Tuesday, March 30, 2010 

In defence (somewhat) of George Osborne.

The best, and therefore almost certainly inaccurate story about George Osborne's formative years concerns his entrance to the now world famous Bullingdon club. His initiation, so legend has it, involved his both being called "oik", allegedly because rather than attending Eton or Harrow he instead had patronised the only slightly less posh and exclusive, not to mention less expensive St. Paul's, and him being held upside down, his head being bashed into the floor until he uttered the required words: "I am a despicable cunt".

As initiations go, not just to the Bullingdon but to other similar clubs, one suspects that was actually fairly tame. While the referring to him as "oik" was probably more of a joke than meant seriously, it probably reflects the attitudes which Osborne has encountered for most of his life. Far too upper class for the vast majority of the population to instantly warm to him, yet still not rarefied enough for him to be automatically welcomed into the even more exclusive establishments. You only have to look at how the City, where you'll never come across such a wide variety of stuffed shirts, has reacted towards him: with something approaching utter horror, despite the fact we currently have a Labour chancellor, a member of a party whom they've been taught all their lives to instinctively loathe. Admittedly, this might partly be down to New Labour's complete subservience to the financial sector, for which they have been rewarded in kind, yet you'd still think that getting back to what they know best would be attractive.

The class warrior in me wants to loathe Osborne for all the reasons which have been outlined ever since he became shadow chancellor, almost none of which are based on actual substance. The Heresiarch, writing on why David Cameron should get rid of Osborne while he still has a chance, openly admits that at least partly his reasoning is based on Osborne's manner and appearance. When natural Conservatives feel this way, you can't even begin to imagine what the general public thinks. In the Graun today both Lucy Mangan and Michael White, commenting not entirely seriously, but as the old saying (or cliché) goes, there's many a truth spoken in jest, voice just some of the unveiled insults thrown Osborne's way. Mangan suggests that he's a "walking justification for all the schoolyard bullying there ever was, is, or ever shall be", which is an especially unpleasant comment, not least for those who have suffered from bullying, for which there is never any justification. White, meanwhile, went instead for a startling funny joke about how this was the most momentous day for him since he "was first allowed to travel alone on the school bus". Never mind that you suspect Osborne has never had to travel on a school bus, which rather undermines the gag, it's just another riff on Osborne being a boy amongst men.

To be fair, I have myself slipped into this casual abuse, as in this post from a couple of years back:
Take as a further example George Osborne, who ought to be on an absolute hiding to nothing. He's young, resembles a caricature of the smarmy, upper-class snob that spent his tender years smashing up restaurants when he wasn't shovelling white powder up his nostrils, with a face so punchable it's a marvel that he hasn't got a broken nose and a good number of teeth missing, knows next to nothing about economics, and has all the charm (to this writer at least) of a self-portrait of Kate Moss drawn in lipstick and Pete Doherty's blood.

This is though partially what the objection to Osborne rests on. That he's young, and therefore inexperienced, something which isn't said anywhere near as often about Cameron despite the Tory leader only being a few years older, that what he did as a young man matters when it categorically shouldn't, even if he did indulge in taking wanker powder and may have used escorts as the more lurid allegations have it, and that he should be judged on what he looks like, which can't be helped, and on how much charisma he radiates, which is very little. Osborne's main problem with relating to voters is that he does seem too much of the toff, that he comes across as patronising, and that he just has that eminently punchable quality mentioned above. None of these things are barriers to being a "successful" politician; just look at the far more patronising Patricia Hewitt and Margaret Beckett, both of whom have had decent careers, even if they're not exactly the individuals Osborne himself would like to be compared to. He has absolutely nothing in the "toff" stakes compared to the offspring of William Rees-Mogg, both of whom are trying to be elected (Cameron supposedly asked whether Annunziata would consider calling herself "Nancy" in a bid to get down with the proles) as Conservative MPs, nor those featured in that now notorious issue of Tatler, and as for punchable, well, I personally would much rather lamp the egregious Phil Woolas, perhaps the most disgusting politician to have emerged from the Labour party in recent times.


When it comes to challenging Osborne on substance, the case against him is much slimmer. Yes, he was a distant third in the chancellor's debate yesterday, but he wasn't a disaster either, and he was always likely to find it difficult to compete with the sainted Vince Cable and the currently supremely confident Alistair Darling. It has to be remembered that it was Osborne's wheeze on inheritance tax three years ago which almost certainly stopped Gordon Brown from calling a snap election; that policy sticks in my personal political craw, and it was a promise which was only so popular because "middle England" thinks that IHT is going to hit them when it almost certainly won't, but it did the business. Yesterday's pledge to not raise national insurance contributions was hardly the most robust policy, exposed completely by Vince Cable in the debate as being costed by even more inefficiency savings, the same ones Osborne had lambasted the previous week, but that must have been debated at far more senior levels of the party and OKed rather just being Osborne's initiative.

The question then if Osborne was to be removed is who would replace him. The obvious answer is Ken Clarke, but the reasons for why he hasn't been given a post more senior than business secretary are apparent: the Cameroons don't trust him, and he's not prepared to temper his own views on Europe and even IHT enough to be given a more senior role without even more unwelcome stories on splits being written. Apart from Ken, just who is there ready to step in? It's not as if Osborne is also the only weak link in the Tory front bench line-up. What about the gaffe prone Chris Grayling, who when he isn't claiming that parts of Britain are like the Wire is defending using completely inaccurate crime statistics, and whose department claimed that 54% of teenage girls in the most deprived areas were getting pregnant when the true figure was 5.4%? Then there's Michael Gove at education, another eminently punchable figure, whose campaign against Unite's involvement with Labour plumbed new depths of union-baiting, is a confirmed Tony Blair lover, an unapologetic foreign policy neo-conservative and rubs people up the wrong way just as much as Osborne. Osborne may be unloved, and that might even be justifiable, but to move him now would be a sign of absolute weakness on the part of Cameron, which would be rightly seized on by the other parties. Ultimately, Cameron and Osborne were promoted together, and they should fall together.

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Wednesday, March 24, 2010 

Tomorrow never comes until it's too late (or, the Budget).

