Saturday, April 14, 2007

Where does the buck stop?

Is there a wider lesson to be learned from the debacle over whether the sailors captured by Iran should have been allowed to sell their stories? Who is really to blame for creating the kind of political culture in which this was initially seen as a good idea? This was the subject of my weekend column in the Journal and Derby Evening Telegraph today, and here it is in full.

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The practice once quaintly known as "chequebook journalism" has nowadays become so commonplace that an entire cottage industry has grown up around it - one that goes by the name of Max Clifford Associates.

But twenty or so years ago, when the phrase was first coined, it was clearly understood to be a perjorative term for what was considered the dubious practice of buying newspaper stories for cash.

Back then, few imagined that a group of serving members of the Royal Navy who had just been engaged in a major international incident would one day be given official approval to sell their stories for six-figure sums.

But that was precisely what happened last weekend before the Government, realising it had a public relations disaster on its hands, executed a swift u-turn.

The Navy's initial response to the outcry appeared to be to try to maintain that the decision had been made internally, without wider MoD or ministerial involvement.

But it was obvious from the start that such a decision would have to have been taken, or at the very least approved, at a political level - or that if it wasn't, it should have been.

Belatedly, Defence Secretary Des Browne admitted he had indeed known of the decision, and insisted that the buck stopped with him.

At the same time, however, he maintained that although he had known of it and not put a stop to it, he had not approved the decision as such - a rather hair-splitting distinction even by New Labour standards.

Mr Browne has been hitherto one of the Government's lesser-known figures, a somewhat faceless apparatchik whose rise through the ministerial ranks has been as stealthy as it has been steady.

His elevation to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after the 2005 election was the subject of a minor Whitehall controversy.

The post had apparently been earmarked by Tony Blair for the former Home Office minister John Denham, who resigned over the Iraq War with Robin Cook in 2003.

But Gordon Brown, who has always insisted on the right to appoint his own deputies, had already promised the job to his pal Des, and not for the first time, Mr Blair fought shy of a confrontation with his Chancellor.

In the event, he proved just the sort of middle-ranking minister Mr Blair likes - competent, low-key, and seemingly adept in keeping himself out of trouble.

He was duly rewarded with what seemed to some to be a startling promotion to Defence Secretary last May when Charles Clarke was sacked and the much-travelled John Reid moved to take up his current berth at the Home Office.

Again, Mr Browne proved the doubters wrong, and his quiet effectiveness in a difficult role had him spoken of a few weeks back as a possible Chancellor in a Gordon Brown government.

But as if to prove the old truism that everyone eventually rises to the level of their own incompetence, Mr Browne came back down to earth last week with a bump - and now his very survival as a minister is in question.

Much will now depend on his statement to the House of Commons on Monday, but the damage has already been done by Mr Browne's confused accounts of the affair.

His initial defence was that he was "not content" with the decision, but that he believed he had no choice under the rules but to acquiesce in it.

But given that any remotely competent lobby hack would know that all interviews with service personnel have to be cleared by the MoD press office, this is scarcely convincing.

And Mr Browne's case has not been helped by yesterday's revelation that the Press Complaints Commission had offered to help the MoD deal with the problem, but been rebuffed.

Aside from the Defence Secretary's plight, the whole episode of the 15 sailors' detention and subsequent release has not been a happy one for the Government.

Even prior to their release, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had faced criticism for her apparently rather weak response, branding Iran's actions as merely "unacceptable" as opposed to the more trenchant language some might have favoured.

The release itself was a public relations triumph for Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, whose mixture of demagogic charm and political extremism makes him quite possibly the most dangerous man on the planet.

In the wider context of the diplomatic effort to prevent the Iranian president acquiring nuclear weapons, the affair seems to have had no impact at all.

In the final analysis, is this what Harold Macmillan might have called a little local difficulty, or is there a wider political lesson in it all?

Well, the obvious conclusion is that when things start to go wrong for a government, as they did for Mr Blair's long ago, you eventually reach the point where absolutely nothing goes right.

The idea, floated in the immediate aftermath that the release, that it would provide Mr Blair and Labour with a boost in the run-up to the local election campaign has proved risible.

Scotland and the SNP threat seems to have become the focus of the Government's worries on that score, and it is ironic that Mr Blair, who once dismissed the Scottish media as a bunch of unreconstructed self-abusers, is having to spend the dying days of his premiership there.

If there is a deeper lesson, though, it is surely to do with the media culture that New Labour has by turns encouraged and fed-off during its decade in power.

Only an administration which hijacked the death of a Princess to make itself look good and which thought 9/11 was a good day to bury bad news would think that allowing Navy personnel to sell their stories was a good idea.

It is all very well Mr Blair saying with the benefit of hindsight that it wasn't such a great idea after all, but in a political culture which views the media as an extension of Whitehall, it is scarcely surprising that such things happen.

