To quote Nigel Huddleston, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Luton South,

“[Esther Rantzen’s] involvement could split the anti-Moran vote and help Labour to win again”.

What do these prospective “independent” candidates really wish to achieve, other than to deny the electorate the chance of representation by a genuine, Conservative MP?

MPs' expenses: Simon Heffer still considering opposing Alan Haselhurst

Esther Rantzen should stick to Strictly Come Dancing

Just as The Daily Telegraph today disclosed the identities of those Liberal Democrat MPs who have taken ample advantage of the lax parliamentary expenses rules, a large part of the mainstream media has concentrated on the generalities of the scandal, with ample references to Labour and Conservative “miscreants”.  This is not surprising given the Liberal Democrats are the “progressive” media’s last best chance of preventing a Conservative landslide at the next General Election.

“As usual the [Conservative] party’s spin doctors will try hard to dampen expectations, but the story is clear. The Tories may be at an historic high water mark across local government as a whole, but there is room for improvement at this particular election cycle. If they do not make substantial gains, they are little better off than that day four years ago when they were simultaneously losing a general election. Nothing less than gains well into three figures and a share of the national vote above 40% will justify the claim that David Cameron is on his way to Downing Street.”

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher

Outlook for the June 4 local elections

Media commentators circle to pick over the bones of the Conservative "defeat" in the May 2007 local elections

Local Elections: The Conservatives are being set up for a fall

What a complete and utter disgrace.

The Evening Standard reports today that Linda Bowman, the mother of murdered model Sally Anne Bowman, has called for a DNA database of everyone in Britain to help police catch serious criminals.

Mrs Bowman believes that her daughter’s case highlights the value of a universal database.  It does no such thing. Mark Dixie, the man convicted of Sally Anne’s murder was detected because like most criminals he committed more than one offence.  It is what nearly all criminals do. In a later incident, he provided a DNA sample to the Police.  It was by this means that his involvement in Sally Anne’s murder was detected.  His detection plainly took place without the need for there being a national database.

Whilst it is obvious that a national DNA database should have enabled Mark Dixie’s earlier detection (bearing in mind the fiasco that occurred in the case of serial rapist Kirk Reid) this is not a compelling reason for the DNA of tens of millions of innocent people being stored on a national database.  It is not only a question of everyone being considered by the State as a potential suspect, which is repugnant enough in itself.  I simply object to my DNA (or fingerprint records, or any other information for that matter) being maintained on any database just because an arm of the State thinks that it might prove useful.

“The loss of liberty is one of the big legacies of an appalling, shallow, dishonest and vindictive government, which has failed the hopes and trust of so many. None of the brilliant lawyers and academics who leap to the defence of the Human Rights Act can deny that the Government's and Home Office's contempt for rights are habitual, and appear to be an ineradicable part of their nature that the HRA cannot restrain.”

Henry Porter  “The Human Rights Act can't restrain the Government”

“Enough. There's something wrong in our politics, something big and bang-in-the-middle: a howling question that is not about the global economy at all. It's about domestic leadership. It's about Mr Brown.  He isn't any good.  He's failing. He's embarrassing. He's dreadful. His colleagues know this. Yet they are gripped with a terrible fatalism, sliding towards election defeat as though catastrophe were unavoidable.”

Matthew Parris  “Do the honourable thing, Mr Brown. Run away”

“Those who have to work with him say that [Gordon Brown] really seems to think that announcing such initiatives is the same as achieving them. Is he, they sometimes wonder, quite right in the head?”

Charles Moore  “Mervyn King's timely lesson in economics for Gordon Brown”

All is not well down at the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).  Reports The Guardian,

“Part of the concern stems from a shift in the tone and style of the new body, which emphasises the concept of “fairness” more than the notions of “equality” and “discrimination”, and is less focused on campaigning. A spokesman for the EHRC said it saw itself as “a regulator and not simply a campaigning organisation.  He said, ‘Fairness is a great British value. I think fairness is a concept that a wider population understands.’ ”

The report continues,

 “An equality lawyer, who also asked not be named, said: ‘The problem is that ‘fairness’, unlike equality, has no basis in law. It’s a much more nebulous concept. Fairness is not about protecting the rights of those who have experienced discrimination, it’s about being fair to everyone, including businesses and white men.’¹ ”

Out of the mouth of babes…

_________________________

1   My emphasis.

“It would appear that the government has an agenda which is driven by the Association of Chief Police Officers. That involves neutralising an independent legal profession whose future role will be to stand by ticking boxes while people are rushed to conviction, whether innocent or not.”

