You are here: Home » Comment »

It’s time Labour focused on Britain’s real scandals

July 7, 2012 8:47 am

Author:

Tags:

Share this Article

Labour is talking about the wrong scandals. We are too preoccupied with the latest Westminster fads and are failing to talk about the bread and butter issues that affect people’s lives.

The fuss about Barclays will bemuse most normal people. I have little doubt that traders acted improperly, immorally and possibly even illegally. But even as someone who is interested, and even a little bit geeky about politics, I can’t quite bring myself to follow the debate about who said what about which type of inquiry should exist and when. I’m not exercised or outraged about whether the inquiry has cross party support. I don’t care about who said who should resign and when. Bob Diamond will doubtlessly be replaced by someone just as overpaid and just as implicated in mess at Barclays, so why bother entering into a spat and waste energy calling for his scalp?

Meanwhile, the real scandals that plague people’s everyday lives are too often going unnoticed and undiscussed. Ed Miliband’s rhetoric about predators and producers truly resonates with a nation that feels increasingly ripped off- but people are far more likely to be angry at their spiralling electricity or mobile phone bills than they are about the internal workings of Barclays’ board or who text who what at News International.

The scandal of profiteering by grubby private companies in social care receives almost no attention, despite the fantastic National Care Service Labour pledged at the last election. The scandal of buy to let landlords making rented housing wholly unaffordable is barely given a mention, kicked to the long grass to be discussed in Labour’s policy review in 2014. The scandal of 100,000 young people trapped in unpaid internships and even more locked out of the opportunities they deserve is nowhere near Labour’s agenda, despite this submission to the National Policy Forum by myself and Hazel Blears. The scandal of train and bus companies making record profits while commuters pay record fares is being worked on beaverishly by the superb Maria Eagle MP, but solid announcements of what we would do to make public transport better appear to hitting gridlock.

When at the NPF in June Ed Miliband said that “no-one who works should be in poverty”, he was speaking to ordinary people who are tired of working long hours for little pay. We need more statements like this and more detail to show how we can make it happen. We can’t hope to rally our supporters around Westminster fads and oppositionalism alone. The Tory omnishambles means Labour has an opportunity to be heard for the first time in years. Let’s not waste the chance to really talk about what sort of Britain we want to build.

20120707-102522.jpg

Related posts:

  1. Time, experience and normality: Labour’s real loss
  2. Revealed: The real Middle Britain
  3. Innovative, entrepreneurial and with strong social support networks: the real Britain revealed
  4. Tory attack doc designed to split Labour – but we are united, and focused on the issues at stake in the election
  5. Why we can’t turn into ‘part-time’ Britain
  • LaurenceB

    “… no-one who works should be in poverty …”

    Whereas if you’re unemployed or denied work for any reason the opposite is true.

    • Hibernian

      It is kind of odd to make a fuss about in-work poverty, e.g., low wages etc., while at the same time thinking about forcing people in out-of-work poverty, e.g., the unemployed, to undertake compulsory workfare for no wages at all! 

      • treborc

         In an article for the Guardian,
        marking the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge report, Mr Byrne suggests
        the ever-increasing housing benefit budget and benefits for long-term
        unemployment are major flaws in the system.He also highlights the lack of proper incentives to reward responsible long-term savers as helping fuel the benefit culture.
        He
        writes: ‘Beveridge would scarcely believe that housing benefit alone is
        costing the country over £20billion a year. That is simply too high.’
        ‘One more heave behind our old agenda won’t do.’
        He
        would like to see the contributory principle once again restored so
        there is a more defined link between what people put in and what they in
        turn receive from the system.
        Mr
        Byrne believes the centre ground of politics has shifted to the Left on
        issues such as bankers and equality, but that many voters – even
        traditional Labour supporters – believe there needs to be a tough line
        on welfare.
        Labour believes
        that as the Tory cuts bite through 2012 people will look at how the
        pain is distributed through society and Labour must not be seen to be
        protecting what Mr Byrne describes as the appalling benefits bill.
        And
        he suggests the time is right as the Government is ‘simultaneously
        presiding over an exploding welfare bill while cutting back on
        contributory benefits and services like childcare – vital if we are to
        ensure that the rhetoric on making work pay becomes a reality for all’.
        Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081673/It-time-radical-rethink-welfare-state-Senior-Labour-MP-calls-dramatic-shake-benefits-system.html#ixzz204gEgxi9

        • Hibernian

          So Byrne wants to cut welfare even more than the Tories during a time when work is declining and more people are losing their jobs since the early Thatcher years of the 1980s. What a tosser!

