Trident: Fox says four, no less no more. Someone tell the LibDems.

             

    One of the very few achievements of the Liberal Democrats in the UK coalition has been the decision to review the replacement of Trident.  Nick Clegg said during the election campaign that he was opposed to renewing the weapons system.  But someone seems to have forgotten to tell the defence secretary, Liam Fox. This week he announced, not only that he was ordering the steel to build the next generation of Trident, but that the country needs four Trident submarines, not three as the former prime minister, Gordon Brown,  believed back in 2009.  Presumably the extra one is to cover for vessels that get lost in the Minch and end up colliding with the Isle of Skye.

    Except that the decision on whether to renew Trident, whether with three or four boats, is not supposed to be taken until 2016. A commission of senior politicians and defence chiefs is reviewing the whole question of whether we need to renew our “independent” nuclear deterrent at all,  given that Trident is designed to obliterate Russian cities and Russia is no longer an enemy.  But you wouldn't have known, hearing Mr Fox interviewed for Sally Magnusson’s through-the-porthole look at life in a Trident nuclear submarine on BBC Scotland .  Gosh, they’re so fit.

Tony Blair, Col Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden.

 Now we know.  That handshake in the desert wasn't just about oil and al Megrahi.  Tony Blair and Col Gaddafi, shoulder to shoulder in the war against Osama bin Laden.   Of course we gave him arms - he was one of the good guys.   How fitting that now, in his desperation to cling on to power, Muammar Gaddafi has resorted to the same bin Laden bogeyman that was used by President George W. Bush and Tony Blair to muster support for their repressive legislation and foreign wars.  

Selling democracy in the desert - a Marshall Plan of the mind.

  If as seems increasingly likely,  the day of the dictator is drawing to a close in North Africa and the Middle EAst, what should we be doing to hasten the sunset?  No fly zone in Libya?  Perhaps, if Gadaffi continues to use aircraft to kill his own people.  Suspend exports of arms?  Absolutely: it is indeed shameful that we have been supplying ammunition for the guns that have mown down pro-democracy supporters in Libya.  A Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of North Africa - undoubtedly, in the longer term, if only because this would be in our economic interest to create new markets and trading partners.   But what else?  What should we do now?   Are pious lectures about introducing democracy enough?


   Actually, they might be. 

And so farewell Wendy Alexander, resignation queen of Holyrood.

Wendy Alexander has walked out again, resigning her Paisley seat and citing the oldest and lamest excuse in politics,  “to spend time with her family”.  She leaves the Scottish Labour leader, Iain Gray, and fellow career women in the lurch.   Though somehow, I don't think this is the last we have heard of Wendy.   Labour’s former Scottish leader has made something of a career out of resignation.  She first walked out in 2002 as enterprise minister after a frantic 7.00 am encounter with the then First Minister Jack McConnell on his Wishaw doorstep. 

Libya, Egypt, Bahrain - they just want to be like us.

  It is hard not to be inspired by the example of the young people of North Africa and the Middle East who have launched and sustained the most dignified, principled and peaceful democracy movement since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.    In Lybia, Bahrain, Morocco, Yemen, Algeira they have taken to the streets and the blogosphere to demand democracy, freedom and human rights.  But what does that mean?  

   There has been a deal of confusion in the west about how to make sense of these pro-democracy movements.  We don't quite know who is fighting for what.   It all looks so spontaneous and un-organised.  Where are the leaders?  What's the programme?  Will they end up like Iran after 1979 as dismal  theocracies run by religious obscurantists?  Will they degenerate into civil war like the Balkans and the countries in the horn of Africa.  Or will they become democracies like the former communist states in the 1990s or South Africa under Mandela?   Is the CIA involved - either suppressing them or encouraging them.  There are reports that a number of the student leaders in Egypt had been trained in the use of social media by US-backed NGOs.  
  

SNP are back. Bad day for monkeys.

It was a bad day for monkeys. It has long been said that, in large parts of Scotland, you if you put a red rosette on a monkey it would still win in most Labour constituencies, especially when there is a Conservative government in Westminster. The old rule certainly appeared to be holding following the general election in May when Labour stacked up over a million votes in Scotland and knocked the stuffing out of Alex Salmond. But the day of the primate may be over. 
If the latest opinion poll from Ipsos Mori is right, and the SNP has clawed back the 10 point lead Labour had over them as recently as November, Labour may have to start looking for a better species of candidate.

Hasta la vista Jeremy. The end of the car is nigh.

  A hundred pounds to fill a tank. At first I couldn’t believe it - staring at the pump in disbelief.  Ok,  my VW campervan has a slightly larger tank than most cars.  And yes, I was up north where fuel prices are higher.   But still - a ton just to fill up!  How did we get here?   This is just not sustainable - economically or environmentally.  

  I looked around at the motorists waiting patiently to be fleeced after me.  How do they manage in rural areas  where there’s no public transport and fuel stations charge whatever they want?   What do small businesses do?  Perhaps there is some sort of black market in bootleg diesel - otherwise the place would come to a standstill. 

  But it’s not just an issue for the highlands and islands - everyone seems to be talking about the cost of fuel right now.   Expressing a kind of impotent rage - at ourselves as much as the fuel profiteers.  We all know we shouldn’t still be depending on cars;  that they are environmentally damaging, cause congestion and encourage laddish individualism.  But we’re all still using them.  With children it’s just not an option not to.  

