Blair's last grasp

Every time I speak to anyone working in Whitehall I hear the same thing: if a policy proposal or No. 10 diktat comes through then the civil servants receiving it ask themselves if Gordon Brown would like it, or want it to happen. If yes, it happens. If not, well there's always the slow tray...

We're in a pre-dawn world where Blair clings on to the last shadows of his rein, desperate to safeguard his destiny, still personally persuasive to the last (and Labour will soon realise how much they'll miss him). But he's frantically pulling on levers of power that no longer really connect to the front line of the civil service. All around him the No. 10 team are polishing their CVs and working out the colour of their parachutes.

Menawhile, Gordon Brown practices his smile in the mirror, as all the polls suggest mounting leads for David Cameron. And Government waits for the new dawn.

Rather than bemoan this lack of movement perhaps we should be grateful. The busier Blair's lot have been the more half-baked and incompetent legislation they have pushed through. A spell of quiet would do everyone a dose of good. Its only political hacks (and bloggers) who crave constant movement.

Market leadership

When Mirror journalists ramped shares they'd recently bought, and then sold them after they rose in response they ended up in jail. The 'City Slickers' affair nearly destroyed Piers Morgan's career many years before his Iraq pictures.

How handy then that the rise of new markets offer less risky ways for commentators to make money from their words. Guido Fawkes - widely read and closely followed by the political elite - recommended a bet on the Labour leadership market, then piled out shortly thereafter which you can do with spread betting. As he put it: "Even easier than investing in private equity..."

http://5thnovember.blogspot.com/2007/03/profit-from-politics.html

And an even better tax regime than private equity.

Triple-counting signatures

Much has been made of the 1.3m (and counting) signatures on the N.10 E-petition website against road charging. I'm not a techie, but one reason for this might just be that when you sign up for a petition (once) you get 3 replies from the website that you need to click to confirm - possibly triggering 3 signatures?

I was signing up to a petition against ID cards

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/IDcards/

Judging Number 10

Its not an obvious thought - and its one that I find hard to bring myself to say, but I will.

I hope, I really hope, that Tony Blair is not charged, let alone found guilty, of any wrong doing in the ongoing cash for honours scandal.

Let me explain.

Firstly, the last thing British politics needs is corruption at the highest level - so I am living in hope that he will not need to be hauled in front of the courts. This would be destructive for both the country but also our whole system of politics.

The hardest conversation I find on doorsteps when canvassing is persuading disinterested, often young, people to vote - not when I encounter someone with a strong set of views counter to my own. This would only get harder. On an international level it will make it harder for any British Givernment to wield any moral clout when criticising countries like Zimbabwe as they engage in truly corrupt mis-Government.

I also think that Tony Blair has done far more shocking things - like invading Iraq - and that is what he should have been punished for. But at the ballot box, not at the hands of the police.

Meanwhile, what sort of Government will we have if it is constantly in fear of judicial enquiry? Trust is the key to running any sort of organisation, and especially so in Government. Constant worries about deleting Emails and individuals coveribg themselves will not help Government work effectively.

Meanwhile, Governments of all colours have given honours to raise cash for politics. The answer is reform - of the Lords, of our political processes and of the role of money in our elections. Blaming it all on Blair will be to miss the structural issues at the expense of the crudely personal.

Don't get me wrong - if he has broken the law then he should be prosecuted. But I so hope that he hasn't.

Reid with embarassment

Another day, another wave of embarassment for John Reid.

He is not a man who is very easy to warm to but its hard not to feel a little bit sorry for him as yet another mine explodes under his feet. He has not yet been in the job so long that he could have turned the Home Office round. The problem is that he has not helped himself - by singing from the Daily Mail song book he can hardly complain as the tune gets nastier and nastier.

However, the woes of the Home Office go to the very heart of the failed Blair project.

Whilst "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" is now often seen as simply a piece of spin it remains one of the most powerful slogans of the New Labour avalanche. David Cameron was groping towards the same position with his "hug a hoodie" speech.

