Received this curious email this evening:

Dear Councillor,
There does not seem to be very much difference between our three main parties these days. This is hardly surprising as 75% of our laws are now made by the EU with little or no input from Westminster. As you must realise local government is in a poor state too with a new unelected layer of Regional Assemblies and voter disenchantment. In UKIP we believe that it is essential for the UK to become self-governing again and for voters to want to participate. We are developing as a broadly based real party of opposition, the only one saying what most people think. (See www.UKIP.org for a full range of policies) With the local elections in May we intend to build up on local government representation and would welcome a conversation with anyone that might consider working with us or joining us. It is time to stand up and be counted. We give you an absolute assurance that you can contact us on a completely confidential basis.
Yours sincerely,
N. Farage
Leader of UKIP
This communication is being organized by the assistant to Jeffrey Titford UKIP MEP (email deleted)

As invited, I visited http://www.ukip.org/ to view a full range of their policies. I started with the education policy document:

We will abolish compulsory Sex and Relationship education, compulsory Citizenship and Personal, Social and Health education immediately. (p12)
The UK Independence Party favours the introduction of a “voucher” scheme, whereby educational funds equivalent to the average cost of state schooling follow the child to the school of the family’s choice - including private schools, where if necessary the fees would be topped up by the parents (p.13)
We believe that grammar schools have a vital role to play in the education of academically more able children, and not only are we committed to the survival of existing grammar schools, but we will encourage the creation of new grammar and other specialist schools, aiming to restore a network of publicly-funded grammar schools across the country. (p13)

I didn’t think it was worth my while reading any more policy documents after this one - not quite my cup of tea.

Remember last year’s Christmas greetings from me to you? Well, forgive me a chuckle that the actress playing Mary in the latest Christian blockbuster “The Nativity Story” is pregnant at the age of - yes you guessed it - 16! Nothing like the touch of authenticity!

On the latest data available (that from 2004), the rate of teenage pregnancy in Oxfordshire has risen by 9.3% since the introduction of the teenage pregnancy strategy (here’s the link: it only works in IE as the webmaster at the TPU is a numpty), bucking the national trend, a decline of 11.1% (link here - yes, only in IE too). (NB: the rate per thousand young women is how you measure falls and rises in teenage pregnancy; talking about more and fewer teenage pregnancies without acknowledging that there aren’t precisely the same number of teenage girls in each age year group is a bit silly, but it doesn’t stop the newspapers doing it. Anyway, that’s a rant for another day.)

In this climate, the decision to close two of the evening sessions of the Alec Turnbull Clinic, the main (only) family planning clinic in Oxford, is indefensible. It follows a several setbacks to contraceptive provision over the last few years in Oxford, including the closure of the outreach clinics on estates such as Rose Hill eighteen months ago, and the move of the clinic from east Oxford, on a good bus route and close to the teenage pregnancy hotspots of the city, to the much less accessible Racliffe Infirmary, in central north Oxford. Now, the sessions on a Thursday and Friday night are to close, because staff shortages mean they can’t be run safely and effectively. On top of this, infuriatingly, when the Radcliffe Infirmary finally closes at Christmas, the clinic will move temporarily to Blackbird Leys - incredibly inaccessible to anyone not from the Leys or without a car - before relocating permanently to Temple Cowley, rather than returning to the newly-rebuilt East Oxford health centre. Really makes you wonder quite how the new Oxfordshire primary care trust proposes to meet that target of halving teenage conceptions by 2010, doesn’t it?

As abortion has always been a matter of individual conscience and not of party policy, those opposed and in support of abortion rights always examine the results of the private members’ ballot carefully. Indeed, the 1967 Abortion Act was introduced as a private members’ bill, admittedly one that received parliamentary time from the government of the day. One worry for the pro-choice movement is that an anti-abortion MP comes near the top of the ballot, or that one of the MPs near the top of the ballot is persuaded to propose an anti-abortion bill rather than one of the others from the avalanche I’m sure is landing on their desks from lobbyists as we speak.

