Kevin Maguire and Friends

Afghanistan: Rights, Wrongs & Votes

2009-11-06T15:37:05Z

Gordon Brown made a good fist of justifying military action in Afghanistan and explaining why this Government "cannot, must not and will not walk away" because it believes boots on the ground are in Britain's national interest. The Prime Minister also found the right emotional tone, as Paul Waugh wrote on his blog, speaking of 93 families this Christmas left with an unfillable place at the dinner table because of British deaths soldiers this year. But I suspect Brown's speech is too late - public opinion's moved decisively against losing more British lives in Afghanistan.

We see it in growing flow of readers' letters to the Daily Mirror calling for withdrawl, working people fed up with an eight-year war. Corrupt Karzai's re-election in a one-horse race after a rigged poll appears to have been a turning point. The checkpoint massacre of five servicemen a breaking point.

Brown's five tests for continued involvement - tackling corruption, more Afghan troops, economic development, internal political reconciliation and better Afghan-Pakistan relations - are sensible. Yet there's a flaw in the PM's implied threat to withdraw if Karzai doesn't clean up his act. If it's as vital for Britain to be in Afghanistan as he argued, by his own logic we cannot pullout. Karzai knows that. Masterminding regime change in Kabul would be an alternative but Karzai's just demonstrated to the UK and US he isn't budging.

David Cameron in the Evening Standard effectively followed the Brown line, speaking in terms of preparing the public for more casualties. Nick Clegg's "not unconditional" support is more interesting and the consensus in favour of action in Afghanistan(a consensus never achieved over Iraq) is fractured. The party that goes into the election talking about withdrawl, perhaps setting a date, will win votes by representing the public mood.

Outside the Westminster Bubble

2009-10-28T15:01:03Z

Viewing Prime Minister's Questions on TV, hundreds of miles from Westminster (in my case South Shields), is to be reminded of what a turn off the jeering and cheering ritual is for most voters.

Quite frankly it's embarrassing, otherwise sane adults behaving badly for half an hour.

Sitting in the gallery week after week you become immune to the silliness, gradually regarding it as "normal" behaviour, when in the real world people watch the shouting with growing contempt. I must do it again soon to avoid erosion of my natural scepticism.

Despite that health warning, I thought Gordon Brown got the better of David Cameron on the economy with the PM's "not fit to be an Opposition" dart a rare bull's eye.

The economy's gone off a cliff on Brown's watch. The collapsing global financial system's to blame but he was happy to go along with that system, operating light-touch regulation as the 40ps in top rate tax rolled in from the banksters.

Cameron supported even lighter regulation, remember, and the likes of myself warning of the need for tighter controls were dismissed as out of touch.

But Brown today he developed effectively the attack line that Cameron's wrong - and would have made the recession worse - by opposing the fiscal stimulus, cutting spending in Britain instead of accepting like the rest of the world that we can spend our way out of recession.

Cameron shouldn't be allowed to get away with the biggest wrong call since Iraq.

Cameron would've risked turning a recession into a Great Deptession.

When the economy's officially out of recession (January?), Brown will attack that he was right and Cameron was wrong.

The Tory leader should've stuck to the Territorial Army £20m training cuts on which the Government was forced to beat a messy retreat. I wasn't sure,however, about rich boy's charge that Brown couldn't be "straight and straightforward when he's performing a U-turn."

U-turns by their very nature aren't, erm, straight.

Grumbling Griffin Plays the Victim

2009-10-23T14:46:04Z

As I reflect on the Question Time battering of that odious maggot Nick Griffin, I wonder if Mark Thompson and Mark Byford behind the public bluster privately feel they got it wrong.

The BNP leader was certainly a less impressive performer than I expected - stumbling with shaky hands, so nervous I feared he'd be sick. He landed barely a punch when I'd anticipated a barb about Straw's expenses, Huhne's wealth and unelected lawmaker Warsi's double-dealing at the 2005 election when she issued contradictory leaflets to Dewsbury's Muslim and non-Muslim
areas. Griffin didn't and left with his tail between his legs.

Those of us who hate Griffin saw him humiliated, shown to be a devious weirdo. Hopefully the curious who tuned in did so too and viewed him as poisonous. But I still fear a minority watched him legitimised, granted respectability by the seat on the panel.

