THE CONVICTION that the elimination of poverty - child poverty, pensioner poverty, Third World poverty - is at the heart of the Labour movement. Every Labour activist I’ve ever met would agree that the fight against material poverty must be a priority for any Left-of-centre government.

I am of the persuasion, that there are real differences between New Labour and the Tories, but perhaps not enough.

In my opinion, we constantly need to be New Labour, adapting to the times. I think a slight leftwards shift can allow us to adapt to the times.

But while there may be a tiny gap between us and the Tories, millions live in that gap, and they will suffer if we pretend there are no differences between us.

I today noticed two differences between us and the Tories, one major, and one very minor, but a very accurate protrayal of our differences.

So in the red corner, Labour fights for workers and consumers, and in the blue corner, the Tories for big business.

If you go to our official party website, contrast what many would be earning with and without the minimum wage today. The difference is striking. The wage can be £100, for every £25 that would be earnt without the NMW.

Don't be suprised if the Tories freeze the wage.

It won't be the Tories that protect agency workers. It won't be the Tories which protect waiter's wages. It will be us.

Now to a minor difference. Here's Labour's freedom, and his the Tories' freedom. We want to enhance choice, by allowing poorer people access to healthy foods, and to gain information as to whether the food they're eating is crap. But the Tories say we're "nannying" people with food labels.

Our freedom guarentees security. But the Tories' freedom can end up being the freedom to exploit (I don't think they see it that way). Of course, the Tories would have a point about how pointless it is to say that kebabs are unhealthy. But how many of the rich, even with more access to information, know that cereals can be more unhealthy than a quarter pounder?

Here, the Tories claims of supporting 'Nudge' economics is guff. Food labelling is nudge politics. Here's a clue, Cameron talked about how he didn't want to use regulation to tackle global warming, in an article for the Independent a couple of months ago. Yet he said he looked to the centre right attitudes of Angela Merkel and Arnold Schwarzenegger, yet they use regulation.

No, his 'Nudge' economics comes in here. He wants to bribe oil companies.

Oh, and John Redwood is in charge of deregulation policies, including allowing sub-prime mortgages on high streets. And it's John Redwood who says that global warming is a swindle. And David "Dave" "D" Cameron, says that this is the man who can tell us all whether he is a Tory. Also, he wants to build lots of roads.

And they will rework tax credits into giving middle-class couples £20 a week, on the back of poorer families. We realise that when a security guard and cleaner couple both earn £5.73 an hour, they're poor not because they take heroin, but because they're earning £5.73 an hour.

I'm not Nick Robinson. When Labour introduces legislation, I'm not interested in the mechanics of the politics of the bill. I'm interested in what it is trying to achieve. So when we leave this political world for one moment, we can see what the implications are of getting rid of a Labour government.

Andrew Gilligan keeps crying whenever a similar Boris scandal, to the Ken "scandals" he reported, are brought up by the liberal press. It's for partisan reasons he shrieks. Why don't they just admit they're Labour? Please, oh, please he cries, stop being mean to my friend. Well, I'm sorry. But if you are going to keep howling about how Ken was more corrupt than a '30's politician in Chicago, our side has the right to bring up similar Boris scandals.

Please all read TheToryTroll. It's highlighting Boris scandals, like misapropriation over Venezuelan funds for TFL.

Secondly, if anyone wants evidence that Cameron is not this cuddly centrist that we think, please read Johann Hari's article in the Independent today.

http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2008/08/boris-blows-apa.html

 

"If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and poltiical correctness. And if you look at what is happening in the Beijing Olympics you can see what piffle that is."

Its the evening standard - so it must be true ;) Why they would print clearly damaging material for the tories is strange - could they actually be making up for the mayoralty? 

What joy though....the most powerful elected tory dismissing his leaders mantra as "piffle." Which of course it is - its complete, absolute bull.

Please let there be a recording somewhere..... 

 

24 or so hours on and what might we have learnt from the Government's handling of the 'Tory think tank slams north' story?

David Milliband writes in The Guardian, mainly about how Labour can take on the "status quo" politics of David Cameron.

