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Tony Burke is the Assistant General Secretary of Unite

Karl Marx said:

“A spectre is haunting Europe.”

That spectre today is austerity and it is ready to haunt the UK. Ahead of the European Union leaders summit on Wednesday called to discuss growth, unions, including the European TUC are saying – enough is enough.

Bernadette Ségol General Secretary of the ETUC said:

“Austerity is an impasse. We expect recovery projects based on sustainable investments, not policies focused on structural labour market reforms.”

And at a recent conference in Manchester supported by Unite, Unison and the GMB, unions sent out the strong message that it is time for unions to fight back across the EU and defend the gains made by working people over the last 60 years.

At the conference I made the point that the anger the austerity agenda is fuelling is calling into question the very future of the EU itself.

• Europe’s Right still full-steam ahead on mad dash for austerity 16 May 2012

Greece, where real wages have fallen by over 25 per cent may be about to leave the Euro; in Spain, where the debt crisis has taken hold, there are one in four out of work and over 50 per cent of young are without a job.

And the technocrats running governments are taking an axe to long fought for employment rights. Take Italy where the ex-Goldman Sachs adviser appointed as Prime Minister immediately made it easier for bosses to fire workers. That was the centre piece of his plans for recovery from the crisis that his former employers and the rest of the banking class caused.

Attacks are also being made on long established national collective bargaining arrangements, which provided protection and a level playing field.

Europe needs an alternative vision and this has to be done by putting faith in people, rather putting faith in the “elites” – the six States retaining their AAA ratings.

State-owned banks and the ECB need to be investing and not hoarding cash. Manufacturing needs to be nurtured. Growth cannot be based on reducing workers rights and making decent stable jobs into even more precarious employment.

And the rich must be made to pay their fair share.

As the ETUC says:

“Fair taxation has to be a priority, there needs to be the introduction of a financial transaction tax and measures to put an end to tax havens.”

But most importantly the trade union movement across Europe needs on the  front line of the fight against the dismantling of social Europe – the social Europe that gave workers decent holidays and working hours; maternity and paternity leave; employment rights for part-time and agency workers, health and safety rights and a Europe which supported national collective bargaining to protect working people.

In the UK the Clegg-Cameron government have slashed taxes for the rich – despite the talk of deficit cutting and are being pressed to bring in more stringent austerity measures and to attack employment rights further.

Calls are being made from assorted right-wing allies for further watering down of EU employment rights, longer public sector pay freezes and an end to national pay deals.

László Andor, the European Commissioner for employment and social affairs told the Manchester conference:

“We are now in the fifth year of the economic crisis and there is little indication of any improvement. Joblessness has reached record levels and the outlook is one of stagnation.

“Here in the UK, the government has applied an aggressive deficit reduction strategy, but despite these cuts the deficit is still 8.4 per cent of GDP. And, with UK unemployment running at 8.2 per cent, one is entitled to ask if the medicine is curing or killing the patient.”

What is clear is that we cannot disentangle ourselves as what is happening across the EU as the world capitalist crisis hits Europe with exceptional force.

The EU must now move beyond the crisis by rejecting banker-imposed austerity and rebuilding Europe based on growth, social protection, good jobs not a race to the bottom - a race going nowhere.

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The Home Office brief – a bed of nails during Labour’s years – shows no signs of becoming a fluffy chaise lounge under this government.

However, the sight of a Tory home secretary being openly barracked by the police is an altogether new phenomenon in British politics.

This was the fate of Theresa May who came in for an unprecedented buffeting at the hands of Police Federation delegates when she addressed their annual conference this week.

At the heart of this animosity is the scale of the 20 per cent funding cuts hitting the police. This translates into 16,000 frontline officers and a similar number of back office staff. As shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper warned in her speech to the same conference, more than 5,000 police officers have already gone “from 999 response units, traffic cops and neighbourhood police”.

But more prosaic reforms are a cause of friction too, not least Tom Winsor’s review of pay and conditions, set up by Theresa May to deliver greater value for money and improve police services. Two weeks ago 30,000 officers took the rare and symbolic step of marching through London in protest.

Winsor recommends raising police entry standards, and fast-tracking more able candidates through the ranks as well as bringing pay and grading into line with other parts of the public sector.

