Council by-elections

Tonight's council by-election results:

Castleside Ward, Derwentside DC. Ind hold. Ind 297 (82.3%,+8.3%), Con 64 (17.7%, +3.7%). Swing of 2.3% from Con to Ind since 2007.

Townfield Ward, LB Hillingdon. Lab hold. Lab 1031 (45.3%, -12.6%), LD 506 (22.2%, +8.7%), Con 445 (19.6%, -9%), BNP 186 (8.2%, +8.2%), NF 74 (3.3%, +3.3%), Green 34 (1.5%, +1.5%). Swing 10.7% Lab to LD since 2006. This is in John McDonnell's seat.

Batchley Ward, Redditch BC. Con gain from Lab. Con 630 (39%, -12.4%), Lab 539 (33.4%, -4.3%), BNP 299 (18.5%, +18.5%), LD 121 (7.5%, -3.4%), Ind 25 (1.5%, +1.5%). Swing of 4.1% from Con to Lab since 1 May this year. This is in Jacqui Smith's extremely marginal parliamentary seat.

Uckfield New Town Ward, Wealden DC. LD hold. LD 311 (47.4%, -16%), Con 289 (44.1%, +7.5%), UKIP 56 (8.5%, +8.5%). Swing of 11.8% from LD to Con since 2007.

Arrow Valley East Division, Worcs CC. Con gain from Lab. Con 1437 (42.2%, +11.1%), Lab 1041 (30.6%, -17.3%), LD 455 (13.4%, -7.6%), BNP 367 (10.8%, +10.8%), Ind 103 (3%, +3%). This consists of another 3 district wards from Jacqui Smith's seat. Swing of 14.2% from Lab to Con.

Cameron on redistribution

I haven't once listened to Radio 4's Today programme since 1990 - these days I'm already on a 243 bus to work when it starts.

Luckily DWP Secretary of State James Purnell does tune in, and is pointing any Labour folk he happens to run into towards this telling quote - evidence of an increasing harshness in the Tory line on social issues now they feel they have detoxified their brand - from an interview with David Cameron on Tuesday morning at about 07.59, where Mr Cameron clarifies the ideological difference between the two main parties on tackling poverty:

"The Labour Party for a long time said it, only it, could deal with deep poverty because it understood about transferring money from rich to poor, but I think we've reached the end of that road, ... we need quite conservative solutions to deal with those problems".

I think we can take it from the phrasing "I think we've reached the end of that road" that a Tory government won't be seeking to increase redistribution. They seem to have an interesting view that making the poor richer doesn't er... reduce poverty. Run that past me again will you Dave?

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you think there should be redistribution to make our unequal society more equal, David Cameron doesn't agree with you. I dread to imagine what his "quite conservative solutions" to poverty might be. Any guesses?

Cancellation of Spring Conference

I'm not impressed by the Labour Party's decision to cancel its 2009 Spring Conference reported in the press today.

It's pretty pathetic if we can't manage to organise an event in a way that is at least self-funding and ideally profit-making.

It's also insulting to Labour councillors as the main function of the Spring Conference is to discuss local government issues - and removes a platform that could have been used to launch our campaign for important County and Euro elections.

The proposed substitution of regional events was a disaster when it was tried before in 2007 - amateurish, poorly publicised and attended and attracting none of the beneficial collateral media coverage the Spring Conferences get.

Could Glasgow East be the turning point?

Conventional wisdom and media punditry has liked the idea that the Glasgow East by-election due on 24 July was going to be the final nail in Gordon Brown's political coffin.

Personally I think there is more chance it will be the turning point when Labour's, and Brown's fortunes, start - perhaps slowly but surely - to go upwards.

Today's ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph puts Labour on 47% in the constituency, with the SNP on 33%, the Lib Dems on 9% and Tories on just 7%.

I'm sure it will be closer when it gets to polling day, but such has been the media expectations game played so far that even a narrow victory is going to look like an against the odds triumph for the PM.

The results in inner London constituencies on 1 May with similar (though more ethnically mixed) demographics to Glasgow East showed that where a good campaign is fought, Labour's core vote is still remarkably solid - and will turn-out enthusiastically in a tight contest.

There's good reason for this. Contrary to the incredibly patronising portrayal of Glasgow East voters in the media over the last couple of weeks, voters in the most economically deprived constituencies in the UK aren't cannon fodder voting Labour through habit against their own interest. They've had to deal with the worst excesses of Thatcherism and they know that whilst the past 11 years of Labour government have not been a socialist Nirvana, they've been a hundred times better than the alternative. They are also not gullible enough to be sucker-punched into thinking that Norman Lamont's ex-Special Adviser Mr Cameron, whilst he may indeed have developed a social conscience since his Thatcherite youth, really knows or cares about life in parts of Britain his party drift into for an occasional "gosh look at all these poor people" by-election walk-about, rather than live in and represent all year round.