Robin Murray

Speaking of the phenomenal response on the internet to his speech at the European Parliament on the 24^th March 2009, says Daniel Hannan MEP in The Daily Telegraph today,

“The episode serves to show how utterly and irretrievably the internet has changed politics. In 24 hours, 380,000 people had watched a video before a word appeared on the BBC or in any newspaper.  The Daily Telegraph was the first. The days when political journalists got to decide what was news are over. Ten or even five years ago, a dozen lobby correspondents would dictate the next day's headlines. Now, millions of bloggers and commentators come to an aggregate view.”

Quite.

There is a lesson to be learned from the case of Erica Connor which might not be immediately obvious.  Mrs Connor was the former headmistress of New Monument School, a primary school in Woking, Surrey.  She was a victim of a campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in her school. New Monument School is situated in the Maybury district of Woking and its local education authority is Surrey County Council.

Surrey County Council is controlled by the Conservatives.  Save for a period between 1993 and 1997, it always has been. Its employees hail largely from Conservative supporting Surrey and surrounding areas.  In spite of that fact, a significant proportion of its management level bureaucracy seems to be of a distinctly guardianista mentality.

Mrs Connor was forced to leave her school because of stress after she was unjustly accused of “Islamophobia” and racism by Islamic elements on the school’s board of governors. Surrey County Council failed in its duty to protect her and intervene.  The Council’s excuse for that failure was “fear of a complaint to the Commission for Racial Equality.” In the High Court, the judge, Mr John Leighton-Williams, QC found that council officers had shown “excessive tolerance” towards the two governors [who had caused the school’s governing body to become dysfunctional] and displayed “misplaced sympathy for [one of the governors]”.  In consequence, the Council was ordered to pay Mrs Connor £407,781 in compensation for psychiatric injury, loss of income and pension, medical expenses and the premature end of her career.

After twelve years of Labour misrule, at senior management level most of our institutions are now riddled with individuals of a guardianista persuasion. The Conservatives must adopt a strategy to deal with this. Otherwise, upon returning to the helm of national Government, though perhaps not being baulked outright at every turn by a reluctant bureaucracy, they might find themselves undermined continually or at the very least severely embarrassed.

Asks Matthew Parris, whilst pondering the advantages of judgment-based regulation as against rule-based regulation,

 “...And the question arises: wouldn't it be cheaper, wouldn't it be faster and simpler, and would it really add much to the sum total of general injustice, if we moved in the direction of appointing more commissar-like adjudicators: men and women empowered to consider the spirit and purposes of regulation and then to pronounce definitively, to deem - their judgments final, with no rights of appeal or judicial review?”

To a significant degree, too many decision makers rely upon an unnecessarily restrictive, literal interpretation of rules to enable themselves to avoid making robust decisions. Their fear of being “taken to law” by someone adversely affected is in most cases irrational.  Worse, it is feeble.  Ultimately, it is a question of mindset. Thus, if Mr Parris’ “commissar-like adjudicators” are possessed of the same trepidity the vice he desires expunged will endure.

There is also the issue that in recent years, rules have been amended and clarified in ever greater detail to achieve a political purpose. In such instances, where decision makers have contrived to do the right thing, the rules have been changed again to tighten the straitjacket.  A prime example is the constant amendment of the criminal law where legislators have sought to enable the securing of convictions where evidence is weak or uncorroborated.  Here, more often than not the Courts have still been able to dispense justice against all the odds.

In essence, in so many spheres of life we appear to have appointed the wrong sort of decision maker.

Whilst we are all engaged in the debate as to whether Sir Fred Goodwin should be entitled to retain his pension and his knighthood, it is worth bearing in mind that when Gordon Brown is finally prised from power and the dust has settled, the former Prime Minister will in all likelihood drift into a knighthood (if not ennobled as Lord Brown of Kirkcaldy and/or Cowdenbeath) to enjoy his very ample gold plated pension.  Given the severe damage that Gordon Brown has inflicted upon the economy, should this be any less worthy of censure than the case of his former best mate, Sir Fred?

