Peter Kenyon

......Step forward capability Brown, make amends and change the landscape

I started writing this just before the Prime Minister Gordon Brown revealed himself in a manner that could bring his term in office as well as his leadership of the Labour Party to an abrupt end, therefore, however, laughably, I will finish albeit with an amended intro.

Labour has eight days to restore its electoral standing and win a 4th term. After Brown's 'sort of bigoted' gaff about Mrs Duffy in Rochdale, that task has just become a lot more difficult, unless he gets back out infront of the public again as soon as possible today...and STOPS talking about MY policy(ies)...they are Labour policies.

That said, the main theme of the debate remains the economy. If the wild and extravagent claims of the other two prime ministerial wannabees and their underlings are any guide - the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are rattled by the underlying fundamentals of the British economy. Increasingly strident, their claims that 'the economy is wrecked' and 'society is broken' can readily be shown for what they are - lies untruths.

Responding demands quiet, soft-spoken confidence. There is no doubting Gordon Brown's confidence. But quiet and soft-spoken? There have been occasions during PMQs in the closing months of the last Parliament, when he heeded the need to avoid being strident, and projected a calmer self. The final televised 'prime ministerial debate' will be such a moment. And it will be decisive.

We are all as a society relatively better off - thanks to a higher public deficit. Without bank recapitalisation, the economy would have been a wreck - not just in Britain, but worldwide. Labour market flexibility underpinned by a national minimum wage and targeted government support for businesses has helped keep more people in work, more businesses trading and more people in their own homes than was forecast 18 months ago. Overlay Conservative policies twenty and thirty years ago and the UK economy would be in a deep depression today. As for the Liberal Democrats, their economic spokesman, Vince Cable, today shredded his own reputation as a save pair of hands with a reckless statement comparing the UK to Greece.

None of the parties disagree about the need to cut Britain's fiscal deficit, the argument is about when and how much. Labour has stated unequivocally its commitment to halve the deficit in four years. The critique issued by the Institute of Fiscal Studies yesterday is about the detail, in particular, Labour's decision to defer a three-year public spending review by 12 months until the Autumn 2010. There is an entirely plausible narrative to justify that decision - to date overall borrowing is lower than forecast last year, ditto unemployment and hence benefit payments by the state, and housing repossessions are also lower - keeping people in their own homes. Growth appears to be returning and is forecast even by those cautious economists at the IMF and the OECD to be the strongest in the Eurozone area next year. That will mean higher tax revenues as well as lower welfare payments. In addition, banks bailed out by the British government are returning to profitability and the government's holdings of their shares are showing a near £10 billion repeat billion profit.

Jobs, maintaining frontline public services - health, education and policing, ending wage, pensioner and child poverty, increased investment in telecommunications, and green industries are all part of a future fair for all.

It is the rebuttal that is crucial to turning the economic debate so that when it comes to casting a vote, we all - well enough of us - refocus on what matters - policies, and our future as a society and not on the flawed personalities who currently lead our political parties. If we remember the General Election is not about electing a prime minister, but an MP representing a political party with a set of distinctive policies, then Labour should win on 6 May. .

Never let it be said, I am not loyal!

Labour's winning combination: policies, passion, processes and party democracy

Admittedly, current opinion polling data is not encouraging for the Labour Party. At least not for the faint hearted. But then think about who's paying for those polls and publishing - a largely hostile media. Meanwhile, in the real world, there are the markets, places of work, leisure and home. And for political party activists, a relentless work programme from an electoral ward in a local authority to capturing the attention of electorate nationally.

This is an election when contrary to the siren calls of those who claim that most votes don't count in a first-past-the post election, every single vote will count in 2010 - wherever it is cast.

Living in a Conservative held parliamentary seat (Cities of London and Westminster), and a place where local council elections took place last year (City of London), I've still been mobilising members in my own Labour Party branch. Some are keeping our Labour candidate for the General Election in the limelight by delivering leaflets, others like me are also canvassing in a neighbouring electoral ward Bunhill Ward in Islington South. Membership alone is not the driver. Nor dreams about possible outcomes. Organisation and policies are key within a framework of party democracy. Having rebuild a local branch, we have members who understand the importance of a political narrative, regular voter identification, messages for postal voters, canvassing of PVers, members to take polling numbers on election day, others to knock to Get Out The Vote. With polling stations open from 7 am to 10 pm breaking up the day into one-hour shifts - a small army is required in every branch, not just constituency to optimise the vote.

Bunhill Ward, like most electoral wards in London has three polling stations. That is 13 - one-hour shifts times three making 39 shifts just to collect numbers,. Then there are runners to pick up, committee room staff to enter and produce 'Knocking-up' sheets for those additional members with the most stamina to walk/jog/run  round reminding 'promises' to actually vote. (There is scope for efficiencies using electronic devices, but that's another story.) It should be done with 20 people/ branch, ideally more. So across a densely populated urban constituency that would be some 200 volunteers - and that's just on polling day. 

