Tuesday, March 30, 2010 

In defence (somewhat) of George Osborne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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3/30/2010 08:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 29, 2010 

Fear, panic and politics win yet again.

If ever there was a purer example of how fear, panic and politics will always win out against rationality, cold reflection and research, it's in the proposed fast-track criminalisation of Mephedrone, "Meow Meow" or 4-MMC, or whatever you want to call it. It also marks the final capitulation of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which having previously argued against the government's reclassification of cannabis from Class C to Class B, and having urged that Ecstasy be downgraded to C now seems to have decided under its new leadership to simply act as the pseudo-scientific justificatory rubber stamp that the government needs.

On the face of it, the ACMD is justifying its quick decision on the grounds that 4-MMC, rather than being an actual new drug, is rather more simply an amphetamine masquerading as a designer drug. The precedent for classifying it more quickly than it usually would was last year's ban on "Spice", marketed somewhat similarly to how 4-MMC has been, but which has definitively been identified as containing synthetic cannabinoids. This is in difference to 4-MMC, which has been identified as being based on cathinone compounds found in khat, but as yet has not been so conclusively independently examined. Khat is also not illegal in this country, having been considered by the ACMD for possible criminalisation in the past, but felt to be "safe" enough for it be left outside classification, although cathinone and cathine themselves are classified as Class C. Spice has also been around for a lot longer than 4-MMC, having first been sold back in 2002, while 4-MMC dates only from three years ago.

A far more appropriate response from a council interested in actual evidence rather than anecdote would have been to delay making a recommendation until more research had been conducted. Indeed, it's almost certainly what the previous head of the ACMD, Professor David Nutt, sacked by Alan Johnson for criticising the government over their failure to reclassify Ecstasy following the committee's advice would have recommended. Nutt has also suggested that a new classification, a so-called Class D, should be introduced under which "new" drugs like 4-MMC could be temporarily classified until more is known about them. This would allow them to be sold but place such substances under far stricter regulation than the current free-for-all, which will incidentally continue if it is criminalised but instead mean that it will be organised crime rather than legitimate businesses in control of the supply. It's not just Nutt calling for such a change, but also the UK Drug Policy Commission, which is referring to its similar suggestion for a new emergency classification as "Category X".

With the resignation of so many members of the ACMD in protest at the sacking of Nutt and the government's general attitude towards its previous advice, the latest coming only this morning, it's difficult not to wonder whether those being pushed forward as replacements are not already more in tune with the government's favoured point of view. Even if this is a slur on their characters, then the pressure on them to make a quick decision could hardly be greater. The last month has seen what was already a stream of concern about Mephedrone turn into a veritable torrent, with the tabloids seemingly determined to whip up a moral panic, as hopefully this blog has identified. Not content with just further promoting the drug, as those supplying 4-MMC have themselves made clear the media's coverage has done, regardless of its tone, they've been actively lying about how schools supposedly couldn't confiscate it from students, selectively quoting from ministerial letters in order to continue the charade. Combined with the relatives of loved ones who believe their children have died as a result of taking 4-MMC, ignoring that almost all those who have died after using it were also taking other (illegal) drugs at the same time, politicians have had to make clear That Something Must Be Done, and will be done. Gordon Brown last week actively described an inanimate substance as "evil"; under such an atmosphere, and with an election only just over a month away, it's difficult to believe that even if the ACMD has asked for more time the government would have agreed. Instead, 4-MMC's criminalisation is to be rushed onto the statute books, and with Conservative support, seems certain to become law before the election.

This is the worst of all possible worlds. The very first step of criminalisation is that the price of the drug, which has been relative low, will sky rocket. Those that have become somewhat dependent on it, although again the evidence for this is only anecdotal, and if the drug is closer to amphetamine than methamphetamine addiction tends to be mental rather than physical (although withdrawal doesn't care which is which) will have to find the extra money to pay for it, which usually leads to acquisitive crime, or to switching to a substitute, the most likely of which are either speed or crystal meth. Due to their illegality, drugs which may well have previously been "pure" are far more likely to be doctored or watered down, potentially with far more harmful substances in the case of the former, or leading to the user needing even more in the case of the latter. As mentioned above, where previously "legal high" and drug paraphernalia shops as well as "entrepreneurs" have been supplying and selling 4-MMC, the usual lowlife will now be moving into the breach. Far be it from me to defend capitalism, but where previously the legitimate economy has at least been somewhat benefiting from the rise in popularity of 4-MMC, we're now going to see all of that growth cut off, which is clearly just the government should be doing when we're trying to pull fully clear of recession. Lastly, as 4-MMC is a so-called designer drug, there's nothing to stop a replacement being developed and appearing on the streets potentially within months, with this entire cycle repeating.

