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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1/08/2010 09:19:00 PM | | | links to this post

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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1/06/2010 10:00:00 PM | | | links to this post

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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11/11/2009 09:29:00 PM | | | links to this post

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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11/10/2009 11:01:00 PM | | | links to this post

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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11/09/2009 11:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

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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10/30/2009 09:28:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 

Farce, then tragedy.

Last year, when Sarah Brown, clearly nervous, stood up in front of the Labour conference and introduced her husband's address, what was clearly an attempt to deflect criticism was viewed sympathetically, mainly as it was still by no means certain that he would be in the job for much longer after it. As it turned out, the speech, probably now best remembered for his put down of both Cameron and Miliband by saying it was "no time for a novice" was just about good enough to secure his leadership, at least until the disastrous local and European election results earlier this year where another major wobble took place.

This year, Sarah Brown's appearance before Brown's speech, far from performing the role it was meant to, simply exaggerated the extended tragedy which has been his reign. What other response could there possibly be to her description of Gordon as "her hero"? Again, she was intended to act as a prophylactic, protecting him from scathing criticism. You can get away with doing this once; do it twice and you start to look cowardly, and this from the man trying to ram books about "courage" down our necks.

You can though understand why they wanted history to repeat. If last year's speech by Brown did just enough, then this year's didn't even come close. You can't deny that Brown delivered it with plenty of brio, hardly falling into the stereotype of someone so depressed and flailing that he needs to be on archaic, strong medication, but it was the content that so bitterly let him down. To call it a speech would, like Nick Clegg's effort last week, probably be insulting the medium itself. There was no theme, no connection. One of the first things you're taught when it comes to writing essays is that they must have an introduction, a middle and a conclusion, something which applies equally to public speaking. The latest innovation it seems when it comes to speeches by political leaders is to throw such outdated notions out of the window: no one other than wonks is going to listen to or read the things in full anyway, so you might as well just talk about one thing after the other, regardless of any connection between them until you've finished. Brown goes from the economy to attacking the Conservatives to the greatness of those ubiquitous "hard-working families" to the public services to back to attacking the Conservatives again, all of it wholly unconvincing.

This conference, if it is about anything, seems to be a collective gnashing of teeth that they have ever saw fit to defenestrate Tony Blair. Yesterday we saw the party finally falling in love with Mandelson, the nearest it now has to the great man himself. Brown, knowing that the last thing he can be is Blair, instead decided to emulate his policies. All those things we thought we'd seen the last of, such as the pointless counter-productive populism on "anti-social behaviour" are suddenly back as if they never went away. Sure, there were a few bones here thrown in an attempt to buy off those who had hoped that Brown would lead the party left-wards, the most obvious and also best example being the great believer in free markets suddenly deciding that the "right wing fundamentalism that says you just leave everything to the market and says that free markets should not just be free but values free" was wrong, but no one believes for a second that Brown intends to act on what he says in this area. Most disturbing was what some have already monikered as "gulags for slags", the shared housing for pregnant 16 and 17-year-olds, rather than putting them up in a council flat. Not only does this buy into a myth, that all you need to do is get pregnant while a teenager and you'll be set up for a life, but that also accidentally becoming pregnant when you're over the age of consent but not yet 18 is something that you should be punished for, not to mention considered to be too stupid or feckless to be able to look after the child either on your own or with the help of your own family without the state barging in. This sense of false victimhood and resentment against those "who will talk about their rights, but never accept their responsibilities" permeated an entire section of the speech. This just illustrates how successful the tabloids have been as painting Labour as friends only of immigrants and single mothers, and how the incredible idea that it's now the white middle classes who are the most discriminated against has become mainstream.

If the idea of "gulags for slags" is chilling, in much the same way was Brown's declaration that "whenever and wherever there is antisocial behaviour, we will be there to fight it." It's worth remembering that the main indicator for so-called antisocial behaviour is not shouting at people on the street or the kind of low-level thuggery over an extended period which the Pilkingtons suffered, but teenagers daring to congregate together in public, doing nothing other than talking to each other. In some senses we've regressed past the Victorian dictum that children should be seen and not heard; now we don't want them even to be seen. Yet this war on childhood in general is, we are told, incredibly popular in focus groups, hence why it's back on the agenda. It doesn't matter that if you focus grouped bringing back capital punishment or permanently chipping sex offenders you'd also doubtless get an immensely favourable response, if a representative sample of the hoi polloi wants it, they'll get it. Or rather, they'll be told they're getting it, as that seems to be just as good as getting it.

On everything other than bringing back the Blair agenda, it was the tiniest most pathetic gestures which were the order of the day. ID cards won't then be made compulsory over the next parliament; MPs guilty of gross misconduct will be able to be recalled; and there'll be a commitment in the manifesto for a referendum on the alternative vote, the most piss-poor non-proportional system of voting other than first past the post. There was no vision here, no adjustment to the world as it is now is, just a repetition of past glories which the electorate are supposed to bask in and so reach the conclusion that the Conservatives would only mess it all up. This was exactly the stance they took in 1997: New Labour, New Danger, you can only be sure with the Conservatives. They were already doomed, but it doomed them even further. In line with that year, tomorrow the Sun declares that Labour has blown it, just as it switched support from the Tories back then. Marx it seems had it backwards: in this instance history is repeating itself, but as tragedy after farce.