So tiring it might be, but 'tired old politics' - oh no. This is the stuff of real politics that reflects our policies, passion, process and party democracy. Parliamentary democracy is not just about a vote when a General Election is called. It's about on-going debate reflecting values - the bedrock of tackling events. If anyone wants to clean up British politics, then their plans have to encompass accountability, party AND parliamentary democracy. All three main political party leaders have shown themselves wanting in that regard. None of them readily embraces party democracy. If Brown really wants to win he will show he understands he owes his career to the Labour Party. It is the Labour Party that has brought fairness to the many. it is the Labour Party that thanks to its members and supporters has a manifesto to offer 'A future fair for all'. 

The economy is on the mend. Today's International Herald Tribune carries some very encouraging words:

Policy Exchange, a British research organization, has written: “Though many people find it hard to believe, the United Kingdom is still a major manufacturing economy — the sixth in the world,” whose output is about equal to Italy’s and a bit bigger than that of France. Although Britain’s deficit, according to the E.U.’s statistical agency, is troublingly high at 11.5 percent compared with Germany’s 3.3 percent, its debt as a percentage of G.D.P. is smaller, 68 percent versus 73.2 percent. And so was its March unemployment rate, 8 percent in Britain against 8.5 percent in Germany, where Rainer Bruderle, the German economics minister, branded “our little Job Miracle” the envy of the world. The International Monetary Fund even projects growth in Britain as out-doing the euro-zone average this year and next. 

Not bad. 

I'd say. So Labour Party Leader, Gordon Brown's job in the remaining 9 days of the campaign is to empathise with the electorate seeking reassurance. He needs to focus on the benefits of public sector investment, the banks back in profit, recapitalised able and more willing to lend, and look forward to rising tax revenues from growth to help reduce the fiscal deficit without draconian public spending cuts or massive tax hikes. 

He should also take some credit for helping stimulate interest in our politics by agreeing to the TV debates. But that will only be credible if he sets himself and his party firmly on the side of ongoing political engagement and collegiate policy making, rather than concentrating more power in the hands of the party leaders and their power brokers (m'lord Mandelson, take note).

General Election: February 1974 - the results

Leader		Edward Heath	Harold Wilson	Jeremy Thorpe
Party		Conservative	Labour	Liberal
Leader since		28 July 1965	14 February 1963	18 January 1967
Leader's seat		Sidcup	Huyton	North Devon
Last election		330 seats, 46.4%	288 seats, 43.1%	6 seats, 7.5%
Seats won		297	301	14
Seat change		-33	+13	+8
Popular vote		11,872,180	11,645,616	6,059,519
Percentage		37.9%	37.2%	19.3%
Swing		-8.5%	-5.9%	+11.8%

Source: Wikipedia

Can/will the electorate 'conspire' to dump Labour's Brown?

With 12-days to go British Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Gordon Brown is facing a pincer movement by the other two competing egos seeking to govern Britain. Brown's legitimacy as party leader was compromised in 2007 when he assumed the leadership of his party in what many commentators described as a 'coronation'. That was the inevitable outcome of a process that resulted in no other member of the parliamentary labour party being able to secure the 44 backers needed to force an election. Labour Party members and affiliates that form the other two parts of Labour's leadership electoral college consequently had no say. This will all come into play if Labour fails to secure the largest share of the popular vote and a majority of seats in the new House of Commons when the counting is finished after 6 May 2010.

Labour election strategy hangs on its ability to get across a simple message. "It's the economy, stupid." "We saved you from the abyss" is not as compelling as "You've never had it so good". Brown reduced the campaigning slogan to : 'Jobs, jobs, jobs' immediately after the second televised prime ministerial debate. The bedrock of Britain's parliamentary democracy - political party mass membership has crumbled in the post war period. The country faces a 'game change' moment when the professional political class stages another coup to further distance the electorate from the elected.

Contraditions abound. The advocates of proportional representation (PR) for elections to the House of Commons have been claiming of decades that votes don't count. There is even a campaign for PR called 'Make votes count' run by a Liberal Democrat. Yet here we are on the eve of a General Election under first past the post (FPTP) when the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives are positioning themselves in the post-electoral scene in which the proportion of votes cast for each party WILL COUNT. Brown's claim to remain prime minister will depend on how many votes are cast for Labour Party candidates, IRRESPECTIVE of whether the seat has traditionally been Conservative, Liberal (Democrat), and more recently Scottish Nationalist or Plaid Cymru. Ever fleet of electoral foot m'Lord Mandelson has spotted that too, and opined accordingly. 2010 is not the year for tactical voting.

