Those who win by tactical voting, lose by tactical voting.  That was one of the lessons of the local elections which took place on 1^st May 2008.  The means seen by those of a Leftist persuasion as an effective method of denying electoral success to the Conservatives, has been found to be a two-edged sword.

In the London mayoral elections, the proportional representation-a-type voting system chosen by New Labour was supposed to have given the alliance of the centre/centre-left a permanent in-built majority, but the assumption that such an alliance would always “do” for the Conservatives has been demolished.

One of the material miscalculations by the Left was an ingrained belief that the electorate was largely liberal-left and tribal.  It is not.  In essence it is liberal-conservative with a fairly flexible attitude to group loyalty.  The mood of the electorate shifts with the times and with the circumstances. Thus, if it perceives a government, any government, is tired, corrupt, incompetent or no longer fit for office for what ever reason, eventually it will confound any voting system or any tactical alliance designed to maintain the status quo.

The general sentiment that evicted the Conservatives from power in 1997 was first and foremost anti-government, not anti-Conservative, even though that defeat was turned into a rout by the “anyone but a Tory” Labour and Liberal Democrat alliance.  Times have changed and Labour will reap what it sowed.

William Rees-Mogg

Sauce for the Labour Gander is not sauce for the Tory Goose

“Gordon Brown did a spectacular U-turn yesterday as only he can. One moment he was going full steam ahead with his plan to tax the poor more and the next he was outraged at the very thought of anyone perpetrating such a wholly despicable act.

At first it reminded me of someone who utters a swear word and then slaps himself for saying it. Except Gordon didn’t slap himself for, of course, he won’t admit to saying it. So instead he accused David Cameron of saying something worse and slapped him.”

Ann Treneman 

Of increasing significance is Gordon Brown’s habit of breaking into an unnatural Cheshire Cat smile at entirely inappropriate moments.  This particular (and avoidable in that it is deliberate) facial mannerism makes him appear like, as one of my late, politically incorrect relatives would have said, a “silly-boy”.  While it is designed to annoy members of the Opposition, especially the Conservative leader David Cameron, it only serves to make the Prime Minister look more ridiculous.

The unavoidable inference to be drawn from Gordon Brown’s constant grinning during yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions session is that his monumental gaffe in increasing the tax burden upon the low paid is all very much a big joke.  That he has created the entirely wrong impression amongst those outside the Westminster Village is completely lost on him.  As Captain Mainwaring would have said to Pike,  “foolish boy!”

“Why is Labour still so popular?” asks Pattrick Hennessy in his blog following the latest ICM poll published by The Guardian, which claims support for Labour has risen to 34%, an increase of five points from last month's ICM poll, whilst Conservative support is down by three points at 39%.

To a great extent, Mr Hennessy answers his own question but another explanation might be that Labour supporters are more fiercely loyal than those of other parties, more tribal, more likely to adopt a “my party, right or wrong” attitude of mind.  Conservative and Liberal Democrat core support is significantly more critical of its own party and to a degree, fair-weather.

It also helps that Labour is allowed to get away with facing both ways.  This started in earnest in late 2006 with Hazel Blears opposing a hospital ward closure in her constituency, when that very process was the result of a policy of a Government of which she was a member.  Her protest was a success, with the Government suffering only minor embarassment  whilst Miss Blears attained heroine status amongst her constituents.  The proposed Post Office closures provided another opportunity for Labour MPs to win approval from their constituents by opposing their own Government’s policy.  Now we have the charade of Labour MPs griping about the abolition of the ten per cent tax band, a measure they “nodded through” the House last year.  Nevertheless, they have won the approval of their constituents with Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling suffering no more than a little egg on their faces.

On the other hand, perhaps this is just another case of an opinion poll playing the usual old trick of understating support for the Conservatives whilst overstating that for Labour.  We shall have to await the results of next week’s elections, when all should become clear.

Mr Parris as prescient as ever, predicts the new scramble for Africa.

