The expectations' see-sore

It all changes so, so quickly.

Five months ago, David Cameron was riding high, following some pretty decent local election results. Tony Blair, New Labour’s election talisman was soon to depart, and be replaced by the ever-grumpy, and supposedly vote-haemmorhaging, Gordon Brown.

And then Mr Brown took over, and confounded the Tories’ worst hopes.

Though most people would be hard-pressed to name anything significant that he’s achieved as Prime Minister - I’m afraid I don’t count being on watch during crises over which you have little or no control (foot-and-mouth), or for which you are partly responsible for (Northern Rock) - he has successfully managed not to be Mr Blair. And, frankly, that’s all the country wanted, just as Margaret Thatcher’s replacement with John Major lifted the Tories almost 17 years ago.

The media has, as is their wont, over-interpreted this mood of relief, and ascribed to it more significance than it deserves. The ‘Brown bounce’ is likely prove to be just that: a temporary and limited surge in Labour’s popularity which owes much to the Prime Minister’s current novelty value.

However, the media’s exuberance appears also to have gripped New New Labour’s high command, which has refused to kill off speculation that a snap election will be announced in a matter of days. As a result, serious politics has taken a back-seat while the parties take pot-shots at each other during this phoney war.

Perhaps Mr Brown was hoping the Tory party conference in Blackpool this week, should it prove a disaster, would help make up his mind. If so, he’ll have been sadly disappointed - whatever you think of the Tories, it’s clear they’ve had a good enough week.

By which I mean, they haven’t fallen into their usual traps of publicly displaying either chronic disloyalty to their leader, or self-indulgent rants from barking mad regiments of retired colonel-types taking their prejudices for a walk. Even if they did make the mistake of letting Liam Fox remind everyone exactly why all Lib Dem and Labour supporters would just love him to become Tory leader.

The Tories have, therefore, successfully achieved just what Mr Brown did in the summer: they have countered the low expectations set for them by the media, such as the risible headline The Observer splashed on its front page, Cameron faces poll meltdown. (If editors of the supposedly more serious newspapers are ever kept awake by their falling circulations, and wonder why the public chooses to shun their product, they would do well to ponder the dumbed-down, hyped-up sensationalism of their front pages.)

All of which leaves Mr Brown in a quandary: damned if he does call an election, and damned if he doesn’t.

Because, make no mistake, to go to the polls now is a huge gamble. How will the public react to being forced to endure a month’s politicking followed by a trip to the polling station in cold, damp, miserable weather?

Some polls suggest the electorate is up for it, ready, willing and able to bound down to their nearest polling station, and mark their cross. Well, perhaps. But Mr Brown should know better than to trust polls which ask hypothetical questions: after all, if they were at all a useful predictor, he wouldn’t now be enjoying his currently high popularity ratings.

I won’t be foolish enough to predict the result of a November election, if one happens - but I will predict that turnout would be down, which in itself would scarcely amount to a ringing endorsement of Mr Brown’s mandate to govern.

Even if he wins, he must win big enough - at least a majority of 40, or his credibility will take a real bashing (and he will find himself at the mercy of the left-wing Campaign Group of Labour MPs). It will only take the smallest of swings away from Labour to see Mr Brown’s majority vanish, and with it his authority and grip on his premiership.

And as for the ignominious prospect of defeat, joining the ranks of the shortest-serving Prime Ministers of this country… well, that thought is the one which is doubtless paralysing Mr Brown even now. To squander a majority of 69 for the sake of the personal hubristic vanity of winning an election in your own right - suddenly all the warnings which the Blairites had whispered in the years leading up to Mr Brown’s accession would seem eerily prophetic.

Which is why Mr Brown might still decide to flunk it, to decide against calling an election, and ride his luck at least until the spring. The whispers I’m hearing from Team Brown is that they have yet finally to make up their mind. The current favoured option is 8th November, announced next week. But who knows?

There would be lots of good reasons for Mr Brown to postpone. Yet it would be seen as a climb-down, an humiliating admission, rooted in careful calculation, that he can’t win at the moment. In an instant, political momentum would swing away from Mr Brown, and towards his opponents.

At which point, the media and the public might just begin to think: for a country-before-party, ‘big tent’-loving statesman, Mr Brown doesn’t half seem to devote an unseemly amount of time to promoting his own personal political interests.

Oxford's Labour group: out of their depth

I suppose I could admire the Labour group in Oxford for its sheer effrontery. But sometimes political hypocrisy can be a little too blatant to be effective.

But a double helping of hypocrisy was on the table at this week’s meeting of Oxford city’s Full Council, when Labour proposed keeping open the Peers Sports Centre and swimming pool in Littlemore. Fair enough, you might say. But there are two problems with the Labour party’s position.

The first problem is that the Labour group, each and every single member of it, voted to pull the plug on the pool back in February during the City Council’s budget-setting. And so, for that matter, did the Lib Dems, and every other party on the Council.

The reason? It’s pretty expensive, and needs an estimated £200k refurbishment - more importantly, it doesn’t fit with the Council’s ambition of having two excellent pools serving East Oxford, one of competition standard at Temple Cowley, and a family-friendly one at Blackbird Leys. Pulling out of running the pool (which is owned by the County Council) will save the City Council £100k in the current financial year - a saving Labour happily banked without so much as a murmur of protest just six months ago when presenting their budget.

But there’s a second problem. The pool and sports centre are located at Peers Technology College - set to be the site for Oxford’s first academy. When the school becomes an academy - and it’s a when, not an if - its current buildings will be replaced thanks to the government bribes funding tied to such status. Oxfordshire County Council, as the local education authority, and the Diocese of Oxford have both already made clear they won’t rebuild the pool or sports centre as part of the new academy site.

Now last month, the City Council debated a motion on Peers academy plans. Guess what happened? Yes, that’s right: every single Labour councillor present voted in favour of them, even though they knew it would mean the inevitable closure of Peers pool and sport centre.

So, on two separate occasions - in February and in August - Labour had the chance to try and save the leisure facilities at Peers. On both occasions, they chose instead to vote for policies they knew would lead to their closure.

