Another missed opportunity for Brown

Time is fast running out for the Prime Minister to provide us with a good reason to re-elect him. Here's today's Journal column.

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As the date of the next general election draws ever nearer, so the remaining windows of opportunity for a revival in Gordon Brown's political fortunes continue to dwindle in number.

In the calendar of set-piece political events, perhaps his best hope of an uplift came with his speech to Labour's conference seven weeks ago, but as I noted in last week's column, The Sun newspaper put paid to that.

Still to come are the pre-Budget report, the Budget itself, and the proposed TV debates with David Cameron, which could yet see the lightweight Tory leader laid out by Mr Brown’s fabled Big Clunking Fist.

But as opportunities go to set out a compelling set of reasons why Labour should remain in power for a fourth term, this week's Queen's Speech has to go down as yet another missed one.

Mr Brown's allies would claim that, with only a maximum of seven months of the current parliament to go before the election has to be held, setting out too ambitious a programme would have invited ridicule.

But surely even ridicule would have been better than the collective "so what?" from the public which seems to have greeted this timid set of proposals.

Despite the criticisms of MPs expenses watchdog Sir Christopher Kelly, it was not so much the absence of a specific piece of legislation to tackle that issue that was the problem.

As the government has pointed out, it is not clear that it requires primary legislation to sort it out anyway, and even if it does, ministers can always resort to Her Majesty's customary catch-all phrase: "Other measures will be laid before you."

No, the real problem with Wednesday's package, as with so much else the Brown government has done, is the lack of any connective tissue to tie these disparate policy threads into a 'Big Idea.'

At one time, before Mr Brown came into office, it seemed likely that the leitmotif of his premiership would be a drive to restore public trust in politics after the spin and sleaze of the Blair years.

In the end, those bright hopes were shot to pieces by a combination of the Prime Minister's timidity, the “smeargate” affair involving his adviser Damien McBride, and finally the expenses scandal.

But this should have been a cue for the government to step up the process of constitutional change, not relegate it to the backburner.

As it is, the only concrete constitutional reform pledge contained in the Queen's Speech is to abolish the absurd "by-election" for Lords' seats for hereditary peers which occurs each time one of them shuffles off this mortal coil.

The fact that hereditary peers remain in the House of Lords at all is almost - but not quite - as savage an indictment of 12 years of Labour rule as the fact that inequality has increased.

The government paid due recognition to this by having Her Majesty utter a solemn pledge to "narrow the gap between rich and poor" - but, like all the other positive measures in the Speech, it begs the doorstep response: "Why didn't you do it in the first place."

If Mr Brown does survive to lead Labour into the election next Spring, that is perhaps the hardest question he and his party will have to answer.

Regaining sympathy not the same as regaining trust

The Sun's quite disgraceful personal attacks on the Prime Minister over his letter to Jacqui Janes understandably swung some public sympathy behind him this week. But neither that nor the Glasgow North East by-election result means he is necessarily "safe." Here's today's Journal column.

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Six weeks ago, The Sun newspaper torpedoed Gordon Brown's hopes of a party conference uplift by announcing on the evening of his keynote speech that it would be backing the Tories at the next general election.

At the time, I was among those who sought to downplay the significance of this, arguing on these pages that it was no more than a right-wing newspaper returning to its natural ideological home.

But if I’m honest, I was swimming against the tide on this. Most of the media seem to take The Sun’s own estimation of itself as the paper ‘wot won’ every election since the 1960s completely at face value.

Hence the paper’s switch after 12 years of loyal support for New Labour was reported as a political event of huge symbolic importance which drove yet another nail in the government’s coffin.

Perhaps, though, they were right. We have seen over the past week just what a dangerous opponent The Sun can be when it has it in mind to ‘go for’ a particular politician.

It used an error-strewn handwritten letter he wrote to grieving mum Jacqui Janes expressing his condolences at the loss of her son in Afghanistan to mount a highly personal attack on the Prime Minister.

It’s all becoming very reminiscent of the latter days of John Major – another well-intentioned PM who seemingly could do nothing right and who incurred the wrath of a certain red-top tabloid as a consequence.

Who could forget the Sun editor on Black Wednesday who promised to take two large buckets of something unmentionable and empty them all over poor old Mr Major’s head?

But if that at least had the merit of humour, on this occasion the paper appears to have over-reached itself.

