Here Comes the New Boss…
Same As the Old Boss… I mentioned before the election that Labour really weren’t the party of change that they were claiming to be. I said on a number of occasions that they were basically the continuity party and that their policies were functionally almost identical to the Tories they were seeking to replace, but with more competent personnel. Yesterday a vote in the Commons demonstrated that this was indeed a correct analysis and that Labour is much more interested in party politics than the good of the country. What Happened? Yesterday MPs had the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the House’s response to the King’s Speech, which sets out the aims of the government now that Parliament has been reopened. The standard unamended response was: That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, as follows: Most Gracious Sovereign, We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament. Address to be presented to His Majesty by Members of the House who are Privy Counsellors or Members of His Majesty’s Household. Hansard This is a fairly standard response to a King’s Speech, and is entirely non-contentious to simply pass without further comment. However, it is also an opportunity for minority parties to point out to the government that they have missed some key issues that really ought to have been included. In the case of the amendment proposed by Christine Jardine MP (Liberal Democrat, I might add), these issues were: The right to see a GP within seven days A guarantee for cancer patients to start treatment within 62 days from urgent referral Free personal care in England Better support for carers, and a cross-party commission on social care An end to the scandal of sewage dumping against which the previous Government failed to take action, including by replacing Ofwat with a new regulator Support families with the cost of living Tackle poverty, including by introducing a national food strategy, extending free school meals to all children in poverty, and by scrapping the two-child benefit cap Ensure that rural communities and farmers receive adequate support Reform the system for parliamentary elections by replacing first-past-the-post with proportional representation, so that every vote counts The new Labour government voted this down. Not only that, they withdrew the Whip from seven MPs that voted to amend the King’s Speech response (NB, they actually voted for an amendment from the SNP which only focused on the child benefit cap – they didn’t even go so far as to vote for this amendment with its various additional benefits for the country), including the former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell. Frankly there is nothing in this amendment that should warrant this type of action from Starmer. His party supports all of these, including proportional representation, so he does not have a mandate from his own party to ignore these requests, let alone the fact that almost every other party in Westminster voted for this amendment (Tories notwithstanding, given they are responsible for most of the mess this would have addressed). Danny’s Debut This year I lost the Uxbridge & South Ruislip election to Danny Beales. At the time I was not hugely disappointed with this because during the hustings Danny set himself out to be progressive in the true sense of the word. Nevertheless, he joined the Labour masses in voting against this amendment. Shame on you, Danny. Every single one of these proposals was in line with what a true progressive would have wanted, and you used one of your very first appearances in our Parliament to vote to retain Tory policies that have harmed our country and our constituency. You should have joined John McDonnell in voting for this amendment if you wanted to be taken seriously as a progressive, but it seems that you have chosen to simply fall in line with what Starmer demands even when it contradicts your own personal morality. A fine example of putting party before country, something you were very keen to accuse Steve Tuckwell of doing. Frankly, if you want to be a progressive, you are clearly in the wrong party. Labour is not a progressive party, as demonstrated by suspending several prominent MPs who dared to vote for some actual progressiveness.
Lessons Learned from my Launch
If you’ve been paying even cursory attention over the last few weeks, you will likely have seen that my campaign launch was coming up. In fact, it was yesterday. I think it’s important to reflect on events and the lessons learned from what occurred during my launch. Tickets Without question, it’s going to be a good idea in future to offer a discount for early ticket purchases, or at least free tickets to the raffle. The issue I had this time was that I set the ticket price as a flat fee, which meant that someone giving 12 weeks of notice would be paying the same as someone who gave 12 minutes! Economically, this makes little sense, so a staggered pricing that increases towards the deadline makes sense, especially if I retain the flexibility to let someone come along at the standard price. I definitely made a rod for my own back with this one in terms of catering numbers, and as such I definitely overbought (what a shame!). Lessons Learned from my Launch #1: consider pricing the tickets so that early birds get a discount. Location, location, location What’s a party without a venue? Well, we found out yesterday, when the owners of the venue that we had paid for and turned up to did not themselves turn up to let us in. It seems that they had accidentally put our booking down as a March rather than a February booking. This had been mentioned and corrected by me in January, but apparently it did not manage to get corrected on the community hall’s calendar. After some drinking in the car park while we waited, we eventually decided that it was just too cold, so we decided that the best bet was to find an alternative venue. I don’t know if you know this (I didn’t) but there was a fairly major football match on yesterday, so most venues just weren’t available. As such, we needed a “volunteer” with a private residence not too far away who would be happy for a large group of political activists to turn up en masse. Long story short, it was me. I was the “volunteer”. So we had an impromptu party at my house. Which I loved, by the way, so I might volunteer to do again! Lessons Learned from my Launch #2: don’t deal with any venue unless you have a mobile number for the person who is in charge of letting you in. Raffles The raffle went quite well, notwithstanding the fact that my photography was the least popular prize of all! That said, it makes sense to ensure that the person selling the tickets (thanks again, Sue!) knows the rules of the raffle first rather than asking how it works after selling 30 tickets or so. Luckily this was all sorted long before the problem became permanent. Of course, it also makes sense to draw the winners before anyone departs, in case they have the winning tickets. In this instance, I thought that two of our departed guests had one of the winning tickets, so I held it back for them, only to find out the next day that they did not in fact have the winning ticket. Who did? Sue. Sue had the winning ticket. She’d sold it to herself, then forgotten to actually check whether she had won! Lessons Learned from my Launch #3: Sue is great at persuading people to part with their money for raffle tickets. Sue is not so great at actually claiming the prizes she wins! Conclusion In spite of my fairly sarcastic tone in the lessons learned from my launch above, I genuinely had a great time. Having so many friends and family descend unexpectedly on my house was lovely, and it was great to have the Morassi Quartet playing in my lounge! Thanks to them, and also to Dom, who did amazing work in the kitchen to produce food for everyone. Bring on the next one – maybe next time it will actually be planned as a house party!