CWU Strike may be terminal for Royal Mail

The CWU today confirmed its intention to begin strike action on a national scale. This is a strike which must, at all costs, be avoided if we are to save Royal Mail as we know it. Public trust in postal workers is reaching new lows, with many understandably unconvinced by the placards brandished by Royal Mail workers claiming that these strikes are not about pay, whilst just a month ago Dave Ward declared “modern pay and conditions” to be a central aspect of the campaign.

Complaints about working conditions are not without justification, but if the CWU seriously hopes to achieve a compromise with Royal Mail, it must decide precisely where its grievances lie and be prepared to accept the reality of the situation. The truth is simple: the CWU must either negotiate an acceptable deal with Royal Mail or face its total demise at the hands of market forces. At present, its leadership is simply not being realistic: the world is still in the midst of a financial crisis and weak companies will not survive; let alone those with no customers.

It seems as though many of those who voted for strike action do not appreciate the gravity of the situation. Prolonged disruption to the Royal Mail will lead to its customers permanently switching to other suppliers. Already, a number of major retailers have announced their intention to take their custom elsewhere in order to maintain service. These retailers will not be coming back to Royal Mail. It is an organisation which must adapt to the modern era if it wishes to have any long-term future whatsoever.

Whether the solution be a co-operative, incorporation with the Royal Mint, a Worker’s Bank or part-privatisation, the CWU needs to find a solution immediately, or Royal Mail staff will be looking for new jobs by Christmas. It is imperative that Royal Mail does not follow the suicidal path which it seems to be leaning towards, or it may be ultimately responsible for its own destruction.

Tories prioritise the repeal of anti-hunting legislation.

As if we were in need of further confirmation that the Conservative party is not the changed, ‘compassionate’ movement that David Cameron claims it is, it was today revealed that senior Tories are secretly and actively planning to reintroduce hunting with dogs if they form a government after the next election.

The sickening proposals centre around the creation of a so-called ‘Hunt Regulatory Authority’, which would in reality be little more than an extensive private members club. The Conservatives excuse their plans by highlighting the weaknesses of the legislation upholding the hunting ban, yet their intention is certainly not to replace it with more comprehensive laws, but rather to hide the regulation of hunting behind a smokescreen of bureaucracy. (Ironic, isn’t it?)

The Countryside Alliance, alongside senior lawyers, have produced a blueprint to return to Britain the hunting of stags, foxes and other animals. Senior Tories William Hague and Edward Garnier have expressed their support. Indeed, the group behind the proposals also includes the backing of Samantha Cameron’s stepfather, Viscount Astor. Stephen Lambert, of the Master of Foxhounds Association spoke with remarkably false conviction of ’some ghastly drama – the hounds accidentally catching a fox in some inappropriate place – it’s not against the law but it most definitely brings hunting into disrepute and the HRA would act’.

This all rings incredibly hollow to those of us who were pleased to see the end of this barbaric ‘tradition’ under a Labour government. It seems as though the Tories have scarcely bothered to spin this story, such is their smugness on this issue. Like a bunch of Etonian schoolboys, gleefully rubbing their hands at an opportunity to sit at the principal’s table, they stand with their pre-drafted legislative agendas. Same old boys’ network. Same old Tories.

Cameron’s Opportunism Sinks to New Lows

One of the major stories of the past few news cycles has been the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie plane bomber, from custody in Scotland. Megrahi was convicted of the murder of 270 innocent people. The move has attracted strong condemnation from many around the world, including FBI Director Robert Mueller who described it as ‘a mockery of justice’. Tory leader David Cameron jumped on the bandwagon by appealing to the public’s sense of empathy, arguing that Megrahi ’showed no compassion’ and so therefore compassion should not be shown to him.

All of this is hard to argue with, until one remembers that this was a decision taken not by Westminster and certainly not by the Prime Minister. It was a decision for the Scottish Executive, and a decision they alone were empowered to make. Indeed, Ian Gray has already made it clear that it is not a decision Labour supported, nor is it one he would have made if it had been in his power. David Cameron, yet again, has sought to exploit the ignorance of the public over due process and spin an event – in this case a tragic and terrible event – into an opportunity to make political capital. This is an utterly despicable example of why Cameron represents the sort of dirty politics the rest of us wish to forget.

Another angle one might wish to consider in this case is Cameron’s political desire to be seen as close to the United States. Fortunately, it seems unlikely that this desire will be realised since President Obama has made his distaste for Cameron abundantly clear already. As he adequately put it, ‘Blair was “sizzle and substance”; Brown was “substance”; Cameron was merely “sizzle”.

Mr President, we couldn’t agree more.

