Friday, September 28, 2007

18th place

My copy of the Guide to Political Blogging 2007 arrived on my doormat today and I am very pleased to see that this blog is still rated among the UK's Top 20 political blogs, as chosen by 500 readers of Iain Dale's Diary.

Although my 18th place represents a drop of eight places from last year, when I was placed 10th, I am actually pretty chuffed just to stay in the Top 20 as the past 12 months have not been easy ones in terms of maintaining the work-life-blog balance.

I was also placed fourth in the "media blogs" category behind Nick Robinson, Spectator Coffee House and Ben Brogan, and while it is gratifying to be named in such illustrious company, I do have a slight issue with this categorisation.

No doubt it was an innocent mistake, but unlike Nick, Ben, and the Spectator boys and girls, whose blogs are essentially adjuncts to their print or broadcast journalism, I am no longer a full-time journalist and the political columns I write for two regional newspapers are not my main source of income.

Update: The full list of the top 300 blogs can now be viewed over at Iain's place.

free web site hit counter

The perils of political punditry

Having said on more than one occasion that Gordon Brown would not call an election this autumn, it's looking increasingly like it could be egg-on-face time for me if Gordon decides to go for it over the course of this weekend.

That said, it looks like I am in good company. As BBC political editor Nick Robinson admits on his blog today, he himself initially described talk of an early election as tosh.

I took the view I did because I do not believe that the public wants an election at this stage, and that against that backdrop Brown will struggle to increase Labour's majority beyond 66. I still hold to that, and agree wholeheartedly with Guido that 3.5 - 1 against the Tories being the largest single party represents good value at the moment.

I'll be saying a bit more about why in my weekend column which will will be posted here tomorrow after it has appeared in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Evening Telegraph.

free web site hit counter

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The election: what Gordon should do.

I don't know whether Gordon Brown is going to call an autumn general election, and if the amount of bet-hedging and fence-sitting going on in Bournemouth amongst my former colleagues is anything to go by, neither does anyone else. In this post, however, I set out my admittedly rather idealistic view of what I think he should do.

We already know enough about Gordon's plans for his premiership to know that constitutional reform - what he termed democratic renewal in his speech on Monday - is going to figure highly. In his speech he gave us one specific commitment, namely to an elected House of Lords, but I am sure there will be more to come.

Mr Brown has also made it clear, in his inaugural Commons statement back in July, that he sees divesting himself of power as a part of that agenda, for instance, the right to declare war or appoint bishops.

Well, writing in today's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland identifies another such reform that is now urgently required - the introduction of fixed-term parliaments and the end of the Prime Ministerial power to go to the country as a time of maximum advantage.

Freedland says in his piece: "British elections are running races in which one of the contestants get to fire the starting gun. So when Gordon Brown finally names the date, let him also vow to be the last Prime Minister to exercise that privilege."

My only criticism of Freedland here is that he doesn't quite go far enough. Were Brown to follow his advice to the letter, he would still be free to decide the election date at a time of maximum advantage to Labour while seeking to deny that power to his successors, which would be rightly viewed by the public as a monumental hypocrisy.

Brown should therefore announce that there is going to be no election this autumn, that he will legislate in the forthcoming session for the introduction of fixed term four-year parliaments, and that in the spirit of this, there will not be another general election until May 2009 - four years after the last one.

I personally think the public would thank him for sparing them an unnecessary trip to the polls, but even if he were to lose, and had to spend the rest of his life listening to people saying "you should have gone in autumn 2007," his place in history as one of the great reforming premiers would be absolutely assured.

free web site hit counter

How I wish I'd been there....

My conferencing days are well and truly over and I rarely find myself feeling wistful about the annual booze-sodden seaside jaunts...but I would have paid good money to watch Blair-worshipping policy wonk Darren Murphy fall over unaided during a late-night bar-room contretemps with arch-Brownite Ian Austin, as reported by Hugh Muir in today's Guardian Diary.

free web site hit counter

This is getting silly

As if political cross-dressing had not gone far enough in recent weeks, with Dave trying frantically to be like Tony but not Maggie, and Gordon trying frantically to be like Maggie but not Tony, we now have the spectacle of Norman Tebbit simultaneously lionising Gordon and rubbishing Dave.

Surely all we need now to complete the circle is for Tony Benn to hail Cameron as the new, authentic voice of democratic socialism.

free web site hit counter

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The next leadership race starts here?

When I first spotted this post on Ben Brogan's blog earlier today I initially thought it was a bit frivolous of him to start speculating about leadership "beauty contests." But in fact Brogan has a very good point.

Despite Gordon Brown's current dominance of the political scene, it should not be forgotten that this could easily be both his first and last conference as Labour leader.

As Brogan points out: "If Brown listens to the hotheads, goes for November, and gets it wrong, we really will be looking for a change candidate."

So just for the sake of argument - and because no party conference would be complete without a bit of leadership speculation - who might that candidate be?

Well, as Iain Dale notes, frontrunner David Miliband has just bored the delegates into slumber for the second year running, although the content of his speech today was largely spot-on.

Brogan himself speculates that energetic Ed Balls could emerge as a runner, although I have long believed that his wife, Yvette Cooper, is really the more talented politician in the Balls household.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson would certainly stand, but at 56 may be considered too old for a gruelling four or five years of opposition before he would have a chance to unseat Prime Minister Cameron in 2011/12.

In my view, the dark horse could well be Jacqui Smith, who has made a great start as Home Secretary and has impeccably New Labour credentials. It will be interesting to see how her speech goes down later in the week.

On a related point, does anyone know why Brown moved the leader's speech to Monday? I guess he must have had his reasons but it's turned the whole of the rest of the conference into a largely meaningless anticlimax.

The conference always tailed off after Tuesday, but I reckon that the extra day's build-up to the old Tuesday afternoon slot was worth at least an extra day's front-page headlines for Labour.

free web site hit counter

A bad omen?

Not sure if anyone else has spotted this yet.....but who was the last party leader to use the words "I won't let you down" during his inaugural conference speech?

