Saturday, March 27, 2010 

Alternative pledge card.

Now that we've seen Labour's 5 election pledges, a collection of the vacuous, the obvious, the reactionary and the piss-poor, all about as inspiring, innovative and and forward-thinking as the large amounts of vomit which will duly be deposited on the pavements of the nation's towns and cities tonight, I can't help thinking that the party would be better off going with this alternative, featured in the latest Viz:

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Monday, March 15, 2010 

The political wife as a commodity.

A couple of years back Siôn Simon inadvisedly made a pretty poor spoof of David Cameron's video blogs, offering in his guise as Dave the chance to sleep with his wife, or if you preferred, to take his children. I'm probably one of the few to find it vaguely amusing, both because he thought it was a good idea and due to the bad taste involved, which is always welcome, from MPs especially, as well as just how ridiculous he looks. He also had something of a point, even if it was put across with all the eloquence and subtlety of Carol Vorderman on Question Time.

Looking at it from the vantage point of early 2010, having already been treated to a prime minister almost shedding tears during a "personal" interview with Piers Morgan, with helpful juxtaposed cuts to his wife who most certainly was crying, and now to the "first" casual, cosy talk between Glam Sam Cam, as the Tories seem to wish us to see her, and Trevor McDonald, it doesn't really seem so ludicrous. Admittedly, Cameron isn't exactly offering us the opportunity to go further than just a informative chat with her, and Brown was presumably strong-armed by the spin doctors into the Morgan interview, although Sarah Brown has previously appeared at the party conferences almost as ballast, but it is treating the wives almost as a commodity, as if they are inseparable from their husbands and that they are somehow more important, or even as equally important as the actual policies which they offer.

In one sense, you could say they're being brave by deciding to go public in such a way. After all, Cherie Blair (or Booth) made the mistake to not just be content to be the prime minister's wife; she carried on as a lawyer and then a judge, which was doubtless in a influence in certain sections of the press on how she came to be treated. Up until now Samantha Cameron has mostly been treated as a clothes horse by the media at large, even though she's been far more successful in her own right as a designer than Cameron himself ever was as a PR for Carlton. In none of these interviews or appearances though do we actually learn what their own political views are, only the qualities of their husbands and how they met. Again, this could be an attempt to avoid being the next Cherie, who was always felt to be the left of her husband and made the mistake of working for the human rights lawyers Matrix Chambers, always likely to be seen as a conscious snub. Ed Vaizey attempted to invoke the uncertainty of those wobbling over whether to vote Tory or not by suggesting that Samantha might have voted for Labour in 1997, but we were quickly informed that she had never voted for the party. That the closest we've had to any actual indication of political inclination is a denial of a past vote is a rather sad state of affairs.

Admittedly, the purpose of these interviews is nothing to do with politics: it's all to do with those self-same publicists who are convinced that the wider public, unable to make their mind up purely on the back of the different policies on offer, also need to know just what kind of a person the man is when he's the one in the kitchen. At the same time though these attempts at showing the "real" person behind the public politician are self-defeating: they are distinctly "unreal", intrusive and spun just as much as any policy is. Hence the biggest revelations from Samantha Cameron's tête-a-tête with McDonald was that Dave likes the Godfather films and tends to channel-hop. At worst, they're not just uninformative, but mawkish, creepy and uncomfortable, as sections of Morgan's session with Brown were. They're also patronising: they imagine that there are voters out there, and you get the feeling they're thinking especially of so-called "Take a Break woman" who are so thick and backward that need to be informed by members of the leader's personal family of just how great they are to earn their support. Always looking for another angle, the media loves it, and it all adds to the soap opera feel which politics increasingly seems to be gaining.

The contradiction inherent of all this is that the more politics becomes like a family affair, or even part of the celebrity culture, where someone cannot be seen out without someone without rumours about splits and worse being whispered around, the more you turn off not just the purists, but also those who don't want their politicians to be like those that fill the scandal sheets and gossip rags, which by my feeble reckoning is just about everyone. Gordon Brown said shortly before becoming prime minister that he felt "the country was turning away from celebrity culture", back in those carefree days prior to the break up of Peter and Katie and before the death of Jade. Instead our politicians haven't just embraced it, it has become them.

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Friday, March 05, 2010 

Blair before Brown.

To call Gordon Brown's appearance before the Chilcot inquiry deeply underwhelming would be putting it too kindly. Boring, mundane, and mind-numbing would all be more suitable. While Blair's sessions were compelling if not always electrifying, they were indicative of his overall character: defiant, certain, convinced of his own righteousness. Brown merely had all his bases covered, and was incredibly well prepared, as you'd expect.

The one thing we've never learned, and which Andrew Rawnsley's book hasn't touched on, is just how much Brown really did believe in the Iraq war. He naturally defended it today, even if he did so on the equally spurious grounds that Iraq wasn't living up to its international commitments, rather than on its non-existent WMD and the intelligence as presented then, although why he continued on insisting that there was no possibility of a second resolution because of Chirac's intransigence, the classic Downing Street smear from the time, was a moment of dishonesty. As we know from Clare Short's evidence, this was happening at a time when Brown was being shut out from the Blair circle, which goes some way to explaining why he hadn't seen many of the documents from the time which the committee asked him about. Equally though there is more than a reminder of Brown's similarity with Macavity, the mystery cat, who isn't there when there's dirty work to be done. It always helped Brown to not be associated personally with the war, even if he was the one writing the cheques. His evidence didn't shed any light on this, but that was to be expected.

While Brown shares responsibility with Blair, as indeed the whole cabinet at the time does, and if you want to stretch it even further, all those in parliament who voted for the war, it's Blair that is always going to remain the one person associated with the decision, for either good or bad, and whatever conclusion the Chilcot inquiry eventually comes to, that also is unlikely to change.

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Monday, February 22, 2010 

The end of the bullying party?

Probably the most fascinating side detail, at least to me, about the extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's book serialised in yesterday's Observer, is that this is the work of a man who can be described as more than sympathetic towards the Labour party, including Gordon Brown himself. It is testament to his journalistic nous that he doesn't appeared to have let this colour his chronicling of Labour in power since 2001 in the slightest; his portrait of Gordon Brown and his faintly terrifying moments of fury, both towards himself and to his staff is absolutely unflinching in its lucidity, and brilliantly written. Without wanting to come over all order of the brown nose, I'd suggest, based just on this one extract, that it's likely to be the best insider's account of government in years and one as a devoted politics nerd that I can't wait to read in full.

