What to make of the by-elections?

I’m not the greatest fan of Parliamentary by-elections. They provide, almost invariably, an unedifying political spectacle in which fairness, objectivity and the public become by-standers to the main event. That turnout is usually low - despite the avalanche of leaflets, and babble of mob-handed canvassers - highlights the gulf between the amped-up interest of we politicos, and the damped-down disinterest of the voters.

However, they remain significant events - serious tests not only of the popularity of political parties, but also of their campaigning effectiveness. To disregard them would be even more foolish than to over-egg their wider significance. What, then, is at stake for the three main parties at Ealing Southall and Sedgefield?

Labour

In a perverse way, Labour can afford to be most relaxed about these by-elections. Why? Because they have a ready-made excuse - all governments suffer mid-term setbacks. It’s a tired, clichéd, and not wholly accurate excuse. But there is enough of a grain of truth in it to get Labour off-the-hook. Unless, that is, their doomsday scenario occurs, and they were to lose both by-elections… in which case it’s a disaster which will flatten the ‘Brown bounce’. More likely, Labour will hold one or perhaps both, albeit with slashed majorities. They can live with that - though that they feel able to should give them serious pause for thought.

Lib Dem

As the acknowledged by-election specialists, the Lib Dems are probably most tense for two reasons. First, because expectations of our performance are commensurately higher. In one sense this is healthy - it shows party activists are still enthused enough to mount a vigorous campaign, and that the media must acknowledge (however much it pains them) that the Lib Dems are not going to disappear simply so that lazy hacks can indulge their love of old-school two-party politics.

And, secondly, because our performance is being viewed through the prism of Ming Campbell’s leadership. Anything that falls short of expectations - however high and unreasonable those expectations might be - may be portrayed as a disappointment, and increase still further the media speculation which has plagued Ming’s 18-month tenure.

A victory in either/both Ealing Southall and/or Sedgefield should be more than sufficient to calm any party nerves, and to shore up Ming’s position. (Though given the commentariat appears to have made up their mind about Ming it’s doubtful that they would accept any evidence to the contrary.) A good result would be the Lib Dems running Labour close in Ealing Southall, and getting a substantial swing in Sedgefield to leap-frog the Tories into second. A poor result would be if the Lib Dems slip back into third in Ealing Southall, and cannot progress in Sedgefield.

The Tories

They, too, will be tense - they have thrown a hell of a lot of resources at Ealing Southall in particular, and anything less than a good second place will be a disappointment. David Cameron’s position is, of course, secure for the moment - he is, after all, more popular than his party. However, a failure to make real progress in this seat will trigger a few concerns, even among loyal Cameroons, that the party is still in no fit state for a general election campaign. And among the not-so-loyal-Cameroons, we might expect to hear some mutterings that Mr Cameron’s personal choice of candidate - famously photographed beaming alongside Tony Blair only last month, and a Tory member for only a few weeks - exemplifies the style-over-substance trait which risks becoming his defining characteristic in the public mind.

Clearly if the Tories win Ealing Southall it shows they’re back in business, at least in the south of England. They could be satisfied with a second place, leap-frogging the Lib Dems. If they remain in third place, it will be a poor investment on their effort.

Their expectations for Sedgefield appear much lower - they would, I suspect, be ecstatic if they held onto second place. If they slip to third, behind the Lib Dems, they will shrug it off. That in itself says much about the national ambitions of the Tory party today.

What should Ming have done?

I have to admit my first reaction to yesterday’s Guardian story - reporting that Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell had discussed Lib Dems taking up cabinet positions in Mr Brown’s first cabinet - was horror. Nor was I as convinced as fellow Lib Dem bloggers appeared to be that the story was nonsense peddled by shit-stirring Guardianistas.

As further details have seeped out - like a stranded oil-tanker leaching effluence - I’ve reflected a little more on the chain of events, at least as far I can trace them from the press reports, and thought: what would I have done if I were in Ming’s shoes?

Apparently, Ming and Gordon met on Monday, following a letter sent by the Lib Dem leader to explore further what our Prime Minister-in-waiting intends for his proposed constitutional convention. The party leaders do meet from time to time - as is quite proper - to discuss such matters behind closed doors. It was, let’s remember, following Ming’s meeting with David Cameron that the silly suggestion that Greg Dyke run for Mayor of London on a joint Lib Dem / Conservative-sponsored independent, anti-Ken ticket was first broached.

