Not Beyond The Laws – 2

And so he was gone. It was no surprise to tune in to the Andy Marr Show this morning and find out that David Laws had resigned. What is more unusual is some of the reaction to the whole sorry saga.

What was clear yesterday morning was that Young Dave had not voiced any tangible support for his Treasury Secretary. Cameron told that Laws was right to refer himself to the Parliamentary authorities – but even then, only through a spokesman. So it was strange to see today’s Mail On Sunday pushing the view that Cameron had been “fighting to save his star”.

Baloney. His statement was the coded equivalent of telling Laws that the bottle of Scotch and loaded revolver were in the drawing room, there’s a jolly good chap. Clearly this is intended to be a Teflon Government – nothing, but nothing, is going to stick to it.

Elsewhere, tales of conspiracy, and of folks in the darkest of shadows plotting to bring down a minister, are rife. This, too, is baloney: within the Westminster village, Laws’ homosexuality was an open secret, and the Fourth Estate was falling over itself to find a story with which to “out” him. No conspiracy, just rabid competition from those who never have to face an electorate – or justify their moral compass.

And there has even been an attempt to suggest the complicity of Alastair Campbell in the affair, on the basis that he had a framed photo of Laws about his person on Question Time last Thursday. The explanation for that was straightforward – Big Al was expecting Laws to be on the panel, and he’d been mugging up on this, for him, new opponent.

How could he have known of the Maily Telegraph story, given that Young Dave and Corporal Clegg didn’t know until the next day? We’ll hear next that Campbell has a Tardis at his disposal.
No, what happened is that the assembled hackery, mindful of the need to find circulation boosting stories, homed in on a Government figure for once, rather than their more usual diet of Z-list slebs. The Maily Telegraph got there first: if the Murdoch or Rothermere press had beaten them to it, does anyone for a moment think that they would have hesitated before splashing the unfortunate Laws all over the front page?

Back on the Andy Marr Show, Tory veteran Iain Duncan Smith suggested that Laws might yet return to the Government. But do he and his partner want to go through all that again? Yes, it’s not pleasant. But it’s the reality of politics today.

Welcome to the bear pit.

Called That One Wrong

Those people who are prepared to back their instinct with a visit to the bookies earn my grudging respect, even when their visit shows them to be terminally clueless. And over the weekend, the cause of cluelessness has been served superbly by the ridiculously overrated Paul Staines, who blogs under the alias of Guido Fawkes, and who is now significantly less cash rich than beforehand.

As the Maily Telegraph splashed the unfortunate David Laws all over its Saturday edition, it became clear that, as I said yesterday, there were two choices facing the keepers of the new and improved two-headed donkey: tough it out and risk more revelations, or sack him. In the event, the coalition has avoided the potential risk, and Laws has been caused to jump before being pushed.

At first, Staines laid out his stall reasonably well, telling that “it doesn’t just look bad, it is bad” and concluding that “Using the ‘we wanted our privacy’ line doesn’t really wash when it comes to public money”. But then, sad to say, the great pundit drew the wrong conclusion, reasoning that “he will probably survive because he is too important to the coalition”.

Er, hello? What is most important to the Coalition is that the Coalition survives, Paul. That means keeping its distance from anything dodgy in the expense department. But Staines wasn’t reading his own analysis: he then, by his own admission, put five hundred quid on Laws surviving the episode. He did this at the same time as noting that the probability of Laws not surviving was increasing.

So, once again, the question has to be asked of Paul Staines: just what part of your own analysis do you not understand?

The Donkey Goes Chicken – 2

After the non-appearance of a Government pundit on last Thursday’s Question Time, it might have been thought that the keepers of the new and improved two-headed donkey would keep their heads down, and try not to put their feet in it quite so badly next time round. But that would be to underestimate the nature of the beast – and those keepers.

Because the grumbling from Donkey Central over Alastair Campbell’s presence on the programme has continued, with Evening Standard political editor Paul Waugh being given a seemingly exclusive insight from a “Downing Street source”. Quite why Waugh feels the need to use such coded terms is unclear, as any fule kno that his “source” is Young Dave’s resident secondee from the Murdoch “family”, Andy Coulson.

