Are the union funding plans a step too far?
December 13th, 2006
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How will Labour fund itself if the changes go through?
It’s beginning to look as though the biggest political fall-out from the “cash/loans for honours” affair is going to be on the way that political parties and future elections are funded. And the latest ideas coming out of the Sir Hayden Phillips inquiry look pretty bad for Labour.
For the idea is that every year each of the 3.5 million union members who opt to pay the political levy will have to be contacted and asked to give their written agreement to the £3 payment continuing. They will then be registered as donors to the party. At the moment the unions involved have to hold a ballot every ten years on whether the optional levy should continue.
The only positive element for Labour is that instead of the £3 payment individual union members will have the option of giving up to £50,000 each!
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Clearly the cost of setting up and maintaining such a system to collect and record a mass of small amounts is going to be horrendous and it is no wonder that the unions themselves and many Labour MPs are up in arms about the plans.
This latest thinking from the inquiry is in response to the Tory move that on the face of it sounded quite reasonable - that a cap of £50,000 be put on all donations with each individual union being treated as just one entity. The problem is that the union movement has become much more streamlined in recent years and there are only 17 of them left which have the political levy.
An added dimension is the suggestion that Tony Blair is personally backing the Phillips plan as part of securing his “legacy” by severing the trade union tie with the party before he leaves Downing Street.
If the plan comes about then it’s hard to see how Labour will be able to go on funding itself.
Surely the best approach is not to limit donations but to put a cap on spending which would extend well beyond the current limits of just during election campaigns?
In the Labour leadership betting Gordon Brown can still be had at 0.21/1 - which in the absence of any credible alternative seems reasonable value.
Mike Smithson
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Not an overwhelming problem, as most have to sign a “check off” form anyway to allow deduction from salary. Surely a slight alteration to the form would do the trick?
re 2. My understanding is that Phillips is wanting a new signed authorisation every year - for just £3. A “slight alteration to the form” won’t suffice which is why the unions are up in arms.
I’ve been away but looks like I haven’t missed much.
I think this change re unions is long overdue. It’s anachronistic and, frankly, unfair.
Just imagine if there were a system in place where boards of all major companies had an expectation that they’d contribute to Conservative coffers - backed up by a shareholders’ resolution (on the nod) every other AGM. Our Labour friends would be up in arms.
Union members can contribute to political parties just like any other individual (indeed I know a couple who contribute to my party in a personal capacity) - but the unions themselves shouldn’t even be ‘collecting agents’ as it present.
Contributing money to a political party should be a conscious decision rather than a default option. No wonder Labour have become so lazy and corrupt over the years.
It looks like a combined SNP/Lib Dem/Tory effort has blocked Labour’s attempt to design the ballot paper for May’s local council elections. The new STV voting system is already a disaster waiting to happen for the Scottish Labour Party, and if they lose this ballot-design issue it is going to be even worse.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1848292006
Tony Blair has another go at natbashing. Salmond and Sturgeon rub their hands with glee every time he does this. What on earth are Labour thinking?
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/76612.html
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1848562006
The Labour leader of West Dunbartonshire Council - not a fan of Jackie Baillie MSP or John McFall MP - has quit in a blaze of glory. Dunbartonshire Labour is making a very good effort at becoming dirtier than Lanarkshire Labour. They still have a long, long way to go to outstrip Jack McConnell and John Reid’s backyard, although they are well ahead of Glasgow Labour, Renfrewshire Labour and Ayrshire Labour, which is in itself a very impressive achievement.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/76576.html
Are they “combining” to overstretch Labour in different areas in May. Are there any direct Lab-Tory fights or is it just with you. Last any predictions as things stand now currently 5.
Will this stop Midland Industrialists (or similar) giving to the Tories or the Rowntree Trust giving to Lib Dems?
I would expect the Unions to re-organize their political funds so that the donating “entity” comes as close to the £50k limit (which in any case will be raised by the politicians when they get their paws on the Phillips report, possibly to £100k) - probably the branch or region, rather than the individual member.
Because this will decentralise control of the TUs’ political funds it may well have the perverse effect of strengthening the link with Labour in policy terms as it will no longer be enough merely to sweet-talk 17 General Secretaries.
The problem may be particularly acute in Scotland and Wales where I guess that many TU members would have no rooted objection to the money going to the Nationalist parties. And of course the “producer interest” in the N.H.S. (and possibly elsewhere) may also find independent candidates to its liking in some places.
cue Barry
7. Presumably it would.
I can’t agree with Mike’s contention that the fairest way is for a national limit. I am of course a little biased in supporting one of the two parties that had to fight a truly national campaign, and the one of those that is in the better position (though still not an entirely healthy one). A national limit would favour the Lib Dems, the Greens, BNP and other minor parties who could significantly outspend their opponents in their relatively few target seats. Labour and Conservative candidates in marginals would presumably still be able to have more spent on them than their colleagues in non-target seats, but they still have campaigns to be run. Unless limits were put by geographical region, the situation would be even more unfair where parties that only contest in certain parts of the UK are concerned.
It’s perhaps also worth pointing out that if that approach were adopted, then parties that were able to raise more money than the national limit would still spend it, but just not on elections. There would probably be more agents and office staff employed locally, for example.