It was Mr Blair and his sidekicks who created that culture. And if the buck stops anywhere, it is there.

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

What will be Blair's legacy?

What will Tony Blair most be remembered for? Leading Labour to three election victories or Iraq? The minimum wage or cash for honours? Have your say in my current poll which can be accessed HERE or via the sidebar.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Will a Miliband bid bring Johnson in?

The man himself continues to deny it, but speculation about a David Miliband challenge to Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership continues unabated. Political betting guru Mike Smithson has today become the latest pundit to predict a Miliband candidacy, following last weekend's Sunday Telegraph tale that John Reid would be giving the Environment Secretary his backing.

But here's a question no-one seems to have asked as yet: what impact will a Miliband challenge have on other wannabe leaders who have thus far ruled themselves out of challenging Brown - ostensibly on the basis that he is the best candidate, but secretly because they don't think they can beat him?

Look at it this way. So long as Brown remains the only serious candidate, and overwhelmingly the most likely winner, there really is no great incentive for someone like Alan Johnson or Hilary Benn to challenge him. Far better to settle for the deputy leadership and (hopefully) a big job in the Brown Government.

But the moment that situation changes, and Brown faces a serious challenge which could theoretically result in him being defeated, then by my reckoning, all bets are off, and all earlier denials of interest so much hot air.

Such a scenario would present a particularly acute dilemma for the fifty-somethings Johnson, Benn and Peter Hain were the 40-year-old Miliband to be that challenger. The current consensus is that if Miliband does stand, he will at the very least establish himself as the heir-apparent, and could even win.

But that, of course, is the last thing Alan Johnson wants. He doesn't want the Labour leadership to "skip a generation" - at least not just yet. He wants to be deputy so that he can slip effortlessly into Gordon's shoes if the next election goes belly-up. The same may apply, to a slightly lesser extent, to Benn and Hain.

Hence my hunch is that if Miliband does stand against Gordon - and I'm still by no means convinced he will - he won't be the only one.

The "ultras" - Reid, Charles Clarke, even Blair himself - may all line up behind him, but he won't get a clear run. And at 40, with other, vastly more experienced people for the Labour Party to choose from, why on earth should he?

* Historical footnote. Similar calculations about whether a challenge to an established frontrunner could create a domino effect causing others to throw their hats into the ring also operated last time round, in the 1994 leadership contest.

One of the principal though lesser-known reasons Brown didn't stand on that occasion was that had he done so, it would have brought his old rival Robin Cook into the race.

With the support of the left and the likely second preference votes of Margaret Beckett and John Prescott, Cook would in all likelihood have come second, ahead of Brown, establishing himself as the de facto No 2 in the Labour pecking order.

People who knew Brown and Cook of old in their Edinburgh days have told me this was something Brown would have wanted even less than to see Blair leading the party.

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Another one bites the dust...

The left-of-centre blogosphere will be a poorer place for the loss of The Daily. At its height, it was in my view one of the top two or three left-leaning blogs in the UK, and a regular source of interesting material on the Labour Deputy Leadership contest in particular.

Now it is no more, it would be nice to know who was actually behind it, as they were clearly Westminster insiders.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Blair's place in history

Hats off to the Observer for its magnificent retrospective on the Blair Years on Sunday, the centrepiece of which was a magisterial essay from the essential chronicler of those years, Andrew Rawnsley.

Predictably for one who has always been seen as something of a New Labour boulevardier, Rawnsley's ultimate conclusion on the Blair premiership is a positive one.

"Some Prime Ministers merely preside over their time. Better Prime Ministers change their time. When Tony Blair's portrait goes up on the staircase wall at Number 10, he will leave office with a good claim to belong to that select company of Prime Ministers who change the future," he says.

To its credit, however, the Ob makes room for an alternative perspective from historian Dominic Sandbrook, who writes: "Truly great Prime Ministers challenge the status quo. They do not simply accept it. Blair seems destined to be remembered therefore as a consummately skilled political operator with brilliant tactical instincts but no radical or compelling long-term vision."

It probably won't surprise many people to know that I'm with Sandbrook on this. Any leftward shift in the political centre of gravity under Blair has been marginal when compared with the huge rightward shift under Thatcher which, by and large, her successor-but-one has accepted.

For me, he will go down in history as someone who had a historic opportunity to rebuild a social democratic political consensus in the UK, but who wasted his first term worrying about getting re-elected, his second on the disaster of Iraq, and his third on his preoccupation with his own legacy.

As Sandbrook writes: "Blair could have used his massive majorities to ram through radical changes in the health service, reorganise the railways, reconstitute the House of Lords, overhaul the pensions system, reform the electoral system, push for greater integration in the EU, even write a new constitution.

"If he had managed two or three - perfectly plausible in 10 years as Attlee could have told him, his domestic legacy would be uncontestable. But he never did."