Iain Dale pointed me in the direction of the winners in this year’s ballot, and I thought it might be worth examining which of the twenty might pose a risk. Here they are, in order, with how they voted on the bill to restrict abortion proposed last month by Nadine Dorries MP:

1. Nick Hurd (Con Ruislip-Northwood), for
2. Tim Yeo (Con Suffolk South), for
3. Caroline Spelman (Con Meriden), for
4. Gary Streeter (Con Devon South-West), for
5. Graham Stringer (Lab Manchester, Blackley), against
6. Robert Walter (Con Dorset North), for
7. Sir John Butterfill (Con Bournemouth West), no vote
8. Paul Farrelly (Lab Newcastle-under-Lyme), no vote
9. Martin Caton (Lab Gower), no vote
10. Richard Ottaway (Con Croydon South), against
11. Roger Godsiff (Lab Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath), no vote
12. Shailesh Vara (Con Cambridgeshire North West), no vote
13. Alan Duncan (Con Rutland and Melton), no vote
14. John Hayes (Con South Holland and The Deepings), for
15. Barry Sheerman (Lab Huddersfield), against
16. John McDonnell (Lab Hayes and Harlington), against
17. Sarah McCarthy-Fry (Lab Portsmouth North), against
18. Michael Meacher (Lab Oldham West and Royton), no vote
19. Emily Thornberry (Lab Islington South and Finsbury), against
20. Francis Maude (Con Horsham), no vote

By my count from this excellent paper on the success of private members’ bills, 61 private members’ bills which started in the Commons have succeeded in the last decade, though of course in the main they are uncontroversial, which would not be the case for a bill to restrict abortion rights. Iain says that Nick Hurd has already announced he will be backing a bill to transfer power from central government to local communities, so I reckon it’s worth paying attention to what the five other MPs on this list who voted for the bill last month - Tim Yeo, Caroline Spelman, Gary Streeter, Robert Walter and John Hayes - decide to do… After all, Nadine Dorries will be actively encouraging her colleagues to submit a bill to restrict abortion. In this, I am of course assuming that those who felt strongly about this issue probably voted in the division last month, and thus that those who didn’t vote are less likely to pick this issue for their bill.

A quick Google search shows that “Caroline Spelman MP is less moderately vocal but equally opposed [to abortion rights]“, from the pro-choice forum, and that John Hayes has previously called for a reform of abortion law in the House of Commons, as well as co-sponsoring Nadine Dorries’ bill.

In the circumstances, I’m glad to hear that Abortion Rights’ public meeting at the House of Commons last night went well. I think we may need to organise some more this year to defend the right to choose… I’m no expert in parliamentary procedure, but it strikes me that if a bill is proposed, we need to ensure there’s no question of the government giving any time to it, and when/if it makes it to the floor of the house, the right procedures are deployed to ensure it’s variously defeated, runs out of time or is talked out. The last time we had a genuine threat, Joyce Gould, then Labour party women’s officer, ran a ferocious whipping campaign against it; I hope one of our pro-choice women MPs takes up that mantle, if, sadly, it becomes necessary.

Finally, I have the luxury of sitting down and blogging about Jon Cruddas’ visit to Oxford last Friday.

Jon spoke to our CLP joint meeting, alongside Nick Lowles, the editor of Searchlight, about race, class, New Labour and the far right. He is, of course, the MP for Dagenham, in a London borough with 12 BNP councillors, so has a little experience of this.

The speech was fascinating. Jon started by talking about the demographic changes that Dagenham has undergone in the last few years. Unbelieveably, the in the 1991 census, the BME population of Barking and Dagenham borough was recorded at 1%; it’s now at 27%. He talked about some of the people that come to his surgeries: people bringing concerns about the shed opposite which is home to eight eastern European immigrants “hotbedding”, a roofer who has seen his hourly rate drop £2 in six months. The problem with this pace of change is that government spending, so often determined by a census taken five years ago, just hasn’t kept pace with the new needs of the area, leading to controversy and the racialisation of all resource allocations. Combine this with the party’s focus on those swing seats, and the relentless triangulation; the end of manufacturing in lots of areas, and the decline in the social wage; the total unachieveability of the private house market, and the impossibility of getting social housing: and you begin to understand why there is room for a far right party claiming to be “more Labour than Labour”.

Jon Cruddas talked about the need for Labour politicians to begin to tackle these public policy issues - prioritising building more social housing, delivering excellent and much more responsive public services, meeting the insecurities of the working class head on, recognising that the free market doesn’t have all the solutions - whilst at the same time rejecting the politics of race dividing lines, closing borders and becoming protectionist.

