Cameron's Grace as PM

David Cameron's election may not have been accompanied by much fanfare or expectation, given the nature of the election results and the need to form a coalition, but he has made an increasingly positive start as Prime Minister. The Guardian's Martin Kettle, from the left, is full of praise for the way Cameron has so far managed his office, while the Spectator's David Blackburn considers the coalition to be the making of Mr. Cameron.

Not that this praise is going to mean much to the unreconstructed rightists in the Tory Party, who are fearful of the party's leftward momentum under its coalition leadership, and are manouevring anxiously to undermine the coalition and be ready to replace Cameron as soon as they can. Three right-wing MPs have been elected to the Board of the Conservative Party, and they include newcomer Priti Patel, who cut her political teeth organising against Tory MPs as press adviser to James Goldsmith's Referendum Party. Conservative Home, meanwhile, is becoming more and more a sounding board for the right than a genuinely Conservative site, with its editors and contributors desperate for a stronger right-wing voice to offset the looming realignment of the centre that the coalition might be portending. Three right-wing parliamentary groupings are, according to CH, now co-ordinating their approach to ensure maximum success. Labour may not be able to match Cameron's grace, and they may be fearful of being left behind as the coalition secures its ownership of British politics' centre ground, but they must surely also be watching the antics of the Tory right with a glimmer of hope for the future, for it is from there that the Coalition will probably receive its nemesis.

Gove's Apology and an Education Nightmare

The period following the A-level exams becomes a bit of a period of blogging withdrawal for me, and perhaps, too, the hot early summer is inducing a degree of lethargy! Nevertheless, the recent education storm is worth breaking the blogging break for.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, may have endured a torrid couple of days following inaccuracies in the list of changes to the school rebuilding programme, but whatever the political difficulties he can certainly hold his head up. His genuine and heartfelt apology to the House of Commons, and afterwards, represents something of a novelty in modern politics, a minister who takes responsibility and can say sorry for something his department has got wrong. The Blair/Brown years made us all too used to the unedifying spectacle of ministers using any verbal perambulation they could to avoid accepting responsibility for anything that went wrong. 'Sorry' was a word uttered only for crimes and misdemeanours with which you could not possibly associate the speaker. Thus, Tony Blair was 'sorry' for the holocaust. Gordon Brown was sorry for poverty in Africa, and for the slave trade. Neither of them were remotely sorry for the long list of their own errors; it became a comonplace that Gordon Brown virtually couldn't pronounce the word. So to have a minister accept that he is at fault and to make an apology for himself and his department is indeed refreshing, and perhaps bespeaks a new kind of politics.

The other feature of Gove's apology is his refusal to lay the blame elsewhere, although it is unlikely that he himself compiled the list that contained such inaccuracies. He is right to avoid doing this, although the inaccuracy for which he has accepted responsibility is, ironically, a justification of the need to deal with the horrendously overblown 'Building Schools for the Future' programme that he outlined in the Commons. The list was provided by the Partnership for Schools quango that oversees the schools building programme, and its shoddy nature speaks volumes about the way that organisation has been operating. Private Eye reports the figure of £700 million a year for the building programme, which equips a few schools with new buildings but dries up the maintenance budget for a vast number of others. It also ensures financial over-runs and bureaucratic nightmares, and tens of millions spent in consultancy fees - hardly surprising that their own list is so full of errors.

New buildings for schools are an undoubted boon, but we should be wary of seeing them as a panacea for educational success. I listened to one headteacher and educational adviser try to explain that the expensive new classrooms they were due to get would allow for 'new ways of learning', and would provide 'learning hubs' that would revolutionise teaching, but I remained ignorant as to exactly how this would work, or why you couldn't just re-arrange the furniture in an existing room! More concerning for the teaching profession - and I write this particularly warily I can assure you - is the knowledge that only 18 teachers have been dismissed for incompetence in the past 40 years. Re-focus away from fancy new buildings (except where the dilapidation is such that there is no alternative) and focus on reinvigorating the teaching profession, and we might find that it is not only economically more viable, but significantly more beneficial all round. Michael Gove's priorities are right in this instance, and firmly confirmed by the fiasco of the inaccurate list.

On a personal level too, Michael Gove's grace under pressure contrasts dramatically with the appalling Tom Watson, a man whose undistinguished career in government included plotting to overthrow Blair for Brown. Watson's thoughtful response to Gove's apology was to shriek at him that he was a "miserable pipsqueak of a man". It came after the equally synthetic anger of the shadow schools minister Vernon Coaker. Both representatives of the regime that landed us with the wretched Partnership for Schools quango, and both good examples of why it is such a relief to be rid of the shrill, angry and arrogant New Labour government. Long Live the Coalition!

And just to let the Watson intervention speak for itself, here is the wretched man's performance:

George Young's World

When summing up how his star-crossed lovers might feel once they had been re-united in the course of a long and complex plot, the genius comic writer P.G.Wodehouse would often use a phrase such as this - "He felt that all was absolutely for the best in this best of all possible worlds". On a beautiful summer evening yesterday, as birds twittered, along with most of the media chatterati, and tourists milled, Leader of the Commons Sir George Young sported a Wodehousian tone in his speech at Westminster to the Hansard Society.

