I’ve decided it’s no longer possible to have a sensible and / or intelligent discussion about immigration. This is especially true when you’ve got most right-wingers still pretending there was some vast Labour plot to deliberately foist these Labour-voting immigrants on them. The idea just beggars belief and yet they all believe it.

Oh and then there’s black candidate Loanna Morrison, who declares on ConservativeHome that Nick Griffin “is right” on immigration. Where do you even start? Is it not possible for these fucking, thick people to say anything sensible on the issue without agreeing with fascists or believing in conspiracies?

Morrison is black – which incidentally does not make any charge of racist stupidity any less relevant.

The Independent today has an interview with Baroness Warsi, the shadow communities minister. It is an interesting look at a quietly impressive performer, who, even if you don’t agree with everything she has to say, seems like someone who will be able to handle her role well:

But Warsi says the problem with 13 years of Labour government is that money has been pumped into deprived, mainly Labour, areas, with very little to show for it. As with previous Tory governments, she says, there will be a “retrenchment of the state”, but the difference under Cameron is that people will not be left entirely alone: voluntary groups, social entrepreneurs or individual activists will be paid to set up community projects. Warsi calls it a “franchise model”.

Surely the last thing deprived estates need is cuts. She replies: “Clearly, if the solution to all their problems was money, we would have solved it, wouldn’t we? That should send out a strong signal to say: actually, money is not always the answer.”

Operation Black Vote have launched their MP shadowing scheme again.

The MP Shadowing Scheme is looking for 25 BME individuals from across the country to gain an invaluable insight into the roles and responsibilities of an MP. MP Shadows will spend six months shadowing high level MPs from the three main political parties.

In their role as Parliamentary Ambassadors, participants will also play a vital role helping to raise awareness amongst Black and minority ethnic communities about our democratic institutions.
Check out: http://www.obv.org.uk

On the Sunday just gone past, Catherine Bennett mentioned me in an article taking a shot at “the mob” – especially on Twitter and blogs.
Here’s my reply:

This weekend Catherine Bennett castigated me, along with others, for being part of a mob that had taken exception to the prospect of Rod Liddle being appointed editor of the Independent. She’s right – I refuse to buy the Indy ever again (or link to it) if Liddle is appointed editor. More than 4,000 people share my concern, and with good reason.

In all these cases the so-called “mob” has been accused of suppressing free speech. But what you can hear screaming isn’t the Twitter or Facebook mob, it’s newspaper columnists terrified at the idea that their critics could organise themselves and do damage to their reputations.
…
What the likes of Bennett, Cohen and others protesting about the “mob” don’t seem to understand is that these are real people, their own readers, trying to do something about the world around them. They join Facebook groups, retweet about court injunctions or state #welovetheNHS because, occasionally, they have the opportunity to be part of an spontaneous movement that can have a big impact. Not all lead somewhere, of course, but some do. And the more people realise the power of the collective the more they’ll join in.

Read the whole thing here

This a guest post by the Drive-by Snowballer

Since the Christmas Day attempted attack on an airliner bound for Detroit, no voice has been more vocal in support of profiling passengers than that of Khalid Mahmood MP. In a cringe-worthy display, he appeared on Monday night’s Newsnight against Maajid Nawaz of Quilliam to defend profiling.

Khalid’s performance starts off inauspiciously. His opening gambit is to argue that extremist recruiters themselves profile targets for radicalisation. [08:35]

They target people, they specifically look at people. They look at the weakness of the people, they draw them into that and then they suck ‘em off… [incomprehensible].

Without descending into puerility and delving into his rather strange closing remark (do radicalisers really “suck off” their recruits?), this is still a remarkably rubbish argument. If terrorist recruiters are able to focus their radicalising efforts then they are just as able to make sure that they are focusing on people whose ethnicity, age and gender would suggest that they are less likely to match the “profile” of a terrorist. To profile is to institutionalise security services always being a step behind terrorists’ recruitment efforts.

