Unless we are all prepared to do something about it, history may be set to repeat itself, but this time with far more devastating consequences. Foreign Secretary, William Hague and the Prime Minister, David Cameron are pushing for early missile and air strikes against the Assad regime in Syria. Well informed reports point to a military build-up in preparation of such an attack, including from British bases on Cyprus, in advance of Parliament being recalled. There appears to be a full intention, once again, to by-pass the United Nations and the UN Security Council by Messrs Cameron and Hague, just as was the case over Iraq with such disastrous results. Continue reading
Posted by Mark Seddon
Whose policy is it anyway?
It has been with a certain detached sense of irony that I have listened to a succession of senior Labour figures – John Prescott, Jack Straw, Alistair Darling and David Blunkett – criticising the strange Labour summer offensive that wasn’t. It is not that they don’t have a point, more that they might have delivered it more effectively privately and without the aid of the media fog horn. But then another thought occurred; perhaps what they are all really asking is; ‘what are Labour’s main policies and when will the rest of us get to hear about them’?The sense of irony is derived from the fact that all must bare some responsibility for the fact that the Labour Party, the members and its affiliates have been largely deprived of any serious policy input for many years now. Under the guise of ‘Partnership in Power’, when Tony Blair was leader, the party conference, the affiliated organisations and the once powerful National Executive Committee were all largely stripped of power. Instead that power became concentrated in the office of the Leader and the Shadow Chancellor. Continue reading
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Could the German economic model be Ed Miliband’s ‘big idea’?
David Cameron was recently filmed lecturing a group of manufacturing workers with the inimical advice that ‘frankly we have to be more Germanic in our work practices’. That was pretty rich coming from an old Etonian who, like George Osborne, has never had a proper job in his life. But it set me thinking – and not least because the German economic model is everything that successive British Government, especially Conservative ones, has shied well away from.
Instead from Margaret Thatcher onward, the British political class have opted for the deregulated, free market model favoured by the United States. This is a model that has seen those employed in manufacturing industry drop from 50% thirty years ago to 15% today. It is a model that has favoured the financial sector, dot-com booms and a reliance on property prices to provide economic growth. It owed much, more recently, to Alan Greenspan and his weird nostrums about ‘endogenous growth’. Continue reading
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It’s time to really mend the Labour trade union relationship
News that the police have dropped their inquiry into the Falkirk selection because of a lack of evidence does not come as a surprise to me. Having spoken at length to people who had read the Labour Party’s internal investigation and to a number of those directly involved in the selection, it became pretty clear that this would be the likely outcome. Having witnessed a whole series of very real selection scandals over the years – including the notorious Erith and Thamesmead selection, when a ballot box was broken into and its contents shredded while held for safe-keeping at party headquarters , with a refusal to call in the police – it was pretty obvious that Falkirk simply did not merit the notoriety given to it. Continue reading
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Yes to a union voice, no to state funding
July has been a hot month. It has been especially hot in the hothouse world of Westminster politics, where lobby hacks mix with media savvy politicians, stories and plots are hatched and exposed. In the immediate aftermath of Ed Miliband’s shock announcement that in future he wanted Labour’s affiliated members to ‘opt in’ to party membership, one GMB official was reported to have said; “How did we get from Falkirk to here in only ten days?”
It is a good question and one that I don’t think has been answered. It may be that few are actually in a position to answer fully just yet, but there are straws in the wind and little in politics happens by chance. Continue reading
