Politics Etc.

Where's Alistair?

2012-02-01T14:38:00.003Z

Fred the Shred's had a shredding of his own, as his knighthood goes into the same bin as Mussolini and Mugabe's. But this is a rather unsatisfactory form of retribution for a man who failed big-time but didn't actually commit any felonies, as the Telegraph's Daniel Knowles argues today. Knowles highlights the Goodwin travesty effectively enough, and quotes a retired former Labour minister to make the case even more appositely. Knowles even suggests that said retiree may be the one possible putative Labour leader to put the shivers up Messrs. Cameron and Osborne. His name? Alistair Darling, the man charged by Gordon Brown with clearing up Gordon Brown's mess, and still a respected figure on the British political scene. The Conservative high command must be very thankful he is indeed retired. Isn't he?

Missing The 'West Wing'.......?

2012-01-30T19:49:00.002Z

How about this for a new US TV series concept? Divorced former First Lady struggles to keep family together whilst working in the new politically hot job of Secretary of State. Who'd have thought; a former First Lady becoming SecState - the imagination churns! Well, for better or for worse, that is indeed the concept behind USA Network's projected 6-part drama "Political Animals". And yes, they did recently employ Chelsea Clinton. What would she know?

Big Bad Bonkers Newt Could Fight All The Way To The Convention

2012-01-30T19:12:00.004Z

There might be worse things for Newt Gingrich than the 20-point lead the Mittmeister seems to have built up in Florida, courtesy of ad expenditure in the region of $6.8 million. But there surely aren't sadder scenes than this one, according to New York Magazine's John Heilemann -

At what was billed as a Hispanic town hall meeting at another church yesterday in Orlando, Gingrich was greeted by row after row of empty pews and maybe 40 voters in attendance. For a full hour after the scheduled starting time, Gingrich and his wife, Callista, sat outside, cloistered in his campaign bus — possibly sulking, possibly fuming at his campaign's horrid advance work, and surely praying that a few more souls would show up. When Gingrich finally entered the building, it was announced that the event was a town hall no more; the candidate would speak briefly, then take pictures with the scant few who'd turned up. And "briefly" was an understatement: Standing behind a Lucite lectern, Gingrich talked for a bare eight minutes and eleven seconds, looking deflated and exhausted. By no small margin, it was the worst and saddest campaign event that I have witnessed in this presidential cycle.

After the glory moments of South Carolina, here's Newt back on terra firma and holding out for yet another come-back. But Heilemann reckons he might decide to make a fight of it all the way to the convention, which would be a nightmare for Romney, and possibly the Republican Party. After all, Newt does nothing quietly. If Florida doesn't comprehensively bury him, he'll be up and running again soon. They love this show in the White House.

Obama's Got Balls

2012-01-30T18:41:00.002Z

Bush didn't do it, Biden advised against it, and everyone knew it was a ballsy decision.

Given his independent status, the Daily Dish's Andrew Sullivan is a powerful and articulate cheerleader for Obama. Here, he reminds us that the decision to get Bin Laden would have caused the GOP to demand an extra face on Mount Rushmore if only he were a Republican. He says:

It was Obama who made that dangerous, ballsy call. It was Obama who argued in a 2008 debate with McCain that he would be prepared to ignore Pakistan and launch a raid in that country if OBL was found there and the US could get him. He was derided as "naive" and without the experience to be commander-in-chief. McCain specifically said he would not authorize such a mission.

Catch 21

2012-01-30T17:45:00.002Z

Have just come across 'Catch 21', a politics site run by Hull University students. Their main focus are the videos they post featuring a range of politicos and scenarios, but their blog is a thought-provoking one. Check out the most recent articles, on the American PACs that are busy buying electoral victories for their sponsors, and the threat from French far-right leader Marine Le Pen in our favourite enemy's forthcoming presidential elections.

The 1 Million Pound Bonus Question

2012-01-30T17:27:00.003Z

The MP for the City, Mark Field, wonders on a Conservative Home blog entry whether or not the eventual success of the campaign to get Stephen Hester to return his bonus is something of a pyrrhic victory. Mr. Field makes many apposite comments, not least his dislike of the unpleasant campaign of denigration waged against Mr. Hester. There was a lynch-mob mentality to it, and the ensuing media discussion was far from edifying. But there remains a question mark about the huge pay differentials in this country, and Mr. Field's concluding paragraph is scathing about the abilities of significantly more lowly paid people. He writes:

Either the government leads the way in making the case for protecting our £45 billion investment in this bank, which we so sorely hope to get back in due course. Or alternatively the only other logical option is that we write-off the entire sum pumped into RBS and from now on run it as a public utility headed by a civil servant on an established grade salary.

Wow! It could be that bad?! A "civil servant on an established grade salary"? Boy oh boy! If Mr. Field's conclusion is that ony sums in the region of £1 million or more can bring in people of real talent, then what price any form of public service, to say nothing of vast numbers of talented private sector toilers? Teachers, doctors, nurses, soldiers, sailors and airmen, civil servants - just go back to mediocre-land and exist on your sub-human salaries worthy only of such despairing lack of talent. If you're not in the million pound bracket, you're useless!

Henry VII's Birthday

2012-01-28T16:38:00.003Z

It's Henry Tudor's Birthday!! Or would be, if he had possessed a sort of rarefied human longevity that matched his legendary wealth. The man who founded England's most famous and popular dynasty, the all-conquering Tudors, was born on this day in 1457. His mysterious, secretive personality, grasping acquisitiveness, extraordinarily canny political nouse and ceaseless intelligence gathering secured the throne for him in the most febrile of circumstances throughout 24 years of sinister rule. He bequeathed England his son, Bluff King Hal, and grand-daughter, Gloriana the Virgin Queen. He remains relatively unknown, but the brilliant book by Thomas Penn, "The Winter King", has come as close as anything to unravelling the secrets of the first Tudor's rule. A sort of Nixonian king who isn't particularly likeable but is endlessly fascinating.

The Right Turn on Maverick Gingrich

2012-01-28T16:19:00.003Z

As if his less than stellar performance in the most recent Republican primary debate wasn't enough, it appears that a slew of right-wing media luvvies are turning against - or to be more accurate, were never really for and are now coming out publicly against - the former Speaker and pet Republican firebrand. Politico reports on the Campaign Against Newt, and also carry a fascinating report on the influence of news aggregator Matt Drudge. Drudge's site, a messy array of links, remains one of the most influential in America. He doesn't express an opinion, doesn't write an article, but his selection of links still drives readers and, presumably, views. Mind you, as one Republican aide comments at the end of the article, Drudge doesn't actually win elections for people.

Debating is The Winner In Republican Campaign

2012-01-28T13:24:00.003Z

The Republican primary campaign has been a great show, and there's no doubt that one reason is the sheer number of debates between the candidates. These may not have been to the benefit of the Republican Party, but they've certainly livened up the whole campaign and placed debate back where it should be - right at the heart of democratic politics. No matter how much preparation is done, no matter how much packaging is wound round a candidate, once they get into the debating chamber they are exposed like at no other time in a campaign. Your wits, your passion and your knowledge matter. The debates certainly put paid to the campaigns of determined ignorists like Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann. They allowed Newt Gingrich, despite the stretches on his finances, to come back as a front-runner. They expose Mitt Romney's hollowness. For all the rules attempting to govern them they remain politics in the raw - a clear, sometimes visceral unpealing of a candidate's carefully managed image. They are absolutely what is required in a democratic process, and they have contributed hugely to the brilliant, roller-coasting unpredictability of the Republican race.

Mitt staged his come-back of sorts with a better than normal performance in the Jacksonville debate, while his old foe Gingrich seemed subdued, out of sorts and downcast. Andrew Sullivan thinks Ron Paul and Rick Santorum had a good night and wonders if that will see yet more polling number changes. David Frum calls it for Mitt, and concludes it was a bad night for Gingrich.

There have been murmurings that the Republicans may try and change matters in four years time - too many debates have exposed the divisions and fratricidal tendencies of their party. I hope they see sense. It may be messy, but the debates are classic politics, and the end result will be to promote candidates with more wit and a nimbler grasp of their political aims and principles than anything else on offer. The change now should be for more debates in the autumn, after the primaries. As for the UK, it took us over forty years to learn from the Americans and stage debates between the leaders. They should learn a lot more quickly that debate is the warp and weft of political life, and make the next election even more debate-focussed. Only then can you really take the initiative out of the spinners' hands, and give it back to the people.

The Struggling Leaders

2012-01-27T11:41:00.007Z

David Cameron can bestride the British political scene at the moment, calmly dispensing advice to other world leaders at Davos, with relatively little concern about being outmanouevred by the other party leaders. With the exception, perhaps, of Alex Salmond, and even he has had to force the pace of the Scottish Independence debate thanks to a Cameron tactical strike. But the two major English party leaders, Clegg and Miliband, are united only in the poor publicity, and hence public profile, that each has. Add in the lack of a serious opposition figure (as opposed to some of the collective opposition) within his own party, and Cameron can afford to be relaxed.

This can't last, especially not in the midst of a long and relentless recession - today's headlines about Stephen Hester's bonus show just how febrile the atmosphere actually is - but Cameron should enjoy the experience while he can. As to the other two, can they improve their position?

Nick Clegg is both the first Liberal leader in generations to be in government, but is of course similarly hidebound by that very arrangement. He has, in many respects, managed it very well, exercising real influence at the centre thanks in part to his positive relationship with Cameron, and managing to put out a distinctive Lib Dem message in more recent months. Politics Home's Paul Waugh observes the tactical success of Clegg's recent TV Sofas campaign on lower taxes for poorer earners, and it is worth emphasising that Clegg specifically, and the Lib Dems generally, have never been able to depend on any heavyweight media support. He is also a helpful lightning conductor for discouraged right-wing Tories who prefer not to attack their leader directly. Much better to direct frustration and blame towards Clegg, and never forget that the Tory media fields some very heavy, and very effective, guns in the British polity. There is an element of the old medieval tactic of not criticising the king but savaging his dispensable advisers instead. Clegg may yet emerge intact, and politically stronger, from his coalition experience if he can stay the course and keep perfecting the art of Liberal message making.

Miliband seems to be a worse case. For an opposition leader not to be making inroads at a time of economic convulsion is the sort of achievement no politician really wants to their credit. Even the Republicans have some credibility in the US political debate, and look at their cheerleaders. The latest Miliband interview, by Paul Waugh (again!) in the House magazine still shows him as strangely relaxed and optimistic, but whether his personal stoicism is enough to keep fending off grumbles from within his own party remains to be seen. If Yvette Cooper keeps sweet talking the Labour MPs, and Miliband keeps being duffed up by the bully Cameron at PMQs, no amount of zen-like relaxation will rescue him from the abyss. It must be Cameron's sincerest hope that his opposite number survives - somehow I think he'll find Cooper a far more difficult opponent both publically and in parliament. "Calm Down, Dear" only works once.

Obama's 91% Approval Rating For State Of The Union

2012-01-25T19:07:00.004Z

The Republicans may be getting much of the publicity at the moment - and given the nature of it, probably very much to the White House's satisfaction - but Obama's 'coming out fighting' State of the Union address seems to have hit a strong chord with the American public, if a CBS News poll is to be believed. They give him a 91% approval rating for the speech which several right-wing commentators and politicians have slated for being too left-wing. The CBS site comments:

According to the poll, which was conducted online by Knowledge Networks immediately after the president's address, 91 percent of those who watched the speech approved of the proposals Mr. Obama put forth during his remarks. Only nine percent disapproved.

All excellent news for the Obama camp no doubt, although it is worth noting that the poll sample was heavily weighted towards Democrats in any case, who tended to form the majority of viewers:

Americans who watched the speech were generally more Democratic than the nation as a whole. Forty-four percent of viewers polled were Democrats and 25 percent were Republicans. (Historically speaking, that is not an unusual statistic: a president's supporters are more likely than his opponents to watch State of the Union addresses.)

Twitter or The Guardian - Who Wields Most Clout?

2012-01-25T19:00:00.003Z

An interesting case study here from the Media Blog about a Guardian sourced 'twitterstorm' that forced a gym to relax its rigid contract towards two of its customers. The case is interesting of course, but the Media Blog write-up is mostly concerned with what it tells us about the relative centres of media power, and how they inter-relate

The Last Labour Leader To Be Deposed....

2012-01-09T14:51:00.004Z

Courtesy of Peter Kellner over on YouTube, where he tells the story of the last Labour leader to be deposed by his own MPs - John Clynes, of course, back in 1922 and just after he'd led Labour to one of its best electoral performances ever at that time. Kellner's full article also contains some interesting analysis of Ed Miliband's polling figures - analysis which, from a seasoned psephologist like Kellner is well worth perusing. Meanwhile, here's his lesson from history:

JR Clynes, a trade unionist from Oldham, had been elected party leader (technically in those days, Chairman of the party’s MPs) in February 1921. Although one of the party’s least known leaders he was arguably one of its most successful. In the 1922 election Labour more than doubled its number of MPs, winning 142 seats. However, in two ways that proved to be Clynes’ undoing.

First, one of Labour’s ‘new’ MPs was Ramsay MacDonald. He had been an MP before – from 1906 to 1918 – and had, indeed, led the party from 1911 until 1914, when he resigned because he opposed the party’s support for Britain’s involvement in the First World War. Back in Parliament in November 1922, he was ambitious to resume the post he had surrendered eight years earlier.

Secondly, Labour was now, unquestionably, Britain’s main opposition party. But the Speaker did not want the party to acquire the full rights of His Majesty’s Opposition, and some Labour MPs criticised Clynes for not standing up to the Speaker.

The showdown took place on November 22, eight days after the election. More than 20 MPs were absent – mainly Clynes supporters, new to Parliament, who were trade union officials and who had yet to disentangle themselves from their union commitments. Clynes assumed he would be re-elected unopposed, and let them stay away. Macdonald, however, had quietly but effectively organised his support. He challenged Clynes and won by 61 votes to 56. Fourteen months later MacDonald was Prime Minister. (Fourteen years later, MacDonald was out of power, out of Parliament and largely discredited; but that’s another story.)

The School Dilemma

2012-01-09T10:42:00.002Z

Two developments today highlight the continuing dilemma over just what type of state education gives the nation's children the best chances in life. Kent County Council has announced an expansion of its grammar school system by setting up a new 'satellite' grammar school in Sevenoaks in response to the huge demand for grammar places. Education Secretary Michael Gove has relaxed legislation sufficiently to allow such an innovation. In addition, for those who may not pass the 11+ necessary for the new grammar school places, Gove's free schools legislation is being taken up by a local priest who is hoping to set up a new Christian comprehensive.

By contrast, Tottenham MP David Lammy is tonight addressing a meeting opposed to the conversion of a failing Haringey primary school into an academy. This has provoked controversy on the right, with Spectator columnist James Forsyth blogging that such opposition will keep the pupils of the Haringey school mired in the morass of inadequate teaching and poor results. Certainly Lammy appears to be allying himself with dyed-in-the-wool opponenets of any educational change such as the NUT's Christine Blower and Fiona Millar.

Education has become one area of significant change and challenging ideas under Michael Gove. The problem is delineating any form of consensus on what might pass for good teaching - given the diversity of several million pupils passiong through the state system this is, of course, inevitable, but it is surely a good thing that a one size fits all policy is no longer applicable. The permanent revolution in education may yet yield real leaps forward and, importantly, a sense of ownership for parents and pupils.

Harmony At The Top

2012-01-07T13:31:00.002Z

Back to Conservative Home for this enthusiastic piece by Bruce Anderson, who praises the calibre and unity of the present Conservative governors. He may be a little over the top, but it makes lovely reading all the same. On the key relationship between Cameron, Osborne and Hague, Anderson has this to say:

They enjoy each other's company. There is a lot of laughter, but also a lot of serious business. There is no rivalry and total mutual confidence. In the entire history of British government from the time of Robert Walpole, I cannot think of a moment when relationships at the top were so harmonious. In fraught circumstances, that is of inestimable value.

Compassionate, Winning Conservatism?

2012-01-07T13:07:00.003Z

Is this the way forward towards a Conservative election victory next time? Conservative Home's Tim Montgomerie identifies the five key policies that a "right-wing party with a heart" could use to win over a majority of the electorate. It's an interesting agenda, returning the debate once again to the issue of how to ensure a right-wing party can best promote the interests of 'one nation' rather than seeming only to be a clique of the wealthy and the already powerful. Montgomerie, never one to shy away from throwing brickbats in the general direction of the current Tory leadership, is often at his best when looking at how conservatism can successfully position itself to govern in the interests of all, and this article is a persuasive argument in that direction. Particularly since he highlights existing policies, rather than searching in the ether for new ones.

Santorum in the Wrestling Ring

2012-01-07T12:57:00.002Z

This is brilliant. According to the blog "Political Advertising" the Romney team unearthed this piece of comedy gold from an earlier Santorum campaign in 2006. just wondering if he'll maybe try an update for the primary campaign?