These coups are brilliant for two reasons: (1) they’ve flushed out and killed off the most annoying Blairites: Purnell (though he may come back under D Miliband), Hazel Blears, Charles Clarke, Hoon etc. I doubt many in the party will shed tears for them, and the stench of betrayal is all around them.

(2) They make it more likely that a coup will happen still (have to agree with John Rentoul) and a new leader will try some semblance of making a clean break from Brown & Blair (there’s no other way) in order to make the electorate listen, very briefly, to why people should vote Labour. Brown isn’t doing a good enough job.

The big story of yesterday was how long it actually took the cabinet’s big beasts to come out in support of Brown. If they were all planning to keep their powder dry until the election then I think they’d sound much more supportive.

Ipso facto, another coup attempt between now and the election is likely.

Yesterday Tory blogger Iain Dale posted a blog-post titled ‘Oxford is Cool’. Not long after, Unity posted an article on LibCon pointing out what a bunch of tripe the thinking and methodology behind that post was. Note, how Iain Dale then acted when others pointed this out.

It’s worth noting, for a start, that Dale’s blogpost is just one in a long line of rubbish he has published about global warming (including a recent punt on the ‘Global Cooling’ myth). It’s a subject he clearly knows little about. But it has become de rigeur for global warming deniers to publish a continuous stream of bad science and rubbish claims, and obfuscate the debate while saying it is there just to further discussion and ‘challenge the consensus‘.

Ezra Klein has an excellent article at the Washington Post on what a hypocritical and mendacious Senator Joe Lieberman is, as he tries to gut healthcare reform. The administration have bent over backwards to accommodate the two ‘independent’ (meaning conservative) Democratic Senators – Nelson and Liberman – and both aren’t giving an inch.

In contrast the Republicans are toeing a tight line, making sure not one Senator crosses over. The result? Obama is in deep shit. If healthcare reform fails then his administration will be labelled as a failure. And all because of one Senator who doesn’t want to give easy access to abortion (Nelson) and the other because he wants to see Democrats fail (Lieberman). And that, in many ways, is why I have a problem with agreeing that allowing politicians plenty of independence is a good thing: you end up with an American system that can’t get much done at all unless discipline is imposed.

There’s a point of clarification here. I generally don’t have problems with independent MPs who attack to defend the base, as people like Howard Dean are doing. I abhor independents who betray the people who turn out to campaign and vote for them and the party that represents a certain set of values.

BBC News reports:

A man has been arrested over an attack on Conservative peer Baroness Warsi during a visit to Luton. The shadow minister for community cohesion, named Britain’s most powerful Muslim woman, was visiting the Bury Park area of the town on 30 November. She was in the middle of a walkabout of the area when she was pelted with eggs.

A 24-year-old local man has been arrested on suspicion of criminal damage and a public order offence. He is currently being questioned. A Bedfordshire Police officer saw the man in the street and arrested him, a spokeswoman said.

Can’t say I have any sympathy for al-Muhajiroun idiots.

This article in the Financial Times is eye-popping, as it goes inside what is dubbed ‘Tony Blair Inc’. Here’s once excerpt:

For a man being pitched as a potential leader for Europe, Mr Blair has spent little time in the continent since leaving Downing Street. He pops up in the most disparate of places: posing with an eco-friendly kung fu star in China; addressing star-struck businessmen in a Florida hotel; promoting tourism on the beaches of Sierra Leone; stepping out of a jet to the strut of a Kazakh honour guard.

This year alone, he has touched down in more than 20 countries, from east Asia to central Africa, often more than once. But if there is one region that best reflects his life as a public figure, fundraiser and businessman in the 28 months since leaving office, it is the Middle East.

You have to read the whole thing… makes me feel sorry for Cherie Blair I think. The Guardian is trying to crowd-source sifting through his finances.
[via Jamie K]

The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has suggested that if there was to be a hung parliament (i.e. one in which no party controls more than 50% of the seats), the Liberal Democrats would support the Conservatives instead of Labour. Whilst David Cameron would seemingly prefer a strong Conservative government, would he (privately) bemoan a coalition government? I think not.