All we're doing is moving from a state of affairs where there was little known about the dangers of the drug but it was legal is to one where the position is the same but the drug is illegal. Even while the police claim that they'll be targeting "dealers", which until the criminalisation becomes law are perfectly legitimate businesses and individuals, there will still certainly be cases where recreational users will be charged and prosecuted simply for wanting to make their weekends slightly better. The very same politicians that would never argue for the prohibition of alcohol or tobacco, not just because they enjoy it themselves but also because history shows us that it doesn't work are perfectly prepared to criminalise others for their different choice of psychoactive substances. The policy of drug prohibition will one day be seen in exactly the same terms as that of alcohol prohibition, but it won't be until at least the last generation either retires or is removed from power.

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3/29/2010 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 27, 2010 

Alternative pledge card.

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

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3/27/2010 08:44:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 24, 2010 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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3/24/2010 11:58:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 22, 2010 

Intensely relaxed about getting filthy rich comes full circle.

As scandals go, Stephen Byers declaring to an undercover reporter that he was the equivalent of a "cab for hire", albeit for a sum which even most taxi drivers would blanch at demanding, isn't even close to the worst that Labour have suffered over the past 13 years. It's also hardly a repeat of "Cash for Questions", let alone the far more dramatic downfall of Jonathan Aitken. The closest comparison is in fact an almost identical operation by the Sunday Times last year, which successfully ensnared four Labour MPs with mouths equally as large as Byers'. In that instance they too also later said that they had played fast and loose with the truth of their fantastic ability to influence, although they didn't go so far in their attempt to don the sackcloth and ashes as Byers undoubtedly has.

The denials of Tesco and National Express also has echoes of that infamous scandal, or what would these days quite rightly be a non-scandal, the Profumo affair. As Mandy Rice-Davies didn't quite tell the court, they would [say that], wouldn't they? It's impossible to know without an investigation whether Byers was in fact telling the truth to begin with and then, either in an attack of conscience or fear that he'd been nobbled decided to retract what he'd said, but the attempt by Labour to shut the whole thing down, even after Byers referred himself to the parliamentary standards committee was never likely to put an end to things. The response tonight, to suspend Byers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon from the party while understandable, is only likely to infer guilt on all three. Equally Downing Street must be enjoying the schadenfreude, despite the damage to the party, of being able to cut down to size the two architects of the attempted coup earlier in the year.

This has though been a scandal waiting to happen; the only real surprise is that it's happened now, and that all three of those to most cover themselves in ordure have been or were Blairites. That might seem counter-intuitive: after all, while you can say plenty about the Brownites and their own use of the tactics of spin and smear, it's always been those on the Blair wing of the party that have found themselves at the centre of scandals. Why though, when parliament is so close to the end of term, were all three so willing to advertise themselves as available to lobbyists? There might be an element of all three being demob happy, as all are standing down at the election, hence their last chance to get some lucre before descending back into absolute obscurity, but it's not as if either Byers or Hewitt are broke: Byers is the non-executive chairman of two companies while Hewitt earns almost as much if not more than she does as an MP through her directorship at BT, having formerly been a trade minister, and slightly less through her role as a special consultant to Alliance Boots, having formerly been health secretary. Only Hoon has no such interests to declare, and he suggested that his quest for cash was down to having two children at university, and seeing as he was in cabinet when tuition fees were pushed through the Commons, he only has himself to blame.

