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Left Foot Forward is a collaborative political blog for progressives. We welcome ideas, tip offs and pitches for articles.

There are three things that we are looking out for:

Any insight that you can provide on politics or current affairs. Did a politician flip flop on a position, misuse data or lie? Does a new report or white paper misuse statistics? What’s the distributional impact of a new policy proposal? Did you hear about an administrative failure in a government department or council?
Unbalanced or biased media coverage or misleading reports. Did you read an article that was badly reported? What about a leader or op ed that was badly researched? Was some data misconstrued? Did a broadcaster give a politician an easy ride?
Interesting new data, analysis, or causes that are otherwise unreported. Has a think tank, trade union, NGO or campaigning group done some work that the mainstream media has missed? Is there an international or historical comparison that shines light on an issue of domestic importance? Have you done heard about some analysis or research that is genuinely new?

Please email editor@leftfootforward.org and shamik@leftfootforward.org with your ideas.

Our address if you want to send us anything is:

Left Foot Forward
11 Dartmouth Street
London
SW1H 9BN

And our telephone numbers are:

Will – 020 7227 4912
Shamik – 020 7227 4918

Joshua Hardy says:

March 7, 2010 at 10:54 pm

http://www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Universities_and_Skills.aspx
I’ve noticed that one of the Conservatives plans for University Tuition fees is to create an early repayment bonus on student loans. Surely this would only benefit students who are already rich enough to be able to pay back student loans. Would this not be a regressive benefit scheme when the money paid out for this could be focused more on lowering Tuition Fees or funding places?
David Davies says:

March 17, 2010 at 12:42 pm

The level of Government debt accumulated in the last 2 years is largely as the result of the unnecessary bailout of reckless `financial wizards’ with a `heads we win, tails you lose’ attitude towards their gambles with other people’s money. These people are more than likely to be tories.

The strictures to be applied to Government spending will mainly be targeted at the livelihoods of the huddled masses at the bottom of the heap. These people should entail the vast majority of the Socialist core vote.

Is it any surprise that so many now say that they intend to vote BNP?
Joanna Daly says:

March 22, 2010 at 4:12 pm

Hi – I have started a new political blog with an anti-racism slant and think it may be especially interesting to Labour readers. It is based entirely on reality. Thankyou.
Chris Bunnett says:

April 8, 2010 at 7:41 pm

I love the ideals expressed in the “About” section of your site, but the tone of all the comments are complete biased against the Tories. I’m not sure that this qualifies you as non-partisan… Pity, I’d love to follow a genuinely unbiased site.

Let me know if you see any way to get back to your openly expressed principles.

PS: I’m an immigrant!
Janet Barlow says:

April 14, 2010 at 10:48 am

I find the argument that the Lib-Dem proposal to raise the threshold for paying income tax to 10,000 is regressive is tendentious. The graphic showing the rise in weekly income as a function of income decile completely misses the point. A far better dependent variable to plot would be the *fractional* rise in weekly income (i.e. change in income divided by the income before the change) — this would tell a very different story and, is I think, in line with the reasoning behind the policy. This alternative graphic would show that proportionately the lower paid benefit more from this approach. To illustrate what I mean: if my income is 300 pounds a week and I gain an extra 30 – that would be a 10 percent improvement (i.e. very noticeable and significant), but if my income was 1500, the same weekly increase is a mere 2 percent and I doubt I would notice it. If the real point is that you don’t see income tax as a progressive tax – or that you think the LibDems are not going far enough (e.g. they should lower the thresholds for higher rates of tax to save the embarrassment of some proportionately tiny tax gains for middle income earners), then come out and say that. Lifting the tax threshold for the poorest in society *has* to be a good and just thing.
John Rickman says:

April 24, 2010 at 12:56 pm

Latest tory plans for ‘constitutional reform’, namely, forcing general elections if a new Prime Minister is invited to form a government part-way through a parliament do not bear scrutiny.

In the absence of a presidential system, PMs are not ‘elected’ by anyone, except the Monarch. It is constitutionally illiterate to suggest otherwise.

Progressives rightly favour constitutional reform to end the hereditary principle in UK politics, but this proposal would entrench the party system and is based on the assumption that there will always be a party able to command a majority of its own MPs in the House of Commons. All that is required of a Prime Minister is that she or he can lead a government of democratically elected MPs capable of passing measures in parliament.