Gordon Brown is having a particularly hard time of it at the moment, but from such a low point any success can be spun as a turning point.  The Media tells us that the next fortnight will be critical for him, the dark inference being that if he does not deal with the challenges to his authority in that time, his premiership will be damaged permanently.  Labour, we are told, is facing a “meltdown” in the local elections to be held on 1^st May.  The Government is “facing defeat” concerning its proposal to detain without charge terrorist suspects for up to forty-two days.  There will be a “rebellion” if something is not done to compensate the lowly paid for the abolition of the ten per cent tax band.  To cap it all, The Guardian reports that Labour might lose the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, when that contest takes place.

We have been here before, as Labour support was supposed to be facing potential meltdown in the local elections of 2006 and 2007.  It didn’t happen, nor was it ever likely to have done. The plain truth is that the Labour Party would have to be led by Adolf Hitler or Beelzebub himself before its core support failed to turn out at any election.  On the other hand, the opportunities for advance by the Conservatives are limited. Having been successful in local elections during the past two years, the Conservatives have reached already a high tide mark and are the incumbent administration in many a council, with all the risk that entails.  For the first time in twenty-seven years Ken Livingstone is being forced to fight hard for continued control of London, but he is likely to win the latest mayoral contest, though by a whisker.  In the Crewe by-election, the Conservatives will come a creditable second, but win they will not.  With vague promises of “putting things right” for the lower paid, Gordon Brown will avoid an embarrassing (and costly) U-turn on his tax policy.  Arms will be twisted and even more vague promises will be made to ensure that the time for detention of terrorist suspects is extended.

Having first overstated the strength or significance of the challenges faced by Mr Brown, the Media will then perceive the Government as having passed crucial tests. It will then pause to dwell upon the Conservatives “lack” of (local) electoral success.  From 2^nd May it will be the turn of David Cameron and the Conservatives’ to face the heat.

“…Corruption tends to flourish the longer an incumbent is able to hold on to power”

said Ken Livingstone in 1998, as Simon Jenkins reminds us.

“Barely a month ago, Labour was a modest three points behind in the opinion polls and slowly if unspectacularly closing in on the Conservatives. Now it is all at sea” 

said The Times, today.

Whilst it is true that the Populus poll conducted for The Times and published on 9^th March 2008 pointed to a Conservative lead of “only” three points, other, fairly contemporaneous opinion polls indicated a much larger lead for the Conservatives (ICM, nine and YouGov, sixteen points). Even worse, the general trend of all the polls taken together showed and still shows Labour falling further behind.  Though it is understandable that The Times would consider its own poll as first amongst equals, the impression given that all the polls showed a three point deficit is wrong and manifestly so.  This is not an isolated misapprehension because in recent weeks a number of commentators throughout the Media have opined upon Labour’s unpopularity as if it was a mere temporary phenomenon and assumed that the very best that the Conservatives can achieve at the next General Election is to be the largest party, by just a handful of MPs, in the House of Commons.  We have now moved well beyond that scenario.

Those in the Media who are sympathetic to Gordon Brown’s administration do it no favours by trying to paint too favourable a picture when in reality the prognosis is potentially so bleak. On the ground, far from the rarefied atmosphere in which most commentators exist, Labour is deeply unpopular and mistrusted.  Its life force is ebbing away.

Worse to come for Labour

“A key inquiry into the Met's handling of the Stockwell shooting has been shelved for political reasons”

proclaims the Evening Standard  today.

As I understand the situation, the publication of the report has been merely delayed…again, rather than actually “shelved”.  Nevertheless, any suspicion that the Government or one of its agencies might be suppressing a report, even temporarily, must be more damaging than the publication of the report, even if its findings are uncomfortable reading.

From having been able to successfully massage news for so long, Labour’s habit of walking into sucker punches has now become pronounced.

According to the current Foreign Secretary, Labour's David Miliband, the Conservative candidate for London's Mayor, Boris Johnson is “not serious enough to run the capital”.  Of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Andrew Gilligan of the Evening Standard puts the charge against Mr Johnson in proper context.

“[The Mayoralty] …could be important. It has a massive budget, and could do a lot of good. But it has made very little impact on most of the things that really matter - the shocking state of the Tube, the lack of investment in new rail, the skills shortage and structural unemployment of the East End, the near-impossibility for most Londoners of affording a home.