In a section that appealed particularly, he talked about refitting old Labour prescriptions for current circumstances (and anyone who’s read the statistic in the previous paragraph about the rate of change in one London borough in 15 years will understand why the language of “repeal the Thatcherite xyz” doesn’t quite cut it). I’ve never been happy to describe myself as either old or new Labour: I can’t be old because I like equality for women and gays, having a set of policies around childcare and families, and not passing on parliamentary seats from favoured son to favoured son, despite appreciating many of the policies; I can’t be new - well, do I need to explain that one? - despite liking modern communications methods and winning elections. So Jon Cruddas’ words were welcome. He was careful to make the distinction between old Labour solutions, and the ones that are needed now: “Our policies can’t just be a hangover from old Labour, but a new and vibrant response to a modern problem.” He talked about the trade union freedom bill, which he supports despite its silly name as a good response to the challenges of contracting out and cheap immigrant labour, calling it “an illustration of whether you can render intelligible for a modern world some of the old solutions without just hitting the rewind button”, and praised trade unions for beginnning to work out how to organise in the growing migrant agricultural sector.

I had a chance to chat to him briefly after the event, and he struck me as down-to-earth, engaged with rebuilding the Labour party and activism within the Labour party, and - despite his recent co-authoring of a paper for Compass - more leaflet Labour than pamphlet Labour, uncompromising on the importance of getting out there and banging on doors. Just on his advocacy for council housing alone, he probably would have got my vote; as it was I was very impressed with the range of policies he advocated, and can confidently say that I will be voting for him as deputy leader.

Taking a break from meetings about local government, I finally made it to not one but two political meetings this week. You know, the sort with speakers who talk not about minutiae, procedure and practicalities. The first of these was the visit of John McDonnell MP to Oxford Town Hall on Thursday night.

To set the scene: Oxford Town Hall is one of those gloriously impractical Victorian buildings - the type meant to cow the working class and remind them their place isn’t here. The McDonnell meeting was in the main council chamber with its nasty wooden pews, designed apparently with the worthy intention of being so uncomfortable as to limit the length of council meetings. The audience numbered about 45: my eye for party members who have been out on the knocker this year spotted about eight leaflet Labour, and the rest I assume were of the pamphlet persuasion. There were also at least two members of political parties opposed to Labour present, of which more later.

In a cunning plot to foil my scheme to hear McDonnell and scurry off into the night, the other speakers went first. My colleague Cllr John Tanner started, speaking of his commitment to McDonnell’s campaign. He was doing fine, until the sharp intake of breath from the assembly in response to the statement “Gordon Brown has been an excellent chancellor” - uncontroversial in most circles, apparently anathema in this. There were two other speakers before the main act - an inaudible student who had recently joined the party precisely to vote for John, and Emmie, our city Unison convenor and former Labour council candidate.

Finally we got to McDonnell’s own speech, which to this reasonably receptive listener, was quite impressive. For a start, his venom was not directed entirely at the current leadership of the Labour party, an occupational hazard for our firebrands of the left, but also at the Tories. Perhaps it’s an indictment of the left of the party that he should need to say, and I should be so glad to hear “No-one should doubt my loyalty to a Labour government. I remember what it was like before”, but none the less, he said it and I was glad. He outlined his policies, as on his leadership manifesto, and picking up the areas of disappointment: “I look back on the last nine years with a depth of anguish at the wasted opportunity … it’s almost like a tragedy for the Labour movement”. Thankfully spent a little time on domestic affairs as well as the adventures of foreign policy, promising the almost unimaginable: a non-means-tested increase in child benefit to all families equivalent to the cost of full-time childcare. Not the most efficient way to make childcare affordable, containing as it does that huge subsidy to some families who could contribute at least part of the cost, but still, a policy which, if implemented, would have a huge benefit to poor families.

He also talked about the need to rebuild the coalition of broad-based support for the party. He mentioned the component parts of the coalition he envisaged: public sector workers, peace campaigners and environmentalists. This made me cross: don’t get me wrong, I want all of those people on our side, but if that’s it, we never get to run another government again. Where are the lower-middle classes in that? Where are the poor and the unemployed in that coalition? Of course, he may have been cleverly playing to his audience of people who attend political meetings, and up his sleeve he may have the strategy to win back the disengaged and hold on to middle England: I hope so.