If a national limit of £50k per year for all people, natural or legal, isn’t politically possible - though it would still be my favoured option - then perhaps a limit on all spending in a constituency by a party might be a option. Were ‘national’ posters to count towards a higher constituency limit, it might rein back their use - whose efficacy I’m not convinced of in any case.
The proposals aren’t official yet, but as reported they don’t seem acceptable, in that they seem to set out to make collective membership difficult. As this is the main basis for regular funding of *one* of the two main parties, while not addressing the controversial aspects of the funding of the other one (the ability of boards of directors to shovel large sums at will into the Tory party out of corporate income - shareholders are not sufficiently organised to block it), it would result in one party becoming hugely better-off than its main rival. This seems unreasonable in practice, whatever the theoretical arguments.
Nearly everyone favours spending limits, and they are certainly easier to get agreement on, but historically in Britain and the US such limits have been routinely circumvented - look e.g. at direct mail to target seats that doesn’t count against the spending limit for those seats. Block that loophole and people will think of another one - e.g. donate £50K each to 200 constituency parties. If one party has a gigantic financial lead, it will give them a permanent edge.
I gather that the quid pro quo for Labour is supposed to be that the limit on donations would be annual, which could slightly cramp the current Tory approach of throwing money at target seats on an epic scale in between elections. But it’s really too easy to get round. If the Tories have say 500 significant donors (companies and rich individuals), and funnel up to £50K*500=£25 million in every year, and if that’s not enough they just set up a front organisation and give it another £25 million which sends out pro-Tory material. I think that a combination of spending limits and even-handed limits on donations is needed. Personally I would accept a limit based on how many people in an organisation have explicitly consented - this would mean shareholders too, so if the limit per person was X, Dixons/USDAW would need the agreement of N individual shareholders/members to donate N*X. This doesn’t discriminate against large merged organisations, as a flat £50K limit does, and it retains the need to get consent.
Hayden Phillips’ proposals will be dead in the water unless they get all-party support, so I suspect the final version will look a bit different. The Number 10 rumour seems to be mistaken: Labour will explicitly oppose these proposals.
6. Marius
Labour are going to be “outstretched” no matter what their opponents do, because, for the first time in modern Scottish political history, it looks as though they will be outspent and outnumbered by the SNP. A couple of weeks ago there was an article about the respective budgets, and off the top of my head I think the SNP are hoping to get close to the million mark, with Labour on about 600,000, and the Tories and Lib Dems a bit below that.
Labour are still thought to have more members, but few doubt that their activist base is seriously disillusioned and placid. Eg, just look at the letters pages of the Scottish papers (or the new comment strands at the online edition of The Scotsman) - they are consistently flooded with pro-SNP contributions, with a few Tories and LDs, but any lone Labour voices usually come from officials or elected representatives, not from ordinary supporters.
Again from memory, the last published numbers I saw Labour had about 18,000 members (falling), the Tories 16,000 (unofficial/heresay), SNP 11,000 (rising) and the Lib Dems 4,000 (rising).
There is no love lost between the SNP, the Tories or the Lib Dems, and they will certainly not be any “combining” from any of them, either explicit or implicit. They dislike each other just as much as they dislike Labour.
There are only two “direct Lab-Tory fights” in the whole country - Dumfries and Eastwood - where the SNP and LDs are too far behind to take a constituency (although their performances could of course still affect who wins the seat).
Top Con targets from Lab (swing required from Lab)
Dumfries (1.7%)
Eastwood (4.8)
Stirling (4.9, but SNP very close in 3rd spot)
Renfrewshire West (5.0, but lying 3rd behind SNP)
Edinburgh Central (7.6, but lying in 3rd behind LD))
Cunninghame North (9.8, but lying 3rd behind SNP)
http://www.alba.org.uk/scot07/targets.html
Will companies making donations have to ask individual shareholders each year.
Think Unions should ask their members how they want the levy proportionately distributed, based on the ballot result, more and more do not appear to vote Labour these days.
11. Nick, I think your contention that there are potentially 500 donors of £50k to the Conservatives is somewhat wide of the mark. Andrea could no doubt find the figures, but I don’t think there have been anything like that number who have donated £50k or more over the last five years, and in particular funding from large businesses has dropped off very significantly from the proportion it accounted for in the 80s (when big individual donations were rarer anyway). I suspect your fears are relatively groundless.
11. Nick, do you genuinely believe Hayden Phillips would spend time developing such proposals without tacit support of Downing Street? He surely would not propose something that he thought would be binned 3 seconds after launch.
12 Correction: the Tories are actually in 4th place in Edinburgh Central, behind both the Lib Dems and the SNP. This actually illustrates the scale of the problem facing the Conservatives north of the border: Edin C is nominally one of their top target seats in May, but they start on only on 17.7% of the vote, in 4th spot.
14 No - but as soon as the 50K limit goes on company donations you will see lots of Directors making individual donations out of the coincidental 50K increases in their bonuses. Just as happens now in the US.
4. I don’t disagree with Eleanor’s comments re union donations, but I think she is being a little blinkered re Company donations as if they were any different. Although it is less common now many of the companies in which I am/was a shareholder (part owner) made significant donations to the Conservative party without my support. In fact I don’t believe they even had to ask me.