I could just be being cynical but I feel there is something not quite right about David Cameron's little allegry of modern life

"Reading David Cameron’s Glasgow speech, I was struck not by how much the Tories have changed, but by how little. He delivered Tebbit’s “Get on your bike” speech, refined by PR experts. Chingford meets Notting Hill", says Health Secretary in a Fabian speech.

I would hate to see it. The idea that Cameron is a moderate is a sad joke. The Equality bill, EMA's, Social Chapter, Minimum wage, Tax credits, Marriage incentives etc.

He wants to see sub-prime mortgages on high streets. He wants to hug a hoodie, but not fund youth clubs to help him. He wants to hug a huskie, but build roads to choke him, and not have environmental audits or car emission standards. He wants to get rid of Inheritance Tax. Wisconsin welfare, which increases poverty in tough economic times. He wants to abolish the New Deal.

I could go on and on. But sure, he is liberal, but only in comparison to the 'There's a Muslim pedophile living under your child's bed. Vote Conservative' campaign he was head of last time. You remember, stopping Aung Sun Suu Kyi coming in to the country if she was seeking asylum, or testing foreigners for AIDS. No suprise since Lynton Crosby, the man who helped Bush in 2000 by claiming that McCain had an illegitemate black child, and advising John Howard to win the 2001 election by ensuring that 353 refugees drowned, was managing the campaign.

Even methadone prescription, which slashes crime and homelessness would have been thrown out of the window. This extends now to heorin prescription. Oh, and when people complain about 37 page police forms (really? 37 pages?), don't be fooled. It was the darker part of 2005, when Howard was confronted by Stephen Lawrence's mother, because police were now forced (quite rightly), to log the ethnicity of the people they were stopping and searching. Ironically, when Tories explain in private that one day the NHS will be privatised and broken up, they don't seem to mind 37 page insurance forms.

So, and although I didn't think I would ever say this sentance, hat tip to Luke Akehurst. He has found Cameron's true policies with regards to the poor. This is from Luke's blog:

"I haven't once listened to Radio 4's Today programme since 1990 - these days I'm already on a 243 bus to work when it starts.

Luckily DWP Secretary of State James Purnell does tune in, and is pointing any Labour folk he happens to run into towards this telling quote - evidence of an increasing harshness in the Tory line on social issues now they feel they have detoxified their brand - from an interview with David Cameron on Tuesday morning at about 07.59, where Mr Cameron clarifies the ideological difference between the two main parties on tackling poverty:

"The Labour Party for a long time said it, only it, could deal with deep poverty because it understood about transferring money from rich to poor, but I think we've reached the end of that road, ... we need quite conservative solutions to deal with those problems".

I think we can take it from the phrasing "I think we've reached the end of that road" that a Tory government won't be seeking to increase redistribution. They seem to have an interesting view that making the poor richer doesn't er... reduce poverty. Run that past me again will you Dave?

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you think there should be redistribution to make our unequal society more equal, David Cameron doesn't agree with you. I dread to imagine what his "quite conservative solutions" to poverty might be. Any guesses?"

With the opinion polls now consistently against us perhaps it's time to consider the reasons why the Conservative Party may win the next election and what Labour can do to limit the damage.

Here's a quote from the speech:

I have always been sceptical of affirmative action. I do however, support Barack Obama's policy on affirmative action, on the basis of economic background.

In the UK, when UCAS forms have to be filled in, the detail of your parents' education has to be mentioned. The right-wing media immedietly denounced this. Consider this. One student who went to an expensive nursery, then a private primary school, followed by an Eton education, enjoying one-on-one tuition, and then further private tuition and gets 3 A's, is compared with a student who gets 3 B's, lives on a council estate, and went to a comp with 25 people per class, having to work every night in a fast food restaurant to bring in money for their family. Isn't it probable, that in equal circumstances, the second student would do much better than the first?

Nonetheless, I was sceptical of this current bill. My worry was that affirmative action would just cream off richer women and minorities.

But I read in the papers (which I still maintain I loathe), of an encounter in Westminster:

David Heathcote-Amory, saw a black woman walking on the member's terrace and demanded to know if she was an MP. "Yes, I am actually. Are you?" Dawn Butler, the former adviser to Ken Livingstone replied. He snapped to his colleagues: "They're letting anybody in nowadays."