Of course, none of this has stopped Labour and their two Littlemore ward councillors from mounting a campaign to save the pool. A campaign they know full well is utterly doomed from the start, not least thanks to their party’s policies, which they fully support!

And then we wonder why the public is cynical about politics…

Reshuffle predictions - how did I do?

Well, not too bad. Five ‘direct hits’ (right person, right job) and 12 ‘indirect hits’ (in the cabinet, but in a different job).

Caroline Flint, Hilary Armstrong, Lord Kinnock and Liam Byrne were the ones I tipped for the top who didn’t make it.

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy PM: Jack Straw No-one appointed (though is Straw de facto)
Chancellor: Alastair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson Jacqui Smith (well, no-one else saw that one coming either)
Justice Minister: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Health Secretary: Caroline Flint Alan Johnson (a safe choice)
Education Secretary: Hilary Benn Ed Balls (children and skills) and John Denham (university and skills) - I’ll be interested to see how long it is before Balls’ tone-deaf touch lands the Government in hot water.
Work & Pensions: James Purnell Peter Hain
Culture Secretary: Hazel Blears James Purnell
Defence Secretary: Peter Hain Des Browne (a lucky survivor)
Environment Secretary: Douglas Alexander Hilary Benn
International Development: John Denham Douglas Alexander (who will combine running Labour’s election campaign with promoting the interests of the Third World. Hmmm.)
Trade & Industry Secretary: Hilary Armstrong John Hutton
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock Baroness Ashton (shame, it would have been fun to see Neil back in the thick of things).
Communities & Local Government: Hazel Blears Ruth Kelly
Devolved regions: Jacqui Smith Des Browne, Peter Hain, Shaun Woodward (A mistake, I thought, not to bring these roles together.)
Transport: John Hutton Hazel Blears
Commons Leader: Harriet Harman
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls Andy Burnham
Chief Whip: Andy Burnham Geoff Hoon
Duchy of Lancaster: Ed Miliband
Without portfolio: Liam Byrne

When opinion polls go bad

For the last few months, no opinion poll of voting intentions worthy of the name has been complete without the inevitable tagged-on question, ‘And how would you vote if Gordon Brown were Labour leader?’ To which the answer of Labour-inclined voters has invariably been: less likely than if Tony Blair were still Labour leader.

Anthony Wells, at the indispensable Polling Report website, has recorded the figures of the pollsters’ beloved anticipatory question. None of the 26 polls conducted since David Cameron became Tory leader have projected a Labour lead on the presumption that Mr Brown succeeds Mr Blair. The average Tory lead in the nine polls conducted in 2007 would suggest Mr Cameron should be some 10.5% ahead the moment Mr Brown formally moves into No. 10.

This has led to all sorts of silly speculation in the media that Mr Brown is a vote loser for Labour. And it has sparked an amusingly unmerited degree of triumphalism among Tories, who somehow imagine they will cruise to a general election victory merely by virtue of having elected a leader who manages, in contrast to most of his colleagues, to look and sound relatively normal.

Yesterday’s opinion poll in The Observer, showing a 3% Labour lead just as Mr Brown accedes to the premiership, has poured a bucket of cold water over the heads of those who, rather foolishly, had taken too much to heart the pollsters’ misleading findings.

As opinion pollsters will be the first to point out, their findings present only a snapshot of public opinion. Moreover, the question they ask to solicit the public’s views is a hypothetical one: how would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow.

Those who are asked the question (1) know there isn’t actually a general election tomorrow; and (2) have not been subjected to a month-long election campaign which will, in many cases, alter their voting intentions before they finally cast the only ballot that actually counts. This inevitably distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways.

To add, as the newspapers who commission the polls insist the pollsters do, an extra layer of hypothesis - how do you believe you will vote in an imaginary general election when a man who is not yet Prime Minister becomes Prime Minister - is a step too far.

The public which answers this question knows full well that what they are really being asked is: what do you think of Gordon Brown? And those who are sceptical about him will take the pain-free opportunity to voice their objections in their answer. This, too, distorts the findings in quite unquantifiable ways.

Finally, you must factor in the statistical fact that opinions polls can only predict with 95% probability to within a margin of error of +/-3% the headline figures which the newspapers will brandish on their front pages with cast-iron certainty. So the Observer poll which I’ve used as evidence in this article may just as well point to a Tory lead of 3% as it does a Labour lead of 3%. Or it could be one of the 5% of opinion polls which is complete bollocks outside the margin of error. You pays your money, you takes your choice...

Like many observers of the British political scene, I expect Mr Brown to enjoy a poll bounce over the summer, and that Labour will continue to be tied with, or build a small lead over, the Tories. How long this lasts will, rightly, depend on the success or failure of Mr Brown’s government.

In part, this will be because Labour has, contrary to all the pundits’ predictions (including my own), accomplished a bloodless transfer of power. It will also be because the media, believing their own rogue polls, and the Tories, believing their own anti-Brown propaganda, have so far lowered expectations of our PM-to-be that he cannot help but clear the low hurdles he has been set.

Indeed, so successful has this ‘dampening down’ strategy been, it’s almost tempting to believe that Mr Brown, a man of native political cunning, may secretly have commissioned some of those polls himself.

Reshuffling the decks on the Titanic

Everyone else is playing the 'who's up, who's down' game ahead of Gordon announcing the new membership of Team Brown... so I thought I'd join in:

Prime Minister: Gordon Brown
Deputy PM: Jack Straw
Chancellor: Alastair Darling
Home Secretary: Alan Johnson
Justice Minister: Jack Straw
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Health Secretary: Caroline Flint
Education Secretary: Hilary Benn
Work & Pensions: James Purnell
Culture Secretary: Hazel Blears
Defence Secretary: Peter Hain
Environment Secretary: Douglas Alexander
International Development: John Denham
Trade & Industry Secretary: Hilary Armstrong
Leader of the Lords: Lord Kinnock
Communities & Local Government: Yvette Cooper
Devolved regions: Jacqui Smith
Transport: John Hutton
Commons Leader: Harriet Harman
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Ed Balls
Chief Whip: Andy Burnham
Duchy of Lancaster: Ed Miliband
Without portfolio: Liam Byrne

Lucky, lucky Gordon?

