The death of TV cricket

This is the first summer since 1971 in which I have not watched a single ball being bowled live in an England Test series. It's left me feeling a bit bereft at times. In my bachelor days, sitting down with a couple of beers for a whole leisurely afternoon of ball-by-ball Test cricket was one of the great pleasures in life.

Sadly, this has not been possible since the foolish and completely counterproductive decision by the English Cricket Board to abandon terrestrial TV cricket coverage in favour of Murdoch's millions - all the more foolhardy since the decision was taken at the very moment when cricket had seemingly regained its rightful place in the national consciousness following the 2005 Ashes win.

Much as I miss watching the game, it's a price I'm prepared to pay for refusing to line the pockets of the man who has debased British culture and journalism more than any other single individual in the last 30 years.

Those now eulogising John Biffen should take note of this. For all his other many virtues, Biffen as Trade Secretary was the man who allowed Murdoch to buy The Times in 1981 and thereby emerge as the most powerful media figure in the UK.

More Family Matters...

A few weeks back, The Guardian published this excellent retrospective looking back at 50 years of the womens' page. I have to say it puzzled me a bit at the time, as whoever put it together seemed to be under the impression that the womens' page was only 50 years old and that iconic feminist Mary Stott was the page's first editor.

In fact, as I have known since my own childhood, they were wrong on both counts. The Guardian womens page - then called Mainly Women - was started in the early 1920s and its first editor was my great aunt, Madeline Linford, who continued in the role until she was succeeded by Stott in 1953.

What was especially odd about this omission was that the Guardian had not read its own cuttings. In 1971, it published an interview with Madeline in which she was clearly identified as the founder of the page. The interview was carried out by none other than Mary Stott.

Thankfully, there is no need for me to write a letter to the Guardian pointing out its error as my redoubtable aunt, Sylvia Michaelides, has already done so. Gratifyingly, the paper's former editor, Peter Preston, has also since written a column restoring Madeline to her rightful place in the paper's history.

Redwood and the Reverse Midas Touch

One of the very best books ever published about the decline and fall of the Tories between 1992 and 1997 was Guilty Men, written by Hywel Williams who was John Redwood's special adviser at the Welsh Office between 1993 and his resignation to challlenge for the Tory leadership in 1995.

Despite that previous working relationship, or perhaps even because of it, the book is not written from an especially pro- or anti-Redwood perspective. But what it does demonstrate is that most of the political enterprises with which the Wokingham MP has been associated have ended in failure.

I have met Redwood a few times, notably when I was doing the Lobby job for the South Wales Echo in the mid-90s, and while he is clearly an intensely intellectual person who finds it hard to descend to the level of ordinary mortals, the overall impression one comes away with is of a fairly decent human being.

But for all his decency and for all the genuineness of his convictions, Redwood has throughout his political career demonstrated the Reverse Midas Touch, ie everything he touches turns to shit.

Redwood's public reputation has never really recovered from that period in the early 1990s when he became the Tony Benn figure to John Major's Harold Wilson - an ideological maverick who behaved as if collective Cabinet responsibility did not apply to him, used left-leaning Wales as a test-bed for loony-right policies, and finally launched an opportunistic challenge for the leadership.

Call it being wise after the event, but I knew instinctively that Ken Clarke's 1997 leadership bid was doomed the minute he teamed up with Redwood in an attempt to block William Hague. Most Tory MPs thought it was more important to stop Redwood becoming Shadow Chancellor than to stop an untried and untested 36-year-old being handed the poisoned chalice of the Tory leadership at a time when Tony Blair was carrying all before him.

Hague, to his credit, realised that Redwood reminded the voters of the worst aspects of the Major years and sacked him from the Shadow Cabinet after a year, although his decision to replace him as Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary with the business guru turned failed politician Archie Norman was scarcely one of his most inspired appointments.

So, at a time when David Cameron as leader is trying to undo all the damage of that baleful period and reposition the Conservatives on the political centre ground, his decision to hand Redwoood the task of presiding over a policy review on business taxation and regulation policy has to go down as yet another strategic blunder.

