Ed Miliband

Where Are The Women In British Politics?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Blair Babes women British politics

 

The conventional wisdom holds that Ed Miliband managed to land a serious blow on David Cameron at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, exposing the Tory leader and his party for their chronic shortage of women in leadership positions and the key offices of state. Miliband makes a good point – an abysmal 4 out of 22 cabinet ministers in the coalition government are women, and only one of those, Theresa May at the Home Office, occupies a position that really matters (Culture, Northern Ireland and International Development, the other ministries headed by women, are either irrelevant or decidedly junior-league). That simply is not good enough, and David Cameron has just cause to feel ashamed.

The Guardian makes the case:

[David Cameron] was taunted about the Conservatives’ “women problem” by Ed Miliband in the same week it emerged several prominent women have recently been sacked from government jobs and Anne McIntosh, a high-profile female Tory MP, was deselected by her local association.

The Labour leader also claimed a prominent businesswoman, who is the wife of a Tory donor, had been greeted by Cameron with the remark: “Where’s your husband?”

He then accused the coalition of failing women across the UK by allowing the pay gap between men and women to widen for the first time in five years.

“You promised to modernise your party, but you are going backwards. You run your government like the old boys’ network – that’s why you are failing women across your party and across the country,” Miliband said.

And the initial exchange between the two leaders at Prime Minister’s Question Time can be seen here:

 

Less reported is the fact that the Labour Party has a record on promoting women every bit as appalling as do the Conservatives, as Dan Hodges correctly observes in his Telegraph column:

Women still aren’t allowed to hold senior positions in the Labour party. The three major political briefs are Prime Minister/Leader, Chancellor and Foreign Secretary. Apart from a short period during the fag end of Tony Blair’s administration when Margaret Beckett was placed in charge of the Foreign Office, and 14 weeks when Yvette Cooper oversaw the shadow post under Ed Miliband, none of those offices have been held by women. The Labour party has been in existence for 114 years. And during that time – under Labour – a woman has held or shadowed one of three major offices of state for a period of 14 months.

Fourteen months. And yet you would not think that Labour was sitting on such a poor record when Ed Miliband stood preening at the dispatch box in the Commons on Wednesday. One could have been forgiven for thinking that women made up a statistically and politically perfect 51% of Labour seats in Parliament and in the shadow cabinet, particularly given the rather unusual concentration of the Labour Party’s female talent on the front bench alongside their leader:

When PMQs started, several people commented on the fact that a number of Labour’s women shadow cabinet members were artificially concertinaed together close to Miliband. The reason they did that was because if they hadn’t done that they wouldn’t have been in camera shot. And that’s because there’s a convention that people sit alongside their leader based on seniority.

If something about the picture below strikes you as odd – don’t worry. There is indeed something different about the Labour front bench at PMQs this week – namely, a lot more women clustered on either side of Eds Miliband and Balls than is usually the case. It is hard to determine which is worse – Ed Miliband’s disingenuous photo opportunity, or the willingness of a number of female Labour MPs to go along with it by essentially allowing themselves to be used as props by their leadership.

Not your standard distribution.
Not your standard distribution.

 

A less-reported fact amid the furore is that all four women cabinet ministers in the coalition government are Conservative MPs, which rather begs the question of how the Liberal Democrats have managed to fly under the radar and avoid being called out for their own shameful inability to recognise and promote female talent within their own ranks. But somehow the party of Lord Rennard seems to be scoring a free pass on their own institutional sexism for the time being – at least as far as Ed Miliband’s focus is concerned.

The lack of women in senior positions in all political parties is a real problem, one which Miliband does little to debate or address by trading barbs with the Prime Minister. Some advocate all-woman shortlists as a solution to the problem, and of course the Labour Party has adopted this particular approach. This blog disagrees with it – firstly on the grounds that it robs local constituencies of the opportunity to select from the widest possible pool of talent when choosing who they want to represent them in Parliament, and secondly because if we must tolerate reverse discrimination as a necessary evil to help put right historic wrongs (and I’m far from convinced that we should), it should be done at the earliest stage possible and certainly not at the point of parliamentary candidate selection.

