Major nations call on UN for Robin Hood Tax
contribution by Owen Tudor
In less than three weeks, the UN will hold a review summit on the Millennium Development Goals (set in 2000, they are due to be achieved in 2015 so we ought to be two thirds of the way there – and we aren’t).
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and International Development Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell will be attending the event for the UK – and the TUC has joined with many NGOs to call on them to support a concrete plan of action to reach the MDGs.
One key issue is how to pay for the measures necessary to reach those goals, and financial transactions taxes (FTTs) would make a big difference.
But it won’t just be unions and NGOs calling for a Robin Hood Tax in New York. The Leading Group – 60 nations including the UK – are calling for a currency transaction levy (a compenent part of an FTT) at the UN summit.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, Japanese foreign minister Katsuya Okada and Belgian international development minister Charles Michel are leading the charge.
Lucas calls for PR option in AV referendum
The Green MP Caroline Lucas is planning to table an amendment to rewrite the referendum question on AV next year, so it includes a “wider range of voting systems”.
In an article for the New Statesman this week she says we will be offered the “choice” between “two flavours of vanilla” – FPTP or the Alternative Vote.
Real reform is not on the agenda, she adds.
That’s why, as MPs start the second reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on 6 September, I am tabling an amendment that would rewrite the referendum question to allow people to choose from a wider range of voting systems, including properly proportional options such as the additional member system (used in elections for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Greater London Assembly) and the single transferable vote (used in Northern Ireland).
As the Labour leadership battle narrows in favour of the Miliband brothers, I challenge them, even at this late stage, to support my amendment, to demonstrate their commitment to both pluralism and democracy.
Lucas also calls on the party to move beyond narrow tribalism and embrace true pluralism.
At recent Compass conferences, I have discussed the need for a more progressive, pluralist politics, based not on Blair’s suffocating “big tent”, but on a campsite of different parties and movements, sharing common values but maintaining their own identities. Labour could play an important part in that progressive alliance, but only if it can leave behind its arrogant belief in its own exclusive role. Is there no candidate willing to lead the party in that direction?
We will soon find out.
More also by Guy Aitchison at OurKingdom
Coulson-gate blows up: both Met and NotW face new suits
Both the Financial Times and the Independent go big on the fresh Andy Coulson / News of the World allegations today.
BBC coverage so far is still limited to a few lines on of their blogs. Director Mark Thompson however is defending himself from visiting Downing Street to discuss coverage of spending cuts. Apparently this is entirely impartial.
Meanwhile, well done to Tom Watson, Chris Bryant, Ed Miliband, John Prescott and others pushing on this story.
continue reading… »
Why I am voting for David Miliband
I think it is an enormously encouraging sign that the so-called “heir to Blair”, “continuity New Labour” candidate for the Labour leadership believes in:
- an economic strategy which aims to halve unemployment
- a living wage
- doubling the bank levy
- a mansion tax on the wealthiest homeowners to reverse housing benefit cuts
- withdrawing charitable status from private schools to pay for an expansion of free school meals
- defending universal benefits
- marriage equality for same sex couples
- a comprehensive strategy to rid the world of nuclear weapons
- training 1,000 future leaders to campaign in their communities
- building more affordable homes and creating more green jobs as part of an industrial strategy to reduce Britain’s dependency on the City of London continue reading… »
If New Labour is dead – what replaces it?
Sunder and Left Futures do a good job of rebutting Blair’s claim that Labour lost the election because it was insufficiently New Labour.
But there’s something to add.
Despite what its left and right critics say, New Labour was not just a marketing ploy. It was also an intellectual project intended to put new life into social democracy. New Labour thought that top-down managerialist policies – such as tax credits, the minimum wage, increased spending on education – could achieve both economic efficiency and greater equality.
continue reading… »
In 2010, Tony Blair was so unpopular that…
Reading Tony Blair’s analysis about why Labour lost the election, I was reminded of a piece of post-election analysis done by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research:
They asked, amongst other things, the following question:
I’d like to rate your feelings toward some people and organisations, with one hundred meaning a VERY WARM, FAVOURABLE feeling; zero meaning a VERY COLD, UNFAVOURABLE feeling; and fifty meaning not particularly warm or cold.
You can use any number from zero to one hundred, the higher the number the more favourable your feelings are toward that person or organisation. If you have no opinion or never heard of that person or organisation, please say so.
The Labour Party got an average score of 44.8, with 38% positive and 47% negative.
