Jeb Bush – the missing link?

Two disturbing glimpses into the US psyche from from Taegan Goddard's ever excellent Political Wire:

"Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.'' - Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (Rep.), when asked by the Miami Herald whether he believes in Darwin's theory of evolution.

Well, I guess you’re not going to get a much stronger argument against evolution than the fact George Bush Snr sired Dubya.

From a new Harris Poll: "About 22% of U.S. adults believe Saddam Hussein helped plan 9/11, the poll shows, and 26% believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded. Another 24% believe several of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi."

(And before we all get smug, and "tsk" the stupidity of a nation which once (only) elected Jeb's bro' President, I wonder how many Brits assume Saddam's Iraq was responsible for 9/11?)

That Charles Kennedy petition…

Over at Liberal England, Jonathan Calder flags up the absurdity of the BBC News online report that 3,300 Lib Dem party members have signed a petition calling on Charles Kennedy to quit as leader.

Jonathan signed the petition as Mickey Mouse from Cheeseborough to show how easy it would be for anyone to fake their credentials.

I though I’d give it a go as CK himself - as the picture (just about) shows – giving my name as Charles Kennedy, my home town as Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy’s constituency), and my e-mail address as charles.kennedy@libdems.org.uk. I clicked on ‘Submit’, and – hey, presto! – The Liberal thanked Charles Kennedy for “registering your support for this petition”. There’s one turkey seemingly voting for Christmas.

Intriguingly, The Liberal’s editor, Ben Ramm (himself a Lib Dem member), claims the 3,300 includes two MPs. I’m delighted to have been able to add a third to his tally.

Now perhaps I’m being cynical, but all this is jolly good, free publicity for The Liberal, a magazine which has absolutely no affiliation to the Liberal Democrats. (The current issue, for instance, includes articles by such liberal scions as Roy Hattersley and Matthew Parris.)

And you might have thought that such an idea might also have occurred to the BBC News journalist responsible for this emetic piece of anonymous journalism. But rather than challenge Mr Ramm to verify his figures in any credible fashion, BBC News is quite happy to repeat them verbatim because it feeds the current anti-CK media agenda.

It is ironic that this tired bit of hackery dressed up as serious political journalism should be published on the day John Humphreys voiced his concern that the pressures of 24-hour news are inhibiting politicians. Because it sure as hell seems to be inhibiting the BBC News from doing its own job properly.

Awards of the Year 2005… Part I

'Tis the season of no news… I mean, c'mon on, the top three stories this week are: It's a bit chilly; shops sell cheap stuff; and fox-hunting, saboteurs, loopholes, blah blah. It's just dull.

So I'm afraid I'm not inspired to pen some trenchant opinion piece, crammed full of wise words, and laced with shrewd liberal acuity. Instead you're getting what every other newspaper is serving up as left-overs to tide their readers over with glad tidings. Yes, it's the inevitable Best/Worst Hits/Misses Treats/Turkeys [will this do? - Ed.] Awards of 2005, divided into two perfect halves for your reading relish.

* First up, we have the JONATHAN ROSS AWARD FOR UBIQUITY, given in recognition of the countless acts of self-promotion which this past year has witnessed.

There were many contenders for this prize, all (as you would expect) self-nominated. From the world of entertainment, both Catherine Tate and Little Britain were strong challengers, their repetitive catchphrases having won a devoted following in playgrounds and among sub-editors across the country. Did they triumph? "Computer says no." And I'm so not bovvered.

Dan Brown should, by rights, have won for his tome, The Da Vinci Code, a book which has now sold more copies than there are people able to read. (And yet still it tops the bestsellers lists: is there anyone left who wants a copy who's not yet read it? 'Cos if so, they can have mine.) Unfortunately, he was cruelly denied by a shadowy, undercover organisation, which goes by the nickname Good Taste, which has successfully perpetuated a canonical hierarchy which conceals from sight the worst excesses of bad writing.

Which left only one possible winner: Robert Kilroy-Slick. For one man with so little talent, so little charm, and so little clue to get elected under one political party's colours; attempt to become its leader; resign in a perma-tanned huff in order to self-start his own new, even smaller, party; which implodes within six months; prompting him to split from his own creation... Well, that all takes a special and peculiar kind of egotism. His love of bathing in the glare of publicity with all the self-knowing naivety of Icarus may just explain a tan known in the trade as Monkhouse-plus. His pale imitation of Oswald Mosley's messianism was drably, inevitably, hubristically pathetic, and proved (pace Churchill) that re-ratting does not take any kind of ingenuity.

* From the ridiculous to the subliminal. The second prize is the IDS AWARD FOR NONENTITY OF THE YEAR, bestowed on those Quiet Men who promised much but then kept that promise well hidden.

Turn the clock back a month, and the nation was girding its collective loin in readiness for a booze-fuelled conflagration of beered-up young people letting rip in our city centres following the introduction of new licensing laws. And yet, to date, the amount of binge being drunk has not resulted in the kind of apocalypse too many tabloid editors (and MPs from all parties) were gloomily prophesying. Of course, the British still have a huge drinking problem, our lives seemingly having no meaning unless an inhibition-shedding intoxicant is coursing round our bloodstreams so that we can wake up the next day with a cast-iron alibi of deniability: "Did I really do that? I must have been so wasted." But to think that every pub chucking out piss-heads onto our streets at the same time each night was any kind of answer to this problem is absurd. Our society's warped attitude to alcohol seems to expect the government to remove the speck from our own eyes, so that we don't have to worry about the beam which still blinds us.

Another dog which failed to bark was the G8 summit to make poverty history. For all Sir Bob Geldof's protestations that the world's leaders, under his tutelage, had committed themselves to a deal which would end want in a world of surplus, the truth at the end of the year couldn't be clearer: our politicians, and the voters they represent, are willing to help the developing world only so long as there is no negative impact on our own way of life. Proof of Europe's complicity in the obscene trade tariffs which cripple poorer countries arrived with the setting of this month's EU budget for 2007-13. In spite of Mr Blair's pleas, and the sacrifice of part of the infamous British rebate, the Common Agricultural Policy - which gobbles up 40% of Europe's entire €862bn expenditure by subsidising large, rich farmers - is intact for years to come. Africa's plight remains a scar on the conscience of the world: 2005 simply applied a band-aid.

But the trophy for the Quiet Man award must go to this third-term Labour Government. It is only 31 weeks since Mr Blair scored his historic hat-trick of election victories - albeit with the support of just 36% of those who voted - and with it a mandate to implement his hefty 112-page manifesto, Forward Not Back. And yet his Government's heart just does not seem to be in it. Those policies which are put forward - whether Ruth Kelly's education reforms, or Patricia Hewitt's health proposals - are met with either apathy or antipathy, even from their own back-benches. The reason is simple. Mr Blair has recognised that the only way to embed improvement in the public services is to create markets so that scarce resources can be prioritised. The problem is that his party (and all too often my own) baulk at the very notion of markets. It's far more comfortable instead simply to argue that more money is always needed; and to pretend that words like efficiency and productivity are evil right-wing euphemisms, rather than tools for getting value for taxpayers' money. The Labour Party, drugged by Mr Blair's success, is now being dragged by its leader in a direction they loathe. Prepare for the whiplash, prepare for the Whips' lash.

* BThe final prize of this half's entertainment is the BILL CLINTON AWARD FOR THE COMEBACK OF THE YEAR, given in honour of those born in Hope who have come full circle.

First up, are two fictional heroes whose resurrections were heartily cheered. Personally, I've always liked the idea of Dr Who more than the reality. It evokes in me a comfy nostalgia of Saturday nights in the early 1980s: a little boy keenly anticipating being scared while lying in front of the fire after my bath. But I've tried watching those episodes since, and their cardboard campery leave me bored. And I'm afraid not even Christopher Ecclestone's re-generation as the ninth Doctor did it for me. He seemed to me just too thespy, too try-hard, too keen to show that he was bigger and better than the show. But, on the strength of David Tennant's Christmas Day debut, I'm going to give it another go: the storyline was taut, the scripting sharp, and the acting superb. (Killed by a satsuma… Even better than Dirty Den's original 'Death by Daffodils'.)

And then there's Harry Potter, who scored a double whammy with the release of The Half Blood Prince (or Episode VI, as I like to think of it), followed by the fourth film, Goblet of Fire. Both were a return to form after disappointing predecessors, and I am now on unabashed tenterhooks for the final reckoning. Accio Episode VII!

