Obsolete

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tax cuts and yet more almost irrelevant legislation.

For what most of the press have presented as a panic measure, yesterday's move by Alistair Darling, or rather Gordon Brown skilfully manipulating the chancellor's strings, to raise the personal allowance by £600 to £6,035, a tax cut in effect worth £2.7bn, was reasonably inspired and probably the best option to mostly end the 10p tax cut debacle. It was what plenty have been arguing for all along: a honest, transparent and simple move that takes more of the working poor out of paying tax altogether, whilst not penalising middle earners at the same time. This was the opposite of what Brown, the supposed champion of anti-poverty measures had done in his last budget, the about-turn performed by his weak puppet. If this is the sort of thing that weak chancellors do, then we could do with more of them.

This isn't to forget about the downsides of the move. Firstly it does to a degree show the government panicking over the possibility of losing the Crewe by-election, but it also shows them genuinely listening to people's concerns, as Brown and others less than convincingly promised. More important though was compensating those who have lost out who should never have done in the first place, and if it just so happens to be done prior to a by-election which has become almost a referendum on Brown's stewardship of the country, then so be it. Secondly is that it sadly won't be fully compensating everyone that did lose out, with up to 1.1 million only getting half back. More must be done for them come the pre-budget statement in the autumn, but the issue does now seem to have been firmly closed, something that previous attempts at buying off both the rebels and the country at large had failed to do. Thirdly it puts the government perilously close to breaking its 40% of GDP borrowing rule, the tax cut coming as it does through lending, but almost any other means of compensating would have been either seen through for the con it was, left many still feeling short-changed even if they hadn't been or taken the best part of two years to come through, something entirely unacceptable. It has the added bonus for Labour of shooting the Tories' faux-plight for those who lost out under original change stone-dead, with Cameron always making clear that he would make no promises to restore the 10p tax band. Darling hasn't done that either, but he's done something better that the Tories at no time suggested.

If that was part one of the planned fightback, then part two was today's announcement of the draft Queen's speech, and understandably it had none of the dramatic effect or chutzpah of yesterday's gamble. Instead we have an almost congealed gloop of left-over, stolen or back of the fag packet style bills that hardly present a coherent programme of government. That is to be somewhat expected half-way through a parliament, but when it's also meant to be kick-starting Labour's hopes of getting re-elected in two years' time, it was mostly a squib of the damp variety.

One of Labour's worst tendencies has been to legislate, legislate, legislate and reform, reform, reform then think of the consequences later. We can see this in the continuing attempt to force through longer detention without charge, the use of various parts of Home Office legislation for purposes which they were not intended, the hospitals and schools sick to the back teeth of new initiatives when they haven't gotten used to the last one, and most egregiously, the banning of demonstrating within a mile of parliament, now due to be repealed in the latest constitutional renewal bill. The best political idea of recent years was the Liberal Democrats' pledge to have a bonfire of the very worst illiberal legislation placed on the statute books, and both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have been making the same argument again today on the quantity rather than the quality of new bills. Their list at the time of what to repeal would still be a great start today, although you can also add the now tragically passed "extreme pornography" sections of the last crime bill to the things to burn.

In lieu of that happening, it has to be said that most of the bills at least have their heart somewhere in the right place. The problem with this pre-Queen's speech announcement is that at best we're given a very shady outline of what's actually going to be in the legislation once it reaches parliament, but on what we know the banking reform and saving gateway bills are steps in the right direction which seem unlikely to come across many hurdles. Of more concern and contentious are bound to be the equality bill, especially the part concerning the all-women shortlists which, despite having the right intention are not the way to achieve equality in parliament; the welfare reform bill, where it's not clear whether the government is "borrowing" the Conservatives idea of needlessly and wastefully re-assessing everyone on incapacity benefit but where they are forcing the long-term unemployed onto "training courses" they have most likely already taken; the policing and crime reduction bill which will introduce yet more crackdowns on "anti-social behaviour", binge-drinking and also "cut red tape", which might well mean the scrapping of the current stop and search mechanism; the Citizenship, immigration and borders bill which will likely toughen still further the steps towards citizenship; the communications data bill, introducing the EU's intrusive demands on data retention on ISPs and the like; and the coroners and death certification bill, where it's still not clear whether the government will relent on its much criticised changes to the coroner's system which mean the Home Secretary can order "sensitive" inquests to be held without a jury.

While this programme might have been intended to add detail to yesterday's decisiveness, it's certainly done nothing to curtail the Tories' spirits, and their response has been emblematic of that. Why, the government is so desperate that it's taking up to 12 of our ideas and putting them to good use was the cry from the opposition benches, and it's one that's not wholly unfounded. While such populist ideas as directly elected representatives that deal with the police can either work well or fail abysmally, there's little here that's immediately going to be opposed on ideological grounds alone, although the pledge to give agency workers the same rights as regular ones, which again needs to be fully fleshed out, might have the Tories pause for thought. There's the saving gateway bill and the social housing plan for government to put up equal amounts as the potential buyer to appeal to the Labour left, but the rest seems almost devoid of colour, limp, lifeless, dull and decent, as someone else suggests.

Some will argue perceptively that that's exactly what Labour needs to do at the moment, to abandon the high risk strategy of eye-catching new initiatives which the Blair years foisted on us time after time, and just concentrate on governing effectively and competently. The other side to the coin is that also suggests a government running on empty, with nothing new to offer, while the increasingly confident opposition only seems to building on its gains. As usual, the reality is split down the middle, with a party that neither knows whether to go all-out or to just carry on. It seems unlikely in the long-run that this latest programme will make any great difference: as before, the next election is now the Tories to lose, and with nothing left in either the kitty or the bag, Brown looks just as isolated and lonely as before.

Labels: 10p tax rate, Alistair Darling, draft queen's speech, Gordon Brown, legislation, policy, politics

5/14/2008 11:34:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, May 12, 2008

Brown's bolus of wankers.

In his diaries on the fall of Margaret Thatcher, Alan Clark wrote that she had been brought down by a "bolus of wankers". With her fall, despite their subsequent re-election two years later, the Conservatives descended into the battles and in-fighting, mainly over Europe, which led to the landslide Labour win in 1997.

Any historian will tell you that despite Marx's remarks, history tends not to repeat itself, although it does at times look strangely as if it is. Likewise, although it's difficult to come up with a better collective noun than Clark's for those currently doing their best to knife Gordon Brown when he's at his lowest ebb, it's probably already too late for Labour's chances to revive. Regardless, the money-grubbing being displayed by Cherie Blair, John Prescott and Lord Levy while Frank Field has decided to abandon the pretence of caring about the 10p top rate to just nakedly wield the dagger is doing the kind of damage which the Tories must be rubbing their hands with glee about.

As Michael White writes, much of the "revelations" in the serialisations over the weekend aren't new, or even that interesting. Prescott says that he told Blair to sack Gordon and Gordon to resign and fight him from the backbenches; neither did because as both they and Prescott doubtless knew, to do so would rip the party in half, and when it came down to it, unity was more important than their short-term gain. More damagingly, but not especially shocking were his comments that Brown could "go off like a volcano," and be "frustrating, annoying, bewildering and prickly." Quite unlike Prescott himself of course, the amiable working class lad who didn't do anything to damage the Labour party during his time in office. The real question is why ministers are then dispatched to defend Gordon from such remarks on his temperament: we all know about his moodiness, especially when Blair was coming up with another half-baked, hare-brained policy to throw to the tabloids, so why bother denying it and make Gordon out to be something he isn't? Again, if anything Prescott's memoirs add to the reasons to why Brown was right to feel aggrieved: he confirms that Blair reneged on a number of occasions to promises to stand down.

