Last year a book was published – Power Trip A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin which promised to reveal “the personal feuds, political plots, and media manipulation which lay at New Labour’s core“. It would be, promised its publishers, “a fascinating, funny, and at times shocking account of how government really works“. At the end […]
Posts Tagged ‘Labour Conference 2013’
Blair’s covert party machine and culture of manipulation to be exposed in new book
Apr 28th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Labour conference delegates: appeal for information
Sep 28th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Those who have read the Yellow Pages delegates’ briefing (produced each day at Labour conference and available here) will have read that the oversight of Labour’s conference arrangements committee (CAC) elections has this year fallen short of the “open, transparent and trusted” political practice which Ed Miliband and Iain McNicol rightly expect. Unlike in Falkirk, there is incontrovertible evidence of misconduct and machine […]
Bring back democracy to Labour’s conference and discipline corrupt party officials
Sep 27th, 2013 by Michael Meacher.Labour’s annual conference has long been a machine operation designed to showcase the Leader’s speech and to suppress any serious discussion of other controversial matters (and the Tory party conference is, if anything, even more orchestrated). It is done to convey a contented and anodyne impression for the television cameras, and the result is of […]
Ed Miliband’s Canny Speech
Sep 26th, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.Our friends in the post below didn’t like Ed Miliband’s speech because they’re scared. They’re scared because for over a generation their party has not had to face a serious, social democratic challenge. A bit like a company management that hasn’t seen strike action for a very long period of time and all of a […]
Conference report: Health
Sep 26th, 2013 by Gaye Johnson.This much anticipated debate, held on the last day of Conference, began with a whimper and ended with a bang. It was given a low key introduction by UNISON’s officer Keith Birch. He started by saying that he NHS was Labour’s greatest achievement but that its future is now at stake. The Con Dem Health […]
Conference report: Housing and transport
Sep 26th, 2013 by Gaye Johnson.Before launching into a report of the Housing and Transport policy debates held on the morning of the 24th of September, two issues of Party democracy which arose before them should be mentioned. As usual the establishment Candidates swept the board in the Conference Arrangements Committee elections. The victors include Heidi Alexander and Tom Blenkinsop […]
Labour Conference 2013: Education roundup
Sep 23rd, 2013 by David Pavett.The debate on the education section of the NPF report, on the first day of Conference, was opened by Peter Wheeler (NEC). Six delegates spoke: three prospective parliamentary candidates and three union delegates (GMB, Unison, Unite). Stephen Twigg replied to ‘discussion’. No teachers, local authority councillors, educational campaigners or university educationalists took part. This session […]