          • Alan Giles

            It should never be forgotten that it was not the Coalition which implemented David Freuds “reforms” initially – it was back in 2009 when James Purnell was, allegedly, the “Labour” welfare minister – even though as he was forcing it through Parliament, Freud (investment banker, multi-millionaire, self styled “expert” on welfare) had become a Tory peer.

            Like Liam Byrne,  Purnell was one of the “expenses” swindlers, though, unlike Byrne, he did have the decency to stand down from Parliament in 2010

        • LaurenceB

          If this is true then the Labour Party is finished. 

        • Dave Postles

           We can vilify Byrne, but presumably he is expressing the current policy accepted by the shadow cabinet, which constitutes a very sad state of affairs.  If you must revert to a notion of a contributory principle, please: (a) start to define what sorts of contributions people make to society; (b) consider whether all people can make those fiscal contributions which seem to be at issue; and (c) make allowance for deferred contributions – i.e. create the opportunities for people to enter into proper working conditions so that they can make these fiscal contributions retrospectively.  Better still, however, consider our collective responsibilities to each other in our fortunes and misfortunes.

          • Peter Barnard

            The “contributory principle” is effectively dead these days, Dave. Apart from state retirement pensions, most social security payments are funded by general taxation.

            In 2009/10, the NI Fund paid out £75 bn, of which £66 bn were state pensions. Total social security payments were £163 bn, with an additional £24 bn in tax credits. There was also another £4.7 bn net additional payment going on public sector pensions.

            You are absolutely right to advocate “create the opportunities for people to enter into proper working conditions …”

            I think that our politicians – on both sides – are being less than honest on the prospects for “full employment,” both in the short term and the medium term.

            However, it is much easier (and politically advantageous) to criticise the “scroungers.”

          • treborc

            The problem it’s all about getting elected, labour now spouts it would make jobs, it failed to do that in it’s 13 years it used the public sector, but the public sector will shrink, so how is labour going to make 2 million disabled jobs, 3 million jobs for the out of work that five million jobs, then add to that the so called economic unemployed or inactive as labour loved to call them, five million of them.

            So full employment ten million jobs, it will be interesting

  • treborc

    So we are what to think to worry about Bankers, the Libor scandal affected most people in this country and I think more people are again angry with labour then you all think.

    The problem with you lot is that telling us about hard working people is really getting people annoyed, labour still find it hard to speak about council housing, social housing, working class, so they come out with words they think would not annoy like hard working people, affordable housing.

    The problem   is not being heard is it, it’s saying something worth listening to…..

  • Dave Postles

    The condition of the people is to some extent tied into these issues, I fear.  Barclays and GSK may have damaged the international reputation of British industry, which will affect us all, not least the unemployed. The only mitigation is the corporate abuse elsewhere (Orange in France seems a current massive issue).

  • Franwhi

    I was right there with you until you namechecked Hazel B

  • Andwhynot

    But all these issues are linked to a damaged culture started by Thatcher and prolonged by every government since including a huge boost by Blair’s right leaning New Labour fiasco. Bob Diamond has the same values and morals as any slum landlord or owner of the privatised, and thus failed, social services sector. Where profit dominates service invariable suffers in time. The idea of competition leading to efficiency and best price to the customer is a proven failed model in the UK. Starting at Government level the UK citizen is seen as an easy target for tax hikes and benefit cuts. They are easily defrauded by banks and other financial institutions and ripped off by privatised utilities. Seeing this trend then every other profit focused business jumps on the band wagon. Labour needs to address the culture and moral fibre of this country : renationalise where the worst excesses of Britain predominate – rail, energy and water. Overhaul the financial sector and put a cap on private rents to start with. Then start investing in state owned assets that benefit the citizen. The private sector have had their chance and have been found wanting. Time to change.

    • treborc

       And if Labour came back to power tomorrow I can hear Miliband and Ball’s sitting smugly in office knowing they have five years, State…. We have to carry on with spending cuts, we have to carry on with the Tories spending plans, and sadly nothing will change.

      Until somebody who know more about it can tell us what else we can do, No Socialist need apply.