Ed Miliband's Calm

2012-01-07T12:38:00.003Z

I'm impressed by the sense of calm that apparently dominates Ed Miliband's office at the moment, at least if today's Guardian interview is anything to go by. He's got his troubles in perspective (a tweet's a tweet and occasionally people make typos after all), had a relaxing Christmas, isn't worried about Lord Glasman (not many people are) and comes across for all the world as if he's really riding quite high. I do quite like the willingness to ignore the frenzy around you - it bespeaks a certain sort of self-confidence that is a prerequisite for political, and indeed other, leaders. But there is always the danger that Miliband's Zen-like calm might also indicate an insularity so great that he has no hope of leading a successful Labour charge. If he's not fussed by the current furores over palpably foolish things, perhaps he hasn't quite understood the situation?

I did rather like Telegraph blogger David Knowles' tweet earlier -

Ed Miliband: "I will not be Ramsay MacDonald". Very true. Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister of three governments.

And that, in the end, is the dilemma for Ed Miliband; for all his preternatural calmness, is he capable of leading Labour to victory?

Blackbusters

2012-01-07T11:40:00.002Z

Great tweet from The Media Tweets:

"Thoughts go out to staff at Conservative party HQ who have all had to give up their weekend to brainstorm "blackbusters" jokes for next PMQs"

Just wonder if the bit of advice they really need to accept is simply "Don't bother mentioning it"?

The Daily Show - In England!!

2012-01-06T18:42:00.006Z

At last! At last! America's pre-eminent liberal satirist, the nightly appearing Jon Stewart, is finally watchable to UK afficonados without the bother of making 34 different adjustments to your operating software.

Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is making clips from Stewart's programme available for watching on UK computers and not before time. Stewart's liberal bias makes him a scourge of the Republicans, but his real ire is aimed at the increasing lunacy of America's competitive and crowded news programmes. Take at look at some of the clips currently being offered from recent programmes - particular favourites are his 'Republican Box of Chocolates' spoof, and the 'Commission Impossible' lambasting of fake Republican anger at Obama's most recent recess appointment.

Romney's Dig At Newt..."I've Been Married To The Same Woman..."

2011-12-07T23:30:00.003Z

Really not sure whether front-running Republican hopeful and eternal flip-flopper Mitt Romney has really done his campaign a lot of good with his not so subtle dig at the thrice-married Newt Gingrich in his current campaign ad. One political pundit analyses the vid and concludes that it might help Romney by focusing unforgiving conservative attention on the issue of 'character', but could backfire when the issue of 'stability' quickly translates from personal stability to political stability. There, says 'Allahpundit", Romney quickly sinks and Gingrich becomes most favoured candidate.

But as Gingrich becomes the most likely conservative alternative to Romney, there is some talk that a Gingrich-Obama contest could be a great ideological stand-off, focusing on genuine policy differences and with detailed back-up, rather than just rhetorical generalisations. The 'New Republic' pundit Michael Kazin posits just this situation, noting that Gingrich is determined to challenge Obama to lengthy debates. Policy might just hold the field in this putative contest.

That all assumes Gingrich's oft described 'colourful' private life can be kept off the burner. He might have less trouble from an Obama campaign on that score than from his own conservative supporters - the Washington Post reports continuing questions from Republican leaders about Gingrich's ability to steer a campaign that could focus on his 'personal life'. They're also concerned that Gingrich is not easily docketed as a straightforward Tea Party supporter.

I like the idea of a Gingrich candidacy. He's different, trenchant, original, intelligent and turns the identikit candidate notion on its head. And it really would be good to see someone whose flaws have been so publicised overcome the negative effects of such publicity; it could mark a real turning point in media reportage.

Hat-Tip to Andrew Sullivan's always excellent Daily Dish for the Allahpundit and Kazin links. Now, here's Mitt's smug little video ad -

Cameron Hit by Europe....Again, and Again, and Again

2011-12-07T19:26:00.006Z

The website politics.co.uk has got it right with their headline today, "The Conservative Curse: Cameron faces the Europe test." The issue that long ago became a latter day tariff reform menace has been warming up for some time to give Mr. Cameron the same unalloyed misery it passed on to predecessors John Major and Margaret Thatcher. Both were undone by Europe in the end - the converted eurosceptic and the europhile alike. Now it's back to haunt the eurosceptic but pragmatic David Cameron. His Prime Minister's Questions performance today was definitely not his finest hour, and while you might dismiss Boris Johnson's call for a referendum as just another piece of typical one-upmanship, it's a little different if your own Northern Ireland Secretary starts publically ruminating about the same issue.

When he became leader David Cameron, understanding the Curse of Europe as well as anyone, tried hard to hit it into the long grass once and for all. Part of that project was to appease the numerically far larger number of Tory eurosceptics by withdrawing from the federal right-wing party, the European People's Party. It caused a bit of a rumpus from amongst the two or three Tories who still professed some sort of attachment to Europe, but otherwise it looked like a domestically shrewd manouevre. A little bit of virtually cost-free eurosceptic action to buy a period of invaluable peace.

It worked, for a while. Europe really didn't raise its accursed head for most of Cameron's time in opposition and even in government, with a healthily eurosceptic Foreign Secretary in William Hague, it did appear as if Cameron had assuaged the beast. Fat chance. Even if the eurozone hadn't threatened an economic implosion that makes the finances of the Weimar Republic look positively sane, he should have realised the nature of the Conservative eurosceptic beast. It was never going to be satisfied with a sop, and the eurozone has given it enough red meat to keep it awake for months, probably years to come.

The heart of David Cameron's problem is that he recognises what most eurosceptics can't be bothered to acknowledge. No matter how populist and democratic the calls for people power to decide our future in Europe, there is no clear question to ask. A referendum about a treaty between 17 other European nations who have no interest in listening to Britain is no use at all. And as for the 'nuclear' option - "Do you want to stay in the European Union?" - the real problem is that no-one, on either side of the debate, has any very clear idea as to what full-scale withdrawal from all of Europe's embrace would really mean for Britain. It is a classic political timebomb. Festooned with a variety of legislative cables, some of which may well be redundant or low-level in their blast capacities, there will be one which could well explode the domestic economy sky-high. We just don't know which one. Cut them all, say the true eurosceptics, gung-ho and newly confident on the back of the eurozone difficulty, they're all bluffs. Ah, says the wise old bomb disposal expert, can we really be sure of that?

There is also the question of how much heft GB Inc will carry in the world outside the European Union, as a valiant little dependent island. One of Cameron's early decisions - his EPP withdrawal - is already coming back to haunt him, as Nick Robinson explains on his blog today. The leaders of eleven European nations are meeting in a private summit today. Not just France and Germany, even Romania and Poland will be there. Finland's going to be represented for crying out loud. But not Britain. Not David Cameron. Because he's not in the EPP club any more. And that was just a small decision. What happens when no-one wants the British prime minister at any summit because - well, because out of Europe and out on a limb he or she just doesn't matter any more.

David Cameron tried to sound decisive and eurosceptic and suitably Thatcherite in his Times article today, but the mischievous calling of 8 euro-unfriendly Tory MPs by the Speaker at PMQs this afternoon soon punctured that bubble. Of course the prime minister can't offer a referendum, much less the beginning of a process of withdrawal. Whatever the travails of the eurozone today, they remain unlikely to knock the political agenda of the European Union far off course. David Cameron, as a savvy leader, knows this perfectly well and has no intention of trying to hidebound any future international role he might want to pursue. His problem, as ever, is that in a wrathfully eurosceptic party, the only European policy the majority of his MPs, and certainly the majority of his grassroots members, want to see is one that would make UKIP utterly redundant. And hang what comes next.

Obama's Bad Luck

2011-12-07T18:52:00.002Z

With attention focused on the extraordinary - and to European eyes ludicrous - line-up of would-be Republican presidential candidates, we forget just how precarious the position of one-time saviour of the world, Barack Obama, is. In an on the money piece for online magazine 'Canvas', SGS alumni Joe Austin reminds us of Obama's undoubted successes - both domestically and in foreign affairs - and then examines why his second term should be so uncertainly viewed.

The Case Against Striking - But For Supporting Public Reform

2011-11-30T10:23:00.002Z

I am at work today. Some might challenge the concept that my attendance at school constitutes 'work' of any sort, but the broad point is that I am in school, when many others are not. They are striking. I have set out what I think are the pros and cons of the public services strike today on the TRG's Egremont blog.

Out of the Ashes

2011-11-28T13:03:00.002Z

My review of David Lammy's interesting book, "Out of the Ashes", has appeared on the TRG's Egremont blog, and is reprinted below:

The last time there were riots in Tottenham, the local MP’s response was to crow that the “police got a bloody good hiding”. He may have been chiming in with the views of many of his constituents, but in the aftermath of riots that encompassed the brutal murder of a police constable it was never going to be a response that scored highly on the constructive engagement scale.

This time, the local MP, who was a boy growing up near the Broadwater Farm estate in 1985, raced back from his holiday as soon as he heard of tension in Tottenham following the shooting of Mark Duggan, spent hours and days in constructive engagement with the local community and the police, and has now published a book of his reflections on the state of urban Britain. But then, David Lammy has always been a very different character from his predecessor.

The former Higher Education minister hasn’t necessarily been one of New Labour’s more impressive spokesmen, but in his post-riots book “Out of the Ashes” he seems to have discovered a political voice that might just be the making of him. No-one can doubt Lammy’s credentials in reflecting on the lessons of Tottenham in 2011. Brought up in the area he now represents, a boy in a single parent (his mother) family from the age of 12, and a black student in a private white-dominated school for much of his secondary schooling, Lammy has personal credentials aplenty in casting his eye over the inner urban landscape that exploded so suddenly last summer. He also understands how government works, and has a close knowledge of the mechanics of the New Labour project under both Blair and Brown.

Yet his is no ‘angry voice’ and it is certainly not an apologia for New Labour. It is a very personal, dignified and thought provoking reflection that offers plenty of food for thought when it comes to devising policies to regenerate a Britain whose broken state Lammy firmly recognises. It is a virtue of his book that it does not represent some dully partisan approach but instead seeks to find practical ideas in community projects which have already been tried and tested. Lammy may write as a Labour MP, but there is much here that One Nation Tories could readily identify with.

Not that there isn’t anger in “Out of the Ashes”. Go to the book’s last chapter, “Banks and Bureaucrats”, and you’ll find an eloquent and condemning account of the powerlessness of the modest citizens left homeless by the riots, and treated mercilessly by the banks. As Lammy recounts the wretched behaviour of banks whose own irresponsibility caused them to be bailed out to the tune of billions of taxpayers’ pounds, you can almost hear the levels of indignation rising and you start to ask why every representative doesn’t regard the contemptuous treatment of his constituents with similar outrage.

Even here, Lammy soon morphs into the would-be fixer, examining how bureaucracy might just work in his constituents’ defence. This is his virtue. Unlike socialists of yore, the current MP for Tottenham sees people in small community terms, to be helped and engaged with by similarly community-based ideas but backed by the power of the state. The key is that the state comes second, not first.

Some of Lammy’s themes will chime with even the most vigorous social conservative. He has no truck with the liberal notion that fathers in families don’t matter. After all, he grew up without one for a significant period of his childhood, and hasn’t put on rose-tinted spectacles to view the experience subsequently. He wants strong male role models in deprived urban areas who are not vacuous celebrities or weapon toting gangsters. He believes every sinew should be strained to keep fathers, especially separated ones, involved in the child rearing process.

On criminality, he believes in punishment, but once punishment has been made he wants effective rehabilitation and offers an interesting – if rather uncosted – form of ‘social impact credits’ to pay for it. This is where the Lammy medicine veers away from the world view of many Tories – he knows his proposals will cost money, and is happy to advocate this. After all, he is not planning to cut the state. Not when it has so much to do.

Lammy’s Britain is broken because too few jobs are around to give people the necessary self-worth, and because poverty is surrounded by plenty, and because the voiceless see the influence wielded by the small community of the well connected. He takes examples that look like the Big Society in action on a small scale, but believes that they need proper state support to become full blown solutions.

He writes with authority and integrity because, whatever else you think of him, he knows his constituency intimately and has been there when a promising young man has been gunned down by a gang emptied of the last signs of human morality, or when a young offender has been failed by the would-be system of rehabilitation. When a politician writes with this level of sincerity, knowledge and commitment, he deserves a hearing. From all parties.

The Republicans' Lunacy

2011-11-23T20:47:00.004Z

David Frum was one of George W Bush's speechwriters, who memorably recounts hearing, on his first visit to the Bush White House, one senior staffer ask another why they hadn't been at that morning's prayer breakfast. Since leaving the employ of the former president, Frum has maintained a profile as a stimulating Republican political commentator and thinker, but his latest article, for 'New York' magazine, reveals the depths of his despair about the direction the GOP is now heading in. He is particularly scathing about the Tea Party movement:

The list of tea-party candidates reads like the early history of the U.S. space program, a series of humiliating fizzles and explosions that never achieved liftoff. A political movement that never took governing seriously was exploited by a succession of political entrepreneurs uninterested in governing—but all too interested in merchandising. Much as viewers tune in to American Idol to laugh at the inept, borderline dysfunctional early auditions, these tea-party champions provide a ghoulish type of news entertainment each time they reveal that they know nothing about public affairs and have never attempted to learn. But Cain’s gaffe on Libya or Perry’s brain freeze on the Department of Energy are not only indicators of bad leadership. They are indicators of a crisis of followership. The tea party never demanded knowledge or concern for governance, and so of course it never got them.

Oh No - Now It's Putin The Dentist

2011-11-16T21:42:00.003Z

As if Russia wasn't in a bad enough state, it's next president (the election's just a formality) is now trying out in that most pain-inducing of professions - dentistry.

Having done his underwater archaeology stunt and found - surprise surprise - an immensely valuable vase that had lain undisturbed for thousands of years, the great master of all things is now clearly determined to intimidate those who may be thinking of voting for someone else by his wielding of the dentist's screwdriver. Journalists in Russia get shot or beaten into a crippled state if they question the Benevolent Leader, but could anything really be worse than settling into your dentist's chair for a standard check-up (just like travelling in a plane, as my niece once observed of the reclining chairs), only to have Putin leering back at you. Clearly, he's taken on board the lyrics from 'Little Shop of Horrors', which had Steve Martin's dentist sing that:

You have a talent for causing things pain

Son, be a dentist!

People will pay you to be inhumane

Your temperamant's wrong for the priesthood

And teaching would suit you still less!

Son, be a dentist!

You'll be a success!

Steve Martin's manic performance for that song could be used as a template for Putin's future campaigning perhaps - for those who've never seen it, go and have a look. The resemblance is uncanny.

Is Perry Out?

2011-11-10T19:34:00.004Z

The Republican presidential race has entered another of its rollercoaster loops, as one-time pack leader Rick Perry - who, let's face it, has had a torrid time virtually since he entered the race as a bright new hopeful in August - appears to have finally damned his chances. At least, according to nearly every pundit on the other side of the Atlantic. Which could mean he has every chance of surviving. He failed to name one of the government agencies he's intending to cut during the most recent presidential debate, and then kept on failing - so that means he's toast, right? Well, possibly, but a previous Governor of Texas went on national television during his presidential contest and drew ridicule for not being able to name the then very prominent leader of Pakistan (it was General Musharraf, for the record) - or, indeed, any other major world leader. The Governor's name? George W Bush.

Anyway - here's that apparently fatal Perry performance (and yes, it is pretty bad).

History Can Change Minds

2011-11-06T20:27:00.003Z

I remember dipping into historian Kevin Sharpe's remarkable book "The Personal Rule of Charles I" when I was teaching the period as an A-level teacher. Sharpe has recently died, and I was interested to read this blog appreciation of his work. The author, himself a lawyer, concluded with this excellent comment:

In the hands of a great historian, the subject has the power to change minds...

What better?

Home Cinema Doesn't Exist

2011-11-06T20:04:00.002Z

Anthony Lane is one of the finest film critics at work today, and his reviews for the New Yorker are always worth reading, not just for their fine, literary, perceptive commentary, suffused with the empathy of the genuine film-goer and a pervasive wit, but also for the light he manages to shed on one of the central elements of our contemporary culture. In this week's edition, he uses his review of the crime caper 'Tower Heist', and the pessimistic fable 'Melancholia', to pass judgement on the concept of home cinema. Whatever their merits as films (Lane is hilariously cool about 'Tower Heist', definitely taken with 'Melancholia'), they share a history as films that were planned to go straight to Video On Demand, alongside their cinematic release - or as near as. The distributors of 'Tower Heist' eventually relented, but 'Melancholia' was available 'on demand' long before it was released in the cinema.

It is this which provokes Lane's reflection that, call it what you will, video at home is NOT cinema! Yes, he understands why you might feel tempted to avoid the cinema, suggesting the average reaction of the film buff to the chance to watch at home might be thus:

“Can you blame us?” they will cry. “Who wants to pay for a sitter, drive twenty miles in the rain, and sit in a fug of vaporized popcorn butter next to people who are either auditioning for ‘Contagion 2’ or texting the Mahabharata to their second-best friends?”
But there is much more to consider, and Lane comes up with an almost elegiac defence of the collective cinema experience:

There’s only one problem with home cinema: it doesn’t exist. The very phrase is an oxymoron. As you pause your film to answer the door or fetch a Coke, the experience ceases to be cinema. Even the act of choosing when to watch means you are no longer at the movies. Choice—preferably an exhaustive menu of it—pretty much defines our status as consumers, and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience, from the Athens of Aeschylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for the folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on the stage or screen. We are strangers in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels now are ended.