But, rising to power, New Labour was obsessed with the media. Alistair Campbell and Peter Mandelson decreed a media planning cycle that required quick Government responses to newspaper headlines, thus creating a blizzard of initiatives. Given the nature of tabloid journalism this affected the Home Office more than any other department (with Health following close behind).

'Tough on crime' was far easier to show than 'tough on the causes of crime' - projects which would inevitably take far longer to mature. Ironically, a decade in is when some of those latter types of projects might be beginning to make a real impact. But instead we have had a decade that added a criminal offence for almost every day that New Labour has been in power.

And because there was so much going on there was no time for doing the simple, boring things like getting processes and systems lined up and teams talking to each other. No time for management.

And so we have a sky-rocketing prison population, a disaffected judiciary delighted to have the opportunity to put the boot in as they very publicly release child abusers and a Home Office in crisis.

Not to worry though, Reid has the perfect answer: capture the headlines with a plan to split the Home Office in two. Problem solved! Until the next revelation...

Freedom of Information

Why is it that this Government seems intent on destroying even the good things they've done?

They are now set on limiting the Freedom of Information Act which has been used to such effect by campaigning MPs like Norman Baker and journalists in the serious press (especially the Guardian). The aim apparently is to limit the "serial requestors" - in other words the dogged investigators who keep digging for information.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/2007/01/join_the_campaign_to_prevent_f.html

But it will hopefully save the Government £10m... Hurrah - that's enough to begin saving for another war.

New Year blues

There is a lot of speculation about the supposed imminent collapse of the most successful multi-cultural and multi-ethnic state in modern history. No, not Iraq. The UK.

Strong polls for the SNP, and carefully-fanned English resentment of the higher levels of public spending in Scotland mean that political commentators are talking seriously about Scottish independence. Or as seriously as political commentators who have a regular deadline to fill with the latest breathless crisis can do.

But this is hugely irresponsible. For 300 years the Anglo-Scottish Union has created an immensely successful dynamic that has benefited both nations. This may not always have been put to the very best possible use - witness the race for Imperial domination. But it has created the modern world of liberal democracy, the importance of the rule of law, the Industrial Revolution and the global financial system. Now – at least partly because the Tory party wants to destabilise Gordon Brown and the press are happy to have a story – all this is being cast in to doubt.

There may be a coherent intellectual argument to make for splitting the Union – but it has to involve the belief that it will be through broader integration with the European Union that England and Scotland can regain the influence and scale that would be lost through partition. To be fair that is part of the SNP argument. But the very right-wing English commentators calling for a split are the same ones who turn puce at the very mention of the EU.

As you may be able to guess from my name I feel especially torn. My family roots are Scottish but I grew up in London. One grandfather slogged through the trenches of World War one with the London Scottish. I personally feel British before I feel either Scottish or English.

The current system is not perfect. It not fair or sustainable that our current Home Secretary can bring in laws that do not affect his constituents. But to jump from this to breaking up the Union shows a short-sightedness that can only be driven by the need to sell more newspapers tomorrow. Or rattle the Chancellor.

Happy New Year

I saw in the New Year in a wind-blown house somewhere near Glasgow. The storm knocked out the electricity, meaning that we ended up eating (and drinking) in a room full of candles, listening to the rattling moan of the tempest outside. A nearby shed was shaking itself to bits in the wind and it was dangerous to venture outside as the night was full of flying tiles. It had all the makings of an Agatha Christie novel and I was waiting for the sudden news that our host had been found dead in the kitchen / sitting room / bedroom, slain by a kitchen knife / tile / rolled up newspaper. The coppers would have to be round in the morning to work out who'd done what.

A useful insight in to what it must be like in Downing Street as 2007 starts.

Crisis at Christmas

I am volunteering at Crisis at Christmas, the homeless charity, again this year.

