From the Commons: Order at last as Michael Martin stands down

Crammed into the lobby yesterday, with the throng of people who had come to see a moment in history that occurs only every three hundred and fourteen years: the resignation of the Speaker. As soon as we managed to get into the public gallery and sat down the fireworks went off but within thirty-five seconds the moment had fizzled out. For there had been no cheering, no great statement, no statesman-like speech only a short brief and to the point address and for less than a minute Michael Martin had briefly restored some order.

The mood in the Commons defused. When he had finished the tension left along with most of the MPs who began to file out as foreign affairs questions began. The PM as he left went over and shook Michael Martin’s hand as he left through the members exit. He was followed by many labour backbenchers the likes of Martin Salter, Dianne Abbott and Stephen Pound speaking to him briefly and exchanging pats on the back and hand shakes.

With his announcement it was back to business in the Commons. With all the understandable furore of MPs expenses over the past fortnight it was gratifying to see some proper debate and discussion. Denis MacShane former European Mission talked of his recent visit to Georgia informing the house that he had seen Russian flags of Russian outposts inside Georgia not far from Gori well within Georgia’s sovereignty. The government reiterated its support for Georgia’s sovereignty as Sir Nicholas Winterton on the Tory benches who asked whether the government would work to improve relations with Russia and be careful not to back one side after the Caucasus was put on the map of international problems during last summer’s war. Refreshing to hear this view from the Tory benches especially after Sir Nick was one of the numerous backbenchers heckling and shaking their heads vehemently against the Lisbon treaty. The Tories are still ardently calling for a referendum, Cameron’s PPS Desmond Swayne yesterday called on the government to have one especially as it was in both main parties manifestos to have one over the Constitution. Caroline Flint reiterated as she has said before that the Lisbon Treaty is different and told the house of Commons that the cost of a referendum would be the same as the general election costing in the region of seventy to eighty million pounds.

The BBC is right not to show the Gaza aid campaign

Gaza Protesters

Just when you think all maybe quiet on the White City front, splashed across the print media is a flurry of critique of the beeb from the Mail to the Times. 

The BBC carries on into this year like a series of one of its hit tragic comedies and Television Centre risks becoming a Fawlty Tower in its own right.  You find yourself cringing as they painfully make a greater mess of what is a simple situation.  Like Basil Fawlty dealing with his german guests, if the BBC were more careful, tactful with their response this would not have got so out of hand.

This television appeal, which is still being edited today for tonight’s broadcast on ITV, C4 and Five, is partial: it is aimed at helping one-side of a war.  You may agree with me that Israel’s actions were absolutely abhorrent and you may like me be about to make a donation to the Red Cross to help the families of Gaza rebuild their shattered lives.  But why should an international news network, famed around the world for its impartiality take a public line and advertise an appeal for one side in an armed conflict?  Were we not aware of the suffering after weeks of coverage?  We are certainly aware of the DEC campaign now, more so than we would have been had the BBC agreed to air it.  In fact, paradoxically the BBC may have done the campaign a favour through this extra publicity and furore which may come at the expense of disgruntled viewers tuning elsewhere for a time.

This whole situation has been born out of the fervent anti-BBC movement amongst elements of the media and politicians who have been brandishing their teeth and led by the antithesis of impartiality The Daily Mail.  Why has Sky News not been criticised, they have not (at the time of writing 5am gmt) not even made up their minds on whether to show the footage or not.  Are they then not heartless for not even deciding on what 11,000 people, 50 MPs, and Britain’s religious leaders see as essential viewing and sitting on the fence? Have they no conscience no standards?  At least the BBC said no.  Why hasn’t CNN been asked to air this campaign, it broadcasts  in Britain and internationally.  Could it not use its airwaves to raise relief for Gazans?  What about Al Jazeera:  the voice of the voiceless, should they not be vocal for this appeal?

The answer as mean spirited as it may sound is no.  All these outlets are there to inform, not to push people so directly in coming down on oneside and by opening up their wallets at the end of news bulletin.  In the last week, the international media has been very good at showing the shear devastation after watching from the sidelines of the Gaza border since 27^th December (with the exception of Al Jazeera who were the only news network in Gaza during the Israeli onslaught). We as the viewer must then take that information and decide whether we let the news roll on to Eastenders or Fawlty Towers re-runs.  We must not have the news followed by an advert which compels to feel one way or another.  Aid agencies already indirectly advertise themselves in war zones by appearing on news programmes talking about the Congo, Darfur or Gaza and give their causes publicity and air time without the need of free airspace and a slanted ad.

