Tagged with Political Strategy

Labour needs its leader and candidates to offer an alternative to austerity

Austerity is failingA fundamental weakness of Labour’s recent general election campaign was the failure to offer voters hope of a return to prosperity. Shackled to the Coalition’s economic framework, the core of which is slashing the public sector, Labour’s small progressive proposals were drowned out by the overwhelming commitment to austerity. Focusing on a promise to introduce a ‘budget responsibility lock’ at the manifesto launch underscored just how out-of-touch the Party’s campaign had become.

The Tories’ rhetoric justifying their budget policies is just misleading propaganda – austerity is not about reducing the deficit. Quite the opposite, cutting government spending contributes to current economic stagnation and in turn depresses the government’s revenue. Continue reading →

What is Scottish Labour for?

InequalityAs Scottish Labour regroups after the General Election, the temptation will be to focus on organisation and structure. Important though these are, the real question the party has to ask itself is – what is Scottish Labour for?

After the 2007 and 2011 Scottish Parliament elections, Scottish Labour held reviews that gave detailed consideration to internal structure, election organisation etc. Tucked away in both reviews was a mention of political purpose and strategy, but it was left to another time, it was regarded as of secondary importance. No political party has a divine right to exist; it has to have a clear political purpose. Scottish Labour needs clarity over its key purpose and then needs to find a way of expressing it in language activists can explain and voters can understand.

For me the answer is, it’s inequality stupid. Continue reading →

How the politics of fear may help the Tories win again

Cameron and OsborneI hate being wrong, but there’s no point running away when you do screw things up. In politics and the analysis thereof, when you make mistakes you have to ask where you went wrong and, crucially, why. And so, the Conservatives winning the general election. That was a turn up for the books. No one expected it, and – embarrassing for me – I spent the last two-and-a-half years telling anyone who’d listen that the Tories increasing their vote, let alone getting a majority, was so improbable it wasn’t worth thinking about. How could my argument have been so wrong? Continue reading →

For Labour to succeed it must get real

red labourThe Labour Party was founded by the trade unions and later developed into a federal structure of local constituency parties, trades and Labour councils, and socialist societies. The link with the trade unions has always been under attack, either legislatively by successive Tory governments, or by the right wing of the Labour Party.

As we move into a period of post-election examination of the reasons for Labour’s loss — despite having had five years of austerity under the coalition government — there are those who think the way back for Labour is to move further from the centre ground, and that the election campaign was too “left wing.”

Ed Miliband tried very hard and certainly presented a very convincing argument on zero-hours contracts, rights at work, the Health and Social Care Act as well as abolishing the non-dom status on taxation. Continue reading →