How Right Wing Are the PLP?

I just don't get the Labour party of today. In John McDonnell there is a totally respectable challenger to Gordon Brown. In response to the market led Thatcherite approach of Brown and Blair he wants a change of direction, one based on empowerment and democratisation of society. This seems totally reasonable to me. Yet it is unlikely he will get the necessary nominations from his Parliamentary Labour Party colleagues to force an election. You have to ask what's happened to the PLP. Stick a Labour MP on a soap box and you will undoubtedly be subjected to a tirade of anti - Thatcherism. Yet their own party are pursuing exactly the same agenda.

In conclusion 1, they are either so stupid they don't know what their own leaders are doing or 2, they are trying to pull the wool over everyones eyes.

Thatcher always said her proudest achievement was New Labour. Guardian columnists bizarrely like to claim that Blair's greatest achievement is Cameron's Tories. The Tories have just gone back to their traditional centre right ground, Blair and Brown have just nicked their spots.

It comes to something when Peter Hain is described as a 'libertarian socialist'. This is the man that presides as a Governor General over Wales and gerrymandered the electoral system in favour of his own party. He has voted for a disastrous war in Iraq and regressive policies such as the marketisation of public services.

What are Labour MPs scared of? Surely the membership of the Labour party should decide the next leader of the party

NH Yes – More like ‘End the NHS’

Sometimes in politics, even at election time, you have to show a degree of humility. Before Glyn Davies gets all excited, what I am about to say in the next sentence does not show any inclination of support towards a Rainbow coalition. The Tory’s have done a remarkable rebranding job.

The talismanic moment in the Carmeron shift was his Conference speech when he uttered “in three letters”, NHS. Aware that whilst the Tories were seen as anti-NHS they had little chance of getting elected, Cameron and the Tory leadership have gone out of their way to commit themselves to seemingly support public provision of health services. Coming from the man who was behind the Tory 2005 manifesto which advocated patients passports – a scheme that would have created a two tier health system, this has been touted as a major ideological shift.

As I have argued before, unmask the Tory spin and not everything is quite as they would have you believe. For the upcoming Assembly elections, the Tories are advocating allowing hospitals in Wales to seek Foundation status. These reforms are seen as a key part of the Blair - Brown agenda for hospitals in England, and basically allow succeeding hospitals to opt out of the NHS – effectively it means denationalising the NHS.

Allowing foundation hospitals in Wales would be deeply divisive and elitist. Foundation hospitals are able to offer separate terms and conditions and raise their own money, enabling them to poach the best staff and resources from neighbouring hospitals and Trusts. Basically it is a two tier health service in all but name. In a country as small as Wales the policy will be disastrous. Inevitably hospitals in the richer areas of our country will go from strength to strength, while the rest of us will have a sub standard service.

When the current health Minister mentioned last week that the days of NHS Trusts were over, perhaps this was what he meant – a round of Blairite health reforms.

Furthermore their manifesto makes a commitment to increase Labour’s mixed economy approach to public services. This means opening up public service contracts to private firms. Labour is already doing this of course, for example in Carmarthenshire there is a huge row over the Labour Cabinet Member (who happens to be the candidate in Carmarthen East) who is trying to privatise home care at the behest of the Assembly Government’s Audit Inspectorate. This policy that would be bad for patients and bad for carers (I note a personal interest as my mother is currently an employee of the County in this very sphere). When will the Thatcherite parties learn that running public services on the basis of profit is lunacy?

I sincerely hope that if my party is in power after Thursday that the Audit Commission and the regulatory bodies instructed by the Assembly Government are given a brief to ensure ‘best value’ based on the quality of service not on cutting costs. Only then will we start to get the sort of public services we deserve.

I don’t often agree with David Davies but he was right the other day, Labour and the Tories are by far the two parties that are most politically compatible.

Tories and the Welsh Way?

The Tories have launched their Assembly election manifesto promising a Welsh Way. Why did they therefore have to send in the cavalry from London in the shape of the boy Cameron?

Global Warming & Trident – The Great Contradiction

This week’s news agenda has been dominated by two issues. The London parties have been in a frenzy to try and claim the green agenda as their own with the Tories and Labour making some grand announcements. The other big story is Trident.

The Times today runs a very interesting cartoon depicting the great contradiction in the position of the Tories and Labour in particular. On the one hand they are trying to save the planet with greener policies. Yet when it comes to weapons that can destroy the world at a touch of a button, both Cameron and Blair/Brown have no problem in making the case. Even the Lib Dems, in typical fence sitting style, won’t rule out renewing Trident.

