Nicola Young 2015 Spring newsletter

I'm back in New Zealand giving my mum a hand with her campaign to win the Wellington mayoral election next year. It's a fascinating change in political culture – I think the country's proportional representation for national parliament has made politics far more charged. Municipal politics is less party political, with the Greens and Labour the only parties to stand candidates in recent elections. Mum is an independent, so doesn't have a party machine behind her.

I much prefer the community focus of electorate voting, but also the way Britain's two dominant parties are coalitions themselves and debate is far more civil. I do realise Corbyn's Labour movement might not feel like that much of a coalition at the moment!

So here's the newsletter we've just sent out to 16,000 households in mum's ward. She's worked bloody hard since she was first elected in 2013, and I think that's reflected in her report to voters. A4 folded to DL, and printed on decent paper!

#ToriesForLiz – a letter to Labour's party members and registered supporters

Life since our epic victory on May 8th has been a bit like recovering from Christmas lunch – having gorged myself on christmas pudding, goose (of course) and canvassing I've been struggling to find the enthusiasm for things like charades, EVEL and reform of the Human Rights Act. But I was jolted out of the obligatory post-election / Queen’s Speech snooze when my local MP Sadiq Khan livened things up by nominating Jeremy Corbyn for your leadership contest.

Not voting 4 @jeremycorbyn - but parts of Labour family share his views. I'm nominating him so we can debate them https://t.co/ERiBNPfZvs

— Sadiq Khan MP (@SadiqKhan) June 14, 2015

Corbyn's opposition to PFI and the Iraq War always struck me as principled and decent, but politically he makes Ed Miliband look like pure box-office. So when the midday deadline for nominations passed tribalism duly kicked in: I downloaded my 'Corbyn for Leader' twibbon (apparently that's how you lefties do things) and began to tweet excitedly about Brother Jeremy. Although being really honest I can't say I had any intention of parting with the £3 needed to become a registered supporter of the Labour Party – #JezWeCan and your open primary didn't seem like my business.

And your leadership options aren't exactly inspiring. Andy Burnham was in charge of the nation's purse strings when the public finances started to run out of control and – uncomfortably for him – he failed to act over the Mid-Staffs abuse scandal when he was Secretary of State for Health. His schtick is scaremongering about Tory privatisation of the NHS. Good luck with that: we are pro-market because we believe that is the way to drive up care standards, which is perhaps why Burnham himself oversaw the privatisation of Hinchinbrooke Hospital.

Yvette, on the other hand, is too.... bleugh. She's been at the frontline of British politics for so long I suspect she's running because there's a weight of incumbency as a competent shadow frontbencher, with the Balls / Cooper leadership dilemma conveniently resolved courtesy of Lynton Crosby. There's an unthinking machine politics about Yvette's leadership bid that just seems so dull. Having spent months pounding the streets and towerblocks of Battersea and Tooting I'm pretty confident neither she nor Andy will be PM come 2020.

So Liz Kendall strikes me as the only candidate who can steer Labour back in the direction of sanity. Yet the rank and file of the Labour movement seems hell-bent on monstering a woman who believes we need to invest in our defences at a time when ISIL and Putin are turning up the heat, and who acknowledges that the last Labour government left a welfare system that was unsustainable – views (may I diplomatically add) that were endorsed by the electorate a couple of months ago. Tony Blair is your only leader to have won two full terms in office, yet Liz is made to wear the term 'Blairite' like a badge of shame.

To us Tories this flirtation with the political wilderness is utter madness. If you want to feel radical and unelectable book Owen Jones for a fundraiser – or join the Greens. Liz (currently tanking at 11/1 with the bookies) is the one we think will give us the biggest run for our money. She is a decent woman and has been honest about the importance of the markets in improving our public services. Kendall will bring a voice to opposition that Britain needs, and my decision to cough up three quid and vote was driven by a desire for healthy debate across the political divide at a time when a worrying number of your movement seem more comfortable ranting about the bedroom tax and wishing Charlotte Church was running for leader.