Both types of donation are/were bad in that they were made on behalf of, and without the support of, the individuals they have a duty to.
16 - which shows how far they have fallen in Scotland over the last 20 years. This was the seat represented by Alex Fletcher up until 1987.
Re 11 Nick’s point of 500 targets at £50k is nonsense.
Before the GE the Tories had less than 100 target supported and it was only in the 12 months before the election at £20k to £30k according to their report and accounts.
LDs also had £2.4m of “Brown money” spread amongst about 50 of their targets which was worth about £48k per seat! But because it was spent centrally, does not appear in individual association accounts.
There is also only a minor amount of donations and loans coming from plc companies with shareholders. In 2005 most of the large non-union donations to the parties came from a few individuals like Labour’s ex-Capita chap who are Company heads. Shareholder money was something that disappeared many many years ago.
15: What I think Hayden Phillips is doing is flying a variety of kites. It’s not an unreasonable thing to do in his position, but this particular kite won’t fly and will I think not appear in the final proposals. And yes, we have Cabinet-level confirmation from two sources close to Number 10 that they will not get Government support.
I accept David Herdosn’s point that the number of £50K Tory donors may be smaller - I was just using round numbers to illustrate the point. But is there a reasonable argument against my N*X proposal for organisations to be allowed to donate £X for each of N consenting members/shareholders, as opposed to £X per organisation, regardless of how many members they have and whether they consent?
15. HenryG, thanks for your info on LabHome (re Gateshead). I replied to you there
By the way, poll adicts will find more at
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2501212,00.html
Unfortunately I think that every one of the questions is of the type where variations in wording will produce a different result. But they’re interesting as far as they go, and show how difficult it is to remake the image of a party. The gender gap over Trident has appeared before - it’s one of the few issues where a huge difference between genders is known.
ConHome reports that Jesse Norman has been selected as the Tory candidate in Hereford.
Unions should be free of the Labour Party, the Labour Party should be free of the Unions. Union members should asked if they as individuals wish to contribute, associate membership (non voting, non involvement) of the political party of their choice, then end the link. Ditto for shareholders of companies. also (they’d like this) if a company makes a contribution to any political party, if must be placed on the product, if possible. That way the consumers, could choose not support a particular party, voting with your wallets. Some companies would like I’m sure,put the statement, ‘free of any political involvement’ on the tin or wrapper etc.
RE 11, Nick Palmer is correct, the Government are not in favour and more importantly may well unilateraly put new law including state funding through early next year. See:
http://aconservatives.blogspot.com/2006/11/party-funding-ii.html
for links to the various stories and websites.
I also wrote this a long time ago on party funding:
http://aconservatives.blogspot.com/2006/07/party-funding.html
Some thing we have to be clear on is that measures which intentionaly or unintentionaly cut a large part of a particular parties funds will not be good for democracy.
I can’t see why corporate donations - either from the unions or business should be allowed. If all donations were individual with a £50K cap political parties would have to battle for funds. If smaller parties get more of a hearing in this market place then the big parties should think about how to engage people and persuade them. Most of the big spending seems to be entirely wasted anyway.
Stuart: What is the objection to grouping names by party? It is quite a sensible thing to do in STV, as it allows party members to order the names within the party grouping according to how many votes they got in their selection contest.
This in turn makes it worthwhile winning a selection contest, rather than just scraping in…because it is well known that people get a vote boost from being higher up the page of any multi-voting paper. Listing the whole lot alphabetically in multi-voting situations just discriminates against people with names late in the alphabet.
Party voters in selection battles are much more likely to know the candidates and be able to rank them viably; while only in the case of very well-known candidates is this likely to be an effect for the general public - and if it is then they can still rank them out of order with party grouped names.
Re: funding, yes clearly both shareholders and union members should have to explicitly agree to political dontaions.
28. I disagree - alphabetical listings are the way forward IMHO.
30: Reason?
…Oh - good name
No one has ever satisfactorily answered the question which I have repeatedly asked here and elsewhere, namely why the parties need these lavish amounts of money, other than to fuel their own egos. Indeed one often speculates that the more that some of them spend, the more disengaged from reality they become.
Ok, I’m fighting on a single issue (albeit a rather important one) and our party will fight probably one and certainly no more than three seats in a single county. But in three months we have achieved blanket publicity locally (local Tv, radio, and newspapers) and substantial national coverage. We have, I would contend, raised the debate about the NHS to the very top of the political agenda. Yet all this has been done without any “policy wonks” (whatever they may be) or brand managers.
For the record, the expenditure to date is:
£150 registration fee to electoral commission
46p stamps
10p envelopes
Total £150.56p
I will also make myself a hostage to fortune and say that when elected I have no intention of having three secretaries, employed at public expense, and don’t intend to employ any relatives.
Political parties need less money, more wisely spent.
Dr Barry Monk
Save Bedford Party
Barry, if you dont employ any office staff to do your casework you will be a crap MP. It takes 2-3 people full time to do a serious job.
[33] Barry, Nick Palmer will tell you how many pieces of correspondence he receives on a typical day, and you can work out how many secretaries you’ll need from there. (Or perhaps you’ve already figured out two will be enough
)
On the question of MP’s allowances, surely secretarial staff could be provided by an agency! The employement of spouses etc. shouldn’t be allowed.
