Sorry to be a bit quiet here this week. I have been writing and have had two pieces published elsewhere, but I don’t know their rules on reposting, so I will just link to them here:

The first was on the Monarchy and the fact that its designed to make us question it at times of personal crisis for the Roay Family on the Huffington Post.

The second is my Stagger’s debut on the effect of Thatcher on the Labour Left.

Enjoy!

Something is really frightening me. Have you heard about the Shadow Cabinet minister who said something disloyal? How about the daft blogger with a superiority complex? What about the policy forum that shouts into a bottomless void? It’s waking me up in the night. Every time my mind wanders, it wanders ends up here, and my heart starts to race.

I don’t think the Labour Party know we lost the last election.

At the very least, very few of us are acting as if we know we’re in opposition.

Being in opposition sucks. It really sucks.

Do you know how much you can invest in growth from opposition?

Nothing.

Do you know how many jobs you can create from opposition?

None.

Do you know how many cuts you can prevent from opposition?

None.

Do you know who are implementing the cuts? Who have choked off the growth? Who are causing rising unemployment?

Do you?

Because from the tone of the conversations I’ve been seeing in the last week, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s Ed Balls who is responsible for causing the damage, not just proposing dealing with the fallout.

The fact that opposition is painful, frustrating and humiliating is no reason to pretend it’s not happening. But that’s what we’re doing.

We keep screaming at each other as if we were still in government and capable of doing – rather than simply discussing – things with which we disagree. We keep talking about ourselves, our leaders, our personalities, their leadership and their personality clashes; reducing leadership to a particularly daft edition of Heat magazine.

I’m amazed we haven’t focused on Ed’s cellulite, or Yvette’s top tips for shifting that baby weight. Then criticised her for her acceptance of the fact that her body has changed.

Not that our cabinet members are acting like they understand opposition any better than the rest of us.

Opposition is a time for ambition, and a time to evaluate our ambitions upwards after the long slog of Government. It’s a time to look again at what we failed to do and why. What we’d like to do and how. What we need to do by when. Right now, our shadow cabinet are acting like jaded ministers in a dying government. They can’t step out of that mind-set. They can’t set themselves free from the shackles of Government enough to turn themselves into the kind of opposition that becomes a new and fresh government.

If we start a government muted and technocratic, God knows what we’ll be like after five years of the compromises of power. We need our cabinet members to shake the timidity of Labour government (for who is accusing this Tory government of being reticent) and grasp at the new nettles of 21st century challenges.

We’ve retained so many of the bad habits we gained as we got comfortable in government. Internecine warfare, insider briefing, poor discipline and easy, opportunistic in-fighting. We’re all at it; we’re all as bad as each other.

We’re holding on to so much of what made us less effective as a governing force. Timidity, managerialism, lack of a sense of an egalitarian destination. A tendency to tinker not to change.

If we can’t – individually and collectively – pull our fingers out and start to focus outwards on the country not inwards on ourselves, we don’t deserve to win again.

And the thing that really, really keeps me up at night?

Do some of us, deep down, prefer it that way?

This post first appeared on Labourlist

Some time ago I responded to a piece on Labour List entitled You don’t have the right not to be offended by doing my level best to offend the author. I called him many things including, but not limited to, intimating that he was a slang term for the female genitalia. (Anyone who wants to see a better, more grown up response to this sort of thing should read this by Grace Fletcher-Hackwood).

Do I think these things of the author Jonathan Roberts? No. I don’t know him from Adam. I just found the piece he had written annoying and insulting to my intelligence, and given its topic and headline, I thought I’d have a bit of fun with it.

I was reminded of this incident when reading two posts over the last week.

The first was written by Rob Marchant and appeared on Labour Uncut.

Rob’s article is basically bloody daft. It starts by fighting one of the most obvious strawmen ever constructed, and ends by demeaning even this diminished point with a manic exception to his self-enforced rule.

The worst part is, I agree with Rob’s basic point – that  people should be able and allowed to write what they want to on the internet.

Rob says “whilst one might not agree with much that blogger A or blogger B writes, their right to say it must be defended, because their ideas must sink or swim on their own, without interference from over-enthusiastic censors telling us all what to think.”

My question to Rob is: What’s stopping you?

Because this is where the straw man comes in. People already do say what they want to, up to and including some very odd writing about David Miliband and a stegosaurus (and no, I’m not linking and I advise you not to Google it either!). The point of the Internet is that everyone gets their say, including those who value collectivism and think Rob is being unhelpful.