    On my own, I use a bicycle around town, because it’s far quicker and I can park it anywhere - but I’m not fooling myself that this makes me any holier than thou.  I can bike it because I can afford to near the centre of town.  Most people can’t and have no choice but to use their cars in the suburbs or the country.  Try commuting by bike in Argyle in winter and you’re liable to end up with hypothermia.  Car transport is a collective addiction which is very difficult to kick on your own.

   But I think now,   with the hundred pound fill up,  we may  just have reached a kind of transport tipping point. 

Let's close Glasgow University. Who needs degrees anyway?

    It’s called the “bleeding stumps” strategy.  How managers of publicly-funded organisations resist cuts in their budgets.  They propose cuts in the most painful and visible services in the hope that the media firestorm forces the government to back down.  Aberdeen City Council did it by saying it was considering closing all the city’s parks and making 900 compulsory redundancies among council staff.  North Ayrshire proposed a four day week for schools, a patently ludicrous idea that became headline news for days.  Professor Anton Muscatelli, the vice chancellor of Glasgow University,  has been warning of his university going bankrupt in 2013, inviting images of unemployed academics in gowns and mortar boards shuffling along dole queues, while sheriff officers hold warrant sales of university furniture.  Come to think of it, that Glasgow university building would make a very decent hotel. 

Because of Iraq we have no role in Egyptian revolution.

  I have been bad tempered all day.  It's because I had the misfortune to listen to Tony Blair on Egypt - sticking very much to the line that Mubarak is our bastard, who has delivered "stability" to the Middle East and we should be wary of any attempts to remove him.  So much, so predictable.  What was infuriating though was not just that this man had launched an illegal war against Iraq in pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that weren't there. If the beneficiaries of the Egypt revolution turn out to be the Muslim Brotherhood, then we only have ourselves, or Tony, to blame. What is happening in the Middle East is the Muslim equivalent of the revolutions that overthrew communism in Eastern Europe twenty years ago.   The movement is overwhelmingly peaceful, broadly based and determined to introduce democracy to countries that has lived under dictatorship for decades.  What right do we have as outsiders to try now to dictate the course of the revolution? 


   But the truly maddening thing is that the West could have been the passive agents of freedom in North Africa, just as in Europe in the 1990s, and could have played a significant constructive role in helping countries like Egypt move into the democratic age.  But because of Iraq, we have no credibility in the region whatsoever.  Hardly surprising.  If Bush and Blair had just let the Middle East alone, instead of using military force to impose US democracy, we would probably be seeing secular liberal democracy established in countries like Egypt through force of opposition by the people. 


  Thanks to the stupidity of the Iraq war, as brought to your screens by Tony Blair et al, we in the West have opted out of history.    We behaved so badly that we even made the dictators look reasonable by comparison.  And now, of course, we are bigging up Mubarak as if he were a noble statesman and democrat, which he isn't.  He is a tyrant and torturer. The people in Tahrir don't trust us, and who can blame them.  

You've been Tesco'd

 Forget the Egyptian revolution, all hail the heroes of Holyrood who have saved the nation  from the iniquitous SNP Tesco Tax.  Thousands of grateful Scots lined the boulevards of  the capital yesterday cheering Labour's Iain Gray as he rode to the Scottish parliament on a Morrisons shopping trolley.  Tearful checkout ladies strew club-cards in his way.   Grateful trades unionists doffed their flat caps as Lord Sainsbury drove past in his limousine.  

Of course my phone is hacked.

  Is there anyone left in public life who has not been the target of Rupert Murdoch’s sleazy evesdroppers? We’ve had Prince William, Gordon Brown, Tessa Jowell, Leslie Ash, even the sexist sport commentator Andy Gray and the former MP George Galloway. Not having had your messages intercepted is practically an admission that you’re loser and no one is interested in you.  Ex Labour ministers like David Clarke say they ‘assume’ their messages are intercepted.  Michael Portillo, the broadcaster and former Tory defence secretary, says he hasn’t used voice-mail for ten years. 

Iain Gray. Bute House. But why?

  George Galloway for the Scottish Parliament?  Bring it on. At least he’d liven things up a bit - and no catty remarks at the back, please.  Nor should "Georgeous George", who announced his candidature this week,  be underestimated.  He was the youngest ever chair of the Scottish Labour Party and one of the most vibrant Labour politicians of his generation in Westminster, before he went off to the wilder shores of minority politics. 

    If Galloway is elected on the Glasgow list -  and he only needs around 11,000 votes - he’s made clear he will be supporting the Labour leader Iain Gray on the big issues of the day - on public spending cuts and the constitution.   And truth be told, Labour needs someone with a bit of charisma even though, as a Respect candidate, Galloway won’t be sitting on the Labour benches or taking the party whip.  There is an air of complacency, of entitlement,  about the Scottish Labour Party right now which isn't justified.  Iain Gray is supremely confident of  coasting to Bute House on the wave of opposition to the Tory-led coalition in Westminster.   Ed Miliband has pencilled in victory in the Scottish parliamentary elections in May as the next milestone on his road back to power. It's all too easy.

Does Ed have the balls?

 Politicians in trouble traditionally say that they are resigning to spend more time with their families.  Alan Johnson’s resignation last week over ‘personal issues’ was unusual in that it seemed for once to be genuine.  That’s not to say that there weren’t political reasons also for his departure.  Had the shadow chancellor been performing supremely well in his post, one suspects he might have persuaded himself that his country and his party needed him, and that he had a serious job to do whatever his wife was up to. 

