That was the life that was

I don't normally do telly reviews, but given that last night's ten-year reunion of This Life was the closest we come to "event television" these days, I thought I would make an exception.

Iain Dale, clearly as big a fan of the original as I was, thinks it was "outstanding," a reference to the last line of the last series, uttered by Warren when Milly clomped Rachel after discovering she had told Egg about her secret affair with O'Donnell. (Still with me?)

Anyway, while it was good to catch up with the former flatmates again after all this time, the main problem with it to my mind was its lack of believability - in total contrast to the original series in which the believability of the characters was its very essence.

Basically, we all knew people like Myles, Egg, Milly, Anna and Warren. I was actually at uni with Amy Jenkins, who wrote it, and while she did not base her characters on individual members of the UCL Law Faculty, it had its fair share of driven careerists (Milly), sexual predators (Anna), rich boys playing at law (Myles), and state school kids who didn't quite fit in (Warren).

By contrast, I don't know anyone who bought himself a huge house in the country at the age of 28 after making a fortune in Hong Kong, and neither do I know anyone who became an overnight literary sensation after finally completing a novel he had been working on for a decade.

The homespun stars of This Life seemed to have joined the ranks of the super-rich and the moderately famous, which, for me, immediately put them at a distance. It wasn't helped by the fact that Egg, the character I once most identified with, had clearly grown up into an egotistical twat.

Milly's conversion from superlawyer to supermum was more believable. As Anna shrewdly pointed out, she poured the same commitment, the same earnestness into bringing up her child that she once poured her cases when she worked all hours at O'Donnell's practice.

By contrast, Anna seemed to have turned into a cliche of the woman who suddenly realises she "can't have it all" after reaching the top of her profession in her mid-30s. Did it really take her ten years to realise that this is what happens?

The other thing I found really irritating was the lack of continuity between the end of the second series (which was not written by Jenkins) and last night's episode, notably in the relationship between Egg and Milly which had all but foundered after her fling with O'Donnell.

In one of the most powerful scenes of the final 1997 episode, he told her: "I told you that if you sleep with someone else while you're going out with me, it's over." You really believed Egg meant this when he said it, but now we discover that apparently he didn't mean it all.

I think Egg would have continued running his restaurant, maybe making a moderate success of it, while Milly would eventually have married O'Donnell. These were a couple going their separate ways for most of the second series - how are we expected to believe they would still be together ten years on?

It would have been great if they could have got Natasha Little (Rachel) involved. The frisson between her and Milly was part of what drove the second series and I half expected her to get wind of the reunion and turn up uninvited.

The plot denouement itself was neat. Anna had come along in search of a sperm donor to help her realise her dream of motherhood, which of course we all assumed would be Myles. In fact, she asked Warren, although you didn't get to see them actually do the deed.

But then Anna went and shagged Myles after all, leaving me wondering whether we really were being asked to believe that Myles would let Warren co-parent his own child.

If so, I'm afraid that was no more credible than the idea of Myles - a consummate office politician in the original but never really the sharpest tool in the box - as a Tory millionaire with a string of hotels.

All in all, I would prefer to remember the end of This Life as Milly and Rachel brawling on a dancefloor at Myles's first wedding. Now that really was "outstanding."

The great game of political forecasting

Mike Smithson is currently inviting entries to his annual Political Forecaster of the Year contest over on PoliticalBetting.com. There are 27 questions in all, ranging from the holders of the major offices, to the extent of the post-Blair bounce, to the likely net gains and losses in the May elections.

My entry is already in, but for the benefit of my own readers, here are my answers to the first five questions together with a short explanation of my choice.

On Christmas Day 2007 who will be…? (50 points for each correct answer except where stated)

1. Prime Minister (bonus of 150 points for correct answers that are not Gordon Brown.) As it's a game, that 150 point bonus looked very tempting. But I genuinely do believe it will be Gordon, and I'm not about to switch horses now.

