Gone At Last

All the normal news outlets can be used to pick up news of Peter Hain's resignation because police are now investigating him. He certainly has more support in resignation from Labour colleagues than he had in hanging on to office.

One of the perennial political questions is 'when should ministers resign?'. The honest answer is probably along the lines of 'when the heat becomes too much', although purists might prefer it if the old principle of ministers going either because their department made unacceptable mistakes, or because they themselves had been guilty of wrongdoing, still held good. Peter Hain left because the scandal became too great. He hasn't left because he admits any wrongdoing. He isn't the first self-justifying minister to be hauled out of office, and he certainly won't be the last, but we probably wait in vain for any repetition of a Lord Carrington-style resignation, back in 1981. Carrington, Foreign Secretary at the time, resigned because he accepted responsibility for the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands, which was a clear foreign policy failure. He was right to resign, and honourable for doing so. Perhaps we need more hereditary peers in government to bring a sense of honour back!

One footnote to the affair is the glee of the political bloggers - leading UK blogger Guido Fawkes is busy claiming credit for the Hain scalp, and is being lauded across the right-wing blogosphere. He's on Newsnight tonight, and it will be interesting to see if mainstream media agrees with his self-assesment!

Let Ahmadinejad Stew

As if we needed further evidence of the need for the West - and particularly America - to lay off grand-standing about Iran, this story in the Guardian reveals that the bellicose Iranian president is losing the support of Iran's Supreme Leader, and heading for a 'winter of discontent'. More significantly, the Guardian report suggests that domestic opposition to Ahmadinejad is being stepped up now that the president can't keep relying on the American bogey to prop himself up. Sane heads have argued for some time that Ahmadinejad needed the threat of American military action to shore up an increasingly untenable domestic position, and the ever obliging Bush administration has not, until recently, let him down. Leave him be, however, and his domestic chickens start coming home to roost. It is perhaps worth adding, in this US election year, that the candidate who has been most robust about Iran, thanks in part to his neo-con advisers, is Rudy Giuliani. Fortunately for the rest of the world, Rudy's hopes of gaining his party's nomination look like a distant one, although a final verdict has yet to be delivered by the primary voters of Florida, where Giuliani has been campaigning hard.

Jacqui Smith's Mistake

It was not, perhaps, the wisest move on the part of a Home Secretary in a government that's been in power for 11 years to admit that she didn't feel safe walking the streets at night, but that was indeed Jacqui Smith's mistake at the weekend. She made the admission while being interviewed by Andrew Marr, and came across as if she were just another of all these helpless people who can't do anything about the soaring crime rate. Except that she's, well, you know......Home Secretary, and sort of in charge of the police and keeping crime down.

One result of her admission has been to push one or two of the newspapers into an anti-crime frenzy, none more so than ardent Labour supporters, the 'Sun'. Their front page today prints a desperate reader's letter that talks about 'decent members of the public being murdered by the feral youths on our streets.' Their website page then goes on to catalogue a veritable smorgasbord of horrors to hammer the point home.

This is meat and drink to the 'Sun' of course, and the link between rising crime and increased police inability to tackle it, with the rise in bureaucratic requirements for the police as imposed by the current government, won't have occurred to them. The problem for the opposition parties, and especially the Tories, for whom this is supposed to be fertile territory, is how to sound strong on the issue without coming across as a hang 'em and flog 'em loony. Mind you, figures notwithstanding, it is just possible that for every Jacqui Smith, fearful of walking the streets lest she be mugged by an annoyed police officer struggling to make ends meet on his less than satisfactory pay rise, there could be a horde of citizens tramping the streets in perfect safety. That bit doesn't get reported of course. It's not really news, is it? 'Man Walks Home Safely'. Hmmm.

The Tories' Successor to Widdecombe

Ann Widdecombe, one of the most recognisable faces of Conservatism over the past decade, is stepping down from parliament. Her safe Kent seat, Maidstone and the Weald, has therefore been looking for a suitable successor and today they announced the result - Helen Grant, a black solicitor and mother of two. Raised by a single parent on a council estate in Carlisle, her personal profile certainly makes a change from the average one for a Tory candidate (although not completely - she is, as I mentioned, a lawyer!), which is possibly why David Cameron had been keen to put her on the party's A-list. (The Evening Standard image opposite is from the Conservative Home site.)