All that is rather by the by though, considering the damage that Rawnsley's account of Brown's behaviour is likely to do, even if few voters actually read it first-hand. Much as we already knew that Brown had a volcanic temper, and was prone to bouts of introspection and that awful word, dithering, reading just how he's reacted to certain news and treated those around him in such detail feels almost voyeuristic, such is the quality of the sources and the fly-on-the-wall nature of the extracts. The one allegation which led the news bulletins and supposed "spoilers" is the one which hasn't actually appeared, at least so far: Rawnsley doesn't make any claim that Brown has actually hit someone, as the prime minister himself denied on Channel 4 News on Saturday, although that might be one of the stories which Rawnsley was unable to satisfy himself was wholly accurate, as he details in his "justification" of releasing the account now. If anything though, some of the stuff which does feature is just as damaging: there have been claims in the past that he threw mobile phones and destroyed photocopiers, but turfing a secretary who wasn't typing fast enough out of her chair and doing it himself most certainly rivals any of that. Most, if not all prime ministers have at some stage become paranoid and hunkered down, convinced that there are individuals out to get them, but few are likely to have grabbed the lapels of the person informing them of the latest bad news and scream it in their faces.

Amid all this, there was also a prime minister portrayed who still appears admirable: a passionate, deeply committed individual who has despite the depths to which he has sunk during the last three years still gotten crucial decisions right, such as the bailing out of the banks, the bringing back of Peter Mandelson despite years of something close to all out war between the two, and who is by no means an irredeemable, let alone terrible holder of the ultimate office of state. This makes the response from Downing Street to the revelations all the more risible, if not actively counter-productive: to deny almost everything and also to rubbish Rawnsley himself. These are, after all, most likely the very same people that contributed to the book; Harriet Harman certainly has, and she was one of the very first to come out and ridicule Rawnsley and question his sources. Brown's peremptory efforts at admitting that he gets angry and shouts and Mandelson's attempt at putting Brown's occasional fury into context were what the whole operation should have been based upon: instead the briefers and spinners have been out in force, and Sir Gus O'Donnell has completely denied, although after a few abortive attempts, that he talked to Brown about his behaviour to the junior staff.

A far better response would have to been to admit that while under extreme pressure, Brown had sometimes acted in a fashion that was both beneath him and that he deeply regretted, and that he had since modified his behaviour. That might, just might, have helped somewhat to close it down. David Cameron would have likely made hay with it on Wednesday, and compared Brown's character with his own, despite his acting as the bag man of an apparently far worse bully while working in PR for Carlton, but the story would have soon lost its lustre. Instead we've had Labour plumbing its usual depths, with claims of Tory plotting, as if Rawnsley was somehow part of a conspiracy dedicated to further damaging Gordon Brown, as well as hysterical claims from the likes of John Prescott that it's all lies. Admittedly, the ludicrous and unfortunately named Christine Pratt, by claiming that staff in Number 10 had phoned her "National Bullying Helpline" may have helped to somewhat substantiate the former claim, but it seems far more likely that it's Pratt trying and succeeding admirably in advertising her business, even if it is ostensibly a charity, rather than some sort of Tory black operation. In any event, her breaching of the standard definition of client confidentiality and the resignation of all three of the charity's patrons as a result has undermined her intervention immensely.

Equally daft were the calls from both Cameron and Nick Clegg for some sort of investigation into Brown's behaviour, as if one was either needed or would ever be authorised. You sometimes get the impression that politicians will call for an inquiry into everything other than the few incidents which genuinely require one, and in doing so reduce the chances of one being set-up in the future. Cameron is again equally hypocritical on this front in any event: his own spin doctor Andy Coulson has not just been accused of bullying, but found by an employment tribunal to have been primarily responsible for the treatment meted out to Matt Driscoll, who was sacked while off work with stress-related depression, a depression brought on by the behaviour of Coulson.

Key as always will be whether this will actually change the way someone will vote, and it naturally comes just as the polls are narrowing, although again that's usual this close to an election. Much as you'd like to think that this won't change a thing, it probably will influence the votes of a few, just as Brown's saccharine, false "opening up" to Piers Morgan likely did. These are after all the two sides there are to Brown: the deeply private, introverted man who blames himself more than anyone else for the problems which befall him, even as he attacks others, and the warm, approachable and pleasant person which some have seen him and which he tries to increasingly bring out for the cameras. It was right for Rawnsley to confirm the rumours, but equally allowances should be made for Brown's behaviour, unacceptable as it was. The thing the Tories should remember before focusing on this is that the last time Brown's character was brought into question, during the Jacqui Janes debacle, it exploded in the Sun's face. History could well repeat itself.

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Saturday, February 20, 2010 

A future fair for all?

As slogans go, "a future fair for all" isn't disastrous. It's certainly not "You can only be sure with the Conservatives", or as dire and positively stupid as "forward not back". It also attempts to distil into 5 words what a vote for Labour is meant to deliver, which is more than can be said for the Tories' equivalents at the moment, which revolve around "change" without articulating what that actual change will be, whether it's "year for change", "now for change" or "vote for change", all of which they've used recently. When Obama invoked change, he at least added it was to be change you could believe in, and he embodied that as a whole; Cameron, on the other hand, only offers change in the sense that the government itself will be different, not that his election will change anything itself.

A future fair for all is still something of a mouthful though. Why not "a fair future for all", which at least to my ear doesn't sound quite as clunking? It also invites criticism over Labour's current record for fairness, which even considering Brown's limited, hidden attempts at redistribution has only ensured that the gap between rich and poor hasn't grown even larger. One other positive is that it doesn't instantly attract mockery, which as the Tories and Cameron have discovered since the release of their first campaign poster, is far worse than just being criticised. It shows that Labour hasn't given up just yet, and even if they don't deserve to be returned to power, the only other likely alternative remains far worse.

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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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Wednesday, February 03, 2010 

Piecemeal reform will still result in contempt.

There are two questions you should always immediately ask when an otherwise completely unexpected political proposal comes along, in this instance Gordon Brown's sudden apparent conversion to an ever so slightly fairer system of voting. Firstly, why now? Second, who benefits?

Well, all right, that's what every cynic will consider. To be fair to Brown, he did ascend to the Labour leadership on the promise of carrying out constitutional reform, which has mostly been either forgotten, watered down to the point of near worthlessness, or handed to Jack Straw to think as shallowly as possible on those much vaunted rights 'n' responsibilities. As everyone knows, Labour has been promising a referendum on proportional representation since 1997, back when Blair was flirting with Paddy Ashdown as he feared not winning an outright majority. We all know what happened next, and despite still setting up the Jenkins commission, which recommended the alternative vote system with an additional top-up element to make it somewhat proportional, there has been no movement until now.