That ought to put Cherie and her comments on Brown's metaphorical(?) "rattling of No.10's keys over Tony's head" in a different light. Undoubtedly, it's her memoirs, apparently moved forward from their scheduled publishing in October because Cherie delivered her copy early, which isn't an entirely satisfying answer, which have the most potential for damage because she unlike either Prescott or Levy was closest (obviously) to both the prime minister and to Brown. One moment she claims Blair would have gone had Brown been willing to implement his precious reforms; the next she says that Blair was in fact determined to stay on because if he resigned prior to the 2005 election that history would decide he had been forced out because of Iraq. It's either one or the other. Most of the attention though has instead been drawn to the more interesting to the Scum demographic stories of the conception of Leo and subsequent miscarriage, which, almost unbelievably, was then used as the excuse why they weren't going on holiday instead of raising suspicions that something was about to happen in Iraq, a snippet that probably gives you more insight into the Downing Street spin machine than anything in Alastair Campbell's diaries. No one would begrudge Cherie putting her side across after the hysterical press coverage against her, but so far she doesn't actually seems to have done that; rather, she seems to be taken most with defending her husband. The serialisation is being stretched out over a whole week, suggesting it might well be another running sore just at the time when Brown doesn't need one.

The most shameless abuse has undoubtedly came from both Levy and Field, however. Levy appeared on the sofa that Brown had previously sat on last week, when Andrew Marr put across questions that previously might have been felt as below the belt; this week Levy was thrown the softest of balls, allowed once again to make his allegation that it would be "inconceivable" if Brown hadn't known about the dodgy loans, something which he has absolutely no evidence to back up and which is understandably making Downing Street furious. Here's the man who might well have offered "Ks and Ps" and whom the police thought should have been prosecuted, and he's the one currently raking it in despite his already overwhelming wealth and doing his best to disparage seemingly everyone formerly considered a friend.

It's the rehabilitation of Field which has been the most curious. Sacked after only a year, everyone assumes because Brown disagreed with his policies on welfare reform, he's spent the past ten years fulminating about how he's been right and everyone else wrong, becoming increasingly embittered, writing nonsensical, illogical and ignorant articles for CiF, and some thought even close to defecting to the Conservatives, who were starting to seem a more natural home. To his credit he noticed from the start the 10p tax rate debacle, but as the aphorism goes, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. It's one thing to be dignified and persistent in standing up for some of the most vulnerable who have lost out, even if in the past you've advocated being even harsher to some of the even more vulnerable on benefits, it's another to then postulate with apparent glee that your old adversary might shortly be heading for the knacker's yard, and that he should consult those he most loves over whether to continue in the job.

This ramshackle bunch, including Stephen Byers, another Blairite who knows what's best now that he can't tell any more lies about Railtrack, don't have much in common other than that they are almost all either yesterday's men or women, all now sucking the last teat of either infamy or wealth before their "star" wanes completely. If their stories or advice had all come at different times, rather than altogether where it can easily be constructed into a narrative of infighting and blood-letting, then they might have had little real impact. Instead, their collective strength has been to wound Brown just when he needs to be seen as recovering. Few people care whether Brown is "frustrating" or liable to "go off like a volcano" as long as he can be seen to be both competent, in control and strong. At the moment both he and those around them appear to be in flux, unable to move on while the vultures seem to be getting ever closer. This is half the reason why Cameron is ahead on every rating rather than because of any real huge difference between the two.

For Brown, it is something approaching a tragedy. As even Blair said, it was never ignoble to want the top job, even if it is slightly abnormal. It isn't, as his detractors state, that he's waited all this time and when he's finally got there he's found he's not up to the job; it's rather than he was both left waiting too long and that the tide itself has turned. He has made mistakes, on the 10p rate, not nationalising Northern Rock sooner and on the election that never was, but let's be sensible for half a second here: they don't even begin to compare with Blair's, especially the one which will now never leave either him or us alone for a long time to come. Brown himself noted that chancellors either failed or they got out in time, and it seems that for him it's been that he hasn't got out in time as prime minister itself. He most definitely has plenty to answer for, but his own bolus of wankers have even more to explain.

Labels: Alan Clark, bolus of wankers, Cherie Blair, death of Labour, Frank Field, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, local elections aftermath, Lord Levy, politics

5/12/2008 09:44:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Labour's "relaunch" and what it ought to do.

Never fear Labour supporters, here's the latest messiah to solve all the party's problems in one fall swoop:

Purnell will declare today that Labour can still beat the Tories in the fight against poverty because it is willing to stump up the money and is committed to tax credits.
"Both their goal and their policies are just aspirations," Purnell will say.
Mocking the Conservatives' approach, he will say: "It would be nice to reduce child poverty. It would be nice to put more money into the working tax credit. But nice isn't good enough. Until they pass the test of hardening their commitment and costing their policy, they cannot claim to be committed to ending child poverty."

Ah, yes, child poverty. It's strange how this government's modest redistribution, so modest that it may have lifted some children out of poverty but has done nothing whatsoever to alter overall inequality, only gets mentioned when the going gets really tough. It screams of desperation, of someone begging their lover not to walk out the door, bumbling, "but, but, look at all we've done for the poor kids!" In any case, Labour's pledge to end child poverty is just as much an aspiration as the Conservatives' policy announcements are: it's simply unattainable and completely unrealistic without far more targeted help being provided, and Labour doesn't have either the will or the funds to do it with. The less said about tax credits, the most hopeless and over-egged panacea of all time, the better.

The whole Grauniad article on Purnell's rallying-cry is about as accurate a distillation as you could get of where Labour is still getting it hopelessly wrong. It treats us first to what this fight-back amounts to:

· An intensification of the government's implementation of the Australian-style points-based system which will tighten the criteria for foreign workers hoping to take up skilled jobs in Britain. Liam Byrne, the immigration minister, will attempt to outflank the Tories by saying that British jobseekers will "get the first crack of the whip", while only those foreign workers needed - and no more - will be allowed entry.
· A £78m boost for schools in disadvantaged areas of Greater Manchester and the Black Country to target funds at those where fewer than 30% of the pupils achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths.
· Senior Labour MPs said one of Gordon Brown's most serious embarrassments - his failure to appoint a general secretary of the Labour party - would be resolved. Ray Collins, a senior figure in the Transport and General Workers' section of the Unite union, is expected to be appointed after winning the support of Brown, who sees him as a unifying figure.

This is what it all adds up to then: flagellating the darkies a little harder for the benefit of the tabloids, parachuting in cash to schools where the Labour vote mostly held up, and err, appointing a new general secretary of the party itself. It's going to knock them bandy!

Just to add to the fun, there's Ed Balls with his own detailed analysis:

Ed Balls, the schools secretary, yesterday signalled a tougher approach by the government when he pledged to dissect Tory policies line by line now that David Cameron is seen as the prime minister in waiting.
"In every area we will challenge and scrutinise the Conservative position and expose their determination to protect excellence for the few and oppose our reforms to deliver excellence and opportunity for all," he said.

