Friday, May 09, 2008
 Melanie Smallman
According to commentators on the weekend, last week's election results in London sounded the death knell for environmental policies for the Labour party: Ken Livingstone stood on a green platform, with some of the most radical environmental policies being proposed anywhere in the world and the voters said 'no', instead voting for a man who supported George Bush's position on Kyoto. The Progressive >
Friday, May 09, 2008
Richard Scorer
What do Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, the United States and Algeria have in common? All of them officially prohibit the use of torture, and all of them are known to have practised it in the recent past. These countries, and one hundred and forty others, are state parties to the United Nations convention against torture. The convention bans the use of torture in all circumstances, including threats to national security. In theory, it's one of the most widely supported international agreements. If signatures on the convention are any guide, the use of torture ought to be almost unheard of. read >
Friday, May 09, 2008
 Jonny Reynolds
Ouch. That hurt quite a bit. After several years of some pretty bad
local election results for Labour across the country, we got well and
truly clobbered. Results in the north, best described as very bad but
not catastrophic, were perhaps more significant in that they showed the
regional divide to the ‘Cameron effect' may be diminishing. Northern
voters have long seemed more resistant to the new Tories, with cultural
anti-Conservatism more deeply ingrained up here, but that appears to be
changing. New thinking >
Friday, May 09, 2008
Tory tactics show New Labour's strategic triumph
'But it is striking that the main arithmetical conundrum Mr Cameron
needs to explain is where he will find the money to fund his various
spending pledges, rather than which public services he will slash to
finance putative tax cuts. “The next election”, says one frank senior
Conservative, “will be won by whoever is most New Labour.”' - Bagehot, The Economist
What should Brown do next? - The Guardian
Ken speaks
'Following May 1 some people are posing the choice as between moving "to
the left" or "to the right". This is not the right question. Labour
must place itself at the centre of a progressive alliance that can
solve the problems facing the country.' - Ken Livingstone, The Guardian
Eton mess
'Boris Johnson's election as mayor now means that there are two men with remarkably similar histories at the top of the Tory party: both he and leader David Cameron are Old Etonians who went to Oxford and were members of the same notorious drinking club. But the Conservatives are just reflecting modern Britain, says John Harris - a nation that is now less meritocratic than in a generation' - The Guardian
Who rules Russia?
'So far, Mr Putin, the prime minister, has eclipsed his nominee as
president, Dmitry Medvedev, whether at the handover ceremony in St
Andrew's Hall on Wednesday or when addressing the Duma yesterday. The
indications so far are that power has shifted from the Kremlin to
parliament, where Mr Putin's party, United Russia, has a majority of
over two thirds.' - Leader, Daily Telegraph
Burma assistance
'We will get down to the job. We will not let our longstanding and deep
concerns over democracy and human rights hold back the lifesaving work
at hand. The regime in Naypyidaw has announced it will go ahead with
the referendum on its constitution tomorrow, a process that excludes
Aung San Suu Kyi and representatives of ethnic groups. It is clear,
however, that the conditions on the ground make the free and fair
process demanded by the UN Security Council all the more difficult.' - David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner, The Times
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Thursday, May 08, 2008
Today, Progress publishes an new online pamphlet by Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, entitled The Crisis of the Democratic Left in Europe.
In it, MacShane argues that the election of 'nationalist xenophobic populists' as Mayors of Rome and London are the latest signs that the democratic left is in turmoil across Europe.
Macshane warns that Labour should be 'thinking seriously about what happens if no party wins an outright majority in the next electoral period.' He urges 'an open admission of cooperation and teamwork between parties as well as within parties as the precondition for the centre-left to do well.'