To win Labour has a mountain to climb. Whilst I'm glad Mandelson has spotted the blindingly obvious in that regard, he has been exceptionally slow and ridiculously stubborn in acknowledging the catastrophic blunders made by New Labour under former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Brown's only chance of remaining prime minister, and Labour winning a fresh mandate is if he and his allies are candid with the electorate.

As Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband conceded in a foreign affairs debate with the Conservatives' William Hague and Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat spokemen when asked if he would still have supported the invasion of Iraq if he had known then what was known now, he said:

“Obviously there would have been no such decision.

“Because if we had known then what we know now, if we'd have known that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, there would have been no UN resolutions and no vote in the House of Commons.

Brown needs to be similarly forthright about his handling of the economy. Major errors were made by New Labour which relied too heavily on the private sector, especially the financial sector. A major shortage of affordable housing was another blunder of the New Labour ideologists. Remarkably Britain is still a major world manufacturer, despite having no strategic industrial policy for 10 years under New Labour. All that has been changed on Brown's watch. Britain is out of Iraq. (No one questions the legitimacy of the was in Afghanistan, just the tactics.) Brown steered not just Britain, but the world out of the 2008 banking crisis, and subsequent recession. No question. Yes, recovery is fragile. But the adverse consequences in terms of jobs and repossessions were far less than forecast 18 months ago. The banking system did not collapse. We were able to continue drawing cash from the ATMs.

Yes, the cost of recovery has been increased public borrowing. But that is what government's are for. That's the lesson of the last century. At last in Brown and the Labour Party, Britain has a prime minister and political party that understands what government is for. The public finances are not in meltdown. The only real risks to jobs, homes, schools and the NHS arise arguably from a Conservative government, or the uncertainty arising from a possible Tory/Lib-Dem administration. (Even a scant knowledge of their respective positions on the economy and electoral reform screams - polls apart!)

What Labour election strategists have to grapple with is who are the best advocates of these messages. We are stuck with another televised debate. But for some of the electorate election day has already come and gone, some postal votes have already been delivered, filled in and returned. Labour supporters are going to have to use crowd techniques to get easily understood messages across in the final few days. Brown has got to be contrite and collegiate. Lord Mandelson ditto. Team Labour has to be allowed to speak.

Memo to Labour Party PR advocates: Every vote WILL count in 2010

In the event of no political party winning an outright majority of seats in the General Election on 6 May 2010, the party with the highest number of votes cast rather than seats won will, according to innumerable commentators, have the greatest democratic legitimacy.

I hope all my Labour Party colleagues advocating tactical voting, active in the mislabled campaign 'Make Votes not Count' and flirting with proportional representation will reflect on the implications of their actions for Labour in government come 7 May 2010.

I'm voting Labour whatever.

Dear voter: Your choice - faces or policies

On polling day - and if you are a postal voter that could be from Monday 26 April right through to 10pm on Thursday 6 May - every voter's choice is described on the ballot paper by the name of a candidate, a party logo if the candidate remembered to authorise its use, and the registered party name.

As I sought to highlight here on this blog, the prime ministerial TV debates are between the prospective parliamentary candidates for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Sheffield Hallam and Witney. Regulation of most other aspects of human activity is intense and subject to scrutiny, except politics - until recently. So when exercising our democratic rights to vote in a General Election, we are only electing a person to represent the parliamentary seat in which we live. The rest - government, and prime minister - is by proxy.

The party with most seats has expectations to form the next government. Its leader (who has already been elected by its members) is invited to do so and, if successful, appointed by the constitutional monarch as prime minister.

As we have seen in the 2010 campaign to date, more vividly perhaps than ever before the medium of television -together with competition between television channels - appears to be quickening the transformation of our parliamentary democracy into a presidential-system of government. The appearance of the party leaders, their body language, facial mannerisms, we are told, account for the vagaries of their respective party's standing in opinion polls more than their party's manifesto policies.

Party politics for me is defined by motivational values - personal greed (Conservatives) vs the common good (Labour). The Liberal Democrats seem to err in Tory areas more towards sating greed, and in Labour areas more towards the common good, through so-called neighbourhood politics. So their existence as a separate political party today for me reflects more the personal ambitions of its relatively small membership base and elected representatives than a distinctive value set that shapes its policies.

This simple categorisation has been thrown into disarray by presidential creep, or the advance of the elected dictatorship. Instead of being encouraged to focus on the policies, we are being bombarded with images of the leaders and invitations to watch debate, rather than participate. The results of round one of the 2010 'prime ministerial' TV debates has been an unprecedented convulsion in public opinion as measured by the opinion polls - showing a meteoric 50% rise in possible support for the Liberal Democrats from 15 - 20% up to 25% - 30% or more. Under Britain's current electoral voting system, it is possible that Labour could win the largest number of seats with the smallest share of the popular vote. Some say that would strip the largest party of democratic legitimacy. I say that's what you get if you allow TV moguls and professional politicians to pervert parliamentary democracy.