#welovethenhs

In light of my blog posts in recent weeks, I am pleased to see the Labour Party movement grasping this opportunity to use cutting edge microblogging technology to spread the very topical message that the British public must not give the Tories an opportunity to implement Dan Hannan’s plans for our health service. Electing the Tories would lead to heavy elements of privatisation and underfunding that would see our NHS return to the dark days of the 1980s and early 1990s. Once more, David Cameron has failed to prove he is in any way progressive or a change from the selfish and solipsistic Tory outlook of old.

Towards a Primary System

David Miliband today set out a vision of an open primary system for electing Labour Party candidates. Whilst I have some concerns with allowing non-members the ability to vote immediately, and feel safeguards are necessary to prevent abuse and hijacking, the sentiment is unreservedly a good one. As Mr Miliband has previously argued, the structures of the party are outdated and alien to the majority of ordinary people. The Labour Party needs to move away from its archaic clique-style meetings, and above all its confusing and over-complicated hierarchical nature. We are stuck in the dark ages and even the Tories seem to be embracing modern developments with greater hunger.

A large part of this must include moving towards a more democratic method of electing parliamentary candidates. Detractors of primaries begin by defending their own party loyalty, sentiments borne out of their fear of outsiders and their natural reaction to protect the status quo. The fact is that the status quo is no longer a useful method of conducting politics. Traditional political parties are dying, and if we are to have any hope of even surviving in the long term, we must ditch them and adapt with urgency.

The Obama campaign in America was, perhaps, the definitive game-changer. For the first time, every American was given the opportunity, indeed the right to be part of the the Democratic campaign for the presidency. By energising the population and involving them in our selection process, we can reinvigorate their interest in politics. For too long, Labour Party membership figures have been plummeting, the gap between elected officials and everyday life has become steadily wider and, consequently, public trust in politicians has reached an all time low.

Bringing change to our democratic processes is also a good opportunity to reintegrate the Trade Unions in our decision-making process. David Miliband talked about ‘fuzzy identity’ and I believe this is perhaps the crux of our problem. We spend our whole time trying to fight for Labour politics, yet in the post-Blairite era we have little to define what that really means. There is time yet before the next general election for us to organise, and to succeed. We must start that gargantuan task right now.

Why we’re falling apart at the seams

The Labour Party prides itself on its democratic nature; its expertise at bringing the voices of ordinary people to the attention of the political elites. Yet it has a huge problem at its core – one which can and must be comprehensively remedied if we are to regain the initiative and not sink so far in the public estimation that we are unable to recover. The structure of the Labour party is outdated, obscure and much bemoaned by its membership. As a party, we are still living in the dark ages, a collection of disparate local groups strung together by the fabric of an over-enlarged club. As early as 1941, political scientists observed with bemusement the complicated and unnecessary federalism that exists within the party, inevitably leading to a lack of unity and splits on almost every matter of substance.

Even more importantly, we have failed to adapt our media engine to the 21st Century, or even to the media of the 1990s. Still based in the age of newspapers, we are unable to exploit news cycles which no longer last a week, but at most a single day. Our efforts to engage with the information age have been frankly embarrassing. At our best, we are ineffective; at our worst, downright contradictory. Every day we see senior party figures; cabinet members, past and present, engage in mud-slinging contests on social networking sites, much to the ridicule of the media. We are simply failing to portray a united front, and lack any sort of proper public relations direction whatsoever. Today’s Harriet Harman incident is a perfect example. The Deputy Leader made an error of judgement in a remark about women and leadership, which has inevitably led to the tabloids accusing her of an attempted power grab. Then, in response, a cringe-worthy response from John Prescott which simply compounded the problem by confirming the media’s accusation of in-fighting. These are the kind of exchanges that have come to typify the public’s view of Labour politics.

LabourList, formerly edited by Derek Draper, has also failed to provide the kind of online home that the Labour party is looking for. Although improved in recent months, it still fails to really grasp the attention of senior party figures or, indeed, the media. It was conceived to mimic the kind of networks that Barack Obama relied on in his Presidential campaign,  but it has mostly proved a poor comparison. Yet this kind of interaction can and must be Labour’s future, and development of such projects should be taken seriously and become a top priority for party leadership.

The party needs to thoroughly re-assess itself from the ground up. At the bottom end, we need to totally redesign local party structure and encourage new forms of participation. At the top end ,we need to hire some media heavyweights, and organise our message properly. This need not mean stifling the progressive nature of the party, but merely putting some traffic lights in place before wading headlong into the motorway at every conceivable opportunity. Inevitably, putting the party into the 21st Century is going to require a sizable cash injection, and we need to find better ways of acquring it than holding raffles at Labour party events. Earlier in the year, there was much talk of following the lead of the Obama for America campaign, but our attempts have so far been rather pathetic. The Labour Party must change if we are to remain a serious force in the political spectrum, nevermind win the next general election. It is time to drag it kicking and screaming into the modern age.