By-election results

Final council by-elections of the year from yesterday.

First, the one I was Labour Agent for - Springfield Ward in Hackney.

Result was:
Conservative – 1244 – 58.9% (up by 414 from 2006, share of vote up by 16.2%)
Labour - 590 – 27.9% (up by 52 votes and 0.2%)
Lib Dem – 113 – 5.4% (down by 85 votes and 8.2%)
Green – 85 – 4.0% (down by 179 votes and 6.2%)
Christian Party – 40 – 1.9% (did not stand in 2006)
Communist – 37 – 1.8% (down by 76 votes and 4%)

Turnout was 33% (up 2% compared to 2006, but electorate has increased by 1300 as well)

For those readers unfamiliar with the idiosyncratic politics of Stamford Hill, this ward is very polarised between two southern polling districts which are mainly social housing and very ethnically mixed, Labour-voting and low-turnout, and two northern polling districts which are mainly owner-occupied with a large Chassidic Jewish population who (in this ward) vote Tory and do so on a very high turnout. Tory councillors at the count last night were describing the result as a referendum on the council's attempts to tighten up the rules on planning permission for residential extensions, a move which is unpopular with the Chassidic community.

Congratulations to Michael Levy the new Tory councillor and to Peter Golds and Matthew Coggins on their campaign. A silver lining to the cloud is that the Lib Dem vote collapsed despite their 5 separate leaflets each saying it was a two-horse race between them and the Tories - and an outrageous leaflet that was blue and stated on the outside that it was a message from the former Tory councillor!

A colleague has calculated that the Lib Dems delivered 19,500 leaflets during the campaign. An impressive 172 leaflets for every actual vote they got ...

Our Labour candidate Munaf Zina put in an excellent performance and worked extremely hard. I hope we will see Munaf as a Labour Councillor before too long – he has a great deal to bring to the council.

Other by-elections yesterday:

In my old stamping ground of Castle Point, there was a 17.5% swing from Tory to Labour in St Mary's Ward, Benfleet - the Tories clung on to one of the two seats being contested but my Agent from the 2005 General Election, Brian Wilson, gained a seat, putting a Labour voice back on a council where we lost our last seat in May.

Shepshed Town Council - 2 Labour gains from Conservative. I think this is in Loughborough parliamentary seat, which is a Labour held marginal.

Attack of the clones

I am already having trouble telling the difference:

Post of the day

Hopi deserves some recognition for this bit of online sleuthing:

http://hopisen.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/spot-the-difference

Council by-election results

Last night's council by-election results:

Brighton & Hove, Regency Ward - Green hold with Tories narrowly overtaking Labour to come second.

LB Harrow, Canons Ward - Con hold of a safe ward. Tories down 13%, Labour up 1%

LB Hounslow, Chiswick Riverside Ward - Con hold. Tories up 16%, Labour up 3%, LDs down 7%, Greens down 12%

Merthyr, Treharris Ward - Ind hold with LDs overtaking Lab into 2nd place.

Reigate & Banstead DC, Earlswood and Whitebushes Ward - Con hold but with big swing to LDs.

LB Southwark, Riverside Ward - Lib Dem hold. Lab & LD both up 8%, Greens down 11%, Tories down 7%.

Surrey Heath DC, Bagshot Ward - LD hold with 5% swing to them from Con.

Test Valley DC, Romsey Cupernham Ward - LD hold with a swing to them from Con.

Wychavon DC, Lovett and North Claines - Con hold


Overall aggregate picture across them all was of an increased Lab + LD vote at expense of Tories.

Long election counts

Anyone who has ever endured a recount on election night will sympathise with the candidates in the Australian electorate of McEwen in Victoria.

Yesterday they completed the first count - two and a half weeks after polling day.

It showed Labor gaining the seat by just six votes - from a total of over 100,000.

They've therefore started recounting and the latest coverage seems to show the Liberals back ahead.

In the meantime the sitting Liberal MP was allowed to vote in the Liberal leadership election - which was decided by a one vote margin.

Tory donations

The Tories in Westminster get some interesting donations, indicating that the class divide is alive and well in British politics:

£325 - Champagne (and postage stamps!)

£4,000 - "Villa"

£3,000 - "Boat trip"

£1,200 - "table gifts"

Labour Up 3%

The tide has turned - again.

Mori poll today: CON 42%: (+1), LAB 35% (+3), LD 14% (-3)

Fourth term here we come.

The surge is working

I had noticed a lack of news from Iraq in recent months.

Tucked away on page 20 of today's Guardian we discover why. The US "surge" in troop numbers is actually working. Much deried by anti-war activists, it turns out that there actually was a military solution to the terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq.

In Simon Tisdall's article we learn that:

• Iraq's government is optimistic because of "Improved security, an expanding economy and new understandings with Iran, Syria and Turkey"
• The Iraqi National Security Adviser believes "We are out of the woods ... We are building a new Iraq under a democratic parliamentary system. There is a new sense of belonging in Iraq" ... "Iraq is going to lead the region in a new way, with democracy and a new nationalism and a western orientation" ... "Our strategic direction is very clear to everybody in the region. We are heading west".
• "Senior US officials advising the Baghdad government say they, too, are increasingly hopeful about current trends, while adding the usual caveats about fragility of the security environment and deep-rooted political animosities. They say infiltration of jihadis from Syria has measurably declined, as has some of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's more objectionable pot stirring. "
• "Civilian deaths are down 60% across Iraq, and down 75% in Baghdad, since the US military surge began in February."
• " a key reason for recent progress is the Sunni Arab Awakening movement in Anbar and other provinces, where tribal leaders have turned against al-Qaida. On the other side of the sectarian divide, the ceasefire by Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia Mahdi army, and a largely unpublicised US operation to clean up the interior ministry, have also been crucial."
• "a senior Iraqi adviser to the country's leadership who asked not to be identified said he believed the past few months had brought changes that were irreversible."

Now why isn't this cautious good news being reported more prominently? Could it be because it contradicts the doom-laden narrative that is received wisdom about Iraq?

LabourHome floats wrecking of the union link

Labourhome seems to rapidly be becoming a repository for ill-thought out ideas.

Last week Alex Hilton was naming - when they have no right of reply as they are staff - party officials he thought should not be allowed to become General Secretary.

Today he and commenters are in this thread - http://www.labourhome.org/story/2007/12/10/34955/147 - casually floating the mutilation of the Trade Union link by halving the number of union reps on the Party NEC. Some idiot bizarrely calling themselves "TrueLabour" wants only 3 union places.

Why would the unions as a whole bother affiliating to the Labour Party if their voice on the NEC was hacked in half? Particularly why would the smaller unions stay affiliated when only the big 3 or 4 would be sure of getting any representation?

Most Labour Party members at least pay lip service to the union link. But this post shows that in practice too many people don't get that it's a two way street - no taxation without representation.

Worth reading

A good dose of reality from Andrew Rawnsley in today's Observer here.

Still no mention of the Abrahams affair from the 100 people we canvassed today.

Another mendacious Lib Dem Focus drops through the doors in Springfield: headline story asks "How can the Labour council make people live like this?" and is about a small estate called Tower Court, which is indeed in a mess. It neglects to point out that the reason that Tower Court is in this state is that it is being demolished and replaced with a totally new regenerated estate, and is in the process of being decanted i.e. everyone is moving out, which kind of answers the question in their headline.

It also says the block is "squatted by drug users " when in fact the crack house on the estate was closed down by the Hackney Council/Police Crackdown team in September and has a notice on the door saying that.

Promoted by Luke Akehurst of Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London, N16 8EB on behalf of Mohamed Munaf Zina of 91 Kyverdale Road, London, N16 6PP. Hosted (printed) by Blogger.com (Google Inc) of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 who are not responsible for any of the contents of this post.

Two sandwiches Short of a picnic

Shame on embittered has-been Clare Short for her frankly weird attack on Baroness Amos.

Short said of Amos' presence at the EU/Africa summit "I don't see any reason to send a kind of pseudo-minister and I think that it's not right to send her because she's black. I don't see any other reason for sending her."

Well done to Amos for the dignity with which she has responded to questions about Short's remarks.

Inside the world of "Save the Labour Party"

The latest Save the Labour Party newsletter - http://www.savethelabourparty.org/0711.pdf - is full of gems.

We learn that:

• the problem with conference is the wrong kind of delegates are getting elected - "only about 11 % the delegates consistently supported our interests"; "It also appears that CLPs are sending increasingly right wing/anti-democratic delegates or, at any rate, those who are easily influenced by Party staff." (translation: left policies are unpopular both with 89% of Labour activists elected as conference delegates, and the activists on GCs who elect them)
• "The Centre-Left Grass Roots Alliance did far worse in these elections than it has done for a long time polling overall 10% fewer votes than usual." (translation: not only do 89% of the Labour Party think left policies are bonkers, they don't like left candidates either)
• "When visiting South Africa earlier in the year STLP Secretary Gaye Johnston asked herself what would have happened in South Africa if Nelson Mandela and the ANC had given up the struggle in the face of odds far greater than we face?" Message from Luke to STLP: you are not the ANC, Gaye Johnston is not Nelson Mandela, New Labour is not the Apartheid Regime. Please see a psychiatrist now to get your delusions treated. Then refer them to the similarly delusional Compass who think they are comparable to Ghandi.
• "The PLP has become increasingly New Labour." Yes, because not only do ordinary Labour Party members not elect left wing fruitloops as conference delegates, they don't select them as parliamentary candidates either.
• The CLGA slate for the NEC is: Ann Black and Peter Kenyon (STLP), Pete Willsman (CLPD), Mohammed Azam (BASG), Christine Shawcroft (NSCGN) plus a woman still being selected by CLPD. Walter Wolfgang is retiring. No doubt Peter will repeat his triumph in the NCC election this year.
• The internal STLP ballot reveals that on a 52% poll 55 votes were cast i.e. this mass organisation which is poised to seize the Labour Party - and gives it lectures about recruitment - has a nationwide total of 106 members. An average of 0.16 per CLP. No wonder they don't get many conference delegates elected. Within this thriving model of democracy Ann Black (who is occasionally sensible) got 38 first preference votes and Tom Davidson –5, Susan Press-5, Peter Kenyon 4, Stefan Cholewka 3. So Peter Kenyon has got on the CLGA NEC slate on the basis of 4 first preference votes!
• Finally we learn that not only is STLP comparable to the ANC, it's actually a religious movement: "Save the Labour Party is a crusade, or it is nothing." A crusade, but just a very small, very unsuccessful one.

