In that great journalistic parallel universe where all the stories that ought to have been true were true, that last sentence would surely have read: "Her No 10 predecessor Humphrey died in 1997 after being murdered by Cherie Blair."
Friday, July 31, 2009
Cat-ching up
Bit late on this one, but I couldn't help but be amused by Ben Brogan's eulogy to Sybil the Downing Street cat which concludes: "Sybil was named after the terror of Fawlty Towers. Her No 10 predecessor Humphrey died in 2006 after being exiled by Cherie Blair."
In that great journalistic parallel universe where all the stories that ought to have been true were true, that last sentence would surely have read: "Her No 10 predecessor Humphrey died in 1997 after being murdered by Cherie Blair."
In that great journalistic parallel universe where all the stories that ought to have been true were true, that last sentence would surely have read: "Her No 10 predecessor Humphrey died in 1997 after being murdered by Cherie Blair."
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Could it be the war that finally does for Brown?
The current mood of unease about the war of Afghanistan constitutes a dangerous moment for Gordon Brown. Here's today's Journal column.
It is one of those enduring yet misleading clichés of British political life that in times of war or national emergency, the public invariably and instinctively rallies towards the government.
Certainly, when civilian lives are threatened on the mainland, it is a rule that by and large holds true. It is not so very long ago that Gordon Brown’s popularity soared in the wake of a series of terrorist incidents which he was deemed to have handled well.
But history shows that wars more often break than make governments, and for Mr Brown, the war in Afghanistan is proving a rather different proposition.
The loss of 15 British soldiers’ lives in a fortnight has not only seen the conflict return to the top of the political agenda for the first time in seven years, it has led to some searching questions for the Prime Minister about the purpose and conduct of the whole operation.
There has always been a hard core of outright opposition to the conflict, ever since it was first launched as part of George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ in the wake of 9/11.
But those who opposed the war on principle have now been joined by a growing number of people who, while sympathetic to the cause, believe the government is guilty of letting down ‘Our Boys.’
Mr Brown insists that none of the recent losses were down to shortages of equipment or helicopters or men, as has been variously claimed by Opposition MPs and Army chiefs.
Nevertheless, the suspicion persists that government penny-pinching is, if not directly leading to solidiers’ deaths, certainly hampering their task in what is an already difficult situation.
That was the essence of the accusation made by the Commons’ backbench defence select committee in its report this week.
Although it stopped short of saying that servicemen were dying because of a lack of helicopters, the committee clearly believes the government is making things more difficult than they need to be.
Chairman James Arbuthnot said: “Operational commanders in the field are unable to undertake potentially valuable operations because of the lack of helicopters for transportation around the theatre of operations.”
Head of the Army General Sir Richard Dannatt, who is becoming increasingly outspoken as he approaches retirement, added that “more boots” were needed in order to keep the Taliban at bay.
The mood of dissatisfaction with Mr Brown’s conduct of the war has also been reflected in criticism of his choice of Bob Ainsworth as defence secretary in his recent reshuffle, and his subsequent ranking as 21st out of 23 in the Cabinet hierarchy.
This is desperately unfair on Mr Ainsworth, a stalwart minister who is one of those increasingly rarities in today’s Labour Party, namely a fully paid-up member of the working-class.
But Mr Brown’s decision to appoint a relative unknown to such a pivotal post in the midst of a desperately difficult conflict has inevitably raised questions over his judgement.
It does not help Mr Ainsworth’s cause that he is the fourth defence secretary in as many years, following in the footsteps of John Reid, Des Browne and John Hutton.
This point was well made by the former head of the Army, General Sir Michael Jackson, who himself worked with three defence secretaries in his three and a half years in the job.
“I think as a matter of principle it is better that such key positions as defence secretary are held on a longer term to provide continuity,” he said.
Michael Codner, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute said defence secretaries needed “stature and respect” which had to be earned over time.
It seems we have moved a very long way from the days of Denis Healey and Michael Heseltine when the defence job was seen as effectively the fourth great office of state after Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.
But this is essentially a row not about personalities or status in the Cabinet pecking-order, but about money.
The crux of the accusation against Mr Brown is that, as Chancellor, he failed to give a high enough priority to defence spending, and that, as Prime Minister, he is now paying the political price of that.
At a time when more and more British lives are being lost by the day, this is a highly dangerous accusation for the Prime Minister.
At the current rate of casualties, it is only a matter of time before a specific death becomes linked to a specific cutback, and that would be a perilous moment indeed for Mr Brown.
The ‘War of Terror’ has never been the great vote-winner for Labour that, for instance, the Falklands War was for Mrs Thatcher. Coupled with the Iraq conflict, there is a strong argument for saying that the entire New Labour project was blown permanently off-course by it.