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9/30/2009 12:30:00 AM | | | links to this post

Monday, September 28, 2009 

The spirit as weak as the flesh in Brighton

Far be it from me, an inhabitant of a concrete hell which culture seems to have passed by, to suggest that this nation's seaside towns tend to be inclement at best and downright depressing at worst during the autumn and winter months, but perhaps the weather in Brighton, especially at night, is in tune with the Labour party's collective mood. This is, after all, according to no less a person than Alistair Darling, a party that seems to have lost the will to live, which no longer has the fire in its belly, and for which everyone from the top to the bottom, has a responsibility.

This theme, that the party is sleepwalking to a defeat next year which could finish it as an electoral force, has become so familiar that it's almost beginning to border on the cliche, and it's one which this blog has not exactly challenged. It is one however that the opinion polls are hardly contradicting, the latest showing Labour equal pegging with the Liberal Democrats on a shockingly low 23%. It's still worth remembering that Labour took 27% of the vote in 1983, the year incidentally in which both Blair and Brown were elected to parliament. The "longest suicide note in history", although one which deserves reappraisal, delivered a higher percentage of support than Labour would currently receive. Only those most in loathe with the last 12 years would suggest that's all that the party currently deserves.

No one seriously expects that Labour will be fighting with the Liberal Democrats for third largest party status in 12 months time. The threat is however that the party could be reduced to its long established bases of support, but even these, on an extremely pessimistic reading of the runes, seem to be in trouble. Wales, the historic bedrock of Labour support, seems to be within the grasp of the Conservatives. According to a Financial Times poll last week, the Tories have a 4 point lead in the north, while in Scotland the party is instead struggling with a Scottish National Party that despite the al-Megrahi backlash only seems to be growing stronger. This is coupled with as Dave Osler has identified, the party's loss of a generation. Amazing and frightening as it seems, those children and only just teenagers who were marching against the Iraq war alongside those of us who had only just gained the right to vote in 2003 will next year themselves be taking part in their first general election, and if they fight off the apathy, it seems doubtful they'll be putting an x in the box alongside the Labour candidate, nor will they in the years to come. Just as we promised ourselves we would never vote for the Tories, so they will have promised never to vote Labour. This poses a challenge which no one in either the Conservatives or Labour has even began to consider, let alone broach.

Looking at the hall in Brighton, many of the seats empty, even during Alistair Darling's speech (although that perhaps might be half the reason), the clapping lukewarm at best, it's hard not to infer that many don't have the stomach to even turn up, like at a Christmas party for a company that's shutting down in the new year. Then again, when the best that Darling could pull out of his hat was a "Fiscal Responsibility Act", designed to put in legal terms how the government intends to reduce the deficit, you do wonder whether involuntary euthanasia wouldn't be kinder for all involved. It really does sum New Labour up: its mania for legislation where none is necessary, that it is so shorn of trust that it has to do so to make sure that the public believes what it says while also no doubt being an attempt to tie the Tories' hands should they want to put certain areas of spending off limits.

Just when you think that things can't get any more absurd, up pops the former Prince of Darkness, who could now more appropriately be known as the Grand Wizard of Sunlight. Mandelson does not have a natural charisma, but what he does have, along with the self-regard, is the ability to reassure, which is what his role was today. In a way, his speech was about precisely nothing, even though he did announce an extension to the car scrappage scheme, but rather about enthusing those resigned with the unannounced theme of the conference, fighting back. Mandelson might have made the most ultimate of comebacks, but even his bounce back ability is hardly likely to infect the party as a whole. He has though made Brown's task tomorrow even more difficult. Brown's speech of 2003, his "Real Labour" opus, is now little more than the tiniest of memories. To go by the leaks, that Brown intends to go on the attack on crime and promises that most piss-weak of political battles, a live debate or debates with Cameron prior to the election, it seems that even Brown and his speech writers have given up the ghost. No longer is even the spirit willing, seeming to be just as weak as the flesh.

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9/28/2009 09:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 10, 2009 

The prime mentalist is back.

Have you missed the glitz and glamour of politics over the summer?  The spirited debates, the back and forth, the agreeing to disagree, the rapier wit of the finest of their profession, crushing their opponents with humour whilst also making serious substantial points?  Or have we just all been waiting for Peter Mandelson to get in trouble again for going on someone's yacht?