There could even be justification, for setting up a regulatory body to administer party funds. This body would act as a filter, vetting contibutions, ensuring they do not conflict with very strict crieria. All political parties would have to apply to the body, to draw from their accounts, giving an explanation as to what the money is for. Full accounts, showing all ins’ and outs’ would be published every year.
RE 33, barry, Two other posters have made the point. Constituants will want answers from you. You will need help, if elected. Whay not ask the Kiddiminster hospital chap?
29 - Agree and would add they also should have to explicitly agree to whom their donation goes if the argument is that Unions or Companies should not be capped as they are a collection of individuals.
On the STV ballot order question: it’s noticeable that surnames closer to A generally get a slight bonus (relative to other candidates from the same party) in multi-member council elections in the UK as it its. So clearly a small number of people either put their crosses next to the first three names on the ballot paper or vote for one candidate from each main party. That suggests that the same proportion of people are likely to number the candidates under STV in the order they appear on the ballot. (Who knows why they bother, but that’s clearly how a small proportion of people do vote!)
Not sure what that implies for this dispute. Except that allowing parties to decide the order in which their candidates appear goes against the spirit of STV, which allows the voter to choose both the party they favour and the individual candidate they favour within that. I don’t see why people should be encouraged to vote for party blocs rather than choosing candidates.
coldstone: Actually the employment of spouses in the office is more beneficial to the tax-payer than employing others. With a small number of exceptions (Like “Betsy” Duncan Smith) sposes can be forced…erm, I mean, encoraged…erm, requested…I mean…are more likely to be willing - yes that’s it! - to work huge numbers of exrta hours for their MP - for free. A typical spouse might work 50-60 hours in the constituency office, while non-spouses would rarely do anything like that.
Duncan: It doesnt prevent people voting for candidates. It just replaces the random benefit of early alphabet names with the measured benefit of winning a selection contest for party ranking.
36 Coldstone’s idea has a lot of merit – a sort of super Electoral Commission. It would have been much safer for the Lib Dems if the “Brown Money” had been given to the Electoral Commission to the account of the Party – the Commission could have decided at an early stage whether the funds were kosher, and handed them back if they were not. Similarly, the Labour loans could have been ratified as being on commercial terms, and the money drawn down when required.
Barry, you’ll get 50-100 letters and emails a day, mostly nothing to do with anything you campaigned about. If you deal with all the issues yourself without assistance, you’ll find you have little time for anything else. It’s not simply writing a letter, it’s sitting on the phone to the CSA, arguing with the manager of a retirement home, etc. With respect you seem to me irresponsibly populist or perhaps just naive about the job you’re trying to get.
re 36 & 40. All this sounds fine except that there is a danger that political donations would dry up. We already treat donors of all kind abominably in this country and to subject them to this process would be the final straw. Adding a quango is just going to create more public service jobs for no real benefit.
I make my living as a professional fundraiser and the idea of having to go through such a process is appalling. Taking a donor from agreeing to make a gift to getting the cash is already a mega-challenge - this would just be the final straw.
41 - I haven’t grasped all the details of Labour’s proposed alternative system (I have only ever participated in STV elections that with ballots ordered alphabetically) - but how are the party groupings on the ballot paper to be ordered in Labour’s proposed system?
Sorry Mike I don’t see the problem. Surely donators would be happy to know that there was no stigma attached to their contribution. Political parties would be happy to know that all contributions to them have been vetted and declared kosher. If it then turns out that a contributor was dubious, the parties aren’t responsible, the regulator is. It would work just like a bank, direct debits would be setup to cover the political parties, ‘housekeeping’ other withdrawals would have to be explained and justified. If the decision is taken for ’state funding’, my preference would be, at the GE on the ballot paper the question, ‘Do you wish to make a £2.00 donation to the party of your choice, tick the box y/n. Taxpayers money would then go to the regulator, to be placed in the parties accounts. To qualify, political parties would have to register with the regulator, with acceptable constitutions, i.e must be parties that accept democracy, and do not restrict membership to any British citizen, because of race, creed or colour.
Test.
Off topic, but you just knew that this government would give with one hand and take away with the other.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6037223.stm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/13/narmy13.xml
44.
The whole debate on total party funding and the cost of elections is fatuous nonsense sparked off at the fag end of the Governments time in office.
Isn’t it surely the case that when the Government is on the wane and the opposition are on the rise then there will be an imbalance in funding between the two however you try and control it.
I mean, who *wasn’t* giving money to Labour in the run up to 1997?
It is now the case that more people want to see the Government ousted than before; therefore the opposition parties will attract donors more easily than the Government party.
No amount of changing the law will help; as Nick himself admits, if people want to support a political movement you can’t stop them (indeed, why should you? we still just about live in a democracy don’t we?).
If you cap spending then you will just get an eruption of outfits like the Countryside Alliance buying poster sites and saying ‘Vote Conservative’.
If you cap donations then people will get round it as happens already when donors simply bid inflated prices for a signed portrait of Mrs T at an auction instead of just giving the money.
It is right that large donors are made public and there is some justification for the arguement that there ought to be an upper limit on donors if only to quell suggestions that people are buying influence.