Answer: It was Charles Kennedy, at the Lib Dem conference in Harrogate, in 1999.

free web site hit counter

Huhne not so ghastly after all

A friend has drawn my attention to this Diary piece in the Times last week in which Matthew Parris withdrew his unsubstantiated slur against "the indefinably ghastly Chris Huhne" published during the Lib Dem leadership contest in February 2006.

Long-standing readers may recall I was fairly critical of Matthew for this at the time and to his credit, he acknowledges as much, saying in his piece: "A noted blogger, Paul Linford, took me to task for this - with justice."

free web site hit counter

Monday, September 24, 2007

Brown's moral society

He didn't once mention him by name. But make no mistake, David Cameron was the real target of this afternoon's big speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

For weeks, Cameron has been banging on about the "broken society," rightly calculating that social issues, rather than economics, will be uppermost in the voters' minds come the next general election, and believing this will give him the crucial advantage over a Prime Minister still perceived by some as no more than a dour financial manager.

Well, in this afternoon's speech, Brown made clear that if that's where Cameron wishes to stage the election battle, he will be there waiting for him. For this was a speech that was, more than anything, about society - and about Brown's vision of the kind of society he wishes to create over the next few years.

In policy terms, much of it was not new. To take one example, my wife is already in the middle of the nine months' paid maternity leave Brown re-announced this afternoon. But the way he weaved such initiatives together in a convincing overall narrative of his government's moral purpose was both new and potentially devastating for the Conservative opposition.

Central to the speech was Brown's own "moral compass" - something his predecessor was often justifiably accused of lacking. Without being at all preachy about it - New Labour still doesn't officially "do God" - the Prime Minister left no doubt about the importance of his own Christian convictions in determining Labour's future policy direction.

The speech was peppered with Biblical references, from ensuring all children are given a chance to use their gifts (the Parable of the Talents) to his pledge to "honour those who raised us" (the Fifth Commandment.)

This moral dimension is the common thread between, for instance, ensuring that young people from low income families will not have to pay to go to university, and ensuring that immigrants who sell drugs or carry guns will be thrown out and shops that sell alcohol to under-18s closed down.

All in all, I thought it was one of the cleverest leader's speeches I have heard. By not even mentioning the other two parties or their leaders, Brown once again succeeded in presenting himself as a national leader above petty party politicking, the personification of a new style of politics.

Most pleasing to me personally was his announcement that an elected House of Lords would be a Labour manifesto commitment. This is absolutely the right way to proceed with this vexed issue, as it will mean that under the Salisbury Convention, the unelected peers will have no alternative but to vote for their own abolition.

As to the great unanswered question - will there be an autumn general election? - the subliminal message of the speech was, surely, is that Brown is getting on with the job of governing. But at the same time, there are clearly people in Bournemouth who are continuing to stoke up the election talk - which may be real, or may just be a tactic to wind up the Tories and keep the unions and the left on their best behaviour.

It did not, to me, come over as an electioneering speech. But as I am not in Bournemouth and don't know what's being said behind the scenes to those journalists and bloggers who are, I can't be entirely sure that my instincts are correct.

What I am sure of, though, is that Brown knows exactly the ground on which he wishes to fight Cameron, and that he is absolutely confident of success.

free web site hit counter

Oborne tells it like it is

I was sadly unable to make last Monday's launch party at the Spectator offices for Peter Oborne's new book The Triumph of the Political Class, but he did send me a copy in the post, for which I was very grateful.

I have not yet had a chance to read it from cover to cover, and when I have done, I will post a full review here, but on opening the book, the following passage from the introduction immediately caught my eye.

"This book is based on my fifteen years' day-to-day experience as a reporter, and more recently political columnist, in the press gallery and lobby of the House of Commons. This is an incomparably privileged job, giving one front-row seats in the great political theatre of the day, as well as intimate access to politicians and their senior staff, many of whom I have come to know extremely well.

"After I had been doing this job for a number of years I started to gain a sense that something was wrong. I noticed that the reports of political events put out to the public through newspapers and the broadcasting media were in large part either meaningless or untrue. As I probed further, I gradually became aware that the conventional narrative structure which is used to give sense and meaning to British politics was extremely misleading.

"Though the public is always told that Tory and Labour are in opposition, that is not really the case. They are led to believe that the Liberal Democrats are an insurgent third party, but that is not the case either. It has come to seem to me that their strongest loyalties are to each other.

"For the greatest part of my time as a political reporter, the most bitter rivalries at Westminster have involved factional conflicts within individual parties rather than collisions of ideology and belief."

This is so close to my own experience of British politics during my time in the lobby as to be uncanny, but then again I have long shared Oborne's general analysis of the state of politics - and political journalism - today.

Although I do not quite buy Oborne's contention that Gordon Brown is as much a member of the "political class" as Tony Blair and David Cameron, I suspect that this, far more so than Alastair Campbell's self-serving Diaries, is the must-read volume for anyone who really wants to know how Britain is governed today.

free web site hit counter

Cheers Tim

Just time to say a belated farewell to Tim Henman following his final Davis Cup match on Saturday. Henman will of course be remembered primarily for not winning Wimbledon despite reaching the Semi-Finals on three occasions, but in my view he was a better player than many who did manage to win the prestigious title.

Many believe that Henman just didn't have what it took to win a major. One very senior BBC sports journalist once remarked to me that he thought the man "wasn't right in the head." I just think he was unlucky - for three reasons.

Firstly, he had the rank misfortune to arrive at the top of the game at the same time as the greatest grass-court player of all time, Pete Sampras, who beat Henman twice in the Quarter Finals at Wimbledon and once in the semis. Secondly, the decision by the Wimbledon organisers to reduce the pressure of the balls in an attempt to curb the domination by serve-and-vollery merchants mitigated against Henman's game. And thirdly, and most memorably, he was deprived of his best opportunity to reach a Wimbledon final by the rain in 2001, at a point where he had the beating of Goran Ivanisevic.

