Birmingham University Labour Students

The National Youth Parliament held a debate in the House of Lords last month, and it was broadcast on BBC Parliament and you can catch it on iPlayer here. The debate was used to decide which three of six motions would constitute their national campaigns for the year. The first of these to be discussed is a campaign to abolish tuition fees.

The speeches and debate are very good and I found them interesting, but I am really quite concerned by some of the mis-information they seem to have come across. One speaker seems to think that she won’t be able to go to university because her parents can’t afford to take out a loan to pay her tution fees. Another quotes tuition fees as being £3000 per term (which they are not yet, at least.) Nobody stands up to correct them. This is really worrying.

Fees aren’t paid back until AFTER you graduate and are earning. Loans are given sperately of loans and living costs. Your parents are expected to top up your living loan to the maximum available; everyone gets between 75 and 100%, and your parents are expected to pay the difference between what you get and the maximum, which is income assessed and somewhere between £0 and £1500. That is all. Your parents don’t pay a penny towards your tuition, and nor do you until you graduate. I am really, really worried that these young people think they’re going to be paying up front.

Anyway, it’s not the tuition fee they should be scared of; £3000 a year is peanuts compared to the University of Birmingham’s new halls, which cost up to an utterly disgusting £5975 per annum. I believe it’s everyday living costs that are the real access issue, not tuition fees. Yes, tuition fees are massive, and yes they are scary and deter far too many people; but you only pay them back when you can afford to. It’s the cost of living that is the real, unreported problem; a student loan is simply not enough. The scare stories about not being able to afford uni are misplaced; much as I hate tuition fees, I’ll worry about them when I come to paying them; right now I’m much more concerned about keeping a roof over my head and food in my cupboard in the short term. Tuition fees do not affect student, only graduates. The cost of living, rent and the woefully inadequate student loan- this is what matters to students.

I love the enthusiasm of the Youth Parliament, and I think their campaign for youth concessions on public transport is fantastic, but it seems an education campaign is needed on what the finanicial issues of student life really are, for the benefit of all prospective students.

Before heading to the Learning Centre today I caught David Miliband on the Politics Show on BBC1. In the past it has been a common complaint that the Brown government does not have the big hitters who are happy to defend the government on TV and radio. This was the role often played by John Reid for the Blair government. These days Milliband seems to be slipping into that job nicely. He batted away every question confidently and even did OK on the Wendy Alexander/referendum question.

Miliband has also been taking a strong stance on the situation in Burma. The situation there looks like it could become more desperate. Based on reports from the ambassador, Miliband stated that up to 100,000 people may have died already.

Now as far as I was aware, until about a week ago, we all did. Maybe it is my own naivety, the old battles on the GLC are very real memories for many and these former divisions do not heal easily. In a ill-thought out move earlier in the week I posted a link about Ken running for Parliament (which incidentally spread some cruel rumours about a Labour PPC which were totally unfounded). Either way some sections of the party seem to be dreading the prospect of him re-entering politics.

I can’t imagine Ken throwing himself into frontline politics for some time. This is exactly what the likes of Iain Dale would like to see. Dale recently claimed Red Ken could be the nextleader of the Labour Party. Old wounds don’t heal easily and although he was an exemplary mayor of London he would not be able to unite the PLP. This rather scuppers the rumour Dale was attempting to create.

Great controversy was generated by Ken’s article in the Guardian earlier this week.  Ken mulled over the results and their consequences for the Labour Party, on first reading I didn’t find anything that was objectionable. Instead he advocated a progressive alliance that could engage the electorate:

“One important development at this election was a formal agreement with the Green party calling for second preference mayoral votes for each other. This benefited the Greens - who added 40,000 votes and maintained their share of the vote and existing number of London assembly seats - but also aided the high turnout and Labour. Had I been re-elected I would have given Green nominees a central role in my administration.

In contrast, Lib Dem failure in London was massive. They chose to stay outside the progressive alliance of Labour and the Greens. As a result they failed even to reach double-figure support in the mayoral election, and their London assembly seats fell from five to three. Hopefully this suicidal orientation will be reversed in the next four years.

Amid the worst electoral defeat for 40 years, even Labour’s best electoral performance in the country could not stop London entering into a period of Tory decline. But as that decline proceeds, a new progressive alliance will be forged, which will go on to regain its position and restore London as the greatest capital city in the world. I’ll have plenty of time to do some very welcome gardening - and to participate in that resurgence.”

Suddenly there was a response from Dave’s Part titled “The class politics of of Ken Livingstone’s progressive alliance”. Now I too was not enthused that Ken was endorsing Galloway for the Assembly but that aside there is only one other objection to Ken’s article; his omission of working class organisations. On second inspection I noticed this to be true but then the article was never meant to be comprehensive, in fact it was fairly short. Making the argument that Ken does not respect the Labour-trade union link is quite a tall order.

As other discussions seem to indicate Ken is no longer the unapologetic red he used to be. At points he seemed very New Labour:

“There are three tasks for a government and a mayor - to ensure the country and London are an economic success; to ensure everyone shares in that success; and to ensure that success is sustainable in the long run through improving the environment.

Labour’s campaign in London gained major support from business. The Financial Times concluded that the majority of big business in London supported my re-election.”

Is this not a vision of the party that we agree with?

More analysis from Compass Youth here.