I love that. I love the idea of "strangers in communion", lifting the film-going experience to something almost spiritual, whatever the nature of the film we watch. It is part of our collective cultural lives, and at a time of increasing atomisation, it is definitely worth preserving.

BoJo and Barack Look Safe in 2012

2011-11-06T08:29:00.005Z

There are two very different electoral personality contests taking place in 2012. On one hinges the fate of the world's most powerful military nation, and still its crucial economic engine. On the other hinges....the continued phasing out of bendy buses perhaps? They may be wholly different in scale but they are both going to offer fascinating and entertaining political drama, as is the nature of direct personal elections. And, intriguingly, though one is a philandering, gaffe-dropping right-winger, and the other a tightly controlled, committed liberal reformer, both the incumbents look - at present - as if they might be safe. That this is so, in a time of economic crisis which should absolutely not be favouring incumbents, is down in large part to the inadequacy of their challengers.

Let's take the smaller contest first. As Mayor of London, Boris Johnson has the second largest personal mandate in western Europe (only the president of France, elected by a whole nation, has a larger). His role, though, has few obvious powers and is defined more by his ability to influence a range of other bodies and their appointments, such as Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police Authority. Even so, the Mayor is in a position to provide leadership to one of the world's greatest cities, and there have been plenty of opportunities for Boris to do so, ranging from the need to bridge London's powerful and wealthy economic elite with its teeming citizens on average to poor incomes; through offering hope and direction during and after some of the worst riots to affect the city in years; to waving the flag for the city that will host next year's Olympics and ensuring its legacy. Boris has been, at best, erratic over all these challenges. He took his time to return when the riots broke out. The Olympic legacy is still befuddled and mixed. His has been an ambiguous voice on the issue of the City versus the People. Even when it snows, Boris' roadshow slips and slides along with the weather.

Against this, he should be an easy target. But his main opponent is a tired re-tread (Ken Livingstone), whilst the third party has - amazingly - also offered up the same candidate as last time (Brian Paddick). Dan Hodges outlines the reasons why Livingstone is such a poor candidate for a piece on Progress. He also notes the 'showbiz' nature of the mayoral contest, which is where Boris exhibits the necessary all important charisma against an opponent whose every pronouncement has been death-defyingly dull so far. As for Boris' ability to distance himself from the Tory Party high command, it is without peer. If he does win - the safe money option at the moment - it will give no comfort to the Tory Party.

The more significant contest is, of course, the US presidential election, and here attention has been focusing to date on the fractious Republican field. As I've noted before, barely a week goes by without one of the right-wing front-runners imploding, and it has most recently been the turn of outsider Herman Cain. Cain has been the subject of some vague sexual innuendos which have stalled his appeals, but every scandal and hitch afflicting the Republicans' right-wing leaders benefits the man who desperately wants the nomination, Mitt Romney. Many observers believe that, in turn, a Romney candidacy pretty well hands the election back to Barack Obama.

Incumbent Obama, too, presides over a recession with no obvious upturn in sight, and has imposed a hugely controversial - from both left and right - health care plan on a country that hates state action. The optimism that greeted his election in 2008 has dissipated and many of his liberal allies feel he has made too little progress to merit a second term. All of this should be manna to the Republicans, yet as Tim Stanley points out in the Telegraph, the Republicans have leaked scandal about each other and appear as a thoroughly disunified, macabre bunch of political misfits (ok, Stanley doesn't use those terms to be fair; he's a lot more polite). Stanley's article, from an academic who wants to see Obama out of the White House, is also interesting in its focus on the power of a relentless media in raking over candidate private lives, which should provoke a serious debate about how we really want our politics reported and pursued. For the moment, however, such shenanigans offer hope to a beleaguered White House incumbent. It's one thing that offers a link between two otherwise very different personal electoral contests.

Two Clerics, No Bankers - Well Done the Protestors!

2011-10-31T19:43:00.003Z

Whether or not two clerics from St. Paul's Cathedral really needed to resign is an open question, but few can doubt that they have done so with the most honourable of motives. One of them - Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser - was committed on principle to opposing any use of violence, and had aligned himself with the protestors. A perfectly consistent Christian attitude. Today's resignee, Dean Graham Knowles, is less clear on his reasoning but there is no doubt that he has felt overwhelmed at having to hold the balance between maintaining St. Paul's as an open place of worship, and wanting to support the aims of the protestors. These well meaning Anglican gentlemen have shown that the snake-pit of political action is probably not the best arena for the modern clergyman.

But what about the protestors? They cut a wretchedly useless, disparate, ill-begotten group of would-be radicals. Whatever the merits of their case - and who wouldn't argue that the arch satans of the banking world should be brought to book - they have projected such an inarticulate stance that they deserve the opprobrium increasingly being heaped upon them. Most damning of all for these part time protestors must be the fact that a group aiming its ire at the financial world have settled all to happily for the soft target of St Paul's Cathedral. While the London Stock Exchange remains blissfully free of any interference from the brave souls of, er, "Occupy the London Stock Exchange", so too do the upper echelons of all the UK's banks. The protestors have secured the scalps of two well-meaning, broadly supportive clergymen. They have failed in their main objective, and seem perfectly happy in their status as radical eunuchs. Such personifications of palpable uselessness should pack up and leave in sheer shame, regardless of the aesthetic and hygienic reasons for getting rid of them.

2012

2011-10-27T15:29:00.002+01:00

We have a year of this - great for genuine aficionados of the drama of American politics, potentially wearing for the less committed. Nevertheless, the US Presidential election is well under way, as the Republican candidates seek to position themselves for the right to challenge Barack Obama. The Republican field has been subject to more shifts than the San Andreas fault as each would-be saviour of the right flies high then falls to earth, to be replaced by the next political meteorite.

Michelle Bachman was once the Tea Party darling who would carry all before her. A couple of poor debate showings later, she was supplanted by the glamorous Democrat convert who governs Texas, Rick Perry. Now he too is struggling to re-gain momentum as pizza millionaire Herman Cain seizes the day, and the light. Through all of this the plodding, well funded campaign of Mitt Romney continues to keep its head above water, and while Sarah Palin may have decided not to enter the race, there remains a host of other Republican candidates still waiting their moment. Even Newt Gingrich is keeping up his poll numbers in Iowa, the first state to hold a caucus at the end of the year.

Cain is an extraordinary candidate. A rare black Republican (no mixed race parentage here either) and an anti-politician, he has sent his campaign adsa viral on the internet. the most controversial is the one below, where campaign manager Mark Block takes a lazy draft of his cigarette just as the picture morphs into a gradually grinning Cain, top the upbeat strains of Krista Branch's evangelical, Tea Party supporting song "I Am America".

With over a year to go, we can rest assured that the drama of American presidential politics will be far more extraordinary, gripping, and even weird, than anything thrown up by X-Factor.

I remain an enthusiastic Obama-ite. Nonetheless, it is the Republicans who are currently trying to define the message, as TRG's Nik Darlington acknowledges in this post on the Egremont blog.

Now - here's that Cain ad:

The Mis-Appointment of Philip Hammond

2011-10-17T21:41:00.003+01:00

Two interesting views on the appointment of Philip Hammond to succeed resigned Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

The Guardian blog notes that Chancellor George Osborne has used the reshuffle surrounding Hammond's move very effectively to his own advantage, and suggests it's a further play in an undecalred leadership campaign against Boris Johnson.

The Tory Reform Group's Egremont blog, meanwhile, slams the appointment of a man professedly uninterested in defence matters as a grave error.

China's Opaque Views

2011-10-17T21:34:00.002+01:00

I'm not sure how successful the Occupy Wall Street protests have really been. They've raised the profile - again - of the many opponents of corporate greed (well - we all oppose that don't we? It's our attitude to corporate existence that's more ambiguous) without achieving anything like the world-shattering results of their protestor mentors of the Arab Spring movement. But for all their relative modesty, the protests have managed to draw the attention of the world's second most significant economic power, China. All eyes increasingly focus on China, waiting for the merest hint or nuance of where they stand on - well, anything. But the Chinese are nothing if not opaque, and the comments of one of their foreign ministry spokesmen are a classic of the genre.

"We feel that there are issues here that are worth pondering", said Liu Weimin in one of his more illuminating comments, going on to add that "We have also noticed that in the media there has been a lot of commentary, discussion and reflection. But we think that all of these reflections should be conducive to maintaining the sound and steady development of the world economy."

Little wonder that sino-spotting remains a seriously demanding interpretive occupation.

The Daily Mail's Thoughtful Analysis

2011-10-10T19:14:00.003+01:00

The Daily Mail have put their finest hack onto the Liam Fox case. Peter McKay, the journalist regularly lampooned by Private Eye, has given us his the benefit of his profound insight, and it's good to see that he's maintained the Mail's reputation for rigorous, thorough, innuendo-free analysis as he writes:

There is a final, delicate reason why Cameron and Co might have shied away from dealing with Fox’s private and public association with Werritty.
Although Fox has denied rumours that he is gay, his friendship with Werritty seems to go beyond what many might consider is normal in male friendships. But the more-inclusive-than-thou Cameron would instinctively steer clear of querying it.

Even better, McKay then has a go at Labour's Jim Murphy for 'smear and slander':

Labour’s shadow defence spokesman, Jim Murphy, justifying his own probe, says: ‘No one has any interest in smear or slander, only in ensuring the office of the Defence Secretary is respected and that Government business is conducted honestly and openly.’

Permit yourself a hollow laugh over Fr Jim’s self-serving sermon.

The Daily Mail - you couldn't make it up (er...).

Unconnected in a Connected World

2011-10-10T18:43:00.003+01:00

One thing this great inter-connected world of ours does is lend itself to vast doses of paranoia. It is more than conceivable that an absence of texts, emails and BBM's simply means no-one actually wants to contact me. Not even the direct mail companies, or the relentless communications from people and places I thought I'd successfully 'unsubscribed' from ages ago. But we now judge our self-worth by the number of times we're wanted in the connected world. Our facebook friends, and the number of followers on twitter - is it really possible to over-rate the monumental importance of these frivolous things?

Well, after a day of communications silence, I did sneak a look onto twitter (via an alternative, working source naturally - an old fashioned computer) and discovered that thousands of users around the world have been suffering the same high levels of inconvenience, unable to access the latest junk mail, or read the most recent banal meanderings of their BBM friends. Yes, the Blackberry server in Slough (?!!) has been down for much of the day. And don't mock now, but the Slough server is responsible for not just the UK, but the Middle East and Africa as well. I hadn't realised how much the freedom fighters of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya really owe to Slough. But at least I could breathe an artificial sigh of relief as I realised that no communications hadn't quite spelt social death. Writing about it on the other hand......

Lilliputian Politicians Dwarfed by Techno Geeks

2011-10-09T15:50:00.003+01:00

Andrew Rawnlsey bemoans the conference season as a gathering of lilliputians, in his Observer column today. While he reserved his greatest ire for a George Osborne speech so low-key it would drive insomniacs to sleep, he was little kinder about the leaders, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. To say nothing of the gathering of other, distinctly minor, ministers.

He may have a point. The three weeks of conference gatherings, which should be showcasing all that is most exciting, radical and controversial about the parties and their policies - which should indeed be shaking up the British polity after its summer, ready for a reinvigorated political term - has been so underwhelming that most of us have been able to sleepwalk through it, unsullied by the thoughts of our elected representatives and their adoring supporters. The barely memorable bits are memorable for the wrong reasons - Sarah Teather's truly lamentable attempt at stage humour, for example, or Ed Miliband's arguably self-evident declaration that he was not Tony Blair. Whatever came out of the conferences has, in any case, been quickly over-shadowed by a good old fashioned political corruption saga.

It is notable that the individual who has reminded us of how genuinely great people can change our lives, has been not a politician but a techno-geek. The obituaries of the giant of Apple, Steve Jobs, have dominated news and magazine covers, and generated lengthy articles about the changes he has wrought. Most politicians can only dream of having even a tenth of the impact that Steve Jobs has had on most of our lives. Alongside the late creator of all things 'i', Amazon's Jeff Bezo has also been making headlines as he presages the launch of the Kindle Fire. The Sunday times today (in a pay to view article) heralds him as the inheritor of Jobs' crown, but in reality he has been making changes to our lives for years already.

The techno-geeks clearly dwarf the politicians. But in a world of globalised relationships and unpredictable enmities, to say nothing of economic volatility, it would be nice to think that one or two politicos could try and hit the mark just slightly above the merely mediocre.

Clegg-Clarke Axis?

2011-10-09T11:33:00.002+01:00

A fascinating line in the Independent on Sunday's taking apart of David Cameron. Commenting on the "cat-flap" nonsense, which saw Clarke robustly attack Home Secretary Theresa May, to the fury of many on the right of his party, the IoS journos comment -

Nick Clegg, say cabinet sources, would not let Mr Clarke, a hero of the Tory left, be sacked.

It adds a new dimension to coalition politics to see a big Tory beast of the left surviving as a result of Lib Dem pressure. But then, Clegg did describe Clarke as the fifth Lib Dem member of the Cabinet in his conference speech.

Defending the Defence Secretary

2011-10-09T11:13:00.003+01:00

Liam Fox's friends are beginning to rally round, none more so than the determinedly right-wing Conservative Home website part owned by Lord Ashcroft. Conservative Home remains broadly suspicious of the modernising agenda of the Cameroons, and have pre-empted his possible desire to remove Dr. Fox - a perennial political opponent - with a detailed defence of the accusations swirling around the beleaguered Defence Secretary. The piece is un-named, the author being merely identified by the handle "The Lurcher", but it contains the key points of any useful Case for the Defence.

Meanwhile, Conservative Home also links us to an article from the Independent on Sunday pointing out "the flaws of David Cameron" (it is, actually, a very interesting piece). You can almost hear hands rubbing with glee over at CH headquarters.

The Independent on Sunday's Odd Reference

2011-10-09T10:16:00.002+01:00

The Independent on Sunday carries an account of the friendship between Liam Fox and Adam Werrity, as part of its coverage of the corruption allegations being levelled against them. Tucked away towards the end of the story, 5 paragraphs from the bottom, comes this intriguing paragraph:

During the general election campaign last year, Fox's home was burgled. His laptop, mobile phone and car were taken, although no sensitive documents were stolen and there was no sign of forced entry.

Intriguing not because it is new information - the incident was well reported at the time - but because it bears no possible relation to the rest of the article. Between two paragraphs continuing the story of the Fox-Werrity relationship comes this wholly disconnected paragraph. It doesn't fit, doesn't continue the story, and sits very oddly indeed. Now why, I wonder, would the IoS see it as important to remind us all of this incident?

The Case For the Low Profile MP

2011-10-09T09:51:00.003+01:00

So in Liam Fox, another high flying minister seems to be scorched by the sun as tales of abuse of power abound. Makes you yearn for the more forgettable, conscientious, hard working MP/minister who just gets on with his job in an attitude of probity. Take heart then from this article by former SGS big shot and current Sheffield luminary Joe Austin, who profiles Liberal Democrat MP and health minister Paul Burstow, citing him as just such an example.

Fox's Failings

2011-10-08T18:13:00.006+01:00

The other week Liam Fox celebrated his 50th. birthday, and entertained the icon of the right, Margaret Thatcher, as his star guest. As if it needed further endorsement, Lady Thatcher's presence - when she has been largely hidden from public view as a result of illness - will have unerlined Fox's position as the pre-eminent spokesman of the right. It all looks so much more fragile now.

Dr. Fox is under investigation for his relationship with Adam Werrity. That they are close friends is not in doubt. That Mr. Werrity has been using business cards calling himself an "official adviser" to the Defence Secretary when he is nothing of the sort is also not in doubt. Mr. Werrity was the sole employee of Atlantic Bridge, a neo-con organisation set up by Dr. Fox to promote the Atlantic alliance with American Republicans of similar outlook. Atlantic Bridge has just been wound up, following a Charity Commission report that stated it had not achieved any of its 'charitable' aims.

The FT today also reports on Mr. Werrity's presence at sensitive meetings regarding Libya. David Cameron has requested that the report being conducted into the propriety of Dr. Fox's relations with Mr. Werrity be on his desk by Monday morning. Clearly Mr. Cameron is in firefighting mode.

The current outlook looks grim for Dr. Fox. If the report clears him of any wrongdoing he will, of course, survive, albeit maimed by the Werrity affair. He and Mr. Cameron have no history of good relations. Both challengers for the Tory leadership in 2005 Mr. Cameron has been suspicious of some of the leaks and reports that have come out of the Ministry of Defence on Dr. Fox's watch.

As he awaits Mr. Cameron's reaction to the civil service report, Dr. Fox may just be wishing he had invested a little more time in cultivating a friendship with the Prime Minister, rather than setting himself up as a standard bearer for his opponents.

