Lambeth Labour face further questions over taxpayer-funded propaganda

By Mark Wallace
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Lambeth Council - whose high taxes I have the misfortune of paying - have a long track record of propaganda at taxpayers' expense. In the past they have run poster campaigns making political attacks on austerity and welfare reform, and published costly newspapers attacking the Government, all the while complaining that they don't have enough money for actual services.

This time, they've sunk even lower - which by the standards displayed so far is pretty low indeed. A new series of leaflets and posters seeks to scaremonger about changes to the fire service - presenting as a news headline a completely fabricated story about children dying in a Lambeth school fire.

After I tweeted the latest misuse of taxpayers' money on Wednesday night, the issue has been taken up by the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail.

Labour must answer questions about why taxpayers' money is being used in such a disgraceful fashion by a supposedly cash-strapped Borough.

It's no use passing it off as a council campaign or nothing to do with senior Labour figures, either. The council's posters are conveniently being used as free materials for Labour's party political campaigns, including the Save Clapham Fire Station Facebook page - where the below picture has surfaced:

According to the caption, it shows "local residents concerned over these massive cuts". Some  may well just be ordinary residents, but the lady slap bang in the cenre in the red jacket is none other than Councillor Lib Peck, Labour Leader of Lambeth Council. The gentleman to her right is Labour Councillor Christopher Wellbelove, who leads the party's campaign against Boris' Fire Station policy.

This is all very useful for Lambeth Labour - the council they run coincidentally churns out and distributes alarmist leaflets at taxpayers' expense on a topic which they happen to also be campaigning on in the run up to next year's elections. When local residents spontaneously meet on the issue, there are Lambeth council posters aplenty, the council Leader centre stage among them and a photographer on hand to supply pictures for the Labour Party's Facebook publicity.

So what of Labour's other prominent figures from Lambeth? Does rising star Chuka Umunna, the Shadow Business Secretary and MP for Streatham, endorse this behaviour by his local Labour councillors? How about newly elected Croydon North MP Steve Reed, who until he won the by-election in November was the Lambeth Council Leader who oversaw the start of this culture of taxpayer-funded propaganda?

How has Ed Miliband's sixth re-launch progressed so far?

By Matthew Barrett
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A week on from Ed Miliband's sixth re-launch, it would be timely to review his progress. Has he managed to persuade the public of his credibility at last? Has he managed to thrash the Coalition in the polls? Is his Party settled and united behind his leadership? It seems not. 

• Ed Balls' big policy speech hinted at Labour wishing to earn economic credibility: "In a speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday, Balls said he accepted every spending cut being imposed by the coalition and endorsed George Osborne's public sector pay freeze, adding that it might need to continue beyond the end of the current parliament."
• Ed Miliband then supported this stance: "Ed Miliband has backed his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, saying he cannot promise to reverse any spending cut at this stage, and dismissed criticism of his own leadership as "part of the gig"."
• ...But at the same time, Miliband said Labour opposes the cuts the Coalition is making: "If Labour was in power now we wouldn't be making those changes. We wouldn't be cutting as far and as fast as the government."
• Perhaps this best explains what Miliband's position seems to be: "Labour's newly calibrated position is that it opposes some spending cuts, on the basis they slow recovery, but cannot promise to reinstate any of them ahead of an election."

Ed Miliband missing from Feltham and Heston by-election leaflets

By Matthew Barrett
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Labour have put out seven pieces of campaign literature for the Feltham and Heston by-election so far. On how many does Ed Miliband have even a passport-sized photo? None. Ed Miliband is nowhere to be seen on Labour leaflets.

On Thursday, the Evening Standard's Craig Woodhouse reported:

"As the party leader battles low personal poll ratings, his opponents have seized on the fact his picture was missing from the election leaflet, though Labour insists he will feature in a second handout."

Well, Labour's latest leaflet has been released, and... still no sign of Ed Miliband. Readers can view the leaflet in full here (page 1 pdf) and here (page 2 pdf). 

