London and the cuts: which way for Labour?

By Tom Miller

The afternoon plenary at the weekend’s Progressive London conference left the assembled crowd with a few pointers as to how Ken might be looking at national politics, along with some (sensibly placed) uncomfortableness on the part of the New Statesman’s Mehdi Hasan. Lets take a look at some of what was said.

Jon Trickett, Shadow minister for the Cabinet Office

Jon Trickett began with a view of the current government, before moving onto the state of the economy and what this means for London.

This is ‘nothing more than a traditional Tory government’, which has had nothing more to contribute than cuts to services, rising inequality all at the same time as cutting taxes for corporations. This is a tax-cutting government though for most people taxes will rise – an act of further redistribution to the rich. Of 200,000 new jobs created, only 6000 have been full time. The average worker is now facing a cut of £750 in their yearly budget. At the same time, Barclays salaries have risen by around 50%, from an average £166K to £236K, not even taking into account the 2.6 billion it has announced in bonuses. The government has been lobbying the EU to make sure that these are kept safe, and is predicted to take in less money under the new banking levy than under Labour’s previous one-off test.

Trickett’s points are firstly that this amounts to an abandonment of the centre, and that this is a platform without any kind of electoral mandate.

For a man who built his reputation on detoxifying the Tory brand, the fact that senior Labour politicians can get away with making charges like this has to be uncomfortable for Cameron. If Ken is fighting the mayoral election on such an analysis, it will surely enter the popular consciousness at some level.

Whether it will stick to Boris is a different matter.

Mehdi Hasan

Mehdi Hasan’s speech was less substantial, but came with some good ideas for Labour going forward, and some uncomfortable truths for some of the leftie orthodoxists in the hall.

Hasan says that Ed Miliband should widen out Labour’s economic platform and hold a big press conference – which of Paul Krugman or Joseph Stiglitz would Cameron’s team attack as a deficit denier?

One gets the sense that Ed’s team is still missing this kind of set-piece press activity. George Osborne has used keynote announcements against Labour to critical effect. In fact, it’s where the phrase ‘deficit deniers’ comes from in the first place. He would do well to look at doing more of this, if he is interested in changing the terms of debate. Perhaps the man to do that is Ed Balls, whose appointment Hasan says is of key importance to winning. I’m sure Ken would agree.

Hasan says we need to remember the intellectual and judicial battles against the Tories as well as the political. He repeats Jon Trickett’s point about the lack of a mandate, which seems to be a developing meme.

Hasan’s most pertinent point was actually during the questions which followed. One woman in the crowd asked whether demonstrators should ‘turn London into Cairo’. Hasan correctly pointed out that while this suggestion is a good bit of leftist populism, it lacks substance, and it is insulting to those in the Middle East who are being crushed beneath jackboots to compare the severity of our plight to them. His comment was met with some discomfort in the hall, presumably by people who like to see themselves that way, but they can’t stop it being true, and worth remembering. We are not here just for the rhetoric.

Salma Yaqoob, leader, Respect Party

People forget that Progressive London was initially formed by Ken as a body that was meant to reach across parties. This time round, that has meant he has secured the support of Respect, or at the very least its leader. Whether the rest of the far left will field a candidate remains to be seen – in any event, Ken will have to work for transfers from all non-Tory voters, as well as getting stuck into those who voted for Boris but are now feeling left behind.

Yaqoob says that Cameron’s main tactic has been to distract the media and politicians from his own actions, with words about Labour’s alleged record, speeches about multiculturalism, and other contrived devices. It is important to return the debate to the substance of cuts, which matter far more than anything else. Most importantly, the idea that there is no choice but to make them must be nailed. Against tax, many of the cuts are actually deficit neutral – the rise in VAT will bring in around the same amount as the Corporation Tax cut takes out. Taxation remains part of the solution, but instead, a 70% cut will be made to Youth Services in Yaqoob’s ward.

Diane Abbott, Shadow Minister for Health

Typically, Diane Abbott says what less diplomatic figures won’t. She says the Tories are cutting this way ‘because they want to’. This is clear enough from the way they reacted to the OBR. This echoes points made in parliamentary debate earlier this week by Wansbeck MP Ian Lavery: “I shall not forget the triumphant, jubilant cheers from the government benches. That made me sick to the pit of my stomach. The people will not forget, and I will not forget.”

She makes the point that BAME people and women are set to suffer more from the cuts as they are both more likely to be employed in the public sector.

Ken Livingstone

Ken starts off by supporting the position of Labour councillors forced to make cuts. He makes the point that the Tories have gutted local government powers in order to make sure their national policies were enforced. In the past, councillors would have chosen to take the political hit involved in raising business rates, but no longer have any control over this.

Having never set an illegal budget as leader of the GLC in the 1980s, Ken looks at some other ways Labour councils can deal with the cuts. He speaks of the need to involve the wider community in financial decisions. It might be worth noting the legal challenges some councils have made, as well as the petition Labour Manchester is carrying out. It is important that a political campaign is built.

All of the speakers so far have concentratedon national issues, and Ken is no exception. Perhaps this gives us a clue as to his platform.

He points out that in the US, the economy has now recovered to the point it was at before the crash, albiet with plenty of debt. In the UK, we are 60% behind, because they carried on spending, while we cut too fast.

He says that in London, the cuts actually began two years ago. Of the capital spending Ken had planned, the only element which has remained are the mis-named Boris Bikes. Perhaps this is due to Barclays sponsorship: “Well of course they can afford it” says Livingstone. “They don’t pay any bloody tax”.

455 Police have also been cut, and Boris is looking 13,000 short on his small 50,000 homes target. He has tried hard to ditch the idea of affordabilitty for these homes, trying to redefine ‘affordable’ as covering homes that people need to earn 75,000 a year to pay for. This also seems to represent a departure from the centre similar to his position on the C-charge western extension – with Boris looking out for his base rather than the whole of London.

Boris’s ‘Stalingrad like defence’ of London finance seems to have dissapeared, with London councils bearing an enormously disproportionate burder on the cuts. He seems to have forgeot who actually won in that historical battle.

How will Ken fight 2012?

Margaret Thatcher often accused the left of ‘ratcheting’ its way to an irreversible socialism. Ken says the Tories are now doing this, but towards libertarianism and the corporate state.

He says that getting Labour into government is one of his main motivations, so that it can make sure that any changes it makes are reversible. He obviously wants Labour to pledge to undo a lot of what the Tories are up to.

His concentration seems mostly focussed on national issues – although Boris will try to distance himself ffrom the Tories, he is incapable of being a champion for London while they are in government.

“This election is a referendum on whether the government are right or wrong”. It will be up to Ken’s team to make that case effectively. Doing so will be essential to Labour’s wider success.

The campaign is on.