The Left's thoughtful commentariat

By Matthew Barrett
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Following last year's election defeat, there have been two sets of commentators on the left. On the one hand, the all-out, gung-ho "evil Tory cuts!" brigade, and on the other hand, the thoughtful contributors to the debate about Labour (and the left in general)'s future. I should apologise in advance for ruining the careers of those listed below, but here are four of the best of Labour's thoughtful commentariat:

Peter Watt (twitter: @PeterWatt123): Watt is a former General Secretary of the Labour Party. He caused a stir last week by writing: "...the Labour party is obsessed with the cuts. It is us, not the Tories, who are being defined by them. We talk about them all the time. We protest against them, predict the horrors that will unfold as their impact is felt and condemn the government for implementing them. We are so completely stuck in the cuts’ headlights, that we are virtually paralysed. And this paralysis is damaging our prospects for the next election." - "Labour must stop fighting the cuts", on Labour Uncut

He also supported the Conservative approach to recognising the family in the tax system, in a post for Labour Uncut last month: "Labour must therefore rethink its offer to families by the time of the next general election. Simply continuing to oppose the Tories approach will not be enough. In fact, it will also risk alienating some of the families who will by then be benefiting from Tory taxation policies." - "The Tories have got tax right: they’ve just got marriage wrong"

The Left starts to create new fora for Lib-Lab co-operation

Tim Montgomerie

Labour (and most of the Right) always thought of the Liberal Democrats as a left-wing party. Most LibDem activists still do and, earlier this week Jonathan Isaby wrote about the success of "Coalition-sceptics", like Tim Farron, in internal elections. On LabourList today, Anthony Painter has written about the end of the budding LibLab romance that so many on the Left had such high hopes for. In an open letter to Liberal Democrats he writes:

"What I’d really like you to know is that though we can never be as close again there is a way we can be friends. When you are over the heady early few months of romance, you may realise that you just went too far. Really, I want you to be happy but if you need our friendship once things become harder and colder, do get in touch again."

Well, work is underway to rebuild a LibLab friendship, perhaps drawing inspiration from Simon Hughes likening the Coalition to a loveless marriage. The Guardian reports how this is happening through the AV campaign where many Labour and LibDem MPs are joining together in the common cause of attempting to kill off First Past The Post. Even more interesting is the Latimer Project, a project that Will Straw describes at LeftFootForward. The project has four themes:

1. How can British progressives learn lessons from recent political renewals in the US and UK?
2. What is the funding, impact, and organisation of the British conservative ecosystem?
3. How does the progressive left do by comparison?
4. What more is needed?

On the Right side of the fence efforts are also underway to explore future LibCon co-operation. The Coalition 2.0 project - described here - is part of that.

The blogosphere will be a poorer place without Tom Harris MP

By Jonathan Isaby

I am just catching up with the news from last night that my friend, Labour MP Tom Harris, has given up blogging.

He writes:

"The blog has become a burden. It’s taking up too much time (though not as much as some might think – I am a very fast writer), it’s getting me into too many squabbles with people I have never met and are likely never to meet. And increasingly I’ve felt like I’m adopting stances simply for the sake of being confrontational and provoking a row.

"Basically, the bottom line: blogging is having a negative effect on my personal, family and political life for reasons too many and complicated to recount."

I can only join Paul Waugh, Iain Dale, Jonathan Sheppard and others in mourning the loss of Tom from the blogosphere.

His was consistently my favourite Labour blog and the way in which he mixed high politics and low culture, and party politicking with regular provocative posts demonstrating an independence of mind - and all in a good-natured and good humoured way - made it a model for others to follow. He was also instrumental in taking the successful Save General Election Night campaign from the blogosphere into Parliament itself.

On a personal level I was sorry that Tom was unsuccessful in the Shadow Cabinet elections and that the new Labour leader the opted against using his talents on the frontbench, so with the demise of his blog, we will have to wait and see which outlets he uses for his views and campaigns. He has been a trenchant opponent of AV, for example, and I had been looking forward to seeing him continue to make the case for First Past The Post on the blog.

So although I'm sure we haven't heard the last of him, for now I salute him for his blogging over these last few years. The blogosphere will be a poorer place without you Tom.