Luckless Liberals

2011-09-20T23:28:00.002+01:00

It might have been better when no-one paid attention to their conferences after all. Apart from David Steel's memorable peroration in 1981 to "Go back to your constituencies....and prepare for government", followed by many years still out of government, few people commented on the deathless stage speeches of Lib Dem politicians. Now, in the full glare of publicity, they're coming under merciless scrutiny. Sarah Teather's humour-defying jokes have already been mentioned, and remain the stuff of Philip Cowley's re-tweeting. The largely anonymous Andrew Stunnell apparently tried a joke at the Guardian's expense which, er, failed. But the big-name fall guy today was Chris Huhne.

Having weathered the tawdry revelations of his driving and related offences, he is now climbing back into the mainstream. His speech today was meant to be clarion call against the evil Tories (a repetitively wearying theme at this conference) but came across somewhat passionlessly. What it did do, however, was provide Newsnight's Jeremy Paxman, in one of his less well-meaning moods, with the ammunition to provide a masterclass in interview harassment. Huhne had carelessly announced, in the anonymous, generalised way of rhetorical flourishes, that "we need no Tea Party tendency in Britain". Well, quite. But cue a series of Paxman questions along the lines of "Who are the Tea Party-ers?", "Name them", "Are they just Bill Cash and some friends?" I was half expecting the indefatigable Paxman to demand the names and addresses of everyone Huhne thought might be a secret Tea Party activist.

Huhne wasn't the only one whose image fared none too well. Party president Tim Farron has been on a bid for the leadership for some time. You can tell this by the way he keeps denying it. But is it just possible that his ever more vigorous denials are also the result of genuine pressure from Lib Dem colleagues to stop putting himself about? The Guardian blog today charted Farron's rapid move from saying that he wouldn't rule out replacing Clegg as leader this morning, to saying he would nail Clegg's feet to the floor to keep him as leader this afternoon. With that level of consistency Farron clearly has a bright future ahead of him (the future is still orange, right?).

The Sarah Teather Jokes Routine

2011-09-19T20:28:00.005+01:00

I personally think it was a mistake to allow politicians to wander around the stage during their conference speeches. Keep them behind the lectern and remind them that they are indeed just politicians delivering little listened to speeches of occasional political consequence. Then at least we might avoid the crushing embarrassment of Sarah Teather's jokes routine. To be fair, having seen one joke fail utterly - even the notorious tumbleweed failed to put in an appearance - she carried womanfully on through another two cataclysmically dire two-liners. You really do have to admire the hide of someone who can stand on stage and look as if everything's alright after that.

Just so you can make your own judgement on the latest comedy sensation to hit Birmingham, it's here:

NB - Politics professor Philip Cowley has been so taken with the Teather style of comedy that he's taken to putting a few similar jokes out on twitter himself - such as this one, oh and this one, to say nothing of re-tweeting this one. Fun for all the family.

The Lib Dem Dilemma - Opposition or Government?

2011-09-18T19:39:00.002+01:00

There was a time when we could safely ignore the Lib Dem conference and not really return to the world of active politics until Labour gathered the brothers and sisters by the sea. There can be no greater sign of the radical change wrought by the 2010 election than the fact that, actually, we have to listen to the Lib Dems. And that they have armed police at their conference too.

They've had a torrid year electorally and reputationally, which makes their Birmingham gathering all the more impressive for being actually quite buoyant by all accounts. Nick Clegg's made one speech, which also had a moderately good joke (the one about Ken Clarke being the sixth Lib Dem cabinet member - probably sounds better when you're at a Lib Dem conference than on the page). He wasn't mauled, and he was able to claim that Lib Dems were 'punching above their weight'. He gets to make another would-be show-stopper on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Lib Dem conference go-ers, for the second time, get to hear speakers who have titles like "Minister for....". Since at least part of the role of political activism is about seeking power, it must all be pretty intoxicating still.

I like the Coalition. I like the fact that it gives a bit more heft to the probably centrist, One Nation instincts of the prime minister and some of his inner circle. I also understand the Lib Dem need to mark out a rather different stall to that of their coalition partners. They were hardly going to go into this conference espousing the need to remain loyal allies of a party that many of their members cordially loathe. They need distance. A bit of orange coloured water. There will, after all, be no shortage of Tories in a couple of weeks time wanting to slam the lily-livered Liberals for slowing down the necessary train of radical right reform.

It shouldn't, therefore, bother the Tories that the Lib Dems are seeking to move antagonistically out of their shadow (and to be fair, more right-wing Tories will be delighted that their enemy shows itself more clearly). The coalition will still prevail, if not in the soupy, friendly spirit that begat it. But the issue for the Lib Dems to consider over the next fifth of their great experiment in government is how far they speak like members of government, and how far they use they use the rhetoric of opposition. Are they, in effect, in Danny Alexander's, or Tim Farron's image? Their eventual answer will clearly determine their election success in 2015.

Lilliputians Question Murdoch

2011-07-19T22:18:00.001+01:00

My initial thoughts on the much anticipated appearance of the Murdochs before the Commons Culture Committee are on the TRG's Egremont blog.

Sun Hacking Continues

2011-07-18T23:42:00.002+01:00

In amongst the escalating scalps and the tragedy of a dead reporter, the hacking of News International has taken a new turn with the Sun's own website being hacked this evening, thanks to the mysterious twitterfeed of The Lulz Boat. Their original replacement site was this story (courtesy of our old friends at Media Watch) about Murdoch's death, which proved so popular that it crashed! Now they've just redirected to their twitter feed, with such ditties as: We have joy, we have fun, we have messed up Murdoch's Sun.

Sometimes hacking can be really worthwhile!

The Last News of the World

2011-07-10T11:45:00.004+01:00

I did wonder whether to buy a copy of the last News of the World. It would also have been the first copy I ever bought too, and in readiness I glanced across its online pages this morning, to see what I would be getting in my last, closing down souvenir issue. The headline, "Thankyou and Goodbye" is a fair enough one, running across a montage of previous front pages. I could then have read about ""Harry's Flo looking good in drag", seen a celebration of "page three cheers - the very breast pics", read about "Michelle's Huge Parts", read an article about Coronation Street's sliding ratings or examined "Kelly's slinky legs" at my pleasure. It wasn't difficult to keep my cash in my pocket and forego the dubious pleasure of a last News of the World.

I did check out one further part of the website - the 47 page collection of their best front pages, and as I was reading these, I realised how much better our Sundays will be without this tawdry, gossip mongering, sleazy newspaper. It is sad, certainly, that 200 people have suddenly lost their jobs. But Sunday after Sunday the News of the World has served us up a diet that appeals to the very lowest common denominator of taste, purveying a content that matches in tawdriness the methods it has - apparently - often used to obtain it.

There may well be a new, equally bad newspaper to take the News of the World's place and titillate its 7.5 million readers, but for the next few weeks at least Sunday mornings in Britain are very slightly more uplifting without it.

Farewell to the Screws

2011-07-07T21:09:00.003+01:00

Great piece by Steven Baxter - ex of SGS - on the New Statesman blog about the News of the World's demise. Baxter points out that the 'Screws' owes its destruction to a culture that it has itself helped to create and maintain - the "do something now even if we don't know all the facts" culture. It's a pretty devastating indictment of the levels to which the tabloid journalism espoused by the 'Screws' has fallen:

We don't know what the outcome will be of various investigations, inquiries and hearings, including the one overseen by Brooks herself at News International. But people couldn't wait for all that to unfold: they demanded something be done now. If they jumped the gun and jumped to conclusions based on limited evidence, they were only acting the way they had been taught to by the News of the World itself.

He goes on to elaborate:

"We will be passing our dossier to the police." Those words appeared at the end of News of the World investigations down the years, implying that readers should infer guilt on the part of whichever ne'er-do-well was being investigated that week, their wrongdoings exposed thanks to secret recording or other "dark arts". It created a culture in which an allegation became proof, a culture in which readers were invited to leap to conclusions. If people have done so this week, the News of the World can hardly condemn such behaviour.

It may be the methods rather than the substance of the News of the World's type of journalism that has caused its downfall, but as Baxter's article shows only too clearly, it is not always possible to separate the two. The News of the World may not have quite destroyed itself, but its parent, News International, is beginning like Saturn to consume its own children, and who knows where that might end.

News of the World Closure

2011-07-07T17:16:00.003+01:00

The stunning announcement that the News of the World will close after this Sunday's edition is a far more nuclear announcement than was being anticipated from News International. It is extraordinary, and many will assume that it is only right that a paper now so sullied should fold. Perhaps it even sends a salutary message. The News of the World was Britain's best selling daily, and it has not proved immune from the ramifications of its wrong-doing. It is, it seems, a stunning victory for the forces of good.

And yet. The extraordinary announcement manages to leave a bitter taste in the mouth. After all, no-one is claiming that it is the paper's current leadership and reporters who have been responsible for the scandals currently engulfing it. The current investigations relate to an ethos and practice that dates back to at least 2002, and the person who was responsible for setting that paper's standards, as the editor, was Rebekah Brooks, now the person presiding over News International itself. There will not be wanting people to ask why the 'clean' current editor of the News of the World should be sacrificed when the person who was actually editor at the time remains in post.

Some of us may welcome the closure of a tabloid which has long been an embarrassment to British journalism. But the dramatic closure of the newspaper still doesn't cleanse the owning organisation of all the problems surrounding it, and Ms. Brooks' continuing leadership position will hardly reassure those who want to see proper rectification take place. It beggars belief that News International can now appear unsullied when the woman who has presided over its worst excesses - whether knowledgeably or not - remains in position. Closure of a newspaper has not provided closure of the issue.

A Tale of Our Times

2011-07-07T08:10:00.005+01:00

Hubris, it seems, comes to everyone in time, even apparently invulnerable and all conquering media magnates. Or so it must seem to anyone observing the News International saga at the moment. For years Rupert Murdoch has bestrode the British political scene. Unencumbered by the menial requirements of mere voters such as British citizenship or the need to pay taxes he has wielded more power and influence over prime ministers and putative prime ministers than any British citizen. His editors have been the satraps of his power, the unelected viziers demanding their preferred politics from timid, beleaguered politicians.

How things have changed. Like many revolutions, this one has been boiling under the surface for years but has suddenly, and largely without warning, burst onto the scene. In so doing, it is not only changing the way in which things are being done, but shedding an illuminating light on the darker corners of the British polity.

On changes, Steve Richards in a trenchant piece for the Independent today, remarks upon the extraordinary scenes of once fearful MPs lining up to attack the Murdoch empire, and his key henchmen and women, in the Commons. Richards' piece is a fine and glorious read, suitably over the top and biting towards the malign influence of News International over the years. And, of course, not one that would have been written any time before, say, the day before yesterday!

Few institutions emerge with much credit from this sorry affair. The bulk of the newspaper establishment failed to produce any sort of investigation of its own - only the Guardian stands as a beacon of virtue in this regard, and we can only guess at the pressure it had to withstand both within and without the incestuous media establishment. The Press Complaints Commission remains a vapid eunuch incapable of action against its own. The political classes, repeatedly confronted with the excesses of tabloid reporting, cravenly failed to take any stand against them. Only now, as the giant falls, are they starting to run towards it kicking and punching. The role of the Metropolitan Police is particularly murky, itself the subject of a potential investigation. Quick to leap into action against politicians, they have proved remarkably more sluggish in pursuing News International. And our leading politicians, the men who would be premier, have been most shabby of all. From Tony Blair to Ed Miliband, the pursuit of the Australian magnate's favour has been a ludicrous sideshow of lilliputian proportions. Richards describes Blair's flight to join Murdoch's executives at short notice; Cameron employed Andy Coulson and wines and dines Rebekah Brooks; even Ed Miliband saw fit to attend Murdoch's summer bash this year, and employs former Murdoch man Tom Baldwin as his press secretary.

The press wields huge power even now on the political discourse of this nation, and consequently on the decisions taken by our political leaders. It also, more nefariously, has the ability - which it exercises - to destroy the reputations of individuals big and small. Such are the libel laws of the land that it rarely needs to apologise for its often grievous errors. It can ruin people at the stroke of a pen and never need to pick it up again for a further apologetic motion. And apparently, up to now, it has employed illegal means to intrude on private individuals' space and emotions with impunity. It has demanded the hide of erring politicians, but the erring leaders of News International now simply slink into the dark corners of their unfathomable citadels.

Will there actually be justice? Will Murdoch, Brooks, Coulson and the rest of the merry band finally face the come-uppance they so readily demand of others? The limp and belated response of David Cameron and others hardly suggests so, although the sound and fury of other MPs in the Commons yesterday may indicate the backlash to come. But justice, in this instance, will be more than an inquiry or two into News International. It demands a wholesale review of the way in which our press conducts itself, and no more tip-toeing around the need for proper oversight here as elsewhere.

One of David Cameron's predecessors, Stanley Baldwin, under pressure from Lord Beaverbrook - the Murdoch of his day - commented that the press "had power without responsibility; the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". He highlighted journalism at its lowest point. What it could, and should be, is summed up in a fine sentiment by Peter Oborne in today's "Spectator":

Unfortunately, we in Fleet Street have forgotten that the ultimate vindication of journalism is not to intrude into, and destroy, private lives. Nor is it the dance around power, money and social status. It is the fight for truth and decency.

If this spat means journalism returns to fighting for truth and decency, rather than the tawdry intrusion into private lives, then we may have recovered something good from this after all.

Ministers Who Don't Resign

2011-06-05T21:21:00.004+01:00

Prompted by a desperate tweet for examples of ministers who should have resigned on the basis of Individual Ministerial Responsibility but didn't, here are a few thoughts.

It really is increasingly rare for ministers to be brought to book over specific issues connected with their job. Plenty of ministers might resign due to non-job related problems: sex scandals, for example, which took David Mellor in John Major's government; or abuse of office - see David Blunkett and Peter Mandelson, who both resigned twice for different reasons - well worth googling them; or health reasons (Mo Mowlam in 2000). Ministers do also resign over differences with policy (i.e. they cannot maintain Collective Responsibility) - Robin Cook resigning as Leader of the Commons over Iraq is a good case, or James Purnell resigning as Work and Pensions Secretary because he believed Gordon Brown should stand down as Prime Minister. However, the responsibility of modern ministers is so wide that it is becoming unrealistic to bring them to book for single errors. Examples of where this has been tried are:

- Michael Howard in 1997. As Home Secretary, he was responsible for prisons policy, and faced criticism over a spate of prison escapes. Howard blamed the Prisons Service, and sacked its head Derek Lewis. Howard sought to distinguish between his 'policy' responsibility (which he claimed was intact) and the 'administrative' responsibility (which had failed and was the Prison Service Director's purview). This issue was famously the cause of an infamous television interview with Jeremy Paxman, in which Paxman asked Howard the same question 14 times.

- Stephen Byers came under pressure to resign as Transport Secretary following his decision to force Railtrack into administration, and over increasingly bad publicity about the way he was running transport policy, including allegations that he lied to parliament about such issues as rail safety. Eventually, Mr. Byers did in fact resign in May 2002, but it had looked as if he was trying to hang onto his job despite the problems over his leadership of the transport department.

- Defence Minister Quentin Davies faced calls to resign after his claims that the SAS were happy with their equipment were brought under scrutiny as the result of contrary evidence given to a parliamentary committee (2008).

- Education Secretary Ruth Kelly refused to resign after her department was said to have endorsed the application of a sex offender to stay teaching in schools (2005).

Two recent examples of ministers under pressure over policy issues don't quite fit the bill.

Caroline Spelman's handling of the Forestry Commission privatisation was strongly criticised, but she changed her policy, under pressure from No. 10. Andrew Lansley remains under pressure over his NHS reform proposals, but these are 'consultations' which again may be changed. Both of these examples are related in any case to policies which are widely disliked, rather than administrative incompetence, which is what the doctrine of Ministerial Responsibility is meant to cover.

The best recent example - and it's not that recent - of the doctrine in practise remains Lord Carrington, resigning as Foreign Secretary in 1982 (along with his whole ministerial team) because of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, for which he took responsibility.

Estelle Morris resigned as Education Secretary in 2002 after a series of criticisms over the way she was handling the brief, admitting that she felt she was not up to the job. A rare burst of honesty that was greeted with warm applause by civil servants in her department.

All of the above examples can be googled for details.

The Prime Minister's Prerogative Powers - AS Students

2011-05-31T13:39:00.002+01:00

There is an old article by Nick Cohen in the New Statesman which sought to explain why Tony Blair, as Prime minister, was able to behave virtually like a monarch unchecked. Cohen examined Blair's governing style, including his notoriously offhand attitude to the Cabinet, and looked at how the prerogative powers of the monarch contributed to the Prime Minister's dictatorial authority. Although the article, from 2002, clearly relates to the Blairite premiership, it is still a useful reference for AS students. The Blair precedent remains relevant in exams, and the issue of monarchical prerogative powers wielded by the PM has hardly gone away.

Cohen's article is here.