Liz probably won't win, but your AV ballot means I get to express a second preference, which will go to Jeremy Corbyn. Choosing anyone other than Kendall means the Labour party really does need euthanising – and we Tories are a compassionate lot these days. Far better to rip off the plaster with one quick movement than spend years peeling it inch by inch. And don't blame me – just have a good look at Sadiq, who wanted your lunatic element to have a voice (no voice for Tristram Hunt's aspirational John Lewis set, mind). With judgement like that it's safe to say I won't be giving him my vote for the London Mayoralty.

Of course there is another option: the Tories are a broad church. We 'invented' modern state education in the way you 'invented' the NHS, not all of us eat babies for breakfast, and we don't talk about Europe – much. And as a bonus, there's almost certainly a literature delivery round waiting for you at your local Conservative Association!

First published by Labour Uncut on July 20th, 2015

'Thank you' literature

I haven't posted anything about general election literature in the last year because I've had relatively little to do with the design, and if you want to see some of the photos I've done you can just look here. But this is something I've knocked up for Dan Watkins which will be appearing through letterboxes in Tooting in the next week or so (with an address on the postage side).

I'm happy to share the InDesign template (and it can easily be adapted for ward use). Just email me and let me know which Association you're from, etc.

Yvette Cooper needs to do more than just talk about Nordic models

Britain’s Left has been indulging in worship of Scandinavian social democracy ever since the tide started ebbing on the New Labour project, most recently on prostitution reform and the SNP’s vision for an independent Scotland. Thinking wistfully of Borgen beats the hard work of actually reinventing socialism, but I haven’t heard so much excited talk about the ‘Nordic Model’ since I was at school and Helena Christensen was practically everywhere. Happy memories indeed.

Last month Yvette Cooper announced that one of the pillars of her leadership bid would be childcare:

campaign[ing] for universal childcare – as other countries, including Scandinavia, have. That means breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, holiday clubs and free nursery places and childcare available full-time not just for three- and four-year-olds but two-year-olds too.

More details were promised, but I’ve waited… and waited. And to be honest if she has a hope in hell of becoming Labour’s leader she’ll keep shtum on her vision of Scandinavian childcare: a big part of the Nordic early years model is deregulation of politically sensitive things like childcare standards, and it would be a bold leadership bid that argued for loosening staff-to-child ratios. Indeed Nick Clegg engineered a high-profile coalition feud over this very issue in 2013.

Back then Labour criticised Liz Truss for putting ‘quality and safety at risk’ with her plans to allow greater flexibility in childcare ratios. Shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg said that ‘a childminder can have the very best qualifications, [but] they still only have one pair of hands’. The attack was clumsy and ideological; the government's proposals were ‘to allow nurseries to relax ratios only where they hire highly-qualified staff’ and bring us more in line with the northern European countries so admired by Cooper, where childminders cope perfectly well with more children than currently allowed in the UK.

International comparisons of national mandatory minimum staff:
child ratios for childminder care by child age (Gov.uk)

What Cooper has missed is that Nordic social democracy is distinctly pragmatic, with privatised railways, free schools and competitive selection for the Eurovision song contest. And the Scandinavian approach of light touch regulation with more children per adult allows people with better qualifications to be employed: the Institute of Education’s research unit describes Sweden and Denmark’s childcare provision as ‘characterised by high levels of staff training, involving at least 3 years education at a post-18 level’.

With parents empowered and free from government edicts, there can be innovation in childcare – another hallmark of the sector in the Nordic countries. Increased resources are needed, but UK expenditure on childcare is well above the OECD average and comparable to Holland. And most metrics suggest Dutch childcare is pretty good.

