Just thought I would add a little tempter to readers to nip out early tomorrow morning. I have just been told that a News of the World poll due out tomorrow will give the Tories a 9% poll over Labour and another in the Sunday Times, conducted post Budget, will show Labour a whopping 16% behind!
Certainly a nice end to Spring Forum this year!
The news this morning is full of two extraordinary stories that underline the truth of Macmillan’s maxim.
The first was to be expected. The nationalisation (although the government is avoiding the term) of Northern Rock has provoked cries of “unfair competition” from other banks, howls from commentators about government dithering and fears of job losses running into thousands for which Labour will now be responsible. The problem of Northern Rock was not something that Brown saw coming, but it has shaken his administration as much as anything.
But the big story at this moment must be the announcement that Fidel Castro is to retire. This is an event that has been so long coming that its actual arrival is a surprise. There can be no doubt that this is a welcome development for the democratic world. For Cuba, this will mean radical change. 70% of Cubans were born after the revolution and have never known any other leader. There is a hope that this might herald an era of better relations with the US (which is more likely if Obama wins than McCain) and real economic reform.
Let’s just hope that these events all turn out for the better in the long-run.
As I outlined on Wednesday morning, in my view, David Cameron had one big task to perform in his close of conference speech. Did he deliver? By and large, yes, I think he did.
The press over the last two days seems to agree and the polls out today, particularly the Guardian which puts the Tories and Labour neck-and-neck, back this up.
What did he get right? Most things. The key element for me, along with the warm words about education, the NHS and defence, was the tone and the philosophy that ran through the speech. What I was hoping to see, and what I did see, was a philosophy coming through that could be summed up on the doorstep with some juicy phrases. Some of the ones I noted down during the speech included:
“We are the Party of One Nation” - This was obviously a particularly TRG-friendly phrase!
“The revolution of freedom from control” - Which works as a key principle that many will understand and relate to.
“Stop wasting money on pointless gimmicks” - Another with broad control that, coupled with the right examples, will be a winner.
“Why don’t you [Brown] go ahead and call that election and let the people decide!” - This has been one of the most consistent recent themes and has been repeated by every member of the party interviewed in the last few days. Brown now has a no-win choice on the election and the Tories seem to be very much on the up as a result.
“Britain will win” - Nice and simple closer, although not exactly Churchillian, it worked well for the cheers in the hall but will perhaps travel less well.
One phrase I did no hear from DC, but which is already being used widely, is “Safer, greener Britain”. This did not sit easily with me the first time that I heard it as I thought the terms made an odd couple. However, it is being repeated and seems to resonate, so there you go. The connecting them is one of the Conservative Party protecting the country from the biggest threats and that was a good part of DC’s speech, too.
Was there anything wrong with it? The “no-script” approach might have jarred with some, but a larger number probably appreciated it. There were some sections that seemed a bit long, but even then there are audiences for some policies that might have felt left out had they been shorter. Really, though, these things are quibbles and the real answer to the question is no, nothing much.
So, the Tories now have a spring in their step and a bounce in their polls. Whether either lasts remains to be seen, but I think this is an overall vote of support in the Cameron leadership.
From a TRG perspective, it is all to be welcomed, and our members are likely to be able to campaign with enthusiasm and confidence should Brown not lose his nerve over calling an election.
Jack Straw’s comments about the need for the law to be made clearer so that those willing to do so feel safe to intervene in the face of crime are welcome. This is not least the case because his government has successfully oppossed several Tory attempts to do the same thing over the last ten years.
Straw wants to protect those people who intervene to prevent crime or to catch those who have carried it out. Good. Some might even say, about time. Crime, particular at the low levels of public disorder, are vastly worse than they need to be because too often those involved are not challenged by the people around them. Anything that can be done to address that should be perceived as a good thing.
It also reminded me of this great little piece by the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, who witnessed a couple of doses of anti-social behaviour on the tube and why is ashamed to not have acted as he would have hoped he would.
I have written before about the split between town and country, which I view as one of the biggest divides in Britain today. One lady, Jane O’Neill, feels the same way and has been on Radio 4 this morning.
Jane has a small holding in Sussex, where some of my own family used to farm. She told a story about a teacher from the South-West of England who refused to to take children on a farm trip because she thought farming was cruel. Why? She thought that cows had to be killed to remove their milk!
The gap between town and country is getting even bigger. Jane’s response has been to do something about it and she is driving geese through London, as it used to be done, tomorrow to highlight the problem. All of this forms part of “The Farming to Food Show”, which sounds like a pretty great way to bring some understanding of farming and where food comes from (that is, where it comes from before it gets to the supermarket!).