Gordon Brown got an average score of 39.3, 33% positive, 55% negative.
David Miliband got 41.9, 21% positive, 37% negative.
Ed Miliband 39.9, 15% positive, 36% negative.
Ed Balls 35.6, 14% positive, 43% negative.
The European Union scored 41.4, immigration to Britain scored 37.5, Israel scored 38.7, and the Palestinians scored 45.6.
Tony Blair scored 36.2, with 25% positive and 60% negative.
So more people who voted in the 2010 election had negative views of Tony Blair than of Gordon Brown, either Miliband brother, Ed Balls, the European Union, the Labour Party, immigration, Israel or Palestine.
Will the web always be a hive for conspiracy theories?
contribution by Carl Miller
On Sunday, Demos released a report, The Power of Unreason. We looked at the role conspiracy theories play in extremism, violence, and terrorism.
Extremist groups use conspiracy theories to recruit, to justify violent acts and to maintain an ideology that sees violence as the answer to the world they find themselves within.
Conspiracy theories can therefore be dangerous.
continue reading… »
How much Blair hated the left and Labour
It was always obvious that Tony Blair hated the left. His recently published book said nothing new on that front.
What’s staggering is how easily he dismisses even close Labour colleagues and ministers.
Jon Cruddas
Jon made quite a name for himself. It was clever political positioning. To his overall political analysis – New Labour had deserted the working class and thus our base – he added a programme for the party. It was clothed in some modernist language, but was ultimately an attempt to build a left coalition out of Guardian intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling – and he was smart enough to make it beguiling – it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s.
Douglas Alexander
Douglas was and is a very clever guy indeed. I had tried to wean him off membership of Gordon’s inner circle; but to no avail. It was a real shame … But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised ir was more like a cult than a kirk.
Ed Balls
He has guts and he can take decisions. But he suffers from the bane of all left-leaning intellectuals. As I have remarked elsewhere, these guys never ‘get’ aspiration … He added a truly muddled and ultimately very damaging party critique. This was the view – I fear tutored by Gordon’s inclination in dealing with the party – that I deliberately chose confrontations with the party in order to demonstrate my independent credentials with the public.
John Prescott
At Cabinet, he would occassionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving … John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her back in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode … He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like ‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?’ In The Sound of Music, though the similarlity ends there…
Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle – no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looking as if I was going to bring the LibDems into the cabinet … In storms John. ‘Where’s fookin’ Menzies?’ he begins. It wasn’t a promising start…
John Smith
Of course, I had no knoweldge that John would die prematurely. Except that, in a strange way, I began to think he might… I said to (Cherie): ‘If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will.’ Is that a premonition? Not in a strict sense; but it was strange all the same. On Saturday afternoon we went to see Schindler’s List…
* * * * *
WTF was the last one about?
And then there’ his dismissal of…
recalcitrant union leaders, bolshie MPs, lefty activists and assorted intellectuals whose main contribution was to explain why nothing should change in the name of being real radicals
What does it say about Tony Blair’s loyalty to the party and the movement? What does it say about his committment to pluralism within the party?
Even the Spectator Coffeehouse blog admits (which reproduced the quotes) that Tony Blair did “not like the Labour Party one bit”.
The case for Ed Balls as Labour leader
I don’t agree with Ed Balls on everything, but he’s by far the best leader of the Labour party we’ve got on offer.
He’s also the best leader the Labour party has got to offer its more leftwing membership.
This is a bold claim, I recognise. Certainly, it’s not one I expected to be making when the campaign started in June, and it needs justification.
continue reading… »
David Miliband didn’t want Blair’s backing
David Miliband appealed to Tony Blair not to issue a public declaration of support in his battle to become the next Labour leader, fearing it could damage rather than boost his prospects in the contest, The Independent can reveal.
However Mr Blair still appeared to give his tacit support to Mr Miliband’s bid as he warned his party it would consign itself to the political wilderness if it takes a left turn.
The Blair memoirs, A Journey, were published on the day ballot papers were sent out for the Labour leadership election and injected another factor into the race.
Candidates, including David Miliband, called for the party to “move on” from the Blair-Brown era as opponents of the shadow Foreign Secretary suggested that Mr Blair’s return to the political spotlight could harm his one-time protégé and head of policy. Mr Blair endorses Alistair Darling’s proposal to halve the public deficit over four years, which is supported by Mr Miliband, and says Labour must have a “coherent” and “credible” position on the deficit if it is to regain power.
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