Amidst the knockabout and the political dividing lines, there was a budget attempting to break out from Alistair Darling's speech. The one thing you can always depend upon is that those on both sides will respond with plenty of vitriol and very little on what they would do instead, as David Cameron did, in almost certainly one of his very weakest performances at the dispatch box. He, or almost certainly rather his writers probably thought that their football metaphor was clever while being easy to understand for all the plebs out there, describing the country as having gone from the top of the Premier League in 1997 to the Conference in 2010 after 13 wasted years. Supposedly meant to refer to Brown wanting to appear on Match of the Day, it instead just struck you as a politician resorting to hyperbole when he has absolutely nothing else to add, and which falls apart on first examination: was the country really in such fantastic shape in 97? Is it really so desperate now? What exactly would the Conservatives have done to make such a dramatic difference when in 2005 the spending pledges from the Conservatives were only £4 billion short of Labour's?

On the opposite side, you have the supposedly "non-partisan" Left Foot Forward doing the equivalent of trying to thrust their collective tongue down Darling's throat, celebrating almost every separate investment decision taken while downplaying the taking away with the other hand. Sally Hunt rather undermines the "welcome news" that the government will fund 200,00 "extra" university places when she notes that the £270m in extra funding doesn't even begin to make up for the cuts which have already been announced. She also doesn't mention that the government is to sell off the student loan book to the highest bidder, something you think might be of concern to the general secretary of the University and College Union.

Budgets tend to begin falling apart the following day or even the day after that once all the details have sunk in, the sums have been done by the likes of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Treasury red book has been thoroughly examined. It didn't even last that long when it came to the headline raising of the stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first time buyers. The cost of doing so, heavily cheered by the Labour benches, is meant to be covered by raising the stamp duty on properties over a million from 4% to 5%, except it doesn't. It's estimated that will bring in £90m, while raising the threshold to £250k will cost £230m. Why bother to raise it by such a measly amount when it doesn't even begin to cover it? We're not talking about the so-called "squeezed middle" here, but the very well off who can comfortably afford to pay more. It is essentially a trick, used throughout the budget and especially by Brown since his ascension to prime minister: giving the appearance of soaking the rich while doing nothing of the sort. How much further Labour could have gone has been aptly illustrated by the one-off banker bonus tax: despite all the screams from the City, it raised more than double the predicted amount, helping to fund the "giveaways" which we had been told weren't going to happen.

Even if the real cuts are being postponed to after the election or until the next fiscal year, which is incidentally the right thing to do, we still have the cuts masquerading as "efficiency savings" which were announced afterwards. A staggering £4.3bn is apparently to be saved from the Department of Health budget, of which £555m is due to come by reducing "sickness absence", which translated means forcing nurses and doctors to go into work when they themselves are unwell, an idea with absolutely no drawbacks whatsoever. Another £100m will be saved from the disastrous IT programme, which even by this government's standards of waste has broken new records in terms of misuse of public money. Speaking of which, another £4bn is to be thrown into the spending chasm known as Afghanistan, a war without end and which only gets crazier as the years inexorably pass.

If the budget and the responses to it were designed to further cement the votes if not the themes on which the election campaign is going to be fought, then both could be classed as relative successes. Toby Helm describes it as anything but a boring budget, but I beg to differ, as I presume Darling himself would. The surprises were so few as to be non-existent, and away from the Ashcroft-bashing, this was hardly the budget on which any governing party would like to be going into an election. The deficit and borrowing figures prevented it being any sort of giveaway, but it also focused on the short-term at the expense of anything approaching a vision. We had a stamp duty cut for those who can already afford to buy, but nothing for those who can't or who can't even find anywhere to live. From both sides we were offered a continuation of the same old politics even when they supposedly thirst to offer everyone change, and a tomorrow which they deeply seem to hope will never come.

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010 

Insert rhyme or "joke" about labour here.

Westminster was rocked to its foundations yesterday after the revelation that a woman is expecting a baby in September.

One source, speaking to Obsolete through a speculum, raved: "This changes absolutely everything. Never before has a woman been pregnant during a general election campaign. The manifestos of all the main parties will have to be completely rewritten as a result. How can Gordon Brown possibly continue with his message of Labour investment against Tory cuts now?"

The nation's press were equally awestruck by the developments. Many were so stunned that they genuinely thought that rhyming Sam Cam with "mam" was amusing, while the Daily Mail settled upon "SAM'S HAVING A BABYCAM!", in an apparent reference to Babycham, which absolutely no one got. Pages were filled with the political implications of the leader of the opposition's wife having a child, the Guardian noting in a by no means pretentious aside that "the fact she will be pregnant will give her presence on the campaign trail greater piquancy". This unfortunately resulted in the news about small matters like parliamentary corruption being shifted to page 94, to give space to Zoe Williams to write about how this changes everything in an entertaining and certainly not interminable fashion.

There was also certainly no ulterior motives in the announcement being made yesterday. That on Sunday there was an embarrassing photoshoot featuring Glam Sam Cam (soon to be mam) in the tabloids, something knocked entirely off the news agenda with the news of the pregnancy, was just a coincidence, and an unintended side effect. No one would ever be so cynical with such happy news.

One thing was however cleared up yesterday. Everyone had previously assumed that David Cameron was referring to his wife when he discussed his "secret weapon". It's now apparent that he was in fact talking about his cock.

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Wednesday, March 10, 2010 

The electoral war over crime.

Up until now there's been something of a phony war instead of anything approaching all-out combat between Labour and the Conservatives in the fledgling election campaign. Sure, there have been skirmishes over Ashcroft which have involved plenty of claim and counter-claim, as well as more than a little obfuscation, and individual launches on policy from both parties, especially from the Tories, which for the most part seem to have failed miserably but we've thankfully yet to see anything on the scale of say, Jennifer's ear, although there's still more than enough time for such low skulduggery masquerading as a serious issue to come to the fore yet.

The closest we've probably come has been the Tory insistence on using statistics on violent crime which are strictly non-comparable. This started when Tory candidates were sent information from Conservative Central Office which compared the number of recorded violence against the person stats of a decade ago with those of 2008-09. These packs failed to make clear that the way the police recorded violent crime changed in 2002 - whereas then the police decided what was and what wasn't a violent crime, which led to accusations that they were fiddling the figures, this was changed to the victim deciding whether or not the incident they were subject to was a violent offence. This, predictably, has led to a huge inflation in the number of recorded violent offences, as any such subjective change is likely to. According to the stats given to the local media by Tory MP Mark Lancaster, there had been a 236% rise in violence against the person in Milton Keynes, going from 1,790 offences in 1999-2000 to a staggering 6,015 in 2008-2009, or as Mark Easton noted, a violent attack every 90 minutes. Thames Valley police themselves objected to this crude comparison, pointing out that the figures were now incomparable, as well as illustrating how the change in recording has ludicrously boosted the figures: they judged that there had been just 81 victims of serious violence in MK, with around 2,000 victims of low-level assaults where a minor injury had occurred, while the violence against the person stats quoted by Lancaster included a dog being out of control in a public area.

