The Poliblogs 6th Novemeber 2007

Real Racism

"The DNA database has become a national disgrace, stuffed with innocent children and a disproportionate number of black people. "It is time it was limited to those who are guilty or under investigation for sexual or violent crime." (Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty)

Angels in Marbles

History repeating…

It was thoroughly right for Nigel Hastilow to resign, not because his comments were necessarily wrong, but because of his complete lack of thought. It shouldn’t take much thought at all to realise that Enoch Powell is probably a name best left out of the immigration debate. His comments were inflammatory in 1968, and they’re inflammatory now.

BUCF

Hastilow criticises the Conservative Party's willingness to toe the metropolitan line

Nigel Hastilow wrote for yesterday's Express & Star. He offered his reflections on recent events. A scan of the full article is published at the bottom of this post (click on it to enlarge) but here are a few key sections:

Conservative Home

How does Dave answer the Queen's Speech?

Tony Blair did two things in his last Queen's Speech a year ago. With little left to offer by way of legislation, he spent most of it attacking David Cameron. And he coined the phrase "big clunking fist", a double-edged moniker that some now believe was a crafty way for Tony Blair to flag up both his successor's strength and weakness.

Ben Brogan

Gordon Brown's re-heated Queen's Speech.

Gordon Brown has been struggling to come up with anything to put in the Queen's speech later today. This is no real surprise seeing as he broke with tradition and announced most of his so called "vision" at the State Opening of Parliament.

Daily Referendum

My Two Cents...on climate change hysteria

And so the scare stories go on. The Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, Lady Young, has said that the battle to deal with climate change needs to be fought "like World War III". The Environment Secretary Hilary Benn - sounding increasingly as shrill as Hillary Clinton, but without the felonous spouse - said that global warming was a challenge to security, migration, politics and economics, as well as the environment. No hyperbole there then!

Blaney’s Blarney

Quantity Over Quality

Labour has spent billions of our cash on increasing the number of young people in state education. In 2006-07 it spent £74bn, more than double the £36.4bn spent ten years ago (a 60% increase in real terms). And that leaves out of account the much greater debts higher education students now incur on their own account. Has it been worth it?

Burning Our Money

Green Party Leader

The Green Party is right now asking its members whether or not it should have a leader. Historically, it has always been leaderless. It currently has two principal speakers - which causes needless confusion when they're being introduced at events or giving interviews. This post is going to list five reasons why it is time for the party to have a leader.

Earthquake Cove

Brussels fudge

It appears that, if you want to drive a coach and horses through EU law, you must fulfil three essential conditions. Firstly, you must be the Italian government, secondly, you act against a friendless, largely penniless group of society – Romanian immigrants – and thirdly, you make sure you have the EU commissioner responsible for the law firmly on your side – i.e., Italian.

EU Referendum

The Governor of the Bank of England spills the beans

If anyone had been in any doubt about the importance of Mr Darling in the handling of the Northern Rock crisis, they cannot be this morning. The Governor confirmed that the Chancellor knew well in advance of the difficulties facing Northern Rock, and himself took the decision not to help a takeover of the ailing institution by Lloyds Bank. We already knew that Mr Darling endorsed the decison not to make more money available to UK markets over the summer, and was himself telling the bankers it was all their fault just before the run on Northern Rock took off.

John Redwood

28 days latter - the hypocrisy and corruption of the New Labour government

Its back. A useful Lib Dem idiot is being used by Gordon Brown to whine on about encryption and the possibility that somebody - one day - might require more than 28 days detention to decrypt a hard drive. This is the case for destroying our civil liberties that we are expected to swallow.

Man in a Shed

Flying blind on the Lib Dem race

The latest Betfair prices on the Lib Dem race have Nick Clegg at 0.36/1 and yesterday’s guest on the site, Chris Huhne at 2.85/1. I did notice that there was a slight movement to Huhne during the morning and I wondered whether his confident performance in our online hustings had given him a boost. Who knows?

Political Betting

Lib Dems recovering in new Populus poll

The latest Populus poll for the Times has topline voting intentions, with changes from last month, of CON 36%(-2), LAB 37%(-3), LDEM 16%(+4). In his commentary Peter Riddell emphasises the parties are virtually neck and neck, the gap is mostly due to rounding with only 2 respondents making the difference between Labour and the Conservatives. Like ICM’s recent poll this suggests the Lib Dems are recovering from their awful ratings last month, presumably thanks to the publicity of their leadership contest.

