Peter Kenyon

Labour Dialogue - a two way process

Reports from the Scottish Labour Party conference suggest a growing recognition on the part of the new Labour Leadership that we need to work together better. I wondered if I was missing something. So I have been back on the Labour Party Membersnet to check Partnership in Power. I found this newsletter, and a questionnaire.

I wonder how many branch secretaries could put their hands up and honestly say they were aware of this new publication? Ditto CLP secretaries? Ditto NPF members? Ditto NEC members? Ditto Cabinet members?

Then there is the questionnaire....With elections on in many parts of the country....dialogue is unlikely to resume until after 1 May. The challenge will be to get the logistics in place to give members a real say, not a token - Albanian style - ballot on a Manifesto when it is too late to change anything.

Massive pensioner tax free allowance hike under Labour

If half the electorate at the next General Election is going to be over 56 years of age, and older people tend to be more consciencious about the electorate, why isn't more being made of this.

Over the Easter holiday, my Mother has been staying with us. As is her way she likes advice about her financial affairs. She showed me her tax coding letters from HMRC for 2007/08, and 2008/09 which arrived before she travelled down.

It's astonishing. Her Personal tax-free income Allowance is up nearly 20% compared with the previous year at £9160 as it will be for everyone 75 years of age and older. Compared with the basic Personal Allowance of £5435, it is a staggering 69% higher and now I come to think about previous Budget statements planned to be even higher. For pensioners aged 65 to 74 the Personal Allowance is now £9030, or an equally staggering 66% higher than the basic rate.

We should be shouting this from the rafters, together with all the other measures to help those in need. Instead the Labour Party website is swamped with warm words about Neighbourhood Policing.   

Can Ed Miliband defy Labour policy blackhole?

Last week's Labour Party National Executive Committee considered the next stage of policy-making. Since the launch of Partnership in Power in 1997, the internal processes have developed what astrophysicists refer to as "black hole" characteristics. A spirited attempt is being made by Election Manifesto supremo Ed Miliband MP to defy gravity and show that policy ideas don't get sucked into the vortex that is the Labour Party controlled by No. 10 Downing Street never to be seen or heard of again. Over the next six weeks, when not campaigning for Ken, I and others will be testing the strengths and weaknesses of the forces that have shredded members' confidence in Labour Party policy making, reduced membership by more than 50%, halved Labour representation in local government and left the Party languishing in the opinion polls (not to mention its finances).

Fiona Gordon - one to watch as Labour languishes

Among the people sitting in at Labour Party National Executive Committee meetings are usually the Prime Minister's Political Secretary Fiona Gordon and her deputy, Jonathan Ashworth. There is one today. I read in Tribune and have been 'tipped off' by well-placed sources that Fiona is the real General Secretary of the Labour Party. I have never met Fiona and can't find a photograph of her.

Given the depressing drift back to Blairite policies lamented at the Progress/Compass event last night chronicled here, I am wondering what her role is as the Party languishes in the polls ahead of an absolutely critical Mayoral election in London in May. Can anyone cast any light?

Labour cabinet reported navel gazing

Read a little bit about it in today's Guardian. They call it brainstorming. I  called it navel gazing. It's the zest that counts. I'm off to find out if we mere mortal members featured in answer to the question: "How does Labour pay for the next election?"

Living wage/fair pay - the next goal for Labour

How many Labour-controlled local authorities have adopted a living wage policy? Certainly none in London, except the Greater London Authority itself. I was discussing this with a local government  policy advisor at a Party fund-raiser last night. He gave me a technical explanation about the difficulties of enforcing a living wage in contracted-out services. Yea, yea, I thought. But what about the politics? We agreed that as the Labour Party we need to be pushing this as a campaigning issue of direct relevance to the majority of people we seek to represent. A twin-track campaign with the Fair Pay Network highlighting greed and inequality would do wonders for Labour Party morale. It might even improve Labour's electoral standing and help reverse our dismal showing in the opinion polls underlined again by the latest ICM/Guardian poll in today's Guardian.

Having proved beyond doubt the economic viability of a national minimum wage, now is the time to assert the right of all to a living wage, and challenge the obsenity of  financial sector bosses pay as we, the taxpayers, have to bail out the......financial sector for their incompetence and failures.

No doubt, this will be another political opportunity missed at this week's Labour Party National Executive Committee meeting. (It doesn't do policy!) Time to get a grip.

Peter Kenyon is a CLGA candidate for the National Executive Committee constituency section. The ballot takes place in June 2008.

Labour navel gazing - not the time? Oh, yes it is!

On the eve of the launch of the London Mayoral campaign this might not be seen by the powers that be as the most appropriate time for a spot of navel gazing. Having blogged vigorously for a general secretary majoring in financial planning skills and an eye on rebuilding membership, there is no better moment than now to highlight the harsh realities. After all if it took ten years from 1987 to 1997 to put on between 125,000 and 150,000 members; how long is it going to take just to put on the 200,000 plus we have lost since regaining power?