Despite a reprimand from the UK Statistics Authority that using incomparable statistics in such a way was "likely to mislead the public", the Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Grayling was unrepentant and has come up with a novel way to get around such minor quibbling: he asked the Commons library to take the violent crime stats from 1998-99 and apply the new counting methods, which he then compared with those from 2008-09. Quite how they performed such a trick when, as noted above, it's the public themselves that now decide what is and what isn't a violent offence is unclear, and it seems destined to remain opaque as the Tories have failed to publish their research in full, instead giving it only to sympathetic newspapers. The library's conclusion was that the new figure for 1998-99 would be 618,417, as compared to 2008-09's 887,942, or a rise of 44%. Certainly not as startling a rise as the 236% in Milton Keynes or the previously claimed 77%, which was also based on statistics which expressly said they were not to be compared and which were also misleading, but still a very serious one.

Naturally, these figures have been ridiculed by Alan Johnson during Labour's own press conference today on crime policy, but it's hard not to conclude that both parties are, as usual, equally guilty. This is after all the same Labour party which produced the knife crime figures just over a year ago which were heavily criticised by the same UK Statistics Authority which has lambasted Chris Grayling. While the British Crime Survey is by far the most authoratitive source on crime statistics with its huge 40,000+ sample, and which the Tories almost never quote from because it suggests that crime and especially violent crime has dropped off a cliff since a peak in the early 90s, both sides only cherry-pick the figures which suit their needs best. There are flaws in the BCS, such as only recently specifically recording incidents with knives, and how again it has only just started interviewing 10 to 15-year-olds, but it remains superior to the police recorded stats both because it records offences which were never reported to the police or which they missed, while also remaining almost completely free of potential bias. It may rely on the honesty of the respondents, but with a sample the size of 40,000 any attempts to deliberately interfere with it are hardly likely to be significant. After exchanging more letters with Grayling over his newly obtained figures, the UKSA pointed out that while his new research is from a body which provides "professional statistical advice", he'd still be advised to make reference to the BCS, something which Grayling has not done when sharing his new findings.

If however Tory crime policy is indicative of Grayling's approach to statistics, being dishonest, crude and punitive, then as we've suffered over the past close to 13 years, Labour's reign of authoritarian solutions to far more subtle and complicated problems seems forever destined to continue. Johnson was today defending the government's indefensible position on the keeping of the genetic profiles of those arrested but not charged or found innocent of any offence for 6 years on the DNA database, the government's attempt at reaching a compromise following the European Court of Human Rights' ruling on the case of S and Marper. They claim that if the Tory policy of only 3 years was in place that 23 murderers and rapists "would have gone" free, a ludicrous and risible position to take which ignores that old fashioned police work would have had to have been used rather than just relying immediately on DNA records, and which does nothing to prove the efficacy of a database which is now the largest in the world. Alongside the ridiculous proposals to chip all dogs and make all owners insure their animals to tackle what is a tiny problem of dangerous breeds, a statist overreaction which only a Labour government which has been in power too long could possibly think was appropriate, the unworkable fantasy that there could be some sort of "alarm" when a known paedophile goes online, and the cynical ending of the early release scheme just before the election, the choice between one group of authoritarians and another, one of which will sadly gain power, is just one of the low points in what is shaping up to be a truly dismal couple of months.

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Monday, March 01, 2010 

Patriotic duty and Michael Ashcroft.

Yesterday David Cameron said that it was the party's "patriotic duty" to to win the general election. Strange then that this patriotic duty doesn't actually extend to the party's deputy chairman paying his full dues in this country, despite the Tories' then leader William Hague promising back in 2000 that he would become a "permanent resident" in order to ascend to the Lords. Here's Billy with another pearl:

This decision will cost him (and benefit the Treasury) tens of millions a year in tax, yet he considers it worthwhile.

How much has Lord Ashcroft in reality paid to the Treasury thanks to his non-domiciled status since 2000? One suspects next to nothing.

There is some truly exceptional spin going on here: it turns out that when Ashcroft said he would become a "permanent resident", he actually meant that he was only going to become a "long-term resident". This seems to be somewhat different to the assurances which were given to the Lords' scrutiny committee, which asked Downing Street to ensure that Ashcroft became a resident before he could become a peer, and indeed the statement that Downing Street issued after his ennoblement was confirmed, which said they had been given a "clear and unequivocal assurance" that he would take up "permanent residence". Either Ashcroft at the time had a completely different definition of what "permanent residence" meant, or he had no intention whatsoever of keeping his promises.

Ignore the obsfucatory nonsense being raised by the Tories about donations to Labour or the Liberal Democrat donations from non-domiciles. None of them gave such cast-iron assurances that they would become permanent residents in order to enter the Lords. Neither have they ascended to such positions of personal influence over the parties they've donated to, as Ashcroft has. Ashcroft for a time was essentially keeping the Tories afloat with his donations and loans, the latter of which were almost as large as the total amount he's donated over the years, at one point as high as £3.6m. When he isn't funnelling money to the party, then he's personally transporting the party's nobility around in his private jet, via his Flying Lion company, registered, typically, in Bermuda. Compare and contrast the treatment of Ashcroft with that of Zac Goldsmith, who also admitted recently that he was a non-dom: Goldsmith was quickly slapped down and told to become a UK taxpayer as "rapidly as can be done", while Ashcroft, despite promising almost 10 years ago that he was going to become a permanent resident is only now getting around to it, all while the Tories have been repeatedly saying in response to any questions that Ashcroft's tax status was a private matter between him and HMRC. Did Cameron know that Ashcroft was a non-dom, or did he purposefully ensure that he didn't know until very recently? Sir George Young said a month back on Newsnight that Ashcroft had the same status as some Labour peers, with Tory sources later saying that Young had "misspoke". Misspoke in the sense that he had inadvertently told the truth when he wasn't meant to.

If it hadn't been for the freedom of information request that forced Ashcroft into making today's statement, would Cameron have actually followed through on his sudden conversion to parliamentarians of both varieties being fully domiciled for tax purposes by ensuring that his deputy chairman was resident here? It doesn't seem so, to judge by his strange refusal to accept, even now, that Ashcroft's tax status is a matter for anyone other than himself. All the parties may be guilty in accepting funds from donors who are not full taxpayers, but none have elevated those individuals to such a position of power and authority in the party. It's this kind of cynicism, of double standards, of turning a blind eye, that so angers the public and turns them off politics. And who can blame them when someone like Ashcroft decides "permanent residency" means something entirely different to what everyone else does and essentially lives a lie for almost a whole decade?