      • Andwhynot

        I do not disagree – Miliband hasn’t got the message yet and is still fixated on appealing to his “squeezed middle” but over the next two years the Labour Party has to get the message that a progressive tax system linked to earnings is required to close the increasing gap between poor, squeezed middle, rich and super rich and not be fooled into thinking the will be a mass exodus from this country. The majority of economists reject austerity especially now it has been proven to fail beyond any doubt. However the free-marketeers continue to profit from the foolish policy and as they are the real movers and shakers behind the Tories it is unlikely that Osborne will change course. As for Balls, Miliband should shed this link with the past. Calls this last week that he could have done more ring true with the electorate and Miliband detracts from his own position by keeping Balls on the Shadow Cabinet.

        • LaurenceB

          Miliband doesn’t seem too bright as far as I can see or have any real convictions as far as politics goes – he seems to be quite an empty vessel as far as morality and principles go. Politics is no more than a career choice for such people; men and women who have no burning desire to elevate the poor or make the world a better place for the dispossessed and the suffering. Miliband came from a political family led by a genuinely left-wing father and so he joined the Labour Party probably to impress his dad. Miliband isn’t an outstanding, great, or even a particularly good man when all is said and done. You can’t expect courage or originality or principled politics from people of his ilk. If defending innocent and helpless benefits claimants seems unpopular Miliband will spurn and desert them without a second thought, sticking and twisting the knife in their hearts more deeply and even more fatally than any of his Conservative competitors.

          Just you wait and see.

          • Billsilver

            He’s never done a real job, merely clung to the coat-tails of pygmies.

      • hp

        All we can do is ask for honesty when it comes to public spending plans.
        Probably too much to ask from a politician.
        Yes, we have to learn to spend according to our means.
        And we need to decide what is the best way to spend that money.

  • http://torrentfreak.com/ Rob8urcakes

    Gus is of course quite right when he boldly states that no-one who works should be in poverty (or have to rely on State benefits), but we also need to ensure that no-one incapable of work should be in poverty either!!

    We’re witnessing the transformation of our social democracy into one of an outright plutocracy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy ) by a Tory Party of sociopaths who are now shamelessly KILLING our own populace – but it goes mostly unnoticed and unmentioned in the mainstream media.  And their targets are the sick, poor, disabled, jobless youth, and elderly people.

    To date – according to the running total at http://calumslist.org/ - the Tories have killed 23 people since coming to power only 2 short years ago, and they intend to continue this trend relentlessly until someone somewhere with sufficient authority wises up and have these murderers charged appropriately and possibly even with Crimes Against Humanity.

    The UK should now be reported to United Nations for failing to properly protect and secure our own population with viable welfare and social care provisions.

    • hp

      Of course, the thousands of Iraqis illegally lilled under the last govt. don’t count ‘cos they’re foreign.  Those 23 are the important ones.

  • treborc

    When at the NPF in June Ed Miliband said that “no-one who works should
    be in poverty”, he was speaking to ordinary people who are tired of
    working long hours for little pay. We need more statements like this and
    more detail to show how we can make it happen. We can’t hope to rally
    our supporters around Westminster fads and oppositionalism alone. The
    Tory omnishambles means Labour has an opportunity to be heard for the
    first time in years. Let’s not waste the chance to really talk about
    what sort of Britain we want to build.
     

    Remove Labour insert Tory, remove Miliband insert IDS, and the question is of course why bother voting labour when you have a party who will decimate the poor.

    • DanFilson

      Yawn. Another Tory troll. If not Tory, then SWP or similar who bash Labour with the same relentlessness and whom I often suspect of being quietly subsidised by the Tories to attack Labour from the left.

    • Chris

       And your alternative is? A bad Labour government is still better than a good Tory one!

      • aracataca

        No alternative will be offered Chris. Instead there will be endless carping and abuse. Great isn’t is?

        • aracataca

          Sorry ‘isn’t it’?

          • treborc

            Children

      • aracataca

        See what I mean Chris?

      • Alan Giles

        ”
        A bad Labour government is still better than a good Tory one!”

        A bad government is a bad government,that is all there is to it. Gordon Brown comes to mind.

        • aracataca

          I’d like to see you in government- maybe at the Treasury or at the Foreign Office.

  • Chris

    Maybe we should club together and buy everybody in the Shadow Cabinet a copy of Paul Krugman’s “End this recession NOW!”. It does give a full alternative if you get past the understandable American bias!