 That is the argument the BBC should be making and doing so as candidly as some of their reports from Gaza.  So when a BBC spokesperson is pressed on a radio debate about whether or not there is a “humanitarian crisis” and they try and squirm – like an interviewee on the Today Show – their way out of referring it as one, so as not to weaken their position further in the hostile public environment the beeb now has in the publics eyes.  They should instead stand firm and say: “there is a humanitarian crisis, and we have been reporting on it day in an day out, it is up to the viewers to decide how they react to our impartial reporting on the ground”.  That should be that and the BBC should not be expected spoon feed morals to the public.  If Douglas Alexander and the Archbishop of Canterbury want people to donate money to Gaza they can come and explain why on air or have a whip round the pulpits of Westminster, but not by way of an ad on our news programmes.

   

Game, Set… Obama outclasses McCain in Nashville

In the wee hours of the morning the debate in Nashville in the last ten minutes has become like the university lecture you loathe.  You look at the clock and know that within 30 minutes you’ll be back in bed and may watch daytime TV.

This debate has certainly been more lively than the one 11 days ago but most telling with four weeks until the yanks go to the polls and McCain who is trailing in two polls out on Tuesday by 8 points looked un-presidential.  He did not invoke the confidence he said we need in the economy and looked inexperienced and out of his depth on the issue that has dominated the headlines and this debate.

He tried “my friends” – consistently using that term to the audience – to show he was the more experienced of the two, referring to when he says he tried to tackle Freddie and Fannie – the two public/private or rather after the US government intervened public-owned mortgage lenders – and end the culture of greed two years ago.  If only  the BBC’s Question Time presenter David Dimbleby had been there: I could picture him looking up from his glasses and asking is that why you don’t know how many houses you have.  Needless to say he would have been rolling in his sheets over the way the debate was chaired:  in short it wasn’t.  Stick to a minute on discussion topics the anchor said.  Did they adhere to timings, what do you reckon?  Did he interrupt and intervene – no.

He may have been put off perhaps by McCain’s body language.  Bill Clinton said the best way to judge the candidates is to turn off the sound and watch there body language.  I needed the sound to stay awake but you didn’t need to mute the sound to see the unease of McCain.  It started badly.  The economy was his undoing his first answer on dealing with the global financial crisis was to talk about the need for energy dependency and security.  The last time I checked my economics book that’s not how you deal with a capital shortage in banks.  Nor did see anything about Hank Paulson or Alistair Darling or any other finance minister this side of the pound dealing with energy firms this week rather banks.  Oil has come down from $140 in August to around $90 per barrel at present.

Worst was that he could not answer a straight question.  Asked which order would he prioritise health, energy and entitlement benefits, he couldn’t.  He needed the list read out a second time and his answer would have been the same even if he hadn’t heard the list: they are all equally important, why can’t we sort them all out at the same time?  Obama put energy first, followed by health and then entitlement and explained simply why.

As time passed on McCain increasingly pace-maked around the stage, shuffling around on the floor and often that was just when Obama was talking.  When it was McCain’s turn to talk he sat on the chair looked at his opponent and listened with his legs slightly crossed.

The astonishing thing is watching these two men now Obama looks the older and wiser of the two.  Comfortable in himself and his role.  McCain looks edgy like a man trying to regain the initiative but has no answer, or rather often daring not to give answer for the risk of losing his ailing support.

 

In fairness McCain had some answers for the economic malaise.  He wants the government to buy bad mortgage debt to stabilise house prices.  “Will it be expensive,” he asked; “yes it will” he answered.  Does it matter I wonder well they’ve just allowed $700bn to be spent on bonds and derivatives that no one in the Fed knows exactly what these investments are.  What’s another few hundred billion eh.

Obama on the other hand reiterated very simply his plans to cut taxes for 95% of Americans.  He talked to the centre he talked to middle America whilst not losing the working class.  Talking of helping middle America he reminded working class voters that his plan is not to give tax cuts to well-off people like himself or Mr. McCain.   With a question referring to why have both parties failed in protecting the US from the crisis.  McCain blames Bush and Cheney trying to distance himself.  Obama says no one is innocent in this but that when Bush and the Republicans took office they had a surplus.  A message of humility but one which highlights the fiscal and monetary stability of the Democrat years.

