Archive for labour party
Closing tax loopholes: Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie star in Labour broadcast
Today’s little something from the political archives is a Labour Party political broadcast from 1993, back when Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie were young and Labour was attacking a Conservative government for leaving too many tax loopholes open for the very rich. As it turned out, when Labour got into power they closed the loopholes [...]
Ed Miliband campaign chief broke rules for MPs
So reports Paul Waugh in the Evening Standard: Ed Miliband’s campaign chief breached House of Commons rules by sending a Parliamentary letter to voters during the general election campaign, anti-sleaze watchdogs have found… Mr Khan was reported to the watchdog after it emerged that he had sent a mailshot using Commons notepaper and pre-paid envelopes [...]
“Wicked and malicious” – Hazel Blears on what went on under Labour
Saying something highly uncomplimentary about your own party is one thing. Saying it, denying it and then having a recording surface of you saying it is rather different though. Step forward, Hazel Blears and her “wicked and malicious” comm...
Some things haven't changed much in politics…
Before TV broadcasts became the norm after the Second World War, parties – and particularly the Conservatives – made their own films and even had portable cinematic projection equipment which toured the country showing them. I saw a clip from a 1930s Conservative propaganda film a few days ago. Its animated cartoon could still be [...]
The verdict from history: bring back Gordon Brown
The lovely phrase “spray on evidence” was coined in the late 1990s in frustration at the attitude towards evidence shown by many in the Labour government. Though officially the government was determinedly set on a course of evidence-based policy, many of those involved in policy making felt that evidence was being applied as a bit [...]
Party finances in the news
For the Conservatives it’s the quitting of their next treasurer, David Rowland, whilst for Labour it’s John Prescott warning of the Labour facing bankrupcy (the context for which you can see in these graphs).
The Miliband campaigning house parties
Over on the Total Politics website they’ve been poking fun at the ‘house party’ instructions issued by the David Miliband campaign. On reading the piece at first I thought it was being a little harsh, because house parties (where you invite electors – Labour members in this case – to a small event to discuss [...]
How the central finances of parties have been panning out
The following three graphs are from the Electoral Commission and show income and expenditure for the three main political parties as reflected in their annual accounts. There are some important exceptions to what they show, such as the money brought in and spent directly by election candidates, though from what I know of these exceptions [...]
Lessons from history on Labour / Lib Dem cooperation: Kier Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald
Sunder Katwala of the Fabians has a thought-provoking post about the role of Kier Hardie in Labour’s current political traditions and attitudes towards working with other parties. Others with more knowledge of Labour history than me will be far better placed to comment on that debate, but what particularly struck me reading it is how [...]
John Prescott illustrates Labour's progressive problem
Many Liberal Democrats become very suspicious when they hear Labour members talk about the need for a broad progressive coalition, suspecting that for many of them the definition of progressive is really “agreeing with Labour”. Labour’s reaction since the general election has done little to assuage such fears, with a sequence of policies that were [...]
