Posts tagged "Ed Miliband"

Cruddas to co-ordinate Labour policy review

Liam Byrne remains as shadow work and pensions secretary while Lord Adonis will run the industrial policy review

Ed Miliband has appointed Jon Cruddas to co-ordinate Labour’s policy review, displacing Liam Byrne.

Cruddas is viewed as one of the most ideological figures in the Labour party and his appointment will be seen as a gamble over whether his big and sometimes abstract ideas can be translated into practical manifesto-ready policy.

But a concerted attempt by some within the shadow cabinet to push Byrne out altogether was blocked, and he will remain as shadow work and pensions secretary. Miliband’s aides explained Byrne’s loss of the policy review by saying it was not felt possible for him to carry on both his shadow portfolio and the policy review.

In a limited reshuffle, Miliband has also appointed the Labour peer Lord Adonis to run the industrial policy review. Adonis had been seen as a candidate to run the entire policy review, but other commitments and his connections with Tony Blair as former head of his policy unit are thought to have counted against him.

Owen Smith, a shadow Treasury minister, has been promoted to the post of shadow Welsh secretary, replacing Peter Hain, who has stepped down.

Angela Eagle, shadow leader of the house, will take over Hain’s role as chair of the national policy forum in addition to her existing responsibilities.

Cruddas has spoken of the canyon between politics and the working class, pointing out that one recent poll showed 60% of working class voters believe they have no political voice in the UK.

In recent interviews he has argued that Labour needs to ground its basic values, partly by building links with European social democratic parties, before considering fresh policies. Miliband rates him both for his ability to think big and the way in which those ideas are grounded in the every day experience of his own Dagenham constituency.

He stood as deputy leader in the 2007 Labour elections, but failed to beat off Harriet Harman or Alan Johnson.

Privately he recognised the failings in Gordon Brown’s leadership, but he held back from a role in ousting him. He backed Ed Miliband’s brother David for the Labour leadership, but is said to be increasingly impressed by the themes emerging from Ed Miliband’s leadership, especially responsible capitalism.

In an interview for the political magazine Total Politics six months ago, he was critical of the state of the Labour policy review, saying: “There’s no ideology. There’s no attempt to construct a hegemony, a new political project or language. It is totally fragmented. They have to be orchestrated. There has to be a conductor. It’s about the sort of intellectual leadership, that they have to be part of a bigger story about where Labour’s going. Otherwise, you’re just going to have 22 different reports that add up to nothing.”

In his most recent speech to the University of East Anglia he conceded “What interests me is not policy as such; rather the search for political sentiment, voice and language; of general definition within a national story. Less ‘The Spirit Level,’ more ‘What is England’.”

A close student of Labour history, he has repeatedly written about a loss of social norms, and the need for politics to reclaim words like compassion, hope, duty, patriotism, family and even religion.

He has argued that New Labour lost its ideological bearings during the years of growth He recently argued: “Fifteen years – sixty uninterrupted quarters of growth – have gone. We were able to swerve around the big distributional issues – and indeed the laws of politics – given the supposed end to boom and bust. Politics became transactional, allocative, rational. Its language cold; yet functional until the money tap stops and so does the music”.

He argues that by 2005 Blair had exiled himself from Labour’s ethical traditions, looking to acquisitive individualism, modernity, and focus groups at the expense of the party’s utopian traditions. He has also warned that unless the politics of the left re-engage there is a danger that Britain and Europe, in the face of the euro crisis could see a shift to the right forced through a more visceral and culture-based politics.

In specific policies, Cruddas has shown an interest in the importance of housing, nation building and has also backed a call for a referendum on European membership.

He has argued that the 2010 election was as bad for Labour as the 1983 and 1931 elections, arguing Labour at times of crisis has in the past retreated into orthodoxy and economic liberalism.

Ed Miliband reaches out to nurses in Labour fight against NHS reforms

Opposition leader expected to receive warm reception when he follows Andrew Lansley in addressing nursing congress

Ed Miliband will on Tuesday offer to join forces with Britain’s nurses to fight the government’s “reckless” reforms of the NHS, which he will depict as a betrayal of David Cameron’s pre-election commitments.