   But either way, it looks like another lucky break for Ed Miliband, following his victory in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, and the resignation of David Cameron’s communications director, Andy Coulson, over the phone-hacking scandal.  Johnson’s departure gets Miliband out of the hole he had dug for himself by failing to appoint the right man for the treasury job in the first place. That man was, of course, Gordon Brown’s protégé, Ed Balls, the best economic thinker in the shadow cabinet by far.   Miliband minor was left looking faintly ridiculous as Alan Johnson stumbled from gaffe to gaffe, celebrating his own ignorance of economics and stumbling over the rate of employers national insurance.  It was obvious that Miliband had made the wrong call.

   Sending Balls off to the home office was not only a waste of his talents, it showed the new Labour leader to be weak.   Surely, the only reason for sidelining Balls was to prevent him dominating the cabinet on the economy.   Now Miliband has had to accept Ed Balls as his shadow chancellor anyway, and the question everyone’s asking is: has Miliband minor got the balls to handle him?   He has a very dangerous rival now, at his side - arguably a more dangerous rival than Gordon Brown was to Tony Blair.  There may have been no Granita pact, but Balls is now immovable and owes his leader nothing.  If Ed Miliband fails to raise his game as leader, and so far he has been pretty unimpressive, then the ‘other Ed’ will be watching for the main chance. 

Tommy Sheridan v Andy Coulson. It's not over.

 What a performance.  Gail Sheridan’s declaration of faith in her husband Tommy on the steps of the High Court yesterday was straight out of country and western iconography.  Talk about standing by your man.  Shame Tammy Wynette isn’t still around to sing about it.  

  Gail’s man had just been jailed for three years for lying about his affairs with party followers and his forays into the sleazy world of swingers’ clubs. The kind of places where ‘the carpet sticks to your feet’, as one of his conquests put it.  Yet there she was, without a hair out of place, not a hint of hesitation in her voice, defending him as the peoples’ champion. “The real reason he’s been imprisoned is because he has fought injustice and inequality with every beat of his heart”, said Mrs Sheridan, without a trace of irony. “But it won’t be long before Tommy is back stronger and continuing the fight”.

   It seemed churlish to point out that Sheridan had been jailed, not for fighting capitalism,  but for lying in court over a £200,000 defamation action against the News of the World.  He makes an odd addition to the pantheon of socialist martyrs.  Not sure John McLean would’ve been found promoting the cause of communism in Cupids sex club.  But Gail Sheridan is probably right about Tommy living to fight another day.  Being jailed after losing a battle with the mighty Murdoch mafia is no great blot on any socialist’s character.  He lied about his private life, certainly, but so did President Clinton.

It's over for the bankers. No, Really.

I’d hoped to avoid writing about banksters for a while, but how can you?  Prime Minister’s Question Time was once again dominated by bankers behaving badly following, the news that Eric Daniels of Lloyds group, is getting his snout in the trough to the tune of £2m. Playing catch up with that other state-owned banker boss, Stephen Hester of RBS, who has awarding himself £2.3 million in bonuses.   Really, how can you ignore this kind of thing?  These people are engaged in legal theft - their banks only exist because of public subsidy. If anyone should be getting bonuses, it’s the tax-payers. 

   I keep reading headlines about how it’s time to stop “banker bashing”.  That it might damage the City of London’s reputation if we keep harping on about their bonuses.  But I hardly think reputation comes into it: bankers clearly have no reputations left to defend. I can’t think of any group in society which as so unconcerned about their public image, so unwilling to mend their ways. Even paedophiles feel remorse. 

Old and Sad: Liberal Democrats down the plughole

“At least we didn’t disappear down the plug hole”, remarked the Liberal Democrat President, Tim Farron the last week after the Oldham and Saddleworth by-election.  True, but I fear Liberalism is going doon the stank nevertheless. The Tories came third, but David Cameron was the real winner.

    There was very little for the Liberal Democrats to celebrate in ‘Old and Sad’.  Had it not been for Tory tactical voting, they  wouldn’t have made it even to second place.  They lost by 3,500 votes in a seat where the sitting Labour MP had been forced to resign because he lied to the voters, and where Labour’s majority over the LibDem candidate, Elwyn Watkins, was only 103 votes.  That’s no kind of success. 

Banker bonuses? Give them to everyone.

There's a very simply answer to the problem of banker bonuses.  Give them to everybody.  No, I'm serious.   The banks are only in existence because of the hundreds of billions in state support.  Had it not been for the guarantee of public money to back up their dodgy asset base, not just direct capital injections but liquidity, asset swaps and loans, even the nominally private banks like Barclays would have gone under in 2008 because the entire financial system would have collapsed and their assets would have been valueless.   

   Very well then.  In future, when the banks hand themselves bonuses, the public should get equal, if not greater bonuses for having underwritten their profits in teh first place.  It's only what the banks would do were the situation reversed, and they were lending to government.  They call it interest.  So seven billion in bonuses  to investment bankers?  Seven billion to us.  Twenty billion in City salaries?  Twenty to us.  

  Such would be the condition for any future public support for banks.  If some banks reject this they can reject this arrangement and go out on their own, but they would really be on their own.   Then we would see what the state guarantee is really worth in the market where it counts.  Can you imagine anyone putting their money in a bank today that would have no future access to any public support?  Exactly.  They would be out of business tomorrow.

Is the financial crisis really over?

   Shake off that New Year hangover; it’s time to party.  After two and a half years of unmitigated gloom, economists and commentators are entering 2011 full of optimism. At least,  the 78 business analysts and economists polled by the Financial Times this week are.  They’ve concluded that there is no double dip recession and that we are on the way to an export-led recovery that will astonish Europe and gob-smack the G8.  Forget sovereign debt crisis, bankrupt banks, inflation, they’re history.   The stock market is booming, growth has returned and manufacturing orders are storming ahead thanks to the low pound. 