Why then now? Despite there being some voices at the height of the expenses scandal last year calling for a referendum on PR to be held on the same day as the general election, like most of the proposals for reform floated at the time it had come to nothing. While it would be lovely if Brown had suddenly had a epiphany in which he decided that the innate unfairness of the first past the post system means that many votes are all but wasted, and that it's an insult to democracy itself that a party can be elected with a workable majority when it received the support of only 22% of the electorate as a whole, a far more compelling explanation is that it's another last ditch attempt at shoring up the Grauniad-reading core vote whilst also appealing to erstwhile Liberal Democrat supporters. It's also impossible to rule out that it's not a throwback to the thinking of Blair in 97: despite everything, a hung parliament at the moment is a real possibility, and a far more plausible outcome than it was back then. The Liberal Democrats, otherwise regarded by the main two parties as a joke suddenly become incredibly popular, and while it's difficult to imagine them making a deal with the Conservatives, one of their demands in exchange for entering into a coalition would almost certainly be voting reform: by holding out the promise now of a referendum on AV, which they could negotiate into a vote on PR-proper, there's already a basis on which the two parties could work together.

This has the added bonus, and this also falls into the who benefits category, of showing the Conservatives up as opponents of progressive (yes, that word I loathe) reform, a trap which they're more happy to fall straight into, as Eric Pickles' bone-headed performance on Newsnight yesterday showed. According to him, the Alternative Vote system was "unfair"; unfair perhaps if you win the largest share of the vote on the initial count but fail to win an overall majority from all those entitled to, which as the Graun's leader points out not a single one of the current members of parliament has, and then lose after the votes have been re-assigned, but an improvement over FPTP it certainly is, even if only a slight one. There's no doubt whatsoever that self-interest informs both Brown's manoeuvring and the Tories' opposition to any form of PR, but even if Labour's motives are hardly pure, the Conservative position is not down to anything as principled as a belief that PR makes for weak governments, but because of their certainty in getting a large enough majority in which to dominate parliament in a similar way to Labour has for the past 13 years, even if its backbenchers have rebelled against the party whip on an unprecendented number of occasions. The "elective dictatorship" which some have railed against is suddenly no longer a problem when you're inside the tent pissing out rather than the one getting wet.

If that answers why now, then while it's assumed that Labour will benefit under AV or a proportional system, it's not necessarily as clear cut, as while in 2005 most Lab/Lib supporters would have voted tactically to keep the Tories out, the opposite might now be the case, with voters determined to get Labour out of office. There is one thing we haven't considered though: what if this isn't in fact a grand ruse to damage AV and PR with Brown's reverse Midas touch? Key is that any referendum would only be held in the event of a Labour victory, and that's if it manages to rush the legislation through parliament in time, itself difficult with Tory opposition and with less than 2 months before an election will have to be called if the vote is indeed to be on May the 6th. Doing this now only encourages the cynical view Brown will do anything to stay in power, even if it doesn't affect the actual vote this time round. It also distracts attention from that other unresolved constitutional issue increasingly affecting parliament: the West Lothian question, where this time round it could be Scottish Labour MPs which stop the Conservatives from gaining an absolute majority.

More fundamentally, the real reason why a referendum on just AV isn't good enough is that it doesn't allow the electorate to make the decision for themselves on just which electoral system this country should have. Why shouldn't we be allowed to choose a fully proportional system, even if it involves the scrapping of the current constituency system? What's the point of AV when the single transferable vote is very similar but actually proportional? Why not lay all the options out, or aren't we considered intelligent or interested enough to be able to make an educated and informed choice? All Brown is offering is the illusion of change, knowing that he almost certainly won't still be around to implement it. The lesson that should have been learned from the expenses fiasco is that the public both demands the right to know and to be able to act; until parties offer that they are likely to continue to be held in contempt, piecemeal electoral reform or not.

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Monday, February 01, 2010 

Does she know something we don't?

One of those slightly strange not quite spam messages that very occasionally falls into your inbox:

Hi there,

I visited your website for the first time last night ( http://www.septicisle.info/labels/Gordon%20Brown.html ) and I noticed that you had some condolence/sympathy and funeral related resources within it. You've done a great job of organizing and listing helpful information and I was wondering if you would consider listing my website as a resource for your visitors?

Obituaries Help is a completely free resource for a person looking for condolence/sympathy and funeral related examples and resources.

...

Melanie Walters - Webmaster

There aren't too many who feel much sympathy for Gordon Brown. Does Melanie Walters then know something we don't on the funeral score? I think we should be told. Mel, do get back in touch. Unless you're going to send the same message again, in which case don't.

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Friday, January 08, 2010 

The real perplexing issue about the snowstorm coup.

Now that the "snowstorm coup" or whatever it's being called has already been forgotten by anyone with half a brain it's always instructive to learn the real reasons behind the attempted putsch. Unsurprisingly, both Hewitt and Hoon had been angling for jobs which they didn't get, hence most likely their fit of pique, although why Hewitt wants another job when she's already got a couple of highly lucrative ones thanks to her previous jobs in government is unclear.

No, the real question is just why Bob Ainsworth is so unhappy about Brown's leadership. Widely if perhaps unfairly judged to be the most useless in a long line of hopeless defence secretaries, does he seriously think that he'll ever have a better offer or job than the one he currently has? The words "ungrateful" and "git" really do come to mind.

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Wednesday, January 06, 2010 

The world's worst coup.

It's official: the Labour party is crap at coups. While it's tempting to suggest that's something to do with the fact that the Labour party as a whole is crap, and that wouldn't be far wrong, for some reason no one in the party has ever seemed to have the killer instinct. Certainly not when compared to the Tories, for whom plotting over the years delivered the heads of both Thatcher and Duncan-Smith, and almost Major as well.

Perhaps it's got something to do with how those who finally summon up the courage to go public with their demands for the leader to stand down, or this time round for a "secret ballot" to be held, which certainly isn't a coup attempt, oh no, are either yesterday's men or those with chips on their shoulders, ala James Purnell last year. Seriously, did Geoff "Buff" Hoon and Patricia "most patronising person to ever wear a pair of shoes" Hewitt really think they were going to set the world alight by demanding that it was time for Brown to face the parliamentary Labour party? It's hardly Michael Heseltine or that other least likely individual to rebel, Geoffrey Howe, complaining about finding that the bat had been broken by the team captain once he had gone out to bat, is it?

Oh, but they had such a hard-hitting team behind them, didn't they? The Safety Elephant, Labour's honorary BNP member Frank Field, Barry Sheerman, who no one has ever heard of, and Fiona MacTaggart, who first felt that legalising prostitution in certain zones might be a good idea then changed her mind completely once told sweet little lies about people trafficking. Again, you're not allowed to mention that with the exception of Field, who's always hated Brown because he blocked his "thinking the unthinkable" on welfare reform and possibly Sheerman that they're all Blairites. Not that either Hoon or Hewitt have anything as dignified as differences with Brown on policy, although Clarke and Field do; this is all about the fact that they somehow imagine that simply by replacing the man at the top Labour will instantly reclaim its rightful place at the top of the polls, vanquishing the upstart Cameron and leading them into that historic fourth term.