46. Coldstone. I like the idea but what would you propose for the vast amount of small amounts of money. E.g. I pay about £50 for membership, £30 for a party newspaper and endless contributions of 50p - £10 for raffles, events, etc.
Exempt amounts under a certain threashold and let local parties carry on maintaining their own accounts?
24 Andrea. What excellent news that black opera singer Jesse Norman has been selected by Hereford Conservatives. She is of course well known in the region having, as may be seen here, sung the praises of Tory policy on asteroid hits in Ross-on-Wye. Lembit eat your heart out !!!
http://www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2001/Oct01/norman.jpg
46 obviously membership fees etc would be exempt, and small contributions that go to local parties would be exempt. This is only a floated idea, the minutae would have to be worked on.
I must say Marcus I liked the ‘the opposition is on the rise’ sorry to point this out, but ‘on the rise’ certainly for the Tories isn’t a phrase I would use.
Now I don’t want you to think Marcus that the voters don’t think that you politicians couldn’t ‘run a ‘P**s up in a brewery’ but basically we don’t think you could run a ‘P**s up in a brewery’ I also don’t want you to think, that the voters think, ‘Your all a load of conniving, cheating, b******s who we wouldn’t trust further than we could throw the Houses of Parliament,’ but basically we think, ‘Your all a load…..’ get the idea.
p.s. not party political, we think that about all of you!
Coldstone, if you have such a low opinion of politicians in general why don’t you stand for election somewhere and show us all how it should be done?
53 Marcus. Pissing up the lamp-post is so much more fun than being the lamp-post …. save in certain parts of Winchester !
Yvette Balls doing a good job of ignoring all questions on the Politics show…
54. But spare a thought for the lamp post’s feelings.
OT. Unemployment figures fall contrary to expectations :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6175273.stm
One thing I’ll miss after Tony Blair goes is the way he whips his glasses off to answer PMQs. Best glasses work since the heyday of Peter Shore.
33. Barry - are you raising your sights? I see you are standing under the ‘Save Bedford’ banner now, rather than just ‘Save Bedford Hospital’…
PMQs lasts one question…
In the old days the loony left were in the Labour party.
http://www.thisishampshire.net/sport/hampshiresport/display.var.1068667.0.skip_skip_hooray_no_i_dont_think_so.php
“Romsey MP Sandra Gidley described the traditional annual competition as her “pet hate” and accused schools of failing to consider the feelings of children with little sporting ability.
Romsey MP Sandra Gidley wants to do away with school sports days because of the trauma it inflicts on the little darlings who finish last.”
[56] Now I’m convinced. The Tories have changed - into a lamppost-friendly party!
53
Marcus I don’t have a low opinion of politicians, but we are all human, some more so! If you put any person in a position of power, then you must set up safeguards to ensure they do not abuse that power. If I were a politician I would want to know, that there was someone: watching what I do, checking I am not exploiting or abusing that power. The voters make a judgement on you every 4/5 years, but there must be other safeguards, you can do an awful lot of damage in four or five years. Politicians are in a very priviledged position, that priviledge is open to abuse!
61. Traumatic memories of coming a sweat-soaked, huffing and puffing last in the sack race have obviously taken their toll…
I can see the merit in limiting donations from Trades Unions and Corporations to avoid the appearance of the parties being ‘bought’ but it is a nonsense that there should be limits on donations from individuals, whom I understand are included in these proposals. A man should be able to give as much of his own money to a political party as he jolly well pleases.
or woman!
63. Interesting viewpoint, who would you ‘put in’ to oversee what your elected representatives get up then? Who would appoint these overseers?
I know! How about having a second Parliamentary chamber made up of ‘elders and betters?’
Better still, why not make sure its full of people who aren’t accountable to anyone, aren’t voted in, cannot be sacked and whose job lasts a lifetime and then pass the job on to their kids?
And best of all we can have one final safeguard, that we have a ‘head of state’ -preferebly there by accident of birth, who nominally controls everything like the army and the police so that if these stupid politicians get totally out of order there is still one last bastion of common sense.
58. John L, yes, the glass movement will indeed be missed.
Marcus your getting surreal!
When the last Conservative Government sold off the utilities, it set up regulators to watch over them. If its good enough for them, it good enough for you.!
Re 67, Marcus fantastic idea. (And I am not joking)
Very interesting details in yesterday’s Populist poll. It seems that the electorate takes approximately 8 months to catch up with PB.Com.
People on here have been saying from roughly 4 months after Dave’s coronation that style over substance would take him only so far and then in the absence of direction his support would start to fall apart.
It wasn’t only Labour and Lib Dem supporters who showed this foresight but some notable Tories as well. Whether he can turn it round is the big question but there is little doubt that the Chameleon Ad was a piece of vision that must make most ad agencies green with envy!
Re PMQ who is that fat Labour lady calling for action to help the obese?
I doubt if there is much spare food any where near her.
PM says it is about taking responsibility!
So she just needs to eat less!
“Romsey MP Sandra Gidley described the traditional annual competition as her “pet hate” and accused schools of failing to consider the feelings of children with little sporting ability.”
I had (and have) very little sporting ability but I can’t say it spoiled my life.