At their Monday meeting, Gordon raised with Ming the possibility of some senior Lib Dem peers - Lords Carlisle, Lester and Baroness Neuberger, for instance - taking junior ministerial roles. Now I guess Ming could have dismissed this out-of-hand, said it was absolutely impossible, no-go, no way. Perhaps, and with hindsight, it would have been cannier.

But it doesn’t strike me as that unreasonable for the party leader to want to think it over, to take soundings from others in the Lib Dems. This, it appears, is what Ming did.

And those soundings left him in no doubt that the Lib Dems would not contemplate any kind of approach from Gordon, which in any way smacked of ‘coalition’ - at least not until there’s a deal on the table which sees considerable progress towards achieving key Lib Dem policies.

It is characteristic of the love of hyperbole of Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, that he could describe these shenanigans on BBC Radio 4’s Today as “breaking the mould of politics in this country”. Nonsense. Ad hominem (or ad feminam) changes are inevitably temporary. Structural change - to our political institutions, our voting system, and so - is an essential pre-condition of any attempt to transform Britain’s political torpor.

The question then remains: who leaked these discussions to the press? I think it’s pretty clear it wasn’t the Lib Dems, as the party (including senior figures, like Vince Cable and Nick Clegg) were clearly caught on the hop.

So it was a henchman in Team Brown. This could be someone who wanted to kaibosh the deal. Or it could be a mischief-maker, keen to show-off Gordon’s ‘big tent’, and willingness to stretch out a bi-partisan hand - only for his endeavours to be snubbed by those petty partisan Lib Dems. Either way, it shows Gordon and his acolytes in a poor light, willing to sacrifice serious discussion of important issues in order to win a day’s headlines.

The lesson that should be drawn from this is quite clear: Ming cannot trust Gordon (or at least Gordon’s friends) to keep private discussions private. Which means any chance of a post-election deal between Labour and the Lib Dems is now an even more remote possibility than it was before.

Gordon may have scraped a battle victory by firing on the Lib Dems while our backs were turned. But he may not be smiling after the next election when he’s lost his majority.

What would a Lib Dem reshuffle bring?

In less than a month, there will be a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who will re-cast the Cabinet to reflect his ambitions. The posts of chancellor and of home secretary will, we know, become simultaneously vacant.

It seems likely, too, that the current incumbents at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (Margaret Beckett) and the new Ministry of Justice (Lord Falconer) will be leaving the stage. We are, as yet, in the dark about whether John Prescott’s hole as outgoing deputy PM will be filled.

In sum, it’s a major overhaul of a serving government unparalleled in modern political times. This poses challenges to the opposition parties, and we know (which is to say, I’ve read it in the papers) that David Cameron is currently preparing to re-shuffle the Tory shadow cabinet in readiness for a Brown Government.

What of Ming Campbell and the Lib Dem shadow cabinet?*

To date, speculation about the Lib Dems has centred on the party leader himself. But, despite a few mutterings, there seems little prospect of a forced exit, least of all from the members of the parliamentary party whose jobs are, ultimately, on the line. Most appear content that the much-vaunted-but-little-seen behind-the-scenes organisational changes Ming has instituted will begin to bear fruit - if we can avoid another destructive bout of public panicking.

So will Ming re-shuffle his team?

Or will he choose to leave things be?

After all, the Lib Dems’ problem is the opposite to that of the Government. The key difficulty Mr Brown needs to surmount is that Labour looks so dreadfully tired (as well as appallingly incompetent, but let’s leave that to one side). For us the third party, our key spokespeople are still too-little-known. Where familiarity has bred contempt for Labour, we rely on it breeding contentment for the Lib Dems.

Nor does Ming have much scope to re-shuffle. Vince Cable might make way for fresh blood in the form of Chris Huhne (or David Laws). But Vince has made huge strides in establishing some semblance of credibility for the Lib Dems’ economic policies - no mean job when the party hasn’t been in power for 80 years. Last year, I suggested he could be given a strategic policy co-ordination role, which would have suited both his considerable talents, and his second job as deputy party leader. But, with Steve Webb heading up the writing of the next manifesto, that role is now taken. So Vince, I guess, will be staying put.