The idea that the critics of Labour’s leadership, the soft left, Ed Miliband and Labour in general are being censored is – frankly – bizarre. On any given day, whatever position Labour are at in the polls, I can, if I choose to, read dozens of posts across the Internet and mainstream media criticising us from every possible perspective. These aren’t being censored.

So what does Rob mean?

Well the clue is in the opening line of his piece “During 2011 a number of people, often well-meaning, sometimes not so, have questioned the choice of some bloggers at Labour Uncut and elsewhere to analyse dispassionately, and sometimes brutally, not just the Tories and the Lib Dems, but the Labour party under Ed Miliband.”

Here’s the rub Rob: that questioning can’t and should be censored either. It is as valid an opinion as yours and deserves a hearing too. That’s how the freedom of the internet works. By complaining that people are complaining about what you have a right to voice, you yourself are seeking to censor people. Can you see why I think you’re being ridiculous? Or is any dissenting voice “group think” too?

I applaud Rob for his recognition that the control of medium, message and messenger that worked and then failed for Labour in the 90s and into the 10s is no longer a valid approach to communications. But he’s still far too focused on a power difference that is increasingly inconsequential between writer and commentator.

Rob as the piece’s writer does not have the right to control all responses to it. That’s up to the commentators and the editors of any site hosting the piece. If Rob wants to control the response to his writing, he should restrict it to his own excellent blog, where he has every right to censor what he chooses to.  It would be a shame, because despite rarely agreeing with him, I believe Rob has a valid voice and a right to be heard by a wider audience, but if his delicate sensibilities continue to be so disturbed by those who disagree with him, perhaps it would be for the best.

But Rob’s article comes a dim and distant second to a post today that – in it’s original title – compared fellow Labour Party members to cancer.** And this from the same person who spent most of last week going ballistic about the comms consequences of a typo. Real expertise on display there.

Like Rob, Luke has every right to his opinion and to publish it where he can. Mark Ferguson, editor of Labour List had a right to change the title as it reflected poorly on the otherwise excellent site, but I hope that Luke will reproduce the article on his own blog with its original title for all to see. I certainly wouldn’t want to censor that. I think it deserves to be judged on it’s original “merit”.

The article itself is Luke’s usual over-the-top messianic nonsense. A micro-grain of a point (Labour shouldn’t boo any former leader) is so lost in the gushing of a teenage fanboy for his idol and the poison towards non-Blairlevers. (Blair is reported to have once said that the Labour Party will have finally grown up when it learned to love Peter Mandelson. Personally, I think the Labour Party will have finally grown up when we accept that Blair is neither the Messiah nor the Devil but an equally brilliant and flawed individual whose time in politics has passed.)

But my question is what is the point of this article? I don’t question its right to exist or to be published, but I don’t know what Luke’s aim was when he put fingers to keyboard. On his website, Luke says his job is to “help political and governmental organisations and politicians achieve their goals through online communications.”  Christ. I hope for his sake he’s usually a bit more persuasive than this.

 Today’s piece is readable only if you already agreed with it or are so put off by Blairites that you need a new hate figure to get your juices flowing. It’s almost unreadable for anyone who doesn’t completely agree or violently disagree. It won’t persuade a single person of Luke’s argument that more Blairites should be encouraged through Party positions. It will further enrage those already motivated against that happening. It’s a classic example of counter-productive communications. It will win Luke some plaudits among those who already agree with and admire him. Maybe that’s all he wants. Maybe he doesn’t really want to convince me of ways in which the Party could become more open to business and ways we could engage the business community. Which is a shame, as that’s something I am interested in. But I have no interest in working with anyone who treats fellow Party members in this way- and that includes those who boo Blair as much as Luke. Because they’re destructive. All of them.

Political communication is about expressing ideas in ways that are open, honest and approachable. Political criticism is vital to a healthy democracy, but will only work if your criticising something that actually exists (i.e. not censorship of criticism of Ed Miliband) or do so in a way people will actually hear (i.e. not accusing them of being a malignant force).

**  Edit: One week after writing this blog, Luke defected to the Tories. Good. Bye.

Tags: Rob Marchant

A number of my posts over the last year have been about relating my personal experience to wider political issues. I believe the early feminists were right. The personal is political. Our experiences of power and powerlessness, separateness and community and equality and division shape the way that we think about the world around us. As a result, I have re-branded these posts and will continue this occasional theme of testimony and politics.

