Chris Mullin in conversation with Michael White

Extracts from Chris Mullin's diaries 'A View from the foothills' are serialised in today's Mail on Sunday.

This promises to be one of the most enjoyable political books of the year. The lack of a smoking gun is indicated not just by Mullin's self-deprecating title for his wry and witty observational diary, but also by 'Day Prescott came to work in odd shoes' being in the standfirst of their frontpage splash. The MoS draws comparisons with Alan Clark, though the extracts suggest more of a Yes Minister experience. Number 10's engagement, through Anji Hunter, in the Leylandi hedge issue is given a good deal of space, somewhat ironically given that this was doubtless driven primarily by fear of the Dail Mail reaction.

The Fabians will host Chris Mullin in conversation with Michael White in Westminster on Wednesday 18th March, the week of publication. (The book will also be the Radio Four book of the week that week). Places are by registration: contact rosie.clayton@fabian-society.org.uk if you would like to attend.

Today's extract begins with Mullin wondering whether he should give up the chairmanship of the Home Affairs select committee for the bottom rung in John Prescott's mega-department, and ends with his being reshuffled to a role at DFID which seems more likely to be a chance to do something useful.

I have been reshuffled. As I was getting ready to go for the train, my private office called to say the Prime Minister was looking for me. The Man called and asked if I would like to replace George Foulkes at International Development. I replied: 'Nothing would give me more pleasure than helping to redistribute the wealth of the middle classes to the poorest people in the world.'
A brief silence and then a chuckle. 'Ah, Chris, that's not quite how it works.'
'Don't worry, Tony, I'll be discreet.' And that was that. My career as the lowest form of life in JP's empire is over. I am now the lowest form of life in a smaller, but more agreeable department.

Read more...

Chris Mullin in conversation with Michael White

Extracts from Chris Mullin's diaries 'A View from the foothills' are serialised in today's Mail on Sunday.

This promises to be one of the most enjoyable political books of the year. The lack of a smoking gun is indicated not just by Mullin's self-deprecating title for his wry and witty observational diary, but also by 'Day Prescott came to work in odd shoes' being in the standfirst of their frontpage splash. The MoS draws comparisons with Alan Clark, though the extracts suggest more of a Yes Minister experience. Number 10's engagement, through Anji Hunter, in the Leylandi hedge issue is given a good deal of space, somewhat ironically given that this was doubtless driven primarily by fear of the Dail Mail reaction.

The Fabians will host Chris Mullin in conversation with Michael White in Westminster on Wednesday 18th March, the week of publication. (The book will also be the Radio Four book of the week that week). Places are by registration: contact rosie.clayton@fabian-society.org.uk if you would like to attend.

Today's extract begins with Mullin wondering whether he should give up the chairmanship of the Home Affairs select committee for the bottom rung in John Prescott's mega-department, and ends with his being reshuffled to a role at DFID which seems more likely to be a chance to do something useful.

I have been reshuffled. As I was getting ready to go for the train, my private office called to say the Prime Minister was looking for me. The Man called and asked if I would like to replace George Foulkes at International Development. I replied: 'Nothing would give me more pleasure than helping to redistribute the wealth of the middle classes to the poorest people in the world.'
A brief silence and then a chuckle. 'Ah, Chris, that's not quite how it works.'
'Don't worry, Tony, I'll be discreet.' And that was that. My career as the lowest form of life in JP's empire is over. I am now the lowest form of life in a smaller, but more agreeable department.

Read more...

'Community organising is the answer'

Neil Jameson of London Citizens is speaking to the Fabian/Webb centenary conference at LSE in the session on how coalitions for change are built. 'We only speak at living wage campuses - so we can only speak in London here at LSE and at QMW', he said.

Jameson made a passionate and effective pitch for community organising's role in

'We have found nirvana. Community organising is the answer to globalisation. It is the answer to the collapse of politics. The issue for us is the governance of the city. Public-facing is what we do. We are not particularly focused with governments or with policy. But we are obsessed with civil society'.

The election of a community organiser to the White House has increased the interest of the media, but mainly in America, he said. A new move in the UK was the creation of a community organiser's guild.

The pockets of power in society needed to be connected together - and faith communities and institutions would often provide the glue, he said.

The institutions of faith and the institutions of labour are the last surviving remnants of a democratic society, along with the charities and voluntary organisations. But the voluntary organisations are the weakest of the three; the trade unions are the next weakest. Faith is, pragmatically, strong. These are pockets of power, and if you can connect this Church to this Church to this Mosque on the things they agree on, then you can connect those pockets of power'

'What they agree on is never ideology, of course', said Jameson. 'What we have pioneered is the politics of assembly. There is no problem of disengagement from that politics. If you get a full room, then you can make things happen'.

This would, Jameson said, bring back the spirit of progressive politics of the late 19th and early 20th century.

'In the Webbs' time, women had no vote. All they could do was march up and down with banners. It doesn't have to all be about Westminster.

And he argued too that the Webbs had a major impact but depended on the tensions created in society since the 1880s. "The Webbs did the business and seized the moment. We must honour consistently too the labourers, the workers, the priests who created the tension which allowed politics to change", he said. Read more...

