Another low key in the leadership race today as the campaigns concentrate on the behind the scenes work of getting out the vote, and the ghost of Blair continues to haunt the front (and comment) pages of the papers.
ED BALLSwas in Wales this afternoon meeting Labour and union members in Llanelli and Swansea. He was in Cardiff earlier today campaigning with CWU members to Keep the Post Public. Tomorrow he will be at an event held by the British Stammering Association in London, before going on to campaign in Brighton and meet members in Norwich ahead of the Sky News leadership debate in the city on Sunday morning.
Ed's interview with LabourList was published today, in which we discussed a range of issues, including his relationship with the Tory press, which has been picked up by the Guardian. Ed said:
"The reason the Daily Mail calls me 'an extreme leftwing socialist zealot' is because they don't like the fact that I make the case against some of the things the Conservatives support."
"I can say the Tories and the papers have tried to knock me down and they've failed. The others haven't been tested yet in that arena."
At long last voting has started in the Labour Leadership contest with ballot papers sent out on Wednesday. I took part in a radio panel programme on the day but the discussion was overshadowed by the publication of Tony Blair’s diaries. So, we spent an hour talking about whether politicians a) lie b) drink too much c) fiddle their expenses or d) all of the above.
I thought they might want to focus on the relationship between Brown and Blair but thankfully it seems even the media has become bored with that one. Instead the new, artificially constructed soap opera starring David and Ed Miliband has replaced it and seems to have the potential to run and run. Probably more remarkable is the lack of appetite for personal attacks amongst the candidates but I suppose that doesn’t make for such interesting reading.
Compass have today announced that they will be supporting Ed Miliband in the Labour leadership contest following a ballot of their members. Ed Miliband received over 50% of the votes polled, and over twice the number received by Diane Abbott, who came in second place. The results are as follows:
Ed Miliband : 342 Diane Abbott: 117 David Miliband: 77 Andy Burnham: 24 Ed Balls: 20
While it is not exactly surprising that Compass, like Tribune this morning, have decided to back Ed, what is surprising is the very comfortable margin by which he has won this ballot. Many have accused Ed of leaning to the left, and the support of the centre-left pressure group certainly shows that he has been able to win support in that area. This suggests that most Compass members are in opposition to their most famous member, Jon Cruddas, on the leadership, after Jon backed David Miliband just over a week ago.
The most positive development of the leadership election has been the renewed involvement and ownership of our party democracy by the membership. Supporters have become members, members have become activists, activists have taken part in hustings and in the various campaigns with great energy and enthusiasm. Like many of my colleagues, over the summer, I have held social and discussion events for young members and new members in my constituency who have joined Labour since our election defeat. People of all ages, races, and backgrounds, who want to get organised, and to get Labour back into power. Membership up 25% in Glasgow North East, desire to fight the Tories and Liberals up 100%.
Ed Balls is the shadow schools secretary and a candidate in the Labour leadership election. He met Mark Ferguson on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010.
You wrote an article for LabourList this week on your housing plan, although some of your other comments in the article have had more attention. You've identified building 100,000 new homes as a means of stimulating the economy. Do you think that's the best use of £6 billion? On your first point, it's important to challenge the media and not just to slip into a lazy view that this is only about personalities or a small number of candidates. Sometimes you have people say, “you're behind in the voting”, and you have to say “hang on a second, nobody has voted at all yet”, and I think lots of Labour Party members around the country want to know that we're not falling into the personality traps of the election campaign, but that we're actually getting down to the substance. So we did challenge people on that in the article, and I think that's the right thing to do, to ask all of us the difficult questions like you've just done on the issues which actually matter to Labour Party members: jobs, housing, who can take the argument to the Conservatives on the substance. Nobody has once said to me, as a voting member of the public “how is Peter Mandelson going to be voting?” or “do you think David Miliband or Ed Miliband are more or less in line with the New Labour legacy?” Nobody would know what you were talking about – but they do say “my daughter has been waiting for a house for two years, what are you doing about it?”
Tribune magazine have today endorsed Ed Miliband as the race for the Labour leadership heads into its final stages. However what is perhaps most interesting about their endorsement is how little it focuses on Ed, and how much time is dedicated to criticism of David Miliband. In fact, this reads more like an "anti-David" endorsement, than a "pro-Ed" endorsement.
"Labour goes nowhere if it does not both learn from its mistakes and rediscover its principled roots. Recognising the failures of New Labour is not to discount the achievements of those 13 years. But they have been overshadowed by New Labour’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, subservience to the City, timidity with the banks, an almost casual disdain for civil liberties and a disconnection with the very people Labour came into being to represent. It was the electorate which drew a line under New Labour."
At the moment, I am eagerly awaiting my ballot paper so I can vote in the Labour leadership election. Or should I say ballot papers.
I get two votes; one through my membership of the Labour Party, another through my membership of Labour Students. If I wanted I could join LGBT Labour, the UNITE union (membership of which has been offered various times at work) and the Socialist Health Association, which would give me five votes in the contest. It seems a tad unfair that some members get more votes than others. It seems even more unfair that LGBT people and ethnic minorities are entitled (if they choose) to one more vote than white or heterosexual people.
