An Evening with Eddie Izzard (and Ken)

On Wednesday I went to a London Labour Party fund raising event hosted by Eddie Izzard for Ken Livingston.  Ken and Eddie both spoke followed by a Q&A. I asked about Boris and his high fare policy for London transport.   Afterwards both Eddie and Ken came around and sat at tables chatting to supporters while signing menus and having their

photos taken with us. See photo
college.

Newham was represented by West Ham MP Lyn Brown and 2012 GLA candidate, Cllr Unmesh Desai. I was pleased to be introduced (but too shy to say anything) to a long time heroine of mine, Jill Morrell. In the blogging world, I saw former Labour list editor, Derek Draper

On our table (bottom left of college) there were mostly affiliated trade unions reps. I sat next to Jessica Asato and we compared notes on our experiences as first term London Councillors. Good and bad. 

Derek Draper Resigns as Editor of Labour List

Dear All,
I am emailing directly because I wanted you to know before anyone else does about developments at LabourList.

Two weeks ago I posted on the site saying I was sorry for my role in the Damian McBride affair. Of course I regret ever receiving the infamous email and I regret my stupid hasty reply. Instead I should have said straight away that the idea was wrong.I do ask people to remember, though, that in the end its contents were never published by me or anyone else involved in the Labour party and they would never have seen the light of day were it not for someone hacking into my emails and placing them into the public domain. Because of that, what was a silly idea ultimately destined for the trash can became a national scandal.

Nonetheless, I should have made clear they were unacceptable from the very beginning.On a much smaller note I al so think I got the tone of LabourList wrong sometimes, being too strident, aggressive and obsessed with the "blogosphere".

Having said that I am proud that I was the founder of LabourList. It really was a Labour of love. In just over 100 days there have been nearly 250 contributors, over 500 posts and 18,000 comments. I’d like to think one day I’ll be judged on all of that rather than just one, admittedly awful, email.What has become clear, though, is that my continued editorship can only detract from what LabourList needs to do now.

That is why, after a couple of weeks of reflection, I am passing on the editorship to Alex Smith, who has been a very able Deputy to me from the beginning. I have no doubt that Alex will steer the site to bigger and better things and I urge everyone who wants Labour to have a vibrant, active space on the internet to give him your backing and get involved in whatever comes next.

Derek Draper

More than a whiff of Tory cant and hypocrisy?

Okay – to be clear what Damian McBride did was plain wrong as well as stupid. He fell on his “sword” (or scribe, pen, QWERTY board – whatever media advisers fall upon) pretty swiftly and resigned. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown sent out handwritten letters of deep regret and has now “finally” according to last nights 6pm BBC News “apologised”. Cue to picture of Osborne saying “it’s a bit late”.

Now all week we have been subjected to various Tories pontificating at length about this and that. I thought that this was all just a little rich. I am not a Westminster village insider, but anyone who doesn’t think that senior Tory officials have not had similar emails exchanges or meetings about slurring Labour Politician’s as those between McBride and Draper are living in cloud cuckoo land. I would have thought that maybe some recognition that “there but the grace of God” humility by the Tories would have been appropriate if they really want to “clean up” the body politics.

By co-incidence I’ve been away recently and it was only last night that I caught up with and read last weeks Sunday papers. This extract from Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography in the Sunday Times review I think is apt. “...we discovered after the election that that some Tories had imported a group of US activists called “the Nerds” whose job was to spread malign rumours and make unfounded personal accusations against senior opposition MPs...after the election Kelvin MacKenzie then editor of The Sun, revealed that at least one cabinet-level Tory minister had approached him seeking to retail scurrilous and untrue allegations against a number of senior opposition MPs.”

Nuff said?

UPDATE: No there is more -Leftygirl tells it as it is here

UPDATE 2: The plot thickens - check out today's Sunday Mirror

Progress Labour 2.0 conference – will 2.0 help us win in 2010?