There's the whole problem in a nutshell. Labour is so concerned by what the Tories are doing that it's forgotten that it ought to be selling itself and developing new policies instead of "dissecting" the opposition's line by line. You weren't voted into power to attack and stalk the opposition; you were voted in to govern. Forget what they're doing and get on with showing why you deserve to remain in government, and you don't when you come up with such specious claptrap as claiming that your reforms have delivered excellence and opportunity for all when they clearly have not. There couldn't be a better example than Lord Darzi and Labour's apparent desire for the all-singing and all-dancing polyclinics: here's the party that claims it wants to engender choice while doing away with local GP services with almost no consultation whatsoever, leaving the Tories with the biggest open goal ever. Labour doesn't just want to shut your post office, they want to shut your GP surgery and possibly even your hospital too! It might not be entirely true, but it hits home.

It's really come to something when it's Charles Clarke of all people who is talking the most sense:

In his article, Clarke suggested a number of policy modifications, including a resolution of the 10p tax debacle, abandoning the extension of detention without trail [sic] to 42 days (intended for terrorism suspects), accepting House of Lords proposals on women's pensions, and suspending the "over-bureaucratic" review of post offices.

The problem with abandoning 42 days now is that it makes Gordon Brown look even weaker. 42 days is his initiative, borne of his apparent determination to be just as "tough on terror" as Blair was, just at the moment that the majority of the right-wing press has decided that such methods are counter-productive, the Sun being around the only newspaper which still supports the measure. If it was meant to show the Tories as being soft or to wrong-foot them, then it's failed miserably, especially as it seems that unless Brown wants to be defeated he'll need to drop the plans completely, concessions being unacceptable when it will still mean the prospect of those entirely innocent being held at the whim of the police for over a month. The Conservatives don't look weak; their arguments have held up while his have been left wanting, even if the public itself is supportive.

Clarke doesn't have a monopoly on getting it mostly right, however:

Looking ahead to May 22's key Crewe and Nantwich byelection, Clarke said that Labour's "all-consuming priority" should be to ensure that the defeat in the local elections was not repeated in the 2010 general election.
That would require changing Labour's recent, erratic short-term politics that had led to the "entirely unjustified" charge that Labour was mimicking Conservative proposals or following demands of the rightwing press, he said.

No, Labour's all-consuming priority should be governing and developing policy, not concentrating on winning an election two years' off. How Clarke can also claim that Labour isn't mimicking Conservative proposals or following the demands of the rightwing press when while he was Home Secretary one of his chief tasks was asking how high when the tabloids said jump is also beyond parody.

Clarke's obsession with power for power's sake is another of New Labour's emerging neuroses. Like the Conservatives after being dumped out in 97, they've came to the conclusion that they're the natural party of government, and that being voted out, or even the possibility of it is not so much a reflection on them but on the voters themselves. They've fallen into the same old trap of becoming the new establishment, and then when faced with the gathering storm fall into denial, buck-passing and outright bribery. Additionally, as with Boris Johnson, Labour is still making the mistake of both underestimating and slandering the Conservative leadership; yes, Cameron and Osborne might be public schoolboys and the product of Oxbridge, but then so was Tony Blair, and one or the other also applies to the vast majority of the cabinet. It's no coincidence that Alan Johnson, the former postman, received a standing ovation at the nurses' conference last week while Patricia Hewitt, the most patronising woman in politics was heckled and barracked on her last visit. Another man with the common touch, Jon Cruddas, said much the same in a Times interview today.

As previously noted, there isn't much that Labour can do to turn it around because the damage is almost certainly terminal. To even have a half-chance however, or to at least get past the Crewe by-election, it needs to either reverse the 10p tax rate abolition entirely or make completely crystal clear down to the last detail how it intends to compensate those that have lost out. It needs to stop worrying about what the Conservatives are doing and make clear what it is doing, beyond such bland generalities from Brown as feeling the hurt and pain as the economic downturn bites. Brown ought to swallow what remains of his pride and drop 42 days, which would be entirely the right thing to do however much short term pain it causes him. He could go further by scrapping ID cards, abandoning the increasingly irrelevant "rights and responsibilities" constitutional changes which couldn't seem more foolish, and as a further gesture that would signal real change, bring home the remaining troops from Basra. Then they could fully concentrate on, as Bob Piper suggests, pensioner poverty and social housing. All of this might do nothing more than staunch the bleeding without healing the wound, but it would be a start. There is however no sign whatsoever that even these small steps will be taken up, and with them the Conservatives will only continue to watch and wait.

Labels: 10p tax rate, Charles Clarke, death of Labour, Gordon Brown, James Purnell, Labour relaunch, local elections aftermath, New Labour, politics

5/06/2008 08:41:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, May 05, 2008

He just doesn't get it.

Poor old Gordon - he just doesn't get it, does he?

He also touched on the possible reasons for the election debacle. "Perhaps I've spent too little time thinking about how we can get our arguments across to the public," he told the Andrew Marr Show. "And now of course I think people are saying, look can you show us that you can come through these difficult situations. And I believe we will."

No Gordon, the public have heard your arguments and they've deciding they're wanting. It's not that they haven't got across; it's that they're not the ones they agree with any longer. Lenin has got it right, it's not that New Labour is dead, it's that it's undead: shuffling around, refusing to go when its time has come to an end. The only solution now is to put a bullet through its brain, as if that hadn't been done metaphorically on numerous times already.

Labels: death of Labour, Gordon Brown, New Labour, politics

5/05/2008 10:03:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Why Ken lost to Boris.

There's only one thing that's less attractive than gloating, and that's petulance and sulking. While some Tories are gloating, some on the left are throwing their toys out of the pram, and most of all, it comes back to two separate but connected ideas: that Boris is a joke and some of those who voted for him did so directly because of this; and secondly, that Boris will be a disaster. Watching Boris over the weeks leading up to the election proved that he is not a joke, a buffoon, or an idiot, if he ever was. He was not a match for Ken in my eyes, but well over a hundred thousand other individuals thought different. Moreover, those performances persuaded a huge number of voters that he would not be a disaster, and what's more, despite his stewardship of the Spectator through the more rough times, his constituency work shows that although the job of London Mayor is a huge step up, he ought to be a match for it. Pretending that he was otherwise was the first major mistake, and one that a lot are still making.

Apart from not taking Boris seriously, why else did Ken lose?

1) The 8 years factor. If 8 years is long enough for the US President, then it's enough for the London Mayor. It would be different if, like in the national election, you were voting for a party rather than an individual, but this was a battle primarily fought on personalities. Ken was always going to suffer from the "change" factor. Ken doesn't deserve any blame for trying for a third term, but it was always going to be a uphill struggle.

2) The assiduous work of Lynton Crosby in targeting the suburbs worked fantastically well, the turnout rising while Ken's constituencies were more apathetic. Ken's people worked extraordinarily hard, but in the end they just couldn't match it.