As the sheer ferocity of its attack became clear, the public’s sympathy seems for once to have swung towards Mr Brown.

Ironically, had the paper not previously announced its intention to support the Conservatives, its reporting of the whole episode might have had a greater political impact.

But as Alastair Campbell rightly pointed out: “Precisely because they made such a splash with the switch to the Tories, the wider public now know more than ever that their coverage is politically driven and totally biased against Brown.”

The Sun also has something of a credibility gap with some sections of the public on issues such as these – as David Higgerson, a former Journal political correspondent now plying his trade on Merseyside, was not slow to point out.

“Nobody in Liverpool needs reminding about the sick irony involved when The Sun decides to have a pop at somebody for being insensitive,” he wrote on his blog.

As it is, a difficult week for Mr Brown has ended on a triumphant note with Labour’s unexpectedly comfortable victory in the Glasgow North-East by-election caused by the defenestration of Mr Speaker Martin over his handling of the expenses affair.

It did not take long for the Prime Minister’s loyal ally, Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, to claim the party’s thumping 8,111 majority over the SNP as “an endorsement of Gordon Brown and what he is trying to do.”

But is it? Earlier this week, South Shields MP David Miliband’s decision to turn down the chance to become EU Foreign Minister led to more speculation that he could yet take as Labour leader before the next election.

A defeat for Labour in Glasgow North-East on Thursday might have raised that speculation to fever pitch.

As it is, the consensus among political commentators last night was that the result will make Mr Brown “safe” from any further attempts to unseat him – but I’m not at all sure they’re right.

The Prime Minister may have garnered some public sympathy this week. But regaining the public’s sympathy is a long way from regaining its trust.

Sympathy for Icarus

Slob returns with a reminder that you should never fly too close to The Sun. More on the red-top's little disagreement with Gordon in tomorrow's weekly column.

Kelly has gone too far

Yes, MPs brought the expenses affair on themselves, and yes, the system needs to be reformed - but reforming it on the basis of a 'blood sacrifice' will not necessarily produce a better Parliament. Here's today's Journal column.

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Ever since the start of the MPs expenses affair, it has been clear that no one political party has had a monopoly on sleazy behaviour.

From Tory knight Sir Peter Viggers’ duck island to Labour ex-minister Elliott Morley’s mortgage claims, the scandal has engulfed those on all sides of the political divide.

You might expect from this that the net effect of the whole debacle in terms of the opinion polls would be pretty well neutral.

But that is not in fact how the public has seen it. In fact, polls have consistently shown that the public regards Labour as far more culpable than the Tories in its handling of the affair.

In a sense, that is inevitable given that Labour is the party in power.

After all, as I have noted previously, the government had every opportunity to spot this car crash coming down the tracks, and every opportunity to reform the expenses system before the extent of the abuse became clear.

But of course, it didn’t, and fearful of the hostile opinion polls, the Prime Minister is now falling over himself to implement the clampdown on MPs expenses that he should have brought forward a year ago.

The net result is that Mr Brown was left with very little wriggle room once standards chief Sir Christopher Kelly had published his own recommendations on how to reform the system this week.

Mr Brown and the other party leaders have already made clear they expect MPs to implement Sir Christopher’s proposals in full – but to my mind, this is not necessarily a good thing.

At the risk of provoking a furious backlash from Journal readers, I am not sure that effectively banning most MPs from purchasing second homes does not amount to something of an over-reaction.

The statute books are full of bad legislation, hastily passed in the aftermath of a moral panic, of which the Dangerous Dogs Act of 1995 is perhaps the most notorious example.

We seem to be on the verge of making a similar mistake with MPs’ expenses, inventing rules designed to produce a ‘cathartic moment,’ or worse, a ‘blood sacrifice,’ rather than considering the most sensible system going forward.

For me, the key question is: will what is being proposed improve the quality of Parliament?

In this region, we are set to see perhaps the biggest exodus of political talent in a generation, with parliamentarians as diverse and distinguished as Jim Cousins, Alan Milburn and Chris Mullin all set to leave the Commons.

Their departures will, in my view, leave a hole in the region’s body politic that may take some years to fill.

But if on top of that, the new expenses regime causes some genuinely public-spirited individuals to conclude that they can no longer afford to represent us, it will be a sad day indeed.