If it wasn't so desperate and counter-productive it would be hilarious. Oh, all right, it is hilarious, and the only real meaningful response is the one on Liberal Conspiracy, which is to come up with some lolcats. While some backbenchers almost certainly are despairing of Brown leading them into the election, the idea that you can do it now bloodlessly and without laying the foundations for internal fratricide is ludicrous. The very real damage being done is, as it was always likely, to the party as a whole: it gives credence to the continual Tory claim that Labour is hopelessly divided and that the only way to sort it out is to install them instead. Already out is the "we can't go on like this" billboard, now featuring Buff and Hewitt instead of Cameron's hideously airbrushed bonce, and you can't help but imagine it's going to be "bucket of shit" time in the papers tomorrow, even when the coup attempt has been so laughable.

The only real debate within Labour has been between those fearing that Brown and Balls have been brewing up a "core vote strategy" and those around Peter Mandelson who despaired of that when honesty was needed regarding the size of the deficit and the need for cuts. As seen by the first movements in the election campaign, both the Tories and Labour are still in denial when it comes to just how sweeping and deep the cuts are going to be, still squabbling over the small print while completely ignoring the bigger picture. Neither party is offering anything other than the same old, same old. That you could probably replace Brown with Cameron as leader of the Labour party and hardly notice any significant policy differences is the biggest indictment of politics as a whole at the moment; that though would be a coup worth writing about.

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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, November 18, 2009 

The Queen's last gasp.

The obvious response to the Queen's speech would to be to class it as the last gasp gesture of a government on its death bed; the sole remaining embers of a cigarette burnt down to the very end, offering not even the slightest nicotine kick; the last words of the condemned before being dropped through the trapdoor. For once, the obvious response is also the right one, although not necessarily for the reasons detailed by either Cameron or Clegg.

Clegg, in the increasingly hysterical fashion in which he seems to be deciding is the best way to lead his party, declared that the entire speech should have been cancelled so that politics could be "fixed". Cameron too, complained that "the biggest omission" was the cleaning up of expenses. Considering that the proposals from Sir Christopher Kelly in the main do not change anything with any great immediacy, except for the intake at the next election, the only real reason for urgency is to prove who has the hairiest shirt, as it was before. Clegg at least has purer motives in wanting the changing of the way we do politics as a whole, but the emphasis which both are continuing to place on the expenses scandal only encourages the view that nothing has changed, when it simply isn't the case. True, the complete changing of our system which some rather hopefully imagined might happen has not arrived, but then neither Labour and especially not the Tories have it in their interests to implement the likes of electoral reform. We're going to have to make do with what we have for now, and further alienating politics from the majority is not going to have a happy ending.

That said, there's not exactly anything to inspire absolutely anyone in this final dirge of bills. Labour has, unless it's saving the big hitters for the election, finally ran out of any remaining ideas it had. Cameron's ridiculously hyperbolic claim that this was the "most divisive, short-termist and shamelessly self-serving Queen's speech in living memory" was wrong, not because it's divisive, self-serving or short-termist, but because it serves absolutely no one, certainly not Labour themselves. The Tories will obviously claim that the commitment to end child poverty by 2020 is meant to embarrass them once they take over, but it would embarrass whoever's in power. Can anyone seriously believe that child poverty in its entirety will be ended at any point in time, let alone in 11 short years, without corners being cut or pledges being subtlety altered? Capitalism itself ensures that there will always be winners and losers; the poor, as the Bible earnestly predicted, will always be with us. It is, like Nick Clegg said while criticising the fiscal responsibility bill with its equivalent pledge of halving the deficit within 4 years, like legislating the pledge to get up in the morning, an empty gesture.

Empty gestures were however the order of the day, as Jenni Russell ruthlessly exposed in her critique of the "pupil and parent guarantees" in the education bill. Politics by magic wand is though increasingly popular: it's the exact same nonsense as "sending a message", whether it's through foreign policy or on drugs, somehow imagining that by raising cannabis back up to Class B the kids will realise that this isn't a safe drug after all and so reject it in favour of those other legal highs, the ones which the government isn't also attempting to criminalise. There was yet another in the Equality Bill, with the public sector having a duty to narrow the gap between rich and poor. Will this be done by cutting the ridiculous salaries which some chief executives on councils and other managerial types take home and "redistributing" them to the lower paid in the public sector? I somehow doubt it.

We should perhaps be grateful for small mercies. While there is an umpteenth crime bill, making it even easier for the police to carry stop and searches, which is simply guaranteed to cut crime at a stroke and have no negative consequences whatsoever, there is no new immigration bill. Missing though was the health bill, which was odd enough to prompt Cameron to ask where it was, even while he was lambasting the government for being addicted to "more big government and spending" and also the housing bill, both of which would have been popular with core Labour supporters. Perhaps they're being saved for the manifesto, but it does show that for Cameron's claim that this was all about electioneering (politics, in a Queen's speech, as Martin Kettle notes, how horrible!) Labour still hasn't brought out the really big guns as yet.

It did however make you wonder what the point of the entire exercise was. How many of these bills will actually make it to the statute book is impossible to know. That there are only 33 legislative days in the Lords though between January and when an election is likely to be called suggests that it won't be many, if any. Everyone in essence was going through the motions, gearing up for the real fight, which is still some distance away. Perhaps the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh could have been given the day off and some random individuals pulled off the street, put in fancy dress and lead in to read the interminable goatskin vellum. It would have been a sight more authentic than Cameron and Brown pretending to talk to each other as they walked into the Lords.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009 

Scum-watch: Well meaning, not bloody shameful.

For those who were perhaps expecting the Sun to allude to the heavy criticism their stories involving Jacqui Janes have received, not just in other quarters but on their own comment facilities, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed with today's follow-up. The closest their report comes to acknowledging that maybe Gordon Brown's letter wasn't more evidence of his "underlying disregard for the military" is in this sentence:

Mr Brown's apology ended 48 hours of uproar since The Sun first revealed the mistakes in his well-meaning but badly handwritten note.

Funny, the paper didn't think it was well-meaning yesterday or on Monday. Then it was "bloody shameful".

Mrs Janes incidentally has been persuaded, doubtless by the Sun itself, to make clear that her intentions were the very best:

Jacqui also set the record straight on her contact with The Sun and her recording of the PM's phone call, in which she berated him over troop and helicopter shortages.

Mum-of-six Jacqui, 47, said: "I released the tape because I wanted people to know what he really said to me, not what Downing Street put out.

"I also want to make clear that I didn't take a penny in payment for interviews with The Sun."

Jacqui said she contacted The Sun because the paper backs Britain's Forces, adding: "It had nothing to do with politics."


Except the paper turned it into politics, whether Janes wanted them to or not. On any grounds, that's exploitation of a grieving person.