The BBC claimed it had to invite Griffin because the corporation must be politically impartial. Yet this was no ordinary QT. The panel, including chair-cum-interrogator David Dimbleby, was five-to-one against him. Every question, save the last on Stephen Gately, was about the BNP. It couldn't be otherwise(except Gately) when we're dealing with a politician like no other. It's typical hyperbole for bruised Griffin to claim he was victim of a "lynch mob" - he clearly doesn't like to challenged. But IMHO the way the show was run is a tacit admission he shouldn't have been invited, special measures needed to handle a most unwelcome guest. The truth is the
BBC didn't treat Griffin with political impartiality and I for one applaud that. And the fact it didn't confirms he shouldn't have been there in the first place.

NOTE: Regular readers will have noticed a few changes to this blog and more will follow to improve it further. Frustratingly a technical problem requires posts from my BlackBerry to be cut and pasted by someone in the office which means standard Mirror legal statements on all occasionally appear(I've deleted one originally at the end of this post). Some Right-wingers may think the warnings appropriate!

EastFascists

2009-10-22T16:34:04Z

BBC director general Mark Thompson would be brain dead with the hide of a rhinoceros if he still thought his corporation was right to award BNP leader Nick Griffin the gift of a Question Time appearance.

I've heard a number of Labour Left-winger wonder aloud if the £142.50 licence fee is worth paying when it funds platforms for fascists who would deny millions of other Britons(and licence payers) the vote. They are wrong and we should stick with the BBC despite Auntie's awful own goal. The BBC remains one of Britain's greatest institutions, a force for good despite this terrible error of judgement.

The backlash may wake up the BBC's dinner party circuit so Griffin's invitations dry up instead of flowing in. If Griffin's status as a MEP secures him a seat on Question Time, why not other BBC programmes that feature politicians? Boris Johnson recently showed why he chose politics over acting when he guested on Eastenders. I'd hate to see EastFascists on BBC1.

Deputy director general Mark Byford earlier defended the BBC's decision saying it was part of the corporation's "responsibility of due impartiality".

Mail v Defence

2009-10-21T14:52:03Z

Gordon Brown and David Cameron going at it hammers and tongs at Prime Minister's Questions over the looming Royal Mail strikes didn't add anything to the sum of human knowledge(or help-unhelp a settlement) but from the Tory leader's point of view it should get him on tonight's TV bulletins.

Defence was the issue, I hear, and Afghanistan in particular that Brown feared he'd suffer a kicking over. The PM must have feared Reigate Con Crispin Blunt asking about the Territorial Army was a sign of things to come. For half an hour striking posties were a relief with Newport Labour MP Paul Flynn's strong attack on losing lives to support fraudster Karzai the other time defence was raised .

The Royal Mail's shaping up to be a Labour nightmare over the next couple of days, hopes earlier in the week that walkouts would be averted appearing ill-founded at this late hour. The end of the recession is expected to be announced on Friday with the resumption of economic growth. No one may notice if striking posties are picketing sorting offices. That would be
political incompetence by the Government, including Peter Mandelson. For Labour what can go wrong, goes wrong...

Cameron's Feminine Side

2009-10-20T16:29:26Z

The roar of protests from unreconstructed Tory male dinosaurs over David Cameron's tentative suggestion he might adopt all-women shortlists in Parliamenatary seats tells me that party hasn't changed that much and on this issue its leader's right. (That'll annoy Cameron!)

I'll leave aside Cameron's use of the conditional "could", the probability few plum Conservative constituencies may be vacant after Christmas plus a nagging suspicion it's another PR stunt to take what he said in good faith at the Speaker's Conference on women, etnic minorities and gays in Westminster. On that basis I agree with him that women-only shortlists are the surest and swiftest way to make the House of Commons more representative of the country should the Cons win an overall majority.

The projected increase cited by Cameron from 19 to 60 women Tory MPs if he gets a majority of one would leave his party in the shade of Labour which currently has just under 100 female MPs. Brown's projection of between 120 and 140 after the General Election is presumably based on a Labour majority, an unlikely prospect. I met a very good women Tory candidate last night on Sky News, Phillipa Stroud who is standing in Sutton & Cheam, but the Cons need to adopt women-only shortlists Labour embraced in the early 1990s if the face of the Parliamentary party is to change fundamentally.
Indeed the complaints by seat-hungry male Right-wingers remind me of the
carping by Labour's macho wing in the last Century which feels very retro.

So go for it Cameron and ignore the groans.

Barry Sheerman should not run for Labour chairmanship

2009-10-19T16:01:36Z

I'm against bloodsports so I'd advise Barry Sheerman not to run for the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Labour Party because he'd lose, probably very heavily.