    Now,  they don’t call it the dismal science for nothing - economists are usually pessimistic to the point of self-harm. So why are they suddenly looking on the bright side or is the Financial Times on the waccy baccy?   Well the short answer is that the City of London is making serious money again.  Zero interest rates and the fear of governments defaulting on their debts, has suddenly made the stock market look a relatively safe bet.  Money has been piling out of  bonds and into equities, pushing the FTSE index of leading shares back up to 6,000 over Christmas - up nearly a quarter since the recession bottomed.  This makes financiers very happy because they rake in large sums in commissions from buying and selling shares.

Predictions 2011

  It’s prediction time again, and another chance for political commentators to fall flat on their faces.  Who could have forecast, twelve months ago, that the Liberal Democrats would be in government by now?  Or that the Scottish transport minister would resign because he got the weather forecast wrong?  Or that Vince Cable would become public enemy number one for introducing  £9,000 tuition fees in England? 

    Reality often turns out to be far more bizarre than anyone could have imagined, which is the fun of crystal ball gazing.  Who could have imagined that the stock markets would boom in 2010, even as a sovereign debt crisis was sweeping Europe?  Or that Scotland’s referees would go on strike?  Or that Ed Miliband would beat his brother David Miliband in a knife edge race for the Labour leadership?   Prediction is a mug’s game, but here are mine. 

2010: An apology.

    2010 will always be, for me, the year of apology, the year of humble pie,  the year I go it wrong.  Yes, I know: I get things wrong all the time - I’m a political journalist after all.  But this was different.  During the general election campaign in May, I suggested that in certain key marginal seats, like Edinburgh South,  voters should consider voting for the Liberal Democrats.  Why?  Because I thought there was a chance that, by levering in more LibDems,  we might finally see a fair voting system in this country, proportional representation.  There was a good chance that a Liberal-Labour coalition - for that seemed the only credible outcome of a hung parliament -  would finally end the first past the post voting system that handed too much power to Number Ten and not enough to the House of Commons.  I also hoped that the  Liberal Democrats might act as the radical conscience of a Liberal Labour coalition.  Hadn’t they stood alone against the Iraq?   I even commended the Liberal Democrats to students since they -  and only they - had given cast iron pledges not to increase tuition fees in England or introduce them in Scotland. 

2011: the End of Work.

  And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Or so sang John Lennon, the 30th anniversary of whose death was commemorated this month.  Can it really be that long ago?.  Curiously, the music and image of the former Beatle doesn’t seem dated, even though he is a figure from digital prehistory.  Lennon died before there were mobile phones, personal computers or the internet.  He was a product of the mass media, but that media has changed in ways he could never have comprehended. 

   If you compare the world as it is now, in 2010, even with how we lived only a decade ago, at the Millennium, the differences are striking enough.  Flat screen TVs, mobile computers, sat nav broadband  and WiFi have transformed our work and leisure.  Social networking - Facebook, Twitter and the rest - has changed the way we relate to each other to such an extent that we don’t really know what the word “friend” means any more. We had email ten years ago, but it didn’t dominate our lives . And while blogging was on the horizon, no one thought that the newspaper industry would face a crisis because of it.   Digital technology has accelerated the pace of modern life.  We live in a real time world, where information is no longer something you have to spend time finding, but is ever present in one electronic form or another. 

2010: Year of Protest.

 It all started with a carnival atmosphere, as tens of thousands of students and six formers took to the streets to protest about the state of higher education and inequality in society.  Students carried placards with witty and sometimes obscure slogans such as “Be realistic, ask the impossible” and “Under the paving stones, the beach”.  But it all turned violent as groups of anarchists seized buildings and confronted the police. Pretty soon, there was an atmosphere of revolution.  

Result. SNP rules out tuition fees.

Who said protest never changed anything?  The bill to introduce £9,000 tuition fees in England may last week have passed in Westminster, despite the  demonstrations by students, lecturers and school pupils.  But Scotland is another country, and it look as if the students have had a result here.  The SNP government has now unofficially committed itself to keeping Scotland fee free.  No up front fees, no graduate contribution, no endowment no graduate tax.  Zilch.  In Scotland, higher education will remain open to all, on the basis of ability to learn, not ability to earn. That is the substance of briefings given by Alex Salmond this week.  

Tuition fees CAN be stopped in Scotland.

  What happens now?  The bill to triple student fees in England became law on Thursday,  even as Parliament Square itself was ablaze, and the heir to the throne besieged in his limousine by angry demonstrators.   Is that it?  Will the students now go back to their rooms to study while the nation indulges in the usual orgy of Christmas consumerism?   No way!   The students should not abandon their intifada,  but take it north to Scotland where fees are still free - but perhaps not for long. 

     The 2010 student uprising is the biggest show of popular discontent since the poll tax demonstrations twenty years ago.  The poll tax became law too, but not for long. Mass protests made the law unworkable, and its author, Margaret Thatcher, was brought down by her own cabinet in large part because of the unpopularity of the community charge.    The students can do the same.  They have lost the parliamentary battle, but won the argument.  They must now demand that the Scottish government sticks to its pledge not to reintroduce tuition fees, nor any "graduate contribution" which amounts to the same thing.  A victory in Holyrood will make Westminster think again. The May Parliamentary elections in Scotland should be turned into a referendum on tuition fees.  And a funeral for the Liberal Democrats. 