Nick Clegg is a prolific shadow home secretary who is regularly sought by the media, while Michael Moore is still trying to get noticed as shadow foreign secretary (a tricky task given the media always makes a beeline for Ming the moment Iran, Korea or the Middle East hit the headlines).

In the chief public service departments - Health, Education, Transport and Environment - the party has yet to score big against Labour or the Tories. (Though at least in Chris Huhne’s environment portfolio this cannot be ascribed to either lack of industry, or the absence of a comprehensive policy agenda.)

We can, of course, blame the media for their disinterest in public policy compared with their febrile who’s-hot-or-not personality obsession. But, truthfully, who among us could give a quick (and accurate) summary of how the Lib Dems would transform for the better our hospitals, schools or railways?

This is not to pin the blame on those shadow spokespeople in those four hot seats. It comes back to that over-used touchstone, ‘narrative’, hotly debated in the Lib Dem blogosphere of late: how do we explain to people, simply and clearly, how the Lib Dems will help them, and improve society.

‘Free, fair and green’ is a good start (and, come to that, a pretty good slogan). But how many of our policies - across the board - actually fulfil those criteria? And if I as an engaged party member am asking that question, is it any wonder that the wider public is uncertain?

I suspect any changes Ming might make to the Lib Dem shadow cabinet in the next few weeks will be marginal. And that’s fine by me - unlike the Tories, we are not a party which looks to the bloke at the top of the party to explain what our long-cherished principles are this week.

But a reshuffle is as good an opportunity as any to ask how far we are translating our liberal principles into liberal policies. And how good a job our shadow cabinet is doing at explaining either or both to the electorate.

* If you’re a Tory about to complain the Lib Dems have no ‘right’ to call their front bench a shadow cabinet, please spare yourself the hassle. The Tories are, de jure, HM The Queen’s Official Opposition. That does not give them exclusive rights to the term ‘shadow cabinet’. Get over it.

Never go back

It was on this day, 30 years ago, that James Callaghan’s Labour Government survived a vote of no confidence, with a majority of 24, thanks to the votes of the 13 Liberal Party MPs.

The dying embers of a Labour Government, led by a Chancellor-turned-Prime-Minister with no mandate from the British people, propped up by the third party in return for a few meaningless concessions… it could never happen again, could it?

Incidentally, Gordon Brown could do worse than try and learn a trick or two from Mr Callaghan's easy, relaxed, honest interview style.

A Labour and Tory coalition? That sounds grand

There are very good reasons why Lib Dems should not talk about hung Parliaments - as Ming Campbell recently discovered, it produces a lot of unhelpful distraction-chatter. However, I’m happy to make one exception to the rule (in time-honoured tradition): the prospect of a ‘grand coalition’ between Labour and the Tories in the event of no one party having a majority after the next election.

In the past, I’ve tended to be a little dismissive of the notion, regarding it as a too-clever-by-half response which deflects, but does not answer, the question Lib Dems hate: which party would we support? I felt it would lack any real credibility with the public, and so merely bring us a lot of grief as the media fixates on whether we’re ‘left-‘ or ‘right-wing’. (Even though the media would never think of asking Labour or the Tories whether they’re liberal.)

And I’m not the only one wondering whether Britain’s Tories and Labour might ‘do a Germany’, and band together on the mushy centre ground they each seem so keen to occupy - The Times’s Tory-supporting Daniel Finkelstein is also contemplating it:

… on three occasions now, Mr Blair has relied on a differently composed majority to sustain his Government - one that unites the centre against the fringes. Could a minority Government work in a similar way? A cleverly produced Queens Speech could challenge a centrist leader of the Opposition to support the Government or risk being seen as obstructive and opportunist. The Opposition leader might fear the consequences of bringing down the Government on a measure they actually support. The middle against both ends? It could happen.

Credit where it’s due - Chris Huhne was among the first to raise this prospect last year during his bid for the Lib Dem leadership:

We must fight as an independent party. If there is no overall majority after an election, we must look for the best way to advance our cause while maintaining our identity and independence. This may even mean going into opposition while the Conservatives and Labour form a German-style grand coalition.