• Police commissioners: Labour must seize the opportunity with both hands 9 Mar 2012

• Policing is political already – why should police commissioners hide their allegiance? 7 Mar 2012

• Resources, powers and accountability – the three big issues facing the police in 2012 5 Jan 2012

• Progressives should be supporting Elected Police Commissioners 27 Jul 2010

• Theresa May is right to take on ACPO and reform the police 29 Jun 2010

As crossbench peer Lord Dear, a former HM Inspector of Constabulary, notes, the reforms are trying to challenge the “current culture” of a service “that is frequently unclear of its role: often risk-averse, process-dominated and defensive”.

Of course it may be a political curiosity to see a Tory home secretary on the ducking stool – and in the speed and scale of frontline cutbacks her critics are right to throw rotten fruit – but on police reform, it is Theresa May who is often right.

As The Independent noted:

“Individually, police officers are often stellar public servants. But the majority of forces are neither as efficient nor as accountable as they should be. Even without the need to tighten the government belt, it is high time for reform.”

The truth is the police have skipped many of the big organisational reforms other parts of the public sector have already undergone. The weakness of police authorities in holding constabularies to account has meant chief constables have enjoyed little real scrutiny and outdated practices have lingered.

When Labour’s former home secretary Charles Clarke tried to instigate the modest reform of rationalising the 43 constabularies in England and Wales into more scaleable regional forces – in order to avoid duplication and improve operational effectiveness – he was assailed on all sides until he was forced to drop the idea.

Anyway, trouble is brewing on another front as one of the Home Office’s flagship policies hits a problem. A poll this week shows the public does not know very much about the new Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) ahead of the first elections to the posts in just six months’ time.

The ComRes poll (pdf), commissioned by campaign and research company Centreground Political Communications, found fewer than one in five voters (18%) feels they know much about the forthcoming elections to choose the 41 new PCCs, while a quarter of voters (26%) say they expect to vote for an independent.

The elections, described by police minister Nick Herbert this week as “the most significant democratic reform of policing in our lifetime”, are due to be held on November 15th. They had originally been tied in with elections for directly-elected big city mayors in a bid to boost turnout. In the event, only Bristol chose to switch to a mayoral model earlier this month, fuelling fears about turnout and the risk of fringe candidates emerging.

This adds to the stack of thorny problems mounting in the home secretary’s in-tray. And then, of course, there’s the Olympics and the ever-present worry about a re-run of last summer’s rioting and looting.

The curse of the Home Office is set to continue.

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The chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), Robert Chote, today said there was no evidence George Osborne’s flagship cutting of the 50p top rate of tax in the budget will promote growth.

He told The Guardian the OBR’s analysis was that there was no evidence to show that the measure would have a positive effect of the kind mentioned by Osborne in his budget speech, in which the chancellor said the cut would improve Britain’s competitiveness.

Chote says:

“We didn’t feel that there was a strong enough evidence base to say our long-term or medium-term view of the economy is now more optimistic than it was beforehand as a result of that measure.”

In a further slapdown to the Tory right, who in addition to cheering Osborne’s slashing of the top rate of tax for the rich (while taking more from the poor), clamour for a euro break up and Greek exit, Chote warns such a scenario risks plunging the UK into a “long-term recession”.

He adds:

“The concern is that you end up with an outcome in the eurozone that creates the same sort of structural difficulties in the financial system and in the economy that we saw in the past recession, and that that has consequences both for hitting economic activity in the economy, but also its underlying potential.

“And it’s the latter which has particular difficulties for the fiscal position, because it means not just that the economy weakens and then strengthens again – ie, it goes into a hole and comes out – but that you go down and you never quite get back up to where you started.”

• Europe’s Right still full-steam ahead on mad dash for austerity 16 May 2012

• Balls and Mandelson call for Britain to take lead on growth plan for Europe 14 May 2012

• Will President Hollande be able to turn France – and the Euro Area – around? 8 May 2012

• Even Tory voters oppose abolition of 50p rate 19 Mar 2012

• It’s official: the 50p tax rate raises revenue 9 Jan 2012

As Left Foot Forward noted on Monday, eurosceptics should beware what they wish for.