And Coulson is admitting a weakness in carrying on his misery-fest against the Beeb: he’s scared witless of Big Al. Moreover, unless Cameron is preparing to appease Rupe and his troops by moving against the Beeb, Coulson would do well to keep schtum and not make matters worse.

In any case, he may have bigger fish to fry before long: the ferreting about in the debris of Phonehackgate by Guardian man Nick Davies has not stopped, and Coulson will know that anything implicating him in the routinely criminal behaviour of those in and around the Screws means that he would be finished. Young Dave would have to dispense with his services, and Rupe wouldn’t have him back.

There just aren’t the career openings for former donkey mucker-outers nowadays.

Not Beyond The Laws

It never does take long for an incoming Government to be buffeted by Supermac’s “events”: Tony Blair got his initiation over taking a Bernie, and now Young Dave finds his previously highly regarded chief Treasury Secretary splashed all over the Maily Telegraph due to a rental arrangement which turned out to be with his long term partner.

The moralising part of the Fourth Estate – for which, read the kingdom of the legendarily foul mouthed Paul Dacre - will no doubt be in nudge, nudge mode next week (who will wield the hatchet, Jan Moir, Janet Street Expletive Deleted Porter, or Fat Dick Littlejohn?) over David Laws’ admission that he is gay. But Cameron faces a more universal and straightforward dilemma.

Laws has decided to pay back around forty thousand quid, which suggests by implication that he has admitted to wrongdoing. Against his claims is Laws’ presence as the new Government’s chief hatchet man, deciding who should tighten their belt, and who should be thrown overboard. He’s been hot on playing the squeaky clean card when it comes to expenses, but may not have been within the rules after all.

Young Dave has so far, as the Guardian has noted, not blessed Laws with anything like unwavering support. And if the Treasury’s number two continues to attract adverse comment – with the Maily Telegraph giving every appearance of being in scalp taking mode – he will have a simple choice: stick by Laws and risk further revelations, or act quickly and remove him.

There is, after all, a replacement ready to go: Philip Hammond, now at Transport, shadowed the job before the election.

A Stroll Across The Astroturf – 12

Just because Zelo Street has not featured the antics of the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) for a while, it doesn’t mean that this less than totally principled body has been idle – far from it. The TPA, which represents less than one tenth of one per cent of UK taxpayers, and demands transparency in others while still not publishing its accounts and a list of backers, has recently brought out a video.

Wow. No advance in technology gets past the TPA, does it? Yes, a video. So that’s what all those generously compensated staff have been up to. And the video tells how we all spend lots of our time working for the taxman. But, so what? How exactly does the TPA expect hospitals, schools, highways and the rest to function?

The TPA’s economic stance, it might be thought, would mean that they would know of the best known saying of Professor Milton Friedman, the high priest of economic quack doctory: that there is “no such thing as a free lunch”. Friedman stressed that someone, somewhere would have to pay for that lunch. It’s the same with those services provided via the public sector. Someone, somewhere will have to pay for them: the TPA’s inference, that anything they don’t like is by definition “waste”, is mere flannel.

And this is characteristic of the TPA: in this “report”, they tell of the millions being raked in by those dastardly local authorities in parking fines. Wow. 328 million, in fact, for 2008-9. And, horror of horrors, some of them are allowed to spend any surplus as they want.

The “report”, in typical TPA style, goes into the most minute “detail”, showing every local authority, how much they have taken in fines, and how large a population they serve. But something is missing: in order to demonise this particular Government – and that, after all, is the sole motivation of the TPA – one figure has to be left out, and that is cost.

Yes, cost – how much does it cost to bring in the fines, which the local authorities concerned have a statutory duty to enforce? This is not as trivial as it may seem: Parking Review magazine has revealed that more than a hundred English councils lost money on their parking operations in the year covered by the TPA “report”.

So that 328 million is not, as the TPA “report” infers, some kind of windfall profit. What surplus there is, we are not told. That would get in the way of the TPA’s routine demonising of Government, and that would not do.

Oh, and where are those accounts, good TPA people?

The Donkey Goes Chicken

It’s an important week for the Government: we’ve had the Queen’s Speech, the new Parliament has been opened, the cuts are being announced, and, most significant of all, the new and improved two-headed donkey has refused to move in the direction of the BBC.