It wasn’t all bad for McCain.  On foreign affairs he was on form.  But with the penultimate question on whether the US would send a military response to protect Israel from an Iranian attack it was much of the same as the previous administration.  The great internationalist and the man respected in many countries said the US would not wait for a UN Security Council resolution to respond the US would retaliate.  He said America must “never allow a second hollacaust”.

Obama said that he would “never take military options off the table” but that it is important “to use all the tools that are at our disposal” calling for “direct talks not just with our friends but with our enemies”.

In the end the calm relaxed man one.  He looked presidential he sounded presidential and came across as the man best placed to blow wind in the face financial storm circling this election.  McCain needs to up his game he needs to improve grasp of the economy before he looks stupid on November fourth.

Obama and McCain meet for the second debate in Nashville

Obama and McCain meet for the second debate in Nashville

News-fright – The grim-reaper stalking Brown

The grim reaper: former whip stabs blunt kife into Brown

The political climate is beginning to heat up as the autumn leaves begin to fall in Westminster.   Brown was, and no doubt still is hoping, that September would bring an Indian summer of shine on his tainted administration and that he may be able to portray a lighter shade of Brown.  Instead the colours got darker for him on Friday.  A figure dressed head to toe in designer black with a garish, dark and weighty chain around her neck walked on to Westminster’s college green surrounded by the press pack and eventually, she made to the towers of the media in Millbank. 

“Losing my job doesn’t matter Kirsty” she told the BBC Newsnight’s presenter, she was doing it for the good of the party and speaking up for those on the backbenchers who don’t dare strike the wounds of poor public appeal that Brown has seeping from every Yougov and Mori wound.

Siobhan McDonagh maybe small fry compared to Brutus or even the chief whip.  But a whip she is.  Charged to defend the Prime Minister and even literally whip dissenting back-benchers into shape, she decided to lead a charge on Number Ten with chalice in hand and dent the scaffolding that is at present quite literally holding Downing Street up.  Will it end in a landslide for Brown of the sort that Blair never experienced?

The news came as Labour HQ admitted that several MPs had asked why leadership nomination papers had not been handed out ahead of the Labour Party conference in a fortnight’s time.   This is standard for the party and even Blair ran the risk that 20% of the parliamentary party – some 70 MPs at present – may try and cast him aside through hands in the air at party conference.

So why did she do it: “because I believe the debate is being had” in government and that they are  “not allowing the wider population in on it”.  Calls again for general election no doubt beckon from Tories voices with words like these, hardly the stuff of loyal party members let alone whips.  The public are only too part of this debate and the disgusted, obtuse voices can be heard in Wetherspoons to wine bars of contempt the public holds for the man who has longed to put GB into Great Britain.

“I want to know what the programme is” she said but you’re a government minister part of his team surely you must know cried Kirsty Wark, well “we’re not in it for the money” she said and apparently leadership candidates themselves could “come up with different ideas”.  Why not wait two weeks and see what Brown, his cabinet and inner circle come up with for the autumn conference?  Her position though she assured wasn’t anything new: she felt the same way she said when Tony Blair stepped down and team GB moved from 11 Downing street into number 10.  So why not say something at the time and instead take up the position of defending what you see as the indefensible?

Who knows; I’m not sure Siobhan knows herself.  “But you’re a loyal member of government there to shore-up support” as Kirsty eloquently put the bleeding obvious to McDonagh.  “Yeah” she said with a slight pause before going on to highlight her record.

So is Big Ben about to chime the clucking bell for Brown.  Hardly, it seems.   He survived Charles Clarke’s comments he’ll survive this rather thin assault.  It exposes once again to the public that the government is divided, concerned and in a self-effacing mess.  Thorns may sprout from many a Labour rose in the coming weeks and days.  Emily Thornberry herself came out at dusk to brandish McDonagh as a nobody and herself as a loyalist, maybe as a hint to fill Siobhan’s shoes and protect her Islington seat which hangs by a knife edge majority in Labour’s hands.

Hewitt and friends who write in Progress magazine next week that Labour needs “a convincing new narrative” are stating the obvious and maybe more unsavoury words for Brown and friends.  The story of who the author of this new narrative should be continues. 