AS Unit 2 Help

2011-05-27T14:15:00.002+01:00

Essay Tips, with specific reference to the topic of prime ministerial power (includes sample essay) can be found on the tutor2u website here. This piece is by Mike McCartney, author of the tutor2u revision guide.

Also, recent mark schemes and examiners' reports are collectively here, or click on the individual links below - they are well worth reading thoroughly:

June 2010 Mark Scheme

June 2010 Examiners' Report

Jan 2011 Mark Scheme

Jan 11 Examiners' Report

AS Unit 2 Links

2011-05-27T11:34:00.005+01:00

With a half term looming before the second of the AS level politics exams, there is some space to read a few extra articles in order to gain that all important specific information which enhances exam answers so much. I have listed some suggestions below:

1. The Institute for Government blog is worth keeping an eye on anyway, but specifically have a look at this article by former Times commentator Peter Riddell about the effectiveness of ministers, and how long they should really be in place. Particularly cogent given that David Cameron has signalled his intention to try and keep ministers in their positions for a longer than normal period of time. Hence his reluctance to sack erring ministers like Caroline Spelman or even Ken Clarke. The downside of any plan to retain stability in ministerial office, of course, is that it generates frustration in the MP ranks below, all of whom want to experience office for themselves.

2. If you have a bit of time, you could read through the Institute for Government's "One Year On" report, a review of the Coalition Government after one year, with the emphasis on how well it has governed. There will be lots of useful examples to use in any exam, although I should also emphasise that it should not negate the need to use a wider range of examples from previous governments too, such as are found in the tutor2u revision guide. Nevertheless, the report is an illuminating one, to be read for profit. There is a brief summary on the linked page as well.

3. For those intending to cover the judiciary, there is an excellent recent article on the work of the Supreme Court in Prospect Magazine.

4. An assessment of David Cameron's premiership from a right-wing point of view by former Tory MP Paul Goodman is here, while an analysis of the Prime Minister's tendency to U-turn is here. Both very good in preparing for PM questions in the Executive topic (but do remember that such questions can equally focus on the role of the Cabinet).

These articles are all about extending your ability to understand and make arguments about how government works in this country, and provide you with some excellent contemporary material to put alongside other recent developments.

When Is An Apology Not An Apology

2011-05-26T20:50:00.003+01:00

When it's in the Daily Mail apparently. I'm very late to this story about the Daily Mail from the indispensable Tabloid Watch blog, but it's an instructive case nonetheless. Having accused a senior medical consultant of saying that babies born at 23 weeks should be left to die, the Daily Mail then did some research and found out they'd got it wrong (always a danger when the research bit follows the writing bit). So they apologised. Somewhere deep in the US section of the paper, just where you'd an expect an apology on a health related story to be!

Tabloid Watch reports that the apology was eventually moved, and thank loads of people for tweeting the error, which may have had an impact on the Mail decision.

But if you think the Mail's bad, have a look down the TW stories for some great Express misnomers. I'm not sure anyone who reads the Express for serious news reasons actually has much of a brain to speak of, and they certainly shouldn't qualify for the vote, but they will definitely have been taken in by the front page headline that the EU are to ban shopping bags. Turns out that by 'ban' what they meant to say was 'hold a consultative exercise with no determined conclusion yet'. I guess that simply doesn't read as well in the headline.

Tabloid Watch, and the equally excellent Media Blog, should be must-reads every morning, before we dare embark on the evidence-less rumour-mongering that masqurades as news in our daily papers.

Sharing the Heartbreak

2011-05-25T14:37:00.001+01:00

Good to see that the former SGS luminary who runs the Media Blog is as sympathetic as ever -

yfrog Photo : http://yfrog.com/h0oftbkj Shared by The_MediaBlog

The Not So Special Relationship

2011-05-25T14:16:00.005+01:00

[photo tweeted by the Spectator's Pete Hoskin]

It’s all very friendly. David and Barack have been partnering each other in a table tennis game at a south London school; they’ve been serving up burgers in the No.10 garden; they’ve both been reveling in the pomp of a Buckingham Palace banquet; and they penned a joint article for the ‘Times’ suggesting that their two countries don’t just enjoy a ‘Special’ relationship but an ‘Essential’ one.

Oh dear. Another prime minister bites the dust as he succumbs to the seductive charms of the power and glory of the American presidency. It doesn’t really matter who the president is – although it can’t hinder matters that it is currently the coolest man on the planet, and a man more determined to get his guy than the Terminator. At some point in their premiership career the men, and one woman, at No. 10 quickly fall victim to the belief that Britain enjoys a Special Relationship with the United States. That there is precious little evidence to suggest that the Americans believe the same is clearly neither here nor there. A quick canter through the history of the Special Relationship That Never Was might help a little.

Roosevelt and Churchill.
This is where it was meant to have started. FDR moved heaven and earth to get US aid to brave little Britain, and he and Churchill bestrode the post-war world stage like conquering colossi joined at the hip. Yes?

Er, well not quite. Roosevelt was a thoroughly reluctant interventionist. He gave short shrift to the pro-interventionist Century Group, deferring instead to advisers like Sumner Welles, who in January 1940 was still determined to get Hitler and Mussolini to talk peace. When help did come, Roosevelt extracted everything he could from Britain and then tried to make sure the Atlantic War was firmly eastern focused, which suited American interests better. Neville Chamberlain had always believed that the cost of American help would be too high – he wasn’t wrong. Military bases, trading concessions and considerable regional influence was all ceded to the USA. The Roosevelt-Churchill relationship existed mainly in the mind of Churchill himself, who did so much to propagate it. Which is surprising, given the way FDR himself sought to undermine Churchill in front of Stalin at Yalta.

Truman and Attlee
Well, Attlee didn’t speak much anyway, but his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin did, and it was Bevin who felt so downtrodden by Truman’s Secretary of State that he advocated British ownership of nuclear weapons, if only so that “no foreign secretary gets spoken to by an American Secretary of State like that again”. It was another Truman Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who caustically remarked that “Britain has lost an empire but not yet found a role”. Thanks for the support Dean.

Eisenhower

One word really. Suez. When Anthony Eden tried to protect British interests in the Suez Canal, Eisenhower was the first and most important statesman out of the blocks to condemn him. And then begin a run on the pound. Never mind that Khrushchev was slaughtering Hungarian rebels at the time – Britain was Enemy No. 1! Oh, and lest we forget, it was Eisenhower as US Supreme Commander who stymied Churchill and Montgomery’s plan to beat the Russians to Berlin. The Russians weren’t a threat you see.

Nixon and Heath
Possibly the only really effective working relationship between a US President and a British Prime minister, because it was based on an understanding that there wasn’t actually a Special Relationship at all. Both Heath and Nixon believed that America’s real focus in Europe was never going to be a single country, but a united European organization. Nixon, in any case, was very clearly identifying the East as the true arena for US activity.

Reagan and Thatcher
This is where it’s meant to really go into overdrive. If the lovebirds Maggie and ron didn’t have a special relationship, then who did? But, alas, for all their cooing to each other in public, Reagan not only proved notoriously slow to throw support behind Britain in the Falklands crisis, but then didn’t let Thatcher know when he invaded the Commonwealth country of Grenada. Britain had to content herself by joining 108 other nations in condemning the invasion at the UN. Tellingly, Reagan later recollected than when Thatcher phoned him to say he shouldn’t go ahead, "She was very adamant and continued to insist that we cancel our landings on Grenada. I couldn't tell her that it had already begun." Special Relationship indeed.

Bush and Blair
No world leader was more determined to show his support for the US than Tony Blair. No other world leader was greeted familiarly as “Yo, Blair”. But for all the support he gave to George W. Bush’s strategy of middle east invasion, Blair’s voice was heard as tinnily as anyone else’s when it came to trying to influence US foreign policy. It was one of the supreme, defining failures of his premiership.

And now it’s the turn of David Cameron. He admittedly started out with a semblance of independence. He is withdrawing British troops from Afghanistan far more quickly than the Americans would like, and he was clearly speaking with a different voice when he led the calls for action over Libya. If the American President’s state visit is merely an occasion for a good bit of mutual publicity, and some shared thoughts in a common language, then David Cameron may have escaped lightly. If he really starts to believe in a Special Relationship, though, he is as doomed as all of his predecessors. Because, not unsurprisingly, the only Special Relationship America has is with herself.

Republican Field Narrows Again

2011-05-22T10:13:00.005+01:00

The race amongst putative Republican candidates for the US presidency seems to be one to announce that you're not running, rather than entering what is at the moment a pretty narrow field. And it just got narrower, as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels cited family concerns for not joining the race in 2012.

An American friend of mine, a strong Obama supporter now residing in the UK, was almost in despair as she considered the one Republican who might be able to unseat the current occupant of the White House. It was, she said, Mitch Daniels, a man who combined rare qualities of empathy and commonsense with a core Republican appeal given his past history as speechwriter to Reagan and Budget Director to Bush I. I seem to remember a speaker - a former Congressman - at a conference at the British Museum last September making a similar point - if the Republicans wanted a winner, they should look to the Governor of Indiana.

Well, Daniels has pulled that rug from under the Republicans - perhaps reluctantly - and the current Republican field remains a distinctly uninspiring one, comprising Gingrich, Pawlenty and Romney. Now I guess we're just waiting to hear from Michelle Bachmann to really liven things up. I think we can guess what the team in the White House are hoping for.

There is, incidentally, another angle to the Daniels decision that is worth examination. He has said he cannot run because of his family. We may guess that they are firmly against. And who could blame them, for in the intensely observed goldfish bowl of American politics, why would any sane individual, concerned for their stability and, yes, their privacy, want to subject themselves and their families to the relentless, hysterical and often hypocritical scrutiny of the presidential process. If they're not careful, the Americans may one day find that the only people willing to run for the presidency are the same sort of people who apply to be contestants on reality television. So perhaps Sarah Palin may be in with a chance one day after all.

New AS Links

2011-05-21T14:39:00.000+01:00

The Revision Presentation for Unit 1 and a copy of the Examiners' Report for the January 2011 paper which relates to the questions in the presentation, are here - check the left-hand column of AS material, and you should see they are the first two links.

From Today's AS Revision - Pressure Groups, Cameron U-Turns and Direct Democracy

2011-05-21T14:18:00.003+01:00

Pressure Groups:

This article from the Guardian details a rally organised by the pressure group Save Lakeland Forests as part of the ultimately successful campaign to get the government to overturn its decision to sell off Forestry Commission land.

Cameron U-Turns:

I thought there had been 9 U-turns already from the former PR man turned Prime Minister, but this New Statesman list suggests ten in fact! Meanwhile a thoughtful assessment of why Mr. Cameron U-turns so much, and why it could be seen as part of a good old fashioned pragmatic and responsive Toryism, is here in the Guardian.

Direct Democracy:

And here is Douglas Carswell's latest brief comment on his Direct Democracy campaign, although for more detailed material on what he is aiming for go here to his and Dan Hannan's Direct Democracy blog.

No Such Thing As Society!

2011-05-21T14:15:00.002+01:00

What did Mrs. Thatcher mean with her most famous quote that "there is no such thing as society"? Robert Low unfolds the ideas behind the misleading quote in a short article for Standpoint magazine.

Blue Labour?!

2011-05-21T14:02:00.003+01:00

We'll be hearing more of this, but Ed Miliband's search for a distinctive Labour identity is finding some illumination in this new defining of a Labour identity. So-called as a response to Philip Blond's 'Red Toryism', Blue Labour seeks to re-engage Labour's heartlands with the party.

The Conservative Home website carried a lengthy article analysing the new ideas here.

Amongst other things they comment that "Blue Labour is fundamentally against the economic neo-liberal and socially liberal approach of Blairism. "

Labour MP and former education minister David Lammy, who is sympathetic, explains the idea here.

How does this fit in to likely AS questions? Really as an indication of where Ed Miliband is trying to take the Labour Party at the moment. Like David Cameron in 2005, he is confronted with the need to develop a fresh identity for an old party (Mao's delight in blank sheets of paper, which you could write completely new things on, comes to mind!) and 'Blue Labour' represents some of the current thinking in the party leadership. Of course it is untested on a wider public canvas as yet, and some Labourites are clearly hostile. But Miliband, the Brownite New Labour man elected leader with the votes of the trade unions, needs to do something to show where the post-Blairite party might be heading.

The Chinese Internet Censor Gets Pelted With Eggs

2011-05-20T11:48:00.002+01:00

Great story from the Telegraph today - they report the pelting of the Chinese academic who created the so-called Great Firewall of China, the internet wall designed to keep out western social networking and search sites.

For a Chinese youth not easily able to blog or tweet their unhappiness with the authoritarian political set-up of their country, it seems the resort to a more old-fashioned, tried and tested method of political protest has now been enacted. It may not be the Cultural Revolution, but I guess the eggs that hit might have made a modest impact on Fan Binzing. Apparently the Chinese government was scrambling to remove any internet traces of the incident...something of a Canutian policy I'd have thought!

The Sun and David Cameron

2011-05-20T09:08:00.002+01:00

Did the Sun really precipitate a shadow cabinet reshuffle when David Cameron was in opposition? This is the truly alarming scenario posited by the Spectator's James Forsyth on the Spectator blog. He writes that after Dominic Grieve went to News International and ripped apart their lamentably bigoted and one-sided reporting of crime issues, the word came back (via Andy Coulson) that they wanted Cameron to replace him as shadow Home Secretary. Cameron did, bringing in Chris Grayling.

Forsyth uses the story to point out the danger to Ken Clarke in the wake of yesterday's typically evidence-based and elegantly argued Sun editorial that Ken Must Go. But the real alarm bells ring not for Clarke, but for the government as a whole if it really is in hoc to such ridiculous decision making parameters. Many of the commenters on the Spectator site seemed to take a similarly dim view of proceedings, such as this eloquently expressed point:

Let's hope for all our sakes that it [ the govt] feels it necessary to stand up to the mediaevalism of thought-process that permeates the Sun and its red-top rivals. Let's hope that it is untiring in promoting the message that humanity must do better than allow itself to be dictated to by lamebrains - for otherwise there's little hope for us.

Perhaps, though, with Coulson gone and Cameron now in government, there might be a change of heart about how closely he should follow the dictates of the Sun. He might do well to remember the immortal words of one of his Conservative predecessors. Stanley Baldwin, referring to the Beaverbrook press, said of the press that:

"It carries power without responsibility; the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages"

Mind you, one of Baldwin's more cynical supporters muttered that it was unfortunate they had now lost the harlot vote. Can't have everything I suppose!

Ken Clarke Rehabilitates Himself In Wormwood Scrubs

2011-05-19T23:40:00.007+01:00

There was much discussion on the BBC Question Time programme tonight about the purpose of prisons in rehabilitating prisoners, but there can be little doubt that one man certainly used his prison opportunity to good effect, and that was the Justice Secretary himself, Ken Clarke.

After a torrid day yesterday, when his perhaps too casual words in a radio interview caused a mini media flurry, and even the demand from Ed Miliband that he should be sacked, Clarke showed this evening why he is still one of the government's great performers.

First off, his response to a harshly worded question about whether he was "clumsy, wrong or misconstrued" in his remarks was "probably a bit of each", followed by what appeared to be a heartfelt bit of contrition that was heard in silence by the audience, and then applauded. He was helped by an articulate and supportive Shami Shakrabati, and even Jack Straw was reluctant to endorse his own leader's call for Clarke's sacking. But the fact remained, a day after traipsing from studio to studio in a ridiculous media fest that would have worn lesser men out, Clarke re-appeared today on the jungle of Question Time, a programme that frequently spits politicians out, and quickly won his audience round. Not because they necessarily agreed with him on prison sentencing - many clearly didn't - but because he argued his case effectively, non-patronisingly and with, for Clarke, a surprising degree of humility!

With the rape question over - having been fully and intelligently discussed by one of the best recent Question Time audiences - Clarke and Shakrabarti then appeared to be in an unusual alliance of the humane and liberal-minded against the authoritarians Jack Straw and Melanie Phillips. Clarke remained effective throughout the programme, but at no point more so than when he responded to Melanie Phillips' crude call to shut down the Department for International Development, that much maligned purveyor of aid to the world's poor. His defence of overseas aid was one which should be heard more widely, and gave eloquent voice to the natural international corollary of One Nation politics.

Clarke maintained a strong position throughout the programme, and the audience - not in fact made up of prisoners and prison warders, but largely the usual cross-section of society as noted by Nick Robinson - was generally sympathetic and responsive to him.

There aren't many members of David Cameron's cabinet with wide public appeal; an appeal that can usefully cross party boundaries and suspend the toxic waft that often accompanies Tory spokesmen. Clarke, however, remains one of them, and the suggestion that he's 'lost it', should have been firmly laid to rest by tonight's performance. As for the absent Ed Miliband, if he isn't now regretting his ill-judged call for Clarke's sacking, he lacks even the limited political nous his detractors credit him with.

When Is A Rape Not A Rape?

2011-05-18T18:34:00.002+01:00

Well, never, according to received wisdom. But it really is all about the language you use, and whatever the merits or demerits of Ken Clarke's case today, he should perhaps have been savvy enough to know that no-one was ever going to listen to the argument - the issue of rape is simply too emotional for that. But then, that's Ken Clarke all over - determinedly unspun.