As for an editorial comment, the only thing which it offers today is a typically lachrymose, jingoistic and unfeeling demand that everyone remembers. Gordon Brown will presumably unfairly cop it again once this whole incident slips down the memory hole.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009 

Scum-watch: How to lose friends and alienate people.

How do you then follow up one of the most petty, vindictive and downright counter-productive attacks on a politician in recent times? The obvious answer, it seems, is to be both even more cynical and underhand than you've already been: wait for the politician, alerted to your news story, to phone the slighted mother to apologise and then get her to record it so you can reproduce the thing in full on your website.

To be fair when the Sun clearly doesn't deserve it, Mrs Janes' claim that she recorded it on the spur of the moment with a friend's BlackBerry could be true. In any case, whether they were personally involved in the recording of the conversation between Gordon Brown and Mrs Janes or not, they must have realised that this was taking the story to a whole other level. It's one thing after all to complain about what you consider to be an insensitive and insulting letter, or indeed to do the equivalent of a Sharron Storer, confronting a politician on the spur of the moment in front of watching television cameras; it's quite another to effectively ambush someone who is quite clearly mortified at the damage he thinks he has done and then to use it against him as part of a campaign.

The transcript of the conversation between Brown and Janes does not make for easy reading. Janes is convinced that her son's life could have been saved if there were more helicopters available, a view she is fully entitled to, but not one that she can actually prove, or be proved without a full coroner's report, which will probably take years considering the current backlog (indeed, we now know that a helicopter was sent after the explosion which ultimately killed Janes). Brown goes out of his way to not argue with her without agreeing with her, and as before, is clearly desperately wishing he wasn't having the conversation. This isn't because he can't face up to the consequences of what he is asking the army to do for him, which clearly affects him hugely, but almost certainly because he knows there is almost nothing he can say that will placate a grieving mother, nor can he think of it while actually in conversation with her. Time, while a healer, also allows for far greater consideration and with it, eloquence, which the prime minister displayed at today's press conference. If he had said during the phone call what he did today to the media, it might just have satisfied Mrs Janes that little bit more. As it was, Brown was right to disagree when she claimed there were 25 spelling mistakes (there were 4 or 5 at most) and that he had spelt both her name and her son's name wrong (unclear on the family name, while he did get his name right, if scruffily). Probably the most instructive lines of all though come towards the end:

GB: Whatever information you've been given, that is not correct. But I don't want to interact in a political debate about this...

JJ: No that's fine. Nor do I.


Whether Mrs Janes did or not at the time, or still does, as a result of handing the Sun the conversation this has become a political debate. As the Heresiarch correctly points out, this isn't about the letter. This is about the fact she has lost her son, with the letter simply being used as a vehicle for her anguish. It just so happens that her belief that the military are being underfunded and betrayed by the politicians is exactly the same one which the Sun holds, or at least pretends to hold. Grief is the motivator, and while money might well have changed hands between the paper and the Mrs Janes, the real issue here is both the exploitation of Mrs Janes for political and personal gain and the low and dirty methods used. Did the prime minister after all imagine that what he must have thought was a confidential and private phone call would be recorded and reproduced in a newspaper, to be used, as yesterday's Sun editorial put it, as evidence of his "underlying disregard for the military"?

If that was the Sun's intention, then it seems to have backfired spectacularly. Yesterday the consensus, across the political spectrum, seemed to be that this was an unpleasant non-story, with some feeling sympathy for Brown. Today that appears to have turned to overwhelming distaste at the reproduction of the conversation, and with even more defending the prime minister even while disliking the man and his policies. Most dangerously for the Sun itself, its own readers at least on the website also seem to be in the majority taking Brown's side, with some even taking pot shots at Mrs Janes herself. This is especially intriguing, as this is hardly the first time the Sun has used grieving parents to demand political change, without them being attacked in the fashion to which Mrs Janes has been by some. Partially this is because of the view of some that those who choose to join the army know the risks of the "job", but it's also because while Sun readers often favour the draconian policies on crime which the paper espouses, they are far more sceptical on Afghanistan, despite the paper's complete support for the war.

Furthermore, the paper's own journalists seem unsure of the attack on Brown which they've launched. The Graun claims that Tom Newton Dunn, the new political editor, having previously been the paper's defence correspondent, wanted the story to put more emphasis on Brown's eyesight with its impact on his handwriting, despite him supposedly being the man who wrote the original report. Even more significant is that Murdoch himself, while obviously supporting the change of support from Labour to the Conservatives, apparently "regrets" it. If he objects to the highly personal turn the criticism has taken, new editor Dominic Mohan will swiftly know about it. It's also curious that despite the high profile the story has taken, that there was no editorial comment today on the interview.

The biggest indictment of the Sun's story though is not just that it has undermined the claim that Brown has "underlying disregard" for the military, that it has so misread the mood of its own readers that they have came out in sympathy with him, but that it has actually deflected the debate away from government strategy on Afghanistan onto the personal and, ultimately, the newspaper itself. This is, as Labour themselves have argued, been a campaign to damage the prime minister, and an unfair one at that. David Cameron might well be concerned with just what kind of partner he has jumped into bed with.

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Monday, November 09, 2009 

It's called the Scum for a reason.

On Saturday, the Sun ran a leader attacking Gordon Brown for having the temerity to answer a question about The X Factor given to him during an interview on a Manchester radio station. According to a newspaper which that day led on, err, The X Factor, he should be dedicating his "every waking moment" to the fate of our forces out in Afghanistan. He ought to be, according to the leader writer, be "leading the way". This is without mentioning the completely fatuous argument the paper made by comparing the number of hits on Google when searching for "Gordon Brown and Afghanistan" and "Gordon Brown and Michael Jackson". Not that it'll be doing so again, considering Mr Murdoch is pondering "banning" Google.

Two days later, and the paper attacks Gordon Brown for err, dedicating his "every waking moment" to the fate of our forces out in Afghanistan. Not only did Brown "fail to bow" at the Cenotaph, quite clearly a concious snub to Our Boys, but he also sent a "bloody shameful" letter to Jacqui Janes, mother of Jamie Janes, killed on October the 5th in Afghanistan. Brown's crime was to write it in his almost illegible handwriting, as well as possibly mistaking their surname for James instead of Janes (it isn't clear whether Brown has written James instead of Janes; his n and m look very similar) and to make a number of spelling mistakes. According to Mrs Janes, who has naturally given the Sun an exclusive video interview, she was so angered by the letter she threw it across the room and burst into tears:

"I re-read it later. He said, 'I know words can offer little comfort'. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer NO comfort.

"It was an insult to Jamie and all the good men and women who have died out there. How low a priority was my son that he could send me that disgraceful, hastily-scrawled insult of a letter?

"He finished by asking if there was any way he could help.

"One thing he can do is never, ever, send a letter out like that to another dead soldier's family. Type it or get someone to check it. And get the name right."