As Justin astutely notes, corruption, lobbying and Mandelson's oft-quoted riff on how they were "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" have all been hallmarks of New Labour, or most certainly the Blair side of the party since 1997. In the first term alone there was the Ecclestone affair, when very mysteriously it was decided the Formula 1 would be exempt from the rules banning tobacco sponsorship after little Bernie had donated a million to the party, then Lobbygate, when Derek Draper (yes, him) informed Greg Palast that he was "intimate" with the 17 people who "count". As alluded to above, it's odd that this has only just come up again now: after all, party conferences these days are just one long lobbying session, when charities and companies buy up fringe events and meetings, and as ex-ministers openly flog themselves to those that formerly were lobbying them, as most egregiously Hewitt and Lord Warner have done. Labour are hardly the only offenders though, as was illustrated when Cameron attempted earlier in the year to associate Gordon Brown with those charged with offences over their expenses, commenting at the time on lobbying. Back then we still didn't know about Lord Ashcroft's tax status, while we did know that Cameron has a "leader's group", where if you donate £50,000 to the party you get behind the scenes access to all the party's luminaries. At least you know what Labour's union backers want, and equally know that they very, very rarely get it, despite the millions donated.

Whether this will have any great effect on either support for Labour, or further disillusion those still to decide whether to vote or not is unclear. Labour most be hoping that the relatively quick suspension of three MPs already due to stand down will have next to no effect on those already likely to vote for them, but far more important is that the integrity of our politics has been once again brought into question. While the lowest point has probably been reached, thanks to the expenses scandal, where it was everyone's money involved rather than that of politicians personally profiting thanks to their influence, it's those that are politically engaged who this time are most likely to be disgusted. Even then, it's not the money involved, or that any of three would besmirch their entirely spotless reputations (snigger), but the downright stupidity and way in which they walked into such a trap. Politicians are human, something we sometimes fail to make allowances for, but hopefully not completely ignorant and lacking in inquisitiveness. The Sunday Times/Dispatches scoop suggests otherwise.

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3/22/2010 11:59:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, March 20, 2010 

Scum-watch: A great victory for liars.

How then do you respond when it turns out you've been telling ludicrous lies, claiming that teachers couldn't confiscate 4-MMC when any actual teacher would have told you the absolute opposite?

Easy. Claim that the rules have been changed because of your highlighting of the problem:

TEACHERS were given the power to confiscate killer drug meow meow yesterday - in a victory for The Sun.

After dithering for days, Mr Coaker wrote to every head in England, saying: "Schools do have the power to confiscate inappropriate items, including a substance they believe to be mephedrone (or any other drug whatever its legal status). They do not have to return such confiscated substances."

As is abundantly clear, this is Coaker just reiterating what the current rules are. Here's part of his letter to schools unedited:

Some questions have been raised as to whether teachers can confiscate such substances, given that they are not prohibited substances. As current guidance makes clear, schools do have the power to confiscate inappropriate items, including a substance they believe to be mephedrone (or any other drug whatever its legal status) in line with the schools behaviour policy. They do not have to return such confiscated substances. As School discipline and pupil behaviour policies: Guidance for schools makes clear, schools may choose not to return an item to the pupil, including

  • Items of value which the pupil should not have brought to school or has misused in some way might – if the school judges this appropriate and reasonable – be stored safely at the school until a responsible family adult can come and retrieve them.
  • Items which the pupil should not have had in their possession – particularly of an unlawful or hazardous nature – may be given by the school to an external agency for disposal or further action as necessary. This should always be followed by a letter to the parents confirming that this has taken place and the reasons for such an action.

The Sun's claims that teachers had to give back 4-MMC to students as it isn't yet illegal have thus been utter nonsense from the very beginning, and their editing of Coaker's letter is cynical and misleading in the extreme.

Nonetheless, the paper's leader continues to claim that it's all thanks to them:

IN a victory for The Sun, teachers are told they DON'T have to give back a deadly drug seized from pupils...What's surprising is that there was a millisecond's doubt.

Day was when school heads could dictate what their pupils wore, how they behaved and whether they could use mobile phones during class.

Never mind not handing back meow meow because it is technically legal.

Makes you wonder precisely what those who run our schools these days are taking.


Or rather, it makes you wonder what those who write the newspapers are taking these days. The idea that heads don't decide on what pupils wear, how they behave or whether they can use mobile phones isn't just beyond ignorant, it's an outright lie. It really is impossible not to absolutely hate the scaremongering liars who write for the Sun, and to be incredibly fearful of the power which they continue to wield, both over this government and the one likely to come.

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3/20/2010 08:11:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, March 18, 2010 

Scum-watch: Fuelling a moral panic over Mephedrone.

This whole post comes with a very hefty hat-tip to Carl, a crime reporter on a local newspaper.