Mc-Cained: Poll to poll with Sarah Palin

A week is a long time in politics, as is too frequently said, though it does feel like an eternity since Obama made his keynote speech in Denver after hurricane Palin blew on to the political scene. 

 

The Republican two, but McCain should have looked leftwards for his running mate

Within a day the media was mopping up the news that Sarah Palin, the Alaskan governor who replaced her Republican predecessor who embroiled himself in a political corruption scandal in 2006, would be McCain’s running mate.  What happened to Romney?  What happened to Lieberman?  The keys to the white house would now be a breath away from a forty-four year-old hockey mum.  McCain lost the experience card on his ticket and has gambled on someone who can steal some of the youthful limelight and mantra of change that Obama holds.

 

This was a mistake.  Whilst Gustav did not rain on the Republicans parade and the party’s rank and file maybe re-galvanised for a pavement-pounding, cyberspace-surfing campaign; McCain has blown his chance card of change.

 

In her inaugural speech ten days ago Palin spoke of eighteen million voters putting cracks in the glass ceiling by voting for Hillary and tried to pick up the fallen baton of the female voter.  Yet women were hardly turned off by Obama – politically as much as anything else – and with the under-35s he had greater support.  The reinforced, double-glazed glass-ceiling that the Republicans actually have to smash is keeping the White House against the odds for a third term.  And even though her convention speech was arousing for the social conservatives and she touched many popular bases with the small town, blue-collared Americans; her views of anti-green, anti-abortion, pro-gun and a hardline on terror sound exactly the same as the policies the US has had for the past eight years.  Joe Biden can tap into blue collar America just as well.

 

As important as the VP maybe, even if Ms Palin herself was unaware of this just a month ago, it is still the Commander-in-Chief who most people will look to when they cast their vote on November 8.  McCain had rising popularity in the early days of the Primaries with his straight talking, centrist views which went against the grain of current Republican thinking.  He was critical of Guantanamo, recalling his own tortured past in Vietnam he called on the prison to be shut down.  On the economy, McCain was more liberal than Clinton and Obama who had supported more protectionist measures against free trade and NAFTA which has generated prosperity and growth for America, Mexico and Canada and has incredible potential.  His opponents attacked it (even though Bill Clinton signed the treaty) as though it was the gutter draining American jobs (this in fact is China which has also been draining Mexican jobs and finishing the Doha round of trade talks which have dragged for five years would go along way to improving the World’s economic climate).  On abortion he has been indifferent, once saying hypothetically that if his daughter wanted one it would be her decision (Palin said the same thing last week about her pregnant seventeen year-old by for other seventeen year-olds she would deny them the right to choose).  With foreign policy he has been much firmer and shown political courage supporting the surge in Iraq and immediately jumping to Georgia’s defence last month whilst Bush and Obama seemed at odds at what to say on the matter.

 

This is not to say that if I were able to vote across the pond I would mark a cross next to McCain.  The old McCain has gone and he has veered to the Republican right and pandered to the religious conservatives whom he once described as “agents of intolerance”.  This will be his undoing.  His party is unpopular.  Double digits separate them from the Democrats who are set for a landslide.  Yet before last weekend McCain led Obama in the polls and last week he had the chance to grab the party by their stensons and get them to take on his potentially winning mantle with the message “We need to change to win” and to have the audacity of hope by moving to the centre which is were he got his lead.  With former Democratic and now independent senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate he could have really made the point that he wants to work with democrats and independents and scoop up those wavering Democrats not sure what Obama stands for.  Lieberman would have strengthened McCain’s experienced hand with his economics knowledge as foreign policy and would not be seen as unfit for office even at the age of sixty-six.

 

But McCain did not do this.  His convention speech on Thursday night was bland even by his mediocre standards of public speaking compared to the Democrat’s two.  Instead he shamelessly tried to pin Obama as a tax increasing liberal and he the tax cutter ignoring completely the content of his opponent’s speech and going for the traditional Republican dig.  If Obama’s speech was thin on the specifics of his policy outlines at least he had outlines.  McCain offered little other than giving his biography and saying he would cut tax for corporations and the essentially the rich.  He has shunned the ideas and potential policies that would have turned on centrists and libertarians in the US and has started supporting the same old policies of Bush which he – like Obama – had once criticised.  McCain should have had resilience in the “real McCain” and stood for what he has believed in for more than a decade.  Now we wait to see what the polls show but this shift to the same old Republican core could be the beginning of his campaign folding.