All those, unlike Palestine, or global warming, are within the Mayor's power to change. But instead, we have million pound buses, grants to cronies, space programmes. That is why it is a fundamental, if surprisingly common, mistake to call Livingstone a serious mayor. It is he, not Boris Johnson, who is the real joke.”

Says Nick Cohen

“The Labour tribe has many prejudices against the privileged but not the one that would help Britain most. It should have an aversion to Left-wing public school boys and never allow them to run the state education system.”

Then again, given their track record during the course of the past forty-five years, perhaps left-wing public school boys shouldn’t be allowed to run anything else, either.

“A man who specialises in creating chaos out of order.”

 Ann Treneman

Reports Patrick Hennessy today in The Sunday Telegraph,

“The Conservatives are heading for power with a comfortable majority of more than 40 seats, according an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph.

The survey puts David Cameron's party on 43 per cent, up 6 points from this newspaper's last poll in January, with Labour unchanged on 32 per cent and the Liberal Democrats down three points at 18 per cent.

However, the Tory majority would be wiped out if the voting system for general elections were changed. Ministers are thought to be considering a new system which would see voters being allowed to choose a second preference as well as their first-choice.” (My emphasis).

How very Robert Mugabe.

“It is one of the grave distempers of our times, this prejudice towards the Jewish people, their nation and their collective identity. And one of the tasks of our times is its exposure, its combating and its defeat.”

Michael Gove

“Legal “vultures” are making £2 million out of the NHS each week” reported one Sunday Newspaper recently.

As usual, this figure was not put into context so as not to spoil a good story, but to quote Amanda Stevens, the vice president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL) who responded to the criticism in The Law Society's Gazette,

“It is insulting to imply that rectifying the harm caused to people who have been carelessly or recklessly injured is somehow wrong”.

Too right.

I had always felt that there was something unwholesome about the Clintons.  In fact, my unease was not caused in any way by the stream of allegations concerning sexual and financial improprieties made over the years by political opponents, many of whom it should be said, had an axe to grind.  Rather, it was the relentless, unnatural thirst for power that I found and still find, repulsive.

Hillary Clinton in particular presents as being a ruthless, purely political being, devoid of common, ordinary humanity who displays emotion only when it is politically expedient to do so.  Andrew Sullivan of The Sunday Times sums up more colourfully.

“The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust  for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy.  You can't escape; you can't hide; and you can't win.”

And,

“For the Clintons, all Democrats who oppose them are . . . Republicans.  And all Republicans are evil.   And evil means that anything the Clintons do in self-defence is excusable - even playing the race card, and the Muslim card, and the gender card, and every sleazy gambit that the politics of fear can come up with.  This is how they have arrested the Obama juggernaut.  It's the only game they know how to play.”

Does anyone really doubt that the Labour Government’s concern about the health of the “middle-classes” as regards “excessive” wine consumption is a complete sham and that in reality this is just another excuse to raise taxation payable by a section of the community which on balance cannot be counted as being amongst Labour's natural supporters?

Tim Hames - Vintage nonsense from Château Darling

Writes Tom Uttley in The Daily Mail  today,

“If my guess is right, the great majority of fair-minded, reasonable Britons - those, anyway, who remember the cash-for-questions scandal that gave the Tory government such a bad name - will think: “Yes, of course. It's an established fact of history that Hamilton corruptly took money in brown envelopes for asking Commons questions.”

Guilty as charged, Mr Uttley.

Now reminded as to how the “brown envelope”  allegations came to be, I have revised my view.

To quote The Guardian,

“Dr Williams is right when he argues that other religions - and not just the established Anglican faith - are allowed to police their own laws. Orthodox Jews have a beth din (a rabbinical court); there is evidence of informal arrangements in other faith communities. But what the archbishop really wants is a tolerance for the role of religion in public affairs that succeeds only in highlighting why it would be better entirely excluded.”

I'll give a religious court (of whichever persuasion) a miss, if you don't mind

“In a corporation that is obsessed with promoting diversity, inclusivity and accessibility - code words for non-white, non-shires and non-conservative views - Radio 4 is the last redoubt for millions of listeners who select their broadcaster on quality of output, rather than its role in social engineering.”