If yesterday's reporting on Mephedrone or 4-MMC was slightly hysterical, then we now seem to be moving into full moral panic territory. Moral panics are not just driven by exaggeration and overreaction through fear, but directly fuelled by downright lies, obfuscation and completely inaccurate media reporting, all of which has come together in today's Sun in a quite remarkable fashion.

Not content with just wanting 4-MMC to be banned, it seems determined to inflate the number of deaths associated with it, claiming that there have been 5 while only 1 has today been directly linked to the drug, but also spreading likely myths. The paper is suggesting that "dealers" are adding Crystal Meth to it, which seems highly unlikely on two grounds: firstly that Meth is not a popular drug in this country, especially when compared to the US; and secondly that the most popular methods of taking it are different. Meth is almost always either injected or smoked, whereas 4-MMC is mainly taken either by snorting it, by swallowing it in capsule form, "bombing it" or mixing it into a drink. Meth can be snorted, and it can potentially be mixed with 4-MMC, but if anyone is doing so, my bet would be only those who consider themselves truly "hardcore" are likely to chance it.

The paper's main claim today though is that teachers are having to hand 4-MMC back to pupils who have it in their possession, as it has no age restriction and isn't illegal. The paper here seems to be using a typical tabloid short cut: what it does definitively report is the comments made by Mike Stewart, head of Westlands School in Torquay:

Mr Stewart said: "Both teachers and police are powerless to do anything about it.

"Items can be confiscated, but because this drug is still legal it would have to be given back at the end of the day and that's disturbing.

"This drug is highly dangerous and must be banned."


Note that Stewart doesn't actually say that he has had to give 4-MMC back to a student after it's been confiscated, because in all likelihood he hasn't. He does though seem to be one of these teachers that love to talk to the media, as this video on the BBC shows. From this the paper has directly taken the line that teachers are having to give it back, which there is absolutely no evidence for whatsoever.

My school days aren't that long behind me, and teachers then were all too confiscate happy, and the time the item was kept was often far longer than just until the end of the day. The idea that a teacher would confiscate a white powder, even if told that it was 4-MMC and still hand it back to a student is ludicrous. The very first thing that would happen is that a higher authority (probably up to head of year, deputy head, even head level) would be brought in for something so potentially serious, and then almost certainly the police as well. After all, you can't take a student's word for it that the white powder they have in their possession isn't cocaine or speed. The Devon and Cornwall police themselves issued a press release today which ought to fully debunk this claim (Update: .doc, thanks again to Carl):

"If the seized drugs are found to be mephedrone no charges will follow under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but it is possible that other offences such as those under Intoxicating Substances Act 1985 could be brought. If, after testing, the seized substance is identified as mephedrone the Force will retain and destroy the product."

No chance whatsoever then that teachers or even police would have to give it back. The Sun could have checked this themselves, but instead thought that scaring people would be a better option.

Having then created a nightmarish picture of teachers having to give potentially deadly drugs back to their students, the paper moves on to lambasting the government, its other favourite popular past-time :

Home Secretary Alan Johnson was blasted as it emerged that a decision on a ban had been delayed SIX MONTHS.

An official review was launched last October, then postponed when the scientist in charge quit in protest at the sacking of chief drugs adviser Prof David Nutt.

The committee has still not reported, meaning any ban is still months away.


Not true - the ACMD is due to give advice to ministers at the end of the month, regardless of the problems caused by the sacking of Prof David Nutt, whom the Sun previously smeared by association, targeting his own children. The government has said it will take "immediate action" upon receiving that advice, although how much they can do considering parliament will have to rise on the 6th for an election on May 6th is difficult to see. The best plan to deal with it in a prohibitive fashion, as pointed out yesterday, was to stick it in a "Class D" classification, age-restricting and taking control of the supply until more research and studies had been carried out. This though simply isn't good enough for those who have already lost loved ones, even if they don't yet know whether it was 4-MMC itself that killed them, newspapers which are determined to use any stick to beat the government and other politicians who are equally set on proving their law and order credentials.

The paper's leader has all of this and more besides:

SCHOOL heads are furious at the Government shambles over killer party drug meow meow.

Teachers seize stashes but have to return them because there is no law against the lethal substance.

Nonsense, as we've established above.

Instead of acting, Labour cobble up plans to microchip puppies - in an attempt to divert attention from the Jon Venables scandal.

Yes, that policy was directly cooked up to distract everyone. Do they really expect anyone to believe such utter rot?