Most people recognise that the Conservatives are ahead for two reasons. First is the anti-Labour vote (anyone but…) and second is the successful detoxification of the Conservative brand by David Cameron (people feel able to vote Conservative again). The second of these reasons would be under threat in a Conservative government, as the more hardline elements of the party would push for measures that would put off some moderates/independents. This is where the Liberal Democrats come in.

A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government would have David Cameron as prime minister, and would have a Conservative home secretary. This would allow the government to reassure voters that they will be tough on crime and so forth. Vince Cable would probably be chancellor, because he is both popular and relatively fiscally conservative. Yet where the Liberal Democrats would demand most control would be over issues like the environment, which are precisely the sort of issues that Mr. Cameron needs to keep away from the more hardline members of his party. Thus the Lib Dems would act as a natural moderating influencing on an incoming Conservative government, leaving Mr. Cameron to complain (in public) about his hands being tied over certain issues.

Europe would be interesting though.

This article by Daniel Finkelstein at the Times is political gold. He points out that ‘Pundits and politicians obsess about dividing lines. They are wasting their time. The public are serenely indifferent.’
The money quote:

Politicians and pundits share the idea that people are constantly re-evaluating their position. But not at all. At a few big moments they might pause and think again; the rest of the time they let events float by, or at best reinterpret them to fit with their existing views. In 1997 Tories thought perhaps Robin Cook’s affair would shake Labour’s goody-goody image. Instead focus group respondents just assumed he must be a Tory because he had had an affair.

But out of all this, surprisingly, something heartening emerges. And that’s where the Queen’s Speech comes in. Because people don’t know, aren’t following and don’t believe politicians and their promises, they can only judge them on one thing. Whether what politicians do works.

Add to this the fact that voters rarely sit there and evaluate policies of each of the parties and make a rational decision at voting time (which is why most of the daily speculation over at Political Betting is a waste of time).

Voters not only pay little attention to politics in the news, they also forget that news very quickly. However they do end up internalising that little bit of emotion (negative or positive) they felt at the time. Over time that builds up and polls shift slowly in a direction. This is why you rarely see big jumps or falls in polls over big news: people rarely pay that much attention. But it also means that if you’re trying to stem a decline in your ratings then you have a much bigger mountain to climb: once people start associating negative emotions with a politician or public figure it’s very hard to shake them off that feeling.

This brings me to the Labour leadership. Labour activists are deluding themselves in thinking they have a chance of winning the election and that the queen’s speech will actually make a difference. It won’t, as Danny Fink points out.

At the Labour party conference I was in a discussion with a Labour MP and three other activists and I said Brown had to go if Labour had any chance of holding on to power.

This was because the public had already characterised him (negatively) in their minds and had turned off from listening to his message. Plus G Brown is an incredibly bad communicator. I said the only hope was to have a quick change of leader, which would make the public sit up and notice for about a month. Within that month the new Labour leader would have to lay out a good agenda for the next term and call for an election (which people would clamour for anyway). But a change of leadership was the only way to make people listen to a new Labour agenda. Right now they’ve internalised the view that re-electing Brown would continue this tired administration and they don’t want it. Which is why the polls have remained static.

My audience disagreed vehemently, obviously. But they disagreed because they thought the public would pay attention or actually cared about changes in policy. They don’t. Messaging and framing is a long slog and takes months, sometimes years, to hammer through the public conciousness. That is if you win the debate on your own term (another problem this govt has – it keeps losing public debates to the Tories).

I also find it amusing that readers think by saying this, on a public blog, somehow that will diminish Labour’s chances even more. They’re not even paying that much attention to the Sun let along PP or LibCon. These spaces are then best served by discussion political strategy in a way that many American blogs do, I think. But that is a different discussion. Right now – that article is a must read for anyone who wants anything to do with politics.

One of the few MPs who tells it like it is. He said on Question Time last night:

They are an illegally constituted party..you may like to [re]consider your invitation to next week’s Question Time. It is a foul and despicable party and however they change their constitution they will remain foul and despicable.

