A Very Civil Partnership.

   It was like a crazy dream, a comic fantasy.  Nick and Dave hugging on the doorstep of Number Ten.  Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of the UK.  As the day wore on my fingers were numb from pinching myself.    There they stood among the foliage of the Downing St rose garden, joking away,  like Ant and Dec in a trailer for I’m a Liberal Democrat Get Me Out Of Here.  Except the Cleggies aren’t going to be allowed to get out of this game because they’ve agreed to a mandatory, five year, non-returnable term of office. And it’s no secret who’ll be eating the bugs in the bush-tucker trials.

   It was all wildly improbable, but Clegg and Cameron seemed to carry it off.  The nation’s press suspended disbelief just long enough to listen to their joint message about the new politics. About giving power back to the people, about going green, helping the disadvantaged and revoking all those nasty Labour offences against civil liberties like ID cards and snooping wheelie bins.    The Westminster hacks were puzzled, though, by the mechanics of coalition governance.  Who’ll control the spin-doctors? Who ‘ll control the civil service?  What happens when there’s a by-election and the two parties have to start fighting each other?  Who takes questions at Prime Minister’s Question Time?  If the phone calls at three am, who’ll answer it?

 Never has the Westminster village seemed so parochial. These issues of coalition protocol were mostly resolved ten years ago during the first Holyrood coalition. The new politics has just filtered south.  Coalition only looks strange because no one in Westminster looks beyond College Green.    The Libdems also work with Tories and others in big councils like Birmingham. One suspects that the Liberal Democrats played a blinder in the negotiations with the Tories largely because they’ve had long experience of doing coalition deals in Scotland. 

  

   And there’s no doubt that Nick and co did play a blinder in those five hectic, sweaty, adrenaline-soaked days following the general election.  It was a poor election result for the Libdems, who actually lost seats, but they still got an amazing result from the Conservatives:  five cabinet posts, the deputy prime ministership, a referendum on electoral reform, ten thousand pound tax threshold, banking reform, fixed term parliaments, an elected House of Lords,  freedom to abstain on nuclear issues and marriage tax breaks.  You wonder where the Tory manifesto went. Green investment bank, Tobin tax on financial transactions, pupil premium, more powers for Holyrood.  It was a real deal, which could  change  British politics for good.  Unfortunately, it came from the Tories. 

  This will almost certainly split the Liberal Democrats. When the Cleggies find themselves having to defend the deficit reduction programme and savage cuts to public spending to their party conference there will be blood.  Some Libdems think it’s not so much a coalition as a suicide pact, in which they have to shoot themselves first.  But knowing the risks, Nick Clegg still grabbed the Tory offer on Tuesday after he’d satisfied himself that Labour wasn’t serious about any “progressive alliance”.   Now,  Labour insist it was the Libdems, not they, who sold out the rainbow coalition; that the “personal chemistry” between Clegg and Cameron was down to the Liberal Democrat leader being a natural Tory who always wanted to do a deal with his public school chum.  Certainly, Nick Clegg had great difficulties relating to Gordon Brown, whom he regarded as a political neanderthal.  But it was Labour’s manifest lack of enthusiasm for a coalition that unsealed the deal even before the negotiations got underway.    The succession of senior Labour figures like John Reid, David Blunkett who went on TV saying that any “coalition of losers” would be undemocratic and unstable and would - shock horror - involve talking to nationalists and other political vermin.     It wasn’t the numbers that was the problem - all the parties were losers in this election.  No, it was visceral hatred of Alex Salmond all  Liberal Democrats that scuppered the great broad left realignment. Tribalism is alive and well in the Labour Party.

   Also, Labour had clearly lost the will to govern. Tired and emotional, the thought of going to all the effort of cobbling together a multinational coalition was just too much.   Never has a government seemed to happy to lose office.  Gordon Brown practically skipped out of Downing Street, wreathed in smiles, no doubt thinking about the booby traps he’s left concealed in the cabinet in-tray.  David Cameron, by contrast, almost stumbled into Number Ten, with no grand phrases or air of destiny.  Compared with Margaret Thatcher, with her quotes from St Thomas Aquinas, Cameron looked like an estate agent who’d come to look the property over and give a valuation once he’d inspected the loft. 

   As the furniture vans arrived to take away the football posters and books on post neoclassical endogenous growth theory,  Labour MPs looked forward to an easier life in opposition.   Honing their invective against the “Tories little helpers” and the “yellow Tories” .   Labour MPs believe that the Lib-Con alliance will crack in exactly fifty days, when the Tories’ emergency budget unveils the true horror of the cuts to be inflicted on the public sector - on local government, social services, non-front line health etc.. The very public sector that employs most Liberal Democrat voters. The public sector unions will be out on the streets within weeks and Labour will be joining them on the picket lines, fighting the Tory-Liberal cuts.   Cleggie! Cleggie! Cleggie! Out! Out! Out! 