There may be merit in some of his proposals. Much health and safety legislation, for instance, is as burdensome and annoying to the customer as it undoubtedly is for the businesses themselves.

On the other hand, making it easier for firms to make people redundant is absolutely the last thing we need in a country riven by job insecurity - the biggest single reason, in my view, why in spite of our increased prosperity, we are generally much less happy than we were 30 years ago when the British economy was regarded as a basket-case.

But that is not really the point. The point is that someone who is seen by the electorate as emblematic of Toryism's darkest hour and who was presumed politically dead and buried, has popped up wraith-like to remind them of exactly why they rejected the party in the first place.

The Tories will not like the comparison - but it is as if Neil Kinnock, at the start of his crusade to modernise the Labour Party in the mid-80s and wrest control from the loony left, had asked Benn to chair a review of party policy. The idea is as laughable as it is preposterous.

But the controversy over Redwood's tax cutting plans is symptomatic of a wider problem for Mr Cameron, in that, in contrast to New Labour during the 1994-97 period, the policy review process he has initiated is not under the control of the leadership.

This is the second one in succession, following Iain Duncan Smith's report on social policy which recommended restoring marriage to the heart of the tax system, which has presented the Tories as retreating into a right-wing comfort zone at a time when Gordon Brown is determined to drive them off the centre-ground.

Bizarrely, Cameron seems to view the job of chairing policy reviews as some sort of long-service reward for party grandees and figures from the past such as Redwood, IDS and Clarke rather than acting as central drivers of the party's modernisation programme.

He now needs to do two things. Firstly, ensure that all future such reviews come under the direct control of his office, and secondly, ensure that John Redwood and all other vestiges of the failed Major era are finally put out to grass.

Choose a Bright Morning, Clara

Yesterday dawned brilliantly bright and sunny up here in Derbyshire, a suitably auspicious day for the arrival of Clara Eloise Linford at 9.23am. She weighed 6lb 9oz - a little smaller than her brother George - and of course she is beautiful.

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37, v4

The great election conundrum

I've left a few comments here and there on other people's blogs with regard to the ongoing debate over whether Gordon Brown will call a snap autumn election, but not so far specifically blogged on it myself.

So what's my view? Well, at the risk of making an almighty arse of myself if El Gordo announces he's going to the country tomorrow, I don't think an election this year is in any way likely, for two main reasons.

First, Labour has a healthy majority of 66. Given that the polls are still reasonably close and the fact that boundary changes at the next election are likely to benefit the Tories by 20-30 seats, I cannot see why Gordon would want to hold an election which might cut that majority before one needed to held.

Even if he did achieve a mandate of his own, it would hardly look like a great victory if he was returned with a smaller majority than Tony Blair - or even worse, forced into a coalition deal with his pal Ming Campbell.

Secondly, and more fundamentally though, I believe that to succumb to the temptation to hold an election at this time could do irreparable damage to the "Brown brand."

In my view, his whole political appeal rests on him being seen by the public as a man of strong principle and serious purpose - not one who is merely looking to capitalise on what is almost certainly a temporary period of turmoil for David Cameron's Tories.

A snap election would also demonstrate a complete lack of faith in his own ability to sustain the "Brown bounce" - or at least the confidence and trust of the electorate - beyond some vaguely defined honeymoon period.

By next June, Brown will have had a year in which to demonstrate his seriousness of purpose, with hopefully some solid achievements behind him. That will be the time, in my view, to start putting his party in election mode.

I'm truly humbled...

Mike Smithson is in my view the best and most influential political blogger in the land (see previous post.) So I was hugely honoured to receive this nomination for Mr Dale's poll.

It's particularly gratifying in view of the fact that I've found it hard to post as often as I would like over recent months due to other commitments. But like Paddy McAloon* I have tried to maintain some "quality control" and I'm genuinely humbled that someone of Mike's stature should recognise this.

Meanwhile...two narrow near-misses in the Witanagemot Club Political Blogging Awards voted for by bloggers who support the establishment of an English Parliament.