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Former infantry officer and author of ‘Callsign Hades’, Patrick Bury, recently conducted research on the Afghanistan campaign for an international security organisation; the views expressed here are his own

With the NATO summit on Afghanistan due to take place in Chicago this weekend, world leaders will be forced to focus on solutions to this long and unpopular war.

The killing on Saturday of two British servicemen again highlighted the increasing ‘Green on Blue’ attacks by Afghan security personnel on NATO soldiers, while US Marines urinating on corpses, Korans being burnt, the murder of 17 Afghan civilians by a renegade American sergeant and a large attack on Kabul have all represented serious political setbacks.

These setbacks have been all the more significant now given that the military campaign cannot save the West from long-term strategic failure.

This is not to say the military have failed in their mission. In the regions where they have been sufficiently resourced, strong tactical and operational gains were made during 2010/11 in the key provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.

The transition of security duties to Afghan forces also remains on schedule.  However, these successes have not translated into the strategic nor ultimately, the political gains the surge was designed to deliver.

In the 2007 Iraq surge for example, violence decreased by about 70% in five months. In doing so it created the space within which governance and the rule of law could begin to be established. Twelve months into the surge in Afghanistan, the U.N estimated that violence had risen by 39%; governance remains patchy at best.

Furthermore, violence is increasing even in areas that are meant to be secure: attacks in the Kandahar region rose by 13% over the winter 2011/12 period. Attacks in the East were up 3%. Taken together, these figures indicate that in the two regions where insurgent violence is most concentrated, attacks have continued to rise, even during the traditionally more benign winter months.

Meanwhile, support from NATO populations  for the war is at its lowest level ever (27 percent in the U.S), France and Australia have already announced accelerated withdrawal timetables and progress toward a political settlement has stalled.

• One year on from slaying Bin Laden, Obama heralds “new chapter” in Afghanistan 2 May 2012

• Is it time to end the war in Afghanistan? 28 Jul 2011

• Why the deafening silence on Afghanistan? 20 Jul 2011

A December  2011 US national intelligence estimate concluded that pervasive corruption and Kabul’s incompetent governance had undercut the surge’s security gains and that president Karzai’s government might not survive a NATO withdrawal at all. Basic metrics support this view.

The central statistic of the Afghan campaign is an economic one. Although it has experienced rapid economic growth recently – the IMF estimates Afghanistan’s GDP to be over $19 billion.  Without the inflation generated by over 100,000 NATO troops and their support staff, the country’s GDP is historically close to $12 billion.

The cost of training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) is forecast by the U.S to be $4-6 billion a year for the foreseeable future, depending on their size. Thus, funding its security forces will cost Afghanistan about a third to a half of its GDP every year. This is simply unsustainable.

Of course, the U.S and its NATO allies are aware of this. Reports suggest that the U.S will continue to provide $5 billion next year; it hopes NATO members will make up the $1.3 billion difference. However, so far the alliance has only raised $550 million (Britain has given $110 million), leaving a significant shortfall in ANSF funding.

Moreover, the long term sustainability of even this amount is questionable. With Europe’s financial woes continuing, it will become increasingly difficult to justify funding an unpopular and distant war that could eventually see NATO governments supporting one side in a civil war.

Here, the echo of the Soviet experience in the country begins to reverberate loudly. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, they continued to fund and equip President Najibullah’s forces.

With Soviet support, the beleaguered president was able to cling to power, gradually ceding some 90% of the country to the Muhajideen insurgency as his army’s appetite for the conflict waned. However, when the Russians turned off the money tap in 1992, Najibullah’s regime rapidly crumbled.

NATO knows that the ANSF in their current form are unsustainable. Next year, the U.S will cut in half the $11.2 billion it gave the ANSF for 2012; the net result being that, after a rush to reach ANSF manning of 352,000, the force will be reduced just as it hits this target.

The latest NATO figures indicate that Afghan forces currently total 344,000, but given the long term questions over sustainability, a force of about 230,000 is now being considered more realistic.

Forces this size would fall far short of the number required by NATO’s own doctrine to successfully conduct a counter-insurgency campaign. Such doctrine holds that one counter-insurgent is required for every 20-25 members of the population.