I’ve written quite a bit about welfare reform recently. It hasn’t been without controversy or challenge. I stand by my view that those who can work should work.* I believe this is what is meant by “from each according to their ability to each according to their need”. I know that this requires not just a functioning safety net, but also an active and aggressive full employment strategy, and that these must always go hand-in-hand, but since when was it wrong to be ambitious about what we can and should do with our politics?

One of the things my critics get most wrong when opposing my ideas on welfare reform is that I have no concept of what it is like to struggle on either income support or low wages. The fact is, this simply isn’t true.

In my late teens, my life fell apart. A series of rows with my parents, a terrible boyfriend and a dreadful first flatmate had led to a situation where I was unemployed and living alone in a basement flat in Lewisham.

The flat was cold. There was only one working fire which was in the living room and there was no natural light to be had through the windows. I remember days when I felt I could afford the electricity, I would put my duvet over the portable heated towel rail for ten minutes before crawling into bed, just to stop it feeling like ice. I lived there for 9 months, and could see my breath in the air for most of them.

I lived on Income Support which for me in 1995 was £36.80 a week. I had a key meter for my electricity and gas, which charged exorbitant rates. I was drinking too much, having discovered my local off licence did bottles of wine for a pound. I was eating terrible cheap food and smoking when I could afford to. I became nocturnal.

These were not good lifestyle choices. You don’t make good lifestyle choices when you’re where I was emotionally.

I was an unhappy, unhealthy, lost little girl, struggling and largely failing to keep my head above water. Looking back now it was quite clear that I was heading towards a breakdown. Thankfully, in the end I had just about enough of ME left to apply to university and turn my life around. I don’t think it is any exaggeration to say that doing so saved my life.

Having been accepted to university, I then got a job in a call centre. It paid £5 an hour, which after Income Support was a bonanza. As they ran shifts, they agreed to let me come back in my University breaks. The work was dull and repetitive. And fulfilling. The two months I worked there before going to university helped me to reintroduce some discipline into my life. They gave me some more of ME back.

My second and I sincerely hope last bout of unemployment came in 2002. I was made redundant from a telesales job in the January and decided to pursue a change of career. I applied to many, many jobs, never quite making it past interview. I was far better supported in doing so by the job centre this time around. I also had a much better support system in place, as while I was still living alone, this time it was in a flat above my sister, so she and her boyfriend were around to offer support. Eventually, I did a part time, unpaid internship, living on bowls of flavoured rice (stock cubes are a marvellous resource when you’re unemployed). This eventually paid dividends and I got a job at the Fabian Society. I remain eternally grateful to them for taking a chance on me. It’s what has led me to the pace where I have a good and improving living, a nice place to live and a great life.

But those who think I don’t know what it is to struggle are wrong. It is precisely because I have known the grinding dull ache of UK poverty (which is obviously at a different level from the rates of poverty seen in the developing world because we do have that essential safety net) that I feel as strongly as I do.

Living like that isn’t good for people. The things that are missed though the many benefits that work brings is about more than simply money. Saving money on welfare reform may be a motivator for Liam Byrne, but for me it isn’t the financial cost of the welfare bill that is a scandal, but the opportunity cost to people’s life of living on welfare. That’s what I want Labour to fight to change. That’s why I want Labour to dedicate itself to getting people off benefits. And let me be unequivocal: I would want us to do so, even if running a system that made this happen were to incur a larger upfront cost (which is perfectly possible, as a\ well run, well organised system does cost money initially – though I strongly believe we would save billions in the long run through recouped tax revenues and savings in health, crime and social care bills.

The value of work is a precious thing to me. Even work that is dull and repetitive has brought me pride, discipline, socialisation and the ability to be a part of a greater whole. It also gave the the chance to make my societal contribution, as according to my ability. That’s the ambition I have for everyone in the UK. And you’ll never take it away from me.

* And I mean those who really can work. I unequivocally support the right of those who qualify (and by qualify I don’t mean fail to be weeded out by ATOS’s cruel and capricious tests) for  ESA and DLA to support that provides a full and decent standard of living.  This post is NOT about disability benefits.

Gosh Ed’s getting a lot of advice at the moment. Well, I say a lot, most of it seems to boil down to the same two key elements: Ed needs to define himself better and Ed needs to be bold. Sometime Ed is told to boldly define himself, sometimes to define himself boldly. But those are definitely the key themes, boldness and definition.