Many people seem to view Henman as another Great British Loser in the tradition of Eddie the Eagle Edwards. For my part, I think he was one of the foremost British sporting heroes of the past 15 years.

free web site hit counter

Back on the blog

Blog regular MorrisOx noted in a comment on the previous post - and in another over at Iain Dale's Place - that things had gone a bit quiet over here lately and inquired as to whether it was an "enforced absence."

It was, in fact, entirely voluntary. We've been away visiting a few old friends down south and enjoying a much-needed family holiday - our first as a foursome since the arrival of little Clara Eloise back in August.

I am not one of those bloggers who take the view that in order to keep a blog going you have to post something new every day - in any case I wouldn't be able to sustain that in view of my other commitments - so I hope readers will forgive the occasional barren patch.

For the record, I'll be blogging on Brown's big speech later, along with various other sporting and political matters which have caught my interest during my time away.

free web site hit counter

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Who'll win the Cup?

Iain Dale won't be watching the Rugby World Cup - his light-hearted explanation of why brightened up my Saturday morning and is well worth a read - but as a huge fan of the oval ball game I certainly will be tuning in and even writing the occasional blog post on the tournament as it unfolds over the next few weeks.

So what of England's chances? Well, to my mind we've wasted the last four years since winning the 2003 tournament and frankly don't deserve to retain the Webb Ellis trophy. Talented young players capable of making things happen on a rugby field like Ollie Smith, Shane Geraghty and Tom Palmer have ended up on the international scrapheap while limited players like Jamie Noon and Joe Worsley prosper. It's back to pragmatic old England, 1991-style, and not even the introduction of an old rugby romantic like Brian Ashton as coach has changed that.

Of the other home nations, Ireland have gone off the boil of late but with Brian O'Driscoll in the side are capable of anything on their day, the Welsh backs look great on paper but their forwards simply don't cut the mustard, while Scotland are said to be in great physical shape - which they will need to be if they are to get out of a tough qualifying pool which also includes New Zealand.

If they play to their ability, New Zealand ought to win this World Cup comfortably. Against the British and Irish Lions two years ago they were awesome, although it has to be said that Clive Woodward's Lions were very poor. As a huge admirer of New Zealand rugby, and of the Land of the Long White Cloud itself, I wouldn't be displeased with such an outcome.

free web site hit counter

So do the Tories really believe in society?

Margaret Thatcher said society didn't exist. Now David Cameron's trying to mend it. No wonder he's so keen to shed the Iron Lady's legacy. This, by and large, is the theme of today's Newcastle Journal column looking back at the week's political developments.

***

A week ago last Friday, a sudden flurry of excitement went around the Westminster village. Labour MPs were said to be rushing back from holidays, a spate of meetings in Whitehall were allegedly cancelled, and ministers’ diaries were supposedly cleared.

For some, rather excitable pundits, it all added up to one thing: Gordon Brown was about to call Britain’s first autumn general election for 33 years.

Well, I hate to say I told you so, but it didn’t happen, and with the opinion polls now showing David Cameron’s Tories back within touching distance of Mr Brown and Labour, it was never likely to.

The election rumours – recycled on a series of right-wing blogs and even the odd national newspaper – had the definite whiff of an attempt to wind-up the Conservatives. Indeed, over the past week. Mr Brown has done little else.

So on Monday, for instance, we saw the appointments of renegade Tories John Bercow and Patrick Mercer to become government advisers, on services to children with communication difficulties and security issues respectively.

Mr Brown hailed this as an example of the “new politics” of bipartisanship and cross-party co-operation. It was, by contrast, a transparent example of the “old politics” of point-scoring and mischief-making.

Never mind that, a few short months ago, Labour ministers were rushing to condemn Mr Mercer as a racist after some rather injudicious off-the-record remarks about blacks in the armed forces ended up in the papers.

Now he is apparently to be welcomed as the latest occupant of Gordon’s Big Tent. When it comes to putting one over on Mr Cameron, it seems anything goes.

But that was not all. The following day came an even more astonishing piece of chutzpah from the Prime Minister as he answered questions at his monthly press conference – one of the few Blairite presentational innovations to survive the handover.

As former Tory deputy leader Michael Ancram fulminated over Mr Cameron’s betrayal of the party’s Thatcherite legacy, enter Mr Brown to claim that he is the true inheritor of the Iron Lady’s mantle.

Margaret Thatcher, he said, was a "conviction politician" who had "seen the need for change,” adding only the slight qualification that he would have dealt with mass unemployment a bit differently.

It was all a far cry from the 1980s Gordon Brown who lambasted Mrs Thatcher’s handling of the economy, but again, who cares about that when it’s all in the good cause of embarrassing the Tories?

Was there a serious point to these apparently farcical games? Well, I suppose if it demonstrated one thing it was that politics are now starting to return to normal after the phenomenon of the “Brown Bounce” over the course of the summer.

I wrote in last week’s column that the underlying political narrative of the autumn would be whether Mr Cameron could come back, and the early indications are that the answer is yes.

The two main party leaders are now as close in the opinion polls as they are appear close in ideology, dancing an increasingly complex pas-de-deux around the political centre ground in pursuit of that winning advantage.

I would expect that between now and the election there will be more and more forays onto eachother’s ground and stealing of eachother’s clothes as each tries to convince the electorate that he is simultaneously both tougher yet also more caring than the other.

Mischief-making aside, the major issue of substance on which Mr Brown and Mr Cameron locked horns this week concerned the twin themes of young people and citizenship.

The Tory leader said school leavers and those going to college should take part in a voluntary six-week summer programme ranging from charity work to mountain climbing.

Cleverly, he dubbed the initiative a 21st Century version of National Service and claimed it would boost participants' pride in themselves and in Britain.

This was something of a political masterstroke in that it is the kind of thing that will appeal to his right-wing critics while also reaching out to those of a more liberal tendency concerned about social breakdown.

Meanwhile Mr Brown and his energetic Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, were out and about on Thursday seeking the public’s views on how childrens’ lives can be improved.