Even given the geographic concentration of Afghanistan’s insurgency in the south and east of the country, the 230,000 figure falls far below this ratio. By comparison, Iraq, which has a similar population to Afghanistan, has over one million army and police personnel for its 30 million citizens.

Simply put, even ignoring Pakistan’s hand in Afghanistan’s affairs, without a large and sustainable security force to suppress the insurgency, the government will be unable to hold the areas NATO forces have fought hard to clear. The only way to avoid this scenario is through some sort of political settlement.

However, in the short term at least, a political settlement seems unlikely. The Sunday assassination of Maulvi Rahmani - a top negotiator for Karzai’s high peace council with strong links to the Taliban - has highlighted the continuing precariousness of the negotiations process.

Mahaz-e Mullah Dadullah, a hard line insurgent faction, has claimed responsibility for the killing. Their actions indicate that many factions of the Taliban remain opposed to any negotiated settlement that would deny them the return of to an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, secretary of state Clinton has not spoken pro-actively on negotiations in over a year. Ahmed Rashid, a leading Afghan analyst, recently indicated that the main reason for this is due to disagreements within the U.S administration over whether the negotiations process should be prioritised at all.

Yet some sort of a political settlement is now the only way the West can prevent Afghanistan’s slide into civil war. Otherwise, on their current trajectory, the basic metrics of its eleven year investment of blood and treasure in Afghanistan point towards strategic failure.

When combined with the qualitative evidence of widespread corruption the complete picture is even worse: a lack of popular support for the Afghan government, an internal Pashtun/non Pashtun divide, an impending shortfall in aid as military assistance is cut and the continuing undermining of stability by Pakistan provides the context within which the quantitative evidence must be understood.

Reports that former northern alliance warlords have begun re-arming in preparation for the Afghanistan that NATO leaves behind, suggest they understand the ground truth better than those meeting in Chicago this weekend.

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Ed Balls today said George Osborne’s “economic mission”, on his own terms as set out two years ago, “on all three counts”, has failed.

Upon ascending to power, the chancellor outlined his economic strategy to “deal with our debts, set our country on a brighter economic course and show that we are all in this together” – promises he has abjectly failed to deliver on, according to Balls.

Writing in the latest Tribune magazine, the shadow chancellor takes each point in turn:

First, on securing a brighter economic future, the government inherited an economy which was starting to grow strongly with unemployment falling month by month.

But the recovery was fragile and, as we warned, cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast risked choking off that growth – especially as a global economic hurricane was brewing. The chancellor thought he knew better, but ever since his spending review the British economy has flatlined and has now been pushed into a double-dip recession. And let’s be clear: this is a recession made in Downing Street by David Cameron and George Osborne’s economic mistakes.

For all the attempts to blame the eurozone for what’s gone wrong here, the fact is Britain would have been in recession over a year ago if it was not for the positive contribution to the economy of exports to Europe and the rest of the world. Despite the problems in the single currency area, France, Germany and the eurozone as a whole are not in recession. [As Graph 1 shows].

After trying to blame the snow, the Royal Wedding and then the eurozone, the chancellor has run out of excuses for why his reckless and unfair policies have failed.

Graph 1:

Second, on George Osborne’s claim that ‘we are all in this together’, the budget exposed that as an empty slogan.

How can it be fair to give a £3 billion tax cut to the richest people in the country – worth over £40,000 for just 14,000 millionaires – while raising taxes on pensioners, families, pasties, church repairs and even charity donations? When a family with children will lose an average of £511 from changes coming into effect this year, the Budget’s tax cut for those on over £150,000 showed just how out of touch the government has become.

And finally, the voters were promised that all the pain of deeper spending cuts and bigger tax rises would be worth it to get the deficit down.

Many people who voted Conservative in 2010 were prepared to go along with short term pain for long term gain. But slow growth and rising unemployment, with more people out of work on benefit rather than paying taxes, has meant billions more borrowing. The government won’t now meet its key pledge to balance the books by 2015 and is set to borrow an extra £150 billion-– borrowing to pay for economic failure, rather than borrowing to invest in the jobs of the future.