Jeff Randall  The Daily Telegraph

“For years we have been cautioned against stigmatising people for a whole array of unfortunate situations - teenage single mothers, divorcees, fat people. But, of course, stigma is the means by which society expresses its disapproval of people who choose lifestyles which, one way or another, cost the rest of society money. Remove the stigma and people think such behaviour is perfectly fine. As a result we have become a nation of obese, sexually incontinent lunatics.”

Rod Liddle - The Sunday Times

Says James Swede, of solicitors' firm Darlingtons in a letter to the Law Society's Gazette,

“The Labour Party can accept funds without identifying the true source.  We, the legal profession, find ourselves bound by anti-money laundering regulation, which means that if we were guilty of the same offence we could face a lengthy prison sentence....”

It is right that our professions are bound by the very highest standards of integrity and that the penalties for failing to do so are harsh, but Labour should ponder why it believes that similarly rigorous standards (and penalties for breach of those standards) should not apply to those who purport to govern us.

“For almost two decades we’ve allowed the message of political Islam to breed unchallenged within the British Muslim community, preaching separation and confrontation. The blame for that must rest solely with Muslims…”

Shiraz Maher - The Sunday Times

“The rest of the country may find it hard to believe that the present Prime Minister has nothing to do with the decade commanded by his predecessor, but I think Mr Brown really has convinced himself that he is not implicated. In this he is, I think, weirdly, sincere.  Somewhere in this strange mind has arisen an idea so palpably absurd when articulated that he has never articulated it, maybe even to himself: but it drives the way he feels about the past. It is the idea that he was somehow not there, or not completely there, from 1997 to 2007: just a sort of hostage, mute witness to a decade he neither willed nor bears responsibility for. To such an imagination, the stink of rotten fish left by his predecessor beneath the sofa cushions at Downing Street can be greeted almost triumphantly, vindicating rather than indicting him.”

Matthew Parris – The Times

“But what is true is that this [donor] scandal serves Labour right. It is mired in the consequence of the false morality from which it profited so much in the 1990s.”

Charles Moore - The Daily Telegraph

Since earlier this year, the Government's quango, the Legal Services Commission, has been locked in a duel with The Law Society concerning the new contract it was seeking to impose upon solicitors who were still prepared to provide legal aid services to the public.  In essence, this new contract (the "unified contract") was a very flexible affair, in that the Legal Services Commission retained to itself a right to vary material terms of the contract during its currency.  Most reasonable minded people would query the fairness of such a one-sided bargain, but not the Government.  The dispute was heard by the Court of Appeal in mid October of this year.  The judgment of the Court was published this morning.

“The Court of Appeal has given judgment today in the appeals by both the Law Society and the Legal Services Commission against the earlier judgment on the LSC's Unified Contract and its terms relating to how the contract can be amended. We are, of course, giving the judgment careful consideration, but we welcome the clarification it provides. This now enables us to move forward with greater certainty”

says this morning’s Press Release from the Legal Services Commission.  The Law Society’s take on the judgement is slightly different (with my emphasis.)

“The Court of Appeal has this morning wholly upheld the Society's challenge to the LSC's unified contract, also rejecting the LSC's appeal. The commission has now lost the power unilaterally to amend the unified contract in the extreme way it proposed. The judgment, handed down by Lord Justice Lawrence Collins on behalf of the court, is a decision 100 per cent in favour of the Society, and the solicitors it represents. The LSC was refused permission to appeal to the House of Lords and ordered to pay Law Society’s costs.

 

Delivering their judgment, the court repeatedly emphasised that this case was extreme: 'The power to amend is better characterised as a power to rewrite the contract' [para 86 of the judgment]. The court comprised Lord Justice Wall, Lord Justice Lawrence Collins, and the Lord Chief Justice, (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers.)”

There can be no doubt that the Government will plough on with its ill conceived “reform” of Legal Aid, regardless.  It knows that it is right and it just doesn’t care.  It would be wiser for the Government to take stock and listen to positive, informed criticism of its proposals rather than dismissing outright any opposition as being merely “vested interests”.  Of course, it will do no such thing.

