Nick Robinson and the US elections

Earlier this week I took BBC political editor Nick Robinson to task on this blog for focusing on the frankly irrelevant question of whether Gordon Brown is "enjoying" being Prime Minister. The debate on this continues in the comments to the original post.

Today, Nick was back with a post listing eight reasons why Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primaries will reverberate through British politics over the coming weeks. And as the excellent Hopi Sen has already pointed out elsewhere, most of them are complete piffle.

I don't want to appear as if I'm running a campaign against Nick. I actually like the guy and remember him from my time in Westminster as one the few senior political journalists who actually spoke to members of the regional lobby. On one occasion he even agreed, at my wife's request, to take a mobile phone photograph of her and me outside No 10 which she still shows off to her mates occasionally.

Nevertheless I am beginning to wonder whether he is falling into the trap - an occupational hazard for all very influential journalists - of seeking to shape the political agenda rather than interpreting it for the benefit of his audience.

The last paragraph of today's post says it all:

"Those who insist that there cannot be any read across from the votes of small American states to British politics will be ignored because they simply don't get it. The political classes are gripped by this campaign. It will continue to feed into commentary, oratory and prediction all year - sometimes absurdly, occasionally aptly. The battle between Clinton and Obama, McCain, Romney and Huckabee is, like it or not, a part of Britain's electoral struggle."

Roughly translated, this means:

"Because, in the absense of a UK general election, I and my senior colleagues in the world of political journalism are gripped by this campaign to the point of obsession, the poor bloody viewer, listener and reader will continue to be forced to listen to us all trying to draw spurious analogies between it and the UK political scene whether or not this is actually justified."

The job of BBC political editor has always involved striking a delicate balance between reporting and punditry. For all his all-round excellence, Robinson's predecessor Andrew Marr occasionally fell off that tightrope, for instance when he publicly commiserated with Alastair Campbell over the death of Dr Kelly.

Far be it from me to teach the man at the top of my former profession how to suck eggs...but Robinson would be better-off in my view following the example of John Cole, who never forgot that the reporting role came first.

It's be nice to Clegg day/week/month/year

Todays PMQs was chiefly notable for the spectacle of David Cameron and Gordon Brown falling over themselves to be nice to the new Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. Expect this to be a central theme of British politics over the next two years as we approach a General Election that currently has hung Parliament written all over it.

Farewell Caroline

A belated farewell to Caroline Hunt who has called time on her blog. We had our disagreements - well, she is a Tory after all - but I always rated her highly as one of the most individual voices in the blogosphere.

Attack puppies called off?

Last week both Iain Dale and the equally insightful and reputable UK Daily Pundit were confidently predicting that the government would declare "class war" on David Cameron.

Dale went further and named the three so-called "attack puppies" who would be unleashed against the Tory leader - Tom Watson, Kevin Maguire and, oddly, Denis MacShane, who hardly fits the same stereotype.

Well, it hasn't happened, but this doesn't necessarily mean the story wasn't true. It may just be that Gordon Brown has thought better of employing such a low-grade tactic at a time when he is once more trying to project himself as a serious and purposeful national leader.

The British public are a funny lot. The one thing that might make them more inclined to vote for an Old Etonian than they might otherwise be is if someone sought to make an issue out of his Old Etonianism.

Bill Richardson is my man

Courtesy of Iain Dale I couldn't resist having a go at the Electoral Compass USA test designed to see which presidential election candidate comes closest to your views.

The answer in my case is the Democrat outsider Bill Richardson, with Hillary Clinton not far behind. The candidate whose views I am furthest away from is the Republican, Fred Thompson.

Bill Richardson would be a good vice-presidential candidate to Clinton or Obama in my view - despite his English-sounding name he's actually a Hispanic so would draw the large Spanish vote in.

I also expect Fred Thompson to end up on the ticket as a running mate to either John McCain or Rudy Guiliani.

It's about service, not "enjoyment"

Nick Robinson today returned to blogging after a lengthy Christmas break to pose the burning political question of the moment, namely is Gordon Brown enjoying the job?

Leaving aside the question of why the BBC political editor chose to focus on this aspect of the Prime Minister's Today Programme interview this morning rather than discuss the actual content, I would have thought the answer was pretty obvious. Because for the great majority of people engaged in it, politics is about public service, not enjoyment.

If you are the kind of person who "enjoys" power, you are almost certainly the wrong kind of person to be exercising it. If on the other hand you look on leadership as a responsibility, as Gordon does, then you might one day make a half-decent manager, or chief executive, or even Prime Minister.

What surprises me about Nick's comments, and for that matter the whole line of questioning from Jim Naughtie in the first place, is that examples of the kind of self-sacrificial public service I am talking about abound in voluntary organisations, charities and public sector bodies the length and breadth of the land.

Did my wife "enjoy" being chairperson of our local National Childbirth Trust branch last year? Not especially, but she did it because she believes in the NCT's work and wanted to see awareness of it growing in our community. And there are various unpaid jobs I've done, in the NUJ, in the Lobby, in my local church, which have brought me little but hassle but which similarly needed to be done.

By following this politics-as-enjoyment agenda, Robinson and others are not only failing to understand what it is that makes Gordon tick, but failing to understand the motivation for much of what makes for civil society in this country.