There isn’t a constitutional obligation to appear on Question Time. That gives them a legitimacy that they do not deserve. These people believe in the things that the fascists believed in in the Second World War, they believe in what the National Front believe in. They believe in the purity of the Aryan race.

That said: I’m not going to oppose Griffin’s appearance on the programme – after all, BBC journalists have been trying to their best to ‘explain’ the BNP’s policies elsewhere. I also think the UAF protest against Griffin’s appearance is a bad idea and will be a public relations disaster. They will come across as a bunch of censorious nutters like the people who opposed the BBC showing Jerry Springer: The Opera.
via Paul Waugh

In writing about left-wing blogging, or more accurately some Labour blogs and some not, Andy Newman at Socialist Unity has similar thoughts to me:

Now there are in fact structural reasons why the left tends to have a semi-hostile attitude to each other, these are threefold fold; i) the traditional First past the Post elelctoral system has encouraged the Labour Party to be a big coalition, and therefore all effective electoral politics has gone through Labour, and those outside it have been regarded as not-serious; ii) the legacy of the divide in the labour movement over the USSR which has led many in the Labour Party to be deeply suspicious of non-members with opinions; iii) the legacy of toy-town “Leninism” that has led the British far-left to splinter into a mosaic of tiny sects, and to have a sectarian and stupid hostility to the Labour Party. These legacies need to be overcome.
…
The legacy of competing tiny groups of true believers splitting hairs and arguing over the finest details of programmes that they would never have the social weight to implement also needs to be overcome, because it is utterly irrelevant to British politics.

Blogs have an important role to play, not only in providing a space for journalism and commentary outside the control of the mainstream media, but also in providing a space for debate and exchange of views, providing a nertwork of mutual support, and devloping new ideas. The left needs to get better at both of those tasks if we are to fight back to prevent a Tory win at the next election, or failing that to wage a determined and effective opposition to a Tory government.

I agree with all of that. There are two structural problems we need to overcome ASAP:
1) too much in-fighting among lefties
2) lack of campaigning orgs and capacity other than unions (which are too pro-Labour)

Forget all the ‘new ideas’ shtick for now – it needs to be resolved but right-wingers aren’t bubbling with them either. The two problems above are more problematic. Part of that is about moving past the legacy that Andy mentions above. However, to me that doesn’t mean setting up alternative political parties for now, as AVPS says here. The danger for lefties is that we focus too much on political parties that offer a home.

Instead, we need to focus first on building cohesiveness and organisational capacity. We need to think about building a non-party infrastructure that can then be used to influence politics regardless of party. The main reason why Tony Blair was able to ignore the left was because there wasn’t any effective pressure put on him from the left. So rather than just thinking outside the confines of the Labour party I’d go further and say we need to start thinking outside the political party structures too.

[For more on "infrastructure", I suggest reading this article in the New York Times, which was my inspiration for setting up Liberal Conspiracy.]

Writing in the Guardian, Rafael Behr laments the Europhobe mentality that has now permeated the British public. It’s funny isn’t it? Right-wingers constantly go on about ‘anti-Americanism’ as if its another kind of racism, but will never say anything about ‘anti-Europeanism’.

Anyway. It’s important to understand why the pro-EU crowd lost the debate in the UK (not Ireland clearly). This is through what I call ‘interventions’. Say you have a political goal: whether that be to convince the public to turn against immigration, the EU, the BBC, the Monarchy, government spending, against religion, Muslims – whatever it is. Pick your opponent.

What lefties do is they just keep stating their case repeatedly, or pointing out how wrong the the arguments are of their opponents. Unfortunately, this relies on a complete misunderstanding of how the media works and how people consume information.

Sayeeda Warsi gave a speech today at the Conservative Party conference. The full speech is below the fold. She said she had three key messages:

1. Labour’s reliance on multiculturalism has failed Britain
2. The state’s continued suspicion of faith is wrong
3. And the threat of terrorism is no excuse for demonising a whole community.
Plus, she equates the al-Muhajiroun lot with the English Defence League.