Of course, once she had finished chucking it across the room, she got on the phone to the Sun. In fact, there's nothing to suggest that the letter was hastily-scrawled: Brown's handwriting is simply that bad. As someone whose handwriting is also close to being illegible unless I write out every letter individually, which makes you look even more like a child, and who also has a surname which is very easily misspelled, which while annoying is hardly the end of the world, it's difficult not to have some sympathy for Brown. Clearly he wants the letter to have the personal touch, something that a word processed expression of condolences wouldn't have, and just what do you say to the parent of someone who's just lost their son in a war you sent him to fight without slipping into the obvious, the clichéd and the torturous? Yes, he should have perhaps been more careful with the spelling and especially with the names, but has it really come to the point where we think that personal letters written with the very best of intentions are acceptable material to attack the prime minister with?

The Sun it seems, having up until very recently having supported the prime minister, even if it didn't blow smoke up his backside like it did his predecessor, has decided to attack Brown over the very trivial things it was alarmed he was involving himself in. Not being able to disagree with him over policy on Afghanistan, on which he only fails to be as gung-ho as they are, they've decided that such perceived slights are "more evidence of Mr Brown's underlying disregard for the military". After all, nothing quite says you disregard the military like not acting like a hunchback in front of the Cenotaph, or err, writing a personal letter to the bereaved. This also ties in with, according to the Sun, his "half-hearted attitude to the war in Afghanistan". This half-hearted attitude involves his increasing the number of troops by 500, and yet another speech last Friday on just why we're in the country. His speech did have a contradiction at its heart, but the reason for this is that Brown is trying to please everyone: he has no intention of getting us out, but knows as public opinion turns against the war and against the corrupt Karzai government, he has to put down some "conditions" for their continued presence, even if they're false ones. If Brown is being half-hearted, then so too is President Obama, still undecided on whether to increase the US troop numbers by 40,000, as requested by the army. Seeing as we rely on the Americans, we're waiting on them as much as everyone else is.

Even by the Sun's complete lack of any standards, this must rank as one of the lowest attacks to be launched on a politician in recent times. Not only is it without any foundation whatsoever, but the newspaper seems to think it's perfectly acceptable to use an individual, in this instance a grieving mother, to attack someone for their own ends, someone whom as pointed out above up until a month ago they were giving their nominal support to. As Mr Eugenides also suggests, it says more about that person that her first instinct on getting the letter was to phone the Sun to complain about the handwriting than it does about the person who took the time to write it. Clearly, we've now gone beyond the point where Brown will be attacked by the Sun on the virtue of his actual policies, it's now "bucket of shit" time, where anything and everything that he does which they decide is wrong will be pointed out and complained about. Going by the Sun's past record when it comes to smearing Labour politicians, the election campaign coming up could be quite something.

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Friday, October 30, 2009 

That's how the cookie crumbles.

That Gordon Brown, eh? So indecisive that he can't even decide what his favourite biscuit is, even though he was asked twelve times? Indicative of his entire approach to government, right? Dithering and prevaricating and procrastinating while our metaphorical Rome burns, unable to take charge and leaving everybody incensed with his behaviour?

Well, surprise surprise, it turns out that the now infamous question posed by the hardnosed politicos over at Mumsnet was never actually given to Brown to answer, although Brown himself said at the time he had "missed" the question. In a blog posted on the site, an explanation behind how he "missed" it is given:

Now it’s not often we find ourselves feeling sorry for politicians but we have to admit to feeling more than a pang of sympathy for the PM over the past few weeks. Because the truth is that Gordon Brown didn’t follow the live chat on the screen directly - he answered the questions grouped and fed to him by MNHQ and his advisers. He didn’t avoid the biscuit question because it didn’t cross his path (as we said on Radio 5 on the day, in fact).

Why did we do it that way? Well, there were so many questions and they were coming in thick and fast on every subject under the sun, so we reasoned that the most effective way of getting as much ground covered as possible was to group them together for him, rather than him answering random ones that he happened to notice.

We had a pile as long as your arm on subjects ranging from climate change to childcare vouchers to treatment of asylum seekers. After he’d covered a question he would immediately demand, “What next?” Occasionally, we’d squeeze in a light-hearted one - for example, about what movies he wanted to see - but we were conscious of not merely focusing on frivolities. Fun as biscuits are, access to the Prime Minister is precious and we would have hated to waste time on Rich Tea Fingers at the expense of miscarriage or school starting age. Plus, of course, we’d rather not be seen as a soft touch in the GMTV sofa mould.


Why Downing Street themselves didn't point this fact out more forcefully is easy to explain - they knew they wouldn't be listened to and that if they did they themselves would have been accused of focusing on trivia. It must though have been absolutely infuriating for all involved for this nonsense to be used to attack both Brown and the government, as both the Times and Sunday Times even included mentions to it in leader columns, while the Mail, typically, suggested his failure to make up his mind was because he was "apparently unable to decide what the politically correct answer ought to be".

As the astute writer behind the blog on Mumsnet points out, this is one of those supposedly frivolous things that can actually colour minds more significantly than an actual decision or policy might. It was also manna from heaven for those who have already decided that Brown is a ditherer, even though this rather contradicts his supposed Stalinist ruthlessness that others have fingered him with having:

In fact the real message of Biscuitgate is that whatever you do or say as a Prime Minister can and will be woven into any commentator’s particular beef or agenda, in order to prove their point. Who’d be a politician, eh?

Well, indeed. Mumsnet does however some other pertinent criticism of the prime minister and his performance at the session:

That’s not to say Biscuitgate didn’t reveal something about the Prime Minister. We strongly suspect that Mumsnetters resorted to asking about biscuits repeatedly towards the end of the chat because they were frustrated at being fed chunks of official policy rather than being engaged with directly. It’s hard, of course, to keep up with the banter on a board like ours - particularly if you’re not reading the actual chat and you’re a Mumsnet virgin.

But the truth is it has come more naturally to other politicians to speak to and emotionally connect with Mumsnetters. That, I think, is a fair criticism of Gordon Brown, as is a a certain brusqueness, intermittently displayed during his visit. What is unfair is that Biscuitgate proves just how indecisive or insincere Gordon Brown is - he might be, of course - what do I know? But there was absolutely nothing he did during his visit to Mumsnet Towers to suggest it.


Or perhaps they simply had ran out of other things to ask? That Brown was brusque or short though does fit with some other pictures painted of the man: he probably didn't want to be there or thought he could make better uses of his time. After all, should the prime minister himself really be giving interviews to places like Mumsnet? New media might be great and all, but wouldn't appearing on say, 5 Live and answering callers as Brown has also done in the past, and reasonably well from memory, be both more representative and reach far more people? Wouldn't a health or family minister be a better fit and still able to answer other questions, if perhaps with not the same authority? Brown might deserve a lot of things, and you can certainly suggest he brought it on himself, but like with John Major and tucking his shirt into his underpants, sometimes the most ludicrous things stick while much else gets forgotten.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009 

The real reason for the Blair presidency.