2. Leader of the Opposition. It will be David Cameron. The Tory right may not like what he is doing, but they won't move against him. Until he loses an election, that is.

3. Leader of the Liberal Democrats. Nick Clegg, after a narrow victory over Chris Huhne. Expect Sir Ming to bow out during the summer "on health grounds" after continuing to fail to make an impact.

4. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. This one is the closest to call but I am plumping for Jon Cruddas over Hilary Benn, just because I think Labour members will see it as their chance to have a "say."

5. Chancellor of the Exchequer. Will be David Miliband, in return for not standing for leader. The Miliblogger is the only man who can beat Gordy, and he will have extracted the Treasury job as the price of the deal.

Update: Mike is also inviting contributions on who will be the first minister to resign or be sacked this year. Patricia Hewitt looks quite good value to me at 18-1.

A return to barbarism

I have made it clear in previous posts that I am opposed to the death penalty, even for criminals of the magnitude of Saddam Hussein, but even if you agreed with the execution, there is surely room for debate over the manner in which it was carried out, and I suspect this is what John Prescott was on about this morning.

As a means of ending someone's life, hanging is a barbaric practice which deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history. A public hanging such as this was, with people shouting abuse at Saddam as he went to the gallows, belongs even more surely in the middle ages.

If we have to have the death penalty at all, then surely the most humane method of killing is by lethal injection. To deny Saddam's humanity by arguing that this would be "too good" for him is simply to stoop to his level.

Some bloggers have decided to display the mobile phone video images of the moment of death. The blogosphere is a free world - mercifully - and that's their right. But Jonathan Calder on Liberal England has a typically thoughtful post in which he compares it to pornography, and I agree with him.

Podcast enters its second year

My Week in Politics Podcast is now one year old having orginally begun just before Christmas 2005 as an experiment on the this is regional websites which I was helping to manage at the time.

Regular readers of this blog may already have seen my look back at the political year 2006 and look ahead to 2007 in text form, but both are now available as podcasts. The Review of 2006 is available HERE, and the Preview of 2007 HERE.

Meanwhile, I am pleased to report some recognition for the podcast from Jonathan Shepherd over at Tory Radio, another blogger who helped pioneer the podcast medium. He has awarded me a CBE for "services to political podcasting" in his unofficial New Year's Honours List.

It's the only New Year's Honours List on which I am likely to feature, or indeed have any desire to, so cheers Jonathan!

2006 and all that

The last day of the year always brings conflicting emotions, but on the whole, I won't be sad to see the back of 2006. Like most years it began promisingly for us, with the works on our house in Derbyshire nearing completion and our family finally settling into some sort of normality after the change and upheaval of the past few years.

The defining moment of the year came on Good Friday, April 14. I had broken up for the Easter Holidays and we spent most of the day in the garden, planting new shrubs and trees ready for the summer.

Gill and I went to bed that evening feeling tired but happy with a week off work stretched out ahead of us. Then, at 3.20am, we got the news that my American brother-in-law Mitch Hodge had been killed in a road accident near his home in Arizona.

We have had many things to be thankful for over the past 12 months, not least the joy that our son George continues to bring us. But when we look back on 2006 in the years to come, it will always be tinged with sadness.

Tonight, as has become our custom in recent years, we will see out the old year over a meal with some of our oldest friends - or perhaps I should say auldest acquaintances.

New Year is, above all, a time of hope, a time for fresh starts. I feel that it's not just in the sphere of British politics that we need one of those.

My preview of 2007

There are a lot of New Year predictions on the blogosphere today, so here is my analysis of what the political year ahead will bring, first published in this morning's Newcastle Journal.

***

Over the years, the job of writing this annual look ahead to what the next 12 months may have in store politically has involved a certain amount of crystal ball gazing.

But it's a bit different this time round. The key political event of 2007 is already more or less set in stone.

At some as yet indeterminate point in the next six months, Tony Blair will finally step down as Prime Minister, almost certainly after chalking-up ten years in 10 Downing Street this May.

