Labour Assembly Against Austerity
9am – 5pm Saturday 9th November
Birkbeck College, Malet Street WC1E 7HX
Speakers include:
Ken Livingstone
Owen Jones
Francesca Martinez
Steve Turner (Unite)
Ann Pettifor
Diane Abbott MP
labour party
Labour support grows when it defends living standards
By Paul Roberts and Jane West
As expected Labour conference fired the starting gun for the 2015 election. What was not so anticipated was the Miliband leadership’s announcement of a series of popular policies that are widely perceived as constituting a shift to the left.
The strategy rolled out was for Labour to position itself as the party that defends the living standards of ordinary people. This was a shift in strategy and a welcome one. It is based on a correct understanding that the mass of the population is now more animated by contracting real incomes – the ‘cost of living crisis’ – than the ideology of ‘deficit reduction’.
Party conferences fire starting gun on 2015 general election campaign
By Nicky Dempsey and Jane West
It is little more than a year and a half until the next general election and already the main issues in each party’s campaign are being delineated.
Labour is still virtually certain to be the largest party after the next election as the long-term decline in the Tory vote will be further depressed by five years of austerity. Electorally the main question is whether Labour wins a majority – and of what size – or whether it is forced into coalition with the Lib Dems.
The dynamic of Britain’s political situation will pose the need for a left party
By Jane West
In recent months the true character of the Miliband leadership of the Labour Party has been more clearly revealed.
The combination of its commitment to maintain austerity and implement the Tory cuts, attacks on the union role in the Party and nasty and vituperative campaigns against the employment of East European migrant labour marks out the contours of the coming Labour or Labour-led government after 2015.
Why the right is attacking the unions
By Jane West
The conflict that erupted between UNITE and the Labour leadership over the union’s decision to sponsor a range of candidates in the current round of Parliamentary has provoked a new round of assault on the union link with Labour.
The decision by Ed Miliband to take the opportunity of the spat to push through changes to the unions’ affiliation to the Party has been cheered on by the Blairites and the right-wing media, for whom an ‘opt-in’ ballot and the elimination of the unions’ 50 per cent of the vote in the London Mayoral selection are just initial steps.
Labour should propose a growth plan not spread austerity more widely
By Nicky Dempsey
The growing recognition that the 2015 election is Labour’s to lose has led to increasing rightwing pressures on the Labour leadership to maintain the essential thrust of ‘austerity’ policy.
The overwhelmingly Tory press focuses on the demand that Ed Miliband in particular commits to maintaining Tory spending plans.