Download the pamphlet >
Thursday, May 08, 2008
 Alan Johnson
Stepping back from the day-to-day headlines, there are six signposts to a progressive internationalism that emerged from the conversations reproduced in my recent book for the Foreign Policy Centre, Global Politics After 9/11. Each is a response to a new terrain of foreign policy. That terrain was mapped in the book by Anne-Marie Slaughter, of Princeton and co-convenor of The Princeton Project - a three-year effort to develop a bipartisan security strategy for the USA. Progressive internationalism >
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Dan McCurry
Lord Carter recommended that ‘local' community prisons should be built, so that families can visit offenders; a vital part of rehabilitation. Yet the government instead opted for economy of scale; the building of ‘titan' prisons is now the policy. However, there is a third way that could allow localism to happily exist side by side with titan prisons. This third way already exists right under their noses. The disused police station custody suites, up and down the country, that are currently housing convicts, have proved to be perfectly effective. Rather than using these cells as overflow from the prisons, we should use them as community prisons. New thinking >
Thursday, May 08, 2008
How best to mobilise Scotland's anti-independence majority?
'I wonder still if the referendum will ever be held in Scotland.
Precedent suggests something or other will get in the way. What a
titanic moment it was in British politics when in 1991 John Major
persuaded his Chancellor, Ken Clarke, to support a referendum on the
Euro. Mr Clarke has regretted conceding the ground ever since, one of
those moments when the Euro-sceptics proclaimed a significant victory.
Of course the referendum was never held, neither by the Conservatives,
nor by Labour who also offered one.' - Steve Richards, The Independent
Of listening and learning
'The response that ministers will now listen and learn from the public
is a curious one, because the message from the British people in the
local elections was that they do not want the Labour Party in power. It
is difficult to see what listening will do now when senior Labour
figures have been standing with their fingers in their ears for so long.' - Martin Bright, New Statesman
'Even if there is currently little sign of it across the range of public
opinion, the risk of a rightwing populist backlash can never be
discounted during periods of economic stagnation or recession, as the
return of the media oligarch Silvio Berlusconi and his racist and
post-fascist allies in Italy has reminded us. The advance of the BNP
last week was a warning of how anger at the political rupture with
Labour's traditional base can be distorted through the prism of race.' - Seumas Milne, The Guardian
'Honest Reporting'
'Any attempt to describe accurately the situation for Palestinians is
met like this. If you recount the pumping of sewage onto Palestinian
land, "Honest Reporting" claims you are reviving the anti-Semitic myth
of Jews "poisoning the wells." If you interview a woman whose baby died
in 2002 because she was detained – in labour – by Israeli soldiers at a
checkpoint within the West Bank, "Honest Reporting" will say you didn't
explain "the real cause": the election of Hamas in, um, 2006. And on,
and on.' - Johann Hari, The Independent
Down the drain
'Boris Johnson’s first policy announcement, a pledge to ban alcohol on public
transport, came under fierce criticism from unions yesterday and suffered a
further setback when it emerged that the measure could not be implemented
across the network.' - The Times
Tax analysis
'
Attitudes on tax also fluctuate. The British Social Attitudes survey shows
that, in the early Thatcher years, 54 per cent favoured keeping taxes and
spending on health, education and social benefits at the same level. This
fell to about 31 to 34 per cent by the 1997 election. Over the same period,
support for increasing taxes and spending more on services rose from 32 to
about 60 per cent. By the time of the last election in 2005, however,
backing for more spending was down to 46 per cent, and staying the same was
43 per cent.' - Peter Riddell, The Times
Fight back!
'But the third lesson is: fight back. I woke up on Saturday morning to a
flood of text messages from friends, mostly non-political. They said
two things: this is really depressing. And, please don't let this
happen.' - James Purnell, New Statesman
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Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Peter Kellner
The old adage often makes sense: ‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’ We could spend our lives preparing for horrors that never happen. Yet sometimes, it is worth thinking ahead. A hung parliament is one such event. I am not predicting this will happen next time; but it could happen. We should have our political insurance ready, much as we insure against our car crashing or our home burning down. read >
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
After 1 May: how Labour can recover from its election defeat
Following last week’s local and London elections, Progress has a range of articles on how Labour can regain the initiative leading up to the next general election. From the May magazine, the editorial argues that only New Labour can win the next election, Lewis Baston writes on Labour's metropolitan meltdown, Sally Keeble MP asks whether the 10p tax row could shatter the New Labour coalition, and Guy Lodge proposes a bold move the prime minister should take on elected mayors.
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