Mr Balls, whose department now covers children's health, sport, and youth justice as well as schools, says he will use the answers to draw up a “10-year plan” for childrens’ services.

One of the main vehicles for this consultation will be Mr Brown’s so-called “citizen’s juries” in which groups of people will discuss questions such as "How can we keep young people out of trouble?"

The initiative follows a controversial report earlier this year from Unicef, which put the UK at the bottom of a league table of children's well-being among 21 industrialised nations.

What this all demonstrates is that, for the first time in living memory, the next election is likely to be fought around issues other than that of the economy, with the theme of the “the broken society” increasingly to the fore.

Mr Cameron thinks he can make this the Tories’ new big idea. His problem is that, historically, “society,” as opposed to the individual, has been something that Labour people care most about.

Indeed, it was the Tories’ most successful leader of modern times – Mrs Thatcher herself – who famously declared that there was “no such thing as society.”

In the present-day context, that alone would explain why Mr Cameron is so keen for his party to shed its Thatcherite clothes – whatever Mr Ancram and other “blasts from the past” may think.

So can he do it? Can Mr Cameron turn what has historically been one of the Tories’ biggest weaknesses into an electoral strength?

It is audacious, certainly, and it will require a great deal more flesh on the bones before it can be considered a coherent policy - but with rising public concern about social breakdown, the opportunity is there.

Mr Brown, though, has one crucial advantage over his Tory rival as they do battle for the public’s support - that whereas Mr Cameron can merely say, he as Prime Minister can actually do.

He may have passed up what some saw as a good chance to secure his own mandate this autumn. But it is far, far too early to say that such a chance will not come round again.

free web site hit counter

Thursday, September 06, 2007

The true sound of Italia '90

Yes, it's sad about Luciano Pavorotti, and his rendition of Puccini's Nessun Dorma will always send a shiver down the spine, but don't let anyone kid you it was the tune on the lips of England fans in that wondrous footballing summer. That was New Order's World in Motion, the greatest football record of all time from, well, the second greatest Manchester band of all time. It's just a shame the BBC wouldn't let them call it by its original title, E for England!

free web site hit counter

Monday, September 03, 2007

Surely, no autumn election now?

Gordon Brown had already been doing his best in his Today Programme inteview today to play down the excitable talk about an October 4 election that appeared on various Conservative blogs last Friday, but surely the announcement that disaffected Tories John Bercow and Patrick Mercer are to become government advisers puts paid to the idea.

Why, you may ask? Hasn't no less a figure than Nick Robinson concluded that that the invitations to join El Gordo's big tent are no more than pre-election mischief-making on the Prime Minister's part?

Well, precisely. Brown claims, contrary to Robinson's analysis, that this really is "the new politics" of bipartisanship and co-operation - but a decision to call a general election would expose the tactic as no more than a transparent attempt to embarass David Cameron.

I have, in any case, made plain my view on more than one occasion that Gordon will not call an election until spring 2008 at the earliest, and readers of this blog seem to agree, with sping 2008 or spring 2009 favoured by 77pc of those who took part in my recent poll.

free web site hit counter

End of the podcast show

It made it to 77 episodes - longer than many of the MSM podcasts that were launched in a blaze of publicity a year or two ago - but sadly the Week in Politics podcast is no more. Life has been becoming frantically busy of late and something had to give - but thanks to all those who listened.

free web site hit counter

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Can Cameron bounce back?

My weekly column today looks ahead to the new political season and in particular at the task facing David Cameron as he attempts to claw back the ground lost prior to the summer break.

***

The political year 2007 thus far has been a year of changing seasons. The underlying narrative of the spring was: Who could stop Gordon – and would David Miliband or anyone else even dare to try?

No-one did, of course, and hence the underlying narrative of the summer became: How high could Brown bounce – and could it persuade him to call an early General Election?

Well, I gave my verdict on that four weeks ago, and though there’s still time for me to be proved wrong, the prevailing wind now seems to be moving firmly in the direction of a poll in spring 2008 or later.

So assuming I am right and we are not moving into immediate pre-election mode, what, then, will be the underlying narrative of the autumn? I think it will be: Can Cameron burst Brown’s bubble?

Whenever that election is held, the Tory leader has much to do between now and then if he is to claw back the ground lost in the weeks and months since the leadership handover transformed Labour’s prospects.

If the events of the past couple of weeks are anything to go by, Mr Cameron is certainly going to give it a try. But the question is, how?

Does he continue to try to reposition his party on the political centre ground, in the face of continued sniping from his grassroots and the risk that his party will appear more and more divided?

Or does he retreat into a “core vote strategy” and face the inevitable accusation from Mr Brown and Labour that, for all his talk of caring Conservatism, the party hasn’t really changed?

On first examination, Mr Cameron’s behaviour over the past month has given succour to those who have called on him to pursue a more traditional Tory agenda focusing on the core issues of Europe, tax, immigration, and law and order.

So on Europe, he has been ratcheting up the pressure for a referendum on the new EU constitutional treaty - with a bit of help from David Blunkett, who seems to have put himself at the head of the first serious backbench rebellion of the Brown premiership.

Knowing quite how big a deal to make of this is a puzzling conundrum for Mr Cameron, given that the opinion polls say quite contradictory things about the European issue.

On the one hand, they say that most people agree there should be a referendum on the wretched treaty, on the other, that people are generally turned off when the Tories start “banging on” about Europe.

Immigration is a similarly double-edged sword. Mr Cameron’s contention this week that immigration had been too high over the past decade appears to be widely shared by the public as a whole.

But at the same time, the floating voters the Tories desperately need to reach appear to be alienated by such talk, suggesting it actually does them more harm than good.

By contrast, as I noted in last week’s column, law and order provides potentially much more fruitful ground for the Tories, with violent crime on the increase and rising concern about the “broken society.”

After ten years in power, Labour is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the charge of failing to be either tough on crime or tough on the causes of crime.