I agree that Ed has not yet properly defined his leadership with the public. The Westminster Press themselves are stumbling from Red Ed to Odd Ed via Dead Ed and Fratricidal Ed along the way. Ed needs a bold moment of definition, he needs a game changer.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think most of the voices calling for Ed to be “bold” actually mean bold. I think they mean macho. They want Ed to adopt some of Blair’s swagger, or Brown’s clunking fist. Even Ed’s admirers talk of his “core of steel” – a pointless hangover from too many comic book, 2D interpretations of what a hero is and can be.

But Ed is not macho. Nor does one have to be macho to lead. In fact the worst thing Ed could do now would be to attempt to adopt a macho pose he could in no way sustain, simply to appease those voices who would then turn around and decry him for being no good at it. It wouldn’t be bold. It would be a facsimile of what a political class has become used to being told is bold. It wouldn’t work.

For Ed to change the game, he needs to change the rules. I agreed with those who said that the post-hacking cries of “let Miliband be Miliband” were largely hubristic and overly indebted to what was, at the end of the day, a work of fiction that took a great deal of faith-leaping for granted. But actually, to be bold now, Ed must play to his strengths, and these include his thoughtfulness and reasonableness.

So how does one change the game by being thoughtful and reasonable? I would suggest, by doing so in an unexpected high-profile and unexpected arena. Where better than PMQs?

Ed Is regularly lambasted after PMQs for not being macho enough, and for letting Cameron win the battle of the jibes. Ed will never regularly win over the Bullingdon Bully if he continues to play by his rules. But PMQs is one area where the opposition can set the tone. The PM may have the last word, but he must respond to (but not –  as we’ve see –  necessarily answer) the questions put to him by Ed.

So Ed. I offer you this question for the opening of PMQs next Wednesday:

Would the Prime Minister agree with me that these are serious times, deserving of a serious debate? That, in his words, this isn’t the time for Punch and Judy politics? Will the Prime Minister join me in putting an end to the bluster, bad jokes and boorishness – from both sides – and agree to join me in an adult, dignified and informative debate on the issues the public care about?

At the same time, his team should release a statement saying:

In this time of unprecedented uncertainty in so many areas of our public life, the public deserve an opposition more interested in holding the Government to account than scoring points. I know I haven’t always done that.

David Cameron has some good jokes  – some of them not even about my Brother! – and I’m happy to accept that this is an area he excels in. But this isn’t Britain’s Got Talent, it’s the one opportunity a week for the Prime Minister to be asked and to answer questions about the big issues his Government is dealing with.

I like a laugh as much as the next person. I love it when my backbenchers laugh at my jokes. I am human after all. But right now I think it’s more important that we get the answers the public deserve to the questions they want answered.

So here is my promise to the Prime Minister. I promise to treat the office of Prime Minister with the respect it deserve, and to work with the Prime Minister – if he’ll agree – to restore the dignity to these proceedings that he and the office he holds warrant. No more one-liners, no more point-scoring, just real questions that deserve real answers.

And to you the public I promise this: I will raise your concerns with the Prime Minister. Every week, anyone who wants to can email PMQs@labour.org.uk with questions they feel the PM should answer. I can’t promise I’ll ask everything you send me, but I can promise I won’t let a week go by without raising your concerns alongside my own.

These are serious times, deserving of a serious debate. I hope we can work together to change the way we talk to each other in politics and public life, for the benefit of all those we serve who have been asking us to do so for so long.

So far, so bold. And here’s the thing – were Ed to take up this idea, I absolutely expect him to be crucified for it. At first. And that’s where the nerves of steel are going to have to kick in. I firmly believe this could be the game-changer Ed needs, but like many of his successes in challenging the orthodoxy it won’t be accepted overnight.

I’ve said before, that what Ed can most learn from Tony Blair is not his style, but his confidence in his own style. If Ed sticks to his guns, refuses to return to the jibes and point scoring, but merely illuminating the impact of the Government’s programme, does the kind of politics that suit him (and incidentally, do not suit the less serious David Cameron)  this could be a Clause IV moment of his own, in his own style.

This post first appeared on Labour List

Tags: Ed Miliband, macho, PMQs

This time last year, I wrote a post with 11 predictions for 2011. One of the joys of blogging for me is the chance to reflect and grow. To see where I’ve called it right and where I haven’t and to learn from both of these. For example, I believed there would be a Cabinet reshuffle in the early summer. Olly Grender called me on it, and she was right to do so.

