Friday, August 07, 2009

Has Bradshaw been sidelined by Mandy?

I posted this piece earlier today on HoldtheFrontPage's offsite blog The Journalism Hub but I thought I'd cross-post it here as it may have a wider political interest. It concerns the question of who is now taking overall ministerial responsibility for the government's Digital Britain proposals.



After some confusion as to whether Sion Simon or Stephen Timms would be taking over the Digital Britain brief from the now-departed Lord Carter, Downing Street has now ruled in favour of Mr Timms.

But anyone expecting any degree of clarity from the government over which Whitehall department will be ultimately responsible for implementing the plans will have been sorely disappointed.

The story so far is that Timms will remain in his current role as financial secretary to the Treasury, but with additional ministerial responsibilties at Lord Mandelson's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

In terms of his Digital Britain responsibilities, he will report to the Business Secretary, rather than the Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Ben Bradshaw, whose department has hitherto led on the Digital Britain report and who personally delivered it in an oral statement to the Commmons back in June.

Meanwhile Mr Simon, as creative industries minister, is to undertake some ill-defined supporting-role in relation to those aspects of Digital Britain which are still the responsibility of the DCMS.

The upshot of all this appears to be that Mr Bradshaw, a former Exeter Express and Echo reporter who has recently made some welcome comments about the threat to regional newspapers posed by council propaganda sheets, has been well and truly sidelined.

A cynical interpretation of this would suggest that Bradshaw, who is also a former BBC reporter, was deemed insufficiently impartial to rule on the vexed issue of whether the BBC licence fee should be top-sliced to fund new regional TV news consortia in which the local press is expected to play a part.

Either way, with so many departments and ministers now apparently involved, the words "too many cooks," "dog's breakfast" and "camel designed by committee" all spring to mind.

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Saturday, August 01, 2009

Mandy takes up the reins

Whoever ends up leading Labour into the election, the past seven days have shown where the power really now lies. Here's today's Journal column.



Traditionally, the time of the year between the start of the MPs long summer recess in July and the build-up to the party conferences in September has been known as the political ‘silly season.’

In most years, an uneasy peace descends over Westminster, and political journalists are reduced to writing about such ephemera as John Prescott finding a baby crab in the Thames and naming it after Peter Mandelson.

But with an election less than a year away and Gordon Brown’s government still mired in difficulties at home and abroad, nobody expected this to be one of those summers when politics effectively goes into abeyance.

And something else has changed too since Mr Prescott observed that tiny crustacean in 1997. From being the butt of Old Labour humour, Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool is now seen by most of the party as vital to its slim hopes of election victory.

In one sense, it’s a fulfilment of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s more controversial pronouncements.

Asked once how he would know when his mission to transform his party had been completed, he replied: “When the party learns to love Peter Mandelson.”

With Mr Brown off on his holidays this week – in so far as the workaholic PM is ever off-duty – the former Hartlepool MP has been large and in charge around both Whitehall and the TV studios alike.

In so doing, he demonstrated beyond any remaining doubt that he has now inherited the mantle of his one-time tormentor Mr Prescott, as Deputy Prime Minister in all but name.

Lord Mandelson is sensibly playing down excitable talk that he could actually become the next Labour leader, although one influential backbencher declared this week that he was the only person who could beat the Tories.

There has not been a Prime Minister in the House of Lords since Lord Salisbury in 1902, and to have one in 2009 would be extraordinary even by the standards of Lord Mandelson’s topsy-turvy career.

Nevertheless, one had the unmistakeable sense this week that this was a moment he had been looking forward to for a long time, such was the relish with which he took up the levers of power.

His aim was nothing less than to set a new strategic course for Labour as it approaches an election that almost everyone now expects it to lose, and lose badly.

Such pessimism about the party’s prospects is hardly surprising given its dire performance in the Norwich North by-election ten days ago, a result which if replicated across the UK would give David Cameron a majority of 240.

So far, it has not led to a renewed bout of speculation about Mr Brown’s leadership, but it has brought about a growing realisation that he has lost the argument over “Labour investment versus Tory cuts.”

This tired old mantra has been central to Mr Brown’s re-election strategy, but has failed to gain any traction with a cynical public that believes spending cuts will follow whoever wins in 2010.

What Norwich North did was to present an opportunity to those Cabinet members who want to move away from a strategy which they think the public now regards as fundamentally dishonest.

Hence the new note of candour in Lord Mandelson’s interview with BBC Newsnight this week when, without actually using the c-word, he accepted that cuts would indeed be part and parcel of a Labour fourth term.

“I fully accept that in the medium term the fiscal adjustment that we are going to have to make….will be substantial. There will be things that have to be postponed and put off, and there will probably be things that we cannot do at all,” he said.

It wasn’t the only change in election strategy Lord Mandelson announced this week. He also appeared to commit Mr Brown to a televised debate with Mr Cameron, despite Downing Street’s insistence that the Prime Minister remains opposed to the idea.

“I think television debates would help engage the public, help answer some of the questions at the heart of the election, help bring the election alive in some way,” he said.

For what it’s worth, my guess is that it still won’t happen, for the simple reason that electoral law obliges the big broadcasters to give the Liberal Democrats almost equal airtime to that of the Labour and Conservative parties.

This will mean that Nick Clegg will have to be included in any head-to-head between the party leaders, something the other two might be keen to avoid.

But that is by-the-by. The real significance of Lord Mandelson’s comments this week is that he now feels in a strong enough position to set out his own agenda without clearing it with Number Ten.

Some could even see it as the beginnings of an attempt to distance himself from Mr Brown and prepare the way for a new leader with a new, more open style.

After the failed “coup” in May I predicted that Mr Brown would, at some stage, come under fresh pressure to stand down in favour of Home Secretary Alan Johnson, and nothing that has happened since has caused me to revise that view.

Mr Brown’s position remains weak. Labour MPs who effectively put him on probation in May spoke then of the need for a demonstrable improvement in Labour’s performance by the autumn, but there is absolutely no sign of this happening.

But whatever internal machinations occur in the run-up to the conference season – and my guess is that there will be plenty – one thing is becoming increasingly clear.

It is that whether it is Mr Brown or Mr Johnson who leads Labour into the next election, it will be Lord Mandelson who is once more pulling the strings.

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Thanks Sir Bobby

I could write a lot about Sir Bobby Robson, but most of it has probably already been said elsewhere already and if it hasn't, it surely will be by the time tomorrow's papers hit the streets.

So I will just say: thanks, Bobby, for putting together the best bloody England team of my adult lifetime, and for a World Cup memory that will never, ever be forgotten.

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PM for PM



More on Mandy's assumption of power in my weekly column tomorrow.....

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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."

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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.

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