A good reminder of why Labour's campaign may be reluctant to show their leader on campaign literature would be Lord Ashcroft's polling in the seat, which found, for example, that Cameron, Clegg and Osborne are more trusted on the economy than the Miliband-Balls team. 

Labour sides with the energy industry and Conservatives side with the energy consumer in hopeful shift of policy

By Matthew Barrett
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On Monday, Minister of State for Climate Change, Greg Barker announced that the Feed-in Tariff (FIT) level for solar installations would be reduced as a result of soaring take-up of FITs. FITs are subsidies for small-scale renewable electricity generation, paid for by ordinary households through their energy bills. The government has allocated an £867 million budget for FITs over the next four years. Without this limit, the cost of FITs to consumers would soar. 

Greg Barker has written to Labour's Caroline Flint, the Shadow Secretary of State for Energy, after she opposed the new measures to protect consumers from escalating subsidies for solar power.

Speaking in the House, Caroline Flint described the government's plan as "yet another example of a government which is out of touch", she called the move one that "threatens to strangle at birth the solar industry", and "a kick in the teeth for all those families who want to do the right thing by investing in solar". 

Labour Shadow Education Minister argues for the abolition of private schools

By Matthew Barrett
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Stephen Twigg, a Blairite reformer, was appointed to the Shadow Education brief in Ed Miliband's last reshuffle. As a former Education Minister who helped the drive for academy schools in the New Labour years, it was hoped his appointment might signal Ed Miliband's support for the Coalition's Free Schools programme. 

Indeed, Twigg said earlier this month:

"On free schools, I am saying that we need to apply a set of tests, that we are not going to take an absolute policy of opposing them. The tests should be: will the school raise standards for pupils and parents, will it contribute to a narrowing of the achievement gap between rich and poor and what is the wider impact of that school?"

Unfortunately, any credibility that Twigg may have in his brief will be undermined by the class war, anti-rich sentiments of his deputy, Kevin Brennan (pictured above), who last night spoke in favour of abolishing private schools - a proposal last seen in Labour's 1983 manifesto, aka the "longest suicide note in history".

Brennan was speaking at the Oxford Union, where he proposed the motion "This House Would Abolish Private Schools". Brennan had previously spoken in favour of the same motion in his debut speech to the Oxford Union - as a student.

Gordon Brown relaunches Labour's campaign... with an Elvis impersonator

Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say.

And the Labour campaign took a surreal turn this morning.

The great relaunch of Labour's campaign took place this morning at an event in Corby - where Louise Bagshawe is poised to oust Labour MP Phil Hope - and involved Brown making a series of outrageous claims about how a Conservative government would reduce the NHS to a 'sub-standard' service.

His scare-mongering claims were all the more spurious given that the Conservatives have of course promised to increase spending on the NHS in real terms - a commitment which not even Labour will match.

And then came the weird bit. Onto the stage then came Labour's latest secret weapon: an Elvis impersonator. It really was quite bizarre.

I have not been able to verify reports that Labour is now considering using the 1958 Elvis B-side I Got Stung as its new campaign song, or indeed that Brown will adopt the King's little-known 1971 single I'm Leavin' as his personal theme at remaining campaign events... 

> Click here to watch the video of the bizarre spectacle

Jonathan Isaby

Gordon Brown's deceit over waiving VAT on Haiti charity single is revealed

The Independent splash this morning reveals a classic example of how a Gordon Brown promise is not all that it seems.

After the Haiti earthquake, when a bunch of celebrities recorded a version of Everybody Hurts to raise money for victims, Gordon Brown announced to much fanfare - and with much name-checking of Simon Cowell - that VAT would be waived on the single.

However, as the paper reports:

"To the fury of aid officials at the Department for International Development, the Treasury has warned them that they will effectively be sent a bill for the Exchequer's lost revenue, The Independent has learnt – the equivalent of the "lost" VAT will be deducted from its budget.

"The cash raid raises fears that each person who bought the single unwittingly deducted money from the Government's aid budget for other countries. Last night aid groups were astounded by the news and accused the Government of penny-pinching, warning that some of the world's poorest people could suffer as a result."