• Osborne’s austerity is strangling Britain 16 May 2012

Grim times indeed; as Balls concludes:

“A prolonged period of high unemployment and slow growth will make the deficit worse not better and cause damage well beyond the two years of economic failure we have already seen.”

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Boris Johnson, Seb Coe and Hugh Robertson were on fine form yesterday, quite rightly revelling in the handover ceremony for the Olympic torch, embracing the event as the Games zone in to view – now just ten weeks away.

At the grassroots level, however, local Conservative councils are showing up the real Tory Olympic legacy.

In Essex, but a stone’s throw from the east London home of the 2012 Games, Tory-run Basildon council this week gave the green light to bulldoze Pitsea swimming pool so Morrisons can build a supermarket. And if there’s one thing the area needs, it’s more big supermarkets.

Presently, there is a Tesco Extra mega store, a Sainsbury’s and an Asda, with another Asda, two more Tescos and a Sainsbury’s nearby. Large parts of the local market will also be built over to make way for the Morrisons.

On the sports front, there will be no new swimming pool. Residents wishing to swim will have to take a 30-minute bus ride and then a ten-minute walk to Basildon Sporting Village – which is anyway often closed at short notice to host commercial events. Green areas are also being built over, meaning less and less space for youngsters to kick a ball about or do any kind of exercise.

More than 3,000 people signed a petition opposing the closure of the swimming pool, all to no avail.

This local Tory disdain for grassroots sport follows the 80s Thatcherite lust for building over school playing fields and takes its present lead from the Conservative-led government’s contempt for school sport, a subject we’ve repeatedly highlighted on Left Foot Forward:

• The fight to save school sport goes on 5 May 2012

• 2018 Wold Cup may be lost, but PM can still deliver a brighter future for school sport 2 Dec 2010

• The devastating effect of Gove’s desire to take an axe to school sport 29 Nov 2010

• School sport cuts: “This isn’t ideology, it’s idiocy” 26 Nov 2010

• Miliband urges Cameron to “overrule” Gove’s school sport cuts 24 Nov 2010

• Scrapping School Sport Partnerships – ideology or idiocy? 22 Nov 2010

• World finally wakes up to coalition’s assault on school sport 22 Nov 2010

• Coalition’s aim for a “school sport revolution” in tatters after CSR 24 Oct 2010

• Minister calls for “school sport revolution” – yet DfE to face £670m of cuts 24 Sep 2010

It’s a sick society indeed when a rich boys school like Eton can offer 12 squash courts, 20 tennis courts, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, four cricket fields, a nine-hole golf course, and rowing on the lake that will host the 2012 Olympics, while kids in Essex have to travel miles to their nearest pool and youngsters in Wandsworth face having to pay to play in their local playgrounds.

Where will the next Mark Foster come from?

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Not only is there little chance of taxpayers seeing payment from the sale of Northern Rock to Virgin, they may also incur further costs, a National Audit Office (NAO) report reveals.

The details in the report confirm every criticism Left Foot Forward laid down at the time of the deal, which took place on January 1st this year.

The Tories’ insistence to rush this deal has resulted in a real ‘botched privatisation’.

Regarding the £150m hole in the sale proceeds in the form of a bond with a coupon, the NAO confirms our fears that the taxpayer may never receive a payment: the lower bound on the NAO valuation of interest is zero (we kid you not!).

Secondly, they ambitiously put a lower bound on the £150 million that the bond represents at just £50 million (that’s hopeful if the payments are zero!).

Left Foot Forward reported last November that Osborne planned to cover this £150m hole with capital notes:

“Capital notes are essentially a form of loan that puts the lender in a riskier position, than if they were, let’s say, to lend the money directly to Virgin Consortium.

“The government has had to engage in this ‘vendor financing’ – a trick pulled by the Glazers when they bought Manchester United - because Virgin clearly can’t find a private investor to back the deal.”

Most worrying is the information on the £250 million asset strip of Northern Rock’s own money Virgin used to pay the government.

• Exposed: Richard Branson the cuddly union-buster 20 Dec 2011

• The £150 million hole in Osborne’s Virgin/Northern Rock deal 22 Nov 2011

• NAO report reveals how Branson “Glazered” taxpayer on Northern Rock 18 May 2012

• How we were all Glazered by Virgin’s purchase of Northern Rock 24 Nov 2011

• Re-mutualising Northern Rock “would be a good move” 1 Feb 2012

Here’s how Richard Branson did it:

“Short-term debt finance of £253 million provided by two banks and repaid using cash extracted from Northern Rock plc.”

