Labour MPs and advisers: We failed on immigration

By Paul Goodman

The IPPR seems to have waited until Theresa May's immigration announcement was out of the way before launching a series of essays by senior Labour figures on the last government's record on the matter.

The Guardian published a story yesterday evening based on the essays, and the key quotes are an indictment of both Blair and Brown's record.

Phil Woolas claims that even at party gatherings Labour was scared to talk about one of the biggest concerns among voters, and that by 2010 the party had no credibility left on the issue -

"We had imposed a gag on ourselves...the public thought we were shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted and even worse that we were doing it for electoral gain".

Ed Owen, policy adviser to Jack Straw, Blair's first Home Secretary, admits that -

"...there was no deliberate and substantive work on immigration issues undertaken in opposition – no attempt to develop a coherent strategic position that might serve as a basis for a programme for government. The consequences of this lack of deliberate policy thinking was disastrous as we lurched from one crisis to another."

Matt Cavanagh, a policy adviser in Downing Street on home affairs issues, argues that -

"both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and the great majority of their ministers shared a conviction that immigration for work and study was good for Britain and the British economy...we needed to change our approach and accept that immigration itself was a major issue for voters".

John Denham, the former DCLG Secretary and Home Office Minister, complains that Whitehall never owned the immigration issue, and that  Labour confused a tough line on immigration with racism partly due to the exploitation of the issue by the BNP.

According to the Guardian, "the essays, brought together by the IPPR thinktank, also point out that Labour first devised the idea of a points-based system for economic migrants in 2000, but took until 2008 to bring it into being".

By the way, Labour's future on immigration won't improve on its past if Ed Balls can't get his figures right.  He said yesterday that "the problem is that 80 per cent of our migration comes from the EU states, they're not affected at all by the cap which was announced today by Theresa May".

But of the 528,000 migrants who entered last year 292,000 were non-European - that is, 55 per cent of the total.  Furthermore, last year inflows and outflows of British and European citizens largely cancelled each other out, and non-European net migration counted for more than 93 per cent of the net migration total.

Ed Miliband's ten troubles

Tim Montgomerie

Ed Miliband returns to work today after his paternity break. His party is level-pegging in the polls but he hasn't enjoyed any honeymoon since becoming leader. If anything his party is doing slightly worse than before he became leader... despite George Osborne's announcement of spending cuts... despite an average disapproval rating for the Coalition of 10%... and despite unhappiness about Europe and crime from the Tory base.

Pasted below are the key vulnerabilities of his leadership, as identified by key commentators.

Alan Johnson Versus Ed MIliband over 50p and tuition fees...

• Chancellor/ leader disagreements are fatal and Martin Ivens in The Sunday Times (£) notes how Alan Johnson continues to publicly disagree with Ed Miliband on current issues like tuition fees and the 50p tax band: "While others moan that they can’t get a hearing, the shadow chancellor... backed a change to Labour’s voting system and lobbied for tuition fees against the graduate tax favoured by his leader. To cap that, Johnson last week made it admirably clear that the 50p income tax band introduced by the last Labour government must only be a temporary measure to get Britain through “difficult economic times”."

Alan Johnson Versus Ed Miliband over union power...

• "Alan Johnson leads calls... for reform of the Labour Party, declaring that the system that elected Ed Miliband as party leader was wrong and should be changed to weaken the grip of trade unions. The Shadow Chancellor’s comments to The Times reflect deep unease among party modernisers over a result in which David Miliband lost, even though he won more support from Labour members and MPs, because his younger brother was backed strongly by trade union votes." - Times (£)

Ed Balls Versus Ed Miliband over personal ambition...

• Dan Hodges in the New Statesman quoting a "Senior Brownite" talks about tensions between Ed Balls and the Labour leader: "Ed Miliband's team are terrified of Ed Balls and Yvette. They think they're going to come and try and kill him. And the reason they think that is because they will."

A vacuum where leadership should be...