Interesting, although not surprising to see Brown and Cameron pick state schools for their children. Although Cameron did reportedly turn down many nearer to his home than the one chosen, and probably couldn’t have gotten away with going private whether he had wanted to or not.

Fabulous to see that the most emailled article from the BBC today is entitled “Great tits cope well with warming.” It’s always good when a good science story tops the agenda.

I commented the other day that the Mail’s anti abortion bilge had made me angry. Imagine my joy at the headlines today that the anti-woman lobby would like to see it dropped to thirteen weeks.

I think for the sake of my stress levels I really ought to stay away from the newstands until after my exams.

Check out their website here.

The campaign has also got a Youtube channel.

About 10 days ago I listened to Boris criticising Ken for filling his top level administrator posts with Labour stooges.  King Boris claimed that he would create a broad-church city hall, making quick decisive appointments, based on experience and delivery not party loyalty.  Ok, so he’s appointed 4 top London Tories to 4 top positions. 

Is there a record for politicians breaking promises, because I think Boris has smashed it!

As a science student, I get really incensed when governments and intelligent people ignore scientific evidence and think they know better. Which is (one of the many reasons why) David Cameron and his Daily Mail cronies are wrong, wrong, wrong for wanting to lower the abortion limit AGAINST medical opinion, and why I can’t understand why the government wants to re-re-classify cannabis AGAINST scientific opinion.

What’s the point in pouring millions of pounds into scientific research if it’s just going to get ignored? What is wrong with, once in a while, just trusting scientists? Or is it because the people in charge are all a bunch of history and politics graduates who wouldn’t know an integral from a vector?

Brij means no offence to our other regular blooger and readers, who with the exception of John Ritchie are all studying hard for politics and history-related degrees, which means they are very clever, but probably still don’t know what integrals and vectors are.

Whatever you might say about the Beijing olympics, this is rather impressive.

Just as you were having a nice rest after the locals, the Crewe and Nantwich by-election has begun in earnest, candidates have been announced.  Tamsin Dunwoody, Gwyneth’s daughter, is flying the red flag for us and there will be a bus out of Birmingham to Crewe for activists on Saturday 17th May.  Get in touch if you want to go, 07761571075.

The first policy announcement for mayor Boris, it appears, is something that was not even on the manifesto: taking booze off London underground. 

The Times article already goes someway to ridiculing the proposals:

• The will be no regular patrols of carriages,
• staff will not have the power to impose on-the-spot fines,
• the policy will largely rely on a “cultural shift” and self-policing.

Brighton Regency muses the libertarian consequences here.

If you want to make public transport safer then these proposals are totally misguided . There are three categories of drinkers who may cause trouble on the tube:

1. Those who are currently drinking,
2. Those who are currently drinking and drunk,
3. Those who are merely drunk.

My own experience of trouble on public transport, and I’ll be honest it’s not vast, would indicate to me it is groups 2 & 3 who are responsible for anti-social behaviour, not group 1. But then you can start stop drunk people getting on the tube, contrary to allegations in the Daily Mail only a fraction of drunk people actually get violent.

Listening to the debate on radio 5 last night the arguments against this proposal generally were: “it wont work” to which the response was “it’s worth trying anyway.” Let’s hope that does not become the philosophy the new mayor of London lives by.

Just picked up the latest offerings of the Tory Party HQ research team via Iain Dale in what would potentially be at home on Recess Monkey.  Apparently an MP called John McConnell is running a stalking horse campaign and Jon Cruddas is the one to unite the party.

Firstly Iain it’s John McDonnell and he has already stated that he is willing to give Gordon at least 6 months to turn the party around, demonstrating that the PLP and party members are willing to give Gordon another chance to rectify the damage Labour has suffered recently.

Dale’s blog also seems to cast doubt on Cruddas’s motives, claiming he didn’t join the Brown government as “he knew what was coming.” In fact throughout the deputy leadership campaign Cruddas clearly stated he was not running to get a job at the end of it, but to make his case for change during the election. To take the junior post he was offered would have been breaking a promise he made to party members.

The possibility of Ken taking on Lynne Featherstone at the next general election is discussed here.

I always hated Lynton Crosby, but I learn that I share something in common with him, a lack of time for wishy-washy Dave Cameron.  The australian pollster found Uncle Dave so intolerable during the 2005 General Election that he has chosen to stay Down-Under during the next contest.  Maybe they’ll turn to Eric Pickles.

There have been many blogs in the fallout of the elections last week that all give many ideas as to what we need to do to turn the fortunes of this party around.  My question now is, whether we can actually do it?  Have we not ventured too far into the political abyss, so as to render our efforts useless?  My very simple answer is, somewhat reluctantly, no.  There is still hope for us.

What we have seen in the first 10 months of Brown’s leadership are the sort of problems that occur with any new premier.  These related to PR, style or even problems climatising to unfamiliar surroundings.  Brown spent over 12 years in one policy area.  We have also seen a massive cut in the number of special advisers around the PM, the circle of influence has become much too small, almost to stifle any outside criticism.  That is evident with Frank Field’s attempts to de-rail the budget, apparently he was agitated with the lack of contact he was having with senior ministers.  All the issues above are very easily rectified.