Desperately Seeking Asylum

Last week immigration minister Liam Byrne tried to seek some political asylum for Brown’s ailing administration by bigging-up the record low in the number of people fleeing war-torn destitution and persecution and coming here to sponge the fruits of our fair shores.  Evidence he declared that “Britain’s borders are stronger than ever” and evidence that Labour was tackling successfully an issue close to the electorate’s heart.  The media, however, were more interested in our new foreign minister, David Cameron and his visit to Georgia and why the leader of the opposition Mr. Miliband had very little to say on the matter unlike our continental cousins the Germans and the French (though a few days later he finally went to Tbilisi and made a rallying speech this week in Ukraine).

 

Unfortunately for Byrne the number crunchers at the Office of National Statistics would not agree.  Their figures show that the 5,720 asylum applications made in the second quarter of this year are 15% higher than the same period in 2007 and in the first three months of 2008 were thirteen percent higher than last year.  Not such good news after all.  Even more sobering news for Labour was the HM Inspectorate of Prison’s report that children were being held for too long at the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire.  According to last week’s report the average time children were held has risen over the last two years from eight to fifteen days.  The “prolonged detention was having a detrimental effect on the welfare and behaviour of children” wrote Anne Owers who is the chief inspector of prisons.  Last week it seems the Home Office was too indisposed in trying to detain its own data sticks rather than caring about the foreign child guests staying at her majesty’s pleasure and getting their figures right.

 

Mr Byrne instead reiterated that “Foreign lawbreakers are being removed from Britain at record levels” rather than focusing on the reality that foreign children are being held in prison at record lengths of stay.  About migrants he said “I have made it repeatedly clear that people who come here must earn the right to stay, work hard and play by the rules.” 

 

But asylum seekers right to stay is purely dependent on whether they were actually fleeing persecution in their country of origin in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and European Court of Human Rights.  They do not have to “earn their right to stay”.  Whether they commit crime or not does not change their fundamental status.

 

For more than a decade there has been confusion over whom and what an asylum seeker is and even with a legal definition it can be hard to define individual cases.  Often the home office staff in Croydon find it hard to confirm exactly where the applicants came from who they were fleeing.  But New Labour’s way of defining migrants over the past decade has a rather odd and yet politically convenient logic.

 

When Blair and friends came to power the number of asylum seekers was rising and deportations of failed asylums seekers had dwindled.  There was the exodus from the Balkans not to mention the Somalia’s, Sri Lanka’s, and Afghanistan’s of the world.  Many felt uneasy about these new arrivals and their views were hardened by articles in parts of the press that saw them as spongers who would live off their taxes and put a strain on public resources they use.

 

At the same time Blair wanted to attract highly skilled international workers.  He felt the best way to keep tax paying, investment spending and job generating multinationals on our island was to allow them to bring whoever they felt they needed to run and work in their companies from shores near and far.  Blair praised these migrants and did everything to let them in arguing that they were economic migrants coming here to work and add to our economy’s skill base: they were good.  But their alter-ego – those seeking asylum – were bad because most were not genuine asylum seekers but economic migrants in disguise coming here to take our jobs and get our benefits.  They should be perturbed from coming and stopped.  The migration sceptics of The Mail and company bought this narrative and the influx of the highly skilled was barely criticised and in fact seen positively, whilst asylum seekers, even the genuine ones, were ostracised by press, government and the views of the majority.  Legislation has tightened which means those seeking asylum cannot work and are completely reliant on benefits until they get a right to remain.  The benefits they receive are significantly lower than those which Brits receive.  For example a British mother with a child under a year old would receive £300 in child benefit a month, an asylum seeker £200 mostly in vouchers.

 

If asylum seekers are economic migrants and willing to work why not let them rather than leave them to live off handouts in a period when our economy was expanding?  Were the people who had the skills and the audacity to flee some of the darkest corners of this earth and the ability to muster the blood, sweat and tears of travelling across continents, get past border guards and deal with smugglers to get here not possessed with the same entrepreneurial panache and get up and go which would turn them into one of New Labour’s coveted hard-working families? 

