Blair’s legacy: a break with the unions?

If reports in the Guardian (twice), Times and Telegraph are right, Blair’s Christmas present to the Labour party is set to be a proposed break with the trade unions.  Hayden Phillips – the man asked to looked into funding issues surrounding big businessmen buying peerages – seems to have gone off on one and come up with radical proposals on all aspects of party funding. 

Reports have dribbling out of Westminster like undercooked fat out of a turkey’s backside this week, but piecing everything together, Hayden Phillips looks set to propose:

* Capping trade union and corporate donations, lumping collective organisations of millions, with democratic structures and accountability, in the same boat as the spivs and fat cats in the city.

* Ending collective affiliation of trade union members to the Labour party, replacing it with individualised membership for levy payers, direct with the party – not through the union.

* Forcing unions (or the party itself) to check in with members every single yearif they want to continue their new indivdualised membership of the party.  (Unions currently have to consult members in a ballot on continuing collective membership every ten years.)

* BUT – cleverly, Phillips will allow individual members of unions to give “up to £50,000”, just like rich businessmen.  Which is, we’re sure, a huge relief to dinner ladies in UNISON and bus drivers in the T&G.

The proposals have the “sympathy” of the Prime Minister and according to the Guardian, “Mr Blair and Mr Cameron discussed the inquiry during a private meeting last month”.  Labour MPs are apparently up in arms and – the Telegraph tells us – held a meeting on Monday night to discuss the issue.

If MPs are “ballistic” about these proposals, they might want to do something about it.  Someone in the government or in the unions is telling the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph what is going on — but from where party members are sitting, it looks like all MPs have done so far is having a bit of a meeting.  MP Kevan Jones, in the Telegraph, stuck his head above the parapet, calling TU donations “the most democratic and transparent money of all”.  However, Nick Palmer busy commenting on politicalbetting.com, tells us that the rumours are so bad that they can’t be true. 

That’s not good enough.

Labour people don’t agree on every issue, but there is real consensus across the whole party on the importance of the party-union link.  The bottom line is that if we end the union link – which these proposals would do – then the party is over.  

Since 2003, reports have suggested Blair has been worried that his legacy will the disasterous mess which is Iraq.  But Blair now has a cunning plan to erase that from memory – instead, he is going to leave us a disastrous mess of a Labour Party in meltdown.

The short straw

One of the daily’s trained chimps got the short straw and attended yesterday’s House Magazine conference on the Queen’s speech. The key note speaker was Jack Straw (see what we did there?)

Straw was interviewed on stage by Jon Craig of Sky. At one point, a member of the audience asked Straw about post office closures – Straw scoffed and exclaimed “come on, hands up who’s used a post office in the last few months?”. At a quick count, just over half the audience stick their hands up – putting Jack back in his box.

Craig then asked the audience of about 250 if they wanted Straw to stand in the deputy leader election. About 3 put their hands up. He laughed but according to our man on the scene “it was a bit embarrassing to be honest”.

President Blair goes nuclear

Some people talk about Blair being a bit too presidential, but the DTI have just given him a bit of a title bump.

A press release about an upcoming meeting known as the “Franco-British nuclear forum” says that it arises from the: “Franco-British Summit in Paris on 9 June 2006, at which the two Heads of State confirmed their common will to set out their energy policy”.

Here at the Daily, we believe that if Her Majesty wants to be head of state, she should stand in an election, which she would certainly win, however, we would be interested to know how she takes the news that she has a competitor for the ceremonial top spot.

Alan Johnson and the ghost of scandals past

As Benjamin mentioned in the last post, rumours have started to circulate about Alan Johnson and one Karl Milner, one of the key players in the 1998 lobbygate scandal. This was half picked up by Jon Henley at the Guardian diary, who posed the question, could this be the same person?

The lawyers no doubt stepped in on that story, but looking around, it certainly seems like Alan Johnson’s donations are being handled by the scandal-ridden lobbyist.  As the site explains, “Paypal account is in the name of the Johnson for Deputy Campaign Trustee K Milner”. It gives the email address K.Milner@Leedsmet.ac.uk.

A bit of a search throws up a PR week article from January 27th 2006, which talks about Karl Milner, Leeds Business School lecturer and Finsbury lobbyist. The Finsbury site, reveals that “Karl worked for Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer and before that as a Labour Party organiser and assistant to a number of Labour MPs.”

You may remember that Milner was forced to applogise after it was found that he passed confidential parliamentary reports to journalists ahead of publication.

It certainly looks like the same Milner. Anyone out there know for sure and want to tell us?

What is the cost of Hoon?

Following the revelation that Europe Minister Geoff Hoon’s new office door plaque now reads, “Minister for Europe – Attending Cabinet”, the
Independent reports that a Parliamentary Question has been tabled asking to know the cost of the new plaque.

A previous question asked, “What is the point of Geoff Hoon”.

‘Name the date, or we’ll take you out’

Michael Connarty MP has an idea in the House Magazine out this week.  It’s a pretty tough proposal:

“Blair will have to name the day he is going and clear up the leadership transition or the unions will have to take him out – they’re the only ones with the muscle”.

The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect the views of The Daily’s writers.  Well, not all of them anyway.

Hoon do you think you are?