The real issue is with trust, that comes into our message crafting which over recent months has been shocking.  There is almost no communication between the party and members as to what the overall message is, thus rendering it incredibly difficult to get passionate about the Government, especially on the doorstep.  This can probably be put down to the slow pace of the policy groups.  The next General Election manifesto will start being written over the summer and I bet we will not get the usual quiet “silly-season” instead we will probably hear new and exciting ideas coming from the Government over the summer months in a kind of “road-testing” session. 

So I remain optimistic as well as firm in my belief that millions of real families benefit from a Labour Government everyday.  Those families would not benefit from a Conservative Government.  That is what we all fight for in our movement, the problem is communicating that belief to the people it benefits and other voters.  That has been easy up until now, so we’ve entered the hard-long slog to the next General Election which will be tougher and closer than ever before!!

My internet connection is being a pile of shit so I can’t upload the front page. But as I collected a copy of the Guardian today, hoping to calm my revision stress by reading articles by people who agree with me, I caught sight of the neighbouring Daily Mail.

“ABORTION: FIGHT TO SAVE 2,500 BABIES EVERY YEAR” is screamed at me.

The first paragraph of the article claims that 2,500 lives would be saved every year. Regular readers will already know my views on this and should probably stop reading here to avoid repetitive boredom.

They. Are. Not. Lives. What the hell about the woman’s life?

It goes onto claim that “Women use abortion as contraception.” If this statement were true, surely it would be a strong case for improving access and education about contraception, not for curtailing access to late abortions for the minority of women, usually in desperate circumstances, who have such late abortions?

And use abortion as contraception? How many women do they think would rather go through an emotionally and physically scarring operation, which the more bigoted members of society will condem them for, multiple times than take a tiny pill once a day, or have an injection once a year, or simply use a condom? The morning after pill is a bloody nightmare to get hold of, and often requires thirty-something quid or a rather personal interview about your sex life, whilst standing in the middle of a crowded pharmacists, to get hold of. Make this easier to get hold of, you will cut abortions. Educate and make contraception more available: you will cut abortions. Leave the law where it is. If there are too many abortions, tackle the reason, don’t cut access.

It was all I could do not to spit at the stack of this bullshit sitting smugly on the newstand.

*brij and her womb sit back and wait for the predictable anti-rights backlash from the usual suspects.*

Since Cameron took over the Tory Party he has been keen to demonstrate how they are changing. Ideally he is attempting to model his party on New Labour in the vain hope that he can lead the Tories to a landslide on par with 1997.

In December 2006 I first highlighted the defect in Cameron’s hand. He has had no Clause IV moment up his sleeve, there has been no symbolic act that in the eyes of voters changed the party. In May 2007 he attacked grammar schools in an attempt to demonstrate he cared about social justice. He also worked the green issue, trying to set his party up as a bunch of environmentalists. The electorate have largely seen through this though.

However, at the same time as claiming to have changed the Tories pledged to carry on the reforms of New Labour. Although he never used the phrase Cameron was positioning himself as the ‘heir to Blair’. Consequently the Tories pledged themselves to match Labour spending on public services. IDS was also dispatched to do a report into social justice, the nucleus from which was born out the Tory marriage tax break plans.  Cameron hoped Brown would be a hapless MP and that he would ride to victory on the coat tails of a mood for change.

That was the initial genius in the Labour Party making Brown it’s leader in 2007. The country was sick of the spin it associated with the outgoing Prime Minister. Labour could claim Cameron was just slick PR, no substance and lightweight.

Through these trials, for a Tory Party that had been seemingly cruising to victory, it reverted to a comfort zone. In it’s plans for tax breaks for married couples we see a policy which completely fails to address the root causes of social breakdown. Cameron has also started to talk about immigration, an issue which he was scared of for so long, and now wants to reduce immigrations, nothing more then a fob to the right wing rags. The Tories are essentially the same party they have always been. What is the challenge for Labour?

Since becoming leader Cameron has attempted to seize the centre-ground of British politics. This centre-ground is fairly mythical, it exists in the interpretation of focus groups and also seems to involved appeasing the Murdoch press. If I’m honest I don’t think it really exists. It is a series of ‘triangulations’ - a snazzy term for what is nothing more then stealing your opponents thunder - to ensure that the majority of public opinion is onside. What this overlooks is the fact that public opinion is, in some cases, malleable.

But then that’s not to say there isn’t a consensus in British politics. I think there is, and it makes our politics relatively dull, even though its makes our nation more stable. A centre-ground does exists because people want to be able to send their kids to a good local school and be able to rely on a good local hospital. The centre-ground doesn’t rest on the choice agenda. That is the difference between means and ends.

That is how the Labour Party needs to position itself, starting now. We need to demonstrate that the nation that we want to create is different from that which is held close to the heart of a Cameron Thatcherite. (That link is worth checking). Focusing on the ends: an affluent but equal society, social equality with racial and religious harmony and security for all from the cradle to the grave. Cameron, and the right, will not deliver that and we should put our principles, like a vision, at centre stage.

After the election post-mortem, the BULS head office turned to further naval gazing, this time over the monthly performance of the blog.  In Tom Guise’s, first month as chair, the hits plummeted from 5543 to a meagre 5065.  Guise’s aides claimed this was due to their leaders busy month of campaigning, and thus meant he was unable to steer them to further gains. 

