Here's an afternoon reading list.
? Stephen Twigg at the New Statesman says Labour is not lurching to the left.
In his last speech to Labour Party conference in 2006 Tony Blair said this:
"10 years ago, I would have described re-linking the basic state pension with earnings as old Labour. By 2012, we aim to do it. 10 years ago, if you'd have asked me to put environmental restrictions on business, I would be horrified. Today, I'm calling for it. I would have bulked at restrictions to advertise junk food to children. Today I say that unless a voluntary code works, we will legislate for it."
He was right then and we are right now. Market failure in tough times should not simply be shrugged off. What?s needed is a hard-headed dose of common sense, not ideology that lets the British people suffer. I?ve not seen many British commentators describing Angela Merkel?s interventions in the economy as 1980s socialism.
? Nick Pearce at the IPPR reflects on the advantages and disadvantages for left populism.
Although the media only really woke up to the populist dimensions of Ed Miliband?s One Nation approach this week, it has been a part of his political armoury for some time. The discursive construction of ?the people? versus powerful vested interests is a familiar one in politics, left and right, and it has been used repeatedly by Labour leaders down the years, including Tony Blair (as Ben Jackson recounts). Obama gave a masterclass in the controlled use of populist discourse in his re-election campaign last year, painting Romney as an out-of-touch, asset-stripping plutocrat on the wrong side of the Main St vs Wall St divide. Its appeal to Labour is obvious.
But it carries a risk. The tension at the heart of Labour?s electoral strategy is between radicalism and reassurance; between offering the electorate substantial economic change to transform their living standards, and reassuring them that it will manage the economy competently so as not to threaten their family fortunes. This is mirrored in an intellectual tension on the left between those who argue that the British economy is structurally weak and in need of radical surgery, and those who think that its pre-crash performance was fundamentally sound and that an expansive macro-stance will put it back on track (Gavin Kelly and I have addressed that question and Duncan Weldon?s piece is excellent). Ed Miliband is in the former camp. He has spent the last three years arguing for a ?responsible capitalism?. Tellingly, he punctuated his speech this week by drawing the attention of his audience to the fact that the ?most important thing he would say? was that the link between growth and rising prosperity for working people had been broken, and that only substantial economic reform could restore it.
He also makes a point that should worry Twigg.
One coda to the events of the last few days. Education barely registered at the Labour conference or in Miliband?s speech. In part, that reflects the times. Wearily familiar evocations of educational aspiration and social mobility fall on deaf ears when the electorate can barely pay its bills. But education is too important to become a footnote in the left?s lexicon and it has come to something when the best that can be said of Labour?s policy stance is that nobody knows anything much about it. David Cameron will exploit that weakness in his conference speech next week, as he did last year. Labour has already ceded its leadership on education amongst the commentariat. It will be in greater trouble if the public follows.
? Andrew Rawnsley at the Guardian says Damian McBride's memoirs are damning for Gordon Brown.
Yet here we have, from the hatchet man himself, plenty of evidence that Brown was the opposite of an innocent bystander. McBride describes one occasion when Brown instructs him to leak at a European summit. "Be careful ? don't do it with any British guys." When one of McBride's schemes goes wrong, Brown asks: "Is all that business over with?" When Brown fears that a McBride leak will upset Buckingham Palace, he rings up at five in the morning screaming: "How can you do this to me? This is the Queen! THE QUEEN!" On yet another occasion when McBride has caused mayhem, Brown asks: "Why do you do this stuff?" Why? Because McBride believed that is what Brown wanted from him. After all, if Brown didn't want it, he would have sacked him.
It was Brown who created and presided over the brutish, treacherous, gangland culture in which his hitman operated. Even McBride laughs at his former capo's "comically irrational outbursts" and propensity to "unleash a tremendous volley of abuse, usually just a stream of unconnected swear words". Then there is Brown's default response to things going wrong ? which is to blame someone else. "Blair!", roars Brown about a self-inflicted blunder. "Blair made me give him the figures. Why has he done this to me?"
The real villain of the period was not McBride. He was just the vicious little monkey. The organ grinder was Gordon Brown, the man who prated about his "moral compass" while allowing his smear merchant to trash the characters of colleagues. In the end, the reputation it most fouled was his own. Which is a sort of justice.
? Benedict Brogan in the Telegraph says McBride's book is essential.
Along the way [McBride] mastered the art of what he describes as ?lying without lying? ? the ability to obfuscate, divert attention and sow false trails without telling an untruth. But the fact is that he did lie, often enough, to promote the interests of his hero. His book could easily be subtitled ?my struggle with truth?, because he poses ? but doesn?t quite answer ? the question that hangs over modern political life: When is it acceptable to lie? Late in the book, he explains his counterintuitive decision to start telling journalists the truth on election nights, about the results and the likely outcome. The more he told the truth, the more he came to be regarded as a reliable source of accurate information. And the more reliable he became, the easier it was for him to tell a lie, because no one suspected him. Telling the truth in order to become a better liar is a crude but accurate distillation of his working method.
? Chris Grayling in an interview with the Spectator says he wants to limit the role of the European court of human rights in the UK.
When Grayling replaced Ken Clarke as Justice Secretary, it signalled a hardening of the Tory position on a host of issues, most notably the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. Grayling declares that ?the whole situation now is wholly and utterly unacceptable?. His view is that they were ?never designed to do the kind of things they are doing today?. He complains that the European Court has ?an almost unlimited jurisprudence to decide what it thinks are human rights matters and the envelope is being pushed wider and wider and wider?.
But condemning the current situation is the easy part; working out what to do about it the hard part. Grayling promises that he?ll set out his answer in ?draft legislation which we will publish later in the year, next year?.
He won?t be drawn on the specifics of what will be in this bill. He wants to see what the working group he has set up with former Tory leader Michael Howard on it suggests. But he?s clear that: ?We have to curtail the role of the European Court of Human Rights in the UK, get rid of and replace Labour?s Human Rights Act. We have to make sure that there is a proper balance between rights and responsibilities in law.?
Crucially, he adds, ?I want to see our Supreme Court being supreme again. I think people want to see the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom being in the United Kingdom and not in Strasbourg.? That last sentence is the heaviest hint yet that the Tories will back leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. Without that, the Strasbourg court will always be supreme.
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