Marvin for Mayor??

LABOUR have picked Marvin Rees to be the party's candidate in the race to become Bristol's first elected mayor, (see story here). Almost no indication, again, of any vision or policy positions however. Marvin Rees suffers from the disadvantages of: representing a party that has already referred to using the Mayor as a political weapon; having no national standing; and not much of a profile in Bristol.

He does have the advantage of not being Peter Hammond, Helen Holland, Dan Norris or Kelvin Blake! Bristol Labour members thought so much of their current leader, former leader, a former MP and former councillor that they – rightly in my view - rejected them. I've seen Marvin Rees is a few debates and he comes across quite personably, but has no gravitas and has so far expressed little or nothing on what he’d actually do.

Pure party politics

"...make a successful Labour mayor a weapon in the party's battle to win back lost seats at the next general election..." (see report, Labour's contenders slug it out to be mayoral candidate)

It makes my heart sink to read this as one of the themes agreed on by Labour's mayoral candidates. The idea of the Mayor as an electoral weapon is repugnant. The focus should be on solving Bristol's problems and creating opportunities for Bristol, not maximising party advantage. Party advantage as a spin off of genuine success yes, but as something to be stated and sought from the beginning no.

Effective Labour Shadow Cabinet?

I think its becoming pretty clear that Ed Miliband and his shadow cabinet are not performing well and not making an impact as an effective opposition (click image to enlarge). Why for instance did they not strongly make the point that the recent much bigger than expected economic growth figures are a result of Labour's policies and action whilst Alistair Darling was Chancellor? I'm not an economist but I know a bit about politics, decision making and complex systems, which includes economies. Its crystal clear that this coalition government cant possibly be responsible for the last set of growth figures because they've simply not been in power anything like long enough to have any effect.

There is a time lag between government economic policy/action and effects appearing so we'll only begin to see the impacts of the coalition government on growth as more months and years go by. We are however seeing the effects of the previous Labour government now. Labour's weak shadow treasury team failed to strongly point this out, made only lame comments and tended to talk down the economy. Ed Miliband and the shadow cabinet failed to go with what is both the truth and the best political strategy/tactic and take the credit for the growth figures - so maybe former Labour cabinet member Jack Straw was right when he said that a third of the new shadow cabinet is incapable - maybe its more than a third!