The Poliblogs

Better late than never!

2009-01-21T15:59:00.006Z

As the keener readers amongst you will have noticed, I have not posted in a time on the Poliblogs. You can (and have been able to for quite some time) still read my blog posts over at The Wardman Wire.

Garbo

The PMQs Battle 20 February 2008

2008-02-20T17:02:00.004Z

PMQs - The Verdict

You can bet there were many places Gordon Brown would rather be on his 57th birthday than in the chamber for prime minister's questions. There was little evidence of Brown letting his hair down - apart from cracking a joke about asking the prime minister of China about Wigan - but at least the leader of the Opposition took the time to wish him many happy returns. And, reflecting on some of the PM's disastrous early performances at the despatch box at noon on a Wednesday, it is hard not to conclude that he has got a lot better at the weekly joust.

ePolitix

Northern Rock And DNA Dominate PMQs

Given the Speaker's refusal to allow a Conservative request for a statement, it was perhaps unsurprising that David Cameron chose his opening salvo to be on the Crown Prosecution Service. The Government stands accused of inaction following a request from Dutch police to compare thousands of DNA profiles against the UK's own database - and possibly catch some serious criminals in the process.

Niall Paterson

Point-by-point: Question time

The main points from prime minister's questions on Wednesday, 20 February, from 1200 GMT:

Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent his condolences to the family of Corporal Damian Lawrence who was killed in Afghanistan. Answering a question from Labour MP Ann Begg, Mr Brown said all of the money lent to Northern Rock would be paid back. He said the government would only return the bank to private ownership when it could get the "best deal" for taxpayers.

BBC

The Verdict

I am pushed for time today, so going to have to make it short and, hopefully, sweet...

The opening Labour planted spoiler question was there as is becoming the new Brown tactic – Brown got a dolly of a question on Northern Rock.

Cameron wisely steered clear of Northern Rock – wisely because Brown has nearly as much ammo to throw at the Tories on this one as they do at him. Also Brown would have been expecting it and easily prepared. Instead Cameron went for the “missing” Netherlands data disc, containing DNA profiles from crime scenes, sent to the Crown Prosecution Service [CPS] in January last year, to be checked against the UK's database. Cameron won this encounter, but only used three questions up...

Clegg then stepped up, delivered a couple of good’uns: one on Northern Rock where he managed to discredit the government and Tories and one on energy prices. Good show from Clegg.

Brown gave a cheap shot about the Tories not asking about Northern Rock – which was a bit dumb considering Cameron had only asked three questions and it obvious what his next three would be about! And they were. Only Cameron decided to talk about Northern Rock’s Freedom of Information status.

I am not really sure where Cameron was going with this. At first I thought that maybe he knew something explosive and exciting and that he would drop the bombshell on Brown with the damage being so bad the Prime Minister would have had little opportunity but to resign there and then. Instead he had no insider information, no scandal, nothing at all. Just a bit sensationalist conspiracy theory about the government trying cover something up (though Dave had no idea what). It could have worked out, but to have a convincing conspiracy theory he should have at least had something up his sleeve about what Brown was trying to cover up.

Cameron, at this point, had blown it. Brown was batting away Cameron’s full tosses like Don Bradman might have seen my pathetic attempts at bowling had the extremely unlikely chance of him facing up to me on at the crease ever happened. Brown was in full throw and Cameron was going nowhere.

The real problem with the Northern Rock issue for the Tories is that ecomonics is Brown’s specialist subject – in fact I think it is his only subject. While they should be making good capital out of all this, Cameron is no match for Brown in a one on one dual.

It was a PMQs of two halves today, but with Brown finishing far the stronger I have to give him the points. In Cameron's defense, however, he will probably get in to the evening news with his questions on the DNA discs - so maybe I am being harsh but...

Brown 1

Cameron 0

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-20T16:02:00.000Z

I will be taking a couple of weeks out after today, so my postings will become far less frequent, though I do hope to get the odd thing up – not least the PMQs Battle on Wednesdays. Today’s Late Lunch Briefing is just a quickie...

The Latest Poll – Bad News for the Tories

ICM has released its latest polling figures – the first pollster to do so in light of the nationalisation of Northern Rock – and it makes miserable reading for the Tories. They are unchanged on 37%, but Labour are actually up two points on 34%. ICM, it should be noted, have been the harshest on the Tory share of late, but the fact Labour has gone up post NR is a telling story in itself. All this ties in with the growing perception that the government have handled this latest episode of the Northern Rock debacle fairly well; and that their decision making has been far more sensible than the option that the Tories want to pursue.

To Cut or Not to Cut

The same poll has said that a significant number of people want to see some sort of tax cuts or sustained spending. The obvious thing for the Tories to do is promise tax cuts therefore you might think. But it is an absolute minefield for them and really sums up the difficulties the Tories face if they are ever to get a serious, general election winning lead over Labour. As soon as they start to promise tax cuts the first thing everyone thinks about is the NHS. Get the Tories on the NHS and they become the nasty party again. In fact, get them on tax cuts and they are easily painted as the nasty party again because everyone assumes cuts in key public services.

However, unless the Tories do something they are simply unelectable – as poll after poll, month after month has shown. They are going to have to be very clever in how they position any public spending policies or they will be taken to the cleaners. But Cameron and Osborne will sooner or later have to take a risk – when they do this very much depends on when an election is going to be called and how itchy the right of the party get about the Cameron leadership. If the right start to sense that they are on to another hiding with Cameron in charge, expect them to become more and more vocal and the Tories to become more and more un-electable. But, a 3% lead in the polls is simply not good enough for the Tories.

Dangerous times ahead

Forget Labour being “in between a Rock and a hard place” with their banking issues, long term it is the Tories who are firmly wedged between the rock and hard place – they are damned if do and they are damned if they don’t. I will be very interested to see what effect NR nationalisation has had on the other pollsters’ polls.

The Poliblogs 20 February 2008

2008-02-20T10:45:00.002Z

Are the Tories wrong on Northern Rock?

Have the Tories got their policy and tone right in their response to the nationalisation of Northern Rock? The jury is out. For understandable reasons, based on their desire for voters to see this as a cataclysmic event, they have turned up the rhetoric against Darling and Brown to quite abusive levels. However, there is a creeping sense that it is not working. Voters are entitled to ask: what on earth would the Tories do differently at this point? Cue Conservative mumbling about the Bank of England, not starting from here and private sector solutions.

Three Line Whip

From a rock to a hard place

At last, after four months of dithering, the UK government has finally decided to nationalize the failed bank, Northern Rock. To their credit, and as if to show how far they have grown from their Old Labour roots, they declare that this nationalization will be "temporary". But as the economist Milton Friedman once noted, "Nothing is more permanent than a temporary government programme".

Adam Smith Inst.

Darling/Osborne Fiscal Policy Meets The Smurfs

Yesterday, the TPA's Corin Taylor picked him up on one point he made, which was that cutting spending growth below Labour's planned 2.1% pa would be to "head off onto the margins of the political debate," chasing a target that "would be lower than anything Margaret Thatcher achieved during the economic turbulence she faced in her first parliament". Corin sets out the history of real public spending growth for the last 35 years so we can see the whole picture. He argues that although spending did indeed grow by more than 2.1% pa during Thatcher's first parliament (2.3% pa to be precise), it was an extraordinarily turbulent time. Over her whole period in office she got spending growth down to 1.5% pa, even taking account of the higher growth in the early years.

Burning Our Money

Northern Rock: History Will Vindicate Darling

So says Hopi Sen here. LOL agree 100% with all three predictions.

1. Northern Rock will be a money spinner;

2. Natasha will have time limited effect on Five;

3. Gordon will edge PMQs tomorrow.

Five are going to be on an upward swing anyway because of factors other than the lovely NK so it may be a little difficult to analyse the out turn.

Chris Paul

Don't worry Darling

David Cameron is calling for his head, the City has lost confidence and the bookies are offering 5/2 that he will be gone from the Treasury by the end of the year. Yet, I suspect that Alistair Darling has more job security than most. Darling was a temporary appointment; no one believes that Brown will keep him in post after the next election which explains why some young Brownites were so keen on an early election. But to move Darling before polling day would be a huge risk. First of all, it would call into question Brown’s judgement in appointing him in the first place. Second, it would add considerably to the feeling that this is a government on its last legs. Finally, there is no guarantee that Darling would go quietly.

Coffee House

Cuba after Castro

Stay in one of the five star hotels, and Cuba is a fabulous place for a holiday. Sit down by that swimming pool and bask in the Caribbean sunshine, light up a cigar from beyond the wilder shores of Freudian symbolism and knock back cocktails blended from the finest rum on earth. And if it’s nightlife you want, there’s hot jazz and salsa clubs that stay open until four am. That’s on the weeknights. Convertible pesos only, of course.

Dave’s Part

Yes, it was dodgy

The long-awaited release of an early draft of the British government's Iraq dossier has produced a smoking gun

Chris Ames

The selfishness of the Council Tax non payers

Let's get one thing straight immediately. I don't like the Council Tax and I want to see it replaced by a fairer system based on people's ability to pay. What else would you expect from a Liberal Democrat.But I do object strongly to people who deliberately refuse to pay their council tax in order to "make a point". I say this in relation to a gentleman in Norfolk who is now being sent to prison for 34 days because he has again refused to pay his council tax.

Norfolk Blogger

Ken Clarke rejects English Parliament

Former Chancellor Ken Clarke, Chairman of David Cameron's Democracy task force, gave evidence to the Commons' Justice Select Committee yesterday. The Committee is taking evidence on the impact of devolution. Within his evidence he said that...

Conservative Home

Should we have more politics on TV?

Jon Bright (London, OK): Mark Bell of CentreForum has an interesting piece in CiF today asking the above question. I had a rather ingrained resistance to the idea, but he might have turned me round. The case against, which he deconstructs, runs as follows: Here in the UK, political parties are banned from advertising on television or radio - with the exception of occasional five-minute party political broadcasts. The logic is seemingly that political advertising encourages negative attacks, reduces politics to soundbites and superficiality, and increases the political influence of the corporations and vested interests whose money would be needed to fund such advertising.

Our Kingdom

Council Tax pensioner jailed

Meet Mr Richard Fitzmaurice, a 76-year-old pensioner who has devoted his life to his country, who served 22 years as a soldier in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, and who yesterday was handcuffed and led away to prison for non-payment of his council tax. The humiliation of handcuffs was a bizarre decision for someone has never threatened anyone or exhibited any signs of resistance to his fate. He was there, he said, ‘on a matter of principle’, because ‘the way old age pensioners are being treated is shameful’.

Cranmer

Only three Daves from ICM in the Guardian

The poll that caught me by surprise. My apologies for not getting a thread up earlier but the latest Guardian ICM poll has taken me by surprise - I wasn’t expecting it until next Tuesday which would have followed the paper’s normal pattern. Also the fieldwork took place at the end of the half term week in many places when a lot of people are away. Pollsters tend to avoid such periods because they have thrown up odd results in the past. The shares are with changes on the last ICM poll CON 37% (nc): LAB 34% (+2): LD21% (nc). So good for Labour and the Lib Dems but disappointing for the Tories.

Political Betting

67% tell ICM that their taxes are too high

The Guardian suggests that voters prefer "continued spending at the next election over tax cuts" by 51% to 36%. We'll need to look at the exact question ICM asked but that seems a pretty useless finding if that was the question asked. What really would be interesting would be to identify voters' reactions to pledges of specific promises of, say, a reduction in council tax, paid for by slower growth in spending.

Conservative Home

Tories 3 points ahead in latest ICM poll

ICM’s monthly poll for the Guardian has topline figures of CON 37%, LAB 34%, LDEM 21%. The changes from the last ICM poll are Labour up 2, with the other two parties unchanged. The poll was conducted between the 15th and 17th of February. The poll continues the pattern we’ve seen since September last year of Labour doing comparatively better compared to the Conservatives in ICM polls done for the Guardian than in polls done for other clients. As I said when I first commented on this apparent pattern, I can find no obvious explanation for it, but as the months go past the patten seems to be consistent.

Polling Report

A View Across the Pond

2008-02-20T09:37:00.002Z

The fall of Casro

Yesterday came the news that Fidel Castro is standing down as leader of Cuba. It was swiftly followed up by a statement from Mr Liberty and Democracy himself, George Bush, saying that he wants a democratic transition to come over the small island. Now, I am not just about to defend Castro or his regime nor am I going to criticise it. The focus here is with George Bush and it goes right to root of why the popularity of Americans has suffered so badly in past few years.

In defence of the US

First thing first however, I am not a US basher. If I had a choice between the US and any other of the emerging super powers running the world it is a no contest for me. The lazy, stereotype myths that Americans are dumb are extremely ill-founded. The US could teach Britain a thing or two about many areas of politics and standards. I am sure that in twenty years time, or however long it is before the BRIC countries start to really have an impact on world affairs, all those ill-informed righteous bigots will be longing for the day when a true democracy had the base of power. However, there is a good reason why the US has got a growing band of haters and critics and it is best exemplified by the situation in Cuba.

The stinking hypocrisy

The call for the US to have democracy installed in Cuba absolutely stinks of hypocrisy. This is the country that has a small corner of Cuba solely used for the imprisonment of hundreds of inmates for as long as they want without trial. They don’t do this in their own country because it is against their constitution and against International law. The very poor standards and lack of human rights that the US criticises Cuba for having are the very same poor standards and lack of human rights that the US is taking full advantage of for their own means. Who the hell is George Bush to tell Cuba what political avenue to pursue when it is, de facto, practicing exactly what it is preaching against and much worse?

For Example

Take the case of Omar Khadr, a 15 year old boy. Now I don’t know what this guy has or hasn’t done and quite frankly I don’t care – it is up to a court to decide. However under US and International law he is a minor and should be tried in a juvenile court. But as the US is using Cuba as its base to torture and hold suspected terrorist subjects, it can do whatever the hell it likes. Thus, Khadr will be tried without any specialist juvenile judge, despite the trial focusing on his actions and words between the ages of ten (the age he is alleged to have been forced to join al-Qaeda) and 15. He is treated as an adult prisoner of war, interned with adults while he faces trial. This could not happen in America, but can and does in Cuba. Then there are the stories of water-boarding and other torture methods, poor living conditions; and remember not one of these men have been found guilty of anything nor are they likely to stand trial at the type of court that the US would demand for its own citizens and for other countries to adopt.

Hope for the future

Until America practices what it preaches, what position is in to tell other nations to adopt certain standards? I am all for the standards that they do preach, but they are so ill-equipped to be preaching right now. This is a George Bush issue currently, let’s hope that a McCain, Clinton or Obama clamps down on this desperate hypocrisy and makes the US a nation that has the integrity as well as the compulsion that the world will want to follow.

Politics Decoded

2008-02-19T11:14:00.001Z

... is up at the Wardman Wire.

I have finally worked out why I am so negative about politics at the moment

And, I give Ken's so called congestion charge a good, logical kicking.

The Poliblogs 19 February 2008

2008-02-19T10:28:00.002Z

Darling surely has to go

It was always said during the Blair years that the worst job in politics would be Chancellor under Gordon Brown. After ten years in total control of the Treasury, there would be no way that Brown would tolerate a mighty Chancellor - let alone one of near equal status. Darling, when he began, was touted as being essentially a safe, dull pair of hands. Having risen without a trace through cabinet, Darling would be unexciting but competent. His talent for keeping his departments out of the news was just what Brown wanted.

Conservative Party Reptile

Getting there slowly

The government has finally done what it should have done months ago with Northern Rock; but many questions remain

Vince Cable

Hague set to replace Osborne

He may be a smug git but give Vince Cable his due, not only has he demolished the Tories almost amateurish proposals for Northern Rock, he's almost certainly ended George Osborne's tenure as Shadow Chancellor. Osborne has never before looked so out of his depth as he did today. Cable's comment that the Shadow Chancellor was in danger of castrating himself as he straddled both sides of the fence summed up the incoherent strategy adopted by the Shadow Treasury team ever since the Northern Rock crisis began.

The Daily Pundit

The Government is right on Northern Rock

And tremendously courageous, in my view. In this day and age, even much of the left, including myself, is decidedly dodgy about nationalisation. My brand of social ownership and democratic control is a decentralist one; though if government didn't have a role this would be little more than foolish economism. I still think however that the role of the state is not to own resources, but to secure ownership and distribution of those resources across society.

New Direction

Northern Rock and the case for extending social ownership

£25bn here and £25bn there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. It has been absolutely apparent for at least five months that nationalisation represents the only realistic means of safeguarding the astonishing sums of taxpayer cash shovelled into Northern Rock to rescue the bank from the consequences of managerial incompetence. Finally Alistair Darling has gotten the message. The erstwhile bearded Trot himself has brought the UK’s number five mortgage lender within the ambit of proletarian property relations. Only another 199 of the top 200 monopolies to go and Britain becomes a workers’ state, comrade.

Dave’s Part

In defence of Darling

Remember, the Northern Rock crisis was not caused by the government. In light of that, the chancellor has done a pretty good job

Martin Kettle

Has anybody thought about Scotland?

One can only revel in the disarray experienced by the "colleagues" as they struggle to come to terms with the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo. Continually vaunting its unity, whenever a crisis emerges, the EU somehow always fails to step up to the plate, each nation state adopting its own position until a formula is found to paper over the cracks and give some uneasy semblance of common purpose.

EU Referendum

Why the Archbishop got it wrong

Whether Rowan Williams is a good man or a bad man; an intellectual or an academic; a highly sensitive soul or a machinating demagogue or whether or not he deserved the tabloid-led backlash is irrelevent to the position that he took when he delivered his speech, Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective.

Pickled Politics

What are Cameron's Conservatives for?

Gordon Brown stood for the leadership of the Labour party on a platform that argued that the renewal that was undertaken in order to gain power needed to be repeated if Labour was to keep power. The fact is that by successfully occupying the centre ground, by modernising and reaching out beyond its own activists Labour ended up turning the Tories into a replica of what it used to be itself – a party with a narrow base, a party obsessed about the wrong things and a party seen as old fashioned and out of touch.

Labour Home

What are TfL hiding?

Last week Mike Smithson broke the story of a BPC investigation into an Ipsos MORI poll carried out for Ken Livingstone. In the Evening Standard today Andrew Gilligan picks up Mike’s story and has got some comment from John Curtice and Ben Page of MORI. The story begins back in December with this press release from the Mayor’s office, claiming to show that a poll for Transport for London showed two thirds of respondents were in favour of the new emmissions based congestion charge.

Polling Report

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-18T16:36:00.002Z

Are we approaching the tipping point?

Northern Rock, up to now, has not seemed to have caused any serious damage to the government. Even this weekend’s polls only put the Tories on a nine point – which may sound like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things is nothing that would be seriously worrying those behind the door at No.10. However, today’s news that the bank will be nationalised could well be a tipping point.

More Dithering

The decision to nationalise the bank in itself is not a major disaster – it was always the most likely and sensible option given the run of events. However, the way this debacle has been handled is starting to become a major, major embarrassment. The accusations of the Brown government “dithering” have never been more appropriate. It seems, and it is only a perception, but it does seem that the Treasury not only is dithering and wavering on what to do, but it has no conviction in what it is doing. One minute we are definitely going to have a nationalised bank, the next Branson will definitely buy it, then we wake up to a sort of temporary nationalisation that might well become permanent.

Perceptions have been damaged

I suspect the long term financial impacts of all this are not going to be nearly as bad as many of the more vocal right wing commentators would have us believe. We’re not all just about to be £25bn out of pocket. However, the question is still not so much whether this will cost the tax payer, but how much it will cost the taxpayer. It won’t be £25bn, but we will pay. Much worse however, is the perceptions that are being formed over all this.

Firstly there are the voters. Almost no –one from either side of the political spectrum is giving praise for the way Darling has handled all this. There has to be some sort of impact on the polls after all this, even if only temporary. If the Tories cannot make big gains out of this, then I’m not sure they ever will –and I mean in to double figure leads across the polls. If this does happen, there will be a very precariously balanced axe hanging over Darling’s head. If he goes, the Tories will be able to move on to phase two of the Cameron mission. They are currently at a stage where people are willing to accept them; the next phase is where there actually start to listen. If the government really do make things any worse over this, then people really start to listen to the Tories – the only phase after that is voting them back in to power. A long way, but these next few weeks could well be giant steps for them.

Secondly, it is the overseas perceptions. What must the traders and investors in New York be thinking about all this? Probably quite pleased actually – just when London looked liked it might succeed in becoming the number one financial centre on planet earth, it gets its pants pulled down by a goon of chancellor in front of the whole world. The damage is done on this one – it is now just a question of how bad the damage will be. For a country that has put all its eggs in to industries such as banking and moved completely away from manufacturing, this could well be disastrous. Again, it’s too early to tell, but just how bad are the impacts going to be on all of us? Iain Dale has some cuttings from the world press and they do not make good reading.

Sack him or back him?

Things continue to go from bad to worse for the government – I just do not know how much more it can take before the polls start to really reflect the mess they are in. If they do, it will be very hard for them to turn things round. Brown now faces a very difficult decision: does he back Darling or sack him? Backing him may prove to be one step too far for the electorate; on the other hand, sacking him may well fan the flames. Whatever he chooses, it is a critical decision.

The Poliblogs Blog of The Week

2008-02-18T11:58:00.003Z

I am going to be posting intermittently from Thursday onwards for a couple of weeks as I take a hard earned break. I will try and get things up every other day, but the roundups and blog of the week award will be on hold after Wednesday. Therefore, this week's winner will be up for two weeks!

Now, cries of cronyism are sure to fly at this week's winner, but it's my blog and I don't care! This week (and for the next two!) The Poliblog's most favourite is The Wardman Wire!

OK, so I write a column at the Wardman Wire every Tuesday so of course I am going to back it - but I only do it because I think Matt has great blog. The Wardman Wire is probably the most complete political blog there is at the moment, covering a range of topics (though mainly focused on politics and current affairs) from all angles of the spectrum. Matt gets a regular host of guest columnists which provides a great range across the political spectrum. The most recent of which has been following the MPs allowances scandal - which has not only provided some excellent and and at time heated debate, but also some great ideas of what Parliamentary procedures should follow in the future.