For the last few days, it’s been known that one of the pundits on this week’s Beeb Question Time would be Alastair Campbell. He’s been tweeting about it on and off for long enough. Also pencilled in was Piers “Morgan” Moron, famous for being himself, and likely not to agree with Big Al over trivialities such as Iraq, Iraq and Iraq, but not necessarily in that order.

So how does the two-headed donkey handle this one? Easy. It puts one or more of its hooves in the brown smelly stuff by trying to get Big Al chucked off the programme. A Government representative, the Beeb was told, would not appear against Campbell, but they would field someone if a Shadow Cabinet member appeared in his place.

Not surprisingly, the Beeb declined this attempt at panel gerrymandering, pointing out that when Labour were in power, they willingly put up ministers against Tory supporting journalists or peers. Moreover, Question Time does not impose any precondition or qualification on its panellists. It would be mightily boring if panels were made up only of MPs, and subject to haggling over appearances by minor parties.

In the event, the Beeb roped in Tory maverick John Redwood, who had no problem with debating Big Al, and he acquitted himself well. And that’s the whole point: this is a forum for debate, but in a way that entertains and informs. As for the “not elected” mantra, it should be ridiculed for its sheer lameness. Whatever next? Removing Dimbleby Major from the chair for being “unelected”? No more journalists appearing because they’re “unelected”?

The reality is that the Beeb has gained in stature for standing firm, the Government has emerged looking foolish, and Big Al has trumped Andy Coulson big time.

Casting A Long Shadow

Anyone living in or near the city of Bradford in the late 1970s will need no prompting about the Yorkshire Ripper case: Peter Sutcliffe was eventually arrested, then charged and convicted of thirteen murders, and there were probably several more. Most, but not all, of his victims were prostitutes.

The shadow of the Ripper has now been cast over the same part of the world as a number of street workers have gone missing recently, but on one count, things are very different: West Yorkshire police have made an arrest soon after the grim discovery of body parts in the River Aire at Shipley.

Because, in the Ripper case, it seemed that there might never be an arrest. Sutcliffe was questioned more than once, and on one occasion, one of his victims had a newly issued five pound note in her purse which was traced back to his employer’s payroll. But he was released, and carried on killing.

West Yorkshire police were also diverted from their task by a hoax audio tape made by a man with a Wearside accent (the culprit was, many years later, jailed for his efforts), and when Sutcliffe was eventually brought in, it was the neighbouring South Yorkshire force that arrested him.

What has changed? Well, one major handicap for the investigation in the 70s was that everything was done manually: no significant use of Information Technology was involved. The amounts of paper and card must have been immense – and unwieldy. Potentially crucial evidence went missing, or was not cross referenced to tie it to Sutcliffe.

Hopefully, the West Yorkshire force has nipped this series of killings in the bud. Even so, the memory of Peter Sutcliffe will continue to cast its shadow over the county, and its police.

[UPDATE: Stephen Griffiths, age 40, has now been charged with three murders]

French Leave

Apologies. There has been no traffic on Zelo Street for two days: this has been because I’ve had a trip over to France. Not so much a holiday, more a shopping expedition.

And what the trip showed was that, despite adopting the single currency some time ago, France is still as independent and wilful as ever. Nowhere is that independent attitude more on view than on a drive south along the A16 Autoroute.

There are nice touches in the finish of the road: statues by many overbridges, for instance. And the stretch of road from Calais to Boulogne is not subject to the toll system, or péage, of many similar motorways across France.

But, and there is inevitably a but, the surface of the carriageways is deteriorating badly in places (hence the lengthy contraflow at present in force), there are some unnaturally severe gradients (no doubt cheaper to build it that way), and when it rains with any force, drainage is in the impressionistic category.

That said, the hypermarket provided good service and a decent range of wine bargains, which latter was the whole point of going. And, despite all the horror stories about it, Eurotunnel were on the dot both ways.

Back to more routine matters next.

Bad Day For Tel Aviv

Even after the testimony of Mordechai Vanunu, the official line on nuclear weapons from Israel was non-committal. Spokesmen would neither confirm nor deny claims that their country had joined the nuclear club. But the declassification of papers by the ANC Government in South Africa has put the Israelis on the spot.