Back in the real world of public affairs, two men were in serious contention for this Comeback Award. Jamie Oliver has transformed himself in the space of just two years from the annoyingly chirpy, cheeky, chippy Naked Chef, whose smug Sainsbury's ads ratcheted up the profits of Tesco, to being feted as the culinary world's answer to Sir Bob. First there was Fifteen, his daringly entrepreneurial effort to train up a group of young people plucked from disadvantaged backgrounds and empower them to make his restaurant a success. Then came his crusade against the appalling nutritional poverty of school meals - at least as much of an indictment of our parents, as it was the inadequacy of government funding - which spurred the Government to inject an extra £280m into the system before you could say 'turkey twizzler'. Now, to cap it all, he has given this nation the most precious gift that was in his power to bestow: his Flavour Shaker, which "crushes, grinds, blends, mixes and more!" How any of us have managed to prepare a meal without one is a mystery only future social historians will have sufficient objectivity to be able to answer.

The winner, though, is David Blunkett, whose brave homage to Peter Mandelson - a swift return to the Cabinet followed by an equally prompt dismissal - mixed tragedy with farce. His directorship of, and shareholdings in, DNA Bioscience were not criminal, nor were they breaches of the ministerial code of practice. But Mr Blunkett's decision during the middle of an election campaign to join the board of a company about to bid for government contracts without bothering to seek clearance from the relevant advisory committee showed such crashingly inept misjudgement that he had only himself to blame for his swift dispatch. The Comeback Kid will not come back again, and so it seems fitting that the Award should be his.

* Click back here again in the next few days to find out who are the runners and riders for the second and final batch of awards.

The Telegraph on Oxford: wrong, wrong, wrong

If you read the headline, 'Oxford caves in on state selection', emblazoned across today's front page of The Daily Telegraph, what might you imagine is the story?

Perhaps you would think that the University has buckled to the Labour Government's latest social engineering whim? That it has agreed to junk independent selection by tutors on the basis of students' academic ability in favour of a postcode lottery? And that it will now simply filter out the posh kids, no matter how bright, in favour of those from grotty state schools, no matter how thick? If you read the Telegraph this morning, that would be a reasonable inference to draw. Yet it would be utter rubbish.

The Telegraph (and its usually pretty sane education editor, John Clare) have a twin agenda: they wish to pummel Labour at every opportunity, and they wish to bait Oxford into sticking it to the Government, and declaring itself private. They are well entitled to hold both views. But what is quite wrong is to distort the facts to fit their agenda. That is what they rather grubbily decided to do today.

So how has Oxford 'caved in' on state selection? What is the Telegraph's justification for its sensationalist inaccuracies? Well, a report has been prepared by the University's admissions executive, chaired by the president of Corpus Christi College, Sir Tim Lankester. This proposes radical reform of Oxford's admissions policy.
Currently, Oxford's 30 undergraduate colleges are responsible for admitting students for the University's degree courses: tutors assess applicants through a combination of submitted written work and personal interviews (and, sometimes, aptitude testing). There is an obvious downside to this. Some colleges - usually the richer, famous ones, like Magdalen - are vastly over-subscribed. Likewise so are some subject courses - such as Medicine. To apply to Oxford to read Medicine at Magdalen is, therefore, one of the toughest gigs going (as Laura Spence discovered).

Yet there are also colleges and courses - I daren't name names - which are, relatively speaking, under-subscribed. This has two knock-on effects. First, some applicants who are 'in the know' play the system, applying to read an esoteric subject at a poorer college, so upping their chances of getting a place at Oxford. Secondly - and this is the fundamental problem the Lankester report is seeking to address - it means Oxford is turning away some strong candidates for over-subscribed colleges, while accepting some weaker candidates who were interviewed by a college with fewer applicants. For a world-class university such as Oxford, this is a fundamental admissions flaw which has to be addressed.

Under the proposed new system candidates will, as they do now, apply to the University. They will then be interviewed by academic tutors within the faculty to which they have applied, and ranked according to academic ability. Such a system already operates with great success in individual faculties, such as Law and Medicine. Those candidates who are successful will then be free to choose the college they would like to attend.

The proposal - which will doubtless face fierce testing at the University's ruling body, Congregation - is not without its difficulties; most notably that it breaks the link between college tutors choosing the students for whom they will be responsible for three years. There will be many who lament such a change. Personally, I think the charge is overdone. College tutors often teach students at their own college for no more than one term, depending on which course options the student chooses. Besides, school teachers do not personally choose the students they teach, yet most find no difficulty in discharging their duty of care, educating every young person to the best of their ability. Why should university tutors be different? Are we really suggesting they don't give a toss for a student's performance unless they can take the credit for that student's admission?

All of this is the usual stuff of internal university politics. The proposal has been put - one which seeks to improve selection solely on the basis of academic merit, but with some loss to college autonomy - and it will now be hotly contested, as such vital reforms should be within an academic community. There is no question that Oxford will do anything other than continue to defend staunchly its right to select on its own terms candidates with the talent and potential to achieve the highest academic goals. To compromise its academic integrity would irreparably damage the University's global reputation for excellence.

But what totally defeats me is why any of this should be felt worthy of the front page of a national newspaper. I can't help thinking the Telegraph will do anything to avoid making the Liberal Democrats the lead story.

If you've not got anything nice to say...

Like other Lib Dem bloggers, I'm fed up to the back teeth with reading in the media about authoritative, anonymous sources who have told Charles Kennedy to pull up his socks.

Do I think CK is perfect? No. Does he sometimes frustrate me with his fuzziness? Yes. Has he been a successful leader? Undoubtedly. Does he deserve a bit of loyalty from a party he has led to its best position since the days of Lloyd George? Of course. Has he got the stomach to stay on as leader 'til the next election? Perhaps not.

But let's allow him some time to decide that, and not indulge in some knee-jerk panic to the much-hyped Cameron honeymoon. We are widely regarded as a decent party committed to fairness. Now is the time to display some of those qualities.

My message to those MPs indulging in reckless media briefing against CK is simple: shut the fuck up, or else show some backbone, and say in public what you're whispering in private.

It's déjà blue all over again

The Tory Party is in a rather chipper mood. They're cock-a-hoop, over-the-moon, on cloud nine. For they have elected a new leader. A man who will usher in a new political dawn, who can take the fight to Mr Blair's Labour Party, and win the next election.

He has united the Conservatives, promised to lead the party from the centre, bested Mr Blair at Prime Minister's Questions, boosted party membership, wooed back disillusioned donors, gained the support of The Sun, and propelled the Tories into the lead in the opinion polls. The threat he poses has set Mr Brown and Mr Blair at each other's throats, while support for Charles Kennedy's Liberal Democrats is hemorrhaging to the resurgent Tories.

Such were the headlines being written two years ago, in late 2003, after Michael Howard became leader of Her Majesty's Opposition.

Let's have a canter through some of the stories published in the Tory Party's house journal, The Daily Telegraph, following Mr Howard's ascension after IDS was swept under the carpet of political history. And, as you are reading, you may, dear reader, wish to consider if there are any similarities between such reportage, and the rather breathless excitement Mr Cameron's election has inspired.

Where better to kick off than with 'Confident Tories begin fight back' (31st Oct, 2003): "Michael Howard launched the Tories on the 'hard climb' back to power yesterday with a promise to lead from the centre and reunite the party's factions…. a new mood of confidence and excitement gripped the Conservatives, reshaping the landscape at Westminster." This perhaps suggests that Mr Cameron was not the first Tory leader to set the pulses of Tory supporters rushing by caressing their centrist G-spot. As columnist Bruce Anderson wrote just two days later, on 2nd November, "Suddenly, Tories believe that they have everything to play for. This weekend, they are almost ready to rediscover the long lost pleasures of political optimism."

That same day, political commentator Matthew d'Ancona dropped a bombshell: even Rupert Murdoch was tiring of the New Labour gloss: "Number 10 was deeply rattled by The Sun's glowing tributes to Mr Howard last week, having learned to depend deeply on the pro-Blair tabloid in the past six years. Suddenly, Mr Blair's officials scent in the wind that which they dread most: unpredictability."

And no wonder, for Mr Howard's was living up to his pledge to steer the Tory Party towards the mainstream, away from its preferred starboard lurch. The Telegraph's political editor, George Jones, reported on 6th November that "Michael Howard will launch his leadership of the Conservative Party today with a commitment to continue Iain Duncan Smith's efforts to show the party is committed to helping the disadvantaged. Mr Howard will make a decisive break with the 'uncaring' image acquired during the Thatcher years by demonstrating a new commitment to social justice and tackling poverty." Most laudable. And all of us can doubtless recall Mr Howard's determination to place social justice firmly right at the heart of the Tories' 2005 general election campaign. That and scapegoating refugees and gypsies.