On Thursday evening I was at an important grass roots union and residents meeting in the Isle of Dogs being held in a tenant’s hall.

Yesterday I was back on the Island but this time at the glass and crystal globe of the East Wintergarden in Canary Wharf. Lots of light in the heart of Gotham City (joke). Of course, now that so many of the local businesses are publicly owned I should have felt very much at home.

This conference was organised by Progress and they had 8 sessions with some 26 panel members. That was a lot of information and opinions to take in 11am-5.45pm. I will just highlight some of the things I found interesting.

The opening address was by RH Douglas Alexander MP (who is also the Labour Party campaign coordinator for the General Election). Partly in response to a question that I put to him (which I think he misunderstood - it’s probably me) he suggested that the global Banking crisis last September is an Obama type issue which has changed the world and that it is traditional Labour values of “fairness...solidarity and collectivism” and the “strength of common endeavour” that is the future - this crisis is our “Hope” and “Change” theme (my interpretation).

Joe Rospars, the foundering partner of Blue State Digital was the next speaker and he is of course better known to everyone present simply as God, aka Barack Obama’s New Media Director. He played one of the many inspiring “making the hairs on the edge of your neck stand up” videos. What fantastic stuff. The 13 million supporters, 200,000 local organisers and $500 million dollars raised from 3 million contributors by the New Media Obama machine is an awesome achievement. The decentralisation of the campaign and its “bottom up” nature was key to its success. But as Douglas said with some venom, during question time, the central Obama campaign organisers where not just holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” together each night. They were leading and controlling as well as organising. We should not forget this.

Professor Andrew Chadwick reminded us that yesterday was the 109th anniversary of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and how the Party started off as a broad church and is still one nowadays. “Pragmatism, co-operation and solidarity”.

Ben Brandzel reminded us that “democracy is not a spectator sport”.

Gavin Shuker that the “narrative” is all important. Complying data without any use is itself useless.

Jag Singh (I finally met Jag for the first time in real life) who despite being unwell spoke amusingly but without bitterness about how as a Hilary Clinton election advisor he had lost his White House cubicle (by 0.5 %!).

Stella Creasy – PCC for Walthamstow has an email list of 2000 names gathered during campaign events which her CLP (usually Stella I suspect) sends out a weekly newsletter. . .......Blimey.

I had a sort of “row” during the last session with panel member James Crabtree (senior Editor, Prospect). He had quite gleefully (in my view) during his presentation predicted that the Labour Party would lose the next election and that they should use the opportunity of defeat to build the Party in order to win in future. I challenged him on this view since I could remember when I joined the Party just before the General election in 1979 I came across people who predicted that the Party would lose and tried to argue that this was a good thing. That opposition would enable the Party to regroup and win next time. This resulted in all these people losing their jobs (Shotton steel workers) and the Tories being in charge for 18 years not one or two terms. James said that he had never said that it was a good thing that Labour will lose the next election. I think he did. To be clear I think we still have a very good chance of winning at the next election. It is not helped by selfish and ignorant defeatist statements.

My big issue is as a Labour Party and Labour movement activist who happens to be a “blogger”. I want to help the Party and if possible help it to win. While I enjoy blogging, is it a useful practical political tool or campaigning weapon? Perhaps not and it is just an enjoyable avenue for activists and theorists to sound off and infuriate internal and external opponents. Or can we actually do stuff of political value to our Party?

What about setting up a central and regional distribution list of labour supporting bloggers who can be sent information and post upon (if they choose to) key issues. What about organising those Labour Party members who blog or post and who would rally to support the Party when it is being “beaten up” on national media blogs and web sites?

Or is there anything else we can do?

At the end of the conference I had a brief chat with Derek Draper (Labour List - right of photo) who I can report in my brief experience as being an extremely polite, constructive and courteous comrade.

Check out these posts on this meeting by panel members Nick Anstead, Andrew Chadwick, Tim Montgomerie (ConservativeHome)