A few points worth mentioning here. She specifically focuses on ’state multiculturalism’ and makes a distinction by saying:

Firstly, when we as Conservatives talk about multiculturalism we are not talking about the building of temples, or synagogues or mosques in any neighbourhood. For us that is religious pluralism and it is a defining British characteristic that began with the non-conformists.

For me, state multiculturalism, as I like to define it is forcing Britain’s diverse communities to still define themselves as different, patronisingly special and tempting them to compete against each other for public funds.

Pretty agreeable stuff. In fact I’m pretty sure I was the first to use “state multiculturalism” (as distinct from lived multiculturalism, which Sayeeda defines first) and criticise it here on the New Gen manifesto.

It’s unfair to blame New Labour because it was the Tories in 1997, just before Labour took over, who first encouraged Muslims groups to band together and speak in one voice. The Labour party took that further no doubt, but once our manifesto was published the whole edifice fell apart pretty quickly.

No doubt New Labour made a lot of mistakes – in both directions. It went for draconian attacks on civil liberties, while hoping that chucking money at religious groups would curb terrorism or encourage ‘community cohesion’. It has now retreated from both positions – but I did say earlier that the party realised its mistakes and changed policy.

I can’t say I disagree with the main points of this speech. There are issues the Tories will duck – like funding ethnic focused groups such as Southall Black Sisters. And in those cases they’ll have to be pragmatic too and realise sometimes its best to help people than become ideologically rigid.

Here an extract from the latest outpouring of rubbish from Peter Hitchens:

The Passport you hold is not British, but European. You are a European citizen. British Embassies are European Embassies – as they already show by flying the EU’s meaningless and tasteless blue and yellow dishcloth. Shouldn’t somebody have pointed out that in the recent history of the Continent, yellow stars call up only one dismal image, the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.

What, you’re surprised a man so odious could use the Holocaust as a stick to beat the Lisbon treaty? I’m not. I’ll let the excellent Left Outside blogger say the rest:

The jaw dropping ignorance of the man is palpable. The coy manipulation of history is truly sickening. The holocaust still matters. It is as impossible to understate the horror as it is to visualise the scale of what occurred. And Peter “in fact, just shorten that to Cunt” Hitchens wants to use it to attack the fucking EU?

JCM has more under the appropriately titled ‘Why it’s hard to take eurosceptics seriously‘

A funny little spat took place over the weekend. I signed a Compass statement for a High Pay Commission of some sort. That statement was criticised by Labour MP Tom Harris on his own blog. I then outlined my reasons for supporting the statement, making expressly economic arguments (which you can agree or disagree with) and criticised Tom Harris’ arguments. He then responded to that and I subsequently tore up his supremely stupid argument that anything that penalised the extremely wealthy would hurt Labour’s electoral prospects.

Tom Harris MP – then unable to make any economic or political arguments, thought he’d be clever and wrote this blog post saying I was hypocritical because I’d earlier signed ‘a statement of ethical blogging’. But I hadn’t, making him look even more idiotic. (Clearly Iain Dale is still smarting over the fact I called him out when he libelled Tom Watson (I posted this on Tom Harris’ blog but he didn’t let that comment through – didn’t want to offend his mate obviously).

So why am I posting all this? It’s a bit of background to the argument I want to make. On Tom Harris MP’s blog, Sunder Katwala of the Fabian society says:

On Sunny representing “Labour” views, my friend Sunny Hundal is not (for sure) and has never been (as far as I know) a member of the Labour Party. He has blogged that he intends to vote Green.
He is anti-Tory, he is somewhat sympathetic to Labour (in that he often argues about what the party should do to connect to disillusioned liberal-lefties like himself and others at Liberal Conspiracy). For that reason, some people (esp LibDems) say that LC is somehow a ‘Labour front’ but anybody who comments there in any way supportively of Labour will know this is nonsense.
…
But I don’t think Sunny is well placed to tell Labour MPs and members that they are not really Labour in his view, even if his argument is that he would join if other people left. This is the factionalism and in-fighting which LC is theoretically against, and ‘no factionalism except for those New Labour bastards’ falls a little way short for me.

