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TMP regular, Tim Caswell, contemplates Gordon Brown’s overtures to the Lib Dems and the end of the road for the Labour deputy leadership contest.

For the second time in a generation, Labour party members and supporters woke up this week to the news that a new Labour Leader had been planning to offer Cabinet posts to the Liberal Democrats.

Tony Blair’s predictable attempt to realign the left with Paddy Ashdown fell foul of a large landslide and even larger temper belonging to his Deputy, John Prescott, in 1997.

This week’s invitation to Paddy Ashdown to become Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was vetoed by Sir Menzies Campbell, the man Ashdown quaintly calls his “Commanding Officer”. It will also have come as a complete shock to the vast majority of Labour members, whose support has made Brown’s coronation on Sunday possible.

To both the minority - who welcome this as proof positive that Brown is both his own man and more pluralistic than anyone imagined - and the implacable majority, this will induce feelings that a proper leadership contest would have shed more light on the man who has brooded so long in the shadows and on the direction in which he intends to lead Labour, the Government and the nation.

Has the deputy leadership contest offered any substitute for this process? No, not fully, because all of the candidates are themselves restricted by the parameters of their perception of the Brown project and the need to be loyal to the leader-elect. I wonder if any of the candidates knew that overtures were to be made to Campbell and friends and, if they didn’t, who in the Labour Party did? More importantly, who will be the victor, and will they ever have the same influence over Brown that Prescott apparently wielded over Blair the last time Paddy nearly got his hands on a ministerial red box?

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Afsana Shukur has emerged to take pole position in the Labour parliamentary selection in Croydon Central. The Tower Hamlets activist, and former head of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Ethnic Minority Employment Division, has come out of nowhere to become a leading contender in the race, despite not being a local candidate.

Shukur, the only Black and minority ethnic (BME) candidate left in the race was automatically shortlisted on 20 June, having secured 91% of votes cast at the nomination stage. The others on the shortlist of five are: Jane Avis (11%), a Croydon Councillor; Joint Deputy Leaders of Croydon Labour Group, Cllrs Gerry Ryan (58%) and Stuart Collins (37%); and Andrew Bradstock (6%), Director of the Christian Socialist Movement.

23% of the population is BME in Croydon Central and Labour must overturn a Conservative majority of 75 to win back the seat from Andrew Pelling.

Labour sources say local members have been impressed by Shukur’s straight talking style and breadth of knowledge on local as well as national issues. The hustings takes place on 8 July.

Meanwhile, Hornsey and Wood Green Labour Party have picked UNISON’s Karen Jennings over BME candidates, Jan Etienne, Claudia Webb and others to be their parliamentary candidate.

The Chair of Parliament’s cross party Pakistan Group, Tory MP Stewart Jackson, has accused the government of “gratuitously offending” Muslim countries by awarding a knighthood to the controversial author, Salman Rushdie. 

Commenting on the move, Jackson, who also leads the Friends of Islam group, said:
“It is for her Majesty and the government to decide who they give honors to and not open to the veto of a foreign power, but it does convey an important message and the timing was very insensitive, particularly with ongoing problems with Iran and the instability in Pakistan.”

To read more, log on to - epolitix.com.

Piara Khabra died today.  He was the Labour MP for Ealing Southall and, at 82, was the oldest Member of Parliament. Born in India, he arrived in the UK in 1959 having served in the Indian Army during the Second World War. He was a teacher and social worker before he entered parliament in 1992 and built up a reputation as an assiduous constituency MP. He will be sorely missed and all of us at TMP send our best wishes and condolences to his family at this sad time.

Chuka Umunna
Editor, TMP

The Government must “review, revise, redouble” its efforts to reduce the overrepresentation of young black people at all stages of the criminal justice system (CJS), says the report of the first sustained inquiry into the issue in more than a quarter of a century by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

The Committee concludes that the number of young black people in the criminal justice system overall, represents a “serious crisis” for sections of black communities.

It says “Government action to date has made little impact” and calls for a new, national level, coherent strategy setting out the responsibility and contribution of each Department and agency to reduce overrepresentation. Evidence to the Committee painted a picture of patchy and diffuse initiatives that are often insufficiently focussed and resourced. The Committee expresses concern that, five years on from the setting up of the Criminal Justice System Race Unit to understand the extent and origins of discrimination, the Home Office is still “unable to say…with confidence why disproportionality occurs.”

The Committee found that we can be more certain that patterns of offending vary between different ethnic groups than that the level of offending varies significantly. There was evidence that young black people were particularly overrepresented in arrests or convictions for certain types of crime, notably robbery and drugs offences (despite young black people having lower drug use levels).

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Barack Obama marked Father’s Day yesterday by releasing his first campaign podcast.  In it, he talks about what being a man and a father means to him.  Notably, Obama and his Senate colleague, Sen. Evan Bayh, have introduced legislation designed to help more men take responsibility for their children.  The measures they have proposed would provide job training, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and increase child support enforcement.  Use the controls below to watch the podcast.

TMP spent a day with Labour deputy leadership hopeful and TMP contributor, Jon Cruddas MP.  Below is our account of one busy day on the campaign trail with him (pictured left with C4’s June Sarpong) last weekend.

0800: The day begins early, to ensure we arrive in Oxford in good time for Cruddas’ appearance on Sky News which is scheduled for around 11am. The sun is shining and the only backbencher in the deputy leadership race is in remarkably good form, given he went to Cardiff and back the day before, for another of the deputy leadership hustings. The contenders are eight hustings down; there are just two to go.