My feeling after speaking to backbenchers is he's a lot less popular with Labour MPs than his ego tells him or we hacks inadvertently suggest by giving Sheerman acres of space and hours of airtime whenever he attacks his own party - which is much of the time.

The Huddersfield MP and chair of the Commons Education Committee sounded like a scolded schoolboy as he made a muted attempt to justify his opposition to the appointment of Dr Maggie Atkinson as Children's Commissioner for England, wisely opting not to repeat his "bully" attack on Ed Balls for daring to disagree.

Balls gave a robust defence of the appointment, the Children's Secretary's position reinforced by supporting statements from the likes of Martin Narey at Barnado's.

The select committee meeting which rejected Atkinson under the (advisory) scrutiny of appointments was, it transpires, attended by 3 Conservative and 2 Liberal Democrats with only four Labour present, as Labour MP and committee member Linda Waltho revealed in a dig at Sheerman, no vote was taken.

I've yet to find a politician with clean hands when the charge of playing party politics is flung and the suspicion on the Labour benches is Sheerman seems to be playing internal party politics.

Former Europe Minister Denis MacShane raised a good point, in that loyal way of being disloyal he favours, in condemning the "synthetic anger" of the Cons while correctly stating it's no good select committees running an eye over appointments if rejections are always in turn rejected.

For select committees to be stronger and have genuine Parliamentary legitimacy, the power of the whips must be removed with MPs voting on who sits on what instead of party cabals handing out places. Sheerman owes his own chairmanship to a rotten system.

On second thoughts I hope he runs against Tony Lloyd for the PLP job so he faces an election.

I've also just been reminded by a political editor on another newspaper that at the Labour conference in Brighton, Sheerman walked into the media area, gazed at the hacks and then (in earshot of several witnesses) declared: "This is the sort of room where they should round up all the journalists, lock the doors and release noxious gases."

Nice.

Labour's Lost Post

2009-10-18T19:21:36Z

If the Royal Mail strikes go ahead on Thursday and Friday(and I have my doubts) the political car crash will be a pile-up on the M1 and not just some minor shunt in town. All the ingredients are in place for a Labour meltdown which would benefit the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, the mail's customers - householders and businesses - collateral damage in an avoidable smash.

Business Secretary Peter "Maggie" Mandelson's still smarting after the Communication Workers Union was at the heart of the campaign to ditch his plans to flog off part of the Post Office to a foreign operator. Is it pay-back time? Mandelson sounds like his Brighton pantomime show's still running when he's "beyond anger". How about instead vowing to do everything possible to avoid walkouts in a publicly-owned industry he's responsible for in Cabinet?

Royal Mail management's poor. I still can't understand how well-paid executives, including Fat Cat Adam Crozier who is paid a million-plus a year, keep a straight face to claim it isn't profitable when the corporation chalked up a £321m operating profit. If recruiting 30,000 strike-breaking temps is his big idea, I hope they're better than I was when I did a xmas round as a student or get used to asking neighbours if they have your letters.

And then there's the CWU which is taking a public hammering. General Secretary Billy Hayes walked onto a sucker punch in allowing himself to be portrayed as a new Arthur Scargill. As Hayes has repeatedly argued on every TV news prog since, this is a very different dispute. Apart from anything else Scargill was looking for a confrontation, Hayes trying to avoid one. Posties have seen tens of thousands of jobs go and work hard for below the national average wage. They'll "modernise" - accept more cuts - but understandably believe change should be negotiated not imposed. They have my sympathy and conditional support.

This isn't a re-run of the so-called Winter of Discontent 30 years ago yet it a political and industrial mess. My gut feeling is all sides will probably end up in talks before Thursday's strike is due to start, possibly at Acas where I spent many hours in the late 1980s and early 1990s as an industrial correspondent. And if it goes wrong it would be grotesquely unfair should trade unionists, not banksters and New Labour politicians who cuddled up to the City of London, be blamed for the Government's woes.

The Big(Non) Debate?

2009-10-18T19:02:37Z

This chaos over a TV election debate was alas all too predictable after it emerged weeks ago that David Cameron wanted only a single debate, the Tory leader's earlier bravado giving way to a fear he could blow a big poll lead.

I'd hate the four-yearly row about format scuppering the debate(s) when we were closer than ever to pulling it off so I hope the broadcasters play tough and refuse to be bullied by either Gordon Brown or Cameron. From the beginning I've expressed a preference for Brown-Cameron-Clegg going head to head over three rounds with separate debates between the Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and their Con-Lib Dem shadows. But the important point is to establish the principle of TV debate(s) this election because it would then be impossible to avoid in future elections.