Furthermore, in defence of forward planning, I cite the following all reported in the last 2 days:

• a YouGov poll highlighting a post-Budget slip in support
• another YouGov poll suggesting Boris has a 12-point lead in London
• a slump in membership in Scotland
• local party issues in:
  • Coventry North East
  • Easington

A ten-year rebuilding programme is needed starting at branch level - with a quality assured service to encourage membership, fundraising and active local engagement. The issue that has flared in Easington - whole CLP suspended for failing to deliver centrally imposed quotas for women candidates for forthcoming council elections - is probably symptomatic of a lack of support from the centre and the North regional office to encourage women to join the party. Candidates are being selected all over the country from diminishing ranks of members. Is this really the time to be berating each other for failure to achieve local gender quotas for elected office, when we know we will probably have less women MPs in Westminster after the next General Election than in 1997? Coventry North East is a case of sitting councillor reportedly being deselected by the LGC for defying the whip, against the wishes of the local branch party. I am researching the story, but I have seen these LGC strong arm tactics elsewhere resulting in active branch members sitting on their hands, tearing up their party cards or joining an opposition party. (When Hilary Armstrong MP as chief whip circulated the rebellious voting record of Diane Abbott MP for Hackney North during her last 're-selection', we complained that Diane had not voted against the government often enough.)

This is no way to run a mainstream political party aspiring to mass membership. Inclusivity, encouragement, tolerance, open debate and decision-making are essential if real discipline is to be achieved, while at the same time recruiting and retaining more members.

This leads on the timeliness, detail and relevance of management information available to the Party's National Executive Committee. In particular, membership and financial information is essential if NEC members are to play an appropriate role guiding their Party officers, and staff. I was told at Spring Conference that membership has stabilised. I don't believe it. I fear it is back on a downward track as it has been for the last 11 years. That's me speaking as a CLP membership secretary. In my own branch I have received notice of two resignations, the first for a year - both over policy differences with the new leadership failing to return to Labour values.

No apologies for banging on about governance, or navel gazing. If the Leadership was better in tune with the members we wouldn't be facing that dismal dip in the polls, which however inaccurate does little to help lift morale. A membership/supporter focussed communique following the next NEC meeting might help.

Tidal lagoons - ebbing tide for a patentee

Inventors who secure patents only enjoy a limited period of time to exploit the monopoly granted by the state to secure a commercial gain.

In the 1990s, an American inventor, Peter W Ullman secured patent rights in most jurisdictions around the world for his ideas about exploiting the ebb and flow of the tide to generate electricity. He trades as Tidal Electric Inc.

He was introduced to me by some friends who had invested not insignificant amounts of money and time in helping him with his ideas. They were willing to settle for modest shareholdings in either his US parent company and/or one of his UK registered firms - Tidal Electric Ltd and Tidal Electric Swansea Bay Ltd. Hopes of progress following the publication of the Sustainable Development Commission Report (2007) have so far proved fruitless. The former Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain popped up last week in the New Statesman calling for a culture shift to invest in renewable energy. He was as supportive as ever of tidal lagoons, which he claimed could only generate half the electricity of the proposed Seven Barrage. I picked him up in a letter to the New Statesman this week written on behalf of the Tidal Electric Swansea Bay minority shareholders. The SDC recommended a pilot lagoon scheme should be built. A feasibility study has already been done for Swansea Bay.

What can not be in doubt is that the tide is rapidly ebbing for the patentee. With some 20 possible sites around the UK coast where this technology could be used, (not including two or three upstream of the proposed Severn Barrage) should the government intervene now or just wait for the patent(s) to expire?

Rainy day economics, Tory shower

Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne is spinning a line - Gordon Brown failed to put money away for a rainy day - what a waster. It was the theme in his TV political party broadcast on the Budget, and repeated again in answer to the first question on BBC TV Question Time. Of course, it's a very seductive dog-whistle line, until you remember what the state of our public services was, including the crumbling fabric of our health centres, hospitals, schools, and railways. Not to mention the previous Tory administration's deathblow to British manufacturing industry in the 1980s, or scandalous abandonment of millions of people flung onto the dole.  In ten years you can make a start tackling that, and at the same time the UK has avoided stop go or recession, and created a record number of jobs. Yes, growth will slow, but the economy will still expand over the Budget forecast period.So let's never forget the Tories are only interested in sidling up to the electorate to get enough votes to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Osborne concluded his party political broadcast claming: "The Tories are on your side new." What a shower!

Careless talk costs Labour votes and members

As our new General Secretary prepares to take up his post, one of the trickiest issues will be how to encourage elected representatives to weigh their words more carefully so as not to damage efforts to rebuild Labour's electoral standing and membership base.

After months of banter on Facebook, I got a message at 6.43 this morning from a local Labour Party branch member poised to renew membership having been lapsed, telling me:

Have just woken up to hear that my children will have to pledge allegiance to the crown. On top of having to carry an ID card. I can't rejoin.

She was not alone in being outraged as evidenced on Political Futures, or in the august columns of the Guardian.

Politically, Hutton's is the most extreme of a series of recent demarches by the retro Blairites - Flint, Purnell, Straw, McFadden - outdoing each other in promoting counterintuitive, counter-Labour policies by being toughest on the weakest. But in the how-Tory-can-you-be stakes, Hutton has hit the jackpot. As they seize the nasty party mantle, this is a challenge to Brown's authority. The decent faction in the cabinet - Cooper, Harman, Johnson, Alexander and the Milibands - may wonder: where is the clunking fist to restrain these increasingly out of order boot boys? This is a gathering heart-and-soul storm.

Gordon Brown should be under illusions if he wants to be re-elected and rebuild the Labour Party, he has got to deal with careless talk.