So if Yvette Cooper wants to lead her party back from the political wasteland she needs to engage with the nuts and bolts of childcare reform. Simply hoping her party members lap up talk of Scandinavia as a justification for spending money was an approach that was tested to destruction by Labour in the 2015 general election – and Cooper is no Birgitte Nyborg.

First published by Coffee House on June 9th, 2015

Bikes v Strikes

I was riding my bike home from central London earlier this week when I noticed there were a lot of black cabs snarling things up in rather a big way. ‘Ahh,’ I thought to myself. ‘That’ll be the strike over the iPhone app thing’. I pulled over to talk to a couple of friendly-looking cabbies, who filled me in as we talked about competition from Uber in the early Summer sun.

Surely The Knowledge gives them an edge over some silly piece of software, I asked the cabbies. They were adamant that they were indeed cheaper and more reliable. But apparently that wasn’t the point, as it turned out that their beef is less with Uber – which you can download at https://www.uber.com/cities/london – and more with Transport for London for allowing new entrants into the metered cab market.

Google Maps reporting traffic flows at the height of London's taxi strike

Like last year, the taxi drivers’ brief period of holding London hostage was the mother-of-all PR cock-ups. Unlike black cabs Uber drivers don’t go on strike – everyone knows that now – and making central London even tetchier by honking horns and clogging up the roads is a novel way to endear yourself to the population.

Yet as I weaved my way home on my bicycle I realised that here we had the political spectrum reduced to a single event: a monopoly administered by the Public Carriage Office snarling up London’s streets for everyone apart from those of us on two wheels, who are bound only by the Highway Code and a sense of survival (and coincidentally my closest shave in years was with a psychotic black cab a few months ago). That the police had promised arrests if the street blockades continued for any duration seemed a wonderful example of how cack-handed the state can be in resolving problems it has created.

Perhaps it is time for the Public Carriage Office’s operation to be reformed. Perhaps it is too late – Uber has joined the ranks of Google and Hoover as companies that now double up as verbs.

I haven’t taken a black cab in years, and the expense of a return trip into town on the tube still makes me wince. But here I was pedalling through Pimlico and enjoying the glorious weather with my progress unfettered by cost or regulation, while others suffered because of people getting grumpy about losing a monopoly licensed by the state.

And I pondered why cycling is associated with the lefty beard and sandals brigade. London’s Mayor and our PM both ride bikes, yet cycling is still regarded as distinctly… Huppertesque, some might say. Indeed the entire Liberal Democrat parliamentary party could ride to work on four tandems.

But cycling is a mode of transport that allows total freedom of movement, requires little government intervention and has ubiquitous vehicle ownership – all solid right wing values. The advent of the modern ‘safety cycle’ in the 1890s played a key part in the emancipation of the working class. And travel by Boris Bike spikes over Christmas and during tube strikes, occasions when state-controlled public transport fails Londoners. Tuesday’s action by black cab drivers rammed home just how inherently Tory the humble bicycle really is.

First published by Platform 10 on May 30th, 2015

2015 General Election image dump

I've spent the past two years running around London and the South East helping friends standing in the General Election on May 7th. Lots of fun as I've been able to see campaigns outside my home patch (Wandsworth) – and meet some lovely people too. Ministerial visits are always a bit of a pain, because you're aware that the photography part really mustn't take more than a minute. Other things are much more laid back – I've had enormous fun biking around Tooting with Dan Watkins, and jumping on the train to help Caroline Ansell down in Eastbourne.

So fingers crossed for Caroline, Paul, Jane, Tom, Maria, Dan, Kim and Anna. All are decent, conscientious people who believe in a just, more equal Britain where people can be their best – and I'm proud to have played a very small part in helping their campaigns. Roll on polling day!

Caveat – I've tried to remember what the photos were for in the captions, but I could well be wrong – any error in this regard is mine and mine alone.