But while we may condemn Miliband’s posturing on the subject and question his methods, we must also acknowledge that at least the Labour Party under Ed Miliband is engaged in a bona fide effort to increase the number of women in their parliamentary party. There is a lot of rueful head-shaking from the Conservatives at the conspicuous lack of women in theirs, but not much action of any kind at all.

Four women out of twenty-two cabinet members in the British government, in the year 2014. This is a national scandal, far more serious than localised spats about the deselection or resignation of individual constituency MPs, or accusations of politicising quango appointments. This is about the integrity of our democracy and our desire to be a more practically and visibly meritocratic country.

The Conservatives, the party of Margaret Thatcher, should be leading the charge on anything to do with meritocracy. The fact that they are not currently doing so is alarming.

Labour’s Best Frenemy

Samuel HooperLeave a comment
edballsedmiliband
Maybe a 65% top marginal rate of income tax would make us even more popular.

 

Dan Hodges may have resigned his Labour Party membership last year in protest of the parliamentary party’s opportunistic stance on intervention in Syria, but he still strongly identifies with Labour values – indeed, his Telegraph biography states that he “writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation”. One would expect no less from the son of my firebreathing local MP, Glenda Jackson. Which makes his scorn for the current Labour leadership and pessimism for their prospects in the 2015 general election all the more compelling.

Of course, one might say that it is perfectly natural for someone who has publicly fallen out with the party hierarchy to publicly root for their demise, and that it is unseemly to trumpet the latest poll results showing Labour’s lead over the Conservative Party almost completely extinguished. But Dan Hodges comes packing precedents, facts and statistics.

First come the simple, time-tested truths:

The party that is seen as being best placed to run the economic affairs of the nation normally wins the election. And at the moment that party is seen to be the Conservative Party. In fact, that party has been seen to be the Conservative Party ever since Labour was ejected from office in 2010. Through rain, through shine, through double-dip (erroneously reported double-dip if you prefer), and through recovery, the Tories have enjoyed a comfortable lead on the economy. The perception that David Cameron and George Osborne are the guys to run the nation’s finances is baked in.

Another issue is leadership. The man who people see as the best suited to be prime minister is usually the one they select as their prime minister. In this case that man is Cameron. From the day Miliband was elected Labour party leader, people have looked at him, and then they’ve looked at Cameron, and they’ve said “David Cameron is the one best suited to running the country”. There has never been a single day when they’ve said “Actually, I think that Ed Miliband is best suited to running the country”. Again, the Tory advantage on leadership is baked in.

Strikes one and two. On economic stewardship, for better or worse, the question is quite settled. George Osborne, for all the many things he has done wrong and key conservative principles on which he has compromised (partly through necessity of coalition and partly through want of a backbone), has still managed to deliver the strongest rate of economic growth since 2007. Meanwhile, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls’ continued shrieking about economic flatlining and living standards (always a lagging indicator) are increasingly coming to sound churlish and divorced from reality.

Hodges also considers the trove of other indicators that are trending in favour of the government at present:

If you think abut it, it’s fairly logical. “So, Bill, I see the economy is growing faster than any of our EU rivals, unemployment is falling, crime is falling, that wave of east European migration didn’t materialise after all, business optimism has returned, wages are rising again, inflation is still low, interest rates are still low, and this lot seem the ones best placed to help the family finances. What are you going to do in the election on Thursday?” “You have to ask? I’m going to kick the bums out.”

The crux of the matter, according to Hodges, is that in order for Labour to win, the British electorate would have to simultaneously break almost all of their recent behavioural precedents and behave in a most unpredictable way, namely:

An opposition party could retain its midterm vote share. A party in power could be ejected after just one term. Even though the economy is improving and unemployment is falling and crime is falling and business optimism is increasing and interest rates are historically low and inflation is historically low and wages are rising in real terms, people could say “It’s time for a change.”