Council by-election results

Last night's council by-election results.

First the good - no, excellent, one:

Sandwell MBC, Princes End Ward - Labour gain from BNP - Labour 796, Con 517, BNP 314, LD 29 - Labour vote increased from 35.7% to 48% since May. BNP vote down from 34.9% to 18.9%, Tory vote up from 19.8% to 31.2%.

Now the rest:

Derbyshire Dales DC, Masson Ward - Con gain from Lab - Con 369 Lab 256 LibDem 126. Swing of just under 9% from Lab to Con.

Maidstone DC, Shepway South Ward - Con gain from Lab - Con 251 Lab 240 LibDem 173 Green 34. Swing of only 1.3% from Lab to Con (the ward had an 11 vote Lab majority in May).

Richmond LBC, Barnes ward - Con hold with swing of just under 5% to them from LD

Wokingham UA, Remenham Ward - Con hold in a very safe seat. Strangely the Labour vote went up - though only from 3.9% to 4.6%!

EDM on Boris and Conrad

CONDUCT OF THE HON. MEMBER FOR HENLEY AND THE RIGHT HON. MEMBER FOR RICHMOND
05.12.2007
Buck, Karen
That this House notes with concern the conduct of the hon. Member for Henley and the right hon. Member for Richmond in supplying character references for the businessman Lord Black of Crossharbour following his conviction in a US court of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud; and believes it is inconsistent for those hon. Members to present themselves as exponents of law and order in light of the fact that they have provided a character reference for a man who, in the words of the Financial Times `stole nearly $7 million from Hollinger through a complex scheme in which he paid himself non-competition fees following a sale of some of the company's newspapers' properties to another company he controlled'.
Signatures( 8)
Buck, Karen
Efford, Clive
Dismore, Andrew
Salter, Martin
Jones, Kevan
Dobson, Frank
Humble, Joan
Keen, Alan

Legal advice

According to this Guardian article Peter Watt accepted the Abrahams donations on the basis of legal advice. The article actually says "the arrangement was technically legal". There's no such thing as "technically legal" - what that means is "legal".

Not a fashionable thing to say then, but if we were able to find lawyers in the past who thought it was legal, we would be able to find barristers who could make that case in court, and rather than him resigning and us all running round screaming mea culpa we should have stood by our original judgement and defended it through the courts. Who knows, we might actually have won.

Alternative ways forward

Just what the Labour Party needs to regain its lead in the polls - a proposal from Peter Kenyon for a meeting - as though we didn't have enough of those already - where "Party officials, and advisors" would be subject to well meaning ideas from the Fabian Society, and whatever nonsense Compass and the LabOUR Commission are offering this week.

I thought Peter was into governance and probity and the neutrality of party officials. If this is the case why would he expect them to engage formally with one of the Party's leading factions, particularly one critical of the policy stance of their elected bosses?

Can we have an equivalent gathering where Progress and Labour First get to lobby Party staff about our vision for renewal? - the Fabians would be welcome to our one too I guess.

And just in case Gordon wasn't getting enough unsolicited advice from Peter Kenyon, the two Jons (Cruddas and Trickett) want us to trash the achievements of the last ten years and embrace ... actually having read the article I can't work out what they want to embrace apart from not tolerating illegal behaviour and safeguarding the union link, both of which are statements of the bleeding obvious. Oh and be in favour of more equality and democracy. And motherhood and apple pie. And they want the next General Secretary to be more autonomous and powerful. Which under the circumstances of what happened to the last one is blissfully unintentionally ironic. And we should have an elected Party Chair apparently - that'll have the swing voters returning in droves and the poll lead returned pronto.

Alternatively we could just get on with delivering a strong economy and improving public services, and spend a bit less time navel-gazing.

Another week, another lying Lib Dem Focus

Last week I mentioned that the Hackney Lib Dems are delivering a by-election Focus leaflet saying "it's a two horse race" in a ward where they came 4th in in 2006.

This week they've followed it up with "Labour cut funding for our most needy children..." which would be terrible if we had, but in fact Hackney's Labour council hasn't made any cuts to children's services either this year or in any of the previous five years - we've had growth budgets with increased spending in every year since 2002. But hey, never let the truth get in the way of a good Focus leaflet.

Promoted by Luke Akehurst of Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London, N16 8EB on behalf of Mohamed Munaf Zina of 91 Kyverdale Road, London, N16 6PP. Hosted (printed) by Blogger.com (Google Inc) of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 who are not responsible for any of the contents of this post.

Boris on Black

Boris Johnson has been taking time out from his Mayoral campaign to provide a character reference for Conrad Black:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3215846.ece

not unlike this previous episode in the Boris saga really:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcgrZs4GXv4

Oh great, a conspiracy theory

Winner of most idiotic and unhelpful contribution to the debate on Party funding goes to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. According to this article today the current issues are all down to "The shadowy role of Labour Friends of Israel".

I declare an interest as a - non-Jewish - member of LFI. But I don't really think that its LFI that Yasmin is writing about. What she is not very subtly trying to suggest is that Jews have too much influence in the Labour Party.

Would she write a similar article demanding to know about "the shadowy role of Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform", or the "shadowy role of the Christian Socialist Movement", or the "shadowy role of Compass"?

No, but like them LFI is a pressure group composed of Labour supporters who share a common interest on a policy issue. Far from being shadowy it publishes pamphlets and books, has a website listing its officers and patrons, and holds a very high profile fringe meeting at each year's Labour conference.

LFI has its counterpart, LMEC, which promotes the Palestinian cause inside the Labour Party. They both express legitimate points of view and make a useful contribution to the Labour Party's foreign policy debate.

She correctly anticipates that she "can already hear the accusations of anti-Semitism". I think I just made the first one. Because I cannot understand what, other than anti-Semitism, would motivate someone to write a whole column whose only hook was the shared ethnicity of David Abrahams and Jonny Mendelsohn.

Another by-election on the 20th

It's a shame I will be busy in Springfield Ward on 20 December, otherwise I'd be on the train to Benfleet as on the same day Labour has a chance of winning back a toehold on Castle Point District Council, where I was parliamentary candidate in 2005.

Two Tory councillors have quit over allegations of benefit fraud.

They represented St Mary's, which is the best ward for Labour on the "Mainland" i.e. the non-Canvey Island part of Castle Point.

Labour is running two excellent candidates - Brian Wilson who was my Agent in 2005, and Co-Op stalwart Tony Wright - who between them have 22 years experience as councillors for that ward until 2003. As the Castle Point CLP website points out, unlike their Tory successors they actually held advice surgeries and made themselves available to local residents - not much to ask and taken for granted in London (at least I hope it is) but in some parts of rural and suburban England a key differentiator between Labour and Tory councillors.

The problem with cash in UK politics isn't that there's too much of it

I'm entertained by the comments under the post below suggesting that the problem with UK political funding is high spending by political parties.

They obviously haven't worked for one recently.

Full-time Labour (and I suspect Tory and certainly Lib Dem) officials up to and including the recently resigned General Secretary earn salaries that are derisory compared to the rest of the voluntary sector, let alone their counterparts in trade unions, the public sector and the private sector.

There are hardly any of them - a skeleton crew at national and regional level who work flat out just to keep the most basic functions of a political party going, with a tiny number of field organisers compared to say the 1950s when over half of constituencies had a full-time Agent.

Most staff are appointed on short term contracts in the immediate run-up to an election then peremptorily laid-off immediately afterwards.

It's hardly surprising we get into a mess about basic matters of law and compliance when we have political parties that are under-staffed by people working ridiculous hours for low wages and struggling to do what they perceive to be the day job (organising elections) let alone exercise legal and financial responsibilities they are unlikely to be qualified to deal with.

UK political parties are trying to sustain the campaigning of their US counterparts, with the accountancy and legal requirements of a major corporation, based on the staff complement of a small provincial department store bolted on to a voluntary machine funded more through jumble sales and quiz nights than corporate donations.

Labour's poverty is a standing joke amongst state-funded sister parties. Swedish comrades tell the story of being shown round Labour HQ by Labour Students and saying "this is a very nice youth HQ, almost as big as ours, but where is the party HQ?"

During elections we have ward and constituency spending limits which don't extend to much beyond putting out a couple of leaflets per household during a month-long campaign. If you are lucky you might have enough over to buy some rosettes.

At a national level we don't have commercial TV advertising by political parties at all. In a General Election if you live in a key seat you might see half-a-dozen billboards per party (compared to dozens advertising burgers or perfume).

When was the last time any of the political parties had enough cash to advertise in newspapers or on billboards on a regular basis between elections?