So here is an examination of the predictions I made. For those of you who believe that politics has right and wrong answers, I’ll give them a right or wrong score. For those – like me – who believe that the really interesting parts of life live in the grey areas, I’ve given myself a mark out of 10 for each and an explanation of that mark. Please, please feel free to tell me how you think I’ve done – and be as harsh as you think is fair!

1. Ed will still be leader of the Labour Party. Of course he will, we don’t have the money, the stomach or the suicidal insanity to re-fight that fight. That won’t stop the bitching or the briefing but as what most people know becomes ever clear to those who can’t quite see it yet, these will subside.

Right.

Score: 8/10. I was of course right that Ed would still be leader. Even at the worst that Ed has faced, his most vocal opponents have realised the brink they were standing on and blinked first. I was also right that the bitching and briefing wouldn’t stop. Points lost for believing it would subside. Certainly the nervy Labour right don’t believe in downplaying Tory “achievements” like the Euro “veto” and it’s consequent bounce.

2. Labour will remain – in aggregate – ahead in the polls. There will be times when we are quite far ahead, and times when the Tories spike. We should treat these imposters both the same. We are a nose ahead and should fight accordingly.

Right.

Score: 9/10. Pretty much spot on. I’ve lost a point to reflect the end of year dip, and the fact that we don’t yet know if the current contraction is a Tory spike (as it looks like) or a longer term narrowing. Either way, we remain ahead on aggregate but by a tiny margin.

3. Labour will win Oldham East & Saddleworth, but it will be close. In the end, not enough Tories will switch to compensate for the loss of Lib Dem voters to push the Lib Dems over the line. The Libs could possibly have won this with a different candidate, but that we will never know.

Right.

Score: 8/10. Again, pretty spot on both on the ultimate result and the reasons behind it. The only problem was that in the end it wasn’t actually close.

4. Labour and the Greens will be the big winners in the local elections, both increasing their numbers significantly at the expense of the Lib Dems.

Wrong.

Score: 5/10. I think if I’ve only scored myself at half, I should say I’ve called it wrong. However, I wasn’t wrong about Labour who did very well gaining 857 councillors. However, the Greens failed to capitalise at all, and the Tories also gained at the expense of their doomed coalition partners.

5. The AV referendum will be closer than I once thought it would be, but it will be lost. I just don’t think enough of the public care enough. I know I don’t – I’m a hack and I don’t even know which way I’ll vote.

Right.

Score: 7/10. In the end, it wasn’t even remotely close.

6. The coalition will hold, but will falter briefly as after the AV & local election losses, Lib Dems see their polling number increase to about 12-15%. There will be some agitation from the left of the Lib Dems that that’s as good as it’s going to get and they should take that opportunity to leave. The leadership will tough it out. They will succeed in doing so as unless there is a new war, the totemic issues for the left have already been capitulated on.

Right.

Score: 3/10. Wow. Ultimately I was right about the coalition holding so that’s the three points, but other than that how wrong could you be. The Lib Dems started to mutter about a new way of dealing with the coalition, which seemed to involve slightly less bending over. Hmmm… can’t see I’ve noticed them getting the Tories to do their own Newsnight appearances, the most visible display of their subservience. They also whipped the European referendum vote which was a further slap in the face for their activists. Oh and a war seemed to have no impact whatsoever.

7. This will strengthen the Tory right and Cameron will have to give them something. It probably won’t be hunting as the polling and imagery is too bad, it probably can’t be Europe, so I suspect there will be something on either tax cuts or immigration or both.

Right.

Score: 6/10. Right, except that it was Europe. Though there have been noises on all the other issues, they’ve mostly been just noises (Theresa’s cat for example) rather than actually policy.

8. Gove will be reshuffled into a role he can’t screw up so publically.

Wrong.

Score 0/10. As above. No reshuffle. Despite being nicknamed the Cabinet of the Dead Cameron is resolute in not reshuffling. Whether this is wise or not remains to be seen, but certainly it meant I was 100% wrong in this prediction.

9. There will be at least two more cabinet resignations, and at least one will be a big beast. Neither will be Vince Cable who missed his chance to make a difference, and is nicely neutered as far as Clegg and the Tories are concerned.

Wrong.

Score 6/10. Just as I scored very low on a questions I marked as right, here I’m scoring pretty high despite getting it wrong. This is partly because we did get one pretty high profile resignation in Liam Fox, partly because I’ve been proved right about Cable over and over and over again and partly because there’s still two days left for Chris Huhne to do the right thing before he’s forced to by the CPS.