    In Scotland, Labour are going back to their constituencies to prepare for government after the 2011 Scottish elections. All those ex-Labour Scottish Liberal Democrat voters  are horrified that they ended up with a Tory government and many will never vote Libdem again.  Alex Salmond’s enthusiastic advocacy of the “progressive coalition”  concealed just how  poor a result Thursday was for the nationalists who, far from winning 20 seats, emerged one with fewer than when the campaign began.    With Labour on the march in Scotland, the SNP will have to have to fight like hell to win re-election    But one thing we can say for certain, whatever the Holyrood result:  neither of them will be eager to form a coalition with the new pariahs of Scottish politics: the Liberal Democrats. 

Don't hold your nose on election day. Vote for fair votes.

     When things go wrong in British politics they don’t half go wrong.  The collision near the launch of Labour’s final poster campaign on Friday was a headline-writers gift:  The Car Crash Election.  The final mishap in the worst Labour election campaign since 1983, when the late Michael Foot - a man of great intellect but little popular appeal - led the party to its worst defeat in half a century. Who’d have thought that Gordon Brown, one of Labour’s brightest young stars in 1983, would lead a campaign that compares unfavourably with that? 

   I recall Footie, with his stick and fly away hair, stomping round the country from botched photo-opportunity to heckled speech.  Manfully trying to defend “the longest suicide note in history” as the Labour manifesto was called.  He scarcely seemed to know where he was most of the time, and nor did his aides. But he never lost his dignity.  He might’ve got in a muddle with his microphones, but Footie wouldn’t have dismissed a loyal Labour supporter as a “bigot”, even in private,  and he wouldn’t have testily blamed his staff.    Nor would Foot have abased himself, and demeaned his office, by turning up with the world’s media in tow to beg for Gillian Duffy’s forgiveness.  (One of the explanations for Brown’s “bigot” remark, by the way,  was that he had thought Mrs Duffy had said “f@@king immigrants” not “flocking immigrants” - to which you can only say: that’s a flocking ridiculous excuse.)

    The 1983 general election almost destroyed the Labour Party and the question this week is whether Gordon Brown could finish the job.  I don’t think he will, not least because our unfair electoral system is designed to prevent parties like Labour expiring through natural causes because people stop voting for them.  It props them up like cadavers in a Frankenstein beauty contest of the damned.   In 1983, Labour plunged to 28% of the vote, only 2% ahead of the SDP-Liberal Alliance.  But Labour  ended up with 209 seats in Westminster and the Libdems only 23.  It was a brutal result, which made a nonsense of democracy.    By rights, voters should have taken to the streets, as they did in Eastern European countries where the electoral systems were similarly rigged.   But they didn’t, Neil Kinnock came along, and the rest is history.  

   In 1983, Margaret Thatcher got a parliamentary majority of 144 seats on only 42% of the popular vote -  a spurious mandate which she used to devastate industrial Britain. Thursday looks like being every bit as perverse as 1983, even though David Cameron is never going to win a majority like that. The poll of polls seems to be suggesting a hung parliament with the Conservatives on around 300 or so seats;  Labour coming second with 200 plus;  and the Liberal Democrats having to make do with under a 100 seats, despite winning more votes than Labour.  Any such result will be an outrage.  As someone put it: we can’t go on like this.  I find the alphabet soup of AV, STV, AMS as tedious as the next man - but after this election  something must be done to make this country a democracy. Actually, I suspect that the death knell for the present system tolled mid week when voters realised that that Labour could come third in this election and still win the most seats in parliament.  Never! Never! Never!

     But as the hours and minutes tick away, Labour are telling anyone who’ll listen that the way to achieve democratic change is to vote, not for the party of electoral reform, the Liberal Democrats, but for Labour.  The logic is thus:  If the Tories win, and the Liberal Democrats come second, Nick Clegg will have no choice but to support David Cameron.  It may be a hung parliament but if Labour is third there could be no chance of a Lib-Lab alternative.   A vote for the Libdems, then, is a vote for David Cameron.  Ergo, to give the Nick Clegg a sniff of power, and to halt the Tories in their tracks,  you must hold your nose and vote Labour.  Hasn’t Gordon said that Labour now accepts electoral reform?

    This argument is too clever by half.   For a start, Labour’s promises of electoral reform are generally forgotten the moment they gain power - they promised a referendum, remember, in 1997.  Even if Brown comes second in terms of seats, there is still no chance of a Lib-Lab coalition.  The British people will not accept a party that has been  defeated in an election hanging on to power. Nick Clegg would still have to let David Cameron form a government and, here’s the twist, so would Labour.   Yet, the democratic reality is that Labour and the Liberal Democrats will have an overwhelming majority of the votes cast on Thursday.  In any proportional system Britain would long since have had a stable coalition of the progressive forces of the centre left. 

 And right now, an overwhelming vote for the Liberal Democrats is - in England at least - seems the best way of demonstrating the central point: that Britain cannot be called a democracy so long as the number of seats in parliament bears no relation to the number of votes cast.  

