Fearless Field Fields Frank Flanker

Unofficial minister for the poor and pain in Brown's backside, Fearless Field, has ruffled a few feathers appearing alongside Dave at a Tory election event.

New Labour cronies will come to regret the day they cast off Field like an old boot.

Field is one of the few Labour politicians, the Orange Party has time for and not just because he's been a thorn in Blair and now Brown's side ever since the Party was hijacked by the New Labour elite.

The former welfare minister and one of the government's most vocal critics is famous for being well, frank. But then Field has never been one to go with the New Labour flow. One of the few politicians at Westminster willing to stick his neck out and speak the unspeakable.

Now Field has done the unmentionable by appearing alongside Cameron at an election event.

Making a guest appearance with Tories is not the way to win friends and influence people as ructions continue over the struggling Supreme Leader's lamentable leadership.

Cameron heaped praise on Field according to The Times, and told the audience that Tory ideas, including those of Iain Duncan Smith, were built on foundations laid down by Field.

Field has long argued the welfare state should be more than a money-redistribution system, drawing the link between family breakdown and 'more instability, more crime, greater pressure on housing and social benefits'.

Sadly you can count the number of politicians like Field on one finger. If only there were more people like him in Parliament.

Field's work in the area of welfare and poverty elimination are well known and well respected but always at odds with New Labour.

Fearless Frank was famously asked to "think the unthinkable" by Blair. When he did and put forward a raft of sensible welfare reforms, Field was shot down in flames because they were just not vote-winners.

How New Labour must regret that they didn't take up his ideas when they had the chance.

Field is a rare breed of politician putting his principles before party dogma and the party whip. So unlike the self serving arrogance of the new breed of politician which infects Westminster.

Last June, Field blogged that he believed the Party would not win the election with Brown as leader, floored Brown in the 10p tax revolt and was one of the few Labour MPs to publicly back Hoon and Hewitt's calls for a secret leadership ballot of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Lately he popped up as part of a cross-party group of around 20 MPs and peers backing a campaign calling for curbs on immigration. At the heart is Field's long held view that unless restricted, current immigration rates will impact on public services and quality of life.

Field's crime and what makes him unpopular with some New Labour MPs is that he dares to criticise the government. Good on him.

A grammar school boy and graduate of a top red-brick university rather than one of the posh school educated and Oxford elite in a privileged position of power.

A man after the Orange Party's own heart with his heart in the right place.

Top picture: The Times

Read More...

Put The BBC Out Of Our Misery

Auntie is on her last legs. The BBC is dying. The only way to save the BBC is to strip it of its licence fee, according to Labour's minister of common sense, Frank Field. Fine words but Auntie is actually alive and well and kicking back all the way to the bank, Frank.

The race is on to save public service broadcasting for the nation, according to Field, who offers a breath of fresh air and an elegant solution. But Field has a fatal flaw.

Public service broadcasting isn't dying. But the way it's funded is. And it's not just dear old Auntie. State-owned broadcaster Channel 4 lives on the back of a fat taxpayer's subsidy with a dodgy public service remit tucked way behind Big Brother.

Field's plan is to use the licence fee, albeit greatly reduced, as a source of funding to dole out to a whole range of public service broadcasters. Funding would be channelled through a Broadcasting Commission handing out cash to programme makers as long as they stick within a public service remit.

But a licence fee stealth tax is still a stealth tax no matter how it is dressed up.

And there's no need. Simply levy a tax on all devices capable of receiving a TV signal. Another tax? In fact that happens already. It's called VAT. Use that VAT revenue alone and Bob's your broadcaster.

What is clear is that the days of the dear old BBC as a bastion of public service broadcasting are long gone.

Today it's all about chasing ratings, making fat profits from spin offs, cutting cushy deals and making a £118m profit on a £916m turnover through the BBC Worldwide commercial arm.

The current row over whether to top slice some of the whopping £3.6 billion a year licence fee and hand it over to commercial operators is a red herring and simply puts off the day of reckoning.

Here's an organisation with a guaranteed income on the back of taxpayers hard-earned cash and obscene profits from its commercial enterprises.

But the current argie bargie over the future of the BBC and the future of public service broadcasting in the digital download age is all rather academic.

Downing Street needs to keep the BBC sweet in the run up to the general election - or rather keep BBC broadcast and on-line news on-side and on-message until that election is finally called and strict broadcasting laws over political balance kick in.

But a start could be made with alerting broadcasters how much would be in the kitty if the VAT on TV receivers was to be ring-fenced for public service broadcasting. A true Value Added Tax less painful than the monstrous licence fee.

