This seems to be the received wisdom – that the absurd claims on many MPs’ expenses forms somehow damaged the public’s belief in our democracy. Similar claims were made by Tom Watson in relation to allegations of “phone tapping” made against Andy Coulson*.

I can’t help but question the extent of this. If an angry member of the public were to meet an MP and summarise what they felt, which of the following is more likely?

1. “I’ve lost faith in politics. I don’t think our political system is functioning.”

2. “I’ve lost faith in politicians. You’ve abused your position for personal gain.”

The expenses scandal was never about politics or the system. People stopped trusting individual politicians to represent them, because bluntly speaking, they seemed to be in it for themselves.

By all means reform the system, and declare a “new politics” that is “progressive”, but are we all forgetting what was wrong in the first place?

I’m not suggesting we throw out all MPs and start again, or that there is nothing wrong with the system. Nor am I suggesting that all politicians are “in it for themselves”. But it seems all too easy to move from blaming politicians to blaming politics and the system.

* Maybe more on this later when everything’s settled down.

Ken Clarke has said that the rise in the use of prison as a sentence has often been ineffective, citing reoffending statistics. This has inevitably drawn criticism amongst the politicians, particularly since it leaves the coalition open to the “soft on crime” argument.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is the rate of child imprisonment and the effect that “locking up” young offenders has. Currently, out of every four young offenders released from a Young Offenders Institution, three will reoffend within two years.

Of course, those who are imprisoned in the first place are more likely to be serial offenders, but it is also worth noting that in a survey of those in YOIs, 90% said they wanted to stop offending [PDF].

This is just food for thought. The question is, is prison the real problem, or is this a misdiagnosis which validates the “soft on crime” criticisms?

Personal opinion? Prison isn’t just for punishment, but also for rehabilitation. With incredibly high reoffending rates, regardless of the number of actual crimes committed, prison doesn’t seem to rehabilitate nearly as well as it should, and is worth looking at again. Being seen to be “tough on crime” might be politically sound in the short term and grab the headlines for the day, but won’t do much good when an opposing party starts researching the numbers before an election.

Then again, maybe it’s just me.

Then Number 10 rejected the idea.

This will almost certainly become a non-story today, although it is still the middle of the day, so with my track record on predictions it might well have escalated to international incident by the 10 o’clock news. Either way, the fact that political bloggers are speculating on Lib Dem attempts to pick up a few points in the polls does raise the question as to what sort of a reaction the 12 point polls are getting from the coalition.

Nick Robinson’s excellent “Five Days that Changed Britain” programme (which is on iPlayer until Tuesday if you missed it) highlighted the importance of voting reform for the Liberal Democrats a coalition deal, and how negotiations with Labour forced Cameron to offer a referendum.

The problem for the Liberal Democrats is that this means to a great extent this term will be judged by the referendum. Even though the Alternative Vote system isn’t the full Proportional Representation they want, a “No” vote would do some serious damage to the Lib Dems. At the same time, a “Yes” vote would probably give them a huge boost, but wouldn’t be the full measure they want.

On top of all this, there are still a few splits amongst the party. There are some rows to sort out, and it has been made clear that some would have preferred a coalition with Labour rather than the Conservatives.

What might be interesting is if the Lib Dems find a way to inoculate themselves against a “No” vote by arguing “we didn’t really want it anyway – we really wanted PR”. Any split might prove useful in this, with further left MPs being able to speak out. The only thing left open with this theory, is what happens to those who made the coalition, and in particular Nick Clegg.

This is all speculation, and depends heavily on not only the referendum, but the intervening time as well. Still, the prospect of a referendum on changing the electoral system will have significant consequences before the next general election.

We could be out of power for a long time, history tells us we will. I want to buck that trend.

David Miliband

Dizzy’s angle on this is an interesting one. He argues that Labour haven’t yet learned the lessons of the Conservative time in opposition – nobody is the “natural party of government”.

The leadership contest has been a civil one, and much more civil than was expected. Most people, myself included, predicted a bloodbath between Brown and Blair factions – in particular the Balls and Miliband (David) camps, but nothing like this has emerged so far.

As much as this protects Labour from negative press and prevents a political implosion, it doesn’t provide a debate. I can’t seem to find much real discussion in media coverage of the contest as to why Labour are now in opposition. The Newsnight hustings did give some insight, with Diane Abbott commenting that the idea that immigration somehow lost Labour the election “takes us nowhere”.

This is almost certainly true – the problem with the famous "bigotgate” incident wasn’t what was said or the issue – it was the attitude that had been taken to a member of the public.

Amongst Diane Abbott’s remarks in the Newsnight hustings one in particular stands out:

[It is] quite tragic that we have conceded the civil liberties agenda to the Tories

Diane Abbott

Labour need to focus on why they conceded that agenda. Personally, I believe it was a habit of control – Labour genuinely believed that the popular opinion was wrong on issues such as ID cards, and the arguments in favour of controlling measures regularly (if not almost always) outweighed the value of preserving freedoms in the face of terrorism.

Both Miliband brothers, now considered the leading candidates, have said they believe the state became too centralised, so perhaps they are on the verge of thinking that control and the approach to the public were part of the reasons behind Labour’s defeat. I suspect however, it will take the party much longer to recognise this, especially so soon after the end of a period in government.

