Labour's growing civil war over candidate selection

Earlier in the week, I wrote about Len McCluskey's development of a "party within a party" of Unite MPs on the Labour benches. Now, further concerns are mounting about the extent of the unions' power over the Labour Party's selection procedures.

Jim Pickard of the Financial Times has carried out research which shows that 16 of the 43 Parliamentary candidates selected so far enjoyed direct trade union support in their nomination campaigns. (For the record, the six candidates Unite has so far laid claim to are Lisa Forbes in Peterborough; Clive Lewis in Norwich South; Suzy Stride in Harlow; Sarah Owen in Hastings; Carol Dean in Tamworth; and Adrian Heald in Crewe and Nantwich.)

They have also sought to skew the pitch for future selections. As Jim Pickard puts it:

"...the rules were recently changed, making it harder for non-union candidates without deep pockets to become a general election candidate. (Unite itself claims on its website that it was responsible for this change, saying its interventions had ‘changed the Labour party rule book’.) Candidates now need to run campaigns for 11 weeks instead of four and send out more mailshots than previously."

On yesterday's Daily Politics, Labour rising star Stella Creasy was challenged over the issue, and she conceded that it is now "difficult" to be selected for a parliamentary seat without the backing of the unions.

Who do Labour MPs represent? The party, the voters or the unions?

By Mark Wallace
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Oh dear. It seems that having bailed out the Morning Star, a paper which has coincidentally been very flattering about him of late, Unite's Len McCluskey now expects other left wing news outlets to dance to his tune.

Guido has revealed a letter sent by Len to the Editor of the New Statesman raging against "confected" reports that he wanted Ed Miliband to sack the Blairites in the Shadow Cabinet.

In fairness to the Unite leader, the quotes in the article don't show him calling for sackings. They say if Ed is "seduced" by Blairites "then the truth is that he’ll be defeated and he’ll be cast into the dustbin of history." All very measured, I'm sure you agree...

Back to the '70s as Labour's far left crank up for selection battles

I have discussed before the indulgent attitude that Ed Miliband takes towards the far left and also noted how blatant Len McCluskey of the Unite union had been about his intentions. Mr Miliband poor judgment was recently confirmed by his schmoozing of George Galloway.

Peter Watt, a former Labour Party General Secretary, has warned Ed Miliband that far left union activists are "running rings" the Labour leader in candidate selections. So far these have been for Euro Election candidates. Recently The Times splashed on the subject. Still, who cares about Euro MP selections as who cares about the European Parliament, aren't the Lefties more Eurosceptic than the Blairites anyway, etc.

However Mr Watt says the same will happen for selections for Labour candidates to be MPs at Westminster in their target seats at the next election.

He says:

"We shouldn’t be surprised; it is what the trade unions have been saying that they would do.  Unite have a political strategy that explicitly says that they will operate on this basis; get onto local committees, selection panels and regional boards and then wield power to get sympathisers selected."

Wilson closed more coal mines than Thatcher

By Harry Phibbs
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That faction on the Left that has been busy over the past 48 hours denouncing Margaret Thatcher has been so blinded by prejudice that facts have been disregarded. In the Daily Telegraph this monring Allister Heath points out that manufacturing output rose during her time in office. Does anyone really believe that manufacturing would have done better without the trade union reforms and with British Leyland and the British Steel Corporation remaining under state ownership?

Then there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who "destroyed" the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour Prime Ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.

These are the figures for the sharply declining number of coal mines open each year under those Labour Governments.

1964           545
1965   ..      504
1966   ..      442
1967   ..      406
1968   ..      330
1969   ..      304
 
1974   ..      250
1975   ..      241
1976  ..      239
1977   ..      231
1978  ..      223
1979  ..      219  

These are the figures for the Thatcher years:

1979  ..      219
1980   ..      213
1981  ..      200
1982   ..      191
1983   ..      170
1984  ..      169
1985  ..      133
1986   ..      110
1987   ..      94
1988   ..      86
1989   ..      73
1990   ..      65 

The Lord Palmerston blog says:

It was the ever-erudite @allanholloway who brought to my attention a few weeks back that more coal mines closed under Harold Wilson’s governments than under Margaret Thatcher’s, and I owe him an apology for not having credited him sooner, given the number of retweets I got for passing that on earlier.  Based on these figures from the government about 290 mines closed under Wilson in all his time in office, and about 160 under Thatcher.  Because the figures are based on year end totals of pits operating, it’s not possible to be precise, but the relative scale of those numbers is clear.  So why isn’t Wilson execrated by the Left for his part in the decline of coal mining?