The selection of candidates, particularly in a party's safe seats, is one of the more hotly contested rights of local constituency parties. The local parties value, and fight for, their independence, not least because selecting the next MP is one of the few genuine, tangible powers that they hold. The central party leadership, meanwhile, is often desperate to denude this power from the locals and decide things centrally. One of the innovations that allowed Tony Blair to mould New Labour was an increased level of central control over candidate selection, thus preventing too many left-wingers getting seats. New Labour, of course, also imposed women-only shortlists, thus substantially increasing the number of women in parliament following the 1997 election, although storing up a bit of trouble for itself in the process. The reason why the once strong Labour seat of Blanaeu is now Independent is down to the furore over a women-only shortlist imposed by Labour's national Executive.

David Cameron has also tried to intervene in local powers, mainly through his 'A' list idea. Tory constituency parties have also been holding 'open primaries' in a bid to widen the representation of who selects their candidate.

The problem for party leaderships, of course, is that local party activists are a far cry from being representative of their constituency as a whole. By definition, a party member is more committed and probably possessed of more forthright political views than the average voter. The leadership wants to appeal to the mainstream voter; the party member wants to secure his or her favoured policies. The result is tension between the two.

Helen Grant's political stance within the Tory spectrum is unclear, but Conservative headquarters will at least be rejoicing in her selection, on diversity grounds alone. One of the unsuccessful candidates for the Maidstone seat blogged her experiences here, and there is an interesting comment below the post about whether a candidate selected as a good constituency representative can also fulfill the function of being an able legislator in the national interest. That, of course, is another of the debates about MP's and their role.

For completeness, I should add that Labour's Hazel Blears has also been successful in being selected for a new merged seat this weekend - her current one disappears under boundary changes.

3 Primaries, 3 Winners

Another winner for the latest Republican primary in Michigan, and at last the multi-millionaire former governor of Massachussetts has topped the poll.  Romney as a candidate has rather failed to define why he should be president, which might explain his defeats in New Hampshire and Iowa despite spending huge sums of money there.  Michigan has given his campaign a much needed oxygen injection, but we shouldn't read too much into it - this, after all, was a state where his family connections included having a father who used to be governor.  Romney also managed to be utterly underwhelming in his victory speech, trotting out what is by now the tired old 'Comeback' reference - although apparently, Mitt's comeback is 'for America'.  Er, right.

Giuliani and Thompson came bottom of the republican poll again, but I have been asked to comment on Ron Paul's little noted campaign.  Paul has been holding in there with a distinctive libertarian platform, and could yet decide to run as an independent, as could that other maverick Republican, the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

Hain Rumbles On

So now we have Hain the 'committed' campaigner for Labour Party office. So committed, in fact, that he was too busy concentrating on his cabinet jobs to take much interest in the financing of his campaign. And, of course, he has 'done nothing wrong' and has 'nothing to hide'. Well, nearly nothing. His late disclosures were not done without much media pressure, and we still know litle of the relationship between him and the mysterious think tank, Progressive Policy Forum. It has apparently done little actual thinking, but that seems to be de rigeur for anyone or anything connected to Peter Hain at the moment.

Nick Clegg made a good point this morning - either Hain is incompetent to an extraordinary degree, or he is indeed guilty of obfuscation. Neither accusation renders him able to credibly carry on as a minister of the Crown, and it is to the discredit of the opposition parties that they have not been calling for his resignation. Are they really enfeebled by the possibility that they themselves have unclean hands?

The Fawkes blog provides a forensic dismissal of Hain's pleadings of innocence, while blogger Iain Dale points up the hypocrisy of Hain's position with his reminder of the departmental campaign that Hain heads up to the public - 'No Ifs, No Buts'. Take your own advice, Mr. Hain.

Hain's Woes

Peter Hain has long been one of the smuggest, smarmiest, most unbearably self-righteous of the New Labour mob, so it's difficult to feel anything other than genuine rejoicing over his current come-uppance. Lacking humour, self-deprecation, or stellar ability, this tediously tanned apparatchik is now splashing around in a little financial scam - namely, the inability to declare £103,000 in donations to his deputy leadership campaign. His justifications are typically self-serving and require real efforts at a suspension of disbelief - apparently he is such a committed public servant, and so uninterested in his party ambitions, that he really didn't pay much attention to the little matter of where the money was coming from. We should really stop hounding such a fine public servant.

Hain should probably resign, although the thought that he might do so quickly and voluntarily won't have occurred to him, so we'll have the unedifying spectacle of yet another cabinet minister clinging to office for dear life while their integrity and credibility get smashed around them. This is the new doctrine of ministerial irresponsibility.