For democracy to be able to fully function, we need political parties with enough staff to train, organise and politically educate their lay members, and enough cash to recruit and proselytise and consult and have a dialogue on an ongoing basis, not just at election time and not just in marginal seats, with the wider electorate.

A debate has now started about where that money should come from. But first of all we all need to kill the myth that there is too much money being spent on politics - i.e. on democracy - in the UK.

Still here

I'm sorry to disappoint Chris Paul but I haven't given up blogging.

It's just been a busy week - a night off to see Babyshambles at Wembley Arena on Tuesday, Alan Davidson's funeral on Friday, and in between being Agent for the Springfield Ward by-election.

Like one of my least favourite Lib Dems Meral Ece I have been out canvassing in Springfield. Unlike her I haven't picked up any comments about recent national events having an impact on people's voting intentions. We've now found 1300 Labour "promises" - with over 2 weeks to go - and I think about 10 Lib Dems. This hasn't stopped the Lib Dem Focus newsletter proclaiming "it's a two horse race" between them and the Tories - this in a ward where in 2006 the Tories got 836 votes, Labour got 534 and the Lib Dems just 198, behind the Greens on 264. The "two horse race" is between the Lib Dems and Communist Monty Goldman to come 4th rather than 5th.

On the national stuff I don't buy the idea that one man making donations through third parties somehow shows the whole system of political funding is wrong. It shouldn't have happened and I doubt it will again but I'm not impressed by people with their own agendas - usually about breaking the union link - trying to draw wider lessons from an extremely quirky scenario. The Labour Party needs to tighten up its own procedures to ensure that donations are transparent, but the actual law as it stands in the PPERA only needs one change - the regulation of spending on campaigning between elections, which because of a civil service drafting error was left out of the Act, allowing rich donors or candidates to "buy" marginal seats with saturation spending in the "long" campaign.

I wrote the above before reading what Gordon Brown said to the NPF today. I haven't deleted it because on this specific aspect of this issue I happen to disagree with him. I'm against a cap on individual donations. As long as people are transparent about donating we should have a system that encourages people and groups of people such as trade unions to give money to political parties - not put limits on it in a way that somehow suggests donating is wrong or corrupting.

As we're on the subject of election law, the bit above about Springfield is:

Promoted by Luke Akehurst of Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London, N16 8EB on behalf of Mohamed Munaf Zina of 91 Kyverdale Road, London, N16 6PP. Hosted (printed) by Blogger.com (Google Inc) of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 who are not responsible for any of the contents of this post.

Peter Watt

I'm sorry to hear that Peter Watt has had to resign as Labour Party General Secretary.

We were both recruited as constituency organisers at about the same time in 1996 - in fact for a couple of weeks after he started we were based in the same building in Battersea, with Peter as Battersea CLP Organiser and me upstairs working for Anita Pollack MEP.

I think the same of him now as I did then - that he is a serious, highly professional person totally dedicated to the Labour Party.

His swift and dignified resignation is a measure of the principled person he is.

I haven't got a clue how he - or his officers - came to believe the Abrahams donations through third parties were acceptable (in either sense of the word). But I believe him if he says he thought they were.

As for Mr Abrahams I don't think he gets it. The law is designed to make donations to political parties transparent. We wrote it. That means donors have to choose between either publicly making a donation, or if like Mr Abrahams they don't want publicity, giving their money to a charity not a political party or not giving it at all. As it happens he's ended up with far more publicity and of a far worse kind than a transparent and properly declared donation would have involved, and cost a good guy his job, and the party he was trying to help a huge reputational hit.

Celebrating the Ruddslide

Today started well watching the live coverage of the Australian General Election on the ABC news website and switching on just in time to see them predict Howard had lost Bennelong, with the presenter accidentally saying "the swing to ABC" instead of the "swing to the ALP" because Howard's Labor opponent is an ex-TV journalist.

By happy coincidence we had a Labor-voting Australian staying with us which made watching Kevin Rudd storm to victory even more enjoyable.

Then out into semi-arctic temperatures to organise a team of 20 canvassers, including Diane Abbott MP, in the Springfield Ward by-election - covering off all the uncontacted doors in the whole of the best one of the 4 polling districts, plus a large estate in the next one - we have now pushed our way to well over 1,000 Labour promises, half way to our 2,000 target with almost a month still to go until polling day. Thanks but no thanks to the Hackney Tories for triggering a by-election in this weather!

Boris attacks the police as "trigger-happy"

Whether Boris Johnson is fit to run London's policing if he became Mayor is in some question after he told the BBC, without interruption from the interviewer:

"I think the real reason Jean Charles de Menezes got killed in the Stockwell Tube was not just because the police were too trigger happy, although I think you could argue that they were, but also because if you look at the chain of events that led to his killing he was accompanied by several police officers throughout that morning, several surveillance officers, and at no stage did they think it worthwhile or possible to tap him on the shoulder and inquire who he was."

Online here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/wato/

Council by-election results

Last night's council by-election results:

Carmarthen CC, Llandybie Ward - Ind hold with Lab staying second

Conwy CC, Rhiw Ward - Lib Dem gain from Con with quite a high swing

Dundee CC, Lochee Ward - SNP hold

Forest Heath DC, Manor Ward - Lib Dem gain from Con in a seat where they were unopposed in May

Norfolk CC, Aylsham Division - Lib Dem hold with a hugely increased majority over Con in what had been an extremely marginal division

Rossendale BC, Hareholme Ward - Lab hold in a marginal ward in a marginal parliamentary seat, no swing at all

Wellingborough BC, West Ward - Con hold in a safe ward

Winchester DC, Wickham ward - Lib Dem hold with a small swing from Con to LD


So a very good night for the LDs, and a good result for Labour in the Rossendale seat.

Australian election turns nasty

The final days of the Australian General Election (polling day Saturday) have seen the ruling Liberals exposed for a dirty tricks campaign in the marginal electorate of Lindsay in western Sydney.

Liberal activists distributed a bogus pamphlet purporting to be in support of the Labor Party from an Islamic organisation that doesn't actually exist.

The husband of retiring Liberal MP Jackie Kelly rather daftly tried to cover his face when caught delivering the pamphlets - but did so with a copy of the offending document:

Nomination in

The most nerve-wracking aspect of being an election Agent is now over - getting your candidate's nomination papers in by the deadline in valid format - something I and every other Agent have nightmares over.

Labour Candidate for the Springfield Ward of Hackney Council by-election on 20 December is therefore the excellent Mohamed Munaf Zina.

For purposes of election law I'll therefore append this post with:

Promoted by Luke Akehurst of Flat 1, 8 Beatty Road, London, N16 8EB on behalf of Mohamed Munaf Zina of 91 Kyverdale Road, London, N16 6PP. Hosted (printed) by Blogger.com (Google Inc) of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 who are not responsible for any of the contents of this post.

Neal Lawson on Newsnight

Well done to Paxman for puncturing Neal Lawson's balloon last night on Newsnight, introducing Neal as "Neal, err... sorry I've forgotten your surname, from Compass, the think tank not the sandwich maker".

Alan Davidson

I've just learnt through references on Facebook and then confirmed by Lambeth Labour Leader Steve Reed's website that my friend and comrade Alan Davidson has died suddenly aged only 43.

This is devastating news - Alan was a fantastic man who was completely dedicated to the Labour Party and trade union movement and known to lots of us in London through the Amicus Regional Political Committee and his campaigning in Streatham CLP.

It's incredibly sad that someone so full of energy and warmth should pass away so young.

My thoughts are with his family.

Another great candidate selected

Labour's candidate selection process this time is continuing to produce some excellent candidates, particularly in the All Women Shortlist seats. As reported by Tom Watson last week Ruth Smeeth has been selected for the Staffordshire Labour marginal of Burton. I would share Tom's analysis that Ruth, Rachel Reeves (Leeds W) and Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) are likely to be amongst the stars of the next intake of Labour MPs.

Oxford Union and the BNP

I don't normally take a great interest in the activities of the Oxford Union debating society (being an embittered Oxbridge reject) but do think it's worth commenting on the idiotic decision of some of the nation's allegedly cleverest students to invite Nick Griffin of the BNP and David Irving to speak. There's now going to be a referendum on this issue on Friday of this week concurrent with elections to the Union's officerships.

If you are an Oxford graduate and took out life membership of the Union you are entitled to turn up on Friday and vote. Please do.

Back tomorrow

Apologies for the lack of posts. I've been in The Hague attending the 15th anniversary conference of ECOSY, the youth section of the Party of European Socialists, as a Veteran (Euro poltical speak for has-been) - I was Vice-President of ECOSY for 4 years back in my youth... normal service will resume tomorrow.

Labour to regain Blaenau Gwent?

The parliamentary selection in Blaenau Gwent in South Wales looks like it might in experienced campaigner Nick Smith (previously at the NSPCC and Wales Labour Party), who grew up locally in Tredegar, be coming up with a candidate who can win back what ought to be a safe seat for Labour. It was lost to independent Peter Law and then in a by-election to his Agent Dai Davies in the fallout from a previous controversy over All Women Shortlists.

Nominations have now closed, with each branch nominating a man and a woman and a BME candidate, and three candidates have secured nominations from branches with a majority of the CLP membership and are therefore automatically shortlisted: Nick, Keren Bender and Nicholas Dobrik.

Nick’s website is: http://www.nick-smith.net

The Hackney Wick fire

Hat-tip to Dave Hill (http://davehill.typepad.com/claptonian/) for posting a dramatic picture of how the fire in Hackney Wick yesterday looked from Hackney Town Hall. The tower blocks in the picture are the Trelawney Estate in my ward:

Labour MPs as employers

One of my pet hates is the small number of Labour MPs, who, despite belonging to a Party set up to represent the interests of working people, fail for whatever reason to treat their own employees properly in terms of issues such as pay, conditions or workplace rights. All Labour MPs should be setting an example as employers, not embarrassing the Party with the way they carry out this role.