Full story here.

Jonathan Isaby

Harriet Harman, paedophilia - and double standards

Amazing recent news.

It’s emerged that a very senior Shadow Cabinet member once said that sexually explicit photographs or films of children should be legalised - unless there was evidence that the child had been harmed.

And at the time (the late 1970s), the spokesman was a senior figure in a libertarian group that wanted the age of consent lowered to 14, and incest decriminalised.

Furthermore, paedophile organisations were affiliated to the group - which said that "childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage".

Some of you are asking: what's going on?

Where's the Government reaction, you ask?  The Labour backbenchers calling for Cameron to sack the spokesman?  The Labour frontbenchers not going quite so far, but murmuring that he - or she - has “questions to answer”?  The BBC top billing for the Labour reaction?  The Guardian ringing round parents' groups for quotes, hunting down former members of the libertarian group, and straining to give the story legs?  The left-wing commentators who want the Conservatives to lose - and Brown to win - announcing proof "of what we've always known - that the Tories can't be trusted with our kids".  The right-wing commentators who collaborate in wanting the same result denouncing "the culture of moral depravity which taints the top of the Party"?  The Mirror doorstepping the Shadow Minister? The pressure building on him to resign?  The election campaign thrown into turmoil?  The plunging opinion polls?

The rest of you have seen the point.

The story did indeed break yesterday.  (The Daily Telegraph had it.)  But -

• The politician in question wasn't a Shadow Cabinet Minister.  It was no less senior a Cabinet Minister than Harriet Harman, Leader of the Commons and prospective Labour leadership candidate.
• The organisation wasn’t a libertarian group. It was that establishment body, the National Council for Civil Liberties.
• And although Tim Loughton, our Shadow Children’s Minister, judged our reaction to the story well, there was – guess what? – little BBC reaction, no sign of a right-wing media ring-round, no reaction from the conservative commentariat: no sense of a story gaining momentum.  I can’t find anything significant on it in today’s media.

My point isn’t that Harriet Harman wants to ease the legal restraints on paedophile activity.  (It should go without saying that she doesn’t.)  Nor is it that her views during the late 1970s are worth the kind of media rampage that I sketch out above  It’s simply this.  Had a Shadow Cabinet Minister taken the same view in the late 1970s as Harman did, and the Guardian (say) rather than the Telegraph broken the story, there would have been if not a rampage, at least a big flurry of media interest.  But there wasn’t.  Why?

Because Britain has slowly developed a deep, sustained, self-reinforcing anti-right cultural bias – which helps to drive media double standards.

Now there are of course anti-left cultural biases, too.  For example, it’s widely assumed (I think rightly) that the left’s head is in the wrong place – in other words, that the socialist economic model doesn’t work.  The corresponding ant-right cultural bias is that the right’s heart is in the wrong place.  The industrial-scale murder, mass starvation, institutionalised tyranny and economic collapse of communism has done astoundingly little to dent it.  It’s the default setting of the academic establishment, the state-subsidised arts, the license-fee funded broadcaster, and the big charities – the cultural equivalent of “the commanding heights of the economy”.  And it spreads outwards from there.

It’s easy to believe that the two biases cancel each other out.  They don’t – at least, not during the run-up to a close election.  If Labour politicians are assumed to be good people – perhaps with some wrong-headed ideas, but good people none the less – their motives won’t be questioned unless personal gain is involved.  Consider what would have happened had the politician in yesterday’s Telegraph story been not Harman, but a senior Tory.  Isn’t there something in the picture I sketched out earlier?  Wouldn't the double standard have come into play?

It’s certainly done so elsewhere.  Imagine the reporting if the leader of a flagship Conservative council (rather than Labour-controlled Glasgow Council) had resigned after admitting drug abuse.  Or if CCHQ had issued leaflets simply making up stories about Labour - accusing them, say, of planning to end free bus travel and scrap TV licences for the over 75s?  Or if some Tory councillors in a shire county had the same relationship with a fascist group that some Labour councillors in the East End have with the Islamic Forum of Europe?