The old cliche or witticism, depending on your view, is that politics is show-business for ugly people.  The difference surely is that while show-business might be viewed as a game, politics is the ultimate one.  The two do now though overlap more and more: Bono gets up on his soapbox while Gordon Brown rings Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell to make sure that Susan Boyle is "OK".  Politics has always shared the bitchiness which is inherent in celebrity culture, and smearing is old as the delusions which both grandeur and power bring.  Margaret Thatcher was a mad old bat; John Major tucked his shirt into his underpants and was the ever gray man; Tony Blair was a liar and messianic, both of which more than had an iota of truth in them; and now Gordon Brown, formerly accused of being autistic and of various mental disorders, is said to be taking one of the MAOI class of anti-depressants.

According to who?  Supposedly, as always, these rumours have been circling Westminster, and it takes one "brave" individual to finally give voice to them, of course much easier in these days when you can say whatever you like about anyone on this glorious interweb and someone will inevitably believe it regardless of any evidence.  That person was John Ward, who has his legion of sources and naturally the psychoanalysis to back it up.  Since he first posted on it, it's been picked up by "The Mole", Simon Heffer, Matthew Norman, who should really know better, and now finally by Guido, who demands to know who will ask Gordo about his drug addiction, since if it's on the internet it simply must be true.  John Harris' piece in today's Graun also seems to be an indirect response to it, but is far too kind to come out and play with the rumours.

It's tempting to not give any credence whatsoever to these stories and to ignore them completely, but seeing I'm writing this mess I've obviously decided otherwise.  It's also equally easy to point out that even if true, Brown is hardly the first politician, let alone prime minister to suffer from mental health problems, and that others have dealt superbly with their demons whilst in high office.  There's also the fact that if you weren't under severe strain while prime minister, especially considering the far from benign conditions which Brown has faced over the last year, if not two years, then there's probably something wrong with you anyway.  There is however also an argument to be made that if true, then the public deserves to know, even if fraught with difficulties.  It's only too obvious from the comments of most, including Guido, that there is still severe prejudice and a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to mental illness, as ably illustrated by his continued use of Brown as a clown with a legend which includes the word "bonkers".  Arguably, there was a case when David Blunkett was still home secretary and suffering from something approaching severe depression as a result of his relationship with Kimberley Fortier that he could have be "unfit" to hold such a high post of office.  Yet equally clearly it's apparent that the only person who should be able to make such decisions and offer such advice would be an actual psychiatrist; if Brown is taking MAOIs, then he doubtless has been prescribed them by one.  If he considered that Brown could not continue in his job as a result of his illness, then he would have told him so, just as that doctor would have told anyone else that they should consider taking time off in the same circumstances.  This doesn't seem to be the case.

There is however also a case to be made that this is politics of the very worst kind.  It wasn't so long ago that newspapers were outraged, disgusted and so deeply deeply shocked by the smears which err, they printed, from private emails between Damian McBride and Derek Draper.  These were rumours, as many accepted, which had been swirling around Westminster.  Nonetheless, it was a disaster for Brown, there were allegations that Brown had to have known, as well as other ministers in close proximity to McBride, which individuals later had to apologise for after legal action was taken.  Only on Monday did Guido deliver to McBride a writ from Nadine Dorries for comments which were allegedly made about her in the emails.  Four days later and the exact same person is indulging in what are almost certainly also libellous claims were they to be proved to be unfounded.  If I were McBride and Draper's legal advisers I would suggest that they argue that Dorries doesn't have a reputation to be libelled, but whatever you think of Brown's tenure as prime minister, a case can at least be made that he does.

All this comes just as there actually is genuine politics to be discussed for a change, and after a month in which the Conservatives have been common consent been piss-poor, not helped by Daniel Hannan or by their "Broken Britain" week, highlighted by Chris Grayling's claim that some parts of the country were as bad as the Wire.  The economy seems to be improving, there is no real plot against Brown, despite what Martin Kettle thinks, and the left finally seems to be realising that there's still something to fight for.  Instead we're back to the sewer.

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9/10/2009 10:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, September 03, 2009 

Joyced.

Eric Joyce's resignation as PPS to defence minister Bob Ainsworth is to say the least, intriguing.  Joyce is most certainly on the Blairite wing of Labour, and even under Brown until recently a major loyalist, and with little chance of influencing any sort of attempt to overthrow the prime minister, it seems his decision to go is based purely on his considerable discontent over the war in Afghanistan.

Judging by his previous tenacity in supporting and defending the war in Iraq, Joyce's apparent conversion to an almost anti-war stance on Afghanistan, as that is very close to what he outlines in his resignation letter, is an indictment of current policy.  Then again, anyone could have already pointed that out: the madness of the status quo, where troops apparently give their lives so that tens of ordinary Afghans can vote, sitting ducks acting as target practice for the fighters who disappear as soon as they launch their attacks, while back home the only justification given by a government that also seemingly doesn't believe in what it's doing, the complete joke which is that somehow what the soldiers are doing is preventing terrorism on British streets, is close to being truly offensive in its fatuity.