3) Genuine distaste for Ken. This went far beyond the cliched stereotypical few who hated him from the beginning -- his lack of humility up until he finally was beaten made it ever more difficult to sympathise with him. Calling a Jewish Evening Standard journalist a concentration camp guard and not apologising for it? Urging businessmen who weren't Iranian to take their chances with the Ayatollahs? Not dispatching Lee Jasper until the damage had been done, while alleging that all those who were questioning him were racist? His complete and utter, disgraceful defence of Ian Blair? All of these things hurt, and they added up over time.

4) The festering sore which was the Evening Standard's coverage. If this had been the equivalent of the Sun in 1992, then it wouldn't have made any difference. Instead this was the constant drip-drip-drip of real scandal, hyperbole and smear, going on over a number of months. As Toynbee said in one of her rare moments of clarity, those voting may not actually read the paper, but they do so the billboards all over London, and they get under the skin.

5) Lack of real difference with Boris over policy. Yes, Ken's policies on transport and housing were significantly different, but elsewhere Boris was forced over time as Sunny argues onto Livingstone's territory. This further forced the emphasis onto the personalities, and Johnson in contrast to Ken was fresh and worth a gamble on.

6) The monumental cock-up over the Olympics' cost. Londoners are going to be paying for this millstone around their necks for years to come, and while Livingstone was at least more honest about it than the obscurantist which is Tessa Jowell, he was still partly responsible.

7) Transport. As much as Ken had success on transport, for those without an Oyster card £4.00 for one trip on the Tube is obscene, while bendy buses, although seemingly an arcane issue for those of us outside London, also hurt, even if Johnson's numbers on Routemasters were ludicrous. Then we have those still angry about the congestion charge, not to mention the justified but obviously controversial £25 fee for the most polluting vehicles, then finally the low emissions zone.

8) Connection with Labour at large. Although Livingstone has always been separate from New Labour, he couldn't help but be lumped by some in with Brown and the polls in the local elections showed how this must have hurt him at least slightly.

9) Ken's friends. Sigh. Where to begin on this one? Al-Qaradawi, Jasper, Muslims 4 Ken, all must have put some voters off. The Guardian's article on the day by Zoe fucking Williams also didn't help.

10) Ken himself. At times during the campaign he looked utterly worn out. The allegations about his "drink problem" also must have had some impact.

11) And finally. Not courting second-preference votes persistently enough, or even explaining the system repeatedly and properly so that everyone realised how it works. The alliance with the Greens was a smart move, but the Left List vote collapsed so didn't help as much as it might have done. Not enough was done to court the Liberal Democrat voters' to go for Ken second, although Paddick's performance was poor in any case.

This isn't a time to be despondent. 4 years is a very long time in politics, and by then, with a different, fresh and representative candidate, the left could very well win the position back, especially if Johnson does turn out to be not up to the job. Ken's time had passed, and up against such a strong insurgency, he couldn't match up. This is the message to take, not that Londoners are morons, voting for an idiot and deserve everything they get. Don't despair; it's time to build again.

Labels: Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, local elections 2008, London Mayoral election, politics, why Boris won, why Ken lost

5/03/2008 09:46:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Friday, May 02, 2008

"We're all fucked. You're fucked. We're all completely fucked."

However much spin Labour loyalists and supporters put on last night's local elections results, and the very likely victory of Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral contest, whether it's Gordon Brown's "disappointing" to Hopi Sen's "pretty bad", none of them can surely really see this as anything other than the last gasp of Labour in power.

The threshold for a "bad" Labour night was to lose 200 councillors; they managed to beat that by another 131, losing control of 9 councils in total. Despite the Conservatives still offering very little in genuine difference to Labour except Blairism/neo-Brownism with even less pity and crocodile tears, they grabbed an astonishing 44% of the vote, Labour receiving their worst result since, appropriately, 1968. This isn't just the sort of result that would give the Tories a election victory, it would give them a landslide akin to New Labour's in 1997, the sort of result that no one, not even the most slavering sycophantic Conservative could claim that they would deserve.

Yesterday's vote also exposes another of the myths that has built up around the most ghastly of the Blairites. Those who argue for the ever more assiduous targeting of the so-called "super marginals", courting the "aspirational" voters especially in the south-east and elsewhere have just had their entire world turned upside down. Their whole plan rests on those in the Labour "heartlands" turning out whatever the weather, political or otherwise. Yesterday Labour lost 6 councils in Wales, were turned out in Southampton, and also took a battering in Nuneaton and Harlow, the voters either staying away or going elsewhere. These are the people that New Labour has taken for granted, in some cases perhaps stealthily helped, as La Toynbee often argues, but who have had the 10p rate show just how much Brown really cares for them when he needs a short-term political boost. Along with the fuel bills and food prices hitting at the same time, they were already being walloped, and then their pay slips came through. How could the doubtless hard-working activists persuade them to turn out or stay loyal? Labour can't win in the super-marginals anyway; to pursue such a policy now would be suicide. Sadly, don't rule out such madness when Brown has decided that the solution to all his problems is to get ever more PR advisers.

Prior to the vote, Labour were making all the usual noises about this being a disaster, hoping that like 2004 and last year that the results would actually turn out to not be as bad as they first briefed. This time round the results were even worse than they had predicted, yet they still went through with the plan, picking on the slightest good result, like almost taking back Liverpool, which they couldn't even manage despite an Audit Commission report which gave the Lib Dem-led council the worst rating for financial prudence in the country. It was painful watching a succession of both the worst and least worst in Labour trying to put on a brave face, from the egregious Tessa Jowell and Geoff Hoon through to the likeable and affable John Denham. The only two who spoke honestly were John McDonnell and Charles Clarke, one an actual leadership candidate and the other a rumoured possible one.

None of them however have any real idea where to go from here. The response is the same it has been over the last 3 years: that "we" will listen. Blair promised to listen after the last election; he instead went knowing for certain that he was doing the right thing and everyone else was wrong. Brown promised change and to listen; he has done neither and has no intention of doing either, except to those opposed to the very values he is meant to represent. Ruth Kelly is currently on Newsnight trumpeting how the great unwashed (i.e. the public) will come back to Labour because they'll find the Tories out for being nothing more than a marketing exercise with no policy behind it. How on earth does she expect anyone to be able to tell the difference?

Over on Justin's they've been discussing what might turn the tide. The truth is that nothing will now. While Labour's share of the vote couldn't possibly be as bad at a general election as it was yesterday, if the Tories don't at least get a workable majority then they might as well, to turn Tony Blair's comment on its head, get out of politics completely. The hope will have to remain that either Brown turns it around somewhat or that the Tories don't manage completely to convince, resulting in the almost mythical hung parliament that might finally force PR onto Westminster, the one thing that will help to re-engage and give a choice beyond the current staleness of two parties that have hardly a cigarette paper between them.

Similarly, Neal Lawson is convinced that this is the death of third way, for the same reasons I think it's the death of the fatal super-marginals thinking. He's wrong because he hasn't yet realised that the Conservatives under Cameron are the new third way, the inheritance of the same radical-centrist dead end, and that's why the likes of Simon Heffer so loathe what has gone on, striking out at Boris in lieu of going after the leadership itself. The only real difference between Cameron's third way and Blair's third way is that the Tories are going to do what Blair wished he could: raising the inheritance tax threshold, directly bribing the middle classes, further attacks on the trade unions, but all with the same kindly wet face that only a ex-PR man educated at Eton can provide.