10. The 10% cut to Housing Benefit will be dropped from the Welfare Bill. The Lib Dems will claim this as a victory despite a lot of the other pernicious stuff that will remain.

Right.

Score: 10/10. Not much to add other than Thank God, but the fight goes on.

11. There will be at least one quarter of negative GDP and unemployment will rise.

Right.

Score: 7/10. This is the most difficult to score. A negative quarter was announced this year, but it was for the last quarter of 2011. We’ve absolutely flat-lined, and predictions are that this quarter will be negative again. But the figures aren’t out yet so I’m having to rely on predictions. I will come back and rescore if I am wrong. I am – sadly – completely right about unemployment.

Final tallies:

8 right, 3 wrong or 73%

69/110 or 63%

(See the difference a bit of subtlty can make – humph!)

Let me know what you think. Have I been too generous? Too harsh? What are your predictions for next year?

Goodwill to all mankind. ‘Tis the season right? Oh well.

Seems I set my self a precendent last year by responding at almost exactly this time to Dan Hodges nihlism. I’ve not bothered with Dan for a while, mainly becuase what was once fun jousting became as tediously repetitive as his columns. I used to enjoy reading Dan in the Statesman. I rarely agreed with him, but his words in that context felt like a challenge I wanted to rise to. And rise I did.

Now Dan is a columnist in the Telegraph. That’s nice for him. I hope they pay him well. He remains a very talented writer. But as we go into the Christmas period I’d like to offer Dan a gift of some advice. He will certainly choose to ignore it, but it is good advice, even if it won’t feel that way.

My advice is this: Stop trying to be a like John Rentoul. It’s doing you wonders in the short term, but it will kill your longer term prospects.

There are a number of similarities. Rentoul built his career by being associated very clearly with a Labour leader. But where Rentoul had a cogent narrative to support and contribute to in Blair and Blairism, Dan’s obsession is a negative one, with a leader he loathes partly on ideological grounds, but mostly because he just really doesn’t like him. Dan has nothing to offer as a positive. He’s not offering Labour an alternative path, championing a different leader or a different vision. He’s trying to tear down, not build up. No wasn’t just a campaign for Dan, it’s become a crippling addiction, a way of life.

It’s perfectly OK not to like Ed Miliband. It’s Dan’s perfect right to do so and to write about it until his fingers bleed. I’m sure the Telegraph will be more than happy to allow him to do as long as it remains useful.

But therein lies the problem. Because this can only end one of two ways, and at present, neither looks very good for Dan. Miliband will either continue to weather the storm and come through successfully or he will be defeated either by the Party or by the electorate. (Personally, my money is still happily on the former). When either of those happen, Dan loses. If Miliband wins, Dan will once again be the man who called it wrong. If Miliband loses, Dan loses his foil. Like Mike Yarwood after the downfalls of Heath & Wilson, he becomes even more irrelevant (I say even more, because his repetitiveness is already threatening his relevance).

Dan is in danger of allowing his talent to become the political equivalent of a diamond sledgehammer – hard, beautiful, capable only of destruction and ultimately pointless. Unless he diversifies, unless he channels at least some – and no one would ask for all, he should still write about Ed – of his energies into a wider variety of topics, and in particular finding someone or something to get behind, then Dan’s doomed to increasing irrelevance. Which would be a huge waste of a once great talent.

*Edited becuase for some reason my theatre addled brain had John Rentoul at the Telegraph not the Independent! Apologies.

Everybody in the country should read this piece by Sue Marsh and get angry. What’s happening to Sue and many, many other DLA claimants is a depressing and disgraceful example of how this government are attempting to reduce the deficit by breaking the backs of the very poorest in our society.

But that’s not the whole story. It would be remiss of me not to mention that ATOS, welfare reform and Lord Freud were all originally brought in by James Purnell and Liam Byrne as Labour ministers. We didn’t go as far and our ideology is different (of which more later) but our hands are not clean on welfare reform.

That’s the admission that cleanses my lefty soul; that goes some way to placating the increasingly loud and well organised disabled lobby. It’s the answer that speaks to the part of our Socialism that is about protecting the weakest and most vulnerable in our society.

But that’s not the whole story either. The whole story is about how we got to that point while in government and where we go now in opposition. The whole story is how we support a system that works. The whole story is how we provide a social contract that those who fund it and those who benefit from it will can both agree with.

These are not questions that simply exist on the issue of disability benefits. On employment and unemployment related welfare, on housing and housing related welfare and on societal attitudes to child poverty and parental welfare Labour faced questions from all sides while in Government and face a louder clamour still in opposition.