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Thursday, February 18, 2010 

Your new overlord has been overcome.

I have to announce the sad news that Stumpy the Gerbil, who put himself forward as a Conservative candidate for the next election after David Cameron's appeal for those who shared his values to join the party, will be unable to take part in the long promised debate with Katie the Dog as he has, as rodents tend to do with depressing regularity, died.

For a rodent who lost the use of his back limbs after an apparent accident in a wheel, he lived to a fine old age of over 3, and as I can't quite recall in which litter he was born, he was either between 3 years and 5 months or 3 years and 2 months old, outliving all but two of his brothers and sisters. He simply crawled into the wheel in his cage, curled up, and died peacefully, leaving his father who he had lived with all his life as the only remaining occupant. Thankfully, as he had no estate, he will not be liable for any form of death tax, which he would have doubtlessly been pleased about considering his long-held Conservative value system.

I again don't know whether this photo actually features Stumpy as a pup, but hey, it's cute, and there isn't nearly enough cute stuff on this blog:

RIP Stump. You will be missed.

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Tuesday, February 16, 2010 

You know it's a slow news day when...

the hot breaking story is that Tutankhamun is dead, Mark Lawson has an opinion piece in the Guardian on what 25 years of EastEnders tells us about politics, and the main political story is about what a bunch of puffed up egomaniacs on Twitter may or may not have called each other. Oh, and just to cap off a truly fantastic and memorable day, Oasis have just won the Best British Album of the last 30 years for What's The Story (Morning Glory).

In the spirit of all this then, here's yet more hilariously unfunny Tory spoof adverts, because there clearly isn't enough already, helped along by there now being an online generator. And seeing as I'm out to equally offend everyone, there's two versions of the most explicit one:










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Monday, February 15, 2010 

The hung parliament hypotheticals.

There seems to be a distinctly strange air to politics at the moment. Despite parliament likely rising in around two months for the dreaded general election campaign, it's still as though it's an incredibly long time away, even though business itself is hardly bustling. Only the Tories seem to be keeping themselves visibly busy, and in doing so keep making more and more gaffes. If the David Cameron personal poster campaign was disastrous, or at least it was with the Twitterati (ugh) and the chattering classes, while the policy flip-flops on marriage tax and public spending cuts were more expected but no less damaging, then the almost radio silence from Labour and the Liberal Democrats, the former only seemingly making any noise when the Tories make such execrable (if not deliberate) mistakes as miscalculating 54% for 5.4%, is not doing much to capitalise on it.

On the Lib Dem front, part of this reticence might be due to the strategising going on behind the scenes in the event of a hung parliament. With the polls either predicting one or a slight Tory majority, even if one suspects that come the day the Tories will get a large enough share of the vote to be able to comfortably govern, it is nonetheless the closest the party is likely to come to grabbing some semblance of nationwide power since David Steel infamously told the party to return to their constituencies and prepare for government. Even if similar plans were made prior to 1997, the polls leading up to the election, although narrowing at one point, never suggested anything other than a significant Labour victory.

The apparent insight into the party's thinking that we're given in today's Graun is suitably significant. Rather than seeking a coalition, Nick Clegg is instead mulling over propping up a minority government through supporting a party's program of legislation, as long as certain Liberal Democrat policies are incorporated in it. Just how many will be needed to be implemented is seemingly elastic, with four policies up for immediate discussion, although just two might also be considered. While you could imagine that Labour would be open to debate on any of the four mentioned, the "pupil premium", tax reform, a greener economy and constitutional reform, it's difficult to imagine that the Tories would be malleable on the proposal for capital gains and income tax to be levied at the same rate, or on electoral reform, which they have consistently opposed.

You can see why they're thinking in this way: propping up a defeated Labour party through a coalition is likely to breed only resentment and disdain, even if say, Vince Cable or Clegg became chancellor and the deal involved Gordon Brown stepping down, although another "unelected" prime minister would hardly help matters either. At the same time however it's difficult to see just how much difference there would be in not getting fully into bed with Labour; is the public really going to live with a minority Labour government passing its legislation with Lib Dem support if it's the same old party rejected at the ballot box with a very slight yellow tinge? At the same time you can't see a minority Tory administration being prepared to give way on proportional representation in exchange only for short-term support; why not simply force a second election or, if Labour and the Lib Dems then attempt to from some sort of alliance, simply stand completely against and preach about its illegitimacy and wait for the inevitable breakdown in relations to take full advantage?

The disheartening thing about the likely manoeuvring in the event of an inconclusive election is that this is probably the only way in which the four stated policies on which the Lib Dems would negotiate, all of which are worthy of support, would ever be implemented. Those voting for the third party are always aware that while their vote is all important on a constituency level, it's not going to change much on a national level, even if they would like to see a Lib Dem government. The irony here is that were the hung parliament to become reality, with a Labour-Lib Dem deal, the party itself would almost certainly lose support as a result. While it would be worth it were some form of PR to be introduced as a result, it could also end the possibility of the party holding any rein of power for another generation. While all of this is based upon multiple hypotheticals, there is just as much to be lost from a hung parliament as there is to be gained. We may want a weaker government after 13 years of the opposite, but our system as it stands with the politics we are currently blessed with seems determined to destroy any possibility of it.

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I've never voted Tory...

You just can't keep a bad thing down. These are incidentally the best Tory adverts so far, although that's not exactly difficult given how terrible the last two have been. Almost makes you wonder whether they went with the "ordinary people" angle mainly because it makes them far more difficult to deface without insulting those in the adverts personally. Not that that's stopped me. Templates over at mydavidcameron.com as usual. Also I know the fonts aren't right, but I haven't the foggiest what the originals were and they don't look too bad anyway. Good ol' Verdana:


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Wednesday, February 10, 2010 

Tory tombstones.

Here are my feeble attempts at spoofing the latest Conservative advertising failure, which I'm sure you couldn't possibly have lived without:




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Monday, February 08, 2010 

The same old new politics.