There are two advantages to this approach from a Lib Dem perspective.

First, it emphasises the degree to which Labour and the Tories are seeking to triangulate their appeal - with Labour trampling all over civil liberties to reach out to voters attracted to authoritarian policies; while the Tories embrace Polly Toynbee and Bob Geldof in an attempt to woo left-liberal voters. It also demonstrates the extent to which the two main parties have collaborated on Iraq, education, and now Trident.

But secondly, it also distinguishes the Lib Dems as the ‘radical centre’ in opposition to the establishment which is the ruling Labour/Tory duopoly. When I voted for Ming Campbell as leader, I did so knowing he was the candidate most easily caricatured as a member of the political aristocracy. As a party which has often struggled to be taken seriously (and that was certainly the case a year ago), this seemed a positive virtue. It still does. But it’s not enough.

We need now to show the public that Britain under the Lib Dems would be a different, brighter, more optimistic and humane place. The choice facing the electorate is more of the same under the leadership of any combination of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or David Cameron; or a change for the better with the Lib Dems. That’s not such a hard sell.

"Don't kill the FoI"

The Government’s refusal to introduce a Freedom of Information Act with teeth was the reason I resigned my Labour Party membership back in 1999. (You can find out just where it was lacking here.)

I no longer wanted to be associated with a political party which has no genuine commitment to empowering the individual against the over-mighty forces of either the state or commerce. Besides, I reckoned that if Labour didn’t have the guts to be radical on an issue like this, which is of minor importance to most people, they were even less likely to make a positive impact on more controversial issues which might attract the ire of the Daily Mail.

But, disappointingly circumscribed as it is, the FoI has dramatically helped to open up the workings of government, local and national. This has sometimes made uncomfortable the lives of both elected and unelected officials - which is just as it should be. I’m sure some public time and money has been wasted answering the repetitive queries of vexatious complainers. It is a small price to pay for the right of all of us to access information about the decisions of those who are in our employ.

But now the Government wishes to rein-in the FoI, and make it much easier for government to refuse to answer questions asked under its aegis. As today’s Press Gazette points out:

According to the Government’s own independent review, an extra 17,000 FoI questions (out of around 100,000) a year will be turned down after the rule changes — irrespective of the public interest in information being released.

The Gazette has launched a petition to urge Labour to change its mind, and retain some semblance of commitment to open and transparent government. No, I don’t hold out much hope, either. But that’s never been a reason not to try. Here’s what you’ll be putting your name to, and how you can do it:

We, the undersigned, urge the Government not to undermine the effectiveness of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 by passing into law the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2007.

To sign the petition, email your name, job title and the organisation you work for to: dontkillfoi(at)wilmington.co.uk.

Why the Labour Party cannot grow up

Oh, for goodness’ sake… Everything I most dislike about the Labour Party, and which prompted me to quit its ranks seven years ago, are encapsulated in these words of Matthew Taylor, the Prime Minister’s ‘chief strategy advisor’:

"We have a citizenry which can be caricatured as being increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government," Mr Taylor told the audience [at an e-democracy conference in London]. Like "teenagers", people were demanding, but "conflicted" about what they actually wanted, he argued.

The reason I left Labour was not that I had abandoned the cause of social justice - that is as important to me as it always was - but the realisation that ‘the left’ view social justice as something which government does to people, rather than something government enables people to achieve for themselves. The state will give power to the people, but only once they accept that it is on loan, and that it can be called-in by the government if it feels the people are abusing their freedom.

“Not yet capable of self-government” - perhaps the most astonishingly brazen (yet remarkably honest) descriptions of Labour’s core attitude towards us, the citizenry. Perhaps Mr Taylor would like to advance his frankness, and define what steps the public must take in order to come up to the mark, to show ourselves to this Labour Government to be worthy of being entrusted with the power to rule ourselves?

I suspect it would mean agreeing with what the Labour Party says and does. Only at that stage would we have proved ourselves to be sufficiently mature.

Mr Taylor’s argument continues:

"The internet has immense potential but we face a real problem if the main way in which that potential expresses itself is through allowing citizens to participate in a shrill discourse of demands. If you look at the way in which citizens are using technology and the way that is growing up, there are worrying signs that that is the case."