The Labour leader is expected to receive a warm reception when he addresses the Royal College of Nursing Congress in Harrogate after a bumpy reception on Monday for Andrew Lansley.

Miliband will announce that Labour is to launch a new service, NHS Check, that will allow patients and staff worried about the impact of the government’s reforms to register their concerns with the party.

The Labour leader will hail nurses as professionals “on the frontline of patient care for the NHS” but also in the “first line in the defence of our NHS”.

Miliband will say: “You tried to engage with the government. You expressed the concerns that nurses were expressing to you. You warned the government of the risks it was running.”

He will say that the government refused to listen as nurses warned that resources were being diverted away from the frontline and patients were waiting longer for treatment. “The government has been acting like they are the masters, not the servants, of the NHS. They are not the masters. Not this government. Not any government. Our health service is owned by patients, professionals and the people.”

Miliband will say that, as prime minister, he would not be able to promise that he would agree with the RCN on everything. But he will add: “I will never do what this government did: dismiss you as just a ‘vested interest’. You are not. You are the defenders of the health service.

“I want to start working with you now, to forge a partnership with you now, about some of the big long-term challenges facing the future of the NHS. And I want to start working with you now to protect the values of the NHS and to hold the government to account for what’s going on. You are not just on the frontline in our NHS. You are the first line in the defence of our NHS.”

Labour says that the government’s NHS reforms, in which around £60bn of the NHS’s £100bn budget is being devolved to new GP-led consortia, is a breach of the coalition agreement. The Tories and Liberal Democrats pledged in the agreement to “stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care”.

Lansley says the reforms are consistent with the coalition agreement because they are designed to devolve power.

Appealing in Ealing: Ken Livingstone and Ed Miliband woo the Labour vote

“Is that Boris?” cried a young female voice as Ken Livingstone, Ed Miliband and a big bunch of red balloons promenaded through the Ealing Broadway shopping centre.

“No, it’s not Boris,” replied her friend.

“Oh.”

I couldn’t see her but I could hear her disappointment – the sound of what Ken is up against. By this time next week either a Labour Mayor Livingstone will be on the eighth floor of City Hall already implementing policies that would be good for most Londoners and London as a whole, or a Conservative Mayor Johnson will be embarking on four more years of doing no such thing.

Seems like a simple choice. Opinion polls, though, suggest that too few London voters are looking at it that way and that too many see “good old Boris” and not much else – which is, of course, exactly what the Johnson campaign and its many press proxies have wanted all along.

Team Boris gives every impression of protecting its boy from potentially unwelcome scrutiny in order to protect his lead: a no-show at a recent hustings, an opt out from BBC Radio London’s breakfast show. Tomorrow, it’s his turn to be grilled on The Sunday Politics. My strong advice is that you shouldn’t hold your breath.

But the polls still allow for a tight outcome. Ken’s rating foot-drags behind general support for Labour in London, but mud that sticks to the Tories nationally is still soil in which his prospects grow. That’s why Ed Miliband was on the trail with him this morning, not only singing his praises as the Labour candidate (that’s “the Labour candidate,” for pity’s sake) but also dirty up David Cameron and that good friend of Boris and various mutual media chums, Jeremy Hunt.

If they’re fretting about Thursday’s vote, it didn’t show. Ken greeted my arrival at Ealing Broadway station by offering me a freshly-fried chip and saying how much he’d enjoyed my calling him “stubborn” in a recent article.

“A ‘stubborn git,’ actually,” I pointed out. (A lot of thought went into that “git”.)

Ken guffawed, forgivingly.

I nattered with some of his entourage – a very nice woman from Labour HQ, another from the office of Ed Balls – and then Miliband showed up, looking shiny and enthused. Together they sailed off through light drizzle accompanied by Onkar Sahota, Labour’s London Assembly candidate for the GLA constituency of Ealing and Hillingdon, which a recent poll suggests Sahota has a chance of snatching from the Tory incumbent Richard Barnes. A flotilla of activists framed the politicians’ progress with “Ken’s Fare Deal” placards. Up ahead, apparatchiks scouted shoppers for photo-op material.

