Blog Wars and Think Tanks

I have said little on the so-called Blog Wars between Tim and Guido since my original post on the matter last month in which I predicted, correctly as it has turned out, that the debate would eventually polarise on political lines. Iain Dale has today called for an end to it, but that seems a forlorn hope at present.

As I said at the outset, I'm sitting on the fence on this one, and none of what follows should be construed as taking sides, but I have thought for some time that there is one aspect of this "war" that is deeply misguided, and about which I ought to speak out. This is the apparent attempt to smear Gordon Brown over his links with the Smith Institute, and the resulting revenge attacks on certain Tory bloggers over their links with the Policy Exchange.

The Smith Institute was set up in memory of the late John Smith. Believe it or not, Gordon Brown was very close to John Smith as a politician and still holds very similar ideas to him on a range of issues. Is it therefore a very great surprise that Brown and the Smith Institute have a close relationship? No, any more than it is a surprise that a would-be Conservative MP such as Iain Dale or a would-be Tory Mayor of London such as Nick Boles should be a trustees of a right-wing think tank, the Policy Exchange.

My point is that political think-tanks are a part of the political process, and have been at least since the days of Harold Wilson and Ted Heath. Some of these think-tanks are close to individual politicians. As I said about David Cameron's schoolboy toking earlier today, big fucking deal.

Feb 14 update: That's enough blog wars - Ed. Comments on this thread will remain open, but the main debate is continuing elsewhere and I think I've said what I have to say on the matter for the time being.

I do have some sympathy with Tim Ireland's view that the blogosphere is a community in which people owe eachother some sort of obligation of good behaviour - as a socialist I would make the same argument about society generally - but I also accept that individual bloggers like Guido have a perfect right to run their blogs in the way they choose, and that there is no sense trying to enforce a "code of etiquette" without more widespread consent for that. End of communication.

The Big Idea

Transport secretary Douglas Alexander - and, presumably, Gordon Brown - wants to have a debate about using road charging to reduce congestion by 25pc despite a 1m-signature petition against the idea.

Well, it may or may not surprise Mr Alexander to learn that someone has already thought of a Big Idea for reducing the number of motorists off the road. It's called public transport.

It strikes me that there is potential for some very interesting political cross-dressing on this one if David Cameron wants to defend the cost of motoring as free at the point of delivery while at the same time underlining his environmental credentials by ploughing the proceeds of green taxes into trains and buses.

Could the Tories, the party of Dr Beeching and rail privatisation, really become the party of public transport? Stranger things have happened.

Blair's nemesis

Lords reform - and how Tony Blair's failure to address it seriously in his first term has now come back and bitten him on the bum - is the subject of my latest podcast which can be heard
HERE or alternatively read HERE.

"There is surely a bitter irony in the fact that had Mr Blair done the sensible, democratic thing and brought in a fully-elected Second Chamber back in 1997, the whole cash-for-peerages affair would never have happened, but in his lack of radicalism and loss of nerve lay his nemesis. It is as good a summary of the Blair years as any."

Is that all Dave? Why Cameron should have come clean

So the big secret's out at last. David Cameron enjoyed a few spliffs while a schoolboy at Eton, and went on to enjoy a few more while a student at Oxford. Well big fucking deal.

The response of the media and political opponents alike has been predictably underwhelming, although admittedly it's hard for Home Secretary John Reid to make too much of an issue of it

For me, it all begs the question why Cameron didn't come clean about this much earlier, instead of allowing the view to take root that he must be trying to cover up a much more serious drug problem. At one point, practically the entire journalistic profession thought Cameron's family trust fund had disappeared up his nose.

Really, it's a bit like a man suspected of marital infedility refusing to answer questions about his sex life when all he has actually done is pull himself off in the shower.

Giles Radice knew the score

Giles Radice was the kindest and most courteous of the North-East MPs I regularly dealt with in my old job as Political Editor of the Newcastle Journal. After I left the Lobby he stayed in touch for a while and sent me a copy of his Diaries which were published towards the end of 2004. Thumbing through them earlier this evening, I came across this remarkable paragraph, written on General Election Day 2001.

"Lisanne and I work in Newark for Fiona Jones. It is an uphill task, because despite being a sitting Labour MP, Fiona is the victim of a horrendous whispering campaign. Sad to say, she has been a lame duck MP, ever since she was wrongly convicted of "fiddling" her election expenses. Although she was immediately and totally exonerated on appeal, the mud stuck and the Tories have been conducting a vicious doorstep attack on her personal character. We meet hostility to her as we knock up, including schoolboys who say she is "corrupt." Poor Fiona!"

This needs little further comment from me, as it already says so much: about Giles Radice and his dedication to the Labour Party; about the awfulness of Fiona Jones' plight; but also about the Labour Party's desertion of her, that she was left to try to get the vote out on election day with the help, not of the party's "stars," but of only a veteran backbencher on his way, that very day, into retirement.

Poor Fiona, indeed....

Has Miliband blown it?

As regular readers of this blog will know I have long tipped Environment Secretary David Miliband for great things under Gordon Brown, including possibly a 50-50 shot at the Chancellorship. But I can't imagine that the PM-in-waiting will have been too chuffed by the Boy Wonder's remarks on BBC Question Time last night.

"I predict that when I come back on this programme in six months or a year’s time, people will be saying ‘wouldn’t it be great to have that Blair back because we can’t stand that Gordon Brown’."

Miliband tried to explain it away by saying he was merely making the point that people always complain about the sitting Prime Minister, but the Brownites will view the comment as, at best, inept and, at worst, indicative of the mindset in the "Blair Bunker."

I don't think Gordon will forget this, and it may well take him a fairly long time to forgive. I may have to revise my predictions as to the make up of Brown's future Cabinet.