In the coming weeks Matt will also be focusing on the Mayoral elections, with another host of supporters and opponants of the main candiates putting their case forward. It will be an asolute must read to anyone with an interest in the Mayoral elections on 1st May.

In short, you get brillaint insight from Matt Wardman, guests posts from blogger such as The ThunderDragon, Mike Rouse, Dave Cole, David Keen and of course, myself. What more could you want?

The Poliblogs 18 February 2008

2008-02-18T11:49:00.002Z

Return to the 'N' word

Imagine, just for a second if you had suggested to Gordon Brown, before he became prime minister, that he would nationalise a bank in his first year in No 10. He would have laughed, then snorted but, if you'd persisted, you might have seen the colour drain from his face. The N word - nationalisation - is so toxic to Brown's generation that they never wanted it to be heard in the same sentence as the Labour Party again. That is, no doubt, one reason he has delayed so long before taking this decision.

Nick Robinson

Crock- Three Questions From Taxpayers

Now that our dithering "government" has finally pulled the trigger on nationalising Northern Rock, taxpayers are formally and irrevocably on the hook for up to £110bn (we don't know how much because we haven't seen any proper accounts for months). For taxpayers, there are three key questions.

Burning Our Money

Where are we with Northern Rock?

It seems to me that the fundamentals of this problem have left policy makers with few sensible choices. The Government was right to step in last autumn to save Northern Rock - protecting depositors and stopping its problems spreading to other parts of the banking system. Alastair Darling was right to properly test all options for the future of the bank. The Treasury had two detailed proposals on the table and they are now taking a hard-headed choice in the best interests of the tax payer. The Chancellor has clearly decided that under current market conditions the private equity options failed to deliver sufficient value for money for the tax-payer. So bringing forward legislation to take Northern Rock into a period of temporary public ownership is the right decision.

Tom Watson

Darling and Brown go mad; Northern Rock Nationalised

Well it is all over the news and I am quite shocked that it has come to this. Sadly, I have to eat my hat (hat-tip istockphoto) as I was sure that Virgin would win the bid. Instead, the Government has decided it knows how to run a bank better than private sector bankers. The decision really beggars belief and although I will post on this later this week, but here are 5 key points to remember:

Capitalists@Work

Sifting through the Northern Wreckage

Perhaps, the greatest political danger for the government from yesterday’s nationalisation of Northern Rock is that it fits so neatly into the narrative of a government that is incapable of making a decision. On The Today Programme this morning, Alistair Darling was repeatedly pressed on the question of why this step was not taken earlier and had no adequate answer.

Coffee House

Vince Cable was right - Lib Dems show better understanding of Northern Rock issue than the government

Vince Cable was right after all. Despite government dithering and trying to avoid the inevitable, it has been announced that the Northern Rock will be nationalised after all. Despite Tory claims that this shows a catastrophic failure on the government's part, at least the government have finally made a decision on this. Remember, the Tories have absolutely no stated policy in this topic and whilst opposing nationalisation have produced no alternative policy with which to lead on.

Norfolk Blogger

Northern Rock nationalised

Cranmer is not going to bore his readers and communicants with allusions to the wise man who built his bank on a rock and the unwise man who built his bank on sand, but the decision to nationalise Northern Rock does demand a little analysis beyond that presently being served up by the mainstream media. This is, after all, the first nationalisation of an industry since the 1970s, since those heady days when the likes of British Leyland, British Aerospace, or Rolls Royce were in public ownership so that profits may be shared ‘for the benefit of all’.

Cranmer

How Mr Darling lost the government’s economic reputation

The Northern Rock crisis has undermined this government’s economic reputation, and deservedly so. They have made mistake after mistake in responding the Credit Crunch and the run on the bank. I have put the main blog entries on Northern Rock from this site together so people can remind themselves of the way the crisis unfolded from last summer. The main errors (highlighted at the time on this site) were:

John Redwood

Punters unmoved by the Northern Rock announcement

Is nationalisation really going to have no electoral impact? Even though some are calling it “Labour’s Black Wednesday” there has been very little movement in the general election most seats betting following yesterday’s announcement by Alistair Darling that Northern Rock. The chart showing betting prices as implied probabilities has hardly changed on the past week. It’s the same with the spread betting markets where punters buy and sell the number of seats the parties will get at the election as though they were stocks and shares. There was a minuscule move to the Tories yesterday but that was prompted more by the latest YouGov poll showing Labour 9% behind rather than Northern Rock.

Political Betting

Are the Tories doing well enough?

Even David Cameron’s most enthusiastic backers in the 2005 leadership contest might have thought it unrealistic to imagine that after a little over two years in the job he would have opened up a nine point lead over Labour. But despite having done this, Cameron is still plagued by the question of whether the Tories should be further ahead.

Coffee House

Lib Dem nasties challenge Clegg

"It's delicious to watch another party suffering European difficulties," writes ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie. He's referring of course to David Heath's threat to defy the Lib Dem Whip over the revised EU constitution - a "u-turn on policy that has never been debated at conference," according to Linda Jack.

The Daily Pundit

Children with fathers do better

On 21 January Peers voted in favour of a change in the law which undermines the importance of the father to a child born after in-vitro fertilisation. The law currently refers explicitly to a child's 'need for a father', which doctors must consider before providing fertility treatment. But the Government proposes to replace this with a reference to 'the need for supportive parenting' in order to give lesbians and single women easier access to IVF.

Cranmer

The latest moral corruption of society is mineral water?

Jesus wept. That is all you can say when you hear that the Environment Minister, Phil Woolas, has said that the amount of money that people spend on bottled water "borders on being morally unacceptable". What a complete idiot. All those people that go a long journey and find themselves thirsty are now it seems morally reprehensible. Why.. doesn't anyone know they should be drinking coca cola? Diet of course so that we can stave off the obesity epidemic, and caffeine free too so that you don't have a heart attack and cost the state lots of money as well.

Dizzy Thinks

How Goes The War On Ken? (Part 2)

Friday’s decision by Ken Livingstone to suspend his equalities adviser Lee Jasper and invite the police to investigate the many claims made against him by the Evening Standard was a calculated gamble at the end of another awkward week for the London mayor. His and Jasper’s wish must be that the move will persuade the capital’s voters that there is nothing to hide and result in Jasper’s exoneration. Livingstone will also be hoping that some of the heat will now go out of the story and that the media will talk instead about the issues he would prefer to debate.

Liberal Conspiracy

In defence of supermarkets

Jay Rayner argues in The Observer that supermarkets have made our lives better. It is a odd thing to say, but I think he has a point. Politaholic is no spring chicken. I can remember a time when most shopping was done, certainly in the working-class area in the city where I grew up, in corner shops. This was before the rise of the super and mega markets. In those days if you asked the corner shopkeeper for parmeson cheese he would have looked at you as if you were mad. An avocado? I didn't know what one looked like until I was in my 20's. Wine was for posh people; and was expensive (now one can buy a reasonably quaffable bottle for around a fiver).

Politaholic

Kosovo's giant mosh pit

Mother Teresa Street in central Pristina has turned into a giant mosh pit. The crowd surges one way and then twists back the other and, for a while, you have to give up all hope of independent movement. From time to time people will clear a small circular space for a spot of traditional dancing to the sinuous local pop music, as the crowd flows either side of them.

Mark Mardell

YouGov reports nine point Tory lead

A new YouGov Poll for the Sunday Times tomorrow, according to the Press Association has some good news for the Tories. “…Questioned on their voting intentions, some 41% of those taking part said they would back the Tories (down two points on a similar poll last month), 32% Labour (down one) and 16% the Liberal Democrats (up two). The overall Conservative lead was down marginally from 10 points to nine compared to the last comparable poll.”

Political Betting

Parties steady in latest YouGov poll

After almost a fortnight without any voting intention polls there is a new poll from YouGov in the Sunday Times. The topline voting intention figures, with changes from YouGov’s last poll back in January, are CON 41%(nc), LAB 32%(-1), LDEM 16%(nc). The poll was conducted between the 14th and 15th of February and clearly shows no significant change in party support over the past two weeks.

Polling Report

PMQs Gold

2008-02-15T16:29:00.003Z

There was no PMQs this week, hence no roundup. Given the lack of quality of late in the chamber, it is probably just as well. Take a look at this clip from PMQs back in the days when they knew how to perform for the crowds...

Iain Dale's Boris article

2008-02-15T10:38:00.006Z

Iain Dale has a piece in today's Telegraph about Boris Johnson's chances of winning the Mayoral election on 1st May. Below I have added my own comments to key sections of the article. I implore you to read the whole thing however over at the Telegraph website so as to get the full story too...

Iain's words are in black, my fisking is in red:

Instead of ignoring his opponent, as most incumbents would, Ken talks about Boris all the time. He launched personal attacks on him from the off. As an electoral strategy, it was bizarre. He dubbed Boris a racist, yet the charge failed to stick. Why? Because no one who has ever met Boris, seen him on TV or read his books would ever believe him to be one.

Iain is absolutely right on this point in my opinion – why is Ken so obsessed with the Boris campaign? The “Look at him” strategy designed to make everyone look at the opponent and see how terrible they are usually only results in everyone looking at the opponent and ignoring the incumbent. This has been Livingstone’s biggest mistake so far – and also the attempts to paint Boris as a racist are simply unpalatable and patently untrue.

Ken failed to understand that, in Boris, he had met the Right-wing equivalent of himself - a politician seen by the electorate as independent of party politics and with a Teflon-type ability to deflect attacks.

Boris independent of party politics? More on this further down...

But there the similarity ends. Boris unites people, whereas Ken revels in division. His political strategy is based on class, and setting people against each other.

Greatly simplified – while many of us do love Boris, there is a significant number out there who do not like him. Worse of all, the biggest uniting factor behind Boris is a belief that while he is a nice chap, he is not necessarily up to the job of running the world’s premier city.

Since then Boris has started to develop some clear thinking in several policy areas, not least crime. But it still doesn't amount to a vision.

This is the catch 22. If Boris focuses on policy he loses what is his greatest selling point – his personality. If he focuses on his personality is will not be seen as a credible candidate. In a straight contest between Ken and Boris on policy and vision for London, Ken will win hands down. What is Boris’s policy on crime exactly? What will he do about transport except get rid of bendy buses? What impact will he have on business in London where Ken is seen as having such success? What will he do for poverty? We know where Ken stands on these issues, whether we like where he stands or not. While Boris can “out-personality” Ken (which is no mean feat), he has yet to show that he can “out-vision” him. I doubt he can and even trying may well have a detrimental effect on his campaign.

Ken did this in 2000 - less so in 2004 - but his ability to appeal to non-Labour voters has now been dented, not least by the scandals that emerge from City Hall.

There is absolutely no evidence what so ever for this. In fact, the immediate poll after the Channel 4 programme went out showed Ken had stretched his lead.

Mobilising the Tory vote is incredibly important. In 2004, turnout was 70 per cent in parts of Labour-dominated Lewisham, while in parts of Kensington & Chelsea it was little more than 20 per cent. Steve Norris lost by only 100,000 votes. That's why Boris's "get out the vote" operation will be crucial to his success. Boris's success is also crucial to David Cameron. If Boris wins, Cameron will be seen to have passed his second big electoral test - and, more important, Gordon Brown will have failed his first.

This works both ways. If Boris cannot even win in the Tory’s back yard, what hope have they got in the rest of the country? The Tories should be cleaning up in the South East by now and Cameron knows if he associates himself with a loser here, then it will discredit the Tories.

I also disagree that Boris is seen in similar terms as Ken, i.e. not partisan. Ken left the Labour party; he is often seen as a thorn in New Labour’s side. Boris is seen as Cameron’s old pal from school intrinsically linked with Cameron’s attempts to modernise the party.

I think the damage would be greater to the Tories if they lose in London than to Labour if Ken was to lose. The SE is just a corner of Britain, albeit an important one. But we all know the Tories have this area sewn up – what does the North care about a Mayoral election?

If Ken loses it will be seen more as his loss than Labour's and Labour shouldn't be winning in London anyway given the larger Tory numbers in the SE right now. On the other hand - if Ken does win it will be seen as a Ken win rather than a Gordon Brown and Labour win.

This election will not be won on first preferences. A key part of the Johnson campaign strategy will be to love-bomb Lib Dem voters into giving Boris their second preferences. It will be tough, as London Lib Dems are a little more Left-leaning than their country counterparts. But if anyone knows the way to attract second preferences, it's Boris's newly imported Australian campaign manager, Lynton Crosby. His appointment signalled the seriousness of the campaign.

Spot on – and the key reason why Boris will lose. Paddick supporters are far more likely to go with Ken that Boris.

His campaign managers have resisted the temptation to de-Boris Boris. Any attempt to turn him into a robot politician will end in him losing.

The catch 22 point. Either he is Boris with no policies or he is the robot with policies that cannot compete with Ken. Unless he can find a third way he has a fundamental problem that he cannot overcome. I don’t see how he can overcome this. Iain is calling for Boris to focus more on policy and vision, but he himself recognises that the biggest mistake would be to move away from Boris's biggest strength - his personality.

The Great Archbishop Debate

2008-02-14T10:16:00.001Z

Are you Backing The Bishop or Bashing The Bishop?

The Poliblogs 14 February 2008

2008-02-14T10:14:00.001Z

Why isn't Michael Fallon in the Shadow Cabinet?

Has anyone - apart from ConservativeHome - noticed that the Member for Sevenoaks is pound for pound one of the most effective operators on the Tory benches? He offers a consistently robust Thatcherite critique of Labour's economic failings. As vice-chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, where he plays a nifty bad cop to John McFall's good cop, he has repeatedly skewered Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, most recently on Northern Rock. Mr Fallon is a canny media operator who manages to generate more coverage than half the Shadow Cabinet.

Ben Brogan

Northern Rock: Spin cycle begins

Late last night, (ignoring traditional rules about making announcements prior to the stock exchange opening, but who in the Treasury cares about that) the Government announced that unless Virgin and the Northern Rock management improved their bids, then Northern Rock will be nationalised. Given that the Rock is already on the public accounts, this is a mis-statement at best. The Rock is already nationalised, all the government are saying is that they will exclude private sector intervention from the future unless the terms are improved.

Capitalist@Work

The case for a written constitution

Does Britain need a written constitution? Traditionally, this isn’t an issue to which the left has paid much attention. Either it has been written off as being of little importance, or else the very concept has been seen as favouring conservative forces in a society. As a result, the ruling class has essentially been able to make up the rules of the political game as it goes along. But with the latest hint from justice secretary Jack Straw that such a development is likely over the next decade or two, it is clearly time to sharpen up our ideas on this one.

Dave’s Part

The government tears up the Bill of Rights

It is typical of this government that Parliament should not be meeting on this day of all days. On 13th February 1689 “the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons assembled at Westminster” presented a declaration to the new sovereigns, King William and Queen Mary. This declaration, known as the Bill of Rights, established Parliamentary supremacy over the Crown in important areas, and guaranteed Parliament’s freedoms .It did so that the people could practise the religion of their choice, avoid arbitrary manipulation of their laws and require redress of ills before they had to pay taxes.

John Redwood

What's driving Ken?

Ken Livingstone's congestion charge policy was established to reduce congestion; now it seems it's about what car you own

Daniel Moylan

This is Gordon Brown's mistake

The chancellor is taking the heat for a U-turn on tax-avoidance by non-doms: but it is the prime minister who should have resisted City bullying

Will Hutton

Spin is alive and kicking at the Treasury

The Treasury spin machine went into overdrive yesterday afternoon to try and water down the significance of Alistair Darling’s u-turn on the taxation of non-doms. Throughout the afternoon, journalists were subject to a range of explanations from supposedly impartial civil servants. First the rules to gain access to offshore trusts and the other assets of non-doms were drawn up by an overeager official who had gone too far. Then, in another call, we were told to believe that there was, in fact, no change to what was originally proposed and yesterday’s announcement was “just a clarification” of what had been said all along.

Three Line Whip

I wish I could fly

This intriguing, if badly-scanned, graph appears in today's Guardian. It's a stark illustration of the pollution caused by the global shipping industry. The darker the area, the more particulate pollution its suffers from - and some of the darker patches overlay major shipping lanes very precisely.

Know Your Place

Archbishop Rowan Firestorm was Started by the BBC before Interview was even Broadcast

Archbishop Rowan Firestorm was Started by the BBC before Interview was even Broadcast

[Update: It appears that this article had a glitch or two in publication, and so there is some undisciplind pinging going on. My apologies.] There’s been a huge media firestorm after the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture to lawyers in London, as we all know - and it’s all been blamed on “Rowan’s naivity” or “Rowan’s bad press team” or “what did he expect, mentioning Sharia” or [insert random Rowan-bashing reason here]. After a bit of digging, it turns out that the Beeb was reporting inaccurate statements about “ABC says Sharia is inevitable” even before the interview was broadcast. Rowan (and a well-tempered debate) never had a chance - whether you agree with his line or not.

The Wardman Wire

Matt Wardman accuses the BBC of stirring

Matt Wardman accuses the BBC, in fairly strident terms, of encouraging an unnecessary storm over the Archbishop of Canterbury's words. His evidence for this is pretty weak. Essentially, he has two points. First, that by publishing the story on their website before the interview they pre-empted his interview and thereby prevented people getting the balanced and nuanced account of his opinions that the interview provided. Second, that the website article was distorting.

Sinclair’s Musings

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-13T15:24:00.002Z

Darling In Circles

You put your left leg in. Your left leg out. In. Out. In. Out. You shake it all about.

What is going on at the Treasury? Are we witnesses the most incompetent Chancellor this country has ever seen? So Non Doms won’t be taxed to the back teeth on foreign income or gains not sent to the UK. In fact, apparently it never was going to tax these people. Oh no, the only reason we ever thought that the Treasury would is because they said so... but that was only because of “careless drafting” of an HM Revenue & Customs consultation paper. Careless drafting? You are supposed to running the most important department of in the country – we cannot be doing with careless drafting... or even worse: dithering!

It is no surprise that Darling has changed his mind on this one. It is reported that the change of heart came following a call from George Osborne for Labour to adopt the Tory plan. The Tories driving Labour’s economic policy? Surely not.

The Wooden Chancellor

Of course this isn’t the first U-turn of the “Wooden Chancellor”, Alastair Darling. We have had Northern Rock and the “will it or won’t it” be nationalised drama (for clarity, right now it won’t be nationalised, though it is unlikely that they will accept the Virgin deal, so it probably will be nationalised, but actually no-one has a clue). There has been inheritance tax u-turns. We’ve had the about turn on Capital Gains tax. This list goes on. When you add all this in to the boiling pot that is economic recession and falling house prices, you have to question how long this born loser has left at No.11.

The press, the city, parliament, they are all full of gossip about how Darling might be moved in a Spring/Summer reshuffle. It is something I suspected at my New Year predictions. Even the most ardent of New Labour supporters who has any interest in the well being of the British economy as an International super-power must be worried about this buffoon running our economy. But will he go?

Party Politics before Economics

The problem with Darling going is that it will inflict serious damage on the government. It will be seen as a major scalp by George Osborne and the Tories. It will be reported as a failure of Gordon Brown’s premiership. It will be seen as a clear sign that the economy is in trouble and will only make the situation less stable, purely on lack of confidence driven by a perception. I fear that Brown will save this numskull purely for political reasons – i.e. to save his government and his own bacon.

A plea to you all

The truth is, in the short term there will be damage. But in the medium to long term it surely can only be good for the government and the country. Things are only going to get worse economically and with such a halfwit in charge of our money it will only be magnified. We need a tough, iron chancellor at No.11 and we need it before things spiral out of control. The only way this can happen, however, is if we all applaud Brown doing getting rid of darling rather than make political capital out of it.

So I make plea right now: all anti-Browns, all Tories and Lib Dems, all anti-Darlings and people with half a brain: applaud when Brown sacks this man, encourage him to do so in fact. Make him feel like it is the greatest decision made since Henry V made a few expert judgments and gave the French a jolly good hiding at Agincourt.

Of course, the Tories are such an excitable lot that they will make Brown look like a complete bonehead if he does sack him – and you can hardly blame the Tories for all this mess anyway. So it looks like Darling is here to stay and free to really mess things up... but we can all still hope.

The Poliblogs 13 February 2008

2008-02-13T11:09:00.001Z

Darling getting it wrong again

Under Blair, Labour was never so foolish as to come into direct conflict with the City. The government tiptoed around it in an effort to nurture the powerhouse of the British economy. But led by Brown, with Darling as Chancellor, they are now clumsily treading on the collective toes of many in the business community.

Adam Smith

Time to go on the offensive on Europe?

It’s pretty much a given in the Liberal Democrats that the party doesn’t talk about Europe in its leaflets. It’s with good cause too. Firstly, it isn’t actually one of the top concerns of voters when they are asked in opinion polls what their biggest issues are. Just like electoral reform, it comes well down the list after all the big ones like health, education, crime, transport and so on. But also, there is an understandable reluctance for Lib Dems to talk about an issue on which it is perceived that the party is out of touch with the voters.

Anders Hanson

Spreading democracy...

Foreign Secretary David Miliband today makes the argument for military intervention to 'spread democracy'. So, according to The Guardian (although it is less than clear in the text) Britain and its partners have a 'moral imperitive' to use force to 'spread democracy'. Gone is the requirement for some sort of facade, no more humanitarian intervention to defeat tyrants terrorising their own people, not even a 'sexed-up' excuse to wipe out fantasy weapons of mass destruction... no, the moral argument for spreading democracy will be sufficient for us to send our forces off to die, and to kill.

Bob Piper

They really don't want you to have a referendum

Labour is clearly rattled by the row over it reneging on its promise of a referendum on the EU Constitution. Not content with threatening to withdraw the whip from Labour MPs who support honouring this manifesto commitment, Labour is engaged in a desperate attempt to discredit the cross-party ‘I want a referendum campaign’.

Coffee House

Should we subsidise the arts?

Should there really be tax breaks for donations to the arts, as Paul Myners and Nicholas Serota demand here? The Pigovian case for such tax breaks is well-known; without them, there’d be an under-supply of such public goods. However, the egalitarian case for such breaks is very shaky, as this recent paper discusses. It argues that donations to the arts can actually increase inequalities of well-being in two ways - even leaving aside the possibility that such donations are really intended to boost the ego of the donor.