Lord Mandelson admits he's never HEARD of meow meow. Shouldn't a senior minister be better informed?

When it has absolutely nothing to do with his own ministerial duties, no, he doesn't necessarily have to be.

America can ban drugs instantly for a year pending investigation.

Why can't we? Labour mumble about a decision by the summer.


Even if 4-MMC was to be banned immediately, does the paper really think that'll either solve anything or decrease the dangers of taking it? Of course it won't, it's just the same old "sending a message" nonsense which has failed now for over half a century.

Tackling meow meow is urgent.

The Government must wake up or have more deaths on its conscience.


More deaths on their conscience? Is the paper really suggesting that the government bears some responsibility for those who die as a result of taking potentially dangerous substances? This is the equivalent of claiming that the government bears responsibility for everyone who dies as a result of alcohol poisoning because that's legal, or through lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking. For a newspaper that repeatedly stresses personal responsibility, this is the complete antitheses of that philosophy. By the same yardstick you could claim that the media could have deaths on their conscience through the hype and hysteria which they're spreading about 4-MMC; you can bet that there'll be more inquisitive and inclined to try it this weekend as a result of all the coverage, regardless of the panic associated with it. If the government has a responsibility, then so does the media. The Sun has resolutely failed that test.

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3/18/2010 10:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 

Mephedrone - what a fucking disgrace.

It's fairly obvious to compare the current hype/hysteria over Mephedrone (Q&A PDF here), a new "legal" high to the seminal Brass Eye episode on drugs where Chris Morris invented the fictional drug Cake, and got celebrities and politicians to rail against it, but then this blog is nothing if not obvious. It really does seem almost too good to be possibly be true - sold as "plant food", called in slang, ridiculously, "Meow Meow", "Miaow" or supposedly "Bubbles", and now we have the deaths linked to it in which everyone seems to be completely ignoring the fact that the two men in Scunthorpe who died mixed it with alcohol and then apparently, and we say apparently, as it's impossible to know yet what killed them until the toxicology reports come back, used Methadone of all things to try and make the comedown smoother. Methadone has all the dangers of heroin, and is incredibly easy to overdose on, especially when you have no tolerance to it and are unable to therefore know what a "safe" dose is. Slight update: as Carl points out in the comments, while it's possible they may have overdosed on just the Methadone, it's also possible that the mixture of the three could just have well have caused their deaths.

As a drug that only emerged in 2007 as a "recreational" substance, much about Mephedrone or 2-methylamino-1-p-tolylpropan-1-one to give it its proper systematic name is unknown, including the true dangers involved in taking it and the long-term side effects. What is known is that so far only one death has been definitively linked to the drug, and that also involved the taking of it with another drug, in that case cannabis. An earlier reported death in this country of a 14-year-old girl was found to have been caused by bronchial pneumonia, and not 4-MMC, as we'll call it from here. We don't then have any solid evidence whatsoever, let alone any scientific studies, to show that the drug is inherently dangerous on its own; what we do have is reports from users that suggest that it has unpleasant side-effects, and also isolated reports that some have become addicted to it, although those have to be treated with the usual scepticism.

To put this somewhat in context, the rise of 4-MMC doesn't seem to be just because its legal status is currently in limbo, nor that it can currently be obtained easily and acquired for relatively trivial amounts of money, but because of both the relative scarcity of Ecstasy, and the perceived drop of quality in both MDMA and cocaine. 4-MMC is currently felt to be far more likely to be purer in quality because of its legality, in difference to the aforementioned drugs, although there have been rumours that some batches could have been contaminated. The other drug to rise hugely in popularity in the last few years has been Ketamine: it's no coincidence that while Ket is a controlled drug, its use as an anaesthetic in both humans and animals means that it is relatively easy to obtain, and that its quality is somewhat assured as a result.

It hardly then follows that making 4-MMC illegal, as demanded by all the usual suspects, will either halt its growth in popularity or reduce the risks associated with it. Indeed, as the ever excellent Transform blog points out, the ban on importing it into Guernsey has had two predictable effects: pushing up the price, fuelling acquisitive crime, with organised crime gangs filling in where previously dodgy if legal outfits had been supplying it. Making a substance illegal only increases the possibility of contamination when the ingredients are more difficult to get hold of (the quality of the ingredients is also bound to suffer) - witness the recent deaths of heroin users who found their supply had been contaminated with anthrax. Lastly, as the equally reasoned Prof. David Nutt makes clear, that 4-MMC is a "designer" drug only makes the possibility of a replacement substance coming along relatively quickly after a ban is put in place all the more likely.