I love the patronising tone - “the internet has immense potential”… well, yes, it does. It also has an immense presence in the here and now. What really bothers Mr Taylor, I suspect, is that his government doesn’t have the ability to mould it, to tame it, to control it.

I imagine Mr Taylor and the Labour Party would prefer to see the Internet resemble a canal system, with varying water levels carefully regulated by ever-watchful lock-keepers. They believe themselves to be the true gateways to equality, enabling easy navigation, and that without them no journey is possible. Sadly - for them, but not for us - the Internet is a torrent, incapable of being dammed (although frequently damned) by over-officious patriarchs who consider they know better.

It’s true the medium veers towards the shrill, though most of the blogs I read - and those which are most widely read - present rational arguments, albeit with an earthy vocab, and from an unabashed vantage. Guido Fawkes is perhaps an exception, but to criticise his glibly partisan coverage is to miss the point - you might as well bemoan the lack of fair-minded balance in Private Eye’s HP Sauce column.

Besides, the readership of blogs pales into insignificance compared with the numbers who listen to radio phone-ins, which are - wholly, universally, and without exception - vacuous, vicious, and vomitous.

And finally:

"What is the big breakthrough, in terms of politics, on the web in the last few years? It's basically blogs which are, generally speaking, hostile and, generally speaking, basically see their job as every day exposing how venal, stupid, mendacious politicians are. [Can anyone point me to a more egregious example of poor sentence construction? “Basically”, “generally speaking” - both repeated twice… FFS.] The internet is being used as a tool of mobilisation, which is fantastic, but it only adds to the growing, incommensurate nature of the demands being made on government." … Part of the problem, he added, was the "net-head" culture itself, which was rooted in libertarianism and "anti-establishment" attitudes.

I’m unconvinced that blogs are “the big breakthrough” for politics on the web. They remain a minority interest, albeit punching well above their weight. As for being “hostile” (I assume he means to Labour), what was he expecting? Rank upon rank of virtual cheerleaders for one of the most authoritarian governments on record?

Blogs are often, by their very nature, obsessively monotonal. So what? Readers are sufficiently clued-up to decide for themselves both what to read, and what to believe of what they read. I offer opinions, tempered by facts. In that order. This blog does not exist to inform (though it may do), but to stimulate, and (occasionally) to persuade.

Mr Taylor may regard political blogs’ indulgence in ‘fisking’ as a destructive force (especially if he happens upon this article). But surely it is just that kind of robust, detailed, line-by-line deconstruction which shows the Internet at its best? Whatever your viewpoint, it’s hard to see how it detracts from the sum of human knowledge.

Indeed, Mr Taylor’s argument is a little muddled. If the ‘net-head’ culture is ‘rooted in libertarianism’, it’s hard to see how this “adds to the growing, incommensurate nature of the demands being made on government”. Unless Mr Taylor is complaining about that rare breed of libertarians which demands more government intervention.

What I think Mr Taylor’s argument is really about - though he’d deny this - is the resentment of those who’ve been accustomed to being at the centre of political debate, intrigue and gossip finding their club is no longer as exclusive as it once was.

Labour politics is ironically circular: in order to continue fighting the class war, the class war must never end. As a result, Labour politicians are imbued with an impregnable aura of self-righteousness: because it is their job to save the lower classes from themselves. It is the ultimate in infantilisation. That they do not, cannot, trust the public is why the public increasingly distrusts them.

The rest of us are growing-up. Perhaps the Labour Party might care to join us?

Labour's gutless complacency: a collective failure

I guess it’s kind of impressive - every time you think the Labour Government can’t sink lower they plumb a new depth.

I’m hard-pressed to know in whom I hold most contempt. It could be the Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett (I still find that four-word sequence ludicrously far-fetched) who argued that a review of the Government’s catastrophic failure of leadership in Iraq would send “the wrong signal”:

“our words... will be heard a very long way away. They can be heard by our troops who are already in great danger in Iraq”.

This can be termed the ‘Dick Cheney defence’ - that somehow to criticise the Government undermines our troops and is, by definition, unpatriotic. The argument might have more validity had Mrs Beckett or any of her cabinet colleagues (bar two) understood their duty to challenge the evidence on which the war was predicated before voting to send British soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their deaths.

