"On 18 March 2008, I posted
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."
Today, I awoke to news that both the Leader of the Labour Party Ed Miliband writing in the Independent on Sunday, and his Blairite brother David, writing seperately in the Observer with trade union baron, Dave Prentis, are backing the idea.
That's really set me up for the next General Election. And after months of famine, something worth blogging about.