What we need is a constitutional convention which would allow these issues to be deliberated upon.
Grit Kuehle says:

April 26, 2010 at 10:25 am

Hi Will,

I just read your article on Questions for the leaders and thought you might be interested in a new Facebook application we’re just launching called “Float your Vote” at http://www.floatyourvote.com.

Float Your Vote allows individuals and brands to create their own “campaign” based on any issue, be it serious or frivolous (e.g. “Extend the London Congestion Charge Zone”, “Save BBC Radio 6 Music”, “Bring back free milk for all school children” etc), and then allows people to vote and comment on the campaign. The application also gives political parties the opportunity to respond to these campaigns and offer their own opinions on particular issues.

As well as allowing individual Facebook users to create their own campaigns and invite their friends and political parties to comment, Float Your Vote is also a platform for commercial brands, charities, pressure groups and other activist organisations to promote and gain support for their own agendas.

When an individual or organisation creates a new campaign, it appears in their Facebook newsfeed. Campaigns then spread virally as people vote and comment on them and encourage their friends to do the same.

The main political parties are being invited to post their own official responses to campaigns.

The application is launching featuring a number of major charities, including the NSPCC and Save the Children.

Diana Sutton, Head of Public Affairs and Campaigns at NSPCC commenting on the application said; “We think Float Your Vote is a great way to spread the word about our “I Stand For Children” campaign, which is about getting every candidate in the upcoming general election to make child protection a top priority.”

Branislava Milosevic, Head of Multimedia at Save the Children, commenting on Float Your Vote said; “We want the next government to make ending child poverty at home and abroad a priority. We’re hoping that, along with all our other activity, having our campaign on Float Your Vote will play an important role in garnering public support for our cause and influencing policy.”

If you have any questions I’d be happy to answer them. You can find Float your Vote at http://www.floatyourvote.com.

Grit

Grit Kuehle
Float your Vote
Matt says:

April 29, 2010 at 11:56 am

Hi,

I don’t know whether this is of interest to you or not. I got 3 of the election candidates in my local constituency, Salisbury, to do a Q and A – most of the questions coming from Twitter:
http://salisburyandstonehenge.net/salisbury-news/tom-gann-labour-candidate-q-and-a
http://salisburyandstonehenge.net/salisbury-news/nick-radford-liberal-democrat-candidate
http://salisburyandstonehenge.net/salisbury-news/john-glen-conservative-candidate

Cheers

Matt
Lynda Hallam says:

May 8, 2010 at 3:26 pm

I have just seen Will Straw & Billy Bragg campaigning outside LibDem HQ for electoral reform. Did I miss in 1997, 2001 or 2005 these people wanting electoral reform then when only 35% of the country voted Labour? The sheer hypocrisy of these people.
John Shields says:

May 9, 2010 at 2:11 pm

I confess that I’m speaking as someone who until recently unequivocally supported FPTP, but anyway, I’m beginning to revise my position, so here goes… Firstly, there are two great supposed advantages to FPTP. Firstly, it delivers strong government and avoids hung parliaments. Er… Now, I know that hung parliaments are of course MUCH more likely under a PR system, but equally, I don’t think you can argue with voters, and nor can political parties show themselves to be afraid of PR – to be afraid of PR is to be afraid of votes themselves. Secondly, and I think more importantly, FPTP preserves the link between local people and Parliament: the last thing we want is a centrally dictated list of people with no nexus with local voters and communities. People would be unaccountable, and all representation would effectively be controlled by parties.

Now, what do we do about the current system, which seems only to benefit Labour and has delivered a manifestly flawed result? Well, firstly whatever system is chosen MUST preserve the local nexus, the locally driven political movements that FPTP, for all its faults, provides. Secondly, the Lib Dems must be modest in their proposals – whatever you think of the main parties, 4 million more people voted Tory than Lib Dem, and even if the whole country didn’t swing to the Tories, it equally didn’t entirely endorse the other parties’ visions – indeed, a few thousand votes more here and there, and the Tories would have been the subject of fawning headlines about an ‘historic victory’ etc., etc. Third, and I’m saying this as someone who is not a Labour supporter, whatever system is produced, it cannot wipe out the Labour movement. Yes, on a personal level, I think many of their policies are retrograde and outdated, but Labour are a key part of our political system. I have a feeling that, under pure PR, they would find themselves pretty quickly becoming a small irrelevance, as the Lib Dems have hitherto been under FPTP. However much I dislike the party, I would not have this happen.
John Shields says:

