Select Committee Extravagance

Private Eye's 'Gavel Basher' carries an exposure of potential select committee abuse in this fortnight's edition.

The select committees could be a crowning triumph of the parliamentary system. Introduced in 1979 by Conservative Leader of the House Norman St. John Stevas (did Margaret Thatcher, his PM, really understand what he was doing I wonder?), they are there to call government departments to account. Manned and chaired by backbenchers, they are an opportunity for MP's to assert their legislative independence and do a bit of decent scrutiny. Unfortunately, much of the would-be independence of the committees is undermined by the ferocious activity of party whips in ensuring representation on them by tame lobby fodder MP's. Now, according to Private Eye, the government have set up seven new regional select committees as a way of rewarding loyal followers. The committees - designed to scrutinise regional spending that is already scrutinised by other committees - are utterly superfluous, and undermine the principle of independence even further by having Parliamentary Private Secretaries sit on them. PPS's work for ministers, so the chances of them asking hard questions range from nil at the positive end to a significant minus number.

Not content with setting up more committees, Leader of the House Harriet Harman has also decided to start paying the chairman of the allowances committee. The purpose of the allowances committee? To check unjustified spending in the House of Commons. Just the right time to make sure it is now responsible for absorbing a bit of extra spending in the form of this new salary then!

The Tories' Nightmare - Winning in 2010

Over on the 'skipper' blog, Bill Jones examines the polling evidence in yesterday's Guardian, suggesting that if any sign of recovery can be perceived by 2010 then Gordon Brown could still win. He looks back at the situation for the Major government in 1992, which squeaked a victory against all odds for precisely that reason. The analogy offers little comfort for the Tories.

In 1992, even the Tories were expecting to lose. Had they done so, Neil Kinnock would have become Prime Minister. His Chancellor would have been John Smith, who at that time was following a remarkably similar path to Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont, esepcially with relation to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. As PM, Kinnock would have thus been the man to preside over 'Black Wednesday', and the subsequent collapse of economic confidence. He would have lost the next election, and Labour's reputation for economic competence would have sunk into the earth's crust, probably not to emerge again for another decade or two. The Tories, meanwhile, would have elected a fresh leader after Major's defeat - possibly Michael Heseltine or Ken Clarke. Reinvigorated, they would have won the 1997 election and would now be enjoying the summer of a second long spell in government. Instead, reality gave Major his election win in 1992, and doomed the Tories to lengthy opposition from 1997.

So what if Cameron wins in 2010? Could he be subject to the hypothetical scenario outlined above for Kinnock? What if the recession does indeed last as long as some commentators say - up to a decade. If it continues to get worse, even a brief boost from the 2012 Olympics won't help the sitting government much. Elected on a promise of getting the country moving again, Cameron could face the ire of a frustrated electorate if he failed to deliver by 2015. A rejuvenated Labour Party, under a fresh leader (James Purnell? Jon Cruddas even?) might then sweep back into power, ready to take the helm as the real recovery starts to works its way in.

Far-fetched, possibly, but few Tories are looking with full equanimity at winning in 2010. After all, Cameron's apology wasn't just about not seeing the recession on the way. It was really about the failure of the Tories to have devised a distinct economic vision to Labour. Even now, they are treading warily around the policy pit to try and determine their best way forward. This is a crisis with few answers, but plenty of potential crashes. If even the President Messiah is struggling, what chance a mere Tory leader with no experience of government?

Burstow on Liberalism

Paul Burstow was the latest guest to grace the 6th. Form Lecture programme at SGS. The Lib Dem Chief Whip - and local MP of course - focused on the defence of freedom for his speech. He gave an eloquent survey of what he saw as the overweening power of the state threatening individual freedoms, and it is not surprising that his talk should have generated some good questions from the audience. His view of freedom is certainly classically liberal - to the extent that he was happy to accept that freedom must come with risks; that some 'anti-terror' measures should be consigned to the waste bin because their impact on individual freedom is more significant than whether they might protect us from external attack. He was clear about not wanting to live in Voltaire's "gilded cage".

The key question for any modern liberal, of course, is how to resolve that tension between protecting individual liberties and promoting empowerment for all. Opposing the power of the state as manifested in its security apparatus is not essentially difficult (although too few still do so nonetheless). Opposing the power of the state when it is more becomingly clothed in its nanny outfit is much more daring. To say that the state has no role in telling us how we should live, how much we should drink, who we should have sex with, what drugs we can smoke....these are the gradual encroachments that are just as iniquitous to individual liberty as the security apparatus. Paul Burstow illustrated his effective case with some high profile, and clearly outrageous, infringements on certain individuals. If you want to see a more low level attack, just drive past any pub of an evening and see the poor sods who have been forced, like naughty children, to take to the cold pavements to enjoy their cigarettes. Freedom comes in many guises, and they are not qualitatively different.

Binge Whinge

If the Sunday papers are to be believed, Britain is drowning under a deluge of alcohol abuse. There are binge drinkers on every corner, corner shops are being besieged by under-age buyers of alcohol, and virtually every adult in England is taking advantage of phenomenally low prices to consume as much as possible.

Or is it possible that there were lots of blank pages to fill and yet another piece about alcoholism is (a) easy, and (b) guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of middle England?

There may or may not be a binge drinking issue to be addressed - the sensationalist nature of all news coverage of the topic actually makes it quite difficult to genuinely decide. If there is, we can be pretty sure that it is not universal, that it is confined to certain groups in society, and that it is nothing new. Which makes the constant attempts to squeeze it onto the news agenda both depressing and suspicious. The chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, is the man who pushed the story out this weekend with his ill-considered suggestion of price fixing - there should, he said, be a minimum price for alcohol. Oh, absolutely. It is clearly the role of the government to tell us all exactly how much is good for us, and to direct what we can consume. And, of course, it is well known that alcohol is priced far too low.