Because the documents confirm that the South Africans, back in the mid 1970s, were seeking to acquire nuclear warheads, and that the Israelis were angling to supply them. And the signatures of the South African justice minister, P W Botha, along with that of the Israeli defence minister Shimon Peres, are clearly visible on the front page.

It would be strange indeed for a country that did not have nuclear weapons to try to sell nuclear weapons to another country. More likely is that the Israelis – assisted, among others, by the British – did indeed have those weapons, and that a sale to South Africa would have created an income stream away from the gaze of the USA.

Not surprisingly, the Israelis did not want the papers to be declassified. Equally unsurprising is that the new order in South Africa paid little attention to them. And that isn’t the only irritation for the Government in Tel Aviv: the Australians are only the latest to demonstrate their disapproval of the use by the Mossad of fake passports.

The Government in Canberra has concluded that the Israelis were behind the use of false Australian passports in the assassination in Dubai recently of a leading member of Hamas. As the Mossad is believed to have carried out the killing, the link is rather obvious. An Israeli diplomat has been expelled from Australia as a result.

After all, the UK had already taken similar action. Israel is increasingly being treated not as an exceptional case, but in the same way as any other country. Welcome to the level playing field.

Mood Swings

Temperatures in parts of the UK over the past few days have set new records for the time of the year. The hot and sunny weather, together with the race day crowds, made the city of Chester one very busy place on Saturday: no-one selling their product to day trippers will have had any complaint over their revenue stream.

So how will this be interpreted by the climate change denial lobby? Simple: if it gets mentioned at all, it will be held to be a fluke, a freak interlude, and a rare chance for telling that there is a difference between longer term climate patterns and transient weather events.

This is true, but then, when temperatures drop later this week, as they are forecast to do, the denial lobby will about turn and attribute the change to show that there isn’t any man made global warming. Alternatively, they can deflect the issue altogether and follow the wilful and eccentric Christopher Booker, now reduced to ranting to an echo chamber of equally deluded admirers, in blaming it all on the BBC.

The Beeb, Booker has decided, has an “obsession” with global warming, which would be an interesting line to take if it had any basis in fact. But, sad to say, right now on the Beeb website, the front page has no mention of “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”. Nor is there any mention of the IPCC.

Booker ought to pack in his feeble wittering. And the Maily Telegraph should tell him to take his product elsewhere in the marketplace – if anyone wants it.

What Labour Can Do – 4

One event, and one alone, dictates whether your party gets someone’s vote, and that is the moment in the polling booth when the decision is made to put an X against your candidate. Many things influence that voter: some may be national issues, and the prevailing mood, but in an election campaign where the challengers have not established a decisive lead – as in the one just gone – the clincher may be simply that your party is the one listening to them.

And that means that your party has to lay claim to that most basic part of leadership: that you are addressing the peoples’ greatest concerns. Those concerns may relate to the most local of issues. They may relate to law and order, bin collections, and – in some parts of the country – immigration. If you want their vote, your party must show that it is addressing them. Nowhere was this approach demonstrated, and vindicated, more than in Birmingham’s Edgbaston constituency.

Edgbaston had been solidly Tory until 1997, when in the Blair landslide the seat was captured by Gisela Stuart. This time round, it was a top Tory target, but Labour prevailed. They did so by responding to the concerns of the electorate, bringing in large numbers of volunteers, and by the popularity of an MP who had demonstrated that she was of independent mind. This campaign is now being hailed as a model for what Labour need to do next time round.

But it isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t just in Birmingham: in east London, Margaret Hodge pointed out back in 2006 the potential vulnerability of Labour to fringe parties such as the BNP, because the white working class felt that they were not being listened to. Hodge addressed the concerns of her electorate on the subject of immigration, and her vote rose at the election, with that of the BNP falling.

It’s so simple, it should not need saying: listen to the electorate, and demonstrate that you are addressing their concerns. That’s leadership.