It helped do for Tony Blair. Could it now help drive the final nail in Mr Brown’s political coffin, too?
It has been said that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won in Helmand Province, but it could be lost there, and a similar point could be made about Mr Brown’s premiership.
The war in Afghanistan will not win the Prime Minister the popularity he so desperately seeks - but it could well lose him what little support he still retains.
It is one of those enduring yet misleading clichés of British political life that in times of war or national emergency, the public invariably and instinctively rallies towards the government.
Certainly, when civilian lives are threatened on the mainland, it is a rule that by and large holds true. It is not so very long ago that Gordon Brown’s popularity soared in the wake of a series of terrorist incidents which he was deemed to have handled well.
But history shows that wars more often break than make governments, and for Mr Brown, the war in Afghanistan is proving a rather different proposition.
The loss of 15 British soldiers’ lives in a fortnight has not only seen the conflict return to the top of the political agenda for the first time in seven years, it has led to some searching questions for the Prime Minister about the purpose and conduct of the whole operation.
There has always been a hard core of outright opposition to the conflict, ever since it was first launched as part of George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ in the wake of 9/11.
But those who opposed the war on principle have now been joined by a growing number of people who, while sympathetic to the cause, believe the government is guilty of letting down ‘Our Boys.’
Mr Brown insists that none of the recent losses were down to shortages of equipment or helicopters or men, as has been variously claimed by Opposition MPs and Army chiefs.
Nevertheless, the suspicion persists that government penny-pinching is, if not directly leading to solidiers’ deaths, certainly hampering their task in what is an already difficult situation.
That was the essence of the accusation made by the Commons’ backbench defence select committee in its report this week.
Although it stopped short of saying that servicemen were dying because of a lack of helicopters, the committee clearly believes the government is making things more difficult than they need to be.
Chairman James Arbuthnot said: “Operational commanders in the field are unable to undertake potentially valuable operations because of the lack of helicopters for transportation around the theatre of operations.”
Head of the Army General Sir Richard Dannatt, who is becoming increasingly outspoken as he approaches retirement, added that “more boots” were needed in order to keep the Taliban at bay.
The mood of dissatisfaction with Mr Brown’s conduct of the war has also been reflected in criticism of his choice of Bob Ainsworth as defence secretary in his recent reshuffle, and his subsequent ranking as 21st out of 23 in the Cabinet hierarchy.
This is desperately unfair on Mr Ainsworth, a stalwart minister who is one of those increasingly rarities in today’s Labour Party, namely a fully paid-up member of the working-class.
But Mr Brown’s decision to appoint a relative unknown to such a pivotal post in the midst of a desperately difficult conflict has inevitably raised questions over his judgement.
It does not help Mr Ainsworth’s cause that he is the fourth defence secretary in as many years, following in the footsteps of John Reid, Des Browne and John Hutton.
This point was well made by the former head of the Army, General Sir Michael Jackson, who himself worked with three defence secretaries in his three and a half years in the job.
“I think as a matter of principle it is better that such key positions as defence secretary are held on a longer term to provide continuity,” he said.
Michael Codner, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute said defence secretaries needed “stature and respect” which had to be earned over time.
It seems we have moved a very long way from the days of Denis Healey and Michael Heseltine when the defence job was seen as effectively the fourth great office of state after Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary.
But this is essentially a row not about personalities or status in the Cabinet pecking-order, but about money.
The crux of the accusation against Mr Brown is that, as Chancellor, he failed to give a high enough priority to defence spending, and that, as Prime Minister, he is now paying the political price of that.
At a time when more and more British lives are being lost by the day, this is a highly dangerous accusation for the Prime Minister.
At the current rate of casualties, it is only a matter of time before a specific death becomes linked to a specific cutback, and that would be a perilous moment indeed for Mr Brown.
The ‘War of Terror’ has never been the great vote-winner for Labour that, for instance, the Falklands War was for Mrs Thatcher. Coupled with the Iraq conflict, there is a strong argument for saying that the entire New Labour project was blown permanently off-course by it.
It helped do for Tony Blair. Could it now help drive the final nail in Mr Brown’s political coffin, too?
It has been said that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won in Helmand Province, but it could be lost there, and a similar point could be made about Mr Brown’s premiership.
The war in Afghanistan will not win the Prime Minister the popularity he so desperately seeks - but it could well lose him what little support he still retains.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Another nail in the coffin of Barnett
I sometimes wonder how many times the noble Lord Barnett will have to disown his own formula, and how many critical reports on the infamous system of regional funding will have to be published, before the government finally decides to do something, but hopefully the latest intervention by a House of Lords committee will nudge things another few centimetres in the right direction....