Joyce sets out, while clearly trying to be as non-threatening and as lightly critical as he can while questioning the entire current strategy, that the public is not so stupid as to believe or to much longer put up with the "terrorism" justification, that we are punching way above our weight in our current operations, and that we should be able to make clear that there has to be some sort of timetable outlining just how long our commitment is both able and willing to last.  All of this should be way beyond controversy, yet already we have the ludicrous sentiment from both Bob Ainsworth and the even more ridiculous Lord West that they don't recognise the picture which Joyce sets out (confused and disjointed was West described it).  This would be reminiscent of Nelson putting the telescope to his bad eye if he hadn't done so with the best of intentions.  The only part which it's difficult to agree with Joyce on is his criticism of the other NATO countries' contribution: who can possibly blame France, Germany and Italy for not wanting to spend a similar amount of both their blood and treasure to us on a war in which they can't even begin to claim as we do that it's preventing terrorism on their streets?

The reason why it doesn't seem right to truly coruscate Labour over the utter cowardice of their current lack of a policy is that it's a failure of leadership which is shared across all three of the major parties.  For all their protests and attacks on the government over Afghanistan, you could barely get a cigarette paper between both the Conservatives and Lib Dems' own ideas on what we should be doing.  All still think, at least in public, despite doubtless their private misgivings, that this is both a war that is worth fighting and one which can be "won", whatever their own idea is of a victory.  Again, perhaps this isn't entirely fair: the Americans, after all, have only just got around to the idea that they should be focusing on hearts and minds and not blowing everywhere where they think there might be a Talib to kingdom come, and to hell with the consequences when it turns out there was actually dozens of civilians in the same compound.

At the same time, it's also hard not to think there might be a touch of cynicism, even conspiracy here on the part of the government and also some of the more pliant sections of the media.  Last week the Sun launched its "Don't they know there's a bloody war on?" campaign, which while not being entirely fair on the government did make me wonder whether there was some collusion with the paper when Gordon Brown the next day turned up in Afghanistan.  Now, exactly a week on from the start of the campaign, Brown will tomorrow be giving the major speech on current policy which the paper demanded, undoubtedly organised weeks if not months in advance.  These could of course all be coincidences, or even the government responding remarkably quickly to a newspaper which it has always gone out of its way to woo, but it's also suggestive of past cooperation between the two.  For the paper which goes out of its way to claim to be the forces' first and last line of both defence and support, such collusion would be incredibly shoddy.  At the same time, it's also a government that cares more for its image, still, than it does for those fighting for it.  To be succinct, there has to be an exit strategy, and at the moment absolutely no one is offering one.

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9/03/2009 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, July 24, 2009 

Norwich North thoughts.

The best that Labour can say about the result in the Norwich North by-election is that it could have been a whole lot worse. There were suggestions at the beginning of the campaign that they could slip into third, fourth or even fifth place, such was the disenchantment with the party, mainly because of the way that Ian Gibson was defenestrated, not just the government's performance as a whole. To be sure, to go from a majority of over 5,000 to a Tory majority of over 7,000, a swing of 16.5%, is ghastly, but not so terrible when you consider that all three main parties lost votes on the 2005 result.

The Liberal Democrats especially must be bitterly disappointed and wonder what they did wrong. There were no real scandals among their expenses, they could claim to be the true heirs to Gibson's politics and punish Labour for getting rid of their popular incumbent, and yet they lost close to 3,000 votes, mainly to the Greens and possibly Craig Murray, but also probably to the Tories.

As for the Greens, the claims that they could win the seat turned out be hot air, although ordinarily a vote of 3,350 would be a cause for celebration. In truth their main target is Norwich South, which they hope to win next year along with Brighton and Hove. If they do, they'll be overthrowing Charles Clarke, which will be an extra cause for breaking out the (organic) champagne. Similarly, UKIP must be ecstatic with their performance, which must surely be one of their best parliamentary results in terms of votes, if not the best, getting an impressive 4,068. Likewise, although Craig Murray is disappointed with his result, 953 votes is a spectacular result for an independent, especially one who was completely ignored by the media, and to beat the BNP into 7th place is no mean feat. Most amusing though is the Libertarians, who received a grand total of 36 votes, behind the Monster Raving Loonies. Who knew that turning the country into an Ayn Rand style fantasy isn't popular?

It seems fairly pointless to try extrapolating anything from this result, as the chances of it being repeated next year seem doubtful. Voters that won't have bothered turning out for a by-election most likely will make the effort come the general election, and the parties outside the main three will almost certainly be squeezed except in their strongholds, especially as the fury over the MPs expenses is slowly forgotten. The question remains just how badly Labour is going to do, rather than how well the Conservatives will - whether it becomes a 97 style wipeout, or a result which the party can recover quicker from. Frankly, it both deserves and needs a 97 style wipeout for it to come to its senses, but the pain that will cause is still difficult to imagine.