As we head down the motorway, Cruddas pours over all of the morning’s newspapers and is briefed by the campaign press officer on the latest stories and items which may pop up in the day’s media interviews. Asked to describe which BBC Radio station he personified at an earlier hustings, Cruddas picked Radio 5 Live, so it is rather fitting that it is on in the background as we make our progress (he is also a self confessed “rare groove” and “funk” fan, so perhaps the soundtrack on our return will be a little different!).

0930: We reach Oxford but are unsure of exactly where we are going - we are a car load of Red Brick university alumni, so the spires of Oxford are rather alien to us. Luckily we stumble upon our destination, which happens to be bang in the middle of the City centre.

People are ambling about enjoying the sun; it all seems a million miles away from the raw grit of London. Only the police, special branch officers, helicopter overhead and outside broadcast units give the clue that the Labour leadership and deputy leadership juggernaut is in town.

1000: We check out the venue, which is a rather trendy modern art gallery. Cruddas briefly stops to admire a very large ball of chocolate situated in one of the gallery rooms, before heading to the hustings room. As he smells the chocolate he tells TMP that he has not swum his customary mile a day, which usually helps him fight off “the bulge”. Today he is sharply dressed in a grey suit – a million miles away from the crumpled suit caricature which has been painted of him.

The hustings room is still being put together when we scope it out and Labour Party press officers rush about ensuring the media have clear shots of the stage. Having checked the battle ground, Team Cruddas retire and go in search of a decent fry up!

1100: Back to a street near the hustings venue to prepare for the Sky News interview. Cruddas pauses on the way to chat to some young anti-Trident protesters outside. Peter Tatchell, fresh from his battles with the Russian police, is also there. Cruddas, of course, is the only one of the candidates who has stridently opposed Trident renewal.

The Sky News team set up for the interview, attach a mic to Cruddas and give him the customary earpiece, so he can hear Sky’s political editor, Adam Bolton, who is to interview him live down the line from London.

Just as the interview is about to start, a police helicopter decides to hover directly above us and bunch of children also decide to come out to play in the garden opposite – no matter, the Dagenham MP is unfazed and gets into his stride on school testing, immigration and the rest.

1130: We enter the venue and Cruddas is introduced by one of his supporters, London Young Labour Rep Alon Orbach, to the Chair of Labour Students, Ciarán Ward. Shortly after we arrive, people start clapping – “Big Gordie”, the Prime Minister-to-be, has just entered the building with his entourage and works his way through the throng - he goes on before the deputy leadership candidates.

1200: While Gordon Brown is taken through his paces by the “yoof”, Team Cruddas chills in the café in the basement and mulls over what questions might come up in the deputy leadership hustings. Peter Hain says a brief hello. Harriet Harman comes over for a longer chat with Cruddas and his team.

Cruddas says he did not know Harman that well before the race but has come to know her reasonably well in the process and likes what he has seen. It was Harman that Cruddas said he would vote for if he was not standing himself on Newsnight recently, so have the two done a deal? The answer is firm “no” – Cruddas says he simply gave an instant, honest answer to a straight question, something which has become his hallmark.

1245: Cruddas heads to the “Green Room” where all the other candidates are milling about with their respective teams of aides, advisors and groupies (Cruddas has an entourage of two). Whilst waiting, Cruddas meets Channel 4’s June Sarpong, who will be chairing the hustings.

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The final report from the Commission on Integration and Cohesion setting out the steps that need to be taken to build strong, cohesive and integrated communities was published today.

The independent Commission chaired by Darra Singh (pictured) was established by Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly and tasked with considering what local and practical action is needed to overcome the barriers to integration and cohesion. Over the past year they have visited towns and cities across the country gathering evidence on how communities themselves are taking action in response to their own circumstances and particular cohesion challenges.

The Commission’s report, “Our Shared Future”, puts forward a wide-ranging set of recommendations for practical action to address cohesion and integration issues at a local level, along with suggestions for a national framework to support these.

Some of the key areas covered by the report include how we promote and support English language speaking, developing a new role for local authorities with strengthened support from national government and how we put a renewed focus on citizenship.

The report contains detailed research into how cohesion issues are affecting areas in different ways and how the nature of the cohesion challenge has changed.

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The new Ministry of Justice publishes an interesting report today into ethnicity and jurors.

The report found that Black and minority ethnic jurors were less likely to convict BME defendants than their white counterparts. Conversely, they were more likely to convict white defendants than their white counterparts. However, where a crime was racially aggravated, white jurors were nearly as likely to convict as BME jurors.

It has been suggested that this stems from “same race leniency” on the part of BME jurors, who perceive the criminal justice system to be biased against BME peoples.

Speaking at the launch of the report yesterday, the Chair of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights, Trevor Phillips said,
“The system can have biases even though it’s populated by people of great goodwill. In this case one of the biases clearly emerges because most jurors think the system is geared against black defendants. This is a bias we want to avoid as much as we want to avoid a bias in favour of white defendants.”

A copy of the report can be found on the Ministry of Justice’s website, here.

The acclaimed Nigerian writer, Chiuna Achebe, has been named winner of the second Man Booker International Prize.

A diplomat in the ill-fated Biafran government of 1967-1970, Achebe’s work is primarily centred on African politics, the depiction of Africa and Africans in the West, and the intricacies of pre-colonial African culture and civilization, as well as the effects of colonialisation on African societies.

The Man Booker International Prize is worth £60,000 to the winner and is awarded once every two years to a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage. It was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005.

Achebe is probably best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart, written in 1958 and Anthills of the Savannah, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1987. Things Fall Apart is considered among the finest novels ever written. Having sold over 10 million copies around the world, it has been translated into 50 languages, making Achebe the most translated African writer of all time.

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