An early start this morning so I won't write much now (its well past midnight) as I've another early start tomorrow but a few thoughts from today:

• Volunteers do a variety of tasks. My first job was an outside job making sure that everything was orderly in Leadenhall square next to the shelter. On one side of the square is the Lloyd's building, dating from the City's last great boom in the 1980's. On the other is the 'Erotic Gherkin' Swiss re building squarely from the current boom. Quite a contrast to the makeshift shelter housed on two floors of what was an M&S mini-market and London branch of an Italian merchant bank until recently. The square was full of people bustling to work as the City awoke from its Christmas slumber - speaking the myriad languages that are the hallmark of one of the world's leading financial centres. Inside the shelter this is reflected in the thick set of pages at reception telling volunteers how to greet homeless guests in a dozen different languages. London's contrasts - linguistic, financial and personal - never cease to amaze, worry and inspire me.
• Working at Crisis at Christmas always restores in me real faith in the fundamental quiet decency of so many of my fellow citizens - whether guest or volunteer. If you want to help Crisis (or better yet volunteer!) go to http://www.crisis.org.uk/
• Speaking to guests, and hearing their stories of how they ended up on the streets I always am struck that, but for the grace of God, there go I. The gap between living in a stable, secure home (often with family) and the life on the streets is scarily narrow.

Now to bed, much to do tomorrow.

Education and the Environment

The ongoing weakness of British scientific education - engineering, physics, mathematics and natural sciences - has been widely discussed. The seeming inability of Britain's businesses to harness the inventive power of the UK's scientists and engineers is also much lamented. These issues are usually seen in the context of the decline of Britain's long term international economic competitiveness.

However, they may be even more important than this.

The UK has long been a hub of scientific advance - the Industrial Revolution was born on these shores and the proportion of recent inventions is significantly higher than our population, or relative GDP would warrant. A recent BBC webpage lists the computer, the pill, the photo-copier, aspirin, television, the mobile phone, the jet engine and the flushing toilet...

It may well be that there is something in the British education system or character that means that - even though we struggle to organise the latest in cutting edge manufacturing processes - we have an inventive streak that few others can match.

If so, the decline of our science grad output may mean that the pool of inventors who might just help save the environment is getting smaller. Less scientific grads means less inventions means less chance for useful inventions for the environment. This alone obviously will not be enough to tackle climate change (indeed it sounds rather like a George Bush policy). The Liberal Democrats have the right set of tax policies to begin to move in the right direction, but break-through technology would surely help.

Then again, my first degree was in medieval history so what do I know?

Caroline, or Change

Had a lovely family outing to see 'Caroline, or Change' at the National Theatre http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/caroline/. Its a somewhat surreal opera - the opening scenes include bursts of song from a washing machine and a dryer - but one that powerfully evokes a time (and characters from); the South of the US in 1960s. It shows how fundamentally good people can be propelled to speak evil through no real fault of their own; and the challenge of how to live a life well.

And Tonya Pinkins who plays the title role can both act - and really belt it out!

Reid back tracks on ID database

John Reid has just announced that they will not, after all, be building a giant computer database for storing all our ID card information: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6192419.stm
They will still gather the information but it will be on a variety of existing databases.

So we go from an overarching, overweening white elphantine waste of money with significant implications for individuals' privacy to the mere wastage of moderate sums, marginal impact on our privacy and mundane inefficiency.

A typically 3rd rate fudge from a Government whose management abilities never cease to underwhelm.

If only I could believe that someone had had a twinge of conscience about the impact of their ID project - instead it will be a simple realisation that they were staring down a black hole, financially and technically. They will portray the amount not spent on the system as a "saving".

PS Not a bad day to bury the news as the Ipswich murders spring back to national headlines...

Oops, he did it again

Iain Dale, one of the godfathers of political blogging, has just posted about my General Election opponent in Rotherham in 2005, Denis MacShane under the title of "Denis MacShane Falls Foul of Mr Speaker". (http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2006/12/denis-macshane-falls-foul-of-mr.html#links

In asking Margaret Beckett the question:
"Next year, Britain will celebrate two great acts of union—that with Scotland and that within the European Union. May I invite my right hon. Friend to take off her sober Foreign Secretary garb and, now and then, return to Margaret the great campaigner and campaign against some of the rancid rabble on the Opposition Benches who reject both the EU and the Act of Union with Scotland?"
he apparently strayed off her Ministerial scope and in to the overtly political.