That is a fair question. Do the Left seriously claim that Harold Wilson was accepting economic realities while Margaret Thatcher was motivated by sheer spite?

Ed Miliband's relationship with the far left

By Harry Phibbs
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Ed Miliband expresses irritation at being given the label "Red Ed." The Labour leader can reasonably point out that he is not a Communist - he does not want to abolish capitalism or overthrow Parliamentary democracy.

However, while he is not on the far left himself, he does show signs of being exceptionally indulgent to those who are.

There is an abundance of evidence of Commmunist genocide, in its various manifestations over the past century. Considering this evidence, most reasonable people would conclude that Communism was not merely a mistake, but evil.

Mr Miliband is not  part of the faction that condones the mass murder that Communisim brought about. Nor does he deny it took place. Instead Mr Miliband disregards it.

Last year we had Mr Miliband paying tribute to the historian Eric Hobsbawm as a "lovely man." Mr Miliband pitched up, along with Jon Snow, to Mr Hobsbawm's memorial service with The Internationale ringing in his ears.

Labour's 100 top target seats

by Paul Goodman

It's worth reproducing it on the site, and here it is from Labour List.  You will see from the illustration on the right that most are Conservative-held. There are only eight Liberal Democrat ones in the top tranche, which I have marked in gold.

1 North Warwickshire
2 Thurrock
3 Hendon
4 Cardiff North
5 Sherwood
6 Norwich South
7 Stockton South
8 Broxtowe
9 Lancaster & Fleetwood
10 Bradford East
11 Amber Valley
12 Waveney
13 Wolverhampton SW
14 Morcambe & Lunesdale
15 Carlisle
16 Stroud
17 Weaver Vale
18 Lincoln
19 Brighton Pavilion
20 Plymouth Sutton & Devonport
21 Dewsbury
22 Warrington South
23 Brent Central
24 Bedford
25 Brighton Kemptown
26 Pudsey
27 Brentford & Isleworth
28 Hove
29 Enfield North
30 Hastings & Rye
31 Manchester Withington
32 Burnley
33 Ipswich
34 Dundee East
35 East Dunbartonshire
36 Halesowen & Rowley Regis
37 Nuneaton
38 Gloucester
39 Northampton North
40 Bury North
41 Kingswood
42 Erewash
43 Blackpool North & Cleveleys
44 City of Chester
45 Arfon
46 Croydon Central
47 Worcester
48 Keighley
49 Wirral West
50 Cannock Chase
51 Loughborough
52 Harrow East
53 Warwick & Leamington
54 Birmingham Yardley
55 South Swindon
56 Ealing Central & Acton
57 Pendle
58 Stevenage
59 Elmet & Rithwell
60 Edinburgh West
61 Watford
62 Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire
63 Vale of Glamorgan
64 Argyll & Bute
65 Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale & Tweeddale
66 Carmarthen East & Dinefwr
67 Norwich North
68 High Peak
69 Milton Keynes South
70 Rossendale & Darwen
71 Cleethorpes
72 North East Somerset
73 Great Yarmouth
74 Dudley South
75 Dover
76 Colne Valley
77 South Ribble
78 Peterborough
79 Stafford
80 Stourbridge
81 Harlow
82 Aberconwy
83 Ilford North
84 Preseli Pembrokeshire
85 Brigg & Goole
86 Crewe & Nantwich
87 Bristol NW
88 Battersea
89 Finchley & Golders Green
90 Calder Valley
91 Redcar
92 Crawley
93 Hornsey & Wood Green
94 Reading West
95 Rugby
96 Burton
97 Cardiff Central
98 South Basildon & East Thurrock
99 Tamworth
100 Redditch

The Sun this morning reported Tom Watson claiming that Labour believes it can win a 60-seat majority at the next election, while the Times said that the party will "import a key part of President Obama’s re-election campaign and flood more than 100 target seats with 1,000 community organisers".

