Peter Kenyon

UK politics: is a return to two dominant parties unthinkable?

Looking at the latest opinion polls, odds for political betting on seats in the next UK Parliament (note: not Westminster) the odds on a return to 2-party politics must be very long indeed. My own political life was shaped by simplistic descriptions of the ideologies of the two main parties in the UK. Conservatives/Tories stand for selfishness and greed. Labour stands for sharing and collective action.

One Nation Toryism forged out of experience post World War II recogognised that the old order shaped by the aristocracy was finished. But the nouveaux riches had other ideas. A succession of events starting in the early 1970s led to a neo-conservative project for the self-enrichment of the few and the recovery of baronial powers to subjugate the rest of us to a modern form of serfdom.

Spelling that out is Labour's challenge in 2015.

Green politics is a distraction. Any self-respecting Labour politician recognises that the planet is at risk from the selfishness of the 1%. Urgent steps are promised by Labour to tackle climate change. But it is not enough. Neither is the response to nationalism. 

Much patriotic cant has been breathed by a deepening sense in the devolved nations of betrayal by Westminster governments past and present.

A return of UK government in May under Labour could be the key to whether two-party politics ever makes a return.

Devolution - the budgetary challenge for Labour to seize

How can Labour Party leader, Ed Miliband, possibly regain the electoral initiative in just six months? As avid readers of this blog will know, I have trying to make the case for a different way of formulating the UK national budget.

Here's my latest form of words:

Labour Party action following Scottish referendum – the budgetary challenge

Preamble

The outcome of the Scottish Referendum rejecting independence has inspired debate about devolution of powers from the Westminster Parliament. This resolution suggests a ways Labour Party members and their existing elected representatives can shape a settlement pending resolution of the wider constitutional issues. In particular it aims to address the aspirations of those seeking a fairer, more equal and prosperous society.

Resolution

This branch:

1. recognises the need to reunite the United Kingdom within a new devolved framework of government

2. considers that current UK national budget making arrangements divisive, top down from Westminster, and, therefore, inconsistent with such devolution

Therefore:

1. calls on the Labour Party leadership to adopt an inclusive approach to UK national budget making to encourage a national sense of purpose while at the same time enabling devolution of powers from the UK government

2. calls on Labour's leadership to invite Labour leaders in Scotland, Wales, London, and throughout local government to join in a new process of preparing revenue and capital budgets for FY 2015/16 and beyond

3. further proposes that these budget plans are coordinated between Labour's elected representatives to highlight issues that will need to be addressed by an incoming Labour chancellor of the exchequer after the General Election

4. opposes rigid adherence to Tory/LibDem spending plans in FY 15/16 as currently proposed by the Labour leadership

Ed Miliband must rue day he scrapped shadow cabinet elections

How could the leader of the Labour Party end up being shackled to his shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer? Ed Miliband must rue that early decision after his election to scrap the annual shadow Cabinet elections. That was supposed to give him the freedom to choose his own team. Instead it looks as though he threw away an opportunity to test the popularity of his frontbench team with Labour MPs.

Of course, this is not the first time that a Labour Party leader has been lumbered.  But at least you might plausibly argue that in those heady days back in 1994 former leader Tony Blair had a deal with Gordon Brown. Together they were seen to be ready for government, and won.

Today, Ed Miliband is in a very different space. He is stuck with an economic spokesman who wasn't his first choice, and whose policies are indistiguishable from the ConDem coalition's. Most Westminster old hands would, and if asked will, argue that it is too late to do anything about it now. Well may be it's too late to sack Balls. But there is no reason why Miliband should not be making policy announcements publically that have support in the party and oblige Balls to comply.

Over the past month I have been posting occasionally, mainly on the theme of devolution and the little discussed role of UK budget-making in fuelling calls for transferring powers from Westminster and Whitehall. My article in the latest edition of Chartist inspired the cover cartoon by Martin Rowson - Balls and chain.

Yesterday, I attended an event at the University of Westminster organised by The Democratic Society, Involve, democratise and the university's own Centre for the study of democracy. Entitled 'Developing the space for a public conversation about democratic reform', this chat about a chat was the stuff consultation nerds get off on. But as the breakout sessions got going and discussion became more focussed, I realised here was a ready made opportunity to advance the idea of inclusive UK budget-making.