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7/24/2009 07:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 

Legislation which doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

One of the more cutting attacks of recent months on the government came not from the Conservatives but from that other continual provider of friendly fire, Frank Field. Writing about government business which was slowly winding its way towards conclusion, he said "week after week MPs have been turning up but with almost no serious work to do. There is the odd bill to be sure. But there is no legislative programme to speak of ... the whole exercise is vacuous."

The problem with Field's criticism is that it assumes that fresh legislation is the be all and end all of government, and it has indeed become one of the key measures by which they are judged. This misses the point that it is not the quantity of bills which are passed, and New Labour has in the past been rightly accused of legislative mania, but rather the quality, on which Labour again falls down on. The immediate answer to passing frenzies and quick to evaporate moral panics is always to get something on the statute book, regardless of how those laws will end up being used and the overall effect they will have. The shining example remains the Dangerous Dogs Act, passed after a tabloid campaign and which outlaws entire breeds of dog, regardless of the dog's own nature. Last year's knife panic brought demands for anyone carrying a knife, regardless of age or reason, to be sent to prison, something which most judges are still rightly either ignoring or evading.

With this in mind, some criticism of what amounts to the next Queen's speech announced yesterday would be unfair. Who can blame a government in uncertain economic times, when it doesn't frankly have a clue how much money it will eventually have to play about with, from not having the most ambitious legislative programme mapped out? Added to this is that we are now less from a year away from an election, where the real big reforms and changes will doubtless be held over to put into the manifesto, and you're likely to be left with what is tinkering around the margins, dropping some of the more unpopular formerly proposed initiatives, with part-privatisation of the Royal Mail postponed and ID cards now not to be forced on anyone (although the real problem all along, the database, will still be around) while also attempting some populist gestures such as allocating more money to social housing building.

As of course this though is New Labour, they can't help but add some very real stings in the tail. The added measure in the housing commitment to make sure that "local residents" are first to be considered for new council homes has only one target, and that is the persistent myth, mined ruthlessly by the BNP, that migrants, asylum seekers and foreigners have the first crack of the whip. It's true that all councils have to bump up those who are in genuine need, whether homeless or otherwise, up towards the top, but asylum seekers and migrants are excluded from the very beginning until they are given leave to remain. Only 5% of social housing is allocated to foreign nationals, but this hasn't stopped the repeated claims that this isn't the case. That the government has now given succour to the idea, regardless of whether or not they also point out at the same time that it isn't true, it's the sort of legitimisation which the BNP and other discontents thrive upon and which they will be pointing out for years to come. It might not be entirely fair to call this "British homes for British workers", but it's not far from it.

Much the same is the case with the kind, generous, selfless gesture which is the offer of a job or training to the young who have been unemployed for over a year. Not a new announcement, but the stick being wielded is. Those who refuse a job, presumably regardless of what it is, will lose two weeks' benefit, and so on and so forth. The opposing argument will be that beggars can't be choosers, but putting someone into a job which they simply aren't suited to do is no solution at all. This conditionality was inherent in James Purnell's welfare reform bill, and it was just as damaging and potentially pernicious there as it is here. Most of those currently out of are work will welcome the possibility of a job, but not any job. One explanation for why this is especially being targeted at the young and out of work is that there is the potential to save money: tax credits, which eat into the savings made when the older out of work find employment, are not payable to those under 24. The government is therefore a winner regardless of whether a job is taken up or not.

Alongside the welcome retreat from the targets culture ingrained in the public sector under Blair, to be replaced by various rights to treatment or private tutors, although where the money's coming from is unclear, the most conspicuous absence is any real reform neccesitated by the expenses scandal. This might be for the better, as the beginning of this post argues, as legislation cobbled together in haste often fails all those involved, and it seems the current bill being rushed through is no exception, but for a prime minister who came in promising further constitutional reform, the final flushing out of the hereditary peers from the Lords is about as tame as it gets. It just confirms that as with the banking sector, parliament is getting back to normal, and far quicker than the City did. It can be argued that the public themselves didn't want major reform of Westminster, just an end to the gravy train, but at the same time it fails to answer the now critical insult that all politicians are more or less the same.

It's an attack which sticks, because all this latest package confirms is that Labour and the Conservatives are fighting a battle not over ideology, but over the little details. The key differences seem to be that the Conservatives will be slightly tougher, whether on law and order, foreign policy and the welfare system, and cut slightly more, except on health and foreign aid, and possibly education than Labour will. Little else really separates them. Neither is prepared to be honest about what they would cut, whether it's Labour who don't seem prepared to admit that they'll cut anything, or the Tories, who have no intention of telling just how harshly they're going to cut public spending. Here is where Alan Johnson's suggestion that there could be a referendum on voting reform at the same time as the election could have made so much difference. The promise that you would no longer be forced to decide which is the lesser of the two evils, with the Lib Dems joining the fray in certain areas, could have helped to suggest that there will shortly be a real choice. Instead we're fobbed off with the same old leftovers as before, regardless of which party is proposing what.

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6/30/2009 10:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, June 12, 2009 

Blears today, gone tomorrow.