Readers will remember that the concept of community organisers is associated in Britain with David Miliband and the Movement for Change.  There would be irony in Miliband Major helping to strike a decisive blow for Miliband Minor.  But the Labour sources I've spoken to place more stress on Arnie Graf, the American Obama supporter and campaigner now working for the party.

Some Conservative MPs holding marginal seats will freak out at the thought of 106 Labour constituency organisers being paid £28,000 seats.  But they shouldn't despair quite yet, if at all. Watson concedes that “Our members are going to have to deliver this", and the membership of all the major parties is weaker than it was.  And sitting MPs have the power of incumbency.

Labour's real campaigning base is the unions, who helped protect crucial Labour marginals at the last election.  However, there is some evidence that at the last election the Conservatives performed more effectively in marginal seats.  So all to play for in each constituency.

Will you sponsor Ed Miliband's union walk?

By Tim Montgomerie
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To mark Ed Miliband's decision to join the TUC's anti-cuts march tomorrow it's worth noting who is sponsoring the Labour leader as he walks alongside the spend-like-there's-no-tomorrow union leaders...

This fun table comes from a new Conservative Party website that reminds people of Labour's record in office, Labour's dependence on union money and its failure to reform its approach to public spending. And it's also quite funny. Take a look...

Union militancy is a problem for the Labour Party - it is an opportunity for the Government

By Harry Phibbs
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I thought my free market Conservative comrades Allister Heath (in his City AM column this morning) and Lord Forsyth (interviewed on BBC Daily Politics at lunch time) were ungenerous in their response to the Chancellor's proposal that workers should be allowed to trade with their bosses more flexible working conditions in return for shares - all with a Capital Gains Tax exemption to give it a nudge.

If the incentives aren't enough let's boost them. If there are technical difficulties let's thrash them out. Let's get stuck into the details and make a success in practice of this idea.

One of the curious objections was that the policy was addressing two problems at once. Firstly, the reluctance of employers to take on staff due to the bureaucracy involved. Secondly, the need for more employees to become share owners, even on a modest scale, with all the benefits that can bring. Yet if this policy can address both challenges simultaneously then surely that is to be celebrated rather than decried?

The other point is that the arrangement is voluntary. So what harm can it do? If nobody wants to start a new job where this is the deal on offer they can look elsewhere. If existing employees do not want to sign away their rights in return for shares they don't have to. But what of those workers who would like to take advantage of this opportunity? Perhaps there will only be thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions. In any event the trade unions have made clear they oppose this addition to workers rights, for however many workers wish to take them up, which the Government is offering.

Is Ed Miliband really backing away from the unions?

By Peter Hoskin
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Yep, the TUC conference is in full effect. Alongside yesterday’s talk of a general strike, we now have the suggestion that pensioners should occupy council buildings in protest at cuts; a “manifesto” for teachers that instructs them to avoid “non-teaching duties” such as supervising children at lunchtime; and — unsurprising, but still deeply unedifying — the sale of t-shirts revelling in the prospect of Margaret Thatcher’s death. It would all make for a grim caricature of the extreme left were it not for one important fact: it’s real.

You’d think that Ed Miliband, the unions’ choice for Labour leader, would want to back away from all this — and that is exactly what he’s doing, albeit quite gently. At a union dinner last night, he told his table companions that, “The public doesn’t want to see strikes. Nor do your members. Nor do you.” And Ed Balls repeated the message this morning, in his speech to the conference. “I am sure that the last thing the vast majority of trade union members want, at a time of such uncertainty,” quoth the Shadow Chancellor, “is strikes over the coming months. It is not what we want. It is not what the public wants either. So let us say loud and clear: we don’t want to see a return to the 1980s.”

The “general strike” threat in perspective

By Peter Hoskin
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Another year, another TUC conference, another round of dire speculation about a general strike. You see, the unions are going to debate a motion put forward by the Prison Officers’ Association, calling for “co-ordinated action with far-reaching campaigns, including the consideration and practicalities of a general strike”. If it actually happened, it would be the first strike of that magnitude since 1926.

But let’s not get over-excited: as the Telegraph’s Dan Hodges points out, a general strike is an unlikely prospect. For starters, mulling over the “practicalities” is some distance from heading out on to the streets, placards in hand, to wage industrial action that many union bosses and members are inclined against.* And then there’s the example of last November’s dispute, which was heralded as a general strike but reduced into a one-day affair which saw only a small proportion of union members militating against the government.