Nevertheless, just to see how our media and political system works, it's worth examining the Justice Secretary's remarks and how they have developed into a row.

This morning, he went on Radio 5 Live to discuss proposals to allow people who plead guilty to offences straight away to have their sentences halved. These included people who have committed rape.

Challenged by presenter Victoria Derbyshire on the prospect that this would mean rapists going free after 15 months, he then suggested she had based her proposition on an erroneous figure of five years as the average sentence for rape. Rape, he said, drew far longer sentences.

The 5 year figure is reached by including a range of cases under the general charge of rape - Clarke said this included, for example, consensual sex between an older and younger teenager, where the younger teenager was under the age of consent (although he unfortunately got the age wrong).

The presenter, Derbyshire, interjected with "Rape is rape".

Clarke's response was to say that it wasn't. His clear intention being to suggest that there are a full range of cases, not all of them of equal weight, which come under the rape heading.

Since sentencing guidelines do indeed have a sliding tariff of sentences for judges to use when assessing rape cases, this might seem to be a legally correct point to make. Since it is also clear that rape incidences do differ from case to case, it might also seem to be a fair point to make from a layman's perspective too.

What has happened next is, alas, the sign of our maturity as a political society. Clarke's attempt to actually show that rape sentences were far more severe than his interviewer was suggesting has degenerated into a morass of emotivity and spin. Ed Miliband even managed to keep a straight face when sombrely suggesting that the Justice Secretary should be out of his job by the end of the day. Of course, Clarke's inability to recognise how his response about an issue as sensitive as rape could be viewed bespeaks a lack of instant judgement. But I guess he wasn't expecting his remarks to be divorced so quickly from the context of his conversation.

We live in an age where the uniformity of political dialogue, and its bland, uninformative contribution is regularly condemned. Apparently we want politicians to break away from their careful scripts and occasionally tell us what they really think, to give us the truth. Yet if today's manufactured furore is anything to go by, we are not actually capable of hearing politicians speak more freely, and perhaps with layered responses. We can only cope with predictable and unexciting sound-bites. The idea of a debate, with sometimes difficult views being expressed, has finally been expunged from our society. And it isn't actually the politicians who have done it. It's a media machine which, even with 24 hours to report and respond thoughtfully, is unable to do more than reduce news and comments to their most trivial common denominator.

Ken Clarke's real error is still not to have realised that.

How Do We Deal With The Aspiration Gap?

2011-05-18T11:12:00.004+01:00

The Prince’s Trust has just highlighted the problem of a ‘youth underclass’. A new report from the organization identifies a number of areas where there is a clear ‘aspiration gap’ between the UK’s richest and poorest young people. Amongst other figures, 16 per cent (more than 1 in 6) say their families and friends make fun of them when they talk about finding a good job; more than a quarter (29%) had few or no books in their home; more than a third (36%) did not have anywhere quiet at home to do their schoolwork. The net effect of such conditions has been to drastically reduce the aspirations of young people from the poorest areas. They believe they will never have a decent job and that their future is likely to be a dead-end one, probably on benefits.

The report, produced in association with RBS, also suggests a decline in aspirations amongst poorer young people, who see their hopes slide as they get older. Prince’s Trust chief executive Martina Milburn said “Our research suggests that all young people start off with similarly high aspirations. However, those from poorer homes are significantly more likely to lose confidence in their own abilities and ambitions as they approach adulthood.”

As David Cameron and the Coalition Government look beyond taming the deficit to the business of policies that improve people’s lives, they could do worse than consider the challenges posed by the Prince’s Trust Report to both their own Big Society vision, and to the more substantive area of education policy.

The Prince’s Trust itself is a classic example of effective Big Society engagement, albeit with impressive personal and financial backing. They aim to help 50,000 “vulnerable young people” find jobs and start to have confidence in their future this year. They have, over the years, notched up an impressive record of engagement in some of the country’s most deprived areas, moving in to fill the vacuum of state aid and support. And it is arguable that, as a charity, freed from the shackles that seems to inhabit so much state sponsored support, they have been able to act with greater freedom and dynamism. But not every charity working amongst the urban poor can boast the backing and clout of an heir to the throne, and even the Trust only seems at times to be scratching the surface of the poverty problem. Smaller charities and community based initiatives are likely to be far more stretched, and could just benefit from a dose of state aid to keep them and their works going. If the Big Society is more than just a call for volunteerism to step in and make good the state’s deficit, it would be good to see a more defined way being articulated from Number 10 about just how the state and charities can work together to alleviate urban and rural deprivation, lack of aspiration and a host of other problems associated with poverty. A dynamic fusion between state and charities could accomplish much, and would begin to make the Big Society look a lot more substantial.

Beyond the need for good, well supported charity involvement however, lies the need for more impressive state action in the area of education. There is no mystery to the fact that education catalyses and inspires aspiration, and that one of the biggest failings in the state system’s education provision to its poorest citizens lies in the very figures produced by the Prince’s Trust. What is lacking in the home, in terms of books and an ethos of achievement, could be provided by a school.

But where do we find such schools? Could they be Michael Gove’s Free Schools? Hardly. As of May the Department for Education had received a mere 323 applications to set up such schools, of which 10 – 20 are expected to actually start in September. Bear in mind, too, that these are schools set up by already motivated individuals, catering to a relatively small potential clientele of similarly motivated families. So what about the Academies? They may have been part of the answer, when they were focused on re-vamping existing poor performing schools, but the current programme amounts to little more than offering a financial incentive to successful schools to opt out of local authority control. Not exactly a vision for aspirational attainment in the poorest areas of the UK.

In fact, of course, the answer lies in an idea far too radical for any party to apparently want to commit to. It lies in providing well funded and well supported schools in the most deprived boroughs of the country, which can cater directly to the pupils’ own education needs and work as mini-communities to quickly and collectively raise the aspirations of their students. It would involve placing young people of similar academic abilities together, thus allowing them to move at a faster pace through their curriculum, as well as playing off each other in their learning, and giving a sense of competition to their academic progress. With teachers able to direct their teaching more selectively, and students able to share a common ethos of attainment and aspiration, it would be the fastest method of promoting social mobilization and dealing with the aspiration gap that we could have. Unfortunately, the name of such a system is the grammar school system. And it’s enough to send every elitely educated member of the cabinet running for cover. Pity. Because it could just work – again.

Rally Against Debt - A Study In Pressure Group Failure?

2011-05-15T21:18:00.004+01:00

Yesterday was meant to see another big protest in London. The Rally Against Debt is a new protest group, supported by pressure group the Taxpayers' Alliance and UKIP, representing an interesting new fusion between parties and pressure groups. The aim of the enterprise was clear - to mobilise that vast reservoir of support that clearly exists for the government's proposed spending cuts. Except that, er, it apparently doesn't. Police estimates for the turnout were around 350. The admittedly biased New Statesman reporter Lisa Hamilton thought 200 was a 'generous' estimate for what was, in her view, really more of a long queue than an actual rally. Compare that with the protests against the cuts, organised by the trade unions and other groups on March 26th., and....well, they garnered something like a quarter of a million protestors, including the fragrant Fortnums sit-in organisers, UK Uncut.

So clearly a failure? Well, yes......AND no. The Rally Against Debt was not, for a start, actually pressuring anyone to change policy. They were there to support what is already government policy. Whether the presence of a few hundred apparently civilised citizens in Old Palace Yard is going to particularly stiffen the mettle of the government is hard to say. They are, after all, already committed to the cuts agenda so the actions of Rally Against Debt are not exactly transformative, however many people turn up. But of course, the aims of this particular day were not just to endorse government policy, but to mobilise opinion in favour of an even more drastic approach to cutting the debt. They wanted to be the beginning of a British Tea Party movement that successfully pressures for significantly reduced government and lower taxes. That after all is the aim of the main force behind the rally, the Taxpayers' Alliance. In that regard, the protest was indeed a complete failure. For all the interest on the right in the American Tea Party, the non-event of the Rally Against Debt appears to suggest that there will be no such successful project in Britain.

So what conclusions can we draw about the impact of pressure groups from the somewhat abortive Rally, and its hated polar opposite, the March For The Alternative of March 26th? First, while pressure groups who support government policy may be successful in getting some insider leverage in influencing the direction of policy, they are unlikely to get a huge number of people to join a public protest - after all, the government's already doing (largely) what they want, so most ordinary people (the necessary ingredient of mass protests) will question the value of going along. Conservative Home's Tim Montgomerie also suggested that right-wingers are simply less willing to protest than left-wingers - a rather dubious claim presumably designed to explain why a cause dear to his heart didn't attract much public support. Second, successful pressure groups need to chime in with a popular mood, and the popular mood remains on the side of public services. Cuts are accepted as, at best, a necessary evil, but they are not enthusiastically embraced.

Third, in this instance at any rate, the size and organisational capability of the relevant pressure group is significant. The March for the Alternative was organised in large part by the trade union movement, with all that implies for funding, publicity and the ability to bus in your supporters. The Rally Against Debt relied principally on social media to heighten its profile - sympathetic blogs, facebook and twitter were all used, supported by a few Telegraph newspaper columnists. They gained more publicity after the event - maybe because of the novelty of it being so small - than before. The organiser of the event, Jacob Patch, gave his explanation for the low turn-out on their website, giving this comment:

There were many factors that worked against us. The main bulk of the media coverage was on the day and the week leading up to it. We had the Royal Wedding and especially the ‘No to AV’ and ‘Local elections’ that diverted many peoples attentions away from the event. For many by the time this was all over it was too late to book trains buses, get time off of work etc. Not to mention the exams coming up for many young people.

An earlier blog entry on the website from Mr. Patch is also interesting in terms of trying to explain how to make the rally as media-friendly as possible - he puts out a call for placards and interesting slogans, and details various prominent speakers who will be attending, all part and parcel of getting a pressure group event noticed.

Of course, it should also be noted that for all its size and profile, the March 26th. event made not a jot of difference to the government's cutting agenda, and was considered by some to have backfired in view of the violent tactics used by a small number of protestors. Large or small, public protests might be seen to be amongst the least effective means of getting governments to change their minds, even if they are a necessary part of obtaining a public profile.

The Taxpayers' Alliance will presumably continue its campaigning work, but it has suffered a bloody nose with its Rally. One of the counter-organisations meanwhile, UK Uncut, are using the notoriety they gained from their Fortnums sit-in to arrange another day of action soon. On 28th. May they are aiming to transform banks into hospitals all over the country, as a protest against NHS changes. Now on that topic, they may well be chiming in with the prevailing public mood. We'll see how they do.

Finally, here is the BBC London report on the rally, with an explanation for its small size from key backer, blogger Guido Fawkes.

Scalps Roll In Scotland

2011-05-09T20:16:00.003+01:00

Since Alex Salmond's storming victory in the Scottish elections last Thursday, every other party leader has now announced their resignation. First off was the doomed Iain Gray of the Labour Party, followed by the Lib Dems' Scottish leader and today, the announcement by the Conservative leader in Scotland, Annabel Goldie, that she is standing down too. Salmond's managed a clean sweep.

As far as the Scottish results go, Labour ended up the most disappointed party. Once all powerful in Scotland, they have finally had to face up to their frailty in the face of well organised, fresh and determined opposition. The Lib Dems probably expected a pasting and weren't disappointed. As for the Tories, although Ms. Goldie says she was relatively happy with the Thursday vote, despite losing two MSPs, that happiness can only be from a base of what are consistently low expectations for the Tory performance in Scotland. The Scots' vote for the SNP certainly indicated a determination to be clear of English associations, but not necessarily to move towards greater independence. The Conservatives have, since the days of Margaret Thatcher, been toxic north of the border and a succession of Tory leaders in Scotland have failed to turn around the fortunes of a decidedly minority party when it comes to Scottish affairs. As with the Labour Party, ambitious Tories prefer to make their way at Westminster rather than the provincial backwater of Holyrood, but this tends to leave the main parties - especially one as small as the Conservatives - with a dearth of talent. It isn't just talented leadership that's missing, though. The Conservatives have yet to find a way of exorcising the Thatcherite demon that causes it so much pain in the north. Since the Scots can't all be genuine left-wingers - can they? - there must be room for a distinctively Scottish right-of-centre party, and if the Conservatives aren't careful, they may find one emerging that isn't them. Perhaps, indeed, the best thing they can do is to dissolve themselves and reform under a wholly different banner - a bit like the old Academy Schools used to do. Or will the Scottish electorate see through such a ruse?!

Two articles post-election...

2011-05-07T15:09:00.002+01:00

There's plenty of comment around about the aftermath of both the local and devolved elections and the AV referendum, but a starter might be this fairly concise, and on the ball summary of winners and losers by the Spectator's James Forsyth. AS students in particular might then find it useful to go on and read his article on why two-party politics is likely to be back with a vengeance in Westminster.

Tomorrow's Last Chance Referendum

2011-05-04T18:54:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow by close of voting the British electorate – or those who can be bothered to turn out – will, in all probability, have decisively rejected the first opportunity in decades to reform their voting system. They will also, in so doing, have put the chance for further reform on the backburner for many years to come. This is not a cause for rejoicing, despite the increasingly hysterical note of the less than salubrious ‘No to AV’ campaign. If Britain had already been neatly equipped with an equitable and representative voting system, then there would be nothing to complain about in tomorrow’s likely result. But it is not. It has instead a demonstrably unrepresentative system whose strains have become ever more apparent in recent successive elections.

It is scandalous that a voting system which delivers strong majority government on a mere 36% of the vote (as First Past the Post did for Labour in 2005) continues to operate in a would-be liberal democracy. It is a national disgrace that thousands of votes in a significant proportion of constituencies amount to little more than window dressing, giving their owners no share whatsoever in the outcome of a general election. It is wholly unacceptable that a party scoring 23% of the vote should be delivered a mere 8% of the seats in the national legislature (the Liberal Democrats in 2010, and it matters not a jot that their share of the vote may, a year later, finally have come down so dramatically that it at last meets the share of seats they once won!). Yet all of these undemocratic features are the regular characteristics of the First Past the Post system that our two major parties are desperately seeking to maintain in tomorrow’s referendum. There are dictators in Africa who could probably claim more popular support than some recent British governments!

The one shred of respectability that could conceivably be attributed to FPTP is that it delivers strong governments. Quite apart from the extraordinary misnomer that ‘strong’, single party government should be regarded as a good thing in a pluralistic democracy (Putin, after all, delivers strong government in Russia, but I don’t notice British politicians leaping to praise his beautifully liberal leading of that nation), the 2010 election even managed to rip that last, vacuous defence from the mouths of its proponents.

So why is the tide running so strongly in favour of retaining this system that has seen the unrepresentative nature of British government increase, while the electoral turnout from voters who no longer believe their votes can affect which party governs has so markedly declined (from 78% in 1997 to 61% in 2005, and a very slight increase to 65% in 2010)? It is partly because of a brilliant, disreputable, manipulative and utterly unprincipled No to AV campaign, but it is also partly the consequence of placing FPTP against what is possibly the least attractive replacement system, the Alternative Vote. In engineering this referendum, the Coalition have betrayed the principles of electoral reform they sought (reluctantly, in the Conservative case) to pursue. The Liberal Democrats in particular, whose raison d’etre in recent years has been to campaign for a more equitable voting system, have allowed themselves to be so comprehensively outmanoeuvred that they barely deserve to remain a serious contender for national power. How a party whose leader so memorably dismissed AV as a ‘miserable little compromise’ could then have accepted it as the only alternative to FPTP beats most of the best brains in politics. Never mind student fees; when Nick Clegg held the dealer’s hand in the coalition negotiations with a Conservative leader desperate to form a new government, he baulked at the only prize his party would find worth receiving. He allowed AV on the electoral reform referendum.

AV is not, in fact, quite the dastardly system its opponents are portraying. It retains some of the strengths of FPTP – single member constituencies for example. Through the ability to vote for candidates in an order of preference, it offers the chance to see elected representatives who are not simply the choice of a minority of voters in their constituencies (in 2010 only a third of MPs actually achieved majority support). MPs even use AV to elect the Speaker and the chairmen of the Select Committees. AV is stringently opposed by a BNP which knows it will be further marginalised by a system which is more likely to reward consensual candidates. MPs wishing to hold their seats under AV, after all, need to appeal to undecided voters who traditionally occupy a centrist political position. The argument that AV will encourage MPs to work harder and reflect the needs of their average constituent rather than pander to often unrepresentative activists in their party committees is a credible one. Yet despite these virtues, the same people who so lamely allowed just one, readily attacked system to appear on the electoral reform ballot have also manifestly failed to argue the case for AV with anything like the strength it deserves.

I am a citizen of a well known democracy whose electoral victors represent the views of under 40% of her citizens. The last chance for at least a generation to change that comes tomorrow, and for all the flaws of the AV system on offer, it not only represents a better and more democratic system than the one we currently use, but it keeps open the chance for further, much needed reform. We reject that at our peril.

