Rutland & Melton Labour Party

Leicestershire County Council is planning to cut bus and transport services for young people, older people and the disabled by up to £1.3m. According to BBC Leicester Leicestershire County Council is going to force children who travel by bus to faith schools in the county to take on the full burden of the cost of travelling. This will leave families worse off at a time when they are being squeezed by price rises and falling wages.

According to the BBC, Leicestershire County Council is “planning to withdraw transport vouchers worth £33 a year for residents with disabilities who live more than 800m from an hourly bus service”.

South Melton Labour Campaigner, Rob Watson, says “At a time when families are being squeezed by job cuts and rising prices, it’s only fair that a small council tax increase is shared by everyone who can afford to pay so that the most vulnerable and least able to pay in our communities are able to access essential services.”

Melton Borough Council has decided to cut the green waste refuse collection service and force residents with larger gardens to join a Garden Club costing £35 per year. While people with larger gardens pay more Council Tax, because their properties are in a higher band, they will now no longer be able to access this valued universal service that has been provided to all residents in the town, regardless of the size of the property. Residents are now being told that they should compost locally, or that they should remove large quantities of green recycling waste to the tip themselves.

Speaking in the Melton Times Dr Matthew O’Callaghan said the Labour group favoured bringing the service in-house, said: “This is such a major change and yet there has been little or no consultation. From keeping council tax frozen, most households will now be £35 worse off.”

Questions Melton Labour Wants Answered:

Will we see an increase in fly-tipping because of the loss of this service?

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The British economic model is under severe stress and in needs of whole-scale change. That is the message of Will Hutton, who has been using his column in The Observer to stress the scale of the challenge that is facing Labour as the party seeks to redefine it’s economic strategy and redevelop a clear message that will tell voters what it will do with the economy if the party is ever to form a national government again. Commentators like Will Hutton and David Blanchflower are assuming that the Conservative Government is going to weather the storms of economic austerity through a combination of active politics, some clever ducking and diving, a few well timed U-Turns, and the promise of tax cuts as we get closer to the election. David Cameron and George Osborne are rightly regarded with awe as tacticians and ruthless agents of their own self-interest.

So the question both Hutton and Blanchflower raise in their separate ways is, how can Labour make headway by arguing for a better form of capitalism? Rather than rehashing the glories and failures of the past (i.e. nationalisation and socialisation), or replaying the Blair/Brown songbook of greatest hits (leaving the banks alone to work without checks and supervision), Labour has to look at building a credible economic philosophy for the future? But what will this economic philosophy look like, and how long will it take to marshal supporters and advocates?

It’s fashionable for philosophical, armchair supporters of left-of-centre politics to talk almost exclusively about ‘progressive’ politics. Various think-tanks and policy groups are full of discussion about what it means to be a ‘progressive’ political movement, and spend lots of time and money trying to come up with a working ideology that will enable the disparate groups of the left to find an over-arching philosophy of government and of electoral success.

So Progress competes with Compass, who compete with the Fabians, who compete with Blue Labour, for a ’narrative’ that will allow the Left to come together and develop a convincing set of issues around which Left of center parties can become a more aligned and viable electoral machine once more. New Labour was the last successful version of this alignment, when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came together to form a coalition of economic liberalism and a weak form of social democracy.

Through this the Labour Party achieved great electoral success in Westminster elections because many people felt that there was an alternative to the Tories, and they liked the general drift of New Labour as pragmatists and the offer of managerial competence. I have often argued that Tony Blair’s great strength is that he wrestled the mantle of ‘pragmatism’ from the Tories. Yes, as a governing party New Labour would manage well, went the argument, but New Labour would not do so from a purely ideological position or with a tribal inflection.

Sarah Maynard Smith was absolutely right to warn in the Melton Times this week of the dangers of the reckless push to Academy Schools. These Academies Schools Mark II are not the same as the Academies that where brought in under Labour to transform standards. They are instead a way for small groups of unelected and unrepresentative busy-bodies to turn-back the clock and recreate an education system that is divisive and focussed on a narrow range of people.

I’m fed up with people rubbishing our comprehensive education system, and telling us that our young people are not achieving as well as in the past. Get a grip. Times have changed, the world has moved on. Technology and globalisation mean that we have to design a schools system that is fit for the future, not some nostalgic past. Our children are doing well, but too often lack confidence. Our young people need our support and encouragement. They don’t need to be made to feel worthless by politicians who use their own prejudices to trash them.

There is an excellent article in the Guardian about the pressure that is being applied to schools up and down the country to convert to Academy Status. Describing how a small group of parents are fighting the move to turn schools in Lincolnshire into academies, the Guardian describes the parents fight as a stand against the “privatisation of state education”, combined with a challenge to the resulting “deficit in democratic accountability” that academies represent. According to the Guardian:

“The controversy raises questions about public and private interests in state education, and the extent to which communities have the right to influence decisions being made about the future of state schools, as institutions across England are encouraged to consider academy status.”