On this site, we’ll be watching for anti-right double standards closely and flagging them up unsparingly during the run-up to May 6.

Paul Goodman

Labour candidate gives Nazi salute as he lazily smears Tory allies in Europe

The image on the right is of Daniel Zeichner, the Labour candidate for Cambridge at the general election, speaking at a Cambridge Union debate earlier in the month.

In a debate about whether the Conservatives are ready to run the country again, he ventured onto the topic of the European Conservatives and Reformists - the grouping in the European Parliament which the British Conservatives helped establish after last year's European elections.

Criticising David Cameron for taking Conservative MEPs out of the federalist EPP group, Mr Zeichner continued:      

"You don't go and have an alliance with Angela  Merkel, you go and find some people in the Polish Law and Order Freedom Party - some people who think that the best thing to do on a Sunday morning is to go out and celebrate the achievements of the Waffen SS in the last war - a bit of this kind of thing [does Nazi salute], you know that's the kind of thing they like. Quite frankly it is shameful that a leader of a major British party in this country has got anything to do with these fascists across Europe."

For a start, there is no such party as the Law and Order Freedom Party in Poland (the Tory partners from Poland are the Law and Justice Party).

But for a parliamentary candidate to parade around the floor of the Cambridge Union giving a Nazi salute as he makes what is in any case a grotesque smear against Conservative allies is simply extraordinary, as is the suggestion that Tory partners in Brussels are "fascists". It is a lazy, unfounded attack and one that Mr Zeichner should withdraw.

The other members of the ECR group are in the political mainstream and if you don't believe my acceptance that the Law and Justice Party fits into that description, perhaps you'll take the word of the Chief Rabbi of Poland.

The ECR group leader, Michal Kamiński, also responded to the kinds of smears being perpetuated by Mr Zeichner and his ilk when I spoke to him at the Conservative Party Conference last year. Many of the MEPs from the ECR group spent much of their lives under Communist regimes, and the idea that they in any way support equally totalitarian Nazi or fascist idology is offensive in the extreme.

You can watch the Cambridge Union debate below, with the offending passage at 26 minutes and 55 seconds in.

6.45pm update:

I have been alerted to the following three links which set out the truth as regards the smear against Latvians in respect of their alleged "celebration" of the SS. The FT has covered it here whilst the Lativan Foreign Ministry has published statements here and here.

7.30pm I am aware that not everyone is able to view the comments below this thread. We are trying to fix this. 8.30pm Is now fixed.

Jonathan Isaby

Ex-Cabinet ministers embroiled in new cash for influence scandal

After a Parliament mired by the MPs' Expenses scandal and allegations of cash for honours, the Sunday Times is tomorrow running a story which will be less than comfortable reading for several former Cabinet ministers who are leaving the Commons at the impending election.

The Insight team at the paper - working in conjunction with Channel 4's Dispatches programme - had an undercover reporter pose as a company executive seeking to hire MPs for lobbying work. It would seem that a number appear to have boasted about the influence and access they could give clients in return for money.

The victims include:

• Stephen Byers - "Was secretly recorded offering himself “like a sort of cab for hire” for up £5,000 a day. He also suggested bringing Tony Blair to meet clients... He claimed to have struck a secret deal with Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, last year on behalf of National Express, which he said was seeking to jettison a loss-making East Coast rail franchise without penalties. Byers said: “We agreed with Andrew... he would be publicly very critical of National Express” as long as he agreed terms which favoured the company. The decision to terminate the franchise in July last year left a burden on the taxpayer of hundreds of millions of pounds. Byers also claimed he could use his friendship with Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, as his “trump card” to squash government plans that did not suit his clients."
• Patricia Hewitt - "Claimed she helped to obtain a key seat on a government advisory group for a client paying her £3,000 a day."
• Geoff Hoon - "Offered to lead delegations to ministers and told the reporter that he was looking to turn his knowledge and contacts into “something that frankly makes money”. He said he charged £3,000 a day."

Read more here. (10.15pm update - the link has stopped working; very odd... link now working again)

Jonathan Isaby