Said Huw Edwards in an article promoting the BBC programme “Gladstone and Disraeli: Clash of the Titans”,

“I have more than a few reasons to name William Gladstone as a hero of mine. He was an even greater hero to some of my ancestors. In the mid-19th Century, most of the Edwards family were tenant farmers in Cardiganshire. Refusing to vote for the local (Tory) landowner at election time was a very dangerous thing to do. In those days, voting was not a secret process. Employers or landowners could check up on how workers or tenants had voted. The “rebels” were promptly punished. One of my ancestors was thrown off his farm near Tregaron for daring to vote Liberal…….It was William Gladstone who put a stop to this obnoxious system by introducing the secret ballot in 1872.”

The subliminal message is that the Conservative Party of the past was not above underhand tactics to achieve electoral success.  However, the myths do not accord with the facts.  The Whigs and Tories of the nineteenth century were of the same social class and neither party nor their supporters, were wholly immune from the vice of seeking electoral advantage by less than fair means.  Thus, a tenant farmer who supported a Conservative candidate was just as likely to suffer the wrath of his Liberal supporting landlord. 

It is also important to look at the issue in context of the age. Whilst the Reform Act of 1832 extended the franchise to a limited degree, the Act that really began the process of “the working man” being enfranchised was the Reform Act of 1867. Thus, the opportunity for the great landowners to purportedly bully the “little people” into voting their way had only just arisen.  It is important to bear in mind also that the Reform Act 1867 was passed by a Conservative administration.  That administration lost power in 1868, only for the Conservatives to be returned to power in 1874 (after a secret ballot) with a large majority over Gladstone’s Liberals.

The secret ballot was a roaring success......but not for the Liberals.

Let me say from the outset, that I have never considered as racist, the comments concerning Shilpa Shetty made by Jade Goody during her second stint as a Big Brother housemate.  Though I had not watched a single episode of Big Brother, when the furore broke I did take the time to view the offending scenes.  It was patently clear to me that the cause of Jade Goody’s antagonism was nothing to do with race, but everything to do with Shilpa Shetty’s natural grace and intelligence.  It was entirely a class issue, with the ill educated Miss Goody responding to the cultured, educated and so obviously top drawer Miss Shetty in the only way she knew – with disparaging comments (the worst of which, I seem to recall, was referring to her as “Shilpa Poppadom”).  The politically correct mainstream media did not see it that way of course, with the result that Miss Goody was pilloried and relentlessly bullied for being racist.

Even Paul Routledge, a hammer of anything even vaguely suspected of being middle class or Conservative supporting, felt constrained to annunciate,

“Shilpa Shetty was slagged off by slatternly morons who are unfit to kiss the hem of her sari. Their illiterate grunting had no place on prime-time TV. By contrast, the Bollywood star bears herself with remarkable dignity. She showed a calm alien to the other “housemates”, especially Jane Baddy. I think that's her name.”

How times and tunes change.  Now in the eyes of Mr Routledge Mrs Jack Tweed is a heroine.

“Jade Goody, 27, has probably filmed her last TV appearance. The shades of eternity are gathering round her….Jade sought stardom as an escape from the hell of a broken home and dead-end jobs.  She succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, becoming rich, a household name and controversial.  She has loved living in the limelight… But poor Jade never had the start in life that Gail [Trimble]’s parents gave her. She had to do it all herself, so I think her achievement is the greater. To break out of that deprived background and do what she did - including her indiscretions - took courage. I respect her for that”

avers Mr Routledge, continuing elsewhere,

“Meanwhile gorgeous, pouting Gail Trimble, Corpus Christi's famous know-all team captain, is inconsolable at losing the [University Challenge] trophy. “Too upset to comment,” say friends. There, there, luv. It's only a game.  Try imagining you're Jade Goody, still talking to the media on the brink of death.  That’ll restore your sense of reality.”

Inconsistency, incoherence and large servings of hypocrisy are to be expected of a newspaper suffering a significant fall in circulation, and as such perhaps it is not surprising that a gifted young lady who had not sought publicity other than by being a member of a successful team appearing on University Challenge, is now so meanly used to venerate an individual who herself was so cruelly abused by the tabloid press.