LabourList's great moment has arrived

There are a number of effective websites on the Left - LeftFootForward being at the top of the tree - but the one most suited to covering the Labour leadership race is Alex Smith's LabourList. He's done a good job in rescuing the site's reputation after the whole Derek Draper saga.

The leadership race is a massive opportunity for the site. The 2005 Tory leadership race certainly made ConservativeHome. By the end of the contest our traffic had grown from 100 or 200 visitors a day to 2,000 per day.

For what it's worth, this is my advice to Alex:

• Provide a running tally of who has endorsed who. It was simple for me. I just listed those Tory MPs who were backing which candidates. Labour's electoral college makes the task harder but provide a list that journalists will use for their reports. Put the list - or a link to it - at the top of the site.
• Stay neutral (at least until the final stages). Be a place where supporters of all candidates will come and argue. I never chose between Cameron and Davis in the final round and gave space for the supporters of all sides to argue their cases.
• Fight for the members. This was easy for ConHome because Michael Howard wanted to strip Tory members of a decisive say in choosing the leader.  ConHome got lots of press attention because of its democracy campaign. There'll be ways in which LabourList can fight for Labour members' rights of access to candidates.
• Run a good digest of the contest for those who only have the time to drop in once a week. ConHome's 'Good Week, Bad Week' was a very popular feature.
• Start a diary that can become a review of the whole campaign once it's over. That's what I did and wrote this 'War and Peace' when it was all done.

Amazingly we didn't use YouTube for our coverage and Twitter didn't exist. You'll have better ideas but I hope mine are useful. Seize your moment!

Tim Montgomerie

Labour and Conservatives are the same says new Liberal Democrat website

The 'Labservative' website lists the Tory-Labour pledges:

• "We promise to be dishonest about the spending cuts required to fix the deficit.
• We promise to spend billions of pounds on like-for-like replacement of nuclear weapons despite Russia and the U.S. reducing their own stockpiles.
• We promise to saddle students with debt for their university education.
• We promise to guard our ‘safe seats’ by blocking electoral reform.
• We promise to protect corrupt MPs from public accountability.
• We promise to accept funding from Unions and Big Business in exchange for political influence.
• We promise to make environmental policy an afterthought."

Tim Montgomerie

A Labour blogger's attempt to smear Chris Grayling is exposed

After David Cameron's announcement this morning of Conservative plans for a tax on banks, Will Straw wrote a post on his Left Foot Forward blog suggesting that a senior member of the shadow cabinet had publicly opposed the policy.

Headlining the post "Calamity Grayling opposes Cameron's unilateral bank tax", it was accompanied by a YouTube clip of the shadow home secretary, purporting to back up his story.

Alas, in the clip, filmed at a public debate in his Epsom and Ewell constituency, Mr Grayling had been asked for his views on a transactions tax, which is something completely different.

Commenters on the Left Foot Forward blog made this clear in some numbers - to the point that comments on the post have now been closed. 

Fraser Nelson has eloquently told the tale in its entirety here.

Jonathan Isaby

Liberal Democrat bloggers have a nerve claiming their MPs are the most liberal and least authoritarian in the Commons

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision and a founding Executive member of Progressive Conservatives. Here he takes issue with claims from Lib Dem Voice that Liberal Democrat MPs are the most liberal and least authoritarian in the House of Commons.

Liberalism is a philosophy claimed by members of all three major parties in Britain, but sadly no party truly lives up to the claim.  However, it is the Liberal Democrats who most loudly trumped their belief in liberalism – not least in their name (please never refer to them as the liberals or the liberal party as it abuses the term).  The Lib Dems are often mocked by true liberals as they seldom measure up to their branding, but amusingly this weekend Lib Dem Voice has boldly claimed that Liberal Democrat MPs are the most liberal MPs in Parliament, scoring them on key votes in the current Parliament.

The votes they picked are admirable and it’s pleasing that even in this biased ranking Conservative Party MPs fare well. Issues such as ID Cards, DNA database and 90 day detention are all examples of the authoritarian Labour Party’s assault on British liberties.  However the compilers of this poll (always reluctant to give honest criticism to their own party) failed to mention several important votes, which I’m sure they will be aware will ruin this airbrushed ranking.