Life in Glasgow East is tough - beyond tough - for many of its residents, and the health and poverty statistics for the constituency (and similar areas in East London and other major cities and outside them in former mining areas) are as good an argument for democratic socialism and as good a reminder of why the Labour Party exists as any one needs. Labour's work in Glasgow East and similar seats isn't finished. It's hardly begun. A fourth term Labour Government isn't a luxury for these kind of constituencies - it's a matter of life or death when male life expectancy in a constituency lags behind the national average by 11 years - if you don't have a Government whose priority is redistribution and investment in healthcare, that 11 year gap will get bigger not smaller.

But the direction of travel after 11 years of Labour Government is a good one and if you are living in what Australian PM Bob Hawke called the "inch between a Labour and a rightwing government you know that inch is a good place to live". Many people in Glasgow East don't have the buffer zone of comfort in their lives to gamble and risk a return to the economic decline, under-investment in health and education and disinterest in the regeneration of their city that they endured under the Tories until 1997. All the things that it's easy to be blase about that Labour has done over the last 11 years have had the greatest impact in the seats like Glasgow East with the greatest poverty: the National Minimum Wage, massive investment in police, schools and hospitals, a massive reduction in unemployment, child benefit up 26%, Sure Start, huge reductions in pensioner and child poverty, tax credits. All of these things, which have been at the core of what Labour in government has been about, have made the most difference in this kind of constituency. That's quite apart from the specific investment happening in Glasgow - ranging from the city's shipbuilding industry getting a major share in building the new Type 45 destroyers and the two new aircraft carriers, creating and sustaining jobs and skills, through to the £1.6bn Clyde Gateway project, which has targeted building 10,000 new homes and 400,000 square metres of commercial property in the next 20 years and aims to create 21,000 new jobs and increase the population in the East End of Glasgow by 20,000.

I think we'll pull it off - maybe narrowly - in Glasgow East because voters there aren't stupid and will vote in their self-interest to protect the improvements to their lives of the last 11 years and to safeguard the future hope that only Labour cares enough to bring to the UK's least well-off communities.

It looks like we have an excellent local candidate and I have a hunch that in a few years time we may all be raising a toast to Margaret Curran and the people of Glasgow East as the folk who saved Labour in its hour of greatest need.

Compass - less than 300 active members

The results of the executive elections for soft left faction Compass are out here: http://clients.squareeye.com/uploads/compass/Compass1.xls

They reveal that it only has 274 members active enough to bother voting in its internal elections. You can - like former NUS President Gemma Tummelty - get on their executive with only 10 first preference votes.

Hardly a mass membership organisation poised to sweep to control of the Labour Party.

Council by-election results

There were some real by-elections last night, as well as the pointless waste of public money in Haltemprice & Howden.

Croft Ward, Blyth Valley DC. Lab hold. Lab 439 (48%, -9%), Ind 266 (29.1%, +29.1%), LD 176 (19.3%, -7%), Con 32 (3.5%, -13.2%). Swing of 19.1% from Lab to Ind since 2007. However, there is a swing to Lab compared with the May 1 results for the new Northumberland Unitary. Blyth Valley DC is being abolished next year.

Risca West Ward, Caerphilly UA. Lab hold. Lab 636 (56.0%, +5.6%) Plaid Cymru 315 (27.8%, +0.3%) Con 137 (12.1%, -10%) Lib 47 (4.1%, +4.1%). Swing of 2.6% from PC to Lab since May. Good result given context of tightness of outcome in May on Caerphilly (32 Lab, 32 PC, 9 Ind - there were 9 Labour losses on 1 May).

Barton Ward, Canterbury DC. LD hold. LD 993 (51.8%, +8.1%), Con 701 (36.6%, +4.2%), Green 121 (6.3%, +6.3%), Ind 102 (5.3%). Swing of 2% from Con to LD since 2007. Strange that there was no Labour candidate in a ward that I'm fairly sure was a 3-way marginal in the '90s - is there a non-aggression pact between the former coalition partners in my home town?

Aberystwyth Rheidol Ward, Ceredigion UA. Plaid Cymru gain from LD. PC 271 (40.2%, +12.0%), LD 252 (37.4%, -30.2%), Ind 98 (14.5%, +14.5%), Lab 36 (5.3%, +5.3%), Con 17 (2.5%, -2.7%). Swing 21.1% LD to PC.

Bury Ward, Chichester DC. Con hold. Con 431 (69.3%, +14%), LD 191 (30.7%, +30.7%). Changes in vote share are since 2007 when it was a Con vs Ind straight fight.

Bradwell South & Hopton Ward, Great Yarmouth DC. Con hold. Con 623 (49.9%, +1.9%), Lab 429 (34.4%, +15.2%), UKIP 196 (15.7%, +5.3%). Swing 6.7% Con to Lab (mainly because the LDs did not field a candidate).