Indeed, so popular was Mr Howard's caring initiative that, just the next day, the Telegraph gave due prominence to his parliamentary party's orgasmic raptures: "A new mood of unity and optimism swept through Conservative ranks at Westminster yesterday as Michael Howard was 'crowned' the party leader. In a sign that he intends to resist pressure to steer the Tories to the Right, Mr Howard described the party he would lead as 'broad and generous - broad in appeal and generous in outlook'… [Mr Howard] has impressed and worried Labour MPs. Suddenly they are faced with a competent Tory leader, who will be a match for Tony Blair, and can be presented as a credible prime minister-in-waiting."

As if his reformist, centrist, modernising policy agenda were not enough to get loyal Tories cheering, the new leader showed himself to be a bit of a dab hand at Prime Minister's Questions. His first joust with Mr Blair, on 12th November, buoyed the Party. The next day, George Jones enthused that Mr Howard had "lifted Tory morale yesterday when he demonstrated that he was the equal of Tony Blair during their first exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions." To top it all off, the following week Mr Howard was named Parliamentarian of the Year by The Spectator, edited by his old mucker, Boris Johnson.

But his Midas touch didn't stop there. Within a fortnight of his coronation, Mr Howard had single-handedly recruited 6,000 new members to the Party, declared Conservative Central Office: "The surge in membership was the biggest since the early days of Margaret Thatcher's government, they claimed," (23rd Nov, 2003).

No wonder that, in the face of this onslaught of popular appeal, the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties wilted. 'Lib Dem collapse is the Tories' chance' the Telegraph reported, rather excitedly, on 28th November, 2003. The paper's YouGov poll gave the Tories 38%, Labour 36% and the Lib Dems 19%. As Professor Anthony King pithily predicted: "The Tories are back. Michael Howard has been Conservative leader for only three weeks but YouGov's latest monthly survey for The Telegraph suggests that he has already returned his party to the political mainstream." One can understand fully, therefore, why Tory supporters have greeted with such rhapsody Mr Cameron's first poll ratings, with this month's YouGov showing the Tories on 37%, Labour 35% and the Lib Dems 21%.

Now I have no wish to piss on the Tory Party's parade - perish the thought - but a sense of perspective is always a welcome quality. Conservatives have a quite endearing need to believe in their leader's Messianic ability to deliver them to the promised land of milk, honey and xenophobia. Once it was Mr Howard, now it is Mr Cameron. The media, for its part, simply wishes for some excitement, and so is quite happy to build up the latest challenger to Mr Blair's sustained domination of the political stage. Mr Cameron may just yet turn out to be the Tory Party's salvation. But nothing which has happened in the last two months is evidence of that. The proof lies in the future.

The media misses the mark

Look at today's front pages, and there's only one story in town: the virginal David Cameron's deflowering of Tony Blair leads almost every front page.

'You were the future once' gibes The Daily Telegraph, picking up on Mr Cameron's slighting of the Prime Minister. It's a measure of our low and falling expectations of the British political media that its obsession with yesterday's theatrical detrita should seem so unremarkable. For sure, Mr Cameron done good. He looked reasonably confident, read out his questions just fine, and remembered a couple of the ad libs he'd prepped. But that he and Mr Blair were debating reform of our schools was a triviality apparently beneath the reporting dignity of Fleet Street's finest.

Lest we forget, the issue was the admissions policy of this country's secondary schools. The Tories want all schools to be free to set their own criteria: a de facto return to selection, most likely according to academic ability. This is a policy vigorously opposed by Labour, and by the Lib Dems, both of which reject any suggestion that the 11-plus should be exhumed. It's a big political debate, the outcome of which will affect all current or prospective parents with school-age kids.

Which is what makes the abject and pathetic coverage by our media of yesterday's PMQs so depressing. Did they subject the statements of either Mr Blair or Mr Cameron to any critical analysis? Did they tease out what their positions meant for their parties' respective education policies? Did they assess what effect such policies would have on the lives of our children, parents or teachers? Of course not. Because that would be hard. And it might be boring. Then people would switch off.

This is perhaps why Charles Kennedy's crucial questions to the Prime Minister have been under-reported. Mr Kennedy put Mr Blair on-the-spot about the USA's seemingly routine deployment of so-called 'extraordinary renditions' - transporting suspected terrorists from the US to a third country for further questioning, interrogation and (the widespread fear is) torture in covert CIA prisons.

Once such accusations might have been dismissed as European paranoiac fantasy. But the scandalous abuses perpetrated at Guantánamo Bay and in Abu Ghraib lend credence to these disturbing allegations. Mr Blair blandly reassured the House of Commons that, "The practice of rendition as described by [US] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been American policy for many years…. However, it must be applied in accordance with international conventions, and I accept entirely Secretary of State Rice's assurance that it has been."

When Mr Kennedy then followed-up - to ask if, and when, Mr Blair was told about the 400 rendition flights through 18 British airports which has been documented by the Mail on Sunday - the PM dissembled bafflement: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the Right Honorable Gentleman is referring to."

This was a sneaky lie, glibly told in order to dodge a tricky question about a fundamental issue of human rights. As this week's Economist punchily notes: "snatching people off a foreign country's streets and holding them incommunicado in an undisclosed place without charge for months, even years, without even their families' knowledge, is unlawful, whether or not torture is involved." Yet Mr Blair stayed silent, and the media stayed schtum - because concentrating on gladiatorial personality politics is just so much easier than having to place three syllable words like 'rendition' within the context of international law.

Indeed, the media might - if they had been feeling at all interested in thinking hard - have asked the new Tory leader his opinion of the US's practice of rendition. For, as Jonathan Freedland noted in yesterday's Guardian, Mr Cameron and his Notting Hill henchmen, George Osborne, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, are all vigorous cheerleaders of the invasion of Iraq, and fully signed-up to the neo-con agenda of forcibly exporting democracy. Yet the media are so in love with their own love-in that they have chosen deliberately to ignore Mr Cameron's policy weaknesses. It simply doesn't fit with their current agenda, which is to project the image of a messianic leader capable of socking it to New Labour, and injecting a bit of dynamic competition back into politics now they've tired of Mr Blair's decade of dominance.

Writing in the Financial Times Magazine last week-end, its former editor John Lloyd proposed a five-point plan to rescue the media from its present pitifully parlous predicament. Though a bit of a curate's egg, his last paragraph at least struck me as bang-on-the-money:

"[Journalists] should always be aware - and seek to make readers, listeners and viewers aware - of complexity. Few things in public life are easy to solve, to reform or to conclude. The debates we have as a nation are always made cruder by being simplified, and though it's hard to keep that in mind and also keep an audience, we have to be true to that if we're being true to our profession."

It's a noble clarion call to his colleagues, all of whom will turn a deaf ear to its plea, content instead to plaster their front pages, or pollute the airwaves, with schlock-fest politicking.

Time to develop a liberal choice agenda

British political life currently inhabits a strangely unreal world. Events are moving fast, so fast they appear to be static. This Wednesday, the new leader of the Conservatives – let’s call him David Cameron – will take on the old leader of New Labour, Tony Blair, at Prime Minister’s Questions.

For all that the media will big-up the occasion, this will be merely the opening skirmish of a ‘phoney war’. Mr Blair is increasingly a lame duck leader and we are all awaiting the arrival of the rival, Gordon Brown, at some undefined future point in this Parliament. In the interim, it seems, the public and politicians are content to put their feet up, and put politics to one side, until such time as the parties have got their own houses in order. All of which rather begs the question for the Liberal Democrats: what do we do while we’re waiting?

On the face of it, the party should be satisfied with its position. With 62 MPs, the Lib Dems are the largest third party force since 1929. The opinion polls have us at a steady state 20 per cent in spite of the media’s Tory lurve-fest since Mr Cameron’s ‘rise without trace’. And yet there is a creeping sense of nervousness: suddenly, all the old certainties are gone.

First, our infamous ‘decapitation’ election targeting strategy imploded. This was a bit of a shock to the system. We have become so used to smash ‘n’ grab by-election victories, and to the public’s residual disdain for the Tory party, that we assumed we could knock out such luminaries as Oliver Letwin, David Davis (remember him?) and Theresa May with one more heave. We were wrong.

