The Glasgow East byelection result is another nail in the coffin of New Labour. Across the country, the electorate are crying out for change, they want a government that can help improve their lives.

But a politics that is rooted in the 1990s has simply run out of answers. In response, the government once again claim they are listening, but things still seem unlikely to change; despite political wipe-out now staring Labour in the face.

If Labour politicians refuse to protect people from the economic forces that are harming their lives it’s no wonder people are turning to other political parties.

This awful defeat vindicates what Compass has been saying for three years – that the coalition that brought Labour to power in 1997 has been shattered. Between 1997 and 2005, the party lost 4 million voters – and this time we saw a further pulling-away of the working-class vote that New Labour has always ill-advisedly taken for granted.

Meanwhile, people across all classes and social groups are turning away from the party. Particularly in England the Tories are on the march; partly thanks to the sense that they are engaging with concerns that lie at the centre of people’s lives.

Needless to say, Gordon Brown’s stiff, remote style of leadership doesn’t help. But there is a more fundamental political problem that is destroying the Labour Party.

Even at a time when the credit crunch and rising prices mean that the post-Thatcher settlement is being questioned as never before, a supposedly progressive government refuses to address the way that the unrestrained free-market is damaging people’s lives in no end of areas: from housing and rising fuel bills, to crippling consumer debt and insecurity at work, and on to the dysfunctional inequality that defines so many of the UK’s current problems.

Others may be distracted by New Labour kremlinology, and the question of whether one of Brown’s cabinet colleagues might somehow be persuaded to replace him.

For us, there is no point in talking about such changes if the conversation isn’t fundamentally about a change of direction that will revive people’s confidence that the government is in touch with modern concerns, and in control of the forces that shape them.

There is little money left to spend and less than two years before the likely date of the next election, but that still leaves room for measures that would signal a change of direction and show that Labour understands the challenges of the 21st century.

We would argue in favour of:

- A windfall tax on energy and oil companies to help those struggling with escalating fuel bills.
- A fairer tax system with a new top rate and a cut in taxes for the low paid with all new revenues ear marked to boost benefit levels for the poor. Some have suggested that those earning under £10,000 per year should pay no tax. This is clean, simple and very appealing.
- A new drive to build council houses. By 2010, 5 million people will need social housing, but this year, a start will be made on only 100,000 new homes. With private construction apparently in freefall, the state has to step in.
- A high-profile drive to improve people’s working lives via government setting new standards. As a minimum, we need a new fair employment clause in all public contracts, to make sure that the public sector points the way out of the low pay culture that ensures – contrary to recent headlines about welfare reform – that work is still no guarantee of an exit from poverty. The government should take the lead of London and roll out a living wage nationwide in all public procurement contracts – which even Boris Johnson has raised in London in his first months in office.
- A moratorium on Post Office closures, and new protection for the universal service obligation of the Post Office.
- Abolishing the youth exemptions in the minimum wage.
- Help close the gender pay gap – with statutory pay audits for equality.
- Access to all local authority sports facilities free for children under 16 to confront the issues of obesity and anti-social behaviour head on.
- Across all these policy areas, if money is needed to deal with rising insecurity and anxiety then we should rethink the renewal of Trident and scrap the ID cards scheme. Government insiders claim that the latter is effectively being left to wither away, but where is the political advantage in that? On this, as with so many policies, a clear change has to be demonstrated.

Over the summer and beyond, Labour has to begin a conversation about all of this and take clear action, or face long years in the political wilderness. Compass intends to act as a catalyst for that process and play an active role in it.

For years, the Green Party operated on a system of collective leadership. Up until 1991 it had 6 co-principal speakers. Since then it’s had two. That’s led to certain groups labelling the Greens as political amateurs - with good hearts, but no idea of what to do.

But last summer the party voted by a margin of 73% to elect a single leader. The Yes campaign argued that a leader was necessary for the party to ever achieve its full potential. The bulk of the party agreed - and so this September the Greens will have their first leadership elections.

The story so far
The first nomination came in last Monday. Caroline Lucas (pictured), at present an MEP and a principal speaker, launched a campaign focused on radical politics delivered with a professional punch. Her website summed up the message:

On climate change, scientists tell us that the next 10 years will be critical in terms of whether we have any chance of avoiding the worst of climate chaos. It is still the case that only the Green Party has both the radical policies, and the political commitment, that are so desperately needed to ensure that we do.

