I’d rather like to be a fly on the wall at tonight’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party to hear what spurious justifications are advanced for scrapping elections to the Shadow Cabinet.

I think Ed is making a big mistake. What on earth has possessed him to go down this road?

Even the Guardian's Michael White thinks he's gone a bit too far. 

When I voted for Ed I didn’t vote for this.

Appointments by the leader mean, by definition, more cancerous patronage. And this from the man who says he speaks for the “new generation” of Labour politicians. Sounds like the old control freakery to me.

I want to see a leadership that is more collegial and less imperial.

Five years ago this month, Tony Blair was telling the Party there was no alternative to nuclear power – even before the energy review he had commissioned had been completed. This was just one of a thousand examples. (see attachment)

The leader already handpicks the Cabinet when the Party goes into Government so he can freeze out the voices he doesn’t want to hear.

For all his talk of “big tent” politics Blair lived in a cosy little bivouac surrounded by his own people.

This group-think can have a serious downside. At the time of the Iraq war, Blair’s spineless Cabinet (with one or two notable exceptions) bit their tongues and shamefully stayed silent when they had a duty to voice their concerns.

If Ed appoints the Shadow Cabinet his favourites will be cemented into top positions for years, owing their position entirely to his patronage.

Ed is absolutely wrong on this one. Shadow Cabinet elections should stay.

Alan Milburn on Caroline Spelman

The former Labour Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, in the job from 1998 to 2003, has blasted the Coalition’s health reforms as the

“biggest car crash in NHS history”.

He should know. I’ve always thought of Milburn as a bit of a Maoist – seeing virtue in perpetual revolution in the NHS.

Under Labour, there were endless, costly and destabilising reorganisations. NHS staff ended up punch drunk with constant change. So much so that at the election last year there was a huge collective sigh of relief when Cameron promised there would be no more top down reorganisations – which is, alas, what we are now getting.

I had a look at Milburn’s Conference speech in Brighton in 2000 to see if he gave any hints of the upheavals to come.

Not a word.

Just a lot of crowd pleasing alliterations about building a bigger better NHS.

The entry of the private sector would be done later by stealth, quietly at first, and in stages.

But in that 2000 speech there was rather a good line from Milburn about Caroline Spelman MP, then a Conservative health spokeswomen and now, at Defra, still going strong as one of the Government’s most prolific U Turners.

She told the Health Service Journal: 

“I try to use the NHS if I can because it is important to see what it is like for people who do not have the privilege of using private health care.”

I find myself wondering if this is still her view.

Canada Post

Canada’s newly elected majority Conservative Government is rolling up its sleeves to take on the unions. Parliament in Ottawa sat over the weekend to pass legislation in double quick time to get the nation’s postal workers back to work.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers embarked on a series of rotating strikes on June 3, frustrated over negotiations on pensions and other issues that were going nowhere. Canada Post responded by locking the workers out on June 14.

Less than a fortnight later, the fast tracked legislation is on the Statute Book and Canada's 48,000 posties are returning to work tomorrow.

Astonishingly, the legislation gives the returning members of the CUPW lower wages that those offered by Canada Post during the negotiations.

A Government appointed arbitrator will choose between Canada Post’s final offer and the last negotiating position of UCPW. Winner takes all.

Canadian unions fear this is the shape of things of come.

The list of workers in so-called “essential services” who could be legislated back to work if they dare to go on strike to defend their livelihoods could be about to swell.

The EMA

I see the East Lancashire Colleges have come up with a package to support struggling students who are losing their EMA.

Last November, Pendle’s MP, Andrew Stephenson, famously declared he was a great fan of the EMA.

I am a fan of EMA; 65% of students in my constituency going to Nelson and Colne College receive EMA. The Government are not scrapping EMA; they are simply replacing it with more targeted support.

We wait to hear how many (and what percentage) of students at Nelson and Colne College who used to get EMA will qualify for its replacement.

The College will have the thankless task of deciding who gets help and who doesn’t.

Attachments:

6 June 2006.pdf

[Report to Pendle Labour Party June 2006]

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