The only issue is whether Strictly Come Dancing performs a vital public service for celebrities and whether Channel 4's 'Christmas' message from Iran's President Ahmadinejad really can be classed as UK public service broadcasting.

Read More...

Field Floors Brown In 10p Tax Revolt

A last ditch bid to scupper New Labpour plans to impose a 10p tax levy on the poor could mark time for struggling Brown, as he faces up to a fresh challenge to his lamentable leadership.

Today's 10p tax rebellion sees an unholy alliance of around 30 decent Labour backbenchers, Tories and Lib Dems, led by veteran campaigner for the poor, Frank Field, out for revenge after being frozen out in his bid to become speaker.

With his bid to take the speaker's chair dashed as punishment for leading last year's 10p tax revolt and Brown's humiliating climbdown, Fearless Field has made no secret of his distaste for a so-called "Labour government" which is hell bent on hitting the poor.

Revenge could be a dish best served in the cold corridors of Westminster. Delivering a parting shot as he stood down as a speaker candidate, Field made it clear: "It just might be that those people who worked so hard to keep me out of the Speaker's chair, when they see the next campaign on the 10p, they might wish they'd put me in it."

Now with the vexed issue of 10p tax compensation raising its head again, Field has issued a rallying call: "This is the last chance for Labour MPs before the General Election to deliver justice to the 10p losers", claiming 1.3m people are losing out even today by £1 a week as a result of the abolition of the 10p tax.

As MPs prepare to vote on the entire government budget, the cross-party bid may not end in government defeat but could well end in a round of fumbled concessions, arm twisting and blackmail which once again casts doubt on Beleaguered Brown's authority.

The so-called Labour 'rebels' are thoroughly fed-up with their fag-end government. With millions of people on low incomes worse off since the change, New Labour is paying lip service in a pretence to protect the poor. As the Orange Party has said many times before - one person's 'rebel' is another person's true Labour MP.

But Bunkered Brown is having none of it, as MPs seek to secure compensation for everyone left worse off by the controversial abolition of the 10p income tax rate.

In a bizarre move for a supposedly 'Labour' government, chancellor Brown's final shot was to scrap the 10p starting rate for the poor in his 2007 budget to fund a 2p cut in the standard rate of tax for the better off.

Field's July revolt forced Brown to suffer a humiliating climbdown and sparked a fresh wave of leadership challenges, as the government was forced to come up with fudged compensation for those who lost out by the decision to scrap the lowest tax band.

Beleaguered Brown is braced for a fresh backbench revolt. A humiliating defeat could block the entire budget, screw up income tax collection and throw all the carefully laid economic plans into chaos.

But the Orange Party isn't holding its breath, despite backbench support and opposition backing. The fag-end government failure will be pulling out all the stops to head off defeat.

All leave has been cancelled as whips muster the troops and twist a few arms to toe the party line. Once again Northern Ireland's DUP will be cajoled to prop up the government. With backs against the wall, no doubt government pork-barrel sweeteners will be passed around to keep the swervers sweetly in line. If all else fails, there's always blackmail and the frighteners of Armageddon.

Even if the threatened revolt fails or manages to wring out some concessions with another heady mix of fudged figures, the spectacle of ministers digging in their heels makes a mockery of the government's bid to paint the Tories as the nasty party of cuts with a New Labour budget which would hit the poor.

Born-again Brown needs today's commons revolt like a hole in the head. But once again the deluded Supreme Leader has made it even worse, with a hotch-potch of measures brought in to try to fix a problem of his own making.

Whatever the outcome, the threat comes just before MPs break up for the summer holds to spend more time with their plotting pals.

Today's events will leave a bitter taste in the mouths of many decent Labour MPs, already fed-up, angry and depressed. And careless talk over Battered Brown's flagging leadership of a fag-end government is bound to erupt once again.

Read More...

Mandy And Brown Stoke Fires Of Anger

Unelected ex-EU fat cat Mandelson, who wormed his way into the heart of government, has the gall to 'speak for the country' with an attack on hard working souls scared stiff about jobs and how to make ends meet. 

The workers revolt is nothing compared to the revolting spectacle of Brown's high and mighty deputy, fanning the flames of angry protest, with Brown behind him. 

As wildcat strikes spread across the country for the second week, Brown has condemned the unofficial action and little else. But he would have say that wouldn't he - he's the prime minister. His weak and limp dronings are part of his natural defence to bury his head in the sand, to 'do his best for jobs' as his misguided "British jobs for British worker's" is thrown back in his face. 

