Latest news with #Brownite
Daily Record
7 days ago
- Business
- Daily Record
Renfrew's Jamie McGuire becomes first Labour councillor to defect to Reform
Nigel Farage's team confirmed the news in a social media post yesterday afternoon as the party leader joined campaigners in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. Renfrew councillor Jamie McGuire has defected to Reform UK. Nigel Farage's team confirmed the news in a social media post yesterday afternoon as the party leader joined campaigners in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election. The representative for Renfrew North and Braehead is the first Labour councillor to defect to Reform in Scotland. In a statement on social media, Reform UK said: 'We are delighted to welcome former Scottish Labour councillor Jamie McGuire.' McGuire makes the move just one week after Reform UK was accused of 'blatant racism' towards his former party leader Anas Sarwar. The party released an edited video of Sarwar marking the 75th anniversary of Pakistan's independence in which they said he would 'prioritise the Pakistani community on Scotland". That was untrue. McGuire was previously viewed as a rising star in the Labour party and worked in the constituency office of Paisley MP Alison Taylor. The 25-year-old was formerly the chair of the Glasgow University Labour Club – and even arranged for a visit from left-wing hero Jeremy Corbyn in 2021. McGuire said in 2021: 'I've been asked a lot recently if I'm a Corbynite or Starmerite, a Blairite or Brownite. My answer is none of the above. I'm a Labourite who will campaign for every Labour leader because I know the difference Labour can make in power locally and nationally.' McGuire is the third Renfrewshire councillor to defect to Reform. Alec Leishman and John Gray crossed the aisle from the Conservatives, stating Reform was the only party that could bring about real change. Leishman, who represents Erskine and Inchinnan, defected in February this year, with Gray, who also represents Renfrew North and Braehead, following suit in March. Both have since refused to stand down and spark a by-election.
New Statesman
12-05-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Yvette Cooper's quiet victory on immigration
Photo by. A week ago, Westminster was emerging dazed from Reform's triumph in the local elections. A week later, Labour has announced a panoply of measures designed to reduce immigration including a ban on new care worker visas and an increase in the normal automatic settlement period from five years to 10 years. Keir Starmer may have used the weekend to confirm that Labour now regards Reform as its main opponent but for liberal critics here is proof that he is chasing Nigel Farage's tail. Yet it was in a speech to the CBI in November 2022 – long before Farage's return to the political frontline – that Starmer told businesses that 'our common goal must be to help the British economy off its immigration dependency' by 'investing more in training workers who are already here'. The Prime Minister's approach to immigration has certainly evolved – in the 2020 Labour leadership contest he vowed to 'defend free movement as we leave the EU' – but lower numbers have been central to his message for years. Yvette Cooper, however, can claim a far longer pedigree. As allies point out, Cooper has been championing controlled migration for more than a decade (or as one puts it, 'before Reform was even a twinkle in Nigel Farage's eye'). Back in March 2013, as shadow home secretary under Ed Miliband, Cooper used a speech to IPPR to denounce the 'free-market liberal approach' which promoted 'wide open borders' for the purpose of 'flexible, cheap labour' (she also called for stronger English language requirements). Yesterday, now ensconced in the Home Office, she vowed to end the Tories' 'free-market experiment'. Despite holding one of the great offices of state, Cooper is often overlooked in analyses of Labour. She is not a member of the party's ascendent Blairite wing – Pat McFadden, Wes Streeting, Peter Kyle, Liz Kendall – nor of its more sceptical soft left (Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Lisa Nandy). As an original Brownite, she is one of the last representatives of a mostly forgotten political tribe (the same is true of her Yorkshire ally Defence Secretary John Healey). Having stood for the Labour leadership a decade ago, she has no interest in offering herself as a putative successor to Starmer. But on immigration, one of this government's defining political and policy issues, Cooper's approach has prevailed. The old assumption that economic growth depends on permanently high immigration – often revered by the Treasury – has been discarded ('we had record high net migration and an absolutely flatlining economy,' remarks one Home Office source of the Conservatives' legacy). In this cause, No 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and director of strategy Paul Ovenden are regarded as key allies (it was Ovenden who wrote Starmer's memorable attack last November on the Tories' 'one-nation experiment in open borders'). Like Cooper, McSweeney has long believed that border control is not an optional extra for a social-democratic party but fundamental to it. Expect much commentary today to the effect that this is an 'un-Labour' approach, proof that the party has betrayed its core values. Yet throughout Labour's history, liberalism has been the exception rather than the rule. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe With remarkable symmetry, 10 months after entering office, Harold Wilson's government published an immigration white paper in 1965 reducing 'vouchers' (or visas) for Commonwealth citizens from 20,800 a year to 8,500 and restricting them to skilled workers. 'Without integration, limitation is inexcusable; without limitation, integration is impossible,' declared then-backbencher Roy Hattersley as he endorsed this approach. Cooper would argue no differently today. 'Does Yvette want tea or coffee? She hasn't made her mind up yet,' runs an old Westminster joke told by her detractors. But on immigration, Cooper made her mind up long ago. And her approach has become the government's. This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here [See also: The dangerous relationship] Related