Truly Legendary

One joke used to demonstrate Brian Clough’s well known lack of modesty has him arriving at the gates of heaven and being offered entry by St Peter, providing he can correctly identify the Holy Trinity. Cloughie points at the three in turn, saying “You’re the Holy Spirit, you’re Jesus Christ ... and thank you for keeping my seat warm, young man!”

Clough never got to manage any of the biggest clubs – and didn’t manage in mainland Europe – but he would have identified with another boss who has just confirmed that he, too, is right not to let modesty get in the way. José Mourinho, Setúbal’s most famous son, has now become only the second manager to lift the European cup in two different countries, and he wants to do it in a third.

Mourinho first won the Champions’ League in his native Portugal with FC Porto: the size of the club’s ambition and presence is not hard to notice, with their home, the huge Estádio do Dragão, or Dragons’ Stadium, looking down over the city. The club has won the Liga four times since Mourinho left, but not the Champions’ League.

The side that has just won Chelsea another Premiership title is at its heart Mourinho’s, and now he has done a treble with Inter Milan. The next stop for this true legend among managers is said to be Real Madrid: if Mourinho can get the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo to remember that, as Rushie used to say at Liverpool, “it’s a team game”, then he will have proved his greatness.

Any less and they’ll sack him. Ask Fabio Capello.

Band Of Brothers

It’s good to see your advice being followed, even if those advised probably didn’t see the post concerned: the Labour leadership contest has, with the inevitability of night following day, reached the thorny subject of Iraq.

And a clear gap has opened between the Miliband brothers on the issue. David, who I still see as the most likely to win the contest, has suggested – rather in the style of Tone – that we should “move on” from talking Iraq. Brother Ed, though, has said he was against the war, something he didn’t have to vote on at the time as he was not yet an MP.

Someone else not an MP at the time, and another going by the name of Ed, former Pa Broon confidant “Auguste” Balls, has also decided to tell that he was also against the Iraq adventure. That might come as a surprise, given his long service as an advisor to Brown when the latter was in opposition, and then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

What to make of it all? Well, the elder Miliband will have brought back less than positive memories, and done himself no favours, speaking in the style of the bloke who got the party into the mess in the first place, whatever the context. His brother may be considered more credible on his opposition than Balls – not that the latter may be thought to be less than honest, but because of his closeness to Brown, who is still unyielding in his support for Blair.

I still have the elder Miliband in front, but this issue could damage him.

All Rise For Her Majesty

In Pa Broon’s three years at the helm, there was a stream of gaffes, losses and leaks, so it has surprised few observers that the new and improved two-headed donkey has chalked up its first leak this weekend. What will come as a surprise is that the leak is apparently of the Queen’s Speech, which makes it a first.

So, assuming the leaked material to be genuine, we now know that there are to be scrapping of ID cards, more schools becoming academies, a policing bill, and of course legislation to bring in fixed term Parliaments. Yes, there was much advance briefing under Labour, but not of a Queen’s Speech.

Who could have been behind the leak? The possibility that those in Tory and Lib Dem ranks opposed to the coalition deal are behind it cannot be ruled out, but how many rank and file MPs see this beforehand? My guess is that this is the work of hacked off civil servants: all it needs is a quick copy and paste to lift the text and drop it into another file.

Why would anyone do that? Well, why not? There are job losses on the way within the Public Sector, with a figure of 300,000 having been pitched. And there is little use dressing the cuts up as “only back office posts”. Whichever office is affected, these cuts are of people and, until and unless they find alternative employment, their livelihoods.

Someone may have got their retaliation in first.

Inexcusable Rendition

Fighting an enemy that you can’t pin down can be a nasty business, and we all want our country to be secure, but that hasn’t stopped a sense of unease at revelations of torture – some of it violent and sadistic – visited on suspects in the name of the so-called “War on Terror”. It seems that some unfortunates have been flown to countries with less than squeaky clean human rights records especially to enable this abuse to take place.

So it’s interesting to hear the new man at the FO, William ‘Ague, say that there will be a judicial enquiry into claims that the UK’s various intelligence agencies were complicit in the process of “rendition” and torture. This shows that Master ‘Ague, who previously challenged David Miliband over the matter when the latter was Foreign Secretary, was not just politicking and is serious about getting answers.