 

A study by Janet Dobson for the Home Office in 2001 showed that when asylum seekers were allowed to enter the Labour market many were not able to apply the skills they had and these foreign doctors, scientists, teachers and business persons ended up doing semi or unskilled jobs.  Many could have applied there knowledge more usefully if they had the support of the state.  She also found that the cost of asylum seekers to the public purse was actually positive.  Those who were eventually able to work paid in taxes for the public resources they used, covered the cost administering new asylum seekers and even produced a surplus between 1988-2000 of around £120m for the rest of the community.

 

Asylum seekers do not necessarily choose Britain just because of our exceptional economy.  Research in 2006 by the Brookings Institute’s Khalid Koser and UCL’s Alan Gilbert into the reasons why asylum seekers chose Britain found that often it was the choice of traffickers and agents who helped people on their journeys – the asylum seekers did not care they simply wanted to leave where they were from.  Other pull factors were links to Britain like existing friends, family and a community or knowledge of the language base.

 

If asylum seekers were economic migrants and their numbers had fallen that would be more telling about the poor performance of our economy.  There numbers would fall like those real economic migrants the eastern Europeans and most notably the Poles whose influx just a year ago was feared by many, presumably because people felt their stay would permanent.  Well they are now leaving and fewer are coming to take their place.  Poland which is experiencing rapid growth is more appealing than dear old blighty.  With our Chancellor writing in today’s Guardian (Saturday 30^th August) that the British public are pretty “pissed off” with Labour and the state of the economy there is only one solution: beat the Poles at their own game and seek asylum in their booming economy.

Obamania: A call for West Wing series eight begins

Democrats - living the West Wing dream?

There is something nauseating and distasteful about stadium speeches.  It must be because it’s a reminder of all those music concerts where the ecstasy of entertainment is interrupted by stars – some fading – making speeches off the back of the crowd’s euphoria.  They call on us to change the way we live, and that all of us, each and every one of us, together, have the power to end poverty, and make the world a better place.  The crowd whoop and cheer, go home on a high and the next day its business as usual – back to work, looking after their families, carrying out their daily lives and the world’s ills are for another day.

Last night in Denver it was Obama-aid.  With the 75,000 around the Democrat nominee it was a call to arms for change and for the rest of the American people to come together and have the audacity of hope.  Captured on camera it looks like moving stuff even here in this stiff-arsed country with a stiff-arsed prime minister as some yanks see us.  I’m sure most of us would have rained “Yes we can” out of us and hung on every sentence if we were there.  But at a time when McCain is ahead in the polls after months of Obama-domination in the polls, the table has started to turn.  It all seems to have gone slightly sour soon after his whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East – which climaxed in his speech to tens of thousands in Berlin.

Last night he offered little substance.  We know that he is pro-choice, that he will support universal healthcare, cut taxes for 95% of America, and help America go green and wean themselves away from their oil thirst.  Like us Europeans he will talk to the likes of Iran and Syria and he has pledged to cut carbon emissions by an incredible eighty percent by 2050 – though Bill Clinton did manage to halve sulphur emissions during his two terms it has to be said. 

The question of how he will do all this remains unanswered.  How on earth will he end Middle East dependency on oil, surely not by green measures alone?  How will he cut taxes for 90% of Americans with the size of the US deficit (although that has started to shrink this year and the economy at present is not looking quite as tumultuous as Obama describes – the US markets are looking a little rosier)? 

His challenge to McCain can easily be answered next week in the Republicans Minneapolis convention.  Obama simply brandished McCain as being like Bush.  He said McCain voted for Bush 90% of the time, and that he think’s Bush is right 90% of the time.  All McCain has to prove to the swing voters and the disenchanted Democrats is that he is not George Bush.  His stance on torture and previous condemnations of Guantanamo would the first chasm that comes to mind between McCain and the incumbent in the White House.

More convincing in Obama’s speech was his attack on the Republican party’s mantra – even if McCain in the past has not subscribed as wholeheartedly as he says – and the poetic jibe that they “give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is – you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps – even if you don’t have boots. You’re on your own.  Well it’s time for them to own their failure.  It’s time for us to change America”.

Yet most Americans at present accept that argument.  That’s one of the main reasons the Democratic party is twelve points ahead and set to take both houses with sizeable majorities.  Yet there is a plague infesting the Obama house and it is declining poll ratings with the cure being substance which even doctor Biden, who has syringes full of it, may not be able to cure.  It is no good having the substance in your deputy, you need it yourself.  Americans outside the Invesco Stadium were waiting for the answer: “yes he can” change, he can offer substance and he can do more than make emotive, grand stand speeches.  They are still waiting.