Dalton Ward, Kirkless MBC. Lab hold. Lab 1397 (40.5%, +10%), LD 1155 (33.5%, -0.8%), Con 605 (17.5%, -1.9%), BNP 157 (4.5%, -6.3%), Green 103 (3%, -2%), Ind 34 (0.9%, +0.9%). Swing of 5.4% since May. Good result in a ward where the other 2 cllrs are Lib Dem. This is in Huddersfield parliamentary constituency.

Cranbrook Ward, LB Redbridge. Con hold. Con 1,625 (60.0%, +8.4%), Lab 729 (26.9%, -5.1%), LD 318 (11.7%, -4.7%), BNP 37 (1.4%, +1.4%). Swing of 6.8% from Lab to Con since 2008.

Common Ward, Stafford BC. Con gain from Lab. Con 397 (40.4%, -3.5%), Lab 294 (29.9%, -26.1%), LD 140 (14.2%, +14.2%), EPP 78 (7.9%, +7.9%), Green 74 (7.5%, +7.5%). Swing 11.3% Lab to Con since 2007. Labour's worst result of the night due to intervention by minor parties in what had been a two-way fight.

Trowbridge Central, West Wiltshire DC. Con gain from LD. Con 452 (55.3%, +21.9%), LD 366 (44.7%, +3.8%). Swing of 9.1% from LD to Con since 2007 following withdrawal of independents who ran then.

Wigan West Ward, Wigan MBC. Lab hold. Lab 817 (38.3%, -5.5%), Con 528 (24.8%, +5.8%), LD 344 (16.1%, -2.4%), BNP 200 (9.4%, -5.1%), UKIP 124 (5.8%, +5.8%), Community Action 118 (5.5%, +5.4%). Swing 5.7% Lab to Con since May.

With the exception of Stafford these are rather better results than for several months.

Out-controversialed

Any worries I have ever had about getting into trouble with senior management at work for saying something too controversial here have now disappeared, as my company's Chief Exec, Colin Byrne has got a bit of coverage here, here, here and here for being less than complimentary about the No10 press operation.

Being a multi-party agency we have quite a diversity of views in my workplace, so just for the record I don't share Colin's critique (sorry Colin!).

Empowerment White Paper

As I was in local government geek mode today I've posted about my take on Hazel Blears' Empowerment White Paper, announced today, and related issues ranging from elected Mayors through electoral reform for local government, Foundation Hospital Board elections and tenant participation to "double devolution" over on the Progress website.

Waking the political dead

Serves me right for being a) provocative and b) naively honest about saying what I believe.

I have achieved the unique double of breathing new life into the decaying political corpses of both the Hackney Conservatives and Hackney Liberal Democrats (an endangered species down to their last 2 councillors) with my slightly hard line positions on counter-terrorism expressed here previously.

I now feature on the front pages of both parties' websites - the Tory one and Lib Dem one which judging by the similarities in text is being ghost-written by Labour-to-LD turncoat/Hackney-to-Islington carpet-bagger Meral Ece.

I'm braced for another exciting story in the Hackney Gazette.

For the record, my views as the strapline to this blog says "are entirely personal" and don't represent those of anyone else or any organisation I'm a member of.

I just happen to take the pragmatic view that there are some very dangerous people out there who want to cause mass casualty terrorist incidents (using CBRN materials if they can get them) that would dwarf 9/11 and 7/7 in scale. Security agencies have a good idea who and where some of those people are, but lack the necessary evidence to arrest and convict them using conventional law enforcement methods (or they live in territories where there is no conventional law and order, or a state that has a lot of law and order but is sympathetic to what the individuals want to do and hence unsympathetic to arresting and extraditing them). Hence the need to pick some of these people up extra-judicially and remove them to custody in another jurisdiction, known as extraordinary rendition.

Some of these people also turned up in battle or after it in Afghanistan, having been involved with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. They were not part of an army so were not conventional POWs. It would have been irresponsible beyond belief to let them loose to carry on with their terrorist careers. They needed to be kept somewhere where they couldn't escape from and where they could be interrogated about what they knew about al-Qaeda and its plans. Hence the need for Guantanamo Bay.

I believe that it is probable that many thousands of innocent lives may have been saved - perhaps some of them here in London - through the thwarting of potential acts of terrorism by the US Government's use of extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay.

That doesn't mean, as Lib Dem Councillor Dawood Akhoon (known as the Invisible Man of Hackney Council so infrequently does he appear or speak in the council chamber) claims, that I'm "actually in favour of people being .... tortured". I believe that extraordinary rendition of people to countries where torture might be used is wrong. I also believe that the alleged use of extreme forms of interrogation at Guantanamo is wrong, not least because quite aside from moral objections to the methods used, it's a useless way of getting information out of people because they just say anything to get the interrogator to stop.