So credit where credit’s due. Because this kind of behaviour is meat and drink to the terrorists and particularly those recruiting them: if the decadent West says it’s OK for human beings to do this to one another, then you can be sure that the followers of Lardy Binman will be more than prepared to do it to our soldiers and anyone associated with them.

But Master ‘Ague has a problem with the torture business: there are those in his own party that are in favour of a bit of torture, so long as they don’t have to be on the receiving end of it. Our old friend Donal Blaney, CEO of the Young Briton’s Foundation (YBF), considers waterboarding to be perfectly acceptable, so much so that he believes the practice would not cause significant psychological damage. And, as a Guardian investigation showed, he names Master ‘Ague and even Young Dave among his contacts.

So perhaps William ‘Ague could get Blaney to reassess his approach to torture. After all, the YBF has trained many party activists in the recent past, so it would not look good for its CEO to take a stance against his preferred party.

Scraping The Barrel

Away from politics in the wake of the election loss, Alastair Campbell still has plenty to occupy himself, not least his reply to a shockingly bad piece of ranting hackery coming from those less than well intentioned folk at the Daily Mail.

Big Al has taken particular exception to a tirade in Wednesday’s paper by Janet Street-Porter, who as everyone knows is famous for ... er, maybe we should just move right along. One thing Janet is notorious for is the ability to spew out faux shock pieces, which by fortunate coincidence is in tune with the why-oh-why orientation of the Mail, and its legendarily foul mouthed editor Paul Dacre.

And the object of Street-Porter’s disdain this week has been those who suffer from depression. This is a condition that has never affected me, and mightily glad I am too: the description of the condition by sufferers, and the effect it has on those around them, is grim enough. Campbell has suffered for over two decades, and his openness about the condition has helped raise awareness – and combat ignorance and prejudice about it.

So I can understand Big Al being less than impressed by Street-Porter comparing depression to a “must have” fashion accessory. This is the crudest and cruellest of stereotypes, demonstrating a staggering level of ignorance and intolerance. Moreover, by falsely linking depression and stress, she reveals how little research – if any – was done beforehand. Therefore her appalling hackery is completely at home on the pages of the Daily Mail.

Also, Street-Porter’s rant is not a one-off: she is a regular columnist on the paper. And no regulars are in the Daily Mail without the approval of Paul Dacre. So if there is one legitimate target for the revulsion that even many commenting on the Mail website clearly feel, Dacre is it. In the meantime, if he wants to inform and educate his readership, rather than repel them, he could do worse than hire a columnist who knows what they are talking about.

And send Janet Street-Porter to spend more time with her bus pass.

Trouble In Paradise

I never did get round to visiting Thailand, and may not do so after recent events. Another example of a location pushed by the tour operators and travel supplements whose image as presented to us when booking (and paying) appears to diverge from everyday reality for many of those who live there.

The brochures show idyllic resorts. The recent unrest in Bangkok shows many Thais live in grinding poverty, in a country with a less than stable Government. And it has all ended with the army wading in and many people dead.

For those who know that, even across the EU and the USA, there are those that have fallen by the wayside, it should not come as a surprise.

1922 And All That

Yesterday evening, the Tory Party’s back bench 1922 Committee had a meeting, and it was addressed by Young Dave. Only at the very last minute were those back benchers told of Cameron’s jolly good idea that ministers – including him – should be able to participate in the committee’s business. Normally, when in Government, it’s back benchers only.

So what? Well, the “22” has a role, when the Tories are in Government, for the foot soldiers to air their grievances, for the mood among them to be taken and then advised to the PM. Its history stretches back to the year when those same Tory back benchers pulled the plug on the Lloyd George coalition – the last Tory and Liberal one – in order to preserve the party’s identity and allow it to go on and govern alone.

But Young Dave doesn’t like the idea of excluding ministers: he says the Tories need to be “one party” (Who said “Ein Volk”? Go and stand at the back). It’s thought that the idea of holding the “22” rather closer than before came from the experience of “Shagger” Major: the last Tory PM had a torrid time with back bench plotting. Whatever the objections from some old hands, Cameron carried his vote, predictably given the size of the new intake this time. But 118 MPs voted against him.