    • DanFilson

      More to te point would be to force the Cabinet, not the Shadow Cabinet, to read it.

      • Brumanuensis

        I doubt they’d pay any attention, Dan, alas.

      • Chris

         That’s about as likely as the existence of the “confidence fairy” – read the book to understand in detail but I guess the point is in the title!

    • aracataca

      Have you read it? Is it strict Keynesianism or a modified version?

      • Chris

         Yes I’ve read it. It’s modified keynesian economics and of course could be criticised by the purist as not “socialist” but offers a good analysis of what’s wrong in America, Europe and the UK. He recognises they are different but related. he even offers solutions which are stronger than those offered by our current front bench so should be compulsory reading for the Treasury team!
        It’s the best kind of popular economics like Galbraith – which is how I got into doing an economics degree 40 years+ ago!
        Borrow it from your local Library – its cheaper and keeps the service going. Waiting for Steiglitz’s “The Price of Inequality” to be available from my library.

  • Leeden

    There are too many MPs with scandals of their own so they shouldn’t get het up about anybody else. If they were honest themselves they could

    • DanFilson

      Keep peddling that myth and undermining democracy. That is one of the ways the Weimar Republic collapsed into Hitlerism. The reality is that most MPs of the main parties do not have scandalous secrets and are not corrupt. They may serve primarily their peers, in the Tory case the wealthy or ‘better-off’ as they are quaintly termed. But that is not corruption. The essence of your comment is to divert attention from the content of the original posting. This is called trolling.

      • Alan Giles

        Desperate stuff Dan!. Hitler dragged into it.

        I suppose it depends on what you regard as “scandalous”: if you think theiving public money, in the form of claiming “expenses” for non-existant bills or buying £8000 TV sets because you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is scandalous then I should say “Leeden” has a point.

        Whatever party they belong to, when peopple are so brazenly on the fiddle it seems to me that they are in n o position to comment on the greed of others.

        • treborc

           Ah yes but Politician can say sorry for stealing £15,000 and then get four or five weeks in Prison come out and write a book

        • DanFilson

          Duck islands and moat-cleaning were so obviously outrageous tat quite rightly those two particular Tory MPs did not stand for re-election, and Derek Conway’s ‘employment’ of his sons was just one of many utterly wrong claims by MPs. But many MPs, of all parties, had made claims which they had first checked with the Fees’ Office as being in order only later to be told that the common acceptance of rules had been revised. The bulk of most MP expenses claims was and is legitimately spent on supporting an effective office. The idea that we shoud go back to a part-time secretary and the MP’s unpaid back-up secretary and assistant is obviously absurd. Yes, my reference to the Weiar Republic could be an example of Godwin’s Law, but I am genuinely concerned that the constant abuse of politicians hiding elective office as all being in it simply for what they can get out of it corrodes trust in the very democratic process, which hands away power to demagogues.

          • Alan Giles

            I don’t think the hypocritical stance of the likes of McNulty and Purnell – or Blears come to that can be written off so lightly.

            All 3 complained about benefit claimants  at the same time as they were falsly claiming for “cleaning” that was never done (Purnell) or claiming that their parents home was their second home (McNulty).

            People like that – and Grayling and Duncan-Smith – who demand total honesty from others while knowingly lining their own pockets deserve all the abuse hurled at them. More should have been prosecuted

  • Brumanuensis

    But it illustrates the corruption and culture of contempt for customers and society that exists among many of our major companies, epitomising the ‘predators’ that Ed Miliband warned about last September. And the public interest is not necessarily the same as what the public are interested in.

  • ovaljason

    What about re-writing your father’s Will after he’s died to “enhance” your inheritance tax obligations?

    I think we can all agree that is scandalous.  Even Gordon Brown described it as a tax loophole that must be shut down.

    I mean, who would re-write their father’s will in this way?

    Well, step forward Mr Edward Miliband.

    • Brumanuensis

      Now there folks, is your textbook standard ad hominem. Watch and learn.

  • Daniel Speight

    One good if small thing to come from this latest Barclay’s scandal is yet more nails in the coffins of Blairism, ‘third way’, ‘no problem with the filthy rich’,  and Progress.

    • treborc

      But of course if moving to the right would win Miliband the next election, I have no doubt he do it if he believes the swing voters will swing his way.
      I do think the ideology of labour these days is more about winning then being left or right.