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

    Sorry, but I am getting heartily sick of the Great Girn, the endless moaning about the weather.  We’ve turned into a  nation of whinging children desperate for someone to blame. Stuff happens.  Weather happens.  But instead of just getting on with it, and using the gift of community to adapt to the challenge, we adopt the mantle of victimhood and start looking for politician to hold responsible. Instead of ‘keep calm and carry on’ it’s find me a lawyer so I can make a spurious negligence claim. 

Calman tax powers are a milestone to Scottish independence, not a millstone for Holyrood.

If there was a twinkle in the eye of Alex Salmond last week, as he scoffed at the new tax powers being offered in the Scotland Bill , it may be because, under the table, he was pinching himself.   I’m pinching myself.  I still can’t quite believe that a Tory-led coalition government in London is introducing the widest and deepest extension of Scottish constitutional powers since devolution, even if they are flawed. 

Swinney didn't lie about tartan tax

 The world held its breath as conflict erupted between North and South Korea; Ireland braced itself for civil unrest as its government imposed a crushing austerity budget;  British students and school six formers took to streets and occupied universities over tuition fees.  And Holyrood spent the afternoon rowing over the unspent cost of collecting a tax, the SVR, that no one intends to raise and is about to be abolished. Cover up? Abuse of power?  Grow up. 

Gray man v ginger rodent

 Just Iain Gray’s luck.  He makes his best conference speech since becoming leader, and is upstaged by a ginger rodent.  Harriet Harman’s extraordinary attack on the Liberal Democrat finance minister, Danny Alexander, as a redheaded rat inevitably stole the headlines at the Scottish Labour Conference in Oban.  There was no way that the Iain Gray was going to be able to top that.  But he did at least try.  

CSR: forget it, Osborne isn't serious

 It’s one of Westminster’s favourite cliches that a budget that looks good the day it is delivered usually falls apart by the end of the week.  George Osborne’s CSR lasted about four hours.  That was how long it took the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to contradict the central claim that the deficit reduction plan was progressive and shared the burden equally across all income groups.  It clearly wasn’t.  It didn’t take a genius to work this out since most of the cuts announced last week hit people on benefits,  who are by definition the lowest income group. 

   Actually, the unfairness of the spending review isn’t really much of a political worry for the Tories.  They think, and there is ample polling evidence to confirm this, that the British people now have much less sympathy for those at the bottom of the heap than has been the case in the past.  All those press stories of families receiving £95,000 in benefits, plus the fact the welfare budget has risen by 45% in the last ten years, has made us much less soft-hearted as a nation.   The latest YouGov/Sun poll confirms this, indicating that nearly 60% believe the welfare cuts were “unavoidable”.  

Osborne's CSR and the ghost of Gordon.

  We were warned in advance that it was going to be the most savage round of public spending cuts since the Geddes Axe nearly ninety years ago. An unprecedented  25-40% reduction in departmental spending.  The state would be reduced to a forest of bleeding stumps, forecast Labour,  after George “slasher” Osborne had swung his Condem chopper.   In the event, the headline cuts in departmental spending were only 19% - which is actually less than the former Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling had planned.  How they guffawed  on the Tory benches as Labour’s shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson tried to respond to one of the cleverest, and arguably the most cynical spending statements since, well, since the days of Gordon Brown.  

    

     George Osborne’s CSR had a remarkable similarity to one of Brown’s classic budget speeches. The hectic delivery,  the gratuitous self-congratulation, the blizzard of spending initiatives from Crossrail to the widening of the A11 around Norwich, which for some reason provoked cheers from Tory benches.  Cuts? What cuts? Pensioners are to keep their winter fuel allowances and free TV licences.  Child benefits for 18 year olds remain. Museums and galleries stay free.  

Broken promises: what would the Greeks have made of it?

As the general election campaign drew to a close in May, I wrote that the political parties were playing a game of bluff with the voters.  They didn’t want to tell us the truth  and we didn’t want to hear.  All of them knew that the deficit was running at around £150bn and that this is represented an extinction level event for many public services.  But they went right on and, well, lied about it.   I have thought carefully about using that word, which is of course unsayable in parliament. But I can’t think of any other way of encapsulating the scale of the misrepresentation. 

   David Cameron promised not to cut child benefits, free bus passes and winter fuel allowances for old people. Well child benefit has gone and just watch the others go in short order.  He also said the Tory plans “didn’t involve an increase in VAT” when they clearly did, for no sooner was Cameron in the door at Number Ten than he announced that VAT would rise in January by 2%.  The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg also promised not to raise VAT, which he called the “Tory tax bombshell”.  Then he dropped it.

  Yes, all politicians break promises,  but the Coalition has set a new benchmark in infamy.   “No more pointless and disruptive reorganisation of the health service” said David Cameron solemnly, before launching the most radical upheaval in English health care in decades.  Next will likely be  charges for “hotel” costs while people are in hospital.  Then what about road pricing, legal aid, pension taxes...

     However, all of this pales against the LibDem behaviour over tuition fees. Before the election, their MPs actually signed a pact that they would vote against any increase in fees, only Sir Menzies Campbell, the former leader seems willing to honour it.   Vince Cable said upping fees would be a  “disaster”.  Not any more, for in the Browne report he is endorsing the biggest increase in university fees in modern history.  In any other walk of life you would be able to sue people who behaved like this.  And don’t tell me he changed his mind when he ‘opened the books’ - he of all politicians knew exactly how bad the books were.  All that's changed is that he is in government.

Tuition fees - bigger than the poll tax?