This seemed in good supply, despite Ken’s utter failure to be Boris. There were all sorts of stop-starts as Labour candidate and Labour leader posed and bantered with assorted Ealing citizens, ignored a passing fellow who crossly shouted, “Support the workers! Support strikes!” and talked to Sky News, PA and the Beeb about reducing London’s cost of living. They went into a sweet shop – Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe to be precise – and a shoe repairer’s, presumably not drawn there by the highly intoxicating smell of glue.

Once back in the fresh air Ken was hailed by a man attending a sombre tree-planting ceremony at the edge of Haven Green. Would he join it, please? The gathering, I later learned, was to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, which Ealing Council has recognised thanks to efforts of Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing North. I was told that there are around 10,000 people of Armenian descent in Ealing.

Ken seemed very game, and had taken several paces across the sodden grass before he was hauled back. Miliband, you see, was already in a car waiting across the way to whisk him to his next destination. Ken was meant to be beside him. “We’re already 20 minutes late,” an aide said, breathlessly.

Ken apologised and did what he was told – not something that happens every day. He and his party’s leader have a common interest in getting along and in being seen to do so. Expect further sightings of them in each others’ company before 3 May.

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Portillo not endorsing Johnson for mayor

Former Tory minister states he will instead support independent candidate Siobhan Benita over issue of Heathrow third runway

Michael Portillo, the former Tory cabinet minister, has said he will not back Conservative candidate Boris Johnson in the London mayoral election, signalling instead his support for Siobhan Benita, the only independent candidate in the race.

In the latest sign that many are putting party loyalties to one side in a race where personality plays a significant role, Portillo said he could not support Johnson because of the incumbent mayor’s opposition to a third runway at Heathrow.

Portillo turned down an invitation to give Johnson a “ringing endorsement” on the BBC This Week programme on Thursday night, just hours after the Labour peer Lord Sugar broke ranks on Twitter to say he thought no one should vote for Ken Livingstone, the party’s candidate in the London mayoral elections.

Sugar tweeted: “I don’t care if Ed Miliband is backing Livingstone. I seriously suggest NO ONE votes for Livingstone in the mayoral elections.” He also wrote: “Livingstone must NOT get in on 3rd May.”

Sugar’s comments were played down by Labour party leader Ed Miliband while out on the campaign trail on Friday ahead of the local elections: “Alan Sugar is Alan Sugar,” he shrugged.

Portillo, who left parliament in 1997 as the most high-profile casualty of the Labour general election landslide, resisted an attempt by presenter Andrew Neil to endorse Johnson.

“I will be looking for a candidate who endorses a third runway for Heathrow airport because I think that is fundamentally important for the capital and I can’t understand any candidate presenting himself or herself without making such a commitment,” said Portillo.

Benita is the only candidate among the seven contenders in the race to advocate a third runway on the ground that “a global city like London needs a global airport”. Johnson has instead lobbied for the past four years for a new airport hub on the Thames Estuary – a proposal that is expected to be considered when the government seeks views on its aviation policy this summer.

Benita, who is battling for airtime as an independent candidate, welcomed the tacit endorsement.

“I am delighted that Michael Portillo is supporting the candidate who is backing a third runway,” she said. “I am the only candidate who is doing that. It is a decision that is too important to play party politics with. It is the right decision for the future prosperity of London and the UK.”

The move may not come as a surprise in light of comments made by Portillo in 2008, just before Johnson was declared mayor, that he was “in many ways an embarrassment” to the Conservative party.

Speaking on the night that votes were being counted, Portillo told the BBC: “If Boris wins tonight, the Tories are going to hold their breath for the next two years.”

Johnson’s re-election campaign hit back, saying: “We are delighted that Michael Portillo has highlighted Boris’s rock solid commitment that there will be no third runway at Heathrow while he is mayor.” The decision on airport expansion rests with the government and is outside the jurisdiction of City Hall.

