Tim Page
On Monday, Pat McFadden, MP for Wolverhampton South East, former Minister at the Department for Business and one-time member of Tony Blair’s Policy Unit, published a paper entitled ‘Making things: a reassessment of British manufacturing’. This is the first chance I’ve had to blog about it. It contains a lot of evidence from Pat’s own constituency, which was formerly a part of the UK’s manufacturing heartland. And, in the main, I think it is a a good report.
Paul Sellers
The coming May Day bank holiday will be the 34th since it was introduced way back in in 1978. In those far-off days of Government incomes policies, the TUC had a series of meetings with the Government in 1977 to discuss introducing the new bank holiday as part of the quid pro quo (I have the minutes). This followed on our previous success in getting New Years Day established as a bank holiday (1974).
Let’s get out there and enjoy this holiday, which we richly deserve. Perhaps the weather may not be the best ever, but if we are going to get depressed by the odd shower then we are probably living in the wrong country. There are plenty of things that we could this weekend indoors and outdoors, including visiting a number of local trade union festivals (this is not just being “worthy”, the one taking place in Dorchester on Sunday afternoon is basically a mini rock festival) – and more traditional May Day events.
Richard Exell
There’s a wonderful letter in today’s Independent in support of Rupert Murdoch. Amongst other things, it says
He feeds over 54,000 families every day worldwide.
I don’t think the writer (someone who “had the pleasure to work with Rupert Murdoch during my career in Australia and London”) means that Rupe’s the Father Christmas of soup runs, zooming from one time zone to another to reach the needy. Plainly he’s referring to the News International workforce – and my first thought was that it would be more accurate to say that every day 54,000 families worldwide feed him.
But it did strike me as giving an insight into a conservative problem that people are finding hard to explain.
Nigel Stanley
Every so often I look at the state of public opinion on the cuts using YouGov data as they regularly poll with the same questions and publish the results.
In summary the gradual shift in public opinion back towards the goverment has gone into reverse, and they appear to have lost the slight – though probably significant – gains they had made. The budget has had a big impact on voting intention figures – this appears to be reflected in the attitude questions that I’ve been tracking.
Whether that’s a permanent shift or a sustained blip, we cannot yet know. My guess would be somewhere between the two -opinion may flow back towards the government in some areas, but there has been a permanent shift for some people. The most recent poll in this series was on April 1st. The government has continued to have poor headlines since then.
Owen Tudor
During the couple of days the TUC’s leadership delegation spent in Australian capital Canberra, the Labor Government took a series of steps designed to help ordinary Australian workers and their families. To us, it looked like a whirlwind of action, and even our trade union hosts admitted it wasn’t usually that exciting. But the ALP Government and the trade unions, so crucial to its election in 2007 and absolutely vital to its third election victory in a year or two’s time, have suddenly got busy in setting out a positive agenda of values and practical action worthy of electoral support.
Owen Tudor
Follow Brendan Barber, Paul Kenny and Owen Tudor @TUCGlobal using #TUCdownunder.
A TUC delegation to Australia visited Canberra today (21 March) for meetings with a range of Ministers, several of them former officials of the TUC’s equivalent, the ACTU. Despite the political turmoil of the recent challenge to Prime Minister Julia Gillard (who will be seeing the TUC later on today), and the Labor Party’s current poll ratings, there is confidence that Labor can turn the situation around by the time of the next General Election in around eighteen month’s time.
One issue that ex-ACTU Ministers like Greg Combet, Simon Crean and Richard Marles were at pains to stress was the vital relationship with the trade union movement. Not so much the ‘embarrassing elderly relative’ in Lord Monks’ trenchant expression, more a key way to ensure that Labor stays grounded in ordinary people’s lives, and can win back their support before the next election.
Tim Page
Today’s Parliamentary event to discuss the TUC’s ‘German Lessons’ report was fascinating, challenging and, at times, provocative - just how a good debate should be! There was a tremendous amount of goodwill in the room, as politicians, policy specialists, trade unionists and industry representatives all sought an active industrial strategy and were keen to learn from the German experience.
Martin Mansfield
Wales’ First Minister, Carwyn Jones AM became the first government leader in the UK to announce his support for the Robin Hood Tax today which puts him in stark contrast to the hostility that the UK Government has shown towards the proposed tax to date. Carwyn Jones joins the growing ranks of business, political and civil society leaders across the world – from Bill Gates to the Archbishop of Canterbury – who are now backing this tiny tax on financial transactions.
It again shows that Wales has leadership which is standing up for ordinary working people, while the UK Government continues to plough ahead with unfair public spending cuts and lets the banking sector off the hook. In contrast strong social partnership between the Wales TUC, the business sector, public sector employers and the Welsh Government is saving jobs and services in the face of UK Government cuts.
Nigel Stanley
Regular readers will know that I have been following polling on spending cuts. YouGov regularly ask exactly the same set of questions. This allows us to track how public opinion is moving. While the precise wording of the question can make a big difference, especially in complex areas that are not the stuff of everyday conversation, tracking the same question can give a valuable insight into how opinion is moving as the same question bias will be present in every response.
I’ve not published any graphs for some time as public opinion was pretty constant for most of last year. People obsess over short term changes in voting intention, but these are often due to the natural variability in any survey or represent a short-term response to whatever is in the news. The truth is that not much happened on the opinion front for most of last year.
But there are some signs of a slight move. Unfortunately it goes in the wrong direction. But it’s not huge, and the government are still losing important parts of their argument, while still ahead on the need for cuts.
Owen Tudor
This week Nick Clegg fell into line yet again behind a right-wing economic policy, endorsing George Osborne’s rejection of a Robin Hood Tax. The Liberal Democrat manifesto in 2010, which put “fair taxes” at the top of four policies on the front page pledged to
work with other countries to establish new sources of development financing, including bringing forward urgent proposals for a financial transaction tax
Nick Clegg himself had gone on record in February, just two months earlier, saying of the Robin Hood Tax (six minutes in):
It’s a great idea in theory….We should push for it internationally. I’m glad to see it now finally being considered by IMF and other international bodies. But aiming for the best which would be a Tobin tax across the world shouldn’t prevent us doing something now here at home.
Now, instead, he is telling the EU to forget a Robin Hood Tax, echoing everything George Osborne has said. We would welcome him back in Sherwood Forest whenever he decides to abandon his new rich friends in the City and return to backing the poor.