Then came autumn’s Blackpool party conference, when the media - rather tediously - focused on Charles Kennedy’s chairmanship/leadership. For what it’s worth, let me state my views on this side-issue in five easy-to-digest points:
* Mr Kennedy is an under-estimated leader whose collegial, laid-back, informal style fits our party snugly.
* He has called some of the big decisions, notably Iraq, pretty much right.
* His carefully cultured anti-politician normality has worked well for the party in an age of geek-wonkery, and has helped give us a firm foot-hold in the Celtic regions.
* However, he is still frustratingly waffly in interviews, and has yet to project a resonant narrative for the party.
* He is safe from a leadership challenge as there is no obvious successor. (Simon Hughes is much more sharply intelligent than he is sometimes credited, but is too excitably gaffe-prone; Mark Oaten is too polarising; Ming Campbell is too clearly a caretaker-leader; and Nick Clegg is too promising to be thrust into pole position prematurely.)

The bigger conference debate - which the media largely ignored because it concerned policy, and so made their heads hurt – centred on our political direction. This continues to be portrayed within and without the party (much to my visceral dislike) as a straight ‘left versus right’ battle for the soul of the Liberal Democrats. This is, of course, a crashingly one-dimensional reductio ad absurdum.

Occasionally, it is elevated to a more historical level, and pitched as a battle between nineteenth-century ‘economic liberals’ (who believe in a minimal state and free markets) and twentieth-century ‘New Liberals’ (who believe in big government and state intervention). This still seems to me to be an unhelpfully antiquated approach, and one which ignores the realities and complexities of our globalised market economy.

But, praise be, the Lib Dems are now thinking seriously about economic issues, recognising that, in the real world, robust financial planning must be at the heart of our decision-making. It is not necessarily that voters expect today’s party to be tomorrow’s government. However, they do expect the Lib Dems, which may well hold the balance of power by 2009, to have an affordable, prioritised programme. The current hiatus in the political maelstrom gives us the opportunity to work out what our direction should be, and how that will map across to our next election manifesto.

Any pair of binary ideological labels is, of course, open to the charge of over-simplification. But I hope my party sees itself as being firmly on the side of the consumer, the individual; even when this sets the Lib Dems in opposition to the interests of the producer, whether state or private. Such definitions are designedly vague, so let me be a little more explicit:
* The best, most effective way of delivering public services is via markets where the consumer has free and fair choice between competing providers.
* Market failure is inevitable: both/either because consumers lack purchasing power to be able to buy into a particular market; and/or because producers operate restrictive trading practices which skew the market.
* Such market failure is best corrected by ensuring every consumer has access to those markets which are essential for them to realise their potential; and by ensuring all producers can compete on a level playing field.

What does such economic theorising mean in reality? Well, for a start it means the Lib Dems should junk their knocking of the ‘choice agenda’ for public services simply because it’s being sponsored by Mr Blair. It is too glib simply to say we believe “there should be ‘choice for all’”, as Mr Kennedy did in a keynote speech this summer. Certainly the Prime Minister’s attempts to direct reform from the centre are to be decried. But his Brighton conference speech spelled out, simply and clearly, what should (bar the references to Labour) be the liberal choice agenda for public services:

“The truth is, command public services today are no more acceptable than a command economy. The 21st century's expectations in public services are a world away from those of 1945. People demand quality, choice, high standards. Why? Because in every other walk of life they demand them. And they are paying their taxes, so they feel they are entitled to them.… There's a great myth here, which is that we don't have a market in services now; we do. It's called private schools and private healthcare. But it's only open to the well-off. There is another myth: choice is a New Labour invention. Wrong. Choice is what wealthy people have exercised for centuries. The Tories have always been comfortable with that. But for Labour, choice is too important to be the monopoly of the wealthy.”

To date the Lib Dems have too often appeared to be in denial about the existence of markets in education and health-care. Our approach to public services has been simply to say: more taxes, more devolution. Undoubtedly, proper funding and local power are both essential if we are to have better schools and hospitals. But we would be naïve to assume that they are a panacea. There will never be enough money, and local decision-makers will sometimes make mistakes. We must, therefore, address seriously how we can develop a market in our public services which allocates scarce resources fairly and efficiently, which holds local decision-makers accountable, and in which the consumer has the power to exercise effective choice.

The arrival of Mr Cameron may make our job harder. If, as he self-proclaims, he intends to lead a moderate, modern Conservative Party – one which prioritises the environment, localism, and choice in public services – the so-called centre ground of British politics is going to become more crowded. But that does not mean we should politely vacate our liberal pitch in order to give Mr Cameron some room. We should instead plant our liberal flag firmly in the ground, and proudly state: we were here first.

A wet centrist, me?

Thank you The Apollo Project for featuring my most recent post - about internal Lib Dem left/right name-calling - on your latest Top 10 Lib Dem blog posts. It appears to have attracted the ire of one of my readers. I don't normally respond to comments through a separate posting, but decided to make an exception this time:

Anonymous said...

Stephen this is a pathetic letter. The debate between the left and right of the party matters quite a great deal in respect of which future liberal voters or otherwise we will be able to attact.

The right of the party believe that the best coalition is of social and economic liberals, that tends to include a lot of left-wing Tories and disgruntled centrists who currently vote for Labour. The left of the party belivee the best is one of social liberals, social democrats and liberal socialists, broadly a coalition of the left or charitably a progressive coalition. What you can't have though is a sort of catch-all spanning the lot. socialists and eocnomic liberals are opponents on most tax and spend matters.

They can agree tactically on civil liberties, but that's rather small beer in the policy portfolio of a future government compared to doing a budget.

In fact it's wet centrists like you sitting there whining passively about why we can't just all get along, rather than taking difficult decisions is precisely why we are in this situation today. The leader being the worst offender.

Oxford Liberal (aka Stephen Tall) says...

Good lord, it's a long time since I've been called a wet centrist! I'll remember that next time someone takes me to task for supporting the legalisation of drugs or the necessity of university top-up fees.

Your comment makes my point for me. No-where have I said, or would I say, that we should avoid a debate which requires difficult decisions (tip: read my article).

What I do want is a debate on our own liberal terms. By unwrapping the useless and unhelpful terms, 'left' and 'right', you've indicated the kind of debate we should be having. (Though I'd suggest ditching the word 'pathetic' and not posting anonymously might be a yet more grown-up approach.)

But that is not the debate which is raging on the letters page of Lib Dem News right now. There the argument is (I paraphrase only slightly): we need to be more left/right-wing to win over Labour/Tory voters. That kind of simplistic logic is what made me despair, and prompted my letter.

Finally... to imagine, as you appear to, that there is no common ground between 'economic liberals' and ' socialist liberals' - other than civil liberties - is a mistake. Opening up markets to competition, and enabling the poorest to take advantage of those markets, are two concepts which can co-exist happily. There are many instances of co-operative societies and not-for-profit trusts where these find practical expression, and unite those with differing ideologies.

You don't always need to pick a fight to win an argument.

Left or Right...? Bored now.

I have slated the media before for their tired attempts to polarise British politics into sterile 'left' or 'right' cliches.

So it's been with escalating exasperation that I've followed the letters pages of Liberal Democrat News, in which various correspondents - over several monotonous weeks - have been knocking seven shades of shite out of each other over the party's future direction. Indeed, they've driven me to write in myself:

Dear Madam,

Enough already! Can Liberal Democrat News correspondents – whichever ‘wing’ of the party they have chosen noisily to represent – please call a truce to the increasingly petty tit-for-tat sniping in which they have been indulging via your letters pages?

I am bored with reading our party must either ‘drift left’ or ‘lurch right’ if we are to stand any chance of appealing to those who have voted Labour or Tory in the past. This is a false choice. As members of a party which rightly disdains the über-simplistic binary labels of ‘left’ and ‘right’ we really ought to know better.

Let us all have the self-confidence, please, to champion liberal policies that will appeal to liberal-minded voters. And leave worrying about their previous party allegiance to EARS.

Yours faithfully,

Cllr Stephen Tall
Oxford

It is of course vital that the party has a serious debate about its future direction. Not to do so will see us eclipsed either by Gordon Brown’s New-ish Labour or David Cameron’s Tory-lite brand. But the debate must be on our own terms.

At its heart must be how the Liberal Democrats would run the economy better. From this will flow how we can afford our priorities. What would a liberal health service look like? Surely not Labour’s centralised state-ist monolith? What would a liberal education system be? Surely not Labour’s prescriptive micro-managed curriculum? What would a liberal pensions policy be? Surely not Labour’s over-complex means-testing, or compulsory retirement age? And so on…

My point is simple: let’s work out our liberal response to the problems facing this country. Then we can worry about our targeting strategy confident that we have a manifesto which puts forward a liberal vision.

Political interviews that leave us in the dark

The Jeremy Paxman Show - or Newsnight as it rather quaintly persists in calling itself - was on sprightly form last night. "David Cameron, do you know what a Pink Pussy is?" barked the Grand Inquisitor, presumably for a bet, as there was little other justification for such a specious, single entendre question. (It's a cocktail, by the way.) Still, it set the tone for what was to prove a listless, harmless, pointless bit of political knock-about. This was a set-piece set-to that never set-alight. Why not?

