Remembering Aberfan...

The Aberfan Disaster, which took place 40 years ago tomorrow, is my earliest memory of a news event. As I have said before on this blog, I have absolutely no recollection of England's 1966 World Cup win, but I clearly remember my mother watching the TV ashen-faced as the pit village catastrophe unfolded just a few months' later.

I guess that was part of the reason why, as a reporter on the South Wales Echo nearly three deacdes later, I felt drawn to highlight some of the terrible injustices suffered as a result of the coal industry in a campaign called Heroes of Coal.

The history of coal in the UK has been one of appalling industrial exploitation and official neglect, right up to the previous Government's flat refusal to compensate those former miners now suffering from chronic bronchitis and emphysema. But even against that backdrop, Aberfan stands as the most notorious episode of all.

The people of Aberfan never wanted the publicity that came with the disaster and, as Melanie Doel of BBC Wales writes in this piece, tomorrow's anniversary will be marked by quiet reflection in the village. But our thoughts will be with them nonetheless.

Another one bites the dust...

Clare Short's resignation from the Labour Party today is not just the culmination of a long process of personal disillusionment with the party, but the latest example of Tony Blair's failure to retain the trust of the people who once constituted his top team.

Short is the second member of the 1997 Labour Cabinet to leave the party, the first being ace badger-watcher Ron Davies. I cannot recall this ever happening to another Government in my lifetime, although others may have longer memories....

Of that initial Blair Cabinet, just six members remain - the Prime Minister himself, John Prescott, Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and Alastair Darling, great political survivors all.

Four are dead - Ivor Richard, Donald Dewar, Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam - while another five - Ann Taylor, Jack Cunningham, David Clark, Chris Smith and George Robertson - have joined Derrry Irvine in the land of the living dead, aka the House of Lords.

Oct 23 Update: Rumours of Ivor Richard's death are apparently greatly exaggerated - see comments thread below.

Forsyth still doing the Lady's bidding

It would be easy to dismiss the report of the Tories' Tax Commission under Lord Michael Forsyth as a political event of no great consequence, given that its proposals have not only been rubbished by Ed Balls on behalf of Labour, but also that the Tories' own Shadow Chancellor Gideon George Osbourne has felt the need to distance himself from them.

That wouldn't, however, be quite right. Although Osbourne has made clear today that the Tories will not be promising an overall reduction in the tax take, and that any cuts in personal taxes will be paid for by increases in environmental taxes, I would nevertheless expect some of the Commission's ideas to make it into the next Tory manifesto. Or even the next Labour one.

Chief among these, surely, is the replacement of Inheritance Tax by a new form of Capital Gains Tax that would exempt the family home, an idea which is looking increasingly like its time has come.

Originally envisaged as a tax that would affect only the very richest, the exponential increase in house prices over the last 20 years has now brought many hundreds of thousands of estates within its ambit, causing much anguish to elderly people whose home is their only asset and who want to be able to pass on something to their children.

If Labour had any sense, they would nick this idea pretty damn quick. Most of the newspapers are already behind it, and my bet is that it's going to be as certain a vote winner among potential Labour-Tory switchers as council house sales were in the late 70s.

Fortunately for the Tories, Brown and Balls appear set on continuing to regard the abolition of IT as a tax cut designed to help the rich, missing the point that, because of the uneven pattern of house prices, it's really a tax that nowadays owes much more to location than social class.

One thing is for certain - that Margaret Thatcher would certainly approve of the work her old protege Forsyth has done in putting tax cuts firmly back on the Tories' longer-term agenda.

An old friend from my Lobby days, who was certainly in a position to know, once told me that Thatcher had actually marked him out as her long-term successor, and that, had she been able to fulfill her ambition to go "on and on and on," would eventually have anointed him ahead of the other Michael, Portillo. I wonder.

Blunkett is cast into the outer darkness

There was a time when David Blunkett entertained serious hopes of becoming Labour leader and Prime Minister. More recently, after he realised that Gordon Brown is unbeatable, he appeared to make his peace with the Chancellor, and indicated that he might be interested in succeeding him in that post.

Today, however, those hopes are in ruins. As the controversry over his diaries continues to rage, the Brownite camp in the shape of Gordon's First Lieutenant, Right-Hand Man and Vicar-on-Earth Nick Brown has delivered a death blow to any lingering prospect of Blunkett resuming his frontline career.

"Newcastle" Brown does not normally do on-the-record quotes. He is the kind of politician - and all parties have them - who prefer to operate in the shadowy realms of thinly-veiled hints and off-the-record briefings, generating the kind of stories that end up being attributed to "close friends," and "key allies" rather than any named individual.

