Does the BBC Now Love Thatcher?

The normally sound First Post has a rather over-egged story on their pages at the moment. Considering both the forthcoming docu-drama on Thatcher's fall from power this Thursday (an obvious must for politics students and general viewers alike) and the release of some rather old memos, FP have decided that the BBC, once considered so hostile to Thatcher, is actually having a little love-in with her. Unfortunately, the text of the documents doesn't really bear this out. Yes, they are almost all very complimentary about the future Iron Lady. But they do seem to date from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the comments are generally anodyne ones about Thatcher's feminine appearance! Hardly the stuff of political love-ins! And, of course, a verdict on just how sympathetic the drama is going to be has to wait until Thursday.

Mind you, Conservative blogger Iain Dale is thoroughly excited by this BBC collection of Thatcher archival material. For those unreconstructed anti-Thatcherites, you might take joy and comfort in the Panorama report about her evil removal of free school milk from the mouths of innocent children.

Updates

The morale of Labour MPs is at its lowest level for five months, according to Politics Home, which at least means that for some reason they even unhappier back in October.

How did Harriet Harman get smeared with undermining her leader, asks Jackie Ashley in the Guardian. It's how the lobby works, she says....just don't believe it too much.

Obama's election has seen conservatives in America renew their attack on the New Deal, says this piece in the Boston Globe.

In this latest crisis of capitalism, just how radical can we expect today's students to be, asks Mark Steel in the Independent.

Those Tough Select Committee Chairmen

Select Committees are one of our guarantees of government accountability. They are intended to bring a fearless independence to their close scrutiny of government activities. good to hear Keith Vaz, then, the ubiquitous Home Affairs Select Committee chairman trot out the government manra that "I am sure Jacqui Smith has done nothing wrong." This on top of his wonderful Newsnight performance last week where he defended the Home Office's ban on Dutch MP Gert Wildeer, but admitted he hadn't actually watched the man's film. And why would he need to, when the Home Office has already told him what to think.

Then there's tough guy John McFall. He was enjoying his bullying of the bankers last week - always good to go in hard against the really difficult targets. But have we heard much criticism of his friend Gordon Brown's handling of the crisis, or of the 'light regulatory touch' that is now considered such a key reason for the bankers' over-reach? Not a bit of it. After all, that would involve criticising the government, and heaven knows what would happen if select committees started thinking they could do that all of the time.

There is, of course, one select committee that consistently gives the government a hard time - the Public Accounts Committee. And that happens to be chaired by an Opposition MP. Time for this practice to be extended, perhaps?

Jacqui Smith's Expenses

One might be tempted to be bored by the Jacqui Smith 'second home' affair and ask why the fuss. After all, it is surely her woeful, underwhelming performance in the high office to which she was too prematurely promoted that is the real issue we should be concerned with. However, the expenses story is rightly on our radars too, since it exemplifies the problem we still have with MPs taking liberties with their taxpayer-funded expenses to line their own pockets.

MPs are public servants. They serve at the pleasure of the public, and are there essentially to look after our interests. This idea of MP - and minister - as servant is rapidly lost in the insular world of the Westminster village, where MPs - and some journalists - can quickly come to believe in their own importnace, and forget the purpose of there presence in an elected chamber. When an MP of Jacqui Smith's seniority deems it appropriate to claim money for a 'second home' which is palpably her first, and in so doing defrauds the very taxpayers she is meant to be serving, then we know there is something wretched in the Westminster body politic. So the requirement by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner to explain herself is entirely appropriate. Not that it was speedy. It has taken some three complaints to get John Lyons to investigate - not exactly a resounding defence of the taxpayer's interests from that quarter either.

Simon Heffer can be caricatured as one of the right-wing's grumpy old men, but he's pretty well on the mark about Smith with his article here.

Tawdry Decline

But, after a political lifetime seeking the job, Mr Brown arrived without a strategy or a project for his premiership.

So says Philip Stephens in an article in yesterday's Financial Times, discussing the decline of Gordon Brown's premiership, and the parallels with the John Major's fin de siecle of the Tory years. The recession may be playing its part in Mr. Brown's difficulties, but there is also the unavoidable sense of decay and hubris afflicting this government, says Stephens.

Brown At Bay

One of the more worthwhile innovations of the Blair years was the creation of the parliamentary Liaison Committee, that group of MPs who chair select committees meeting together to question the Prime Minister. Whether it yields anything more than the weekly PMQs in front of all MPs is a moot point, although it is meant to allow for greater depth of question and answer. Brown, of course, has the habit of retreating into mind-numbing detail, as the Spectator's Fraser Nelson reports, but the keen observer can still glean something about the PM from these encounters, as the Times' Ann Treneman shows.

Regrets? He has One.

I don't know why Professor Ian Smith should now regret the comments about Diplomas that he made, but apparently he does. Yet his original comments, though scathing, were not unfair. He said the Diplomas were 'schizophrenic' (they are certainly that, with their woeful mix of vocational and academic modules) and that the government should concentrate on getting GCSE's and A-levels right (shouldn't they just - these are the exams taken by the vast majority of England's students).

Professor Smith is the government's science education adviser, and his initial comments suggest a perfectly clear assessment of the government's abysmal attempts to mess around yet again with the exam system. The government sees the Diplomas as the jewel in the crown of their vision for secondary education qualifications. Most other people see them as an appallingly incoherent and inadequate attempt to get round the fact that exams are still too academically selective. The take-up of these wretched qualifications is far lower than hoped, and the universities are keen to ignore them altogether. So why Professor Smith's regret? One can only assume that his brief moment of clarity and coherence has come to the attention of his Children's Department bosses and that huge pressure has now been brought to bear to get him to suggest that actually, the Diplomas are a really good idea. After all, the reputation of a government and its wacky advisers depends on them.