Asks Iain Martin,

 “I have been waiting, in vain, for this scandal [the debacle of LloydsTSB acquiring “toxic” HBOS]  to catch fire. But instead the story is fizzling out.

Why? Well, Britons are punch drunk after the past six months. And perhaps the numbers involved are so large that they are difficult to visualise. Fred the Shred's pension, involving sums more easily grasped, was handily leaked by the Government as a distraction.

Yet the chain of responsibility is straightforward. Both Sir Victor and Brown made catastrophic errors of judgment, thinking a great deal of their own interests. The cost to the rest of us will be higher national debt and higher taxes.”

The actual answer is that there were so many depositors and investors who would have lost money by a catastrophic collapse of HBOS, they were happy to see their investments and savings protected even though that might beggar LloydsTSB.  It hardly lies in their mouths to then join vocally in the condemnation of Sir Victor Blank and Gordon Brown’s extraordinary agreement which led to the wreck of a sound bank.  This is not to say however, that Gordon Brown's involvement in this monumental blunder has passed unnoticed.  The electorate's anger will simmer until the General Election, when retribution will be delivered.

Discussing our ruling classes’ recently acquired addiction to twittering Rachel Sylvester quotes psychologist Oliver James who says,

 “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It's a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are.  Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”

Being someone of little consequence, this is deeply satisfying to know.  I do not twitter ergo I have a strong sense of identity. 

Or is it simply that I still haven’t mastered using this new fangled quill writing implement?

“Lloyds TSB was a cautious bank, mocked for its conservatism by the banking buccaneers whose testosterone-charged aggression precipitated the downfall of the British financial sector. It was precisely the kind of healthy institution that, left alone, could have led the national recovery. But Gordon Brown, with the anti-Midas touch that characterises him, pushed it into a doomed union with HBOS, thus destroying a bank that gave capitalism credibility.”

Gerald Warner

Has there ever been a Government more “economic with the truth”?  Not only has this Labour administration now descended into the realms of pure deceit, but it seeks to browbeat those armed with the real facts who dare to publish them.

No matter how you look at it, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi College, Oxford team won the 2009 University Challenge competition.  That the BBC stripped the champions of the official title and physical trophy is neither here nor there.  It is not surprising that the Manchester University team was reluctant to accept the champion's mantle, because its members knew that they had not earned that accolade.

The rules contrived an unfair outcome, the disqualification of the winning team, as a direct result of the competition now being run across two academic years, in effect barring final year students and one year course postgraduates from taking part.  Everyone save the BBC and its acolytes saw the strict application of the rules as being grossly unfair and wrong.  In the light of the latest revelations that earlier winning teams also comprised disqualified members, the BBC’s decision to disqualify Corpus Christi appears increasingly perverse as well as ridiculous.

As with another great champion who was stripped of his title on trumped up and dubious grounds, Gail Trimble and her Corpus Christi team remain the people’s champions.

According to Vernon Bogdanor, Fellow of Brasenose College and Professor of Politics and Government at Oxford University,

“Why should Gordon Brown not seek a coalition government, a government of national recovery, to bring all social democrats under one roof? That would revive the new Labour project of realignment that collapsed only because it won by a landslide in 1997; and it would transform the economic psychology of an electorate coming to believe that Britain's economic problems are too serious to be resolved by any one party alone…

 

...There are, of course, deep differences between Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Yet a government of national recovery would not be a mere coalition of convenience. The two parties have been able to work together perfectly well in the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, to the benefit of progressive government. They could surely agree measures to stimulate the economy, combat the collapse of the housing market, achieve greater control over the banks and reform the regulatory system.”

and finally,

“It was because the forces of progress were so often divided that the 20th century was a Conservative century. If the Left can unite on an agreed programme of economic reform and electoral reform, the Conservative century could be succeeded by the progressive century.”

I cannot imagine anything that would be guaranteed to enrage the electorate more, than a centre-left coalition maintaining in power the most inept, unprincipled and ability challenged British administration of modern history. A political misjudgement of this magnitude on the part of the Liberal Democrats must surely ensure Conservative hegemony for many years to come.

“We cannot refuse to be killed. With or without 42 days, there will be further attacks on London. But we can refuse to be terrorised. We should be building defences in our minds against terror. Rather than fuelling disproportionate, uninformed fear in pursuit of their police-powers agenda, the Government-should be educating people about the true nature of the threat. They should tell us that it is grave, but not devastating. They should acknowledge, for instance, that most so-called "weapons of mass destruction" are nothing of the sort.”