Well, by his own standards, Paxo failed to stuff Mr Cameron. In the clichéd, macho argot of the news-room, he scored no 'palpable hits', delivered no 'killer lines', landed no 'deadly blows'. Mr Paxman didn't repeat the same question 14 times, a trick he infamously pulled on the Young Pretender's mentor, Michael Howard, back in 1997, when Mr Howard's leadership hopes were dashed by the encounter.

Indeed, Mr Cameron did well deftly to parry his interrogator's rhetorical thrusts, protesting - in a carefully-scripted fit of pique - that, "This is the trouble with these interviews, Jeremy. You come in, you sit someone down, you treat them like they are some cross between a fake or a hypocrite, and you give no time for anyone to answer the questions. It does your profession no favours at all."

This might have sounded a tad more convincing, but for the fact that Mr Cameron had just argued, with consummate pained sincerity, that he had "genuinely changed" his mind about university tuition fees. He had been opposed at the last general election - "furious with Labour for breaking its promise" - but is now, just six months later, fully in favour of them.

I have no special insight into the workings of Mr Cameron's mind, but I suspect this might be a more honest take:

"I always believed tuition fees to be the right policy. They are the only viable way in which universities can be funded. I thought Iain Duncan Smith was absurdly opportunistic (and utterly desperate) to commit the Conservative Party to opposing them. We should have ditched the policy when we ditched IDS, but, frankly, it was about the only popular thing we had going for us. That's why we kept it in the manifesto."

It is precisely because politicians refuse to give this kind of straight answer that the brusque manner Mr Paxman has made his own (and which some of his colleagues unsuccessfully attempt, rather embarrassingly, to emulate) is so popular with the public. Witness some of the eulogies from viewers on the Newsnight website: "The interview with Cameron was great! Watching him getting grilled was the highlight of my evening. Only Paxman could get the juicy info from Cameron." Or: "Not for the first time does Britain owe Mr Jeremy Paxman a great debt for exposing a politician." And: "I thought Jeremy Paxman was brilliant! Cameron got really agitated by his superb questioning."

Mr Paxman has another champion, probably a more important one for him to keep on-side: Peter Barron, the editor of Newsnight. In his Editor's Column on the programme's website (under the headline, What is the point of Jeremy Paxman?) Mr Barron mounts a staunch defence of his star's televised confrontations with Messrs Cameron and Davis:

"They are standing for high public office and it's right that they should be subjected to detailed scrutiny of their principles and policies. In a few weeks' time one of them will be leader of the Opposition and, in a couple of years, perhaps Prime Minister. He'll face withering exchanges at the dispatch box and if elected Prime Minister torrid crises at home and abroad. Voters surely want to know if their man is up to it or if he might crumble. Our job on these occasions is to try to find out."

It is difficult to gainsay such high-minded principle. (Though I am unconvinced that being roughed-up on Newsnight has any equivalence with "torrid crises", whether foreign or domestic: being interviewed by Paxo is clearly far more stressful.) Yet it is even more difficult to square this self-proclaimed devotion to scrutiny of principles and policies with Mr Paxman's habit of demanding yes or no answers of his victims: for example, "Do you think gay couples should be able to adopt?" or "Do you believe in free, universal child-care for all?"

Now some people may be able to do justice to their views on these important topics by uttering just one word: if they can, I won't vote for them. I harbour a visceral disike of binary politics, in which every argument must be reduced to black-versus-white, positive-versus-negative, synonym-versus-antonym. I want to see politicians who respect complexity, wrestle with difficulties, grasp subtleties, and who are able to distil this confusing swirl into a clear, reasoned proposition.

It was put best in the US television series, The West Wing, when the fictional President Josiah 'every-liberal's-wet-dream' Bartlett took a verbal swing at a Dubya-like Republican red-neck Governor, whose stock in trade was 10-word sound-bites:

"Ten-word answers can kill you in political campaigns. They're the tip of the sword. Here's my question: What are the next 10 words of your answer? Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next 10 words. How are we going to do it? Give me 10 after that, I'll drop out of the race right now. Every once in a while, every once in a while, there's a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong, but those days almost always include body counts. Other than that, there aren't very many unnuanced moments in leading a country that's way too big for 10 words."

Mr Barron is of course right that I want to know how either Mr Cameron or Mr Davis might handle those nuanced moments which would face either one of them were they to occupy 10 Downing Street. To watch an interview which reveals how they think - which shows their minds at work, grappling with tricky issues - would be fascinating. But the Paxman approach gives us the very opposite. The politicians he cross-examines are completely on their guard, so conscious that a word out of place, a careless slip-of-the-tongue, could spell disaster for their careers that they put up their mental shutters and turn off all the lights. Leaving us in darkness.

Sir Christopher and the Secret Keepers

Sir Christopher Meyer, the UK's former ambassador to Washington, is in trouble. His former civil service colleagues, Lords Butler and Renwick, have accused him of a "breach of trust", and of flouting a well-established "self-denying ordinance". The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has gone far, far further, dissing Sir Christopher's behaviour as "preposterous and very demeaning… completely unacceptable". What could have prompted such condemnation? Has Sir Christopher been plotting against Her Majesty's Government? Has he betrayed his country?

No. The offence which has prompted this highfalutin umbrage from what might once have been regarded as 'The Establishment' is the serialisation of Sir Christopher's chattily indiscreet memoirs, DC Confidential.

If an autobiography is to be at all interesting - and certainly if it is going to justify the publisher's advance - it will have to cause upset. And it is not hard to work out why those who are named and shamed by Sir Christopher might feel hard done by. Mr Straw is described as "tongue-tied" when meeting US officials, as "someone more to be liked than admired", who took "a long time to find his feet" in the Foreign Office. The chippy John Prescott may not be thrilled to see immortalised in print his references to the "Balklands" and "Kovosa". And Mr Blair could probably have foregone the headlines suggesting he was "seduced … by the proximity and glamour of American power" in this, his latest worst week as Prime Minister.

Sir Christopher's memoirs have two schools of critics.

The first, and most understandable, is represented by Mr Straw, who - doubtless smarting from the ex-ambassador's disdainful put-downs - has thrown an 'It's so unfair!' teenage strop. Naturally, the Foreign Secretary has had to dress this up to avoid looking pitifully thin-skinned, and so has invoked Sir Christopher's chairmanship of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC): "He is in the newspapers saying controversial things. If people want to complain to the newspapers about what he has said, who do they complain to?" As Mr Straw will be fully aware, the PCC has the power to adjudicate only if a complaint has been filed by someone directly involved. So, if Mr Straw truly wishes to discover what will happen "if people want to complain", the answer is within his personal gift.

The second, and more significant, school is represented by Sir Christopher's peers, those such as Sir Michael Jay, head of the UK's diplomatic corps, who stoically urges eternal anonymity on his colleagues: "we cannot serve ministers effectively unless they trust and confide in us, which they will only do if we respect that confidence, not just when we're doing our jobs, but afterwards, too." This is - and I mean this phrase to be damningly pejorative - a very British argument.

The civil service, according to Sir Michael's injunction, is the 'secret keeper' of government ministers, irrespective of party. The questions asked, the advice dispensed, and the decisions taken: all must remain clasped to the bosom of the government's devoted retainers until their dying breath. They should see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. Well - and I say this with all due respect to Sir Michael - bollocks to that.

For a start, it is clear that politicians no longer "trust and confide" in their civil servants: they are too well-schooled in Yes, Minister to risk that. One of the incidents, dripping in bathos, which Sir Christopher recalls is being told by Mr Blair's chief of staff that the Prime Minister would prefer to have his communications chief, Alistair Campbell, accompany him to supper with President Bush, in place of the ambassador. Sir Christopher's robust response would have earned Mr Campbell's approval, at least for its explicit style: "If this happens, you will cut me off at the fucking knees for the rest of my fucking time in Washington. Is that what you want?" In the end, both Mr Campbell and Sir Christopher were able to step up to the plate, and bring their smarts to the dinner table.

Nor is clear to me that the amount of trust which politicians are willing to invest in their advisors is in any way related to the propensity of those advisors later to write about the experience. That Mr Campbell kept a diary during his Downing Street years was well known within Westminster. Yet this did not stop him remaining Mr Blair's closest political confidante.

But Sir Michael's remarks are indicative of a more dangerous assumption: that the role of the civil service is to counsel ministers in private, and to keep schtum about it for ever. Now, of course, there are occasions when delicate negotiations require secrecy: most obviously, when the British government denied it was talking to the IRA at a time when, to reveal this fact, would have jeopardised a successful outcome. However, these are the exceptions, not the rule; no matter that our political culture inverts this principle.