And on social justice, we face a country more unequal than it has been for decades. Only the Green Party has coherent alternatives to government policies that are privatising public services, increasing inequalities, and leading to greater violence and exclusion.

Lucas wants the party to provide discontented liberals and lefties with a credible home. Recent events and policies clearly show the party to be of that liberal-left; where else could a party that challenged David Davis as too authoritarian sit? The energy is clearly there, and Caroline Lucas says she’ll provide the professional quality to bring that vision to the voter.
Continue reading…

Ken Livingstone has effectively begun a four year campaign to be London’s next Mayor, having turned himself into a one-man unofficial scrutiny committee of the new Johnson regime. He says that he will confirm his decision to run once Labour opens the nomination process in 2010 (though he has shown before that this might not be his only possible route to City Hall).

It is not difficult to see why running again appeals to Ken. It offers not the prospect of avenging his defeat to Boris Johnson and being back in office for the 2012 Olympics too. Were Livingstone to win the Mayoralty again, it would demonstrate political stamina and bounce-backability which might well be unparalleled in democratic politics.

But there’s the rub for Labour. Livingstone may now have his sights set on outlasting both Thatcherism and New Labour. But will the party want to run a candidate in 2012 who would not just be re-fighting the election of four years before, but who first held the leadership of the Greater London Council more than three full decades before?
Continue reading…

SnapsThoughts has a photo essay on the fraughtness of union links with Labour. Each image is accompanied by some thought-provoking words. Highly recommended.

Douglas has news of a sexist Tory. In other news, bears are Catholic and the pope poos in the woods.

Spirit of 1976 discovers his inner Clarkson and feels DIRTY.

Sexual Intelligence Blog reports on John McCain’s reluctance to discuss sexual matters. Not in front of the children, dear.

Jonathan Calder is rather cross about curfews, and people who hail them as a success before they even start.

Lee Griffin has some praise for the home secretary’s plans on knife crime.

Feminist SF covers the finale of the most recent series of Doctor Who.

That’s all folks. Tips to the usual address, and I’ll see you Sunday.

A short one today, I’m afraid, since I was up until stupid o’clock last night and am knackered

Purple Cthulhu and prominent Brussels-ite Nick Whyte both report on the sneaky Tories being sneaky and urge you to write to your Euro MP before they introduce a Euro Law which could take your internets away. Andrew Ducker has already written, as have many others.

UK Polling Report has realised that young people can’t remember living under the Tories and thus are less likely to be prejudiced against them. In other news, the sky is blue and the Pope shits in the woods.

Jonathan Calder praises the Sunday Times for praising Lib Dem Economic Expertise.

Septicisle approves of an article in the Daily Fail shock!

Smashboredom examines the G8 in group blog Powerswitch.

And The Prydonian Academy has an end of series poll for Doctor Who.

Is there a blog we should be reading, or a post that you think we should link to? Email us your tips to tips@liberalconspiracy.org

Iain Dale’s Total Politics site has launched, and revealed its editorial team. It’s actually quite interesting, and appears to be very well funded too… Why no, these grapes are sweet and tasty, why’d you ask? (Hat tip, Mark Pack at LDV). Oddly they don’t appear to have linked to us from their political blogs directory, but then, as a top ten political blog we’re hard to miss, and the blog directory is so badly-constructed, it’s possible they have linked to us and I just haven’t found the link

Andrew Rilstone writes about how a writer’s writings are distinct from and yet linked to the writer as a person and that person’s political views. Brilliant post (and not just because he says The Shadow Over Innsmouth is better than The Call of Cthulhu), but does contain rude words: proceed with caution.

PC Bloggs turns her ever-acerbic eye onto government in the latest of her occasional series on 21st Century Policing. If I could make PC Bloggs a Home Office advisor…

Political Betting are wondering if the Labour Party will lose their deposit in Henley.

Lynne Featherstone is a big blubbing girly - and this entry is so lovely it turned me into one too. Get your tissues out, and I won’t tell anyone that you needed them.

BluJay posts in the cheerfully-named So Very Doomed group blog about the difficulties that we in the developed world will have obtaining food if things don’t change drastically and soon.

Slightly Warped posts pictures of a fire in a cave in Uzbekistan that’s been burning for 5 years (so far) and is known as the Door to Hell. (Hat tip: Neil Gaiman)

Tomorrow is Download Day. I’ve been using the Firefox3 beta for some time now, and I’m very impressed with it. If you’re using IE and fancy giving it a shot, you may as well do it tomorrow and be part of a world record attempt. Click the button for the link:

Lynne Featherstone talks about the difficulties of relying on the NHS to provide you with independent movement.