If agreement is impossible, the news networks should organise their own and empty seat any leader who doesn't turn up. I'm sure Nick Clegg would be delighted to answer questions on his own.

I Didn't Vote for Him...

2009-10-15T16:09:52Z

...Did You? London's Con-servative Mayor Boris Johnson doesn't look so funny if you travel by bus or tube or drive which must be pretty well most people in the capital. A taste of David Cameron if the Conservatives win Spring's General Election?

Kevin Maguire at the Conservative Party Conference 2009 - live blog

2009-10-04T17:06:45Z

Conservative party conference live blog

Kevin Maguire at the Labour Party Conference 2009 - live blog

2009-09-27T13:00:00Z

Kevin Maguire at the Labour Party Conference 2009 - live blog

So Who Does Advise George Osborne?

2009-09-23T20:13:21Z

No sooner had the Daily Mirror carried this than the New Statesman (the direct link was not available when I posted this piece - I was working with a paper copy) came up with a cracking demolition of George Osborne. Professor David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, was ahead of the curve on the recession - warning unemployment would soar and calling for interest rate cuts when Mervyn King was playing Mr Cautious Central Banker. So Blanchflower's opinions carry weight. And what does he write about the Shadow Chancellor?

"It is not hard to work out that, with unemployment rising fast, it isn't the right time to cut public sector jobs, wages or public spending for that matter.
"Mr Osborne, I really don't know which economists are advising you on this brilliant strategy to increase unemployment, but feel free to give me a call. Unemployment makes voters unhappy."

Or try this: "The time for cutting public spending is not now, not next year and not the year after."

Or this: "If large numbers of public sector workers, perhaps as many as a million, are made redundant and there are substantial cuts in public spending in 2010, as proposed by some in the Conservative Party, five million unemployed or more is not inconceivable. They could be our lost generation."

The Tories are on the wrong side of the biggest political and economic issue of our time, fiscal Conservatives trapped by an ideology that would make a bad position worse. My old foe Business Secretary Peter Mandelson was spot on about Osborne for the second time in a few days. The first time was that jibe about a boy in a man's job. Now he's accusing him of economic illiteracy. The esteemed Prof Blanchflower appears to agree. So who does advise Osborne?

What Nick Clegg Wants

2009-09-23T15:42:13Z

Nick Clegg's "I want to be Prime Minister" speech failed to set the pulse racing. I want to score the winning goal for England in a World Cup final and I've about as much chance of doing that as he has of moving into No 10. Which is nil, zero, none.

I find Clegg comes across as a reasonable guy when interviewed on TV but the conversational tone of the speech in Bournemouth wasn't effective on the box. The party faithful might have liked it but I'm not sure viewers will when they watch. All in all not a good week at the seaside for the Lib Dems. Brown will be hoping he does better than that in Brighton, Cameron in Manchester.

Observing Ashcroft

2009-09-22T15:03:45Z

Oh dear. The backlash has started against Lord Ashcroft buying the news. It's not every day I receive an email from the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley so here it is in full. I applaud what he's done. I like politicshome though I turned down a request to be on its panel of commentators because, to be frank, I couldn't be bothered. I know two of those on the panel who are now considering their own positions over the Ashcroft link.
Here's that Rawnsley public resignation. Right-wing foamers should look away now or go straight to comments:

Andrew Rawnsley

I have today resigned as Editor-in-Chief of PoliticsHome.co.uk.

Thanks to the dedication and flair of the team, PoliticsHome has been an
outstanding editorial success. The site has attracted plaudits from many
other media organisations and across the political spectrum.

That praise has been generated by its ground-breaking methods of surveying
opinion at Westminster, Whitehall and beyond along with its impartial
reporting of all strands of news and commentary.

It has been both professionally and personally satisfying to work with the
talented people who have achieved this in the eighteen months since the
inauguration of PoliticsHome.

I therefore greatly regret the decision made by Stephan Shakespeare, the
chairman, to do a deal which places PoliticsHome under the ownership of
Michael Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. The site
has been folded along with ConservativeHome into a new entity in which Lord
Ashcroft is the majority shareholder.

I became Editor-in-Chief on the basis that PoliticsHome was dedicated to
being a non-partisan site clearly independent of any party both editorially
and financially.

It was essential for users of the site that they could feel absolute
confidence in the political independence of PoliticsHome.

I do not believe that can be compatible with being under the ownership of
the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.