The Farming to Food show is at Potters Field, right by City Hall, London on 27, 28 & 29 September 2007 and is open from 10 a.m.
Something to do before conference! If anyone goes along, leave a comment here with your thoughts.
The Financial Times is carrying a story today about the upcoming sale of one of the earliest issues of Magna Carta.
Magna Carta is very dear to my heart, which may or may not be connected to the fact that I read history at university.
However, in the frequent debate about whether Britain needs a written constitution, it is important to remember that Magna Carta is an early forebear of just such a document. For example, it recognises and enshrines limits on the power of the state and offers the basis for an impartial legal system.
No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any other way destroyed, except by the lawful judgement of his peers.
Over the years, most of the copies that were originally sent out to each county, have been lost or damaged beyond repair. The British Library holds four copies, of which only one is in a good state. The one on sale is one of only two copies currently outside the UK and the last in private hands and has been on display at the National Archives in Washington since arriving in the US in 1984, alongside the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence
Sotheby’s are estimating that it will reach around $30m, which I believe is a bargain for such an important document for both British history and the cause of human rights. It might be worth a quick whip round among some of the Conservative Party’s biggest donors, too, as we should be looking to preserve such a rare document.
After all, Tony Blair had a pretty good go at trying to tear-up all the other copies…
This evening’s edition of the London evening standard is being promoted with bill board’s covered with words to the effect that Brown has already fired the starting gun for an election.
Of course, this is not quite the case, but there does appear to be a shift towards an election given the Prime Minister’s speech at the Labour Party conference this afternoon.
Discussing this issue with people over the weekend, the common view seemed to be that if there is an election in 2007 it would be at the end of October, before the clocks go back on the 28th. I am going to to put my neck on the line and suggest that IF there is an election, it will be in November and probably on the 8th rather than the 1st.
Firstly, I don’t think that the clocks going back is the issue for Labour that is for the Tories, and even then it is small. Secondly, the perception amongst Labour advisors is that local Conservative Associations are not as ready for an election as the central party machine likes to make out. In particular, it is their observation that a great many seats remain without candidates and they do not want to declare an election before the Conservative party conference has concluded next week as that would give ample opportunity for Tory Association Chairmen and candidates to get together if needs be. They also want the Tories messages to be blunted by being unsure whether they are looking three years out or three weeks. Finally, Gordon ‘Prudence’ Brown will be wary of the Tories pulling off a minor miracle and getting a big enough bounce from conference messages to look more threatening.
All of this points to a decision on or around the 9 October when the first poll data after the Sunday papers review the Tory performanceI. Adding three weeks to that will take us into November.
Anyone think otherwise?
And if you will excuse me a moment of I told you so, I told you so… :0)
On the “Blogger TV” show on 18DoughtyStreet.com on Monday, we debated the issue of the likely effects of Northern Rock on the opinion polls. I suggested that provided no-one lost any money (which they didn’t) then the Northern Rock affair would blow over and do precisely no harm to Labour’s polling. One of my fellow bloggers disagreed.
My assertion was based on a comparison with the run up to the 2001 election, in which thousands of burning animal carcasses were on TV each night in an attempt to clean up the foot and mouth infection. Blair was advised by almost everyone to not hold an election because of the damage that the affair was thought to be causing to his ratings. He judged, correctly, that once the images were gone so would the memory. Something similar happened here and the moment there were no longer pensioners queuing around the block, all was revealed to be fine.
Last night’s Newsnight poll showed the results. Labour undamaged by the whole affair. An election in 2007 seems ever more likely.
The news has emerged that no body is likely to face charges in the cash for peerages affair. The BBC’s Nick Robinson has done an excellent job of summarising the whole thing in his blog.
I am looking forward to seeing some of the apologise that are now due from some parts of the media. However, some suspicions no doubt remain and long-term damage has been done to public confidence.
However, I have long thought that this affair was one of the main motivations behind the renewal of the wrong-headed proposals for turning the House of Lords into an elected chamber. Maybe, in the cold light of day, this will now rightfully fizzle out.
More from me on this topic in the autumn issue of Reformer.
John Cruddas has quite a few. So does Alan Johnson. David Cameron has a lot, as do some of his opponents.
I am thinking of friends among the bloggers out there. On 18 Doughty Street this evening, we were chatting about bloggers’ reactions to Gordon Brown but could not think of one friend that he has out there.
There seems to be an extraordinary lack of enthusiasm among grass-roots Labour members for old-Gordo. Does anyone know of a blogger who has stood up for him?
