Monday’s Today Programme on Radio 4 majored on local government.
It was the usual shambles. We were told that local authorities were expecting to make cuts in services – hardly news. One reporter told us that libraries were not used by many people – in fact had she spent ten minutes on research she would have discovered that libraries are visited by half the adult population each year. This makes libraries far more popular than any if not all of the sporting events on which the BBC lavishes time and our money each year.
Last week, Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, launched the Referendum (Scotland) Bill consultation. The SNP has few aspirations, beyond independence for its own sake. I can’t help but think of them as someone courting a reluctant bride. They keep asking, and keep cajoling, hoping that eventually the electorate will say yes, and let them take them up the aisle.
On Friday, Nicola Sturgeon, who faced parliament about her own troubles earlier in the week, said “this isn’t about what the SNP wants, it’s about what the people of Scotland want”. Well, she’s wrong. This consultation actually is …
A former US grassroots campaigner, now working in Manchester, has claimed that Labour is an alienating force in our big cities and Obama would never have made it in the Labour Party.
By Stephen Tall
| Sun 28th February 2010 - 3:45 pm
Let’s begin with the positive: Inside Out, Peter Watt’s autobiographical account of his two years as Labour general secretary during the handover from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown, is an entertainingly gossipy book which, at 200 pages, doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s packed with anecdotes and throwaway remarks which cast a new – and rarely flattering – light on Labour’s senior dramatis personae. In short, well worth reading.
But does Peter Watt come out of it well. Hmmm, there I’m less sure. Here are the five aspects of the book which struck me …
Thing 1: Tribalism
The over-riding impression of Inside Out is quite how tribal politics is. And not just tribal between parties – that’s, at least in part, to be expected – but also within parties. For example, the very New Labour Peter Watt boasts of exploiting the rift between Blair and Brown when hacking for the post of general secretary, accumulating a motley collection of votes on Labour’s National Executive Committee from “trade unionists, people on the hard left and passionate Blairites”.
Mr Watt presents the traditional mea culpa at the end of the book (“tribalism turns good men bad”), but it’s easy to be sage after the event: what politics needs is for its participants to recognise this when they’re in leadership positions, not when they’ve shed them.
London Assembly member Caroline Pidgeon sets out how the Mayor of London’s approach to problems with the London Oyster travelcard is a demonstration of Boris Johnsons wider approach to addressing issues that face Londoners:
This week at City Hall I was accused by Boris Johnson of being a “negative Liberal Democrat” when I dared to question him over some of the problems that have happened as a result of the extension of Oyster Pay as You Go to national rail services across London.
Well I stand by my questioning of the Mayor as there is no …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 27th February 2010 - 8:15 am
Here’s your starter for ten as we continue our new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
All liberals will happily sign up to the concept of free speech. But the practise of it often makes us uneasy. JS Mill summed up the dilemma by asserting that while all opinions should be aired, one can’t “shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre”. In other words, freedom of speech must be tempered by individual responsibility. The inevitable question then arises: who should exercise that responsibility: the individual, or should it be regulated by the state in some way?
With their lead in the latest opinion polls down to just 5% according to one poll, there is clearly a bit of a wobble at Conservative HQ. Right-wing website ConservativeHome has helpfully printed a ten point plan to put the Tory election campaign back on track. Here’s an alternative take on it …
1. Don’t panic
The Corporal Jones approach. Perhaps not the best way to encourage the Conservative grassroots to stay focussed. As all psychologists will tell you, if you tell people not to panic, the one word they remember is – Panic. What the Tories ought to be running …
What do Lib Dem MPs have in common with the Tories and Labour? Hardly any of them pay their interns – along with almost all politicians and media groups. With an increasingly competitive employment market, getting a job today often relies less on your interview skills than your ability to intern for free. An article in the New Statesman highlights this problem, but even they fail to pay those interns who are working for them.
To support yourself in London for three months costs around £2000. The division between those who can afford to do internships, and those who cannot, …
Surprise, surprise. The Press Complaints Commission rejected the complaints about Jan Moir’s nasty attack on Stephen Gately.
If there’s any good to come out of this affair, perhaps it’s that this case reinforces the case for wholesale reform of the PCC. Here’s why.
