Peter Kenyon

European socialist awakening, and hey Italy - wow!

With the European Parliamentary Elections barely 18 months away it's not too early to be thinking about the PES manifesto. Indeed a website has been created here to enable us all to do just that.

While I have managed to lift my eyes from the British agenda, have you read Denis MacShane's piece on the Italian left in the latest issue of Tribune?  Three million, yes, three million Italians have just voted to elect the first leader of a new Party fusing all the non-Conservative parties in the country except the Trots.

Renewable vision - go with the flow Gordon

Newsnight went to town on renewables last night, while I was down the pub after Cities of London and Westminster CLP's General Committee.  Hat tip to zerochampion.  No one should doubt the difficulties of achieving the targets. But if Gordon wants to appear visionary as Labour Party leader, he is going to need to get up to speed on just how much electoral support there is for clean renewables, and put the resources of the state behind the technologies to achieve tough EU renewable targets. That will include exploring tidal lagoons as recommended by the Sustainable Development Commission.

Brown long on wind, short on tidal renewable pledge

Gordon Brown in reaffirming the Labour Party's commitment to EU renewable energy targets - a welcome development at PMQs today - needs to update his script. As Hansard will show tomorrow he repeatedly referred to on and offshore wind farms and mentioned the Severn Barrage once. But he missed an opportunity to let everyone know he is keeping up with the red boxes (don't mention the cost).

The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) published its report Turning the Tide on 1 October 2007. I know he might have something else on his mind at the time. But there has been plenty of time since to catch up and rejoice in the scope for adding to UK renewable energy capacity. This can be achieved as the SDC recommends by new investment in tidal technologies to exploit both tidal flow and tidal range resources around the UK coast.

Brown shrugs off woes, and principles?

Another day, another shrug.

Reuters tells us Brown shrugs off slump in polls. Gisela Stuart, Labour MP for Edgbaston writing in the Evening Standard accused the Prime Minister of betraying the trust of voters by refusing to hold a promised referendum on the EU treaty. The former health minister said:

"It's a matter of trust and integrity. A referendum was promised. It should be delivered," she wrote in today's London Evening Standard.

"If Labour can't trust the people, why should the people trust Labour?"

Let's not forget my earlier blog about the reported unscrupulous trade allegedly being offered the Tories re: election spending caps in return for a shameless raid on taxpayers' monies to pay for party politics as proposed by former top civil servant Hayden Phillips.

Or that small matter of who should decide when a General Election is called, which is why I have signed up for Fixed Term.

Extend membership to European Socialist Party

News late last night that our outgoing leader Tony Blair is being promoted by recently elected French President Nicholas Sarkozy as the first full-time European President poses some ticklish questions of democratic legitimacy.

To start the ball rolling, I'm re-reading a piece published a year ago in Chartist written by former Guardian European editor, John Palmer. Among his proposals to develop the European Demos was the idea of extending individual membership of national political parties to the European level.

If adopted by the Labour Party in the UK, this would mean that in addition to being a member of my local branch party, entitled to vote for delegates to my local Westminster Parliamentary Constituency Party and so on, I could also be an individual member of the European Socialist Party.

Now if that meant I could vote for who was going to represent the European Socialist Party in the forthcoming (not) European Presidential elections, that would be a major democratic break through.

I don't think that was what M. Sarkozy had in mind. But if Gordon Brown wants a big idea...........