   It is one of the most cherished myths of Scottish national identity: the lad o’ pairts.  The image of proud Jock, of peasant stock, striding out of the kailyard with his bag of meal in one hand and his bible in the other. Whistling a Man’s a Man while preparing to take on the  upper classes  thanks to the free Scottish university system.    Like all myths, the “Democratic Intellect”, as George Davie described the Scottish tradition of open access higher education, involves an element of pure fantasy.  Scottish universities in the 19th Century weren’t free, for a start, though fees were very low and most students received bursaries courtesy of the Carnegie Trust.

   Nevertheless, there was some truth in the lad o' pairts myth, and cynics ridicule it at their peril.   At the end the 19th Century,  nearly 25% of Glasgow University students came from manual working class backgrounds, something inconceivable in  the English system,  which was the exclusive preserve of the upper classes.   The belief that higher education should be based on ability learn rather than ability to pay is deeply ingrained in Scottish  culture.  Universities have been seen here as national public institutions which should be mainly financed out of general taxation.  This is confirmed in opinion polls, such as the recent Scotsman/panelbase poll of 1001 Scots which this month showed that two thirds of Scots reject a graduate tax related to earnings.

Now I know why Cameron wears that condom

I’ve never quite understood the cartoonist Steve Bell’s caricature of David Cameron wearing a condom over his head, except for the rather obvious suggestion that he is, well, a male member.  However, following the row over how many children benefit claimants should be allowed to have, I finally do get it.  Vote Tory and stop one. 

Iraq: Labour need a truth and reconciliation commission

 So, it did turn into a ‘geek’ tragedy after all, at least for David Miliband.  Just as we were all digesting Brother Ed’s rather dull but worthy address to conference on Tuesday, and thinking that Labour had  put the past behind it, a huge, ugly crack suddenly appeared in the facade of Labour conference unity.   In a fatal lapse of self control, the defeated David  turned to admonish his colleague, the deputy leader, Harriet Harman, for applauding Ed Miliband’s admission that the Iraq war had been wrong.  “Why are you clapping?” said Miliband D,  “You voted for it”. 

  Those eight words echoed around Manchester as David Miliband walked out of the shadow cabinet, the only action he could have taken.   Had he remained, there was a real risk that a kind of civil war could have broken out.  David Miliband wasn’t the only former minister to be outraged by Ed’s condemnation of their collective action over Iraq.   Every member of  the shadow cabinet  is going to have to submit to the 'were-you-clapping' test now brother Ed has finally admitted on their behalf that Iraq was a disaster.  How many, like Harriet Harman, privately agreed with him?   Why did they allow it to happen?  

Who will lead Labour's Star Trek convention? Spock or Sulu

 Watching the five Labour leadership candidates enter the final straight this week,  I couldn’t help remembering David Cameron’s wicked quip about a Star Trek convention.  There is indeed a hint of the Starship Enterprise with David Miliband as Mr Spock - austere, rational, borderline autistic,  and Ed Balls as Captain Kirk - bumptious, over-promoted, lacking emotional intelligence.  Diane Abbott is of course  Uhura, interjecting every now and then from left field and being largely ignored. I see Ed Miliband as navigator Lieutenant Sulu, who knows the way ahead but sometimes has difficulty explaining it..  Andy Burnham, like Ensign Pavel, is the one whose name no one can remember. 

  The Labour hopefuls shouldn’t be too bothered -  the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, always regarded it as a political allegory.  Nevertheless, the sense that the entire leadership cadre of New Labour are not on the planet is something of a handicap in an election race before a very down to earth media. But what is it about the Labour leadership candidates that makes them seem just a little other-wordly?  I think it stems from the fact that all five are essentially policy wonks, career politicians who've risen to prominence in a party that has lost touch with  any kind of mass popular movement. 

Vince is about as Marxist as Adam Smith

 ‘’Vince Cable “not a Marxist”’said a BBC headline yesterday on the eve of  his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool.  Indeed, he is not.  Vince Cable is an economic conservative, who has long advocated free market capitalism and cutting the state.  . Cable was a prominent contributor to the LibDem “Orange Book” which argued  for market reforms in the public sector, including the NHS.  He is an enthusiastic advocate of the Chancellor, George Osborne’s deficit reduction programme

Nick Clegg: an apology.

  I suppose I should apologise.  I was one of those McChattering hacks who urged Scottish voters to consider backing the Liberal Democrats, tactically, last May.  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  The LibDem surge seemed like a unique opportunity to break the dead hand of the two-party monopoly in Westminster and introduce fair voting. It was time, I said, to bring an end to elective dictatorship once and for all.

    But look where it’s landed us: with the most conservative government in modern times pushing through the most swingeing programme of public spending cuts since the “Geddes Axe” of 1921.  And declaring war on welfare and the NHS (in England at least).  And what have we  Liberal Democrat fellow travellers got in return?  A referendum on the Alternative Vote method of proportional representation, which it isn’t actually proportional and which will very likely be defeated anyway.  Ok , they have got things like scrapping identity cards and a raising of tax thresholds, but these are small beer.  And now Nick Clegg has declared that there is "no future" for the Left in the new, Tory-friendly LibDems.  All those election promises about Trident, taxing the bankers, not increasing VAT, hammering CGT tax avoiders, abolishing tuition fees...all sacrificed in the interest of getting Liberal Democrat bums on cabinet seats. 

Is the Pope really a Catholic?