It is his privileged and powerful deputy Mandelson, accusing the strikers of 'protectionism' against EU neighbours which sticks in the throat. Having the downright cheek to suggest workers here should try to get jobs abroad, no doubt forced to wrench themselves away from families and live in squalor, to support Mandy's self-serving EU interests. 

Tell that to the lads on the picket lines who saw their jobs thrown away by a foreign company who used every trick in the EU rule book to bring in cheap labour and then tore the rule book up in their face. 

The Orange Party has warned this is the winter of our discontent as first it was clear the government can't help protect and create jobs and now it seems it won't. 

The government has been spinning around duping the public, refusing to even admit the looming recession. Now, as the chickens come home to roost, it is stuck in the past, trying to cling on to failed 'boom years' policies while the country falls apart round its ears. 

Mandelson is protecting his idea of 'protectionism' and spinning it around to jobs but protectionism has nothing to do with jobs. Its about free trade and most would agree that free trade within the EU is essential, especially in times of deep recession. But that should not mean a jobs free-for-all. The only people who suffer are the working backbone of this country.

Telling workers if they don't like it they can lump it and go and get jobs elsewhere in the EU, cuts no ice with workers with families and commitments here - and nor should it. What next for the unelected peer who has no voter  to fear? Tell them all to 'get on their bikes'?

Even the neo-liberal trade agreements so beloved of this former EU top dog, allows in cheap imported goods, while UK manufacturing is destroyed. Cheap imported goods is one thing - cheap imported slave labour quite another. 

The strikes are not politically motivated or whipped up by agitators, as a quick glance at the messages on the coordinating website BearFacts show. It is a bitter cry for help by solid workers who feel abandoned by the government in a bitter recession. 

What started as an industrial dispute over illegal jobs contracts at the Lincolnshire Lindsey Oil Refinery has now erupted into full-blown anger at the way this so-called 'Labour' government treats its own workforce with utter contempt. 

Mandelson may genuinely believe in free markets across Europe and bully for him but joining the EU never meant screwing the country's workers, nor an ever-expanding, heavily beaurocratic EU, whose leaders are bent on creating a military and financial super-state for their own power and glory. 

How can two grown men be so politically naive? Local and EU elections are round the corner, so too a general election. Their arrogant actions merely boost the BNP which is already using the dispute to whip up support. 

Backbench Labour rebel MPs led by the likes of Jon Cruddas and Frank Field are speaking out and speaking sense: “Stakes could not be higher,” warns Field. “The men and women on these picket lines are not just fighting for their jobs, they are asserting their national identity. Anger should be directed at this Government.”

Cruddas is shouting from the rooftops with warnings about the dangerous rise of the BNP. 

The Orange Party has stated time and again that none of this mattered during the false boom years with easy credit and easier jobs. Now with a deep Depression hanging over the country, it exposes a government floundering around in disarray, hopelessly out of touch and clinging onto the past. 

Picture: Workers brave blizzards at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (BBC). 

Read More...

Gordon Gets The Glaswegian Kiss

With the Labour Party in disarray in Scotland, riddled with sleaze allegations, the people of Glasgow East have sent a clear message to Westminster. Brown is now down and out in Glasgow East.

They are fed up with Brown and his cronies who have no place in the hearts and minds of the people of this area. 

This is much more than a disastrous result for New Labour. It should mark the end for Brown. Glasgow East was a solid Labour stronghold where the Party runs in the blood of the people. Even with a lack-lustre candidate from the SNP in John Mason, Labour couldn't pull it off. 

The SNP majority was 365, an incredible 22.54% swing against Labour on a turnout of 42.25%. In 2005, Labour recorded a majority of 13,507 over the SNP on a turnout of 48%. This SNP victory and Labour's utter humiliation will go down in political history.

New Labour's recent attempts to spin evidence of a Brown bounce has evaporated. If you can't win in Glasgow East, with no Conservative or LibDem opposition to speak of, you can't win anywhere. 

And it's also a well-deserved and stunning victory for Alex Salmond who played his charisma card by fielding a boring SNP candidate who wouldn't take the limelight away from him and the SNP movement. 

But, like the turn towards the Conservatives in England, this was more a vote by people fed-up with Brown and New Labour rather than a vote for the other parties. 

The brutal fact is that Brown once again bottled it. He had a golden opportunity to pull a rabbit out of the hat ahead of the by-election. Back-bench true Labour MPs like Cruddas and McDonnell were showing him the way and shouting it from the newspapers. 