At times during the expenses furore, which continues to flicker, further fuelled by David Cameron's denunciations of Gordon Brown today, I sometimes felt like the only person in the country not enraged by the graft and misappropriation of public money. That was what, when you reduced the entire fiasco down to its very bare bones, it was all about. It wasn't, as the Tory MP notoriously complained, that people were envious or jealous of his "very large house", but he was in the right area. It was instead that these already generally well off individuals were feather-bedded to the extent that they didn't even have to pay for their food or to furnish their houses. If you want to be pretentious about it, it was a microcosm of what our society itself has become: a turbo-economy where those, whether either rich or extremely poor, are to a certain extent protected against the effects which the rest are beholden to, with the result being a sometimes justifiable sense of grievance against them. Where wealth is everything, don't be surprised if the bitten occasionally bite back.

The mood was, and still is, profoundly anti-politics. It isn't anger directed at one political party, but at politics itself, which is why Cameron's attempt to try to associate Gordon Brown directly with those MPs who have been charged with false accounting is unlikely to succeed. It also overlooks that even though no Conservative or Liberal Democrat MP was charged with a criminal offence, of those who had to pay back the most, 5 of the top 6 were Conservatives, including Liam Fox, Cameron's defence spokesman. As also previously argued, the attempt, mainly by politicians themselves as well as the ex-broadsheet media excluding the Telegraph to turn the anger into a case for constitutional and parliamentary reform also seemed to miss the point of the rage: those who wanted the equivalent of heads on pikes or an immediate general election weren't interested in slow and steady changes to fix how parliament works; they just wanted the MPs who had abused their expenses out. That also hasn't changed over time, and while Cameron is to be commended for keeping up the pressure for change, it's hardly likely that many votes for the Tories are going to be picked up on the back of reforming the current lobbying system.

It's difficult not to think that Cameron personally attacking Brown might have something to do with Brown's mentioning of he who must not be named: Lord Ashcroft. Ashcroft is also the spectre hanging over Cameron's entire speech: he wants anyone sitting in parliament to be a full UK taxpayer in the United Kingdom, yet he can't even confirm that the deputy chairman of his party is just that. He wants to "shine the light of transparency on lobbying in our country", yet if you donate £50,000 a year to the party you can join "The Leader's Group" and gain personal access to "David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, post-PMQ lunches, drinks receptions, election result events and important campaign launches".

The entire speech is one that just screams of either never coming close to being implemented or coming back to haunt them. At four separate occasions he claims that "we are a new generation at ease with openness and trust". Really? Would this be the same Conservative party that seems to be imposing top-down control on MPs and prospective MPs use of blogs and social-networking sites? This is a party that even as it denounces Labour's past use of various spin doctors employs the likes of Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton, the former accused at an employment tribunal of leading the bullying of a journalist who suffered from depression. It's an easy allusion to make, but it really is all so reminiscent of Tony Blair: the repetition, the claims of being entirely clean, a new break, yet even while it sounds good, it's next to impossible to believe almost any of it. In that sense, it's Blair at his very worst: trying desperately to convince of his good intentions whilst failing to do just that. Even Blair at his worst though wouldn't have made such stonking great errors as talking up parliament as formerly being an unimpeachable institution once famous for "radical legislation, elevated debate and forensic scrutiny of laws"; has it really been anything like that since the 60s? Nor would he have made the mistake of claiming that a monologue exists where parliament talks and the country listens; parliament may well talk but the country either doesn't listen, or as the Heresiarch suggests, it jeers.

The only part that rings true is also the funniest and most puzzling. At the end he desperately appeals to the media to change its attitude as well, a part worth quoting in full:

But this change also needs something else. It requires a change in the attitude not just of politicians, but of the media too. I want to see a whole new culture of responsibility from those who report the news. You are the lens through which people view the actions of this Parliament. That gives you a great duty to our democracy.

I want to see a proper distinction between honest mistakes made by good, decent people whose intentions were honourable and those who set out to deliberately mislead, swindle and deceive.

Most people who pursue a career in politics do so because they want to serve and because they want to do good. That should be recognised. Parliament does important and effective work, yet it is barely reported.

And remember when you’re putting good people down, you could be putting good people off from entering politics. I’m not telling you how to do your job. I’m just saying that if you want to change politics as much as I do, this is something we’ve got to do together. We have a shared responsibility.


The idea of certain parts of the media treating any politician other than the very few it decides it likes in such a way is hilarious. This though is someone who has been treated up till now by the vast majority of it in a completely timorous, even sycophantic fashion, in difference to how those outside it have routinely ridiculed him. He surely doesn't believe that this will change anything, and in any event he uses them just as much as they use him; why then make the appeal at all? Is it for public consumption, although again few are likely to read or have seen his speech in full? Just as you don't believe for a second that Cameron has any real truck with what he calls "social responsibility", the idea that the media think they have any wider responsibility other than to their shareholders or owners is ludicrous.

It is instructive though that the one real reform that would truly redistribute power to the people is the one that the Conservatives refuse to trust the electorate with: Brown's sudden conversion to the alternative vote may be cynical or have ulterior motives, and it may not be proportional, but it would give voters something approaching a real choice over who governs us. A new politics sounds good, but it will remain the same old politics unless you genuinely feel you can make a difference. Starting with the electoral system itself would make the most sense, and would still fit in with the actual anti-politics mood, enabling you to vote the equivalent of none of the above and still make a point. Anything else is likely to fail to make an impact.

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Tuesday, January 19, 2010 

The depressing political fight over binge drinking.

There's little that's more depressing than politicians attempting to outdo each other when it comes to the latest social evil to have been sporadically identified. We went through it on gun crime, on knife crime, and now as we approach the election it seems we've decided on binge drinking as the next thing to be cracked down upon, at least until the new and even deadlier scare comes along, which looks at the moment to be shaping up to be mephedrone.

While it's often been the moralising tabloid press that has screamed loudest and longest about the damage being down to the centres of our towns and cities at weekends in the usual hyperbolic fashion, alongside the health workers who find themselves at the sharp end, it's been the Scottish National Party that started the arms race and which is attempting to legislating a minimum price for a unit of alcohol sold off-licence. It goes without saying that this is the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, penalising everyone regardless of how little or how much they drink, a flat tax on booze if you will.

It is though the kind of policy that ensures you know where you stand. The same can't be said for either the government's changes to the current licensing conditions or to the Tories' counter proposals. Labour seems to be completely ignoring the fact that it isn't the pubs or clubs which are overwhelming flogging cheap alcohol to the masses, as anyone who visits either even casually will notice, but the supermarkets with their offers on cases of the stuff, usually with either 2 for a £10 or a similar slightly higher sum. The Tories admittedly have recognised this, with their new policy being to ensure that supermarkets can't sell booze at below cost price, but their other proposals are even more draconian than Labour's, and typically stupid. The idea that imposing extra tax only on strong lagers and ciders, as well as alcopops, which those drinking to get drunk rarely imbibe will have any effect when they can downgrade to the only slightly less strong "ordinary" beers is ludicrous, and seems more designed to sneer at those who drink them than anything else.

