Uber-Blairite journalist John Rentoul writes about Ed Miliband's speech in the Independent:
"The weakest line in the speech was the response to being called Red Ed. “Let’s have a grown-up debate,” he said. All right, what about his policy of a living wage? How do the economics of that contradict the idea that his instincts are of the unrealistic left? Who is going to pay for something much higher than the minimum wage at a time of recession and a public spending squeeze? How is he going to get people off benefits by encouraging employers to pay higher wages to the marginally employable?
Elan Closs Stephens, the chair of the Anglesey Recovery Board, has used the occasion of the first anniversary of its formation to write to all IoACC councillors to set out the Board's assessment of progress to date. Here are the key passages and my comments:
"Since last summer the Council has made some real progress, particularly in reforming its political structures, tackling instances of poor member behaviour and improving public engagement."
This statement is interesting in many ways. In mentioning progress on tackling "instances of poor member behaviour" it shows that the Board, despite previous claims to be neutral on the issue, tacitly approves of the expulsion of various councillors from the then Original Independents. The comment referring to progress in "reforming its political structures" is puzzling. Political structures must refer to the various political groupings within the council, and possibly to the fact that they have now produced 'statements of aims and values' as they were required to do by the Board. However, as I noted yesterday, there is little point in them doing this unless they then make them publicly available -- something all of them apart from Llais i Fôn have avoided doing despite numerous requests from this blog.
"We have seen some tangible benefits of this in practice, and of members contributing fully and effectively to the business of the council and the challenges that the island faces"
The significance of this statement of course is that it implies previously councillors (total salary & expenses: £760,935) were not engaging with the challenges the island faces...
"However, we believe that recovery remains fragile and that we cannot say it is completely sustainable for the future."
So clearly not all good news then. And theres more, much more:
"[The Recovery Board] were less convinced that members fully appreciated the general and strategic purpose of their role as Councillor. It is this corporate and strategic role that will have to be developed as Anglesey faces the challenge of one of the worst recessions in living memory."
This is also a strange statement insomuch that it implies that many councillors either don't realise or don't appreciate that is they as elected representatives of their ward constituents who are supposed to be setting the strategic direction of the council -- not the officers. As it has been known for some time that there has been tension between councillors and officers at IoACC, this might suggest the reason why. It might also reveal the reason why councillors and non-party groupings have not thought it necessary to produce manifestos until now...
"We have seen the Wales Audit Office draft Corporate Assessment report ... it identifies that the detrimental personality issues that were identified by the Auditor General for Wales last year still persist, if to a lesser extent. It sees only limited progress in strategic policy-making and in the management of human and financial resources, and continuing weaknesses in public accountability"
So after one year of the Recovery Board and numerous direct warnings from Carl Sargeant that the Council is in the 'last chance saloon', some councillors still thinks its a good idea to play personality politics. Regarding "limited progress in strategic policy-making" see my previous comment. I guess we will learn just how much the various groupings at the council have learned when we see how they engage with the Rhosneigr by-election.
"Overall, we agree with the WAO the progress towards recovery has been patchy and would probably not have been achieved without pressure from the Minister through his Board and the MD over the past year. This must be a strong concern given the severe challenges that Anglesey faces in the months and years ahead."
'Strong concern' is putting it mildly.
"I hope you will have recognised by now that the Board is on your side as you move towards recovery. We do not want to say that we have helped recover the Council. The Board wants to say that the Council has recovered itself."
I would say that the whole of Anglesey wants to see that too.
Ed Miliband in his conference speech today said that the war in Iraq was "wrong". All the media analysis of this part of his speech has centred on the strategic re-positioning implications for Labour of this admission (and of course on the rift this exposed with his elder brother who was captured on camera asking Harriet Harman why she was clapping when she had voted for the war).
However my opinion is that all this talk of "trying to strategically reach out to those who left the Party because they opposed the war" is both trivialising the issue and dramatically missing the point when we think of the human consequences of the conflict. I wonder how the families of soldiers who lost lives or limbs in Iraq will feel about the leader of the Labour Party now essentially saying that those sacrifices were for nothing.