A quieter day in the leadership campaign today, as Tony Blair again dominated the airwaves. Whether or not it was a deliberate strategy, it's probably for the best that today was a quiet day in the race. Very little would have made much of an impact today, and a quiet day in the media avoids "feeding the beast". Instead, the candidates concentrated on electioneering to those lucky enough to have their ballot papers already...
DAVID MILIBAND has been in the North West, starting in Bolton, then Preston where he did a Q&A with the Lancashire Evening Post before meeting Unite members at BAE Systems. He then moved on to St Helens and finished the day at a rally in Liverpool with John Hannett (General Secretary, Usdaw), Stephen Twigg MP, Dave Rowntree from Blur and Louise Ellman MP.
In perhaps the most interesting act from a candidate today, David confronted the Blair issue head on with an email to party members, in which he said:
"I’m sick and tired of the caricature that this leadership election is a choice between rejecting or retaining New Labour. It does a disservice to all of the candidates and, even worse, a disservice to the thousands of members who’ve been participating in this contest over the last few months and working hard for years."
Today Diane Abbott gave a speech at Policy Exchange this morning and talked about how Labour should respond to the government’s Big Society agenda and give her vision on how civic society can be strengthened. You can read the full speech below.
"The Left should take leadership on issues around the family and community
My fellow leadership candidates and I have been criss-crossing the country this summer on the leadership trail. From the Highlands of Scotland to South Coast, from Wales to East Anglia, we have taken part in specially staged debates for the delectation of party members.
The media have written off this process as tedious in the extreme. The grander Guardian columnists have obviously met the Miliband brothers at innumerable smart North London dinner parties. What use they argue of a democratic process. Let the Toynbees and the Aaronovitches be the arbiters! And I have to admit that the contest so far has not exactly been “Pop Idol”.
This afternoon I listened to Tony Blair being interviewed on Radio 5 by Richard Bacon, and watched his interview with Andrew Marr again. The one thing that jumps out at you when you’re watching (or listening) to Blair, is the supreme self-confidence that he has – something that no British politician since has managed to convey. Much attention has been given to Blair’s comments in his book that Brown is a “strange” man, but surely if anything Blair is even stranger.
What kind of person has this extreme, unbounded self-confidence and drive? Is it not a strange kind of person who could return to the political stage after three years and dominate it, completely, while at the same time taking part in high-level peace talks). None of the leadership candidates have this frightening self-belief, at least not yet. Perhaps this is for the best. There can be few in the world who have such feelings, whether they are an ability or a handicap. What the Labour Party is looking for next is not a clone of Tony Blair. It's also very clearly not what Cameron is either. Any attempts to paint him, or any other British politician as such a replica should be rebuffed.
It’s probably fair to say that the 2010 Labour leadership contest hasn't been the most exciting campaign ever fought. It's certainly been less fiery than the Tory battles in either 2001 or 2005, but I reckon that's probably because we are not as ideologically divided a party as the Tories were and, deep down, still are. But after three months of campaigning, the ballot papers are hitting our doormats. It’s decision time - and in my case, and no doubt others, I've changed my mind during the campaign. My first preference will be going to Andy Burnham.
I could happily live with some of the other candidates. Both Miliband brothers would make excellent leaders, and the most important thing is that whoever we elect becomes the next Prime Minister.
On the night of the Marr interview with Blair and the Channel 4 leadership hustings I, perhaps somewhat begrudgingly, had to be in the community public hall for a 7PM Annual General Meeting. Now whilst I have the pleasure of Sky+ to record such programmes, the prospect of a community AGM is never a truly exciting one – a small group of people in a large hall, rich tea biscuits, adoption of an annual report, confirmation of minutes and the like. Hardly as exciting as hearing from Tony Blair after three years of silence, or so I thought.
I have spared a moment to look up from my copy of "A Journey", the fastest-selling autobiography of all time, to consider the plight of Christopher Myers. Myers was, very briefly, a special adviser to the foreign secretary William Hague. He resigned this week after Paul Staines reported on his blog that he and Hague had shared a hotel bedroom. Hague has denied any impropriety, but the young man has had to go anyway.
I feel enormous sympathy for him. The story has gone from internet gossip to front-page news within a single news cycle, and his resignation has been brutal and swift. It has raised lots of questions about the role of special advisers, and revealed, yet again, the colossal degree of ignorance about their role and function.
Ballot papers to select Labour’s candidate for London Mayor will be dispatched next week. Ken or Oona: our previous, successful Mayor or the lively, personable former MP?
It’s a hard choice, but one Labour Party members have to make. I have come to my decision. It quite simply has to be Ken.
As a feminist and a longstanding campaigner for more women in public life, I would dearly like to support a female candidate, this would be my natural choice and what people would expect me to do. I find it a real shame that there is no woman standing as Labour Mayoral candidate who has the right experience.
Ed Miliband is right; the process by which parents can vote on whether to maintain academic selection simply doesn't work. Yes, we need a review: justice demands it. The policy that Miliband wants to review allows selective entry into grammar schools to remain unless a majority of local eligible parents vote for it to change or grammar school governing bodies decide to change their admission policies to admit children of all abilities. To date, no governing bodies have done this. Before a ballot can be held, 20% of eligible parents in the areas concerned must sign a petition calling for a ballot. To require all of the 164 grammar schools in England to take children of all abilities would need 48 petitions and ballots.
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