Prior to the general election, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives were opposed to a third runway – a position sealed in the coalition agreement. But many Tories reportedly want the party to admit the decision was wrong and back the new runway in the manifesto for the next general election.

The transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, sought to scotch rumours of a possible U-turn when she told an aviation conference in a speech this week that the government would “explore all the options for maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status with the exception of a third runway at Heathrow”.

Incoming search terms:

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Ed Miliband plans to switch voters on with cheap electricity

Labour leader hopes that organising bulk purchase of electricity will help protect squeezed living standards

Labour is considering organising the bulk purchase of cheap electricity to sell at a discount in a move designed to help squeezed households and show that the party is focused on more than just winning elections, Ed Miliband has told the Guardian.

The initiative is being studied by the Labour leader after being urged on the party by the American community activist Arnie Graf, who is advising him on how to revitalise the party’s culture.

Miliband said: “It is an outstanding idea. It might involve working with, or emulating what [the activist organisation] 38 degrees and Which? magazine are trying to do, which is to sign up people to bulk buy energy from the energy companies.

“We are thinking of going to the energy companies as the Labour party so that ‘responsible capitalism’ is not just an idea, but something practical. We think we may be able to deliver it through our grassroots network.”

Party sources said the planning was at a preliminary stage, but the idea of collective purchasing is that the buyer has greater leverage and can so secure a better deal for its customers.

In Belgium the Labour party has teamed up with ichoosr to become the country’s largest switching service, helping to cut energy bills for thousands of people. Labour recruits members and constituents to the scheme and then once a threshold is passed ichosr does the mechanics of the negotiations with the energy firms, party sources said.

In the UK, according to the energy regulator Ofgem, 60% of consumers have never switched their energy supplier.

Miliband, enjoying a Labour poll surge, said in an interview with the Guardian that last month’s budget had ended the Cameron modernising project, but he was acutely aware that the predominant mood in the country is alienation from all politics. He said: “The party needs to prove it has changed and will change more by operating in communities offering practical help, as well as political campaigns.”

He said he was increasingly alarmed by the way in which established parties were perceived to have lost touch with local communities, citing the shock Labour byelection defeat in Bradford West.

Too many people believe all politicians and all parties are the same, he said. In the Bradford West by election the most worrying statistic was that half the people registered to vote failed to do so.

“Politics has to change and Labour is changing so we reach out to the voters who have been written off as unreachable or feel they have been ignored for too long.”

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Michael Portillo not backing Boris Johnson for London mayor

Former Tory minister states he will instead support independent candidate Siobhan Benita over issue of Heathrow third runway

Michael Portillo, the former Tory cabinet minister, has said he will not back Conservative candidate Boris Johnson in the London mayoral election, signalling instead his support for Siobhan Benita, the only independent candidate in the race.

In the latest sign that many are putting party loyalties to one side in a race where personality plays a significant role, Portillo said he could not support Johnson because of the incumbent mayor’s opposition to a third runway at Heathrow.

Portillo turned down an invitation to give Johnson a “ringing endorsement” on the BBC This Week programme on Thursday night, just hours after the Labour peer Lord Sugar broke ranks on Twitter to say he thought no one should vote for Ken Livingstone, the party’s candidate in the London mayoral elections.

Sugar tweeted: “I don’t care if Ed Miliband is backing Livingstone. I seriously suggest NO ONE votes for Livingstone in the mayoral elections.” He also wrote: “Livingstone must NOT get in on 3rd May.”

Sugar’s comments were played down by Labour party leader Ed Miliband while out on the campaign trail on Friday ahead of the local elections: “Alan Sugar is Alan Sugar,” he shrugged.

Portillo, who left parliament in 1997 as the most high-profile casualty of the Labour general election landslide, resisted an attempt by presenter Andrew Neil to endorse Johnson.

“I will be looking for a candidate who endorses a third runway for Heathrow airport because I think that is fundamentally important for the capital and I can’t understand any candidate presenting himself or herself without making such a commitment,” said Portillo.

Benita is the only candidate among the seven contenders in the race to advocate a third runway on the ground that “a global city like London needs a global airport”. Johnson has instead lobbied for the past four years for a new airport hub on the Thames Estuary – a proposal that is expected to be considered when the government seeks views on its aviation policy this summer.