Polling Report

Summing up on Abortion

Two weeks ago I tried to do something which my many detractors would assume I was incapable of doing, given that I am, as is well known, an unhinged spittle-flecked extremist. That is, I sought a compromise between my own position and that of those who disagree with me. I tried to interest defenders of abortion in a political armistice for a good purpose, aimed at helping to achieve a reform which would - in my view - reduce the instance of a major evil. I hoped to do this in a way which might be acceptable to those who, on principle, regard abortion as a procedure which ought to be available under some circumstances.

Peter Hitchens

Politics Decoded

Go over to the Wardman Wire to read the latest Politics's Decoded column...

The Weekend Poliblogs 3rd & 4th November 2007

Tories should focus on own policies

The Conservatives are in danger of becoming cocky and overconfident. Yesterday’s focus by David Cameron on the non-general election of November 1 exposed the Tories’ own shortcomings as much as the Government’s many weaknesses. That is apart from the irony of celebrating the cancellation of an event which Tory leaders never wanted, and which was a tactical coup for them to have halted.

Peter Riddell

If we count every vote, then every vote should count

Polly Toynbee makes a great case for electoral reform on CiF. I’ve changed my mind about lots of things over the years (actually I haven’t), but I’ve never swerved from a desire to see some form of proportional representation in UK national elections. 20 years living and voting in the safest Conservative seat* in the UK can do that to you. My preference is for the Alternative Vote + - as dreamed up by Roy Jenkins and recommended in the commission he headed in 1998. It goes like this:

Harry’s Place

Conservatism vs libertarianism

As the government’s favourite policeman fights for his job in the face of mounting pressure to quit (as a New Labour placeman to his fingertips, it’s entirely typical that he insists on hanging on by them), the Telegraph fills some space on its website with an off-the-peg "have your say" page which asks, "Do you trust the police to keep you safe?". There are 222 comments at time of writing this, and I would estimate that answers in the negative comprise at least 95% of the total.

Mr Eugenides

Let’s face it, we’ve lost…

In four months time, the House of Commons will ratify the Lisbon Treaty; A treaty that creates an EU president, a high representative for foreign affairs, and a treaty that pushes majority voting into somewhere between 45 and 70 new policy areas. Then there’s the ‘ratchet clause’, which could see treaties revised and amended without an inter-governmental conference. If, like me, you don’t like the sound of that, tough.

BUFC

Kelly caught red handed

Ruth Kelly has issued a statement "unreservedly" apologising for misuse of her Parliamentary "communications allowance", a £10,000 a year grant which is turning out to be little more than a propaganda slush fund. You can read the details in the Mail on Sunday here. By rights the revelation that a Cabinet minister has confessed to what might be described as "sharp practice" should provoke a sharp intake of breath. Gordon Brown re-wrote the Ministerial Code in July, "to make sure we maintain the high standards the British people have a right to expect from us". Precisely.

Ben Brogan

So was Enoch Powell right?

The BBC, ever keen to attack the Tories, joyfully reports today that a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate, Nigel Hastilow, is set to be carpeted for saying Enoch Powell was “right” on immigration. Hastilow, PPC for Halesowen & Rowley Regis, wrote in a local newspaper:

Blaney’s Blarney

16-18 Year Olds To Be Kept In School

I'm a little torn on this. You see something in my gut tells me that it's just wrong to keep people in education against their will. Of course we do it every day, up and down the country children will tell their parents every morning that they don't want to go to school. As I type plenty of kids are bitterly angry that they are cooped up in a classroom rather than running around in the park. Hell I'm grumpy and angry that I have to go to work in a few minutes rather than being allowed to sit on my sofa all day reading books.

Caroline Hunt

The government's immigration numbers are wrong again

The immigration statistics saga takes another turn today, as the News of the World produces figures showing that immigrants from the 25 EU countries account for just 32% of the total. Ergo, ministers have been able to control immigration all along – and its repeated suggestions to the contrary are untrue.

Coffee House

Cameron has changed the Conservative Party (but not enough)

Conservativehomeeditorial Yesterday I spoke at Labour's Progress conference. I accepted the invitation before I knew my slot would clash with Arsenal V Man Utd and I had to reject the offer of a ticket for the game. Never mind! The invitation to address the workshop came in mid-August. The topic: "Is the Cameron effect wearing thin?" It was delicious to hear most of my fellow panellists admit that the title was now somewhat out-of-date.

Conservative Home

Nigel Hastilow's Enoch Powell and Immigration comments.