Spirit of 1976 has suddenly discovered an urge to try Khat - why? Because the Tories want to ban it.

The Times has a fascinating article on the history of Vibrators, and how the humble Personal Massager reflects the changing attitude of society to women.

Smash Boredom has a convincing argument that Robert Mugabe is right about something.

PC Bloggs has a very affecting tale of police resources spread too thin. I can’t recommend her blog enough.

And finally, Feminist SF reviews the weekend’s episode of Doctor Who in a rather weary manner.

The real problem with Labour is right, more than anything, is the perception that we’re being bled dry by various different outlets of our hard earned cash.

If Gordon Brown is to have any hope of a fightback, the best place to start is with our energy prices, a subject that the government clearly feel is a priority given the announcements made on the 30th of May. Don’t be fooled though, if you’re hoping for a cure to the ever booming gas and electricity prices then you’ll be sorely disappointed by this latest official announcement.

All in all the plans seem to do as much as the idea of the big six energy companies investing a further £225million over 3 years in to social tariffs, a scheme that if you take British Gas’s profits (which is from my perspective a good average of the other companies) would mean merely 2-3% of their annual profits being “reinvested” in to helping the poorest customers afford their rising energy bills.
Continue reading…

I will be the first to admit, I don’t drive a car. I use trains more than any other form of transport except walking. Buses come a very distant third. Perhaps this makes me totally biased in respect of the concept of congestion charges but I am.

When the opposition to congestion charges reads like a poor man’s Daily Mail, I don’t see any reason to care what motorists think. If this is genuinely a cross-section of what motorists think then frankly they’re too stupid to be allowed an opinion never mind suffrage.

If readers are wondering why this subject and why now, it’s because Graham Stringer has declared that if we go through with congestion charges, we’ll torpedo our chances of election in Manchester by alienating voters in marginal seats. Evidently the notion of getting his parliamentary P45 doesn’t appeal to Stringer.
Continue reading…

Mmmmmm. Is there a daintier dish than jerked right-wing knee? The Bishop of Stafford writes an article about climate change and rather unwisely uses Joseph Fritzl as an example of human selfishness. Watch the right-wingers hitch up their skirts and squeal like the housekeeper in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.

It could be argued what the Bishop said took the argument to the acceptable limits of taste. So. without further ado, let he who is without sin cast the first stone…

Continue reading…

Rich American Libertarians are planning to live on huge metal platforms out on the ocean. Which is good news. Now if only all of our problems could be got rid of so easily.

Executives from Google and Paypal are financing the creation of new independent ’seastead’ states which will be anchored out in international waters. Once built, anti-social millionaires fed up with those tiresome duties of having to obey laws and pay tax, can sink their millions into the project and rust their days out on the high seas.

Of course founders Patri Friedman and Wayne Gramlich don’t quite put it like that. In their manifesto: Seasteading: A Practical Guide to Homesteading the High Seas they write of new sustainable communities that will serve as models of ‘open source’ government.
Continue reading…

So David Cameron the political shape-shifter, just like Odo from Deep Space Nine but with less humanity, is spinning away the true nature of the Tory Party again today.

This seems to be his main tactic - either lie about what your party believes in, ignore anything your party may have believed in the past, or preferably believe nothing at all.
Continue reading…

When someone says they can “put an end to extinction,” you tend to listen to them. That’s exactly what a group of Norwegians claimed earlier this year, when they placed 100 million food crop seeds in a “Doomsday vault,” built into the side of an Arctic mountain.

A letter dropped on the doormat yesterday. If you live on an estate (that’s council, not country), you may have had something similar.

RE: Proposed Removal of Recycling Bins on [road]

I am writing to inform you that we have received several complaints regarding the misuse of recycling bins on [estate]; due to the area round the bins becoming an eyesore. Currently we have placed this area on our weekend hot spot list and therefore a lorry removes all items round the bins on a Saturday morning. During the week the cleaner also has been instructed to ensure this area is tidy. Despite these efforts users of the recycling bins are constantly leaving recycling items outside the bins causing an eyesore.

We would like to offer an opportunity for residents who live near where the bins are situated to voice their opinion on this issue of whether they will be in favour of the bins being removed.