In this, the real blame lies not with Brown, but with Blair. It was he and his acolytes that created this situation, and left Brown to pick up the pieces after he hung on for too long, Brown too cowardly and without courage to get rid of him when he should have done, far earlier. Brown has had a go, it worked for a couple of months, then it all went pear-shaped, the real Brown rather than the one the adoring Guardian columnists had created unable to pull it together. Now Blair's real heir is getting ready to take over. Labour can't say it hasn't had the chances to change. To paraphrase Richard Mottram, the party now really is completely fucked.

Labels: Conservatives, death of Labour, Gordon Brown, local elections 2008, New Labour, politics

5/02/2008 09:35:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Political biographies and Lord Levy.

In a world in which ever more thoughts are expelled, and the written to the read ratio drops accordingly, it's curious how the book publishers continue to inflict ever greater crimes against literature on the public at large, even when it seems apparent that it will be simply impossible to recur the original outlay in sealing the deal and providing the advance when the contents are likely to be of interest to only the dullest, most anal and self-hating of individuals.

My point could be about the cross-spectrum of banality provided by sports stars, the cacophony of crying from the misery memoir writers, the vacuousness of self-absorbed celebrities who describe themselves as journalists for writing a column about being a professional clothes horse and beach-dweller, but at least the aforementioned three are guaranteed to sell more than a couple of copies. The same can't be said for the political memoir, no longer confined to those who reach the very top and stay there, and just might have something to contribute towards history, but to the increasing number of acolytes that also make the grade. In recent weeks we've been treated to John Prescott admitting that he was putting his hand down more than the one orifice we've already been alerted to and Jonathan Powell, one of Blair's chief adviser's reminiscing over the Northern Ireland peace talks, a worthy subject for sure but not one which really told us anything new.

The collective nadir appeared to have been reached with the self-indulgent diaries of David Blunkett, who had nothing whatsoever to say but decided instead to wallow in his own misery. There's nothing especially wrong with doing that, but his justifications and blaming of all his woes on everyone other than himself, especially when he played the media for all it was worth and continues to do so rightly rankled, and the book was the biggest and most deserving of flops.

With the memory of that in mind, it's hard to fathom exactly what Simon and Schuster were thinking in giving Michael Levy, aka Lord Levy, the chance to write his autobiography and, more pertinently, his own account of the "cash for peerages" scandal. Never the most sympathetic of figures, especially when he and others resorted to claims of anti-Semitism because of the level of criticism and speculation directed towards him, he has the added problem of despite being Labour's chief fundraiser under Blair of by no means being one of the former prime minister's chief confidants. Even the title sticks in the throat, almost mockingly titled "A Question of Honour".

The excerpts from the Mail on Sunday's serialisation may not represent the overall tone, but it seems as if in lieu of actual juicy material, Levy has decided to take his revenge not just on those he felt were out to get him because of his connection with Blair, but also the Blairs himself and his apparent cooling towards them, whether because he felt Downing Street didn't provide enough support in his hour of need or not. Levy relates anecdotes about Blair receiving long massages from Carole Caplin, of Cherie's conflict with Anji Hunter, and his eventual disappointment with Blair "just being in it for himself", as though Levy himself also wasn't. It also wasn't his idea to seek loans and he didn't want to do so, but was pushed into doing so by Blair, Matt Carter and Alan Milburn. Doubtless the offering of a "K or a P" was also not his idea, but someone else's also.

The main vindictive streak though is certainly left for Gordon Brown and others sensed to have slighted him, with him quoting Blair calling Brown a liar and viewing him as duplicitous, both qualities which we know for certain neither Blair nor Levy have. He also suggests that Brown did know about the loans, something that we know almost for certain that he did not. Similarly questionable is his claim that Jack Dromey, Labour's treasurer went public with his concerns over the loans after they were first revealed in a bid to damage Blair and shore up Brown, which if true would have been inflicting a wound on the party as a whole, not just Blair, something that Brown, would had so many opportunities to wield the knife but never did so was loth to do. The biggest wound though is undoubtedly Blair's other suggested conversation with Levy which suggested that he didn't believe that Brown could win against Cameron, something denied by Blair's camp. For those allegations to come at the same time as Brown is in such difficulties, even if they are mostly of his own making and just a few days before the local elections makes it all the damaging and all the less forgiveable for someone already fabulously wealthy to be once again cashing in as he did so often in the past for others.

The Guardian's leader on Levy's comments finishes by saying that Levy isn't the problem but that the funding system is. That lets both Levy and Blair completely off the hook. Levy didn't have to go along with Blair's urgings to get loans, even if that was the case. It omits any responsibility on either of their behalf for the curious coincidence of four of those who had made loans subsequently being nominated to receive a peerage. The Crown Prosecution Service may have decided that there wasn't enough evidence for anyone to be charged under the ancient act brought in after Lloyd George's selling of honours, but that hardly clears him or Blair of impropriety in full. Levy's behaviour undeniably brought the whole system into disrepute, creating a stench of corruption that will only be dispersed when all parties agree to a system, a deal currently being blocked by the Conservatives wanting to destroy Labour's link with the unions, a move that would force it to rely on the very individuals who got it in such a mess in the first place. His profiting from his role is the scandal is typical of both a man and a party which has become just as shameless in pursuit of power and wealth as all those before them.

Labels: biographies, bullshit, corruption, David Blunkett, Gordon Brown, loans for peerages, Lord Levy, New Labour, political donations, politics, Tony Blair

4/29/2008 09:03:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

The Sun, tabloid journalism and Cameron's Conservatives.

If there's one thing that Gordon Brown can perhaps cling to when everything else appears to be falling apart, it's that Rupert Murdoch is clearly no nearer to making a leap of faith with the Conservatives. Today's Sun leader is hardly enthusiastic about George Osborne's speech yesterday, billed as the Tory bid to seize the initiative, but which seems to have been lost in the maelstrom:

Tell us, George

SHADOW Chancellor George Osborne is a clever politician who talks a good game, but where are the promises?

He tore into Gordon Brown yesterday, claiming the PM’s economic record had collapsed in a “heap of rubble”.

He blamed Labour for hammering hard-working families, fuelling inflation and turning its back on the poor. Rattled ministers know there is some truth in his charges.

Taxes are too high. Spending is out of control. Borrowing is excessive.

It is the Opposition’s job to attack the Government when it gets things wrong.

But if the polls are accurate and the Tories are heading for power, we want to hear precisely what they intend to do about it.

By that "we" you can detect the quivering hand of Murdoch himself.

It can be far too easy though to give Murdoch more power and influence than he actually has, and also to not notice his cautiousness in deciding whom to back. Despite it's self-promotion, it wasn't the Sun "wot won it" in 1992, and its decision to back Blair in 1997 was taken when it was already more than certain that Labour were going to triumph by a landslide. We're still very far from that happening in reverse whenever we next go to the polls, and Murdoch is hardly going to humiliate himself by making his decision too early.