This cash was extracted in the following way:

“By transferring one of its subsidiary companies to Northern Rock plc, Virgin Money was able to free-up cash to repay the short-term debt finance. This internal transfer of assets swapped £253 million of cash in Northern Rock plc for £330 million of shares in the subsidiary.

“The balance of £77 million due from Northern Rock plc could then be used to fund the payment to the Treasury of the deferred elements of the agreed sale price.”

Shuffling the deck! Gosh that Branson is a smart chap! The question we asked was why couldn’t the Treasury have done this?

This was the NAO white-wash answer:

“As a stand-alone business, Northern Rock plc was not profitable and the Treasury could not extract any capital in the form of cash before a sale. Combining Northern Rock plc with Virgin Money’s profitable operations enabled cash to be released after the sale.”

Furthermore, according to the NAO it did not cost the Taxpayer anything because:

“It is not possible to separate the value paid by Virgin Money for this cash from the price paid for the business as a whole.”

How did they work that out?

“Virgin Money told us that it paid full value for the cash released from Northern Rock plc which it used to part-fund the purchase.”

We would rather not take Branson’s word for it, because there is plenty of evidence in the NAO report showing the Treasury could have taken out Northern Rock’s excess capital itself.

For example, the competing bid was from NBNK Investments who thought the Treasury were able to extract money, and was helpfully telling the Treasury how much the taxpayer should extract. (We estimated the excess capital at around £600 million and the Treasury should have extracted it all, no matter how nicely NBNK suggested a number!).

This is how the NAO described the competing NBNK final bid:

“The NBNK bid was valued by UKFI at £829 million to £846 million. The valuation included an assumption by NBNK that the Treasury could extract £142 million to £159 million from Northern Rock plc before any sale. Such an extraction of capital would have required FSA approval.”

And what would the FSA have said? Well in Appendix 3.18 we see why they agreed in relation to Virgin’s asset strip:

” The FSA decided that less capital was required than had been the case for Northern Rock plc on a stand-alone basis.”

So that was a low hurdle to clear.

So the asset strip of the excess capital by the Treasury is still an open question. Despite Branson being able to do it, and NBNK believing the Treasury could do it, is it still credible to believe that the Treasury could not have done it?

And there is a cost to the taxpayer. We thought the cost of this botched privatisation would be to reduce the price of book valuation to 0.66.

And hidden in the back of the report the NAO agrees; point 3.20 notes the cost to the tax payer:

If full value is ascribed to the cash freed-up, the adjusted multiple of book value paid for Northern Rock plc’s other assets falls slightly from 0.76-0.86 to 0.66-0.80.” (The top of the range assumes the bond pays more than the NAO expects!).

But being right is no comfort when you see some guys pay the taxpayer just £700-odd million to trouser a £500 million pristine bank with a gift of £600 million of excess capital.

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An unnamed Conservative MSP has told the Herald the Scottish Conservatives do not feature on David Cameron’s radar after he seemingly undermined the party’s leader at Holyrood over a date for the referendum on independence.

With Ruth Davidson MSP having been fiercely loyal in calling for a vote as soon as possible, on Tuesday evening the prime minister used a reception at the Scotland Office in London to state he was now “not fussed” about the date.

The development has led some Conservatives in Scotland to accuse Cameron of hanging Davidson out to dry.

Whilst Davidson herself has publicly remained loyal to the PM, in private Conservative colleagues have expressed concerns.

The Herald quotes what it describes as a “senior” Tory MSP as saying:

“The real significance of this is David Cameron clearly doesn’t think he has done anything wrong because the Scottish Tories are such an irrelevance we are just not on his radar. This was not wilful or deliberate or even careless.

“It just showed it did not occur to him the view of the Scottish party or its leader might even matter.”

He goes on this morning to quote another as declaring:

“There is absolutely no communication from London. It’s ridiculous. Even the Liberal Democrats are better at this.”