• Dan Hodges in the New Statesman quoting a shadow minister looks at the lack of direction from the top of the party: "There's a sense of a vacuum developing. People are looking for leadership and direction. And at the moment, they're not getting it."
• The TImes (£) leader-writers: "Rebuilding after the Brown years requires imagination and courage. Labour is divided and directionless. Since the election it has drifted, and the election of Ed Miliband has not halted the drift. He has somehow succeeded to the office of leader of the party while leaving it vacant at the same time. Mr Miliband is bound to show greater courtesy to his colleagues and more self-discipline than his predecessor. But it is less obvious that he will avoid other vices of Mr Brown. He will need to be able to make decisions rapidly that signal Labour’s direction and he will need to ensure that he leads a modern, reforming free-enterprise party rather than one with an excessively romantic view of its democratic socialist past. Some early signs are discouraging — confusion on tuition fees, opportunism on cuts. And Mr Miliband does not have long to prove himself."
• James Forsyth at Coffee House: Ed Miliband needs to make some noise.
• In The Observer Andrew Rawnsley quotes "One member of the shadow cabinet wryly [referring] to himself as a spokesman for "the third most interesting party in Britain"." Rawnsley continues: "he needs to start making his presence felt or run the risk that he instead becomes stamped with other labels which can be just as corrosive, labels like "Vague Ed" or "Unready Eddie"."

Blairites join David Miliband in rejecting their leader's call to serve...

• Mark Seddon in the Mail on Sunday: "Unapologetic former Blairite Ministers Hazel Blears, Pat McFadden and Ben Bradshaw had refused to serve in Mr Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet."

Rebellious Labour backbenchers...

• Harriet Harman took a very firm line with Phil Woolas but backbench MPs raged at her in a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party and have been donating to his judicial appeal.

Rebellious Left-wing supporters...

• Mehdi Hasan: Where is the radical candidate who came from behind to win the crown?
• Jim Pickard of the FT on why Ed Miliband is upsetting his Left-wing base: "Miliband’s caution reminds me of Tuesday last week when Labour’s new leader didn’t attend the TUC rally (which he had promised to go on), with aides saying it wasn’t a rally. You can understand his determination to shed the Red Ed tag and try to position Labour as close to the centre ground as possible. But those who heard him during scores of summer hustings may now be confused about what he does stand for."

An Anti-Business/ Anti-Donor attitude that will harm party fundraising...

• "Ed Miliband has been warned he is taking a multimillion-pound gamble with Labour’s finances after blocking peerages for three donors who have helped to keep the party afloat... Labour, which is up to £12 million in debt and had to fight the general election on a shoestring budget, is already finding it harder to prise open the wallets of some longstanding benefactors. Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who has given the party more than £12 million over the past five years, is known to have been upset by David Miliband’s defeat in the leadership contest. Lakshmi Mittal, the steel tycoon who has donated £5 million since 2005, is also said to be concerned about Labour’s attitude to business." - Times (£)
• Without the support of businesses Ed Miliband will be increasingly dependent upon trade unions like Len McCluskey, elected yesterday as the ultra-left leader of Unite. 

A declining press operation...

• James Forsyth in The Spectator: "Certainly Ed Miliband has not played the media as well as Cameron did in the months after his election as Tory leader. Tory strategists couldn’t believe that Ed Miliband released the photos of him and his partner and their new baby on the same Wednesday afternoon that students were violently besieging Millbank. However cute the photos, they were never going to knock the rioters off the front pages. Back in the day, the Labour spin machine would have known this. The photos would have been released on Thursday."

Voices from Labour's past that snipe at Ed Miliband...

• The Mail on Sunday on Mandelson V Ed Miliband (Part 94): "Peter Mandelson has added to the growing pressure on Ed Miliband, claiming the Labour leader had insulted him by saying he should be ‘packed off to an old folk’s home’. In a new war of words between the two men, Lord Mandelson suggested Mr Miliband was devious and had secretly plotted against Tony Blair. And he contemptuously dismissed him, saying he had ‘never seriously thought of him’ as a leader."
• Asked about Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls told Andrew Marr: "The papers are full of the twitching of old corpses of the past.” Strewth!