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Saturday, April 07, 2007

May 3 and beyond

Today's column in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Evening Telegraph aims to catch-up on what happened while I was away and look ahead to the local election campaign and its likely aftermath. Here it is in full. It is also now available as a Podcast.

***

The Tories say they have a "mountain to climb" in the North of England. Labour are bracing themselves for heavy losses more or less everywhere. The Lib Dems bravely claim there are no "no-go areas" for their party. Sound familiar, anyone?

Excuse me if I experience a slight feeling of déjà vu when it comes to this year's local election battle.

The two main parties appear to be playing down expectations, doubtless in the hope that things will turn out better than anticipated. The third is playing them up, in the hope that the voters will take them seriously.

But as ever, the trick with this sort of pre-election positioning is to try to separate the spin from the reality.

What seems beyond dispute is that the Government is in for a hammering as voters vent their frustration at the sense of drift that has characterised Labour for the past year.

Last September, following the failed coup attempt against Tony Blair, I wrote that if the Prime Minister was still in place by time of these elections, the party would pay the price.

As it has turned out, it appears to be a price the party is prepared to pay in order to allow its most successful leader ever a dignified exit at a time more or less of his own choosing.

But whether that is how it will be seen by the hundreds of Labour councillors, Scottish MSPs or Welsh AMs set to lose their seats on May 3 is another question entirely.

The local councils are one thing. Labour would doubtless like to win back cities like Newcastle, but it won't do any lasting damage to the party's national powerbase if it doesn't.

Local government has, in any case, nothing like the power it had when I first started covering local elections two decades ago.

The Scottish and Welsh bodies are a slightly different matter, though. They do have significant devolved powers, as Welsh Assembly leader Rhodri Morgan's recent decision to scrap prescription charges showed.

Furthermore, because most seats in the devolved bodies are coterminous with Westminster constituencies, there is much more of an interplay between Labour's performance in Scotland and Wales and its electoral prospects UK-wide.

I must confess to being surprised that Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs have been prepared to put up with a situation which is likely to see their party's powerbase in those areas significantly eroded.

If, for instance, a Labour parliamentary constituency ends up with a Lib Dem MSP, it creates a situation in which Labour's hold on the Westminster seat can be steadily undermined.

It was for this reason that I expected Scottish and Welsh MPs to be in the vanguard of a renewed attempt to force Blair out well before we got into the local election campaign.

But they bottled it, and in my view, that is something they will fairly shortly come to regret.

So, I believe, will Gordon Brown. The prevailing consensus throughout the past few months has been that the Chancellor was happy to let Mr Blair "take the hit" for the expected May 3 carnage.

If that is the case, I think that he was taking an extremely defeatist view about his ability to restore Labour's fortunes if and when he finally takes over.

If Mr Brown truly believes that he is the man to renew Labour in government, he should instead have taken the view that the sooner he took over, the better for the party's prospects.

The more electoral damage that is done to Labour under Mr Blair, the more poisoned the chalice that Mr Brown will eventually inherit.

Assuming, that is, that he does inherit. The fortnight since this column last appeared has seen a further ratcheting up of the pressure on South Shields MP and Environment Secretary David Miliband to throw his own hat into the ring.

It no longer seems possible to take at face value Mr Miliband's denials of last autumn, when he declared that he was "neither a runner nor a rider for any of the posts that are being speculated about".

His failure to kill the current wave of speculation has led to suspicions in the Brown camp that he is, at the very least, still pondering a bid.

One Brown ally said last weekend: "Miliband knows exactly what he is doing. He could quite easily say specifically, `I won't stand against Gordon' or that he is far less experienced than Gordon - something he couldn't go back on. But he doesn't."

Mr Brown, meanwhile, is in an increasingly invidious position. Like the long-distance-runner who has spent too long anxiously looking over his shoulder, his position seems to weaken with each week that goes by.

Notwithstanding its historic import, his decision to announce a 20p standard rate of tax in the Budget appears to have won him few friends and the row over the 1997 pension fund grab has been deeply damaging.

Labour has a perfectly respectable story to tell on this, which is that an anomaly in the tax system needed to be removed in order to release funds to help the many, not the few.

Instead Brown's strategy seemed to be firstly to try to conceal the evidence that he ignored civil service advice, and then when that failed, spin a cock-and-bull story about how the CBI encouraged him to do it.

It is hard - very hard - to escape the conclusion that this is exactly what Mr Blair intended when he decided to "play it long" and drag out his departure until this summer.

Messrs Brown and Blair were united on the campaign trail for one last time last week as Labour launched its local election push - but it is hard to see who they were trying to convince.

The old double act has served Labour well over a decade or more, but it has long since run its course.

And the real story now is not what happens in the days and weeks leading up to May 3, but what happens in the days and weeks immediately afterwards.