Potentially the biggest potential Tory vote-winner of all, in my view, is Inheritance Tax, which Mr Cameron is keen to abolish in line with the recommendations of the recent party commission on taxation and regulation.

The problem here for the Tory leader was not so much the message as the messenger. Entrusting the job of chairing the commission to the right-wing bogeyman John Redwood was a clear error of judgement.

Nonetheless, scrapping inheritance tax makes such obvious political sense that I would be amazed if Mr Brown does not in some way attempt to purloin this idea sometime between now and polling day.

Once upon a time, it was a tax which affected only the super-rich, but rising house prices coupled with the phenomenon of fiscal drag have pulled more and more of Middle England into its ambit and this is now reaching a critical mass.

So is Mr Cameron pursuing a “core vote strategy?” Many of the people who have been urging such a course on the Tory leader now think so.

Tim Montgomerie, editor of the influential traditionalist website Conservative Home, said this week: “For a lot of us grassroots who have wanted to see this shift, it is beginning to happen.”

A more balanced verdict came from BBC Online’s Nick Assinder, who said the fact that Mr Cameron is now happy to debate such issues is a sign he is trying to reassure worried traditionalists that he really is a Conservative.

“After the best part of 18 months refusing to promise tax cuts, avoiding Europe and immigration and offering a middle-ground, often liberal agenda, that is not about to go unnoticed,” he added.

But to argue that Mr Cameron is seeking to reassure some of his party’s traditional supporters is not, of course, the same as arguing that he is pursuing a “core vote strategy.”

For my part, I think he is simply trying to have it both ways – exactly as Tony Blair did prior to 1997 when he attempted to put together a coalition of “New Labour” and the “heartlands.”

That coalition swiftly broke down after 1997, once Mr Blair’s determination to define himself in opposition to his party’s natural supporters became crystal clear.

But by that time, it didn’t matter. Labour was in power, and those MPs who thought Mr Blair should show more respect for the party’s traditions could effectively be marginalised.

Whether Mr Cameron can pull off the same trick now depends largely on whether he can instil the same sort of internal discipline on his party that Mr Blair managed between 1994-97.

By that point, Labour had become so desperate for power that they were prepared to subjugate all their most cherished values to the pursuit of that quest – and entrust it to someone they knew wasn’t really one of them.

I am far from convinced that the Tories have yet reached this point. Many still seem to believe that if Mr Cameron plays the old tunes loud enough, the voters will be forced to listen.

Keeping such people on board while steering his party towards the political centre ground is a hugely difficult tightrope for Mr Cameron to walk. But walk it he must.

free web site hit counter

Friday, August 31, 2007

Diana: Thoughts and Reminiscences

Where was I when I first found out?

At my mum's house, in Hitchin, Herts. I'd gone there for the weekend to help her with the garden, but the news from Paris put paid to that. By 11am the following morning I was at my desk in the Commons helping my paper, the Newcastle Journal, put together its Diana coverage. I ended up writing a piece about how the marriage turned sour, though I'm not sure what qualified me, as political editor, to do that one.

What was my initial reaction?

I'm afraid to say my very first reaction was that MI5 must have bumped her off. Diana had become increasingly outspoken over the previous 12 months and was on the verge of becoming a political embarrassment. Of course only Richard Desmond and Mohammed al-Fayed still think this way today, but it seemed to me a logical conclusion to draw at the time.

Was it really Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell's finest hour?

Even as a Campbell-hater, I have to admit the man was awesome that week. He appeared in complete charge of the situation, to the point where he almost gave us lobby correspondents the impression that he had personally drawn up the funeral arrangements. A tour-de-force.

Did I think the Monarchy would be overthrown?

A lot of very influential people - notably Will Hutton, then the editor of the Observer - were trying to push that line, and the initial reporting of Charles Spencer's speech has to be seen in that light. But I always took the view that Diana was held in such public affection more because of her royal status than in spite of it.

Did Britain fall victim to an outbreak of mass hysteria?

It was more the case that public displays of grief became socially acceptable for the first time, though that must have seemed like hysteria to more conservative types.

free web site hit counter

Monday, August 27, 2007

Did Murdoch really save The Times?

Iain Dale visited here yesterday to leave a comment on an old post about the lack of cricket on terrestrial TV that referred en passant to the Murdoch takeover of Times Newspapers Limited in 1981. Iain's view is that the Dirty Digger saved the Times and the Sunday Times, mine is that he destroyed them. The full exchange can be read HERE.

Since the role of Murdoch in demeaning British journalism over the past 40 years is something of a pet subject of mine, I thought this was worthy of its own post. I would certainly be interested to hear others' views.

free web site hit counter

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Tough on crime victims...

"Laura Norder" has leaped back to the top of the political agenda this week following the Learco Chindamo controversy and the Rhys Jones killing. Here's what I had to say in my weekend column published in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Telegraph this morning.

***

Every so often, an individual crime takes place in Britain that is seen as so horrendous and which provokes such a degree of public outrage that it actually shifts the political consensus.

The death of Liverpool toddler James Bulger in 1993 was one such instance. It produced some in us deep soul-searching as to what kind of country we had become, and a new emphasis on the need to mend our “broken society.”

It was shortly after this that the then Shadow Home Secretary, Tony Blair, first displayed his infallible ability to capture the zeitgeist by coining his memorable soundbite "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime."

It is arguable that the Bulger death played at least a part in Mr Blair being elected leader of the Labour Party the following year ahead of Gordon Brown, who up until then had been the senior of the two men.

A similarly seminal episode was the Dunblane Massacre, in 1995. It resulted in the Labour ban on handguns introduced after 1997 and, with the Tories having opposed the move, was a small but significant issue in the general election of that year.

Then there was the murder of the London teenager Stephen Lawrence, which led to the Macpherson Report into “institutional racism” in the Metropolitan Police and a huge change in the culture of UK policing.

Few crimes, though, have generated as much public debate and as many political repercussions as the 1995 murder of the London headteacher Philip Lawrence while trying to protect one of his young pupils.

