A Free Left Blog

" Every consensus is based on acts of exclusion ." ~ Chantal Mouffe. Labour’s main problem came into focus for me yesterday when I was watching the BBC News Channel. Rupa Huq, the new Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton (congratulations to her for winning) came on and started boasting about Labour’s success in London, linking it to London as a place where UKIP doesn’t do well and drawing a contrast between the diverse, relatively well-educated capital and the rest of the country. This sort of ‘London exceptionalism’ makes some people feel very good about themselves but it doesn’t seem calculated to appeal to many outside the capital nor indeed many former Labour voters. It’s common currency among London Labourites though, and it’s telling that the contrast is most enthusiastically illustrated by contrasting Labour to UKIP . On this dimension the ‘us’ stands in contrast to a ‘them’ composed of UKIP and UKIP voters. The contrast draws its fuel from a ...

I was fortunate to get an invite to a talk by Labour’s Policy Review Coordinator Jon Cruddas yesterday evening hosted by the Civitas think tank in Westminster. Cruddas made a typically interesting and enigmatic speech, on the theme of ‘ One Nation Labour:   work, family and place ’ (transcript here ), outlining how the Policy Review is unfolding around these themes and exploring them in some detail. I won’t go into much of that detail here (click the link above to read the speech); instead I want to focus briefly on the “organisational renewal” within Labour that Cruddas spoke about in glowing terms. This is the attempt, led by the American community organiser Arnie Graf , for Labour to become more connected within communities, engaging with voters more on their terms and with less focus on “harvesting their votes” using Voter ID data (which puts you into categories and defines you without campaigners even needing to meet you).(For some of Graf’s own thoughts, cli...

This article was republished on the same day on the blog Left Foot Forward . Ed Miliband’s Labour Conference speech was full of interesting and important ideas, so let’s get stuck in. As Daily Mirror hack Kevin Maguire said on Twitter during the speech, “Red Ed is back.” It’s a rather interesting Red Ed though –not the 1970s socialist stereotype that right-wingers have been lambasting. Certainly state intervention is back on the table in serious form. The energy companies will be subject to much greater control if Labour gets into government, land speculation will be curtailed in favour of development, and state schools will permanently extend opening hours to make life easier for working parents. Each of these policies are potentially problematic, and I have my fingers crossed they have been thought through properly and Labour has got its defences and counter-attacks planned well for the assault that began immediately even while Ed was talking. The headline-gra...