Poverty of the past and poverty to come

To be honest with you many people like me will be relatively unaffected by the cuts announced in the CSR yesterday. However as the IFS has recently reported, George Osborne's spending cuts will hit the poorest harder than the better off. Over 100 years ago Seebohm Rowntree carried out some preliminary research into the amounts and types of foods, the levels of rents, cost of heating and lighting, etc. deemed necessary to maintain 'physical efficiency'. Rowntree’s estimates of the income needed to avoid poverty were set deliberately low in order to test whether there was any level of income at which people could not maintain a non-poor lifestyle no matter how hard they tried. In his report Rowntree distinguished between (a) ‘primary’
poverty – families whose income was insufficient for the maintenance even of ‘physical
efficiency’, and; (b) ‘secondary’ poverty – families whose income would have been
sufficient for the maintenance of 'physical efficiency' were it not that some portion of it was
absorbed by other expenditure.

When you read Rowntree’s report today, especially in light of the savage cuts that have just been announced, one is left contemplating exactly how we might today define what physical efficiency means. For Rowntree it meant the following:

'A family living upon the scale allowed for must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half penny
newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join a sick club or trade union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description'.

So how, exactly, will today's poor be affected by these savage, brutal and according to many commentators, unnecessary cuts? The coalition cabinet is drawn almost exclusively from the financial elite, people who simply have no concept of what 'physical efficiency' means for the millions of their fellow citizens who exist on modest incomes but who will bear the brunt of this ideologically driven spending round. Cameron’s Conservatives are made up of the “right kind of people” – his people: privately educated and from a background of immense wealth and privilege. Under Cameron, the Tories still believe the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their own particular political, economic and social outlook. The CSR has given every indication that under the Cameron/Clegg coalition the gap between rich and poor is likely to rise even further. If Labour is to expose the ideological recklessness of these cuts then its best prospects lie not in outlining what it would have done instead - it is the opposition now and needs to get used to opposing - but in campaigning against what these cuts will do to further entrench the ugly realities of health, education and housing inequality.

Rowntree's 1901 report exposed the senseless, soul destroying and economically dire implications of a laissez faire, non-interventionist state - we owe it to today's poor to ensure that his sound advice and analysis are not dismissed in the name of inevitability.

An evening with Alastair Campbell

Last night I had the rather daunting task of acting as the host and compere for 'An Evening with Alastair Campbell' at the Place Theatre in Oakengates in Telford. Alastair donated all of he proceeds from the ticket and book sales to Telford CLP. He entertained and enthralled his audience with his reflections on his time at the heart of the New Labour project and his views on topics ranging from how intelligent he thinks George Bush really is to how we can better support people with mental health problems. Some of the things he spoke about that I personally found interesting were:

• That he is pretty certain Adam Boulton does not like him very much!




• His view that David Cameron has style but lacks 'policy' substance.




• That he owns 3 road bikes and one of them was made to measure!

Though I was very, very nervous I really enjoyed the whole event and I know that Telford CLP were delighted with the numbers attending and with the amount it raised which will go to help fight campaigns in the area in the coming months. Alistair is a class act and the Labour party nationally and locally owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Were you there? What were your thoughts about the evening? Do you have photos that I might add?

Why Ed Miliband must show that politics has to be about more that the desire to wrong foot your opponent

The sad truth is that (despite a few notable exceptions) the last government did not make it easy for the electorate to vote Labour with any enthusiasm. On the doorstep the divide between the concerns of core Labour voters and those of a PR-fixated cabinet never seemed wider. In fairness though; the history of Labour governments was ever thus. Since the 1920s the story goes something like this: Labour supporters are near euphoric when victory is achieved there is then a period of hard slog as the party faces up to the harsh responsibilities of being in government. The party then accuses the leadership of betrayal and the leadership accuses the party of ingratitude. Supporters then become disillusioned which leads to defeat at the polls. We then experience a long period of Tory government before the next outbreak of euphoria and so on and so forth.

After an unprecedented 13 straight years in power many of Labour's own members are not certain what they want. Many want the party to be both passionately principled and sensibly pragmatic; to be a party that proudly honours its past while not neglecting to shape both its and the nation's future; to champion the state while being part of the market; to tackle poverty but also support aspiration. Ed Miliband stood for the leadership of the Labour party on a platform that argued that the renewal that was undertaken in order to gain power in 1997 needs to be repeated if Labour is win at the next election. In the mid-1990s Labour successfully occupied the centre ground, it modernised and reached out beyond its own activists and turned the Tories into a replica of what it itself used to be – a party with a narrow base, a party obsessed about the wrong things and a party seen as old fashioned and out of touch.

Can Labour win under Ed Miliband? Of course it can but I strongly believe that the best prospects of future success for our party lie not in the puerile tactics of the spin doctor; politics has to be about more that the desire to wrong foot your opponent. The prospects for future success for Labour lies not in defending the status quo of what is still a highly unequal Britain, rather it is in working with the British people to help rid our nation of some ugly realities such as child poverty and the still endemic inequalities in both health and education, inequalities that could well be even further entrenched once the age of austerity kicks in.

The politics of ambition and optimism must also be the politics of principle - we should attack our opponents for what they espouse, for their policies and not for their personal shortcomings.

Ambition not austerity

I am a big Hilary Benn fan and think the tone set in this video is the right one and that the message and title offer some clear dividing lines between ourselves and the ConDem coalition.

The politics of optimism

Possibly the best political TV advert ever!

I found this a few years ago - perhaps Ed Miliband should adopt a similar approach, it espouses the politics of optimism!