The unease at the prime minister’s posturing comes just two months after he seemingly undermined Davidson by hinting at further powers for the Scottish Parliament despite her objections to it.

• The Tories in Scotland: A tale of two parties 20 Mar 2012

With Lib Dem Scottish secretary, Michael Moore, arguing the date of a referendum need not be a “barrier to an agreement” between Westminster and Holyrood, the SNP have seized upon the latest u-turning.

Pete Wishart MP, the party’s spokesman on the Constitution at Westminster, declared:

“David Cameron’s cave-in on the date of the referendum left the Scottish Secretary and indeed his own Scottish leader looking very silly - and Michael Moore has now fallen into line.

“The Westminster government’s insistence the referendum had to be in 2013 was clearly all a big act.

“Only last month Michael Moore was warning about waiting until 2014. He is left looking very silly, as his Tory warnings over the date are exposed as a sham.

“Where does the prime minister’s ‘Dover Declaration’ leave the Scottish Tories? Ruth Davidson has been undermined again by David Cameron.”

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Ed Cox is the director of IPPR North, IPPR’s dedicated think tank for the north of England

Replacing Regional Development Agencies with a more-aspirational Regional Growth Fund has not produced any evidential improvements for communities, a National Audit Office report (pdf) has shown. Yet another Conservative shake-up has proved to be a waste of resources and taxpayers’ money.

As Figure 7 shows, last week’s NAO report on the Regional Growth Fund highlighted the fact that only 41,000 jobs are likely to be created by the first £1.4bn tranche of spending – well short of the 330,000 jobs the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills claims it will create.

Figure 7:

For a scheme hailed by the government as the answer to suffering regions prayers, the fund actually appears to be as effective (and maybe not even that) as the Regional Development Agencies it replaced.

The NAO report includes a revealing chart showing comparisons between the average cost per job with similar programmes in recent decades, including those run by the abolished Regional Development Agencies with the average cost per job coming out at £33,000 for the RGF, compared to £28,000 for the RDAs.

What’s more, the range of expected costs per job varies considerably between projects under the RGF, from under £4,000 per job to over £200,000 in some cases.

Some would argue that such costs are to be expected given that the programme was focused on creating jobs in some of the most challenging places. But equally, government was clear that the primary focus of the programme was delivering the greatest number of private sector jobs in the fastest possible time in those areas most vulnerable to public sector job losses, irrespective of local growth strategies.

To quote one key protagonist when the scheme was announced:

“A job is a job.”

The relative failure of the scheme lies in a combination of factors. Civil servants were overwhelmed with applications and Vince Cable has admitted that additional administrators have had to be brought in to cope with assessment and implementation after complaints that it was taking too long even for successful projects to get off the ground.

In such conditions it is easy to see how mistakes could be made with too much speed and not enough haste.

• Spending watchdog slams Regional Growth Fund waste 11 May 2012

• Regional Growth Fund leaves regional economies in the cold 3 Nov 2011

• What is Vince Cable? 26 Aug 2011

But more importantly, the RGF plans were not connected to local growth strategies. In round two, small amounts of Regional Growth Fund have been delegated to Liverpool and Greater Manchester as part of their ‘city deals’ but there is a strong case that (if there are to be further rounds) all future RGF should be allocated this way.

Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) are far better placed to understand the opportunities and needs of local businesses and are far more likely to tie investments into emerging local growth strategies too. At the very least, LEPs should have a greater contribution to RGF decision-making for any future RGF investment.

Balancing administrative and economic logic is a problem that won’t go away. There can be no perfect fit and so in such conditions, stability and continuity is probably the top priority. But just as this NAO report reveals problems with RGF, so too there are similar challenges concerning transport funds and inward investment.

It is becoming increasingly clear that LEPs are too small to go it alone in building some of the key foundations of economic growth and centralised solutions are not working either. The nature and form of LEP collaboration is a topic that requires urgent attention.

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By Joe Fortune, parliamentary officer for The Co-operative Party

The previous session of parliament was indeed a marathon one. However, it was not one that offered much improvement to the lives of many in constituencies up and down the country.

It would be hard for even the most passionate Conservative to argue that this government was a slick legislating machine – we have seen bungling over the Health and Social Care Bill, Welfare Reform Bill and Public Bodies Bill.