The proponents of nuclear weapons need to answer one thing. On what basis would these weapons be used? If for instance a terrorist cell planted a dirty bomb in London, who would the Government retaliate against? The very nature of a terrorist cell is that it is not nation state aligned – the 7 07 bombers for instance were UK citizens – so what would be the retaliation of the UK Government? To nuke the city the terrorists came from, even if it was a UK city? The whole thing is totally insane. If they decided to attack a city in the Middle East the terrorist would have achieved their objective, polarising opinion in the region in favour of the ideology of the terrorists. The fact of the matter is that the nuclear deterrent can not work against terrorism – which the Government admits is the major security threat to these islands.

Proponents of nuclear weapons claim it is an insurance policy, however it can only ‘work’ on a nation state v nation state basis. Many of us would argue that the fact that there wasn’t a nuclear catastrophe during the cold war was down to pure luck rather than design, Gorbachev and Regan subscribe to that and they know what they are talking about.

Say for instance Iran developed a nuclear weapon, they would then still have to find a way of delivering the device via an intercontinental missile to the UK. They are nowhere near being able to develop delivery devices of that kind. The UK Government should know, we are dependent upon the US technology to deliver any nuclear weapons if we decided to use them.

The whole debate is about the vanity of Blair and the cowardice of Brown. Blair wants to secure his legacy and Brown who wants this issue out of the way before his watch. How pathetic the Labour party has become.

Tory Funding

The Tories in all probability will be the largest spenders come May. David Cameron has amassed a massive war chest with private donations of £17m over the last year.

How has Cameron gone about rebuilding Tory finance? The Guardian reports yesterday that old fashioned dinners and dances have been the key to success. A sliding scale of patrons clubs offer access to different tiers of the Tory leadership. The Leaders club, and a dinner with Cameron will put you back £50k per annum. Nice to see to the Tory Leader keeping to his man of the people image! The average household income in Wales isn’t even half that sum, which means not many people in Wales will be having lunch with the Tory leader.

The Guardian reports claims the key appointment of Aurelia Cecil as head of fundraising. Cecil is a member of the upper echelons of the ruling class. Cecil apparently knows how to run a good party and has brought the fun back into being a Conservative. She is a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew. I guess you can work out the sort of people Cecil has been inviting to her parties.

The relevance for the Assembly elections of course is that the Tories in Wales do not exist as a separate accounting unit. Their campaign will be funded from Tory HQ in London. Nice to know the sources of the funding the Tories will be using over the next 9 weeks to buy Welsh votes.

Enter the Young Pretender?

The Guardian reports today that Charles Clarke and Alun Milburn are paving the way for a David Miliband leadership challenge by calling for an open policy debate before Tony Blair departs. Bad news for Gordon Brown who wants to keep his policy cards close to his chest in the hope that his planned shock and awe tactics during the first hundred days would blow David Cameron out of the water. Looks like a leadership election could well be back on the cards.

Guardian ICM Poll – Brown and New Labour in trouble

The Guardian ICM poll today is very bad news for Gordon Brown and the Liberal Democrats. If Brown was leader of Labour the Tories would have a 13% gap – their largest lead since 1992. Labours rating puts them at the same level as their result in the 1983 General Election under Michael Foot.

This is desperately bad news for Brown personally. His only hope is to call a snap election after assuming power, probably at the end of the first 100 days after a policy blitz, and hope the honeymoon period will be enough to carry him through. The added advantage of such a strategy would be that all Cameron has done so far is talk about ambiguous ideas – the Tories have no coherent policy platform in place ready to face a General Election, much in the same way that the only pledges they are coming up with here in Wales are, “we’ll look at this, re-start that, review those”.

Its very high risk stuff. Will Brown who has waited for so long for the top job risk it all on assuming the Premiership. My view is that if he waits ‘till 2009/2010 the Tories will steam roll, he has to go early if he is to have any chance.

Far be it from me to offer any advice to the Labour party, but Gordon Brown is a dead duck leader in waiting. They have to find someone new, fresh and dynamic. Someone able to renew the party and hope the Cameron effect in Middle England runs out of steam and that they are able to exploit the clear contradictions that exist within the Tory party. The problem for Labour is that their talent pool isn’t exactly deep.