We've heard a lot recently about self-inflicted harm and acts of suicide, mainly in connection with the Royal Mail, yet much the same could be said about the curious, perplexing campaign springing up for Tony Blair to be the first permanent president of the European Council. The power and prestige of the post is probably being exaggerated, as Nosemonkey argues, yet it's apparent it's not so much the job and the work involved but the title and impression which the person whom lands it will send.

The first, resounding and most bamboozling question which it raises is just what damaging, horrendous and career ending secret information Blair has on Gordon Brown. Despite everything we've been told about Brown's ever deteriorating relationship with Blair, he is still apparently "lobbying discreetly" for Blair to get the job. At times Brown and Blair apparently didn't talk; at the lowest point, when Brown felt that Blair had reneged again on his promise to hand over the reins, he told him that he would never believe a word he said again. A smart principle perhaps when dealing with someone as notoriously slippery as the "pretty straight kind of guy", but not one which is conducive to running a government. Why, after everything, would Brown now still think that he'd be the best man for the job? While Brown has always preferred the United States to Europe, even if unlike Blair it hasn't loved him back, he has never given the impression of wanting the EU to actively fail or to sabotage it from within. Perhaps Brown is envious at how, again despite everything, Blair has so successfully turned his hand from leader into money-maker, something which you doubt Brown when he exits Downing Street will emulate. Helping him get the job of EU president will for two and a half years at least severely undermine his earning power, even if when you're earning £12 million a year you can easily afford to take a couple of years "off". We're left with wondering just what this information Blair must have is. How terrible could it be that you have to support someone for a job who you so actively loathe?

Just as mysterious but for the opposite reason is the Conservative opposition to Blair gaining the post. Cameron and friends are still supposedly hoping that the Czech president will find a way to delay signing the Lisbon treaty, its last hurdle now that Ireland's voters were persuaded to change their mind and Poland's ratification, leaving them enough time to come to power and hold a referendum. Not because Cameron himself is viscerally Eurosceptic, but mainly become the Tory base and Rupert Murdoch demand it. Far more likely though is that the Czech president stops procrastinating and that Lisbon comes into effect long before the Tories get their shot at power, and that the other Tory promise to "not let matters rest" turns out to be as much froth as many of the other plans. How better then to undermine an organisation and institution you regard as bad for the country than by ensuring that someone as unpopular in this country and controversial elsewhere as Blair becomes its figurehead? Strangely then, despite joking about how bad it would make Brown look, William Hague supposedly would only allow Blair to become president over "his dead body". Cameron now thinks much the same, although he opposes the EU having a president, and that if it did, it should be someone who can chair meetings rather than grandstand on a global stage. This doesn't seem to be based on personal dislike for Blair: after all, Cameron was the person who made his front bench raise in applause for Blair has he left and who has actively based his entire persona on the great man. Could it be that, despite the Heresiarch's mocking, Cameron genuinely does fear being upstaged by Blair, or rather that he is much more afraid of a Europe which he would be far more inclined to agree with than would otherwise be the case? Then there's the Rupert Murdoch factor again: Blair as EU president might be someone who Murdoch would be far less likely to ceaselessly attack. Would a Blair presidency help somewhat with a reconciliation, something Cameron would most certainly not want to happen?

Strangest of all though is the apparent support of those who genuinely do believe in the European Union. The Guardian is concerned only by the fact that Tony Blair might be a war criminal; otherwise he would be the most obvious and easily the most qualified candidate. The European Union has never exactly been the most democratic of institutions, and the decision on who will become the president is certainly not with the European electorate as a whole but instead with the European council's 27 members, yet you thought even they might have seen the downsides of Blair becoming president. There are after all not many convicted criminals or potential criminals in charge of democratic nations, Italy being a notable exception, but even Mr Berlusconi, despite his involvement with the Iraq war, is only likely to be a small player in any eventual prosecution of both Bush and Blair for their role in a war of aggression, the "supreme international crime". Electing as your global representative someone who has never shown a moment's regret or pause and who declares that only God can be his judge is a difficult proposition to get your head round. David Miliband's argument was that Europe needs someone who can stop traffic in global capitals, although he probably didn't mean that those stopping the traffic would be the police in order to try to arrest him. Bush after all never showed any inclination to travel, which is probably just as well, and Blair, although he has been globe-trotting, is probably still wary of nations which could attempt to have him charged with some sort of offence. He probably couldn't get anywhere much safer than Israel, as the current representative of the Quartet, which must suit him down to the ground.

In fact, I think I might have alighted on the real reason why Sarkozy and Merkel think Blair might be the right man for the job. Nothing would seem more calculated to further ostracise the EU from this country, where probably the only person equally as unpopular as Blair is Brown himself. Why not kill two birds with one stone? Piss off Brown even if he's lobbying for it, as it must piss him off, and help start the formal exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, as the nation's real leader, that man RM again, has long wanted. What could possibly go wrong?

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Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

Scum-watch: Don't know what you've got till it's gone.

They must have known it was coming, but the defection of the Sun back to the Tories after 12 years of "supporting" Labour has still quite clearly shook Labour. While the paper's representatives claim that it was yesterday's speech that finally confirmed they could no longer support the party, it's been obvious that the switch has been coming ever since last year's Conservative conference, when it gave David Cameron the sort of positive coverage he must have dreamed of. Since then the paper has been overwhelmingly anti-Labour without necessarily being anti-Brown. Some of the signs have been slight: calling Cameron "prime minister" when he was invited onto the paper's recently launched piss-poor online radio show was one, but the demand for an immediate general election earlier in the year was far less guarded.

The final nail in Brown's coffin was more than likely David Cameron's decision during his speech on quangos to focus almost solely on Ofcom, the regulator which is currently investigating whether Sky has an unfair stranglehold on the pay-TV market. With Cameron's culture secretary making menacing noises towards the BBC, which the Murdochs have all but declared war on due to the fact that their news websites simply can't compete with the far superior corporation offerings, it's clear that the Murdochs can now trust Cameron not to hurt their businesses just as they once trusted Tony Blair not to. That's the first condition of Murdochian support filled; the second is that you're going to win, and few are willing to bet anything other than a Conservative victory come next year.

It's still curious then that the paper has come out so decisively for the Tories when there is still plenty of time for anything to happen. The paper, after all, didn't swap sides until March in 97, when the Labour victory was already in the bag. As unlikely as it currently seems that there could yet be a fourth Labour term, it's not the first time that Murdoch's papers have got it wrong recently: the New York Post endorsed McCain last year. As a comfort, it's unlikely to warm the hearts of the Labour leadership.