The PCC is not independent
The PCC claims to be independent. One of the advantages of self regulation ought to be that it keeps the press out of the hands of politicians while still holding newspapers to account.
The PCC fails on both counts.
The Chair of the 17-member Commission is Baroness Buscombe, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. Her party …
By Chris White
| Thu 25th February 2010 - 11:24 am
Local newspapers in western Hertfordshire exploded on Friday evening with news that the county council had lost a court case. It was chasing an invoice for £335 in a dispute with a water company over a broken manhole cover. The county council had had to put up a couple of cones to warn passing motorists and apparently cones are expensive things to handle.
The water company felt that this was excessive and the council and the utility had seen each other in court. The costs of the case were awarded largely against the council and were reportedly £110,000.
Sorry to be militaristic. This is the signal that the Royal Navy used to make it a supreme force in the world two hundred years ago.
What is the one factor that is preventing thousands of electors giving the Tories another turn? It is fear of what they did last time. It is fear of Margaret Thatcher’s impact on unemployment and on essential services.
Cameron’s main objective has been to move this stigma from the brand – cut’s in services, dole queues, the nasty party.
This morning Osborne admitted on the Today Programme that he will …
So, how to explain what Alistair Darling has been up to with his comments about Number 10 unleashing the forces of hell on him?
Let’s go for the carefully plotted conspiracy theories first (warning: may contain irony).
Explanation number one: it’s all a clever plot to make sure the Conservatives win the general election and are then crippled for a generation by having to carry out huge spending cuts. After all, look at the damage winning in 1992 did to the Conservative Party in the long run. This is a consistent, long-term and well thought out plot of course because each time …
By Prateek Buch
| Wed 24th February 2010 - 12:50 pm
It isn’t often that Members of Parliament are praised, vilified as they are over their expenses, point-scoring and deference to vested interests. Yet this week has seen a moment of real clarity in Westminster, a true demonstration of how our elected leaders can exercise critical thinking and formulate policy based on objective, rational evidence – and all this over some tiny sugar pills.
The political impact of TV debates in other Parliamentary democracies (and yes, yawn yawn, obligatory American reference, in the US too) has often been more about expectations than about absolute performance. Beat expectations and you benefit from the debate, even if that means people viewed you as the narrow loser. But if you were expected to be a big loser and then beat expectations and only just lose, you benefit.
Also the impact of debates has often been to reinforce people’s existing predilections rather than switch people between different parties or candidates. That has, for example, been a common feature in Canada, where TV debates have been held off and on since 1968. (Yawn yawn, US example, 1988 second Dukakis-Bush debate and others.)
In other words, you’re best placed to come out well from a debate if your party is the one most in need of motivating its supporters and if the expectations about your performance are low. Step forward then, Gordon Brown.
As for Nick Clegg?
Both of Brown’s advantages are advantages over David Cameron – and only over David Cameron. Liberal Democrat share of the vote is fairly static overall as turnout changes: from purely partisan motives, the level of turnout does not really matter, though of course from the perspective of health democracy higher turnout is much to be preferred. The expectations one is trickier, but the expectations amongst many in the media that Nick Clegg will benefit hugely from being in the debates is based on simply him being there, so he won’t go in to them with the pressure of extremely high personal performance being expected by the media.
Moreover, for Nick Clegg there is that third factor: TV debates can raise the profile of leaders beyond the main two parties.
For Nick and the Liberal Democrats this is likely to be a major boost, because consistently the party does best when it is in the news (even if, during the post-Kennedy leadership contest several MPs did their level best to disprove that). As simple a move as asking people about their views of party leaders before asking them which party they’ll vote for raises the third party’s vote in opinion polls. That’s why for many years Gallup gave the party higher ratings that other pollsters.
Compared to that, appearing in a trio of TV debates alongside Brown and Cameron will be a massive boost for Nick Clegg and the party.