Lynne Smith, who used to be active in Hackney South CLP before moving up to Bradford and becoming a councillor, has just had to fight a case at Employment Tribunal against her former employer Marsha Singh MP (Bradford West).

She won her case for unfair dismissal.

Perhaps the PLP could play a more active role in ensuring high standards as employers are kept to by all Labour MPs, and providing a central pool of management advice to help MPs deal with situations they are not trained to manage in a way that does not put them on the wrong side of employment law.

Latest Aussie poll

Latest poll in the Australian General Election shows Labor's lead on the two-party preferred vote increasing to 10%:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/files/newspoll-12nov.pdf

Remembrance Day

Today I went to the smallest of the three Remembrance Sunday events we hold in Hackney - one for each of the three former boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch and Stoke Newington - in the vestibule of Stoke Newington library.

It is a very short and simple ceremony - the main civic service is held at St John's Church in Hackney - with a wreath being laid by the Council's Deputy Speaker, representatives of the other political groups on the Council, and the local Air Cadets, who then parade past the old Stoke Newington Town Hall.

On the wall is a war memorial which, for WW1 alone, lists over 1,000 names of Stoke Newington residents who died.

Above the door to the library is a short inscription which reads:

"All ye who pass in quest of happy hours,
Behold the price at which those hours were bought."

Council by-election results

More evidence of the incredibly competitive state of the fight between the two main parties from last night's council by-elections:

Tamworth BC, Castle Ward - Lab gain from Con - Tory maj of 181 in May turned into Lab maj of 6. This is in a key parliamentary marginal with a majority of about 2,500.

Guildford BC, Holy Trinity Ward - Con gain from LD

Telford and Wrekin UA, Brookside Ward - Con gain from Lab picking up second seat in what had been a split ward in May

That resignation

No not Lord Drayson.

Last night Hackney Town Hall was rocked by the sudden resignation from the council of Tory Group Leader Eric Ollerenshaw OBE, announced by means of a note slipped under the door stating he was no longer a councillor effective from midnight.

A shame he did not tell us last Wednesday at full council as it would have been good to say goodbye formally.

Eric has been a councillor for 17 years and led the Tories since the elevation of "Tory Joe/Mr Hackney" Lobenstein to the Mayoral chair in the mid '90s. The Tories in Hackney are not awash with talent so his departure leaves a bit of a gap for them. Rumour is that Harvey Odze and Maureen Middleton will compete for the leadership of the group in a clash of the municipal titans...

Eric, to his credit, always tried to stay on friendly terms with opponents even whilst enjoying a knockabout style of debating in the chamber. Again to his credit when Hackney was threatened with Government intervention if we did not appoint a stable leadership in 2000, he did the right thing and worked with Labour. To his discredit, much of the chaos that created that situation had been made worse by his "it's all a big game" attitude and willingness to take defectors from other parties of any calibre, however low, down to and including Isaac Leibowitz, who ended up as a convicted vote rigger.

Now there's going to be a council by-election in Eric's Springfield Ward in Stamford Hill - won by under 200 votes in 2006 and by only about 30 in the 2001 by-election - on better boundaries for the Tories - following Leibowitz's conviction.

Should be a competitive one, but a bit disruptive of my Xmas shopping. Apologies if it distracts me from blogging.

Eric is off to fight marginal Lancaster and Fleetwood for the Tories in the next General Election.

Walthamstow selection result

Congratulations to my friend and former colleague at Lewisham Council Stella Creasy who was selected yesterday as Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Walthamstow (Lab maj 7993), the seat where she lives, in succession to Neil Gerrard MP.

I think Stella will make a big impact both on the PLP and on delivering local improvements for Walthamstow - she's a very hard working campaigner and a policy ideas person too.

On the telly

I was interviewed by BBC1's The Politics Show yesterday at the Progress conference - basically about whether Labour should move to the left. I think you can guess what I said.

If, like me, you missed this moment (or 20 seconds) of TV history because you have better ways to spend your Sunday lunchtime, it's online here.

A new comrade

Haringey Lib Dem Councillor Catherine Harris has seen the light today.

Madonna, Julie Burchill and Luke Akehurst

I wasn't ever aware I had anything in common with Madonna and Julie Burchill until today's Jewish Chronicle article on friends of the Jewish community cited the three of us as examples.

Council by-election result

Only one council by-election last night:

Ashfield DC, Sutton West Ward: Lib Dem gain from Independent (with the LDs not having run last time), Labour staying in second place.

Five questions for members of the Socialist Workers Party…

There were so many e-mails flying around in October 2007! Notably “Respect” and Socialist Workers Party E-mails about the current break-up of Respect that really were not meant to reach amused spectators.

A friend of this blog missed the opportunity to ask questions of a prominent SWP member at the end of October, but here are those questions:

1) Have you discovered any clues towards identifying the people who broke Cllr Oliur Rahman's (Respect (Independent) as opposed to Respect) windows?
2) Could the defenestrators have any connection with the people who, in April 2005 in Tower Hamlets, abused a crowd of elderly Jewish people who had gathered to commemorate a 2nd World War tragedy?
3) Now do you now understand the meaning of Jamaat-i-Islami?
4) Are you feeling a new-found empathy with the Iraqi Communists who formed a bloc with Ba'athism between 1972 and 1978?
5) Are you getting a new and more profound insight into the meaning of "What goes around, comes around"?

A state visit does not imply endorsement

Some of the blogosphere left are trying to say that the Saudi state visit implies the Government somehow doesn't care about the appalling human rights record of the Government there.

But I seem to recall state visits by Presidents of the USSR throughout the Cold War when both sides were condemning each other's political and economic systems, were pointing nuclear arsenals at each other and we were specifically condemning the Gulag and the treatment of dissidents.

My take on the Saudis is the same as that Churchill had on Stalin's Russia when the Nazis invaded it: "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."

They are a ghastly regime but the current alternative - even more extreme Islamism of the al-Qaeda variety - is even worse.

It's the same reason the West correctly backed Saddam's Iraq against Iran.

Diplomacy sometimes involves sitting down and establishing common interests with people you would otherwise not want to invite to dinner. You have to do it if you have wider strategic interests that need protecting, or you just need to be in dialogue with your "enemy's enemy". Unfortunately it's part of being in government - unlike Vince Cable we can't indulge in gesture politics.

I'm fairly sure that vice versa the Saudis find it equally, if not more distasteful than we do sitting down to negotiate with decadent infidel Western liberals who have a female head of state.

Salmond on Burma

Interesting EDM from the Lib Dems:

FIRST MINISTER OF SCOTLAND AND THE BURMESE JUNTA
29:10:07


Mr Michael Moore

Mr Alistair Carmichael

John Thurso

Jo Swinson


* 4




That this House welcomes the recent visit of representatives of the opposition movement in Burma to the Scottish Parliament; expresses its support for their campaign for freedom, justice and democracy in Burma; believes that all countries that share those values should put maximum pressure on the army generals at the head of the Burmese regime; notes that Burma has been heavily criticised by the United Nations for its crackdown on anti-government protests last month and the deaths and suffering caused to unarmed civilians; is therefore outraged that the First Minister of Scotland's most recent communication with the Burmese junta has been to ask for its help and support for his campaign for observer status for Scotland at the United Nations rather than in support of the international response to this crisis; believes that the First Minister could have avoided this situation if he had followed the agreed concordat with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and had discussed his letter to Burma with the FCO before it was sent; reiterates its wholehearted support for the pro-democracy protesters in Burma and condemns the oppressive actions of the military junta past and present; and calls on all political institutions, including the Office of the First Minister, to fully support international efforts to bring peace and democracy to Burma.

Compass breaks cover

Labour's pamphlet-writing tendency, Compass, has broken cover today with a statement in the Guardian by the two Jons (Cruddas and Trickett) which appears to be some kind of very politely phrased, coded even, critique of Brown.

It's in full here, with a wider list of signatures from the usual suspects: http://www.compassonline.org.uk/article.asp?n=981

I am struggling to understand after carefully reading it what, beyond sounding a bit more left, they want Gordon to do.

There are lots of warm words:

They want "an intellectually and morally coherent vision for his premiership". Great. I expect Gordon being both intellectual and moral, already has one. But what voters want to see more than a vision is good schools and hospitals, low crime, security, a strong economy and preferably not to have to pay too much tax for it. If they suffer from inequality they probably want to be have a fairer share of the cake. Most of them couldn't give a toss about the "moral and intellectual" coherence of the package as long as it makes life better for their families.

They want "change" - but of an unspecified nature. They welcome the policy changes that Brown has already made but don't seem to trust his judgement to deliver more of the same direction, yet at the same time don't tell him what they do want him to do.

They don't want a "big tent" - hang about I thought Neal Lawson et al were amongst the loudest proponents of pluralism, and "let's not be beastly to the Lib Dems". Later in the same statement they contradict themselves and call for Brown to look "beyond the Labour Party".

They are against "dry economism". Being professional politicians or chatterati, the Compassites are handily insulated from real world concerns like inflation, unemployment and high interest rates that happen every time you lose focus on "dry economism".

But I can't find any actual policies except for an attack on the reactive change of position on inheritance tax. I.e. Compass confronted by a new Tory policy that is so hugely popular it is the primary policy contributor to turning a 10% Labour lead into a 7% Tory one pick reacting to this as the one specific thing to mention that they don't think Brown should have done!