Benita, who is battling for airtime as an independent candidate, welcomed the tacit endorsement.

“I am delighted that Michael Portillo is supporting the candidate who is backing a third runway,” she said. “I am the only candidate who is doing that. It is a decision that is too important to play party politics with. It is the right decision for the future prosperity of London and the UK.”

The move may not come as a surprise in light of comments made by Portillo in 2008, just before Johnson was declared mayor, that he was “in many ways an embarrassment” to the Conservative party.

Speaking on the night that votes were being counted, Portillo told the BBC: “If Boris wins tonight, the Tories are going to hold their breath for the next two years.”

Johnson’s re-election campaign hit back, saying: “We are delighted that Michael Portillo has highlighted Boris’s rock solid commitment that there will be no third runway at Heathrow while he is mayor.” The decision on airport expansion rests with the government and is outside the jurisdiction of City Hall.

Prior to the general election, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives were opposed to a third runway – a position sealed in the coalition agreement. But many Tories reportedly want the party to admit the decision was wrong and back the new runway in the manifesto for the next general election.

The transport secretary, Theresa Villiers, sought to scotch rumours of a possible U-turn when she told an aviation conference in a speech this week that the government would “explore all the options for maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status with the exception of a third runway at Heathrow”.

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Labour: Cameron misled public on tax

Labour rounds on PM after he claimed Ed Miliband’s party was seeking to cut the top rate of tax to 40p

Labour accused David Cameron of misleading the British public after the prime minister said Ed Miliband was seeking to cut the top rate of income tax to 40p.

At the end of noisy exchanges at prime minister’s questions, aides to Ed Miliband turned on Cameron after he claimed that a Labour amendment to the finance bill would abolish the new 45p upper rate of tax, leaving a rate of 40p.

A Labour spokesman said: “David Cameron has misled the British public.”

The row broke out after the prime minister seized on a Labour amendment to the finance bill that would abolish the 45p upper rate due to be introduced next year. If passed, the amendment would mean that the higher rate of tax would revert to 40p.

The prime minister said: “If he is successful, he will give us a 40p tax rate.”

Labour had hoped to table an amendment that would have re-inserted 50p as the higher rate of tax. But this was ruled out of order by House of Commons clerks, who said the opposition was not entitled to introduce a higher tax rate contained in a resolution already agreed by the Commons.

Aides to Miliband released email exchanges with a Commons official showing that Labour’s original amendment to reintroduce the 50p was ruled out of order.

A Labour spokesman said: “David Cameron should know, and almost certainly does know, that you cannot use amendments to the finance bill to reintroduce tax rates. The prime minister has brought in a tax cut for millionaires and should be prepared to stand up and defend it instead of trying to hoodwink the British people.”

A Tory source said: “Labour have bungled their amendment, as clear as day, and they should just accept that and rephrase it or pull it.”

The row followed testy exchanges between Cameron and Miliband as the Labour leader challenged the prime minister over the budget, which he described as an “omnishambles”. This is the word invented by Armando Iannucci to describe a Whitehall meltdown in his comedy, The Thick of It.

Rachel Sylvester, the Times columnist, wrote on Tuesday that government officials are describing the budget as an “omnishambles” and a “clusterfuck”. No 10 officials are concerned that a month after the budget headlines are still dominated by the “granny” and “pasty” taxes and the cap on charitable donations.

Miliband said cutting the 50p rate of tax to 45p, intended by George Osborne to be the headline measure of his budget, would be “worth at least £40,000 a year to Britain’s millionaires”. Cameron said: “The cut in the 50p tax rate is going to be paid five times over by the richest people in our country.”

The prime minister admitted he had experienced a tough month. “You talk about my last month, I accept, a tough month,” he said to Miliband.

But Cameron added: “Let’s have a look at your last month: you lost the Bradford byelection. I have to say you have given one person a job opportunity – George Galloway. You showed complete weakness when it came to the Unite union and the fuel strike and you’ve got a [candidate for] mayor of London who won’t pay his taxes.”