The news was greeted by a series of frantic blogs by disgraced former chair, Tom Marley who attempted to re-align himself within the hearts and minds of grassroots members.  To add further poison to Guise’s woes, another former chair, John Ritchie returned for the local elections and has since been blogging as well.  A source close to BULSInside suggested that both Marley and Ritchie were attempting a cous-d’etat, and that it was imminent.  Guise, reportedly entered exile in London and has not been seen in Birmingham since he was spotted roaming Broad Street in the early hours of Friday morning.  His parents have expressed mild-concern, close friends could not be located.

BULS members have blocked the email account in head office with calls for resignations.  One member said “we need to know where we stand, we’ve lost the plot a bit.  We just need to be able to tell people what it means to be BULS again.”  Others were less couteous, demanding Guise’s head and other vital body parts.  It will be hard to envisage how Guise and his aides can turn BULS around but we expect to hear further news on Wednesday afternoon, after Guise leads the new committee in their first meeting since assuming power.

Congratulations to all newly-elected Birmingham City Councillors.  I happened to be browsing through the Birmingham Conservatives website, and found a page containing lovely pictures of all Conservative Birmingham City Councillors, sorted by ward.  I would encourage everyone to go and take a look - it appears not to have been updated with the new councillors yet, but please check back once it has been updated.  Notice anything?

I wonder if any of the Conservative Group plays chess.  Hmmm.

On Saturday, I ventured to London, it was my step-brother’s christening on Sunday.  As I entered the city, by car and through Dagenham I noticed something.  There were no cars, no people.  Were the rumours true?  Had swathes of fearing Londoners left the city hours after hearing the proclaimation of their new Mayor.  Of course not, infact it was 3.30am on Sunday morning.  Nothing has changed in London, but it will and I am actually going to step back and watch with interest.  The new Mayor may be gaffe prone and a bit hard to stomach at times but he won a race fair and square so it’s the least we can do.

The results were dissapointing for all in the party.  Many hours of strong, honest campaigning by activists had accumulated to nothing, many good quality councillors lost their seats through no fault of their own.  It’s been a demoralising few days.  But you know what?  I reckon we can pull ourselves back.  We may lose the next election, we may not.  But we know that with a Labour government millions of families benefit, millions of school kids have their education and future safe-guarded, millions of people have jobs.  All thanks to Labour values in practice.  We can hold our heads high.  But a response is vitally needed to the new demands of voters.  People who want mortgage assistance, wages that reflect rising living costs and greater job security.  These have, in the past 10 years, been minute concerns of large state organisations.  Labour has focussed on massive initiatives to kick-start the economy to ensure that growth is benefited by all, that got us through three elections but it won’t through the fourth.  When Brown became leader he hand-picked a handful of big thinkers in the party to look at issues more closely, law and order, education, youth services and the environment.  Those manifesto groups are due to report back in June/July so expect alot of debate over new radical ideas over the coming months.  Hopefully we can come up with some coherency, we beat the Tories on policy, even Cameron admits it, but we lose on educated voters what we stand for.  That needs to be our focus now.

While Marley prophecises and speculates about the future of the Labour party, I thought I’d lightenthe tone with some Bank Holiday fun for our less politically animalistic readers, or those who just need a laugh, with a citizenship test from the BBC. Fifteen questions, three options for each- I got ten.

Lots of it is absolutley bonkers. Having got through “What do you do is you spill someone’s pint? a) prepare for a fight in the car park…” I half expected to find “What is the minimum wage and does it apply to seasonal fruit pickers?” on there.

What did you get- are you more British than me?

3 reason why we all need to unite behind Gordon right now:

1) He has been prime minister for less then a year and he has made only two errors of judgment: not calling the election in October and the 10p tax rate abolition. He did his best to rectify the second and there is nothing we can now do about the first. Neither of these mistake constitute a firing. Also I believe he should have an opportunity to put the party back ahead in the polls.

2) It is importent to keep someone of proven experience at the top when we are facing potentially troubling times. If we do enter a recession we need to show the country we are looking outwards and not having internal squabbles.

3) No other candidate is ready to take on the top job, even Milliband or Balls would struggle to get the party back on top. Keeping with this blogs recent theme of pragmatism, I think changing leader now is the best way of loosing the next election.

As PragueTory has said, now is the time for everybody to be giving their two-pence worth on why the party did badly last Thursday. The elections were never going to be a picnic, to put it lightly, and even though Ken lost we should recognise the great service he has done to London and look to the Assembly members to where possible carry out his manifesto.

The other day I noted that the debate was already raging about whether of not New Labour is dead. This blog is about that issue, and I’m going to answer yes.

The Labour Party has always been a pendulum swinging from right to left. Every Labour prime minister has at some point been accused of being a Tory and selling out on Labour voters. Expectations will always be high of a Labour government and some will inevitably be disappointed, not in what the government did, but in the sense that it did not go far enough.

Saying this when Blair declared that he regretted not going further I imagine many members breathed a sigh of relief.

Thinking about this issue over the weekend, primarily on a train to Manchester for my cousin’s daughter’s baptism, I realised New Labour was a strange beast. Defining it would be impossible, to every individual it means something different. I want to argue that I don’t think it means merely ‘right-wing’. The values that underpinned the policies were essentially the same, social justice and equality at the heart of society. New Labour did to some extent accept the Thatcherite reforms of the eighties though New Labour advocated a third-way: accepting the role of the market but accepting in the age of globalisation the state needed to adapt to ensure that those values of social justice could be delivered. I still subscribe to that view. No one doubts that Labour has not delivered some good stuff but in standing up to the market I believe the party has been too timid, scared that it would loose the confidence of business and its good reputation on the economy.