Just one big popular policy announcement would have done it. A cabinet reshuffle to clear out the dead wood would have done it. A clear announcement over troop withdrawal from Iraq, while not directly relevant to voters in Glasgow East, would have galvanised the Party and kick-started the campaign. But nothing happened. 

In the end, the arrogance of the New Labour Westminster elite was their downfall. They may have hijacked the Labour Party but they cannot highjack the people of Glasgow East.

Now a humiliated Brown will be forced to go cap in hand to the unions at the National Policy Forum to plead for cash to keep the Party afloat. 

With the devastating result of Glasgow East still fresh in everyone's minds, the unions will drive a hard bargain, if indeed they want to continue to prop up Brown and his New Labour gang at all, ahead of September's Labour Party conference.

Read More...

Brown Needs White Rabbit Or White Flag

If Brown wants to survive he's going to have to do something big and something real. Something which captures the public's imagination and turns public opinion. Like a magician, he needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat, or give up. 

If Brown doesn't do this soon, ahead of the Glasgow East by-election, he might as well back up his box of tricks and go home. 

Cameron's conservatives are having it too easy. They are reacting to Big Issues as they come up, unfolding hard policies slowly to a tightly controlled pre-election grid. The LibDems are going nowhere under Euro-boy Clegg. 

True Labour back-bench MPs are starting to pull their own rabbits out of the hat and maybe put their hats in the ring. 

Frank Field's comments in the Daily Telegraph read like a manifesto and are remarkably similar in tone if not content to a lament by John McDonnell in the Guardian recently.

John Cruddas put forward his white rabbits in yesterday's Sunday Mirror, as "a last chance to revive (Brown's) Government". 

At the moment Brown and the New Labour elite are just clinging on to power. A long-awaited cabinet resuffle won't help. Just the same old faces - but younger. 

After a decade, the New Labour Project is coming to an end and voters can see through the sham. Coming up with wasteful white elephants or just sticking green labels on things won't help. 

Brown was part of, but not one of the main architects of, the New Labour Project. 

He started out his premiership with a white rabbit when he scrapped the supercasino plan. But that was all. 

Brown still has time to pull another white rabbit out of the hat. He could call time on New Labour and pick up just one of the ideas from Field, McDonnell or Cruddas. There are plenty of white rabbits to choose from. 

Read More...

The English Question Answered

Sooner or later someone is going to have to grasp the nettle and sort out the 'English Question'. What kind of democratic representation should we have in the 21st century?

The present system has been described by Labour MP, Frank Field, as "one of the festering sores in English politics", with English voters becoming increasingly resentful of the present system that allows a range of "fiscal discriminations". 

And the Conservative's Ken Clarke, is looking at the same issue. 

The New Labour government is being, not surprisingly given the Scottish grip on the Party, rather quiet on this vexed issue. 

But this shouldn't be about nationalism. It should be about democratic structures and representation. Yes, it creates resentment, anger (and a headache) but that doesn't mean it can be hidden away. Sooner or later it will come to head. 

The problem is the simple democratic legacy. England doesn’t have a parliament. And whatever solution is put forward, this lack of an English parliament has to be settled once and for all. 

And the fact that Labour MPs, representing Scottish and Welsh constituencies, can vote through laws for England that do not effect their own constituents, is causing a growing backlash among English MPs and voters. 

An actual structure is becoming clear. Westminster, the Mother of all Parliaments, represent the United Kingdom - and that remains sacrosanct. MPs from all over the UK sit at Westminster.

But that UK parliament should only deal with matters which have not been devolved to the four nations. 

What has to be made clear is exactly what powers are devolved to the national parliaments and assemblies and what must remain for the UK as a whole to decide. Defence is obvious. So too must be national security, strategic transport, immigration policy, national taxation and the NHS. 

The Scottish parliament should be given more devolved powers. The Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies should move faster towards their own parliamentary status and the London Assembly must be considered as part of this devolution. 

But in the end, it is the UK parliament which should decide which powers are devolved.

And it would be an English assembly first, then parliament later, which also sits at Westminster, but clearly separate from the UK parliament, to decide English matters. 

That's the structure. Pretty clear and straightforward. Such a structure is inevitable anyway. 

The real problem isn't this structure or the cost. The problem is over the representation to the parliaments and assemblies which have evolved piecemeal over time. 

There's no way round this. England will have to produce another tier of government in the form of English members of parliament (EMPs) - similar to those in Scotland. 

But there's no reason why a present UK MP for an English constituency, sitting in the UK parliament, cannot be the same person as the English parliament MP.

It has to happen soon. Before it all turns nasty.

Read More...