Well, when you put it like that…

It did not have to be this way. As any reader of this blog will know, I am no supporter of the Labour Party, and given the fact that the Conservative-led coalition government is at least making timid steps to roll back the size of the state and tackle government spending, I have no great desire to see things change in this regard. But I also saw a path that Labour could have taken to put themselves in a better position going into the 2015 general election, a path that they conspicuously chose not to take.

This route to potential victory involved making an initial very public mea culpa accepting responsibility for their previous economic mismanagement and unsustainable growth of government (and so drawing a line under it) and a pledge to take deficit reduction at least as seriously as the Tories, followed by a pivot to actually address some of the British public’s legitimate concerns on welfare, on Europe and on government spending. From his recent columns, it is evident that Dan Hodges also saw this potential door back into power, just as it was firmly being pushed shut by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls.

The Labour Party leadership and allied local party activists who have drunk merrily from the Ed Miliband Kool-Aid since 2010 probably do not like to hear any of this, from someone they no doubt consider a turncoat. But I have a strong premonition that, should the 2015 general election not go Labour’s way, it is the words of Dan Hodges that people will summarise and plagiarise when writing their post-mortems of the Ed Miliband era.

Maybe Dan Hodges isn’t Labour’s worst enemy in their own midst; in fact, he is quite possibly their very best friend at the moment. If only they could see that.

Labour Reveal Their Priorities

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Miss me yet?

 

It was heavily trailed, but now we know for sure – Labour, who have been feeling the heat as a result of their total lack of credibility on the economy and the fact that the Tories are finally starting to benefit from the fruits of economic recovery, have been forced into revealing some of their plans for the future. And what plans they are. They can best be summarised as “let’s return to how things were in the final days of Gordon Brown’s premiership”.

Whether this makes you want to get out or chequebook and make a huge contribution to the Labour Party or scream and and fall down on the floor in absolute incredulity depends entirely on your political leaning.

The Telegraph reports on Ed Ball’s major policy speech:

[Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls] said it was wrong for the Coalition government to have decided to cut the 50p top rate of tax to 45p from April last year.

“When the deficit is still high, when tough times are now set to last well into the next parliament, when for ordinary families their real incomes are falling and taxes have risen, it cannot be right for David Cameron and George Osborne to have chosen to give the richest people in the country a huge tax cut,” Mr Balls said.

“That’s why for the next parliament the next Labour government will reverse this government’s top rate tax cut, so we can finish the job of getting the deficit down and do it fairly.

“For the next Parliament, we will restore the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000 – reversing this unfair tax cut for the richest one per cent of people in the country and cutting the deficit in a fairer way.”

Ed Balls calls cutting the top rate of income tax from 50 to 45% a “huge tax cut”. Let us leave aside for a moment the ludicrous presumption on Balls’ part that taking a full half of the incremental pound that someone earns in income tax alone (never mind National Insurance, indirect taxes and VAT) could ever be proposed in a sentence together with the word “fair” and be taken seriously. I am more interested in what Ed Balls and the Labour Party had to say when Gordon Brown decided to raise the top rate of income tax from 40% to 50%. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t call it a “huge tax increase”. In fact, I know that they didn’t sell it to the country that way. So if increasing the top rate of income tax by ten pence in the pound is not a huge increase, how can a partial rollback of five pence be considered a huge tax cut? The answer, of course, is that it cannot.

So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax...
So a friend of mine had this great idea on tax…

 

In what was doubtless intended as a ringing statement designed to assure us of Labour’s new-found commitment to sensible economic management, Balls also committed to eliminating the budget deficit by the end of the next Parliament, in 2020:

Mr Balls announced what Labour said would be a binding commitment to balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling in the next Parliament.