The other admirable value which underpined New Labour was the belief that pragmatism was more important then irrelevant principles. Triangulation was important in changing the public perception of the party and capturing the centre-ground. In the last 10 years the centre-ground has moved, investing in public services is a national priority. We did not do enough though to combat right wing attitudes on race and immigration and where the centre ground has gone left wing in some areas, on certain issues it has gone to the right to the benefit of the BNP.

Let’s go back to the 1990’s.  Read The Last Party by John Harris if you haven’t. It was ‘cool britannia’ - wherever you looked: Britpop, Britart, there was a new mood. It was cool to be British. Add to that the fact that the Tories were old; they were holding Britain back and you realised quite simply the country had moved on.

The Labour Party was moving on too. Kinnock had done the hard work of expelling Militant and Blair and Mandelson completed that change by rewriting Clause IV - a largely irrelevant and ignored part of the constitution, its wording suitably vague to be unoffensive to any branch of socialism. This symbolic act demonstrated to the electorate the party had changed and there was a clean new image to accompany it.

Cue D:Ream. Things could only get better and along came Blair. Fresh faced, idealistic and embodying hope. New Labour and Blair became the zeitgeist of British politics. 

New Labour was the brand, the third-way provided the ideology and by managing the media, Campbell and Mandelson delivered it to the country. That brand is now at the end of it’s product life cycle. The ‘new’ in Labour is what some voters hate about our party right now: cash for honours, Iraq, spin, Mandelson and dodgy passports, Ecclestone’s donations.

We can though, drop the brand, and move on with our politics. To reiterate Gordon: we are best “when we are Labour.”

Having made these assertions I am not calling for a necessary swing to the left, a rewrite of Clause IV or the start-up of a troteskyite entryist organisation. But building on my comments that other day (which were subsequently printed in The Times), we have overlooked the fact that we are a membership organisation. Blair was always scared of the party and what it would do should he take his hand off the lead. It was commented that after addressing Youth Conference in 2007 he was surprised by the warm response. The cynic in me suspects Blair was expecting to enter a room full of young guns who hated his guts. The whole time the party was never as radical as he feared. The thought of going back to the eighties and to unelectability was intolerable. The party had to be managed.

It should come of no surprise that membership has declined so much and this has limited our fundraising ability, meaning the party relies on an increasingly small number of wealthy backers.

The first act has finished, I believe the second act should now begin.

Brown is a man of the party and he needs to recognise the reconnecting with its members is the only chance we have of pulling it together to win at the next election. I want to say something grand like: ‘he now needs to trust the members in the way we trusted him when he became leader unopposed’. And what chance does the party have of listening to voters if it can’t even listen to the people who pay subscriptions?

We have the chance to change. In the internet we have a resource that can inject new life in to our operations. Importantly it allows us to reach out. Elections, ideally CLP and NEC, should be done online, allowing those who don’t always have the incentive to go to meetings to read the manifestoes and vote. Maybe if they were given this opportunity to take part in proceedings they may start going to meetings.

I don’t like conferences. I couldn’t design an atmosphere that was more detrimental to developing well thought out and progressive policy. I would take away the policy making powers of conference. However, the National Policy Forum should have the power to put issues to the vote of the membership in binding party referendums. This will allow more members to take part, rather then the tiny proportion who go to conference, and will stimulate debate in the party.

Doing these things would put us on a new track. New Labour got us into power. The brand is finished and it’s time to find a new approach. The membership is the party’s only chance of doing that.

Let’s push things forward!

Kathryn Woodroof of BULS reports back from the event “Labour, The Women’s Champion” in Washwood Heath

A few Sundays ago a contingent of us BULS women went over to Washwood Heath to show our support for the local Labour candidate Mohammed Rasib. Birmingham’s Labour Party had originally intended to put forward an all-women shortlist for this ward, but following a shortage i.e. complete lack of female candidates, was forced to put forward Mr Rasib, a worthy candidate for the position nonetheless. Some of those present expressed disappointment that no woman had come forward and others anger that it was still proving difficult for women, especially Black & Minority Ethnic women, to get into politics, local or otherwise. We listened sympathetically to the thoughts and frustrations of those present, and the “women need help to get into politics” line of thought was starting to grate a little, when suddenly a young woman stood up and said that if women wanted to get into politics they should quit moaning about it and just do it. Hear hear! Councillor Anita Ward of Hodge Heath ward admitted she too disagreed with all-women shortlists and that women should be put forward as a candidate based on their ability and not their sex. Furthermore, why should a good male candidate such as Mr Rasib be rejected in favour of a woman who might not do the job as well? Sadly it is not quite as easy as all that, but it was refreshing to hear women speak out against the all-women shortlists, which are frankly insulting and ignorant of our strengths and abilities. To foster higher female and BME representation, we must firstly provide more information about how you go about standing as a local councillor, or supporting your preferred party. Young people in particular know very little about local politics and this is a barrier to participation. Following that, women need to hold more meetings like this in order to meet female MPs and councillors who have succeeded in the political arena, hear their stories and gain inspiration from them.