The same slanders against this bill, were said of one of the best acts of the Wilson administration, the Equal Pay act.

Harriet Harman has consistantly maintained loyalty to the government, but fought hard for progressive policies against people like John Hutton (why doesn't he just defect to the opposition?).

She reminded me in dark times, why I was a Labour voter. The pay gap between full-time workers is 17%, and between part-time workers, a shocking 40%. She said: "Do we think she is 40 per cent less hard-working, less intelligent, less qualified?"

It is a major factor in low pay that 70% of those on the minimum wage are women, and 40% of part-time workers are on the minimum wage. Feminism isn't some metropolital liberal worry about not enough female FTSE 100 directors, it is at our red beating heart of social justice.

Apparently though, not all agree. The Daily Mail has suprisingly been against this, normally being a much more wise and thoughtful paper. They say that women "choose less well-paid jobs" because they want "more time with their families". The Mail would have to imagine that every woman had a family, and that they had them in teenage years for this to be true (oh, wait, they DO think that every teenager is pregnant). The pay gap sets in long before women decide to have children (and contrary to the Mail's warnings, women are having children much later).

The Women and Work commission found that after just 5 years, the pay gap between those who have earned first-class degrees is 15%.

Indeed, the bill doesn't go far enough. Harman had to compromise with Hutton (who I just want to deport) on pay audits. Also, it was the Tories who not long ago, were mocking the government for not supporting pay audits.

Why do many conservatives like to pretend that there is no ideology in between cut-throat, tough luck, lassez-faire Thatcherism, and throw-you-in-the-gulag communism? These particular conservatives are more politically ignorant than I thought.

Pay audits, whereby private firms who underpay female workers can be named and shamed, enhance economic competition. It strengthens our economy, and social justice at the same time.

On the most contraversial part of the bill, it doesn't ban white men from getting jobs, as spun by the Express. It gives employers a legal right to balance skewed workforces, whether largely female/male or white/thnic minority. They are under no legal requirement. I have been to primary schools where the workforce was largely female, as have been the secondary schools I've been to. Employers would have the right to balance the workforce with more males. That's it. This is what the controversy has been about.

Now we return to another fine Labour woman, Barbera Castle. The same arguments were shot at her, word for word. We apparently can't afford gender equality in a time of 'recession'. This argument is potent, as most low-paid are women, so the wages of the low-paid would rise.

It is the same principle as tax cuts for the rich during times of recession. A recession used to be when a factory owner had to close his fourth factory. If you give tax cuts to the rich, he will open a fifth, failing factory, and spend the rest on boats and cars. If you give tax cuts to the bottom half, they will go out and spend the money in the local economy, allowing the factory owner to re-open the fourth factory. Everybody wins.

A feminist agenda would do wonders for the economy. The estimated NPV of universal childcare, on a neutral estimate in 2003 would have been £40 billion over 65 years. The top estimate, was £93 billion. Wasting women's education and skills costs us £23 billion a year.
Don't believe me? In Norway, they mandated that 40% on corporate boards had to be female, and business growth soared. Mckinsey found that stock growth went up by 53%, when there were more women in senior positions.


Never fall for David Cameron. He defines himself as a 'progressive'. That doesn't mean anything. Would anyone call themselves 'regressive'? George Osbourne says there is "much to learn" from George W. Bush's 'compassionate conservatism'.

This is what Boris Johnson ran on. His first act? Slashing half-price bus fares for poor Londoners. Would he be bewildered to know that many can't afford 4x4's? Apparently not. About driving these Chelsea tractors he says:

"Tee hee, I said to myself ... out of my way, small car driven by ordinary person on modest income. Make way for the Nissan Murano."

It isn't that the Tories are toffs (they are). It's that some can go to private schools, which allows them to be shocked by low pay, and poverty. Harriet Harman follows in the tradition of people like Attlee who have done so. Most of the Tories don't know any other world though.

This bill defines what Labour is for, and I hope it starts the process of bringing back soul to the party.