Selections in the spotlight: The End (for this election)

It's official, I have just had confirmation from Labour Party HQ that since John Heppell stood down in Nottingham East just before Easter no further Labour incumbents have stood down. Labour constituency labour parties have been spared any further imposition of candidates by the party's power brokers.

BBC Newsnight's Michael Crick noted on his blog earlier today that the absence of vacancies after the Election was called was 'especially remarkable'.

With that squalid chapter now closed, it's time to focus on 'Voters in the spotlight'. Is it an election or a beauty contest? Should the electorate focus on the party leaders or their party's policies?

#askthePPCs for Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Sheffield Hallam and Witney

Amid all the ceremony for tonight's TV debates, I'll wager than none of the participants will be introduced for what they are - prospective parliamentary candidates for their respective political parties, (in a constituency comprising less than 100,000 electors). Those lucky few are the only people who will get to vote for one of these three people on 6 May 2010 - not the UK's 40 million plus electorate.

Pound to a penny, there will be no 'health' warning for the hapless viewing public stating: Polite Notice - UK Prime Ministers are appointed NOT elected. The sub-text could elaborate: Unless you are registered to vote in a UK general election in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath, Sheffield Hallam or Witney - you will NOT be able to vote for or against any one of these three individuals. 

None of them are MPs at the moment. The Prime Minister remains the Prime Minister. I'm not sure about the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition. As for the Liberal-Democrats, they must be laughing all the way to the ballot box.

It's all part of the onward march of the political class. The TV debates, are seductively billed as prime ministerial debates. All three participants, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are lining up to deceive the public. Unless one of them has the courage to tear up the script and confess. "Viewers - you will not be electing a new prime minister on 6 May, you will be electing a new member of parliament."

"Just so there is no confusion, my party members elected me as their Leader, tonight we are debating the policies my party is proposing .......I'm one of a team - not a team of one.....I'm asking you to vote for the candidate my party has selected to stand in your constituency. If you, the electorate vote my party a majority in the House, we will be able to form the next government. If I succeed in that task, I hope my party will endorse me as its Leader. I will be submitting myself to annual re-election as Leader during the course of the next Parliament. So if you want to keep me on my toes, join my party now and take part in our annual leadership election."

For all the regulation of broadcasting, political parties, advertising, plus the public money poured into citizenship education, that simple proposition - "we don't elect prime ministers" will not even get a mention. As for the use of 'I' , if I can bear to stay the course, I'll be counting.

Any more squalid selections in the spotlight? Or was Nottingham East the last?

4 pm April 20, 2010 - that's the deadline for nomination papers to be submitted for prospective parliamentary candidates. That's less than four working days away. Since the results of the Nottingham East 'selection' were announced late yesterday afternoon, I have been asking contacts on the Labour Party's Special Selection Panel and in the media about the prospects of yet more selections to come. Given how little time is left, any last minute 'resignations' by prospective parliamentary candidates would inevitably require a new candidate to be imposed - an ideal opportunity for the exercise of yet more patronage by the 'powers that be'.

Only two weeks ago, the Labour-supporting weekly Tribune magazine reported a possible further dozen 'redundancy runners'  resignations - MPs willing to step down to take advantage of generous payments for just not standing for parliament again under the corrupting allowances system of the last Parliament, now abolished. That was followed by a report of an even larger number in the Daily Telegraph on Easter Saturday. 'Up to 20 Labour MPs may stand down this week', its headline claimed. Nothing has happened. So far.

Reactions to my queries ranged from 'watch xxxxxxxxxxxxxx', who brusquely denied the suggestion when asked by a contact whom I knew would have the person's telephone number, to extreme doubt that any further stitch-ups were possible.

So I remain on alert to chronicle if necessary. Ideas about how to 'legislate' against these abuses inside the Labour Party in future would be welcome. Rebuilding trust between members, supporters, voters and their elected Labour Party respresentatives is going to take much longer.

Notts East selection: Chris Leslie gets nomination

Former MP Chris Leslie has been selected by the Labour Party's Special Selection Panel as its candidate in the Nottingham East parliamentary constituency.

He was chosen from a shortlist of nine by a panel of five NEC members, including Deputy Leader Harriet Harman and NEC chair Ann Black. 

The decision was reported by the FT's Jim Pickard here. And I can confirm from my own sources. Some reactions are best not repeated. It is rally round time.

UPDATE: the decision was another split vote Leslie 3 : Taylor 2