Yours faithfully

I live about 5 houses away, less than fifty yards. Overleaf there’s a few lines of space for me to fill in my views (and it would appear that I may not continue on a separate sheet…). It would be a waste of space, I guess, to use them to comment on the death of the comma in local govermnent communications. So,

I am not in favour of their removal. My 4-year-old puts her rubbish in the bin. Are we now outsourcing recycling policy in Hackney to a few slobs who can’t even manage that?

But maybe I’m just an old idealist. Can you come up with something better? You’ve got 2 sentences, 3 short ones tops, and an impeccably left-liberal brief.  I may even nick yours; the posting deadline is Monday.

What’s in it for them, eh? That must have crossed your mind on reading this chirpy piece from Green London mayoral candidate Siân Berry in the New Statesman hitching her wagon to the Labour party.

Continue reading…

LOLcat, if you don’t know, has become a popular internet phenomena where pictures of cats are given speech bubbles with funny messages in pidgin English. Sometimes, pictures of cats are super-imposed on random pictures too. See: Icanhascheezburger

I have a new suggestion. LOL-blair. In this game we find pictures of Tony Blair from his latest new and exciting plan to change the world, write captions, and speculate on what he’s going on move on to next.
Continue reading…

Well there’s a headline I never thought I’d write. It may normally be the epitome of all evil, but yesterday I was taken aback by a front-page campaign in the Mail calling for a ban on plastic bags. No really, they’re being serious about it.

There were pictures of animals dying because of plastic bags, like above, in the paper and on its website. I’m impressed. There’s even a petition I’ve signed (though I did feel slightly dirty after).

Could the Irish and M&S lead the way here? [updated]
Continue reading…

The climate change denial blog has an interesting post from Roman Krznaric entitled ‘Does The Left Really Believe in Climate Change’. Krznaric recounts his attendance at a leftist conference on Latin America that he attended last year in London. He recounts that not only did none of the speakers mention climate change as a factor to be considered in Latin American politics, but support for Chavez in Venezuela appears to condone his reliance on oil to fund the ‘Bolivarian revolution’.

Krznaric says that

I can’t help concluding that the Progressive Left doesn’t yet really believe in climate change.

He gives the following reasons for this:

One factor concerns hope. For the first time in years there is a sense of hope about Latin America amongst the Progressive Left. Neoliberalism is in retreat and left-leaning governments are being elected throughout the region. Chavez is challenging the US and the multinationals, and having an impact on poverty reduction. Bolivia has its first indigenous President. But none of this, I believe, is an excuse for ignoring climate change.

A second factor is that many activists and policy-makers continue to keep human development issues separate from what they think of as ‘environmental’ issues. If you are interested in tackling poverty in the favelas of Rio, it is quite normal not even to consider that climate change is a related issue. I think there is a real need for development agencies and activists on the one hand, and environmentally-oriented organisations and campaigners on the other, to merge their thinking to create a new Ecological Humanism, so that climate change and social justice are considered interdependent issues.

A third, possibly deeper factor, is psychological denial. As individuals, we have an extraordinary capacity to shut our minds to the realities of issues that we think are frightening or insurmountable. Climate change is one of them. The good news is that people in rich countries are starting to overcome their denial and accept that climate change is not only happening, but will change their own lives, and that they have to adapt to and embrace the changes. The bad news is that most of them remain in denial when it comes to the world’s poorest countries. As a recent Oxfam report points out, the rich world is sorely lagging behind in its response to the need for developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change link..

The time has come for us to take our struggle against denial a stage further, and recognise that climate change is a reality not only for ourselves, but for the world’s poorest people in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions.

This article is absolutely right that in many left wing and liberal circles, climate change is nowhere near higher enough up the agenda. It’s also right to skewer the neo-Bolivarians for their short-termist relianceon petrodollars. But I can’t help thinking that the source of the problem isn’t so much denial or the other reasons Krznaric gives, so much as a more intractable problem with politics itself.

Continue reading…

Predictably, the post-Bali conference fallout is one of claim and counter-claim. Is it a disappointing cop-out? A great day for the environment? The best that could be hoped for under the circumstances? I’ll leave this one to the multitudes who claim to be experts on this topic. What I am struck by though, is the increasing number of commentators who argue that whatever the deal reached in Bali, whatever action we take, we are too late to avoid a period of considerable climate change-related turmoil.

I was very disturbed by a recent article by well-regarded writer on climate change Ross Gelbspan. Gelbspan’s message is harsh in the extreme:
Continue reading…