Fortunately, once one has waded through the morass of hysteria there is a beacon of hope, not just for the perfectly reasonable wine drinkers of society, but for anyone concerned with an over-abundance of government intervention on the liberties of ordinary people. The government and the opposition seem united in rejecting the idea of alcohol price fixing. Gordon Brown has been distinctly cool on his response, suggesting that the government has no intention of introducing the measure, and the Tories' health spokesman Andrew Lansley has also clearly opposed it. So we can safely leave the boozy journalists to their anti-alcohol print frenzies without the prospect of a Big Brother state hoving into view just yet.

For a different view of the Great Alcohol Debate, see Will Self's First Post article.

Quality? Just Select a Woman!

The Labour Party undoubtedly transformed the look of the House of Commons after 1997 with the admission of a large number of women MPs, thanks almost entirely to the success of the all-women shortlists. This was a comsiderable move forward for female equality in a parliamentary world that had been clearly biased against it. Naturally, such an advance also came at a price, most notably the price of quality. Very few of the women who entered parliament then established themselves as effective, weighty politicians. Labour continues to suffer - and the cause of female equality certainly suffers - from the promotion of clearly inadequate women to senior positions purely on account of their gender. No better example than Jacqui Smith, the woefully underwhelming Home Secretary, serves as clear evidence of this. And Labour encountered growing opposition amongst its grassroots to the continued use of all-women shortlists, which seemed increasingly to be imposed on ultra safe seats that looked in danger of selecting potentially maverick male MPs. It was this situation that led to the election of Peter Law as an Independent MP in the utterly solid seat of Blanaeu Gwent in 2001.

Now, Labour may be facing another revolt in a historically strong seat. John Reid, the former Home Secretary and all round tough guy of the Blair years, is retiring from his Airdrie and Shotts seat, and the party leadership is looking to impose an all-woman shortlist here. It is causing the most almighty row. The local party is up in arms at the actions of "an arrogant London clique". There are rumours that the move is inspired by another woman of limited abilities but unlimited ambition - Harriet Harman - in order to shore up her support amongst the sisterhood in parliament. The constituency chairman points out that his activists have previously selected not only John Reid, but also Helen Liddell and John Smith - hardly a poor record, or an exclusively male one.

All-women shortlists have made a major impact, and hopefully changed the face of the Commons for good. They have certainly shown that the centre of national politics does not need to be an all male preserve, and may have opened constituency eyes to the virtues of selecting able women. The problem is that the next step in the promotion of women in politics is to improve the quality of those who get there, thus ensuring better representation at the highest levels of government - not just tokenistic as in the case of Smith, or seriously off-putting, as with Harman. And to do this, the Labour Party probably needs to allow constituencies to choose their own candidates again. They may even have to accept a few more independent minded candidates of either sex, to parliament's significant gain. Whether or not Labour's National Executive sees it this way is dubious, and the progress of Airdrie and Shotts will show us how willing they are to cede local choice again. Central control, though, is more easily extended that rescinded, and the cause it was extended for may now suffer by its continuation.

Immigration - The ESU Debate

Was at the English Speaking Union's grand headquarters in London, Dartmouth House, last night to hear a debate on immigration. Dartmouth House has, in the past, been the scene of great public speaking nearly triumphs from the SGS speaking teams, but last night it hosted Damian Green MP, Phillippe LeGrain, Dr. Mark Pennington and Jim Black. The motion was that "This House Believes in a Liberal Immigration Policy", which means uncontrolled. Damian Green - still on bail for the heinous crime of trying to hold the government to account - was opposing, and made in fact the most eloquent and practical of the four cases. Acknowledging that the proposition had "better tunes to play" he nonetheless warned against leaving the case for any sort of control on immigration to extremist politicians, proceeding to make a pretty level headed one of his own.

One aspect of the debate was that each side's speakers seemed to come to their position from a different perspective to their colleague, thus the proposition's Mark Pennington was all for allowing uncontrolled immigration because it would mean the end of the welfare state, a position strongly rejected by his colleague. Green's colleague, Jim Black, meanwhile made an intervention about his grandfather telling his grandmother he was going to kill Germans, which I must confess I didn't understand, and which in the light of current events seemed a little ill considered.

SGS contributions from the floor included the Comrade Major asking, in his thickly accented Russian, for free immigration from Russia without fear or favour (I paraphrase - he pretended to be asking about something more neutral). The final vote from the well heeled audience went 27-26 in favour of the motion, showing that liberals still thrive in the salons of London, even if not in the wider voting public.

Lib-Con Pact?

It seems the Lib Dems may be preparing to look at a Liberal Conservative Pact in the event of a hung parliament after the next election. That, at least, is the substance of a report on Nick Robinson's blog, and an FT report as well. The problem for the Liberals is that, whatever the logic of a Tory pact, most of their activists hate the Tories, and the Liberal party as a whole is far more sympathetic to Labour. You can find plenty of examples of Lib-Lab pacts in both local government and, until the nationalists kyboshed the idea, in the devolved assemblies. There are, however, precious few examples of Lib-Con deals in any governmental organisation in the UK. And the reason, of course, is that the two parties are simply not natural allies. Although both may be in opposition at present, it is all too easy to forget that the Liberal Democrats are a left of centre party and the Tories are a right of centre party. They exist in clear opposition to each other, and that is the reality that Nick, Vince and Chris are having to confront in their pre-election pact planning!