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Prime minister’s questions: 18 April 2012 – audio

David Cameron takes questions from Labour leader Ed Miliband and other MPs at the weekly event in the House of Commons

George Galloway unimpressed as David Cameron makes jibe – video

PM mocks Ed Miliband over Labour’s loss of the Bradford West by-election to Respect’s George Galloway

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Tories snub Labour plan to cap party donations

Labour proposal for £5,000 limit described as meaningless, but party says it would curtail discretionary donations by unions

Donations to political parties should be capped at £5,000 a year, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has said as he launched fresh proposals to resolve the scandal of party political funding.

Miliband claimed he was making a move that would deprive his party of millions, but his proposals were rejected within an hour by the Conservatives, who described them as meaningless as the Labour leader was planning to leave untouched the £8m annual income the party receives from union political levy payers affiliated to the party. Nearly 3  million union members are automatically enrolled into giving £3 a year, unless they choose to opt out.

The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, convened all-party talks on political funding after the Sunday Times revealed that privileged access was being offered to Tory donors by Conservative headquarters. The first meetings were held last week.

Miliband told the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that the £5,000 cap would mean real pain for his party as it would curtail large discretionary donations by unions, especially at election time.

But Grant Shapps, the Conservative housing minister, dismissed the idea as “a complete wheeze, one of the most disingenuous interviews I think I’ve seen all year”. The Conservatives pointed out that, in 2011, Labour received just £100,000 in discretionary donations, less than 1% of its total £10m funding from the unions.

Labour countered that in the last election year, as opposed to last year, the party had received more than £4m in discretionary one-off donations from the unions, as part of a total of £9m high value donations it received. Labour also claimed that, over a parliament, the unions had provided £10m in one-off donations and this would be fsacrificed under Miliband’s proposals.

The committee on standards in public life estimated recently that one-off union donations to Labour averaged £2.5m a year between 2001 and 2010.

In his BBC interview, Miliband also rejected proposals for union members to opt in to a political levy, as opposed to the current system whereby a union member has to decide to contract out, an option that is not always well advertised.

There are currently 28 unions with political funds, not all affiliated to Labour, and just under 10% of their 5.5m members opt out.

Differing views on how to treat Labour income from affiliations has been a repeated cause of previous failures to reach an inter-party agreement on party political funding.

In its report in November, the committee on standards in public life proposed a switch to contracting in.

But Miliband said: “The issue really is whether it’s transparent where people’s money is going. That’s what matters. I am in favour of transparency and that does have to be looked at.” On his blog, he added: “There is the world of difference between a wealthy individual giving millions, and millions of trade union levy payers paying a small sum of money to affiliate to the Labour party.”

The committee proposed a cap of £10,000 on donations, but the Tories insisted the cap should be £50,000 annually.

The committee calculated that, if nothing else changed, and a £10,000 cap on donations had existed between 2001 and 2010, the Conservatives would have lost £12.7m or 76% of its income, the Liberal Democrats £1.6m or 57% of income, and Labour £7m or 42% of its income. The Labour figure assumed there was no cap on union affiliation fees.

Miliband defended his £5,000 cap, saying: “The Tories say they want to limit donations to £50,000 a year. That is twice the average annual wage. The Tories would allow an individual to donate £250,000, or a married couple to give £500,000, over the course of a parliament. A cap set at £50,000 would be unacceptable, because it would still keep big money in politics and still leave parties open to questions about buying access.”

The Liberal Democrats were warmer to the Miliband initiative, but said he should shift support for political levy payers contracting in.

Simon Hughes, the deputy leader, said: “I think the most important thing is that Ed Miliband as opposition leader recognises, as Liberal Democrats have done for a long time, that we need to get big money out of politics. We argued for a cap of £10,000, the Independent Standards Commission had argued for a cap of £10,000, Ed Miliband has said £5,000, so we’re in the same ballpark. The Conservative party hasn’t got there yet, the Conservative party had argued for a larger cap. I think there is a consensus in Britain that big money needs to get out of politics.”