This week, former General Secretary of the CWU Alan Johnson has issued an unabashed attack on trade union influence within the Labour Party in an interview with Progress, part of an increasingly confrontational and destructive approach to dictating Labour Party policy from the Blairite wing. Jacqui Smith’s now regular articles, including hers on Osborne’s welfare trap before the recent benefit cap vote, follow in a similar vein and indicate a growing unrest amongst the Labour right as the next election grows closer and they increasingly try to assert their influence. Continue reading
Tagged with Alan Johnson
Ed Balls is the right choice for Shadow Chancellor
It seems that Alan Johnson has resigned for genuine personal reasons, and we must wish him well in handling whatever those are. His successor, Ed Balls, is the right person for the job on several grounds. He has great experience and a long track record in finance and, unlike his predecessor, will not need to bone up on an economic primer to master the subject; far from it, he will hit the ground running. He will also rough up George Osborne something terrible, which will go down extremely well both within the PLP and in the country. He is of course helped in that by Tory economic policy which could hardly be more maladroit and ill-advised. But the biggest reason to welcome the Balls appointment is that his instinct to move away from the damaging Brown-Darling New Labour economic legacy is right and strongly needed at the current juncture. Continue reading
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Balls to the Economy
Ed Balls is now Shadow Chancellor in a move which will delight most of the Left and considerably improve Labour’s performance, whatever the “personal reasons” for Alan Johnson’s departure. Moving Yvette Cooper to Home affairs and Douglas Alexander to Foreign Affairs minimises disruption of the Shadow Cabinet. It is interesting that whilst Brown himself failed to make a success of the Labour leadership, his team now occupies all the top slots, albeit having been in three different camps in the leadership contest. Liam Byrne has done well to retain his policy review role as well as leading opposition to IDS’s review of welfare — which might cause the left some concern.
So what of the residual Blairites? They will not be happy. But Ed made the gesture to them and it didn’t work out. It’s hard for them to complain.
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Amidst lies and midwinter madness, the VAT bombshell strikes
Today, VAT rises from 17½% to 20%. Nick Clegg warned of a “Tory VAT Bombshell” back in April but then made it happen anyway. In the same month, David Cameron denied it, telling Jeremy Paxman “we have absolutely no plans to raise VAT.” As he’d said of VAT rises a year earlier: “it’s very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you“. So much for his promises. Last week, Alan Johnson called for a last minute rethink of the rise, finally picking up on the theme rammed home by Ed Balls months ago, just as the CBI warned of “a dramatic slowdown in the pace of economic recovery.” But Cameron and Clegg are not for turning.
Addition: David Cameron also said in one of the Cameron Direct events in 2009 (8 May in Exeter):
If you look at the effect of sales tax, it’s very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does. I absolutely promise you..it goes very very widely. VAT is a more regressive tax than income tax or council tax.”
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Labour’s command & control regime, for some but not for others
Command and control is alive and well on Labour’s front bench. Ed Miliband may be criticised for having a blank sheet of paper about the future but Alan Johnson and the Treasury team plan to keep it that way, at least when it comes to spending commitments. Any front bench spokesperson who plans to say something that could be interpreted as implying a spending commitment has to complete a form and submit it to the Treasury team for approval at least two weeks in advance — I kid you not. Front benchers, of course, with a few exceptions, are well used to command control, having cut their teeth in more authoritarian times. Continue reading