Quite why we would want to exchange a government that tried and failed to manage this feat in the lifetime of the current Parliament for one that never displayed an interest in doing so until now but which suddenly claims to be able to achieve it in the next Parliament if only they are given the keys to power is never fully explained.

Neither does Balls acknowledge the fact that even when the budget deficit is eliminated, the national debt will remain intact and ominously large – he makes no proposals about running a future surplus to begin paying down this debt and lowering the nation’s interest payments. Neither, of course, does George Osborne devote much of his time to that niggling fact – but if Ed Balls really wants to seize the mantle of economic trustworthiness from Osborne he needs to aim higher and show that he has a better grasp of the longer term picture than his counterpart.

The reaction to Balls’ speech from the business community – who Labour like to malign, but are actually the ones who create the jobs and pay corporation tax and National Insurance contributions – was predictably scornful. Words and phrases such as “absurd”, “disaster”, “unmitigated disaster”, “putting our economic security at risk”, “unhelpful” and “political posturing” were often deployed.

By contrast, the Unite trade union saw Balls’ announcement as a fantastic development, and urged Labour to ever more destructive heights of foolishness and irresponsibility:

However, the Unite trade union, Labour’s biggest donor, welcomed the policy but warned it was only “a beginning”.

A Unite spokesman said: “The commitment to restore the 50p top rate of tax is a sign that a future Labour government understands the need for a fairer taxation system in this country.

“This is a beginning; we would urge Labour to also tackle the disgraceful abuse of the system by the evaders and avoiders too.

You know what would make tax avoidance really difficult, unnecessary and socially unacceptable? A flat tax. But somehow I don’t see Unite advocating for that any time in the near future. Because, though they do not like to admit it in public, high taxes are not a regrettable but necessary evil to people like Ed Balls and his cheerleaders on the left. For Ed Balls, higher taxes are a desirable end in themselves, a last line of defence to ensnare anyone who defies the odds and manages to break through Labour’s dragnet legacy of mediocre standardised education, burdensome regulations and big government and succeed in spite of themselves.

With regard to Labour’s brave new economic stance, the British electorate will cast the only verdict that matters in May of 2015. But I think David Cameron and George Osborne will be sleeping a little more easily in their beds from now on, warm in the knowledge that Ed Balls has set Labour on a firm course back to 2010.

Defying The People On Europe

Samuel Hooper2 Comments
Not so fast. First we need to preserve democracy by translating the referendum question into Cornish.
Not so fast. First we need to preserve democracy by translating the referendum question into Cornish.

 

Labour peers in the House of Lords have filed more than fifty amendments to the EU Referendum Bill as it makes its way through the committee stage in a transparent and bold-faced attempt to filibuster the bill, defy the clear wishes of the British people and to save their hapless leader, Ed Miliband, from having to take a firm and unambiguous stance on the issue.

The Telegraph reports:

David Cameron’s plan to give the public a vote on membership of the European Union could be defeated within weeks after Labour peers tabled dozens of outlandish amendments that could halt its progress in Parliament.

More than 50 amendments were tabled for the committee stage of the EU Referendum Bill, including holding a petition of a million voters, posing the questions in Cornish and giving prisoners the vote, the Telegraph has learnt.

As a private member’s Bill, it has a limited time to pass through Parliament. It can only be debated on Fridays and must be approved by both houses by February 28.

Dirty parliamentary tricks such as this have been used by all sides at one time or another, but it is dispiriting to see them deployed against a bill that merely seeks to return power to the people on an important issue of sovereignty such as this. There is no need to wait for a petition of a million votes before proceeding, we know that a vast number of people support a referendum. Neither do we need to pose the referendum question in Cornish, Klingon or any other obscure language. And topics such as the re-enfranchisement of prisoners currently serving custodial sentences deserve their own hearing and debate, not just to be used as ammunition in childish political games.

