Don Flynn claims that I argued “that support for the right of migrants to freedom of movement is the same as support for the free movement of capital”. Readers of my article can see that I said no such thing. It is possible to support one and not the other. Armed with this confusion he […]
Labour’s progress, through the eyes of the right
Sep 27th, 2017 by David Pavett.Guardian commentators like Rafael Behr knew from the start that a radical left turn in Labour politics, such as that which propelled Jeremy Corbyn from the backbenches to Labour leader, could only end in tears. They confidently predicted Labour’s electoral collapse and did whatever they could to support the disgruntled majority of Labour MPs who, […]
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A Spectacular Own Goal?
Sep 13th, 2017 by David Pavett.A new group called the Labour Campaign for Free Movement has been launched. It says that thousands have already signed up to its campaign statement. It is also clearly hoping that the model resolution it has circulated will make it through to annual conference. An article by Hugh Lanning on Labour List puts the campaign’s […]
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Labour Policy and Annual Conference
Sep 8th, 2017 by David Pavett.After the politically stultifying years of Blair/Brown and its aftermath under Miliband, Labour members voted for a left-wing leader in 2015. This was a palace revolution without a changing of the guard. All the old structures and place-holders remain largely unchanged. They were, and are, either incompatible or largely hostile to the new leadership as […]
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NPF Annual Reports – the International Commission
Aug 14th, 2017 by David Pavett.This report by Labour’s Inernational Policy Commission follows the same non-committal, evidence-free, approach that I noted when reviewing the report from the Early Years, Education and Skills Commission. If these reports are not all written by the same person they certainly seem to closely follow the same template. The first section kicks off with hand-waving […]
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Where do we go from here? Notes on a contribution from Compass
Aug 10th, 2017 by David Pavett.The left think-tank Compass recently published an extended essay Mayism without May: the crisis of the Regressive Alliance and the challenge of Corbynism. It is offered as “an analysis of the dominant bloc that determines the common sense of our society” and as a contribution to finding a path to alliances of progressive forces inside […]
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The National Policy Forum Annual Report 2017
Aug 9th, 2017 by David Pavett.The NPF Annual Report was quietly released on 3rd August by placing it on membersnet but making no announcement of the fact. Would it have been so hard to email members to tell them the document is now available? Despite this publicity-shy approach (the report was not even available on the Policy Forum website at […]
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NPF Responses: Education
Apr 5th, 2017 by David Pavett.The Consultation document for Early Years, Education and Skills says that this year’s task for the Commission was to to do “further work on building a modern early years system, developing a schools system for the 21st century, modernising further education and adult skills and how we can improve children’s social care and safeguarding as […]
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What’s in the NPF draft policy statements?
Mar 24th, 2017 by David Pavett.According to the Labour Party Rulebook: “Party conference shall decide from time to time what specific proposals of legislative, financial or administrative reform shall be included in the Party programme. This shall be based on the rolling programme of work of the National Policy Forum.” (Emphasis added) The results of that “rolling programme of work” […]
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What happened to the Labour vote in the recent by-elections?
Feb 28th, 2017 by David Pavett.I am no psephologist but in compiling the graphs below I noticed a number of points which I think are important in any discussion of Labour’s poor performance in both Stoke Central and Copeland. First the graphs which show Labour’s share of the vote and share of the total electorate since the creation of the […]