The other interesting finding in the poll is that the Lib Dems are on 17%. They are clearly being squeezed and losing votes to the Tories. It seems that the coup of Charles Kennedy as been an unmitigated failure. If they had not purged him, he would be the most experienced leader of all the three London parties once Blair stood down.

Looks like a very busy year for us here in Wales. After the Assembly elections in May I wouldn’t bet against an Autumn General Election if Brown is PM.

Blair and Brown Spot the Difference

Big hitting Labour backbench MP Frank Field is the latest politician in his party’s ranks to voice disquiet at the seemingly trouble free succession of Gordon Brown.

Field confirms my assessment that a Brown Premiership will not herald any significant change from the current Administration – mostly because he has been the one behind most of New Labour’s domestic agenda. In the back of his mind is undoubted the way in which the Cameron strategy is built with Brown in mind.

He calls for a generation skip to combat Cameron and pleads with David Milliband to put his name forward.

The interesting point for us here in Wales is why are the First Minister and Brown’s dogs of war in Wales who led the failed Autumn coup against Blair, such in favour of a Brown succession? They tell us in Wales that New Labour is dead and that they are adopting a Welsh way, yet they openly support the Godfather of what they claim to abhor.

The key point is there is no coherence to the arguments of Labour in Wales. Perhaps I am missing something and would be eternally grateful if someone could provide an explanation.

Growing Unrest in the Tory Ranks

There’s a very interesting article in the latest edition of the House Magazine by former Tory Minister Edward Leigh. The article is a critique of the Cameron project. Leigh is concerned that as Cameron adopts Clinton’s triangulation process (subsequently followed by New Labour), voters are left without a real choice.

Leigh is a passionate traditional right of right winger, and clearly is far happier talking about privatisation and lower taxation than the Cameron focus on wellbeing and other what he views as ‘soft’ issues. He is particularly perplexed at why the main opposition in Westminster would want to fight the next General Election on exactly the same policy platform as the Government.

The Cameron strategy is quite simple. He is doing exactly what the New Labour project did to the Tories. He has positioned his party on the exact same ground in the hope that he will achieve power ‘cause people fancy a change in personalities rather than basing a strategy on a significant change of approach. The Cameron strategy is also built with Brown in mind - with no undistinguishable policies the electorate will base their choice on personality. Let’s face it in the charisma stakes Cameron is on a different political planet to poor old Gordon.

Leigh’s article gives an interesting insight to the frustrations of being a Westminster politician with values these days (not that I agree in any shape or form with his views). Since the battle of ideas in Westminster has come to an end – all three London parties now exist solely for the sake of achieving power.

Luckily in Wales we have another option to the failed consensus of the London parties. I am delighted that Plaid for the forthcoming Assembly Election is putting together a policy programme that challenges the current visionless WAG orthodoxy.

update - Neol Gallagher seems to have the same views as me on the Brown/Blair/Cameron consensus. Watch the newsnight interview.

The Duplicity of the Cameron Project

David Cameron to be fair to him as employed the obvious political strategy to counter act New Labour since becoming leader of the Tories. Much of New Labour’s success has had far more to do with the idiocy of the manner in which the Conservatives have responded to New Labour’s existence rather than anything constructive New Labour has achieved.

By moving Labour to a centre right position – traditional Tory ground – the Tories did the fatal error of moving the party further to the right to create some clear blue water. Under Hague, IDS and Howard, Tory strategists played into the hands of New Labour by fighting on issues that were only relevant to the far right - ie their membership.

Cameron has turned things around by appearing to move the Tories back into the centre right position – creating a Tory/New Labour bottle neck meaning that ultimately after 10 years of New Labour middle England might well just vote for the Tories at the next General Election for change more than any clear divergence.

The problem Cameron has is that messaging is one thing, policy is another. There is no coherence currently. Whilst he passionately talks up the NHS the only detailed policy to come out of the Tories so far is to cut public expenditure by £20bn.

The new cuddly Tories Cameron is trying to push is further undermined by an extremely right wing article he gave to the Telegraph last week. In a statement which has gained very little coverage, Cameron said that he would restore the UK opt out of the EU social chapter. Nick Cohen of the Observer in his excellent article yesterday points out that the Cameron approach is not to secure legal rights for workers but hope employers do the right thing. As we have one of the most liberal labour laws in the world already – the prospect of even greater de-regulation, for the most vulnerable in particular, is quite frankly frightening.

The phrase ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind.’

The question is where do the Tories in Wales stand on this?