Liberal Conspiracy

Frank Field: Right theory, Wrong practice

Labour MP Frank Field has had to put up with a lot over the years - not least being ousted from Blair's first government for being too radical and since then being treated by his own side as if he's about to defect to the Conservatives. Well, today Frank launched rather interested reform plans that would charge people who earn over £150,000 a year an extra 10% tax which could be offset totally through donations to charity. You can read the BBC report here.

Little’s Log

Foul emission in London

Up in London the Livingstone beast is at it again. He is going to charge the owners of Chelsea Tractors £25 a day for taking their gas guzzlers into “town”. It will not affect me. I have only driven in London twice in the last six months and the Crippen Toyota Previa (four children, Ken, what else can we do?) has relatively modest emissions. As Iain Dale vehemently points out, the charge will not apply in some of the most congested parts of London, such as Crouch End and Willesdon. The people most affected will be voting for Boris anyway.

NHS Blog Doctor

Prime Minister Balls?

In a fascinating post, Robert shows how the Tories are doing Alistair Darling harm by sympathising with him. The Chancellor may be replaced by Ed Balls so they present Darling as a decent man treated awfully by bossy Brown. They want to spread discord and paranoia because it suits their own ends. But at the root of the Balls for Chancellor movement, is a prospect even more worrying for the nation: it is that Ed Balls appears convinced he is the natural next Labour leader. Can I be alone in finding this idea preposterous?

Three Line Whip

Voodoo polling corner

A sudden outbreak of voodoo polling this morning, or more to the point a sudden outbreak of serious newspapers reporting a voodoo poll as being meaningful. What’s a voodoo poll? It’s what Bob Worcester calls the little “press the red button to vote” polls on Sky News, or the little readers’ votes things on the BBC website. They are entertaining enough, but they mean nothing whatsoever, they don’t measure the opinion of a representative group of people, they only measure the opinions of people who wander past that particular website (or are directed to said website by people trying to influence the poll) and care enough about the issue to vote…often several times if they know how to delete cookies from their computer.

Polling Report

Politics Decoded...

2008-02-12T10:51:00.000Z

... is up at The Wire

The Poliblogs 12 February 2008

2008-02-12T09:50:00.001Z

Will Gordon speak up for his Chancellor?

This is a dangerous week for Alistair Darling. It's half term at Westminster, not much is going on, and when things are quiet there's mischief about. Put together the dire headlines for the Chancellor yesterday and today (Not just "Knives out as Darling loses trust of City" - Sunday Times; "Why Darling is a menace to Britain" - William Rees-Mogg; "Darling's confidence seems misplaced" - Anatole Kaletsky; but more importantly the FT/Telegraph pincer movement on non-doms) and you get a picture of trouble.

Ben Brogan

Booze: Is Bottler Brown Dithering?

On the day three scumbag yobs were jailed for kicking Garry Newlove to death in what the judge called a night of "drunken aggression", you might have expected the Government to signal a crackdown on cheap booze. But you'd be wrong. My narks in the Treasury tell me the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, is unlikely to hammer cheap beers and lagers sold in supermarkets with big tax increases in his Budget on March 12.

Boulton & Co.

Sharing The Proceeds Of Growth

Take a look at the chart. It shows how much of our GDP has been spent by government under each of our last six Prime Ministers (counting the 1974-79 administration as one). 44 years ago when Harold Wilson first took the controls, government spent 38%. This year, it expects to spend 42% (£589bn), but the path from 1964 has been extraordinarily bumpy, and back in the mid-70s they spent 50% (we're using HM Treasury's figures on Total Managed Expenditure- TME). Where will the line go next?

Burning Our Money

And the brass neck of the year award goes to...

If there is an award for a brass neck of 2008, George Osborne has just done enough to win in. First, he proposes a tax on the non-doms (which I critiqued at the time). Then, Darling nicks it in his infamous magpie budget. Then, it becomes clear this daft proposal will simply drive away the highly-mobile millionaires resulting in a net loss to the Exchequer. Today Osborne has written an “open letter” to Darling asking him to repeal this proposal for all the harm it will do. A proposal which he was complaining was nicked from him. Of course winning parties tend to have brass necks – and Osborne’s cheek is far preferable to the pusillanimous approach of previous Shadow Chancellors. But what a cheek it is.

Coffee House

Dr Martin Parsons: Gordon Brown’s hypocrisy in condemning the Archbishop's sharia comments

On Thursday Gordon Brown’s spokesman denounced Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ claim that the introduction of sharia to the UK was inevitable. However, Gordon Brown himself has been quietly seeking to appease certain aspects of the agenda of 'peaceful' Islamist groups in the UK - including what amounts to a partial implementation of sharia.

Conservative Home

Should Labour adopt all-black shortlists?

If not positive discrimination, then what? An internal Labour Party report on increasing black representation in parliament – written by Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote – is recommending that current law be changed to allow all black shortlists for parliamentary selections. This is a proposal I am instinctively uneasy with, largely because I can remember the way positive discrimination worked in local government and the voluntary sector in the 1980s, before being subsequently outlawed. In particular, I recall watching one young Asian woman – a pleasant enough human being, as it goes, who co-habbed with a pal of mine for a while – enjoy a string of rapid promotions to jobs that were on any fair judgement beyond her capabilities, until she predictably came rather spectacularly unstuck.

Dave’s Part

Clegg's first 50 days

The new leader of the Liberal Democrats has made a steady start but he should now exploit Cameron's weaknesses

James Graham

Censoring the interweb

I was stuck at the back of an inordinately long queue in the central Post Office yesterday so naturally I picked up the in-house magazine, put there to divert customers' attention from the fact that their lunch break is being frittered away, whilst half of the counter positions remain unstaffed. Inside was a feature asking people's views as to whether the internet should be censored. Presumably, the editor felt that it would make a good talking point. Unfortunately, none of the proffered arguments convinced me.

Peter Black

Why Lynton Crosby will encourage me to bet on Boris?

Is Ken being ousted the best bet around at the moment? Cards on the table straight-away: quite simply I believe that the 1.84/1 that’s available on Boris Johnson to win the London Mayoralty is by far the best value political bet that’s currently available. Last October I pocketed £3,400 on Gordon’s general election U-turn and in the coming eleven weeks I’ll be investing at least half of that on Boris - when the prices are right. As Sean Fear observed in his excellent analysis on Friday Ken won last time thanks to the fact that many non-Labour voters in the GLA election opted to split their ticket and vote for Ken in the Mayoral race.

Political Betting

Do the Tories need a change of tactics?

Mick Fealty at Brassneck has a very good take on the Tories' discussion on whether or not they should be bolder in taking on Brown. "Cameron and Osbourne are in tight, working hard and lacing the Brown Government with short body blows, none of which looks remotely like taking down the old Scots slugger. It may be that they need to stand off and offer a fresh perspective on that most ancient and pivotal of political arguments, tax."

Three Line Whip

Mayor unveils programme to transform cycling and walking in London

Ken Livingstone today announced the most ambitious programme to transform walking and cycling in London’s history. The package of measures will create a new network of quick, simple, and safe routes for cyclists and pedestrians that will change the profile and priority of walking and cycling on London's streets.

Theo’s Blog

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-11T15:53:00.000Z

A month to go before Alastair Darling presents his first budget to the Commons. This year, as all years, we can expect the any of the pleasures that we get in life a good hammering – e.g. alcohol. Say what you like about it, yes it may well be worse than a cocktail of heroin and crack cocaine that is taken while sharing an audience with the devil himself, but the fact is most of can handle it and don’t need the kind assistance of our government to make it so expensive that only an absolute addict would risk financial ruin from buying it.

Where is the logic in all this? Firstly the government says that we are nation that is dying because of extreme alcohol abuse so we must be encouraged to stop drinking it. Anything more than 21 units a week is likely to cause a slow and miserable death. Absolute nonsense! Please can someone show me the evidence that say we should only be drinking this much alcohol a week? It is a completely arbitrary figure plucked out the air. Yes drinking a lot is not good for you. But to actually get liver damage you have to drink a serious amount of booze – the sort of levels that most of the population do not embark on. This 21 units a week figure is a smokescreen and con. So why the majority should be told that we should pay more is beyond me.

Secondly, we are told that that binge drinking is a problem. Yes it is. But how many people in our town centres are getting in brawls have been sat at home on the sofa with a nice bottle of Rioja before deciding that actually they are bit bored of watching the Channel 4 news and get the bus in to town for good punch up with the nearest passerby? Not many I suspect. No, I suspect that most of the brainless fools have been down the pub drinking a load of alcopops and spirits. So why are the government focussing on the booze from the supermarkets when it the booze in the pubs that (in the town centres) that are attracting all the trouble is beyond me also.

Then we are told it is underage drinking that is the real scourge on our society? Well isn’t there a law against this already? Why should all those people legitimately buying alcohol have to pay more because a load of kids aren’t be held to account by the law? Crack down on the shop keepers or landlords that do it, crack down on these kids’ parents – hell, arrest the blighters themselves and dish out a bit of justice. Don’t make me pay for it though.

Why are we be told that these are all the reasons for raising the tax on alcohol even though when you actually think about it, there is no logic in the premises whatsoever? Because it sounds like it makes sense and is a nice little earner for the Chancellor. And, after all, it fits in with the worst mantra that New Labour ever had – “it is better to be seen to be doing something than nothing at all – even if that something does nothing”.

The Poliblogs' Blog of the Week

2008-02-11T12:28:00.000Z

This week's Poliblogs' Blog of the Week is The Croydonian.

This past week alone, The Croydonian has made me laugh out loud like only The Daily Mash can normally do. Take a look at the brilliantly observed "Survey of the Week" - which has to be the most pointless piece of government research in a very long time with the least surprising results ever. Or how about "Great Typos of Our Time"... I can see the Commission now just belting out the ways of the EU set to Mozart.

Croydonian is brilliantly observant, laugh out load sarcastic and punchy to the point - the sort of blog you go back to a few times a day in those spare few minutes between "real work". That is to say, he's in my favourites, not just my bloglines.

The Poliblogs 11 February 2008

2008-02-11T12:11:00.000Z

Dr. Rowan Williams.

How on earth is one to react to the latest musings of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was a bit lucky that I was heading out of the country today when BBC Wales rang me. I was boarding the plane when they invited me on to talk about Dr. Rowan Williams' lecture to the Royal Courts of Justice. It would have been walking on very thin ice indeed. It would have been easy if I didn't have such great respect for the man - as a theologian and an academic. But he is not much of a politician. I cannot think of anything more designed to wind up the British people than to suggest that sharia law should apply in some circumstances in our country.

A View from Rural Wales

The fluoride state

As the Government finds more and more ways to curtail our liberties, the Health Secretary chips in with his own brand of interference in the way that we live our lives. The problem, as Ben Goldacre points out in his Guardian Bad Science column, is that there is no evidence that the addition of fluoride to our water supply will have the beneficial effects claimed for it:

Peter Black AM

Watch your back, Darling

The whispering campaign against Alistair Darling just went public. The Sunday Times carries an article today that is packed with devastating quotes from government insiders, albeit anonymous ones. We are told by an MP close to Number 10 that Brown’s team are openly considering moving Darling out of Number 11 in a reshuffle while a Treasury Civil Servant bemoans that Ed Balls is not in charge and claims that there wouldn’t be any of these problems if he was. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out who might be hoping from this briefing against Darling.

Coffee House

Charles Clarke - Gordon Brown is a Ditherer

Charles Clarke has made my prediction of Gordon Brown being given the boot by May, a whole lot more credible today. Speaking to Petronella Wyatt of the Daily Mail, Clarke has launched into what can only be described as a scathing attack on the Prime Minister. Not only that, he even has the bottle (I wonder if he has a spare one for Brown) to praise David Cameron for his decisiveness over the expenses fiasco. This is just a small taste of the Clarke's criticism of Brown:

Daily Referendum

Charles Clarke denies sour grapes

.....after he broke into Downing Street, sneaked into Gordon Brown's bedroom and chopped a sleeve off each of the Prime Minister's suits. There is some good news, however, and it concerns Clarke's health: he's out of the coma. Bear in mind he said the following a day or two ago and not a year or two ago:

The Daily Pundit

Public Finances

Philipa has asked me what I think of the James Purnell "second home" funding "scandal". Well, first of all I would like to express my total lack of surprise at this "revelation". Every MP who has a constituency outside London does this. They get £22,000 a year each to help them fund a pied-a-terre for those evenings when they have to be in London. Rather disgracefully, many MPs with constituencies very close to London also take advantage of this subsidy. Guido has been chipping away at this particular trough for a good while, and he knows more about it than I do.

Edland

Will others follow the Wallace example?

On Sunday I drew attention to Tory MP Ben Wallace and his unilateral decision to put all his expenses online, for all to see. What to you and me seems an obvious and praiseworthy step for a parliamentarian was actually a risky one for Mr Wallace. David Cameron may be striking the right poses on transparency, but behind him the Tory ranks are seething with anger at the mess they find themselves in.

Ben Brogan

FT interview with Clegg: LibDems could back Conservatives

Due to my self-denying ordinance, I missed this one on the tickertape machine when it came through:

Liberal Burblings

Campaign against 42 days extension

The government will try and push its Counter Terrorism Bill through parliament in the next few weeks. This bill includes the provision to hold someone in detention, without charging them, for 42 days - a two week increase on the current limit of 28 days. Unsurprisingly, New Labour has been trying to paint this extension of police powers in benign terms. But we should not be fooled. Why? Because:

Liberal Conspiracy

How Do Y0u Solve A Problem Like Sharia

Cassilis is always a good read although he is a bit of “Seeing-all-sides-and-must therefore be right “ merchant. I always like CS Lewis on this when he pointed out there are endless answers to a question until you know the right one and then there is one. Anyway, on the Bishop bashing issue he has pointed out that in a previous Church state row ( forcing Adoption agencies to consider gays ) those who are incandescent about Sharia law encroaching on the secular hegemony felt that religious considerations should take precedence over the states universal edict. I like the comparison because I think it takes us to the heart if what is going on here.

Newmania

Labour's parallel universes - Part 2 - London

Saturday 9 February was the second of two all-member consultations about the Labour manifesto for the forthcoming Mayoral and Greater London Assembly elections on 1 May 2008. A beautiful morning tempted me onto my bike to cycle down to the Lilian Bayliss Technology School at Vauxhall, in the London Borough of Lambeth.

Peter Kenyon

Should Brown be worrying about the Clarke onslaughts?

Could the Prime Minister really “obliterate Labour?” While all the focus that has been on the US elections we have not really looked at the growing attacks on Gordon Brown from his long-standing foe within the Labour movement, Charles Clarke. In an interview with Petronella Wyatt in the Daily Mail this weekend the former Home Secretary and still-loyal Blairite issues one broadside after another against his party leader.

Political Betting

This country is politically dead and I am frightened

Dead countries almost always give birth to dictatorships. Remember that old one about for evil to prosper, all that's needed is for good men to do nothing? When it comes to voting, most good men (OK, and women... yada yada) under 35 are doing nothing. They know of no reason to vote. They see politics and politicians as nothing to do with them.

Prodicus

Wendy: from the frying pan into the fire

Just as Wendy and her team think she has got off with it **Fuc&ing Brilliant**, now the real issues of Wendy's leadership will come to the fore. But not before she defends herself in a new donorgate scandal that is brewing over the funding of a constituency organisation by a 'front organisation', the Scottish Industry Forum. Now some of the Tory-supporting donors to SIF are making formal complaints to the Electoral Commission that they were deceived into making donations to her Paisley North election campaign - and not the economic renewal of Renfrewshire!

Tartan Hero

The danger with Darling

Patrick Hennessy says Charles Clarke has gone too far this time. There is surely no way back for him under the Brown regime after his interview with the Daily Mail yesterday. He described the PM as a "ditherer", echoing David Cameron's line of attack. The problem for Clarke is that he has had so many goes at Brown that they long ago lost impact. He is the Blairite lounge bar bore: "And another thing..." Smarter Blairites are keeping their powder dry. John Reid is a "volcano waiting to explode", according to one observer who spent some time with him recently. However, Reid will know he has one shot at doing his old enemy GB any serious damage and will pick his moment.

Three Line Whip

The Poliblogs 8 February 2008

2008-02-08T10:33:00.000Z

Time to beat the Archbishop

It will come as no surprise to regular readers of my blog that I am spitting blood at the remarks of the Archbishop of Canterbury in his call for sharia law to be adopted in Britain. He has managed to get the three main parties - including Baroness Warsi, of all people - to condemn his remarks, as has Trevor Phillips.

Blaney’s Blarney

£2bn Down The Tubes

We've blogged the Metronet fiasco before (see here), highlighting the risk of a serious taxpayer loss. Yesterday we got the bill for £2bn as Metronet's bank creditors called in the government's guarantee. Let's remind ourselves of the key features. Metronet was a special purpose vehicle (spv) established and owned by five construction companies to manage a £17bn contract to renovate part of London's tube sytem. The contract was Public Private Partnership deal bulldozed through by Gordon Brown in 2003. Transport for London had argued strongly against the PPP contract, wanting instead to fund the work via US-style municipal debt issuance. But that would have blown Brown's tricksy Golden Rule fiscal targets, so he insisted on the PPP.

Burning Our Money

Should al Qaradawi be allowed into Britain?

Qaradawi_ban.gif I’ve tried listening to those on the left who repeatedly try to tell me that I should see the utterances of Yusuf al Qaradawi ‘in context’. I really, really have. But the man widely regarded as one of the world’s leading moderate Muslim clerics openly argues that it is permissible for husbands to beat their wives and that gays should be killed, and let’s just say that I remain enough of a wimpish liberal to have one or two difficulties with this.

Dave’s Part

We have a problem

This blog has pointed out on numerous occasions, for instance here and here that Western Europe is in danger of becoming completely dependent on Russian gas for energy. The way things are going in that country and given President (soon to be Prime Minister and Chairman of Gazprom) Putin’s tendency to use gas supplies to bully his nearest neighbours, this may not be the smartest of political moves.

EU Referendum

An underground scandal

Taxpayers will have to pay billions after the failure of Gordon Brown's finance initiatives for London's tube. It's an outrage

Christian Wolmar

QT review

So what of QT? Well, new Culture Secretary Andy Burnham had the job of keeping the government's end up and he was deeply unimpressive. He particularly struggled when asked to defend Caroline Flint's bonkers idea to chuck the unemployed out of their council homes - a suggestion which seemed to have little support in the Liverpool audience - and also when put on the spot about Labour's potty plan to expel the four MPs who are demanding a referendum on the EU Treaty. Burnham does at least seem to have a bit of passion about him, as well as an element of Northern grit, but the overall impression is of an intellectual lightweight. I was left wondering what on earth Telegraph pol ed Andy Porter sees in him.

Paul Linford

Worried

It was while I was reading this in the FT that it dawned on me that I am in serious trouble. I don't know quite how to tell you this so I'll type it quickly. The fact is, I am missing Tony Blair. Worse, I am beginning to think of him as a heavyweight politician, a proper Prime Minister.

Prodicus

Privy Council Chilcot Review report on Intercept Evidence - more ***

The Government has now published the Privy Council Review of intercept as evidence: report to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary (.pdf 64 pages - censored) produced under Rt. Hon, Sir John Chilcot GCB. This review makes the recommendation. that Intercept Evidence should, vaguely, at some undermined time in the future, be permitted in Courts in England and Wales (but not in Scotland or in Northern Ireland), for terrorism and serious crime cases , but not for Civil cases,. It is unclear if the recommendation for "terrorism" cases also include other national security cases such as espionage.

SpyBlog

Listening For Evidence

I can see no real problem at all with using phone-tap evidence in court. After all, they can only record them, not make them say anything. It shouldn't be used instead of other evidence, and shouldn't be used as the sole source of evidence of any particular fact, but rather to strengthen circumstantial evidence gathered in another way. Also, if any phone tapping evidence is to be used in court, the defence must be provided with all secret recordings made.

The ThuderDragon

Principles of policing

With today’s publication of the Flanagan report on policing, there will be a lot of talk about civilians taking over the back-room tasks of the police. Today's police uniform is quite a change from the top hat and tail coat. However, it should be remembered that police ARE civilians. It is the one thing that differentiates our police from most of their continental counterparts, whose gendarmeries are quasi-military outfits. It was to stop them looking like soldiers that the first recruits to the Metropolitan Police when it was established by Robert Peel 175 years ago were issued with uniforms of top hat and tail coat.

Three Line Whip

MPs and Democracy: We The People

The Wardman Wire has seen some very good articles over the past week on the subject of MPs and the money they claim, both as salary and expenses. It’s not my intention to weigh in on that debate, but use the opportunity to examine the role of MPs in our democracy.

The Wardman Wire

Wendy Alexander cleared but the back-stabbing goes on

According to the Scotsman there were 'shouts of joy and celebration among embattled Labour MSPs at the Scottish Parliament' yesterday after the Scottish Labour leader was cleared of any wrongdoing in the undeclared donations row. It won't last.

The Daily Pundit

Milk with your iPod?

The fact that MPs can claim expenses of £250 without a receipt has already been greeted with widespread incredulity. The fact we learnt today is likely to be greeted with even more. MPs can, apparently, also claim £400 a month for food without receipts.

Nick Robinson

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-07T14:50:00.001Z

Metronet: A Failure of PPP?

It was announced yesterday that the government would be picking up the bill (i.e. the taxpayer is picking up the bill) for the massive £2bn hole Metronet blew in the PPP contract they were operating on the London Underground. It is being reported as a deep embarrassment for the government as it was forced upon Livingstone and former TfL Commissioner, Bob Kiley. The Mayor wanted a bonds based scheme while the government insisted that it wanted to put the risk and debt on the books of the private sector. So who was right and why did it go wrong?