Government statistics
More on the current spate of casualties in Afghanistan and their potential political impact in tomorrow's weekly column.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Not-so-new Labour say their goodbyes
This week's Journal column focuses on North-East matters, namely the forthcoming retirement of at least ten of the region's 30 MPs. Most of them are going not because of the expenses row but because they're 60 and facing a spell in Opposition, but some of them will leave a bigger hole than others....
All general elections involve goodbyes. Over the last decade and a half, those who have bidden farewell to the Commons’ green benches have included such North-East political luminaries as Don Dixon, Sir Neville Trotter, Dr David Clark and Derek Foster.
In between times, the region also saw two of its most famous ‘imports’ move on to fresh woods and pastures new – Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair.
But even that loss of political talent looks set to be dwarfed by the scale of the exodus when the next election finally takes place.
Ten of the North-East’s 30 MPs have already announced they are standing down – or in the case of Stockton North’s Frank Cook, had it announced for them – and several more may yet follow.
As well as Mr Cook, who has been deselected, those on the way out include former ministers Hilary Armstrong (Durham North West), Alan Milburn (Darlington), Doug Henderson (Newcastle North) and Chris Mullin (Sunderland South).
They are joined in the queue for the exit door by backbenchers Jim Cousins (Newcastle Central), Fraser Kemp (Houghton and Washington), John Cummings (Easington), Bill Etherington (Sunderland North) and Peter Atkinson (Hexham).
Some of these departures can be put down to natural longevity – with the exceptions of Mr Kemp and Mr Milburn, all are either at or approaching the normal retirement age,
But there has inevitably been speculation that the MPs’ expenses scandal, while not directly implicating any of the above-named in wrongdoing, may have persuaded at least some of them that Parliament was no longer worth the candle.
For my part, I’m not sure. While some no doubt view with trepidation the prospect of having the public pore over their expense claims online, it is as nothing compared to the far grimmer prospect of Opposition.
With Labour providing 28 of those 30 MPs, the prospect of a Labour defeat in 2010 will inevitably have a bigger impact in the North-East than elsewhere.
Most of the Labour MPs who are retiring have already experienced a longish spell in Opposition prior to 1997 – but back then, they were in their 40s, and could look forward confidently to ministerial office one day.
For an MP past his or her 60th birthday, five years of Opposition presents a quite different proposition. Even if Labour is only out for one term, there would be little for them to come to back to save for a lap-of-honour on the backbenches.
So Ms Armstrong and Mr Henderson, for instance, are right in their assessments that it is time for a younger person to take over the reins in their respective seats, and although they have not all said so explicitly, the same goes for many of the others.
That is not to say, however, that some of those going will not constitute a grievous loss to the politics of the region, and indeed to the UK as a whole.
The MP who will be most sorely missed in terms of his dogged and occasionally lonely championing of the region’s interests will, without doubt, be Jim Cousins.
Meanwhile the ones who will leave the biggest holes in terms of their wider contribution to Parliament and to centre-left politics more generally will be Chris Mullin and Alan Milburn.
So why single out those three? Well, Mr Cousins first. Back in the days before 1997, the Newcastle Central MP had legitimate ambitions to be a minister, and served at one time as part of Robin Cook’s Shadow Foreign Office team.
But to the region’s very great fortune, he lost that job and ended up in what turned out to be the very much more influential role of backbench member of the Commons’ Treasury Committee.
For the past 12 years, he has used that platform to advance the interests of the North-East at every opportunity, from bemoaning the impact of London-centric interest rate policies in the late 90s to helping facilitate the rescue of Northern Rock last year.
Jim would have been a perfectly competent minister, but the truth is he’d have been wasted. Quite simply, there has been no finer advocate for this region over the past two decades.
But if the North-East owes Mr Cousins a great debt, the country as a whole owes a greater one to Mr Mullin – another who found his talents more suited to being out of government than in it.
His championing of the cause of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four highlighted two of the worst miscarriages of justice of the past half-century, and led to lasting changes in the criminal justice system.
As for Mr Milburn, he will, to my mind, go down as largely unfulfilled political talent. He had a lot more left to contribute to the Labour Party, and had he chosen to do so, could have helped Gordon Brown renew its policies for new political times.
Unfortunately the two men found themselves unable to work together for the good of the party – a sure sign of a party that is about to lose power.
Inevitably, there have been suggestions that the great exodus will fundamentally change the political culture of the North-East, but that remains to be seen.
While the imposition of all-woman shortlists in some seats may very well make the Northern Group of Labour MPs less male, whether it will make the North-East less Labour is much more open to doubt.
