Tag: Andy Burnham

COULD CORBYN ACTUALLY WIN?

 

TORIES WIND UP LABOUR GRASSROOTS.

 

Tory papers, perhaps out to make trouble, are reporting this weekend that veteran left winger Jeremy Corbyn is ahead in private polling for the Labour leadership.

I don’t think it will happen but the speculation has been fuelled by the sort of thing that happened on the Victoria Derbyshire debate on BBC 2 this week. In front of an audience of potential, former and current Labour voters three of the four candidates faced a struggle to convince the audience that they were worth voting for. Time and again Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall set out their policy stances, but back came the same response that they weren’t inspiring people to vote Labour. Only Jeremy Corbyn got real gutsy rounds of applause when he called for a fight against austerity.

Sadly Liz Kendall seems to be trailing badly with her pro business stance and insistence on cutting the deficit. Andy Burnham is campaigning against the London based elite that he says has run the party for years, but he’s burdened by his past record on letting private firms into the health service. Yvette Cooper is banking on saying little, relying on her Cabinet experience as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

The problem for these three is that they are swimming against a left wing tide in the party that we have not seen since Michael Foot was elected leader in 1980. It was not a rational response to the election of Margaret Thatcher then, and is unlikely to be the right response to Cameron’s victory now. However the activists in the party have a right to express their views and elect who they want. Corbyn is catching that mood and the other three candidates are struggling with their various policy nuances, but with the basic belief that the deficit must be reduced and the Tories have caught the public mood on benefits.

Harriet Harman has hardly put a foot wrong in her long career. She has always kept in touch with the party mood and been popular with her commitment to women. It was therefore quite startling that at the very end of her time in front line politics she should have advocated a humiliating cave in to the Tories welfare reforms.

It posed one of the most difficult questions of our time, what is Labour for? Corbyn has his answer, fight austerity, support large families and ban nuclear weapons. The other three candidates have more complicated answers because they believe that is where Labour has to be to win back middle England.

Middle England, the elusive prize for Labour. What would they feel about Jeremy Corbyn leading the Labour Party? They would be more comfortable with a telegenic Burnham or perhaps a woman leading the party for the first time in Kendall or Cooper.

Meanwhile the Tories drive support to Corbyn with their latest proposals on strike ballots and having to opt into levy payments to the Labour Party. That goes down well in Middle and South East England where the tube strike wrecked havoc with people’s lives last week. But it angers grass roots Labour who feel they want to lash out, perhaps elect Corbyn and to hell with the consequences.

THE HEALTH BILL: THERE’S STILL A PULSE!

Next weekend those cocky members of the Coalition, the Lib Dems, are likely to try and crash the Health Bill into the buffers.

They nearly derailed it last year. Their Spring Conference forced the government to “pause” consideration of the legislation. The next few days will see a tussle between activists and Lib Dem party managers trying to keep the issue off the agenda at their Gateshead conference.

It is all too much for some Conservatives who are fed up to the back teeth with their Coalition partners. The Lib Dems have already begun their approach to the 2015 General Election, trying to remain in the Coalition but distancing themselves from unpopular measures. But the more they attempt to curry favour with their grassroots, the more they infuriate those Tories who have little time for this forced marriage with the Lib Dems.

This week I was at a meeting with a Tory councillor present. She was criticising government policy. When I pointed out that it was her government, the forces of hell descended on me. She glared at me and declared “It is not MY government.”

Whether the Health Bill is debated at Gateshead or not, the legislation is already causing casualties in Lib Dem ranks in the North West.

Paul Clein was a leading member of the Lib Dem administration that governed Liverpool for over a decade and a plausible candidate for leader of his group in the city. He has now resigned from the party that he has been a member of all his life.

He believes that although Shirley Williams has wrung some concessions from ministers on the health bill, the legislation should have been opposed by the party from the start because it was not in the Coalition agreement.

But Clein is not rushing off to join the Labour Party. In his resignation message, he says they “nauseate” him for “acting holier than thou”, pointing out how much private provision they introduced into the health service.

This criticism is unlikely to worry Andy Burnham. The Leigh MP is having “a good war” as Shadow Secretary of State for Health. When he stood for the Labour leadership 2 years ago, he was little known outside the North West. Now the fresh faced Everton supporter is growing in stature within the party and I wouldn’t rule out him becoming leader one day.

But let’s get back to the Lib Dems. Party President Tim Farron is set for a very difficult time in Gateshead. Having let slip on Granada’s Party People programme that the legislation should be dropped, the role of the Westmorland MP will be pivotal next weekend.

As will Shirley Williams, who is remembered in these parts for her brief period as MP for Crosby. Having achieved some concessions she might prove a problem for Lib Dem rebels trying to stop the bill. Altogether she has had a long career in British politics, and although she has never held the highest ministerial offices, Williams is widely respected.

The Conservatives remain convinced that the NHS is in need of reform and they are probably right, but not by this complex bill. Vested interests, including some doctors, have always opposed reform. That was true in 1948 when Labour’s Nye Bevan had to “stuff their mouths with gold” to found the NHS in the first place.

It is a right old mess. Following an unwelcome modern trend, there has been a presumption that the bill would become law. Many of the Primary Care Trusts have already wound up. So going back would be very difficult.

Like that other tortured soul, Macbeth, the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is probably concluding “returning would be as tedious as go o’er”.

Bring on the witches!