Benedict, when you look at our somewhat haphazard constitution afresh it does work - in spite of it’s lack of logic.
Which is why Blairs fiddling with it is such a worry.
RE 74, Marcus, yes I agree. It has evolved over a thousand years. You would not start with it, but if you were to ask the question “what do you want to achieve” then looked at what we have, they seem to do a reasonably good job.
72. HF, do you mean Kali Mountford (most famour for her hairstyle that looks like she has stolen the Sun King’s wig)?
74. “fiddling with it” = 75. “evolved”
Who is the MP with a dead grey poodle on her head?
She’s a Labour MP and asked a question at the end of PMQ’s.
She pops up everywhere but I don’t have a clue who she is!
BB
RE 77, jr, A system that has evolved over a thousand years is now being fidled woth so hard that it is not evolution but genetic modification
Rather more importantly with out any regard for why it is like it is now.
78. Do you mean this one?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/405000/images/_405078_kali_mountford150.jpg
80. Thanks Andrea. Yes, that’s the one.
Although I think that picture was taken many moons ago!
BB
73. Someone should fire that woman, for fecks sake its physical education, not necessarily team/competitive sport.
73. As a LD she should know all about being a loser.
Andrea, thanks that is her with “the poodle on her head”.
Murdo Fraser MSP, the Scottish Conservative Deputy Leader, has proposed that the Stone of Destiny on which the Kings and Queens of Scots were crowned be removed fron Edinburgh Castle to its original site of Scone Palace in Perthshire. And a good idea too ! :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/6174183.stm
85. What’s the point? it’s a fake, isn’t it?
85. Sorry link is :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/6174183.stm
83 Her Conservative opponents in recent elections have had much more experience of losing .
83. Is that the best you can do?
This womans comments are a joke. I dont; care of shes BNP or LD, shes a tube for coming out with that.
Want to defend her comments? Without any ifs or buts or you said she said.
Good to see Murdo Fraser engaged with the real issues…
No Mike,
I can’t agree with you.
(a) by not limiting donations, you are encouraging the parties to continue to rely on a small number of donors - who thereby become highly influential. Dennis Skinner’s argument that union cash is clean, is nonsense - as the Warwick Agreement showed. There is nothing to stop the Labour Party asking union members to agree to a direct debit for x number of years to keep down their costs. I suspect that the reason why they choose not to do this is because there is intimitation in the union movement that forces people to agree to this charge and that the party would get no where near was much cash if they approched members directly.
(b) by limited donations across the parliament (which is what I think you are suggesting), but massively increase the benefits of incumbency. Already they have allowences, staff, access to the media and a job that by its nature means that you are campaigning for election by undertaking it. If you ban money challengers won’t have a hope in hell. (Have a look at what the ashcroft cash was spent on - leaflets, basic expenses. Hardly the end of democracy).
Re 83 Mark Senior “Her Conservative opponents in recent elections have had much more experience of losing .”
Possibly true, but he has seen her majority fall to 125 in May 05.
Is she stating Lib Dem policy?
I suspect that fine athlete Ming may have cringed…..
92 Not possibly true certainly true as a clear matter of fact - I know that is hard for you Conservatives to take sometimes you are much more amenable to the snide aside expressed in post 73 . No she is not stating LibDem policy nor a view that I personally agree with but it is a view fairly widely held amongst a minority of people in more than 1 particular party .
HF: Although a Health spokesperson, I doubt it.
On Scottish ballot papers, and the influence of order of names in particular, can no-one think of a way of dealing with this? While my own surname begins with B, I can’t help but think that we should elect our representatives on merit rather than name (sorry Aaron Aardvark.) Has there ever been a trial of random ordering of names on a ballot paper, so that each ballot paper may have a different order? You could still select by name or party, and then just put your cross near the top if you really want to, but the name effect might balance out? Have other suggestions been trialed?
I bet Sandra Gidley was the sort of schoolgirl who sailed easily through school in almost every subject, and for some reason remains very bitter that there was one subject she was forced to do that she was bad at. Conversely, there are a lot of children who really struggle with most of school - and find it humiliating that they are, for example, utterly unable to comprehend concepts in maths that their classmates seemed to have grasped long ago - but get some sense of achievment and self-worth that in PE there is demonstrably one thing that they are better than their peers at.
And ’skipping and dance’? Does she honestly think that this is going to make PE more popular? Foolish woman.
12&16. So basically the Tories most direct opponent in terms of largest number of seats they can win is you. You think you may misread on “overstretch”, regardless of how the SNP are doing if Labour are under pressure from all of the other parties in second place that must drastically weaken them overall no, as opposed to just being under SNP pressure in which case they can concentrate everything against you.
82 - I’ve never understood why it’s P.E and competitive sport that always seems to get it in the neck. There are very, very few kids who are good at everything. I was fairly hopeless at art but just because my paintings never got put up on the classroom wall it didn’t exactly ruin the rest of my life.
97 – Marcus to be honest I don’t think Labour will seriously be under threat in more than about 10 of the seats they currently hold. They don’t seem to be targeting any of the seats they lost in 2003 either so they can plough all their resources into holding what they already have.