In an encouraging sign that this blog has so far managed to avoid pigeonholing, it was voted both the 2nd best Labour-supporting blog behind Kerron Cross, and the 2nd best centre-ground blog, behind (somewhat bizarrely) Iain Dale.

* The guy out of Prefab Sprout who wrote about four double-albums' worth of material in the 1990s and didn't release any of it because he thought it wasn't up to the standard of their previous work.

The Top 20

Last year, I made it into the Top 10 of Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging in the UK. I don't really expect to do the same again - there's a lot more competition out there now and my work commitments have prevented me growing the blog as much as I would have liked in the past year - but Mr Dale is now working on a follow-up edition and wants your views as to which blogs should be included.

Naturally I hope that as a reader of this blog you'll vote for me, but either way please email your nominations to iain AT iaindale DOT com, typing Top 20 in the subject line and ordering them from 1 to 20. Your top blog gets 20 points and your twentieth gets 1 point.

The deadline for submitting your Top 20 to Iain is 15 August. Once all the entries are in, a lucky dip prize draw will take place in which the winner will win £100 worth of books and cds.

My Top 20, for what it's worth, is listed below. There will, I suspect, be few surprises here, although the last two blogs named are relative newcomers to the 'sphere which have really impressed me of late.

1 Political Betting
2 Iain Dale's Diary
3 Liberal England
4 Bloggerheads
5 Benedict Brogan
6 Chicken Yoghurt
7 Guido Fawkes
8 Dizzy Thinks
9 UK Daily Pundit
10 Skipper
11 Rachel from North London
12 Tom Watson
13 Nick Robinson
14 Mars Hill
15 Little Man in a Toque
16 The Nether World
17 Obsolete
18 Conservative Home
19 Kate's Home Blog
20 Newer Labour

The buzz around David Davis

Some interesting speculation on the Tory blogosphere over the last couple of days over whether David Davis is now becoming David Cameron's de facto deputy, and as such whether he rather than George Osborne or William Hague is now best placed to take over should Cambo fall under the bus or, alternatively, be ditched by his increasingly restive party.

I have to say the same thing occurred to me last week and was touched on in my weekend column, entitled Could the Tories ditch Dave? Very asutely, Davis managed to be both 100pc loyal to Cameron while dramatically improving his own standing in the eyes of party members.

"He was certainly making all the right noises this week, going out of his way to be loyal to Mr Cameron and demanding that MPs show “a bit of discipline” – exactly what the grassroots like to hear."

The column can be read in full HERE and is also available as a podcast HERE.

In remembrance of sporting times past

Today has been something of an ultimate Sunday. The sun has shone for what seems like the first time in weeks, enabling our little family to enjoy some much-needed quality time together in the garden, while today's Observer Sport Monthly has been an absolute delight to read. It was editor Jason Cowley's last issue and a strong vein of nostalgia for golden summers of sport long gone ran through the whole edition.

The first thing to catch my eye was a magisterial piece of writing by Tim Pears on Lasse Viren, one of my childhood sporting heroes on account of his heroic performances in the Munich and Montreal Olympics. Pears correctly identified the 1976 5000m final in Montreal as the greatest distance race of all-time, and his vivid account of it - and the way Viren held off possibly the most talented field ever assembled to defend his title - had me purring with joy.

There was also a rather obvious but nevertheless enjoyable comparison of this year's rain-drenched sporting summer with its rather more memorable counterpart of thirty years ago - the year Liverpool won the European Cup for the first time, Virginia Wade improbably triumphed at Wimbledon, Tom Watson overcame Jack Nicklaus in the Duel in the Sun at Turnberry, and best of all, Geoffrey Boycott returned to Test cricket to score his 100th hundred against the Australians at Headingley.

In between the two, rather pointedly, was a savage appraisal of the current state of English football and why the relentless takeover by foreign tycoons could only happen here. I don't often blog in praise of the mainstream media, but then again, I rarely find so much in a Sunday paper to keep me happy for several relaxing hours as I did today.