Rejecting the past attitudes of a party is not an easy thing to do from within – if it is rushed, then there will be those who argue their voice hasn’t been heard, and if there is any lesson from the last government, it is of the damage those voices can do.

Now that my stint at URN’s Big Picture is over, I hope to be a little more open with posts and slightly less neutral. That said, I hope not to rant too much. Yelling and writing a post entirely in capital letters, whilst creating absurd and wonderful insults is, to be fair, fun. Nevertheless, it is what all blogs are: ultimately a bit self-indulgent.

It also tends to draw comments – the currency that many (although certainly not all) bloggers worship. But most exchanges as a result of a rant boil-down to a shouting match.

Comments are still something I’ve always prized on this blog, since it means I’ve written something worth bothering about. What’s more it’s why I’ve installed the very useful IntenseDebate – to try and have discussions rather than turn this site into some sort of droning monologue.

So I’ll try to avoid ranting.

Other people are entitled to their opinions, but they’re wrong.

Mark Kermode

In theory, more open (a neat way of saying “veering towards biased”) posts should make it a bit easier to post regularly. Over the last 6 months (when cunningtitle was using the Hemmingway theme) I tried to be as neutral as possible in posts, to the point of sacrificing content and quality – a grand total of four posts since January, mostly because when I sat down to write I confess I had a complete block.

Whether I’ll actually post more is probably subject to justified skepticism.

So in summary, the following will be moderately-biased, sporadic and self-indulgent blogging that occasionally rants, but tries very hard not to (and probably uses brackets far too much in the process).

Sounds like a good tagline.

Rarely is the question asked, “is our children learning?”

–George W. Bush, 2000

Last week on The Big Picture*, Simon produced a special report on the state of the education system. The panel all seemed to agree that there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the current state system, going as far as to argue that there was a relatively even distribution of both state and independent schools throughout the league tables.

The panel don’t seem to be alone; a recent Populus poll for The Times (9th Feb 2010) asked people to rate their perception of public services on a scale of 0 – 10, and the modal average was 7.

This raises two puzzling questions: firstly, why are the Tories focusing on education as the target of their policy announcements, and why would anyone call for “positive discrimination”?

The Conservatives have been calling for reform of education with a focus on more traditional subjects like history, and have proposed radical changes allowing parents to have more influence. Their draft manifesto lists various policies for achieving this and granting more independence in what they call a post-bureaucratic age, but the true reason is found in the opening blurb:

the success of our plan to mend Britain’s broken society depends less on the actions that a Conservative government will take to give people more power and more on society’s response [emphasis added]

Despite the apparently positive view of education that the Populus poll indicates, the same poll found that 70% believe society in Britain is broken. The question is how to fix it, and the Conservatives have, rightly or wrongly, targeted education.

As for the private and state sectors, it can only be presumed that there is a perception of a gap between the two. Otherwise, the only reasoning for calls for “positive discrimination” is covert class war – something few parties are willing to openly advocate. Perhaps this argument may see such calls silenced over the course of the election, particularly if Labour are to claim that the state sector is now the equal of independent schools.

Is education reform needed, have the Tories misdiagnosed a “broken Britain”, or is this all myth?

*Shameless plug alert! Rob presents The Big Picture.

On top of this, the National Bullying Helpline is, as I type this, dominating the news channels – particularly since their patron has just resigned over the alleged breach of confidentiality when they stated that several people working in Gordon Brown’s office had contacted them about bullying.

But this doesn’t remove the political element from the story. The problem for Labour is one of context. For a party satirised by the fictional government of the Thick of It, one particular Malcolm Tucker quote stands out:

How dare you call me a bully. I am so much worse than that.

There are already those associated with Labour who the public and the media perceive as bullies: Alastair Campbell and Damian McBride, whilst labelled “spin doctors”, also were believed to have fulfilled the role of “enforcers”.

Whether or not this is true will by now be irrelevant; the damage is done to their careers. The real problem for Labour now is that this might be extended to the Prime Minister, and the fear that there might be similar consequences.

The media have been accused of being selective in their coverage and have to some extent ignored some of the more negative coverage of the National Bullying Helpline. More weight has been placed on the issues of confidentiality surrounding the statements of Caroline Pratt. Yet the media can afford to be selective and may well do so consciously – this story has a much longer history than the last 48 hours.

Yet when there was originally speculation about the political role of blogs, it was suggested that they provided little more than a platform for the views of an individual. The comments sections seem to contradict this. Whilst yes, in some cases people are angered or seek to provoke others, there is also opportunity to hold the blogger to account and discuss issues further. Bloggers have taken to publicly asking questions of each other and answering them – as when Guido Fawkes of Order-Order questioned Daniel Finkelstein’s approach to tax.

Edward Murrow’s maxim holds true:

the fact that your voice is amplified to the degree where it reaches from one end of the country to the other does not confer upon you greater wisdom or understanding than you possessed when your voice reached only from one end of the bar to the other

Both comments and the network of blogs (I refuse to use the term “blogosphere”) inform reader and writer alike. The change in tone from dismissing blogs to accepting them is one that has, and hopefully will continue to, expand discussion and debate.

cunningtitle has changed a bit today, and I’ve moved the site to the hemingway theme with a few modifications.

The main purpose of this post is as a test more than anything else. There should be more content in the next few days.