This, together with the government’s shaky record of holding on to senior ministers and the lobbying scandals, all contributed to nearly 850 new Labour councillors being elected up and down the country earlier this month.

The Co-operative Party enjoyed electoral success in the local elections as well; many newly elected Labour councils have come to office committed to delivering upon their co-operative council pledges.

Labour Co-operative councillors were even elected in the prime minister’s constituency of Witney.

Therefore the 2012 Queen’s Speech was billed to be a reboot of the coalition. It was short on content and left many parts of society without the measures they required. Sadly, the Queen’s Speech also confirms that once again the government have walked away from the real practical measures that could have helped the co-op and mutual movement to grow.

In contrast, through the last session, Co-operative MPs have been active in promoting co-operative and mutual proposals as well as scrutinising the government’s legislation – so it was no surprise to hear Meg Hillier MP during her speech in the debate say:

“There is no commitment in the Queen’s Speech to introduce any mutual models at all, as far as we can see. The Water Bill would have offered such an opportunity and the Energy Bill might have offered opportunities for some mutual solutions, as would, of course, the Banking Bill.

“We need new measures on demutualisation and we have already missed an opportunity through the selling off to the highest bidder, rather than remutualisation, of Northern Rock. If the house is united on the need for banking reform, why not join that up with the idea of the mutual model and ensure that businesses as well as individuals are supported by mutuals?’’

I agree with Meg – this demonstration of the government’s priorities was particularly disappointing for the Co-operative movement, as it comes on the back of no serious effort to remutualise Northern Rock, no serious interest in encouraging more energy co-ops to emerge, no sustained effort to encourage real involvement in the running of football clubs by football fans through football supporters’ co-operatives, and no requirement to promote a diverse market in financial services for the Financial Services Authority or its replacement to help financial mutuals.

• Taking on the energy giants: The co-operative insurgency gains ground 11 May 2012

• Queen’s Speech: Cameron reneges on his promises 9 May 2012

• The Queen’s Speech needs an ‘Economic Freedom Bill’ 9 May 2012

Labour co-operative MP Gareth Thomas, in his speech during the Queen’s Speech debate, raised a number of areas that are important to many in our movement. For example, he felt this gracious speech was striking in that it did not include a bill to fulfil the commitment that 0.7% of our national income should be spent on development assistance.

The three major parties all committed to legislating on that. Indeed, before the last general election, Thomas took such a bill through the pre-legislative scrutiny process.

There is a strong case for Britain continuing to set an example on the provision of international aid for people in less well-off countries. We should think of the current West Africa food crisis and the huge numbers of people at risk of dying of hunger there, and of the considerable remaining health challenges in respect of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State for International Development explain why he failed to convince colleagues for this bill’s inclusion.

This Queen’s Speech and following debate seemed to confirm the suspicion that ministers are currently unwilling to really challenge the big energy companies. In his speech, Thomas highlighted the fact that our movement is leading the way in the field of energy purchasing and delivery, which given the right support would continue to grow and provide an alternative to the current oligopoly.

Minsters would also do well to look again at the measures included in the bill he championed in the last session relating to community investment in energy delivery. It is clear that the announced bill aimed at electricity market reform would benefit from learning lessons from our movement. I hope that it does not come too late in this parliament to make a real difference to the size of the bills we will have to pay.

Further the community groups that were championed when the Conservatives were in opposition are now left very much on the sidelines. Huge cuts in funding that began to hit hard last year will hit even harder this year.

Last week, the head of Volunteering England warned that the network of volunteer centres across the country is beginning to fragment, with a number set to close this year. Why, at a time when we need national renewal, are we set to make it harder for people to give something back through volunteering? The National Children’s Bureau has warned that 25% of the charities it contacted that help young people and children believed that they might have to close next year.

Charities that were promised government contracts will now know that they were hollow words when ministers spoke them.

Sadly, the Queen’s Speech confirms that once again the government have walked away from the real practical measures that could have helped the co-operative and mutual movement to grow.

Whatever the next session of parliament holds for the government and indeed the country, it is safe to say that Labour and Co-operative members of parliament will provide a powerful voice to ensure the aims, values and needs of co-operative movement are not ignored by this coalition government.