Even with all of that in mind, it has to be remembered that it was Alastair Campbell himself who made clear that it was the image of Neil Kinnock in a light bulb on the Sun's front page that made him and those around him determined to ensure that history would not repeat itself. It's by no means clear yet who Murdoch is going to plump for in the US election, having previously held a fund-raiser for Clinton, even while his Fox News network continues to skewer the Democrats wholesale. It again might be because as yet, with the Democratic contender not yet decided, the whole election is far, far too close to call. McCain doesn't offer anything other than more of the same, but Murdoch has hardly been concerned by the previous 8 years of the Bush administration and its myriad failings, meaning it would be foolish to write off any of them as of yet.

Unlike Blair and also Brown, who not so long ago appeared alongside Murdoch on the same panel in Davos, the Cameroons have yet to put any specific feelers out towards the Murdoch camp. Indeed, when you'd expect them to be aiming to capitalise on Labour's problems and deficiencies, it's not Dave or Osbourne that are appearing in print in the Sun with their policies outlined, but rather Brown himself on the worthy but not especially relevant to the average Sun reader topic of combating malaria. The closest they've perhaps come to hitting the Sun's buttons was Cameron's appearance alongside Helen Newlove, and even that didn't come to close to a promise that the Tories would adopt her and the Sun's agenda for fixing "Broken Britain".

Perhaps this can itself be linked to the Sun's increasing crisis of identity. In its Thatcherite heyday under Kelvin MacKenzie, you certainly knew where it stood, just as you know now where the Daily Mail stands. It employs the crude talk radio hosts Fergus Shanahan and Jon Gaunt as columnists, but its distance from their stance was highlighted during the recent debate over capital punishment, where both supported its reinstatement while the leader line opposed it, despite "99%" of its readers also expressing their enthusiasm for the old black cap. It increasingly seems more at home decrying the latest hate figure from the world of celebrity, whether it be Heather Mills or Paul Burrell than it does attacking a political adversary. Its campaigns against paedophiles, the Human Rights Act and "Broken Britain" aside, the whole paper seems less confrontational and even whisper it, liberal. This is undoubtedly down partly to changing attitudes, and the Sun is nothing if not a barometer of its readers, but the increasing turn away from open propaganda is still surprising to note. The one remaining area where this does remain is in its unwavering support for foreign military adventures, regardless of the costs that the war in Iraq especially has inflicted. The laughable claim when the British army withdrew from Basra that the Mahdi army had been fought into ceasefire has since been proved to be a fantasy, but it didn't stop Tom Newton Dunn, the Sun's defence editor from scooping reporter of the year at the British Press Awards.

Whether the Sun as a brand is in terminal decline is far more difficult to measure. It's increasingly clear that it's only its price cutting in Scotland, London and the south-east that is keeping it above the 3 million sales mark, and its website, despite its attempt to draw in users with its MySun social network, is well behind the Mail's in the ABCe rankings. Rebekah Wade may be a piss-poor editor, but there doesn't seem to be anyone angling her for place, and Murdoch despite embarrassments over her past performance both in and out of the chair doesn't seem worried in the slightest about the paper's overall placing. After all, it continues to deliver a healthy profit, something other papers are increasingly finding difficult to achieve.

As noted previously on this blog, what is increasingly clear is that the most vituperative, slanted, invasive, judgemental and downright unpleasant "journalism" no longer comes from the paper of "Gotcha!" and "THE TRUTH" fame but instead from the supposedly more mild-mannered mid-markets Mail and Express, both of whom seem to attempt to outdo each other in which can demonise immigrants more, invade the privacy of both celebrity and "commoner" alike and state that black is in fact white. Both also coincidentally, despite Brown's wooing of Dacre, are right behind the Conservatives under Cameron, with the Express front page today more or less blaming the fact that it gets dark at night on the Supreme Leader. By those calculations, the Conservatives, despite recruiting ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson as their spin supremo, are not yet worried by the Sun's failure to come on side. They might start panicking more when the time has further ebbed away, but for now it seems the Conservatives are happy not to be assiduously courting Uncle Rupe and his super soaraway flagship.

Labels: Conservatives, David Cameron, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, media analysis, politics, Scum-watch, Sun-watch, tabloid analysis

4/15/2008 08:07:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Monday, April 14, 2008

The state of play.

There's nothing quite like a good media feeding frenzy over the apparent imminent demise of the Labour government as we know it. Cabinet ministers are literally at each other's throats, with the Telegraph alleging in an article which was later mysteriously pulled that Jack Straw and Ed Balls had almost come to blows over who was responsible for youth crime, while the former is apparently greatly perturbed by the continuing obsession with extending the detention limit for "terrorist suspects"; there's a potential civil war breaking out between "old" and "new" Brownites over their master's newly installed spin doctors; and all while the man himself is according to some briefings by nameless individuals sinking into "clinical depression", breaking three mobile phones a week in fits of pique, and possibly even faced by a potential leadership challenge.

The one that will probably hurt the most is that article in the Mail, his wooing and friendship with Paul Dacre apparently unable to stop such wounding old jibes as being "psychologically flawed" from re-appearing alongside newer even less flattering accusations. The most dispiriting recent criticism however though will be the one from Rory Bremner, because it passes the Homer Simpson challenge of being funny and true: "[I]t's a bit like having an uncle who's been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the past 10 years, and you go down to see what he's up to, and you look through the window - and there's nothing there." Even Pollyanna Toynbee expanded on this point, writing on Friday that "[T]he Wizard of Oz stands exposed, the emperor has no clothes, the box of secrets is empty." When even the most nominally loyal of Brown nosers seems to be having recurring doubts over her past man in shining armour, it might well be time for the panic stations to be manned.

Or is it? It's easily forgotten, but Blair had numerous weekends of bad publicity, albeit not as early into his reign as Brown currently is. Often there were rumours that this was the week, when Blair was going to be challenged strongly, and where it was all falling apart, all for it have blown over completely by Tuesday. Typically, on those weekends it was often the highly sympathetic to Blair Martin Kettle who was one of the few fighting in the opposite direction, whereas on Saturday he was alongside most of the others with the knives, sticking them into Gordon's shoulder blades. Although there are accounts among the briefings that it's not the familiar bleating Blairites who are doing the blade-sharpening, the journalists doing the talking, such as Kettle and John Rentoul certainly are Blairite sympathisers, while Charles Clarke, although not a Blairite but certainly on the "modernising" wing of the party, is the one supposedly collecting names towards a challenge.

To suggest this is some sort of highly delayed Blair-influenced coup though would be completely over-the-top. Those most aggrieved by Brown's performance are undoubtedly the backbenchers themselves, more than sensitive towards the dismal polls which suggest that the Tories are moving beyond the numbers needed to get a firm majority, even if only so far backed up by the often erratic and wrong YouGuv survey. That by most accounts Brown was dismissive or even in denial during the recent meeting with backbenchers, where the main grievances were the abolition of the 10p top rate of tax, targeting those both most likely to turn out and vote Labour, as well as the closing of local post offices, impressed on some that perhaps the whispers that Gordon wasn't up to the job might have been right all along.