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

The desolation of Gethsemane

Unfortunately I'm not at church tonight as baby-sitting duties call, but from my youth I've always thought the Maundy Thursday communion service was the most moving and dramatic in the Christian calendar.

Back in my home town church of St Mary's, Hitchin, they used to - probably still do - conclude the service with the reading of Matthew 26, vv 47-55, a passage which ends with the baleful words: "Then all the disciples deserted him and ran away."

At this precise moment, the lights in the church would be extinguished, symbolising the total darkness and desolation of our Saviour as he prepared to face his forthcoming ordeal, alone.

It sent shivers down my spine as a 12-year-old choirboy, and it still does.

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Why I haven't commented on the Iranian hostage story

A good friend emails me to ask why there is nothing on the blog about the release of the 15 Britons taken captive in Iran. Like other bloggers, I get these sorts of inquiries fairly regularly, so I thought it might be helpful to publish the entire exchange just to clear up any confusion about what the purpose of this blog actually is.

To protect his identity (well, a bit) I shall call my friend Nosey.

***

Paul,

Nothing about the just-finished Iranian affair on your thog - sorry, blog. Surely this is pure politics (albeit of a different nature)?

Nosey

***

Nosey,

I don't really feel I have anything particularly new or original to say about the hostages issue so I haven't covered it. My blog is not a current events news service - people can go to the bbc or any other news website for that sort of thing.

This is something I regularly have to point out to blog users who ask me in the comments why I haven't done this or that story.

Cheers,

Paul

***

Paul,

I see what you mean, but there is a whole load of comment about what actually happened. The actual news would be pretty boring - "Hostages Captured" ... "Both sides get hot under the collar" ... "Hostages released" ... but the things that intrigue me are why did Ahmadinejad do what he did, what was said in the private telephone conversation between Downing Street and Tehran, how did Iran get such a PR coup out of it (which they did), and how come the British administration come over as - frankly - so wet?

One of the observations on the BBC is that Ahmadinejad has seen our feeble response to this, and will be encouraged in his pursuit of nuclear weaponry.

Political - surely? And therefore within the scope of a political blog such as yours?

Nosey.

P.S. You have probably realised that my grasp of politics is slightly worse than my grasp of swahili, so I may be talking out of my arse hat here.

***

Nosey,

Of course it's political, it's just that it bores the bollocks off me, that's all, and hence I've got nothing to say about it. My blog is not aiming to provide a systematic commentary service any more than it is aiming to provide a systematic news service. There are particular issues I'm interested in and they are reflected on the blog - eg the Labour leadership battle, English nationalism, the interplay between Christianity and politics, the constitutional reform agenda and so on.

My readers are by and large people who are also interested in those sorts of things. For me to start covering international politics when I've no particular expertise in it and it's not the reason people visit my blog anyway would be a bit like a specialist fish restaurant sticking steak on the menu to try and compete with a new Beefeater that's opened down the road.

Cheers,

Paul

PS I am now thinking of putting this entire email thread on the blog to make the point to all the others who keep asking me such questions.

***

Paul,

Fair point. (And it made me laugh!)

Nosey

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Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Guido, Sir Michael and the so-called "car crash"

Another thing that happened while I was away was the infamous Newsnight interview involving blogger Guido Fawkes. Guido has himself conceded that it was mistake to break his own rule and agree to be interviewed, while the reaction on blogosphere as a whole has been scathing, the consensus being that he was made mincemeat of by veteran Guardian hack "Sir" Michael White. But having now looked at the film, and the ensuing studio discussion, I am not convinced it was quite as one-sided as has been presented.

White kicked off the studio discussion, chaired by Jeremy Paxman with Guido appearing in "shadow" from Westminster, with a well-made point about how it is not only political journalists who run the risk of getting too close to their sources. In fact it is far more of a problem in entertainment journalism. One-nil to White. But Michael then threw away this early advantage by revealing Guido's real name, which was somewhat cheap, and saying he looked a "prat" for wearing a rugby shirt at a lobby lunch, which came over as simply pompous. One-all.

White then reacted to Guido's oft-made allegation that the Lobby had effectively concealed the truth about John Prescott's private life with the counter-claim that Prescott was being "stitched-up" by bloggers. To which I can only respectfully say: Bollocks, Michael. Prescott fairly adeptly stitched himself up by (i) shagging his secretary, and (ii) infuriating Labour MPs by allowing himself, as the keeper of the cloth cap, to be pictured playing the decadent upper-class sport of croquet at his country retreat. Two-one to Guido.

Sir Michael then compounded even this error by maintaining he did not know John Prescott's age, despite an earlier report that he had attended his 68th birthday party. Well, sorry, but whether he attended the party or not, I find it preposterous that someone who was a national newspaper political editor for 16 years would not actually know the Deputy Prime Minister's age, particularly as it was a point at issue in his decision to retire along with Tony Blair. Three-one Guido.