Very interesting article by Will Hutton in the Observer today, about technology and it's economic impact. Here's an interesting sample:
"Over the past couple of decades the key question – what new goods and services are entrepreneurs going to come up with using transformative technologies – went largely unanswered. Instead western policymakers were bullied by the financial oligarchs into believing that the market is magic."

And:
"For 30 years or more the consensus has been that governments necessarily and always fail – and only markets succeed. But reality is beginning to intrude. Even the coalition government, wedded to the old-time religion, is finding that if it wants a growth strategy it has to do what used to be prohibited – design markets and build institutions that innovate."

I wonder how anyone at a UK university will view this just at the point when investment in public funding for all courses is being slashed? Where will the innovators of the future come from? The UK hasn't been renowned recently for producing world leading technologist who break the mould and come up with something new. It's fine to praise Dyson and Rolls Royce, but they are making things that we already have, only doing them better, not changing the game.

Creativity and innovation look likely to be the battleground of future investment, whether it is led by industry or government. But one thing is certain, it will be a battle between big and small, agile and slothful, nimble and established, multicultural and elitist.

George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller's book 'Animal Spirits'  is an examination of the workings of the economy from a neo-Keynesian perspective, or more precisely from a post-Milton Friedman perspective. Revisiting Keynes notion that economies are not governed by the rational economic calculator known as the 'invisible hand of the market', Akerlof and Shiller detail how speculative bubbles become normalised within our culture based on a herd instinct where prices are inflated on the basis of speculation rather than any sense of their relative value. One passage stands out:
"A nation's investment - in new machinery and equipment, new factory buildings, new bridges and highways, new software, new communications infrastructure - ought to matter enormously for its economic prosperity. These tools convert our simple labour into modern and sophisticated output. The better our tools, the better our standards of living will be. If a country imports the most up-to-date machinery and software, or better yet builds it itself, its workers are forced into a learning experience that keeps them abreast of the latest thinking in technology. The investment produces hands-on-experience with new technology" (Akerlof and Shiller p.142).

As the somewhat dull Labour Leadership contest trundles on, and the fallout from the bruising General Election defeat begins to settle, I have found myself thinking about who will be the best candidate for the Labour Leadership. Who has the strongest platform and the best chances of offering the party a renewed sense of purpose and a way forward. After considering a couple of the candidates, I am now edging towards supporting David Milliband. Here are a couple of thoughts about why.

Labour supporters, and the left in general, can usually be defined in two ways. Not left versus right, or old versus new, but scepticism versus pragmatism. On the one hand there is a strong and proud history in the Labour movement of people who are able to give a clear and well justified account of what is wrong with the world. These people can easily make recommendations as to how it can be put right. But as sceptics they tend to see opposition as a good thing, a chance to rediscover their purity of conviction and a chance to reconnect with their highest virtues.

Here are a collection of articles and reports about the Labour Leadership contest:

All Candidates Statements The Guardian 01/06/10

If you have any other links to other articles and websites, make a comment on this blog and we will collate them all together.

Conservatives in Leicestershire are split over national and local education policy after the new coalition government made a commitment to offer all schools Academy status. Speaking to the Leicester Mercury, Mr Ould has claimed that "He was not convinced academies would be as independent as promised and would have less of a voice if they had to report to the Government. He said: "If schools do not have to answer to us they will have to answer to Westminster, so this seems to be switching one control for another."

Melton will no longer be forced to take extra housing. New Government proposals will mean that top down housing targets should be abolished. Newport Councillor Matthew O'Callaghan said "I am sure there are residents between Melton Spinney Road and Scalford Road who will welcome this change in policy as Melton Borough Council decided to place the 1000 new houses between these two road which no doubt would have significantly expanded in future years."

A bypass for Melton is now almost an impossibility given the cuts in Government spending on transport schemes. Chairman of Detour the Melton Bypass Action Group Matthew O'Callaghan said: "Leicestershire County Council missed out on funding a couple of years ago when the Government reimbursed the East Midlands Region for half the cost of the Scheme to the tune of some £180m. David Parsons chair of the region said the Melton Bypass was his first priority but refused to allocate any money towards the scheme which would have only costs about £25m. In response to a petition on the PM's website the Government was favourable to a Melton Bypass and asked the County to come forward with proposals which they never did. It looks as if county stalling has lost Melton its bypass for a generation."

And so the process begins for the Labour Party to redefine itself after what has been a crushing and bruising defeat. As leading figures in the party start the long-drawn out process of declaring their candidacy, and others start to make their views known on who they will back, the deep realisation is only now beginning to settle-in that Labour was comprehensively beaten at the General Election, and that on a national level we are a discredited force in the eyes of large parts of the electorate. While the last few days have been the calm before the storm, with all eyes fixed on the love-in between Cameron and Clegg, media attention will soon start to turn to the question of - not how did they win it - but how did we loose it?

The first question I would ask prospective candidates for the party leadership is one that all parties should ask themselves on a constant basis. What is our purpose? What is the Labour Party in the business of doing? And why would we do things differently than other people in other parties?