  The time for holding noses is over.  Some Scots will vote  for the SNP to register their discontent on Thursday.  More are likely to vote Liberal Democrat.    This is not 2007, and the issue in this general election is not who governs Scotland, but how to reform Westminster.  Of course,  the vast majority of Scots will continue to vote Labour, as they always have,  especially in the West of Scotland, where hatred of the Tories is the driving force.  I fully respect that.  However, in those seats where it counts, I hope people will at least consider voting tactically for whichever party seems most committed to change. 

    

   We have one chance:  to end of this rotten, corrupt and unfair electoral system, which has deformed our political culture. Which has allowed leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, with inflated majorities in parliament on 43%  or 42% of the popular vote, to push through policies like the Iraq war and the poll tax that the majority of British voters never wanted.  Voters have an opportunity to make themselves heard on Thursday:  Let’s open our mouths and scream. 

Clegg: The knives are out.

 I don’t know - you turn your back for a few weeks and what happens? they go and break the mould of British politics. Again.  It sometimes feels like I went to sleep and woke up in 1983, the last time the Liberal Democrats -  or rather the SDP-Liberal Alliance -  were in mould-breaking form.  Didn’t quite happen back then of course, even though they won 26% of the general election vote against Labour’s 28%.  Our iniquitous electoral system awarded the SDP-Liberals just 23 seats against Labour’s 203 -  showing just how the Westminster electoral system serves to keep the two big parties in power.

   Will it be different this time? Well yes, I think it just could be - if only because of the loathing of so many British voters for the Westminster way of politics. The mood really is ugly out there; party workers on the doorsteps all testify to it.   Voters are furious and desperate for a change; for a chance to kick at the whole corrupt, sclerotic and incestuous Westminster system.  If the Libdems can surf this tide of resentment, then the mould could, perhaps, stay broken. 

    Of course, a lot hangs on Nick Clegg’s performance in tonight’s edition of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (you choose).   Can Superclegg on Sky repeat his performance in last week’s ITV debate, which propelled the Libdems into a solid second place in most UK opinion polls ?  Or could he turn out to be the Tim Henman of British politics?  Well, it shouldn’t be too difficult for Clegg since his performance wasn’t actually all that strong last time, as he himself has conceded.  The Liberal Democrat leader apparently had to console himself with a lonely cigarette after he left the ITV studio because he thought he’d lost. 

    It wasn’t Clegg’s delivery, which was competent but sub- Obama, but the fact that he wasn’t Brown or Cameron that was his real strength.  Clegg seemed to many viewers to be the best available boot to use on the backsides of the big parties.  The fact that he was new (to most people), less polished and even a little geeky was a positive advantage.  People don’t want folletted smoothies or speak-your-stats machines any more. They want someone who sounds authentic, real, more ordinary, even a little confused.  These are confusing times. 

   They probably liked the general sound of Clegg’s policies as well.  Not renewing Trident, bashing bankers, scrapping the Lords - what’s not to like?  Stricter rules on parliamentary expenses, fairer electoral system, scrapping the Barnett Formula (ok, we’ll draw a veil over that) abolishing Labour’s illiberal anti-terror laws, which make it potentially illegal to wear tee-shirts criticising Tony Blair. But I don’t believe it was really Liberal Democrat policies that made the difference - most people are too sophisticated these days to pay much attention to election manifestos which they assume are wish-lists or lies.  They just want someone they think they can trust, or who might cause an upset. Someone who isn’t a product of Westminster; a politician who isn’t a politician.  

   And the great problem for Clegg tonight is that people are beginning to realise that a politician is exactly what he is.  In fact, Clegg is a classic career politician - a former lobbyist and political bag-carrier who became an MEP before he stood for Westminster.  We’ve learned a lot about Mr Clegg this week- that he’s half Russian, half Dutch; that Louis Theroux was his fag at Westminster school (allegedly); that the ex-Conservative minister Leon Brittan thought he was a natural Tory.  Clegg it emerged, has claimed £84,000 on parliamentary expenses to do up his second home,  including paying chaps to prune his fruit trees.  According to the Daily Telegraph, he has been accepting donations into his personal bank account, a practice the former parliamentary standards commissioner, Sir Alistair Graham, has described as "irregular". 

    Conservatives warn that he is a supporter of the euro who wants an amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants,  and intends to release 60,000 prisoners. The Daily Mail claimed he'd compared Britain unfavourably to Germany under the Nazis.   My own view is that this assault on Clegg’s political character largely misses the point.  British voters are more liberal than politicians give them credit for.  They don’t really hate Europe and immigrants; welfare scroungers or foreigners. British are generally decent moderate souls who want to hang bankers and politicians from the highest lampposts, but in a nice way. 

     David Cameron will certainly target Clegg’s europeanism and his unilateralism in tonight’s foreign affairs debate, as will Brown.   But the most serious charge against Clegg is that a vote for him is really a vote for Brown or Cameron; that his destiny is to let the Tories or Labour back in. Clegg insists that he can ignore “desperate” Brown and crawling Cameron - but the electoral reality is that, on present showing, the Libdem leader will have to help one or the other into office even if Clegg doesn’t want a formal coalition.  Indeed, the Libdems may have no choice but to allow Cameron the chance of forming a government, if only because the Tories will probably have the largest number of seats and it will seem perverse to keep Brown in power after his rejection at the polls. Recall how the Scottish Liberal Democrats found they just couldn’t keep their former coalition partner, Jack McConnell,  in power in Holyrood in 2007 after Labour lost to the SNP. 