At this point in the discussion, Guido was well ahead in my view, but threw away his advantage with two silly errors in the closing stages. First, he made a reference to Lord Levy's forthcoming "trial" which presented an absolute gift-horse for White and Paxman to accuse bloggers of being cavalier with the facts. Three-two. Then, in injury time, Guido made the grievous mistake - which a real lobby hack would never make - or naming a source (BBC political editor Nick Robinson) for one his stories. Three-all.

In conclusion, even though Guido managed to break the first rule of journalism - not exactly surprising given he isn't a journalist - he still got away with a score draw. He may not have covered himself with glory, but I don't think White did either and he came over as both pompous and petulant, which oddly is the very opposite of how I remember him from my lobby days.

As it is, the degree of gloating on other blogs about this interview is to me symptomatic of the marked lack of charity that currently characterises the blogosphere. It seems a long time ago that Guido, Iain Dale, Tim Ireland, Justin McKeating and myself were among a large group of bloggers who joined forces to put together the Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze. It was a great collaborative effort, masterminded by Dale, but at least two of us were not invited to contribute to the second edition, and you probably couldn't get all five of us together in a room these days without fisticuffs.

I don't agree with Guido's politics, or all of his methods, and I do agree with some of Tim's points about the need for some commonly agreed standards of blog etiquette. But even if the blogosphere might be a little more well-mannered without Guido, it would almost certainly not have as a high a profile - and we have all benefited from that.

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Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Time for Miliband to stop the teasing

While I was away sunning myself, it was evident that a head of steam was continuing to build up behind a challenge from David Miliband to Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. One newspaper, the Observer, even reported that Blair himself was at the heart of the effort to persuade him to stand, and had privately predicted that if he did so, he would win.

Be that as it may, my Poll shows that Miliband is indeed the favoured contender of those who would like to see a Cabinet-level challenge to Gordon Brown - although his support is only marginally higher than those who would like to see Brown challenged by his own campaign manager, Jack Straw.

Miliband has several times appeared to rule himself out of the running, but has yet to do so in unequivocal terms. Writing in this week's Sunday Times, Crackers Cracknell and Isabel Oakeshott reveal that the Brown camp are not impressed by his failure to kill the speculation.

As one ally of the Chancellor put it: "Miliband can’t say it’s not his fault. He knows exactly what he is doing. He could quite easily say specifically, ‘I won’t stand against Gordon’ or that he is far less experienced than Gordon – something he couldn’t go back on. But he doesn’t."

I concur. I happen to believe David Miliband is a cut above most politicians in the honesty stakes and I have no reason to disbelieve his earlier declaration that he was "neither a runner nor a rider for any of the posts that are being speculated about."

If that remains the case, he should say so. But if he has changed his mind, he should make that equally clear. The current wave of speculation - egged on by the Martin Kettles and Mary Ann Siegharts of this world - is doing the Labour Party no favours at all.

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Monday, April 02, 2007

Holiday reading

Holidays and Christmas are the only real chance I get these days to settle down with a good book, so I was determined to make the most of this rare opportunity during our recent trip to the peaceful resort of Los Gigantes, on Tenerife.

The first of the two books I took away with me was Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy which I last read as a student more than 25 years ago.

It's hard to say what it is I love about this book, which is probably the literary equivalent of listening to The Smiths. It is set against the grim backdrop of 1970s Britain in all its drabness, mundanity and loss of influence in the world, and deals with the painful themes of personal and political betrayal.

The re-read was partly inspired by the fact that's being repeated on BBC 4 at the moment - the last episode is tonight but if you've missed the preceding six, don't watch it as it will give way the ending. Read the book instead, and then buy the DVD.

Also on my reading list was God's Politics by Jim Wallis, the American Christian leader. It's a brilliant analysis of how the so-called "religious right" in America has hijacked Christianity for its own political ends and how a truly Biblical understanding of Jesus's teaching would lead one to very different ideological conclusions.

Wallis correctly identifies the current political consensus as socially liberal and economically conservative, whereas a Christian approach would tend to produce something socially conservative and economically liberal. This moreorless summarises my own disillusionment with modern politics, so it was good to find someone else taking a similar view.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Heading for the sun

It's a winter holiday for the Linfords this year, for reasons that will become obvious later in the year, so barring the odd internet cafe excursion blogging will be light over the next week or so.

In the meantime, I leave you in the very capable hands of the following:

Labour leadership speculation - Political Betting
Insightful political analysis - Skipper
English nationalism - Toque
Christian socialism - Mars Hill
Blogging about blogging - Bloggerheads
Interesting minutiae - Dizzy Thinks
Tory gossip - Iain Dale
Labour gossip - Tom Watson
Lib Dem gossip Jonathan Calder
Any old bollocks - UK Daily Pundit

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Charles Kennedy - Derby County fan?