The problem and concerns for the Democrat Presidential race is that Obama is living the Democrat dream and not the reality.  This is live political pornography for all those viewers of the West Wing who longed and hoped that their country would be more like Josh Bartlet’s than George dubbyer’s can now see Obama make that so.  He can pick up the mantle where the series left off, from the hands of President Santos – the first ethnic minority President, who is said to be based on the young Illinois senator.   Maybe he can, but its time for the voice of change to change himself and prove that he can.

 

The Bye Election

The love of Labour has truly been lost.  The east Glaswegian stomping ground that was once one of their safest seats is now in the clutches of their political nemesis north of the border.  What’s worrying for Brown is the result comes on the first day of Labour’s National Policy where he could find his policy, in the clutches of the unions. 

 

With the Blair-era business backers flogging their funds elsewhere, fearful that investment in the party won’t yield the returns it once did with the party’s poorest poll ratings for a quarter of a century and the dodgy loans fiasco, the party is now reliant on the organisations they have tried to wrestle power from.  Now ninety percent of Labour’s income comes from the unions and they “don’t give it to them for nothing” according to the GMB.  Brown has already said he will not bring back secondary balloting for strike action nor internet balloting, one of the unions’ primary demands.  And he would be wise to stand firm.

 

Moving to the left to appeal to Labour’s core-voters as the unions have suggested will not let them keep the keys of Downing Street and the ministries.  Instead they need desperately to move back and keep the centre ground.  That means jumping on opportunities at the opposition’s expense like yesterday’s Tory plans to rekindle their historic link with the Ulster Union Party in Northern Ireland.  This surely undermines any impartiality a future Conservative government would have in dealing with the once troubled and now stable region.  Should any problems arise again would Cameron be in the same position as Blair to be able to bind northern Irish hearts and minds together once more? 

 

From the government’s perspective you could argue the great New Labour success of ending nearly four decades of civil strife risks being undermined by political manoeuvring by the Conservatives.  Instead what message does the government give the electorate – if you’re Glaswegian not a lot.  Not one cabinet minister campaigned in Thursday’s by-election.  Despite Des Browne’s message on the Today programme this morning that the “government needed to listen more” they had the opportunity to do that for the last three weeks.  They did not bother and the voters gave their response loud and clear.

 

The malaise that Labour is in is clear to see.  What is opaque is how to get out of it.  Labour is supposed to develop its manifesto for what would be its historic fourth term this weekend at Warwick University.  That idea on both accounts looks like a fantasy.  Getting everyone to agree to a set of policies will be as hard as getting Gordon Brown to make a decision, with the unions, party members and parliamentarians divided as to what the party should do. 

 

The answer to Labour’s problems lies largely in rekindling the party’s love-affair with communication. It may have led to the spin being tattooed to their name but it won them three elections and it got the party message across.  In fact last summer Brown’s ten point lead over Cameron was in part due to his spin and communication.  Holidaying in Britain then back in London like Saatchi’s flash Gordon posters to sort out the foot and mouth outbreak followed by a very measured, timely and sensible response to the Glasgow terror attack referring to the perpetuators as “criminals” rather than coming out with some 12 point plan which falls by the wayside like his predecessor. 

 

The personal problem for Brown is whether he has the charisma left to do it and whether the party will give him a chance.  Labour has not lost yet, but to regain the political lead they may well need the initiative of a new leader come the autumn.  The ideal candidate would be Alan Johnson.  A moderniser who appeals to southern voters and the unions alike (having been the leader of the Communication Workers Union) he is the one person the Tories fear.  And with his more down to earth, relaxed, but tough style he has the potential to plough back the Tory lead in the polls.  As Health Secretary he has been a success.  His predecessor Patricia Hewitt was heckled and booed by the Royal College of Nursing, this year he received a standing ovation.  He is a canny operator with friends both sides of the Commons including David Davis.  His smooth operator-style may just make things get better for Labour, though as the Telegraph this Saturday reports one cabinet minister as saying “things could hardly get any worse”.

Taking a Liberty

This week sees the return of David Davis on the green benches of the Commons after his battle for the protection of our civil liberties.  But through the fields and the towns of the Haltenprice and Howden consituency, the instigators of 42 day detention never turned up to fight their corner.  The Conservatives were the only mainstream party on last Thursday’s ballot paper.  Davis hailed ‘victory’ claiming that he had won the argument pointing to ICM polling showing seven percent of the population had switched their support on extending the time terror suspects can remain under arrest.  Yet still the majority of the population support the government on this issue.