   It is of course grossly unfair that the Liberal Democrats should lose out just because their votes are evenly distributed across the country. If we had a fair system, it would be the Liberal Democrats who would be looking for third party support.   If nothing else, this election should be the death knell for the First Past The Post electoral system,  which has perpetuated the old party duopoly.  I’m tempted to say that electoral reform alone is a good enough reason for voting Liberal Democrat in this election. 

      Why, even Alex Salmond, said as much in at the SNP manifesto launch when he urged voters to back the LibDems to ensure a ‘balanced parliament’.  He meant in England, of course - in Scotland the latest Ipsos Mori poll puts the SNP  ahead of the Scottish Libdems.  But a lot of voters in Scotland are likely to draw the logical conclusion and vote Libdem in marginals like Edinburgh South or Aberdeen South.   When Alex Salmond promised to deliver 20 seats in Scotland at the general election we didn’t realise he meant Liberal Democrats. 

      

Why is unemployment not an election issue?

On Wednesday I was sitting staring into space, wondering what I was going to write about this week. The press were preoccupied with mounting debt, and the creeps at Strathclyde Passenger Transport circumnavigating the globe at our expense.  Then my phone rang.  It was a BBC producer wondering if I would come and talk about why unemployment was no longer an issue. Now, that’s a very interesting question.

  Hardly anyone seems to think that unemployment, currently running at 2.5 million in Britain, is going to be a key issue for the general election.   An issue, yes, but hardly a dominant one.  Yet back in 1979, the last time a refreshed Tory opposition challenged  an incumbent Labour government after an economic crisis, unemployment was THE number one issue.  “Labour Isn’t Working” said that Saatchi and Saaatchi Tory ad, possibly the most  infamous election poster of all time.  Unemployment then was only 1.4 million.  

    True, the unemployment figures were calculated rather differently in 1979, but that doesn’t alter the point.  The return of mass unemployment has not been the burning issue it was in the past.   In 1979, 53% of voters believed unemployment to be most serious issue facing the country against only 30% today, according to Ipsos Mori.   Yet unemployment really is back in a big way.  The slight decline in the UK figures last week ( they continued to rise in Scotland of course) by no means indicates that joblessness has peaked.  There has been a huge increase in underemployment, with over 7.6 million on part time working.  Economic “inactivity” is also up - the numbers who have given up looking for a job, like students, long term sick etc. has risen to 8.8 million.   Hundreds of thousands of workers have accepted big reductions in pay in order to hang onto their jobs.  One in five young people is unemployed.  And the Chartered Institute of Personnel  and Development warns that a new shakeout of employment is almost inevitable later this year because of the sluggish economic recovery. 

   So, why is unemployment not an issue?  Make no mistake,  a lot of people are really suffering. Ask yourself: could you live on £64 a week jobseekers allowance?  Britain has some of the lowest benefit rates in Europe. In Ireland, unemployment benefit is nearly three times what it is here.  Many British workers have exhausted their savings and are hitting rock bottom, as the dramatic rise in the claimant count indicates.   The pain is partly mitigated by he various government schemes which have frozen mortgage payments and credit card debt.  But these subsidies can’t last indefinitely, and when they unwind, we could be facing a huge social problem. 

  But where’s the public outrage?   Where were the ministers squirming on Newsnight?   In 1991 when the Tory Chancellor, Norman Lamont said that unemployment was “a price worth paying” for economic recovery he was rounded on by the media.  Now no one bothers to compute the price of joblessness. It’s as if we don’t think that governments have any responsibility any more - even though Gordon Brown said, some years ago, that “full employment” was the government’s goal.  

    In the 1970s and 80s, joblessness was regarded as THE great social evil.  The prospect of just one million unemployed was enough to make Ted Heath, the Tory PM, radically change his economic policy in 1971.  The Labour PM, James Callaghan, came to grief over it in 79.   Under Margaret Thatcher’s monetarist policies in the 1980s, unemployment soared and so did social unrest, culminating in the miners strike in 1984/5. Now it’s back, and we all seem to be just accepting it as inevitable.  Even the response to the Corus ending steel-making in Redcar after 150 years has been muted, though a ballot on industrial action has been called. 