When Tony Blair famously said “power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile,” he was setting a mood which has dictated the Labour Party’s attitude to policy-making ever since.  Many of the party’s grassroots at the time called it a sellout on their principles - many more accepted that a degree of pragmatism was needed to make Labour electable again.

There was a degree of pride-swallowing for everyone in the Labour Party back then, and there needs to be a similar degree of pride-swallowing now.  Not in order to capitalise yet more on the middle-England vote that we are so terrified of losing (and are evidently succeeding in so doing), but to understanding what motivates the electorate to vote Labour in the first place.  The electorate stuck with New Labour in the past because it associated strongly with New Labour’s ideology - there was an understanding that New Labour’s policies would only push the middle classes as far as they felt comfortable, but no further, and there was an understanding that the fruits of that prosperity were going to help people at the bottom.  They did.

But what the Brown administration has not yet grasped is that the electorate’s inate understanding of New Labour’s ideology, i.e. that Labour will protect the poorest but not over-burden the rich, never needed renewal, and certainly not in terms of handing tax breaks to the middle-classes whilst risking over-burdening the poor.  What was in deperate need of renewal was an understanding that politicians were motivated less by retaining power and more by retaining our country’s social and economic stability.  Brown, with a solid reputation for both aiming for power and retaining stability, appeared to give the impression that the power was more important than the principle.

Bizarrely, I think the route out of Gordon Brown’s troubles may come in a familiar, yet not often-trumpeted form (at least not in New Labour circles).  Tony Benn once said there are two types of politician - signposts and weathercocks.  Signposts believe in what they believe, and will argue according to their principles.  Weathercocks will dither and wait on the results of opinion polls and focus groups before making a decision on anything.  If you had to classify Brown and Cameron into one of these categories 9 months ago, the result would be fairly obvious - you knew where you stood with Brown, and Cameron was all spin and hair grease.  But the main issues that have completely reversed Brown’s fortunes have been due to his transformation in the eyes of the public from a signpost to a weathercock - the election that never was, inheritance tax, and the 10p tax rate fiasco - all decisions made on the back of perceived public  opinion and political points scoring - all another chip out of Brown’s “signpost.”

What Labour needs now is not to re-connect with middle-England, but to reconnect with the very reasons that made every voter (working-class, middle-class, Scottish, English, men, women or whoever) put a cross next to Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 - a belief in promoting fairness, equality and social justice… but never at the expense of stability.  As soon as the public start to notice these “signposts” are pointing towards Labour and Gordon Brown again, we need have no fear about going into the next General Election…

… and sinking David Cameron’s weathercock.

Some time between midnight and two, waiting for my mate to come out the loo at the Carling Academy in Birmingham, I finally get some reception on my phone. The internet tells me Boris Johnson is London’s new mayor. My night now with something of a dampner on it, I promptly bump into Kat R of BULS, and share the news. We forlornly drift over to the bar to drown our sorrows and have a couple of shots in Ken’s honour.

I had a feeling all along this would happen, and am sad to be proved right. My Mum, a former Londoner, replied to my forlorn text with “Fuck. Think about emigration.” My Dad followed that up with “At least he’s not mayor of Brum.” Heh- I guess he wasn’t checking the Birmingham election results too closely from little old Eastbourne.

The results are what we always kinda knew would happen, but they’re still a bit of a kick in the gut. A mate from Sheffield rang me yesterday, and couldn’t sound more depressed if someone had died.

Time to move on- to learn, to recharge our batteries and to refresh…

I have to say I’ve been quite impressed by the non-partisan tone of some of the discourse in the aftermath of Thursday’s elections, particularly the Mayoral election.  Anyone who has actually been an active candidate or a community campaigner in local elections (as opposed to a party-aparatchik, navel-gazing, prediction-making, strategy-forming “campaigner”) has some appreciation of what we’re all really in this game for.  It’s not to win one over the other side, although that must be how it appears to most.  It is entirely about positively influencing the lives of the people who live in our communities.

In reality, that positive influence can come in many forms, and almost always you can make the impact without needing the Councillor’s allowance or the vote in the council chamber.  I stood for Council last year, and whilst I knew I would make a better councillor than my opponent, I also knew that all was not lost from my defeat.  Running a high profile campaign and being good at doing it almost invariably helps not the politicians, but the electorate.  I left the count last year knowing that by calling my opponent publicly to account with high-profile and aggressive campaigns, I had probably changed the quality of life of hundreds of people in that ward.

The same applies to a number of wards this year, where some results appear to be just completely unjust to anyone with a grasp of either the intellect, capacity to work, or community involvement of the defeated candidate relative to the victor.

But we’ll carry on fighting, remembering that our democratic system trumps it all.  This year hasn’t been “bad,” it’s been disastrous.  What we need now is not idiotic and patronising soundbites about how we’re all going to start “listening” - everyone knows our grassroots campaigners have done exactly that for years - even if the conduit to the leadership for those views has been far from a path of least resistance.  What we need is to remember why we’re doing this in the first place.  If we carry on the fight, you can rest assured that before too long, circumstances will have us back in power locally, but much more importantly, will have us making the positive changes our communities deserve under Labour, and are always left wanting under the Conservatives.