The Times has one of the most amusing stories The Daily has ever seen.  Apparently, Geoff Hoon got a right royal ticking off from Margeret Beckett at the FCO pre-meeting for Question Time on Monday.  Beckett is said to have told Hoon he would not be answering any questions on Europe.  After arguing about the fairness or otherwise of that, he was told “I am the Foreign Secretary and that’s it”. He then replied, “Margaret, you can’t stop me from coming to Foreign Office Questions.” She is said to have replied: “Well, I can’t physically stop you.” 

The Daily isn’t a big fan of boxing, but Margeret – we think you could physically stop him.

As an aside, an impeccable source informs us that Hoon, still smarting at his demotion from Secretary of State grade, insisted on the name plate of his new ministerial door saying, “Geoff Hoon, Minister for Europe (entitled to attend Cabinet)”.  Amazing.

Blair backs Benn

According to Patrick Hennesey at the Sunday Telegraph, Downing Street played a “played a key strategic role” in Hilary Benn’s decision to stand for deputy.  This fits in with several pieces of the jigsaw which may yet undermine Benn’s claim to be the unity candidate.

According to the Telegraph, Downing Street has now withdrawn its support from Alan Johnson – not hard to believe if you saw how they left Johnson out in the cold over faith schools.  That means Benn will have access to the 50 or so hard core Blairite MPs – easily enough to take him over the 44 threshold.

What is just as interesting as Blair’s backing is the people involved in Benn’s campaign.  Ian McCartney as campaign manager may look good at first site but the union leaderships view him as serially untrustworthy after his years as Blair’s party fixer.   Benn’s apparent use of the Campaign Company will also raise serious questions, especially given reports that controversial ultra-Blairite David Evans is being lined up to direct the campaign.

Downing Street’s backing for Benn as the Blairite candidate leaves the right-wing section of the race seriously crowded.  While Blairite runners (Benn, Straw, Johnson and according to today’s Observer Blears as well) are fighting for that turf, Hain, Harman and Cruddas are going for the arguably larger swathe of MPs on the centre and left. 

Who ends up on the ballot is absolutely crucial to the strategies of the candidates – until the nominations are sorted out, there is all to play for.  But The Daily now feels confident enough to predict that the following will make the ballot: Benn (representing the Blairite wing), Cruddas (representing the grassroots and the unions), and Harman (backed by a mix of female and southern MPs).  At least one and maybe two of Hain, Straw and Blears will fall at the first hurdle.

Lib Dem slams Fair Trade

The Daily had a lunch outing today to the Terrace Cafeteria – works canteen in the Mother of all Parliaments – and took the chance to idly leaf through their “Comments” book. We recommend to our readers in the Westminster bubble that they do the same should they ever fancy some entertainment, ranging from Bill Olner’s demands for “more tongue” through to Bruce George’s outrage that when he took the Ambassador for lunch there were no saucers for the tea cups.

But first prize goes to a comment from one of Parliament’s most outspoken Liberal Democrat MPs, Bob Russell, who has recently courted controversy with a bizarre outburst in which he accused the government of being racist for using the term “black economy”.

He had this to say:

Why is there so much fair trade food?  I’m all for helping the poor, but it’s more expensive and it crumbles in the mouth.  We want more Mars Bars.

Always good to see a glimpse of the true Nestlé-munching face behind the Lib Dems’ cuddly image!

Benn out-toughs Bush

With the US elections coming up, and the Bush regime teetering on the edge of the worst mid-term defeat since the 1960s, George W’s spin doctors have realised that they need to stop digging in the hole marked “Iraq”.  The war is costing Republicans votes hand over fist across America.  The tactic of labelling anyone refusing to “stay the course” as a friend to terrorists and sectarian killers hasn’t worked.

You can say what you like about right-wingers, but they certainly know how to spin their way out of trouble.  Got an unpopular line? Change it!  So yesterday, the Republican rolled out their new, voter friendly message: “adapt and change to win”.  No more insisting that the US will “stay the course”, no more insisting that opponents of the war want to “cut and run”. So brazen is the about-turn that Bush even told one interviewer: “We’ve never been ‘stay the course…'”. 

Which brings us to Hilary Benn, put up to defend the government’s Iraq policy on this morning’s Today programme.  Benn, who clearly hadn’t read the morning memo from the RNC, told John Humphrys that the Brits “would stay the course” until “the job is done”.  Hopefully not on our own! 

However, despite his hard-line language, he conceded that security situation on the ground is dreadful: “It’s grim, and there’s no point pretending otherwise, particularly in those parts of the country where a lot of violence is taking place – although it does tend to be concentrated in certain parts of Iraq,” he said. 

He also rebuked opponents of war for their failure to criticise the insurgency and warned them that “there is no alternative” to the government’s policy. Could make for an interesting conversation next time his father drops round for tea, though at least he didn’t go as far as Adam Ingram and call them “the pro-dictator coalition”.

Hilary Benn’s apparent decision to stand in either (or both) the leader or deputy elections means people will start paying more attention to what he says and does.  This could give him problems if his superiors decide that he is the best way to sell their worst mistakes.

Update:

The Democrats have launched a new ad criticising “stay the course”. They’re arguing for “a change in policy” not a “change in rhetoric”.