Speculation about the political year ahead therefore really boils down to two questions: who will replace him, and what kind of Government will that successor seek to lead?

Much has already been written about the likely leadership denouement, but there are, to my mind, four basic scenarios as to how it could all pan out.

The first is the one that most Labour supporters in their heart of hearts still long for - a "stable and orderly transition."

In this chain of events, Mr Blair announces his departure date, endorses Gordon Brown as his successor, forestalls any serious Cabinet challenge, and the sunlit uplands ensue.

It could still happen, but such is the fragility of the Blair-Brown relationship - and the visceral hatred between the two camps - that the odds must be against.

The second, and to my mind more likely scenario, then, is that Mr Brown wins the leadership, but has to fight a nasty and potentially divisive battle to get it.

It is hard, at this stage, to predict where the challenge will come from. Both David Miliband and Alan Johnson have ruled themselves out in what look like unequivocal terms.

But as I have said more than once in this context, politics abhors a vacuum, and if Mr Brown appears at any point to be beatable, then someone, somewhere will step up to the mark.

In my view, Home Secretary John Reid remains both overwhelmingly the most likely challenger, and the one most likely to force the Chancellor into a serious battle.

Which neatly brings us to the third scenario, in which Mr Brown is not only forced into a serious contest, but actually manages to lose it.

It could surely only happen if a large section of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the party membership became convinced that he could not secure a fourth election victory.

The key to that is the polls, and in particular Mr Brown's personal ratings when up against Tory leader David Cameron.

If these were to go into freefall, it is just conceivable that the Labour Party may reluctantly persuade itself that it was time to look elsewhere.

Perhaps the most intriguing scenario, though, is the fourth and final one, in which Mr Brown was not even a candidate in the leadership election at all.

It would require the intervention of a deus ex machina - either a huge political scandal in which he was implicated, or some personal family or health problem serious enough to force his withdrawal.

In those circumstances, the field would open up to perhaps six or seven candidates, including some of those currently pledged to support the Chancellor.

Messrs Miliband, Johnson, Reid and Hain would be there or thereabouts, but the dark horse could be Jack Straw, who would be seen by many as a natural compromise choice.

I did wonder whether to add a fifth scenario, in which Mr Blair does not stand down at all.

In terms of sheer comedy value, it almost merits inclusion, but not on any serious political criteria.

There was a time when the party, staring at a huge poll deficit and the prospect of a Cameron victory, might have turned and implored him to save them - but no more.

As one senior MP said a while back: "The Labour Party will let him do his ten years. If he tries to go on a day longer than that, they will kill him."

As for what sort of Government Mr Blair's successor will lead, Mr Brown for one has already made clear there will be a renewed emphasis on both constitutional reform and social justice if he takes over.

In Mr Blair's eyes, these are the kind of ideas that "butter no parsnips," but a period of decent, steady government free from scandal may be just what Labour needs.

But if there is one thing about which most commentators - and even some of the candidates - now agree, it is that it will have to be a new government.

Such is the low level of public esteem in which Mr Blair and his administration are now held that "continuity" is now no longer an option.

For beyond the timeframe of the next 12 months, Labour faces the prospect of what will surely be its most difficult election campaign since 1992.

The situation is not beyond recall. Mr Cameron too faces difficult challenges over the next year, not least the task of producing some actual policies in place of what so far has amounted to little more than mood music.

In short, the Tory leader remains vulnerable to the charge of all style and no substance, and it could yet all come good for Labour if it gets the leadership transition right.

But first, the party has to do what it really should have done a long time ago - and wave farewell to Mr Blair.

Hazel Blears goes up in my estimation

Whatever health minister Ivan Lewis has said today, there can be no doubt that Hazel Blears' protest against NHS reorganisation in her constituency is deeply embarrassing for the Government. It demonstrates not only that its internal discipline is continuing to break down, but also that ambitious, up-and-coming ministers like Blears are now able to defy those on the way down like Patricia Hewitt with impunity.