This week, the case was dominating the political agenda again, following the judgement that Lawrence's killer, Learco Chindamo, should not be deported to Italy if, as expected, he is released on parole next year.

The Lawrence case was always one that pushed a lot of buttons. The extent of knife crime, the rise in gang culture, and the rights of victims were but three of the issues it threw up.

It gave rise to a knives amnesty at the time, and later helped lay the ground for the introduction of “victim statements” in which those most closely affected by individual crimes were allowed to address the court at the end of a trial.

But for all the Blair government’s oft-repeated hype about “putting the victim at the heart of the criminal justice system,” the system remains stacked against the victim as this week’s ruling showed.

It remains the prevailing legal view that the justice system is not about delivering the wishes of Mrs Frances Lawrence or any other victims, and that attempts to make it do so stem more from “tabloid hysteria” than ordinary common sense.

For what it’s worth, my own view of the case is that the focus on the row over the deportation of Chindamo has obscured an even more glaring injustice – the pitifully short sentence he has had to serve in view of the seriousness of the original crime.

This was also the case with Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, the killers of James Bulger, who were set free under new identities several years ago.

But the fact that Chindamo has become eligible for parole after just 12 years only serves to emphasise the extent to which the deportation tribunal decision has failed Mrs Lawrence, who must now live with the thought that her husband’s killer is at large in the same city.

If life could not mean life, the system could at least have ensured that Chindamo was sent somewhere a long way away from the people whose lives he has ruined.

So much for my views – what of the law? Well, the initial blame for the ruling attached to the Human Rights Act passed by New Labour in 2000, which holds that Chindamo has a right to a family life.

His Filipino mother still lives in London, and although his father lives in Italy, he is currently in jail for throwing acid in a woman’s face and has not seen his son for many years.

But as the week has gone on, it has become clearer that the real legal culprit was not the Human Rights Act but the 2004 EU Free Movement Directive, which makes clear that Chindamo cannot be deported unless he is a serious threat to public security.

Politically, this is something of a heady cocktail, encompassing not just concerns about youth crime and gang culture but also Britain’s whole relationship with Europe at a time when the EU constitution referendum row is raising its head once again.

Little more than 48 hours after the Chindamo ruling came the fatal shooting of 11-year-old Rhys Jones, a crime that carried more than a few overtones of the Bulger killing a few miles away on Merseyside.

It has also stirred similar emotions, with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith struggling to hold back the tears in a television interview yesterday after watching Rhys's parents talk about his murder.

Meanwhile, in a further shift away from traditional Tory concerns, David Cameron has insisted that the “broken society” would be a central theme of his party’s general election campaign.

Even before this week’s events, the youth crime issue was growing in importance as talk of that election continues to intensify. It is sure to be a key election battleground now.

It was one of Tony Blair's great political achievements in his 13 years as Labour leader to make crime a “Labour issue,” and it is still too soon to talk of it becoming a “Tory issue” again.

But simply by virtue of having been in power for ten years in which the problem of gun crime in particular has continued unabated, Labour is once again vulnerable on the issue.

The political impact of the James Bulger murder was to catapult youth crime to the top of the agenda and put Tony Blair in pole position to become Labour leader and later Prime Minister.

Fourteen years on, the combined political impact of the Chindamo ruling and the Ryan Jones killing might just be to put David Cameron back in the game.

free web site hit counter

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The true story behind The Kipper and the Corpse

I have always been a huge fan of Fawlty Towers and The Kipper and the Corpse has always been one of my favourite episodes. But I never realised until I was subbing this tribute to Andrew Leeman on the national obituaries site I currently manage that the recently-deceased restaurateur was in fact the inspiration for the episode in question, and that John Cleese had named the "corpse" Leeman in his honour. You learn something new every day...

free web site hit counter

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Powell Lite

I raised a few hackles among readers of this blog a few weeks' back for daring to criticise Boris Johnson, so I was interested to read about the report by Compass on why the former Spectator editor is unfit to be Mayor of London.

Frankly, I think the Brownite think-tank was being a bit po-faced by quoting Boris's comments on driving a Ferrari against him - "the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her well-bred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion".

It may be tasteless, but most readers would probably take this comment in the light-hearted spirit in which it was meant. Racism, though, is a different matter - especially in a city as multiracial as London.

In its report, Compass described Johnson as "a type of Norman Tebbit in a clown's uniform." Perhaps a better comparison, though, would have been with Enoch Powell.

The Compass dossier, which delved back into Johnson's journalistic career as well as his more recent political utterances, reminds us that Johnson once wrote a piece in which he referred to black people as "piccaninnies with watermelon smiles."

The phrase "wide-grinning piccaninnies" was of course used by Powell in the notorious Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 which effectively ended his career in frontline politics. As such it is a word which all aspiring Tory politicians should surely avoid.

free web site hit counter

Poor Frances Lawrence

I am coming very late in the day to this, I know, but having followed the original case quite closely back in 1995 I couldn't let the Learco Chindamo controversy pass without comment.

I don't care how much of a reformed character Chindamo has become - and as a Christian I'm a firm believer in the possibility of redemption - but the bottom line of all this is that Mrs Lawrence should not be expected to live with the thought that her husband's killer is somewhere "out there." If he could not be locked up for life as his appalling crime surely merited, then let him at least be sent somewhere a long way away from the people whose lives he has ruined.

free web site hit counter

Friday, August 17, 2007

Inheritance Tax: Tory gain

The reaction from the opposition has been predictable, but I'm afraid the Tories are right about this one. Inheritance Tax should go, or at least be radically reformed, not necessarily for all the reasons John Redwood says it should but because, thanks to the phenomenon of fiscal drag, it has basically become a regressive tax that penalises people who by no stretch of the imagination can be considered rich.

I would be amazed if David Cameron does not put today's proposal straight in the Tory election manifesto, but it makes such obvious political sense that I would also be mildly surprised if some form of it does not also end up being purloined by Labour.