I leant upon a coppice gate   When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate  
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky  
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh  
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be  
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,  
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth  
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth  
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among  
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong  
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,  
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul  
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings  
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things  
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through  
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew  
And I was unaware.

Even Thomas Hardy wasn’t supporting Boris…

Yes say Compass.

No says Luke.

You decide.

… says Chuka Umunna is a post on the Compass website.  

The good ship Labour can sail again.

OK so this isn’t a great time for the party: the best thing we can do is get back on our feet, Gordon needs to start demonstrating again that he can lead his government and we need to make the most of the policy consultation documents going out today.

Which is why I am annoyed that Pitt-Watson seemed to be dragging his heels about taking on the GS job. Now it appears he has turned it down. 

“Some believe Pitt-Watson’s decision to stand down had less to do with delays and more to do with fears that a man with personal wealth could become personally liable for any Labour debts as chief accounting officer for the party.

Labour is servicing a £13.5m overdraft from the Co-op Bank, included in a total of outstanding borrowings which stands at £20m. The main difficulty for the party is a lack of fundraising capacity.”

One of his key roles would have been to ensure the Labour Party was doing plenty of fundraising. 

Personally I’m quite annoyed at Pitt-Watson for this debacle. Why was it not the case if he knew the party had debt, his personal wealth would have been as risk? The Labour Party is desperately needing leadership right now and a strong GS is essential in helping Gordon regain the national agenda.

Do you think Mike Griffiths is up to much these days? 

Just thought it would be worth having a rant about the substandard quality of the BBCs coverage of the local elections last night.

We had Jeremy Vine repeatedly demonstrating how Gordon Brown has gone from a Stalin-like figure to a Mr. Bean. At the time I was attempting to work out what the significance of this was but to no avail. Unfortunately it seems he was going for the cheap gags and dumbing down the discussion to a lowest common denominator. Mike Smithson also took issue with the BBCs coverage. 

It seems strange to me that the likes of Paxman may bemoan the current state of politics, though the race to the bottom is only being matched by the fact the the floor has fallen in on quality analysis at the BBC.

For decent news coverage watch Al Jazeera. 

Albert Bore’s response to the 6 losses last night has been reported on The Stirrer.

“Labour leader Sir Albert Bore scoffed at suggestions that local voters were swayed by local issues.

He laid responsibility for his party’s performance at the government’s door.

“It’s not about cleaner streets or even the Council Tax, which only raises £6 million anyway, compared to £60 million from central government.

“The fact is that the government is unpopular at the moment and we paid the price for that.”

Bore argued that traditional Labour voters hadn’t switched sides to the Conservatives – rather, they had simply stayed at home

I for one think it’s sad that we lost two of the best members of the Labour Group last night, in John Cotton and Jan Drinkwater.

An interest idea was floated my way in the wee hours of the morning.  If Boris wins in London, we can watch as he goes about making gaffes and blunders every week and it’ll discredit the Tories so much nationally that the voters will come crying back. 

It could happen.

Just taking a quick break from work and am wondering… what is the news from the BNP? There was much talk about the getting at least one seat on the London Assembly. Hopefully the silence is a good omen.

Keep up to date with the news here.

It isn’t looking good for Ken, although his vote came out it seems the Tory vote came out too.

Bob Piper wonders here whether it the poor result is due to Labour voters not turning out.

New Direction also argues the problem lies in not getting our core vote out.

Dave’s Part gives some interesting reflections on the strange death of Liberal New Labour England.

Luke’s blog did well yesterday.

The count started at 8.00 this morning.

The rumours I heard last night was that turnout was at General Election levels… this has to be good for Ken.

Check out the results for Birmingham City Council elections here.

Without doubt PragueTory will be on this blog within minutes claiming he knew all along Labour were going to get hammered. I’ll say this to Dom now, there’s no real surprises there. Over the last few weeks this blogs hasn’t exactly been a laugh a minute with depressing news on the national front. Local elections will always be used by the voters to ’send a message’ and give a good kicking to the national party.

Every now and again, after the 2005 General election and other bad years for council elections, ministers describe how we need to go away and consider what has happened and listen to the electorate more. I hate this empty notion. There was unrest over the 10p tax rate but Gordon has already backed down over that. The other contentious issue at the moment is 42 day detention, hardly something that regularly comes up on the doorstep.

Also, let’s bear in mind that the people who didn’t vote Labour yesterday have never probably voted Labour in the past. Wards like Quinton we lost, not because the Tories converted Labour supporters, but because our supporters stayed at home. How we should be taking lessons from people who never wanted us in power I am not entirely sure.

It’s hard to finish this blog though without giving the impression that I think the party is in the pits. Labour can win the next election (not to say I think we will the way we’re going now). There are two challenges which face the party though: the lack of cash flow and the fact that we are seen to be bereft of new ideas. The Labour Party needs to face up to the fact that it can, and would overcome these, if it looked more to it’s members as a resource, and not just as a bunch of leafletters.

Was there, for the first time from the chair, a recognition that he cannot go on like this and will not now hang on to the bitter end?

His monthly press conference crackled with the anticipation that, this time - unlike so many before it - it really had to deliver.

And deliver it did - in spades if you are of a mind to accept Tom Marley’s nods and winks unquestioningly.

But even for the cynics there was at least enough to think the last two weeks may have shifted the political landscape irrevocably.