Andrew Gilligan

Terrorism: The Government has lost all sense of proportion and perspective

Says Pippa Crerar in her Evening Standard blog today,

“Raised eyebrows at City Hall this week after Boris disappeared off on a family sailing holiday. In his acceptance speech at City Hall, the new Mayor promised to “work flat out” for all Londoners. But here he is, just three weeks into the job, enjoying the sunshine off the coast of Turkey in his patterned swimming trunks.”

Only a few weeks ago, Ms Crerar (who, I am reliably informed, wrote occasionally for The Guardian and The Mirror) complained that Boris Johnson, having promised to be open about the cost of his advisers, took three weeks to publish details.  I recall vaguely that Ken Livingstone took eight years to disclose precisely nothing.  Oh well.

Of course, holidays are for wimps, though I suspect that that is not Ms Crerar’s objection.  Presumably Mayor Livingstone was entitled to a holiday because he did not promise to work “flat out” or at all (though being a “man of the people” he would never have taken one on a boat and certainly not abroad).

According to the Mayor’s spokesman,

“It’s half term this week, he's got four children and he’s been on the road campaigning since last autumn.”

Retorts Ms Crerar,

“But will this defence persuade those who are concerned that while Boris worked flat out to get elected, he might not do the same for the people of London?”

Well no, it won’t persuade anyone who will never have anything good to say about Mayor Johnson, but for those of us who recognise a real political “misdemeanour” when we see one, it does.

“Labour has been marching through the institutions for 11 years. With the exception of the armed forces, it has not allowed one state body to stay in the hands of natural conservatives. The Church of England, the BBC, the judiciary, the senior Civil Service, the trusts, agencies and quangos all have a pinkish hue. Even chief constables sound like Harriet Harman.”

Nick Cohen

So, here we have a clue as to how to fix it, do we not?

“….these very same people who happily accuse their opponents of being “toffs” are also the ones who are scrupulous about political correctness and the nomenclature of race, creed, colour and disability.

The prejudice of ascribing character and ability to class is so obvious it barely needs arguing; yet even Polly Toynbee in The Guardian will effortlessly refer to “toffs” as if her own privileged background and education had been whitewashed. She would never dream, though, of referring to didicoys or Paddies or yids.”

AA Gill

“The great pity is that the clowns in top hats standing in the way of opportunity for all are from the Labour Party.”

Michael Gove

The language of egalitarianism justifying the maintenance of class barriers

Says Eamonn Butler in The Times today, about the latest TV licence advertisement,

“It's time we citizens stood up against this state-sponsored intimidation, particularly now that anti-terror legislation is being used to spy on whether our dogs are fouling the pavement and that we're closing our wheelie-bin properly. And it's time we told our unelected officials that we don't much like “our town, our street, our home” being in their database - given their ability to lose it in the mail or leave it on laptops that they forget in the pub.”

It is more than fair comment to say that in recent years government has sought to criminalise an ever greater number of rule breaking activities and impose increasingly draconian penalties for “crimes” which though seen by the majority of the public as being worthy of some punishment are still considered by that same public as relatively  minor.  There is too much stick and not enough carrot.

“What makes Gordon Brown so popular with newspapers and voters? This may seem a strange question to ask when the Prime Minister has just suffered the worst local election defeat since the early 1980s and faced the most humiliating headlines since the collapse of John Major's economic policy on Black Wednesday. But considering just how disastrously Mr Brown's Government has lately been performing, the real surprise about this week's U-turn on taxes has been the mildness of the media and public response….”

 

“…Yet far from demanding Mr Brown's immediate resignation or predicting the inevitable demise of his Government, the media have mostly treated this week's U-turn as the moment when the Prime Minister's fortunes could start to recover.”

 

Anatole Kaletsky

Yes, I thought that curious, too.

In seeking to defend his colleague and mentor Gordon Brown yesterday, Ed Balls explained,

“You have had sporting stars who have been heroes and then become villains... and then built their way back”.

One such hero who comes to mind committed no more heinous a crime than kick an Argentinian opponent.  Mr Brown’s equivalent act was to jump into the stands and start kicking his supporters.

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