I wonder if the trade union/party funding furore will have consequences for the party’s deputy leadership election? I see that Sir Jeremy Beecham has now intervened and that there is to be an emergency NEC meeting tomorrow.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/unions/story/0,,1971186,00.html
I think it could certainly harm a Hazel Blears bid who is arguably ‘on watch’ as party Chair during the whole review. As someone appointed by Blair she may be seen as too close to the wrong people on this one and dramatically reduce her credibility (further).
Re: 93 yokel, no wonder Ming does not see her as suitable for his “front bench”.
Re 94 Mark, well her majority has dwindled away at a rate greater than other Lib Dems. Is she standing again or getting elevated to HoL?
[95] I think that’s done in Australia where compulsory voting led some people to just vote for whoever was at the top of the paper (I think it was called the “donkey vote” - doubtless S.O. Else will give further and better particulars … )
73 . Sean Fear, I loved sport and the competition, it was one of the few things I enjoyed in my school life.
If you follow through what she has said then you end up with kids dropping out of subjects or other activaties because they are not good at it or just “not botherd!”…very slippery slope which Labour has already taken with GCSE’s which are now worthless.
83. Your an ass.
96&98. Got to agree with both your comments. I hated PE and still have “fond” memories about being made to do cross country in January, although being knee deep in snow did make you run faster.
Re 100, Benedict also said yesterday he had heard about an emergency NEC meeting.
I agree with HenryG that this row between Blair and most of his NEC will undermine Blears. Yvette Cooper from the Brown camp said today that she wanted the union cash retained.
I thought Beecham was a Blairite but clearly Blair is losing most of his leading supporters as his power ebbs away.
105. Yes, Beecham is a very good weather-vane and is a well-respected loyalist. His intervention is therefore very signficant. It looks like a last throw of the dice to harden a New Labour legacy within the party. It’s Blair’s record of pushing things through relying on opposition support that’s alarming people the most though. This could accelerate his departure. I’m not in Westminster, but apparently among the PLP it’s becoming pretty hairy.
Mike Smithson
Completely off thread (as usual- usually becasue I am caught reading the threads the day before).
Picking up from your lead last night- “Touching the Void” was fantastic, IMO opinion one of the greatest ever drama/documentaries. I have actually bought it. You have an extremely talented family.
I will look out for John’s new work, and report back on the site.
94. Mark is quite right - school sports are opposed by members of all the ultra PC left wing parties, the Lib Dems, Labour and the Greens.
105. Someone has just pointed out to me that frenetic blogger Tom Watson MP has not posted since the first Hayden Phillips stories broke on Tuesday morning. As an old trade union fixer with a very strong belief in the union link, I wonder if he’s been sharpening knives? Watch out Tony.
109. Is DC not more to the left then all of them now?
Certainly more so than the Lib Dems….we would never hug a hoddie!!
109…he couldnt sharpen a pencil
101 I don’t know if she is planning to stand again . The swing against her at the last GE was a bit below average , I recall some Conservatives posting on here that their recapture of the seat was a formality . The boundary changes will put her notional majority up a little to around 500 .
100. HenryG, I suppose the NEC will never back such proposals. The 12 unions representatives + 4 Grassroot Alliance members + Skinner would already be enough to get a majority on the NEC. And without counting that other figures like Beecham are already expressing their concerns about it
Re: Labour NEC meeting.
Is Tony LLoyd the new Chairman of PLP on it?
He is backed by Amicus and it does appear that both the left and Brownites are piling in against the Hayden Phillips proposals.
Actually as a Lib Dem I think Sandra is wrong this once. I was always crap at organised sport at school and they gave me the option to stop doing much serious at the beginning of the 6th form in the Rugby term. I kept it up, because I enjoyed it, for the last 3 years. And I enjoyed sports days. One of the advantages of a house system was that if you were not personally good enough you could support your own ‘team’.
On the subject of Sandra’s majority however, don’t count chickens!
Erlend
Re Sandra Gidley - all these comments from a web site posting. Does anyone actually know what she actually said.
116. http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/latest/display.var.1066958.0.school_sports_days_put_children_off_sport_mp.php
and some replies:
http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1068667.mostviewed.skip_skip_hooray_no_i_dont_think_so.php
http://www.thisishampshire.net/sport/hampshiresport/display.var.1070334.0.mps_comments_spark_school_sports_debate.php
117. But this is a newspaper report!. Actual words, context?
114. I don’t know if Tony Lloyd gets to attend tomorrow’s NEC meeting, but he’s rock solid behind the union link, as I’d say is the majority of the PLP. This is a good issue for him to exercise his authority.
118. If you had read the link I just gave you, you could have discovered she said during a Commons debate. And so you could have gone to Hansard and read all the debate!
(clue she said it on Dec 5th)
120. Andrea I did and I read the original article, but I doubt whether a single other person actually looked this up in Hansard to check it before condemning her. I just get frustrated at how people treat what is printed in the press or heard on the TV/radio as the truth.
The current debate on the so called secular hijacking of Christmas is typical of this. After weeks of this the Today programme (which had been involved in the debate in the preceeding weeks) checked out the stories and could not find a single actual example. However if you talk to people they believe it because they read it.
