Labour Party

Labour’s Arrogance Could Cost Ed Miliband The Election

Samuel Hooper11 Comments

Ed Miliband - Austerity - TUC March For The Alternative - Arrogance

 

With less than a month to go until the 2015 general election, the London Evening Standard (print edition) is currently running a Constituency Focus series, exploring the different dynamics and personalities at play in London’s diverse boroughs and constituencies.

Yesterday saw the focus on the constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, this blogger’s home turf, with Labour candidate Tulip Siddiq featuring prominently. My own interview with Tulip Siddiq is here, and this blog’s overview of the electoral battle for Hampstead and Kilburn can be found here.

Today the focus moved to the west London constituency of Brentford and Isleworth, an area covering Chiswick, Isleworth, Brentford, Osterley and Hounslow, close to Heathrow Airport. Unsurprisingly, all of the main local candidates are proudly displaying their NIMBY credentials by opposing a third runway at Heathrow.

From the Standard:

In the Tory stronghold of Chiswick, the issue of school places dominates; while in the traditionally Labour-supporting parts to the west, NHS waiting times are the hot topic.

But the one issue that is a major talking point across the whole of the Brentford and Isleworth constituency is the proposed Heathrow expansion, which both the main candidates oppose.

Conservative candidate Mary Macleod won by just 1,958 votes in 2010, making this the 65th most marginal seat in the country. The constituency … is also one of the Tories’ 40/40 seats – 40 to win, 40 to keep.

But it is on the subject of austerity that a real difference is revealed between Labour and Conservative philosophies.

Ruth Cadbury, a long-serving Labour councillor and part of the Cadbury chocolate dynasty, is standing as the Labour Party candidate in the general election. And when she spoke about the level of Conservative support in the wealthier parts of her constituency, she had this to say:

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Dispatch From Hampstead And Kilburn – Interview With Tulip Siddiq (Labour)

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

 

Tulip Siddiq displayed her knowledge of local issues (she is local resident of Kilburn) when responding to my question about gentrification in the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency and its implications for affordable housing, proposing a national register of landlords to help safeguard the interests of people who rent privately.

When asked to look back at Labour’s most recent thirteen-year spell in government (1997-2010) and identify their greatest achievement, Tulip Siddiq highlighted “the NHS” and referenced the treatment that her father received on the NHS as her personal inspiration to join the Labour Party.

Surprisingly, Siddiq is Labour’s sole ethnic minority candidate in a currently Labour-held seat, though her chances of election are strong and (as this recent profile in The Independent suggests) she is well positioned to rise up the ranks of any future Labour government,  especially having been an early supporter of Ed Miliband.

 

Click here for interviews with each of the 2015 candidates standing for election in Hampstead and Kilburn, and a summary of the recent hustings organised by West Hampstead Life.

Tulip Siddiq - Labour Party - Hampstead and Kilburn - General Election 2015

The Reaction To Labour’s Immigration Mug Is More Than A Storm In A Teacup

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

Labour 2015 General Election Mug Control Immigration - Immigration Policy

 

To mark the official start of the 2015 general election short campaign, the Labour Party celebrated by offering their supporters a commemorative coffee mug with Adolf Hitler’s face adorning one side, and quotes from Mein Kampf on the other. Or so one might be forgiven for thinking, judging by the pant-wettingly hysterical reaction of some left-wingers to Labour’s latest piece of campaign merchandise.

In reality, what happened was that the Labour Party released some campaign trinkets based on their “five pledges” outlining what they would do in government. The offensive mugs make reference to the fourth of these pledges:

CONTROLS ON IMMIGRATION: People who come here won’t be able to claim benefits for at least two years, and we will introduce fair rules making it illegal for employers to undercut wages by exploiting workers.

Cue hysteria and frantic disassociation from the “campaign essential” merchandise from the unthinking wing of the Labour Party, and its odd-couple ambassadors, Chuka Umunna and Dianne Abbott MP:

Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and a former Labour leadership hopeful, tweeted a picture of the mug on Sunday afternoon with the words: “This shameful mug is an embarrassment. But the real problem is that immigration controls are one of our five pledges at all.”