Whilst we wait to find out what the televised general election debates will bring, enjoy this moment from the 1988 Canadian debates. The 1988 election was a re-run contest between Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives, who had won a landslide in 1984, and the Liberals under John Turner, still leader despite leading his party crashing out of power in 1984. John Turner is the silver haired one:
At the height of Make Poverty History back in 2005, in the Cabinet Room at No 10, Richard “Four Weddings and a Funeral” Curtis asked then PM Tony Blair, “would you mind if I showed you a video I’ve made?” It’s not the same as some bloke at work offering to show you his holiday snaps. So when Richard Curtis showed his new Robin Hood Tax video to some of the 85 national organisations supporting the latest big campaign in the TUC General Council Chamber earlier this month, we knew we were in for a treat. There’s already
Yes, teenage girls have problems. And it may well be that there are specific measures the State can take to reduce those problems, such as the regulation …
Here’s your starter for ten for our Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Although it is estimated that no more than 2,000 people in France wear a burka, it has become a hot topic of political debate:
A parliamentary commission proposed a ban on the garment in all public services facilities, including transport.
The commission’s report stops short of recommending a complete public ban on the head-to-toe covering, which conceals the face, wanted by many politicians. Instead, it calls for those wearing the garment to be denied access to hospitals, buses, welfare offices and all other public facilities. (FT)
There’s a class war going on. So the Tories tell us. They treat it with distaste. But they rather seem to revel in doing so.
It’s all about one man, David Cameron. So the Tories tell us. It’s all about the disgraceful proposal from Labour that we should vote against Dave simply because he went to Eton.
Pause for breath.
Labour, let’s face it, make a pretty implausible bunch of class warriors these days. As Blair put it, they are all middle class now. Recently, the Tory press pilloried Harriet Harman as a class warrior when she dared to point out that Labour …
The Guardian reports that the Press Complaints Commission has rejected a complaint from Andrew Cowles, the partner of the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gately, over a Daily Mail article by Jan Moir originally titled “Why there was nothing ‘natural’ about Stephen Gately’s death”. Moir stated that Gately’s death was not natural, despite official reports to the contrary, and claimed that the circumstances were “more than a little sleazy”.
Over 25,000 people complained to the PPC over the article, claiming that it was homophobic and slanderous. The article went on to compare Gately’s death to the suicide of Kevin McGee, …
Even the keenest, most aggressive deficit cutting rhetoric used in any of the main political parties still envisages a large deficit for many years to come. Politics over the next decade is likely to be hugely shaped by this backdrop. It won’t squeeze out all other issues but, just as the 9/11 terrorist atrocities caused civil liberties and foreign affairs to dominate much of the political debate in subsequent years, the deficit is likely to dominate over the next few.
What will the practical consequences of that be? What issues may come to dominate political debate?
I got my first lap-dancing related hate mail the other day. The writer (who was not anonymous) suggested that I had nothing better to do with my time and argued that I belonged in the Stasi.
One of the hazards of politics is that you occasionally take a clear public view and someone doesn’t like it. My crime was to have issued a statement in support of the new rules on sexual encounter establishments.
Since the 2003 Licensing Act, lap-dancing clubs had been subject to the same licensing regime as pubs and restaurants – in particular, there was a presumption in …
By Prateek Buch
| Wed 17th February 2010 - 12:50 pm
As people who know me well will tell you, I’ve always been something of an idealist, daydreaming about some abstract political philosophy whilst everyone else deals with more pragmatic concerns – or ‘living in the real world’ as I believe it’s known. I make this point as what I’m about to write alludes to an apparent confluence – potentially at least – of strands of abstract political thought and practical everyday policy that I believe should gain prominence as the general election approaches.
First of all let’s deal with the practicalities (unusual for me but there you go…). Earlier this month …
Councillors in Salford will be banned from using Twitter in meetings.
Gatherings of the full council at Salford’s town hall have been covered live by councillors via their micro-blogging profiles.
The debates have attracted hundreds of followers, but town hall bosses have now banned members from using the site during meetings.
I have to admit to being rather confused by this opposition to Twitter that’s creeping across a few Town Halls.
The argument is that councillors who are twittering can’t be paying attention, but how can you report on a meeting if you’re not paying attention to it?
Despite their professed enthusiasm for having a bonfire of the quangos, in practice the Conservative Party keep on announcing new ones – and have rather run in to trouble when pressed to explain what’s going on the bonfire (both points I wrote about here).