Metronet: The Failure of PPP

Firstly, to try and paint the collapse of Metronet as a failure of PPP is disingenuous and playing politics. The reason Metronet failed is not because the government used a Public Private Partnership, but was down to the consortium members of Metronet. WS Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Bombardier, EDF Energy and Thames Water have effectively cost the tax payer £2bn and suffered very little in the way of penalty. Instead of sub-contracting out the work like Tubelines (which is a very successful PPP deal and working fine on the rest of the Underground), Metronet decided to divvy up their contracts between them. In effect they were paying themselves to do the work. The incentives to actually do the work was immediately reduced. So while Metronet has gone into administration, guess who is still getting paid to carry out the work on the Underground...

The Government played their role too

The government and Gordon Brown do not get off scot free here, however. The big myth that handing out PPP and PFI contracts means that the risk of a project rests with the private sector has been shot wide open here. Metronet as a firm may cease to exist, but the companies that made up Metronet are still going strong and have not had to pay up a penny of the £1.7bn – because when all is said and done the risk sits firmly with the tax-payer. While PPP is in my opinion a good tool for getting major projects done, it by no means shifts the risk away from the tax payer. Nor is it the solution to all projects. Then again, Ken’s bonds scheme had its flaws to and was, at the time, by no means the better option. The big failing from the government in all this is that they allowed a contract to be signed without realising that Metronet would keep it all in house and shaft the tax payer when it all went wrong.

If you are angry by having to shell out for part of this £2bn fiasco, by all means direct it towards Gordon Brown – but the real culprits here are WS Atkins, Balfour Beatty, Bombardier, EDF Energy and Thames Water aka. Metronet.

The Poliblogs 7 February 2008

2008-02-07T10:06:00.000Z

Tory Splits

The Planning Bill committee held its last session yesterday. Sixteen sessions in all, lasting a total of something like 100 hours. It has, for the last month, dominated my life, some of which I now hope to reclaim. As it turned out, yesterday was dominated by matters Welsh. The Government had, disgracefully late, tabled a clause giving additional legislative powers to the Welsh Assembly in relation to development plans. Three additional “Matters” were to be added to the devolved competence provisions of the Government of Wales Act.

David Jones

Phone tapping evidence could help convict Britain’s terrorists

The sooner phone tapping image evidence is permitted in our courts to help secure convictions of terrorists the better. How can anyone argue against presenting evidence to show we are serious about locking them up? The safety and security of our citizens should be the first objective of any government. Yet Britain is one of few countries in the world to ban the use of evidence from intercepted phone calls, emails, letters and faxes as part of a prosecution case in court. Phone intercept material from intelligence services in the courts are commonly used to secure convictions in America, Australia and countries in the European Unions. It’s time we did the same.

Ellee Seymour

David Cameron cannot be bold enough in increasing accountability of politicians

24 hours after the Derek Conway report was published David Cameron took decisive action against the disgraced MP and he has kept up the momentum over the last week with welcome requirements for greater openness from his frontbenchers with regard to their taxpayer-funded expenses. It's also fair to say that Mr Cameron, with considerable support from Ken Clarke and Andrew Tyrie, has been working on many other proposals that aim to restore the public standing of politicians.

Conservative Home

PMQs - 06/02/08 Gordon Brown, just answer a bloody question - part two.

I've had to force myself to write something about this week's PMQ's. It was, all in all, a total repeat of last week's pathetic performance. David Cameron can't be blamed; he's doing his job i.e. asking questions that the public want answers to. Unfortunately Gordon Brown now sees it as perfectly acceptable not to answer them. The speaker seems not to care and even allows Brown to question Cameron - it's a sodding farce. We've got Labour back-benchers asking questions like "I think the Prime Minister is more super than Super-Duper Tuesday, will the Prime Minister agree with me?"

Daily Referendum

Does Brown suffer from selective deafness?

I missed PMQ's yestedray as I was out, but when I read the sketch by Simon Carr this morning in the Indy I couldn't quite believe it was as he said it was, but now that I have checked Hansard and it's true. Nick Clegg asked Brown some questions and Brown's answers were ona completely different subject. A truly bizarre exchange of words.

Dizzy Thinks

Brown’s terrible performance at PMQs

The point about Gordon Brown and PMQs is that he is supposed to be getting better at it, not worse. In recent weeks he had developed a certain dogged style which David Cameron could find no way round. It was inelegant but effective.

Three Line Whip

How Brown could revolutionaise PMQs, improve Labour's standing, polish the image of politics and make the Tories look like silly - all in one go

Another Wednesday, another PMQs (Prime Minister's Questions) in Parliament. What to make of today's Punch and Judy show between Cameron and Brown? First - I guess, as Nick Robinson points out, that Cameron has forgotten his professed distaste for Punch and Judy, you say one insult, I'll say two back more loudly style of politics. Perhaps he genuinely meant it when he said it, but if so he's long since changed his mind. Second -Gordon Brown really ain't that sharp or fast when it comes to PMQs. He was always going to have a tough act to follow after Blair who, love or loathe what he said, was a master of the art of question time.

Lynne Featherstone

Fixed rate mortgages for all? - The Chancellor turns mortgage salesman

Today I learn that the Chancellor has become a mortgage salesman again. He is lecturing us to take long term mortgages at fixed rates. Has no-one reminded him that his government has made mortgage selling a regulated activity? I doubt if the Chancellor has bothered to fix himself up with the necessary regulatory approvals to start selling the fixed rate proposition so actively.

John Redwood

Tony Blair and the race for the presidency

I’m told Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have discussed the possibility of Mr Blair becoming President. That’s President of the Council, the new top European job created by the Lisbon Treaty. Some want to find a high profile president to represent the European Union on the world stage at events such as the G8, the Bali summit and for meeting heads of state.

Mark Mardell

The PMQs Battle 06 February 2008

2008-02-06T17:41:00.000Z

PMQs - The Verdict

Normally politicians like nothing better than an attentive audience but not when it is the security services listening into a private conversation with a constituent, as was apparently the case with Sadiq Khan MP. And with Ann Cryer, Willie McCrea and Nick Clegg all asking the prime minister about surveillance, it became one of the proceeding's key themes. Brown reassured Cryer that a review into bugging was underway and that until it reports, "people should not play the game of speculation." It was a reference to shadow home secretary David Davis calling Brown a liar in relation to what he knew of the bugging of Khan. Having mentioned the bugging probe, David Cameron revealed that the prime minister had established another 52 reviews during his brief premiership.

ePolitix

Sense Of Deja Vu Descends On Commons

You would be forgiven a sense of deja vu. Again. The questions this time round were about Government reviews and the future of A-levels, but the weekly clash between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition is becoming as predictable as yet another Amy Winehouse freak-out. In one corner, David Cameron, asking for a straight answer to a straight question. In the other, a Prime Minister surely now delighting in failing to provide one, and instead choosing to ask some questions of his own.

Niall Paterson

"Dithering" Brown stumbles on Cameron's attacks

When they didn’t mention MPs expenses last week, it was odd. This time it was downright embarrassing – and adds to the impression that they all have something to hide. Which, of course, they all do. First thing’s first: Ed Miliband seems to have a new job. He now sits next to Brown making theatrical grimaces and facial expressions of mock astonishment when Tories speak. Quite fun to watch. Oxford, LSE, Harvard – and he ends up as the highest-paid mime artist in Britain.

Coffee House

What is the point of PMQs?

It's somewhat strange, I thought that the point was that the Prime Minister answered some damn questions, not ask them. Before this, Cameron's first question was to do with the government's reviews: after the Monocular Fuckwit's lack of answer, Cameron then pointed out there had been 52 reviews—fifty-fucking-two!—since Brown took over. The Gobblin' King then pointed out that NuLabour had created 3 million jobs. No, you fucking haven't, you cunt. Private businesses create the jobs in spite of your high-taxing fucking government, you fucking little shit. Good question on the "surveillance state" by Clegg though.

The Devil’s Kitchen

Could Gord get away with abolishing PMQs?

Another Wednesday and another PMQs for Gordon Brown to have to endure. He clearly doesn’t like them and being open every seven days to the fierce blasts that Cameron is able to master cannot be very pleasant. Ever since a piece appeared in the Indy a couple of weeks ago about Brown’s views of the weekly ritual I’ve been pondering over whether we are being softened up for a proposal to change the structure. Maybe they could find a way of blaming Cameron for the need for change because of the way the Tory leader handles the event.

Political Betting

The Verdict

“They say we're young and we don't know, We won't find out until we grow. Well I don't know if all that's true, 'Cause you got me, and baby I got you

Babe!

I got you babe!”

IT’S GROUNDHOGDAY!

PMQs is back and Brown is at it again. Refusing to answer the questions, accusing Cameron of learning his lines, dribbling out facts and figures about the past ten years that could mean anything to anyone.

I have been very critical of Cameron at PMQs of late and I think I am quite right to be. He is up against an absolute numbskull of a performer at the dispatch box, yet has not really landed any heavy punches for weeks. Well this week was an improved performance.

For a start he didn’t fall in to the trap of asking about the bugging of Khan. The government are employing a new desperate tactic at PMQs of late – the spoiler question. This week Labour backbencher Ann Cryer was the patsy. She asked a very soft and leading question on bugging that the PM could easily bat away and look good with. Had Cameron then gone on to ask about the bugging case it would not have had much impact. Secondly, the government do not appear to be at blame for any of this and the only impropriety that we can be certain of is David Davis' completely wild statement that the PM had lied over the matter. Brown would have had a field day asking (as he does at PMQs) if Cameron backed up Davis’s claims.

Instead, Cameron was far more shrewd, though it was a little bit Groundhog too! He tried, and to a certain degree succeeded, to paint the PM as an indecisive dithering. Heard it before, though this time it was done masterfully and in a way that Brown could not have predicted. He claimed the PM has established 52 reviews—one every four days! Yet no decisions. Ouch. It struck the bad tempered old bear right on his wobbly jaw. For the first time in weeks Cameron had the clunking fist shaking and stuttering. He made him angry – only for a few seconds did it show – but it showed. Brown never looks more undesirable, less statesman like, less like a man that you'd want as Prime Minister than when he loses his temper. It is lovely to watch, but an all too rare sight because of Cameron’s inefficiency of late.

Again, it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a classic performance from Cameron nor was it the battering of Brown that these affairs should be. But it was effective and so much better than anything Cameron managed in January. Clegg’s half decent show was made to look all the more good for Brown’s illogical response – something about not supporting CCTV or something. He was starting to bore me by this point and I was switching off. It had little to do with Clegg’s question anyway.

All in all a win for Cameron and something to build on maybe. He still has such a long way to go before he can truly say he is a great Commons performer though. Brown on the other hand never will be.

Brown 0

Cameron 1

The Poliblogs 6 February 20008

2008-02-06T10:47:00.000Z

The limits of the Wilson doctrine

As with other areas, the constitution must evolve to deal with the devolution. It is not immediately obvious why, if members of the Parliament at Westminster are entitled to confidential dealings with constituents, members of the Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly should be excluded. The same principle would, logically, extend to Stormont. That might mean, though, that surveillance of people attached to paramilitary organisations could be verboten.

Dave Cole

Cameron: put up MPs' pay

It was a brief press conference, but Mr Cameron did some useful business. He made the obvious (though not to all politicians) point that "the House of Commons has got to see itself as others see it. There is a danger that we don't see ourselves and our arrangements as others see them." He put the Wintertons - and other MP couples - on the spot by arguing that MPs must be ready to defend "in the court of public opinion" the arrangements they enter into. "It's difficult to do that in this case." Ouch. He said there was a case for rolling some of the allowances MPs receive into their pay, in particular the additional costs allowance which helps MPs with the cost of running two homes.

Ben Brogan

Cameron's Conservatives Must Do More

Each of the two main parties are suffering from accusations of sleaze and sharp practice aimed at various of their parliamentary members. This, coupled with an increased focus on the new Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, best explains Sky's latest monthly average of opinion polls.

Michael Thrasher

David Cameron shows Brown how to lead a party - Expenses

Once again David Cameron has taken the lead on the tough decisions. He hasn't waited for a fake inquiry to publish a nonsense report - he's got on and behaved in the way any decent party leader should - by acting decisively. From July, all frontbench MPs will register details of any Commons allowances spent - and any relatives they employ. This information will be published for public scrutiny each April from then on. All other Conservative MPs have been urged to follow suit. David told the press:

Daily Referendum

The left press in Britain

Can any explicitly socialist publication in Britain credibly claim a five-figure circulation anymore? And does it matter if they can’t? Let’s start from the premise that New Statesman doesn’t count for these purposes; it’s better described as left of centre rather than leftwing. Last time I checked, the Morning Star and Socialist Worker were officially insisting that they shift more than 10,000 but less than 20,000 copies, per day and per week respectively. Then again, I have heard sources close to both these fine organs frankly admit over a beer that quoted figures more accurately reflect print run than actual sales.

Dave’s Part

Unwarranted Intrusion

The debate about bugging hots up. Two speakers on the Today programme this morning revealed quite how much power The Authorities have to keep tabs on us. 600 organisations have the authority to put us under surveillance, and they don't have to go to a judge for a warrant. The Police - quite rightly - cannot search your home without a warrant, but they can intercept your email. When the current "RIP" legislation was being put forward it was all about counter-terrorism, but why would your local council need the power to watch over you if it was only about terrorism?

Edland

Is Caroline Flint thick?

She said on Today prog this morning how so many people in social housing were unemployed - yeh well divvy it’s because you carried on the Tories policy of allowing people to buy up council housing so reducing the stock. Thus only the unemployed etc have access to it. Oh my giddy aunt and this woman’s a Minister! She wouldn’t be pandering to the crowd would she?

Liberal Revolution

Is there some merit in bits of what Labour are saying about making people work ?

I note today that Labour minister Caroline Flint has come in for some deserved criticism of labours announcement that they may wish to make people homeless if they fail to get jobs. This is a slightly odd situation as presumably when they become homeless the council would then be forced to find them a home, but that is not the point.

Norfolk Blogger

Attention Scotland: Salmond's threat

Given the choice between cheap stunts and issues of principle, it would appear that Scotland's Alex Salmond will always choose the former. The SNP First Minister's threat to resign and call an election north of the border if his budget is thrown out at Holyrood today is not some great issue of moment. At present the SNP has only one seat more than Labour but if there were to be another Scottish election, they would probably do very well, given the chaos that passes for leadership in the Scottish Labour Party and the fact that the Tories and Liberal Democrats are making no headway with the voters.

Three Line Whip

What Should the Rules be for MPs? Guest Article Series

2008-02-05T16:26:00.000Z

The next article in the Matt Wardman series on "What Should the Rules be for MPs? Guest Article Series" is up. Today it is Dave Cole - and a jolly good post it is too. We are not in total agreement, but we do share the belief that our MPs are not such bad lot and that things should be done to tighten up the system - we differ slightly on the means and extent. I suggest you have a read.

Below is my contribution from yesterday for those who missed it:

Independent Adminstration Needed

This first contribution is by Garbo of the Poliblogs, who argues that our politicians are in fact far more honest than they are currently being painted, but that an independent decisonmaking and administrative process would help create the necessary transparency and clarity, and improve the reputation of politics.

Garbo previously wrote an article on his own blog soon after New Year, which you may like to read first. He then updated his opinion after the Derek Conway affair at the end of January.

Bad Week for Politics

It has been a shocking week for the reputation of our MPs. There is a long held perception that MP are a bunch of no-good, money grabbing corrupt jobsworths who look after themselves and don’t give a damn about the rest of us. I think this is a lazy and unfair view of what are actually some of the very best politicians in the world.

Compare our lot to what goes on in other countries, then you start to actually thank the Lord we have them and not anyone else’s. And I’m not just talking about the developing world. Russia is basically run by corruption. Nothing would get done without some level of corruption in Italy (and very little does with it). Even the US presidential elections make our dirty trickster politicians seem like high jinks in the playground. But while our press (and bloggers) love a good scandal story and will exaggerate the sleaze of our MPs, I am not suggesting for one moment they are whiter than white.

Take Money Decisions out of MP’s Hands

As such I propose that the only effective way forward to ensure our MPs snouts are not in the trough and to appease our over-reacting press, who paint one MP’s misdemeanours as the wrong doing of 650 MPs, is to take the money decisions out of their hands altogether.

The issues at stake here are:

MP’s Pay – the yearly MP pay rise
MP’s expenses – the right for MPs to take housing allowances and get the tax payer to pay for just about any facet of their constituency work from pens and pencils to transport.
MP’s staff allowances – the MP’s employment of anyone they see fit to do as much or as little work for a very generous salary.

For me, I think it is time that all the above was done by an Administrator. Cue Matt Wardman and David Cole to shout “U-Turn” and The ThunderDragon to suggest that all HR types are crap and that we are somehow handing power over to unelected bodies… but bear with me!

Independent Pay Body for a Fairer Deal

Firstly I will deal with the MP’s pay rises and Matt’s and Dave’s correct calls of a U-turn. I am not suggesting that MP’s have the decision to vote on their pay rises taken out of their hands because they are abusing the system. Far from it.

As Matt and Dave know, I believe that MP’s are worth every penny of their £60k salary and that by voting for themselves every year they are under such massive scrutiny from the press and public they actually end up giving themselves pretty modest increases.

This year’s annual pay rise was preceded by all the cynics shouting and ranting that MPs will inevitably vote for an inflation busting rise. What happens? They gave themselves a 1.9% - instead of the full 2.56% recommended by the independent Senior Salaries Review. Not such a good story, eh?

It is no coincidence that the one area of payment to our MPs that is least abused is that one that is most in the public eye. Instead of awarding themselves a massive pay increase, they actually went well below the independent recommendation. This is a system that works.

Only it doesn’t. Because MPs are under such pressure to take such small pay rises, it only encourages them more to play the system outside their salary, i.e. expenses claims. Therefore, I propose that we take the decision out of the hands of MPs, not to limit their pay, but to give them a fair pay rise – because right now they are not getting one.

No more free-for-all on expenses

Secondly, this same body should be responsible for handling expense claims.

Every single expense claim that an MP makes should be verified and signed off by this independent body. No random checks that will inevitably lead to individuals getting through the system.
Everyone should be checked – no room for the odd opportunistic claim that someone will probably get away with and thereby muddy the name of MPs again.
Housing should be handed out on a needs basis, not as some sort of privilege that is to be taken advantage of.
Transport should be verified and signed off.

Then at the end of the year every single MP’s expense claims should be published for all to see by this independent body.

Professional support to end nepotism and falling short of the law

Finally, the employment of MP’s staff. Again, this should be done with the independent body. Professionals who understand employment law and who is the best candidate. HR professionals.

At this point, last time I suggested this, The ThunderDragon (see comments) stated that all HR professionals are crap and that we would be appointing more unelected people in to positions of power.

Nonsense.

I may sometimes sympathise with his stereotyped opinion of HR people; howeber, the reality is that I am not suggesting they employ bad HR people! If all HR were so bad, why would every single major company in the world have an extensive HR department with the most senior figures usually right at the top of the company? You can not dismiss a whole profession just because you don’t like them!

As for appointing people to power? Who is being appointed to power? Not the HR people:

These HR professionals will be there to ensure that the correct and proper procedures are gone through – like they are in every other public sector body:
They know the law and so will take the pressure off the MP.
They will ensure that the best candidate gets the job, not some MP’s son who is studying for his degree in Newcastle where he is clearly not best placed to do the job!
The HR people won’t be going in to the Chamber and voting on laws that affect the country! Nor will the researchers and PAs be doing much more than reading Hansard and writing letters.
They will manage employment of MP staff under a competitive process and the position advertised publicly to all, in line with the law for all other public sector recruitment.

I also propose that the MP is part of the employment process – the HR professional is there as a guide and as a check that nothing that falls under the category of nepotism occurs.

It both protects the MP from making a mistake and also from deliberately abusing the public purse.

The Cost Savings

And how much would this all cost? I suspect it would pail in to insignificance with the cost savings that they would provide. MPs would think twice about claiming expenses and they would be under real pressure to provide value for money – including in their employment of staff. They would employ a better calibre of candidate who would churn out more work.

Everyone is a winner

By setting up this administrative body, everyone is a winner - including MPs. The tax payer will save money, and can be sure that there is no corruption going on. MPs get a better annual pay deal and will see that they appoint a better calibre of candidate to their staff.

It will also restore some confidence in our MPs and do a lot to restore our faith in politics - which right now is being undermined by a very small minority of MPs and a savage press.

A View Across The Pond

2008-02-05T15:15:00.000Z

Damp Squib Tuesday?

So finally we have arrived at Super Tuesday. Or “Super Duper Tuesday”, as some people are calling it. Why? I don’t know. To me it seems more like “Damp Squib Tuesday”. What do we know today that we won’t know tomorrow? McCain will be the Republican nominee and the race will still be on between Obama and Clinton. Granted, tomorrow we will know how close the race is, but I don’t expect either of them to secure the nomination when all votes for Super Tuesday have been announced.

Still Exciting Though!

The reason probably rest in the American psyche – and Super Tuesday is yet another reminder of how they do things differently in America to us Brits. We treat politics in this country as a very sombre and serious business. We don’t use superlatives like Super Tuesday. The only time we ever name a day is if it is a particularly bad one – Black Wednesday for example. Super Tuesday – it conjures up excitement and glamour. Hell, it makes going to the polls sound like a trip to Disneyland!

Maybe We Can Learn Something Here...

Maybe we should spice up British politics with a few meaningless superlatives to make what is otherwise a pretty boring activity for vast swathes of the population sound more like a Hollywood Action Thriller. Why not call our election day Super Thursday? Or PMQs could be Interrogation:PM. Local Elections and European Elections could do some spicing up too – though it may well be just too disingenuous to treat European Elections with anything more than the total apathy we give to them currently.

The Serious Stuff...

So what of the candidates. Well McCain and Obama are on the up, Clinton is having a blip. I still expect Obama to win this race eventually, but the Comeback Kid Mach 2 is by no means out of it – and is still probably the favourite. If the Democrats are going to win come November however, Obama is the stronger choice. While McCain is seen as the War leader, the coming months in America are going to be about domestic issues and that will play far better in to the Democrats hands. If that is the case, I just sense that more floating Republicans are likely to switch if Obama is on offer rather than Clinton.

Only 278 Days To go...

Only 278 days until polling day – it’s another 331 before the next President actually takes over! Hell, it’s only 324 until Christmas! Mmmm... maybe that is why it’s called call Super Tuesday – they have to use these exciting adjectives just to keep everyone going.