It is a guiding principle in English Law that “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”

R v. Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy [1924] 1 KB 256 at 259

Since 1997, the Government has honoured this general principle frequently only in the breach when arranging or overseeing an inquiry or review following some ministerial or departmental debacle, or alleged misconduct or lack of competence on the part of someone holding an appointed Office.  The investigation into the HM Revenue & Customs lost data fiasco is to be conducted by the Chairman of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a company that undertakes sizeable projects on behalf of the Government.  Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair survived a no confidence vote by the Metropolitan Police Authority, a body that “exists to make sure that London's police are accountable for the services they provide to people in the capital”.  As it happens, it is a body where Government appointees outnumber the elected members.

Such inquiries might well be conducted with the utmost integrity and vigour, nevertheless the public's perception is just as likely to be that there has been a “fix”.  Any positive outcome for the Government or its placeman convinces few but more significantly does nothing to clear the air or settle the issue.  It is a simple matter for the Government to avoid such misperceptions by appointing patently independent inquiries or regulatory bodies, but it can do this only if it is fearless of the truth being outed.

The Government lost no time in responding to criticism by no less than five former Chiefs of Defence Staff concerning its under-resourcing of our Armed Forces.

Defence Minister Derek Twigg is reported to have said that there had been “the longest period of growth in defence spending since the 1980s.” However, the charge as I understood it was that, to quote Admiral Lord Boyce,

“The money that defence was given for its budget is not sufficient to meet the level of activities that the armed forces are currently engaged in.”

The crucial problem for this discredited Labour Government is that when not funding one of its pet projects (when bucket loads of taxpayers’ money is made available) it always expects to receive first class services at cut-down prices.  That the Labour Government should adopt this attitude concerning our Armed Forces who are fighting two wars to which they were committed by the very same Government, as well as peace-keeping elsewhere, is an utter disgrace.

Words fail me completely.

Reports James Kirkup in The Daily Telegraph today,

“Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, yesterday published plans to change the way people qualify for benefits on the grounds of being medically unable to work.  The Work Capability Assessment will be introduced in October 2008. It will assess what work new claimants are fit to do, replacing current tests that focus on what a claimant cannot do.  The Department of Work and Pensions said the new test would make it harder to qualify for incapacity benefit in the future.  Around 40,000 people apply each year for IB, which can be worth as much as £78 per week, and around half are expected the fail the new test when it is introduced…but the [Department of Work and Pensions] also admitted that the new test will only apply to new claimants, and will not affect the 2.7 million people currently claiming incapacity benefit.”

Oh dear, yet another example of Government mispresentation and misinformation.  When challenged by Chris Grayling, the Conservative Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Mr Hain retorted that,

“the scale of the IB roll was a legacy of the last Conservative government [which] preferred to put people on incapacity benefit where they were off the unemployment total instead of trying to find them a job because there weren't any jobs then.”

Lest anyone overlooks the fact, the last Conservative Government expired almost eleven years ago. Thus if the “last Conservative Government preferred to put people on incapacity benefit…” then successive Labour administrations did nothing to reverse the situation but in fact added hundreds of thousands more people to that particular benefits bill.  Those of a cynical disposition might conclude that Labour was more than very happy to retain the status quo for the same reason imputed to the Conservatives.  The more awkward point for Labour to explain is why the number of such claimants increased significantly during their watch.

This Government has been caught out being less than frank or not saying what it really meant on too many occasions now.  Even past instances when its word was accepted, are being revisited and different conclusions drawn.  The public no longer accepts uncritically what it is told by Labour.  The public’s irritation at being fed with endless misinformation is turning gradually to anger.  Fortuitously for the Opposition, most senior Labour politicians don’t seem to be able to change habits of a political lifetime.

Bejesus.  Forget Identity Cards. These are the guys who want our DNA data to be stored on a national data base.

UK's families put on fraud alert

Data on 25m benefits claimants lost in post

Personal details of every child in UK lost by Revenue & Customs

“The job of the security services is to propose to government what they think will make Britain as safe as the grave. The job of politicians is to put such proposals to the test of proportionality, value for money and civil liberty. It is now moot whether Britain’s politicians are up to that job.”