   So, what’s changed? Well, for one thing the nature of employment has.  Instead of being in large workforces in manufacturing industry, workers today are largely employed in small companies of under 50 often in poorly organised service occupations.  The great strikes and factory occupations in the 70’s and 80’s, like Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the British Leyland Bathgate, were mobilised like military campaigns.  The foot soldiers were workers who all knew each other, lived in the same streets, had similar status and a great sense of class solidarity.  Now they are dispersed across all manner of occupations, as security guards, supermarket shelf-stacker, or in call centres.  They also have mortgages, which most didn’t in the 1970s, and big debts which put a dampener on industrial militancy.  And whisper it, but the influx of several million poorly unionised immigrant workers, willing to accept poor conditions and low pay, has sapped the strength of British  labour  Instead of union militancy, we have apathy and incapacity benefit.  As a result, trades unions are not the political force they were in the 70s and 80s. The last attempted strike action was the farcical BA non-event at Christmas.  Before that, it was power station workers downing tools in favour of “British jobs for British workers”. 

   The other big difference is that the public sector unions have not yet been mobilised in this economic crisis.  The recession has hit in the main the private sector.  Employment by the state has actually risen by around 100,000 since 2008, during the deepest recession in eighty years, and wages in the public sector have continued to rise, even as non-state workers are taking pay cuts.    In the past, public sector workers - nurses, teachers, fire-fighters - had a deep sense of grievance at their poor pay and were leaders in industrial unrest.  Nowadays they are a relatively privileged class earning higher wages and with better pensions than their private sector equivalents. 

   However, this might all be about to change.  If and when the next government tries to tackle Britain’s unsustainable public deficit, sacking hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, then unemployment and industrial militancy are likely to stage a dramatic comeback.  There have already been threats of strikes from public sector unions at the mere suggestion of a pay freeze - but much more than that will be required to balance the government books.  This may explain why Labour, which tends to do rather badly in times of industrial distress, has held off cutting public spending until after the election is safe and gone.

    So politicians may be fooling themselves if they think unemployment is no longer an issue. There is a lag in social awareness.  It has taken some time for people to remember what it actually means in terms of ruined lives and social dislocation.  If we think society is broken now, just wait until next year and the year after that.  When people lose hope they become desperate - and the clock is ticking.  

  

Toryota Camron - Total Product Recall

 There are renewed fears for the future of the Toryota firm  this week as further flaws have been discovered in the company's leading models. The brand image of Toryota has been seerious damaged by the mass recall of thousands of policies over the last few weeks. Their once top selling model, the Camron - supposedly and environmentally friendly vehicle - has turned into an erratic death trap, unable to run in a straight line and seemingly having lost its ability to stop at junctions. 

    “My Camron is all over the place,” said one disgruntled buyeer. “You just don’t know where it’s going from one minute to the next”. In its latest mishap, the Camron careered into Scotland without proper guidance and ended up colliding with political reality.  Then it was found that the speedometer reading was out by a factor of ten. 

  Toryota had looked like becoming the top sellier in Britain during the last couple of years as its fresh-faced models benefited from a mass advertising campaign.  Pictures of the Camron appeared on billboards across the land, attracting much attention from consumers bored with other brands that have been looking their age.  But the shiny new exterior concealed serious flaws in the construction of the leading Toryota model. The billboard ads have had to be pulled from the hight streets because of online photoshop parodies.  

    Unpublished blueprints showed that there were unresolved issues in its financial management system.  Promises that it would be much cheaper to run a Camron, because of its new green image, turned out to be false. Its security system has also been giving trouble and many people who have bought the Camron say that it just doesn’t perform in they way that’s promised. Attempts to conceal the flaws in the Camron only made matters worse.  

Embarrassed company bosses have had to make grovelling apologies for ambitious early claims made for the vehicle.  Shares in Toryota have been on the slide since before Christmas and there are fears that punters could dump their stakes entirely before the all important public floatation in Westminster in May.

  Sales of Toryotas have been particularly weak in Scotland for a number of years. Toryota had become a by-word for flash, overpriced and English.   Earlier models simply couldn’t cope with the numerous potholes and zig zag bends in the Scottish high road.  Questioned about why he once again came to Scotland without a functioning sat nav, the boss of Toryota insisted that problems with the brand had been exaggerated. . “Look, Scots will be buying literally tens of Camrons come May 6th., you mark my words” he said.  “You can be taken for a ride by us or you can stick with  your boring old banger which isn’t going anywhere at all”   

   The government says it is considering extending for the popular scrappage scheme to cope an expected deluge of people trying to get rid of their Camrons in the next three months. 

Midwinter mutiny leaves Brown dead in water, Miliband overboard.

  The best thing to be said about the latest tragicomic episode in the decline and fall of New Labour, was that the latest coup attempt was at least quickly over.  In fact, it was over almost before it began,  on Wednesday lunchtime when the Labour former cabinet ministers, Patricia Hewitt and Geof Hoon launched their kamikaze raid on the Prime Minister’s bunker.  The move was so preposterously mistimed - in the middle of the deepest freeze in thirty years and with an election campaign only weeks away - that no one in their right minds could take it seriously.  Eighteen months ago, perhaps.  Last summer, maybe.  But on the eve of an election?  Barking. Not so much the men in grey suits as the men in white coats. 