His friends among the union movement seem to be thin on the ground, too.
I love the Economist.
As a single, weekly digest of global news and opinion I don’t really believe that it can be beaten. The name is not completely correlated to the contents, as there is a good mix of arts and politics in with the financial and business stories.
In particular, I love the columnists that each cover one of Britain, Europe and the US. This week’s US column, written under the sobriquet “Lexington”, offers a summary of a book entitled “The Myth of the Rational Voter”, by Bryan Caplan of George Mason University, that explains something that I have never truly understood: why voters are stupid (although being a book of US-origin, it is less blunt than me).
The theory of modern democratic decision making has long since abandoned the idea that everyone in the population needs to understand the most complex problems in order to make a decision. Based on an economic theory sometimes known as the “miracle of aggregation”, the idea is that in any large herd (like a bunch of voters) the vast majority can make decisions based on not really knowing what is going on but provided there is even a small minority that can make well-informed decisions it will all work out in the end. The bulk of people will behave in a way that is almost random and thus cancel each other out at the ballot box. The few that are informed or knowledgeable enough will then swing the balance. As Lexington points out, this works pretty well in most parts of life. The audience of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” is right 91% of the time, for example.
Sadly, when it comes to voting, Mr Caplan suggests that the system breaks down. This is because the voters that are not making their decisions based on sufficient information do not behave randomly.
Caplan suggests that instead, they are motivated by four main forms of bias. The first is that given a lack of economic understanding, many people fail to understand the benefits of a market economy and tend towards an anti-private profits bias (look at the anti-Tesco movement in the UK). Secondly, they do not see the benefits of interactions with foreigners and tend to be anti-foreign. Third, most people believe that everyone having a job is more important than what everyone is doing, which is simply not the case, and leads to bad economic decisions. Finally, most people think that things are worse than they actually are so are open to manipulation and (sometimes) unnecessary changes that address problems that do not really exist.
The sad part of this is the way in which politicians exploit these traits in the knowledge, frequently, that they are promoting behaviour that is not in the long-term interests of their electors. This explains the anti-immigration tendancies of the Republicans and the anti-trade tendancies of the Democrats, for example.
The book would appear to be a useful read to both aspiring politicians and their critics. I am off to order my copy on Amazon.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC MP, a patron of the TRG, responds to Tony Blair’s recent article for the Economist.
As he comes to the end of his time in office, Tony Blair has felt the understandable urge to defend his foreign policy record. In an article in the Economist entitled ‘What I’ve learned’, Blair attempts to justify his decision-making. Regretfully, he does not appear to have learnt very much. As usual, his analysis of the threats and challenges that we face is broadly correct. It has been in his proposals for action that he has fallen down, with terrible consequences for both the UK and the wider world.
more…
There are two-sides to every debate, it is often said. The media has managed to make this point today by carrying two stories at the same time on the subject of immigration.
The first, concerns a report from the generally excellent Jospeh Rowntree Foundation. The report details the higher than expected levels of immigrants who come to the UK expecting to return to their country of origin only to later change their minds and opt to stay.
Such is the general hysteria on the subject of immigration that this story has been near the top of the news all day and BBC News 24, for example, has interviewed several people about different aspects of the story. Underneath it all, I have had the feeling that there is a “the foreigners are flooding in” feeling that I dislike.
The second story, less sensationally covered that the first, explains why immigration is still needed and that in some aspects it is, in fact, declining and causing problems. The National Union of Farmers (NFU) has warned that the strawberry harvest is under threat due to too few immigrant fruit pickers. The main issues that the NFU thinks is the cause of this lack of labour are rising living standards in Eastern Europe and too many job opportunities for immigrants who do still come the UK.
In this case, the immigrant shortage is among unskilled labourers, but there have been plenty of recent studies highlighting the needs for skilled migrants, too, such as the one conducted recently by the British Chambers of Commerce. This study was another that was not carried as loudly in the media as the anti-immigration case.
So, as ever in the debate on immigration, there is one message suggesting there are too many people arriving in the UK and failing to integrate and another message saying there are not enough.
There are few more emotive topics in the current British political climate than immigration. However, we cannot let either side run away with arguments based on prejudice or ignorance. We need immigration - the questions need to be about the levels, border controls and methods.
The Tory party has been handling this well of late, but we must ensure that the wider media does not run away with stories that prevent rational discussion. Both sides of the issues need to be promoted equally. They were not, today.
