Tom Mangold makes my day!

Yesterday morning Iain Dale posted a piece on his blog criticising Panorama's latest tabloid-style documentary on the water industry. Agreeing with the general thrust of this, I posted a light-hearted comment saying "Bring back Tom Mangold!"

Imagine my surprise when I logged onto my computer this morning to find an email from Mangold himself thanking me for my comments!

The man is actually a journalistic hero of mine, having produced a brilliant Panorama documentary on the miscarriage of justice surrounding the Cardiff Three murder case which inspired me, as a reporter on the South Wales Echo in the early 90s, to try and do my bit to get the case reopened.

I'm not sure if my efforts had any effect at the time, but the Cardiff Three were eventually completely vindicated in 2003, when Jeffrey Ghafour - the notorious "Mr X" of numerous newspaper investigations into the crime - admitted the killing having been nailed by advances in DNA technology.

More cross-dressing

I suppose that as political transvetitism goes, it would take a fair bit to top this piece of sheer audacity from Home Secretary John Reid at the weekend.

I agree with him as it happens. It's not racist to want to have a debate about whether immigration policies are serving the country's wider interests. But it's only 15 months since the Tories were being described as exactly that for seeking to have that debate during the general election campaign.

If this is now official Labour policy, I think that the least the party can now do is apologise to Michael Howard for the unjustified slurs of April and May last year.

If however it's just another piece of freelancing by Dr Reid, then I think he just kissed goodbye to any prospect of mounting an effective challenge to Gordon Brown for the leadership. However well this kind of thing might go down with the general public, the Labour electorate is a different audience.

Meanwhile, more from me on the question of whether stealing other parties' political clothes really is here to stay in my newspaper columns and associated Podcast at the weekend, developing a theme explored on this blog last week.

My overall verdict is that, whilst politicians may be happy to play these sorts of games, there is no great evidence of the growth of political transvestitism amongst the public at large.

"If anything, the dominant trend at recent elections has not being people switching from one party to another, but switching from one party to no party.

"Furthermore, it is hard to argue that New Labour’s “politics without conscience,” as William Hague once memorably termed it, has not been one of the biggest reasons why.

"Turning politics into an ideology-free-zone may please the Rupert Murdochs of this world, but for millions of ordinary voters, it merely leaves them disillusioned and disenfranchised.

"It seems that rather than resort to political transvestitism, we would rather be seen wearing no clothes at all."

Read the full version HERE.

Who's running Britain: the annual non-story

Okay, so it's a great story, all the more so at a time of year when good political stories are in very short supply. Fat old working-class fool who can't speak the language properly and mispronounces the names of foreign leaders is left to run the country for a fortnight, opening up the prospect of a whole series of disasters along the way.

Or, at least, it would be a great story, if there was any truth in it. Because the truth is that, whether he is a fat old fool or not, John Prescott has never actually been left in charge of anything in Tony Blair's absense.

There seems to be an assumption on the part of the people writing this stuff that Mr Blair somehow ceases to be Prime Minister when he is on holiday. That might have been the case had we still been living in the era of carrier-pigeons, or when ocean liners were the only form of foreign travel, but not in an era of modern communications and transport.

Doutbless it won't stop the stories being written though, even if Mr Blair's decision to postpone his holiday means they have to be shelved for a few days.

Walter Wolfgang joins Labour's NEC

Possibly the greatest victory against NuLab control freakery since Peter Mandelson failed to be elected to the NEC in 1997! Read the full story HERE.

I was however genuinely surprised by this result as, from her Loughborough Uni days onwards, Lorna Fitzsimons has always been good at getting elected to things, occasionally employing some innovative techniques in order to do so.