They pander to the refrain of saloon bar morons up and down the country: voters are being "refused a meaningful choice". A) this is rubbish - there are hundreds of meaningful choices on policy between Labour and the Tories; B) we had a bigger choice between the parties in the '80s and early '90s - unfortunately presented with it the voters chose Thatcherism. I really do pity Labour Party members who can't see the difference between a Brown government and a Cameron one.

They claim Labour has failed to "energise the progressive middle class". I.e. it has based its policy agenda on the bread-and-butter aspirations of working people rather than the hot topics at the Islington dinner parties attended by some of the statement's signatories. Because of course the role of the party founded to represent the working classes should be to "energise the progressive middle class" - a class consisting of perhaps a million at best people out of a population of 60 million - who already had their own party, the Liberals, before we got our act together, but would rather like to control our one too.

They state: " Our essential question is this: what is the Labour government for? We are still unsure." They speak for their own confused selves. As far as I can tell most Ministers, MPs, Councillors, activists, members and voters - and the PM - know exactly what a Labour Government is for: delivering a more equal and just society with high quality public services and a strong economy. We've been doing it for ten years, and we should all get on with contributing to delivering it - and generating the policy ideas to take it forward. I don't see any way in which the latest Compass threnody makes any practical contribution to that. What a pointless organisation.

Huhne's opposition to Trident

Chris Huhne quit the Labour Party to join the SDP in the early '80s. One of the big motivations claimed by the SDP splitters was that they objected to unilateralism.

Strange then that Mr Huhne is running for Lib Dem Leader on a platform of unilaterally ditching Trident.

Or perhaps he is just a complete opportunist.

English Parliaments, Fairly Elected

I'm not a great fan of the asymmetric devolution practiced by Labour over the last ten years. Giving different powers to devolved assemblies and parliaments in different parts of the UK, and no devolution in much of England, whilst it isn't the constitutional atrocity the Tories claim, does keep the West Lothian question open and allow charges of intellectual inconsistency to be levelled.

But an English Parliament or English Grand Committee of MPs isn't the answer if that institutionalises the Tory South East dominating the Labour areas of England. That's just an England-only version of the UK situation that created the Scots demand for devolution in the '80s.

Personally I would favour full symmetric devolution with each region and nation of the UK enjoying the same powers that the Scottish Parliament currently has. You might start to see policy innovation and competition to attract investment and migration between regions that would eventually lead to better government nationwide.

As in Scotland and Wales, it would be important that each assembly was elected by an electoral system that prevented the region in question becoming dominated by a single party. Will the Tories be as selfless in giving away power in the south as Labour was in accepting PR for MSPs in the Scottish constitutional convention process?

The 2005 General Election results if reflected in a proportional electoral system would have produced regional assemblies in England looking something like this if each had 100 members and a 5% threshold for getting seats:

East - Con 48, Lab 30, LD 22
East Midlands - Lab 44, Con 37, LD 19
London - Lab 46, Con 32, LD 22
North East - Lab 57, LD 23, Con 20
North West - Lab 50, Con 29, LD 21
South East - Con 51, Lab 24, LD 25
South West - Con 44, Lab 33, LD 23
West Midlands - Lab 46, Con 35, LD 19
Yorkshire - Lab 50, Con 29, LD 21

of course London's Elected Mayor would continue in place but with powers equivalent to Scotland's First Minister. If there was a great urge to have single-party executives in each region, you could have an equivalent to the London Mayor - a Directly Elected First Minister - in each region and nation.

A funny kind of modernisation

Cameron has always presented himself as the Tory counterpart to Blair, creating a new, modernised, cuddly, centrist party.

It's a funny kind of modernised party that seems to have largely stopped talking about green issues and social justice as it was a few months ago, and is now banging on incessantly, in much the same way as Hague and Howard did, about the core-vote "dog whistle" issues of an English Parliament, immigration and a referendum on the EU.

The equivalent position would have been Blair talking about New Labour but continuing to put unilateralism, nationalisation and withdrawal from Europe at the heart of the Labour agenda. And having Michael Foot as his Shadow Foreign Secretary.

MPs' expenses

Can anyone point me to a league table of the recently published MPs' "expenses" that is disaggregated?

I'm fed up with seeing "expenses" figures that - with the implication from the media that the total figure is a huge claim for lunches and overseas jollies - lump together travel etc. (it's usually higher for Scottish MPs, there's a shock - a problem easily solved by relocating Parliament several hundred miles north) with postage (which is an indicator of whether they do any work in their constituency - or at least work that involves envelopes, letters and stamps).

We need a separate list of who sends how many letters. Then the whips - and the electorate - should start asking the ones who aren't spending much on postage a) how they deal with casework and b) how they communicate with the people they represent. I would be interested to hear their excuses.

It would also be good to expose the ones who aren't paying their staff a decent wage.

Observer/Mori Poll

A strange silence from a couple of Hard Left blogs that have been putting the boot in to Brown since conference, now that today's Mori poll shows Labour up 3% in 2 weeks, back ahead of the Tories (just) and on a fantastic 41%.

Anyone would think that some of our own comrades don't really want a Labour victory at the next election.

Council By-elections

Last night's council by-election results seem to be in line with the opinion polls - very tightly competitive between Labour and Tory:

Cumbria, Penrith E division - LD hold

Great Yarmouth, Nelson Ward - Lab hold by 70 votes over an Independent who the Tories stood aside for

Harlow, Todbrook Ward - Con gain from Lab by 15 votes (with Respect unhelpfully taking 102 votes) compared to a Lab majority of 24 in May

Harlow, Little Parndon & Hare Street Ward - Lab hold by 196 votes over Con (up from majority of 184 in May) - the Tories had hoped to gain this ward as well as Todbrook

North Devon, Witheridge Ward - Con hold

Penwith, Gwinear Ward - Con hold

Sefton, Manor Ward - Con gain from Lab (adding to the other 2 seats in the ward they had already picked up)

Wrexham, Stanstey Ward - Lab gain from LD, overturning majority of 231

Waltham Abbey TC - Honey Lane Ward - Tories narrowly hold off BNP by 18 votes

Poll

First poll since the election that never was is out in tomorrow's Telegraph:

Con 41% - extremely good for them and up a full 9% since the Sept YouGov poll
Lab 38% - actually a good score given recently publicity and well up on 2005 General Election
LD 11% - oh dear

Energy Targets

I may be being ignorant, or naive, but I don't quite get this week's soft-pedaling on the renewable energy target.

Not only do we have what most thinking people believe is the huge problem of climate change to deal with, but we also have two inter-related problems that will be looming even if some miracle happens and it turns out the scientists are all wrong, George W Bush is right (which on the track record seems unlikely), and climate change isn't as serious as expected:

1) Peak oil. The stuff is going to run out. There is a finite supply of it. Possibly we are already past the high point of oil supply and it is running out. And there are a billion plus Chinese just starting to enjoy products made from and powered by it. It won't run out tomorrow or in a decade or two's time but it will run out medium term enough that we need to start finding other ways to generate energy now-ish and start just using oil for the stuff you can only use oil for.

2) Security of energy supply. The places the dwindling supply of oil come from include some of the most politically unstable areas in the world. It's a good idea not to have your economic system dependent on imports from places liable to either end up being your enemies or chronically unstable/anarchic. The places where new oil fields are being explored aren't much better. The place where nice cheap gas comes from is currently flexing its muscles with reactivated bomber fleets and new missile systems and drooling over the prospect of having the ability to literally switch the lights off in Western Europe if we don't keep in line politically.

Of course there are huge obstacles to switching to less carbon-intensive energy sources - people get upset about having a wind farm or nuclear power station in the neighbourhood, the transition is extremely costly in terms of equipment in the short term, some of the technologies aren't perfected, etc. etc.

But the triple problem of climate change, the decline in oil supply and insecurity of supply mean that the problems of changing have got to be second order problems compared to the problems of not changing.

This is a set of issues that are so big that governments have to say stuff the electoral consequences and do the right thing. There are large, chunky ways to cut carbon-based energy consumption quickly. Each new nuclear power station provides about 2% of the UK's current energy needs if my memory is correct. Big wave power schemes across major estuaries can provide double or triple that each. Let's just get a move on with building some of both. People will thank us for it in a couple of generations time.

Oh and while we're at it let's ban a few of the most wasteful luxury uses of polluting energy just to set an example - with the new Eurostar line getting to Paris and Brussels so fast how about either banning London-Paris and London-Brussels flights or taxing them so much that they cease to be economically viable... I await someone telling me this is against competition law, in which case let's change the law.

Cost of the non-election

The Guardian is making a big deal out of the alleged £1m cost to Labour of preparing for the non-occurring November General Election.

My reaction:

a) £1m is not a big deal in terms of the overall costs of an election these days. If my memory is correct the spending limit nationally is about £20m, so this represents a precautionary 5% outlay on "long-lead" items - the hardware and personnel you need to already have on the day the campaign starts.

b) It would have been grossly irresponsible, given that there was a chance of an election being called, for the General Secretary not to have committed the expenditure to get the Party ready. Better to waste a million being over-prepared that lose an election through stinginess.

c) If the reports of a huge fundraising push in anticipation of an election are correct, the net effect will have been that the Party actually raised a lot more than £1m spent and ended up considerably reducing its indebtedness.

New Blog

A new Labour (in both senses) blog has been started by Hopi Sen who I remember as a Labour Student of usefulness: http://hopisen.wordpress.com/

Walthamstow shortlist

Walthamstow CLP shortlisted for its parliamentary selection last night.

Nadia Sharif withdrew from the contest, and sadly because of ill health so did Laura Bruni.