On he went, through the bloodbath of early September’s leadership crisis (not the Sopranos, or Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but Up Pompeii, apparently), to what happens in the first 24 hours of that socialist prime ministership: the breaking of the millitary alliance with Bush and the scrapping of Trident, and then he finished to a round of applause.

Having said that I was impressed by McDonnell himself, the questions and the audience were enough to drive anyone into the arms of another candidate. The chair was a guy with improbable facial hair from Witney CLP who clearly didn’t know the usual suspects placed in strategic positions in his line of sight, so we ended up with long minutes of tedious opinions and few focussed questions to John. Worse still, the chair thoughtfully picked two questioners who had no stake at all in the election, being ineligible to vote because of their membership of other parties opposed to Labour. McDonnell had said in his speech that at every meeting a member of the Socialist Party would ask “that’s all very well, John, but what happens when you fail?”. You would think that any listening member of the SP would be embarassed enough to keep quiet, but no, we were treated to his musings on the weaknesses of the Labour left at length. The chair also managed to call the deputy leader of the Green Group on the city council, who asked a pointless question about the internal party democracy of a party of which he is not a member.

Most of the other questions I heard (and I didn’t stay until the end) were of the variety: “John, I was sad you didn’t find time to talk about [insert pet issue] in your speech today. Could you tell us what you think about [pet issue]?” Needless to say, John was always eager to talk about [pet issue], and neatly promised their required policy changes. The Americans have a useful concept for this - being in bed with the special interests - and it seems by his enthusiasm for the concern of the questioner, he is just that, though I guess that’s better than snuggling down with the corporate special interests.

Anyway, John McDonnell’s eagerness to talk about party democracy and special interests meant that he only answered one of my two questions, the one on policies to end child poverty. The child poverty policies were fine if unimaginative and unspecific - focus on inequality, redistribute power and wealth, trade union rights are the way to a living wage, need to invest in council housing, oddly civil liberties and environmentalism were in there somewhere. However, not being a special interest, a representative of an entryist group, a representative of an opposition party, but merely a probably-Gordon- but-might-be-swayed-if-you’re-good and-by-the-way-I’ve-actually-got-a-vote voter, I was slightly disappointed that he didn’t answer my question about what the Labour government has done which he thinks is good, though to his credit he emailed me an answer the next day with profuse apologies (in short - gay stuff, devolution, Northern Ireland peace, minimum wage, foxhunting, but undermined by all the bad stuff).

So, where do I end up? Not convinced, to be honest, but then we’re still months off, and I hope to get to another meeting with him before the actual election. If I had one piece of advice to his campaign, it would be this: whatever you do, screen those people who have no stake in being at meetings about the Labour leadership out before the meeting, and have a chair with enough nous to call the right people. I might have voted for John, might still do so, but the other people that are supporting him really make me wonder whether I could. Too often the Labour left is accused of being disloyal, of collaborating with entryists and co-operating with those outside the party. It would be really useful not to confirm the prejudices of those who think that.

This week, what with the American elections, lots of hard work in the office, and visits from John McDonnell and Jon Cruddas to Oxford (reports to follow), I’ve not found time for much blogging. I certainly don’t have space in my head to say anything more than one or two intelligent sentences about each of these interesting links:

The Don is setting up a new internal party campaign: Labour against poverty. His post, and one following at Bloggers4Labour, are both worth a read.

On of the feeds in my feedreader is the Indymedia Oxford newswire. I’m sure the type of people who post there wouldn’t like me very much - I’m sure elected Labour politicians aren’t very popular there, they seem to find the local Greens a bit sell-out - but I usually think of them as on the right side of things, in some vague way. The comments following this post by one of my sucessors as OUSU VP Women, though, riled me.

I enjoyed this account of election day in PA-08 by a student from the university of Pennsylvania. I daresay you don’t need me to tell you the result in that district… On a related topic, this new blog, Britain and America, is consistently interesting, though the comments seem sadly to be descending into mouth-frothing anti-BBCism. Having tried to get any news from US terrestrial TV and radio during the 2004 election, only to be stymied by the endless parade of lifestyle shows advising on Halloween wear for dogs and finding the BBC hour on PBS a godsend, I really don’t know what they’re complaining about.