At the very least, ministers ought to consider some of the alternative options to outright abolition, such as exempting the main family home from the tax, or levying it at 20p rather than 40pc, or raising the threshold to £1m, so that it reverted to its original purpose as a tax only on the very wealthy.

Chancellor Alistair Darling today said the Government was "keeping the situation under review." Expect that review to have been completed well before the next General Election.

free web site hit counter

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Hardly a ringing endorsement

The polls on this blog are not meant to be taken especially seriously - they are really there just to provide a bit of a talking point and to give users another way of interacting besides leaving comments. But the result of my recent survey on who should lead the Lib Dems into the next election makes interesting reading in my view.

The full result was as follows:

Sir Menzies Campbell 28%
Nick Clegg 22%
Charles Kennedy 21%
Chris Huhne 15%
None of these 11%

Given that a fair few of my readers are Tory and Labour supporters who might have voted for Sir Ming in the belief that a new Lib Dem leader might generate a recovery in the party's fortunes at their own parties' expense, this hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement. Neither does it demonstrate any clear consensus on who might replace Ming, with almost as many favouring a return to Charles Kennedy as backing leader-in-waiting Nick Clegg.

Still on the subject of the next election, a new poll is now running on when you think it will be held, within the available legal timeframe of autumn 2007 - spring 2010.

free web site hit counter

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

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.

free web site hit counter

Monday, August 13, 2007

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.

free web site hit counter

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.

free web site hit counter

Saturday, August 04, 2007

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

free web site hit counter

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

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.

free web site hit counter

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.

free web site hit counter

Monday, July 30, 2007

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

free web site hit counter

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.

free web site hit counter

Sunday, July 29, 2007

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.

free web site hit counter

Thursday, July 26, 2007

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.

free web site hit counter

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.

free web site hit counter

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.

free web site hit counter

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

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).

free web site hit counter

The Brown Bounce

My weekly podcast is now on its 75th episode. The current one, which looks at the state of the parties in the wake of last week's by-elections, can be heard HERE.

free web site hit counter

Friday, July 20, 2007

Another whitewash

Did I believe there was no connection between Alastair Campbell's desire to "fuck Gilligan", the leaking by government officials of Dr David Kelly's name to that end, and the weapons inspector's subsequent suicide? No, I didn't, despite what Lord Hutton told us.

And like Guido, neither do I believe there has never been a connection between donations to the Labour Party and the award of peerages, even if nothing was ever written down on paper about it in a way that would have enabled the Crown Prosecution Service to prove that a specific crime had been committed.

I have one simple question on all this: If no-one at No 10 had anything to hide, why did they seek to obstruct the inquiry at every turn, turning what could have been a routine investigation into one that eventually lasted 16 months and cost £800,000 of taxpayers' money?

I don't think the public will be any more convinced by this than I am. Maybe, as with the case of Lord Archer, we will just have to wait a decade or more for the truth to out.

free web site hit counter

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Gordon scores

The Tories are predictably fuming about the fact that Gordon Brown has succeeded in re-focusing attention on the issue of politicians' drug-taking pasts, first by pledging to look again at the reclassification of cannabis and then by persuading Home Secretary Jackie Smith to fess up to having a toke at university.

Why do they protest so much? Isn't it a perfectly legitimate tactic for a party leader to seek to put his opposite number on ths spot over an issue - particularly when they have brought the problem on themselves by being less than open about it in the past?

But whatever the low politics of the situation, it's the right move by Gordon. Cannabis is evil shit and I have witnessed at first hand the kind of psychosis it can induce in regular users, in my case in a former landlord. An old newspaper colleague of mine, Huw Lewis, had an experience that was, sadly, even closer to home.

And in case anyone's wondering....yes, I did, once or twice, and all it ever gave me was a bloody headache.

free web site hit counter

British Beatyourselfupaboutit Corporation

Okay, so it's a serious story, and having grown up in local newspapers where awarding competition prizes to your friends can be a sackable offence, I find it frankly beyond belief that such things have been going on at the BBC.

But however justified, there is something in me that hates to see the corporation beating itself up like this. It's still the greatest broadcasting organisation in the world, and British culture would be immeasurably poorer without it. Let's hear it for the Beeb!

free web site hit counter

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

From Two Jags to Five Hats

One admittedly rather processological story that caught my eye from earlier in the week concerned Harriet Harman's new self-proclaimed role as the "MPs enforcer."

Harman is quite right to see this as part of the role of a Leader of the House of Commons, but it doesn't sit especially well with her party role, leaving a further question mark against the wisdom of this particular appointment by Gordon.

The Tories have already taken to calling Harman "Four Hats" on account of her superfluity of titles - Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Party Chair, Leader of the House of Commons and Minister for Women.

In fact, she has five hats. They are forgetting Lord Privy Seal, a purely ceremonial role but an additional title nonetheless.

free web site hit counter

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Premature euphoria

Actually I did consider calling this post premature something else but that sort of thing can attract unfortunate search engine rankings. But either way it is clear that the decision by Boris Johnson to enter the race for the London Mayoralty has sent the Conservative blogosphere into paeans of ecstasy not seen since the days when Margaret Thatcher was in No 10.

As a fellow-journalist, I have to say I had a fair amount of respect for Bozza. But as a politician? Well, suffice to say his is a precocious talent that has remained unfulfilled.

As far back in the mid-90s, when he was still on the Daily Telegraph and toying with a Parliamentary career, he was being talked about as the most promising Tory of his generation. Yet he seemed unable to make a clear choice between politics and journalism and was eventually beaten to the Tory leadership by a younger man.

His frontbench career has progressed in fits and starts. Michael Howard took a gamble on him and brought him into a prominent role, but ended up having to sack him after he was less than forthcoming about his affair with Petronella Wyatt.

For what it's worth, I thought Iain Dale was right that Boris would have benefited from the rigour of a tough internal primary against someone of Steve Norris's calibre. But that now looks unlikely to happen, and who can blame Norris for not wanting to play the fall-guy?

The fact that this chaotic and wholly unproven figure has been alighted upon by the capital's Tories as a potential saviour is surely a measure of their desperation.

