Monday 11 October 2010

Shadow Boxing

Congratulations to Kevan Jones on being kept on as a Shadow Defence Minister. That appointment bumps up to one hundred per cent the previous ninety-nine per cent certainty that he will be the Labour candidate for the new seat within the expanded boundaries of which I sit as I am writing this. His nomination papers will then be far more notable for who has not signed them than for who has, and one really does have to wonder who would turn out to leaflet for him across great tracts of his new patch. He himself certainly has no intention of going there. Ever.

And it will be an AV election. Assuming (and we can do a lot more than that in the seat as envisaged, especially in profoundly anti-Kevan areas) enough hardcore pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war votes to prevent early elimination, then that creates quite an opportunity for a candidate who will give a voice to those whose priorities include the Welfare State, workers’ rights, trade unionism, the co-operative movement, consumer protection, strong communities, conservation rather than environmentalism, fair taxation, full employment, public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament, and a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State, while having a no less absolute commitment to any or all of the monarchy, the organic Constitution, national sovereignty, civil liberties, the Union, the Commonwealth, the countryside, grammar schools, traditional moral and social values, controlled importation and immigration, and a realistic foreign policy.

A voice to those who are aware of, who understand, who value and who draw on the Radical Liberal, Tory populist, trade union, co-operative, Christian Socialist, Social Catholic and Distributist, and other roots of the Labour Movement, rejecting cultural Marxism no less comprehensively than they reject economic Marxism, and vice versa. A voice to those who, with Herbert Morrison, “have never seen any conflict between Labour and what are known as the middle classes”, and who, with Aneurin Bevan, denounce class war, calling instead for “a platform broad enough for all to stand upon” and for the making of “war upon a system, not upon a class”.

An opportunity to give a national platform and profile to a candidate who is part of the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China. Who is part of the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left’s traditional electoral base. Who recognises that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level.

A candidate who refuses to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich. And who could therefore co-operate as closely as possible with the forces of provincial, rural, protectionist, church-based, conservative, mind-our-own-business Toryism, forces set free by electoral reform from tendencies variously metropolitan, urban, capitalist, secular, libertarian and make-the-world-anew.

Imagine if even one such MP were returned in 2015. Imagine the effect that it would have, especially if it removed someone who would otherwise have become a Minister. The combination of AV, the new and larger boundaries, and the visceral loathing of Kevan Jones among the politically active and others in important parts of that new constituency, makes such a return a very great deal more than plausible here. If we can be bothered. So, many congratulations, Kevan. Very many congratulations indeed.

17 comments:

  1. You do go on, don't you?

    ReplyDelete
  2. As Harold Wilson said, "I know what goes on. I go on."

    I find that my critics have very limited attention spans. Hardly my fault.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Bongo, Mr Lindsay is not writing for the likes of you. Are you Kevan Jones?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Now, now. Keep it civil. Not that I am disputing your first point. But even so.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ed has appointed 14 Whips and seems to need two PPSes when the PM gets by with only one.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Things will only get worse once there are fewer MPs, since there is no proposal for there to be fewer Ministers, so the payroll vote will be an even larger chunk of the House than it is at the moment.

    What are PPSes, anyway? Don't give me some Wikipedia or textbook answer. I know all that. I mean, what do they do, apart from stay in line because apparently they have to? I have answered my own question there, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  7. They're actually quite useful as sources of intelligence to the minister. Read Chris Mullin's diaries.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh, I have. But I'm still not convinced. As much as anything else, that is supposed to be part of what Whips are for. But in either case, since everyone knows who they are, who is going to tell them anything?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Stephen Pound and Dave Anderson made Whips, it will be interesting to see the complete list of PPS's. Inside the tent, as Truman said. Ed M must really be expecting trouble so he is giving jobs to as many independent minded people as possible. His first action was to kill off both the Blairite and Brownite candidates for Chief Whip and guarantee someone loyal only to him, so he is a lot more ruthless than people give him credit for.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Why the assumption that it will be an AV election? Voters may opt to keep the current system.

    ReplyDelete
  11. If you're going for it seriously then be seen (as a politician) between the elections, leaflet, knock on doors etc. Don't assume everyone reads the local paper and don't assume you can change very many minds in the 5 weeks before the general election. Get on with it now instead of writing your blog. Be the shadow MP. That's how to beat an absentee incumbent.

    ReplyDelete
  12. We don't have an absentee incumbent, although she is extremely unlikley to stand again, because Kevan will pull rank. We don't have the constituency boundaries, or even the constituency name. There is no point doing anything yet, whether here or in any other constituency in the country. This situation has not arisen to this extent in living memory, but here we are.

    ReplyDelete
  13. @Anonymous 23:07, is that an offer of funding? You should email Mr L.

    ReplyDelete
  14. davidaslindsay@hotmail.com - nothing counts for Electoral Commission purposes until the Election has actually been called.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Not an offer of funding, just advice. My main motivation is for you to give Labour some more work to do, rather than because I want the UK to incoporate Canon Law into its legal system.

    To be taken seriously as a candidate (there are always independents saying various different things) then it's important to get on the district or county council in the meantime.

    ReplyDelete
  16. There are no District Councils any more, and the two County seats are held by two friends of mine neither of whom will be creating a vacancy ... well, probably (and they are each somewhere between 50 and 65 and in rude health) until they die.

    That's how these things work round here, if there is anywhere where it doesn't. But, hey, I can't complain: I had two school governorships when I was 22. It's not what you know. And I know people over here whom Kevan wishes that he didn't know.

    ReplyDelete
  17. I am not being nasty but I have to wonder who Anonymous thinks he is talking to. You don't exactly need the advice.

    I expect you signed the nomination papers of both county councillors. If not then only because neither will have been short of people and they had found enough before they ran into that week.

    Now that we have two-member county wards, how do school governorships work where only one of the two is Labour? It can't be the old system where the single ward councillor appointed and removed cronies at will or kept all the places for himself. Other than one of them, you are probably cumulatively the most experienced school governor in the ward. Undoubtedly so if you take out people who still are.

    Two prominent second preferences for you for a start. Or one first preference publicly if Watts doesn't stand again. Nor does anybody seriously expect the other one to cast his first preference for Kevan Jones in the privacy of the polling booth. You can see him round the pubs and the club nodding and winking as he expresses his "endorsement". If anyone asks what to do with vote number two, he will say "David Lindsay" simple as that, and nobody needs to tell you what an influential man he is.

    ReplyDelete