It strikes me that this is an opportune moment to remind anybody who is considering standing in the Rhosneigr by-election of the following passages from the People's Manifesto for Ynys Môn:
One of the major reasons why Anglesey County Council is dysfunctional is because our councillors lack both a shared vision for the Island and a policy roadmap of how to get there. This is in large part due to a significant number of Independents who are elected without issuing to voters in their wards either individual or group manifestos, i.e. a statement of where they stand on various issues and what they should like to do if elected. Such a situation is intolerable because:
- Voters are denied the opportunity to vote on a political vision and set of policies – instead they must try to make their decision based only on the personalities of the candidates. However when you consider that the current average councillor to elector ratio on Anglesey is 1:1,270 people, it is laughable to think that each of those 1,270 voters are able to make an informed decision on the personalities of each of the candidates. Furthermore this situation will worsen at the next council elections when, following Local Government Boundary Commissions changes, the number of councillors will be reduced from 40 to 36, and the councillor to elector ratio will increase to an average of 1:1,411 people.
- Independents, once elected, are effectively accountable to nobody but themselves and are certainly not constrained by any kind of group manifesto or ‘party discipline’. As a result they are free to behave pretty much as they please – leading to the myriad problems of ill discipline we are currently witnessing at the council.
- Independents do attach themselves to a number of opaque groupings (the Original Independents, the Menai Group, Anglesey Forward, and, recently, Llais i Fôn), however these groupings also fail to (i) produce or publicise their aims or policies; and (ii) often fail to impose any form of ‘party discipline’. As such they are better regarded as ‘factions’ not ‘parties’.
- As voters do not know in detail what they are voting for, it is impossible for them to then evaluate their councillor’s performance when the next council elections come around.
Following a similar analysis by the Anglesey Recovery Board, the WAG Minister for Local Government has required that all Anglesey non-party independent groupings produce a "statement of their aims and values" no later than May this year. However as of now only one group -- Clive McGregor's Llais i Fôn -- has unconditionally made their statement public following requests from this blog (for which they deserve great praise). I have emailed the Original Independents, Anglesey Forward and the Menai Group asking them to also send me their Statements but have been met with either silence, or a request for my name and postal address. As we are now four months past the deadline set by WAG all groups must surely have completed their Statements, yet for whatever reason do not wish to publicise them -- which surely defeats the object of producing them in the first place. How can Anglesey residents vote for you if they don't know what on earth you stand for?
Accordingly, for all those thinking of standing in Rhosneigr (and the groupings which may be backing them), I would like to re-iterate this section of the People's Manifesto which deals with local elections:
- All Parties and Political Groupings must publish an updated and Anglesey-specific manifesto of their aims and values at least two months prior to local elections. To save costs these can be hosted on the Anglesey County Council website.
- All Independent candidates standing to become County Councillors in Local Elections must either:
(a) state which Political Grouping they intend to join if elected; or
(b) publish a personal manifesto of their aims and values at least two months prior to local elections.
If we are ever to break with the problems which have bedevilled the council for too long then candidates to become county councillors have to start becoming more open and more transparent about their intentions should they be elected. Therefore I appeal to all Rhosneigr candidates to let us know either know which group they intend to join if elected, or to produce a manifesto of their aims and values which can be distributed among the 748 ward residents. Let's all make Rhosneigr the turning point.
You can download the full People's Manifesto for Ynys Môn here.
------------------------------------------ A SIDE-NOTE: I found out yesterday that this blog has been shortlisted amongst four others in the politics section of the inaugural Wales Blog Awards. The winner will apparently be announced at a ceremony in Cardiff on the 14th October. I know many of you come to read the comments rather than my well researched and finely argued postings ramblings, but nevertheless I thank you all for helping making this blog the force it is!
Considering that today was the day that the Adjudication Panel for Wales met behind closed doors to discuss ex-Anglesey Council Leader Phil Fowlie's case (having refused to postpone the case to allow him to attend personally following his recent heart operation) it probably wasn't the ideal day for Anglesey Council to post the election notice for his replacement as councillor of Rhosneigr: Notice of Rhosneigr Election1
Nevertheless the by-election will now take place on 18th November. Following all the dramatic changes at Anglesey Council since the last local elections, it will be interesting to see which of the Council groupings will be successful in Rhosneigr. We may also finally get to see the Manifestos of groupings other than just Llais i Fôn...
