view or download here) were circulated to local Labour parties, affiliated organisations and other stakeholders after the May elections and the national policy forum meets again in Birmingham on 16/7 June. Although timescales are short, you and your local party do have the opportunity to [...]
Making Labour policy: who calls the tune?
May 28th, 2012 by Ann Black.Excellent election results and rising polls have brought a mood of unity and created space and time for serious work on policy. Francois Hollande’s victory shows that austerity is not the only option, and Labour must start to develop an alternative agenda, rejecting the Tory politics of resentment and division in favour of policies which [...]
Ten good reasons to welcome the appointment of Jon Cruddas
May 16th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.It’s been a while since Jon Cruddas was a Labour Left pin up boy and even then the status was contested by some sections of the Left — his campaign for the deputy leadership being seen as a distraction from the non-event that the main event turned out to be. Since that campaign, he clearly [...]
A new Labour Policy Review is urgently needed
May 12th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.The report in today’s newspapers that a Labour shadow cabinet reshuffle may be in the offing is to be welcomed if at last it enables the party to get a grip on one of the essential components for electoral success – the Policy Review. For 18 months now this has been stranded in the doldrums [...]
The question now is not will we win with Ed, but how we win with Ed
May 4th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.Who says we cannot win with Ed Miliband as Leader? It was only in January that a meeting of leading Progress MPs decided not to challenge him this side of a general election — not because they really back him but because they couldn’t bring themselves to back Balls or Cooper, and they didn’t have a [...]
Labour’s policy review: Susan and Melanie and why one head is better than two
Dec 23rd, 2011 by Jon Lansman.Labour’s policy making process has two heads but has shown little sign of life since Ed Miliband became Leader promising to re-create a “living, breathing party“. The two heads are Peter Hain, Chair of the National Policy Forum, who theoretically oversees the policy making process, and Liam Byrne, charged with overseeing the policy review. The National [...]