The GC therefore shortlisted all seven remaining candidates for the final hustings on 4 Nov:

Hina Ansari
Farmida Bi
Stella Creasy
Dora Dixon-Fyle
Jan Etienne
Melanie Johnson
Marie Pye

It's looking a bit unpredictable for the final vote but my sources in the audience say Stella and Farmida made the best speeches.

The Tories are obsessed by Europe, the voters are not

I have a feeling that with the increasing focus on calling for an EU referendum the Tories - with William Hague as Shadow Foreign Secretary - are about to make the same strategic mistake they did in 1997-2001 by over emphasising Europe.

No one disputes that a majority of voters are Euro-sceptic to varying degrees.

But unlike Tory MPs and activists, they aren't obsessive about it. In most cases it probably won't determine the way they vote in the next General Election - issues that have a more immediate personal impact like the economy, schools, crime and hospitals will.

The higher the profile the Tories give Europe the more they look like a strange bunch of obsessives, and the more they turn most people off politics by focusing on arcane matters like who has which red line, and which country gets which votes under QMV, rather than bread-and-butter issues.

They know this isn't an election winning strategy, they've tried it before, but they are making the same mistake again.

Councillor/activist's diary

I occasionally get complaints in the comments here (usually from Kris) that I don't write enough about local stuff in Hackney.

There's two reasons:

a) most of what we do as councillors whilst worthy doesn't make for interesting reading

and

b) the stuff that is politically contentious would need to be cleared for publication by the Group Press Officer under our standing orders, and he's got better things to do than edit my blog

Just to give a flavour of life as a councillor/Labour activist in Hackney, this is my diary outside of my day job for the last few and next few weeks:

Mon 8 - Unite/Amicus London Regional Political Committee meeting - discussion on GLA election planning
Tue 9 - babysitting while the other councillor in my household (Linda) goes to Planning Cttee
Wed 10 - babysitting while Linda goes to Stoke Newington Neighbourhood Forum
Thu 11 - Hackney North Labour Party Executive meeting - again mainly about the GLA elections
Fri 12 - Advice surgery for my ward
Sat 13 - campaigning in Bexleyheath & Crayford
Tue 16 - Labour Group meeting - main discussions are on the Stoke Newington gyratory road system and whether to revert to a 2-way high street, and the Estates Plus regeneration scheme
Wed 17 - Governance & Resources Scrutiny Committee - main discussions are on the Overall Financial Position of the Council, and on the workings of Team Hackney, our Local Strategic Partnership
Thu 18 - Homerton Neighbourhood Forum - debate on the new Controlled Parking Zone I have been campaigning for in my ward, other discussion was on review of Licensing Policy
Sat 19 - Leafleting in my ward
Mon 22 - Police Community Advisory Panel meeting for my ward
Tue 23 - Nisbet House Estate Tenants & Residents Assoc meeting
Wed 24 - Jack Dunning Estate Tenants & Residents Assoc meeting
Thu 25 - Hackney North Labour Party General Committee meeting
Sat 27 - Speaker of Hackney's community coffee morning
Mon 29 - Council Cabinet
Tue 30 - All-residents Meeting on Trelawney Estate to explain residents' concerns have been addressed and they have been removed from a regeneration scheme they were unhappy about
Wed 31 - Meeting with Borough Solicitor re. review of council constitution; followed by pre-Council call-over meeting, followed by Full Council meeting
Thu 1 - Ward Labour Party meeting to report back to local members
Sat 3 - Progress Conference
Mon 5 - Night off!
Tue 6 - Labour Group Executive meeting
Wed 7 - Hackney Standing Advisory Committee on Religious Education meeting (statutory body on which I'm a council rep.)
Thu 8 - Visit to Tower Hamlets Council as part of scrutiny committee inquiry into best practice with LSPs, followed by meeting of Reserve Forces & Cadets Association of London meeting, an outside body I represent the council on
Fri 9 - Advice surgery
Sat 10 - Canvassing in Stoke Newington Central Ward where I live

Council by-elections

Council by-election results from last night:

Ellesmere Port & Neston, Rossmore Ward - Labour hold: Lab 504, Con 324, LD 60, English Democrats 30. 1.4% swing from Con to Lab since May.

Wellingborough, Croyland Ward - Con hold: Con 698, Lab 448, Ind 125, Green 55. About a 1%swing to Lab.

Basingstoke, Whitchurch Ward - LibDem hold: LibDem 858, Con 709, Lab 58. LD hold. 3.8% swing from LD to Con

South Derbyshire, Church Gresley Ward - Lab hold: Lab 639, BNP 516, Con 304. BNP didn't stand in May. G

Congleton, Sandbach West Ward -Con hold: Con 445 LibDem 382 Lab 160. The other seat in this ward was won by a Lib Dem in May.

Wigan, Central Ward - Con hold Con 1013 Lab 817 Com Action 262 . 0.75% swing from Con to Lab since May.

The PM should meet the Dalai Lama

I'm not usually a great signer of petitions, but this one from the Free Tibet campaign is important:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to make an official announcement that he will meet with the Dalai Lama when he visits the UK in May 2008.

As President George Bush and the United States Congress honour His Holiness the Dalai Lama, we, British citizens and residents, begin this petition requesting that Prime Minister Gordon Brown make a formal statement that he will meet officially with the Dalai Lama when he visits the United Kingdom in May 2008. We further request that the Prime Minister state on record that his meeting with the Dalai Lama will include a discussion of how the United Kingdom can help Tibetans find a solution to the Chinese occupation which began in 1950.

You can sign it on the Downing Street website here: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/DalaiLama/

Fed up with the BBC reporting itself

I'm fed up with the BBC running very, very lengthy stories about itself.

Newsnight last night featured a huge piece about the job cuts about to take place at the BBC.

Some coverage was justifiable, but would Paxman have given the same prominence to an equivalent number of job losses at a) another broadcaster or b) a manufacturing company?

A nice man leading a nasty party

Watching Ming's interview I couldn't help thinking that the real problem was not that he was too old, but that he was too nice to lead a bunch of back-stabbers like the Lib Dems.

The idea of calling for them to disolve as a party and the UK revert to a two-party system has lost its superficial appeal when I realised that as well as Lib Dem voters we might have to take some of their activists and MPs too.

Ming Gone

According to Sky Ming is about to resign... thereby stuffing Cameron's chances of winning the next election (hopefully).

Progress Conference

Just a quick plug for the Progress Conference on 3 November - details and online booking at: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/Events/

Speakers include David Aaronovitch, Wendy Alexander, Ed Balls, Nick Cohen, Yvette Cooper, Tony Giddens, Peter Kellner, Oona King, Ed Miliband, Estelle Morris, James Purnell, Jim Knight, Jim Fitzpatrick, Liam Byrne, Kitty Ussher, Phil Woolas ... and even some people I have disagreed with on this site in recent days such as Andy Burnham and Polly Toynbee...

Seminar topics include foreign policy post-Iraq, the public services, housing, the security debate, equality and aspiration, business and social justice, Cameron and the Tories, Labour party reform, politics post-spin, the green agenda, and how progressives should engage with political Islam.

There's also a speech by someone described as "Keynote address - Senior Government Minister".

I have a suspicion that mystery keynote address could be one of the speeches where Mr G Brown, PM, sets out the vision that, had Lord Falconer had the patience to wait two weeks and buy a £5 ticket, he could have heard before chatting extremely unhelpfully to the Sunday Times about an alleged absence of.

Tax shouldn't be anything to do with relationships

To say I am wound up by Andy Burnham's suggestion that "the tax system should recognise commitment and marriage" is an understatement.

As someone who isn't married, but is in a stable relationship that has lasted considerably longer than some of my friends' marriages, I wish politicians of all parties would butt out of trying to tell people what model of family or relationship is best for them and particularly of trying to social engineer people into marriage through tax bribes. What is it supposed to mean? That married people are "better" or "more worthy" and must therefore be rewarded?

A few bugbears:

a) the rate of divorce in this country suggests too many people marry in haste. If we encourage more marriages without creating support and advice for couples and getting them to stop and think about whether they are doing the right thing, we'll just get more divorces.

b) how dare any politician tell any of us what sort of relationship would be best for us? How are they supposed to know?

c) surely some tawdry tax break devalues the whole institution and makes it look like a financial deal not a declaration of love?

d) do we really want to make people less well off because they get divorced? Won't they have enough problems to deal with anyway?

My partner says she would seriously consider whether she would stay in the Labour Party if it goes down this path.

Maybe one day we might get married. If we do though it won't be because the Treasury tries to bribe us to do it.

While we're on the subject, when are we going to follow our fantastic, progressive step in creating Civil Partnerships for gay and lesbian couples with a similar civil partnership institution that mixed-gender couples can sign up to if they want legal recognition as a couple but don't want the cultural/historical/social trappings of getting married?

P.S. before anyone starts having a go, I think marriage is a great institution, I respect people who want to get married, I enjoy weddings immensely - I just want other people and the state to recognise that one size doesn't fit all and you don't have to be married to have a happy family life.

The state - and politicians - should stay well away from telling people how to conduct their personal lives.

Australian General Election

Australian PM John Howard is expected to call a 24 November General Election this weekend.

The most recent polls put his Labor rivals under Kevin Rudd 10% ahead.

There's good coverage here:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/election2007/

Particularly a swingometer: here

and interactive constituency map/guide: here


(you need to zoom in to see most of the ALP seats as they are mainly geographically tiny urban seats)

Other good sites:

http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/

and
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2007/

And the ALP campaign websites:

http://www.kevin07.com.au/ and http://www.alp.org.au/

Poll of marginals

This is fascinating:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/1055

a poll of 112 marginals shows Labour performing well in the seats which have the most impact on the outcome of an election.

