Cruddas the Brave(Compass Conf)

[articul8]

Remember, Cruddas worked for Blair in Number 10 - as his union liaison guy. Cruddas has often spoken very warmly of early Blair but felt he lost direction/momentum in terms of keeping that big tent 97 constituency together. He's the point at which Blairist right and soft left become indistinguishable - hence support David Miliband, being mates with Purnell, etc

 

[sihhi]

Remember, Cruddas worked for Blair in Number 10 - as his union liaison guy. Cruddas has often spoken very warmly of early Blair but felt he lost direction/momentum in terms of keeping that big tent 97 constituency together. He's the point at which Blairist right and soft left become indistinguishable - hence support David Miliband, being mates with Purnell, etc

You can't just redefine what to make Cruddas not on the Labour Left, because you don't like him.

Compass says 'Members of Compass overwhelmingly vote to support Jon Cruddas for Labour Deputy Leader... Cruddas polled 53% of first preference votes compared to runner up Hillary Benn on 19%'

At the most recent Compass Conference Cruddas was there alongside ... Caroline Lucas MP; Chuka Umunna MP; Prof Richard Sennett; Ruth Lister CBE; Prof Francesca Klug OBE; Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman; John Harris, The Guardian; John Kampfner, ex-New Statesman; Jonathan Rutherford, Soundings; Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper; Frances O'Grady, TUC; Paul Mason, BBC; Gavin Hayes, Compass; David Babbs, 38 Degrees; Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy; Andrew Simms, nef; Prof Ken Spours; Heather Wakefield, UNISON; Pat Kane; Deborah Grayson, Climate Rush; Damon Gibbons, Centre for Responsible Credit; Kat Banyard, UK Feminista; Stella Creasy MP; Nick Couldry, Centre for the Study of Global Media; Dan Hind, author; Michael Calderbank, ERS; Thorben Albrecht, SPD; Henning Meyer, Social Europe; Karl-Heinz Spiegel, FES; Mark Ferguson, LabourList; Neil Coyle, Disability Alliance; Sue Marsh, Diary of a Benefit Scrounger; Kaliya Franklin, Broken of Britain; Richard Excell, TUC; Carol Roper TUC; Paul Maloney, Unions 21; Kevin Curran, Unite; Tom Powdrill, PIRC; Duncan Exley, One Society; Martin Kirk, Oxfam; ...

This thread is about his appearance in 2009 when he got a standing ovation

I include Compass on the left.

 

[articul8]

I'm on that fucking list doesn't mean that I am or was uncritical of Compass or am aligned with Cruddas. I'm not denying that he's seen as on the left now - but his allegiances aren't as clear cut as all that.

 

[butchersapron]

Demonstrates your bubble though.

 

[ayatollah]

Cruddas (and his opportunist ilk) are "on the Left" in the same way Mussolini was "on the Left" whilst it suited him personally to be so as editor of Avanti. For heavens sake .. how many unprincipled opportunists throughout Labour Movement history does it take before people , particularly in the Labour Party, recognise snakes like Cruddas for what he is ? He'll say anything from moment to moment to manoeuver his personal career forward, with no underlying personal principles whatsoever. A bit of racism here, a bit of Leftie verbiage there ... Absolute vermin.

 

[articul8]

that's why I said his "left" is indistinguishable from the Blairite right

 

[butchersapron]

that's why I said his "left" is indistinguishable from the Blairite right

And your right, is it distinguishable from his left?

 

[sihhi]

that's why I said his "left" is indistinguishable from the Blairite right

Tony Benn was an important member of the most right-wing Labour government ever seen up to then in the form of Wilson II 1966-1970, he personally concluded a weapons money-for-uranium deal with South Africa. Yet by the 1980s he was undisputed champion of the Labour Left, Tribune and Campaign Group.

Why does Cruddas being a party staffer in Blair I 97-2001 stop him, after his shift to the left in 2003-04, from being left. Cruddas didn't do anything controversial back then. He just had contacts in what was then the T&G. It was Blair making the decisions, deciding the policy over stuff like bringing in a minimum wage, but at a low level.

Both Ken Livingstone and Tribune supported him as an anti-Blairist left candidate in the 2006 deputy leadership election. Surely you should be a bit less insular, mate, recognise that we need a broad coalition of leftism, including Cruddas, if we are to dislodge the rampant Toryism?
Compass, offering "Direction for the Democratic Left within Labour", who believe in a nationalised economy for the major sectors, still regard Jon Cruddas as a leftist. So much so that he is again keynote speaker at one of their conferences.