 The PM is someimrd compared with Joseph Stalin in his rigid approach to party loyalty, but Stalin never had to face anything so inept.  It’s as if the plotters had all liquidated themselves instead of targeting their leader.  No need for show trials with enemies like these.  One MP said that Charles Clarke, the arch Blairite former health secretary who has was one of the ringleaders, was like “a suicide bomber who only kills his own friends and family”. 

  

  The midwinter mutineers had clearly hoped finally to winkle out Gordon Brown’s cabinet critics, bouncing them into the open, but even this was botched. They briefed journalists to the effect that the Scottish Secretary, Jim Murphy, was one of those willing to wield the knife. Anyone who knows the ultra-loyalist Murphy would realise that this was ridiculous, as Murphy made clear on his own website.  New media is adding an interesting new dimension to political coverage.  Unattributable briefings can be almost instantly denied now by politicians writing in their own blogs, making it much more difficult for malicious rumours to spread,

  Indeed, you might call this an analogue coup in a digital age.  Things move too fast now, with twenty four hour news and the internet, for backstage plots to work.  The cabinet ‘rebels’ couldn't afford to wait around to see if there was much support for the plot on the backbenches  before deciding which way to jump.  It was back Brown or sack him within hours -  delaying for six hours made David Miliband look like a dangerous rebel.  

   The prime minister is damaged, of course, by this latest challenge to his leadership, however farcical.  It confirms the continuing dissent in the party and the government over his leadership, while also making the Labour party look a laughing stock.  Piss ups and breweries come inevitably to mind.  If they can’t organise a coup properly, how can they be expected to run the country?  If David Miliband is the best they have got, then God help all of us if he ever becomes prime minister. 

   The boy wonder may charm women of a certain age, like Hillary Clinton, but he is manifestly unsuited to the role of leadership. Three abortive coups have been mounted in his interest, leaving a trail of ministerial casualties in their wake.  The first was sparked by Miliband himself when he set out his stall in a Guardian article before the 2008 Labour conference, announcing that the party needed a new direction.  That ended famously with Miliband wagging a banana disconsolately at the cameras after he disowned the rebellion he had inspired.  But among those who lost their careers as a result was junior minister, Siobhan McDonagh and the former Scottish secretary, David Cairns.  Then in June 2009, the high-flighing cabinet minister, James Purnell, committed political suicide by leading a ministerial walkout following Labour’s disastrous showing in the European elections, when they came third after UKIP.  Miliband sat on his hands and then backed Brown - just as he did this week.  His belated endorsement on Wednesday sounding about as enthusiastic as a sun cream salesman in mid winter.  Hewitt, Hoon and Clarke now have to answer to their constituency associations for their incomprehensible act of pre-election treachery and will justifiably find their true place in the rogues gallery of Labour hate figures.

   But there was more.  The cabinet ministers who denied joining the plot then briefed journalists to the effect that they had all wrung concessions from Gordon Brown on the back of it. Alistair Darling got assurances on the government being more honest about spending cuts, Harriet Harman on being less nasty and blokeish, and Jack Straw, that Brown would abandon the class war against Tory toffs.  This made matters even worse, confirming the depths of cabinet discontent with Brown and making it look as if the PM was being held hostage by his own cabinet. 

   Needless to say, the Tories are laughing like a drain. After all, it was the week when David Cameron admitted he had “messed up” his own manifesto pledge on tax relief to married couples.  It doesn’t get much worse than that, and yet it was Labour that crashed and burned.   This inept and divided government will surely now drift aimlessly to defeat in May when Gordon Brown finally meets his date with the voters.  Though no doubt he will be looking for any pretext for delay, arguing that the risk of an asteroid hitting the earth means an election would not be in the national interest.

   For what it’s worth, Alan Johnson, the affable home secretary is the probably winner in the leadership stakes.  His humility and loyalty will have elevated him in the eyes of the party, since he was the only member of the cabinet who wasn’t looking out for number one last week.   A shoo-in when Brown goes.   Lord Mandelson of Foy consolidates his place as Her Majesty’s Fixer-in-Waiting. Mandy was once again the centre of attention as he offered just enough support to Brown to make it look as if he were indispensable to the government while carefully distancing himself from his boss. 

   And for Labour? Well, the immediate future looks bleak. The party will be racked with recrimination and remorse after defeat at the election.  Brown is hoping to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, but Nick Clegg is making clear they don’t want a deal with him. This Labour government, and Brown personally, will be in the dock of history for the most irresponsible credit boom since the South Sea Bubble.  But at least in opposition Labour will be able to rediscover its soul.  That’s if it still has one. 

Imagine: an X Factor Election.

  Simon Cowell, the evil genius behind the Prime Minister's favourite programme “The X Factor” has made clear that he'd like to extend the franchise to politics. The talent show mogul is offering to stage high octane debates on key issues during the general election campaign. But why stop there....?

Brash music. Stars. A giant X falls from the sky to land in the Palace of Westminster as Big Ben bongs with X replacing the clock face.  Cut to stage built like a huge ballot box with audience going wild, half holding huge red pencils and half blue ones. Dancers with big rosettes and bull horns do complex routine to rap version of “Climb Every Mountain”.