The first and most obvious is the Liberal Democrats voting on the smoking ban and other liberal measures to restrict the rights of smokers on private property.  The vast majority of Lib Dem MPs voted both for the substantial ban and also against any provision to allow exemptions for private clubs.  They have also voted for display bans and to ban vending machines.  I ask Lib Dems how they justify calling themselves liberal while voting for such illiberal measures?  No doubt they will cry that they are attempting to protect workers – because the authoritarian streak in this party thinks that pub workers were too stupid to make these decisions for themselves.  Labour is clearly the most authoritarian major party in Britain, but at least they don’t put the word liberal in their name!

By focusing on votes in parliament they also neglect to take into account authoritarian action by local councils or calls by MPs without any vote taking place.  How do they rank Jo Swinson MP as being liberal despite wanting to censor advertisements?  Of course Ms Swinson justifies this policy as being for the children – they cry of authoritarians everywhere.  They conveniently ignore Lib Dem councils like Liverpool who have called for banning under 18s from seeing films containing smoking.  It is also a convenient fudge to ignore the last Parliament’s vote against fox hunting – one in which a majority of Lib Dem MPs took an illiberal stance.

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision and a founding Executive member of Progressive Conservatives. Here he takes issue with claims from Lib Dem Voice that Liberal Democrat MPs are the most liberal and least authoritarian in the House of Commons.

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision and a founding Executive member of Progressive Conservatives. Here he takes issue with claims from Lib Dem Voice that Liberal Democrat MPs are the most liberal and least authoritarian in the House of Commons.

Shane Frith is director of the classical-liberal think-tank Progressive Vision and a founding Executive member of Progressive Conservatives. Here he takes issue with claims from Lib Dem Voice that Liberal Democrat MPs are the most liberal and least authoritarian in the House of Commons.

Left-wing Labour MPs, union leaders and bloggers want to plunge the country even deeper into debt

There is a letter in the Guardian this morning criticising Conservative plans to cut public spending and calling for another fiscal stimulus to "secure economic recovery".

It states:

"The government was right to stimulate the economy with a variety of measures last year and so offset some of the worst effects of the recession. Yet, as some of the world's leading economists have pointed out, the fragile nature of the recovery means that fiscal stimulus is still required.... A programme of government investment would not only stimulate the wider economy in the short term, but would increase long-term growth, thereby lowering the debt levels through a higher tax take.

"To this end, we encourage the chancellor to use the forthcoming budget to announce a second fiscal stimulus – especially in housing and transport, where investment has fallen most, and with a focus on developing a low-carbon economy – which would both help to secure economic recovery and create much needed jobs."

Organised by Labour MP Colin Burgon, he has attracted the support of a number of his Left-wing colleagues such as Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn, Peter Kilfoyle, Austin Mitchell, Michael Meacher; other well known Lefties and union leaders like Ken Livingstone, Kevin Maguire of the Mirror, Billy Hayes and Tony Woodley; and most of the prominent Labour bloggers including Alex Smith, Will Straw and Sunder Katwala.

Jonathan Isaby

If they can mess with our posters, shouldn't we have fun with theirs?

On Monday Labour launched this poster and Tory Rascal hit back with this:

Here's another example:

Please use the thread below (or email me) to suggest other variations on Tory Rascal's theme and we'll put the best up later today...

Gordon Brown misled the Commons yesterday after lifting unreliable material from a Left-wing blog

At yesterday's Prime Minister's Questions, Gordon Brown alleged that David Cameron had replied to the question "Are you committed to educational maintenance allowances?" at a public meeting by saying "Let's just say I'm not uncommitted to it".

There was much excitement at the Left Foot Forward blog during PMQs that Brown had lifted the quote directly from a piece on the site by guest writer James Mills.

However, later in the day the site had to admit that:

"In light of a video made available to Left Foot Forward, we accept that this is not the form of words that Cameron used at the event and have amended the story accordingly."

Will Gordon Brown follow that with a similar apology for misleading the House at next week's PMQs?

For the record, the Conservative position remains that there are no plans to scrap EMAs, as Michael Gove told the Guardian last autumn, for example.

4.45pm Update:

Iain Dale points to this exchange on the floor of the House of Commons as an even more unequivocal statement of the Conservative position on EMA:

Dawn Butler (Lab): Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of the education maintenance allowance?

Michael Gove: Yes, absolutely

Jonathan Isaby