A work colleague draws my attention to an interesting snippet on the Derby County FC Rams Forum that former Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy has been seen at Pride Park in recent weeks. We could certainly do with the support of a few big names as they have been few and far between since Cap'n Bob went overboard.

Other interesting examples of political fan-dom: Osama bin Laden, reguarly spotted cheering on Arsenal at Highbury in the late 1980s, and Tony Blair, never spotted cheering on Newcastle at St James' Park.

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Brown stuffs 2p tax cut up Clarke's backside

Without desisting from anything I wrote earlier - the Blairites and Fleet Street would still find a reason for forcing a contest even if Gordon Brown was revealed as the second Son of God - today's Budget was a stormer. For years, governments of right and left have dreamed of a 20p standard rate of income tax. It is Gordon Brown who has finally delivered that and for that and many other reasons he will go down as the greatest Chancellor since Gladstone, whatever happens next in his career.

It was absolutely typical of Gordon that after presenting eleven Budgets himself he went and stole the next Chancellor's first Budget as well by announcing the 2p standard rate cut. His successor probably won't thank him for that but I can't help but admire his chutzpah.

Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn had been calling on Brown to say more about what he would do as Prime Minister, and today Gordon gave them the perfect answer. He not only said what he would do, he actually did it, by pre-announcing a decision that didn't actually need to be announced for another year.

Indeed, he has gone even further than that and announced another major tax cut to take effect in April 2009 - just before the likely date of the next general election - rsising the threshold for the 40p top rate of tax to £43,000 and so free millions of middle-income earners from the pernicious effects of "fiscal drag."

David Cameron tried to make the best of it by claiming Brown had adopted his agenda of "sharing the proceeds of growth," but Cameron knows that he too has been stuffed, and that any room for manoeuvre for further crowd-pleasing tax cuts has been absolutely closed-off.

I wrote earlier today that although Brown's enemies will deny him a coronation, the crown remains his to lose and a good Budget performance would make it all the more certain he would win a serious contest. On that score, the Chancellor certainly delivered.

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Welcome to the Thog

I was pleased to learn today via Paulie that I have been described as a thogger or "thinking blogger" for those unfamiliar with the term. I will do some thogging on the Budget later.

Meanwhile, I am supposed to nominate five other thoggers, so here goes: Skipper, Unity, Shaphan, Femme de Resistance and Jonathan Calder

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Whatever happens today, Gordon will be challenged

Today is Gordon's Day, and by the end of it we will be probably be hearing all the usual stuff about how the Chancellor has once again underlined his status as a political colossus of modern times and how, as Labour MPs reel from the sheer force and brilliance of his intellect, the likelihood of a leadership challenge has now diminished. But much as I would like to believe that to be the case, I'm afraid I won't believe a word of it.

I make no bones about the fact that I am in the Margaret Beckett camp of people who do not believe a Cabinet-level challenge to Brown for the Labour leadership is either necessary or desirable. I think Gordon has demonstrated over the past 10 years that he is the outstanding candidate, and to hold an election now strikes me as rather akin to the common sporting practice of making the club that finishes top of the league by a wide margin play off against the one finishing a distant second for the sake of generating a bit more excitement for the spectators.

But I readily accept that is not how most people see it - even among visitors to this blog. My current POLL shows that only approximately one sixth of respondents think there should not be a Cabinet-level challenge, and some of them are people who support Michael Meacher or John McDonnell rather than Gordon. There seems to be a consensus in the Labour Party - which I happen not to share - that a serious contest would be useful as opposed to a potentially divisive distraction.

And if that view is becoming widespread in the party, it is even more so in the media. Slowly, the pressure has been building - even among left-leaning pundits - for a serious challenge and when Blair actually goes, that pressure will become intolerable.

The campaign to question Gordon Brown's credentials has been conducted mainly through opinion polls designed to show that he would do worse than Tony Blair in a straight contest with David Cameron, even though practically no-one disputes that Labour's position in the polls is bound to improve when Blair finally quits. This has been accompanied by regular guerilla activity questioning Brown's methods and ways of working with colleagues, culminating in yesterday's Gordon the Stalinist attack by former Cabinet Secretary Lord Turnbull.

Its aim was to create the conditions in which a challenge became viewed as desirable and I think it has now succeeded in that. In other words, it has created a need for someone to step forward and fill a vacuum, and human nature being what it is, sooner or later someone will do so.

If not David Miliband, then John Reid or Alan Johnson. If not Reid or Johnson, then John Hutton or Hazel Blears. If no member of the Cabinet, then Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn. Even Jack Straw could come into the reckoning as a compromise candidate if the current run of bad polls continues.

The crown is still Brown's to lose, and a good Budget performance this afternoon would make it all the more certain he would win such a contest. But I think he can forget the coronation now. The Blarites - and more importantly their friends in Fleet Street - simply aren't going to let it happen.