The Tories can legitimately entertain hopes of winning perhaps three additional seats in the region next year, and the Liberal Democrats two – but that still leaves Labour as the overwhelmingly dominant force.
The region is seeing not so much a changing of the political guard, as the swapping of an ageing Labour generation for a younger one.
All general elections involve goodbyes. Over the last decade and a half, those who have bidden farewell to the Commons’ green benches have included such North-East political luminaries as Don Dixon, Sir Neville Trotter, Dr David Clark and Derek Foster.
In between times, the region also saw two of its most famous ‘imports’ move on to fresh woods and pastures new – Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair.
But even that loss of political talent looks set to be dwarfed by the scale of the exodus when the next election finally takes place.
Ten of the North-East’s 30 MPs have already announced they are standing down – or in the case of Stockton North’s Frank Cook, had it announced for them – and several more may yet follow.
As well as Mr Cook, who has been deselected, those on the way out include former ministers Hilary Armstrong (Durham North West), Alan Milburn (Darlington), Doug Henderson (Newcastle North) and Chris Mullin (Sunderland South).
They are joined in the queue for the exit door by backbenchers Jim Cousins (Newcastle Central), Fraser Kemp (Houghton and Washington), John Cummings (Easington), Bill Etherington (Sunderland North) and Peter Atkinson (Hexham).
Some of these departures can be put down to natural longevity – with the exceptions of Mr Kemp and Mr Milburn, all are either at or approaching the normal retirement age,
But there has inevitably been speculation that the MPs’ expenses scandal, while not directly implicating any of the above-named in wrongdoing, may have persuaded at least some of them that Parliament was no longer worth the candle.
For my part, I’m not sure. While some no doubt view with trepidation the prospect of having the public pore over their expense claims online, it is as nothing compared to the far grimmer prospect of Opposition.
With Labour providing 28 of those 30 MPs, the prospect of a Labour defeat in 2010 will inevitably have a bigger impact in the North-East than elsewhere.
Most of the Labour MPs who are retiring have already experienced a longish spell in Opposition prior to 1997 – but back then, they were in their 40s, and could look forward confidently to ministerial office one day.
For an MP past his or her 60th birthday, five years of Opposition presents a quite different proposition. Even if Labour is only out for one term, there would be little for them to come to back to save for a lap-of-honour on the backbenches.
So Ms Armstrong and Mr Henderson, for instance, are right in their assessments that it is time for a younger person to take over the reins in their respective seats, and although they have not all said so explicitly, the same goes for many of the others.
That is not to say, however, that some of those going will not constitute a grievous loss to the politics of the region, and indeed to the UK as a whole.
The MP who will be most sorely missed in terms of his dogged and occasionally lonely championing of the region’s interests will, without doubt, be Jim Cousins.
Meanwhile the ones who will leave the biggest holes in terms of their wider contribution to Parliament and to centre-left politics more generally will be Chris Mullin and Alan Milburn.
So why single out those three? Well, Mr Cousins first. Back in the days before 1997, the Newcastle Central MP had legitimate ambitions to be a minister, and served at one time as part of Robin Cook’s Shadow Foreign Office team.
But to the region’s very great fortune, he lost that job and ended up in what turned out to be the very much more influential role of backbench member of the Commons’ Treasury Committee.
For the past 12 years, he has used that platform to advance the interests of the North-East at every opportunity, from bemoaning the impact of London-centric interest rate policies in the late 90s to helping facilitate the rescue of Northern Rock last year.
Jim would have been a perfectly competent minister, but the truth is he’d have been wasted. Quite simply, there has been no finer advocate for this region over the past two decades.
But if the North-East owes Mr Cousins a great debt, the country as a whole owes a greater one to Mr Mullin – another who found his talents more suited to being out of government than in it.
His championing of the cause of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four highlighted two of the worst miscarriages of justice of the past half-century, and led to lasting changes in the criminal justice system.
As for Mr Milburn, he will, to my mind, go down as largely unfulfilled political talent. He had a lot more left to contribute to the Labour Party, and had he chosen to do so, could have helped Gordon Brown renew its policies for new political times.
Unfortunately the two men found themselves unable to work together for the good of the party – a sure sign of a party that is about to lose power.
Inevitably, there have been suggestions that the great exodus will fundamentally change the political culture of the North-East, but that remains to be seen.
While the imposition of all-woman shortlists in some seats may very well make the Northern Group of Labour MPs less male, whether it will make the North-East less Labour is much more open to doubt.
The Tories can legitimately entertain hopes of winning perhaps three additional seats in the region next year, and the Liberal Democrats two – but that still leaves Labour as the overwhelmingly dominant force.
The region is seeing not so much a changing of the political guard, as the swapping of an ageing Labour generation for a younger one.
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