19 July update: And this great story from the Mirror's Bob Roberts proves the point. I particularly love this quote from a "Labour source" which Bob couldn't possibly have made up:

"It may be safe to go back into the water. It's certainly not safe to go back to the Tories."

free web site hit counter

Monday, July 16, 2007

The Stab in the Back

If you think I have been a bit hard on Alastair Campbell, you should read this piece by the former Mirror Group political editor David Seymour in this week's Press Gazette. Apart from being the most comprehensive hatchet-job I have ever seen on the former spinmeister, it also contains the sensational allegation that Campbell described Gordon Brown as "psychologically flawed" in conversation with another Mirror journalist, the week before Andrew Rawnsley's famous scoop.

The Stab in the Back, by the way, was the colloquial name for a famous Mirror watering hole frequented by Campbell in his drinking days.

free web site hit counter

Saturday, July 14, 2007

The emerging battleground

Today's columns in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Telegraph focus on Brown's "Queen's Speech" last Wednesday and the emerging battleground for the next general election. Subjects ranged over include the monarchy, housing, counter-terrorism, regional assemblies, supercasinos, marriage and income tax.

***

We've had Gordon Brown’s dummy Queen’s Speech, setting out his new government’s programme for the next year and providing a symbolic break with the Blair era by scrapping the “supercasino” plan.

We’ve had David Cameron’s bid to win back Middle England by recasting the Tories as the party of the family.

And we’ve had Sir Menzies Campbell’s attempt to bring a new radical cutting edge to Lib Dem policies by proposing a 4p cut in income tax paid for by higher green taxes and ending tax breaks for the very rich.

If anyone had any doubts that the three main parties are now in election mode, the events of the past week will surely have dispelled them.

To take first Mr Brown’s Commons statement on Wednesday outlining his draft legislative agenda, the first thing to say about this is that it is a very welcome constitutional innovation.

As I have written in this column on at least two previous occasions, I have long believed that the Queen’s Speech itself has become a farce.

Requiring Her Majesty to read out phrases such as “My government will focus on the people’s priorities” and “My government will govern in the interests of the many, not the few” demeans the Monarchy and does nothing for the image of politics.

She should still formally open Parliament each November, but in a modern democracy it makes sense that the programme itself is read out by the Prime Minister.

What, though, of the actual content of Mr Brown’s package? Well, one comment that has been made is that while the style may have been very different from that of the Blair years, the substance remains much the same.

That to my mind is a trifle unfair, given the relative importance being attached by Mr Brown to the different parts of the package.

Had it been a Tony Blair statement, it would certainly not have majored on the issue of social housing, a subject which was of very little interest to the former Prime Minister.

No, it would moreorless all have been about crime and counter terrorism, as were most of the Queen’s Speech packages of the latter years of the Blair regime.

Okay, so those problems have not gone away – but despite, or perhaps even because of the recent attempted terror attacks on London and Glasgow, I think Mr Brown is right to try to lower the temperature on that score.

“Politicians used to sell us dreams of a better life. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares,” went the trailer for a BBC documentary a while back.

Mr Brown, to his credit, is one of the old-fashioned variety of politicians in this respect.

Without necessarily taking the terrorist threat any less seriously, maybe we might become a more optimistic and less fearful nation on account of it.

As it is, Mr Brown’s declared aim of building 3m more low-cost homes by 2020 may be no easier to achieve than defeating al-Qaeda.

Some of those additional homes will be no doubt be built on government-owned brownfield sites such as former hospitals and MoD land, and many of these have already been identified.

But it is simply fanciful to think such an ambitious target could be reached without encroaching on green belt land as well.

And just as the Blair government was in danger of destroying our civil liberties by over-reacting to the terrorist threat, so the Brown government risks destroying another essential part of our British way of life – the countryside.

The abolition of the unelected regional assemblies, welcome though that may be in many quarters, will not make things any easier in this respect

Local authorities are set to get back the strategic planning role they were forced to give up to the assemblies five or six years ago, but it is unlikely to make the actual task any easier.

The upshot will almost certainly be that they won’t be able to agree among themselves which bits of green belt get concreted over, meaning the decision will go to Whitehall.

Thus does the “new localism” risk ending up as the old centralism, as devolution goes into reverse.

As for the supercasino decision, which came as a bolt from the blue even to Mr Brown’s own Cabinet, that seemed in part a response to Mr Cameron’s attempt to take the moral high ground over marriage.

The Tory leader has backed a report by his predecessor-but-one Iain Duncan Smith arguing for tax breaks for married couples worth £20 a week.

It will be a popular move in some quarters, but I can’t help but see it as a bit of a retreat into the comfort zone for a party which had been seeking to show it has come to terms with modern Britain.

In any case, using the tax system to encourage a certain course of behaviour is what used to be called social engineering - something only Labour governments tended to be accused of.

What of the Lib Dems? Since the overthrow of Charles Kennedy they have been floundering as a party, having shed not just a well-liked leader but also most of their most distinctive policies.

I still believe Sir Menzies is the wrong leader. He is too much an establishment figure for a party that thrives on being seen as slightly edgy.

But his supporters will argue that if the party is going to go in for very radical policies, perhaps it helps to have a reassuring figure like Sir Menzies at the helm.

The policies unveiled this week are certainly radical, and if implemented would constitute the biggest taxation changes since the last time the Liberals were in power, under H.H. Asquith.

After Mr Brown’s lacklustre debut at Prime Minister’s Questions a week and a half ago, a Tory MP was seen rubbing his hands with glee outside the Chamber exclaiming “Game on!”

He may have been getting a bit carried away with himself. The election is still very much Mr Brown’s to lose, in my opinion, and he has all the Prime Minister’s powers at his disposal as he seeks to make the political weather.

But what is becoming clearer is the way in which the respective parties intend to tackle the contest when it finally does come round.

Maybe it’s not quite game on yet, but the key players are definitely starting to limber up.

free web site hit counter