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Two St Pancras party delegates steer Labour ship
IN some ways it’s a bit stranger than fiction. But, hard though it may be to believe, one of the key policy elements of future government legislation turned on Tuesday at the Labour Party Conference on the motion of a delegation of two members of the St Pancras and Holborn party branch.
Although on Britain’s political map the branch is of little significance, many cabinet members of Gordon Brown’s government were anxious that its delegates did not rock the boat.
Basically, the cabinet – still Blairite in political direction – wanted a particular motion deferred from last year’s Labour conference, reshaped in the intervening months by a Labour sub-group, to be passed on Tuesday.
The original motion? To give sufficient extra funds to local authorities to improve council estates as well as promote more housing association developments.
But arguments that the government should embark on a large programme of council housing – imitative of the 1950s and 1960s – was soundly rejected by the sub-group, chaired by Blairite MP Michael Cashman.
While the unions – a growing influence in today’s Labour party – were broadly supportive of the government’s amorphous housing policy, the view of the St Pancras delegation remained influential. Which way would St Pancras go? To a new future of new council housing? Or a mish-mash of compromises that, fundamentally, would not alter the housing scene?
A great deal was at stake for the delegation. Disapproval by the high-ups in the Labour machine is not to be sniffed at. Politically, heads could roll. Ambitions may be frustrated.
In the end, the good old tradition of British compromise prevailed, and the government’s desired ends were met with a nod of approval from St Pancras.
Will any of this matter? Between today and the next general election, a matter of two years at the most, is it likely the government will embark on any sweeping reform of the economy? Hardly.
Judging from Gordon Brown’s speech on Tuesday, apart from cosmetic reforms, the New Labour ship will sail on.
It’s one thing to nationalise a broken backed bank like Northern Rock but quite another to reverse positions, build council housing, windfall tax energy companies, raise tax bands on the very wealthy and renationalise the railways, for instance.
These are reforms too far for Gordon Brown however popular they may be for much of Labour’s heartlands as well as parts of Middle England.
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