Jon Cruddas interview: ten key points


by Sunny Hundal    
9:25 pm - June 16th 2012

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Jon Cruddas is interviewed in tomorrow’s Observer, and it is quite significant.

I’ll let the key points, taken straight from the interview, speak for themselves:

1. He thought New Labour had lost touch with its ethical roots and the party’s founding purpose. He turned down offers to join Gordon Brown’s government more than once.

2. On issues such as housing, social care and the wider role that the state should play in promoting secure and flourishing lives for all, he fears the country is on the edge of a crisis.

3. Suggests he will quit the shadow cabinet unless Miliband is “bold”.

4. If the party reverts to anything like late New Labour, he will be off. “I refused to join the Labour government because I was unhappy with the shape of it, and the trajectory of it,” he says. “It was becoming mechanistic and bureaucratic. It lacked an identity.”

5. “I am not here just to dust down the record. If it is on those terms, I am not interested.”

6. He has torn up Labour’s previous policy-making machinery of the past two years, replacing 29 separate policy groups with just three – on the economy, society and politics.

7. He says what the Labour party has lacked since the last election is an “over-arching story”. That story should now, he says, be about “rebuilding Britain” both in terms of bricks and mortar (more housing and infrastructure to create jobs) and creating a sense among its citizens of joint involvement in “national renewal”.

8. He wants to look at the idea of appointing union officials to company boards.

9. He wants to reform public services where necessary, but only where that will enhance their role, not as a means of shrinking them and hiving them off in parts to the private sector.

10. He talks confidently of “reforming the band”, by which he means enrolling the biggest New Labour beasts, including Tony Blair, behind project Ed.

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


1. The Judge

He talks a good game, but point 10 knackers everything else which went before. The Blairites are the last people who should be involved if the Labour Party is to provide any viable opposition not only to the coalition but to those in influential positions in Labour who merely wish for a more ‘gradualist’ approach to ‘austerity’ and the throwing of our public services to the private-sector wolves. Marginalise them and tell them to take themselves off to the Tories or LibDems if they don’t like it.

I’m afraid he won’t get far; the Sainsburys of this world won’t hold still for it.

2. Belinda Webb

Very good news!

3. Louie

I recently saw Cruddas host a Labour party event in Surrey, and he sounded very pro-Miliband there. Any strong talk about wresting Labour down the correct path and reconnecting with its roots may just be a sop to the Labour centre-left.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour’s big hitters continue to try and keep both the left and right wings of the party sweet as this Progress story continues to do the rounds.

4. Dan

Very hard to be pro industry and pro strong social policy, but always felt cruddas can deliver on policy and rhetoric. He’s got to play a large part in making labour trustworthy and true to their roots again.

5. Sunny Hundal

The Blairites are the last people who should be involved if the Labour Party is to provide any viable opposition not only to the coalition but….

You’e not reading it properly. His aim is to persuade Blair that times have changed, and to get him behind Ed M’s direction… not to go back to how New Labour was (which he criticises quite strongly).

6. Jacky Davis

Lets have some specifics about how/whether Labour will reverse or mitigate the destruction of public services, in particular the assault on the NHS.

Andy Burnham says they’ll repeal the Act, Ed M talks of addressing 3 minor points. which is it chaps? Once we know we can get behind you.

7. Alisdair Cameron

@ Sunny (5). Sorry, don’t believe that for one second. The names he cites in that bit, Purnell, David Miliband and Blair are at best unprincipled opportunists, and many would say much,much worse than that. Just what is the purpose of roping them in?
Oh, as you say, it’s to somehow persuade them to back Milband,E.’s somehow different policy direction. Okay, how is getting the backing of such dissembling,insincere and frankly unpopular types going to assist Ed? Why would you want them on board?

8. Andy

I’d never noticed before how much Jon Cruddas looks like Ed Milliband. Oh, it is Ed. Couldn’t you at least have used a picture of Jon? On a more serious note, if Blair comes back it would be a disaster.

9. Sunny Hundal

Andy Burnham says they’ll repeal the Act, Ed M talks of addressing 3 minor points. which is it chaps? Once we know we can get behind you.

Ed M himself has echoed Burnham loads of times on the NHS bill and repealing it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/apr/02/ed-miliband-health-election-campaign

10. Greenleftie

Alisdair Cameron (7) I’m not sure about Blair & Purnell, but David M has gone walk about since the Leadership election, & his views have changed a bit particularly on Foreign affairs. It’s this I reckon Jon Cruddas wants to tap.

11. Barrie J

If I or my family are to ever vote Labour again I don’t want Blair’s diseased personna anywhere near it.
Similarly: Mandelson, Falconer, Goldsmith, Campbell, Blunkett, Reid, Prestcott and all the other Labour M.P.s who simply sat on their hands and got their snouts stuck into the trough of public largesse during the Blair/Brown years.
Thieves, liars, and war criminals, you choose.

12. TONE

REALITY CHECK:

1. New Labour would not have been elected if they had not lied about increasing taxes by stealth

2. Unless you deceive them, the electorate is simply not interested in your nostrums

13. TONE

And as a coda of economic reality, can I gently point out that you can have ONLY TWO of the following:

1. a progressive tax system
2. economic growth
3. large-scale state provision

The Nordic countries have decided on 2 + 3 – and they are growing. The one choice the UK cannot make is 1 + 3…

Just saying, like…


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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  2. Jamie

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    http://t.co/NL2zL673

  3. Geoff Walker

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  4. Soniya Ganvir

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