Now, considering that at some time in the future, I would like to become involved in politics, I'm going to be very careful about what I write on this subject. I've heard some very strong language used to describe this situation from the media. What I haven't heard on the news is what exactly Nigel Hastilow had to say in the newspaper column. Peter Hain told Andrew Marr this morning that Hastilow's comments showed the racist underbelly of the Conservative party.

Daily Referendum

Do the Tories want an independent NHS or a private one?

The Tories are proposing to introduce a Bill to Parliament which would effectively given independence to the NHS. The so called NHS Autonomy and Accountability Bill makes me wonder who will be accountable and what would it achieve?

Norfolk Blogger

Tories' Grand Committee idea - is it all due to their virtual elimination north of the border?

In yesterday's Observer, Professor Vernon Bogdanor wrote an excellent criticism of the Tories idea for an English "Grand Committee" in the House of Commons. He says it will create two governments at Westminster, effectively take away Scots MPs' power to vote on the funding for Scotland (which is set via an arithmetic connection the English tax settlement) and politicise the role of speaker, who would have to decide which bills, or more likely which bits of bills, are UK-wide and which are English.

Liberal Burblings

Should Tory punters take a reality check?

The chart shows the changing market views on whether it’ll be a Labour majority, Tory majority or a hung parliament with the prices expressed as an implied probability. As can be seen the big change in the past few days has been for the Tories to squeeze ahead of Labour in the market assessment of which of the main parties is likely to secure an overall majority, if at all. So currently it’s 2.2/1 against the Tories a slightly tighter price than the 2.3/1 that’s available on Labour. The hung parliament option remains the 6/4 favourite.

Political Betting

Just a training company? The Illuminati? The EU? WTF?

The blogosphere carries a lot of (always) disapproving allusions to an organisation called 'Common Purpose'. It seems to be simply gigantic. 'Forty-five offices across the UK. Since 1989, more than 60,000 people have been involved in Common Purpose and over 17,000 leaders have completed one or more programmes.' That's from the website of the Said Business School (Oxford University) who seem to be right behind it..

Prodicus

Ipsos MORI on immigration

A new Ipsos MORI poll in the Sun has topline voting intentions of CON 40%, LAB 35%, LDEM 13%. This is in contrast to a MORI poll a week ago which showed Labour back up above 40%, ahead of the Conservatives. The five point Tory lead is the largest MORI have given them since back in April.

Polling Report

A 'neet' problem

Rarely has an acronym been less appropriate. It is not neat to be NEET. Very far from it. Talking about NEETs though is very cool in Westminster just now. Today it was the turn of the prime minister and his Children's Secretary Ed Balls.

Nick Robinson

Three wheels on my wagon: Scottish Nationalists

I wish this was a story about Alex Salmond restarting cross-border raids into Northumberland in response to the damage and depredations made on Scotland by Hengist and Horsa in around 480 AD (*). Unfortunately it is far more routine. It is about the Scottish Nationalists and the Scottish Government Executive’s financial mickles making a much smaller muckle than turns out to be required.

The Wardman Wire

The Poliblogs 2nd November 2007

Pressure grows on Sir Ian Blair

The press this morning are almost unanimous in calling for Sir Ian Blair to resign. While we should not forget that the Met was operating under incredible pressure that day in almost panic conditions, the verdict does reveal a devastating set of failures. It is hard to see how Sir Ian Blair can restore the public’s confidence in the police.

Coffee House

Teacher, leave those libs alone

If headmasterly Chris Huhne is to compete against Clegg, he must find more to talk about than the environment.

Nicholas Blinkcoe

Clegg and Huhne need to pare it down to basics

The Lib Dem leadership campaign is starting to get spiky. Good, it’s past time for a bit of frankness. And while Nicholas Blincoe’s attack on Chris Huhne over on Comment is Free is ad hominem enough to make even me blush (making up a pretend speech impediment and then taking the piss out of it is in the gutter even by my standards), his criticisms of Chris Huhne’s stance on the environment aren’t a million miles from my own yesterday.

Quaequam Blog

Tell Chris Huhne to lay off the negative campaigning please !!

I cannot be the only person who is concerned about Chris Huhne's apparently "negative" words used against Nick Clegg, can I ? Did Chris Huhne really need to say "Britain does not need a 3rd Tory party"? After all, isn't one of those questions that does not need to be said unless you are trying to imply something?