      • Chris

         Well in opposition you can do sweet francis adams! except shout and the Tories can’t be embarassed. Winning arguments and losing votes is frankly a waste of time!

        • treborc

           But of course the public decided labour should be in opposition, no party has a right to rule, and you cannot argue we’ve  had a banking crises, and now we have a Libor scandal, all on a party which saw no evil heard no evil.

          The question for me about labour was did it not see the Banking bonus culture a reason to investigate, to check to look, did not even the banking crises mean labour needed to look to check to investigate.

          Did nobody in power give a toss about banking.

  • Billsilver

    Oh Gus. “The scandal of buy to let landlords making rented housing wholly unaffordable is barely given a mention……” No doubt why all those buy-to-let landlords leave their property empty as the rents are unaffordable then? Piffle old chap! An empty flat is an income foregone.
    “The scandal of train and bus companies making record profits while commuters pay record fares” – oh dear Gus, this all happened for 13 years under NewLab too, and what did anybody do then?
    “The Tory omnishambles means Labour has an opportunity to be heard for the first time in years…” – but it’s not talking and nobody is listening.
    “he (Ed Miliband) was speaking to ordinary people who are tired of working long hours for little pay.” What can be done Gus? Work shorter hours for less? Demand a pay increase and price yourself out of a job? Maybe there are too many people chasing too few jobs so holding pay rates down. Lots of issues to address Gus. Where were you when 500,000 people a year came to work here. Did you protest at the lack of protection for your fellow citizens – from its own government?

    • Chris

       Have you wandered in from the Daily Mail website?
      There is a housing crisis and in part the problem is a lack of affordable housing to rent. The “bedroom tax” on the poorest will expose this even more and private landlords will find themselves screwed by the Tory government.
      As for immigration being the root of our unemployment problem and lousy working conditions I would suggest that has more to do with government policy than anything else!

Latest

  • Comment Labour’s future schools policy: why accountability matters

    Labour’s future schools policy: why accountability matters

    By Mike Ion

    Stephen Twigg, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is one of the more thoughtful and pragmatic individuals to hold this vitally important brief for some time. To his credit Stephen has been out and about these past two years listening to pupils, teachers, parents and governors and finding out more about the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. In addition Stephen has been looking closely at some local, regional, national and international programmes that have had a demonstrable impact in raising [...]

    Read more →
  • News Seats and Selections Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

    Falkirk selection process suspended by the party

    The Labour Party have this afternoon suspended the selection process for Falkirk, after concerns were raised about “membership recruitment”. We understand that Ed Miliband was “keen to act swiftly” as the selection process was due to formally begin on Sunday. An officer of the party – yet to be confirmed – will investigate. A Labour spokesperson told us this afternoon: “We have suspended the start of the selection process of the Falkirk parliamentary seat. Concerns have been raised about membership [...]

    Read more →
  • Comment Seats and Selections Unions Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

    Working Class MPs – the end of a era?

    By Paul Wheeler

    It is interesting to see that the Labour Party is returning to the vexed issue of its parliamentary selection process. The changes may be well and good.  But maybe we should be asking a bigger question – are we  witnessing the end of working class representation in Parliament? When the Labour Party was first founded it was more simple. Then the explicit  aim was to secure working class representation, and specifically organised labour, in Parliament. Inevitably it became more complicated [...]

    Read more →
  • Local Government News An absolutely classic Lib Dem bar chart

    An absolutely classic Lib Dem bar chart

    Earlier this week we brought you a decidedly dodgy bar chart from the Tories, but it seems that they’re not the only party in Camden adopting dubious use of bar charts. Step forward Camden Lib Dems, with this classic of the dodgy Lib Dem bar chart genre (courtesy of Theo Blackwell). Even by the pretty shoddy standards of the yellows, this is a corker:   Update: Haringey Lib Dems might want to work on their bar charts  maths too (via [...]

    Read more →
  • Featured Modern life is rubbish – We need to put Work and Home at the heart of everything we do

    Modern life is rubbish – We need to put Work and Home at the heart of everything we do

    By Mark Ferguson

    “Work and home is what One Nation is about – family life, how people live everyday life.” That’s what Jon Cruddas – the man who will in all likelihood write Labour’s next manifesto – told the Guardian the party’s policy review is focused on. And it sounds so simple – doesn’t it? Critics will say it’s too simplistic a definition (and they’d be right – I’m cherry picking here), but it’s also a brilliant example of the distance between most [...]

    Read more →