The Tories have a strong and firm stall on all issues of welfare. It may (indeed does) have evil consequences, but it would be a mistake to believe it comes from a place of evil. It comes from a flawed, misguided, mistaken belief that looking after people infantilises them and that tough love is the best – indeed only real – love there is. Call it wrong because it is. Decry the effects loudly, because they are terrible. But if we simply revert to name calling without understanding, we won’t be able to change minds. When the majority of the public agree with their attitude, rhetoric and most of the measures, we simply cannot expect a democratic party of opposition to ignore that simply to pick a fight they’ll lose anyway.

There was a fair amount of angst among Labour supporters about the recent speech by Liam Byrne about making unemployment benefit recipients work harder for the money they receive. Measure might include weekly rather than fortnightly attendance at the Job Centre and compulsory work training for the long-term unemployed. It was all too easy for the left – Labour and otherwise – to believe that these announcements were tantamount to the demonisation of the unemployed. Despite Liam Byrne making other speeches calling levels of unemployment a disgrace.

We cannot forget that currently there is a prevalent belief in disability fraud – despite fraud being relatively low incidence and extremely low cost. But those who are struggling the most live closest to those who are defrauding the system, because the poorly paid live in close quarters with those on benefits, including the small percentage who may not deserve them. Those who are working hard, unsatisfying low paid jobs deserve as much as anyone to feel their taxes are being well spent, and it is them as much as anyone who a new social contract will have to be made.

This being the case, I would urge disability campaigners like Sue to engage even more fully on the issue of fraud (I know this is done to an extent). Not because it is as real or prevalent as the Daily Mail believes, but precisely because it is not. If we can lay the myths firmly to rest, we can stop basing our policies on the demands they create from ordinary people. But until we engage with that narrative head on and change it, we will never lose the term scrounger (one of the reasons I love Sue’s blog is her taking that word and challenging it in it’s very title. More of that!).

In my previous writing on welfare I was fumbling towards a time when Labour and the left could agree that the simple statement “as a society we should encourage as few people as possible to be on benefits” was not an attack on those who do need and deserve societal support, but an acknowledgement that most who do would prefer – if possible – to live by other means. Getting people off benefits should be equal in our minds to reducing unemployment, to raising standards of living. Not – as it is in Iain Duncan Smith’s philosophy as a way of testing the mettle of the unemployed in the hope they will rise to the challenge. Too often, both sides of this debate on the Left have allowed what should and could mean the former to mean the latter.

That’s the fault of our politicians for failing in and out of government to challenge perceptions rather than pander to them. But equally, it’s the fault of the left for falling into the trap of playing an eternal and losing defensive game. What we currently have in terms of welfare isn’t working. It’s barely enough to keep those who rely on it off the breadline and yet still seen as wasted by those who don’t. The left, campaigners like Sue and Labour should come together in all our long term interests – and those of the UK – to make welfare reform a thing that excites rather than frightens us. We should be talking to experts, health practitioners and patient groups to make assessment work; we should work with charities, employers and claimants to make long term unemployment a thing of the past; we should work with strong hearts and loud public voices to proclaim the birth of a new welfare contract in the long term interests of everyone. We should never again let our fear stymie our ambitions. Because every time we do, every time we fight on the defensive not the offensive, we lose a little more ground. And soon we will have none left.

Marcus Roberts wrote a convincing ten point planon what Ken needs to do to win. I agree with nine and half of his points. Not bad going. However, I also slightly disagree with the premise as a whole. Because I think it buys into the half a point I disagree with – that this is a contest of Ken Vs Boris.

If we allow this to become a Ken Vs Boris contest, we’ll lose. Ken may have been the big personality of London once, but he isn’t anymore. In 2000 even I voted for him against Labour. In June a poll had him trailing the Party by 20 points. Things have changed, Ken’s campaigning style needs to change too.

You would not know this to look at his website or his otherwise excellent Fare Deal video. In fact you’d barely know that Ken is running for Labour. This is a huge strategic mistake. It’s a mistake because Labour poll ahead of Ken, but more than this, it cedes the ground of the debate. It gives up a Tory Vs Labour fight we have a chance of winning to a personality politics bun fight. That puts the game firmly on Boris’s turf, allows him to flirt with his Tory rebel image (without actually ever actually living up to it) and these days, Ken is no match for this

I like Ken. I’ve grown up with him as a permanent fixture of my political life. The GLC were an intrinsic part of my childhood, and that of every child who ever sailed up the Regents Canal on the Jenny Wren or tried in vain to use one of their square rubbers as a bouncy ball. But Boris is the bigger personality. Just as Ken was a household name in the 80s, now Boris is known and – we must accept liked – by millions.