Norfolk Blogger

Paul Tibbets and Enola Gay

Paul Tibbets, pilot of the plane that dropped the Hiroshima bomb, died today. (The plane he flew, the Enola Gay, was named after his mother.) You can read a jaundiced account of his career on BBC News Online. There is much to be said about Gen Tibbets's long life and public service, but one characteristic stands out. He was, on the accounts of those who knew him, a humane man who reflected publicly and thoughtfully on the A-bomb decision, the lives it cost and also the lives it saved. His view never wavered...

Oliver Kamm

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

Sir Ian Blair is refusing to resign, apparently, despite the outcome of the Jean Charles de Menezes case. Should he stay, or should he go? Meanwhile, here's an excellent piece about Sir Ian from a recent book which a few of you may have read. Took me for ever to type it in, but in case you haven't read it...

The Policeman’s Blog

Who’ll be the next resident here?

The next PM will almost certainly come from one of three distinct scenarios and it’s probably helpful if the field of candidates is grouped into three sections to fit these. Firstly, if Brown were to fall under a political or health-related ‘bus’, there are those people who have the political stature and position to replace him now or in the next two years; secondly, there are those within the Labour Party who could be in a position to replace him at some point after the next election should Labour win it; thirdly, there are those outside the Labour Party who could replace him if Brown serves through to a point when Labour is forced from power - and this could be either a straight election loss or a resignation in a hung parliament following or in anticipation of the loss of a vote of confidence.

Political Betting

Libertarians and Monarchy

Devil's Kitchen and Peter Risdon are having a debate about the monarchy. First, can and should a libertarian be a monarchist? Second, should we adopt DK's particular plan for giving the monarchy 'hard' power within our constitution again? I should qualify that I am not a libertarian so am writing about a doctrine not my own. While I still have relatively liberal views on many touchstone social issues, and always come up as a strict libertarian on the silly ideological tests, I am philosophically conservative. However, I still have a feel for libertarian thinking from my student days, I should be okay.

Sinclair’s Musings

Latest Scottish Polls

Almost a month since it was carried out the most recent YouGov poll for the SNP has been published on the YouGov website, I know some of my readers have been anxiously awaiting it! The topline voting intention figures for Westminster are CON 18%, LAB 42%, LDEM 11%, SNP 27%. Compared to the last general election the Conservatives are up 2 points, Labour up 3 points, the Liberal Democrats down 12 points and the SNP up by 9 points. It was conducted between the 1st and 4th October. To put this is context, when this poll was conducted at the beginning of the month YouGov’s GB polls were still showing a 4 point Labour lead.

Polling Report

You don't say...

The Met has been found guilty under Health & Safety legislation. You don't say - they put a gun to the guy's head and threw out seven rounds in to him. Imagine if they had been found not guilty of breaching health and safety after shooting a man in the head.

What a pointless trial and waste of money. Yes they got it wrong, but either they killed a guy they shouldn't have or they didn't. So they should either have had a proper trial or got on with it. What has health and safety got to do with it ?

I do share a fair bit of sympathy with the police on this matter - particularly after speaking to a member of SO19 a few months back. These guys aren't jumped up traffic cops, they are serious players doing a serious job - and they are anything but trigger happy. They are extremely accountable, as they should be, and every time they discharge a round they are effectively suspended and investigated thoroughly - regardless of the circumstances.

Let's hope this ruling hasn't damaged any of their ability to do their job properly.

The election that never was and the polls that never would have been

There are lots of “non-election day” posts being written today, some said we would be waking up to a Tory government tomorrow, some saying Brown made the right choice as the polls have shown he would be in trouble. If Labour had gone to polls today and the recent ICM or ComRes polls were repeated then Labour would indeed be in trouble and very possibly have lost its majority entirely. But that would be ignoring the fact that the reason the polls say what they do today are because Brown did not call THAT election. The polls would not necessarily be the same if he had taken a different path. Let me take you back a few weeks...

There were three paths that could have been taken that would have got us to today. Two of them would have seen no election, the other would have seen us (bar a few Labour voters who apparently don’t vote if the clocks go back) going to our polling booths.

Path one is the path I think Brown should have taken in the first place. He should have announced on the eve of the Labour party conference he wasn’t interested in cheap point scoring and cashing in on his massive double figure lead in the polls because he is above all that. He wants to get on with doing what is best for the country. If that had been the case, the Tory revival would not have happened – and it may well never have happened. The polls today would give Labour a comfortable lead and the worse Brown would have had to take would be a few of his allies moaning that they might have missed the chance for an easy election win. Brown would have known that, however, he is charge, Cameron is on his last legs, Ming is finished altogether and the Blairites will have to keep schtum. Roll on May 2008 election and easy win.