Sir George, the 'bicycling baronet', is a bit of a Wodehousian character himself, in a world where Etonians are once again 'in' after a long absence. A charming, thoroughly decent, not exactly exciting gentleman, he is charged with bringing the Cameron/Clegg government's parliamentary reform programme into being, and to be fair, he had much positive news to report to us. Backbenchers have got their own committee, the Coalition Committe is a dream, parliament is being reinforced to better scrutinise the executive. All well and good. But what really got Sir George going as close to a rhapsody as he would allow himself, was the sheer beauty and wonderfulness of the coalition. He couldn't quite believe it himself. The Liberal Democrats and their Conservative colleagues were working superbly well together. Liam Fox and his Lib Dem deputy Nick Harvey were as one on the key issues of defence. As were Sir George and his own deputy David Heath. In fact, suggested the new Leader, he and his deputy had really always voted the same way (although Sir George may have allowed enthusiasm to get the better of him here; my usually well informed colleague noted that they had actually voted separately on the issue of shorter summer recesses, which Sir G. is now a convert to).

His keen-ness on this new parliamentary arrangement also allowed him one of his better lines - "David Cameron and Nick Clegg share the same philosophy but are in different parties, whereas Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were in the same party but had different parties". Actually, of course, it's more about the fact that Cameron and Clegg share a similarly pragmatic outlook and have better personal chemistry, but there we go. Sir George also noted that it was time to give parliamentary debates more punch, although coming from a man whose own delivery had the measured tone of a sun-sated bumblebee this might be portending an excitement that is difficult to realise. Nevertheless, the era of car seat punching and mobile phone throwing is over, and the bicycling baronet is merely the latest figure to report on the new mood of joy and harmony that is currently permeating parliament. Now if only someone could usefully remind the Tory Right that that is the era we are now in, Cameron and Clegg really might be able to survive the full five years.

Scottish News

For those wondering what the point of the Scottish Parliament might be - apparently even the majority of Scots remain determinedly uninterested in its affairs - then be enlightened, for it is clearly to provide the occasional bit of light relief from the drudgery of ordinary politics. Hence the McAveety Affair. Mr. McAveety chairs a Scottish Parliament committee. Thanks to the very modern nature of the Scottish Parliament, all of the committees have microphones in excellent condition. Certainly good enough to pick up Mr. McAveety's 'off air' comments about the 'very attractive girl' sitting in the second row, 'dark and dusky', and whom he later compared to a Gauguin painting. In many ways it's a shame he's felt the need to resign. Scotland's political talent pool is not so large that it can really afford to lose someone who can not only recognise a Gauguin painting, but apply it so effectively to real life.

Low Level Blogging

This blog was originally intended to direct A-level politics students towards stories of note in the pursuit of their studies. One or two even managed to access it a couple of times. While that is still meant to be its purpose, it has obviously become a therapeutic sounding board for me as well; we're all columnists in the great connected world of the internet! Its school-based nature does, however, mean that the impetus for regular updates tends to die a death in the long, lesson-less summer period. Why mention that? Simply for tidiness - an explanation of why this is so infrequently updated, at least until September brings another opportunity for me to persuade a new tranche of students that these words are worth reading.

Liam Byrne's Mistake

James Forsyth in the 'Spectator' provides the explanation for Liam Byrne's apparent lapse of judgement in leaving the "We have no money" note in the drawer of the Chief Secretary's office when he departed. Interviewing Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, Forsyth notes that when he was shadow Chief Secretary, Hammond and Byrne got on well, engaging in friendly banter to and from television studios. Thinking Hammond was almost certain to succeed him, Byrne left the note - something of an in-joke between the two of them. Hammond tells Forsyth he probably wouldn't have revealed its contents, leaving Byrne kicking himself that the Tories failed to gain a majority, thus having to put Lib Dem David Laws into his old office instead!

Politics Albanian Style

Well we were getting in a tiz after May 9th. because the coalition negotiations took at least 5 days to produce a government. Here in Tirana the ramifications of last summer's election are still going on, and several ballot boxes remain unopened and are the subject of ongoing dispute. Tirana is a rapidly developing city now, thanks in large part to the efforts of its socialist mayor, Edi Rama. The thing is, though, that Rama is also the opposition leader, and believes he, rather than conservative (or Democrat) Sali Berisha should actually be prime minister now. Traffic in the always somewhat anarchic capital virtually ground to a halt last week while Rama and his allies took their campaign to the streets, going on hunger strike and camping out near one of Tirana's major squares. Sadly, that's all disappeared now as the protagonists head to Brussels to see if they can negotiate a way out of the impasse, while Rama's diggers continue to develop Tirana's city centre. Meanwhile, most Albanians carry on imperviously, their daily routines unaffected by the political wrangling that is presumably designed to bring them all better lives! Perhaps we could learn a little from their phlegm, if not their politics!