Our current Prime Minister has long revelled in the soubriquet, ‘Lucky Tony’. The BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, today suggests that this mantle has now been passed to his successor, Gordon Brown.

His rationale is simple: this week’s latest shambolic performance by the Labour Government could have happened in seven weeks’ time, getting the new Premier’s tenure off to the shakiest of all possible starts.

Well, perhaps. I think Mr Robinson rather underestimates the incapacity of this Cabinet, and their potential for conjuring future folie des grandeurs.

For while it’s a tad tricky to feel sympathetic towards health secretary, Patricia Hewitt - who would happily climb a step-ladder on the peak of Everest all the better to talk down to us - the rather hapless Ruth Kelly is perhaps a little more deserving of pity. Handed the poisoned chalice of making Home Improvement Plans work, she is being forced to sup long and hard no matter the taste is bitter.

Meanwhile, the Government minister actually responsible for the HIPs fiasco, Yvette Cooper, is tipped for a big promotion in Mr Brown’s first cabinet, together with her husband, Ed Balls, a man who manages to make Ms Hewitt seem human.

Lucky Gordon? Really?

He is fortunate in one regard, however - Prime Minister Brown will have an unparalleled opportunity to re-mould his ministerial team as he wishes. Labour party leaders are usually hemmed in by two constraints when assembling their cabinet.

First, the need to reward political rivals in order to show their magnanimity and to unite the party. But Mr Brown has no rivals - enemies, you betcha, but not rivals.

And, secondly, Labour leaders have to construct their first cabinet from those elected by the Parliamentary Party to the shadow cabinet. Look at Team Tony c.1997 - how many of those would have been there from Mr Blair’s personal choice? However, this party rule, rather quaintly, applies only to the first cabinet. After that, the leader can do as she or he wishes.

So Mr Brown has a free hand, made even freer by the voluntary redundancies of those other two clunking fists, the Two Johns, Prescott and Reid.

Of course, this is itself a double-edged sword - his allies will expect their reward, but he cannot possibly avoid disappointing some of the 308 Labour MPs who coronated him.

And yet, as has become painfully obvious these last few months, there are precious few Labour MPs of real standing, who are also cabinet material. That Mr Brown is the sole leadership candidate after 10 years as Chancellor is a very real tribute to his talent and resilience. It is also a damning indictment of the paucity of quality within this Government. The lack of a viable alternative has assisted him in making it to the top of his party; conversely, it might not help him to stay there.

He’s going to need all the luck he can get.

A dose of sunshine for Lib Dems everywhere

It’s a sunny day, and I’m nicely rested after a few days’ holiday - so let’s celebrate some positive stories.

First up - Ming Campbell’s challenge to Prime Minister-select Gordon Brown to a televised debate was a cute way of (i) giving the Lib Dems a fresh angle on a stale story at a time when our bipolar media traditionally eschews giving the party any air-time; and (ii) highlighting just how little we know (or expect) of the Labour Party’s newly-minted leader’s views across the whole gamut of national and international issues he will be leading this country on.

It was also a real advance on Ming’s previous attempt to grab a headline, when he rather lamentably called for a snap general election, having apparently confused the UK’s parliamentary system with a presidential system - as noted by Lib Dem blogger Jonny Wright here.

Secondly, it’s good to see the Lib Dems taking a lead in the campaign to stop the Labour/Tory alliance in the House of Commons from watering down Freedom of Information legislation, with a new petition today launched to defend the public’s right to know what our Parliamentarians are up to. James Oates’s Cicero’s Songs blog has the full roll-call of dishonour of those 96 Labour and Tory MPs who are happy to create one law for our legislators and another for the rest of us.

This rather squalid episode has cast a revealing light on the mindsets of those MPs who clearly feel they have something to hide, and that their affairs exist on a higher plane than everyone else’s. It’s times like this we can, and should, feel proud to be members of our party, the only one which truly understands how destructive sectional interests - whether of class, wealth, ethnicity or nationality - are to society.

Finally, last week saw a bit of negative publicity among some sections of the media about Ming Campbell’s leadership of the Lib Dems. Clearly now Gordon Brown has been acclaimed leader by his own party, the media is anxious to have another personality-fuelled tussle to fixate on - anything to avoid actually having to report the dull daily grind of politics. Sorry, but it bores me: it’s Heat-style journalism for Guardian readers.

But I did see some poll figures which did intrigue me. They were by Communicate Research for Newsnight - and clearly they did not fit the programme’s agenda at the time, or else were too complicated for them to feel able to report.

What they show is that the Lib Dems have become a much more credible political force in the eyes of the public since 2002 in virtually every regard. In particular, it is fascinating to see the Lib Dems are apparently the party most people see as being trustworthy on immigration. Which suggests there is a liberal vote out there into which the Lib Dems need to tap more loudly than we have in the past. It’s only fair to note that the party’s rises are paralleled by the Tories’ recovery - but forgive me for sticking to the good news for the Lib Dems on this blog.

What is also interesting is that the Labour Party’s figures, while dipping, have not collapsed. This appears to back up what has been found in the last few years’ local elections - each time a rout has been predicted for Labour, each time they have (just about) avoided imploding. Their support has proved - in the circumstances - to be pretty resilient.

So, there you have it - a dose of optimism for a Tuesday afternoon.

A legacy of regret

This, famously, is what Tony Blair said to Paddy Ashdown, back in 1999:

“Going is the most difficult thing to do in politics. Too many people stay for too long. I would rather stop when people said, ‘Why is he going?’ than when they said, ‘Why isn’t he going?’ Or, even worse, ‘When is he going?’”

(Tony Blair quoted in The Ashdown Diaries, V.II (1997-99), p.385)

Tony Blair’s promise of a surprise departure turned out to be yet one more expectation he disappointed. His last 12 months in government has been torture to watch, and doubtless excruciating to witness. A Labour leader who helped re-build his party has, almost single-handed and quite contentedly, let it go to wrack and ruin because of a misplaced sense of his own indispensability.

A politician with any honour would have resigned four years ago, when it became clear that he had committed his nation to the most disastrous foreign policy in living memory. He took this nation to war on a false prospectus, and with contemptible sophistry. That he has clung on to power regardless is to his shame, and that of his party.