It seems that David Miliband was overwhelmingly the preferred choice of North Wales activists, beating his younger brother by 44 percent to 30 percent. In total only three North Wales constituencies favoured Ed over David, curiously all in the North West: Arfon, Dwyfor Merionydd, and Ynys Môn, perhaps indicating a more radical, left-leaning Labour base in our part of Wales.
And as an added bonus, here's how our MP, Albert Owen, ranked his preferred candidates for the leadership:
Ed and Albert pictured struggling in Energy Policy class
So Gordon Brown-loyalist Ed Miliband -- and the man backed by Anglesey MP Albert Owen (another Brown loyalist) -- has become Leader of the Labour Party. As the media begins asking what Ed's leadership could mean for the Labour Party and for the country at large, Its a good time for us to ask ourselves this question: what has Ed Miliband ever done for Ynys Môn?
The answer, despite having only been in Parliament for five years, is quite a lot -- but little of it positive.
Ed's only position of note within government during his short career was as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position he was appointed to in October 2008. Just two weeks into that role he suddenly announced that the Government's then target of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 percent by 2050 was not ambitious enough and promptly upped it to 80 percent -- one of the highest such targets in the world. At the time this move was welcomed by climate scientists and various green pressure groups, and, who knows, over time it may be be proven to have been the correct decision -- but the fact is that it also had important knock-on effects for British industry which were not so widely trumpeted by the Labour Party. Emissions targets such as this, and the carbon-trading scheme implemented by the EU to help implement them, have effectively made it all but impossible for Europe-based primary metallurgical industries -- such as Anglesey Aluminium -- to remain competitive with similar companies operating in Russia, China, or India. A target of 80 percent reductions in emissions indicated that energy prices would almost certainly rise in the future -- not good news for an energy-hungry company such as Anglesey Aluminium which daily consumed 20 percent of the entire electricity supply in Wales. Ed Miliband had effectively put AAM on notice, and when just three months later the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency informed AAM that the cheap electricity deal on which it depended with the now publicly-owned Wylfa power station would have to be scrapped because of EU legislation preventing government subsidising private companies, there could be no other outcome but the closure of Anglesey Aluminium. Unsurprisingly Anglesey Aluminium was not the only such primary metallurgical company to be forced to close at the same time: the Corus Steelworks in Redcar also folded for almost exactly the same reasons.
One thing however we can half-thank Ed Miliband for is that in setting such an extraordinarily high emissions-cut target, he finally woke himself -- and the Labour party -- to the energy black hole the UK was sleepwalking towards. The fact is most nuclear plants and half of the UK's conventional coal plants are scheduled for closure over the next decade and the Labour Party, whilst in government, had completely taken their eye off the problem -- leading to even Ed Miliband's own department predicting possible energy blackouts by 2015. From this point of view it is illuminating to note that when Ed Miliband was appointed two years ago as the Secretary for State for Energy and Climate Change -- this was the first time in 13 years of Labour rule that there had actually been a full Minister in charge of energy policy. Before then the energy portfolio had been just one minor part of the sprawling Department for Trade and Industry's remit. Furthermore the average tenure of DTI Secretaries of State was just a year and a half meaning that there was little continuity or foresightedness at the top of the department.
No wonder therefore we are currently in the position we are now in Anglesey: hoping against hope for a massive £7 billion investment to build Wylfa B immediately following the largest recession since the 1930s, with a UK government facing the highest ever peacetime levels of public debt, and seemingly entirely at the mercy of internal German politics (see here). Had Labour taken action much earlier during the boom years Wylfa B could have already been in place and the Island's largest private-sector employer, Anglesey Aluminium, may well still have been operating. So, thanks for nothing, Ed. UPDATE: Just in case you were wondering, this is how Labour Party members in Ynys Môn voted in the leadership contest:
click to enlarge
Good to see such overwhelming support for Ed Miliband despite his sterling work in contributing to making Anglesey's largest private-sector employer unviable.