Politics Decoded...

2008-02-05T11:08:00.000Z

...is up on the The Wardman Wire.

The Poliblogs 5 February 2008

2008-02-05T10:28:00.000Z

No Olivant branch for Northern Rock

In addition to the poor pun; this is quite bad news for the government and taxpayers. Olivant was the financial engineering bid, the one that would make the numbers add up before all else. Branson's bid has a big element of investing faith in the Virgin brand to make a turnaround. We know that this does work spectacularly sometimes, but there are a quite number of failures on the route too. I don't see too many crowing about the Virgin Media success story.

Capitalists@Work

MPs' Expenses Inquiry: I Predict a Whitewash

I've just been on the phone home, when my partner told me that the BBC were reporting that Speaker Michael Martin had launched a "root and branch" investigation into MPs' expenses. Good, I thought. It's about time too. Most MPs would admit that the whole system is creaking and is open to misinterpretation. Better look up the detail, I thought. And so I came to THIS BBC Online report - and my heart sank.

Iain Dale

MPs: Taking the Michael

Norman Baker, as always, got it exactly right on PM. Speaking of MPs who claim their mortgage payments for London second properties and then sell those properties at a profit when they cease to be MPs, he said: "That's unethical". It is very welcome that Norman, speaking in a personal capacity, we were told, put it so bluntly.

Liberal Burblings

"Secretive and bizarre" decision-making

Perversely, we can find no corresponding report in the Committee’s website. Its latest production there is dated 29 January and does not overtly deal with the issue to hand. This notwithstanding, the Western Mail story tells us that the Committee is urging greater openness about the actions of the European Council. It also complains that parliaments in some of the other member states are given access to draft European Council documents which our local government withholds from the House of Commons.

EU Referendum

Something's bugging me...

Sometimes in this job you stumble into a subject about which you know very little and emerge, well, confused. Then you suddenly realise that this is entirely intentional. Clarity is sometimes the last thing government's want when handling tricky questions. So it is has been over the years with the issue of bugging MPs (or intercepting their communications which, I now realise, is very different). To be fair to the Justice Secretary Jack Straw if you listened to him very carefully and then read what he had to say several times the fog did begin to clear (a little).

Nick Robinson

Bugs rife

The Wilson doctrine is to protect MPs from subversion by rogue elements in the security services, but not to give them immunity from all surveillance

Crispin Black

Bugging MPs

Why is there such a furore over the bugging of Sadiq Khan [Labour MP for Tooting]? He wasn't being bugged, but the person he was visiting. That he is an MP should make absolutely no difference. MPs should be exempt from bugging personally because they are MPs, but bugging shouldn't have to be restricted with regards to other people around them. MPs are just citizens who happen to be allowed to site of the House of Commons for a while by kind permission of the electorate. Maybe this is something they forget?

The ThuderDragon

Policing the Surveillance Rules and House Rules Parliament

The Wilson Doctrine states that privileged conversations of Westminster MPs and Peers should not be bugged. This morning I heard on Radio 4 a description of why the security apparatus had kept quiet when this happened: “We didn’t tell them about it becuse then we’d have to have admitted what we have done”. And - as far as I know - that is the story under both shades of government in the UK, and so is a non-partisan civil liberties question. But the problem is similar to that of seeking a more acceptable set of principles, rules and structures for managing expenses and all the rest in the Houses of Parliament.

The Wardman Wire

The reassertion of our social democracy

Labour project has demonstrated anything, it has underlined just how far British politics has become de-ideologised. No longer do the mainstream parties fight on the basis of competing visions for society, even to the limited extent that they did in the late 1980s, let alone the period of polarisation between Thatcherism and Bennism that immediately preceded the Kinnock years.

Liberal Conspiracy

Can Labour regain the moral high ground?

Can high level resignations be avoided if Labour is to have any hope of regaining the moral high ground it sought in the run up to the 1997 landslide General election result? The Conway affair exposed by journalists has left all three mainstream political parties wanting. My wife and I took our 10-year old niece to a highly entertaining production of Aladdin by the Castle Players in Lytchett hall in Dorset on Saturday. It is a long way from Westminster, but they are on the button when it comes to the political issues of the day.

Peter Kenyon

Does Ken Livingstone deserve to stay Mayor?

That’s the question I’ve been grappling with for the past few weeks… maybe even months. Long before the allegations appeared in the ‘Evening Boris (Standard)’ newspaper and Martin Bright’s Dispatches documentary on Channel 4, I had been pointing out here that Livingstone was happy hosting events for fundamentalist Sikh and Hindu groups without learning of their background (let alone cosying up to the MCB!).

Pickled Politics

Tories shrug off Conway affair in new Populus poll (revised)

Tory lead boosted to 9% in spite of problems. The figures from this month’s Populus poll for the Times are just out and show an increase in the Tory lead. The shares are CON 40% (nc): LAB 31% (-2): LD 17% (-2). The Tory share of 40% equals the best the pollster has recorded since the general election and the nine point margin is the best. I go back to the point that I repeatedly raise - that Tory poll ratings are closely linked to the volume of media coverage the party is getting - good or bad. What Conway has done has put the party back in the headlines again.

Political Betting

Fly away, Wendy

The Scottish Labour leader was once admired for loathing sleaze. Now her party badly needs her to show a sense of moral purpose by resigning

Tim Luckhurst

What Should the Rules be for MPs? Guest Article Series

2008-02-04T17:43:00.000Z

I have kicked off the "What Should the Rules be for MPs?" debate over at The Wardman Wire.

I think I have come up with a great solution to the "snouts in the trough" scandals. No don't many of you will subsequently decide I am completely bonkers and have your own opinions.

However, the crux of my argument is that all decisions surrounding of expenses claims and MP pay rises and employment of staff should be put in the hands of an independent administrator. This way, MPs will get the pay rises they deserve, not what the press and public put pressure on them get; they will no longer be allowed to freely claim expenses and they will have to go through the same processes of employing staff that all other public sector companies do - i.e. an open, competitive process. Read the article for the more detailed and explanatory version!

All week different takes will be put forward by bloggers on the issue. Go take a look and enjoy what should be a fascinating series of debates.

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-04T13:41:00.001Z

Another week, another scandal...

A new week, a new political scandal. This latest one is, I suspect, a storm in a teacup in terms of the government and opposition. The bugging of Tooting MP Sadiq Khan having a private conversation with a constituent whilst visiting him in prison is today's headline story. There are a few interesting things that have struck me about this latest story - though I am sure that after we hear Jack Straw’s statement there will be a few more.

Was the letter sent?

Firstly, David Davis’ claim that he sent a letter to Downing Street last December telling them of this story and No.10 denying all knowledge of any correspondence. Why would David Davis lie about this? And why would no.10 deny this?

The case against DD

Well, it does seem strange that if DD did write to No.10 nearly two months ago about something he considers very serious, why has he only decided to follow it up now? Perhaps it is just coincidence that this story has come out at the same time as the first negative press the Tories have received since last summer. Perhaps not.

The case against No.10

The motive for No.10 denying this is if they were the ones who authorised the bugging directly and are attempting a cover up. This seems highly unlikely to me. The government will be seriously damaged (again) if they are found out to be behind this – particularly if it was either Brown or Jacqui Smith who is directly behind it. I just don’t think they are though. I suspect this is either the police or MI5’s doing. Again, it may well be damaging to either of them – especially if it turns out Sir Ian Blair had a say in it – enough people want to see his head roll to make this story big.

The case against the Wilson Doctrine

The second interesting part of this story is the idea of the Wilson Doctrine. Why should MPs be exempt from having their phones bugged, but the rest of us aren’t? This just sounds a little bit like the MPs having one rule for themselves and another for the rest of us. It just adds to the perception of double standards that the expenses debate is showing up. I understand that an MP should have a the right to private conversations with their constituents, but then again I should have the right to a private conversation with my friends. If the powers that be see the need to bug an individual then I don’t see why an MP is any different.

Not who was bugged, but who authorised it and why that are the important elements

Surely this whole story should be not so much about who was being bugged but who authorised the bugging and why. If it turns out that it was some two-bit copper who didn’t go down the correct channels then heads should roll. If there was a legitimate reason – e.g. a serious threat to national security - and the right and proper processes were taken, then I do not see a problem.

Personally I am very suspect of the growing surveillance society and this may well be a good opportunity for the government not only to move on from an outdated 1960s convention but also to review who and what is ethical to be bugged. Maybe if our MPs were under the same laws and conventions as the rest of us, they might not be so quick to allow our conversations to be listened in to.

UPDATE:

Just seen this on the BBC. It looks like it was a "Thames Valley Police Officer" who took the decision. As I suspected Ministers were not consulted. Nick Robinson is also saying that Khan was not the intended target of the bugging. A storm in a teacup indeed.

The real plus out of this is the exposure of the Wilson Doctrine again and maybe we can update this outdated convention that paints the picture of MPs being above the law.

The Poliblogs 4 February 2008

2008-02-04T10:50:00.001Z

So who decides the ‘right way’ to staff an MPs office? 1 February 2008

In response to the scandal over Derek Conway’s employment of his son for doing no work, there have been understandable calls from some commentators to change the way parliamentary staff are employed and monitored. But what worries me about this discussion is that people appear to believe that there is one agreed way for an MP to do his or her job, and likewise for the way they employ their staff.

Anders Hanson

Tory MP publishes detailed expenses

Is it likely, with the news that Tory MP, Ben Wallace, has decided to publish a detailed breakdown of his expenses claims that other MPs will now follow suit? Something tells me they won't, not sure why but I just doubt that many of them will. Some of them will not want to because they think it is a witch hunt, others probably won't want to because if they do people might find out that they've been claiming for money to pay for things that they shouldn't have.

Dizzy Thinks

Value for money from Parliament?

Let’s face it. Parliament has become to some another of those monopoly nationalised industries that Labour always think work in the public interest, but which the public love to hate. People pay through the nose for the subsidised nationalised industries whether they use the service or not. The service is often not up to the standard they want. Now there are similar criticisms of the cost and performance of Parliament.

John Redwood

Desperate Tories: Trying to Bury Conway News?

At last a story from a Tory about goings on in a prison cell near you. But alas not from Iain Dale's bessie Derek Conway who is going out of way to state that he doesn't think he "ripped anyone off" by passing loads of money to relatives and their mates while getting no work back. Instead Iain Dale has his M & S XXLs in a twist over the bugging of Shafiq Khan MP. This occurred allegedly during a routine prison visit to a constituent who happens to be a USA target for extradition to face terror charges.

Chris Paul

So what happened to DD's letter?

There's a nasty anti-democratic whiff to the revelation that the cops have bugged an MP. Naturally, I'm curious about a parliamentarian who has "ordinary, routine meetings" with someone suspected of Talibano-beardism, but that doesn't excuse what looks like a blatant example of contempt of Parliament by the Met. I'm told that it's not a case of mistaken bugging, and that the Yard are being quite bullish about eavesdropping on Sadiq Khan. Sir Ian Blair will have to explain why he's free to ignore Parliamentary convention.

Ben Brogan

Ken Livingstone - Darling of the Right

I voted for Ken Livingstone in 2000 and 2004 and, barring something astonishing happening, will vote for him again this year, despite holding my nose to keep out the stench of his opportunistic support for Killer of the Yard and his gun goons. Mind you, I'm a crotchety left-of-centre sod who's keen on public transport, likes a drink and hates neocons. So far, then a perfect fit. However, this discussion came up twice recently while talking with a couple of friends who don't exactly fit that image.

Blair Watch

Brown is all that stands between Blair and the EU presidency

What started off as a joke is growing more serious by the hour. Bets are being laid on the next EU president and the favourite is one Anthony Charles Lynton Blair. Ladbrokes has cut him from 3/1 to 2/1, perhaps after the Guardian piece this morning. Put aside the (rich) comic value of all this, the appointment has its logic. If you want the EU to pack a diplomatic punch (I don't) then this depends to a huge degree on getting heavy-hitter who knows how to work the circuit. Who better than the globe-trotting Blair?

Coffee House

Blair: ‘I'll be president of Europe if you give me power’

And what power would this be? Why, the power to intervene in matters of defence as well as trade. And so the EU acquires overt military expression, and another tranche of sovereign power is ceded as the foundations are laid for a revived European Empire. Cranmer won’t say he told you so, but he told you so.

Cranmer

Have the Blairites commenced hostilities with the Brownies?

In a previous post I gave Gordon Brown until May before he was given the boot. I may have wrong. You see, he could be going much sooner. Not wanting to sound like a gypsy palm reader, I think I see a pattern emerging! Two former Senior Labour Ministers have been critical of their own party this week. The two critical interviews do not seem that damaging when taken individually, BUT when you look at the targets of the criticism and take into account that they came only days apart, Gordon Brown and his supporters will know exactly what is going on.

Daily Referendum

Crunching Credit - why is Vince Cable still a voice crying in the wilderness?

Vince Cable has been warning for many years about spiralling debt in this country. But, rather like Noah, his words have, until now, fallen on stony ground. The stoniest ground it seems to me being in parts of the financial services industry, closely followed by the opposition parties. Now we are all paying the price for this palpable neglect, but none more so than those who face the threat of the repossession of their homes.

LindyLooz Muze

Quite literally the nanny state

For what it’s worth, I think that the new proposal from the Conservatives is actually rather good. It entails each newborn and their mother having the services of a maternity nurse for the first week after leaving hospital. According to the Observer, it would cost ‘at least £150m a year’. I think a closer figure is £212m per year - my workings are at the end of this post. Whether or not it survives, I think the Conservatives - and I mean this genuinely - are to be congratulated on putting forward an ambitious, policy proposal. I hope that full, detailed costings and implementations are brought forward.

Dave Cole

Why concentrating on scandal misses the point

Political blogging is young even in its mother country, the United States. In the United Kingdom it is barely out of the cradle and murmuring its first words. Political blogging here insofar as it has come to the attention of mainstream journalists has come to their attention because of a couple of sites- notably that of Guido Fawkes. Guido writes about political scandal all the time. If you want the latest word on Peter Hain or Wendy Alexander or Harriet Harmon, head over to his blog and he’ll be sure to enlighten you. He doesn’t write about policy because he says its boring- he’d prefer to concentrate on the juicy scandals.

Liberal Conspiracy

It’s back to a smiling Gordon with Ipsos-Mori

Is Gord’s party really doing better than in 2005? The results of Ipsos-Mori January face to face survey of more than 2000 people are just out and give Labour a one point lead - a huge change on the last survey by the pollster just three weeks ago. Unlike this survey the earlier poll was by phone.

These are the latest shares with comparisons on the earlier survey CON 37% (-5): LAB 38% (+6): LD 16% (+1). The fieldwork took place the week before last finishing on January 23rd. A YouGov poll that closed on the same date had an 8% Labour Conservative lead.

Political Betting

Labour’s ICM deficit moves up to 5%

Has the Conway business actually helped Dave? A new ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph tomorrow has the following shares with changes on the last published survey from the pollster - CON 37% (nc): LAB 32% (-3): LD 21% (+1). These numbers will certainly ease Tory jitters and deflate the bubble of expectation amongst Labour supporters that followed yesterday’s MORI poll showing the party with a one point lead. All these changes, it should be said, are within the margin of error.

Political Betting

Sunday Times: illegal bugging of Muslim MP - Wilson Doctrine breached ?

The Sunday Times leads with an interesting scoop, involving two topics about which we have written about here on Spy Blog, namely the Wilson Doctrine executive administrative prohibition on tapping or bugging the communications of Members of Parliament, and the controversial attempt by the US government to extradite British Muslim IT technician Babar Ahmad to the USA, without presenting any prima facie evidence to a British Court.

SpyBlog

A golden opportunity for David Cameron

Team Cameron will be relieved they got through the weekend without another killer Conway style blow on MPs' expenses. Cameron needs to take the side of the public against the MPs. Some clever planting of policy stories, as Patrick Hennessy pointed out, diluted the impact of revelations on the subject, such as there were, in the weekend papers. Indeed, some of the worst headlines related to Labour and the renewed troubles of the party's leader in the Scottish Parliament, Wendy Alexander. She has been reported to the fiscal over non-declaration of donations.

The Three Whip

Condoleezza Rice

2008-02-04T10:14:00.001Z

I don't agree with much of the rhetoric that has come out of the current US administration over the past few years and I try to focus this blog as much on UK politics as possible. However, I have to say that Condoleezza Rice is spot on about Al Quaeda’s use of mentally-handicapped women as bombers. Rice said that Al Quaeda had “no political programme here that is acceptable to a civilised society and that this is the most brutal and the most bankrupt of movements”.

Using handicapped women as suicide bombers? This brutal and bankrupt bunch of sick criminals has almost impossibly plummeted new levels of depravity.

The Poliblogs' Blog of the Week

2008-02-04T09:50:00.000Z

A slight change to the Poliblogs' Blog of the Week award from this week onwards. Instead of a top three I will just be awarding to the winner.

This week's top of the blogs is the brilliant Blaney's Blarney. A blogger who hardly needs recognition from me, but he's getting it anyway! Blaney's Blarney is from the old school of Conservative thinking. A self-confessed Thaterite, Donal Blaney is not a man to mince his words. Punchy and cutting, Blaney's Blarney has featured in my Daily Roundup from day one and rarely goes more than a day or two without at least one of his posts making making it on to the Poliblogs. Whether you are a Tory or not, this blog will pick you up and either make you cheer with joy that finally someone is saying it, or make you hang your head in shame that someone has only gone and said it! Either way, you'll want to enter the debate. Thought provoking, amusing, sometimes filled with anger, Mr Blaney is a master of the partisan blog.

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-02-01T12:25:00.001Z

The Worst Politician in the UK

Who is the worst politician in the UK? Derek Conway? Peter Hain? George Galloway, perhaps? Some might even plump for Livingstone and/or Boris Johnson. However, I can trump all of these. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Britain’s worst politician - Liberal Democrat MEP Fiona Hall. Deluded Fiona Hall has summed up to me everything that is wrong about the Environment debate and whether you are a staunch believer in man-induced climate change or a sceptic, you should have contempt for MEP Fiona Hall.

Ban Patio Heaters? Are you joking?

In case you missed it, Fiona Hall has called for a complete ban on patio heaters. This is her idea of saving the planet. The every little helps approach. In fact, not only is she doing bugger all to save the planet she is reducing what is actually a very serious issue in to one about patio heaters. What in the name of all things holy does this enviro-nutter think banning patio heaters is going to actually do? We’d probably make more difference if we all promised not to fart for a week.

What are you actually trying to tackle here?

Lib Dem Voice (thank God not all Lib Dems are nutters, just this one and few others – all parties have them!) has highlighted a piece from Dr Eric Johnson, a national expert reviewer for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He states that plasma TVs produce far more CO2 than patio heaters. Let’s ban them too. And while we’re at it, let’s ban the car, the fridge – hell let’s ban electricity. We should all move in to caves and eat plants –raw one of course. And while we are at saving the planet, there are far too many of us here to sustain a zero-carbon lifestyle so let’s have mass genocide and get rid 90% of all humans on the planet. That will end made man CO2 emissions, for sure. Just one problem – why the hell should we?!

It is people like Fiona Hall that have a real problem with people actually bettering themselves. Why should the masses be allowed to huddle round a heater while having a cigarette? Smokers are tantamount to murderers these days, so to hell with them! Why should Mr Jones buy a better car just because he has worked his way up the ladder and come in to a bit of money – he came from humble beginnings, he can stay there.

A Radical new approach is desperately needed to tackle this serious issue effectively

Attacks on people’s simple way of life that have virtually no impact on global warming will only make people more resistant. We need a new approach to tackling climate change because right now we are making no difference other than to increase taxes to raise coffers and change people’s chosen life styles. We are not having an impact on the real issues. The result is apathy and cynicism. Technology is the answer and industrial change in the USA and BRIC countries will make the differences. By all means we should practice what we preach – but banning patio heaters? Dear Lord.

The Poliblogs 1 February 2008

2008-02-01T10:29:00.000Z

Brian Paddick: Talentless & Desperate

The sight of Brian Paddick, famous only for being a gay policeman and downgrading cannabis on his patch, at a celeb-filled fundraiser for his London mayoral campaign shows how weak his campaign for mayor has already become. How he can use the phrase "Serious About London" as his campaign slogan is beyond me: it must be his display of humour.

Blaney’s Blarney

Times: 'Livingstone Used City Hall Staff in 2004 Vote'

Today's Times has alleged that Ken Livingstone's 2004 campaign team "instructed public servants to write articles in support" in his bid for re-election. The paper reports that "One e-mail to the mayor's former senior adviser on Asian affairs, Atma Singh, sent at 9.30am, explicitly asks that he write two articles in support of Mr Livingstone by noon that day."

Mayor Watch

Galloway backs Ken

You can say a lot about that George Galloway, but this is a positive thing. Anyine who can get the support both of Galloway and Luke Akehurst is onto a winner. I have no idea why SWP/Respect persists in running a candidate against a socialist mayor, but I suppose that's the SWP for you. This is particularly insightful:

New Direction

Maggie Gives Cameron His Orders

Never one to mince words, Margaret Thatcher has told David Cameron to raise his game and win a "proper majority" for the Conservatives at the next election. They were together at a rather glitzy awards ceremony in London, at which he presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award and made a rather gushing speech about her.

Boulton & Co.

Cameron on Thatcher

Last night, David Cameron presented Margaret Thatcher with a lifetime achievement award, and he follows it up with an article on the Iron Lady in today's Telegraph. The article begins boldly: “Those who say that the modern Conservative Party is breaking with the legacy of Margaret Thatcher are wrong.” And mixes praise for Thatcher with swipes at Brown:

Coffee House

PMQs - 30/01/08 Gordon Brown, just answer a bloody question.

I've just caught up with yesterday's PMQs. Until late 2006 I considered myself a Labour supporter, all be it a disaffected one. I then went through a stage of not being able to call myself aligned to any party. However through blogging I became more aware of the political situation in this country and decided to become a member the Conservative Party. The reason I became disillusioned and ended my life long support of the Labour Party? - Incompetence - pure and simple. I voted Labour in their last three election victories. The latter with a gnawing doubt that I was making a mistake, but I was pinning my hopes on Labour finally getting to grips with governance. You see I was brought up in Barnsley, South Yorkshire where enterprising (i.e. wear a red rosette) donkeys really can make it to Westminster.