This isn’t to say we shouldn’t highlight Boris’s incompetence, dilettantism and complete inability to empathise with the lives of ordinary Londoners. But we should equally be framing this better. It’s not just because Boris is rich that he considers his wages “chickenfeed” while raising the fares of ordinary Londoners. It because he fundamentally agrees with the path the Government is taking which is hurting ordinary Londoners.

Boris doesn’t want to fight this campaign as a Tory but as Boris. I accept that we can’t simply repeat the fact that he is a Tory, but actually being a Tory is one of Boris’s big weaknesses. Not to at least attempt to capitalise on that would be insane.

Ken and London Labour should adopt most of the advice Marcus has given them. But I’m concerned about  “meeting voters where they are on Boris”. Because where they are at the moment is that they like him and they’re inclined to vote for him. Labour have to come out swinging as a team. We have that strength in London that the Tories don’t. It’s going to be difficult because this contest has never really been fought on a Party political basis. But we need to shift the frame of the debate if we are going to win back my beautiful city. London deserves better than Boris and a lot better than the Tories. We have to make it clearer to the electorate, that by electing BoJo, you get Osborne, Cameron, and Brian Coleman. But by electing Ken, you get a Labour candidate ready to take the fight for London to the Government.

This post first appeared on Labour List.

Tags: Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, London

Let’s start with some honesty: I have been a professional lobbyist. I wasn’t very good at it (of which more later), and getting made redundant was a sweet relief as I hated every solitary second of it, but I did it for 18 months. I stress that the firm I worked for we’re not only enthusiastic signatories to the APPC code, but were evangelists for it. They represented some clients I wasn’t that keen on but never, ever did anything that I could describe as shady. As someone who has dealt with public affairs companies when seeking sponsorship for a variety of events and projects, it is my opinion that this is true for the vast majority of the lobbying industry. I know some excellent people who work in the industry none of whom are – to my knowledge – evil. They are, like most people, trading the skills, knowledge and experience they have developed for a salary. As simple as that.

Still I wake up every morning thankful I’m no longer a lobbyist. Even on the worst day at my current job (and every job has its bad days).

Of course my former colleagues would argue that I am still a lobbyist. As a campaigner, it’s true that the majority of my work is spent trying to convince politicians of the rightness of my cause and act accordingly. As do the public affairs teams at all major charities and pressure groups, companies and trade organisations, think tanks and unions.

But for me personally, and forgive me for being crude, the difference between lobbyist and campaigner is like the difference between being a lover and being a prostitute. You’re doing exactly the same things, but with quite different motivations. In short, you mean it Maaan. I’ve discovered that for me to be able to fulfil my potential, I have to mean it.

In most public affairs companies, there are two types of people: the swans and the hamsters.

The swans are the directors and their entire role is about liaison. Never purposefully lunching alone, they keep up their links with the politicians they’ve known for years, with the clients they’re keeping onside, with the former clients they’re hoping to win back and the potential clients they’re hoping to win. They are known throughout the industry and they charge accordingly.

The hamsters are the account managers. They read and digest for the clients endless committee, think tank and pressure group reports. They listen to select committee hearings and attend APPG meetings diligently taking notes to be bundled up for weekly digests for the clients. They arrange meetings, create briefings and organise diaries. The reason I was not a great hamster, was that I found it a Herculean effort to read dry, dusty reports on matters I didn’t care about. I lost my ability to pay attention to detail on issues that didn’t matter (and my big picture strengths were rarely brought into play as a hamster). Other hamsters do this extraordinarily well though, and my two closest colleagues from my time as a lobbyist were two of the most professional and dedicated people it has been my pleasure to work with.

Lobbying isn’t clear cut. The image that exists ( and which lobbyist like Bell Pottinger’s Peter Bingle do everything to maintain) isn’t the whole picture. But it is an industry in need of sunshine. The APPC works pretty well for those who sign up to it. But until there’s a mandatory code covering everyone in the industry, and that should probably include Greenpeace and the Tax Payers Alliance, the worst sort of swan will continue to tarnish the best sort of hamster. In the end, despite the kicking and screaming of the old guard, regulation may well be good for the industry as a whole.