   So, atheists are Nazis according to Pope Benedict, speaking in Edinburgh today. This is just a little rich coming from a former member of the Hitler Youth. I don't believe that the Pope is or was a Nazi, but I think it was a peculiarly inept and thing to say.  It was offensive, also,  to the majority of people in this country who do not believe in god.   

The Pope's exact words were these:    "Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.  As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny."  

   This is very dubious history. Adolf Hitler was a Christian, a Catholic who remained so all his life, though he wasn't very devout.  Nevertheless, he repeatedly invoked god and Christianity in his war against "faithless communism" and the jews.   In his Proclamation to the German Nation in February 1933 Hitler said  that "The National Government regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of our national life".  German soldiers were required to wear belts bearing the legend "Gott Mit Uns",   "god with us".  The SS was supposedly based on the Jesuits.  In the Nazi-Vatican Concordat of 1933 Hitler agreed to outlaw secular schools and have all teaching based on faith. 


  Now, just because Adolf Hitler believed in god, I don't conclude that Roman Catholics are Nazis.  But the pontiff really does suggest that atheists are morally responsible for fascism.  Following the remarks from, Cardinal Walter Kaspar, one of the Pope's senior advisers about Britain being "a third world land" full of "aggressive secularists", where Christians are victimised for wearing a cross, it rather suggests that this state visit is turning into a public relations disaster.  The Holy Father and the Roman Catholic leadership is becoming detached from reality. 

Independence - Is that it?

As Alex Salmond’s flagship referendum bill sank beneath the waves last week, there were precious few mourners at the quayside, even amongst the SNP. There were even fewer criers of ‘betrayal’ - though the godfather of fundamentalism, the former SNP deputy leader, Jim Fairlie, remarked that: "at the mention of the word 'independence', a shiver ran through the ranks of the SNP, frantically searching for a spine to run up."

    The opposition parties snorted about broken promises and nails in the coffin of  Alex Salmond’s credibility, but it was pretty routine stuff - as if the abandonment of the independence referendum bill was just another item on the list of lost manifesto commitments along with local income tax, the Scottish Futures Trust and abolishing student debt. But it is much more than that.  Only two years ago, at the height of the SNP honeymoon, people were seriously talking about the momentum towards Scottish independence becoming unstoppable.  August bodies like the Constitution Unit at UCL in London were holding conferences on the mechanics of separation -  one referendum or two? how to split the national debt? It was more or less assumed that an independence referendum would happen, somehow. Not any more  

I have been naked with William Hague

   I can't keep this secret any longer.  It has to get out.  I have been naked, on several occasions, in a room with William Hague, who was also  without clothes.  Yes, I realise that this latest bombshell will re-ignite the whole two-men-in-a-bedroom scandal, but I can no other.  I have to get it off my chest.   I know my phone is tapped but I want to sell my story before they do.  

Poor Tony: domestic abuse drove him to the bottle. A Journey is misery literature for the political classes

  So that explains it:  Tony Blair was pissed half the time.  One of the most extraordinary revelations in the former PM’s foray into confessional literature, “A Journey”, is that he was, by many medical definitions, a problem drinker.  A stiff G and T (3 units) and up to half bottle of wine (5 units) each night put the PM way over the government’s safe limit of 21 units a week.  Did it addle his brain? make him careless? affect his judgement?  Actually, I doubt it. By the standards of his predecessors in Number Ten, notably Winston Churchill who began his day with a large Scotch, had a bottle of  Pol Roger champagne for lunch and kept himself liberally topped up throughout the day, Blair’s imbibing was purely recreational.  However, it is a curious thing to highlight in a political  memoir. 

   But then, as its title suggests, “A Journey”  is a very modern   memoir - aimed at a media culture of confessional womens magazines and celebrity journalism.  What better way to get noticed, and divert attention from the real issues - like Iraq -  than to get onto the therapy couch and admit to having a little bit of a drink problem - just like countless middle class, middle aged men and women.    Just like his hero George W. Bush, in fact -  though Dubya gave up the bottle after he found God.  Tony lied too - and was “manipulative”, he tells us. But always in a good way.Amd of course he never felt comfortable in Scotland because it was Gordon country.

Expenses: MPs in the right, shock.

  MPs were in the doghouse again last week - or should that be the duck house - over  their expenses.  Employees at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, who process MPs’ expenses claims, say they have been threatened, insulted and abused. Called  “f..ing idiots” and  “monkeys” by irate MPs one of whom described their computerised system as a “f...ing abortion”.  Mind you that’s nothing compared to the language voters used about MPs when their expense abuses became known last May. However, in this case, MPs aren't wholly to blame.  IPSA is being called to put its own house in order

Edinburgh: how "Dodge City" really makes its money.

    Summertime and the living is easy - at least for Edinburgh’s commercial classes.   The Festivals are jumping - heading for two million ticket sales across the 'cultural olympiad'.  The warm weather is stuffing the pockets of hoteliers and those Edinburgh folk who famously decamp for the summer in order to charge inflated rents to festival goers.  Where else could you see a caravan being offered at £800 a week? 

   But it’s not just the Festival that’s putting a smile on the faces of Edinburgh’s business class.  Somehow, the financial crisis that was supposed to turn the capital city into a soup kitchen for bankers seems to have completely passed it by.    Edinburgh house prices rose 20% in the year to February 2010;  unemployment at 3.3% is way below the Scottish average.  New business start ups are up 33%, planning applications are pouring in, commercial property is recovering.  Even the tram chaos seems to be passing, to be replaced by something worse:  an endless traffic jam of new Range Rovers and BMW as Edinburgh’s new money pours into the car showrooms. If you’re looking for austerity, you won’t find it here.