Daily Referendum

Should the Lib Dems be supporting the ban on patio heaters?

It’s a big day for patio heater manufacturers, as the European Parliament looks set to approve a Lib Dem-inspired measure which would see the faddish appliances phased out, along with electrical stand-by modes, and minimum standards set for energy efficiency on air-conditioning, television “decoder” boxes and light bulbs. Lib Dem MEP Fiona Hall is behind the initiative (which has no legal force). You can read her report in full here. Here’s an extract:

Lib Dem Voice

Do you think Gordon will see this as a threat?

What does Labour do now the Tories are not seen “the nasty party”? The front page of this morning’s Guardian is dominated by a report that groups of Labour modernisers, including cabinet minsters, are planning to tell Brown to offer a more radical reform programme to help beat off the Tory threat in the centre ground. Linked to a paper from the Progress thinktank the group is arguing that the political landscape has changed, that the opposition is perceived differently and, pointedly at Gordon, that economic competance is not enough as a platform. Labour needs a stronger message.

Political Betting

David Cameron's day in the Sun

Surely it is a mere conspiracy theory? Can there possibly be any truth in a story I’ve picked up about David Cameron and the Sun? On Wednesday morning, when the rest of Fleet Street was busy ending the career of Derek Conway, Britain’s Number 1 daily red-top had a different story on its front page. “Police, Cameron, Action” ran the headline: the Tory leader had told the paper exclusively of his plans to revise the rules around the police’s so-called stop powers. I’m not sure this was such a great departure by the Tories, but let us leave that for now.

Three Line Whip

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-31T14:50:00.000Z

Time for the fallout

So Derek Conway has been suspended from the house and will step down as an MP at the next general election (insuring that he keeps a good salary for another year or two and bumps up that pension fund). The fallout from all this won’t just affect the Tory party. It is looking like all MPs will have to change their rather cushty set up – and quite right too.

Why are MPs so different?

I do not have a problem with MPs employing members of their family. But only if they are actually doing the job and doing it to the standard that should be expected of someone being paid out of the public purse. All other public bodies have to go through an arduous bureaucratic process to show that when they employ someone it is done in a transparent and fair process – not discriminating against any race or other minority. In fact, employing someone in a public sector body is one of the most complex processes known to mankind. All sorts of people have to get involved and at each stage you have to make it absolutely clear why that candidate has got to the next round. So why are MPs so different?

Time to take the problem out of their hands

They have effectively been given a bottomless pit of our cash to handout to whoever they want to. I propose that recruitment is taken out of the hands of MPs, unless they want to pay them out of their own pocket. The Houses of Parliament should set up an administration department with HR experts who are then in charge of the recruitment process. By all means MPs should play a part in this process, but it is scrutinised and policed. Just like every other public sector body in this country. From the government and parliament that gave us the Gershon report and is always talking about efficiencies, isn’t it time you got your own house in order?

Prove it

Of course, our dear MPs won’t ever do this because it will be inconvenient for the ones who abide by the code of conduct and a damned right nuisance for the ones who are pocketing a fortune through the current system. But if they truly want to prove that they aren’t a bunch of corrupt, money grabbing fiends who are exempt from the law then they won’t opt for any half way houses and run with this option. Either they want to stamp this menace out, or they don’t. I bet they don’t.

The Poliblogs 31 Januray 2008

2008-01-31T10:24:00.000Z

And the winner of PMQs is ... Boris Johnson

The best part of PMQs came just after it ended, in the form of an irate Boris Johnson. "I am sure the Prime Minister inadvertently misled the House when he said I want to cut spending on the Metropolitan Police".... Brown was walking out the door, to Tory roars. "I'm the only one who has to stay and listen to it" says Michael Martin. Boris had just done what the other Tories should do all the time: refuse to put up with falsehoods said by the Prime Minister.

Coffee House

A Visit to PMQs

I had the pleasure of being in the public gallery for Prime Minister's Questions today, first time I'd been in there, and an experience I'd recommend.

All the normal cliche's probably hold true, the chamber is much smaller than you'd imagine, for example, but the more important things are probably the more subtle. Cameron looked nervous when the cameras weren't on him, and I thought he talked nothing but nonsense, Nick Brown is clearly still a very influential figure for the PM despite not having a cabinet position, he stood behind the speaker keeping an eye on the Labour benches, presumably for any errant Blairites wearing the wrong expression, and Osboune and Cameron do look like two kids who've found themselves with the best toys, constantly sniggering to each other.

Liberal Action

Round one to Ken

London elections 08: Despite the acres of newsprint and months of research, the campaign against the mayor doesn't seem to be working

Dave Hill

Who will lead the reform?

Now that Derek Conway is out of the way, MPs can turn their minds to the "what is to be done?" question. A consensus is emerging that the status quo is not an option. Even traditionalists accept that the "one bad apple" argument won't wash. The Commons must now bring itself into line with accepted practices in the public and private sectors. But who will take the lead? David Cameron has wisely taken a first step by ordering his MPs to answer questions about family members on the payroll and how much they are paid. The Lib Dems have done the same. We wait to hear from Labour. Some say it should be up to the various Commons housekeeping committees. Others point to the work done already by Kenneth Clarke and Andrew Tyrie.

Ben Brogan

Conway: "I've Become A Distraction"

Henryconway"It can't go on," a forlorn Derek Conway told me shortly before Tory HQ issued a statement announcing that he is to stand down from Parliament at the next election. "I've become a distraction. I've done nothing wrong and some of the press coverage has been unfair. But we can't carry on like this." Derek Conway's view of his demise is not shared by many of his colleagues on the Tory benches in the Commons. I have been struck by how the attitude of many Conservative MPs towards him has hardened in the past 48 hours.

Boulton & Co.

Con-way Parallels: More Like Old School Tory Felony

Iain Dale covers the announcement by his bessie mate Derek Conway MP that he will not be contesting the next election. We can only hope that he'll still be in jail then and there will be a by-election before too long in Bexley Heath and Sidcup. In justifying his decision not to "diss on" (sic) his friend Iain suggests that none of Wendy Alexander or Peter Hain's friends were calling for them to resign. But I'd say that at least some of their blogging friends were covering the case.

Chris Paul

Relatively Working For MPs

So Derek Conway has resigned. He really had no choice after the revelations that he had employed both of his sons at the taxpayer's expense for minimal work, and Cameron withdrew the whip from him. Personally, I appreciate Iain Dale's stance on Derek Conway: he's a friend, so anything he wants to he'll say to Derek's face. Simple human decency. It appears to be a dying breed.

The Thunderdragon

Who else is on the payroll?

Are there more family businesses such as "Conway PLC" earning tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money from working in the House of Commons? The answer is we do not and cannot know. The reason for that is the House of Commons, led by the Speaker, has consistently blocked attempts to reveal basic information such as the names of the staff MPs employ, whether they are their relatives of their employers and what they are paid (see this story from September 2006).

Nick Robinson

Why isn't Brown acting?

As Andrew stressed earlier, the European response to the credit crunch has been anaemic (How anaemic? Check out the footage below of Gordon Brown and his EU compatriots agreeing the "way forward for [the] global economy"). By contrast, the Americans have been the very model of proactivity - introducing sharp interest cuts and proposing massive tax relief programmes. What's holding the British Government back? I suspect it's a combination of economic and political motivations.

Coffee House

Smithson’s view: A Hung Parliament? – Don’t bet on it

I asked a professional gambler recently – someone who made a decent tax-free living from his betting – if he could offer me some tips that I could follow. One of his suggestions, which he said had proved to be a sure-fire consistent money-earner, was to bet against the draw in cricket test matches. He brought up a pile of statistics on his lap-top to show that the odds you can usually get on this option are better than the chances of it happening. The reason was simple – cricket punters have a long-standing record of over-estimating the chances of draws which in the modern game have become much less likely. Thinking about this, it is the same with hung parliaments.

Lib Dem Voice

Bad IDea

Since I called yesterday for a Conservative MP to be hanged in Parliament Square, let’s redress the imbalance this afternoon by regurgitating a Conservative Party press release practically verbatim. It concerns a little remarked-on side effect of the national ID card scheme which will make life a small misery for tens of thousands of people in rural and outlying areas of the country, and particularly Scotland.

Mr Eugenides

Housing gem from the Tories

With the furore over sleaze, it's easy to forget that some serious policy work is going on in the Conservative Party and it's during weeks like this that quite significant hints slip by unnoticed. It's a shame that the Tories' new idea on housing may go unnoticed There is a real gem today on Conservativehome from Grant Shapps, the thoughtful shadow housing minister. He proposes that communities might be offered lower council tax, or have local services boosted, if they accept a major housing development in their area. It's a radical and interesting idea and a really innovative solution to the problem of Nimbyism.

Three Line Whip

Jack Straw's prison shame

Let's be totally clear about it! The British Government's prison policy is a total disaster. Of course, there are those who should be imprisoned, primarily as a result of violent deeds that have been committed in the past. Some such people are a threat to the safety of the public.

Turbulent Cleric

John Moir: The big lie underpinning the Northern Rock rescue plan

John Moir, retired accountant and former financial director of Lloyds of London, argues that the Northern Rock rescue plan is the biggest financial rip-off in history. There are a lot of facts surrounding the Northern Rock disaster that are being withheld from the public, i.e, the taxpayer or, in its simplest term, “us”). These facts, some of which I will enumerate below, would be embarrassing to the Government and would probably scupper the latest ingenious plan (i.e, con) to get the Government off the hook. This does not excuse the official lies and deception.

Conservative Home

The PMQs Battle 30 January 2008

2008-01-30T17:57:00.000Z

PMQs - The Verdict

With accusations of sleaze dominating the front pages and the rolling news channels, visitors to the public gallery might have been surprised to hear barely a whisper about money troubles at prime minister's questions this week. The elephant in the chamber was Conservative MP Derek Conway's generous use of the public purse to top up his sons' pocket money, but - frustratingly for Gordon Brown - the Labour fundraising scandal which last week forced his first ministerial resignation meant he could not stick a clumsy boot in.

ePolitix

Prime minister's questions – live

Gordon Brown has lost a cabinet minister since the last PMQs and, with Derek Conway no longer taking the Conservative whip, David Cameron has in effect lost an MP. So both of them may be reluctant to start lecturing the other on standards in public life. If the Sun is anything to go by, then Cameron has decided that today's the day for an announcement on stop and search powers (enabling him to pre-empt the government's initiative on the same issue due next week).

Andrew Sparrow

Gordon Cuffs Boris

While the BBC employed an expert on the Daily Politics today to interpret Gordon's hand gestures, I wondered whether the BBC thought about doing the same for Alex Ferguson at United games. I have to say while watching PMQs (before the post-event analysis available on the above link) I thought that Brown's cuff link had popped out. Therefore I wasn't too surprised when he started fiddling with it trying to put it back together.

Kerron Cross

The Verdict

Another week of Mr Soundbite versus Mr Won’t Answer The Question. Of course any chance of these two amateurs discussing what everyone is talking about was very unlikely. Accusations of pots and kettles would have had made this week’s drama just too much as one accused the other of having a corrupt party. Instead they both accused each other of not being very good at their job – why this didn’t fall under the kettle and pot category, I am unsure.

The problem is, neither of these two are very good at PMQs. Both are repeating the same gags and accusations while never actually landing any good punches. Cameron is like a man possessed by alliteration at the moment – it is like he has just learnt what the word means and now wants to impress everyone with it. Today’s alliteration was a particularly low point - "flannelling about the Flanagan report". So bad in fact, that everyone’s ears pricked up and it will probably make the evening news and a few of daily rags too. So maybe not so bad afterall!

Brown continues to do what he does best – the one thing that annoy me more than anything else – he just listed a load of statistics and blamed the world’s problems on the Tories. He then accused Cameron of learning his lines – again. Heard it all before Gordon. At least Cameron’s learnt lines are more listenable than the never ending repetitive stats that come out of your twitching gob.

What have we done to deserve these two? This has to be the lowest point in PMQs for a long, long time. I’m talking decades. On the government benches we have a man who wants to bore us in to submission and boy he is doing a good job; while on the other we have a man who wants to be flash, unfortunately his lines are about as good as the Fastshow’s Swiss Tony’s right now.

Please up your game gents. I have to sit through this non-event every Wednesday and its starting to feel more like Groundhog Day. In a first for The Poliblogs, today I score it a no-score draw, because quite frankly these two don’t even deserve half a point from a small time blogger let alone to get a prime time slot in Parliament.

On a plus point – Clegg looked a lot stronger today. Please keep it up, for the sake of my sanity!

Brown 0

Cameron 0

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-30T15:04:00.001Z

Bad Week for the Tories

It has not been a good week so far for the Tories (it hasn’t been that great for Labour either, but it rarely is these days). First the polls showed an unexpected fall in their share of the vote – despite the seemingly endless bad news stories about Labour. Then they got caught up in a sleaze scandal which trumps anything Hain has done (or not done, ahem). Then a shadow minister is arrested after allegations he assaulted two teenage children – though this has hardly featured in the headlines given the scale of their other problems. Of all of these issues it could well be the first one, the polls, that causes most alarm at CCHQ, however.

Cameron Saved in the Nick of Time

Remember back in the summer when Brown took over the party? It was Cameron and the Conservatives who were getting all the bad press and trailing by a country mile in the polls. There were not just rumbles, but ever growing vocal calls for the head of David Cameron. The thing that saved him was Gordon Brown’s non-election. Up until that point Brown was the golden boy and Cameron was up for the chop. Then the polls turned on their head. The Tories surged to an 8 to 10 point lead. It shut the right of the party up immediately. Suddenly his position was saved – and in the nick of time too. The Tories are a party who constantly appear to be just around the corner from imploding, and the gauge that measures this is the polls.

Have the Tories Peaked?

If the right of the party think that they are on to a sure fire winner, they will shut up. As soon as it looks like they might lose, all hells breaks out. I fear we may be just months away from that position. The problem is, if Cameron cannot make Brown and the Government look useless and take a commanding lead in the polls after the catastrophic few months they have had, then will he ever?

We all know that the Tories need to be polling a good 8-10 points at least over the government come the day of the general election if they want to win a majority. The mid-term opinion polls will always favour the opposition, and on that basis you would expect the Tories needing to be polling in the region of 15-20 points if they are to look like serious contenders. Right now, after everything, they are not even close.

They Must Hold it Together – or They Are Finished

Unless something extraordinary happens, how is Cameron going to change this? He has had everything he needs in the past few months to pull ahead in to a commanding lead. The question right now for the right of the party will be – have the Tories peaked in the polls? If they think they have and they start to slide back down again, expect the Tories to implode. Again. Something they must avoid at all costs. Changing Cameron and going back to the right could well spell the end of the party as well know it and end any hopes of forming a government for a long, long time.

The Poliblogs 30 Januray 2008

2008-01-30T11:04:00.000Z

Neither Parliament nor people will decide the EU Treaty: the government offers a done deal.

The government has failed to give us the promised referendum on the EU Treaty.

Now it is failing to give us the promised full Parliamentary scrutiny. Yesterday we had a bad tempered debate on how much time would be made available to go through all the powers transferred and the complexities of the EU proposals.

John Redwood

A House divided

Yesterday, the House of Commons debated the motion to curtail debate on the Lisbon Treaty ratification. The vote went with the government, the Ayes 299, and the Noes 243. The guilty men and women are here. Amongst the notable contributions was Sir Nicholas Winterton, who declared:

EU Referendum

Conway: Call Me Dave's Flip-Flop

Licking his lips after the Standards and Privileges Committee recommended a 10-day suspension from the Commons for Derek Conway, Labour's backbench sleazehunter John Mann MP rushed up to me in the Members' Lobby and asked gleefully: "What will David Cameron do now?" The answer, from a senior member of Tory high command, could not have been clearer: "The whip will not be removed from Derek Conway. He has apologised and faces the appropriate punishment by the House of Commons."

Boulton & Co.

Conway loses the whip... Cameron loses his last shred of credibility

I never thought I'd see the day when The Conservative Party, the oldest political party in Britain and probably the most successful, would cave in to the demands of a handful of Tory bloggers. Derek Conway losing the whip is the very least he deserves.

Daily Pundit

Conway gloom

Tory MPs are trying to find comfort in David Cameron's decisive action in the Conway affair. His willingness to end Mr Conway's political career - admittedly only after the Mail revealed an extra £32,000 in potentially dubious family payments - is compared favourably to Mr Brown's "dithering" over Peter Hain & Co. Mr Conway has many friends and admirers at Westminster, and not just among those who recall his heroic efforts to keep the Major government afloat

Ben Brogan

Public and Corporate resignations

So we have had a good few weeks of resignations and clinging on and it seems appropriate to note the etiquette and mores of today's world when it comes to hanging on to one's highly paid job. First up, Peter Hain, who finally succumbed after realising the plod were coming to feel his collar, his boss seemed to weak to act. Next up on the list is the Harriet Harman, keen to keep her status and showing no sign of remorse - up until she is proven guilty of something.

Capitalists@Work

Stop And Search

Just who is taking the lead on stop and search these days? Government or Opposition? You'd probably say the Conservatives, if the first paper you picked up this morning was The Sun. In an interview, David Cameron says he wants to cut out the form-filling and remove the requirement on cops to refer up the chain of command whenever they wish to S&S. The police are no longer racist, he asserts, and changes such as these will be welcomed in the ethnic communities.

Boulton & Co.

Tories go one up on violent crime

It's 1-0 to the Tories in the great stop and search debate after the Sun's front page on Tory proposals to extend police powers upstaged the Guardian's report on Labour's plans for designated 'hotspot zones'. It would never have happened in Alistair's day. Incidentally, has Brown been to Liverpool yet to visit the scene of Rhys Jones's murder? What about Manchester and Nottingham and scores of other cities where similar attacks have taken place? If not, why not?

The Daily Pundit

Labour's reforms cost taxpayers dearly

Gordon Brown today urged his Cabinet colleagues to push ahead with Labour’s "reform agenda". Presumably, this is the same reform agenda which a few years ago led to an overhaul of the correctional system, intended to merge prisons and probation to manage offenders from the moment they are charged until well after they are released. It was called the National offender Management Services (Noms), and cost millions to set up and run. Figures show the cost of running the service is now almost £900m a year. The probation workers' union, Napo, claims that the budget has risen by 556 per cent since 2005. Over the three years of its life, Noms has cost the taxpayer more than £1.5bn. Now, the Government has effectively scrapped it.

Three Line Whip

Regions, Parliaments and the future of England

Peter Facey (London, Unlock Democracy): There is a real danger that the debate about English devolution is becoming sterile, with the debate crystallising into two irreconcilable camps. On the one side you have individuals who put all their emphasis on an English Parliament, and regard any talk of decentralisation below this level at best premature and at worst a plot to break up England - not to mention something that has already been rejected by the public.

Our Kingdom

A View Accross The Pond

2008-01-29T14:18:00.000Z

The Republican’s Big Day

The Republican’s are waking up to their day on the front pages today. So far it has all been about the Democrats, but today in Florida only the Republicans will be going to the polls with anything to play for. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani will find out in just a matter of hours whether his gamble to focus all his efforts on to Florida have paid off... all the signs are, it hasn’t.

The Democrats are down to a two horse race between Clinton and Obama. I predict that tomorrow the Republicans too will be in a two horse race with Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani fading away to the leaders John McCain and Mitt Romney. A Quinnipiac survey shows McCain on 32% to Romney's 31%, Giuliani's 14% and Huckabee's 13%. Four other pollsters tell much the same story.

Clinton whinging

Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton is really showing herself up, again. She is calling for the state's delegates to be reinstated. This despite all the candidates agreeing that they would not campaign in Florida on the proviso that no delegates would be awarded. I suspect that there is more to run on this and that a row with Obama could be brewing... again. Obviously, if the vote is close and no-one looks set to lose out too badly, then the delegates will almost certainly be reinstated as a way of avoiding any damaging arguments.

The betting between Clinton and Obama is tightening – Clinton is still the favourite, but the gap is closing. Obama’s case has probably been helped by backing from a member of the US “Royal Family”, Senator Edward Kennedy. He is said to be up-happy with the Hilary Clinton’s campaign and sense that he is not the only one.

My Prediction

As for the Republicans it is looking like McCain all the way to me. All this could change of course next week when we enter Super Tuesday where 24 states hold their primaries. Right now I am going to lay my cards on the table: Come November we will be watching a battle between McCain and Obama. And what a battle that will be – two brilliant politicians who offer in the way of personality, at least, so much on opposite ends of the scale. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – oh to have this calibre of candidate leading our two main parties.

The Poliblogs 29 January 2008

2008-01-29T11:55:00.000Z

Conway: what should Dave do?

Take time to read the Standards and Privileges report on Derek Conway. It is jaw-dropping stuff. The facts are that Mr Conway paid his son Freddie roughly £32,000 to "work for him" while he was at Newcastle University. The committee concludes: "This arrangement was, at the least, an improper use of Parliamentary allowances: at worst it was a serious diversion of public funds. Our view is that the reality may well be somewhere between the two."

Ben Brogan

Keeping it in the family

First an MP is found guilty of paying £50,000 to his "all but invisible" son in what was, at worst, "a serious diversion of public funds." Then it emerges that he paid his other son and his wife too. So why is Derek Conway not in more trouble? There are many small procedural answers and one very big political reason.

Nick Robinson

Derek Conway

Tory MP Derek Conway has been outed as employing his son as a parliamentary researcher whilst he was a full-time student and paying him £1,000-plus per month, with a total of around £13,000 salary - plus bonuses. And all from taxpayer's funds, for work that wasn't done. Certainly not work to that value, anyway. There is no excuse for what he has done. It is utterly disgraceful and unacceptable. He should have to repay every penny that has been wrongly taken. Every. Single. Penny. From his own money.