As always, the real reason why there's something approaching a drinking problem in this country is not mentioned. When quality of life is so poor that the one thing to look forward to is getting smashed at the weekend, or indeed every night to take away from the everyday nightmare of living and working, the problem is not with individuals or with the opiate, but with the entire philosophy of a nation and the modern nature of capitalism itself. We then further promote an immature attitude towards drink by denying it to teenagers as a matter of politics, while families across the countries connive in breaking the law to give it them. When politicians are not prepared to so much as consider the first as a factor, while continuing to regard alcohol as a terrible thing until we reach a certain arbitrary age, we're always going to be reduced to a political auction where everyone asks how much without considering why we're bidding in the first place.

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Wednesday, December 23, 2009 

Shorter David Willetts.

(With apologies to Don Paskini.)

"As only 270,000 people married last year, it's clear that marriage is in danger of becoming the preserve of the middle classes. This obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with the ever increasing cost of getting married, but instead to do with the fact that there is no recognition of marriage in the tax system. By recognising the institution in the tax system (and putting the state to work to help couples stay together, but we'll make sure that we keep this relatively under our hats) we will at a shot vastly increase the number of couples who will tie the knot and live happily ever after. That this will also be a massive tax break for the already married, overwhelmingly middle and upper class that traditionally vote for us is neither here nor there. Nor is it an example of Conservative class war. Only the despicable Labour party does that."

(P.S. My eldest brother was due to get married this year to his long-term fiancée. They called it off, not because they would be penalised for getting married by the tax system, but because they could no longer justify the cost of the ceremony and reception etc, something which Willetts completely dismisses as an issue.)

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009 

The ghost of Labour future.

For a pre-budget report that was pretty much universally disparaged, especially by both the Sun and the Daily Mail, the opinion poll returns have been far better than Labour can have expected. Not that a 9-point lead for the Conservatives is going to result in fevered discussion about a March election, as the media, clutching at straws for news as we wind slowly but inexorably towards Christmas, seems so certain that it both has and will.

One explanation for Labour's improved showing is, as almost always happens when an election is no longer just a distant thought but a fast approaching reality is that those who have previously flirted with changing their vote are returning, tail between their legs, to the one they know best. Having led in what should be the rock solid Labour north back in October, the Conservatives have now fallen back to a far less significant 28% support, compared to Labour's 44. The difficulty for Labour is that the marginals, key as we are so often reminded to who will be taking or retaking up residence in Downing Street next spring/summer, are often fought on battles which have little to nothing to do with the national message which the party is pushing. As Political Betting suggests, in the ones where it's a straight fight between Labour and the Tories, they will in effect be referendums on 4 to 5 more years of Labour rule, not to mention Gordon Brown himself, with specific policies being a secondary concern to general feeling.

Another is that the Conservative performance of late, while hardly catastrophic, has not exactly been setting the world on fire either. While few will probably have noticed Cameron's cock-up at prime minister's questions a few weeks back when he rather bizarrely attacked the prime minister on money being given to a educational charity linked to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, not the most populist of subjects on which to focus and got the details wrong, coupled with the also poor performance of George Osborne in response to the PBR, Zac Goldsmith's tax status, the biting attacks from Labour on Tory tax policy being drawn up on the fields of Eton and the constant character assassination from the Daily Mirror, equivalent to that which Brown has been subject to from the Sun, things have not been going their way. The claims of class war, taken up by certain parts of the press, have not made much of a dent, probably because anyone with the slightest amount of digging can see through them. While Osborne attacked the raising of national insurance for anyone earning over £20,000 a year as Labour abandoning anyone outside their core, the party itself has been assessing whether to raise VAT should they come to power, hitting the poorest directly in their pocket when they spend.

Brown meanwhile, while his personal ratings remain desperately poor, has been having a better time of it. Ever since the Sun personally attacked him over the letter of condolence sent to Jacqui Janes, which won him overwhelming sympathy, things have gradually been improving. Afghanistan, which looked for a time to be potentially becoming as toxic for Brown as Iraq was for Blair, has been somewhat lanced, thanks partly to the Obama "surge" change in strategy and also to the army itself not being in apparent mutiny over government drift, while politicians as a whole must be somewhat relieved that last week's latest expenses revelations seem to have been a damp squib rather than inspiring outright revolt as the slow drip-drip from the Daily Telegraph did earlier in the year. The general piss-poor nature of the Queen's speech, with legislation to neither outrage or nor inspire, has added to the benign nature.

While it must be something of a concern to the Cameroons that their lead is 10 points below New Labour's at Christmas 1996, there was always likely to be a narrowing of the lead. The real problem is that while Labour won 3% more of the vote in 2005 and got a majority of 67, the Tories can win by 9% as in the current poll and still only get a majority of four seats. The money must still be on a comfortable Conservative win, but that continuing spectre of a hung parliament also refuses to stop looming. That still no one is showing any great enthusiasm for a Conservative victory, certainly nothing that even begins to equate with that of the Labour victory in 97, perhaps suggests that maybe it is time for the Liberal Democrats to at least have a sniff of power. Whether they get it or not might well depend on just how much Cameron motivates from now on and how little Brown alienates.

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Wednesday, December 09, 2009 

The real "we are all in this together".

At one point during the pre-budget report, you had to wonder whether Alistair Darling, tired of the deliberately tedious nature of what he was delivering, had inserted a concealed joke just to see if anyone would notice. To be vulgar for a second, you suspect that there are plenty of people out there, politicians included, whom have paid money for old boilers in their time, although £400 seems a bit steep.

It was the one moment of levity in what was otherwise a tour de force in the completely expected, the responses also seemingly written weeks in advance and not updated to take account of any late changes. George Osborne, who courtesy of Steve Bell I now can't look at without seeing buttocks on his nose, did the now standard New Tory act of claiming this meant Labour had completely abandoned the aspirational, while the Daily Mail has somehow construed a pre-budget which hits more or less everyone in some way or another as class war.