Campaigning in Bexleyheath

I've just got back from a morning canvassing for my friend Howard Dawber, who is the Labour parliamentary candidate for Bexleyheath & Crayford in SE London.

Howard is one of a number of very dynamic Labour candidates fighting to regain seats lost to the opposition in 2005 - Bexleyheath was Labour in both the 1997 and 2001.

Judging from the quality of the campaign he is running, with some innovative literature, lots of young activists and a lot of good old-fashioned door-knocking, we have a chance of taking the seat back.

The canvassing gave grounds for optimism - we were in typical prosperous suburban streets of semis in the best Tory ward in the constituency - including the street where the Tory MP lives - and identified a lot of solid Labour support, and many voters who are waiting to see how the Brown administration pans out before deciding which way to vote.

Al Gore

I would have given Al Gore the Nobel wooden spoon not the Nobel peace prize.

Yes he's been doing great work highlighting the threat of climate change but if he had fought even a half way decent presidential election campaign in 2000, and not childishly blocked Clinton from helping his campaign, he would have been President for eight years and actually been able to DO something about climate change instead of bleating about it.

This donkey of a Democratic candidate is the reason (along with "Green" vote-splitter Nader, some Florida poll-rigging and his even more useless successor John Kerry) the world has been stuck with George W Bush for two terms.

Fair weather Brownite breaks ranks

It hasn't taken much to get Polly Toynbee to announce the latest in her career-long cycle of betrayals.

Ms Toynbee first stabbed the Labour Party in the back by joining the SDP in 1981.

After returning to Labour and professing gushing enthusiasm for Tony Blair and all his works, she switched to attacking him in virulent terms.

Now, having cheer led Blair's replacement by Gordon Brown for years, she has taken less than six months to turn on him and start accusing him in hysterical terms of "capitulation to the Tory agenda and refusal to make the case for equality".

Put a sock in it Polly. You tried to destroy Labour in the '80s. Then you tried to destroy Tony Blair. Now you are trying to destroy Gordon Brown. Perhaps you are psychologically incapable of loyalty. Perhaps you just write what you think Guardian readers want to hear. Either way it's a shame that you have to link quite reasonable social democratic analysis on policy to wholly destructive and unrealistic political conclusions.

Which poor politician is going to be the next object of your hopes, before being turned on in a journalistic frenzy when they have to start dealing with the realities of government?

Polls and votes

We've now got the first real post-"there will not be an election" poll, from Ipsos Mori:

CON 41%(+7)
LAB 38%(-3)
LIB DEM 11%(-5)

Good for the Tories, awful for the LDs, not too bad for us given the tone of this week's media coverage - 38% is exactly where we were in August (during phase one of the "Brown honeymoon") with this pollster and 7% higher than our position with them before the leadership election, as well as being better than the result we got in the 2005 election. Given this is now the mid-term and not the run in to an election, I don't think we should be over agitated.

Real votes last night in council by-elections:

Hobrook Ward, Horsham DC - Tory ward in Sussex - Lib Dem gain from Tory on a 9% swing
Chippenham Town Council - another Lib Dem gain from Con

UPDATE

The full figures are here - http://www.ipsos-mori.com/polls/2007/s071010.shtml - which reveal that Labour is actually 6% ahead of the Tories amongst all those expressing an opinion - only behind when it's filtered down to those certain to vote (i.e. the headline figure should be more accurately called a "election prediction model poll" than an "opinion poll"). Now if we could only introduce compulsory voting ...

Also interesting:

Do you think that Gordon Brown was right or wrong in his decision not to call a General Election this Autumn?

%
Right 47
Wrong 42
Don't know 11

Tory take on Crossrail

Tory GLA Member Brian Coleman's New Statesman column - http://www.newstatesman.com/200710090002 - is a treat this week.

He attacks the Corporation of London for helping fund Crossrail, saying:

• "it [Crossrail] has no benefit at all for most actual Londoners"
• it is a "bribe for the election that never was"
• and it is "a few trains from Maidenhead"

All of which will be of great interest to the London communities and businesses looking forward to the enhanced transport links and economic regeneration Crossrail will bring, who have been waiting for the project to get the go-ahead for over a decade.

I had thought George Galloway was Crossrail's only major political opponent, now I know he has found a new ally. I'm sure they'll work well together.

Why a November election would have been a bad idea

Look out of the window (assuming you are reading this soon after I posted it and reasonably near London).

It's absolutely bucketing down rain.

Would you have wanted to canvass in that, let alone expect anyone to go out and vote in it?

The "collapse" that wasn't

There's been a lot of nonsense spouted since Saturday about a "collapse" in Labour's poll ratings having prompted the decision not to call an election, Brown having got his strategy all wrong, etc., etc.

Today's Populus Poll in the Times shows that actually Labour support went UP during the week of Tory conference:
CON 38% (+2)
LAB 40% (+1)
LIB DEM 12% (-3)

So the reality is both Labour and the Tories benefited from the conference season, and the LDs are in a really deep mess.

Labour's poll rating is only 1% off the highest Populus has recorded since they started doing polls for the Times in January 2002, and 4% higher than our score when we won the last General Election.

To be on 40% midway through the third term against a charismatic opposition leader who has just flung the kitchen sink plus tax cuts against you in a week of TV coverage is amazing.

Let's have a bit less carping and a bit more confidence.

One side issue - the last two weeks show conferences really are important in determining people's perceptions of the parties - even more reason why it was right to dump the annual contemporary resolutions slanging match.

Walthamstow Nominations

All eight ward parties in Walthamstow CLP nominated in their parliamentary selection this weekend. The selection is an All Women Shortlist so each ward could nominate one BME candidate plus one other candidate of any ethnicity. The scores were:

"Open" Nominations:
Stella Creasy - nominated by 5 wards - automatically shortlisted as these represent about 70% of the membership
Marie Pye - nominated by 2 wards
Laura Bruni - nominated by 1 ward

BME Nominations:
Hena Ansari - nominated by 4 wards - automatically shortlisted
Farmida Bi - nominated by 1 ward
Dora Dixon-Fyle - nominated by 1 ward
Jan Etienne - nominated by 1 ward
Nadia Sharif - nominated by 1 ward

What next?

Not calling an election was the correct decision.

But let's not lose the huge amount of organisational momentum that's been gained in the last few weeks.

Frankly we were behind the curve on candidate selection and a host of other key factors in an election and now we have caught up with where we should be two years before a poll.

I'd like to see:

- Every CLP out campaigning each weekend for the next month as though there was an election - let's get the doors knocked and some leaflets delivered anyway
- Every candidate in place as soon as the timetable for a full democratic selection - started now - will allow
- Cash that would have been spent on an election used to fund more organisers on the ground for the "long campaign"

And let's stop whinging about Lord Ashcroft's cash and start fund-raising to match it - the numbers quoted in the press are that he is giving £40,000 per year to each Tory constituency association he is targeting - that isn't beyond the capabilities of the unions, our own major donors and levies on councillors and MPs to match in the CLPs where it matters - there are already some Labour CLPs that raise that kind of annual income. £40,000 is not much more than the cost of a professional Agent in each key seat - and back in the 1950s we were funding professional Agents in several hundred seats.

Give Kensington CLP a choice

Members of Kensington CLP need to have other candidates to choose from, not just Tony Benn, who has been promoting his possible parliamentary come-back there to the media.

I fear a Benn candidature will become a damaging media distraction in a General Election. It will give him a platform to attack Labour's leadership and manifesto and damage the Party nationally.

Kensington members need to be presented with a choice.

Here are the selection details for anyone who wants "I stopped Tony Benn's final comeback" on their CV - and who would be a better campaigner and more on-message candidate than the man who lost Bristol East to the Tories and inherited rock-solid safe Chesterfield and bequeathed it after 17 years as a Lib Dem seat:

Seat: Kensington
New seat
AWS: No - open selection
Closing date for applications: 10 October
Shortlisting: 5 November
Hustings: 24 November
Procedures Secretary: Lee Jameson
16 Notting Barn Road
LondonW10 5YW
Email: kensingtonclp@yahoo.co.uk

Council By-elections

Last night's council by-elections:

Shepshed Division, Leicestershire County Council - Labour marginal in marginal Loughborough constituency - Labour hold with 5% swing from Con to Lab since the district elections in the same area in May (the district wards in the division were both lost by Labour in May)

Datchet Ward, Windsor & Maidenhead Council - no Lab candidate, Tories hold safe seat but with 11% swing to LDs

Helensburgh and Lomond South Ward, Argyll & Bute Council - LD gain from Ind

Charlie Whelan - why the blog silence?

I thought one of the most politically significant stories at Labour Party Conference was the comeback of the PM's former spinner Charlie Whelan to run the new merged Unite's political operation.

This surely sends some massive signals about the kind of relationship brothers Derek and Tony want with Gordon Brown.

But all the coverage I can find that it got was a piece on Sky and a mention in a couple of newspaper gossip columns. In the Labour blogosphere, nothing. No mentions whatsover.

Strange because I have a hunch Brother Charlie is going to be playing a huge role in the future internal dynamics of the Labour Party.

NEC Chair

I mentioned in the post below that Dianne Hayter is the new NEC Chair.

I don't think enough has been done to celebrate that we have an NEC Chair this year who proudly proclaims on their official biography on the Party website - http://www.labour.org.uk/dianne_hayter - that they are "the author of "Fightback! Labour's traditional right in the 1970s and 1980s"." And she's from Holborn & St Pancras CLP - which has to be a good thing.