Though the Freedom of Information Act (2000) has brought out much into the open that was formerly hidden, its success is overly reliant on the benign patronage of the unelected position of Information Commissioner - whose rulings can, in many circumstances, be over-ruled by ministers. Yet without openness and transparency, there can be no true accountability; and without true accountability there can be no real responsibility.

All secrets are about power: the knowledge one person has which another does not gives him the edge. That is why they are precious, why they are hoarded by those who wish to retain power. To share a secret is to diminish the power of its keepers, to break the sacred conspiracy of silence of the Magic Circle.

Sir Christopher's memoirs are not exceptional, not scandalous, not traitorous. They simply allow us a glimpse inside those ego-filled rooms where decisions are made in our names. We now know a little bit more about those decisions than we did, and a little bit more about those who took them. As a result, we are a little bit more powerful than we were, and they are a little bit less powerful than they would like. And that is why Sir Christopher is in trouble.

Mr Blair and the 'Sod you' Legacy Agenda

Today's headlines put it pretty bluntly: 'The beginning of the end'. The politicos' consensus was that the Government's surprisingly heavy 31-vote Commons defeat, Mr Blair's first as Prime Minister, is the first nail in his pre-ordered coffin.

If he is unable to persuade his own backbench MPs that legislation he believes is vital to the security of the realm should become law, then what chance has Mr Blair of winning them over to his market-based health and education reforms? If they are dead in the water, what is to become of Mr Blair's much-touted 'legacy agenda'? Put simply: what is the point of Tony Blair any more?

All this is, of course, to under-estimate, to over-state, and to extrapolate.

It under-estimates the magnetic force of Mr Blair's charisma; which, though weaker than in 1997, still exerts real pull among Labour voters, and the wider, wavering public. Too much has, I think, been read into opinion polls showing overwhelming public support for 90-days' detention without charge. (The question won't have been, "Are you a spineless supporter of Al-Qaeda who regards terrorist outrages as a legitimate form of free expression, or do you believe our brave bobbies should be given the essential tools to do their bloody difficult job?" But any reader of a tabloid would have assumed that was their choice.) Yet there can be no doubt that Mr Blair's stance will have impressed those centre-right, authoritarian-inclined voters who he tempted away from the Tories eight years ago, and whose concerns he so artfully articulates. Witness Mr Brown's johnny-come-lately endeavour to pander to this powerful bloc's prejudices.

It over-states the danger Mr Blair is in. This defeat is part of politics natural rhythm, its ebb and flow. Six months ago, after his third election victory, the Prime Minister's authority was said to be in tatters: his majority had been slashed by a hundred, and it might have been worse but for Gordon Brown's popularity with Labour's 'core' vote, and a woefully inept Tory campaign. Three months ago - after Mr Blair helped London secure the 2012 Olympics, stood up resolutely to the 7/7 terrorists, and identified himself with Live8's anti-poverty campaign - he bestrode the world stage, dominated the British political arena. Today, he is written off as a lame duck. What will be written three months from now? That Mr Blair has bested Mr Cameron at the despatch box, and that Tory MPs are already worried by the jittery performance of their inexperienced new leader?

And it extrapolates from one vote, and assumes a trend. Yesterday's rebellion was large, certainly; but the whips have seen worse. In the last Parliament alone (2001-05), there were four rebellions with larger numbers of dissenters than yesterday's 49 defiant Labour MPs: on Iraq, top-up fees, foundation hospitals, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Some of those who revolted are normally loyal (for instance, the former local government minister, Nick Raynsford) and/or were acutely conscious of the significant Muslim populations in their constituencies (Leicester South's newly-minted Sir Peter Soulsby). There is considerable 'churn' in the rebels among Labour's ranks. Between 1997 and 2001, 133 Labour MPs rebelled against their Government on 96 separate votes: they did not all do so on every issue. To assume Mr Blair's 'legacy agenda' will not be delivered on the basis of this one civil liberties vote cannot be assumed.

A lot will depend on how smartly the Tory opposition plays its hand. It has two courses open to it. It can, as it did yesterday, shoot the Government down in flames, and revel in the schadenfreude. This destabilises Labour, and boosts the morale of the Conservatives (the vicious mockery of the über-right-wing press notwithstanding). Yet, perversely, this has the effect of lancing the Labour boil: anger against Mr Blair will diminish every time one of his unpalatable reforms is defeated; and, with it, the pressure from within the Labour Party for him to stand down sooner rather than later may subside. The perception and reality of policy drift, though, may well increase the media pressure on Mr Blair to hand-over.

Alternatively, the Tories might decide - especially when it comes to market-led public service reforms - to hug Mr Blair closely, and to prop up his Government. This could have two advantages. First, it places the Conservatives firmly in the mainstream centre-right which Mr Blair has so long, and so successfully, occupied. Secondly, Mr Blair's continuing Parliamentary success would seriously antagonise the Labour rebels, whose impotence in the face of this New Labour / Tory pact might trigger a revolt which brings about the Prime Minister's political demise.

What is certain is this: the Tories would be well advised to choose whichever option they believe will hasten Mr Blair's departure from Downing Street. Gordon Brown's assumption (in more ways than one) of the top job will give Labour an inevitable boost in popularity. Novelty has charm, and is yet to disappoint. However, the Chancellor presents a far easier target for the Tories to attack than Mr Blair, and they will not want him to have the chance two or three years down the line to call a 'cut and run' election during his honeymoon. The sooner they can run out Tony, the longer they have to bowl out Gordon.

What yesterday's vote demonstrated is Mr Blair's increasing determination to talk over his party direct to the public. Clare Short took the opportunity to (yet again) accuse Mr Blair of succumbing to "hubris", the sin customarily ascribed to leaders of longevity. I think this is a clichéd, simplistic interpretation of Mr Blair's motives. Rather we should see it as an integral part of Mr Blair's legacy agenda. It might be termed more accurately his 'sod you' legacy agenda.

The Prime Minister could have compromised on 90 days: his Home Secretary wanted to, and would have settled for (say) 42 days. The Government would then have won the vote (probably). This would have enabled Mr Blair to prove how tough are his anti-terrorism credentials, and still to have tainted the Tories as 'soft'. So why didn't he? As he said so recently himself: "Every time I've introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I'd gone further." You can't get much clearer than that. Wait a minute: yes you can! For what did Mr Blair declaim at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday: "It is better sometimes to lose doing the right thing, than to win doing the wrong thing."

Mr Blair is the canniest political operator of his generation. Yesterday's defeat was not a slip-up or a miscalculation: it was the Prime Minister anticipating his retrospective validation by history. The one legacy Mr Blair believes he can definitely achieve is to be able use his lecture-tour retirement to preach "I told you so".

Let's hear it for partisan politics

Charles Kennedy often gets a bad press from within and without the Liberal Democrat fold. So let's also give credit where it's fully due. In today's thegrauniad, CK sets out a compelling, and unabashedly liberal, response to the Government's latest attempt to make the law into a Kafka novel.

A couple of paragraphs in particular caught my eye:

"A crucial division of opinion is opening up between the party of civil liberties and the party of authoritarianism. Liberal Democrats are on the side of civil liberties. Labour - which had a proud libertarian tradition when Roy Jenkins was home secretary in the 1960s - is now the party of authoritarianism. The prime minister embodies a shift that is becoming a defining issue of our politics. ...

"Our political opponents try to suggest that the Liberal Democrats' passion for civil liberties somehow makes us 'soft on terror'. I totally disagree. Certainly, we may find ourselves defending the rights of very small and unpopular minorities - those accused of terrorist crimes, those seeking asylum, those seeking to avoid deportation. But all of us are in a minority at one time or another. All of us could be wrongly accused of a crime we did not commit. All of us could express views or do things the government of the day does not like. All of us do unpopular things or utter unpopular thoughts. And we all need the protection which the impartial rule of law gives us."

It brought to my mind one of the many memorable speeches uttered by every liberal's favourite US President, Jed Bartlett, in the brilliant West Wing epsiode where he sticks it to Governor Ritchie, the right-wing nutjob transparently modelled on 'Dubya':

"I don't think Americans are tired of partisan politics; I think they're tired of hearing career politicians diss partisan politics to get a gig. I've tried it before, they ain't buying it. That's okay, though. That's okay, though, 'cause partisan politics is good. Partisan politics is what the founders had in mind. It guarantees that the minority opinion is heard, and as a lifelong possessor of minority opinions, I appreciate it. But if you're troubled by it, Governor, you should know, in this campaign, you've used the word 'liberal' 74 times in one day. It was yesterday."