More likely to do so is that the Sun is no longer the behemoth that it once was. While gaining the support of the Sun has always been second to gaining the support of Rupert Murdoch, the other major reason why Blair and Alastair Campbell entered into the original pact with the devil was, as Campbell said himself, he was never going to allow the Labour leader's head to be in a light-bulb on the front page on voting day again. While actual support for a political party from a newspaper on voting day has little to no impact whatsoever on the votes cast, it was the constant demonisation, undermining and ridicule which Kinnock was subject to, especially in the tabloid press, that helped to ensure he never became prime minister. The key difference today is that the Sun is no longer the attack dog it once was; while the paper ostensibly supported the Tories up until March 97, Kelvin MacKenzie famously told John Major after Black Wednesday that he had a bucket of shit and that the next morning he was going to pour it all over his head. MacKenzie might still be a columnist, and the likes of Bob Ainsworth might now be the person having a bucket of shit thrown over him repeatedly, but unlike back in 97, the media has now diversified to such an extent that the paper doesn't have the hold it once did. If anything, the paper has overplayed both its hand and its influence: it is still feared and respected mainly because of its former reputation rather than because of what it currently is.

One of the many repeated myths spouted today by those who deal in clichés is that the Sun follows its readers rather than getting its readers to follow it. Perhaps at times they get surprised by the strength of reaction, but this is a newspaper that wraps itself in what it thinks its readers want as defence against criticism, as a reassurance that it's what they want, and finally to tell them that because they're saying they want it, then it must be true. If anything the Sun is probably one of those newspapers which has the least loyal readership: the circulation of the broads, while falling, has not changed hugely since the advent of the internet; the tabloids, with the exception of the Mail and the Daily Star, have seen theirs fall massively. At one point the Sun dropped below the 3 million sales mark, triggering an almost panic-stricken price cut. Even with its lower circulation, the Daily Mail now almost certainly sets the agenda far more often than the Sun does.

This didn't of course stop the love affair between Blair and the paper, which remained to the advantage of both. For Blair, always determined to annoy the left of his party while reaching out to the cherished middle Britain, it served a double purpose. For the paper, it meant exclusives of even the most banal significance: Piers Morgan in his diaries was furious on a number of occasions about the access which the Sun got while the Mirror was shut out, most famously when someone (probably Cherie herself) told Rebekah Wade that the Blairs were having another baby, a story which Morgan believed was to be a Mirror exclusive. It meant obscene cooperation between the two, including policy stitch-ups involving asylum seekers. While New Labour and the Sun's politics may not look close at first examination, both shared, indeed share a contempt for civil liberties and an unaccountable lust for social authoritarianism, even if Blair could never come close to putting the paper's demands into action. On foreign policy, the two were inseparable: the Sun has always believed that might is right, and the fact that Blair dressed up his wars in the language of "liberal interventionism" only made them even more attractive.

Arguably, there have only been two occasions when Labour genuinely needed the support of the Murdoch press. Without the unstinting loyalty of all Murdoch's organs between the Iraq war and up to the end of the Hutton inquiry, there was still a possibility that Blair could have been forced out. In 2005 the paper all but abandoned the party except over Blair's wars. The real reason why remains Murdoch's certainty that the war was going to lead to oil at $20 a barrel, something that has not even come close to reality. The other occasion, is, well, now. Just when the party needs support, it loses it. This was the especially brutal part of the Sun's sudden but long in coming decision, knowing full well that it was not just kicking someone while they were down, it was the equivalent of a desecration of a corpse. Any hope that there might be the slightest boost from Brown's speech has been neutralised. David Cameron really must be delighted with the outcome, and again, this only highlights exactly why he's installed Andy Coulson as his very own Alastair Campbell.

As for the Sun's actual supposed reasons and dossier of "Labour failure", they're mostly so flimsy as to be not even worth bothering with. The dossier puts together often completely irrelevant data, and when it doesn't, it naturally cherry picks the information it relies on. On justice the paper absurdly highlights the cost of legal aid, as if the giving those who can't afford it access to briefs was a bad thing. It highlights the rise in alcohol tax receipts since 97 without pointing out this might be something to do with err, the rise in tax on it and not just increased sales. It compares the spending on police with the rise in deaths by stabbings, without mentioning that last year saw the lowest number of murders since the 80s. It also uses the 2007 figures rather than the 2008 ones, which saw a fall from 270 fatal stabbings to 252. Their data even directly contradicts some of the claims made in the leader, such as here:

But they FAILED on law and order, their mantra "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" becoming a national joke. Knife murders are soaring.

Their dossier shows that knife murders between 2006 and 2007 soared by, err, 1. In 2005 they were down to 219, then leapt in 2006 to 269, only two more than there were in 2002. As pointed out above, fatal stabbings were down to 252 in 2008, hence proving the editorial completely wrong. The weapon used should be irrelevant: it's that there are murders, not that one particular weapon is used. The idiocy continues:

Smirking criminals routinely walk free in the name of political correctness, while decent people live in a virtual police state of snooping cameras and petty officials empowered to spy and to punish.

The idea that criminals walk free in the name of political correctness is so ludicrous as to be not worth dealing with, while if there is a virtual police state, it was the Sun that helped create it. When has it ever opposed more CCTV cameras or more state powers? Answer: never.

Most disgracefully of all, Labour FAILED our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving them to die through chronic under-funding and the shambolic leadership of dismal Defence Secretaries like Bob Ainsworth.

Again, their dossier shows that spending on defence has risen year on year. The real people who failed our troops in Iraq were those who demanded they be sent in in the first place, but the Sun has never pointed its finger at itself. It wasn't those fighting them that left them to die, but then it also clearly wasn't Baby P's parents that killed him. It was instead the system:

Billions blown employing a useless layer of public service middle-managers like those who condemned Baby P to die.

Everything about this leader is backward looking, trying to turn the country back to halcyon days which never existed. Murdoch, despite his Australian-American citizenship, is a nationalist wherever his newspapers are. Loyal in China, neo-conservative in America and anti-Europe here, he somehow imagines that if only we were to spend more on defence and give the troops what they "need", they'd instantly "win". This doesn't of course apply to anyone else, but this is the kind of outlook we're dealing with. The leader concludes with:

If elected, Cameron must use the same energy and determination with which he reinvigorated the Tory Party to breathe new life into Britain.

That means genuine, radical change to encourage self-improvers, not wasting time on internal party wrangling or pandering to the forces of political correctness. It also means an honesty and transparency of Government that we have not seen for years.

We are still a great people and, put to the test, will respond to the challenges we face.

The Sun believes - and prays - that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.

Sub-Churchillian jingoism which turns the stomach. This is the relationship which Labour is crying and angry about losing today, to such an extent that it seems to have almost made Gordon Brown walk out on an interview. Labour never needed the Sun, but now it doesn't know what it had.

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