A man blessed with extraordinary powers, he has achieved lamentably little of his potential, and has tossed away a generational opportunity to transform this country’s public policy and political institutions. Such waste is scandalous. It is also to be pitied. He has a long retirement ahead to reflect on the barrenness of his legacy.

Tony Blair to resign

Apparently this is news.

• Friday, 1st October, 2004: Tony Blair announces he will resign.
• Thursday, 7th September, 2006: Tony Blair announces he will resign.
• Thursday, 10th May, 2007: Tony Blair announces he will resign.
• Wednesday, 27th June, 2007: Tony Blair will resign.

Very New Labour: always re-announcing good news.

Tony Blair's tipping point

David Marquand has written a compelling psycho-analysis of Tony Blair’s premiership in this week’s New Statesman, tracing his tragic descent from vacuous inanity to hubristic zealotry.

No prizes for guessing the tipping point:

Blair's ultimate tragedy … did not get fully under way until after the horror of 11 September 2001. A warning sign was the astonishing mixture of hubris and hysteria that ran through his speech to the Labour party conference immediately after the atrocity. Al-Qaeda's attack on the twin towers, he told his followers, marked "a turning point in history". In the new world that it had brought into being, Labour's mission extended far beyond the British isles. It was to "fight for freedom" right across the globe. And, in a passage echoing Winston Churchill, one whose full significance would not become clear for many months, he promised the American people: "We were with you at the first. We will stay with you to the last."

Though few saw it at the time, those two sentences marked the end of the glory years that had begun when Blair crossed the threshold of No 10 in 1997. Rhetorically and emotionally, he had tied himself to the most reactionary US administration of modern times.

From then on, his doom was as inexorable as Macbeth's after Duncan's murder. Each downward step followed inevitably on the one before. The decision to wage war on Saddam alongside the Americans; the decision to present what was in fact a war for regime change as a war to eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction; the decision to lean on the security services to fit their findings into a politically convenient mould; the decision to defy the United Nations and betray the core principles of the European Union; and the monstrous final decision to commit British troops to battle against the manifest will of the British people formed a seamless web of delusion, illegality and self-immolation. The horror that is post-Saddam Iraq, with its spiral of sectarian violence and its mounting death toll, cannot be laid at Blair's door alone. Britain's contribution to the calamity is far smaller than America's. But morally, even if not numerically, Blair is as guilty as George W Bush.

Wither John Reid?

I’m rather surprised at the positive spin the media are giving John Reid’s bombshell announcement that he will quit when Tony Blair resigns the premiership. (It seems Dr Reid is such an ultra-Blairite that he feels compelled to follow his leader, and pre-announce his resignation, too.)

‘Reid’s resignation boosts Brown’ trumpets The Guardian: “Gordon Brown's path to a radical rejuvenation of the cabinet was cleared yesterday when the home secretary, John Reid, his great rival, shocked Labour politics by announcing he was quitting the front bench altogether.”

The BBC’s Nick Robinson is also in eulogising form: “If Gordon Brown wants a Tony Blair-style "new dawn" to usher in his premiership, John Reid's resignation is a symbolic first step - and there may well be more to come.”

Now I’m no fan of Dr Reid, the current holder of New Labour’s ‘Most Authoritarian Home Secretary Since The Last One’ title - a baton originally wielded by Jack Straw, subsequently handed on to David Blunkett, and then Charles Clarke, before it was prised out of his cold dead hands. Dr Reid’s über-macho, attack-dog style portrays politics at its most tribally, snarlingly, unthinkingly asinine.

And yet… Dr Reid is one of the few heavyweight politicians New Labour has at its disposal, with a wealth of accumulated cabinet experience, and pretty popular with the public (loathe as I am to admit it). For the media to count his loss as a victory for Mr Brown strikes me as a tad peculiar. If anything it reveals the essential truth of one of Mr Brown’s key weaknesses: his inability to work in harmony with enough of his colleagues. Indeed, if he hadn’t antagonised such a substantial proportion of the current cabinet, he would have become Prime Minister long before now.

Dr Reid’s decision to camp outside Mr Brown’s tent reminds me of Kenneth Clarke’s refusal to serve in William Hague’s shadow cabinet way back in 1997, after he was first defeated for his party’s leadership. Many observed then that this would help Mr Hague to remodel the Tories, and to distance his party from the calamities of John Major’s administration. In reality, it denuded his shadow cabinet of a politician of real stature, and diminished Mr Clarke in the eyes of many Tories, who felt he had thrown his rattle out of his pram.

Dr Reid’s decision might be politically (and personally) expedient for Mr Brown in the short-term. But it won’t aid his number one cause: to get New Labour re-elected. That’s a consequence Tony Blair would have seen quite clearly - which is why our current Prime Minister is a proven election winner, and why our next Prime Minister won’t be.

Let's hear it for Norman

If Norman Baker did not exist, we would need to invent him. Today, the Lib Dems’ very own Stormin’ Norman is battling Tory MP David Maclean’s attempts, via a private member’s bill, to exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act (2000).

Mr Maclean is hiding behind the skirts of that much-abused notion, ‘public interest’, claiming his only desire is to enhance the privacy of MPs’ constituents, and prevent their personal details being disclosed in correspondence between MPs and public bodies under existing FoI legislation. As Mr Baker has pointed out, such details are already protected by the Data Protection Act (1998).

If, as Mr Maclean claims, perhaps accurately, “things slip through the net”, his job is to ensure existing legislation is being correctly interpreted and enforced, before he piles on yet another layer of legislation designed to emasculate hard-won freedoms.

It is - naturally - a complete coincidence that Mr Maclean’s bill would also exempt disclosure of MPs’ expenses and allowances. Their revelation, in part due to Mr Baker’s unpopular and tireless efforts, has caused acute embarrassment to some MPs. The personal assurance Mr Maclean has received from the current House of Commons speaker, Michael Martin, that these will continue to be released voluntarily isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.

Of course, the Labour Government is still trying its utmost to undermine its own legislation by passing into law the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2007. This will, according to the Government’s own independent review, result in an extra 17,000 FoI questions (out of around 100,000) a year being turned down, regardless of the public interest in answering them.