How much of this is media frenzy is difficult precisely to judge. There are two obvious main points however that mitigate against some, if not most of it. Firstly, that it would be absolute madness for there to be an attempt to depose Brown, especially as the economic gloom continues to deepen. That really would be the end for Labour in government, to be conducting open warfare while also still pretending to be feeling the pain, even if that's what appears to be going on now behind closed doors. Secondly, that there is no one at all waiting in the wings in Labour to take over. Clarke's bid is clearly not completely serious in its aims, but it does sum up his continuing loathing of Brown for whatever reason. Others have mentioned David Miliband, who rejected the attempts to become a stop Brown candidate previously and isn't ready in any case, and Alan Johnson, who'd just be a genial stop gap with a sympathetic background, but can anyone seriously imagine any of them, or indeed almost anyone in the cabinet or the wider party that would stand a better chance against Cameron? Some who might fancy their chances in a leadership campaign were Labour to lose the next election and Gordon to resign simply currently don't have the necessary profile or backing to make any attempt now.

The main case against Brown currently is as Jackie Ashley set out this morning, that rather being a disaster, Brown has been a disappointment. I would add that the disappointment has been on the scale of being crushing. Few had real hopes for Brown, rather the early enthusiasm was that Blair had finally gone. Even by those standards Brown has failed to live up to his billing, as the difference between him and Blair has proved, as some always argued it would be, to be so slight as to be inconsequential. Despite a decent start we're back seemingly in the old vacuum, where huge paychecks are celebrated as the poor get stuffed, where the private is always better than the public regardless of the cost, and where basic rights are something to be ignored or thrust aside at the first excuse. The Guardian at the weekend offered three things that Brown could do which might help turn the tide, all eminently sensible: full immediate withdrawal from Iraq; ditch ID cards; and radical constitutional change, perhaps even the alternative vote before the next election. It's hard to disagree with any of those, except perhaps the latter on the grounds that it would be seen now, probably quite fairly, as being an attempt to keep the Tories out as they look to be about to regain power, but Brown doing any of them is a flight of complete fantasy.

There's no solace either in the idea that Labour can afford to lose the next election in order to reinvigorate itself out of office. Those coming through the ranks are not the radicals needed but a careerist clique that increasingly don't seem to have had any job other than either being a politician or in PR, the City or marketing. Party politics as we know it is moribund, but no one is interested in the one thing that would shake it up, which is the aforementioned constitutional change, not least the Tories that have always loathed the idea while the current system still works for them. It might well come down to how Cameron and his similarly unimpressive colleagues who also offer no real change other than the same politics with a slightly harsher face govern that determines just where the real opposition and left alternative emerges from.

Labels: Conservatives, death of Labour, Gordon Brown, infighting, Labour, media coverage, politics

4/14/2008 10:18:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Contempt is a two-way street.

"Why do they hate us so much?" is one of those wails that occasionally wafts from Westminster and into the press, politicians and commentators alike wondering why our representatives are either spat on, denounced as all the same or just completely ignored. There is a good case for making that the vast majority of politicians are not in it for themselves, that they genuinely do believe in some tangible concepts, and that they serve us with a diligence which many of us ourselves could neither achieve nor would want to attempt to. Then there's days like today, when the case for the defence seems so utterly overwhelming.

As Mr Eugenides writes, it's almost as if Gordon Brown at the moment has a reverse midas touch, where everything he goes near suddenly turns to shit the moment he opens his mouth about it. Here's the former clunking fist, the man accused of being Stalin, and he's being repeatedly made to look as if he's like another fictional ruler, the emperor without any clothes, debasing himself in public in front of the baying and mocking crowds. Half of this is because of his scattergun approach: one day declaring that plastic bags will be banished because the Daily Mail's just started a campaign up about them, the next deciding that malaria is the world's most pressing issue. Tony Blair wasn't immune to this either, as anyone who can recall his plea for Coronation Street's Deirdre's miscarriage of justice to be rectified can testify. The power behind the throne then though was Alastair Campbell, who compared to Brown's current advisers and chief spin doctor Stephen Carter was a genius and rottweiler rolled into one. Where Blair's spin was assured, either because it was done so well, or because the media was still involved in its temporary love affair with New Labour, Brown's is fast becoming his biggest weakness and in danger of turning him into a laughing stock.

Yesterday's announcement that Brown wouldn't after all be attending the opening ceremony of the Olympics was seemingly designed, in light of the protests in London and his own failure to so much as touch the flame when it arrived in Downing Street while the Chinese shell-suit mafia obscured him from vision, to be a good news story. Prime minister does decent thing despite potential pitfall over Britain hosting the next games! Easily offended Chinese get political equivalent of blowing a raspberry! Strong-man Brown says no to human rights abusers! Only, the slightest deeper look at the story exposed it for the fraud that it was. Brown had never explicitly stated that he personally was going to attend the opening ceremony; rather, span Downing Street, he was only always going to attend the closing ceremony, so that the spirit of the Olympics could be passed on. In any case, Tessa Jowell, the truly hapless Olympics minister is still going to attend the opening ceremony, so there's not going to be any boycott of any sort whatsoever. Within minutes of Brown/his lackeys making the announcement on Channel 4 News the entire thing had fell apart. The Conservatives, already fusillading Brown with accusations of dithering have yet another weapon to use against him, while the public themselves, not to mention those whom the gesture was meant to please, just feel cheated and almost lied to.

A very different sort of contempt but still one which reverberates around the country was thrillingly and damningly exposed by Lord Justice Moses and Lord Justice Sullivan in the Royal Courts of Justice. Although ostensibly the case brought by Corner House and CAAT was against the Serious Fraud Office's Robert Wardle after he caved into pressure from Downing Street and the Attorney General to drop the investigation into BAE's slush fund to the Saudis, this was a judgement that exposed the sham and sheer mendacity of Blair's government in its dying days. Prince Bandar, the man since revealed as receiving up to £1bn through the Al-Yamamah deal, waltzes into Downing Street, feeling the heat on the back of his neck because the SFO is close to accessing Swiss bank accounts that would confirm the allegations against BAE, and says that unless the investigation is abandoned, not only will the Saudis take their next big order of armaments elsewhere, but they'll also cut off diplomatic and intelligence relations. Instead of telling Bandar to get lost and take his blatant blackmail with him, Blair writes directly to Lord Goldsmith, who gives in and orders Wardle to drop the investigation.

It's worth quoting directly from the judgement, so sneering as it is of the government's action:

# The defendant in name, although in reality the Government, contends that the Director was entitled to surrender to the threat. The law is powerless to resist the specific and, as it turns out, successful attempt by a foreign government to pervert the course of justice in the United Kingdom, by causing the investigation to be halted. The court must, so it is argued, accept that whilst the threats and their consequences are "a matter of regret", they are a "part of life". (§ 6)

# So bleak a picture of the impotence of the law invites at least dismay, if not outrage. The danger of so heated a reaction is that it generates steam; this obscures the search for legal principle. The challenge, triggered by this application, is to identify a legal principle which may be deployed in defence of so blatant a threat. However abject the surrender to that threat, if there is no identifiable legal principle by which the threat may be resisted, then the court must itself acquiesce in the capitulation. (§ 7)

and

Had such a threat been made by one who was subject to the criminal law of this country, he would risk being charged with an attempt to pervert the course of justice. (§ 59

The rule of law is nothing if it fails to constrain overweening power.(§ 65)

The government's response to this tearing apart of its decision, this exposition of how they broke the rule of law itself so that one of the most vicious dictatorships on the planet could continue to be sold arms it doesn't need and so that its demagogic royal family can continue to receive vast payments courtesy of the UK taxpayer to be used on prostitutes, private jets and all the other trappings of unearned wealth while their own citizens are not even afforded the most basic of human rights? None. It's refused to comment. As has BAE, and the Serious Fraud Office itself, not to mention Prince Bandar. Perhaps it should be said that all those mainly involved have either gone or are about to go: Blair took Lord Goldsmith along with him, and Wardle himself is shortly to be replaced at the SFO. Even so, it doesn't slightly begin to justify the silence not just from the government, but from the Labour party as a entirety.