It took the Scots nearly 20 years to recover from an abortive referendum on devolution in 1979, when the majority in favour was less than the 40% of the electorate necessary to succeed. Today, no-one could doubt the appetite for democratic reform in Scotland with a massive 84.5% turnout, the highest in any election in the UK since the introduction of universal suffrage in 1918, nearly 100 years ago.

But it was the result of a conversation that started decades earlier.

Ed Miliband has barely six months to salvage his party's electoral fortunes in Scotland, and with it the prospect of securing a majority of seats in the Westminster Parliament. Holding him back is his shadow chancellor and formal rival for the Labour leadership. How can he conceivable capture the national imagination at this late stage?

Well, Miliband prides himself on standing up to vested interests, and there can't be a bigger one around the shadow cabinet table than the Balls/Cooper combo. I suggested devolution offered Miliband the chance to escape Balls and chain here. But weeks have elapsed and all that is on offer is a England Devolution Act transferring control of a modest £30billion to local and regional authorities. That style of hand-me down politics fuelled Scotland close to voting Yes to independence.

What is needed is a fresh approach to UK budget making - an inclusive one in which revenue and capital needs are worked out by local leaders and then shared UK-wide with a view to reaching a consensus about the national budget. Participatory budgeting could be added to broaden involvement. All it requires is leadership.

Devolution: branch resolution update - it was seconded.....

Last week I wrote about a resolution I had drafted for my Labour Party branch about the party's response to the No vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum last month.

It was duly tabled, and as the proposer, I needed a seconder. A comrade familiar with the old ways of policy making obliged to enable discussion to proceed. We had a lively discussion for about 30 minutes, which admitted that the Labour Party needed to do something pretty darn quick. But that as set out the branch concensus was the resolution itself sought to combine too many ideas together in too short a space, and lacked clarity about why an 'out of the box' type approach was needed to improve Labour's chances of winning an outright majority of seats next May.

So I am other interested members have been charged with redrafting and bringing back to the next meeting.

In the meantime there is nothing to stop any other Labour Party branch opening up its own debate about how to reunite the disunited Kingdom and engage lots more people in deciding how best taxes should be spent and government borrowing invested.

The current Labour Party frontbench needs all the help it can get, in these political testing days.

Devolution: opportunity for Miliband to shed his Ball(s) and chain?

Labour leader Ed Miliband's timidity, or is it understandable caution, can't propel our party to an overall majority at the General Election next May. The core vote is too fragile, especially in those diminishing Labour heartlands.

He has to ask himself how can Labour can appeal to them once again.

Miliband has shed some Blairite baggage. Iraq was't right, and so on. But he continues to be dragged back from being an inspiration leader by his very own ball and chain - aka Balls and Cooper.

To reunite the Union that makes up the United Kingdom means finding a way of enabling all those on the peripherary to believe that at least the Labour Party is listening to them. The only way I can think of is tearing up the way UK budgets are set and inviting everyone to participate in making a Growth4All budget.

The devolved nations already have the infrastructure in place to set their budgets, if not the means to finance them directly yet, except in a very minor way in Scotland. There is a mood among northern cities to have their say. But there is neither encouragement, nor the institutional framework to facilitate consensus building. The last minute horse-trading by party leaders ahead of the Scottish independence referendum may have secured a NO vote, but added to the risk of clumsy fragmentation.

Miliband could stop the rot. But it means shedding that ball and chains, and spelling out how Labour wants a UK consensus about a Growth4All budget that must be set out before the Summer Recess 2015. Every elected Labour Party representative in local, regional, and the devolved nations has a part to play in encouraging discussion, debate and resolution of budgetary priorities. Those debates should be being encouraged in every Labour Party branch, constituency and local government unit.

If the chancellor of the exchequer in waiting doesn't like the idea, tough.

Devolution: Labour action - branch resolution, waste of time?

Labour Party leader Tony Blair sought to kill off the art of resolution writing by imposing a new method of policy-making, misleadingly called Partnership in Power. The system was adopted by the 1997 Annual Conference after a historic UK General Election victory. Hapless members or at least their Conference delegates, carried along by the euphoria, suspended critical judgment and signed away collective freedom of expression.