Compass Education Conference - December 8th 2012
Thursday, October 04 2012
Compass Education Conference
When: Saturday 8 December 2012
Where: Congress House, London
Key note speaker: Jon Cruddas MP

He is a popular guy, is well received, he certainly can be reclaimed for the left, provided there is enough pressure within the Labour party grassroots demanding. Instead sneerers like you just dismiss everything about him. Do you want the left to win or not?

 

[articul8]

I'm not sure Compass is a very appropriate name to be honest. I don't think Cruddas can be "claimed" for the left (Compass daren't criticise him when he backed David for the leadership - they need him more than he needs them) - but I don't dismiss him out of hand. He's core to the leadership's strategising.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm not sure Compass is a very appropriate name to be honest. I don't think Cruddas can be "claimed" for the left (Compass daren't criticise him when he backed David for the leadership - they need him more than he needs them) - but I don't dismiss him out of hand. He's core to the leadership's strategising.

would this be the same cruddas who has a large house in notting hill?

 

[articul8]

the very same

 

[Pickman's model]

very left

 

[butchersapron]

Meacher is even lefter - he has 7 homes.

 

[articul8]

not my left - I can barely afford to rent a 1 bed flat

 

[butchersapron]

Yet you join forces with BTL scum. For us.

 

[articul8]

BTL?

 

[butchersapron]

BTL?

Buy to let.

 

[articul8]

how am I joining forces with them? I want rent controls, and proper investment in council housing

 

[butchersapron]

how am I joining forces with them? I want rent controls, and proper investment in council housing

Have you joined forces with the the labour left as represented by people like left futures to try and shift the labour party in a leftward direction?

 

[sihhi]

I'm not sure Compass is a very appropriate name to be honest. I don't think Cruddas can be "claimed" for the left (Compass daren't criticise him when he backed David for the leadership - they need him more than he needs them) - but I don't dismiss him out of hand. He's core to the leadership's strategising.

This tells us nothing. If Compass need Cruddas more than the other way round, it proves that Cruddas is where it's at, he speaks the language of the people, so he has a house in Notting Hill, what's wrong with that? He still attends his surgeries, he's born and bred Dagenham. Most people agree he's a better constituency MP than John McDonnell.

Jon's next advice surgeries
Rainham
26/10/2012 - 16:30 - 18:30
Dagenham
09/11/2012 - 16:00 - 18:00
Dagenham
23/11/2012 - 16:00 - 18:00
Elm Park
30/11/2012 - 16:30 - 18:30
Dagenham
07/12/2012 - 16:00 - 18:00

Here he is uniting the Africans and British in Rainham, defusing community tensions, opening their food bank.

You're like a silly V.S.C. extremist in the 1960s who thought Tony Benn couldn't be claimed for the left. How will the left ever grow, if it doesn't organise within the Labour Party and lets anyone tainted by any association with government be marked as beyond the pale.

 

[articul8]

Are you being sarcastic here?

 

[butchersapron]

Are you being sarcastic here?

 

[kenny g]

Got a lot of time for Cruddas - he has a lot of respect in his constituency and does seem to genuinely care. Might all be a show but i doubt it.

 

[treelover]

Cruddas has just been on Newsnight, very worrying indeed, he has hired the IPPR(largely responsible for the ESA, end of IB) to audit L/P policies, he see welfare being provided by voluntary organisations such as boxing clubs!, the DWP will be massively reduced and that food banks are here to stay and are a positive thing, benefit will be based on contributions so those who have paid more in will get more...

a dangerous man?

 

[butchersapron]

Dangerous in that he's the front man for a privatised social-neo-liberalism, he's the one whose got to go out there and sell it to others and he's been picked to do it because he has a w/c accent. He doesn't come up with it himself. He appears to have no other skills, the post report interview was terrible, attempting to sell himself as the wo/man on the street by repeatedly saying that he's not part of the commentariat, that this is not some inside beltway deal (the beltway is a road that goes around washington) and other media-invented and politician used term despite him being picked by the next Prime Minister to do this job, he couldn't be more insider. Pathetic performance.

 

[treelover]

Imo he sounded like a fake....