Let me explain this properly. I see myself on the political left and therefore I’m loyal to the left and to lefties. I have stated loads of times I don’t like factionalism and in-fighting on the left. But I’m not a Labour Party tribalist and not a member of any political party. I see Labour, the Libdems and Greens as broadly progressive parties and roughly left of centre. But I’m not attracted to anyone very specifically right now enough to join them.

So while I’m not a party political tribalist, I am a leftie and proud of being one. The reason why I attack Tom Harris is because he’s not of the left. He may be within the Labour Party but that doesn’t make him left-wing. He can’t even make a political argument, let alone an economic one on why he doesn’t a High Pay Commission (and there’s plenty of valid criticisms to be made), and the only thing he can do is accuse others of ‘politics of envy’ or play these cheap shots.

And there are lots of others precedents for this. Look across the pond and there are plenty of progressives who will support the liberal wing of the Democratic party but will not come anywhere near traitors like Joe Lieberman. They will actively campaign against the right-wing elements of the Democrats (the ‘Blue Dogs’) and I’d happily approve of that strategy.

I’m not interested in supporting or defending right-wing elements within the Labour party just because of their political affiliation. This is a political war and they are on the wrong side. Once the left-wing blogosphere starts campaigning and fundraising, we should be supporting left-wing and progressive elements of Labour, Libdems and the Greens – while actively rejecting people like Harris who like adulation from the Tories.

As I’ve repeatedly stated in the past – Republicans are just bat-shit crazy. If you need evidence just watch some of the debates going on there now about healthcare. But as tacticians go Republicans are frighteningly successful and therefore it’s worth watching them to see why exactly they’re successful.

First: go completely overboard. Sarah Palin is a brilliant example and her ‘death panel’ meme isn’t the only one. Obama is being called a socialist, a marxist, a communist, fascist and everything else under the sun despite being more right-wing than we would in the UK. There’s a book out by Michelle Malkin on how is administration is completely corrupt – and it’s only been six months since he took power. There Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to put out these books under the genuinely corrupt Bush administration.

The point about going completely overboard is that it moves the territory somewhat in your direction. Of course most people won’t believe that Obama will create Death Panels, but they might believe there is no smoke without fire. They’ll start thinking the big fuss is there for a reason. That automatically moves the centre of debate in your favour.

Second: have complete discipline. Moderate Republicans rarely criticise their wingnut counterparts. Sure they might argue about which direction the party should go in, but when it comes to opposing a policy they’re united. And when they have a common enemy (the Democrats) the moderates will never ever ever ever criticise the loony-fringe for saying absurd things. Why? Because of the first point. It gives the moderates more of a license to push the boat out, and it makes them sound sane. Discipline also ensures you spend less time fighting each other and more time fighting the enemy.

Third: exploit the media. The media has to try and remain somewhat non-partisan and it’s driven by the chatter and whatever else everyone is talking about. Which means that if everyone is talking about Sarah Palin’s ‘death panels’ because it sounds so absurd – then it becomes part of legitimate conversation on Cable TV and then people start expounding other crazy theories. This means Democrats are constantly on the defensive and end up losing the battle. You never win on the defensive – only on the offensive.

The second part to exploiting the media is to constantly accuse it of misrepresenting you and being biased against you. It doesn’t matter what the truth is – the aim here is to build a siege / victim mentality so your followers get even more angry and take action. If they think their views are being represented in the media then they won’t do anything further.

But…. You may argue that this culture-war business is what drove the Republicans to become so small. Not exactly – there are demographic reasons for that. But the point is that for a small southern party the Republicans are still completely punching above their weight and outmaneuvering the Democrats on all fronts. If Obama makes one big mis-step then Healthcare is doomed and maybe his presidency.

These Republicans are vicious. But it’s worth learning tactics from them otherwise lefties will keep losing.