Small wonder, then, that Mr Maclean’s bill has the tacit approval of Labour, who could easily have squashed it if the Government were actually opposed.

It is on just such occasions, when individual freedoms are being assailed, that the Lib Dems are such a vital bulwark. Labour cares little for such ‘middle-class niceties’, believing the state is the only way in which society’s vulnerable can be protected. And Tories, as exemplified by David Maclean, care little for anything which challenges the status quo, or entrenched privileges.

What David should do next

What would you do if you were David Miliband? He’s already getting a whole load of advice, some friendly, some not-so-friendly - it’s a moot point which he finds least helpful.

His options appear limited. He can either contest the leadership of the Labour Party against Gordon Brown, so long the heir-presumptuous; or he can choose to keep his powder dry. When in doubt, flip through the history books.

First point to note: Mr Miliband would be the least experienced British Prime Minister since 1945.

There have been 11 post-war Prime Ministers, five of them appointed to the post while serving as members of the cabinet:

• Anthony Eden (translated from Foreign Secretary);
• Harold Macmillan (from the Chancellorship, had been Foreign Secretary);
• Alec Douglas Home (another Foreign Secretary);
• Jim Callaghan (yet another Foreign Secretary, though had also been Chancellor and Home Secretary); and
• John Major (who followed Macmillan’s career path).

The other six were elected to the post having served time as leader of HM’s Opposition, itself a pretty thorough preparation for the job to come:

• Clement Attlee (who had been Deputy Prime Minister);
• Winston Churchill (a former Prime Minister, who had also held more cabinet posts even than John Reid);
• Harold Wilson;
• Edward Heath;
• Margaret Thatcher; and
• Tony Blair.

All 11 of them had served at least a decade in Parliament.

By contrast, Mr Miliband has been an MP for fewer than six years, serving in the cabinet for nigh-on two of them. Promotion to the First Lord of the Treasury in one bound would be quite an hubristic leap.

Of course, it can be argued that such experience doesn’t matter a jot. “Look at David Cameron,” comes the cry. Well, we shall come to see how time treats the Tories’ young pretender; for now it suffices to say that I suspect even he is grateful his moment has not yet arrived, that he has a while longer to work out what he would wish to achieve in government.

From this you might think my conclusion is obvious: Mr Miliband would be daft to stand. If only it were that simple! For there is always another consideration - what will happen if he doesn’t stand?

The sensible analysis reads: let Gordon win the leadership and lose the election, allowing David to take over the reins as the Labour Party’s saviour.

That might seem rational now; but so, too, did the Blair-Brown ‘Granita Pact’ in 1994; as did David Davis standing aside for Michael Howard to assume the Tory leadership in 2003. I wonder if either now regrets their choice? And what of Michael Portillo’s failure of nerve when declining to challenge John Major in 1995? The standard-bearer of the Tory right was instead eclipsed by the vulcanesque John Redwood.

Favourites have a habit of thinking their time is yet to come. But events have a habit of unravelling what once seemed seamless.

When Chris Huhne stood for the Lib Dem leadership last year, he was initially dismissed as ‘Chris Who?’ But ‘Who’ had the last laugh - the freshly-minted Eastleigh MP scored 32% in the first round of voting, besting the better-known and vastly more experienced Simon Hughes, and emerging as the newly-crowned ‘activists’ darling’. Nick Clegg might be considered by the media as Ming Campbell’s natural successor, but Mr Huhne will stand in much better stead next time than if he hadn’t risked standing this time.

Such are the considerations for Mr Miliband to ponder. My verdict? He’d be mad to stand. But he’d be madder not to. The real risk for him is that he might win. However, I don’t think he should worry too much about such an outside possibility.

The case for fair-minded journalism

How does the media come out of Gordon Brown’s 1997 decision to scrap dividend tax credits, the so-called ‘pensions scandal’?

On one level, they will claim vindication. After all, it was The Times’s two-year battle to publish the advice of Treasury officials which sparked this week’s controversy, with Mr Brown’s credibility once again placed in the full glare of publicity. Only after being ordered to do so by the Information Commissioner, under the aegis of the Freedom of Information Act, did the Treasury hand over the documents showing the possible ramifications of the move, including an immediate £50bn fall in the value of existing pension funds.

So why am I asking the question at all?

It was prompted by Ken Clarke’s interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, during which he observed:

They had an extraordinary honeymoon period, the first two years of the Blair Government they could do no wrong. … All Conservatives did actually protest strongly about it, but we were being ignored. We were an unpopular Government - even the right-wing press were rejoicing in having brought us down - and all new governments have a honeymoon period, and they had a remarkably long one.

Now we should be wary of cutting the Tories too much slack on this. The Tory Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major presided over the infamous pensions mis-selling scandal in its peak years, 1988-94, at an estimated cost of £13.5bn, severely undermining public trust in private pension plans.

In their early years as HM Opposition they were also regularly predicting that Mr Brown was about to plunge the British economy deep into recession, a claim which, from the party that brought us ‘Black Wednesday’, looked a tad desperate. Nor was it clear, at that stage, quite what a devastating effect Mr Brown’s pensions raid would wreak. It is, then, perhaps understandable the press greeted the Tories’ forebodings with a pinch of salt.

But, still, Mr Clarke has a point: the media was just not interested. Not interested because stories about pensions were regarded then by the media as dull-dull-dull. And not interested because the media regarded Tony and Gordon as shiny-shiny-shiny. No matter that “All that glisters is not gold.”

As it’s holiday season, allow me to neologise my own proverb: If salt is to be pinched, ‘twas well they are equal pinchings. Trustworthy journalism requires sceptical rationalism, the willingness constantly to challenge and inquire into all sides of a story.

It’s a task for which much of the media, with an attention span which makes a goldfish look like a chess grandmaster, is singularly ill-equipped. If there’s one thing the media dislikes it’s nuance, complexity, shades-of-grey; they much prefer a single, simple narrative.

At the moment, that means Mr Brown is getting it in the neck on every possible pretext. The timing of the ‘pensions scandal’ outcry is partly of his own making, of course. Had the Treasury released the documents requested by The Times two years ago the story would have created scarcely a ripple.