I'm not a poet, and I'm aware of the fact

I promise: I won't make a habit of this... below is a pome what I have writ. I wish to make abundantly clear what will, in any case, become crystal clear. I am not a poet: my best scansion is done by computer, and my meter can be measured in yards. But, once a year*, I indulge my Muse.

An Ode-ious Canvasser

I.

He dusted off the clip-board,
Pinned on his rosette,
And rehearsed his patter word-for-word.
(Until the mirror crack’d.)

II.

He strode up to the first door,
Ready to demand
To know: “Who are you voting for?”
(Answer came there none.)

III.

At the fifteenth house he finally found
Someone who was in:
“You’ll vote for me, I’ll be bound!”
(Alas, his luck was out.)

IV.

An hour gone, he paused for breath,
And counted both his pledges:
“That’s not so bad, I must keep the faith.”
(Though God had given him up.)


V.

The rain set in, and darkness fell:
An obvious metaphor.
“My luck is turning, I can tell”
(It wasn’t, and he couldn’t.)

VI.

At last, the night was over:
Time to reflect, perchance?
“It’ll be a landslide, no doubts whatsoever.”
(He told his broken mirror.)

VII.

On election day, he toured the town
Shouting his instructions.
“Vote for me, you ignorami, not that other clown.”
(Their faces said it all.)

VIII.

The result, of course, was on the cards,
And, to nobody’s surprise:
“The people have spoken. The bastards!”
(It’s all over ‘til next year.)

* The excuse is the annual Headington Poetry Competition, which raises the profile of the Christmas Fun Day (4th Dec), and raises money to support the town's Christmas lights.

Have I got the political X-Factor?

In days of yore, you would just be told by your line manager if you were doing a good job: a Christmas bonus if you were; a stiff injunction to pull your socks up if you weren’t.

Then came appraisals, in which you would dialogue with your boss: “this is a chance for you to feed back on how I’m doing so we can both work together to achieve mutual empowerment”. It’s moved on a stage further now: 360-degree reviews mean you know exactly what your ‘co-colleagues’ think of your ‘core competencies’; and everybody is required to self-assess their individual performance. Which was fine when it happened to other people. But now it’s happened to me.

All city councillors were recently sent a self-assessment questionnaire “as part of your development process and the Council’s capacity building programme”. There were three sections – but, not being very important, I had only to complete the first of these: on my role as an elected member.

I was helpfully informed that the “questionnaire is divided into clusters of competencies, such as, community leadership, regulating and monitoring, and communication skills”. I was then asked to rate myself, honestly, on the following scale:

* exceptionally effective at this
* generally effective
* not consistently effective
* not confident that fully effective

But, dear reader, I have a confession: I refused to fill it in. I said (a tad pompously maybe) that “it was not a good use of my time”. And as the residents of Headington are my only line managers, I feel I must explain why to you/them (delete as appropriate). The easiest way to do so is to quote five of the questions. (To repeat them all would be tedious for you; and a possible breach of copyright by me.) Take a look, and see if you can understand my reasons.

How effective are you at…:

1. Engaging proactively with the community, canvassing opinion and seeking new ways of representing others.
2. Being approachable, empathetic, understanding and encouraging trust.
3. Understanding and acting on your judicial role in order to meet your legal responsibilities (e.g. duty of care, corporate parenting).
4. Quickly analysing and assimilating complex information and taking account of the wider strategic context.
5. Achieving goals by co-ordinating others, maintaining task focus and persisting in the face of set backs.

Now I don’t think of myself as old-fashioned or Luddite. It is very easy airily to dismiss phrases such as ‘best practice’, ‘performance management’ and ‘capacity building’ as meaningless management bullshit. Behind the inevitable jargon, though, are some useful protocols, from which we can all learn, about how to behave as grown-up professionals in the real world. So I didn’t refuse to complete it as some futile, reactionary protest against our new-fangled human resources fetishism.

Two points did strike me, though.

First, who on earth is going to have the arrogance to self-assess themselves as “exceptionally effective” at any aspect of their job? (I shall tread cautiously here for fear my Council colleagues and friends might have done just that; will read this; and now be offended I’ve labelled them arrogant. But really...)

The reason I stopped filling in the survey is that, after a few questions, I realised I was ticking “generally effective” for everything. Now, I hope and think I’m a pretty good ward councillor. I’ve been elected three times by the residents of Headington, so hope and think they mostly agree. But I know I’m not perfect, or “exceptional”, and that there are areas where I can improve (at least if there were more hours in the day).

Secondly, I have absolutely no idea to whom I should compare myself. Should it be to my fellow councillors; or to all councillors everywhere? If the former, I will do well compared to some of the less diligent (no names!); and less well compared to those who (for instance) are full-time councillors. If the latter, I have no idea even where to start.

I suspect if I had asked for advice on filling in the survey (and I know I should, but, truly, life’s too short) I would have been told that I should compare myself as a councillor to my perception of an ‘average’ councillor in Oxford.

But this, of course, is where my real beef with the questionnaire was.

A survey which seeks to set up an average, a ‘norm’, will skew the answers towards that average: deviations will be seen as just that, even if they are an accurate reflection of the majority. We should, it seems, all cluster within the safe obscurity of the morass of mediocrity, rather than dare to risk exceptionality.

So I have taken my stand, and declined to tick my boxes. However, if you are a Headington resident, and want to assess my performance as a councillor, please let me know, and I will e-mail you my appraisal form to fill in for me: it takes only 20-30 minutes. (And, if you’re nice about me, I’ll publish the results.)

Time and tide waits for no politician

Fairest to me of all delights
That makes this earth a heaven,
Is the joy of finding it half-past six,
When I thought it was half-past seven.
(Anonymous.)

Success in politics, as in comedy, is all about timing. Some have it, some don’t. Today, as he wound the clock back one hour, I wonder if David Davis secretly wished he could keep on turning? Perhaps to a month ago, before he mumbled his way through that conference speech, and self-imploded his second and final Tory leadership challenge. And I wonder if Gordon Brown were secretly wishing the clocks could have moved forward? Perhaps to that as yet unspecified time when Mr Blair will bequeath him the New Labour Government, rather as an older brother might discard his tatty and unfashionable hand-me-downs.

It all looked so different when Messrs Brown and Davis were the shoo-ins for their respective parties: but Spring forward, Fall back.

The prevailing wisdom among the Chancellor’s supporters had gone something like this: two years of Tony, a graceful handover-cum-coronation, two years of honeymoon for Mr Brown, then a triumphant election victory. But that was back in May, when Mr Brown was widely credited with saving Mr Blair’s electoral skin, as the two of them toured Britain with their ‘Vote for one, get the other free’ message. Then, of course, July saw Mr Blair re-assert his authority, as the vicious synchronicity of the London Olympics announcement and 7/7 bombings allowed him to promenade his finely-tuned ‘pained resolution’ rhetoric.

But the hyper-kinesis of the last month has smashed to smithereens even that topsy-turvy summer. Ever since the newcomer, David Cameron, entered stage right, ad libbing as Mr Blair’s Mini-Me, his opponents – both Tory and Labour – have been trying desperately to stick to the script they helped write. No one, neither Mr Brown nor Mr Davis, wants to be upstaged by Mr Cameron: to end up typecast as his supporting actor.

Ten weeks ago, I wrote an article comparing the then Tory leadership contenders to the Seven Dwarves of fairytale yore. With hindsight, I see now that I blundered in labelling Mr Davis as Grumpy. In fact, the dwarf he now most resembles is a White Dwarf: an average-size star, which, after it has shed its outside layers, becomes “a tiny ball of degenerate matter not massive enough for further fusion to take place, supported only by degeneracy pressure”, according to Wikipedia. Harsh, but fair.

No one can dispute Mr Cameron’s sense of timing. Less than one month ago, a YouGov poll in The Daily Telegraph suggested only one in ten voters could identify the Tories’ new Sun King, compared with recognition factors of 83% for Ken Clarke, 57% for Mr Davis and 19% for Liam Fox. Mr Cameron has since eclipsed them all, earning the dubious pleasure of what will doubtless be the first of many Private Eye covers. An ICM poll today suggested almost three-quarters of Tory members would plump for him. Which means we will have opportunity soon enough to discover if the Sun King is more than just a shooting star.

All this has left Labour looking nervously over its shoulder (especially if they’re called Walter Wolfgang). As the Scottish writer, Eric Linklater, put it: “At my back I often hear Time’s winged chariot changing gear.”