The tally of new quangos the Conservatives is now at least 19, which sits rather oddly with the rhetoric about culling them. However, that doesn’t mean all the individual proposals are bad ones.
One in particular which appeals to me is an Office of Tax Simplification.
Regular readers may have noticed my love of tangling with bureaucracy. (I …
“Where have all the good times gone?” That old song by The Kinks often comes back to my ears when I am in Britain –quite regularly, that is. The economy is not only going down, it is just not up to what it used to be.
The Cadbury flop
The takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods is just the latest in a long series. In less than three decades Britain has lost many of the jewels in its industrial crown.
One of the most spectacular examples is of course the car industry. When The Times writes about Jaguar Land Rover as “the UK’s …
By Stephen Tall
| Sat 13th February 2010 - 7:45 am
Here’s your starter for ten as we experiment with a new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Belief in equality is, as the preamble to the Lib Dems’ constitutions states, one of the fundamental values of the party. But, as with all values, equality can mean different things to different people.
There has long been tension between liberals who believe the role of government is to aim for equality of opportunity for everyone, and liberals who believe government must promote equality of outcomes. The former will tend to stress the importance of education as the chief means by which individuals …
By Stephen Tall
| Fri 12th February 2010 - 2:30 pm
Two articles by broadsheet columnists on the prospect of a hung parliament bookended this week. In their contrasting ways, both made a convincing pitch for the attractions of neither Labour nor Tories ending up with an overall majority at the next general election.
The bogeyman of a hung parliament is being used to terrify British voters. What is needed, it is argued, is a government with a strong majority, to rescue the UK from the threat of national bankruptcy. This is nonsense. The UK
There is one principle that Labour politicians seem willing to test to destruction in the English courts. It is the avoidance of embarrassment principle. The Foreign Secretary has not only tried to apply that principle in court, in full public view – where he has looked increasingly ridiculous in the Binyam Mohamed case – but his legal representative has also tried to pursue the principle in private, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to conceal his master’s shame and the
Government’s hypocrisy.
Even though the Government appeal in the Binyam Mohamed case was dismissed the Foreign Secretary told the House of Commons that …
By Stephen Tall
| Thu 11th February 2010 - 10:25 am
The last 24 hours’ focus on voting systems – surely every Lib Dem’s dream come true? – have highlighted just how hard it will be to gain acceptance for the party’s preferred proportional voting system, the single transferable vote.
It’s no surprise that almost all MPs from the two establishment parties, Labour and the Tories, are desperate to hold onto the electoral system that secures their cosy hold on power: just five Labour/Tory MPs voted to include STV in any referendum on voting reform.
But it will also be the case that a significant portion of the country will …
By Iain Roberts
| Thu 11th February 2010 - 7:28 am
Radio 4’s Today Programme has revealed the cost of the new parliamentary body to police MPs’ expenses: around £6.5 million a year, with 80 staff and a boss pulling in £100k.
Nice work if you can get it, but surely it raises serious questions about the new system.
The total amount current and former MPs are being asked to repay, covering claims over several years, is a touch over a million pounds.
That means the new cost of checking those expenses and ruling whether they’re legitimate is many times higher than the amount the public purse was previously losing where …
Chloe It seems many on this thread live in a post fact world. Comparing the two papers it's blindingly obvious - add to that the outlandish claims of the personal exp...
David Raw What is the party doing to improve it's showing outside 'Middle England' ? 1.6% in Cumbria, 3% in Nottingham, and 2.1% in South Yorkshire sends a message the p...
David Allen "@ David Allen …………………… Oh, dear, yet another example of how the Lib Dem Party has swung to the right"
Just in case you've missed it, Mr Raw,...
Simon Robinson @Mick: I also have a PhD so I have a pretty good idea what studying for one involves and I agree with @FS People. I think the thing you're missing is that there...
Jeff Judy Abel 16th Aug '26 - 3:51pm:
I am sorry but while privatisation may not automatically lead to poor water quality it certainly has in the UK.
...
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A library on the site of an old fire station
Ian Christie asks if the cinema invented Swinging London
Latest voting intention and leadership ratings opinion polls
George Eliot as Coventry City supporter
Chloe 
David Raw 
David Allen 
Simon Robinson 
Jeff 