Did David Davis have an impact.  The answer is yes.  In the Commons he fought valiantly in the name of civil liberties but in the end was let down by the Labour backbenchers won round by the Home Secretary and the nine DUP members.  He lost at the backroom political arm-ringing something which he excelled at over a decade ago as one of John Major’s whips.  He was perfectly happy to see the right to remain silent and the obligation suspects have to help the police with their enquiries added to the statute book in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994. 

People do change and Davis’s attacks on the merits of the bill have been impassioned and seem genuine.  But he has not created the debate up in Yorkshire or nationally that he was hoping for.  Despite having twenty-five candidates to debate with the issue of civil liberties was lost with the likes of the Greens and the English democrats who chose to focus on the environment and Britain’s role in Europe.  Jill Saward stood independently on a platform against David Davis’s criticisms of the DNA database and “not saying anything about sexual violence” as shadow home secretary.  She was gang-raped in the eighties and one of the first women to speak openly about what happened.  Yet she came fifth last Thursday behind Miss Great Britain – hardly a bastion of civil liberty or security.  The media pack focused on the extraordinary number of candidates something their more colourful characters like Madcow Girl and the Church of the Militant Elvis Party and why David Davis stood down when the bill is likely to get defeated in the Lords.

Sky News reported that Camronians in the Tory party were eyeing Davis’s job and with Cameron’s twenty point lead in the polls he could finally remove Davis from one of the top jobs in his shadow cabinet.  This seems more likely with David Cameron playing down any chance Davis has of getting a shadow cabinet position.  Appearing on Question Time a couple of weeks ago he humbley answered David Dimbleby’s question of whether he wanted his question by saying “I would love my old job back, but I don’t think it will be offered to me”.  Surely if Davis is as important to the party as Cameron makes him out to be he would simply give him back the position he has served so well.

It seems the Haltenprice and Howden by election was more about backroom politics than civil liberties.  This more of a last hurrah for Davis before returning to the backbenches.  There he could be a large thorn for Cameron able to root into the right-wingers and wait for the Cameronian elan to fade.

Cameron’s ‘catastrophic’ mistake on Europe

This article appeared in Pi Magazine, February 2006.

 

Ken Clarke described David Cameron’s planned withdrawal of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament as a ‘catastrophic’ mistake.  Speaking to UCL students at a Tory Reform Group event the last Conservative Chancellor felt it was a misjudged move and would leave the party aligned with “neo-fascist fringe parties… not the sort of people the Conservatives should be associated with.”

 

Francis Maud, Conservative party Chairman, dismissed Ken Clarke’s comments stating that Cameron’s move is to form “a new centre-right grouping that is more aligned to our approach in Europe.”  Mr. Maud ruled out any partnership with UKIP in the European Parliament and reinstated that William Hague is currently negotiating with a range of political parties.  However, he said this new European party would still “work with the EPP” in Brussels.

 

Tim Yeo, a Tory moderniser who is not on Cameron’s front bench, was less vocal at the TRG about pulling out of the EPP.  But he did say that the “more we engage, the more likely we can influence Europe in the way we want it to be”. 

 

When asked if he felt it was a mistake to isolate the Tory party from the two centre-right parties of France’s UMP and Germany’s CDU – which are part of the EPP and likely to be in power at the time of the next election in Britain – Mr. Yeo stated that “we should be drawing them into the debate rather than cutting ourselves off”.

 

At best David Cameron appears to be embarking on a very ambitious European project, at worst he will leave his party isolated and taint its image at home and in Europe.

 

All three men were extremely positive about Cameron’s leadership so far.  Tim Yeo passionately told students “he’s done very good job indeed, and has an impressive understanding of what the party needs to do to get into power at the next election.” 

 

Whilst the Tory Reformers were all behind David Cameron at the event held in Millbank, there were signs that not all on the Conservative benches were behind him.  “The vast majority of the party are behind him; there is no tolerance of any dissent at all right now” says Yeo.  However, the former Environment minister admits that privately some may have doubts but they are keeping those to themselves.  Yeo believes he will get the benefit of the doubt over the next few months, and that it will be healthy for Mr. Cameron to “face down” and debate with critical party members.