The Tories have – or at least think they have, which may amount to the same thing – their own Blair-lite. If, and surely when, the dour, brooding, stentorian Mr Brown eventually swaps his role as Last Word of the Treasury to become its First Lord, will the comparison with the smiling, youthful, modern Mr Cameron be helpful to the Labour cause? Will it enable Labour to pitch the next election as battle-hardened experience versus silver-spooned naivety? Or will it be viewed as glum-faced Presbyterianism against fresh-faced optimism?

That the questions are even being asked points to the sea-change in British politics we have witnessed in the last month. And that some are suggesting Labour may also now wish to skip a generation points to the universal truth underpinning Sir Robin Day’s waspish observation to John Nott that he was a “a transient, here today and, if I may say so, gone tomorrow politician”.

Time and tide wait for no man. If either Mr Davis or Mr Brown should be at all depressed by their inability to control the temporal, they might at least comfort themselves with the thought that no politician is exempt: how President Bush must wish he could have stopped the clock on 3rd November, 2004, the last time he appeared in charge of his own destiny.

Simon Jenkins: writing with forked pen

As the voice of Liberal England, Jonathan Calder, noted a couple of days ago , Simon Jenkins appears charmingly content to fit his voice to his readership. On Wednesday, he biffed Blair for giving parents some say in their kids’ education:

The education white paper offers a vision of a "parent-led" state secondary-school system. Its key institution is the "self-governing school free to parents", a copy of the Tories' grant-maintained school that Labour once derided. Parents will be able to control a school's "ethos and individualism". As one parent briskly put it to me, "We can keep out the blacks."… Most parents cannot and do not want to roam the country in search of the "school of their choice", even if the transport system could stand the strain. They want the school closest to where they live to be an excellent one, period.

Of course, the best state schools already have a pretty effective racial screening process: it’s called the housing market, and it means that the poorer communities too often don’t get a look in.

And of course parents would prefer their local school “to be an excellent one, period”. Who knows, though, they might even prefer the option of two excellent local schools offering different curriculums, a different ethos, different extra-curricular activities, etc.

Perhaps Mr Jenkins doesn’t feel parents should bother their little heads with such minor concerns?

But all this then made for a bizarre experience today to read Mr Jenkins’s article for The Spectator, headlined Independence for Oxford. Here we read:

The government last week proposed what is a de facto voucher scheme for English secondary schools. They can be self-governing institutions with the freedom to determine their ethos and accept [financial] contributions from parents and others. Oxford would be no different in principle.

So let me get this straight, Mr Jenkins: you are happy to champion independence for educational institutions which are free to determine their own futures when writing for The Spectator – but equally happy to diss it as terrible idea when writing for The Guardian? It's one way of achieving balance, I guess.

Giving parents real power: purchasing power

Being a school governor is an educative experience: I offer two illustrations. A couple of years ago, the state primary school where I am a governor was 'Ofsted-ed'. I have long felt there is great value in being subject to outside scrutiny. If nothing else, it forces you to look at yourself as others see you.

In fact, I found the inspection to be a surprisingly negative experience. The four-day whirlwind reconnoitre did highlight some important issues; but this 'speed-rating' left a nasty taste in the mouths of those on the receiving end. No reputable organisation would handle its appraisals in such an interrogative fashion.

Then last week I attended the school's annual parents' meeting, when the highlight of the evening was a talk on 'Reading and the Literacy Hour'. For one hour, a full hall listened intently as the art of teaching children to read (phonics 'n' all) was de-mystified, and the parents asking interested, interesting questions designed to enable them to improve their child's home learning.

Which indicates to me the obvious: that parents are the single most important influence on a child's educational attainment. More important than Ofsted, more important than the DfES, and more important than LEAs (to list but three abbreviated regulators).

Labour appears to have cottoned onto this statement-of-the-bleedin', with Ruth Kelly announcing proposals she argues will usher in true "parent power". Sounds great in theory; the actuality is less impressive.

Let's canter through five of the key problems in schools today:

• The admissions post-code lottery: parents who want to guarantee their children can get into a good school have to pay: either in school fees, or in higher mortgages. It's been calculated a 10% improvement in Key Stage 2 results in primary schools is associated with a 7% increase in house prices.
• A bloated national curriculum: prescriptive government dictation of what should be taught in our schools undermines teachers' ability to tailor their classes to their children, stifling creativity and professionalism. We need a minimum curriculum agreed by schools, not a national one set by government.
• Under-achievement: around a quarter of children leave primary school unable to read or write. In the OECD's 2004 comparison of 15 year-olds, Britain was ranked 11th out of 32 countries in science, and 18th in maths. Just 27% of black children achieve 5 A-Cs at GCSE, compared to 47% of whites - a discrepancy which is a function of poverty, rather than race.
• Disruptive children: not simply the clear-cut, out-of-control head-cases, but the persistent low-level disrupters for whom there are few effective sanctions.
• Devalued exams: in 1989, the mark needed to achieve a grade C in the higher Oxford and Cambridge GCSE Mathematics paper was 48%; in 2000 it was 18%. In difficult A-level subjects, such as Maths, up to 40% of candidates are awarded an A grade, and many universities are now setting their own admissions tests to filter the brightest.

Big issues, all of them. So what's Ruth Kelly's answer? Well, her insipid education White Paper - Labour's twelfth since 1997 - proposes that new schools can be set up and managed by parents, private schools, universities, businesses, or faith or community groups; that a "schools commissioner" will help parents set up their own schools and to match potential backers with schools; and that existing schools will be allowed to become independent of LEAs. And, er, that's about it.

Not much wrong with any of this, but I can't see it transforming primary or secondary education. Why not? Because the Government refuses to - or dares not - see the logic of its own approach.

If parental involvement is the key to driving improvements in our schools, three ingredients are essential: responsibility, accountability - and purchasing power.

Let's start from first principles. Teachers are responsible for educating children to the best of their professional ability; children are responsible for learning to the best of their ability; and parents are responsible for providing a supportive home background to the best of their ability. The aim must be to create a virtuous circle, connected by parents, in which motivated children hungry to learn are schooled by motivated teachers eager to educate.

But, of course, this utopia will not happen unless there is very clear accountability, with schools, children and parents all equally well aware of their own responsibilities. The accountability of children to their school and children to their parents is pretty clearly understood. What is currently opaque is the accountability of schools and parents to each other.

In theory, this can occur at different levels: informally (through a parents evening, or meeting with the head-teacher); or formally (via the governing body or LEA). In reality, parents have very little say over how their child is educated. This is for two reasons: first, because teachers are themselves so constrained by government in what they can teach, and how; and, secondly, because they have no option but to accept the type of education their local school offers, or else pay to opt out of the state system.

Responsibility and accountability are both pretty meaningless unless they are accompanied by the ability of parents to choose an alternative. To imagine - as the Government's White Paper does - that new schools will magically appear in order to provide that alternative is fantasy. The only way in which parents will have real choice is if they are able to shop around for the school they believe will best suit their child's education. The only way in which the market will supply that demand is if parents are in control of purchasing their child's education. This means - yes, you've guessed it! - school vouchers.

Let me be clear. School vouchers are not an end in themselves. They do not offer a quick fix. They would solve many existing problems, but create some new ones. However, let me be equally clear about this: in considering what is best for our children's education, the key decision-makers should be parents. Schools, and by extension the state, operate in loco parentis only.

Vouchers offer the best, and most flexible, method by which parents can be empowered. They would end, at a stroke, the postcode lottery of schools admissions. Schools which are free to set their own curriculums will attract more motivated staff and children. Their pupils will, in turn, disrupt less, learn more, and achieve better exam results. And if the value of the voucher is greater for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, or with special needs, schools will have an incentive actively to seek out those whom the education system is currently failing.

For too long, the educational requirements of children, and the role of their parents in choosing their education, have been elbowed aside by politicians desperate to take the credit for rising educational standards. The state should step back. It is time now for real parental power. And that means purchasing power.

Of soccer and swearing

Chris Patten muses on the British national identity in his excellent tome, Not Quite the Diplomat:

"My own preferred idea of identity rests heavily on George Orwell's observation that above all we are a gentle people. I fear that this land of revolver-free policeman, polite bus conductors, and those old maids on their bicycles, made famous by John Major, as they peddled through the early mornign mists to Holy Communion, was only part of the picture even when Orwell drew it.

"He also noted our bad teeth, British grime, intemperate boozing and foul language. One of Aden'a last British governors, Sir Richard Turnbull, mourning the end of the British Empire, told Denis Healey that when it finally sunk beneath the waves of history, it would leave behind it two monuments: one was the game of Association Football, the other was the expression 'Fuck off'."