My worry is that we are seeing an example the law of unintended political consequences, whereby a measure designed to clamp down on the political gravy train ends up primarily penalising MPs of no independent means.

There is a risk that we will end up with a situation in which the only people who can afford to be MPs are those rich enough to be able to buy second homes in London without the help of a mortgage.

If so, it will mean history will have come full circle since the days before the Labour Party was formed in order to provide parliamentary representation for the newly-enfranchised industrial working class.

Perhaps, at a time when Eton College seems set to regain its reputation for supplying the British ruling elite, we should not be so surprised at this.

A fond farewell

An emotional day today as I travelled to North Wales to bid farewell to my former regional lobby friend and colleague Ian Craig. A sad occasion, for sure, but it was lovely to meet Ian's family and to see so many old faces from my Westminster days. The turnout at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Wrexham, which included one or two senior politicians as well as numerous Press Gallery figures past and present, was yet a further indication of the huge esteem in which Ian was held.

Blair presidency would be gift-horse to the Tories

The tide already seems to be going out on the Blair bid for the European presidency, but were it to happen, it might actually help David Cameron. Here's today's Journal column.

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There are many reasons why William Hague was not a successful leader of the Conservative Party – the fact that he had the bad luck to come up against Tony Blair at the height of his powers being perhaps the most significant.

But one thing no-one has ever doubted about Mr Hague is his wit, a weapon he has regularly deployed to devastating effect at the expense of his political opponents.

Back in 1998, his savage deconstruction of the government’s “annual report” reduced the Commons to tears of mirth, and accurately predicted New Labour’s journey “from fascination to admiration to disillusion to contempt.”

More recently, he conjured up an equally hilarious image of Gordon Brown’s ultimate nightmare – having to greet Mr Blair’s EU motorcade in Downing Street and being forced through gritted teeth to utter the words: “Welcome, Mr President.”

Cue loud laughter on both sides of the Chamber – except that, on the question of whether Mr Blair should assume the presidency of the European Council, Mr Hague was possibly being a trifle unfair on the Prime Minister.

For in a bizarre piece of role reversal, it is Mr Brown who is supporting the man he schemed and plotted to destroy for ten long years, while Tory leader David Cameron, the self-proclaimed “heir to Blair,” is fighting desperately to block it.

Mr Cameron’s motives are perhaps the easiest to fathom. As he said this week, he doesn’t want an EU president anyway, and he certainly doesn’t want one as powerful and persuasive as the former Prime Minister.

The Tory leader may have copied much of Mr Blair’s style and many of his policies - but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to have to deal with the man at the international negotiating tables.

Mr Brown’s attitude, however, is possibly more ambivalent. On the face of it, he is probably telling the truth when he says the government is supporting Mr Blair’s candidature on the grounds that it would be “good for Britain.”

In so doing, he is also hoping to secure the kind of short-term tactical advantage over the Tories that Mr Brown loves to calibrate - by making it appear as if they are acting against the national interest.

But there is also the possibility that Brown backing Blair for EU president is part of some kind of Blairite-Brownite non-aggression pact under which one side dare not move against the other.

If Mr Brown’s people were to be caught briefing against a Blair presidency, Mr Blair’s might just feel tempted to start briefing that it’s time the Labour Party had a new leader.

So should Sedgefield’s one-time MP get the job? Well, the debate in the end really boils down to the question of whether his undoubted leadership qualities trump his flawed record.

Yes, he would give Europe a much stronger voice on the world stage, and, in a world that is too often dominated by the US, Russia and China, that would surely be no bad thing.

But many British voters find themselves unable to overlook the fact that, as Prime Minister, he led the country into a war which most now agree was fought on a false prospectus.

And as the former Foreign Secretary Lord Owen said this week: “Like contempt of court, contempt of parliament should always be a disqualification for holding high office.”

Will he get the job? The signs were looking less than positive yesterday, with European socialist leaders refusing to endorse his candidature and deciding instead to convene a panel to consider names.

Furthermore, the EU has a history of making lowest common denominator appointments to its most senior roles, which is why becoming Prime Minister of Luxembourg is a better career move than it might at first appear.

But either way, if Messrs Cameron and Hague really think that President Blair is somehow going to get us all sold on the idea of European integration, they are surely worrying unnecessarily.

Is a discredited former leader re-emerging in a powerful unelected role really likely to endear the EU to an already sceptical British public? I think not.