The idea that those who voted against the war - the Lib Dems and Nationalist MPs - are the ones now putting the lives of troops in danger is monumentally crass.

But at least Mrs Beckett can claim to be bound by collective responsibility. Backbench Labour MPs who chose not to back today’s motion have no such excuse: only 12 of them thought that the largest foreign policy failure since Suez might merit a Parliamentary inquiry to find out how so many of those in government - elected politicians and unelected advisors - could have committed such a tragic misjudgement.

The rest proved themselves to be either spectacularly supine (continuing their sworn fealty to this Government) or tediously tribal (vetoing the motion not because they disagreed with it, but because they disliked those arguing for it).

Their gutless complacency deserves to reap its reward at the next election.

Presiding over all this is Tony Blair, whose hold on power splutters like a candle in a draught. There are some who continue to argue that Mr Blair is a strong Prime Minister, that ‘sticking to his guns’ on Iraq proves his leadership credentials. They are wrong, confusing strength of judgement with stubborn obstinacy. True leadership requires making the right calls, and understanding how to take people with you.

Mr Blair got the biggest decision of his premiership wrong, and now is forced to cling to the wreckage of his reputation. He supported the invasion of the one member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ without WMD or imminent nuclear capability. As a result, the global community is ham-strung in dealing with either Iran or North Korea, both of which pose a greater threat to British national security than a contained Iraq did.

Mr Blair and the Labour Government have left Britain’s international reputation in tatters and committed our troops to an unwinnable war with scant regard to an exit strategy. Our country is less safe as a direct result of their actions. There can be no more serious indictment than that.

Why Phil Woolas should take his own advice

There’s a right way of going about things, and there’s a wrong way. Today’s crass and clumsy intervention by Labour’s Phil Woolas - calling on suspended teaching assistant Aishah Azmi to be sacked - falls squarely in the latter, dog-whistling category.

Why? Because there is such a thing as due process, an essential component of that fundamental liberal principle, the rule of law: our guarantor of peace, order and good government.

At its heart, this means that every citizen who is subject to any form of judicial process must have confidence that they will be given a fair hearing equal to that of any other citizen. Evidence will be tested in a robust and impartial manner, and a verdict independently determined by those who have heard it all at first-hand.

Ms Azmi’s case was heard by an employment tribunal over the course of five days in September, with the judgement due in a couple of weeks. As a result, when her employer, Kirklees Council, was asked for a quote by the media they said simply: “It would be inappropriate to comment further.” Mr Woolas felt no such constraints: "She should be sacked. She has put herself in a position where she can't do her job."

Fair enough, you might argue. Not only is Mr Woolas a Member of Parliament for near-by Oldham, he is also the government minister whose responsibilities include ‘Community Cohesion, Race and Faith’. Who better to make clear his position on behalf of the Government?

But who is in a better position to judge the rights and wrongs of Ms Azmi’s case against the Council: a tribunal which has heard the full story from both sides? Or an attention-seeking, rent-a-quote MP who thinks nothing of trampling over a woman’s life and career if it secures him a couple of column inches in the Sunday Mirror?

Individual cases (understandably) get the press excited: they are comprehensible and bite-size, with lashings of human interest. They should not, though, be the basis for new laws.

However, Mr Woolas - as a member of that band of populist authoritarians which now masquerades as the Labour Party - drops heavy hints in the Mirror that the Government may be unable to resist leaping aboard this passing bandwagon:

Mr Woolas gave a clear signal that the Government would not tolerate others who followed her example. He said: "There are limits in a liberal democracy. There are boundaries in a democracy and this is one of them. It's a boundary we can't cross."

Yet there is no reason to believe that government intervention is needed. This kind of employment issue is best left to the individual school and its governing body to resolve according to their local circumstances.

If a school believes with good reason that recruiting a Muslim woman who wears a veil in lessons would be incompatible with the learning needs of its pupils they should explain why this is to her, and give her the choice of accepting the school’s employment requirements, or turning the job down. But if a school is quite happy to employ as a teacher a Muslim woman wearing a niqab why should I, you or Mr Woolas’s Government have any problem with this?

In the meantime, I hope Mr Woolas will engage his brain before interfering with due process in the future. Or he might just find that he has put himself in a position where he can’t do his job. Sound familiar, Phil?