Cameron's No. 10 Operation

2011-04-03T15:17:00.002+01:00

I have put a piece on tutor2u summarising some findings from Anthony Seldon in an excellent piece for the Independent on Sunday today. The Seldon piece is essential reading for AS students studying the power of the prime minister and the operation of the Executive in British government.

The State of the Parties - some AS support!

2011-04-02T13:52:00.004+01:00

Party ideology is not as fixed as it once was, and Ed Miliband faces the same problem that David Cameron faced in trying to determine how to establish a distinctive, ideologically coherent message that doesn't veer too far away from the middle-ground consensus that still decides elections.

A couple of useful support links for AS students are here:

1. From the tutor2u website, Mike McCartney gives an overview of where the parties are at the moment, using a recent sweep of relevant stories.

2. The Today programme's Norman Smith has a fascinating report on the problem for Miliband as he tries to recover lost constituencies like Gravesend, which still seem to be firmly in 'Blair country'.

A Tale of Two Reforms

2011-04-02T13:28:00.004+01:00

If you want to know whether Andrew Lansley's proposed NHS reforms are a good idea you need only take a look at the Conservative Home poll on the subject. When 84% of that site's readers agree that the reforms are necessary, you know there's a problem. Conservative Home and the Daily Telegraph compete for the readership of the core, right-wing base of the Tory Party - the same base that thought Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard were good leaders, but have real reservations over Cameron. And if they like an idea, you can bet it's probably going to go pear-shaped.

One of the key Tory perception problems - correctly identified by the Cameron team - is that they genuinely dislike public services, especially the NHS, and would like to cut them down. Margaret Thatcher, despite regularly increasing the sum given to the NHS, never quite managed to banish the impression that she'd rather privatise the whole thing. Thatcherite Tories want the NHS to be "good value for money". Well, don't we all. But many Tories think that the provision of health care can be neatly quantified, and that the only people who can do this effectively are the medically trained doctors in GP surgeries rather than the financially trained managers trying to organise the various healthcare trusts. Most Tories use private healthcare provision anyway - the sort that's properly run by business and finance aware managers whose work lets the doctors get on with their primary job of actually healing - and aren't overly bothered by the impact of reforms on the NHS. There is, I think, a sneaking suspicion that most people who use the NHS don't really need to - they're just being hypochondriacs, a bit like all the welfare cheats.

Lansley's reforms, with their odd emphasis on the wrong people managing the business side of healthcare when they should be managing the medical side of healthcare, look increasingly like a car-crash bearing down on the Coalition. Even the Conservative Homers, in their slavering desire to decapitate the NHS, also recognise that if the reforms go wrong it would be a disaster - 72% of the cuddly Conservatives apparently believe it will be hard for David Cameron to be re-elected if the reforms go wrong. Lansley's background as policy wonk and politician may not have been terribly helpful in assessing the practical problems of what he is proposing.

All of which seems to be in contrast to the under-stated but efficient way in which welfare minister Chris Grayling is now planning to radicalise the apparently often abused Incapacity Benefit. The Spectator's Fraser Nelson, one of the bash the Coalition crowd, is impressed by the way in which Grayling has gone about his task, which could substantially alter the level of Incapacity Benefits issued and increase the progress of the welfare to work reforms. Of course, Grayling benefits from the fact that welfare reform is often so complex and humdrum that no-one can be bothered to check the details, and in any case only affects a minority of the population (although 2.6 million people, the number currently on IB, is no mean minority!). The NHS potentially affects us all. But perhaps a little closer attention to detail, and the realisation that pleasing the Tory base is often a sure fire way to alienate what we might call the broader electoral base, wouldn't have gone amiss when Mr. Lansley was dotting the i's of his current grand reforms.

You Couldn't Make It Up - But Littlejohn Does, Every Week!

2011-03-28T22:43:00.004+01:00

I must confess I've never bothered to read the Richard Littlejohn column in the Daily Mail that's enjoyed by millions, and this excellent defenestration of one of his pieces about the recent Japanese Tsunami not only confirms that it's right to give the man's malicious mutterings a wide berth, but also begs the question of how on earth he manages to continue drawing a salary for this crap. Oh, but wait a minute. His employers are the Daily Mail. Well, next time they sign his cheque, they might want to chew on these wise words of his about the appalling Rwandan genocide:

'Does anyone really give a monkey's about what happens in Rwanda? If the Mbongo tribe wants to wipe out the Mbingo tribe then as far as I am concerned that is entirely a matter for them.'

Also worth checking out this passionate, angry piece by the Independent's Johann Hari.

Does Intervention in Libya Help Al-Qaeda?

2011-03-26T14:03:00.003Z

The forthright left-wing commentator Alexander Cockburn says that western intervention has never had a positive result. He may well be right. So poor is western awareness of the complexities of middle-east politics in particular that it is no wonder the interventionist tendencies of both left and right in government are more likely to come a cropper than not. Iraq was not exactly a model invasion plan, and while there may have been some self-defence justification for Afghanistan, you'd be hard put to suggest that it was an unalloyed success. So now we have Libya. It was understandable that western politicians, under pressure from their respective medias and the loud voices of interventionism, would start to see Libya as a classic case for more benevolent western military force. Gadaffi is a caricature lunatic with markedly vicious tendencies, while the besieged citizens of Benghazi are the classic heroic 'little people'. What doesn't work in this scenario?

Well, the little fact that eastern Libya is a prolific recruiting ground for al-Qaeda for one. Cockburn, in his First Post column, reports some of the alarming statistics about the closeness of Benghazi and Dernah to al-Qaeda, and concludes that Osama Bin Laden must be thinking he's living in a parallel universe as Cameron, Sarkozy, Obama et al leap to his defence.

This is the problem with rash decision making on middle-eastern politics. We may find one side unpalatable, but we know nothing about the other sides either. Libya's conflict is a civil war, and for all the tragedy of it, should have been left as such. Quite apart from the financial implications of western involvement at a time of government belt-tightening, the intervention of disliked western countries merely muddies the already murky waters of middle-eastern power struggles. And, of course, there is no exit strategy here. How could there be? We don't really know what we are fighting for. No wonder President Obama was so cautious about intervention. No wonder the US military establishment, fronted by Defence Secretary Robert Gates, was so opposed. We will see soon enough just how awkward this most recent example of western egoism is going to turn out, but the chances of this sending some lessons towards the politicians of either left or right seem slim indeed.

Cameron Fails the Palmerston Test!

2011-03-21T23:45:00.004Z

Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish is on the money as usual, although I think he under-states the genuine difficulty faced by Barack Obama. Sullivan has been blogging consistently against intervention in Libya, and here uses a historical parallel with Palmerston's refusal to take action to support the put-upon Hungarians in 1848. Sullivan uses Obama as the contemporary foil, but it works as well with the current holder of Palmerston's former office. Cameron has decided not to resist the pull of interventionism. Palmerston, the successful practitioner of 'gunboat diplomacy', did. Palmerston's historical reputation is assured. It'll be a while before the verdict on Cameron can start to be formed!

Voting For War - It's What MPs Do!

2011-03-21T23:13:00.002Z

Tonight's vote in the House of Commons in favour of military action to maintain a no-fly zone over Libya was overwhelming. 557 MPs voted in favour with only 13 abstainers. It's certainly far more crushing a majority than the Iraq War vote managed back in 2003, but even that one achieved 412 to 149 in favour of action. We didn't hear a lot from the mighty 412 subsequently, and it does perhaps serve as a useful reminder that when it comes to war, MPs seem to regularly give it the benefit of the doubt. Somehow, the heartache and problems that arise from western military action can always be deferred to another day. Gaddafi's war against his rebels is a savage and unpleasant one, but the remarkable inconsistency of western foreign policy 'actions' continue to open such votes as today's to be branded as hypocritical, to say nothing of the way in which western action tends to act like quicksand on its own forces, and dimension changers on the conflicts they are designed to stop.

It is very difficult to watch Gaddafi move against the rebels without wanting to see the tables turned against him. It is also difficult to stomach Robert Mugabe pulverising, bullying and starving his own people while he remains cosseted in a lap of ill-gotten luxury. It isn't easy to hear about the violent, authoritarian action of Royal Wedding guest the King of Bahrain either, or to continue reading the gut-wrenching tales from Russia's savage, dirty war against the Chechens. When it comes to three of the afore-mentioned international calamities, the western nations appear to have tacitly - and correctly - determined that they cannot intervene. But Libya, somehow, is different. Just as Iraq was different it seems. Perhaps the presence of oil makes them different. Maybe it's simply the high media profile and the belief among so many legislators that nothing is worse than not acting upon the media's preferred crisis. There is, possibly, a strategic dimension. But whatever it is that determines the difficult to defend inconsistency of western action, nothing can disguise the continuing problem that liberal interventionism presents to a western world struggling to escape the charges of ideological imperialism that tarnishes it so badly, and the human and financial costs it so willingly incurs each time it flies in to an alien conflict.

Farron's Furrow

2011-03-14T21:36:00.002Z

Whether the Lib Dem president Tim Farron is ploughing a determined furrow towards eventual leadership we can't know, but he does provide an alternative source of authority to the current beleaguered leader, Nick Clegg, and was far more rapturously received at the Lib Dem conference, as the Telegraph's Peter Oborne points out. If Clegg is doomed by the Coalition, then it is Farron who is most likely to reap the party rewards, as a leader untainted by membership of the government. Mind you, Oborne does contend that, mindful of his difficult position, Clegg is starting to re-evaluate his public stance on the Coalition by being more open about his differences.

Whether that can make up for so signally failing to ring-fence the notorious Lib Dem pledge about student tuition fees remains to be seen. I still suspect Clegg has no future outside the Coalition any more - that may prove to have been his ultimate sacrifice in the pursuit of power.

Lib Dem Dramas

2011-03-12T16:50:00.003Z

It's all go at this weekend's exciting Lib Dem conference in Sheffield. The invaluable scoop-meisters tweeting to EyeSpyMP have already noted that Rochdale MP Paul Rowen is drunk - at 4pm! - and that ex-Tory MEP Edward MacMillan-Scott has been shouted at as "Tory Scum" - whether he's scum or not is debatable, but he's no longer a Tory! What next - Nick Clegg yelled out for being a Lib Dem sell-out merchant?!

Jamie's 'Dream' School

2011-03-09T22:33:00.004Z

I'm not sure it's a good idea for teachers to watch Jamie Oliver's new series, "Jamie's Dream School", but it has proved too compelling not to. This isn't because it is showcasing particularly good teaching that would make us all feel inferior, but because it is indulging 20 GCSE drop-outs in the belief that formal education still has something to offer them. On the evidence of the first two programmes - it hasn't.

I know I'm privileged as a teacher, teaching motivated, decent, interesting and generally well behaved students whose worst offence is usually a bit of over the top banter or mis-placed comedy. I've a real fear that the 20 students in this programme might, however, be more representative of the average school student. They are a disaster area - so totally self-obsessed that they are unable to sit for a moment without resort to mobile phones, incessant chat, computer games and a general refusal to acknowledge that they need to listen to anyone other than their own banal selves. They can't surely be real - they must be actors, mustn't they?!

The man who tried to provide the most formal lesson, historian David Starkey, had a nightmare, admittedly due in part to an ill-judged comment about one boy's 'fatness'. When he returned to the classroom, his most successful gambit was to show them a video of themselves trying to joust. Significantly, the most successful lesson in the programme so far appears to have been the artist Rankin giving them the project of creating a self-portrait. So let's continue to indulge their already overweening belief that the world revolves around them and their remarkaby limited ideas. There isn't much evidence for Jamie Oliver's assertion that they're all 'bright as buttons'. If they were wouldn't they have already recognised the value of at least some of their education in previous schools?

The students have even been given a role-model in self-obsession. Their politics teacher is none other than Alastair Campbell, who helpfully showed them the video of his own ill-tempered exchange with Adam Boulton on Sky last election, and then promoted a valueless but aggressive discussion between two teenagers that eventually resulted in a minor physical stand-off outside the classroom. Al's definitely teaching them politics the New Labour way!

It's bad education and tells us little about how to engage determinedly disaffected youths, but it's good television and perhaps reminds us that knowledge is very different from entertainment and is hard won by a bit of sacrificial grind. I doubt that's going to feature in any of their lessons.

Liberal Humiliation in Barnsley

2011-03-04T08:23:00.004Z

If the Liberal Democrats about managed to save face in the earlier by-election of Oldham, the same ccannot, alas, be said for Barnsley. A dismal sixth place, behind even UKIP and the BNP, can only have put the jitters up the Coalition's junior partner. That said, anyone hoping to take comfort from the Liberals' misfortune should do so quickly - few real lessons can be drawn from this by-election. Hardly a typical seat, a northern Labour stronghold, and a pathetic turnout - merely 37%. UKIP's 2,000 odd votes will always look rather better against a turnout of only a few thousand in total than it will when all the normal electors come out to vote! The victorious Labour candidate, meanwhile, should prove an interesting addition to the Commons, as a former paratroop major who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Clegg 'Forgets' He's In Charge!

2011-02-24T09:42:00.005Z

Nick Clegg apparently forgot he was in charge of the country while David Cameron is busy touting for business in the New Improved Middle East. Actually, to be fair, he merely made an off-hand comment, saying that he supposed he was in charge, but the whole issue is rather overblown in the modern era with the internet and blackberrys.

Clegg has it right. His refusal to make a big play of deputising for the PM, and instead acknowledging that things don't change much just because the PM is out of the country, is a welcome difference from the bear-pit politics of the Blair era. In those days, the issue of who should be 'in charge' when Blair was on holiday, or away, was savagely contested amongstt he Labour high command. It was meant to be John Prescott, but that didn't usually stop a Mandelson or a Straw or a Reid claiming they were really the ones pulling the strings. More recently, under Gordon Brown, he had barely left Downing Street for a brief sojourn before Harriet Harman came charging in, holding press conferences and playing the role of acting PM for all it was worth (which wasn't much!).

So well done Nick Clegg. Ignore the ludicrously puffed-up nay-sayers and keep acknowledging the deputising role for what it is - virtually an irrelevance.

Foreign Office Shambles and the Tragedy of William Hague

2011-02-23T23:12:00.005Z

Everyone knows it's difficult running the British Foreign Office, having to deal with those pesky foreigners and not having a clue which country's going to stage a revolution next against one of our chummy autocrats. But really, William Hague seems to be excelling himself in his frontman-for-a-lost-cause routine. A few days ago he was telling us that the firmly Libya based Colonel Gadaffi was on his way to Venezuela. Now he's trying to explain why Britain can't even match Turkey in evacuating our nationals from Tripoli. Actually, to be fair, he finally gave up on the task of fronting one of the British Foreign Office's most lamentable performances to date by not even appearing on a predictably aggressive Newsnight interview, leaving the field to his rather clueless junior minister Alistair Burt whose only line was that we did well in Tunisia and Egypt.

I've not got a huge amount of sympathy for the Brits who have been busy propping up the Gaddaffi regime with their corporate involvement in his wretchedly governed state, but I do think the Foreign Office might still try and manage to charter a couple of planes to get its own people out. They probably encouraged them to work there in the first place after all.

One of the more ludicrous aspects of the Burt interview on Newsnight was when interviewer Kirsty Wark turned the conversation to Hillary Clinton's hint that the US might use military force to intervene in Libya. Burt was asked whether Britain would hold a similar line. Now wait a minute - here we are, having failed to get either military or commercial planes into Libya to rescue a few benighted British citizens, possibly because we've cut so much of the RAF there aren't any spare planes to fly out there in any case, and a British Foreign Office minister is seriously being asked whether we're up there planning military action with the big boys? I know the Foreign Office still lives with the illusion that we count for something in international affairs, but do the BBC have to nurture the illusion quite so gratuitously?

Anyway, whatever the outcome of today's failure, it looks as if William Hague has made some powerful enemies within the Foreign Office. Perhaps his attempt to shoehorn Chris Myers in as an unqualified Special Adviser last year is still smarting, but one mainstream magazine blogger mentioned that he had heard 'journo after journo' criticising Hague today, and concluded that someone, probably from the FO, was briefing against him. He wondered whether the Venezuela comment had embarrassed someone there as well - the hostile briefing could be their revenge!

Hague's already announced an enquiry into the poor British evacuation effort, but that's not going to get 540 Brits out of Libya, and it may not manage to save Hague's job either. The lecture circuit could be beckoning again.

Politics, Parties, Leaders and Image

2011-02-16T22:57:00.002Z

There is much to be gleaned from psychology in understanding politics. I'm just not sure that the lecture some of us went to this evening did much of the gleaning. The phrase of the evening from the very pleasant and engaging Dr. Tereza Capelos was "We need more information". She also noted that, on the whole, political scientists aren't there to provide answers, they're there to ask questions. So on the whole, her initial comment that "we would go into the minds of the voters" may have been a little ambitious - especially when you consider that most voters don't venture much into their own minds. Any visitor is likely to find....well, something of a sparsely populated desert I suppose.