You have to hand it to Hazel Blears, if there's one thing she has in abundance, it's pure chutzpah. She wasn't plotting, she regrets "insulting" Gordon Brown, she wishes she hadn't worn a brooch with "rocking the boat" on it, and it was careless to resign only a day before the local elections. If you wanted to extend the rather tired Stalinist analogy, you'd be forgiven for thinking this was Blears having to confess to her crimes before she takes the bullet in the back of the head.

Except it later turns out that she's now facing a motion of no confidence, albeit one she seems likely to survive, rather like how she herself failed to displace Gordon Brown despite of course now denying that she ever wished for that to happen. Could Blears denouncing herself and that motion possibly be connected?

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6/12/2009 09:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, June 05, 2009 

Brown's bastards and the death of a once proud party.

To call Friday the 5th of June 2009 a day of contrasts would be something of an understatement. On the positive side for Labour and Gordon Brown, what was almost certainly a Blairite coup appears to have been averted, and with it, the Blairites themselves have almost to an individual been purged, or rather, for the most part purged themselves. The only Blairite true believers who remain in the cabinet are probably Tessa Jowell, who ought to be history, Andy Burnham and Peter Mandelson, but who now seems to have bizarrely became as pro-Brown as he was pro-Blair. Thanks to James Purnell, Brown has also apparently been foiled from carrying out the wholesale changes he wanted: Alistair Darling stays chancellor and Ed Balls, his supposed replacement, remains at education, both of which are non-changes for the better. Likewise, that both John Denham and Alan Johnson have been promoted, two of the most capable and pleasant ministers within the government is also a wise move. Johnson has the potential to be a vast improvement over the last three home secretaries (what happened to Shaun Woodward, being so talked up earlier in the week?), and you can also detect perhaps an ulterior motive from Brown, to be giving probably the most poisoned chalice within government to the man so heavily tipped to be his successor.

Those are however the only positives to be taken, as the local election results have been completely cataclysmic for Labour, something which the media, fascinated and intrigued by the machinations at Westminster has failed to really delve into. Labour lost control of its last four remaining county councils, and some of the wipeouts have been breathtaking, losing 30 of 32 seats in Staffordshire and 17 of 21 seats in Lincolnshire. Earlier in the week the talk was that if Derbyshire was lost then Brown should have been finished; it's gone, and he's for the moment clinging on. The results leave Labour with only around 130 councillors across such councils, and the party itself reduced to a rump, moribund with the activists in despair. We shouldn't write the party off, and the Conservatives have recovered from similar disasters, but it does make you wonder whether this isn't the slow, agonising death, not yet ofLabour itself, but New Labour certainly.

The ostensible Labour share of the vote is 23%, 1% down on its previous poorest showing, but that covers up just how terrible the kicking has been. Almost certainly the European election results will be even worse; it surely isn't unthinkable now that Labour's share of the vote could be well below 20%, and that is especially chilling when you consider how many former Labour supporters will have crossed the box for the BNP. Hopefully most will have plumped instead for UKIP or the Greens, but Nick Griffin gaining the respectability of a Europe seat is an ill wind about politics in general. That the Conservative vote has dipped to 38% from its previous high suggests that all are suffering to some extent, but Labour the most. The one consolation that remains is that on a similar share of the vote at a general election, unlikely as most who voted for the minor parties or stayed at home will return to the big three and turn out, the Tories will only have a majority of around 4 seats. This is still not yet a Conservative walkover, with the voters attacking Labour and politics as a whole rather than coalescing around David Cameron, although that may well be the next step.

Like earlier in the week, we should again be celebrating that another Labour careerist Blairite, as even John Prescott described James Purnell, walked the plank in such a sickeningly self-righteous manner. In his resignation letter, Purnell hilariously wrote that "[I]t calls for a government that measures itself on how it treats the poorest in society." This is the man that has just presided over changes to the benefit system that penalise, punish, harass and prosecute those very people. Even more staggering has been Caroline Flint's mood swing from backing Brown to the hilt only last night to deciding today that he had been using her and the other women in the cabinet as nothing more than "window-dressing". Mercilessly satirised by the Heresiarch, this seems to have far more to do with the fact that Brown didn't consider her for promotion, despite offering that she could attend cabinet, hence the throwing of the toys out of the pram in a political hissy fit that will have doubtless delighted the "women against Gordon" she was alleged to have been associated with. That she recently posed for the Observer in a range of dresses, some of which have predictably found their way onto the front pages of tomorrow's newspapers (not to mention this blog) seems to have done nothing to deter her from using such a potentially hypocritical turn of phrase.