The Thunder Dragon

Derek Conway: Dead Man Walking

Do you remember Michael Trend? He was a former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party who stood down as MP for Windsor at the 2005 election over a mistake about his expenses. In his case he had claimed an annual allowance of £20,000 that was meant to fund London accommodation for MPs from faraway constituencies. He was disciplined by the Standards & Privileges Committee, suspended for 2 weeks from the Commons and had the sense and honour to stand down at the following general election.

Blaney’s Blarney

Sleaze: Before The Tories Get Too Smug...

DerekconwaympAny Tories gloating or feeling smug about Labour's embarrassment over the financial affairs of Peter Hain, Alan Johnson or Harriet Harman and "donorgate" should read the latest report of the Standards and Privileges Committee of MPs: Conduct of Mr Derek Conway. The committee is chaired by former Conservative cabinet minister Sir George Young.

Boulton & Co.

Conway row to escalate, as Tory poll lead shrinks

Following yesterday's initial revelations, it's since emerged that Derek Conway employed another of his sons using taxpayers' money. The news is like manna to the Government, and has spurred the Labour MP John Mann to call for another formal investigation into Conway's actions.

Coffee House

How many more Conway's?

Half a dozen? A dozen? More than a dozen Tory MPs engaged in what amounts to treating parliamentary allowances "like a family heirloom," as one Westminster insider puts it in today's Daily Mail? We'll know soon enough. Chances are this emerging scandal won't just end the career of Conway and at least one prominent Tory frontbencher, it could be the end of Cameron. If more cases emerge and it transpires that the Tory leader knew about them then it's goodnight Vienna.

The Daily Pundit

The Tories get medieval

Did you know that on average, we give a measly 0.7 per cent of our income to charity? Or that if we raised this to just 1 per cent, the voluntary sector would get an extra £4 billion? It was one of the more intriguing points raised at the Tories' judderingly titled one-day conference today, 'The Role of the State in the Post-Bureaucratic Age' (which Alice Thomson also dropped in on. It was basically a blue-skies thinking session (there was even a cheery squiggly blue-sky background) at which a succession of Shadow Cabinet members trooped up to affirm their commitment to decentralising power, opening up the processes of government and, basically, not making the same mistakes as Labour.

Three Line Whip

It's still the economy, stupid

Bill Clinton, famously, hung a sign on the wall of his 1992 presidential campaign headquarters that read: “It’s the economy, stupid”. It was placed there to keep the campaign team focused on the plain fact that, broadly speaking, voters feel more inclined to change their governments when they feel that the alternative is more likely to look after their economic interests.

David Jones MP

London Mayor election update

1. Evening Standard latest: Lee Jasper (aide to Ken Livingstone) admits £18,000 was improperly diverted. Police now investigating …

2. … and as Lynne Featherstone points out, that makes five police investigations into allegations of financial misdeeds at City Hall and the London Development Agency (LDA). As Lynne says, once again there are also question marks over whether their press operation has been telling the full story.

3. Political Betting casts reasonable doubt on the last YouGov Mayor poll (which put Brian Paddick on 8%, +1%): the sample size was just 240, which makes the margin of error +/- 6.5% - a very high figure. (This is the margin of error for the random sampling process; in addition there are other causes of error, such as a systematic bias in who is asked to take part in a poll.)

Lib Dem Voice

Who told us that we are better than McDonalds workers ?

We've all heard the jokes about people who work in McDonald's. It is supposed to be harmless fun, but at the end of the day it is often a class thing, a smugness amongst the educated middle class against people who are lowly paid, often lacking qualifications and end up in what is seen as a dead end job. So it saddens me to see people being so demeaning of the opportunity given to McDonald's staff to earn a proper accredited qualification.

Norfolk Blogger

Mayoral poll based on just 240 voters

How much can you trust a survey with such a small sample? The detailed data on YouGov’s London mayoral survey is out today and there are two things to highlight - the survey took place AFTER the controversial Channel 4 Dispatches programme last Monday but the size of the sample was just about the smallest that I can recall from the firm. In their normal national voting intention surveys YouGov generally involve about 2000 people. The figure for Saturday’s Daily Telegraph poll was 1992. In previous surveys for the London Mayoral race the figure has been about 1000. The December survey was based on 995 responses and a poll in November had a sample of 1036.

Political Betting

What does Cameron actually stand for?

“Cam’s withering”, says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. The Tory lead has been slashed to two per cent in one poll and eight per cent in another. “Voters still don’t grasp what he stands for?” says Trevor. Where’s the vision thing. We all know that Dave can do the soundbites, jump the red lights and mulch his own compost but what would he do if he was given the Westminster vegetable patch?

Three Line Whip

Daily Record tells Wendy to go

The death knell on Wendy Alexander's leadership of Scottish Labour (Holyrood division) has been sounded by the official Labour press office in Scotland, the Daily Record. To be generous, the editorial is a warning shot to Wendy that she needs to up her game. In reality, this is a notice to quit.

Tartan Hero

Politics Decoded

2008-01-29T11:20:00.000Z

Read my Politics Decoded column over at the Wardman Wire which is up now.

The round up will be with you before 12pm.

The (very) Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-28T18:11:00.000Z

More dodgy money accusations

The dodgy money stories continued over the weekend. The big casualties were Alan Johnson and Tory MP Derek Conway. As far as I can tell so far, the Johnson story is a storm in a teacup and not much will come of this. The Tory case is slightly more interesting however. It goes back to a debate I had with Matt Wardman and Dave Cole over MP’s wages and expenses.

I made the case that the problem with MPs remuneration is not their direct salaries – even if they do vote for their annual pay rises themselves. These annual pay rises are under such massive media scrutiny that they couldn’t possibly get away with massive inflation busting greed. Hence the other day they only voted for a below inflation increase. They could hardly do anything else. Anyway, they all know that there is plenty of scope to bump up that bank account with the various allowances MPs get. Enter Mr Conway.

Really? Mmm.

Derek Conway has described paying his son £1000 a week but not declaring it as “administrative shortcomings”. To me, and I might add for legal purposes I emphasise sounds like – no accusations, this sounds like hogwash! I may well be wrong, but handing over a grand a month to a student to work an extra 17 hours a month just seems unlikely to me. How many MPs do similar things but pay a student that is not related or previously known to them? How wise is it to pay a grand a month to someone who has eye on his university work and a good night out in the evening as most students? Good pocket money anyway – I wonder if Mr Conway gave his son any extra pocket money out of his own pocket?

It does raise the issue of just how much scrutiny are out MPs getting at the moment. You may remember a couple of weeks back of the Lords who were complaining that they didn’t get paid sick pay – not realising that in their scramble for claiming allowances, they didn’t actually get a properly salary at all and were therefore not eligible for sick pay. We have MPs who are claiming housing payments for a second home yet are within easy commuting distance of London. The annual expenses claims are now published with some real belter from last year.

How honest are our MPs?

LSE did some research in to MP allowance and I think you will find some of the findings very interesting. For a start, there is no correlation between party affiliation, constituency size, average income of the constituency and marginality of the constituency are all uncorrelated with the total amounts claimed. It is the older and more experienced MPs that claim less for some reason. In terms of hiring staff it is the Lib Dems that spend the most per MP. Overall though, the findings were quite positive – generally speaking our MPs do not milk the system. However, it is clear that some of them, a minority of them, do...

More scrutiny will weed out the cheats

It will come as a surprise, maybe, that cabinet ministers claim the least on average – about £9k less than your average MP. It is no coincidence I don’t think that these are the MPs that are also under the greatest scrutiny. It is my belief that it is not so much the fact that our MPs can claim a allowances that is the problem, but it is far too easy for them to do it and the checks just are not good enough. Hence, I have no problem with Mr Conway employing his family, but more needs to be done to prove that his son is doing what he is paying to do. It is also a very good reason why MPs should not be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

The Poliblogs 28 January 2008

2008-01-28T15:07:00.000Z

It's the economy, stupid

The competence of this government has been put into question once again over the ongoing capital gains tax fiasco. The latest concession in offering "entrepreneurs’ relief" is just another example of how out of touch the government with the business community. Richard Lambert, director-general of the CBI employers' body, stated that the new relief would "do nothing to help the real business powerhouses of this country":

The Adam Smith Inst.

How damaging is Conway to Cameron?

Will there be few tears shed for David Davis’s rounder-upper? This lunchtime’s news that Tory MP Derek Conway faces a 10-day Commons suspension after the standards watchdog said he paid his son too much from parliamentary allowances. Freddie Conway, received a salary as a researcher while he was studying at Newcastle University. The only problem was, according to the report “.. no records appear to exist of either actual work that Freddie did for his father, or of the work he was required to undertake”.

Political Betting

Polly turns on Brown

Must-read of the day is Polly Toynbee's searing critique of Gordon Brown's week, which she believes could turn out to be the moment the next election was lost. There's lots to surprise students of the Toynbee oeuvre here, not least to find that she is still pro-police after that distasteful demonstration. She's spot on about Labour's "miserable tribalism" (arch: G Brown) which is behind so many disastrous decisions (avoiding Rock nationalisation, messing up CGT to name two). But her smack-in-the-Brown-solar-plexus conclusion is this:

Ben Brogan

London Key To Vote In '08?

The Mayor of London is in a jolly mood. Latest polling suggests that his ratings have actually gone up since last week's Channel 4 Dispatches programme, which he considers to have been "a hatchet job". Indeed if Livingstone can win in May for the third time, some senior Labour strategists are now arguing that Gordon Brown should call a General Election in June.

Boulton & Co.

YouGov - Livingstone apparently undamaged by Dispatches

A new YouGov poll for ITV London has topline voting intentions for the London mayoral election of Livingstone 44%(-1), Johnson 40%(-4), Paddick 8%(+1). I can’t find the exact dates of the poll yet, but press reports suggest it was conducted after the Channel 4 Dispatches programme criticising Ken Livingstone, and the preceeding couple of weeks of agressive attacks on Livingstone by the Evening Standard.

Polling Report

Boost for Ken in new YouGov poll

YouGov puts him 4% ahead. After one of his most controversial weeks since becoming Mayor in 2000 there’s a boost tonight for Ken Livingstone in his bid to secure a third term in the most powerful directly elected office in the UK. A Yougov survey for ITV London found - with changes on its last poll a month ago - Ken 44% (-1): Boris 40% (-4): Paddick LD 8% (nc)

Political Betting

Clegg and spending

I like Clegg’s language, his correctly choosing 2000 as the starting point to an “explosion”. The days of Kennedy’s “penny on the pound of income tax to pay for education” is gone. I’d like to think the premise of Kennedy’s proposal – that more money would get extra results – has been tested to destruction so future governments know not to make the same mistake. Standards have staggeringly declined in British schools between 2000 and 2006. The tragedy is that so many millions of pupils suffered to prove this point to the world.#

Coffee House

Andrew Lilico: Politics, the inflation target, and what Conservatives should say

In this article I shall argue that there has been a significant failure of political leadership, from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, regarding the UK’s inflation target. The significance of this failure is becoming magnified in the difficult policy situation we face in 2008, has already undermined, and threatens to undermine further, the hard-won credibility of UK monetary policy.

Conservative Home

Looking on the bright side

But for Conservative Home, we would have missed it completely (they nearly did) – but yesterday there was an ICM poll published in The Guardian which explored the electorate's views on the European Union. The strap gives you a taste of the findings, it declaring: "Poll finds support rising for EU membership." And, by the way, it also reports Labour polling up a point to 35 percent, with the Tories down two to 37 percent, giving Cameron a minuscule two percent lead – albeit in a poll that tends to favour Labour.

EU Referendum

Meaningless words

"Reform" is one of the most devalued words in politics. It should go into lexographical dustbin along with "radical" and "change". Consider the issue of welfare "reform". Alarmed by the Tories unveiling of "radical" welfare "reforms", Gordon Brown is today highlighting his own "radical reforms". He and his new welfare secretary, James Purnell, will pledge to introduce proposals recommended by the ex City banker David Freud. This is just, you may recall, what the Tories did a few weeks ago.

Nick Robinson

Davos and Soros are too gloomy- but Davos usually gets it wrong

A year ago the luminaries, power brokers and business leaders at Davos were very optimistic. The discussion in private sessions ranged widely over ever larger bids based on heavy borrowings. We were at the peak of the rule of King leverage. The attendees foresaw a continuation of the securitisation bubble and thought it represented the new economic stability. In other words, last year Davos did not predict Credit Crunch, securitisation meltdown or the coming slowdown. The world’s most powerful and best informed got it hopelessly wrong.

John Redwood

Why we need to reform the Electoral Commission and the Register of Member's Interests

Over the last few months we have seen a massive increase in the number of politicians who have not registered donations or other items with either the Electoral Commission or the Register of Member's Interests. I may be being generous but I don't believe all of those concerned are corrupt or deliberately not declaring things properly, so perhaps we need to reform the Electoral Commission and the Register of Member's Interests.

Colin Ross

Is there a point at which Liberal Democrats should want to leave the European Union?

I used to take it more or less as an article of faith that the EU is good for us. Somehow. And that the Liberal Democrat position of being avowedly critical of some of the ways it operates was a good one - we were the first, I believe, in calling for CAP reform way back just after we joined, for example.

Jock’s Place

Alan Johnson donation - yes, it is a damp squib!

Tinkering around at midnight last night, I thought I was going out on a bit of a limb by describing the media story about the Alan Johnson donation as a "damp squib". I am delighted beyond measure to see my early doors judgment supported by the vociferous Mr Whenman and Liberal Action.

Liberal Burblings

Too many soundbites from Cameron - Says Ken Clarke

Ken Clarke is right to highlight Cameron's obsession with the fluff of sound bites. Every time he speaks it is as if he had five of them to say and he shoe horns them in in an almost corny way. His sad attempt to emulate Vince Cable's Mr Bean line about Gordon Brown by referring to Gordon Brown "turning from Prudence to Del Boy without touching the ground" was enough to make you groan it was so lame.

Norfolk Blogger

Are the good times returning for Gordon?

Will today’s polls bring a smile back to his face? Following the good news for Labour in last night’s YouGov poll on the London mayoralty there’s a further boost for the party in new national voting intention surveys from YouGov and ICM this morning. And one of them has Labour’s deficit down to just two per cent. The latter finding is in the monthly ICM survey for the Guardian which has, with comparisons on the last poll from the firm a fortnight ago the following splits: CON 37% (-3): LAB 35% (+2): LD 20% (+2)

Political Betting

The Blog of the Week Award

2008-01-28T14:23:00.000Z

Blog of the Week

This week's blog of the week is Edland. The posts over at Edland have been top notch stuff of late - not that they haven't always been very good, but since the New Year Ed Clarke has stepped up a level. A Libertarian who, like many of the right of centre blogosphere, have really had enough of New Labour - but Edland writes about it in his unique and immediately gripping fashion. Well worth adding to your favourites.

Runners Up

John Redwood. Not the most popular of MPs, even in his own party and will always be remembered for his shameless "singing" of the Welsh National Anthem. However, in his spare time he writes a cracking and very thought provoking blog. Great coverage on the Northern Rock crisis is his specialty at the moment. Makes other MP's blogs look very amateur and tokenistic.

Paul Linford. One of the blogosphere's truly great blogs. Watch out for his famous Top Tens, but also his daily comment is measured and well informed. A former hack, you would expect his writing to be top notch. He does not disappoint.

Late Start...

2008-01-28T14:21:00.000Z

All the usual stuff will be up today - just a bit later than normal.

I will post the Blog of the Week at 2:30pm

The Roundup at 3pm

And The Late Lunch Briefing at 5pm

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-25T16:22:00.001Z

So the dust is beginning to settle, Hain is out and the newbies are in. Well, I say the dust is beginning to settle; actually the truth is it hasn't even begun! This is a story that is going to haunt the Labour party for the next year at least probably much longer. This is just the end of chapter one. The chapters still to come include Wendy Alexander, Harriet Harman and probably one or two other characters that we didn’t realised were in the story. Every day that passes, the Brown administration resembles the John Major government more and more. Something the Labour party must be deeply worried about.

Whereas Blair could shake off the bad news stories, with Brown they just seem to get bigger and hang around like a bad smell. His party is fragmenting (though not on a Tory scale yet). He is being dogged by sleaze. The press is turning on him. He is unpopular and looks dithering and weak. Worst of all: circumstances are conspiring against him. Just like Major, he is taking over at a time of deep economic uncertainty. I strongly believe the best thing that could happen to the Labour party, if they are still in this position in September, is a leadership challenge – it is also the worse scenario for the Tories because someone competent may just take over as PM.

The real question for the Tories in all this is who is David Cameron? Is he the Tony Blair or the Neil Kinnock of the Tory party? One thing is for sure, he has had to modernise the party like Kinnock did. A shift to the right would be an unmitigated disaster for the Tories. What is less clear is whether he is the fall guy, like Kinnock, who has to do the dirty work but ultimately is not accepted by the electorate or can he give us a vision and some hope in times when everything in Westminster seems distinctly flat? My fear is the former, my hope is the latter. It is an absolutely key twelve months. The worst case scenario is come the next general election we have a choice between the latter day Major versus the latter day Kinnock. It will mean another five years of a visionless Britain.

The Poliblogs 25 January 2008

2008-01-25T15:25:00.000Z

Will Hain do for Brown?

You might expect a Cabinet resignation, sparked by a police inquiry, just seven months into a new Prime Minister's first term, to be a meltdown moment. Objectively, the elements of this story tell a terrible tale of incompetence, casual contempt for the law, and complacency at the heart of the Labour party. In the past hour we asked the question that should be a shocker but has become routine: has the Prime Minister been interviewed by the police? (Answer: No). All this on a day when the Treasury goes into reverse on CGT, Labour MPs vote for more money, and pandemonium grips the markets. This should be a dire day for Gordon Brown.

Ben Brogan

Hain: Did "Bottler" Brown Dither Too Long?

When Peter Hain did "the right and honourable thing", as Gordon Brown put it, and resigned, the Prime Minister acted fairly swiftly to reshuffle and freshen up his Cabinet. The Cabinet changes took less than five hours and the full ministerial reshuffle, 14 appointments in all, under six hours. In that time, three ministers under 40 were promoted to key Cabinet jobs and the gender balance tilted a little, with another woman joining the Cabinet as a full member.

Boulton & Co.

Where now for Gordon Brown?

I wrote yesterday that Gordon Brown's New Year relaunch is in tatters. Now he's in the uneviable position of having to relaunch the relaunch. How should he go about it? We've already witnessed Brown's new approach to personnel - that is, to draft youthful faces into the cabinet. Now his comment piece in today's FT indicates one of the central planks of his policy approach - the reform of financial systems:

Coffee House

Donation differences

There are important differences between the cases of Peter Hain and those of Gordon Brown's deputy, Harriet Harman, and Labour's Scottish leader, Wendy Alexander, who are still awaiting the verdicts of the Electoral Commission. Harriet Harman. The most obvious difference is scale. Peter Hain failed to declare over £100,000 whereas Harriet Harman's deputy leadership campaign accepted a much smaller sum, £5000, from a proxy for David Abrahams and Wendy Alexander accepted just £950 from a Jersey-based businessman who was not a "permissible donor".

Nick Robinson

Some thoughts on the Hain resignation

Firstly, it should have come sooner: why did Hain wait for Police involvement before deciding that clearing his name was more important (and more time-consuming) than his two Ministerial posts? However, I'll still nod in respect to the man for taking the decision. It had to be taken, and it was the right one. Labour ministers have shown an extraordinary bouncebackability since Mandelson so he won't be out for long, but he can't fight this and do his two jobs at the same time. Late, but right.

J.Arthur MacNumpty

A life as a comedian beckons for Paul Flynn MP - Is Peter Hain his idol ?

I you need cheering up at this depressing time of the year, read Paul Flynn's account of why we should be sorry that Peter Hain has lost his job. The almost comical list of Peter Hain's achievements does go on and, if it is to be believed, Peter Hain should be made a saint, given a nobel prize and should be given a statue on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square. Perhaps the most comical of Paul Flynn' assertions about who will not be sorry about Peter Hain departure are

Norfolk Blogger

Ken's fightback backfires

Like many Londoners, I have been reading and watching the steady stream of allegations being levelled at Ken Livingstone, the London Development Agency, and his inner circle of Advisers, with fascination: It really has been like watching a train crash.

Meral’s Musings

DECLINING BRITISHNESS IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND?

OurKingdom: The National Centre for Social Research has just issued its new British Social Attitudes Report. This is taken from its 13 page pdf summary press release.

Only 13% of people born and living in England, and 3% of people born and living in Scotland, describe themselves as ‘only’ or ‘mainly’ British. Meanwhile, nearly half of those born and living in England say that they are ‘equally English and British’, and only one in five born and living in Scotland describe themselves as ‘equally Scottish and British’.

Our Kingdom

It’s 5/1 that Hain will get back to the Cabinet in 2008

Is this worth betting on? William Hill are offering odds of 5/1 that Peter Hain will be back in the Cabinet by the end of 2008, and 3/1 that he will return there by the end of 2009. ‘Mr Hain was a 7/1 shot to be out of the Cabinet by the end of this January and 2/1 to be the first Cabinet Minister to lose his position - so many political punters are celebrating his departure’ said Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe.‘However, given past situations with, for example, Peter Mandelson, it is far from impossible that Mr Hain could be back in the Cabinet in a comparatively short space of time.’

Political Betting

Daily Roundup...

2008-01-25T09:32:00.000Z

Will be a little later today...

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-24T13:52:00.000Z

More on the Hain resignation later. Today's Late Lunch Briefing focuses on the possible first commons defeat for Gordon Brown as PM...

A defeat in the Commons for the Government?

The Government today unveils it plans for holding terror suspects. After previous defeats, the latest arbitrary figure they are going for is 42 days without charge. The Tories and Lib Dems are opposing this measure and there is a good chance that many Labour back benchers will too. Ironically, I suspect that the extension of the 28 days limit is probably quite popular with the electorate – most have bought into the line, rightly or wrongly (who knows?), that we live in dangerous times and that certain civil liberties need to be curbed for our own safety. Personally I feel that unless the government can make the case for the extension using hard facts, I just cannot back them on this issue. So far I have not heard the government make this case – their argument is solely based on a very loose “what if?” Either way, the vote could spell trouble for Brown.