Blears also has the merit of being right. Like the abortive police force mergers project, which was sensibly scrapped by John Reid in one of his first acts on replacing Charles Clarke as Home Secretary, the current health reorganisation is doing exactly the opposite of what people want, and taking services further away from the people they serve.

In my area, the main A&E hospital in the centre of Derby is being closed and all services transferred to a site on the city's western extremity. That will no doubt make a huge amount of sense to people who live to the north, east and south of the city - not.

I have always regarded Hazel Blears as a just another shameless New Labour careerist, but perhaps there is more to her after all. She has certainly gone up in my estimation this week, and more importantly, I suspect she will also have gone up in the estimation of thousands of Labour members with votes in the party's deputy leadership election.

President Gore and other things I got for Christmas

Regular readers of this blog will know I was a huge fan of the political counterfactuals book, Prime Minister Portillo and Other Things That Never Happened. So it was great to find the new volume, President Gore.... lying under my Christmas Tree on Monday.

This one digs deeper back into political history than the original, for instance postulating what might have happened if the 1832 Great Reform Act had not been passed or if Sir Robert Peel had lived longer. I haven't had time to read it through from cover to cover yet, but three chapters dealing with more recent events immediately caught my eye.

The first, by Peter Riddell, looked at the question of what might have happened had Harold Macmillan succeeded in taking us into the Common Market in 1957. By and large I agree with Riddell that it would have made us far more European-minded as a country, but I disagree that it would have led to a moreorless permanent period of Conservative Government, under Macmillan and then Ted Heath, throughout the late 50s, 60s and early 70s. Riddell forgets that that was an era of political pendulum swings, and that Harold Wilson proved a much more successful election-winner than Heath.

The second standout chapter for me was written by the book's editor, Duncan Brack, and looks at what might have happened to the Liberal-SDP Alliance had it not quarrelled over defence and lost a third of its support during 1986. Brack presents a convincing argument that the row could have been avoided given a bit more political commonsense on the part of the protagonists, David Steel and David Owen, but I think he underestimates the extent to which Owen was determined to wreck the Alliance, and that, in this regard, the defence issue was little more than a pretext.

The most fascinating chapter, for me, was the one by R.J. Briand on whether,if John Major had become Chief Whip in 1987, would have have saved Margaret Thatcher from defenestration at the hands of her own party in 1990, only to see her defeated by Neil Kinnock at the ballot box in 1991. Quite possibly. By contrast, Mark Garnett's chapter on Michael Howard becoming leader in 1997 only served to demonstrate that very little would have changed for the Tories in that period, and that whoeever the Tories chose in 1997 and 2001, they were onto a loser.

Anyway, it all goes to show once again that there is very little historical inevitability about anything. I have always thought that the political history of my own lifetime would have turned out very differently if Jim Callaghan had fought an election in 1978, achieved a hung Parliament, gone into coalition with Steel, brought in PR, established a moreorless permament anti-Tory coalition....and relegated Margaret Thatcher to an interesting footnote about a failed ideological experiment instead of coming to dominate the landscape of the past 30 years.

The most wonderful time of the year

Christmas Eve is and always has been my favourite day of the year, a day of wonder and expectation, a day for wrapping presents and preparing good things to eat, a day for listening to Carols from Kings on the radio, and singing them in church and in Belper Market Square later tonight.

No matter how much they try to commercialise Christmas, or secularise it, or even just turn it into into a week-long food and drink fest punctuated by endless episodes of EastEnders, it will never, for me, lose its magic and spirituality.

So if anyone is visiting this blog today, it's time to stop thinking about politics, or even about England losing the Ashes, and start thinking about what it is that we are celebrating.

I leave you with the words of Thomas Hardy, who, in this short poem, summed up the meaning of Christmas better than I, or any other writer for that matter, could ever hope to do.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Wishing you a Christmas full of wonder

My Political Review of 2006

It's been a highly eventful year politically, so for those who would like to relive with me the ups and downs of the past 12 months, here's my Political Review of the Year, first published in this morning's Newcastle Journal.