And meetings of less than totally happy Tory back benchers don’t have to happen in a Commons committee room. In fact, given the means of communication available nowadays, actual meetings don’t have to happen at all. Unless Cameron intends to monitor his MPs’ email, mobile phone, Twitter and any other communication they care to use, he could be in the dark as much as Major or Thatcher were.

Moreover, there would be nothing to stop the 118 disaffected – and however many more they may recruit along the way – forming a new committee. Right now, the new Government is still in its honeymoon phase, but given the usual crises and scandals, together with the strain of holding two parties close to one another, there could well be a 2012 Committee rising from the ashes of the “22”.

It might not have been such a good idea for Young Dave to listen to “Shagger” Major, who brought us Back to Basics, the railway sell-offs, the Cones Hotline ... you get the picture.

Rewriting History

Retelling historical events can be a tricky thing: any attempt at bias or selective memory is easily exposed when that history is recent. But the further back you go, the less widely the history is known. And once you go back before, say, the days of photography, then selection becomes easier.

This may or may not have been in the mind of Corporal Clegg today when he signalled the supposedly biggest shake up of our democracy since the Great Reform Act of 1832. Because that act, although it extended voting rights, still meant that only one in seven adult males were able to vote. Even after subsequent legislation in 1867 and 1884, only 60% of males had the vote, and there was still a property qualification. Universal – and unconditional - suffrage for all over 21 did not come until 1929.

And, although some of the suggested repeals are ones I agree with – ID cards go in the WOTAM category (Waste Of Time And Money), and the over-zealous use of DNA and other databases is in my book A Bad Thing – he may come unstuck on the attempt to stop the move to biometric passports, at least for those travelling to the USA. Moreover, the idea of asking the public which laws they would like to have repealed smacks of cheap populism. Leaders are there to lead (there’s a hint in the name).

But it is in the area of voting reform that Clegg must know there will be problems. The Tories don’t want what he wants, so the donkey’s two heads will campaign against one another on the issue. Even if there is a referendum on a new voting system, the chances are that any proposal for change will be defeated when it comes to the vote that matters – that in the House of Commons. Such a defeat would not even need Labour MPs to get involved: they can sit on their hands while the Lib Dems’ paltry 57 votes get trampled under more than 300 Tory ones.

Thus the inevitable outcome when idealism is subject to the cold wind of reality.

Toothless Is As Toothless Does

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) regularly gets it in the neck for being less than totally effective. This is not totally unrelated to its being perceived as too close to the industry it is supposed to be policing: its Editors’ Code Committee is chaired by the unapologetic and bullying Paul Dacre, the legendarily foul mouthed editor of the Daily Mail.

So it was no surprise that the Commons’ committee for Culture, Media and Sport recommended the PCC get increased powers, and that it called the PCC toothless. The inadequacy of the PCC was then superbly illustrated when another unsavoury and unapologetic Daily Mail hack, Jan Moir, penned a hatchet job on the memory of Boyzone star Stephen Gately, generating over 25,000 complaints.

The PCC has now ruled, surprise surprise, that Moir’s article did not breach press guidelines, with suitably worded noises about “free expression of the columnists’ views”, which is complete baloney. The Moir article had nothing to do with free expression: rather, it was written to order, and to fit the Mail’s agenda, which in the case of Stephen Gately, was to reinforce prejudice against gays.

The apologist for the PCC’s behaviour, Baroness Buscombe, then tells that editors have to “consider ... key ethical issues before publishing”. This, too, is utter tosh: that Paul Dacre has any ethical compass, let alone being constrained by such a concept, is utterly fanciful. Moreover, that he or any other editor would defer to the PCC is beyond the bounds of credibility.

If there is to be regulation of the Fourth Estate, then it should be done properly, and that means having a regulator independent of the press, able to make binding decisions and order proper and prompt retractions and apologies. Such a body, operating fairly but firmly, would soon cause the various editors to actually think through the consequences of their actions before publishing.

Because right now, all we have is a toothless and therefore useless regulator, leaving the only redress for so many victims of the less principled part of the press in the hands of lawyers. Those who cannot afford legal redress become damaged by the sequence of publication, delay and grudging retraction. That’s not good enough.

There should be proper regulation of the press, and an end to the sham that is the PCC.