One thing should be made clear. Despite the fact this is almost definitely a coup attempt led by Blairites (and every single resignation with the exception of Margaret Beckett has been by Blairites), there is no real quarrel here about policies. While there were policy differences in the past between the Blairites and Brownites, however slight, there is now nothing whatsoever to separate them. This is purely about Brown, and how they don't think they can win the election with him in charge, not that Alan Johnson or David Miliband will lead the party back into the promised lead of constant reforming revolution; Johnson after all has just been successful as health secretary mainly because he has allowed the NHS to settle after constant restructuring. This is why if Brown is to be overthrown, and that still in my opinion, despite everything, should not happen, it should be by the backbenchers, not the "bastards who have never had a job in their lives". There are still differences in opinion back there, and it is only they who can claim to have the interests of the party at heart. The anger at the grassroots at the manoveuring of Blears and Purnell is palpable, as the Grauniad's letters page shows, making a bad situation for those already stricken by the expenses scandal even worse.

Even then though, there is no indication whatsoever that they would be listened to. Brown certainly doesn't trust them, or rate them, as there will now be 7 unelected ministers in the cabinet. How can Brown or anyone else claim to be interested in genuine reform when he has to turn to the Lords repeatedly to shore himself up? While he may not have appointed peers in the same way that Blair did, this apparent contempt both for backbenchers and for the idea that our reprensentatives should be elected rather than cronies is another sign of his weakness. For now he might have saved himself, or rather the Blairites might have saved him through their own pitiful conspiring, but Labour is set to sink whoever is at the helm. 15 years of New Labour has destroyed it, and who knows how long it will be before even the slightest recovery will begin.

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6/05/2009 11:03:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 03, 2009 

With a bang, not a whimper.

Normally the departure of Hazel Blears would be a wonderful cause for celebration. The epitome of absolutely everything wrong, not just with New Labour, but with politics as a whole, she jumped before she was pushed. No one imagined that Blears, despite being an awful politician, was also on the make or out to "take what was hers", in the words of Michael Martin; perhaps her expenses are still a genuine oversight or based upon bad advice from the fees office. It was however the icing on the cake when it came to someone who based their entire career up until very recently on unstinting, unquestioning loyalty and belief in the righteousness of absolutely everything that New Labour has done, manifesting itself most vividly in her recent interview with George Monbiot, when her wild-eyed fanaticism looked as if turning instead into sad, desperately lonely certainty.

In normal times, Blears would be a pygmy, in more than one sense. There is however no other interpretation but that this was further revenge from a woman who has been both scorned and wronged, who knew she had the power to inflict yet more damage on an already flailing prime minister. Whether she was involved in the leaking of Jacqui Smith's resignation, as alleged by some in Downing Street or not, this was without doubt a further act to that. Her resignation letter is as pointed, both in its repeated emphasis on how she will be returning to her roots, and in its failure to pay any real tribute to Brown.

Downing Street should have been able to laugh this off. This is after all a non-entity, someone with ideas above their station who failed miserably when she stood for the deputy leadership, coming dead last. Her brand of clap-happy, shiny smiley ultra-Blairism could not be more out of fashion, and her brandishing of a cheque on television to pay back the over £10,000 she owed in capital gains tax could not have been further removed from those she claims to have backed and defended her entire life. Some of those doubtless could not have put together a cheque for £100, let alone that sum. Indeed, for someone who claims to have the interests of the Labour party at heart, she has almost certainly just cost some Labour councillors their seats, and taken votes away from their European candidates. The irony of the local government minister, through an act of petulant, pathetic self-indulgence, doing the equivalent of shoving a bottle up local Labour activists will ensure that her return to Salford is unlikely to be a happy one.

Quite how weakened Number 10 has been by this is shown by someone having the temerity to claim that Brown and others had "smeared" Blears by apparently leaking further information about her tax payments to the Torygraph. Blears has just done the equivalent of leaving a turd on the doorstep of Brown's den, and her allies are suggesting she's the victim in all of it! Whether there is a concerted plot by "friends" of Blears, almost all Blairite women, which includes Jacqui Smith, who seemed to laugh her way through a Sky News interview to kill Gordon through bleeding to death from a thousand cuts or not is impossible to tell. What is clear however is that despite the claims of Polly Toynbee, this does have the potential to cause deep resentment within the party, perhaps not on the level which consumed some Tories after Thatcher was deposed, but poison nonetheless. The plotters almost to an individual all seem to be Blairites, or Blairite-sympathisers, some who have always either disliked or loathed Brown, and now seem to finally sense they can have their revenge. This wouldn't be completely ignoble if there was a genuine leader waiting in the wings who could unite the party once Brown goes, but there isn't. Does anyone honestly believe that Alan Johnson is a long-term Labour leader rather than a stop gap? Is David Miliband even approaching ready to become prime minister, even only for a couple of months until he'd have to call an election?

There is however still one way out of all this, as proposed by the Heresiarch, which I thoroughly agree with and am rather shamelessly borrowing. Brown on Friday should go to the palace and ask for parliament to be dissolved for an election. It's the one thing that would wrongfoot absolutely everybody, his opponents in the party, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, and doubtless the Queen herself. The Labour ranks would be forced to get behind him, the other parties would have to actually tell us what their alternative will look like, and it would also appease those who are demanding an election now because of the expenses scandal. It would remove those who have said they are standing down far quicker than they might like, also a very good thing. At the same time there could also be that referendum on voting reform, a vote for which David Cameron could almost certainly not ignore, and which would be one thing which Brown could cite as his legacy, as well as being the biggest change which the expenses debacle demands. Whatever Brown now does, he's going to lose. Why doesn't he go down fighting, not just for his leadership but for the country as well?