File (Eastbourne)

Boris visits Sutton (Sutton & Cheam)

Endorsement literature (Battersea)

File (Eastbourne)

Open Primary (Tonbridge & Malling)

Open Primary (Tonbridge & Malling)

Newsletter header (Lewes)

A27 campaign (Hastings & Rye, Eastbourne and Bexhill & Battle)

A27 campaign (Eastbourne)

File (Lewes)

Save The Wheatsheaf (Tooting)

PM visits Asda (Battersea)

PM visits Asda (Battersea)

File (Tonbridge & Malling)

Save The Romany (Tooting)

Save Eastbourne DGH (Eastbourne)

Chancellor visits Nu-Flame (Sutton & Cheam)

The Orangery open day (Streatham)

File (Streatham)

File (Tooting)

Northern Line upgrade (Tooting)

File (Erith & Thamesmead)

Southeastern trains campaign (Erith & Thamesmead)

Love Your Local (Tooting and Battersea)

Love Your Local (Tooting and Battersea)

File (Tooting)

Endorsement literature (Battersea)

Save The Wheatsheaf (Tooting)

East Coast showed us what a renationalised railways would be like

Two years ago, I was on my way back to London from my first Party conference in Manchester. The train carriage was rammed, with the heating inexplicably on full blast. This situation was made worse by the buffet being closed, so with no water for the two hours we were stuck in oven-like conditions.

Not fun – but not exactly life-endangering, and Virgin Trains offered me two first class tickets to any part of their network as compensation.

I mention this merely because it is a good example of how, under privatisation, our railways now ‘do’ customer service. Yes, there is still enormous room for improvement. And, yes, train travel can be utterly maddening – as anyone stuck at Finsbury Park after Christmas knows only too well. But the upshot of my trip back from conference was that I thought Virgin Trains were actually bothered about whether or not I’d want to travel with them again.

Why, then, is renationalising the railways so bizarrely popular – even with Conservative voters? People almost willingly ignore how much better our trains are than the squalid service that state-owned SNCF runs to some loose timetable on the other side of the Channel.

Yet you don’t have to go to France to see what a renationalised railways would be like for the travelling public: look no further than our own East Coast service, which was run by the Department for Transport for five years. The chaos at King’s Cross last Christmas was caused by state-owned Network Rail, but compounded by the customer service of then nationalised East Coast trains, whose operation propped up the bottom of the national railways performance tables before the company was returned to the private sector a month ago.

'Privatisation' gave Britain the world's fastest steam locomotive

(Telegraph)

Let me explain it another way.

Remember how privatised Virgin Trains made up for my poor travelling experience? Well, in early January my cousin was travelling from Aberdeen to Kings Cross on ‘nationalised’ East Coast. My cousin has muscular dystrophy and is stuck in a wheelchair. Alas, the train’s disabled lavatory was out of service for the entire seven hours of the journey – and his request for help via the disabled assistance button was ignored.

Not unreasonably, he wrote to East Coast. The state-owned company replied – two months later – by sending him a voucher for £10. A tenner! I can’t imagine Richard Branson would regard ten quid as anything other than a slap in the face of a disabled man ignored by the train staff, and unable to pee for the best part of a public sector working day.

Many people remember British Rail as a proxy for a halcyonic Britain that never existed. But it was free enterprise that gave us our railway glory days, with ‘privatised’ LNER’s Mallard breaking the speed record and Glasgow’s ‘privatised’ North British dominant as the world’s largest locomotive builder, selling to all corners of the globe.

Nationalisation in 1948 put a stop to all that: British Rail was an introspective operation that closed down railway lines, treated passengers badly and built locomotives that we couldn’t export. Its head office was nicknamed ‘The Kremlin’ – and with good reason.

Miliband’s lot would put the faceless apparatchiks at the Department for Transport back in charge of our trains; leaves on the line would be the least of our worries. The East Coast franchise was a timely reminder of what renationalised railways would be like – and my cousin has the £10 voucher to prove it.

First published by Conservative Home on April 2nd, 2015