Pickled Politics

Oh dear! Just as the right-wing blogosphere is getting ever so excited at the knowledge that an elected Tory can make a good speech, along comes another elected Tory to provide something that Conservative Home admitted was a 'trainwreck'!

I missed the BBC's Question Time last night, so the first intimation I got that Tory Chairman Eric Pickles had hit the rails was a text saying concisely that he'd just been 'destroyed'. And they weren't wrong. It seems that Pickles ran into trouble when trying to explain why MPs claimed second home allowances. Now there might not be an easy way, in the current political and economic climate, for any MP to explain why they should have financial perks, paid for by the taxpayer, that are not available for others. Possibly the best approach is to hold your hands up and suggest that perhaps there should be an inquiry. Possibly the worst approach is to try and explain that they're absolutely essential because, if you live 37 miles away, you have to get up at 5.30 am in order to attend a committee start time of 9.30 am. Guess which approach Pickles took.

What is annoying so many people about his comments is the way they seem to encapsulate the insularity of the Westminster world. A 9.30 start?!! There are people living much further out from London who have to start work at 9, or 8.30, or 8. And is the Central Line so poor that it takes four hours to get from Brentwood and Ongar to central London?! The world of Pickles is clearly not the world of most workers. I have already referred to Andrew Rawnsley's article last week in which he suggested that the debate on public services was now moving towards the value that they give, since the pressure to justify public spending in the depths of recession is becoming ever greater. Eric Pickles, to the obvious dismay of fellow panellists who included Lib Dem MP Ed Davy, may have inadvertantly struck another blow for the cause of reigning in MPs' allowances. Certainly, for a newly appointed party chairman charged with getting the Tory message across to voters, he cannot have boosted confidence much back at Tory HQ. Maybe Dan Hannan will be promoted more quickly than he could imagine.

The Viral Internet

The 'Today' programme has been trying a little experiment in internet video influence, by producing a light little video and seeing how long it takes for it to 'go viral' - i.e. start being seen all round the world, and by large numbers of ordinary, humble net surfers. They needn't have bothered. The Dan Hannan attack on Gordon Brown in the European Parliament the other day appears to have done the trick far more effectively.

Hannan gave a short (3 minutes) but effective and sustained demolition of Brown in reply to Brown's speech to the European Parliament. His speech went unreported by all of the mainstream media; certainly no showing on any broadcast news outlet. As with all of his speeches, Hannan posted it to youtube. It was picked up by a number of widely read Conservative bloggers (Iain Dale, Guido Fawkes etc). By yesterday, it had become the most watched video on youtube and Hannan was being invited onto Fox News in America to comment. So without any mainstream media promotion, Daniel Hannan nonetheless becomes an icon of Conservative opposition to Brown, and his speech widely seen. Now that's viral. And that's how the internet is breaking the monopoly of what used to be a privileged caste of political reporters. It is also an indication of how well organised the right are in their use of the internet in the UK.

Hannan's own comment on all of this is here.

A Euro Attack on the PM

Events in the European Parliament don't get a great deal of coverage, perhaps deservedly so. Gordon Brown, however, is probably quite pleased at their low profile amongst the public at large, as he isn't always subject to the sort of forensic attack in Westminster that he was treated to in Strasbourg by Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan. See whether you think Mr. Hannan deserves a wider audience in the clip below - helpfully placed on you tube by, er, Dan Hannan MEP!

Westminster and Work

Just how hard working are these MPs, that they need to claim all manner of extra expenses? Tony McNulty is merely the latest, but the issue of MPs' allowances for second homes, John Lewis lists etc has been on the front burner for a while now. There has been the suggestion that perhaps they should be paid a higher salary, and then the extra allowances could be abolished altogether. Are they, though, worth extra money from the public purse? The Evening Standard's Paul Waugh has this piece on MPs working hours, written on a Friday afternoon when MPs were distinctly thin on the ground at Westminster.

The PM and Goody

When he became prime minister Gordon Brown was apparently keen to roll back the celebrity obsessions of his predecessor Tony Blair. It seemed somehow inappropriate that the nation's leader should be so obviously in hock to a febrile celebrity culture when, really, didn't he have more significant things to do with his time? So to hear him issue a paean of praise to the deceased Jade Goody, whose sole claim to public attention is to have appeared, foul mouthed and ignorant, on a reality television show, is surely an immersion in celebrity vacuousness too far? There are many, many more sufferers from terminal diseases at too young an age who have given much to others, lived their lives with charity and warmth and suffered their approach to death wih quiet dignity. But, of course, they haven't appeared on television, or screamed about the unfairness of life on cable television channels and in celebrity magazines, so naturally why would Gordon Brown be interested in them?

Policies for a New Tomorrow

Do you think reform of the House of Lords is a good idea? How about granting every young adult £20,000 once they turn 18 as a reflection of the stake they hold in society? Both of these suggested policies for a future Labour manifesto feature on the New Statesman's website. More interestingly, they both come from quite near to home for anyone studying politics at Sutton GS...just have a look at the authorship of the first and seventh policies listed!

School Places and Bottled Mineral Water

No, hard pressed parents can't win much coveted school places with the gift of a bottle of mineral water for their prospective schools but there is a link in the title nonetheless. The Observer today carries a story about parents of pupils in a high achieving west London state primary who are faced with rejection by all of their preferred secondary schools. The education lottery is becoming worse as the credit crunch forces parents who might once have opted for the private sector to search for appropriate places in the state sector. (There is, interestingly, another story here, to do with how well the state sector could cope with demand if the socialist desire to abolish private education were ever realised, but that's for another time.) Consequently, parents at a well run primary school like the one featured in the Observer's article, becoming more choosy about what they are willing to accept for their children, are finding that the 'top' secondary schools are massively over-subscribed. How willing are they to send their offspring to the more chancey secondary school, the one with poorer results and worse discipline? Whatever else the state is delivering, it has a long way to go before its secondary education sector matches the aspirations of the majority of taxpayers.

Over on the comment pages of the same paper, meanwhile, Andrew Rawnsley observes that the public finances are in such a state of ruinous deficit that, apart from giving any politician with a brain nightmares about how to deal with them, the public sector is under greater pressure than ever to 'prove its worth'. Takes a recession of near unprecedented proportions to produce this genius observation, but at least it is now on the table. And just how, at the moment, is the public sector 'proving its worth'. Rawnsley provides a slew of examples of its Alice in Wonderland mentality. Ofcom, for instance, has its own branded mineral water; 61 of Rotherham's council bureaucrats earn salaries in excess of the town's MP; the chief executive of the Stafford hospital whose standards of care were so comprehensively rubbished this week earns £180,000 a year. He could have gone on to examine the salaries of top echelons of the BBC, or the vast amounts of money spent on PR in every Whitehall department, but his column has a limited word length and you have to stop somewhere.


Both parties are confronted with a deficit crisis that means they have to redefine their approach to the public services. Neither can deny that a ballooning state has, over the past couple of decades, produced plenty of examples of waste while leaving parents bereft of a decent choice of education in their boroughs. Even if the choice isn't quite as stark as branded mineral water for a few extra decent state school places, it is time to see the debate about the 'worth of the state' back on the agenda. It is the old liberal conundrun writ large. The modern liberal wants to empower the citizens of the state, and believes it is legitimate to expand the state's role accordingly. But in expanding, they are recreating the uncontrollable state that their ideological cousins, the classical liberals, were warning about when it was focused on the power of an individual ruler. Despots and welfare states both demand large sums of unearned income in the form of taxes. It was a rare despot who used it to provide services of genuine public worth. Let us hope the same does not apply to his Hydra headed successor.