'Community organising is the answer'

Neil Jameson of London Citizens is speaking to the Fabian/Webb centenary conference at LSE in the session on how coalitions for change are built. 'We only speak at living wage campuses - so we can only speak in London here at LSE and at QMW', he said.

Jameson made a passionate and effective pitch for community organising's role in

'We have found nirvana. Community organising is the answer to globalisation. It is the answer to the collapse of politics. The issue for us is the governance of the city. Public-facing is what we do. We are not particularly focused with governments or with policy. But we are obsessed with civil society'.

The election of a community organiser to the White House has increased the interest of the media, but mainly in America, he said. A new move in the UK was the creation of a community organiser's guild.

The pockets of power in society needed to be connected together - and faith communities and institutions would often provide the glue, he said.

The institutions of faith and the institutions of labour are the last surviving remnants of a democratic society, along with the charities and voluntary organisations. But the voluntary organisations are the weakest of the three; the trade unions are the next weakest. Faith is, pragmatically, strong. These are pockets of power, and if you can connect this Church to this Church to this Mosque on the things they agree on, then you can connect those pockets of power'

'What they agree on is never ideology, of course', said Jameson. 'What we have pioneered is the politics of assembly. There is no problem of disengagement from that politics. If you get a full room, then you can make things happen'.

This would, Jameson said, bring back the spirit of progressive politics of the late 19th and early 20th century.

'In the Webbs' time, women had no vote. All they could do was march up and down with banners. It doesn't have to all be about Westminster.

And he argued too that the Webbs had a major impact but depended on the tensions created in society since the 1880s. "The Webbs did the business and seized the moment. We must honour consistently too the labourers, the workers, the priests who created the tension which allowed politics to change", he said. Read more...

Townsend: Refocus on inequalities and World Bank

Veteran anti-poverty campaigner Peter Townsend said after looking at domestic banks and their weaknesses, it was time to look at the inextricable links between the domestic and international economies.
There were examples of this every day, he said, just this week there had been the announcement of job cuts in Swindon because of the problems going on with Honda in Japan.
Townsend said the key organisation that he would like to "take a bit of stick to" was the World Bank, and part of his interest has arisen because of work on child poverty around the world.
If you took a look at the GDP of the 53 low income countries in the world it was less than the total of the income of the five biggest international companies, he pointed out in a speech that identified the weaknesses of the World Bank.
The World Bank had not achieved reductions in child poverty across the world, he said at the Fabian conference.
Then he went on to point to an increasingly lack of transparency about the actions of transnational companies, partly because of the dismantling of three UN bodies that used to track this, he argued.
Townsend, a LSE lecturer, also argued for decent labour conditions down the line, among subsidaries of big companies, and public awareness of this. Read more...

Townsend: Refocus on inequalities and World Bank

Veteran anti-poverty campaigner Peter Townsend said after looking at domestic banks and their weaknesses, it was time to look at the inextricable links between the domestic and international economies.
There were examples of this every day, he said, just this week there had been the announcement of job cuts in Swindon because of the problems going on with Honda in Japan.
Townsend said the key organisation that he would like to "take a bit of stick to" was the World Bank, and part of his interest has arisen because of work on child poverty around the world.
If you took a look at the GDP of the 53 low income countries in the world it was less than the total of the income of the five biggest international companies, he pointed out in a speech that identified the weaknesses of the World Bank.
The World Bank had not achieved reductions in child poverty across the world, he said at the Fabian conference.
Then he went on to point to an increasingly lack of transparency about the actions of transnational companies, partly because of the dismantling of three UN bodies that used to track this, he argued.
Townsend, a LSE lecturer, also argued for decent labour conditions down the line, among subsidaries of big companies, and public awareness of this. Read more...

Change depends on convincing society, not just government

"You achieve enduring change by shifting the public and taking the public with you", says Tim Horton, Fabian Research Director, arguing at the Fabian/Webb Memorial Trust centenary conference at the LSE, that the progressive left has forgotten how it achieved its major successes in the early 20th century.

Tim quoted Beatrice Webb's diary entry of her 1909 encounter with Winston Churchill, a member of the Liberal Cabinet.

He did not altogether like the news of our successful agitation. ‘You should leave the work of converting the country to us, Mrs Webb, you ought to convert the Cabinet’. ‘That would be all right if we wanted merely a change in the law, but we want’, I added, ‘to really change the minds of the people with regard to the facts of destitution, to make the feel the infamy of it and the possibility of avoiding it. That won’t be done by converting the Cabinet, even if we could convert the Cabinet – which I doubt. We will leave that task to a converted country’

"Beatrice Webb’s insight was that successful campaigns need to be public facing. But when we look at political campaigning, despite some excellent examples, far too many progressive campaigning institutions are govermment-facing and argue to government for changes of policy. It now seems that the right understands that better than the left. The way the anti-European movement changed Britain from a more pro-European to a more Eurosceptic country: it wasn’t by targeting the government or the Conservative party, it was by shifting public opinion. That is how the Taxpayers’ Alliance drives anti-taxation sentiment

So we need public facing coalitions. But this is not just a message for campaigners. It is a message for politicians too. Margaret Thatcher knew this: 'The economy is just the means; the aim is to change the soul'.

The counter-example is Bill Clinton. He did good things in too office, but did not make public case to shift the argument. His policies could be easily reversed and were like footprints in the sand”. Read more...