Dermot O'Leary: “Good Evening and welcome to the “Election Factor” your chance to decide the outcome of the 2010 general election. Tonight the future of the nation is in your hands. After country-wide auditions literally thousands of politicians have had their chance to live the dream. But now comes the big test. The pressure is on and there's nowhere left to hide.

Please welcome the Election Factor judges: Alistair Campbell, Jeremy Clarkson, Polly Toynbee and Simon Cowell”.

(Mastermind music thumps in as judges stand to attention to deafening applause)

Dermot: “And quiet now, please for our first contestant. He's the new kid on the block, after an amazing debut in the Westminster heats, with that great standard, It's Time For A Change, here he is. The Peoples Toff: David Cameron.”

( Lachrymose Tory leader nails the first big number of the night, ending his speech with a back-flip.)

Alistair Campbell: “Oh, is it over yet? I thought it was bollocks quite frankly, usual dirge. Posh git. Out of his depth”.

Jeremy Clarkson: “Well give him his due, he isn't Gordon Brown. If you have to have a politician in politics, you could do worse. But then again, you could do better.”

Polly Toynbee: “Total mistake by whoever gave him that material about inheritance tax and throwing everyone out of work. And where is the backing? Really, we've heard all this before and the public just aren't interested”.

Simon Cowell: “You know David. I had my doubts about you from the start, but I think you have really started to come good. You're likeable, you look good and you are singing my song. You deserve to go all the way to the top”.

Dermot. “Whahey the lad! David - what did you think of all that?”

David Cameron (burst into tears) “I'm just so grateful to Simon for letting me have this chance. It means the world to me and I want to thank my mother, the Queen, the Bullingdon Club and all the voters who've given me the chance to live my dream.”

Dermod: “So, ladies and genlmn. How can you top that? Well, don't go away, because - I can hardly believe it myself - here, live on the Election Factor stage, one of the greatest figures in modern British politics. Eleven years as Chancellor, three as Prime Minister. Five general elections, eight cabinet positions, total votes since entering politics: 120,000. Let's hear a great Election Factor welcome to.... The Right Honourable.... Gordon....Brown.

Boos echo around hall drowned by massive orchestral introuction as GB delivers off-key rendition of “Give Me One More Chance (To Show I Really Care).

AC: “Look, I've always liked you, Gordon, but tonight I think you have lost the plot. I can't see the public buying this one, quite frankly.”

JC: “Like a clapped out Ford Mondeo, it's the scrappage scheme for you my Scotch friend. Hoots mon the noo!”

PT: “It just didn't work for me Gordon. I used to be your greatest fan but somehow, I can't bring myself to vote. I'm sending you home.”

SC: “Hold on a minute guys. This is a talent contest and what you can't deny is that he's got it in him. Look Gordon, here's what I'm prepared to do. If you work for me, I'll work for you. One more chance. Ok mate?  Dermot. “Well Gordon. ~What about that Some pretty tough old messages there me old mate. What've you got left to say to the nation as they prepare to cast their final vote”.

Gordon Brown: “Well, Dermot, uh, I'm just so grateful to Simon, er or should I say Lord Cowell, uh, for giving me this chance to show the people at home what I can do. I've given it everything. It's my best shot. What you see is what you get. But at the end of the day, uh, it's the people who make the choice”.
 
Dermot. “That's dead right, mate”
 
(audence silenced, lights dim, roll of distant thunder)

Dermot, solemnly: “So what's it to be voters of Britain: Gordon Brown or David Cameron. It's time for the big decision. They say that every political career ends in tears, so whose career is going to end tonight. Who is going home and who is going to Downing Street...

“..And the winner of the Election Factor 2010 is...”

(Endless pause for effect during which several several audience members die of old age)

“....Simon Cowell”.

Could Labour win?

A nagging worry is keeping Labour MPs and ministers awake at night. It's not the expenses row – they've gone through the pain barrier on that already. It's not the prospect of a hung parliament and having to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats – they could live with that - or even the prospect of losing power altogether. No, the new spectre stalking Westminster is the possibility that Gordon Brown might actually win the general election in May.

The latest MORI/Ipsos poll in the Observer puts the Tories at only six points ahead of Labour for Westminster - not enough for David Cameron to form a government, for which he needs a minimum of 117 new MPs. One poll doesn't make a summer victory, but there's no doubt that things have been looking up for Labour recently. Only a year ago the Tories were ahead by 20%. Last month's Sunday Times/Yougov poll cut that lead to 11%. At a comparable moment before the 1997 general election, Tony Blair was consistently ahead by between 12% and 25%.


And it's not just opinion polls. Labour have been winning by-elections again, in a way John Major never did on the eve of the 1997 election. In the Glenrothes by-election, Labour astonished themselves by turning an expected loss to the SNP into a seven thousand vote victory. In Glasgow North East – one of their rottenest rotten broroughs – Labour won by a remarkable eight thousand majority with 60% of the vote. For the moment at least, David Cameron's momentum has stalled. The bookies are anxiously reviewing the odds.