As a strong supporter of both the EU and the Act of Union I happen to agree with Denis. In questioning if we can ever have a "Scottish" Prime Minister the Tories are playing with fire for the sake of short term political gain against Gordon Brown. And their anti-Europe stance runs profoundly counter to the country's long term interests.

Denis' best point, but a pity for the country, is that he is probably the staunchest ally of the European Union in the Labour Party. It was a combination of Brown's irritation at this - and his repeated hunt for media airtime, sometimes at the cost of caution - that hastened his departure from the role of Europe Minister after the last General Election.

But its hard to keep him down - only Denis would treat the 9% swing I got against him at the last General Election as something to celebrate in his acceptance speech. The reason? For the first time since World War I the two "progressive parties" had put the Tories in to 3rd place.

Sad Ending

Watching the closing days of the Blair regime I am torn between anger and sadness.

Anger at the squalid little scandals that are causing long term damage to the fabric of our democracy; cash for peerages, dodgy decisions on corrupt arms dealing probes, lies about Iraq, vast sums squandered on ID cards... The list is long.

Sadness because in 1997 Blair had a once in generation opportunity. A massive majority, an awesome political machine, a huge wave of popular and media goodwill, a discredited opposition - he could have done anything.

Anything. Rebuilt our education system, re-engineered Britain's relationship with Europe, created a thorough (and properly thought through) reform of our political set-up, delivered an NHS for the 21st Century...

The gamble he chose to take was Iraq.

And he could have done anything... How can you not be sad?

How NuLab works

If you want to see how New Labour runs the country then switch on your telly now.

As the media focuses on the unfolding tragedy in Ipswich and flashes back to the death of Princess Di they have chosen today to slip out a whole bunch of news.

• 2,500 post offices will face the axe.
• There will be a third runway at Heathrow (doubtless the "very last" such development...).
• The Serious Fraud Office probe in to British Aerospace's questionable sales relationship with the Saudi Royal family when they purchased Eurofighters will be closed down. (According to the BBC the SFO said "No weight has been given to commercial interests or to the national economic interest.")

But then the bubble burst on them - and Inspector Yates' team had a chat with the PM so at least that will probably head the news.

Despite all this the story that heads the BBC website's most read list is rather more fishy: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/world/asia-pacific/6178659.stm

Obama fever

The emergence of Barack Hussein Obama brings hope to those depressed by American politics. This from the nation that gave the world George Bush.

The decline of American influence and prestige around the world is not ultiamately to the world's benefit, however much it has been abused by the current President. There are precious few world problems that America is not critical to help solve. I have monitored two elections in Kosovo (raw, inspirational, hectic affairs for ultimately disappointing electoral results); a province that Europe was not willing or able to intervene in alone. And the powers seeking to fill America's place in the world rarely inspire great confidence.

Bush's misguided pursuit of American unilateralism has simply revealed its inherent futility. America was key to the creation of the post-war multi-lateral UN for good reason. Now the US military has learnt the hard way that their overwhelming power, once used, is spent. And America's enemies have learnt to go nuclear as fst as they can - it is no accident that it is on Bush's watch that the number of nuclear nations has practically doubled.

And at home America is more divided than ever. The incompetence and indifference revealed during Hurricane Katrina was simply the thin end of the Bush wedge: massive tax cuts for the rich, a grotesquely unblanced budget and widespread corporate favouratism.

And lets not get started on his environmental record.

Obama might just be an over-hyped media flash-in-the-pan. But wouldn't it be nice if he wasn't?

PS Although the idea of a female President is incredibly attractive it is not clear that Hilary Clinton's current favourite status will carry her through. Besides a Presidential line up that has gone Bush - Clinton - Clinton - Bush - Bush and then Clinton - Clinton (by when George's brother Jeb will ready for another Bush - Bush?) has a certain nepotism to it. How grateful must we be that neither Carol Thatcher or James Major looks set to take up politics....

