Posted by David Pavett

Where do we go from here? Notes on a contribution from Compass

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 and outside the Labour Party. It was written by Ken Spours, Professor of Post-Compulsory Education at the London Institute of Education. He previously wrote The Osborne Supremacy and The Very Modern Prince: the 21st century political party, both published by Compass.

The essay is based on four propositions: (1) Tory dominance continues but in changed circumstances opening new possibilities; (2) The Tory-led regressive alliance is in crisis but will adapt; (3) Corbyn’s Labour has achieved much but now needs to develop a “progressive combinatorial politics”; (4) the progressive bloc must be led by Labour but will require new alliance-based politics and popular mobilisation. Continue reading →

The National Policy Forum Annual Report 2017

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 the time of writing) we are told in the opening pages: “We want as many people as possible to get involved … Together we can build a policy platform to tackle the challenges our country faces …”.

You can download the full annual report here. If you have not got time to read the whole thing but would like to focus on one or more of the policy areas covered by the eight policy commissions, then here are the separate reports for printing separately: Early Years, Education and Skills, Economy, Business and Trade, Environment, Energy and Culture, Health and Care, Housing, Local Government and Transport, International, Justice and Home Affairs, Work, Pensions and Equality. The text of the reports varies between four and six pages. Continue reading →

NPF Responses: Education

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 priorities for this year”.

The opening section (Labour’s Vision) assures us that Labour wants to build a world-class early years, education and skills system system that serves all. But then, of course, everyone says that. Equally generally, we are also told that “Labour’s aim is to build a National Education Service which would be open to all throughout their lives”. The lack of clear specific ideas, on this and in the rest of the document, is disconcerting. Continue reading →

What’s in the NPF draft policy statements?

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” emerge at this time of the year giving members a few weeks to read and discuss them and to get their party branches and CLP to respond. It’s a tight timetable and there is room to doubt the value of the consultation that this purports to be. Continue reading →

What happened to the Labour vote in the recent by-elections?

BallotBoxI 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 two constituencies.

StokeCentral_1950_2017

Copleland_1983_2017

In the case of Stoke Central there is a clear picture of general decline (with a few ups and downs) ever since 1950. In that year more than 50% of the electorate turned out to support Labour. They did the same again in 1951. From that point the same thing was never again achieved and Labour support in the general electorate went into long-term decline. Labour peaked at 41.6% in 1997 and from that point the story was one of dramatic decline. By the end of the Blair/Brown years this had fallen to just 20.6%. In 2015 the figure went even lower and fell under 20%. Finally, in the 2017 by-election it fell to 14.2%. Even though Labour retained the seat this can hardly be regarded as a great victory. Despite Paul Nuttall’s many attempts to commit political hara-kiri, UKIP increased its share of the vote by 2.1% and Labour share fell by 2.2%. Continue reading →