Nutt also offers the best "prohibitive" short-term solution, a so called "Class D" classification:

This is a holding category where drugs can be put before they are well understood: sales are limited to over-18s; the product is quality-controlled so users know what they are getting, at doses limited as far as possible to safe levels; and it comes with health education messages. Society can limit sales and collect data on use.

Unfortunately this would never be close to acceptable to the "usual suspects" mentioned above. In fact, they'd consider it the government openly sanctioning the use of such dangerous substances, and if someone was to die in circumstances similar to that of the two young men in Scunthorpe where it hasn't yet been proved that their deaths were anything to do with 4-MMC, then they'd declare that the government had blood on its hands. Like the Private Eye taxi driver stereotype where hanging and flogging is the only thing that "they" understand, so in this instance only a ban is acceptable or likely to be understood. That drug prohibition has almost certainly been the most destructive political orthodoxy of the post-war years in terms of lives destroyed and lives lost continues to be completely ignored by the entire mainstream.

Where we then need knowledge, understanding and time to make informed decisions of just what harms drug pose, we instead have the equivalent of the celebrity in Brass Eye declaring that Cake could make you throw-up your own pelvis bone. What a fucking disgrace.

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3/17/2010 10:28:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 15, 2010 

The political wife as a commodity.

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

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

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

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

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

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3/15/2010 10:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

 

Celebrity endorsements.

Is there, or can you think of a less exciting celebrity endorsement of a political party than that of today's quite brilliant Sun front page, announcing to the world Andy McNab has switched his support to the Conservatives? I've been racking my brains, but I can only mainly come up with slightly contentious or potentially offensive endorsements, such as Michael Barrymore pledging his vote to Labour, or just naff ones, such as Noel Edmonds bigging up the Lib Dems.

Then again, perhaps this is just part of the way in which political programmes have tried to get down with the kids or have non-political but "normal" guests, hence the appearance of Monty Don on Question Time or Lady Sovereign deciding she didn't want to be on This Week after all (She says she had a panic attack, which is fair enough). Closer to May the 6th, can we look forward to learning who Maggot from Goldie Lookin' Chain is going to put an x in the box for, or whether Daniella Westbrook is going to use her vote?

(I mean, that's presuming that actually is Andy McNab behind the porn-like obscuring black block with Dave; after all, it could be some bloke that was wandering around Westminster that they got to pose with him for a fiver. How do we even know that Andy McNab exists, or that he really is voting for the Tories? Why am I writing this unfunny crap?)

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3/15/2010 09:57:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 12, 2010 

The Liberal Democrat dilemma.

If nothing else, the Liberal Democrats can claim at the election that they're the only party to have an "adult" film director standing for them as an MP. It does say something about the Libs though that they're both mature and open-minded enough for Anna "Span" Arrowsmith to be their candidate in Gravesham; you can hardly imagine Labour, let alone the Tories and their so-called "Turnip Taliban" being prepared to face the attention and controversy which such a career is always going to bring. In fact, it's probably down to the fact she is representing the Lib Dems and that she has no chance of actually winning the seat, which was an almost dead heat between Labour and the Tories in 2005, that she's had such a favourable and reasonable response to her candidacy, rather than the country (or perhaps the media) developing a more open attitude towards sexuality. Being female instead of male also probably helps, as the Heresiarch concludes in his usual fine style, but the party also makes an important difference. That Adam Holloway, the Tory MP she's standing against has voted against equal gay rights might also be a debate starter.

As for the Liberal Democrats as a whole, they continue to confuse and perplex rather than inspire confidence in those who are flirting with voting for them. Nick Clegg's latest disastrous decision was to give an interview this week to the Spectator, presumably in a dubious attempt to appeal to those still unsure about the Tories, although you somehow doubt that Speccie readers and subscribers are anything but true blue. Maybe it was a stalking exercise in convincing the Tories that the Libs can be trusted should there be a hung parliament, but even if it was, they must have known that Clegg issuing a paean to Margaret Thatcher over her dismantling of the unions, as well as pledging to cut the deficit wholly through cuts rather than tax rises was hardly going to go down well with committed supporters, nor Labour-leaning floating voters. Perhaps Clegg was thinking that considering the SDP helped split the vote in the crucial 83 election he was on sure ground in praising Thatcher, but the rifts which her reign has left are still with us, and will be for a generation yet.