   But there’s a slightly shifty quality to this prosperity - as if the benefiaries feel just a little guilty about it.  One prominent Edinburgh financial commentator has taken to calling Edinburgh “Dodge City”, such has been its ability to side-step the banking collapse, the economic recession and now the government’s austerity drive. The city that was at the centre of the financial cyclone seem to be making a fortune out of it.  But  the catch is that their good fortune is almost entirely built on other peoples’ taxes. 

What goes up... Mobility isn't very social

 I’ve always been just a little suspicious of people who advocate social mobility as a cure for society’s ills, as the answer to  inequality.   It isn’t.    When Nick Clegg said last week that social mobility is “the badge of fairness in society” he is missing the point.  The very image of “social mobility” is one of those loaded metaphors like “housing ladder” which implies that we can can make it to the top if they have enough drive and are given the right opportunity.  This has always been a myth.  

Long Live al Megrahi

    Will the Queen be sending a telegram to Abdel Basset al Megrahi when he reaches a hundred?   

       Has this man no decency?  Doesn’t he realise that by clinging on to life he is daily destroying the credibility of our own Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill.  Tony Blair - whose ‘deal in the desert’ with the Libyan dictator began the process that led to Megrahi’s release - is in the dock of American opinion. I mean, sales of Blair’s autobiography, The Journey, could seriously be affected.    If only Megrahi could see the distress he’s causing I’m sure he’d top himself. 

Jimmy Reid's failure

 Many and various have been the tributes to Jimmy Reid, hero of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in in 1971.  The  occupation was a success, the yards saved, but politically it was downhill all the way from then on for Scotland’s favourite communist.  I don’t mean that to sound negative or unsympathetic:  Jimmy had a great life and was much loved by friend and foe alike.  He became a national institution: successful journalist, university rector and genuine working class hero.  Latterly, like many on the Scottish left, he gravitated toward nationalism, became an influential voice in the home rule movement and ultimately joined the SNP.   So, no tears necessary, and he wouldn’t want them. He’d want us to reflect instead on the history and politics of his times.  But it’s not a comfortable history for the Left.  

Gordon is Back - thanks to Mandy

   Peter Mandelson’s memoirs may have achieved the impossible:  kick started the rehabilitation of Gordon Brown’s political reputation.  By rushing into print while the wounds of defeat are still raw, by cashing in shamelessly on his insider knowledge and displaying breath-taking disloyalty, Mandelson hasn’t just discredited himself.  He has raised fundamental questions about Tony Blair’s integrity. For a start, he reveals that Blair really did promise to step aside for Gordon and then went back on his word.

Liar Loans: SFA from the FSA

You’ve heard of locking the stable door when the horse has bolted. Well, the Financial Services Authority, has gone one better and promised to do its job properly only after it's been closed down.  Yesterday, the boss of Britain’s financial watchdog, Lord Turner, grandly announced that the FSA was going to put an end to “liar loans”, 125% “suicide” mortgages and other scams from the great housing bubble.  Bit late your Lordship.    Last month, the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced that the FSA is to be scrapped and financial regulation returned to the Bank of England.

    Perhaps if the FSA had done its job six or seven years ago, we wouldn’t be in the state we are in now.  Ah, but that’s just being wise after the event isn’t it?”  It’s easy to criticise with 20/20 hindsight.  Wrong. As readers of this column will be aware, perhaps painfully so, I have been banging on about irresponsible mortgage lending for most of the last decade.  In 2004 I warned that house prices were an unsustainable bubble. In 2005 I fulminated against the irresponsibility of lending five or six times income.  IN 2006 I railed against Northern Rock’s “Together” mortgages where the bank loaned first time buyers 25% more than the value of their property, thus placing them in negative equity even before they got the keys.  After Northern Rock collapsed in 2007, to demonstrate what was happening,  I applied for and was offered a £200,000 mortgage after telling the broker I had a disposable income of only £18,000.  Sheer madness. 

Free personal care saves money - axe top salaries instead.

   

     So who pays?  What gets cut? Well,  hardly a day seems to go by without a story in the press claiming that the cost of free personal care for the elderly is “out of control” and “unsustainable” .   There are repeated calls to axe near-free prescription charges; to restore the graduate endowment and bridge tolls.  Let’s end free bus passes; shut swimming pools and libraries.  Museums - who needs ‘em?  Clearly, everything has to be looked at.  But there’s a real danger that we start from the wrong end, axing relatively cost-effective front line services rather than cutting administration.  That is where the real savings are to be made ina public sector which is highly labour intensive.  Great damage could be done to the quality of peoples’ lives, and the dignity of vulnerable groups, by slashing services that don’t actually cost very much while protecting the public sector bureaucracy.

Pension apartheid: just how bad are private pensions?

 It’s war.  Public sector unions have promised strikes and hinted at civil unrest if the government tries to cut their “gold plated” final salary pensions.  But the £1 trillion unfunded pension liabilities of the public sector, as reported in yesterday’s Herald, are simply unsustainable. This is going to be an epic struggle.   The unions are right on one thing though: the real scandal is the poor state of PRIVATE sector pensions. 

   The average public sector pension, according to the TUC is a modest £7,000, but look over the other side of the fence and you’ll find that the average private sector pension is much less - around £1,700 a year, according to the Pensions Policy Institute. And of course around a third of all employees aren’t saving anything at all for their old age. But to cap it all, most low income earners who do save into private pensions will lose out in the Pension Credit trap. It is a national scandal.