I remain genuinely torn on the issue of Europe. Whilst I see the EU in its present form as nothing but a scandalously wasteful talking shop in pursuit of a closer union never formally sanctioned by the citizens of any of its member states, the issue of a potential British withdrawal would be very thorny. Though none of the worst-case scenarios peddled by the pro-European scaremongers are anything near accurate (all of our trade with the EU vanishing overnight, sudden diminution on the world stage among others), there are real questions that need resolving around the realistically achievable options for future relations between a seceded Britain and the remainder of the EU. At its most basic, we need to know the terms on which Britain can continue to remain a part of the common market and free trade area whilst subscribing to as little as possible of everything else that the EU has taken it upon itself to do.

When they are not busy accusing eurosceptics of being little Englanders or xenophobes, those on the pro-European side of the fence are forever issuing mea culpas, saying that of course the European Union has flaws and needs reform, but that the only way to tackle this is from the inside as a fully engaged player. But the day to press for such reform never seems to come, or when it does come Britain finds that her interests on a key point do not align with other key players in the union, resulting either in gridlock and inaction or another painful debit from the “give” column in the give and take of our membership, the price, we are told, of being part of the club.

I am exceedingly unwilling to spend another year, yet alone another 5-year stretch between general elections, being fobbed off in this entirely predictable manner. Yes, what happens if Britain crosses the Rubicon and votes to leave the EU is of tremendous importance for our country, and those on the “leave the EU” side need to flesh out this part of their argument more fully in order to be more convincing to those such as myself who are genuinely torn. But the fact that these questions have not yet been fully addressed is no reason to delay the referendum, in the same way that contempt and distrust of the British people is also not a legitimate reason.

I often get the sense from the words and actions of the Labour Party that they are convinced that they know what is best for me far better than I do myself. But nowhere is this self-righteous superiority combined with ruthless determination to promote their vision of Britain over all others more evident than in the current manoeuverings of the Labour peers in the House of Lords.

The people deserve their say, and if Ed Miliband cannot muster the courage to take a public stance one way or another, he should at least call off his ennobled lackeys and prevent them from impeding the wheels of British democracy any further.

Jim Murphy: Labour’s Saving Grace?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

 

After a day enduring the speeches at the 2013 Labour Party Conference in Brighton, I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that Jim Murphy MP, the shadow Defence Secretary, is the sole saving grace in Ed Miliband’s weak shadow cabinet.

Aside from the much-heralded rollout of a redundant proposal to specifically criminalise attacking a member of the armed forces, his speech – delivered without notes or teleprompter – was the best thing of the day:

 

Murphy rightly calls out the current government for their mistakes in defence policy, and though Labour’s record in this area is hardly stellar, he manages to land some punches that will hurt the Tories and which should give them serious pause for reflection as to their own conservative priorities and supposed natural affinity with the armed forces.

In so doing, he also managed to tick off an impressive list of Labour policies and pledges, as yet unmatched by the Tories, which would naturally appeal to service members and their families.

Legal aid and entitlements for veterans.

In-service education for serving troops.

Codifying the armed forces bill of rights in the Labour Party rule book.

Denouncing the decision to make tens of thousands of experienced veterans redundant while expecting their roles to be backfilled by reservists in the TA.

Mocking the lamentable fact that Britain’s new aircraft carriers will enter service years before the jets capable of flying from them.

Rightly calling out the government for failing to address the disastrously bloated and inefficient defence procurement system.

In their zealousness (but not effectiveness) to reduce Britain’s budget deficit and roll back the size of the state, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government has undeniably weakened Britain’s armed forces and military readiness, and Jim Murphy did well to draw blood on all of these points.

It is still a bit rich for Labour to try to seize the mantle of being the party of the armed forces, but Jim Murphy is a talented and competent politician with an obvious affection for and affinity with the military. He may not have owned up to Labour’s own past failings in the defence sphere – no one in the shadow cabinet has managed to do that – but he is no dove, and he clearly has his eye on the future.

Based on his recent performance, Jim Murphy would be a solid pick for the Labour party leadership after Ed Miliband has finished leading them into electoral oblivion.

The Conservative party should watch and beware.