Happy Memories....

The start of the Parliamentary recess today spells the end of an era for a great and venerable journalistic institution - the Press Bar at the Palace of Westminster. Apparently it's going to move next door as part of a "rationalisation" of press facilities that the Commons authorities have long planned.

The Guardian's resident lobby gossip Bill Blanko - who is almost certainly not Simon Hoggart or Michael White as is commonly supposed - has written a moving lament in his latest column. Reading this I was not surprised to hear that Rob Gibson, former Gallery chairman and songsmith, had composed a musical tribute to mark the occasion.

It's two years or more since I had my last drink in there, but I still miss the place. Yes, the Lobby was a brutal, backstabbing environment at times, but it also had great camaraderie, and none more so than on those magical Press Bar evenings when a leaving do or some other celebration was in full swing.

I hope they manage to replicate some of that atmosphere in the new "cafe bar" opening next door in the old canteen area, but something tells me it won't ever be quite the same again.

Only Human

Guido has a consuming hatred of Gordon Brown and his blogging about the Prime Minister has to be viewed in that light. But this post today on the "dough-nutting" of El Gordo at PMQs made me laugh out loud, especially where he says: "Jacqui Smith looked like the moody one out of the Human League."

I assume by this he means Susanne Sulley rather than fellow Sheffield Crazy-Dazy-Disco-Club* dancer Joanne Catherall on account of her blonde hair and ample cleavage, although it seems unlikely that Susanne quite shared Jacqui's distaste for the funny fags. Could they by any chance be related? I'll leave you to judge.

* Later The Limit Club, now a shopping centre.

So much for the new localism

Local government reform is a notoriously difficult area and one in which you are inevitably going to end up upsetting one group or another. But I for one am surprised by the thrust of the latest proposals for unitary councils announced this week.

This government - both before and after the Blair-Brown handover - has made great play of its commitment to "new localism," and to devolving decision-making down to the lowest possible level. So it is disappointing that the big losers in this week's plans seem to be the district councils rather than the counties.

Cornwall, Durham, Northumberland, Shropshire and Wiltshire county councils will all become giant all-purpose authorities, with the districts in those areas disappearing. Two other county councils - Cheshire and Bedfordshire - will cease to exist in their current form, but other large single-purpose authorities will be created in those areas.

Why is the government doing this? Well, larger authorities tend to cost the taxpayer less, both in terms of administrative overheads and through economies of scale. I think what this goes to show is that when push comes to shove, governments will always put saving money before the importance of local democracy.

There may be another, less obvious explanation, and that is that the government is seeking to compensate for the loss of the regional assemblies whose abolition was announced the week before last. This will require the creation of "joint boards" of local authorities to oversee region-wide functions such as transport planning, and this will be far simpler with two or three counties than with 15-20 districts.

If I am right about this, it is surely another example of the operation of the law of unintended consequences - how abolishing an admittedly unpopular regional tier of governance actually ends up not bringing decision-making closer to the people, but taking it further away.

About time too

By choosing today to announce a pledge to reform the honours system to reward unsung heroes in the week following the conclusion of the loans-for-lordships investigation, Gordon Brown couldn't really be making it any clearer that he intends to conduct his government in a very different way from Tony Blair.

There will, in any case, be no more coronets for cash, at least under Labour. Reform of the House of Lords to bring in a 100pc elected second chamber will, I am confident, be a Labour manifesto pledge at the next election, and if Gordon wins, the backwoodsmen who have fought for 100 years to retain this vestige of the feudal system will finally be forced to admit defeat under the Salisbury Convention.

But while Gordon is at it, he really should go much further in dismantling an honours system which is rooted in the days of Empire and which, in its absurd hierarchy of categories, still helps to perpetuate the class divide in British society.

It's all very well to hand out honours to Britain's "Everyday Heroes," in the words of Mr Brown's latest book. But not if that means that lollipop ladies and local charity fundraisers are still awarded MBEs while senior civil servants continue to collect their KCMGs (otherwise known as Kindly Call Me God).