May 9, 2010 at 2:16 pm

I have been complaining to the BBC and generally around the blogosphere about the use of the word ‘progressive’. The BBC are talking of a ‘progressive’ Lib-Lab coalition. This implies a value judgment, and whatever you think of the parties’ policies, this is not impartial reporting. Every party thinks of their policies as ‘progressive’. I’ll bet the BNP even calls its policies ‘progressive’!
John Shields says:

May 9, 2010 at 3:35 pm

I agree with Lynda Hallam – Tony Blair ditched the idea of political reform: in the last election he got a smaller share of the vote than the Tories did this week, and yet was returned with a big majority. Labour has benefited hugely from FPTP, and yes, it’s just desperate and hypocritical to have this ‘deathbed’ conversion to PR. Gordon Brown is a serious politician – and when he’s fighting for his political survival, stuck in a corner, you can expect him to come out guns blazing. The Liberals really shouldn’t fall for the lures he’s dangling in front of hem as part of that breakout.
John Shields says:

May 9, 2010 at 3:46 pm

I also agree with Chris Burnett – there’s some good intelligent discussion going on on this site, but it’s very biased, and in a lot of the comments, what would be reasoned argument is tempered by less than dispassionate analysis (it also doesn’t help having a list of ‘progressives’ on the right hand side – people have got to wake up to the fact that ‘progressive’ means different things to different people; thus, overall, it means nothing).

If you go on to the Coffee House website run by the Spectator, you’ll find similarly biased views from the Tory side of the fence. Both Coffee House and Left Foot Forward have valuable contributions to make and are very good sites, but both would both profit from examining the different sides of argument in greater detail.
John Shields says:

May 9, 2010 at 3:59 pm

If you think the Tories are in-fighting, just imagine what’s happening in the Lib Dem camp! I think the Lib Dem position is very week currently – not much worse than the other two parties, of course, but very weak still. They can’t seek to join a government with Labour: Gordon Brown is obviously a non-starter, as over 70% of the population clearly don’t want him as PM; and would people put up with another ‘unelected’ Labour PM? I doubt it. To do this would be electoral suicide for the Lib Dems: in fact, I would go further – for the good of UK parliamentary democracy, they mustn’t do it. There would be riots. A Lib-Con alliance recognises the only absolutely certain result of this election, namely that Labour lost.

Which means, they’ve got to reach a deal with the Tories. This is obviously not going to please anyone – Tory voters will be annoyed at any compromise on First Past the Post; Lib Dem voters will be annoyed at anything short of full PR. And both camps probably hate each other anyway. Well, here’s news for the lot of them: neither full PR nor full FPTP are going to result from the Lib-Con (perhaps it should be called ‘Whig’?!) deal. And that’s something everyone’s just got to accept. But, on the positive side, we’ll end up with a Cabinet and government that has been at least partly endorsed by 60% of the population – that’s got to be a victory for democracy, no? I mean, let’s not be children about this: we’re at least getting SOME of our sweeties, even if it’s not the full sweet shop.
Al says:

May 13, 2010 at 6:21 pm

I think much more attention should get paid to womens equality (or lack there of) under the new ConDem coalition. The issue of race equality is no where to be seen in the media either.
The new cabinet are mainly white middle-aged men (two thirds of whom went to private school by the way) which is not progressive, is it? Theresa May is the new Home Secretary and Equality Minister and lets face it, she’s not going to have time to commit properly to both. From a total of 29 individuals attending cabinet, there will be just four women and one, Sayeeda Warsi, is unelected and a “minister without portfolio”. She is also the only non-white member.
What happened to a progressive, diverse and ‘plural’ politics promised by Clegg? Change was supposed to be moving forward not taking a number of steps back. I’m not saying put women in cabinet just for the sake of it, if they can’t do the job (aka do back to Teresa May who thinks being a feminist is all about wearing a t-shirt for self-identification and voting appalling on equality issues, such as abortion and gay adoption.) There are a number of women in the ConDem alliance that could have been put forward for cabinet positions, albeit both parties are behind Labour in womens representation.
Equality is definately one policy area in which the majority of the population, who are not represented by the cabinet, will have to watch.
Bill Sperco says:

May 19, 2010 at 6:19 pm

Why is Dr Jon Cruddas not standing? He is by far the best candidate!! A leadership election without him will be an opportunity sorely missed
John Green says:

May 22, 2010 at 11:38 pm

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph today, Mr. Balls said: “We just lost our way on some issues in the second term.”