Path two was the path he decided to take – though not the path he took. That is to say, he was persuaded to go for the election but for some reason just let the issue run and run without saying anything. Brown, of course, denies that he was ever going to call election even if he was going to win with 100 seats. No one believes him of course – if that were the case why did the cash strapped party spend millions on an election that was never going to happen?! Had he just gone with it anyway I am sure he would have won. Given a campaign Labour would have recovered some of their lost ground – enough to at least get a majority even be it a reduced one. The electorate, whilst enchanted with Cameron’s revival, would not have seen Brown as a bottler and there would not have been enough time for him to really convince voters that it was safe to change to him. Of course, Ming would have been stayed too and given an election and the exposure the Lib Dems are entitled to, it would have seen their vote improve (in-spite of Ming, of course). Much of the Tory bounce came from Lib Dem voters, remember. Brown would have won, he would have come out of it a little scathed, but he would have won.

Path three is the path he took and by all accounts it may well be prove to be the biggest political botch up since the poll tax. By bottling it, Brown looked weak, indecisive, manipulating, scheming and rather stupid too. He also transformed Cameron from a man dead on his legs to a very strong opponent. It has ruled out any hopes he may have had of going to the polls next year and it has damaged his reputation almost irreparably. So while he would now be in a commanding position or at very worse have won an election on a reduced majority the reality is he has brought the Tories single handedly back in the game and who now can say for sure what will happen in an election come 2009/10? Rather like the England football team, the future is no longer in his hands.

The Poliblogs 1st November 2007

Government and its Funding

The Labour party is not a political party in the same sense as are the pluralist democratic parties in the UK and other European countries. It has highly formalized sectionalised structures each with an agenda and power hierarchies to which other party members have no access as party members. The most important of these separate structures is the trades unions and their power elite and agenda. This has formal and important ties, too, into an international trade union socialist movement that in no way responds to the interests and concerns of the UK electorate and UK interests.

Angels in Marble

Louise Bagshawe: Just another Thursday

It’s a bittersweet day for me today. I’m off to David Cameron’s constituency of Witney, to attend a key speech. I have a book deadline, so will be writing in the back of the cab. In the morning I’ll be doing the laundry and getting the children off to school; my eldest needs to do his reading practice. All in all, for a candidate it’s just another Thursday.

Conservative Home

Would Blackpool have been different if a poll had not been suppressed?

November 1st, the day Labour was planning for the general election, is probably a good moment to reflect on the amazing events of the past six weeks. And one element that nobody’s really focussed on is the impact of Observer decision not to publish on September 29th an Ipsos-Mori poll showing the Tories 13% behind. For if it had been the splash lead rather than what did appear (above) then would the conference, which started that day, have gone so easily for the leadership and could Labour’s hoped for Conservative implosion actually have happened?

Political Betting

Non-Election Day

Had things worked out differently today would have been election day. What would have happened? Polls at the time of the non-election announcement showed the Conservative’s advancing, and polls in recent days have shown them in the lead, albeit, not by enough to get an overall majority. If ICM’s poll published yesterday had been repeated at a general election today it would have left Labour 26 seats short of a majority and the Liberal Democrats as power brokers.

Polling Report

Gordon Brown's British jobs for British workers - Not in the EU Comrade.

Gordon Brown has repeated his call for British jobs for British workers. I want to know who is trying to kid. There are plenty of jobs for British workers, they just don't want to do them. According to his own figures there are 600,000 job vacancies, if you add to that the 1.5m jobs taken up by people born outside the UK in the past 10 years, you have got to wonder why these jobs have not been filled by our own unemployed. A total of 2.1m job vacancies and we have an unemployment problem? If 1.5m people have come here to work, a large number of which are unskilled, then I think we can safely say that getting a job in Britain is not that difficult.

Daily Referendum

New Labour and educational attainment in Britain

A decade of New Labour in office has transformed Britain’s education system from "below average to above average", Gordon Brown said today in his first major speech on education policy since becoming prime minister. Up to a point. You can get chapter and verse on how the UK compares to other developed countries by downloading these statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development here. On some yardsticks, Britain does top the OECD average. Just. But our relative performance has clearly been slipping and then slipping some more for decades on end. Here’s one fairly representative fact-bite:

Dave’s Part

Don't drive Scotland away, Cameron

Alex Salmond is emerging as an unlikely consensus builder in Scotland, while the Conservatives appear to be turning their backs on the union.