Ticketless Tory

See that there is a small story in the press today about David Cameron losing his ticket on the way to Wembley. He allegedly got off with buying a new one for £3 rather than paying the £30 fine.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23377830-details/Ticketless%20Cameron%20let%20off%20without%20a%20fine%20on%20the%20Tube/article.do

Ok, so what. Man forgets ticket, ticket collector treats him decently. Big deal.
Except that...

"His spokesman said: "David did buy a ticket. He was even able to produce the receipt for it when he arrived at Wembley Park. ""

Who exactly gets a receipt on the Tube for a £3 ticket when they are travelling for personal reasons? Have you tried to get a receipt on the Tube? Most odd.

Crunch time for Cameron?

I'd keep an eye on Cameron in the coming months.This is make or break time - and it may be coming faster than expected.

His plan has always appeared to be to spend Year 1 re-positioning the Tory Party away from its "nasty" roots by surprising us all with his 'liberal' acts and comments. That his first interview post-elevation as Tory leader was in The Observer has always struck me as a class move. The year since then has been somewhat haphazard - and occasionally disastrous as when ambused by Douglas Alexander who dubbed his comments on youth crime as "hug a hoodie" - but the implicit promise has always been that we should withhold judgement until his policy commissions began to report.

Well, they are beginning to report. The Tax Commission made various suggestions (£21bn in tax and spendings cuts, no suggestion of green taxes) that the leadership recoiled in horror from. Now Iain Duncan-Smith has delivered his views on poverty in Britain and - behind what probably was not a snear at gay families - there are some familiar themes emerging. Family break-down, growing debt, declining social mobility under Labour even as the sums spent on benefits rise inexorably... Good of the Tories to finally catch on to what has been happening to this country that they used to run.

But the challenge for Cameron is where to raise his policy standard. Is it on a liberal position that will increase the number of disaffected Tories turning to UKIP's "commmon sense" and continue the sniping that he has received from the Daily Mail. Or will it be on traditional Tory ground?

The NuTory answer would presumably be the former, but there must be some concern within the senior echelons of the party over the potential disaffection of the rank and file activists. Blair's great triangulation success included a love / hate relationship with the Labour front line: he would alternatively bate them (to satisfy Murdoch / the Daily Mail) and then throw them nuggets like the ban on fox-hunting. Cameron's biggest effort to deliver to the rank and file: pulling the Conservatives out of the EPP Group in the European Parliament ended in tears. Now we hear almost daily reports of unrest in the shires: http://www.libdemvoice.org/more-conservative-candidate-trouble-342.html

And the press are beginning to tire of the 'Cameron is a darling' storyline. Expect more references to Eton; who knows, even some scandal on one of his inner circle? Opinion polls are inconclusive http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2006/12/11/will-gordons-recovery-be-sustained/ but trending away from a clear Tory victory. Tony always looked like a winner, hence his party stuck with him almost whatever he did. Cameron may never get the luxury of such treatment.

Policy is the right way to judge Cameron - but this moment is fast approaching. I suspect that there will be far less "I don't know"s about him in six months time. If not, he is in trouble.

Pinochet's Death

I suspect that there'll not be many tears - apart from those of Margaret Thatcher - at the death of General Pinochet. What is sad is that he never properly faced justice for the 3,000-odd people who "disappeared" during his dictatorship.

In this country, Pinochet will be remembered for definining the high point of New Labour's "ethical foreign policy" when he was placed under house arrest in the UK. And then the end of it when he was released by Jack Straw.

ID nightmare

Where the Government's new ID database might just take us...
http://www.aclu.org/pizza/images/screen.swf
Make sure that you have the sound turned up.
(hat tip to Iain Dale)

... And for some political balance here's one on the same subject recommended by Labour blogger Recess Monkey
http://eclectech.co.uk/clarkeidcards.php