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Labour minister Bridget Phillipson tipped for demotion in likely Cabinet reshuffle next month after school reforms that 'blindsided' Number 10
Bridget Phillipson could be demoted and Lisa Nandy sacked in a Cabinet reshuffle tipped for next month, Labour insiders have said. After allegedly 'blindsiding' No 10 with her controversial school reforms, the Education Secretary is widely expected to be moved. Labour insiders told the Mail that Ms Phillipson is being considered for demotion after a 'lacklustre' start. The 41-year-old was a high-profile figure during Labour's election campaign and was tipped by some as a potential future leader. But she has been accused of 'blindsiding' No 10 with a reforms package that undermined the academy system, which was introduced by New Labour and accelerated under the Conservatives and is popular with parents. There is also irritation that, despite adopting much of the agenda of the teaching unions, she has failed to head off the threat of fresh strikes in the classroom this autumn. Under one option being considered, she would replace Lisa Nandy at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, who is said to be a 'certainty' for the sack. Technology secretary Peter Kyle, a Blairite who is a close ally of Sir Keir Starmer, is being lined up as a potential successor at the Department for Education, having been shadow schools minister in opposition. Technology secretary Peter Kyle, a Blairite who is a close ally of Sir Keir Starmer, is being lined up as a potential successor at the Department for Education Others tipped for the sack include Commons leader Lucy Powell, who triggered a backlash last week after describing the grooming-gangs scandal as a 'dog whistle' issue. But Labour sources say Ed Miliband, a Brownite, is safe despite pressure to remove the Net Zero zealot, who is blamed by some for aiding the rise of Reform. Last night a government figure denied reports that Ms Phillipson could be moved as 'total b*******' but No 10 declined to be drawn on speculation.
The Guardian
27-01-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
The term 'Blairite' is meaningless. So why do people continue to use it?
Late last year, before Nigel Farage fell out of Elon Musk's favour, the technology writer William Cullerne Bown asked a question that has since been rendered at least temporarily irrelevant: if it's a problem for Musk to give Farage $100m, why is it fine for Larry Ellison to give Tony Blair $100m? Tech titan Ellison is reportedly donating huge sums to the Tony Blair Institute. Before we even get to that question – and it's a good one – there's just a tiny adjustment we need to make on political vocabulary. We've been saying 'Blairite' ever since there were two tribes, the other being 'Brownite' (as in Gordon Brown). It may not have entered the dictionary until 2000, but insiders have been using Blairite for about 30 years. By 2010, Blairite meant 'part of Blair's inner circle back in the day, a disciple of his brand of political realism; the kind of person who would never have a beard, who got invited to Rupert Murdoch's summer parties, and didn't talk to Labour members except to tell them to take their medicine'. Blairite meant David Miliband, a fact that was so incontrovertible to the British public that David Miliband spent the whole of 2010 denying he was a Blairite. But that's not what Tony Blair was like in 1994 at all. At the start, he was Mr Anything's Possible; sure, he already spoke warmly of the private sector, but it was only later that that became a defining theme. This was a guy who took on the massed forces of business to bring in the National Minimum Wage, which was decried at the time as the end of British prosperity, later to become the most popular move that first government ever made. It was genuinely amusing to hear Jeremy Corbyn written off as a dangerous radical pinko in 2017, with a manifesto whose promises were in some cases identical to Tony Blair's 1997 pledge card (reduce primary school classes to under 30) and in others (free tertiary education) no more or less than an OG Blairite would have considered their right. Blair by 2005, post-Iraq, was a curious proposition, politically: more aligned with the US than with Europe; more presidential than prime ministerial in the loyalties he demanded from his cabinet; a man satisfied that his economic experiment had paid off. It was a little senseless, from the time Blair left office in 2007, to call anyone a Blairite: he was working for JP Morgan Chase and Zurich Financial Services, and buying multimillion-pound houses. Whatever his politics were, he didn't seem to be looking for any disciples. Yet on and on we quested, and for years; who was the true Blairite in 2015? Was it Liz Kendall, fighting on an 'only I understand how badly we've been defeated' ticket? Was it Yvette Cooper, once a 'Blair babe' (different times, folks), who might still smell a bit Blair-y? The label had become an Arthurian sword; it was sitting right there for whoever could get it out of the rock. Nobody ever could. None of that is as ridiculous as calling someone a Blairite now – which people persist in doing, whether that's Wes Streeting (because he's brought arch-Blairite Alan Milburn in to help with NHS reforms) or Keir Starmer's team (closely advised by Peter Mandelson, who must be a Blairite, surely?). Except that nothing in any of them resembles early Blair, and now Blair himself has done the full rightward shift. Stung, one imagines, by criticism he thinks unfair, he has started doling out advice that could have come straight from Alf Garnett: maybe mentally ill people should just pull themselves together; maybe the best way to counter populists is to get tougher on immigration; maybe Labour's challenge is to avoid 'any vulnerability on wokeism'. Which would all be laughable, if it weren't so incredibly well-funded, and so instead follows a familiar pattern: any conversation about politics that doesn't include a plan to tax billionaires is probably a conversation a billionaire is paying someone to start. So maybe 'Blairism' should now mean that. I don't even care what we decide it means! So long as we're all using it to mean the same thing. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