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Bailey on Freddie

For the benefit of those who missed it yesterday, here's blogger Richard Bailey's compelling verdict on why Andrew Flintoff should never have been chosen to captain England in the Ashes series.

"That we so much as considered giving the Captaincy to a man who presents himself to the Queen pissed is intolerable. That he should continue any where near a position of authority after a 5-0 whitewash and the most spineless English series performance ever, is beyond reason.

"The man is a drunk, a talented one perhaps, but a drunk all the same and I for one am thrilled that he has revealed his true colours and will never again presume to lead England in any context ever again."


Sheer class - or is that classism? Either way, it made me laugh.

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Justice for Terry Lloyd

Forty years ago this year, a young Derbyshire police officer by the name of Aled Lloyd was killed in a panda car accident while answering a false emergency call. It was the kind of tragedy that would have broken many families, but with the support of their mother Agnes, Aled's two young sons Kevin and Terry went on to make their respective marks in the world of television, one as an actor, the other as an award-winning journalist.

Against that backdrop, the death of Kevin Lloyd from alcoholism brought on by the pressures of TV stardom in 1998 was bad enough. But the killing of Terry Lloyd by US forces shortly after the start of the Iraq War in 2003 was, for me, the saddest episode in the whole wretched debacle.

So I wholeheartedlty support the campaign launched by Terry's former boss at ITN, David Mannion, to make it a war crime to intentionally kill a journalist.

It is too late for Terry, and for Agnes who died shortly before him. But not too late to hope that some good may yet come of the senseless death of this brave reporter - truly a "local hero" up here in God's Own County.

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The enormity of Turnbull's hypocrisy

Good to see Skipper back from a lengthy sojourn in Australia with an excellent post on the Andrew Turnbull "Gordon Brown is a Stalinist" story. I agree with Skip that this will hurt Gordon, and I have no doubt that in the current climate it will have been explicitly designed to do so - but that doesn't alter the fact that Turnbull is a hypocrite of the first order.

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Monday, March 19, 2007

Boyhood memories....

You know you must be getting on a bit when the people who were your boyhood sporting icons start dying off, and Bob Woolmer was one such. He wasn't the greatest batsman to play for England in the 1970s, but he was one of the first who truly impinged on my consciousness. His 149 against Australia in 1975 - in only his Second Test Match - was one of the stand-out innings of the era, and he went on to make two more centuries against the same opposition in the 1977 series.

Although never a big-hitter, there was a classiness about Woolmer's batting that was very easy on the eye, and by the time he defected to the Kerry Packer Circus in 1977-78, he had established himself as the Mr Dependable of the England team. I remember being devastated when he went and, as Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted in his incomparable Who's Who of Test Cricketers, whatever he gained financially from joining World Series Cricket, he lost in the momentum of his Test career.

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Friday, March 16, 2007

Five things to change the world

Sadly I've never been asked to contribute to Comment is Free - they've probably got enough lefties at the Guardian already - but if I had taken part in yesterday's What would you change? opinion-fest to mark the first birthday of the site, here's what I would have listed as the things I want to see change in the year ahead.

* to see Gordon Brown as Prime Minister reaching out in a radical new, policy-rich direction which genuinely seeks to fulfil Labour's mission to serve the many, not the few.

* to see people starting to take personal responsibility for tackling climate change, including changing their travel patterns, and for acquaintances of mine who refuse to do anything about recycling to realise how stupid and short-sighted they are being.

* to see a growing awareness of the futility of military action in Iraq and other Middle East countries where the West is already viewed as the enemy, and a growing recognition of the need to tackle the Israel-Palestine conflict ahead of anything else.

* to see an end to the absurd micromanagement by Whitehall of housebuilding targets, leading to the production line of uniform boxes with tiny or non-existent gardens coupled with increasing encroachement onto green belt land.

* to see people taking faith and spirituality more seriously, realising there is more to life than money and material possessions.

Oh well, I can but dream....

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Thursday, March 15, 2007

Punditry

UK Daily Pundit has long been one of my favourite blogs but it has really excelled itself in recent days. Last November, it reported that Shadow Home Secretary David Davis was on the point of resigning. Now he's apparently on the verge of taking over as Tory leader.

I've never quite worked out whether the Pundit is the blogging equivalent of the newspaper racing hack who tips every horse in the Grand National in the run-up to the race so he can say he backed the winner - or whether the entire blog is an elaborate spoof on dead tree political commentary and its tendency to make outlandish predictions about the fates of individual politicians.

Probably a bit of both...!

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More sock puppetry

Looks like this blog has been dragged back into the ongoing Blog Wars between Tim "Manic" Ireland and various rightist bloggers. Tim's latest target is Dizzy who among other things is accused of using a sock puppet called sock puppet to attack Tim on this very site. Dizzy, meanwhile, sets out his response HERE. Guys, guys.....