During his spot on GMTV’s political show this morning, Iain Dale, Tory Blogger extraordinaire, suggested that in the next shadow cabinet reshuffle, which he predicts will be mid-June, David Cameron should pull in a couple of heavy-weights with real experience of politics to ensure they look credible to the electorate.
Interestingly, the two names he suggested were Lord David Trimble and Ken Clarke. Now I was pleasantly surprised by his selection, and would wholly endorse both. As if it needed pointing out, Ken Clarke is the TRG’s President and Lord Trimble (this bit is news!) will be the TRG guest of honour at our up coming summery party!
Perhaps we should offer Iain a ticket?
The government has released the latest paper in the barrage of initiatives designed to soften up the public before the next generation of nuclear power stations is announced to a general feeling of “unpleasant but necessary”. This one suggests that the best location for a new nuclear power station is Hinkley Point in Somerset, closely followed by Sizewell in Suffolk (not far from where I grew up as the crow flies, and the subject of my school project when I was 15).
Now, I am not against nuclear power stations on principal and would swallow the argument that we have to have them if we are to reduce our carbon levels sufficiently. But may be we should all be questioning that assumption…
There is an interesting little gadget on the BBC’s website. It is an energy calculator. It lets you enter your preferences for how energy is produced and then tells you how it might all work out by the year 2020. The aim is to ensure that the UK generates enough electricity for our needs while staying within our carbon emission targets and doing so at a reasonable cost.
What intrigued me was not just that this seems to be an excellent aid to understanding competing policy requirements where the explanation of the sources indicates a good deal of thinking and research. It also occurred to me that, quite surprisingly and assuming the inputs are correct, that this is not a hard equation to balance, after all. I would be intrigued to know if others have found the same? I certainly did not need to resort to some of the scenarios the government appears to be suggesting to lead us to build more nuclear stations.
However, before I give more away, I’ll post up my choices as a comment so you can have a play first and then see if your solution looks anything like mine! If we do all disagree, then maybe it is not as straight forward as it seemed to me.
Given that we are likely to be deprived of anything interesting happening during the Labour leadership contest, we have to look at the Deputy Leadership Race to see what the parliamentary Labour Party really want to see as the future for their Party. Will they dump all the vestiges of Blair? Will Brown get his man in? Will their be a triumph for old-Labour?
It is not the most appetising list to chose from. Cruddas represents a wing of the party that many want to see die and puts off voters. Blears, Johnson, Harmen and Hain have all been tested in a variety of roles and been found wanting to various degrees.
At the moment, William Hill seems to have Hilary Benn out in front. He is perhaps the freshest face among the leading pack and may be a good way of reaching out to some of the middle-class, Islington set voters that Blair always kept on-board, but may be worried by Brown.
May battle commence!
We should also take a moment to remember what came before. The resignation of John Prescott in the wake of his leader is also a small moment of significance. Take a moment to look at the BBC’s montage of classic Prezza images. Aah… the memories. How ever did this man get to be a heartbeat away from the top job in politics?
Amidst all the coverage of Blair’s resignation speech yesterday, I am afraid my main thought was, “Oh no, we’ve got seven weeks of this…”. I had already had enough of his emotive language - as ever using phrases such as “I did what I thought was right” rather than emplying reasoned arguments to back-up his actions. However, it was not the coverage as it happened that worried me, it was a fear about what was to come later in the day.
I was scheduled to appear on 18 Doughty Street last night as part of a panel discussing news events of the day, a date picked a week or two ago. To be honest, when I realised that that was also to be the day of the resignation, I knew that was all we were going to talk about. I really thought there might be nothing else left to say. After all, the Tory party has spent over a decade criticising him. However, I am pleased to say, I was wrong.
We talked about the things we thought he had done wrong (a long list), things he had got right (a shorter one) and what will happen next (In a word: Brown - yikes!).
But one thing caught my eye above all of the other comments. It struck me as being an important symbol of the passing of the Blair-era of spin, hypocrisy and emotive language. The Labour Party launched a new website and a new party logo.
Gone are the references to “New” Labour. This is Labour, the old way. The website is pretty good from a website point-of-view and has clearly been in preparation for some time, so there is nothing likely to be ill considered here. Brown is clearly wanting to send a message that the spin of “New” Labour is dead, long live “Labour”.
This feels like a little bit of step back into the past, though. Indeed, the new logo looks like the kind of red stamp 
that was used in offices in the 1970’s and 80’s that might have otherwise said “Denied”, “Approved” or “Top Secret”. It is somehow punched out and authoritarian - particularly in the way they have chosen to show the rose part of the logo. Maybe that is just my view and the rest of the world will see it differently, but I think there is always a great deal to be said for the importance of symbolic moments like this. Blair is gone. Brown wants to make sure everyone knows that. I suspect the rest of his plans will not be long in un-folding.