Simon Jenkins

“Meanwhile, terrorists continue to rely not on the bang but on the fear of the bang. Terrorists desperately want politics and the media to notice them. By showing we are so rattled that we will give up our cherished liberties, we are giving those with murderous jihadi dreams a gift. By pandering to the toxic fantasies of suburban wannabe warriors, by dignifying their delusions of global struggle with horrified headlines and constitutional change, we are debasing what we stand for.”

Rachel North

Says Jeff Randall in today’s The Daily Telegraph,

“The Rock’s “rescue”, presented initially as a cocktail of commercially priced loans from the Bank and some warm words from the Treasury, is morphing seamlessly into open-ended state aid with diminishing prospects for recompense. The sum involved has surpassed five per cent of the Chancellor's annual budget - and the drain continues. In effect, [Alistair] Darling failed to distinguish between protecting depositors' funds (the right thing to do) and bailing out shareholders and staff (a big mistake).  [Gordon] Brown is trying desperately to steer clear of the crime scene, while maintaining the fiction that taxpayers' interests are protected. He told the Commons on Wednesday that official loans are secured against the Rock's assets.”

However, it would appear that by 2010 the Northern Rock might still owe the Bank of England £6 billion.

The Northern Rock was a Labour sympathetic Bank based in a Labour heartland.  The Labour Government has broadcast a powerful message to all those who enjoy its largess.  A potential loss to the taxpayer of £6 billion? – for Labour, cheap at twice the cost.

The answer to the West Lothian Question is, you’ve guessed it, regional assemblies for England.

According to Professor Robert Hazell, Professor of Government and the Constitution at University College, London, “English votes for English laws” at Westminster seemed logical and fair, but there could be "huge technical difficulties in identifying what counted as an English law".  According to the Professor, another solution would involve handing powers to elected regional assemblies, which though overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the North-East, “should not be written-off forever.”

The BBC reports that whilst Professor Hazell agrees that the “closest to a complete answer” would be a separate English Parliament, he notes that there are not any mainstream politicians in favour of such an idea and considers there is no significant public support for it.

I shall leave aside any argument about whether there are any really insurmountable difficulties in practice about the implementation of the Conservatives’ preferred option of “English votes for English laws”¹.  I am able to predict with absolute certainty that if there is any fudge of this issue, for instance by way of a continuance of the denial that there is any real democratic deficit as between England and those parts of the United Kingdom that enjoy devolved government (the view of the Labour Government) or the imposition of regional assemblies (the current preference of the Labour Government) there will arise an irresistible, overwhelming support for an English Parliament.

Scotland 'still has too many MPs'

_______________________________

1 I cannot see any great difficulties and would be pleased to hear of examples as to what they might be.

“[Sir Ian] Blair clings to office because he has the support of both Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, and that walkin’, talkin’ “systemic failure” Ken Livingstone, the London mayor. And this is because he is the most politicised copper this country has ever seen; he owes his survival to his willingness to follow every politically correct obsession dreamt up by the Labour party: show him a “hate crime” and he’ll be there with his truncheon. Show him a burglary, however, and he’ll explain to you why it didn’t happen, or wasn't important, or is a vanishingly rare occurrence. He has also adopted new Labour’s technique of spewing out disinformation to the media.”

Rod Liddle

Sir Ian Blair receives the support of the Prime Minister

Sir Ian Blair is cleared

“We are a talkative and opinionated society and not always good at listening.  The discourse of politics, media and academe is essentially adversarial.  While this is undoubtedly important in a democracy, it can mean that people are not really receptive to an opposing viewpoint.  It is often apparent during a parliamentary debate or a panel discussion on television that while their opponents are speaking, participants are simply thinking up the next clever thing that they are going to say.”

Karen Armstrong, The Bible - The Biography 

“It appears that those who troop through the division lobbies, heaping law upon law or rubber-stamping Brussels initiatives further to control our national life and regulate individual behaviour, have little sense of how those same laws are enforced.”

Iain Martin