The media is eager for Mr Brown to be challenged for the Labour leadership: if he is ‘coronated’ there’s no story. To encourage a plausible pretender to the throne - whether Messrs Miliband, Reid or Hutton - the media must contrive to make Mr Brown less electable. Which is why ordure is being heaped high upon Mr Brown’s head: in the eyes of the media, he can do no right.

I shed no tears for the Chancellor. He has deliberately evaded enough fair criticism during his tenure for some unfair criticism to be mere karmic retribution.

I do not, though, buy Polly Toynbee’s typically over-simplistic rant in The Grauniad that this is a low-down dirty trick conspired across the right-wing press. Their agenda is borne of boredom, not malevolence. But that knowledge should not make us any less sanguine about the power of the media to debase national debate by failing to treat political protagonists even-handedly.

Let’s look at two examples. David Cameron has suffered a couple of bad-news stories in the last month. First, it was revealed he used a private jet to travel 90 miles, from Oxford to Hereford, in spite of his supposedly green credentials. Then, secondly, he was found guilty of breaking Parliamentary rules by using his taxpayer-funded House of Commons office to raise money for the Tory Party. Mr Cameron’s defenders will argue that both these are non-stories: he carbon offsets all his travel, and has apologised unreservedly for his improper fundraising.

Whatever one might think of the rights or wrongs of either of these issues, one aspect is I think indisputable: swap the name of Gordon Brown for David Cameron and both stories would have achieved far greater prominence. Is it too much to ask for the media to treat these two imposters just the same?

Civil political discourse requires civil political journalism. If the choice we will face is the over-excitable hysteria of the right-wing versus the self-righteous defensiveness of the left-wing media commentariat - with the blogosphere playing the role of an amped-up mini-me - we can hardly expect enlightenment.

What will happen in the 2007 local elections?

About this time last year, I wrote an article for PoliticalBetting.com, attempting to predict the parties’ shares of the votes based on their ICM opinion poll ratings. And, if I say so myself, I didn’t do too badly.

I guesstimated Con 39%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 29% - but noted in the comments thread that followed: “my instincts are that Lab and Lib Dems will be slightly closer together than my extrapolated figures”. And so it proved.

The BBC’s projected share of the national vote was: Con 40%, Lab 26%, Lib Dem 27%. Respected psephologists Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher projected: Con 39%, Lab 26%, Lib Dems 25%.

So I’ve updated my workings from last year to see if it points towards this year’s result...

The figures below show the projected national share of the parties’ votes in that year’s local elections compared with the ICM poll rating (in brackets) immediately prior to those elections:

1998: Con 33% (31%), Lab 37% (48%), Lib Dem 25% (16%)
1999: Con 34% (28%), Lab 36% (50%), Lib Dem 25% (17%)
2000: Con 38% (32%), Lab 30% (45%), Lib Dem 26% (15%)
2002: Con 34% (29%), Lab 33% (45%), Lib Dem 25% (18%)
2003: Con 35% (30%), Lab 30% (42%), Lib Dem 27% (21%)
2004: Con 38% (33%), Lab 26% (38%), Lib Dem 29% (22%)
2006: Con 39% (34%), Lab 26% (32%), Lib Dem 25% (24%)

The Tories have added between 2-6% to their ICM national rating in recent local elections; Labour have dropped 6-15%; and the Lib Dems have increased 1-11%.

If this pattern were to repeat itself in 2007 – using the most recent ICM poll (19th March), with the Tories on 41%, Labour 31% and the Lib Dems 18%, as our bench-mark – we might extrapolate the following shares of the vote this May: Con 45%, Lab 21%, Lib Dem 24%.

Hmmm, well I don’t know about you, but I’ve not convinced me. Despite Tony Blair’s best efforts in the last six months to destroy the party he helped re-build by clinging onto power far beyond his political utility, I cannot see Labour’s vote dipping to 21% this year.

Nor can I see the Tories scaling the dizzy heights of 45% - which would exceed what Tony Blair managed in 1996 - though I may, of course, be proved wrong.

My wet-finger-in-the-air projection gives: Con 42%, Lab 25%, Lib Dem 25%

Seems plausible to me. We’ll see.

Incidentally, the final half of my original article stands the test of time (I think) - and even bears repetition:

***

The stubborn refusal of the third party to lie down and quietly die points to a wider trend: what has been termed the de-alignment of British politics.

If we look at the combined, average general election vote shares of the two big beasts of post-1945 politics, the Tories and Labour, and compare them with the combined, average vote shares of the Lib Dems and other parties for each of the last five decades, the fragmentation of voter loyalties is clear:

1950s: Con/Lab 92%, Lib Dem/Other 8%
1960s: Con/Lab 89%, Lib Dem/Other 11%
1970s: Con/Lab 80%, Lib Dem/Other 20%
1980s: Con/Lab 72%, Lib Dem/Other 28%
1990s: Con/Lab 75%, Lib Dem/Other 25%
2000s: Con/Lab 70%, Lib Dem/Other 30%

Voters no longer identify tribally with one political party based on their self-perception of class or religious interest (or their parents’ views). In 1964, according to the British Election Study, 48% of Tory voters identified strongly with their chosen party, compared with 51% for Labour. By 2001, the figures were 14% and 16% respectively.

As voter turn-out has declined, transforming the electorate into a selectorate, the remorseless march of the de-alignment process has continued apace. The cosy Tory/Labour duopoly is coming to an end.

And, however much Messrs Brown and Cameron might prefer to ignore such a reality, this is the new politics with which all parties are going to have to deal.

***

Moving up the table

Two quick questions for a Monday night:

1. Which of the 238 district councils in England sets the highest Council Tax?
2. Who’s the local MP?

Answers as follows:

1. Sedgefield - £354.37.
2. Tony Blair (of course).

For the record, Oxford had - under Labour control - the 10th highest Council Tax of any of the 238 English district councils.

I’m proud to say that, after just one year of me being in charge of the city’s finances, this has improved by one whole place! Yes, Oxford now levies 'only' the 11th highest district Council Tax in England thanks to the Lib Dems proposing a below-inflation Council Tax increase this year. So we’re heading in the right direction... but I think it’s fair to say we’ve a long way still to go.

