Ed Miliband’s spin doctor soon to be working for City of London

Bob Roberts on Daily Politics, May 2015

One of the spin doctors employed by Ed Miliband, who spectacularly lost the general election in May, is to head up comms for the borough in both a commercial and political capacity.

Bob Roberts, formerly of Press Association and the Daily Mirror, was part of Labour’s team of three spin doctors who helped craft Miliband’s attacks on “predatory capitalism”, alienating many businesses across Britain.

He is also part of the same group that failed to establish Labour as an economically credible party with the electorate, which political scientists have highlighted as one of the two main factors that contributed to the party’s defeat.

The other reason, Miliband’s poor credibility as leader, was not even accepted by Roberts in the wake of the defeat, with the spin doctor telling the BBC’s Daily Politics that he did not accept voters did not trust the Labour leader:

“In the end, a lot of people thought Ed had a decent campaign. Ed came across as exactly who he was, a decent man for ideas and principle.”

Instead Roberts laid the defeat at the feet of the Scottish National Party, which demolished Labour in Scotland:

“There was a social and political revolution in Scotland which neither Ed Miliband or the Labour Party could do anything about. It swept us away north and affected us south.”

But at a Hansard Society event early in September, John Curtice of Strathclyde University specifically played down the importance of prospective deal between the SNP and Labour in moving votes, despite its centrality to later Tory campaigning.

Roberts said he was “delighted” to take on the role in the City, which will begin on November 2nd.

John Barradell, chief executive and town clerk of the City, said: “My colleagues and I are looking forward to working with Bob, who will bring a wealth of experience to this role.”

At least someone’s making a buck after Labour’s meltdown…

Image Credit – Bob Roberts on Daily Politics, May 2015

Northern Powerhouse will roll out to Sheffield as city grabs transport powers

Sheffield City Hall, October 2012 by Ed Webster

Sheffield is to join Manchester as the second northern English town to grab a host of powers from Whitehall as chancellor George Osborne seeks to devolve significant oversight of transport to the region.

Under the plans the Steel City will vote for an elected mayor in 2017 to preside over a region spanning South Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

However the Sheffield mayor appears to risk being labelled a glorified transport commissioner, much like the current mayor of London, as the highlighted policies from a government press release concern little else:

  • Responsibility over the region’s transport budget, with a multi-year settlement to be agreed at the Spending Review
  • Responsibility for franchised bus services, which will support the Combined Authority’s delivery of smart and integrated ticketing across its councils
  • Responsibility for an identified Key Route Network of local authority roads that will be collaboratively managed and maintained at the city region level by the Combined Authority on behalf of the Mayor
  • Powers over strategic planning

City devolution has been a pet project for Osbo for a number of years, and the “Northern Powerhouse” slogan regularly featured in the Tories’ general election campaign.

Victorian Britain boasted a number of powerful city governments, as evinced by the grand city halls still used by many of the local councils, but by the end of the Second World War much had been centralised in Whitehall.

Whilst Osborne continues to flaunt his devolution credentials he has come under fire for not putting enough public money into regions outside of London, a position justified by Conservative claims that too much public investment discourages the private sector from investing.

Under the new plans for Sheffield the central government will invest £30m a year over the next 30 years, in what the government claims will allow the Steel City to “boost local growth and invest in local manufacturing and innovation” – a policy seemingly inconsistent with the “crowding out” thesis.

For the deal to go ahead all local councils must agree to it, with the regions affected detailed in this map below from the Big Investment Project:

Sheffield City Region Map by Big Investment Project

Image Credit – Sheffield City Hall, October 2012 by Ed Webster

Charlotte Church is right to say climate change could have fuelled the Syria conflict

Drought, April 2009 by Bert Kaufmann

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function create_function() in /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamshield/wp-spamshield.php:2033 Stack trace: #0 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(324): rs_wpss_encode_emails() #1 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(205): WP_Hook->apply_filters() #2 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/post-template.php(256): apply_filters() #3 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-content/themes/graphy/content.php(23): the_content() #4 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(792): require('/home/jimmyni1/...') #5 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/template.php(725): load_template() #6 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/general-template.php(206): locate_template() #7 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-content/themes/graphy/home.php(19): get_template_part() #8 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/jimmyni1/...') #9 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/jimmyni1/...') #10 /home/jimmyni1/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/jimmyni1/...') #11 {main} thrown in /home/jimmyni1/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamshield/wp-spamshield.php on line 2033