Iain Macwhirter

Clegg on thin ice with ID card claim

The leadership battle for the Lib Dems just got a little more interesting. But just a little. Nick Clegg has taken a bold step in claiming that he will defy the law and encourage others to do likewise. I am deeply opposed to ID cards on a number of levels and I will do everything that I can to ensure that they never come into force. But. You can't just choose to ignore laws, and elected representatives cannot incite people to do so. Where would this end? Ignoring laws on speeding? Paying tax? Murder?

James Cleverly

Next election in hands of 8,000 voters

The next general election could be decided by just 8,000 voters, the Electoral Reform Society has claimed. The organisation published the study to mark what the Conservatives have dubbed "the election day that never was" - the likely November 1 date of a poll until prime minister Gordon Brown decided against going to the country. According to the study, just 8,000 swing voters in 25 key Labour marginals will decide if Labour loses its overall majority.

Make my vote count

What's the problem with PR for Labour?

I meant to comment on this - a jointly-authored article by John Cruddas and Jon Trickett - yesterday, but didn't get round to it.

Never Trust a Hippy

Grand Committee is no easy fix for West Lothian

Andrew Blick (London, Democratic Audit): Those who advocate restricted voting rights for Scottish MPs have undoubtedly uncovered a problematic anomaly with the UK constitution. But the UK constitution is a collection of anomalies and the proposed solution will create more of them.There are many technical difficulties with the idea, but here are some of the more fundamental objections. The focus on Scotland distracts from important questions about the Northern Irish, Welsh and even London devolved governments. MPs are not merely representatives of geographical areas, they deliberate on behalf of the population of the UK as a whole. Decisions that involve spending money are of interest to all MPs since taxes are raised centrally.

Our Kingdom

Asking the people

It is difficult to go into things in any depth when my only access to the internet is via a limited blackberry but I was intriqued by one of the proposals in Chris Huhne's election manifesto published today. Unfortunately his suggestion that we might want to adopt the Swiss idea of a people's veto on unpopular legislation smacks a bit of finding something radical to say for the sake of it. It is not in my view a Liberal proposal.

Peter Black AM

Obama Sex Scandal!

It might be that there's a Barack Obama sex scandal about to break. So I was down in DC this past weekend and happened to run into a well-connected media person, who told me flatly, unequivocally that “everyone knows” The LA Times was sitting on a story, all wrapped up and ready to go about what is a potentially devastating sexual scandal involving a leading Presidential candidate. “Everyone knows” meaning everyone in the DC mainstream media political reporting world. “Sitting on it” because the paper couldn’t decide the complex ethics of whether and when to run it. The way I heard it they’d had it for a while but don’t know what to do. The person who told me )not an LAT person) knows I write and didn’t say “don’t write about this”.

Tim Worstall

Preserving the Kingdom

There’s been an almighty kerfuffle in the past week concerning public expenditure in England’s Celtic neighbours, the Scottish Executive Government plans to scrap prescription charges (something the previous minority Labour administration in Cardiff Bay introduced earler this year), the infamous West Lothian question and ultimately the British constitution in the wake of devolution.

The Wardman Wire

Salmond serves Scotch on rocks and UK's future could be at risk

IF ANYONE has ever doubted the crucial contribution that a single individual can make to the political process they need only look as far as Scotland and the Scottish National Party to have their doubts dissolved. Until the advent of Alex Salmond, the SNP often tottered on the brink of being a joke organisation. With his emergence as its leader, it has become a formidable force, quite capable of destroying the United Kingdom.

Labour Home

Culture of education

Poverty of aspiration. That, Gordon Brown will argue today, lies at the heart of the failure of the British education system to be world beating. The prime minister has, once again, put on his thinking hat for what promises to be another densely argued speech. He believes that the educational debate in this country since the war has been damaged by an obsession either with state-only solutions or market-only solutions. In fact, he will argue neither can provide the complete answer when the real problem lies with the culture of education in this country.

Nick Robinson

Who does she think she is?

Oh the British press. Take Heather Mills ridiculous outburst on GMTV yesterday. The headlines are all along the lines: "I am treated as badly as Kate McCann and Diana".

The sentiment from the press being:

'Mills reckons she is being treated as badly as we treated Kate McCann and Diana! Who does she think she is? She is not in the same league, we treated those two so much worse. That Mills woman has delusions of grandeur if she thinks we'd treat her as badly as we treated the other two'.

And it's true.