Harman, Woolas and Labour's north-south divide

by Paul Goodman

Bad news day for Labour, with this morning's MP expenses fraud court judgement, and earlier detailed accounts of Harman's mauling at yesterday's Labour Parliamentary Party meeting.  A lot's been written about why Woolas has so many Labour backers.  He's a long-standing trade union operator with GMB connections.  He's part of the big north-west group of Labour MPs.  The Liberal Democrats have a record of making tackles from behind during election campaigns, and Labour MPs in general are raging at the court decision.  Cherie Blair's a friend of the Woolases, and so on.

But one point doesn't seem to have been made.

Namely, that Labour's internal row over the Woolas affair is part of a north-south divide.  In the south, Labour's few seats - such as Slough (which is worth an article in itself, and a matter I should return to), and the inner London constituencies that they hold - aren't kept red by the votes of the white working class and the public sector interest alone.  The votes of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities can be decisive.  In the north, the white working class is a bigger factor in the mix.  Woolas was feeling the effect in his seat of its alienation from Labour over the immigration issue - hence his maniacal leaflets.

Harman encapsulates perfectly the self-righteous, boosy-boots, knows-what's-best-for-you nature of Labour's Londoncentric network - greatly influenced by lawyers, of which she's one.  Woolas is a good illustration of the kind of north-based Labour MP who'd nothing much to say about immigration until the problems driven by Labour's lack of control of it turned up knocking at his front door.  Harman faces Clegg at Prime Minister's Questions later this morning.  It'll be interesting to see if he tries to exploit Labour's divisions on the issue.  And, if so, whether Harman's response helps to make relations between the two parties even less of a love-in.

Unready Eddie

By Paul Goodman

Harriet Harman was, until recently, Labour's acting leader.  She's just said that the Party won't support Phil Woolas's challenge to this morning's court ruling, which ruled that the Oldham and Saddleworth seat must be re-fought, thus depriving him of his Parliamentary seat.  (He has since been suspended from the party.)  It is, she said, "no part of Labour's politics to try to win elections by telling lies".

When did she decide that Woolas hadn't told the truth?  Was it the judges' decision today that caused the scales to fall from her eyes?  Or was she convinced at some earlier stage - for example, after examining his raving election material?  If so, did she have a word with Ed Miliband about the matter, after he was elected as Labour's new leader?  And if she did, why did he appoint Woolas to the front bench?

I know, I know: all parties have candidates who run campaigns that are, let's say, careless with the truth.  And the judges seem to have over-stepped the mark: it's voters, not the courts, that should determine who goes to Westminster.  That said, Woolas was essentially done for making up stories about his opponent, and it's hard to keep m'learned friends at bay once that's happened.

If I'd said at my last election that my main opponent was in league with Islamist extremists and in the pay of an Arab Sheikh - and my team had put e-mails around saying "we need … to explain to the white community how the Asians will take him [Goodman] out … if we don't get the white vote angry he's gone" - I suspect that her lawyers would have had something to say.

Other MPs may none the less be thinking today that it could have been them in the dock, and Simon Hughes was given a gratifyingly tough time on TV earlier today about his original by-election leaflets.  However, the question persists: why did Miliband risk appointing Woolas to the front bench - and as immigration spokesman, too, for heaven's sake?

Why, furthermore, did it take him some four hours to announce that Woolas would be suspended from Labour?  Wasn't his team prepared for the court's decision today and, if so, why not?  CCHQ have been making hay all afternoon with Miliband's slowness off the mark.  He's been Labour's leader for little more than a month, and first impressions with voters may not stick.  All the same, they're important.

Polling's a better guide than guesswork, but my punt would be that Miliband's made little impression at all to date.  He had a plan to win his Party's leadership campaign.  It's not clear that he's got one to win the country's votes.  David Cameron's team grasped early how vital it is in Opposition to make the news, get noticed, grab attention, surprise voters.

Hence the bicycling and the huskies and all that - ripe for mockery, I know, but that early activity at least helped to make an impression.  Maybe Miliband's secret strategy is masterly inactivity, and the hope that his excellent Commons position - 258 seats on some 29 per cent of the vote - will get him over the finishing line in five years time.

If so, it may work.  Then again, it may not.  In his election's aftermath, the new Labour leader was Red Ed.  His team countered by putting it about that he's Steady Eddie.  He looked like Unready Eddie today.