Clegg himself, and those advising him increasingly seem to the major problem with the party as a whole. He and they don't know what they want to be, and with it what the party is meant to stand for. Even those only slightly interested in politics knew that the main Lib Dem policy of old was a 50% tax rate for those earning over £100,000 a year, and while Labour has introduced something similar as a result of the financial deficit, there's been no similar replacement. The closest the party had was to scrap tuition fees, yet even that is now an "aspiration" rather than a promise.

It's this indecision, reflected in the woeful slogan the party has decided on for for its election campaign, "Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain", that is more than anything holding the party back. The leadership wants to have it both ways, taking the Tories' crap "vote for change" and combining it with Labour's better but hardly sparkling "A future fair for all". That they couldn't think up anything even slightly original, let alone inspiring is never a good sign for what is yet to come. It already threatens to be a dismal, depressing, underhand and dirty campaign, something which the Lib Dems usually manage to rise above. Not this time it seems.

The conundrum for those of us who've abandoned Labour just as it has abandoned us is that the Liberal Democrats, much as we agree with them on most things, just don't seem to really want to make us truly welcome. In my case it doesn't really make any difference: my constituency is a straight fight between the Tories and Labour, with the Libs a distant third, and the boundary changes seem destined to make it an even safer Tory seat. Whether I vote Lib Dem or Green (although I might be persuaded to waste my vote even further by a far-left grouping, if one stands) isn't going to matter, and increasingly I think I'm going to plump for the latter. Others though will be in a position to make a difference, and beyond a doubt the best possible electoral outcome will be a hung parliament. The leadership and their incompetence are helping to ensure that we have exactly what we don't deserve: either a Labour or Tory outright victory.

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3/12/2010 09:43:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, March 05, 2010 

Blair before Brown.

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

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

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

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3/05/2010 10:20:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, March 03, 2010 

Michael Foot, 1913-2010.

It's become a cliché to say when someone truly great or stratospheric passes away that we'll never see their like again, yet I challenge anyone to say that it isn't true of Michael Foot, who has died aged 96. Not only was he the last socialist to lead the Labour party, something which will certainly never happen again, but he was also the last great, genuinely principled leader of any mass political party. In an age where presentation and pretence trump integrity and honesty every time, we've lost one of the few remaining reminders of why politics truly matters, something which challenges even the most committed and well-meaning of us at times.

Foot will partially be so fondly remembered because he lost, and as a nation there's little we love more than a romantic loser. Who knows what kind of prime minister he would have made had history been different, but he could hardly have been worse than the alternative. It was as a parliamentarian though that he truly excelled, and he's bequeathed us one of the greatest insults in the House of Commons during the 20th century, accusing Norman Tebbit of imitating a semi-trained polecat every time he rose to speak. Nigel Farage take note. He was never more right than when he made the unquestionable point that "most liberties have been won by people who broke the law", something completely anathema to today's generation of Labour politicians to whom the state in all its guises is never wrong.

As a 17-18-year-old it was Foot's even more left-wing nephew Paul who I wanted to emulate: the investigative journalist who through his campaigns freed more innocent people than almost any other in this country. When he died back in 2004 it was the tribute and image painted of the two men in Private Eye which has always stayed with me: the comedic vision of the two Feet, walking down a London street, arguing and debating as they went, both gesticulating to make a point with their sticks, other pedestrians fleeing from their path. That both have now left us is deeply sad, but the memory of these two great contributors to British cultural and political life will live on for a very long time yet. As the Guardian's obituary finishes:

Michael gave love and earned love as few politicians do in any age. He was wonderful company, a marvellous comrade, a magnificent man, a great socialist and libertarian. The only tribute that he would want, the only memorial that would do him justice, is enduring application of his values in the cause of progress.

Let us give him that.

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3/03/2010 10:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, March 01, 2010 

Patriotic duty and Michael Ashcroft.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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3/01/2010 10:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, February 22, 2010 

The end of the bullying party?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2/22/2010 09:26:00 PM | | | links to this post

Saturday, February 20, 2010 

A future fair for all?

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

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

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2/20/2010 09:39:00 PM | | | links to this post

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