Anyway, if you want to know more about the logo and the other (less myopic!) things we discussed last night, you can watch the full show here.
When I wrote a short piece about the local election results recently, I started by saying that there was little to be added to the mass of commentary in the media.
But perhaps one dimension that might be of interest to TRG supporters and other Conservative Party members, is the way in which “old” Labour has started to interpret the results. In this case, the voice of the Labour left is Compass, a pressure group that, among other things, is supporting Jon Cruddas for the Labour leadership.
The following as an excerpt from their report on the election results. There is more on their website.
Results mark death knell for New Labour
Comment from Compass Chair Neal Lawson on the election results
It’s been a bad and bruising encounter for Labour. 27 per cent of the votes cast is a miserable tally. Just one per cent up on Labour’s worst result ever. This is not an opinion poll. These are real votes cast by real people. The Tories have consolidated above the 40% barrier and are inexorably shifting from hung parliament territory to potential out right winners at the next election. This can and must be reversed. But it demands the party changes.
Natural Labour supporters have been put off voting for their party because of a toxic combination of Blair, Iraq, sleaze and what’s happening to public services. All of this was avoidable. We said after the 2005 election victory that Blair should go and that if he insisted on prolonging his premiership he would damage the party and the country. The hard work of thousands of councillors and party activists around the country has been undone by a Prime Minister who out stayed his welcome. Where now are the people who said Blair should stay for a full term?
These elections signal the death knell for the politics of Blairism. We have lost five million votes since 1997 - mostly from our traditional base, who no longer feel able to turn out for us and stay at home or protest through the Greens, Liberal Democrats or others. Now Cameron threatens to drain away middle class support - creating a pincer movement that could be devastating for Labour MPs at the next election.
The Party cannot go on run as a tight clique, commercialising public services and playing the nodding dog to George Bush. It is not just Compass that demands a change of direction but the country. Let’s be clear – unless there is a break with Blairism Labour will lose the next election. That means the modernisation of hospitals and schools based the ethos of public services; it means less flexible labour markets; a shift towards Europe; a reconnection with the people of the country through democratic reform and with party members by starting to listen to them. We forgot that we are the servants. On new issues like the environment, well-being and quality of life we have got to get ahead of the Tories and stop lagging behind. All of this can be done and a forth victory secured – but not just through a change of leader – only though a change of direction.
The loss of hundreds of councillors and members will be a hammer blow to local parties. In Labour’s depleted party ranks, councillors tended to be the people who have kept the campaigns and the canvassing going. They are the ones linked into local communities, supporting Labour MPs and keeping the party alive. They are the fabric of the party. The Tory party had lost its councillor base by the early 1990s and the national party crumbled soon after.
Jon Cruddas is the only candidate on the ballot paper for the new leadership who understands the depth of the hole we are in and has the commitment and the plan for the renewal of the Labour party. Others, who have been in the Cabinet and the leadership team, have allowed the party to whither. Now we must chose change.
Some people never learn! It is almost enough to lead us to pity Gordon Brown. But not quite.
Just watching the Politics Show on BBC 1 a few minutes ago, I saw John Reid announce his attention to retire from the Cabinet in June, “once Tony goes”.
I wonder if this is the start of a series of high-level departures from Labour’s ranks. Gordon Brown faces a real problem with personnel. Many of the best political operators have already gone (Mandy, Blair himself, etc) and the big names that are left are tired. It will be a really difficult task for him to manage the transition of faces there needs to be if there is to be any feeling of change from the Blair-era while also keeping control of the media and their ministerial responsibilities.
Update - 6 May 2007
It took the BBC a couple of minutes longer than the TRG to get the story up!
The story has been revealed that Greg Dyke, formerly of the BBC, has considered running for London Mayor.
However, a key detail is not being widely reported by the press and that is that Dyke approached the Conservative Party, not the other way around.
Dyke’s idea was based on his disillusionment as a long-term Labour Party supporter and (I believe) donor. He wanted to stand as an independent and had asked the Lib-Dems and the Tories to endorse him while not putting forward anyone of their own.
It was wise of the Conservative leadership not to dismiss a successful figure with wide name recognition, like Greg Dyke, out of hand. The Lib-Dems are apparently not able to entertain the idea because of limits in their constitution, but with no such limits on the Tories it is right that the party leadership considered all of the options.
In the end, I think it would have been wrong if we had chosen to be part of this plan, but it would have been worse to have said no without thinking.
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