The fact of the matter is that Labour has lost all credibility after thirteen years of mendacity, sleaze and sheer, mind-boggling incompetence.

On a personal front, the three architects of the New Labour project have shown themselves to be such unappealing characters: Blair the Liar, Brown, the economic incompetent who has dropped us all in the deepest, thickest “brown stuff” imaginable, and Mandleson, the Wicked Fairy, waving her malevolent wand over all and sundry. These three pantomime characters surrounded themselves with a host of political midgets, some of whom will now fight for the party leadership. We know from the many insiders who have published their diaries, that these characters did not trust each other and employed hosts of “advisors and spokespersons” to plot against each other. Why should anyone else trust them?

Until the Labour party faces up to its deep flaws and short-comings, its future looks extremely bleak. It desperately needs some people with integrity, brains and political astuteness. It needs to replace Brown’s despicable and sordid “moral compass” with an ethos to inspire. I don’t see that happening sometime soon.
maxinefrasermf@yahoo.co.uk says:

May 28, 2010 at 2:47 pm

I am surprised that Labour has not made more of the abolition of EMA. It really is a lifeline for poorer students and I fear its abolition will truly discourage poorer students from staying on at college. Surely that is retrogressive and will not help the poor. Is anybody on the progressive opposition side going to take up the EMA mantle??? Who is going to champion the rights of poorer students for whom the EMA is a necessity, not a luxury!!! Those poorer students whom Nick Clegg claims he is the champion of need to be supported throughout and after they have left school. Receipt of EMA can make all the difference between staying at college and doing nothing at all and becoming a NEAT
John says:

June 30, 2010 at 9:45 am

I’m waiting for your critique of Jack Straw’s prisons policy against that of Ken Clarke’s. Would you dare publish anything that goes against the former?
Harry Barnes says:

July 13, 2010 at 8:27 pm

Have a look to see how this local initiative over the Labour leadership contest is going – http://dronfieldblather.blogspot.com/2010/06/calling-those-with-voting-rights-in.html
Its birth is explained in the following item which I placed on the Fabiano Society web-site “Next Left” – http://wwwnextleft.org/2010/06/case-for-ralphs-milibandism.html
Andy Burnham has replied and will produce a personal manifesto in line with our call. Our actions might now get replies out of the other 4 candidates. But backing and help to raise our profile would be welcome.
GORDON says:

August 3, 2010 at 4:02 pm

I don’t think David Cameron should be sticking his thumb up very many more times, when they read the article by BRAWDY on MP Peter Lilley
Posted on the web site for. HARPENDEN PEOPLE for all his constituents to read.
When he is forced to Explain the Huge criminal Government action he played a major role in.
There might be millions of people, like those the Roman Amphitheatres 2 thousands years ago, turning their thumbs “down” when they understand the implications of David Cameron’s Political part, along with MP Peter Lilley in the Conservatives “Lost” “Stolen” 3 Nuclear Weapons crime and the detonation of one of those Conservative weapons by North Korea on 25 May 2009.

or even more Politically damaging, if the Derbyshire Police are forced to make PUBLIC, to the CHILCOTT INQUIRY or International Press, the “SECRET” ARMS TO IRAQ Files and Dossiers removed using a Court Proceeds of Crime order from former Intelligence Advisor to the Select Committee of the DTI
Ms TARA ANDREA DAVISON.

Having been arrested in January 2010 in North Wales, she is using her “SECURITY BLANKETS” to protect her from prosecution, with details of ALL the DIRT on our CONSERVATIVE, LABOUR Politicians and High Profile VIP’s who were ALL involved in “ARMS TO IRAQ” Trade.

But then, Just like The Cover-up’s in the
SCOTT INQUIRY
MATRIX – CHURCHILL
PAN AM 103
DODI & DIANA
DR DAVID KELLY
and
THE CHILCOTT INQUIRY.

The Truth will eventually come out to HANG THEM ALL.