Budget, fudget

After Gordon Brown’s botched budget last week, many Labour MPs and activists were mustard-keen to point out that poorer people - those earning less than £18.5k - would be better off in the round, once tax credits were taken into account.*

So I was interested to read this snippet in today’s Financial Times, reporting the evidence given by Treasury officials to MPs on the Treasury committee examining the 2007 budget:

Officials were also willing to concede … that 5.3m families would lose from the budget changes; that government spending plans did not forsee the take-up rate of working tax credit rising from its current dismal 25 per cent; and that there would be no money in the autumn comprehensive spending review dedicated to fighting child poverty.

* There were two small problems with this argument: (i) it isn’t true, and (ii) not everyone is eligible for tax credits, as pointed out by Ming Campbell at PMQs yesterday.

How Mr Brown flunked his big moment

For a little while now, I’ve felt Gordon Brown has been maligned. That’s not to say I agree with him - don’t be silly - merely to suggest he’s been under-estimated by armchair pundits. Mr Brown has been a formidable Chancellor, one of the two dominant politicians of his generation. To think that he might be bested by the smart glibness of David Cameron was, I felt, wishful thinking on behalf of his opponents.

Today, I’m less sure.

I still think it’s a rash commentator who writes off Mr Brown. The fairest assessment of the budget - stripped of all spin and counter-spin - is Hamish McRae’s verdict in the Indy. It deserves to be read in full, but here’s the conclusion:

... the fact remains that the British economy has performed remarkably well in the past decade. There are of course concerns, including the fact that it has become even more of a two-tier economy, with the super-competitive London, the South-east and East Anglia, and the rest. You could argue that he inherited this competitive advantage, that it had very little to do with him. You could argue that at the margin the additional complexity he has loaded on to the system has undermined some of that competitiveness. But he has understood intellectually how competitive advantage in the present global economy is achieved and sustained. I don't think the next 10 years will be as easy as the past 10 but meanwhile he has a right to take some of the credit for what, in economic terms, has undoubtedly been a successful decade.

It’s an assessment most of us could sign up to, though perhaps lets Mr Brown off the hook a little too easily when it comes to public service investment: having starved the public sector in his early years, he then glutted it in his later years with scant regard to value-for-money. Billions have been wasted in the time it’s taken New Labour to understand that resources and reform go hand-in-hand. And still they try and control everything from the centre.

But still - Mr Brown has, by any objective standard, avoided disaster and achieved modest success. Few Chancellors can boast such a claim, let alone one who’s served a decade in the post, however impatiently.

To imagine that, having waited so long to ascend the premiership, Mr Brown won’t have a programme for government carefully devised - one which will be consciously and cleverly designed to take the wind out of puffed-out Tory sails - is to ignore the evidence of his past behaviour, from making the Bank of England independent to this week’s 2p basic rate income tax cut.

However, however, however.

Mr Brown screwed up his budget big time. He made a hash of it in a way which should disturb his fellow Labour MPs, and which gives those, like me, who have defended his tactical shrewdness, real pause for thought.

Let’s ignore the rights or wrongs of doubling the starting rate of income tax, while cutting the basic rate - a move which will leave many of the poorest in society poorer still. I think he made the wrong choice; but I’m a political opponent so I would say that, wouldn’t I. No, the worrying thing for Labour was how badly Mr Brown presented his budget coup de théâtre.

Simon Carr, again in the Indy, brilliantly contrasts Messrs Blair and Brown’s rhetoric and what their styles say about their respective personalities:

Blair's personal style is a search for the best consensus he can make on his own terms. Thus his reaction to a hostile question is: "Where I agree with you is this." This instinct has mutated in the aftermath of Iraq: "There are those who disagree with me and I don't disrespect them for that," he is inclined to say. It's one of his attractive traits. His speeches, likewise, assume the presence of an intelligent interlocutor who disagrees with what is being said, and with whom Blair argues. You can sense the respect by the fact that the interlocutor isn't presented as ridiculous or vicious. Why would he alienate half of the voting population?

Gordon Brown's speeches reveal a very different internal process. There is no real interlocutor in his speeches. His view of the enemy (he views the Tories as enemies) reduces them to caricatures motivated by malice, cruelty and greed. No reasonable person would characterise half of the British electorate in those terms. But then, everything in the speech is Gordon: every portrait is a self portrait.

Yes, this sort of speech-making seems to be the direct result of his personal relations in professional life. Successful, argumentative, engaging speeches need more than one hand. They are a collaboration. They require that the speechmaker has the substance to hear his work criticised and chopped about. To have his ideas challenged and to accept the validity of other points of view. This is not the way the Chancellor operates, if recent reports be true. It is, as they say in the Civil Service, "outwith his grasp".

Imagine how Mr Blair would have presented this week’s budget.

He would not have tried to sneak past the abolition of the 10% starting rate of income tax by hurriedly muttering it, sotto voce, so that only David Laws for the Lib Dems spotted its significance. He would not have left his 2p tax cut to his final line, producing it like a rabbit out of the hat, hoping to distract and astonish in equal measure.

No, our current Prime Minister would have been open and upfront, something like…

“Seven years ago, Mr Deputy Speaker, I announced to this House that I was introducing a starting rate of income tax of 10p in the pound. The reason was quite simple: to cut taxes for the poorest in our society. This, for me, was a realisation of what New Labour thinking is all about. Putting money back in the pockets of those who have least, giving a helping hand to those who need it most.

“I do not under-estimate what a difference this reform has made to those with lower than average incomes. But, equally, I recognise that our tax system is open to criticism from those who say it has grown too complex. So the challenge today for our party is this: how can we simplify the tax system, and ensure that low- and middle-income households pay less tax?

“Today, I am delighted to inform the House how we shall meet that challenge. We will scrap the 10p starting rate, and use the proceeds to cut the basic rate of income tax by 2p in the pound. We will increase tax credits for the poorest. As a direct result of this measure, the whole country will be better off, and perpetually bathed in the sunshine of my bountiful iridescence.”

Okay, okay, so I made the last bit up: the whole country won’t actually be better off. But you get the idea. Mr Blair is actually rather more transparent, rather less spun, than the Chancellor.