 

[sihhi]

Dangerous in that he's the front man for a privatised social-neo-liberalism, he's the one whose got to go out there and sell it to others and he's been picked to do it because he has a w/c accent. He doesn't come up with it himself. He appears to have no other skills, the post report interview was terrible, attempting to sell himself as the wo/man on the street

Massive supporter of Labour cuts in local government too

"The Labour Party did not come into the world as an economistic left party preoccupied with state remedies; nor with a remote cosmopolitan bent that surrendered talk of place, home and nation. That all came later. Historically, the dispossessed peasantry built land banks to house each other, food banks to feed each other and burial societies so that their humanity was not lost in the humiliation of a pauper’s grave. We created real banks too. The big story of the last thirty years is that there has been a centralisation of both market and state power. The intermediate institutions and associations through which people could own and belong withered. Historically, Labour demanded a partnership with the state not its own subordination to it. Municipal socialism gave new life and power to the regions of Britain and brought to prominence the fundamental role of cities. The institutions of the Labour Movement- burial societies, unions, retail food and building societies and socialised house building- asserted that habitation was as important a consideration as improvement.
For Labour the paradox is that our tradition is our future. Today the renewal of political and civic institutions is an essential part of restoring our global economic competitiveness. This is being acknowledged in Labour led Town Halls right across the country. Not simply preoccupied with fighting or managing the cuts but focused on building partnerships for local and regional economic growth. In short, seeking to build more resilient communities."

If you change Labour to Conservative (or Liberal) all that guff still makes sense:

"The Conservative Party did not come into the world as an economistic left party preoccupied with state remedies; nor with a remote cosmopolitan bent that surrendered talk of place, home and nation. That all came later. Historically, the people of these isles built land banks to house each other, food banks to feed each other and burial societies so that their humanity was not lost in the humiliation of a pauper’s grave. We created real banks too. The big story of the last thirty years is that there has been a centralisation of both market and state power. The intermediate institutions and associations through which people could own and belong withered. Historically, Conservatives have demanded a partnership with the state not its own subordination to it. Conservative local government gave new life and power to the regions of Britain and brought to prominence the fundamental role of cities. The institutions of the Conservative Party - burial societies, staff associations, department stores, Church building societies and trust house building - asserted that habitation was as important a consideration as improvement.
For Conservatives the paradox is that our tradition is our future. Today the renewal of political and civic institutions is an essential part of restoring our global economic competitiveness. This is being acknowledged in Conservative-led Town Halls right across the country. Not simply preoccupied with fighting or managing the cuts but focused on building partnerships for local and regional economic growth. In short, seeking to build more resilient communities."

 

[treelover]

imo, Cruddas is very hard to pin down, but there is something of the 30'S about him, the new political ideas that were fermenting, such as distributionism, the commonwealth partý, etc...certainly the real 'third way'

something fishy anyway...

 

[sihhi]

imo, Cruddas is very hard to pin down, but there is something of the 30'S about him, the new political ideas that were fermenting, such as distributionism, the commonwealth partý, etc...certainly the real 'third way'

something fishy anyway...

He is a John Smith style figure, he went with Blair for a bit but was on the more traditional left of his policy advisers. He never liked the name New Labour - too alienating of the old and middle-aged, but supported most of the content.
All the stuff about the Labour co-operative tradition and what sounds to you as 1930s (I don't see that decade myself) is just fluff.

 

[Delroy Booth]

As a quick note, this fetish for the olde world civic institutions that underpin Labour's traditions "The institutions of the Labour Movement- burial societies, unions, retail food and building societies and socialised house building- asserted that habitation was as important a consideration as improvement. etc etc" neglects one thing - that these things whilst they might've be useful as a short-term remedy to mitigate the very worst effects of capitalism when they were created, but when it came to making an actual functioning safety net they were totally inadaquet. The post 1945 welfare state, the policy commitment to nationalisation, the "preoccupation with state remedies" and so on were themselves a product of recognising that workers meagre attempts at creating their own welfare within civic society were woefully inadaquet when it came down to it. You couldn't, and still can't, run incredibly complex services like the NHS or the education system in the same way families used to form funeral societies, not only does it require professional (and costly) expertise but it needs steady supply of funding that realistically only the state can manage, or at least until full anarchist communism is achieved and some other non-state means of doing it can be worked out.What Cruddas (and glasman too he's well into this) want is a welfare state not part of the social contract of the country, but one created out of the desperate necessity that working people faced in the 19th century when dealing with a government that didn't recognise any obligations towards the welfare of working class people, and for this ad hoc self-reliant pseudo welfare to be reliant on the charity of those who themselves need the help most. They want there to be a safety net, but one that's patently inadaquet, because that appeals to his personal tastes more. Food banks being a case in point - we should be looking to create a society where the idea that we need food banks, in 2013 in Britain ffs, would be considered absurd, and not elevated and romanticised to the point where they're seen as a good thing in and of themselves.

It's Cameron's "Big Society" schtick wrapped up in an Old Labour nostalgic package All it will means is that in future services privatised under Labour will have to market themselves accordingly. It's really dangerous stuff, and when it gets exposed as being the exact same bullshit Cameron tried to get away with then there'll be huge resentment towards the Labour party, and for Cruddas, as a result.