Dave Osler has already said this, but it's a point well worth repeating. This week much attention has been paid to events in Dewsbury, and discussion of whether the alleged abduction of Shannon Matthews was a scam from the very beginning. Her mother has been charged with perverting the course of justice, for not informing the police of all she knew and when she knew it. The government back in December 2006 did almost exactly the same thing, except on a scale completely alien to anyone in that part of Yorkshire. The difference is that Matthews is just a member of the underclass; Goldsmith and Blair were the land's highest legal adviser and the prime minister himself, yet they conspired to pervert the course of justice and in doing so broke the rule of law irrevocably. Some of those in Dewsbury have been warned not to take the law into their own hands as a response; who could possibly blame anyone for having complete contempt for the politicians responsible in this much larger and much graver case?

Labels: apathy, BAE slush fund inquiry, contempt, Gordon Brown, Lord Goldsmith, Olympics, politics, Serious Fraud Office, spin, Tony Blair

4/10/2008 11:59:00 PM | Permalink | | links to this post

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Beware the Tory wolf in Labour clothing.

Beware the lesson of the Tory wolf in liberal clothing, writes La Toynbee. As it happens, she's talking about how the centre-right in Sweden, after getting into power on a programme of policies not much different to that of the centre-left, have turned out to be rather more right-wing than they promised, the implication being that no one must vote for that nice Mr Cameron, as despite his message, he'll undo all of Labour's hard work in abolishing poverty and establishing total equality.

I exaggerate slightly. The headline could however just as easily be about Brown. Toynbee strangely doesn't mention in her column something rather more important to the average low-paid worker who's most likely to actually vote Labour, but Brown could be that Tory wolf in Labour clothing. What else to say of someone who, through abolishing the 10p starting rate of tax, has just redistributed mainly from single workers without children earning under £18,500 to those earning over £35,000 a year, who gain under the tax changes introduced in his last budget?

It's important to set the background to how this change came about. This was back shortly before Brown was to inherit the Earth - or at least the Labour party leadership. His stewardship of the economy was not yet as threatened or criticised as it is now, but it was starting to come under some strain, and he didn't have much room for manoeuvre. He needed something that would grab the headlines, but that wouldn't smack the most crucial constituencies, the cliched hard-working families, pensioners, or the City. It might not have had anything to do with it, but the weekend before a number of newspapers called for tax cuts, with the News of the Screws almost begging for some sort of slash. The 10p top rate, introduced by Brown himself some years previously, was the obvious contender. The reasoning was that due to the introduction of tax credits, those on low pay who would have otherwise have been whacked had something of a fall-back, while the only real major losers would be those under 25 without children who couldn't claim them and part-timers who didn't work enough hours to qualify.

The signs that this wasn't thought through properly, or that it was, and Labour either didn't care or thought that the majority wouldn't care, are fairly clear. If there's one thing that New Labour has always been aware of, it's the polls, and time after time they show that around the only remaining demographic that supports the party consistently and in spite of everything is the 18-24-year-olds. How could they have not noticed it regressively targets them if the Treasury hadn't been frantically searching for the proverbial rabbit to pull out of the hat?

Regardless of that, the giving with one hand and taking away with another didn't fool hardly anyone else in any case. The most grateful headline the budget received was the Sun's "reasons 2p cheerful", which was rather mitigated against by the following day's headlines elsewhere on Brown's "tax con". Questions have been asked of why the Labour MPs now concerned and angry about the change didn't recognise it sooner and speak up - the reason why they didn't because at the time they didn't care as they had no reason to think it was going to affect them personally. Even if the local elections were coming up again, the losses were thought unlikely to be as severe as previously, especially considering Blair was on his way out and acting as a lightning conductor for discontent. With him gone, Brown was bound to re-energize the party and re-engage with the public itself. This was exactly what happened - until the Northern Rock crisis broke out, Brown fluffed his opportunity to call the election last autumn, and the economic weather significantly turned with the credit crunch, still now reverberating and having a chilling affect across the board.

Backbench MPs are concerned now because a tax change they thought they could bluff their way through has come home to roost. However much the Supreme Leader and Alastair Darling chunter about how we're in an excellent position to deal with the lack of liquidity in the financial markets, with inflation low, the lowest paid are the ones feeling the pain of the price of food especially rising. Then, just as things are getting worse, they get further stabbed in the back by Labour taking away the 10p rate. Taking into conjunction with other matters that Labour has dismissed or poo-pooed, such as the closing of post offices and now the most dramatic fall in house prices since the dark days of 1992, and it's little wonder that the Labour MPs are so worried. Even though the Conservatives continue to offer very little of any substance or great difference, they see the upcoming local elections as the precipice they may be about to fall off. They remember the almost wiping out of Tory councils back in the local elections of the mid-90s, and fear it's about to happen to them. The only major council Labour still controls in the south outside London is Reading - and it's under great pressure.

This was not how it was supposed to happen. If Brown had gone for the election back in October, then Labour would now most likely still be in power, albeit with probably a further reduced majority, and while all the above issues would be of concern, they'd have the four or five years to once again turn it around. Instead Labour is increasingly hemmed in from all sides, but Brown himself doesn't either seem to recognise this, or if he has, he's not showing it. I personally couldn't care less about house prices falling, especially seeing if I'm ever going to be able buy one at some point in the future they're going to have to drop a lot further, but when it's possibly the number one issue for the middle classes it seems to be asking for it to refer to the drop as "containable". That doesn't even come close to the apparent contempt he feels for the very individuals he's shafted with the removal of 10p rate however, who have to realise that he's taking the "difficult long-term decisions" and that in a few months they'll see the results - I'm sure they'll appreciate that when their pay-checks come in.

Quite why the Labour MPs are complaining however, as opposed to why are they complaining now is the better question. It's with a piece of everything else Labour has done of late. When John Hutton does the greed is good routine just as the banking sector has brought the Western economy to its knees, when concessions over the non-doms are made almost as soon as the City howls, when Caroline Flint continues to spout about evicting those on benefits from council houses and when the entire cabinet seems to have decided to out Blairite the worst excesses of the Blair years across the board, they ought to have realised by now that Labour stopped caring about its base a long time ago. Instead of letting them eat cake it urges them to eat tax credits, even if they mask the problem rather than anywhere near address it, are incredibly difficult to claim in the first place and there continues to be huge problems in the administering of the scheme, leading to both under and over payments. Rather than offering the change he promised, Brown has been a continuation of the same without the undoubted political nous which Blair had. You might remember that David Miliband said on Question Time that a year into a Brown prime ministership some might feel nostalgic for Blair and want him back; someone more perceptive might have instead said that a year in and everyone would be saying that nothing had changed. The "tragedy" has been that they would have been proved right.

Labels: 10p tax rate, Gordon Brown, New Labour, politics, Polly Toynbee, tax