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6/03/2009 09:52:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, June 02, 2009 

Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.

If the weekend and yesterday were bleak times for the government and especially Gordon Brown, then today can only be described as the worst of times. Normally, the announcement that three ministers would be stepping down would be only met with a shrug, even if the home secretary was among them. Such though is the precarious position which Labour finds itself in, it instead looks as if this a complete breakdown of control from the very top.

Again, no one will be shedding any tears for the departure of Jacqui Smith. She may be, as Iain Dale says, "a thoroughly nice woman", but she was simply the worst of all worlds when it came to being in charge of the Home Office. Having been promoted from chief whip, it was her expenses claims which did for her, but it really should have been both her dreadful failure to make the case for any of the policies which she was attempting to ram through parliament, and doubtless connected to that, the fact that all she seemed to be doing was instituting policies that had been decided for her. The one policy that she did have any real apparent interest in, the ridiculous and dangerous idea that men that paid for sex with women that were "controlled" by others could be charged with rape has had to be toned down, with the police highly critical of how on earth they were supposed to be able to enforce it. She can't exactly be blamed for the 42 days debacle, as that was undoubtedly Brown's policy as much as it was hers, but her continuing attraction to identity cards, her knee-jerk response to the knife crime panic of last summer, and most of all the Damian Green disaster, as well as the ludicrous banning of various "extreme" individuals all made her a typically tin-eared Labour home secretary. She wasn't quite as bad as either David Blunkett or John Reid, both of whom could have been accurately described as two of the most dangerous men in the country when they were at the Home Office, but that's hardly a ringing endorsement of her tenure.

Everyone though expected Smith to be out of a job come the reshuffle. It's that somehow, either she or someone couldn't keep the fact she was leaving out of the public domain until the time as when Brown had made his decision as to who her replacement will be. The question, as always, has to be whether it's conspiracy or cock-up, whether the leak is meant as a passing fusillade against Brown for the lack of support she seems to have been given. There is, it must be said, always rumour mills whirling furiously before expected reshuffles, but when a prime minister is as weak as Brown currently is, it seems utterly bizarre that he should be adding to it himself as he seems to have been by not given Alistair Darling his full support. Darling, as others have pointed out, has spent the last couple of years taking the flak for Brown, as it is after all his work while chancellor which has left Darling in such an enfeebled position, yet despite his loyalty and willingness to eat the equivalent of a shit sandwich repeatedly for his master, he's now been left out in the cold like the other miscreants which Brown thinks he can sacrifice. We all know why Hazel Blears' expenses claims can be described as "totally unacceptable" while James Purnell and others are given more equivocal backing, but why treat Darling in such a way?

It gives the impression that Brown has lost whatever remaining grip he had. Not the grip on the party itself - that had long gone, but now his hand seems to have left the tiller of the cabinet as well, those few that will still publicly defend him. Such events will always be exaggerated, but the Daily Mail again doesn't seem too far off tomorrow when it screams that the rats are leaving the sinking ship. If you wanted to indulge in conspiracy, as alluded to above, you might think that Smith's leaving was designed to make everyone engage in just this sort of speculation. Why else would you further undermine a prime minister prior to elections where it now seems credible that Labour could face its worst ever post-WW2 results unless you wanted to throw a spanner completely into the works?

Right on cue, the muttering in the Grauniad by the likes of Pollyanna Toynbee, Jackie Ashley and Martin Kettle has moved from their columns into the editorial itself. Tomorrow it calls for Brown to go with dignity. It isn't a bad argument, as far as they go, but it's the wrong timing again. The time for Brown to go and still retain some respect was last summer, not now. To go now would be utter humiliation, and surely those who wrote it must realise that. Regardless of Brown's mistakes and his personal failings, he still doesn't deserve such an ignominious fate. It is however typical of the modern Guardian that it called far too late for Blair to go and it now abandons Brown at the worst possible time, both for him and for the party. For far too long it indulged Blair's worst excesses with meek criticism while it has repeatedly failed to show the same fairness towards Brown. Who are these other individuals in the cabinet that would do a better job, but which the paper doesn't even deign to name? It too can't face up to the reality: that regardless of leader Labour in its current form is doomed. It needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up, to re-engage with its roots, to become a genuine party of the working person again. No one in the current cabinet is prepared for such radical thinking. It has become a small "c" conservative party, on some measures even more right-wing than the actual Tories themselves are. No party can so disengage from its supporters for so long and expect to survive, and it is at long last facing its denouement. The Mona Lisa itself is falling apart.

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6/02/2009 11:21:00 PM | | | links to this post

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