Labour’s working-class problem
Among middle-class voters it is startling to note that Labour’s performance in the polls at the moment is good by any historical standards. YouGov persistently finds Labour support among this group running at 36–38 per cent, compared to 34 per cent in the 1997 general election. The Conservatives are running a few points below their 1997 performance, suggesting a real swing to Labour among the middle classes. Why, then, is Labour not miles ahead in the polls? The answer is partly that the working class is still only a bit more Labour than ABC1s, and that social change over 16 years has increased the middle-class proportion of the electorate. The other is that, since 1997, and particularly in 2001 and 2005, the swing to the Conservatives was higher in the working-class social groups, and the drop in turnout was worse (it is, historically, quite a new phenomenon for social class to make such a difference to turnout in the UK). Labour’s relative weakness among working-class voters is one of its more pressing problems as a party. Low turnout is a sign that people – particularly young and working-class people – lack a sense that politics can be used to effect any meaningful change. The challenge for Labour is to find a policy that is big in terms of changing people’s lives, achievable and, given the financial context, not too expensive.
Posted by Lewis Baston on 25 October 2013
The Tories’ development failure
The next time someone describes international development to you as an issue on the fringes of British politics, think about the history of our country, and ask yourself this: what is the face of Britain you want the rest of the world to see? Is it an open, progressive UK, prepared to cooperate with others to level the playing field for fair trade, not just free trade? Is it a Britain that sets standards, or a Britain that encourages a race to the bottom that hurts UK employees badly and those on the lowest wages worst? And what about the politics? The Tories say that they have reformed themselves from the 1990s when international development spending rarely topped 0.3 per cent of gross national income and the brief was a tucked-away, forgotten subset of the Foreign Office. Yet David Cameron does not turn up for work: he failed to attend the UN general assembly summit on replacing the millennium development goals, and it seems increasingly likely that the pledge to legislate for the 0.7 per cent target will be missed.
Posted by Alison McGovern MP on 17 October 2013
Why did the Taliban shoot Malala?
At some point western liberals will turn on Malala, just as they did with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch-American feminist, before her. Whether they turn on Malala next week, next month or next year is less certain; the fact, however, is that they will turn on her in order to maintain an illusion they have been clinging to for the p ast 10 years: that extremism is, when it comes to the pinch, a problem caused by the west. The fact that Malala was shot for wanting to go to school is incompatible with this belief, and therefore another question will be soon be asked in the universities and the pages of the London Review of Books: why did the Taliban ‘really’ shoot Malala?
Posted by James Bloodworth on 9 October 2013
Media regulation
Self-regulation of the press has been an utter disaster. The pirate’s code is observed with more regularity than the Press Complaints Commission’s code of ethics; journalists regularly intrude on private grief or demonise minorities, while opinion and fact are not so much mixed as wholly integrated. State regulation, though, has fared little better. Yes, no one worries about journalists hacking their phones in China, but the press – such as it is – is just as lurid and celebrity-obsessed as it is everywhere else. It just does a worse job of holding the government to account. Do not forget that it was not flouting the PCC’s code, but law-breaking that led to the Leveson inquiry. Any number of ‘state regulations’, or good old-fashioned laws, could have been used to curb that law-breaking, from contempt of court to data protection. Instead, we have a press law, and we do not even need to go as far afield as China to see the pitfalls of regulating the press: just watch the BBC – a great organisation for producing documentaries on politicians that have left office, and a pretty substandard one for holding them to account while they are in power.
Posted by Stephen Bush on 22 October 2013
Labour’s disability rights challenge
The last three years have probably been the most threatening for disabled people and their families. After 15 years of sustained progress, from the Conservative government’s Disability Discrimination Act in 1995 to the groundbreaking Making Rights a Reality for Disabled People in 2005; from the signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities in 2007 to the Equality Act of 2010 – there was an air of optimism, that disabled people were at long last being seen as having rights in modern Britain. Alongside this came the recognition that disabled people had responsibilities too, including participation in the workplace with support and ‘reasonable adjustments’, where needed, while at the same time recognising that work might not be an option for some disabled people who would then be entitled to receive support. Within months of May 2010 that optimism was turned into anguish and anger as disabled people became the butt of headlines categorising them as scroungers. Analysis showed that the word ‘disability’ and ‘scrounger’ almost became interchangeable in the eyes of the general public. To what end? To justify the coalition government’s radical welfare changes. Fear replaced optimism; parents with disabled children became worried about their future. People recovering from serious illnesses were told they were fit for work.
Posted by Anne McGuire MP on 23 October 2013