Her tweet prompted a barrage of criticism against Labour on Twitter, with the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert writing: “Wow. The stories are true. Labour have actually produced a campaign mug championing ‘Controls on immigration’.”

Owen Jones also felt the need to get in on the action, though one cannot disagree with his wider point that the Labour Party (and the others) would be better offering some hope, or a positive vision backed up by tangible policies:

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Forget David Cameron’s Successor – Who Will Replace Ed Miliband?

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

David Cameron Breakfast Cereal Terms Are Like Shredded Wheat 2

 

And so, with a confusing breakfast cereal metaphor, David Cameron announced in an interview with the BBC’s James Landale that he would not seek to run for a third term as Prime Minister should he cling on to the post at the 2015 general election.

From James Landale’s own analysis:

David Cameron’s admission that he will not serve a third term in Downing Street will provoke a flurry of speculation. What was he hoping to achieve? What message was he trying to send?

First things first. I asked him a question and he answered it. It was not something that a helpful Downing Street official had suggested I might ask with a heavy hint that I might get an interesting answer. It was just one of many speculative questions that political journalists like me ask in the hope that just occasionally they might get an answer. And this time it did.

Second, Mr Cameron’s overt aim was to get across the message that he would serve a full second term. He wants to quash speculation that he might stand down early in 2017 after a referendum on the UK’s EU membership.

But by emphasising that he would do another five years, he inevitably has to address what he would do after that. And his answer was clear. Terms in Downing Street, he said, are like Shredded Wheat: “two are wonderful, three might just be too many.”

This is all very interesting, and certainly we should keep an eye on what might happen in the year 2020 and beyond. There is already plenty of good analysis off the back of David Cameron’s off-the-cuff revelation, from the Spectator here, the Times of London here and here, the Guardian here, and Conservative Home here.

But of far more interest than who will be jockeying for position to replace David Cameron (a largely uninspiring field of Theresa May, George Osborne and the unthinkable Boris Johnson) is the more pressing question: who will replace Ed Miliband if Labour lose the election on 7 May?

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Labour’s NHS Attack Ad Exemplifies Our Rotten, Uninspiring Politics

Samuel Hooper12 Comments

General Election 2015 Labour Party Campaign Attack Ad NHS Public Spending

 

Today we saw the publication of the Labour Party’s first election poster of the 2015 campaign, and it is a nasty, negative little piece of work.

Designed to appear like an X-ray image, the poster shows a broken arm, and the warning “Next Time, They’ll Cut To The Bone. The NHS Can’t Afford The Tory Cuts Plan”.

There’s no point wasting space pointing out that this is not a very promising start from a party that promised to wage a relentlessly upbeat, positive election campaign – that point has already been well made. And it’s a fair point, but perhaps not the most important one.

What is really depressing about this Labour attack ad – and all of the negative campaigning we will soon see from the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP too – is the lack of vision, of imagination, of anything resembling a positive outlook for Britain’s future.

Ed Miliband is fervently hoping that he can squeak across the finish line and into Number 10 Downing Street on the back of the British public’s fear that our precious public services will be cut back or degraded under five more years of Tory rule. Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats hope to stave off electoral annihilation by likewise preying on the fear of a Tory majority, and by promising that returning a sufficient number of LibDem MPs to Westminster will help to soften the edges of a future coalition as they did in 2010.

Meanwhile, UKIP, for all their anti-establishment fervour and sometime happy warrior image, will be busy preying on fears and resentments about immigration and injustices inflicted upon helpless Britain from Brussels. And David Cameron and the Conservative Party will desperately hope that their own negative campaign ads, designed to make the British public fear the uncertainty and economic chaos that a profligate Labour administration would bring about, will convince us to allow them another term in government.

The common thread? All of the campaigning between now and May 7 will be negative.

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