121..Smoke..fire…
121.”120. Andrea I did and I read the original article, but I doubt whether a single other person actually looked this up in Hansard to check it before condemning her”
well, I went to read Hansard (but I haven’t comdmned her either), To prove it, I can tell you that an MP told her “rubbish” and then “The hon. Lady is talking complete bunk”.
122. Yokel, so you believe everything you read in the papers and nothing is taken out of context?
123. Andrea, I believe you read it. With your record how could I not.
I did say ‘ a single other’ and that wasn’t referring to me.
By the way if she did say this and it isn’t taken out of context I also think it was a potty remark!
122 Smoke .. fire .. Cameron .. youth .. hard drugs
125.
124. I don’t believe everything I read about the Lib Dems in the papers. The truth is, in fact, usually far worse than they report.
124. kjh, I think she actually said it out of context.
Diana Johnson MP: “Does the hon. Lady deplore the proposal by her Lib Dem colleagues in Hull to remove the free healthy school meals in all our primary and special schools? Those meals give our youngsters a very healthy start”
Sandra Gidley MP: ” cannot really answer for my colleagues in Hull— [ Interruption.] I do not know the full story. It might have been prompted by a funding problem from central Government— [ Interruption.] What would hon. Members expect me to say? It would be unfair to comment on that situation when I do not have the full facts.
Much has been said about sport, and I want to take issue with what the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) said about the need for a lot more competitive sport. Those children who are a towards the end of the queue when the teams are being picked soon get the message and decide that they do not want to exercise because they do not want to make fools of themselves. That is not a positive experience. I have a pet hate about school sports days. Children who have little sporting ability in the traditional sense are often forced to enter races and be publicly humiliated”
and then all started
Thanks Andrea. I was just too lazy to look it up myself. Interesting isn’t it. What was in paper sounded crackpot. In context it doesn’t particularly.
129. She went on with a couple of more interventions about it.
It’s on Dec 5th Hansard.
129. Sorry, that seems just as crackpot as the original setting of the remarks in the paper to me. ‘Publicly humiliated’ is a ridiculous term to use in the context of a school sports day.
131. I don’t think so. I’m very pro competitive sport, but I certainly remember from my school days one or two children who were completely inept at sports being humiliated in front of children and parents and they were usually the ones that were bullied for being different. I have two young children both of whose schools do competitive sport and I’m not aware of any of these issues there, but that may be because the schools are very much more sensitive these days to the bully issue and ensure the obvious exposure doesn’t occur.
RE 109, Timbob, what is he going to resign from this time?
Perhaps any forum in which people are required express their views and be exposed to ridicule if they are extemely stupid ones should be banned.
How embarrassing.
Someone claimed up thread that the LD Brown cash was doled out between 50 targets… not so.
Lumps of it were spent on the posters and freesheets which were rushed out at a very late stage. The party got the money pretty close to the eventual polling date and didn’t know in advance it was coming.
Indded, in fact the money came so late that it could not have been spent particularly ‘wisely’. It was also given with earmarked spending options, defined by the giver. Weird.
Why are the plans a step to far? Why should unions have special treatment? Because they’re working class and support Labour?
Seriously, I can’t see what’s wrong with people individually supporting their chosen party - why should they have to pay a levy because they’re a union member? Don’t say “they can opt to leave”, the point of a union is to represent their members not support political parties. Nor should they be forced to complain, they should be asked if they want to donate. Do you think your bank has the right to sign you up to lots of supplementary “benefits” at your own cost without your consent?
The unions are complaining because they’ll lose their supposed influence with a major political party and Labour MPs because their party will lose a lot of money. I doubt they’ve thought about bureaucracy - after all the government loves it at the moment.
Of course there’s no reason you can’t have a cap on spending as well. Why not have both?
Just looking through the details of the populus poll, frankly, any party can look at the details therein positively.
Two main things stood out, firstly the press gave Greens and UKIP prominence as part of the others vote, it appears that the BNP got the same percentage as UKIP but were not mentioned. Memo to The Times: ignoring them won’t work.
Secondly I was looking for what potential churn exists with Brown as leader and the figures show Cameron gaining a net 10% of the lib dem vote and a net 2% of the labour vote. There’s only a vote in it between labour and lib dems (would have hoped to see a net flow to lib dems but there you go). Also notable is that all parties lose 2 or 3% to others, Cameron loses no advantage to UKIP therefore (didn’t the Riddell analysis try to claim that or was that before?)
Also, beware a woman aged between 35 and 44 in either Wales or the South West and from social class AB, she plans to vote for the Natural Law party, amazingly they found another such person in October and March as well…..
Isn’t the obvious response for unions to delegate the donation aspect to its smallest administrative unit? It depends on exactly how the new law is worded of course. But surely each union might be able to get local groups to ballot themselves and continue to give £3 per head or whatever it is. That way it’s much less administrative, because the unions will be mailing their members from time to time anyway. Obviously some groups will vote no.
In any case, anything that limits the money swilling around is surely bad for a right-wing party, because it reduces their financial advantage. Aren’t Tories just as dependent on big donations as Labour, if not more?
Personally I think £50,000 is far too high, except possibly for bequests. How many people can afford to give that kind of money to anything? Clearly wealthy people will have far more influence than poor people, meaning that we will still live in a plutocracy.