If the Mail's right, then this is class war on all of the classes rather just the middle or the upper. While the additional increase in national insurance will affect anyone earning above £20,000 (the average wage before the recession being somewhere around the £24,000 mark) the freeze in public sector pay across the board, which will in effect be a cut in real terms, spreads the pain across the board. George Osborne ought to be pleased: Darling, with the tax on bank bonuses and freeze on the inheritance tax threshold is ensuring that we truly "are all in this together", something you doubt his own plans will accurately reflect.

Like when some papers and the Tories cried that the Queen's speech was nothing but pure politics, as if this was something new and terrible, Darling's effort today could be condemned in similar terms. Depending on your view, it could be cowardly, as it puts off almost all the big decisions until after the election; political, in that as it's more than likely that the Tories will then be the ones to pick up the pieces; and also the right thing to do, as cutting now in the way that the Tories propose, when the recession is not over and everyone is just assuming that growth will return in this fourth quarter, will just damage the recovery even further. It can also be all three of these things, which is the view I take.

In short, what was billed as being significant was nothing of the sort, or wasn't presented by almost anyone in those terms. The real significance was in the back of the documents which accompanied the speech as always (PDF), showing that the deep cuts are coming in the years to come, just unannounced, although everyone already assumes the worst. The battle is now over who can be the most optimistic in the public whilst being a pessimist behind closed doors, and the government has to hope that the gap in the polls can still be made up by portraying the Tories as the ruthless cutters of old. One suspects however that even with the Tory lead being reduced of late, the victory is still the Tories' to lose rather win.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009 

A very much precendented case of newspaper hyperbole.

Last night Keir Starmer, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, gave his usual annual lecture to the public prosecution service. It was a typical lawyerly sermon, touching on both human rights and the independence of the prosecutors. Those who were there and awake probably didn't give it a second thought; Starmer gave a decent defence of the Human Rights Act, but hardly the strongest and most detailed one ever. The Telegraph however thought that this was somehow worthy of a splash. "An unprecedented attack", it bellowed, and since then the usual Tory suspects, the two Davies', have added their voices at this apparent broadside at Conservative policy.

Starmer, as it happened, didn't so much as mention the Conservatives, probably because he wasn't just attacking the Tories but also Labour. Here is what he did say:

However, one cannot escape, particularly in recent months, the debate that has emerged around the extent to which it is appropriate - and these are my words here - to repatriate the Human Rights Act and make it "more British."

While the Tories have promised to repeal the HRA and introduce a "British" Bill of Rights in its place, without of course providing any detail whatsoever as to what these rights would be and which might be different to those enshrined in the HRA, Labour has also continued to talk about a bill of Rights and Responsibilities, even though it has been shelved for now. These Rights and Responsibilities, Jack Straw hoped, would give a British feel to the HRA. It doesn't matter that, as Starmer points out, the European Convention of Human Rights, on which the HRA is based, was mainly drafted by us Britishers, because it's "European" in origin this somehow infers that it's a foreign creation imposed on us. The Sun, the main campaigner for a repeal of the HRA, has so often mistakenly referred to the ECHR as being a construct of the European Union when it is not and is entirely separate from it that it's difficult to believe it isn't being done deliberately.

The main flaw with any plan to repeal the HRA, something which Starmer doesn't mention, is that it's difficult to believe that we would also then leave the ECHR in its entirety, something we would have to do to make sure that the "criminals' charter" doesn't interfere with our law in any way, shape or form. All repealing the HRA will do is mean that breaches of the ECHR will not be able to heard in our own courts; instead those seeking redress will have to go to Strasbourg, and wait potentially years for their case to be heard, such is the backlog which has built up there and continues to mount. As Starmer argues, it's absurd that rights which the rest of Europe has never had any problem with should "stop in the English Channel". After all, even Russia is signed up to ECHR, even if it isn't as proactive in falling into line with its rulings as the more democratic nation states of Europe are. The closest Starmer gets to really attacking those who wish to do away with the HRA is this line:

And it would be to this country's shame if we lost the clear and basic statement of our citizens' human rights provided by the Human Rights Act on the basis of a fundamentally flawed analysis of their origin and relevance to our society.

It doesn't really help the Tories' cause that Starmer is entirely right. The main reason why the Conservatives want to get rid of the HRA is not because it's a criminals' charter or any of the other things which its critics say it is, but because from the very beginning the press, and especially the Sun and the Daily Mail, have been worried about its implications for their business model. Article 8, the right to privacy, has meant that the tabloids can no longer be certain that their celebrity stories and sex scandals will get into the papers unmolested, or if they do, that they won't then be brought up before the beak afterwards. There is, it must be noted, potential for abuse of Article 8, but this is slight when compared to the overall benefits which the legislation as a whole brings. In any case, the real threat to press freedom is not Article 8 but our libel laws and the tenacity of the libel firms and their pursuit of "super-injunctions", as last week's assault by Carter-Fuck on behalf of Trafigura showed. The supposed "madness" which the HRA has brought is partially dealt with by Starmer, although not fully:

A police force unable to circulate a photo of a wanted, dangerous and violent criminal because it might breach his Article 8 rights to privacy? My advice - go ahead - it is essential to protect the public.

Unelected judges can now tell Parliament that their laws need not be enforced? No - judges cannot strike down legislation.

Human Rights mean that school teachers cannot enforce discipline at school? No - it is domestic legislation - section 548 of the Education Act 1996 - passed 2 years before the Human Rights Act - that banned corporal punishment in schools. Interestingly enough, it is section 93 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 - passed 8 years after the Human Rights Act - that now allows school teachers to use reasonable force to prevent a pupil from committing an offence.

It is often in the interests of those who want to debase a principle to chip away at it by citing examples of its occasional misapplication. We should all take care to examine critically the so-called restrictions brought about by the Human Rights Act and consider where the misunderstanding truly lies before condemning a constitutional instrument that has provided legitimate comfort to so many.


Some of these I've touched on before, but it's indicative of the misinformation which surrounds the HRA that the Telegraph in its report repeats the myth that Learco Chindamo, murderer of headteacher Philip Lawrence, couldn't be deported back to Italy when he finished his sentence because of the HRA. It was in fact because of the EU's 2004 directive on citizenship, but as usual the initial myth has become fact.

Has Starmer though strayed into politics with his pronouncements, something that the head of the CPS shouldn't be doing? Despite the Telegraph's suggestion, the previous head of the CPS, Ken Macdonald, did something rather similar in a speech to the Criminal Bar Association, where he made clear his view that terrorists should always be treated as criminals, and that there was no such thing as a "war on terror", something uncontroversial now, but rather more heated back in 2007 when the attempt to ram through 90 days without charge was fresh in the memory. Macdonald also made clear on a number of occasions that he felt 28 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects was sufficient, something which was hardly popular with the government, and which was definitely straying into politics. Few now object when the police demand new powers, although they should; why shouldn't the head of CPS express his view that the Human Rights Act shouldn't be abolished? Is it that it's only when it's the government that it's critiquing that it's OK, when if it's (perhaps) the opposition that it isn't?