In some carefully worded pronouncements Mr Marley, looking far less confrontational than we had been led to believe, delivered something significantly new.

He dropped the defiant old “here to serve a full third semester” stuff, in favour of an entirely different form of words.

And it was all about standing down soon enough to give his successor time to establish himself, or bed himself in.

Gordon on Cameron:

This is the man who wants to be both tough on crime and hug-a-huddie at the same time.

This is the man where political calculation meant he cycled to work and at the same time had the chauffeur driven car driving behind.

This is the man who is a shallow salesman and never addresses the substance of the issue

From Clegg on Kinnock:

Is he (the prime minister) not ashamed of the grotesque chao, to quote Neil Kinnock, of a Labour government, a Labour government scuttling around the country handing out closure notices to 5,000 local post offices?

Goof old calamity Clegg!

Polls are open tomorrow from 7am until 10pm.  Here are just 15 reasons why you should take time out to vote Labour;

1. Labour introduced a national minimum wage that has risen to £5.52
2. Over 14 000 more police officers in England and Wales - crime down by 32%
3. Employment has never been higher
4. Free entry to museums everywhere
5. Winter fuel allowance to ease the financial burden on the older generation
6. NHS Direct offers easy to use advice both online and via telephone.
7. A million pensioners lifted out of poverty
8. 600 000 children lifted out of poverty.
9. Inpatient waiting lists down by over 50%
10. cut long term youth-unemployment by 75%
11. doubled the foreign aid budget since 1997
12. free off-peak bus travel for over 60s
13. 3 million child trust funds created
14. Cleanest rivers, beaches and air since before the industrial revolution
15. Increased the right to paid-holiday for all full-time workers, now 24 days

So go out and vote Labour and make sure we continue to deliver on that record of success. 

The Torygraph reports that their political namesake is considering reducing the “power of the unions.”

There’s no real question that this is simple knee-jerk opportunism on the Tories’ part.  We’ve had a teachers’ strike (whose justifications were admittedly dubious) and a strike of chemical workers (whose justifications seem perfectly commendable), and Osborne is trying to craft a winter-of-discontent image of unions holding the country to ransom.  Pathetic, George: and the Daily Mail-style scare tactics aren’t befitting even of the current Tory frontbench.

What is slightly more scary is the tone of this message and the exposure it gives to the Tories’ hypocrisy.  Only this morning, Cameron was telling us how he was only worried for the poor people of the country in opposing the abolition of the 10p tax rate.  Nonsense.  In a climate where the poor are being squeezed whilst the rich are getting better off (one of the legacies of the current government of which I am less proud), workers need the protection of the trades unions - they do not need yet further erosions to their powers.

In another blindening dose of inconsistency, when it comes to the blame game between employer and union, Osbourne believes the unions are to blame and need to be cut down (cf. Grangemouth), yet when it comes to Civil Servants and the employer happens to be Gordon Brown, can you guess who is to blame?

Striking was not the right way to tackle the issue, he said, adding that the “real culprit” was Gordon Brown.  By that reasoning, who was to blame for the miners strikes of the 80s?

… the unions, I guess.

I stumbled across this page whilst browsing the Parliament website.  It’s quite interesting to browse down the party affiliation list down the right hand side…

At least one of the two main political parties have much to do…

Having just received my Take Home test for Political Analysis, I am annoyed. When we were given them, out lecturer said that history students get an extra week just because they have a little bit extra work to do, fair enough. Ive no idea how much work they have but i’ll accept it. Where my problem lies is that he also said certain members of the module have been granted extensions simply because they are campaigning for Boris in London. This is ridiculous when all of us are campaigning, as BUCF are im sure. Why then should Boris campaigners be given an extension when no one else is. If this module was going to grant this extension, they shouldnt have given their test over council election week. End of 

From today’s Independent:

Lord Laidlaw, the multimillionaire Tory donor, has pledged a £1m donation to an addiction charity after a Sunday newspaper published lurid claims about his addiction to sex.

The Monaco-based peer admitted his lifelong problem after the News of the World claimed he had held sex parties with prostitutes. In a letter to the newspaper, Lord Laidlaw, who has given more than £3m to the Conservatives and paid £25,000 to Boris Johnson’s mayoral campaign, said he had been “fighting sexual addiction for my whole adult life”. He said he was seeking “expert help” and plans to give £1m to a British addiction charity.

Lord Laidlaw said: “Sexual addiction is comparable to other, better-known addictions such as drug, alcohol and gambling. There is no cure for it and self-help is rarely successful.”

Dawn Butler, a Labour vice-chairman, condemned the peer’s actions.

She said: “If they have any respect for the women of this country, I hope David Cameron and Boris Johnson will return the millions of pounds they have been given by Lord Laidlaw or hand over the money to a charity helping abused women. That would send the right signal that his behaviour is unacceptable.”

I have to say, I’m with Dawn on this one.

Recently BUCF posted an anonymous blog on the issue of student politics.

“It is thoroughly depressing then that only 3% of students voted for the President, with even fewer for other positions… very few people seem to give a damn about it any more. Why is this? My answer is that the majority of students who do engage with student politics, especially at the University of Birmingham, are idiots.”

The blog gets off on a rather light hearted note by seeking to offend every volunteer who, hasn’t just moaned from the sidelines, but actually has got involved. A