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Who should challenge Gordon?

Should Gordon Brown be challenged for the Labour leadership? And if so, who should challenge him? Have your say in my latest poll which can be found HERE.

The poll allows for multiple choices so if you think more than one person should challenge the Chancellor, you can vote accordingly. It will be interesting to see if the results differ greatly from more scientific surveys on this issue.

Update: If you think AN Other should challenge Gordon (and s/he is currently running third behind Straw and Miliblogger in the list of potential challengers) why not leave a message in the comments to say who you think that should be.

In answer to the comments about Meacher/McDonnell/Milburn, the question specifies a Cabinet-level challenge. Milburn is included because he has Cabinet-level experience, the other two (along with John Denham) are excluded because they don't.

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Is Quentin Letts taking the piss?

I had a fair amount of time for Quentin Letts in my Lobby days - unlike Michael White I did not regard him as a shifty little cunt - but it has to be remembered that he is (a) a Tory, and (b) someone whose writing is often deliberately tongue-in-cheek.

So when I saw his piece in The First Post about the possibility of Jack Straw becoming Prime Minister, I was immediately somewhat suspicious.

Was the ever-mischievous Mr Letts flying a kite in the hope that someone, somewhere might come up with some interesting reasons why Jack might not be as suitable a candidate as he might appear?

Henry G and Alex commenting on the story today on Political Betting, seem to think so...

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Trident debate is Blair's Macdonald Moment

In May 1997 Tony Blair became the second Labour Prime Minister to represent a seat in the North-East of England, following in the footsteps of former Seaham MP and Labour folk villain Ramsay Macdonald. Tonight he will follow in Macdonald's footsteps again by relying on Tory votes to stay in power as up to 80 Labour MPs prepare to rebel on the vote to replace Britain's nuclear deterrent.

Given the Government's majority of 66, a rebellion on that scale would ordinarily mean a Parliamentary defeat on a central issue of government policy - enough in normal circumstances to require the Prime Minister's resignation.

Because the Tories are pledged to support the renewal of Trident, Mr Blair can rest easy on that score, but I think it's a good thing from his point of view that Blair has already promised to go, and that Gordon Brown seems in no rush to hurry him.

If this were not the case, I suspect a lot more would be being made of the fact that the Prime Minister has clearly lost the support of a substantial section of his party.

* Apologies for light bloggage over recent days. Either something is very wrong with my PC or Blogger is going through another of its crap phases. There have been long periods this week when I've not even been able to get on the site.

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Ten Questions for Alastair Campbell

So Alastair Campbell is to publish his first volume of diaries, shortly after Tony Blair leaves office this summer. The Guardian's Julian Glover has today published his own top tips of what the great spinmeister should write about, but here's a list of some of the questions I'd like answered, some of them of purely personal interest, others of broader significance to the body politic.

Anyway, here goes:

1. When you held your first briefing as Downing Street press secretary on May 2, 1997 you told us that Tony Blair "felt he had been given a remarkable opportunity to unite the country." Do you genuinely think he has done?

2. When in 1995 you briefed the Lobby that Derek Foster would be given a Cabinet job in return for standing down as Chief Whip, were you aware that he would in fact be offered only a junior ministerial post?

3. Why did one of your deputies tell me in October 1997 that Dr David Clark had "totally lost it" and would be sacked in the next reshuffle, and was it linked to your attempts to undermine the Freedom of Information Bill which he was then drawing up?

4. From whom did Tony Blair first learn about the incident on Clapham Common involving the then Welsh Secretary Ron Davies in September 1998, and why did you refuse to answer this question when I asked it at a Lobby briefing?

5. Do you regret your decision to dispense with most of the heads of the departmental press offices following Labour's first election win, and has the resultant politicisation of Whitehall improved the conduct of government?

6. Why did you brief the Lobby in 1999 that Tony Blair believed the North-South divide to be a "myth," when he never actually said any such thing?

7. A copy of the September 2002 dossier on Iraqi WMD sent in advance to evening papers showed the so-called "45-minute claim" highlighted in flourescent marker-pen. Did you personally authorise that?

8. You said in your diary that it would "fuck Gilligan" if Dr David Kelly were revealed as the source of the BBC report which questioned the 45-minute claim. Do you deny that you had any part in making his name public?

9. When you announced last year that the death of Dr Kelly had almost caused you to have a nervous breakdown, did you think of the impact this might have on the Kelly family?

10. When you left an offensive personal comment on this blog last July, why did you not have the courage to post as yourself as opposed to anonymously?

I think that will do for now....I'm sure other readers will be able to fill in any questions I have missed.

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End of the peers show

The latest podcast, looking at what happens next with Lords reform in the wake of last week's historic Commons vote, is now available HERE.

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