The onus on people who don't believe in extraordinary rendition is to explain how they would deal with people believed or known to be terrorists at large in third countries. Leave them free to carry on planning atrocities? It's also on people who oppose the creation of Guantanamo Bay to explain how they would have dealt with the influx of Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters picked up in Afghanistan. Set them loose with a promise not to be bad after confiscating their Kalashnikovs?

I've no doubt the other political parties in my home patch will attempt to play a sordid game of communalism with my views on this come the 2010 council elections and will try to smear my Labour colleagues (despite the fact they as far as I know they all disagree with me). I've also no doubt that Muslim residents in my council ward are a lot more interested in my ability to get their lifts fixed or a new controlled parking zone set up, the job they elect me to do, than in my idiosyncratic but deeply held views on international issues. Far from my views having "outraged" Hackney residents as Cllr Akhoon claims, they only seem to be of interest to Lib Dem and Tory councillors - I've not had any ordinary voter raise them with me, though as I reported a couple of weeks ago, my appearance in the Gazette did bemuse/entertain some of my constituents.

Susan Press

I don't normally bother reacting to the lunacy spouted by Susan Press of Labour Left Briefing and the Labour Representation Committee on her blog, http://grimmerupnorth.blogspot.com/

But three of her four most recent posts really are extraordinary.

Post one attacks the Labour campaign in the Glasgow East by-election. How about waiting until after polling day to critique it Susan? Did it not occur to you that Labour members should be saying supportive things while an important by-election is actually being contested?

Post two reveals that one of Susan's mates in the LRC is named Lenin, presumably because his parents thought it was appropriate to glorify a mass-murderer and dictator when they named their kids.

Post four urges Labour Party activists to pick where they will campaign based not on the marginality of the seat, but on the politics of the MP i.e. the left should only campaign for left MPs. Having spent a lot of time earlier this year campaigning for Ken Livingstone, and in previous years alongside Diane Abbott - despite not sharing much of either one's politics - I find this suggestion grossly offensive. Labour activists should campaign for the Labour Party Candidate in their own seat, and for the nearest MP in a marginal seat that needs their help - you don't pick and choose who you canvass for based on whether they pass your own ideological litmus test.

In contrast ...

One of the people who should have been Deputy Leader and is displaying admirable loyalty to the PM, Hazel Blears, was on form at the LGA last week, with this to say about the role of political parties, councillors and councils:

"So I am announcing today a new set of powers for local authorities to be able to promote democracy. This ‘duty to promote democracy’ will mean that local councils are placed in their proper context: not as units of local administration, but as lively, vibrant hubs of democracy.

I want councillors to be in charge of councils. That may seem obvious – unless you’ve served as a councillor!

I am reminded of the story told by Tony Benn from his days as Minister for Technology in the Wilson Government. There was a large demonstration outside the department, as so often happened in the 1960s. There were all the usual groups: the International Socialists, the Revolutionary Workers, the Anarchists. The Permanent Secretary burst into Tony Benn’s office, and warned him: Minister, we have to evacuate. The Anarchists are trying to take over the Department. To which Benn replied: ‘but I’ve been trying to do that for months…’

It always sounds better when he tells it!

So I see this new duty being interpreted in various practical ways which will help councillors be more effective.

For example, I never again want to hear an officer tell a councillor that they can’t hold surgeries on council premises, or appear on a council website or leaflet because that’s ‘political’.

I want political parties to be able to hold their meetings in council buildings, and to have stalls at council-run public events, so that political parties are seen as every bit as legitimate as the chamber of commerce or the voluntary sector.

I want every citizen to be able to phone up their council, and for the person on the end of the phone to be able to tell them the name of the Leader of the council, the political party they belong to, which party or parties are in control, and when the next set of elections is.

I am making money available to train these council staff in the basics of local democracy.

I want leaders of councillors to have reasonable facilities: a desk, a phone, a computer, support staff.

I want every council (not just the best) to run lively campaigns to explain the voting system, to encourage first-time voters, and to sign people onto the register.

Some of you may say: but Hazel we already do all of this stuff. But ask yourself whether every council does it, and you will see we need to send a signal loud and clear that councillors are in charge of councils: elected, representative, accountable.

These measures will make it clear that politics is not a dirty word, that councils are political entities, and that councillors, with power on loan from the people, are in charge."

Et tu, Harriet?

If this article, suggesting Harriet Harman is promoting herself as a potential successor to the PM, is true, it represents a degree of personal betrayal and disloyalty that I find breathtaking, given that Harman spent the whole Deputy Leadership election portraying herself as the candidate closest to Brown.

Ministers should be using their spare time to canvass voters in Glasgow East, not to canvass the PLP in pursuit of their own ambitions.