The concept of ‘narrative’ has perhaps been over-sold in recent years. But all it means is that you should be able to distinguish a beginning and end to an argument, recognise its ideological sweep, perceive an underpinning philosophy.

Mr Blair’s speeches have a compelling narrative: they take you on a journey, even if you want to wind the window down half-way there because you feel sick. Mr Brown’s speeches take you hostage: gagged and bound in the boot of the car, he lets you out, disorientated and resentful, only once you’ve arrived at his pre-arranged destination.

Mr Blair’s the kind of politician who, if he were actually a magician, would tell you how he did the trick. Mr Brown takes pleasure in secrets, in concealing from us what he knows and we do not.

Mr Blair has an instinctual, simpatico sixth sense. Mr Brown an analytical, brooding tone deafness.

The budget was Mr Brown’s career-defining opportunity to show he could match, even surpass, Mr Blair’s sureness of touch. He flunked it.

Labour, party of social justice: RIP

Talk about a double whammy.

First, Labour’s Lyons Review flunks the prospect of wholesale reform of Council Tax, instead opting to tinker round the edges with bands that will make no difference to the vast majority of income-poor residents who suffer under the current system.

Then, Gordon Brown decides to double the starting rate of income tax, ensuring anyone who earns under £15,000 pa will be worse off. As Will Howells notes, this is some U-turn from the Chancellor who once proclaimed the importance of the 10p rate for the poorest in our society.

Badly done, Gordon, badly done.

Oxford Labour and Greens: muddle-headed or political opportunists?

Well, at least no-one can say that Oxford's rubbish is being swept under the carpet. The local press are reporting that councillors are in "major revolt" over the 'recycling revolution' - introduced last November by the new Lib Dem administration with all-party support - which is on-track to double the amount of recycling in the city.

"Major revolt" is, perhaps, an exaggeration. I say 'perhaps' because it's becoming increasingly hard to tell quite how committed are the Labour and Green groups to the City Council's recycling expansion. On the one hand, they pay lip-service to the obvious - that everyone wants to see an increase in recycling in the city; but on the other hand they seem intent on undermining at every possible opportunity the Council staff implementing the scheme.

A cynic might infer that both Labour and Greens are more than a little guilty of political opportunism - hoping to share the credit as the recycling rates improve, but to wash their hands of the difficult decisions being taken by the Lib Dems which are needed for this improvement to happen. But, as I'm not a cynic, I'll charitably assume they are simply muddle-headed.

The issue has reared its head again as a result of an odd Council motion passed last month by Labour and the Greens, which sought to undo a fundamental tenet of the new recycling scheme.

All party groups are agreed that weekly collections of recyclable materials, and fortnightly collections of residual (non-recyclable) household waste, are the best way to reduce landfill. It stands to reason that - if you are going to move to fortnightly collections of non-recyclable waste - you need to ensure it can be stored hygienically.

That is why all households are being offered a wheelie bin. No-one is being forced to have one, not least because we recognise some households (eg, flats, or terraced houses with no gardens) simply cannot cope with a wheelie bin - in such cases special sacks are being provided as an alternative. My experience, as both a resident and as a ward councillor, is that the Council's officers are being polite, diligent and understanding in their conversations with residents. The handful of problems which have occurred in my Headington ward as the scheme has been rolled-out have been amicably settled.

However, Labour and the Greens have joined together to demand that any householder can refuse to have a wheelie bin for any reason at all. Sounds pretty reasonable, you might say. However, it ignores the following facts:

(1) Neither Labour nor Greens are proposing to return to the old weekly collections. Instead, their policy would result in more bin bags being left out on the streets, almost certainly resulting in an increase in rats and other vermin. Wheelie bins are not rat-proof - is anything? - but they are certainly more secure than loose sacks. Why should any resident have to suffer a likely increase in vermin simply because their neighbour doesn't like the look of a wheelie bin?

(2) The sacks provided to households which cannot cope with a wheelie bins are over three times more expensive, yet neither Labour nor the Greens ear-marked extra cash in last week's budget for a switch away from wheelie bins to sacks.

(3) The Council has a duty of care to its staff, and it's clear that wheelie bins are more popular with the collections crews than loose sacks, which offer no protection from hazardous materials. A Council employee has taken the highly unusual step of e-mailing all councillors to point this out:

"How many people including members of the council are aware of the many hazards when picking up refuse sacks. Injuries are plentiful, such as broken glass slashing operatives legs, needle stick injuries from discarded hypodermic syringes and strains on back and other muscles and limbs from lifting overweight sacks. We are then put in the firing line for taking too many 'sicky' days off work. The operatives are also expected to scoop up waste when bags are ripped apart by scavenging animals. The introduction of the wheelie bin service has brought a breath of fresh air to the collection of waste and the operatives I have spoken to are 100% in favour."

It will be interesting to see if Labour and the Greens - often happy to pose as the champions of staff rights - will recognize the ill-effects of their motion on the Council's work-force.

Perhaps the least pleasant aspect of this "major revolt" is one Labour councillor's publicly-stated wish to make this a vote of no confidence in my colleague, Cllr Jean Fooks, the portfolio holder for a Cleaner City, who has the unenviable job of implementing the recycling revolution.

Such personal attacks reflect far worse on those levelling them than they do on Cllr Fooks, who has devoted huge amounts of her time to ensuring the scheme is implemented flexibly, fairly and efficiently. Where mistakes have been made - as they inevitably have been - she has apologized, and ensured they are swiftly corrected. But she at least has never lost sight of the reason we are doing all this: to double the recycling rate, and reduce this city's landfill.

I can safely say that Cllr Fooks has the complete confidence of the Lib Dem administration, and that she is acting in the name of us all. I hope the unfortunate views expressed by Labour's Cllr Colin Cook do not accurately reflect his group's line, and that we might once again see a return to cross-party working to ensure the whole Council unites behind what is proving to be a hugely successful scheme.

With only one-third of the city so far covered by the new scheme, Oxford's recycling rate has already increased from 19% this time last year to 27%. In most cities, this would be a cause for celebration, and an occasion to thank the Council staff and local residents who have helped achieve such a result. It's a real shame that there are some who, instead, view it as an opportunity to indulge in some petty, partisan grand-standing.