***

IT was the year of Charles Kennedy’s downfall, the year of David Cameron’s rise and rise – and the year John Prescott was forced to give up any remaining claims to be taken seriously.

But the political year 2006 will be remembered, above all, for one over-arching story – the long, slow demise of Prime Minister Tony Blair.

It was a story that took on many different guises. The police investigation into “cash for honours.” The increasingly bitter power struggles with Gordon Brown. Iraq’s descent into chaos following the disastrous war that Mr Blair helped initiate.

But these stories were really all one – the story of a leader who had long outstayed his welcome, yet who, in the vain search for a legacy, continued to rage against the dying of the light.

But to begin at the beginning – to borrow another of Dylan Thomas’s famous phrases – the year kicked off with attention focused on another party leader.

Dissatisfaction with Mr Kennedy’s leadership had been simmering within Liberal Democrat ranks for a while, and before the New Year was a week old it had finally boiled over.

Having belatedly admitted to a drink problem, Mr Kennedy was forced out in a revolt by his own MPs, some of whom probably owed their seats to his personal popularity with the voters.

Sir Menzies Campbell saw off a spirited challenge from newbie MP Chris Huhne to win the leadership, but he lacks his predecessor’s common touch and the party’s ratings remained in the doldrums.

For the Tories, too, it was a testing year, as David Cameron continued his march towards the political centre-ground to the dismay of the party’s more traditional elements.

Like Mr Blair before him, Mr Cameron set out to define himself in opposition to his own party, notably by backing redistributive taxation and highlighting green issues.

It was all too much for some, and his talk of “tough love,” “hug a hoodie” and “letting sunshine win the day” was widely ridiculed.

But it seemed to strike a chord with the electorate, with the Tories ending the year eight points ahead of Labour in some polls – enough to convert into an outright election win.

The Cameron phenomenon was partly, though not solely responsible for the continuing political malaise within Labour.

For the fist time since 1997, Mr Blair was up against someone who looked like a genuine contender for power – but Labour seemed unsure of how to respond to the Tory young pretender.

With all the self-delusion of those who remain in power too long, the Prime Minister continued to see himself as part of the solution rather than the problem.

But the voters begged to differ, and a dismal set of local election results in May saw more and more Labour MPs come to the view that he should stand down sooner rather than later.

Initially, Mr Blair tried to blame the poor showing on the revelation of Mr Prescott’s affair with his diary secretary shortly before the poll, and a row over the deportation of foreign prisoners which had been badly mishandled by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

He staged a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle in which Mr Clarke was summarily sacked and Mr Prescott stripped of all his remaining powers.

But the view among a growing number of Labour backbenchers was that the person Mr Blair really needed to reshuffle was himself.

It all came to a head in September. A group of previously loyal MPs signed a letter demanding that Mr Blair set out a timetable for his departure.

At first, it seemed the tip of the iceberg. There was excited talk at Westminster that up to 50 MPs would join in and that a Cabinet minister would deliver the coup-de-grace with a Geoffrey Howe-style resignation.

But although the coup attempt faltered, Mr Blair was forced to make clear that he would stand down next summer, and that the forthcoming conference in Manchester would be his last.

The Blairites, furious that their man had been backed into such a corner, attempted to implicate the Chancellor in the plot as relations between Labour’s Big Two plummeted to an all-time low.

It was clear that a patching-up operation would be needed to get through the conference, but Mr Brown’s attempts at conciliation were undermined when Cherie Blair was heard to call him a liar during his keynote speech.

Thereafter, an uneasy truce prevailed. Mr Brown remained on probation, while the Blairites secretly hoped another contender might step up to the mark.

But their great hope, Environment Secretary David Miliband, ruled himself out of the race, while new Home Secretary John Reid also appeared reluctant to join in.

