No substitute for experience

I am not, in principle, opposed to the idea of governments of all the talents, but the idea that you can take people who have been successful in one milieu and expect them to be able to repeat that success in the political arena has always seemed a dubious one to me.

So it doesn't greatly surprise me that Alan West has become the latest of Gordon's fresh talents to find himself in political difficulties, following on from the controversies that have surrounded Mark Malloch Brown, Digby Jones and Ara Darzi in the months since their original appointments.

A conspiracy theorist might see it all as evidence of a dark plot by Labour MPs to get rid of a bunch of outsiders they never wanted in the government in the first place, in the hope that next time round, the jobs might actually be handed out within the PLP.

Tempting though that theory undoubtedly is, I think it just shows there really is no substitute for political experience.

Scrapping ID cards tops your wish-list

Last week I asked readers of this blog to vote on what they thought should have been in the Queen's Speech that wasn't, listing ten policy ideas which I personally favour. The fairly unambiguous result is that the single policy which would you would most like to see is the scrapping of ID cards.

There now seems to be a growing consensus on this across the political spectrum. Gordon Brown still has the chance to ditch the scheme as an unwanted hangover of the Blair years, and given their own stance on it the Tories would be unable to criticise him for doing so, as they undoubtedly would if he attempted to reverse other aspects of the Blair legacy.

The full results of the poll, listing the ideas in order of popularity, were as follows:

• Scrapping ID card scheme 79pc
• Four-year fixed-term Parliaments 53pc
• Abolition of the Barnett Formula 52pc
• Referendum on EU Reform Treaty 51pc
• Fully-elected House of Lords 49pc
• Proportional representation 48pc
• Cap on party funding 35pc
• More action to combat inequality 34pc
• Full year's maternity pay 14pc
• Immediate end to airport expansion 14pc

The level of support for abolishing the Barnett Formula is scarcely surprising, given who the author of this blog is, but the degree of backing for other enthusiasms of mine such as fixed-term Parliaments and PR is encouraging.

Stephen Poliakoff: Genius, or overrated?

Like Paul Burgin I am a huge fan of Stephen Poliakoff, and would rate his 2006 dramas Friends and Crocodiles and Gideon's Daughter among the best things I've seen on the telly since the 70s golden age of I Claudius, Bouquet of Barbed Wire and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

But I couldn't help but feel a little let-down by the two more recent films, Joe's Palace, which was shown a week ago on Sunday, and Capturing Mary which had its first airing last night.

While both were brilliantly well-acted, as you might expect from an ensemble cast including the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, Sir Michael Gambon, Rupert Penry Jones, Ruth Wilson and Kelly Reilly, the storylines were exceptionally thin and at times downright unconvincing - for instance when, in Joe's Palace, Sir Michael's character enlists the help of a girl from the local deli (played by Rebecca Hall) to uncover a secret from his father's papers that has eluded scores of professional historians.

I personally think Joe's Palace and Capturing Mary would have worked better as a single film, with the latter shown as flashbacks as Mary unburdens herself to Joe in between the requisite bonking sessions involving Penry Jones and Reilly. It would probably have had to be about three hours long, but would, in my view, have had a much more substantial feel to it.

Poliakoff is of course being commissioned by the BBC to come up with this stuff, but I do wonder whether they are in danger of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and whether the corporation might be better advised to cast its net a little wider when it comes to showcasing new drama.

Meanwhile, for anyone who loved Friends and Crocodiles and is also a fan of the seminal 1990s artpop duo Mono, here's a special treat.