In future policy was to be made through commissions, and deliberations of the National Policy Forum (NPF). The NPF was and remains dominated by leadership placepersons or self-appointed loyalists. That is despite the introduction of one-member-one-vote elections for constituency Labour Party delegates, in the full face of leadership opposition in 2009.

The last remaining vestiges of resolution-writing persist in the form of Contemporary Issues (no more than 10 words) with a 250-word backgrounder aka a resolution, or an Emergency Motion.

So how are members of a local Labour Party branch expected to get their heads round a seemingly complex issue like devolution and the aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum? From a leadership point of view, we are not expected to. Fullstop. Shut up and accept the leadership line. To a greater degree that works with the Parliamentary Labour Party.

So there in a few sentences is a process-driven insight into calls for devolution. Treat people like idiots and there is a risk of revolt.

The resolution I published yesterday here followed concerns raised pre-Conference by branch members about the lack of debate inside the Labour Party about of either demands for devolution or action required post-referendum, and my own reflections since. One of my comrades who was most keen to see the issues discussed emailed me after the result of the referendum highlighting the results for independence in local authority areas that form part of the so-called Labour heartlands in Scotland.

Risks to the Labour vote in Scotland in the run-up to the 2015 General Election can not be understated. To rise to the challenge, Labour leader Ed Miliband needs to hear from disparate voices inside his party and those that support Labour's values.

Resolutions are one way of providing such expression. Amendments are a transparent means of highlighting differing points of view to that proposed.

 

 

 

Devolution: a constitutional or budgetary issue?

Amid the furore over the Scottish independence referendum, aren't we all overlooking one of the underlying issues driving tensions between the UK government and all other tiers of government, namely, the way in which uk national budgets are formulated?

Brief exchanges with comrades elsewhere in the country led me to formulate a resolution for my local Labour Party branch which hopefully will be debated later this week.

It reads:

Labour Party action following Scottish referendum

Preamble

The outcome of the Scottish Referendum rejecting independence has inspired debate about devolution of powers from the Westminster Parliament. This resolution aims to encourage debate about ways in which Labour Party members and their existing elected representatives have at their disposal today to shape a settlement to meet the aspirations of those seeking a fairer, more equal and prosperous society, pending resolution of the wider constitutional issues.
This branch:
1. notes commitments by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband to enable greater devolution to Scotland and local government
2. recognises the need to reunite the United Kingdom within this new framework
3. considers that current UK national budget making arrangements are inconsistent with such devolution
Therefore:
1. calls on the Labour Party leadership to adopt an inclusive approach to UK national budget making to encourage a national sense of purpose while at the same time enabling devolution of powers from the UK government, consistent with the UK's international and EU budgetary commitments and obligations
2. calls on Labour's elected representatives at all levels of government to exercise leadership by acquiring and develop the skills to prepared revenue and capital budgets for FY 2015/16 and beyond
3. invites them to coordinate their efforts prior to negotiation with an incoming Labour chancellor of the exchequer with a view to reaching a consensus about a national UK budget designed to enable Growth4All
4. while recognising the constraints on the next Labour government arising from five years of mismanagement by the Tory/LibDem coalition, opposes rigid adherence to Tory/LibDem spending plans in FY 15/16 as proposed by the current shadow chancellor Ed Balls MP
5. calls on Labour's elected representatives on the ALC, ALG, National Policy Forum, and the Clause V Committee to vote for the inclusion of the above measures in Labour's 2015 General Election Manifesto.

As this is my first post for over nine months, I doubt it will attract much interest, but I think, over the next week, it may be worth unpicking why I'm less interested in the constitutional convention route, than reflecting on how centralised budgetary power is (ab)used by UK governments. With Labour leader Ed Miliband in thrall to his (second choice) shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, easing the resulting tensions appears impossible unless confronted. The affiliated trade unions have demonstrated by their posturing at Labour's National Policy Forum in Milton Keynes in July, they can not undertake that role. It is now up to Labour Party members, especially those who are elected representatives to take up the struggle. Budgetary power must be devolved. Who votes for what in the Westminister Parliament is a sideshow in comparison.