A busy time for the Whips

In order for the government to be defeated there needs to be over 34 Labour rebel backbenchers. It is going to be tight and the Whips will have their work cut out. So what can the Whips do to ensure that the government wins the day? Well, this takes us in the dark and murky world of British politics. The unsaid and largely unknown. Hansard doesn’t report what the Whips do in Parliament – the excuse being that it is a party issue. So what do we know and just how far will do Whips go to ensure the government wins the day?

The dark and murky world of being a government Whip

A fascinating and revealing piece on this can be found here, written by Patrick Dixon. He details, using first-hand accounts of the extreme lengths that some Whips will go to. Those not familiar with the Whip system should know that Whips are the key figures in the party that instruct MPs how to vote. They will tell their parliamentary party members that they must vote in today’s debate and then underline the words either once, twice or three times. This indicates what the punishment will be if they don’t vote or vote against the party. One line means that not a lot will happen if they don’t vote. Three lines mean a withdrawal of the whip – which is effectively expulsion from the party, hence the term Three Line Whip. But there are far more sinister tactics used than this...

Extortion, blackmail, heavy verbal abuse and even physical roughness

The bully boy tactics used by Whips have been reported to include extortion, blackmail, heavy verbal abuse and even physical roughness. The threat of losing that promotion to the cabinet or that meeting with the queen is not uncommon. There are even reports that MP’s have been threatened with sleaze stories being released to the press or their partners. Whips have been accused of keeping “little black books” which are a directory of misdemeanours that members have built up over the years that can be used against them. Of course, depending on whose account you listen too, these tactics are either common or not ever used. Given what I have read and heard I suspect it is somewhere between the two. There is little doubt that heavy handed whipping does go on and I am sure Westminster will be party to some on the upcoming Counter Terrorism Bill.

An extraordinary account

I will leave you today with this extraordinary account of just how extreme Whips are willing to go to ensure they win a parliamentary vote:

This Patrick Dixon talking to a Tory MP discussing the 1992 vote on Maastricht where many Tory MPs were planning to vote against the government:

“A lot of wives were then contacted, either by the Whips Office or by somebody from Central Office or by the friend of the MP attacked, depending on how well they knew the family. And the line with the wives was, er, sometimes persuasive, like, you know, "You're not going to get . . . Your husband's not going to get the title. You won't get the title or won't get the trips abroad or won't get this or won't get that," or quite threatening: "We know something about him, in his private life.

Then as the night came and then the day and then the evening and the vote at ten o'clock, as that got nearer the numbers were just not adding up and they [The Whips] were getting more frenetic. Going round they would try a combination of all these things simultaneously.

'The plan fell apart and they would just physically, er, get hold of people, verbally abuse them, or persuade them there's drinks - the Prime Minister probably never poured out so many bloody drinks - and the Prime Minister was available...

And then as the vote was called and the divisions began I saw people physically blocking the entrance to the Lobby to stop some Members getting in. I saw one MP physically carried into the Lobby...”

Should be fun and games in the Commons again then with the Counter Terrorism Bill too then... oh to be a fly on the wall!

The Reshuffle

2008-01-24T13:02:00.000Z

Hain's resignation does of course mean that Brown will have to reshuffle his cabinet - or bring in a new face directly to the DWP and Wales posts.

Has Brown made another Boo-boo?

Of course, Brown did say only a few weeks ago that Hain is only guilty of being incompetent, instead of sacking him - a sign of more dithering and poor judgment? What if it is now shown that Brown backed a man who deliberately committed fraud?

The fallout from all this could be very serious indeed...

The Thermometer of Doom

2008-01-24T12:36:00.000Z

Peter Hain has resigned!! About time too! It seems that the final straw was being referred to the police. We'll miss you on the Thermometer of Doom, Peter. Though I am sure we will find someone else to replace you before long.

It will be interesting to see if this has any impact on Harman who has been accused of similar, though not the same, allegations.

More on all this later...

The Poliblogs 24 January 2008

2008-01-24T10:34:00.000Z

Dave and truth

Raised eyebrows in Camp Cameron this morning at the way his views on parents and faith schools were presented this morning by the Times. They assure me he does not condone parents who lied about their faith to get their children into religious schools. The key line is "I don't blame anyone who tries to get their children into a good school," but presumably he would blame those who can be shown to have exaggerated their religious enthusiasm.

Ben Brogan

Will a downturn help or hinder Brown?

Although they look at it from different angles, I think that James Forsyth and Daniel Finkelstein have both identified one of the most interesting political questions of 2008 – will an economic downturn boost or deflate support for Brown’s Government? Contrary to James, Finkelstein claims in an article today that the gathering economic storm-clouds will be good news for the Prime Minister:

Coffee House

ID Cards are to be delayed: Ten reasons to scrap them.

Apparently a document has been leaked to the Conservative Party which suggests that plans to issue ID Cards to UK citizens have been put back to 2012. Some suggest that this could be leading to the scrapping of the stupid scheme. Here are ten reasons why I think the scheme should be scrapped:

Daily Referendum

The recession of 2008 and the return of economic intervention

Governments should not intervene in market economies. For over two decades now, even to challenge that proposition has been enough to mark you out as at best an unreconstructed Keynesian pinko and very probably an outright goddam red. The smelly little orthodoxy moved on from being the exclusive preserve of mildly eccentric laissez faire think tank nerds in half-moon spectacles to become the received wisdom of the parties of the mainstream right, ultimately spreading to international social democracy. That girl TINA has surely been putting it about.

Dave’s Part

Home Economics

Yesterday's decree from the Secretary of State for Education unsettled me somewhat. On the face of it, teaching children the basics of how to cook is a laudable ambition. It does seem, on the face of it, that much of the current fatness epidemic is caused by poor eating habits. Children ape their parents so if they are fed a bad example there isn't much that is going to whip them into shape until they are mature enough to set their own direction.

Edland

BREAKING NEWS: LibDems want a referendum on the EU constitution!

Yes it's true! We have not broken any promises - we promised a referendum on the EU constitution. We still want a referendum on the full constitution of the EU as constituted from the various treaties since the Treaty of Rome - ie. an “in or out” referendum - which is a much, much wider matter for referendum than the very narrow amending treaty - the EU Reform treaty.

Liberal Burblings

Ken Livingstone and Dispatches

I guess a lot of people watched the Dispatches program on Monday night - Martin Bright's the Court of Ken! I watched it myself at about midnight on Monday. Hadn't realised when they interviewed me (for an hour) that I would have such a starring role! Usually when you do these things (or my experience anyway) is that you end up on the cutting room floor.

Lynne Featherstone

This Not-So-Charming Man

A couple of weeks back, the right-wing columnist Richard Littlejohn made a vile attack on Gordon Brown in which he made reference to his "kiddie fiddler smile." That estimable blogger Paul Burgin was one of those who were suitably outraged, expressing the view that Littlejohn should not be allowed to get away with such a "joke."

Paul Linford

Is the “Gordon’s a weirdo” tag a deliberate strategy?

Could such an approach backfire on Cameron? Yesterday’s characterisation by David Cameron of the Prime Minster as being “that strange man in Downing Street” has prompted a number of Labour-leaning bloggers, including Paul Linford, to suggest that this is part of a Tory plan.

Political Betting

Fanatics, bores and sceptic tanks

Sorry to return to possibly the most boring issue(s) on the agenda these days - Europe, the Lisbon treaty and the campaign for a referendum. It seems that 80% of the British public want a referendum, but the same public is evenly divided as to whether the treaty should be approved or not. And when it comes to whether the EU is really an important issue at all, opinion polls suggest that most of us don’t think so.

Shiraz Socialist

Let me say something nice about Mr Darling

Over the last decade the UK has been marooned with a high standard rate of capital gains tax, whilst many other countries have decided to be friendlier to savers and entrepreneurs by slashing CGT rates.

John Redwood

Delay tactics

Tony Blair regarded ID cards as an election winner. He pledged that legislation to make them compulsory would form a "major plank" of Labour's next election manifesto. Under Gordon Brown it now looks clear that will be no such pledge. Any decision on compulsory ID cards could be delayed until after 2020 even if ministers stay committed to the scheme and there is no change in government and technological problems, concerns about cost and shifting public attitudes don't cause yet more delays.

Nick Robinson

A climate for eurosceptics

President Barroso sees the European Union’s plans to deal with climate change as a route to popularity. He told the European Parliament that it was a great argument for the European Union and shows that the world needs a strong EU. I am not sure he won over quite everyone in the chamber.

Mark Mardell

PMQs 22 January 2008

2008-01-23T17:05:00.001Z

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

I don't often get the opportunity to watch PMQs, and in the last couple of months it would appear by all accounts I should probably be grateful because it seems David Cameron has been dishing out a thrashing to Gordon Brown, and he was ably assisted in this by the dry, laid back wit of Vince Cable.

Bob Piper

Dogged resistance from Brown over Northern Rock

In India, Brown was full of beans – boasting at one stage that he’d outlasted Dame Kelly Holmes who had to retire to her hotel. He should have saved his energy. He looked exhausted at PMQs today. Until Cameron piped up on Northern Rock, that was. Then he sprang to life and put up a hell of a fight.

Coffee House

Live PMQs blog from noon

EDITORIAL VERDICT: "Emphatic victory for David Cameron. He talked about the big issues of the week - Northern Rock and economic weakness. He made the Prime Minister look evasive because he failed to answer questions about taxpayer exposure. Nick Clegg even helped the Conservatives by implying that Brown hadn't nationalised the Rock because he was running scared of the Tories. Who's the real opposition now then, Mr Clegg?"

Conservative Home

PMQs - The Verdict

Prime minister's question time was dominated by Northern Rock but with Jacqui Smith's nocturnal snacking in SE15 and Only Fools and Horses being raised, Peckham provided an unlikely sub-plot.

Conservative MP Stephen Crabb began proceedings by asking: "What is happening on Britain's streets when the home secretary needs an armed police escort to go out and buy a kebab?"

ePolitix

The Verdict

Another week and the focus is yet again on Northern Rock. I think ePolitix sums it up best by describing Cameron’s performance as “Another far from devastating six questions on Northern Rock.” I do disagree with them on Brown’s performance however. He was every bit as poor and unconvincing as Cameron. The problem is, neither of these two have any idea what to do about Northern Rock and they both keep changing their minds on a week by week basis.

At least Cameron is sticking to the single issue, ensuring that it gets on the evening news, but as I have said a million times before he is not the polished performer we once thought he might be. Political Betting has an interesting article that really hits the money on Cameron’s PMQs performances. He has a clip up there of Blair taking on Major back in the 1990s. Blair looks hungry, as though he means it, is incredibly measured and puts the knife in brilliantly. The way he delivers the line “Weak..Weak..Weak” is so damning and convincing it doesn’t matter whether Major is weak or not – we all believe Blair. He makes Major look weak. Cameron has to up his game to this level if he is ever going to really take on Brown and finish him off. Until then, PMQs is just going to be a playground slanging match where both competitors disappoint.

All the tools and ammunition are there for Cameron. Now he just needs to learn how to use them.

On another point – Nick Clegg. Who side is he on? Labours? The Tories? He doesn’t appear to be on the side of the Lib Dems. First he decides to back the government over the EU Treaty referendum. Then today he does the Tories ground work for them by telling Brown he is "running scared of the Conservative Party." It went down a treat with the Tory benches. A poor start for the new leader in my book. Bring back Vince!

Brown 0.5

Cameron 0.5

The Late Lunch Briefing

2008-01-23T14:21:00.000Z

The Rock crisis continues...

It’s the issue that just won’t go away. Northern Rock. Once again they clashed over the Rock at PMQs today (more on that later with the PMQs Battle round up at 5pm). Remember, this all started way back before the Conference season when Brown was flying (or bouncing) high in the polls. Back then we all thought it would pass and it was a bit of a non-issue. People even started throwing money in to the Rock as they thought the share price would recover once the government had backed it. Oh how things have changed since those late summer days...

Does anyone have the answer?

The government’s latest idea is to issue bonds and let Richard Branson take it on. Last week we were all firmly set for nationalisation. Next week – who knows? The Tories haven’t been much better – I am as unsure as to what their position is on this as I am the governments. To watch the two leaders argue about in PMQs today was ridiculous – both accusing the other of “flip flopping”. The truth is they both are. This has been an almighty balls up and no-one, it seems, has the answer of what to do. Meanwhile the crisis goes on and the bills (covered by the tax payer) continue to rack up. Have we reached a point in UK politics where no-one is up to the job?

Where have all the Big Beasts gone?

Rather like a poor intake in one year at school or in the military, is the class of 2008 just not very good? Back in the 1980s it was Labour who were just not very good. In the 1990s it was the Tories who were not very good. In the Brown era it seems that mediocrity of our main party leaders and front benches is the best we are going to. Where are the giants of old? The big beast? The Wilsons, the Hurds? The Heseltines? Dare I say it, where are the Blairs and the Thatchers? You may not like them, but at least they were decisive and strong. We have now probably the most indecisive PM we have ever had. This man makes Chamberlain look strong. Opposite him we have a man who just appears to lack the conviction of a man who not only really believes what he is saying but really wants the top job.

Maybe this is some sort of distorted nostalgia, where the past always seems better than the present. But somehow I just cannot see anyone on either side of the house who is offering hope and a vision for the Britain. As I said, sometimes you just get a bad intake. Or perhaps Cameron or Miliband just aren’t quite ready to step up to the plate. Either way, whoever it is who can capture the imagination of the British public again will surely be destined to be the next Big Beast and our new PM.

About The Poliblogs

2008-01-23T10:30:00.000Z

Seeing as I have made a few changes to the blog and developed it some what since I first launch in July 2007, it seems about time I explained what the Poliblogs is about and the features on the blog:

The Daily Round Up:

The main daily feature of the blog is my daily roundup of what I consider to be the best political posts in the blogosphere. I monitor about 200 blogs on a daily basis and take the cream of the crop and share them with you. I try to ensure that I take a balanced view by taking a range of opinions on the major issues of the day from the whole political spectrum.

The Late Lunch Briefing:

The Late Lunch Briefing is new to the Poliblogs for this year. It is my daily column where I tackle the major political issue or issues of the day adding my opinion and hopefully a little insight. I try to get this up by around 2pm daily.

The PMQs' Battle
Every Wednesday, when the House is sitting, I do a daily round up of what the blogosphere thought of that day's PMQs. I also add my own take on proceedings and then score the battle. I have been doing this since Brown took over as PM and so the tally (in the right hand column) is a total of every meeting Cameron & Brown have had. This is posted at 5pm every Wednesday.

A View Across The Pond

Another new feature to the Poliblogs - every Tuesday at 2pm I will post my take on the US presidential election.

The Blog of the Week Award
Every Monday morning I hand out the "coveted" Poliblogs Blog of the Week Award - my top three blogs of the week. Hopefully it will introduce my readers to a new blog or two and also recognises who I think are at the very top of their game in the political blogging world.

Politics Decoded
Politics Decoded is my weekly Tuesday column I write on the Wardman Wire blog for Matt Wardman. It is a longer version of the Late Lunch Briefing, in effect. It is my take on the major political issues of that week. I re-post the column 24hours later on the Poliblogs.

Other Stuff
I also occasionally post other things - the odd video, link, piece of opinion...

If there is anything else you'd like me to cover on the Poliblogs, all ideas are very welcome!

Blogpower & Daily Round Up developments

2008-01-23T10:20:00.000Z

I recently applied to become a member of Blogpower, which is a community of bloggers who actively support each other and promote each others' blogs. It is for the smaller bloggers out there, rather than the Iain Dales and Political Bettings of this world.

I am very pleased to say my application has been approved and I am now a member.

I have added the blogroll of all the other members of Blogpower in the right hand column - please take a look at some the the blogs on there when you have some time.

I am very aware that my own blog roll is starting to get a bit out of date with some blogs now defunct and other new ones coming out that I am enjoying and have added to the daily roundup but not my blogroll.

In the next couple of weeks I will be doing a complete review and a culling exercise - taking out the old and bringing in some new. I expect that overall I will be having a net gain in the number of blogs I monitor. I will keep you up to date with the developments and let you know who I have added (when I have added them). I suspect a few from Blogpower will be added to the daily roundup.

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions as to a great blog that I should be reading, then let me know either in the comments or by email - poliblogsAThotmail.co.uk

The Poliblogs 23 Januray 2008

2008-01-23T10:02:00.000Z

Beyond Our Ken

The interesting thing about the sudden "Decent Bat-Signal" (thanks to Alex in comments for this phrase) that now is Fuck Ken Time, is that they don't appear to be endorsing any alternative candidate. Why not? A glance at the slate reveals that all the alternatives to Ken are politically ... difficult for the Decents to love:

Aaronovitch Watch

Throwing mud at the mayor

Recent attacks by journalists on Ken Livingstone have obscured the issues by which he - and his rivals - should be judged

Dave Hill

Dispatches on “The Court of Ken”

Like many people, I tuned into the Dispatches investigation of the office of the Mayor of London, or more specifically the way Ken Livingstone has conducted himself and the people he has surrounded himself with. martin_bright_140×140.jpgThe programme was led by Martin Bright, Political Editor of the New Statesman, and opened with Peter Tatchell (whom I know from the Doughty Street days as a very passionate campaigner and generally serious dude) saying:

Mike Rouse

Nick Clegg must prove we trust the British people on Europe

Whilst the Lib Dems news policy of a referendum on out continued membership of the EU might be inspired, it serves merely to gloss over the fact that we promised a referendum on the EU Constitution, and as has been shown by various reliably sources, the EU reform Treaty is virtually identical to the EU constitution. So shouldn't we support the referendum we promised ? Others I know feel the same way too.

Norfolk Blogger

Lisbon Treaty: referendum, please

The Lisbon Treaty, at least to my eyes, looks much like the EU constitution dressed up in the political equivalent of a fur coat and Trinny and Susannah Original Magic Knickers. For the uninitiated, T&S Original Magic Knickers – available from Littlewoods here – promise instantly to transform the larger lady into a svelte beauty who will knock the guys dead as soon as she dons her little black number. But there’s just one snag, girls; a backside the size of a small planet, even when crammed into doubtlessly wonderful elasticated underwear, remains a fat arse.

Dave’s Part

The dangerous uselessness of 'Euroscepticism'

Here we go again, another festival of pointless calls for a referendum on the EU constitution. The whole thing reminds me of dogs chasing cars. What would they do if they caught them? What would happen if they held a referendum, and everyone voted ‘No’? Well, we already know. Nothing good. Ask the people of France, Ireland and the Netherlands, all of whom at various times have said 'No' to EU plans. They've either been sent back to do it again and come up with the right answer, or they have been ignored. And then what do they do?

Peter Hitchens

None of our business

Liberal-Democrat leader Nick Clegg has declared that he and his party will NOT support a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the one declared by many to be almost identical with the EU constitution voted down in France and the Netherlands. This is hardly surprising since I remember him on television at the time saying the "no" votes didn't count "because polls have shown that the French and Dutch voters didn't know what they were voting about."

Adam Smith

Brown no longer gets the benefit of the doubt

If you had told most people in the Westminster Village a year ago that the economy would hit choppy waters, then most people would have thought that this would actually strengthen Gordon Brown’s electoral position. The logic behind this was that Labour’s advantage on the economic competence question was so deep set that the public would prefer Brown’s experienced hand at the tiller rather than the untested Cameron and Osborne combination.

Coffee House

The rules haven't changed

Change the world: Believe it or not, New Labour is beginning to make sense on terrorism, now Tony Blair has gone

Sunny Hundal

Will it ever get as bad as this for Gordon?

According to a report in the Independent yesterday Gordon Brown is telling friends that the public is being increasingly repelled by PMQs and that the Commons exchanges are now of little use in discussing the issues of the day. He’s reported as saying that “nothing prepares you” for the ferocity of a packed chamber in full cry” and that the weekly event is worse than it has ever been. I’m not so sure. The above short video shows a couple of exchanges between Tony Blair and John Major in the period before the 1997 election when, of course, Blair was asking the questions. The “Weak..Weak..Weak” refrain has become famous and shows Blair at his most aggressive. I do not think that Cameron has yet matched this in his exchanges with Gordon.

Political Betting

Mark Field MP: Northern Rock has been nationalised in all but name

For sure there have been more spectacular banking crises than that which has affected Northern Rock in recent months. The phenomenon of a ‘run on the bank’ was almost commonplace in Victorian times. More recently the collapse of BCCI (1991) and Barings (1995) show that even a highly regulated banking sector is never immune to mismanagement and fraudulent activity.

Conservative Home

A View Across the Pond

2008-01-22T14:16:00.001Z

So far the presidential candidates’ race has all been about Clinton, Obama and the Democrats. The Republicans have had a few moments in the limelight, but overall we have been enthralled by these two brilliant performers. The Oscar nominations have just been announced today and it wouldn’t have come as a surprise if Clinton had been nominated as best crying actress or Obama as best male speech.

You can tell that things are hotting up in the Democrat’s presidential candidate race – the final two (John Edwards is surely out of it) – and it’s getting more and more personal. In a televised debate yesterday the two ripped in to each other as Edwards sat back and watched. But the two of them are going to have to take a back seat when the action moves to Florida. While we have been enthralled with the Democrat’s race, it is actually the Republican race that is even wider open and more interesting. Is the biggest gamble of all the primaries about to pay off for Rudy Giuliani?

Giuliani’s strategy had been to take a back seat in the other states and put everything he has in to Florida in the hope that that would be enough to get him the nomination. If he fails to win in Florida it is as good as over for him. And it looks like his gamble may not be paying off. A Rasmussen poll of voters throughout the US has him in joint fourth place on 10%, 15 points behind the front-runner, John McCain on 25%. Is this the end of the hero of New York? Well, to rub salt in the wound, even his home state of New York appear to have lost the faith. A Siena College poll puts him on 24%, 12 points behind Mr McCain on 36%. And the pollsters are rarely wrong on these sorts of things... d’oh!

So on to Florida where it seems we have no idea who will win as you can’t trust the polls, followed by Super Tuesday (or Tsunami Tuesday as it is known this year due to the number of primaries taking place) where we should be left with some answers to one of the most complex and long winded election processes in the world. It’s fun to watch, but thank God they do don’t do it here!