I see Oxford West and Abingdon Conservatives are picking from a shortlist of four women to fight Evan Harris at the next general election. The comments box at Conservative Home has the usual laments for the men who were obviously shut out of the selection, as it’s clearly inconceiveable that the four best applicants for a seat could all be women. The open primary is this week coming at the Guildhall in Abingdon - I wonder if anyone I know is going? I’m sure Neil will give us the insider goss…

Here is a short paper by Philip Cowley, the revolts man, about party and gender splits in the abortion vote in Parliament a few weeks ago. Surprise surprise, 96% of Labour MPs voting opposed the bill, and 81% of Tories voting supported it. 89% of women MPs voting voted against the bill.

Luke yesterday blogged about a 1980s guide to Trot splinters and factions that he’s recently rediscovered online. Oxford and Hackney Labour comrades may wish to read the section on Red Action…

Finally, the proprieter of this blog is always glad to hear of ructions amongst Lib Dem groups in local government. This quiz to find out what type of Southwark Lib Dem you are made me chuckle.

Proper posting on Cruddas and McDonnell to follow, I promise!

If you’ve been following the saga, this news is particularly welcome. From the Daily Kos:

… there was an even bigger loser last night — the anti-choice extremists who couldn’t even support a radical anti-abortion law in South Dakota. This wasn’t California or Massachusetts or New Jersey or New York or Illinois voting. It was one of the most conservative states in the nation.
Yet the voters in South Dakota, by a double-digit margin 55-45, declared that government should not stick its nose in doctors’ offices.
It cost our side about $2 million to wage the battle, but that may been the best $2 million it has spent since Roe v. Wade was fought. Unlike Roe, this was a decision by the people, in a referendum, and the results were loud and clear. They are unambiguous.
The people of this nation believe in choice. And those who would strip those rights away?
They are out-of-touch extremists.

If you, like me, are crossing your fingers for a Democratic victory tonight, this list of when polls in key states close might be useful (courtesy of the BBC):

0000 GMT: Virginia and Indiana
0030 GMT: Ohio
0100 GMT: Tennessee, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, Florida, Connecticut
0200 GMT: Texas, South Dakota, Rhode Island, New York, Minnesota, Colorado
0300 GMT: Montana
0400 GMT: California

So, as I haven’t got tomorrow off work (an oversight on my part!) I reckon it’ll be the Virginia exit polls before I go to sleep, then up at 5 or 6ish. BBC News 24 doesn’t go live to the US until 3am, but for the first time, I reckon this election will be one where it’s better to be sat in front of a computer than trying to stay up-to-date on telly.

I particularly want to see Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania ground into the dust tonight, even if the Democrat challenger isn’t all we could have hoped for. More detail about my attachment to Pennsylvania here.

Update: News 24 is live already, and by the backdrop, Matt Frei who’s anchoring it is stood on a balcony overlooking Benjamin Franklin Parkway in central Philadelphia - not far from where I was working two years ago, on an unhappy night…

Update 2, 23.55: I’m finding it really odd sat at home watching TV on an election night - it’s been years since I last did this. Okay, so as I’m sat hitting refresh on the variety of US blogs I read, I’m glad that some people can be spared to write blog posts, otherwise it would just be the shouty TV pundits to keep me occupied. What I don’t understand is why there are people commenting on those blog posts whilst polls are still open in the US… don’t they realise that that’s not how you win elections?!

Any party members in Oxfordshire may like to know that this week we have two candidates for leadership positions speaking in our city.

First, on Thursday, leadership candidate John McDonnell MP will be speaking at Oxford Town Hall at 8pm, alongside our own Cllr John Tanner, Brian Hodgeson from the county Labour party, and Carys Afoko from something called Oxford Left Forum (I’ve never heard of them - can anyone illuminate me? They’re unGoogleable.)

Then, on Friday, deputy leadership candidate Jon Cruddas MP and Nick Lowles of Searchlight will lead a discussion on race, class, New Labour and the far right at the Oxford and District LP monthly general meeting, at 7.30pm at the Asian Cultural Centre.

I’ll be at both events, and hope to see some other local party members there too.