Mr Brown’s succession began to appear increasingly assured, if only from the lack of plausible alternatives.

He even received a somewhat double-edged endorsement from Mr Blair, who warned Mr Cameron during a Commons debate that a “big clunking first” would soon lay him out on the canvas.

By the year end, it seemed politics had gone into a bizarre state of inertia, with Mr Blair increasingly in office but not in power.

He suffered the humiliation of becoming the first serving premier to be questioned by police over abuse of the honours system, but still he hung on, sullying not just his party’s reputation but that of politics in general.

In an emotional final keynote conference speech in Manchester, Mr Blair had declared that his most important legacy would be a fourth term Labour Government.

But history may well judge that, by his actions during 2006, he greatly reduced the chances of such an outcome.

The Seven Best Things I did in 2006

James Higham has tagged me among others to name the seven best things I have done this year. This seems like a good, last-day-at-work-before-Christmas sort of thing to do, so happy to oblige, James.

Watched my son George continue to develop into a right little character.

Celebrated my fifth wedding anniversary.

Moved to a new role at work, away from the online-print interface into web project management.

Built up this blog from nothing to a place in Mr Dale's Top 10.

Bought a big family tent and enjoyed a lovely holiday in the Lakes

Finished landscaping my garden

Although I would rather not have had to do it, helped my sister organise a very moving send-off for my brother-in-law Mitch, who was killed in a road accident on Good Friday.

Who is now the "Bus Candidate?"

There's an interesting if ultimately rather academic discussion currently in progress on PoliticalBetting.com on who might win the Labour leadership if anything were to happen to Gordon Brown over the next few months - if he were to "fall under a No 13 bus" in the traditional Westminster parlance.

In the context of leadership speculation, the bus is used as a convenient shorthand for (i) a debilitating illness or family difficulty that might put a leadership candidate temporarily or permanently out of consideration, or (ii) the emergence of a sudden scandal that could engulf his or her hopes. Both are possibilities in Gordon's case, though unlikely.

In the event of GB being forced to pull out, Mike Smithson is backing David Miliband rather than John Reid to emerge as the frontrunner, although Miliband's September statement - "I am not a runner nor a rider for any of the jobs that are being speculated about" - appears to suggest he is not just ruling out a challenge to Gordon but making clear he will not be a candidate for the leadership in any circumstances.

For my part, I think both Miliband and Reid would struggle to build the kind of broadly based support within the party that would be needed to mount a successful challenge. Rightly or wrongly, they would both be seen as Blairite continuity candidates, and I think that, in the unusual circumstances of a Brown withdrawal, a compromise candidate would be certain to emerge.

The obvious name that springs to mind here is Jack Straw. He will not stand against Mr Brown, but I have always regarded it as a certainty that he would stand against anyone else. Jack knows his own worth, and as the next most experienced and senior figure in the Government after Mr Brown, he would regard himself as the natural successor were the Chancellor to be put hors de combat.

Margaret Beckett is also a possibility. She too would never oppose Brown, but she has an unerring habit of being in the right place at the right time politically, and it is more than conceivable that she could come through on the rails.

There is another factor which would put Straw and Beckett ahead of the likes of Miliband, and that is their age. If Gordon were put out of action, his people would look around for a caretaker leader who could be relied on to stand aside after four or five years, by which time Gordon might have overcome his personal or political difficulties.

Having observed Gordon Brown from a distance for a number of years, I am convinced he will never give up his ambitions of reaching No 10. And even if he were to be forced to do so temporarily, he will try to arrange things in such a way that he lives to fight another day.

BlogGems

An occasional series dedicated to bringing choice quotes from the blogosphere to a slightly wider audience.
No 4.

"She has done little of note other than issuing the usual identikit centrally produced Labour MP press releases and attracting unkind whispered comparisons to the density of porcine ordure."

- Labour Watch, on the failure of Gateshead East and Washington West MP Sharon Hodgson to be selected for the new Gateshead seat.