Yet here is the former Chief Whip telling today's Times: "Politics is a team game. Politicians on the same side have to stick together. I cannot understand what David Blunkett thinks he is doing except disqualifying himself from consideration as a serious politician."

This comment will need no deciphering among the ranks of Labour MPs who are used to Nick's ways. He could have chosen to employ his usual, less direct methods, and still got someone to write a story along the lines that "key allies" of Gordon Brown were warning Blunkett as to his future behaviour - but he didn't.

It can only mean that Gordon is sending a clear an unambiguous message to the former Home Secretary. "You're out."

Did I do Stephen Byers a disservice?

David Blunkett's tape-recorded diaries The Blunkett Tapes are published today having been serialised in the Grauniad last week. I have already made clear my view that the content should be viewed primarily as entertainment rather than enlightenment, in particular the assertion that Tony Blair was ready to sack Gordon Brown unless he backed the Iraq War in 2003.

One little gem did catch my eye though in Friday's final instalment. Had I not been in a very important meeting for most of that day, and had my home dial-up connection not been buggered for most of the weekend, I would have blogged on it before now.

Anyway....I refer to a passage in which Mr Blunkett gives his take on one of the infamous episodes in the entire history of the Blair administration, the email sent by Stephen Byers' special adviser Jo Moore on the afternoon of 9/11 stating that it was now "a very good day to get out anything we want to bury."

Blunkett's account casts a completely new light on the episode, and therefore merits reproduction in full:

October 2001

[Leak of email sent by Jo Moore, special adviser to Stephen Byers, to Department of Transport press office on September 11 saying it would be a "very good day" to "bury" bad news]

The world has gone crackers, and the cause célèbre of the week has been the débâcle over Jo Moore, which is going on and on. Steve was intending to sack Jo Moore, but by early afternoon it had all changed and apparently it was because, quite rightly, Tony had perceived that this was a try-on by the civil service. It was felt that they were the ones who had received the email and leaked it, and no matter how appalling the email, the declaration of war by the civil service and their ability to leak emails and thereby bring down special advisers had to be countered. Unfortunately life is not as simple as that. Tony's interpretation of the situation is right, but Steve's initial decision to sack Jo Moore for the content of the email was also right because this story has run and run and run.

In dictating this I had no idea just how catastrophic it was going to be for Steve Byers. I think those advising really did mean well, and it was a difficult situation to call. There is no doubt that Jo Moore paid the price, but what price.

Now this, to my knowledge, is the first time anyone has claimed that the decision not to sack Moore after her initial, appalling misdemeanour was not Byers's, but Blair's.

I was of course working in the Lobby at the time as Political Editor of the Newcastle Journal, and since Byers is a Tyneside MP, it is fair to say I took a keen interest in the story. It was common knowledge within the Lobby that Alastair Campbell, then at the very height of his powers, wanted Moore out, and the supposition was that it was Byers - not Blair - who was resisting this.

I have myself written on a number of occasions in my Journal column and elsewhere that not sacking Moore was the mistake that wrecked Byers' career. Yet it now turns out that it might not have been his decision at all.

It would be too much to expect a loyal Blairite such as Byers to now confirm the truth of Blunkett's account at the cost of dropping the Prime Minister in it. But once Mr Blair has left office, it will be interesting to see if Byers chooses to set the record straight.

I'm a 40pc Political Junkie

I love all these Twenty Questions-type surveys that go round the blogosphere, so here, via Brod Blog, Mars Hill and Iain Dale is the latest, the Political Junkie Test.

The things that are true about me are in bold:

You're a political junkie if.......

1. The first thing you do in the morning is check the BBC’s politics website, followed by the broadsheets.
2. You can name 10 Lib Dem MPs.
3. The Today programme is as much a morning routine as brushing your teeth and taking a piss.
4. You know the URLs for the Top Three political blogs from memory.
5. In your briefcase is a copy of Private Eye, an iPod, and Alan Clarke’s biography.
6. You read Boris every week, even if its only to disagree.
7. You record Question Time via Series Link on your SKY + box.
8. You know the Huffington Post is not a newspaper from a town called Huffington.
9. You know who Nicholas Sarkozy is
10. Your family never brings up politics in your presence.
11. You have a complex opinion of Tony Blair.
12. You actually know where the politics section is at your local Waterstones.
13. You always vote.
14. Your water cooler conversations usually revolve around a recent Westminster scandal.
15. You have given money to a political party, via either membership or a donation.
16. Your dream is to appear on Question Time yourself.
17. You read political blogs during your lunch hour.
18. You see more of Iain Dale or Recess Monkey than your children, sadly
19. You can name the last four foreign secretaries.
20. You have a ‘handle’ at Labourhome.

I make that a score of 8 out of 20, or 40pc. A bit of a politics junkie, then, but not exactly mainlining on it.