It's a great book - buy it while stocks last.

P.S. Message for Greta Karpin if you are reading this can I have my copy of "Fightback" back?

Mr Benn

Please no, Mr Benn senior, you've done enough damage to the Labour Party over the years not to need to make a comeback.

And wouldn't you need to go through a panel process and be asked questions like "will you obey the whip" before being allowed to run for Parliament again?

On the other hand I can see that the Campaign Group are running pretty low on youthful talent, so maybe they need some retreads.

Don't believe everything you read on LabourHome

Top topic for gossip amongst Labour hacks this week has been what process might happen with selections if there is an early election.


The story has changed about three times, but Alex Hilton over at LabourHome has decided to go for it with his analysis here:


http://www.labourhome.org/story/2007/10/4/125959/866


Unfortunately Alex's story - although I believe the thrust of it is correct that the NEC will shortlist and then there will be all member hustings votes in winnable seats - is riddled with glitches in the detail:

- he links Jack Dromey to two seats but not to the one I understood he was actually going for

- he suggests a vacancy in Barking which I should think is news, and rather annoying, to the incumbent MP M Hodge who has put a lot of effort into getting reselected

- he names the NEC Officers erroneously - Mike Griffiths isn't the Chair any more, it's now Dianne Hayter

This may all be academic now given the latest polls, but I do think it shows that whilst LabourHome is a great source of selection gossip, some of it is posted in haste and not 100% accurate.

The Polls

3 polls all basically saying the same thing - Tories boosted by their conference, Labour holding on to a good 39/40%, LDs nowhere, minor parties squeezed:

ICM - Lab 39%, Con 38%, LD 16%
Populus - Lab 39%, Con 36%, LD 15%
YouGov - Lab 40%, Con 36%, LD 13%

Two conclusions:
- the arguments I set out in the post below about not having an early election are reinforced
BUT
- if Cameron can give it everything he's got and deploy his tax cuts and Labour is still poll 39/40% then we will win when the election comes

We have the great advantage of time - lots of it - three years if we want - to prepare our defences in depth and win not just narrowly but a comprehensive and strategic victory.

The election speculation has been valuable in that it has got Labour onto a fighting footing and ramped up our campaign preparations, whilst smoking out the Tory policy position.

Let's stay calm and if the election isn't called still get out there on the doorstep and make this a campaigning Autumn that leaves all our marginal seats in a stronger position.

Election timing

Having been swept along with General Election hype over the last two weeks I have now taken a deep breath and tried to think through whether I believe this is a good idea.

On the plus side:

- The Party at a national level is very much ready to fight an election - why stop now when everything is geared up and ready to go?
- I think there's a genuine chance of net Labour gains in terms of votes and seats compared to 2005.
- There's a strategic opportunity to stop Cameron's renewal of the Tories in its tracks and put them in a position where they have expended the best leader they are likely to have in the near future and made no progress - it could even trigger a split or realignment on the right.
- Will we be able to sustain an 11% lead in the polls until a later date?
- It gives voters a chance to say whether they want Brown as PM.

On the minus side:

- Time would be helpful in terms of organisational preparation at a constituency level (though that cuts both ways and would allow the Tories more time to spend Ashcroft's millions).
- The polls are volatile - it would be good to see a longer run of poll leads.
- Do we have a real handle on the regional trends and the trends in marginal seats behind the recent poll leads? An 11% national lead is not much use if it is all stacked up in safe seats not marginals, or if losses to the SNP offset gains from the Tories.
- Risk that voters see it as an unnecessary poll as we have 3 years of mandate left and punish us.
- November is going to be cold and dark which will militate against effective campaigning and inevitably depress turnout, which will be bad for democracy and probably disproportionately impact on Labour.
- If we are confident of our ability to govern and that we have new policy ideas - the answer to which is yes on both counts - then these should feed through in to a sustained poll lead - maybe even a growing one - so the risk that "we'll never be 11% ahead again" is actually one that it is in our power as the party in government to remove. Maybe we can even build a bigger lead?
- The strategic objective of halting Cameron and his phony modernisation project can be achieved without a quick General Election if we are confident we can sustain or build our position in the polls. Because most Tories don't actually buy into his vision, if we are ahead for months, not weeks, they will launch a leadership coup against him and destroy themselves before a General Election.
- From a purely London point-of-view there is a tactical advantage to holding the General Election in May on the same day as the Mayor and GLA elections to increase turnout and campaigning activity in these, which would help Ken see off Boris and help keep the BNP off the GLA.

Personally I love election campaigns and can't think of any better way to spend the next month - and I know that most Labour colleagues are ready and waiting for the balloon to go up - but - and it's a very balanced and marginal decision (and one where unlike the decision-maker I don't have a full deck of polling data or insight into the potential threats coming up on the political and economic horizon) - on balance I think I would play it long and not go for an election this side of Spring.

Lancaster or Millbank?

The Guardian has helpfully published a chart showing who has which desk at the Tories' Millbank HQ:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/10/03/tory_layout.pdf

I was a bit surprised to see that Hackney Tory Group Leader Eric Ollerenshaw has a desk there as I assumed he would be focused on his role as their parliamentary candidate for Lancaster & Fleetwood - http://conservativehome.blogs.com/goldlist/2007/03/eric_ollerensha.html

Eric certainly has a talent for multi-tasking, having been both a GLA Member and Tory Leader on Hackney/Chair of Overview & Scrutiny at the same time until 2004. Some people suggested his speeches in the council chamber indicated a certain lack of focus and preparation on the latter role.

But is it really possible to fight a marginal seat in the North West from the comfort of a desk six seats away from Cameron and Osborne in the "Thatcher Room" or has Eric already given up on winning Lancaster?

Political Influences

Mike Ion has tagged me wanting to know my top 5 political influences

Here goes:

1) Herbert Morrison - the archetypal Labour organiser as London Labour Party secretary in the '30s, and both Mayor and MP in Hackney, hammer of the Bevanites
2) Neil Kinnock - inspired me to join the Labour Party and the reason why it still exists
3) John Spellar - turned me away from the LCC (Labour Co-ordinating Committee) before I could accidentally become soft left
4) Stephen Twigg - I agree with him about most issues and he was the person at national level who most encouraged me when I joined Labour Students
5) Doug Naysmith - taught me how to campaign when I was a student in Bristol in the '92 election

Some of those names will be a bit shocked to be listed alongside each other!

Number 72

I've been voted number 72 in Iain Dale's top 500 UK political blogs.

Not bad considering the voting was partly by his readers, who are mainly Tories.

I think I'm also the only person in there with a full scale spoof of my blog by someone else in the top 500 - the spoof Luke comes in rather lower that me at number 274, which he must be crying into his keyboard in Dalston about given the amount of creativity, hours of photoshopping, and sheer bile (can you get a bile transplant if you use it all blogging?) he puts into the job.

Some Tory or Trot - http://www.septicisle.info/ - I couldn't be bothered reading it to work out which - thinks my ranking is outrageous as I'm "the Hazel Blears of the online world". Thanks for the unintended compliment, whoever you are...

George Osborne

Most interesting read of the weekend was the Guardian's profile of George Osborne by Decca Aitkenhead.

The overwhelming impression is of a kind of dilettante who is serious about his career but with no real understanding of why he is the number 2 politician in the Tory Party, or what he wants to do if, God forbid, they win the election, other than that being Shadow Chancellor is a jolly good thing to have on your CV if you are the kind of chap who went to a good school.

Gems include:

"Was he worried by the prospect of Brown succeeding Blair as prime minister? Quite the contrary. Choosing Brown, he smiled gleefully, would be the biggest mistake the Labour party could make."

"not once, in all our conversations, does Osborne attribute his career in Tory politics to a passion for ideological action."

"What about the miners' strike? He narrows his eyes - "Hmm, the miners' strike..." - and searches his memory. "I'm trying to see if I can honestly remember.""

"He seems to use the words "current affairs" and "politics" interchangeably, and time and again the word interested recurs, as if politics were an absorbing diversion that his family found enjoyable to follow, perhaps like horse racing."

"Osborne claims that, after a brief Brown bounce, the polls showed that the parties were on level pegging again: "And that is the shortest political honeymoon any British prime minister has ever had." Ten days later, a new poll puts Brown nearly 10 points ahead."

"For all the Tories' efforts to appear modern and egalitarian, the old question of class unavoidably inserts itself - because, time and again, little telling remarks reveal the chasm that still divides Osborne's perspective on normality from most of the population's."

"Osborne thinks his fee-paying, selective boys' school, St Paul's, was "incredibly liberal. It didn't matter who your parents were. Your mother could be the head of a giant corporation - or a solicitor in Kew" as if this encompassed the full imaginable spectrum of socioeconomic status. At the party conference last year, someone pointed out that he had no working experience of the real world outside Westminster. "Well, it depends what you mean by the real world," he retorted - and, to demonstrate his intimacy with it, offered: "I have plenty of friends who work in law, in the City, in government agencies.""

"People who know him often mention his utter lack of snobbery. But ultimately the concepts of social inclusion and exclusion have had to be learned - like French or Latin. He's impressively fluent, but every now and then his command of their language fails, exposing him. In Manchester, at the agency for the long-term unemployed, he listens respectfully to the director and makes all the appropriate noises. But his questions are "When incapacity benefit clients show up, how many have a genuine disability?" and, "How many of your clients come here because it's a condition of them continuing to get their benefits?" As we are walking across the city centre afterwards, we pass a group of youngsters styled in the classic Mancunian fashion for artful scruff. "Don't people in Manchester look good!" I exclaim. He glances at me as if I have lost my mind."