Everyone needs a laugh during the day eh? So how about this? Tory blogger Iain Dale is outraged…. OUTRAGED I say because Southall MP Virendra Sharma recently gave a speech praising Subhas Chandra Bose.

So a Labour MP praises a wartime axis leader because he was, er, Indian, and prior to the war had supported Indian independence. Mr Sharma is a disgrace. Those of his constituents in Ealing Southall who had fathers and grandfathers who fought in the Far East should be informed of this act of treachery by their local MP.

He says. Oh no! The constituents of Southall will be so pissed off that Sharma praised someone agitating for Indian independence! It’s an act of “treachery” and any other similar words you can find!

For a start, Dale’s headline: “Labour MP Praises Indian Wartime Fascist Leader” – is libellous to Sharma. Bose was never a fascist, though he did want to work with the Japanese and/or Germans to get rid of the British. But he wasn’t a race supremacist. Meanwhile, Dale makes excuses for MEP Roger Helmer despite him saying homophobia doesn’t exist. No outrage there – only solidarity. Pathetic partisan grandstanding at its best.

Sunder Katwala of the Fabians has put a strong evidence-based case on the Fabian website against ethnic short-lists. This follows on from earlier points him and I made against why positive discrimination in politics wouldn’t work.

Here’s a key point: that progress has been achieved without shortlists:

In 2005, Labour elected only 40 new MPs. This time, 3 Asian and black MPs made up 7.5% of the group. Labour fielded 32 BME candidates in all (5.1%). And that rose to 8% in selecting candidates who not already in Parliament. Both new candidates and new MPs were more than three times more likely to be non-white than had been the case in 1997, even though with Oona King losing her seat, there was only one more non-white Labour MP than in 2001 and only four more than in 1997.

In this Parliament, Labour has held 26 selection contests in seats which the party already holds. In four cases (15.4%) it has selected non-white candidates. It can be confident of winning each of those seats: the least safe would require a 9% swing for the Conservatives in Streatham. And Labour is also likely to regain Bethnal Green and Bow following the implosion of George Galloway’s Respect party.

Overall, Labour is selecting BME candidates at a rate of 10.5%. (This rises to 16.7% in marginal seats where Labour is within 10%, and falls to 8.2% in unwinnable seats).

He is right in saying that Labour have gone the furthest, while the Cameroons have tried hard to catch up. The Libdems are woefully behind. Either way, he is right to use the evidence to point that short-lists aren’t the only way to get more representation in politics.

The Libdems are re-starting their attempts to woo ethnic minorities to the party and to “support talented party members from black and minority ethnic backgrounds”. An event is being held next week for this. About time. I’ll report more when I get back.

I really wish all interviews with politicians were like this. Brilliant interview by Toby Foster on BBC Sheffield with the new mayor of Doncaster.
via James Graham on Twitter)

This video speaks for itself. Brilliant.

They had a lower percentage of the vote in the European election and lost councillors as well. Do the public associate the failures of Labour with centre-left politics? If thats true then its also very depressing, given how a lot of this economic bust has been due to Gordon Brown continuing the legacy of Thatcherism, by increasing the economy’s dependency on the City while championing ‘light-touch’ regulation.

I still maintain that Brown’s biggest mistake was financing increased expenditure in public services through borrowing rather than raising taxation as well (not necessarily income tax, but it could have been something innovative such as some form of carbon pricing). The problem now is having the 50% tax band when not as many people are earning that much money anymore.

Going back to my main point, how have the Lib Dems failed to capitalise on this? Vince Cable has been the most coherent politician on the economy and is seemingly trusted by the public. Is it because Nick Clegg comes across as the epitome of a well to do, upper-middle class politician rather than ‘man of the people’ Charlie Kennedy? Maybe its because he seems quite similar to David Cameron in appearance and speaking style.

In any case, I thought that the only hope for the Lib Dems wasn’t proportional representation, but to overtake Labour or the Tories when they imploded. Well the Tories have already come back from implosion, while Labour are heading towards it now. Yet the Lib Dems are going backwards.