The Tory plan to repeal the HRA has always struck me as something which they're likely to forget about once they actually do get in power. Labour has thrashed around hopelessly with the Rights and Responsibilities idea, and if you really believe that the Tories are more suited to constitutional change for the better, I don't think you've been paying enough attention. It's true, as Henry Porter has argued repeatedly, that the HRA has not prevented this government from its attacks on civil liberties, but the key to that is not more legislation, but better governance in general. It seems just as unlikely we will get that from the Tories.

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Friday, September 18, 2009 

A response to the Heresiarch on the Conservatives and liberty.

(Apologies for the crap blogging of the last couple of days. Hopefully will be better next week.)

Left as a comment on the Heresiarch's post, but felt was reasonable enough to dedicate a post to as well:

I think you're being far too credulous. You're talking almost rapturously about a party that only recently was advocating a "21st century clip round the ear", i.e. the police "confiscating" mobile phones or bikes off teenagers summarily, almost exactly like the very worst proposals made under Blair. A party that thought David Davis at best an eccentric when he resigned, and at worst a lunatic. And just what exactly was the Conservative response to the police riot at the G20 protests? There wasn't one, mainly because when it's the police beating up crusties, hippies, greens and lefties the Tories couldn't care less and even cheer it on.

A lot of people seem to make the mistake that the current strain of authoritarianism began in 1997. It didn't. It can instead be linked back almost certainly to the murder of James Bulger, and while Labour made the most out of it, the Tories were no slouches either, as Michael Howard's record as Home Sec testifies. It was after all he who first proposed ID cards, even if they're nothing like the ones we may soon have to get used to.

I don't deny that on some things the Tories may well be better, and I expect they'll keep to their promises on the various databases, mainly because they'll be one of the easiest things to cut and shut down. I don't believe for a second though that as soon as the Sun starts screaming about the latest moral panic that they'll ignore it or argue against instant measures which must be introduced right now; after all, why bother getting an ex-tabloid editor as your spin doctor if you're not intending to govern with a firm eye on the tabloids? It might not quite be New Labour MKII but it probably won't be far off . That "principled opposition" to extending detention without charge will be forgotten in an instant if we get another 7/7 or worse. And as for that "British" bill of rights, well, it either won't thankfully happen or we'll have the HRA repealed and one of the very few excellent pieces of Labour legislation will be gone. Then there's the apparent Tory intention to further politicise the police, likely to make things even worse, not better, and Kit Malthouse's claim that the Mayor's the real one in charge of Scotland Yard is probably just the start.

All that said, there are some Tory policies which show promise - such as the recent green paper on prisons, which if implemented could do a lot of good, but I'm not exactly going to be holding my breath. To be not as beyond redemption as Labour isn't going to be difficult; to actually be better might well be.

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Tuesday, August 25, 2009 

When you walk through the garden...

In one way, you've got to give Chris Grayling some credit. In what is otherwise an entirely run of the mill speech on law and order, which offers precisely no new policies at all from what I can see, he's managed to get the attention of the entire press corp, all thanks to his mention of The Wire, which although few of the people reading the story written up in the papers may have seen, those writing it almost certainly will have. By run of the mill, I mean, in Grayling's tradition, deliberately deceptive, misleading, tenuous and predictable. There's the personal anecdote from Manchester which is then applied to the country as a whole, ringing with hyperbole of a "urban war"; there's the selective use of statistics on violence which don't even begin to give the whole picture, as he relies entirely on police figures rather than the British Crime Survey, which he then later uses when it does help his cause; the now obligatory claim to being more progressive than Labour, which isn't difficult, but which the Tories still manage to fall down on; then, despite claiming to be the new progressive alternative, he goes through all the old law and order dog whistles, benefit culture, broken society, family breakdown, how voluntary organisations and the"third sector" will solve everything, all without even beginning to explain how their proposed alternative would help.

Grayling rather let the cat out of the bag when he said he had only seen a few episodes of the first series of The Wire; I doubt he's even seen those, although those who wrote the speech for him and advise him almost certainly have. As other bloggers have pointed out already, if you can't tell that the The Wire is about the utter futility, hopelessness and disaster of the war on drugs, then you haven't been watching it closely enough, and as indeed the co-creator himself even said. I have a suggestion though: if Grayling thinks that parts of this country now reflect Baltimore as portrayed in The Wire, then let's try some of the solutions which the characters in the show themselves experimented with.

For instance, in the third series, beaten into a corner by the insanity of the pressure on him to reach targets to cut violent crime, as well as his disgust at seeing how following the demolition of the main area of the city where drugs were bought and sold the trade has spread out into neighbourhoods previously untouched, Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin finds an almost deserted part of the city and sets up a "free zone", which as long as the dealers and their underlings and the other assorted hangers-on keep to, they'll face no charges and even be helped or protected by his officers. Colvin's plan isn't of course without hitches, and soon, pressured by an old friend into also providing clean needles, free condoms and outreach workers, as well as a murder, it all inevitably falls apart as his superiors realise what he's done, with councillor Carcetti, starting his campaign to be mayor, also milking it for all its worth. Now, while I don't think many would suggest that we should set up similar style "free zones", what's stopping the Tories from thinking really radically and following the example of Portugal and decriminalising drugs almost entirely while drastically improving the facilities for treatment, detoxing and help back into work and society itself? That would be truly progressive.

Then there's the fourth series, with its focus on the school system and the programme which Colvin, now outside the police and into academia attempts running which focuses on the "corner kids" and attempts to both socialise and civilise them into being able to return to their normal classes. Few schools have anything as radical or as breaking out of the mould as similar programmes, and as Colvin himself points out, these are the kids that are being left behind anyway, regardless of claims by politicians that no child will be. Or there's the overall theme which permeates all five series, which is that politicians and police don't mix, and that targets set by politicians only distract from real police work. The Tories still seem set on the idea of elected commissioners, which has to be one of the very worst ideas they've come up with. The police do of course have to be accountable locally, but electing someone who will do little more than interfere and also potentially bring out the very worst in both policing and politics is straight out of the mad house. Three ideas then for genuine, progressive reform, all of which the Conservatives would almost certainly baulk at.

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