Nevertheless, in amongst some of the stuff we probably already guessed at (most voters vote according to feelings rather than on specific issues; politics is emotional etc) and the occasional piece of academic jargon on the impressively large overhead screens (try "Parameter estimates are unstandardised regression coefficients" as an example of one of the bright little explanatory notes) there were some interesting comments and experiments. We grammar school types - well, ok, four grammar school and one smug fee paying type - rather liked the Huxleyan division of the voters into two classes - the sophisticates (er, us, obviously) and the unsophisticates (Sun and Express readers anyone?). And there was a great experiment conducted in the Netherlands where Dr. Capelos and her colleagues asked people to indicate approval or disapproval of policy statements they said belonged to either Nelson Mandela (generally liked and respected) or George W. Bush (generally not). Mandela's policies received far greater approval than Bush's. No surprise there. The catch, though, was that the canny academics had actually switched some of the policies round, telling their unsuspecting subjects that policy statements which actually originated with Bush belonged to Mandela and vice versa. So there you have it. Actual policy matters less than who's delivering it. Unless you're Nick Clegg.

True Grit, True Class

2011-02-13T19:34:00.004Z

This is a time for great films. Don't know why, maybe the studios have started to understand the value of brilliant scripting and superb acting over blockbusting, sequels and effects. Whatever the reason, I hope there's more to come. Much attention has been deservedly given to those superlative films "The King's Speech" and "Black Swan", both of whose main actors are up for Oscars which they richly deserve. You can add to that consummate coupling an equally outstanding third film, the Coen Brothers' remake of "True Grit".

The story is a straightforward revenge quest, as a girl hires a US Marshal who has seen better days to help her hunt her father's killer. What turns this relatively simple story into a masterpiece of modern cinema is a combination of sparkling scripting, with the spare dialogue leaping off the screen at you; cinematography on a scale grand and well observed enough to truly capture the rugged, wide expanses of mid-western America; and, of course, a calibre of acting that simply draws us indelibly into the characters whose story we are following.

There are no weak acting links in this film - just as there aren't in the other two mentioned - but Jeff Bridges makes the role of Marshal Rooster Cogburn (played by an Oscar-winning John Wayne in the original) a wholly sympathetic one that simply shouldn't be the case with such a rollicking, wise-cracking, callous, disreputable drunkard. He grates out his dead-pan one-liners with gruesome effectiveness, provoking several laugh out loud moments in the cinema. Meanwhile newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, playing the 14 year old heroine, so grips the screen and draws us on side that you are reminded that there can be really good child actors. She was 13 when she played the part, and I don't know which acting school she went to but I only wish the child leads of Harry Potter had managed to go there, even for only a week. Steinfeld was superb in the difficult role - she acted (Daniel Radcliffe please note) and showed an emotional range that didn't just about struggle to get to B from A. She had to hold the film together and in that she triumphantly succeeded. There are many great lines in the film, and she utters one of them when she observes the forthcoming punishment of her father's murderer - You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free except the grace of God.

And the ending for this fantastic western revival tugs with such empathy at our emotional weak points that it nearly had me descending once again into the persona of a lachrymose imbecile. I've never seen the original version (neither, apparently, has Matt Damon, playing the second bounty-hunter in this film); having seen the Coen Brothers' version, I've don't think I've got any desire to go and watch what could only surely be an inferior film, even if it did provide Wayne with his Oscar.

For a great review of the film by the way, read David Sexton's in the Evening Standard.

Defending Ken Clarke From The Tories

2011-02-12T15:03:00.005Z

My old stamping ground, the Tory Reform Group, has a new blog, so I thought I would post one final thought on the old one, before disappearing altogether. Ken Clarke is once again making waves with his honest assessments of the political scene, and is also under regular attack from his right-wing opponents, so I thought it only proper to provide a defence - a somewhat limited one, but it is with specific reference to the accusations that he persistently undermines Tory leaders.

The Rotters' Club

2011-02-12T12:20:00.003Z

"There were a couple of men dining by themselves. One was taking out his glasses to study the menu, the other was tipping brown sugar into his coffee cup from a paper sachet. Their actions seemed banal: but how was anyone to know what storms, what torrents of ideas and memories and dreams were raging through their minds at that instant?"

Anyone who can deliver that wonderful insight from such an everyday scene is worth reading further for the way in which he tries to get under the skin of how we all tick, and Jonathan Coe is such an author. I have discovered him only recently, thanks to a couple of former students, and have read only two of his books, but they are high on my list of recommendations. "What a Carve Up" was a great read, and an incisive dissection of Thatcherite Britain, but if anything "The Rotters' Club" is even better. Set in that weird decade of my own childhood, the 1970s, with its divisive politics, odd music, strange fashion sense and atmosphere of impending doom, it is a captivating coming of age tale of a group of grammar school friends. Coe deals with friendships and relationships admirably, painting them against the political and cultural background of the time with compulsive clarity. The book doesn't quite 'end', in that we are still left guessing about some of the outcomes of events recounted along the way, but it has its fair share of twists and surprises throughout.

The grammar school setting gives it a degree of familiarity with anyone at SGS, and a key focus is the school's student-produced newspaper, used in the novel as a fulcrum for much of the plot development. It may not be a sports paper, but the way its sixth form writers use their new-won positions of literary influence to settle a few scores is not unfamiliar to readers of SGS's own "What's the Story..."

Coe writes feelingly about human relationships, and revealingly about politics and produces, in sum, a readable novel that should engage anyone interested in the way we were just a few decades ago.

10 o'Clock Live and the Big Society

2011-02-10T22:54:00.003Z

It's getting better. Not, alas, the Big Society, which is still stuck up a cul-de-sac with no obvious means of escape, but Channel 4's new (ish) political satire show, 10 o' Clock Live. The scheduling is admittedly chronic, cutting across that other show for political anoraks, Question Time, but there is an increasing chance that they are not going to be shedding half their viewers at 10.30 for too much longer. This evening's episode was, as expected for a one hour show, uneven, but much less so than earlier episodes. Jimmy Carr's opening news review is still poor - the audience laugh at his mis-steps and his deprecatory look when things go wrong rather than the rapidly dying wit - but it was followed by two excellent, classic monologues from Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell. Mitchell's interview with Simon Hughes was better than his fold-up-and-wilt approach to Alistair Campbell a couple of weeks ago, and Hughes defended himself quite well too. But for a current affairs show they managed to hit a nerve over the 'Big Society' with Mitchell chairing a genuinely passionate debate between Johann Hari and Philip Blond, and occasional interjections from Shaun Bailey.

David Cameron has always had trouble defining the Big Society and it's running into the sand even more as much of the glue of our local communities is gradually dissolving away under local government costs. Whatever the original aims (and what were the original aims?!) it looks increasingly like an effort to get people to take the place of local services on the cheap. Utter nonsense of course, and Johann Hari sounded more convincing when he pointed out that US states which spent more on their services from tax had higher rates of volunteering, than Big Society defender Philip Blond did when defending, er, the survival of volunteering when all the structures within which one might volunteer are being stripped away.

This week's satire thus managed to make some decent points, although I think they could do a lot more on the dismal state of the print news media. The few digs they did make were well aimed, but the Star is an easy target and it's time to take on the big boys!

The Politics of Justice, US Style

2011-02-09T18:05:00.003Z

Lord Phillips may be concerned about his lack of judicial independence under the current funding and structure of the Supreme Court in the UK, but the legendarily independent US Supreme Court is also facing scrutiny. Or at least, one of its justices is. Clarence Thomas was always a controversial appointment as a very conservative justice beloved of the Republican movement. His wife, a former Tea Party group founder, is now a political lobbyist, and Democrat representatives in Congress are asking the good Justice to recuse himself (step down from) from deliberations on the constitutionality of the national healthcare bill on the grounds of possible conflict of interest. This is becoming a thoroughly political issue, as a Republican senator has also suggested that Obama's newest appointment, former Solicitor General Elena Kagan, should also recuse herself from the same issue because of her former government position.

Lord Phillips should cast a wary eye towards Washington, and perhaps thank his stars that his job isn't quite as politicised as his American counterparts, for all their vaunted independence, just yet.

The Politics of Justice, UK Style

2011-02-09T17:56:00.002Z

Some of the more adventurous SGS politics students take advantage of the regular lecture visits organised by the indefatigable Mr. Bartlett, and last night's trip to hear Supreme Court President Lord Phillips at UCL proved to be a high profile one. The Supreme Court is, of course, the body that replaced the House of Lords as the UK's highest court. Apart from giving its leader a Star Warsy type of title, it was a move to ensure the independence of the UK judiciary. Lord Phillips last night suggested that the set-up of the court was hardly conducive to much independence, with its funding granted on an annual basis, its civil service answerable not to him, as president, but to the political Justice Secretary, and its appointment of judges subject to MPs' scrutiny.

These are serious charges, and strike at the heart of the constitutional question of how far judicial independence requires independent funding, limited scrutiny from parliament etc. The Supreme Court was an attempt to move closer to the US ideal. For Phillips' money (such as it is!), it hasn't yet moved nearly close enough.

Justice Secretary Ken Clarke, the genial giver of votes to prisoners, responds to some of Phillips' charges on the Today programme here.

Nick Clegg, Universities and Social Mobility

2011-02-08T20:56:00.003Z

Nick Clegg, famous alumni of exclusive Westminster School, wants universities to widen access to those who didn't go to a famous public school. It's a campaign full of fraught joys, from poking fun at Mr.Clegg's own privileged background, to damning the universities for daring to dumb down their entrance requirements, to quite properly demanding a return to grammar schools in all areas to give social mobility a bit of meaning. As ever, the Economist's university educated Bagehot is on hand to put things in perspective, including the insight that universities have always been prepared to give lower offers to pupils from tough comprehensives. Makes a change from the boring, predictable, dull but well prepared public school toffs. Which leaves the grammar school boys and girls where, exactly?

We Are Being Poorly Governed

2011-02-08T20:31:00.003Z

Simon Heffer in the Telegraph is no friend to David Cameron, and he uses his column today to note the growing unrest amongst Conservative backbenchers at Cameron's leadership. In this, he echoes other right-wing commentators such as James Kirkup, Tim Montgomerie and James Forsyth (see earlier posts). However, he has a fresh take on one aspect of the problem that the Coalition government is facing, and that is the very quality of governance.

Heffer cites the recent Forest Furore as an example of idiotic presentation of a policy, and goes on to examine the Defence Department. He has harsh words about the quality of the all important civil service:

One of the greatest difficulties the Government has is with the quality of the Civil Service, diminished and emasculated after 13 years of politicisation by the Labour administration. A reader wrote to me last week about how a letter to her husband from the Ministry of Defence began "Dear Lt Cdr (Ret'd) Smith", something that one hopes would make the First Sea Lord weep. At the top level, inexperienced and compromised permanent public servants are shaping and supporting decisions made by inexperienced and not especially bright politicians. The Cameron loyalist to whom I spoke, having praised much else that was happening, conceded that the defence review had been a "shambles". Given the quality of those who had to put it together, that can hardly be wondered at.

Attacks on Mr. Cameron's leadership have more than a whiff of the political partisan about them of course, and should be sifted accordingly, but the civil service, the once reliable, ultra professional, neutral, impeccable, Rolls Royce engine of the civil service - well, if that's failing us, can it be long before the ravens start to leave the Tower of London?

More Right Attacks on Cameron

2011-02-03T17:40:00.002Z

If you judge a man by his enemies, then David Cameron is doing pretty well as a centrist, consensus minded One Nation Tory. Barely a day goes by without the sirens of the right launching yet another whinge in his direction. Tim Montgomerie, the editor of online site Conservative Home, now regularly breaks cover from the safety of his internet operation to take the battle into the frontline of the papers that bloggers enjoy deriding as the 'dead tree press'. In the Mail last week, and the New Statesman this week, he is busy sounding his by now familiar message of "Woe to Cameron who won't listen to his right-wing backbenchers'. Time was when Montgomerie used to have something interesting to say, but his record got stuck some time ago.

He's joined by the usual variety of right-wing nay-sayers in the predictable corners of the press. James Kirkup, holding forth in that long-term battalion of Thatcherism the Daily Telegraph, provides a detailed analysis of Cameron's governing style which concludes that, er, he's not very good at it. The sort of conclusion, from that source, that's right up there with the shock announcement that Christmas Day will fall on December 25th. this year.

However, amidst the sound and fury of a right-wing that feels ignored, and yearns for the glory days of Thatcherism when we didn't have to put up with the whiney Liberals in government and could watch the Tory vote gradually disappear from the urban areas and that bit of England we know as the North, there are some warnings for Cameron. Not least, his need to sharpen his defence of his government's agenda, and step in early to pre-empt regular attempts to undermine him from his parliamentary opponents. Perhaps his new Communications appointment will help him in this. Meanwhile, there are still several publications that haven't yet printed Mr. Montgomerie's Variation on a Theme so keep a good look out for more of the same.

Post-Mubarak Fears

2011-02-02T22:49:00.001Z

One Egypt based blogger expresses his fears of the anarchy that might envelop Egypt in the aftermath of the current protests. Hope for a better future competes with such pragmatic pessimism.

Egypt's Eruptions Show Signs of Spreading

2011-02-02T22:20:00.003Z

President Saleh of Yemen certainly gets it, although possibly too late. He has announced he will not be seeking re-election in 2013, ahead of Yemen's own planned 'day of rage' on Thursday. It may still not be enough, as the extraordinary 'people action' which started in Tunisia continues its rampage across the Arab world. There are reminders here of the fall of communism in 1989, which erupted so unexpectedly and then gathered steam across all of the eastern European countries. The danger in the current instance, however, lies in what on earth will replace the tottering regimes. The dictatorships of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen sit atop a simmering cauldron of poverty and unrest which is easily exploited by the well organised Islamic fundamentalist groups waiting to seize their chance. The protests in Egypt, and the putative ones in Yemen, seem to be led by liberal minded middle class and young citizens who would have little truck with the conservative islamicists, but unlike their religious counterparts the protestors are not well organised politically. The spectre of Iran hovers above the unrest, and although there are significant differences, including the fact that these protests have not been spun from the sort of religious agitators who took the lead against the Shah in 1979, there can hardly be any western analysts who aren't currently shuddering at the prospect of a post-Mubarak Egypt, or a post-Saleh Yemen. Democracy, after all, is fine, except when it delivers the wrong verdict.

Paxman's Gem

2011-02-02T21:18:00.003Z

Courtesy of the Media Blog, edited by Old Sutt Will Sturgeon, we have this gem of an email from Jeremy Paxman, announcing the death of the Newsnight daily email.

"The time has come to put this exercise in fatuousness out of its misery" announces Paxman, with typical under-statement. He goes on to say, in his usual mild tones, "The reason for killing it off is pretty straightforward. It's crap." There's more brilliant material in that vein in what is one of the few must-read news emails issued by the BBC.

Paxman's tone clearly hasn't changed from when he was forced to do weather reports on Newsnight. He responded by injecting them with as much verbal contempt as possible, as shown in this compendium from Have I Got News For You:

Good Journalism, Bad Journalism

2011-02-02T19:29:00.009Z

We watched "All the President's Men" at the History Film Club last Monday. It's slow, but it shows the painstaking care with which the two Washington Post journalists working on the Watergate case - Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein - went about proving their case. Their story eventually brought down a president, but it took many months to get there, and the film illustrated the frustrations of real, investigative journalism, and the painstaking need for certainty, for getting every controversial fact approved by at least three sources. It was a remarkable tale, and no less tense for knowing the eventual outcome. It was a portrayal of journalism at its best. It was an illustration of what one hopes men and women go into journalism for. To bring the mighty to account, to represent the poor and voiceless, to bring us true stories that illuminate the world we live in, to answer the almost unanswerable question of Pilate in the gospels - "What is truth?"

So hold all that in mind and turn now to this harrowing tale posted by one Juliet Shaw (and which I came across courtesy of Jack Burkill, pursuing a little bit of investigativism of his own!). It concerns her dealings with the Daily Mail in 1993. The Daily Mail is one of the most influential voices in the arena of public discourse in this country, and while it is ridiculed on facebook it is read devotedly by hundreds of thousands of citizens. But in the instance described by Miss Shaw, it comes across as a paper that lies and misrepresents its interviewees, to extraordinary detriment. Juliet Shaw was just one of four women, none of them famous, whose lives were trashed by the newspaper and its fatuous, inadequate, shameless reporter.

The Washington Post was at its most triumphant in the 1970s. Its reporters, Woodward and Bernstein, and its editor, Ben Bradlee, and countless others working on it, managed somehow to see journalism as a decent, even moral calling. The Daily Mail should recover some of that spirit itself. I'm aware that Juliet Shaw's tale dates from some years ago, but comments below the story suggest that the Mail is still in hoc to such poor stroy making methods as were evinced in 1993.

There is good journalism out there. The Guardian and Independent stand out in this regard. The Guardian's Nick Davies broke the story of News Corporation's bugging pandemic, while that same paper's media commentator, Roy Greenslade, has used his blog to bring Juliet Shaw's story to a wider audience. Davies, of course, has also authored one of the best recent books into the convoluted world of the media, "Flat Earth News".

UPDATE: This post sums up one of the Mail's reporting techniques beautifully.