Now, this Labour turnaround, if such it is, could be most inconvenient. An air of benign defeatism has hung over the government benches in Westminster for most of the last year. Many Labour MPs are standing down to spend more time with their expenses-financed property portfolios. A number of Labour ministers past and present have lined up nice little jobs in the City. Now they face having to return to the Westminster grind, and with no second homes allowance. Another four years having to be nice about Gordon in public - the agony!.


Worse, Labour's apparent polling revival raises the leadership question yet again. Confident they were going to lose, Labour MPs had more or less stopped bothering about Brown's leadership. In fact, it was quite useful having a dud PM on which they could lay the blame for expected defeat. But now, if they're in with a chance, however remote, then it becomes the duty of Labour MPs, surely, to consider changing horses and installing Alan Johnson in post in the New Year. For, while the polls suggest the Labour government is recovering, Gordon Brown is as unpopular as ever.


So, how has all this happened? Well, voters are feeling more optimistic about the economy – that is confirmed in the latest poll. A year ago, everyone was talking about financial apocalypse and the possibility of another Great Depression. Now it appears that apocalypse has been averted and while many people are losing their jobs, those who still have them are doing rather well. Home owners with an average mortgage have had a windfall of several hundred pounds a month. The public sector, which employs a quarter of the work force in Scotland, has escaped spending cuts and many employees are getting pay increases instead of P45s..


People have money to spend and everyone's getting bored with austerity chic. It may all be funny money, but the British economy has been living a credit-fuelled fantasy for years, so why not a few months longer? Brown is on course to borrow £200 billion this year, or around 13% of GDP. Coupled with quantitative easing from the Bank of England, and give-aways like the car scrappage scheme and the cuts in stamp duty, this amounts to an irresponsible and even reckless handling of the national accounts. But hey! Who ever bothered about prudence – this is politics.


The Tories are may have the economics right – this continuation of the debt cycle cannot be be sustained – but they may have got the politics wrong. They fell into the spending trap laid by Gordon at his sneakiest. By throwing money around, he got George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, to start talking about swingeing cuts in government spending; freezing public sector pay and ending final salary pensions. At their conference, the Tories promised to take an axe to the state bureaucracies, getting rid of all those phoney equal opportunities team leaders and multicultural outreach co-ordinators. Yesterday, David Cameron said there would need to be an emergency budget to “cut the deficit”. His realism is commendable, but all this talk of austerity has started to frighten people. Women voters in particular are anxious about the Tory assault on the state since many of them are either working in it or relying on it help with child care and education. They liked Labour's promise of free social care in the Queen's Speech last week.


The government may be acting with transparent cynicism in buying the general election – but economic literacy has never been our strong point as a nation. The public's capacity for self-delusion is pretty unfathomable, even when they are being bribed with their own money. Gordon Brown may be taking us down Zimbabwe road, but as long as people can buy new cars and see house prices going up who needs a map?


Will this irrational exuberance last till polling day? My own view is that Labour is too far gone to recover in time for next May because the entire South of England has already made up its mind and wants a change. Gordon Brown is still immensely unpopular, even if his economic policies are not, and Labour certainly show no sign of getting rid of him. I suspect people will begin to realise before polling day that they're being sold a fantasy. If unemployment rises to near three million by next spring, Brown's goose will surely be cooked.


But what this poll blip tells us is that Labour MPs can no longer rely on losing the next general election. They can't just coast comfortably to defeat. They now have to decide whether or not to get up off their backs and make a fight of it. At the very least, go back to their constituencies and prepare for a hung parliament.

SNP 'turkeys voting for an early bath' in TV debate storm.

   It's the great unmentionable that everyone’s talking about.  The Scottish National Party’s desperate bid to get a platform on the English premier league. The Scottish squad has made repeated attempts to get equal treatment with the English teams during the BBC coverage of next year’s finals. They’re hoping that their midfield miracle worker, Alex Salmond, will show that he really can play hard ball with the big boys.  

 But the reaction from the English premier league has been negative. “They’re just turkeys voting for an early bath, quite frankly", said one top English TV supremo: “We don’t want any jumped up Jocks coming on our TV and alternately boring the pants off the viewers and then frightening the life out of them with their sectarian chants and parochial obsessions. ”  There is concern that English viewers might not understand what Salmond says and could switch off in droves.  Said one English fan: “It’s a diabolical liberty.  We thought we’d got shot of the Scots, and here they are demanding to be back on our television screens”. 

  The other Scottish teams are similarly contemptuous of the move.  “The SNP have just shot themselves in both left feet” said the Labour United supremo Iain Gray.  “Salmond’s obsession with playing in England is undermining the rest of the Scottish division and will put off potential sponsors. They should be supporting the Scottish game, not trying to get their faces on English TV sets.  They’re falling between two stools with their tails between their legs. ”.

    Blues boss Annabel  Goldie predicted that Scottish fans would desert them.   “It’s time they got the ball in the net in Scotland instead of crying foul every ten minutes. Alex Salmond will be sick as a parrot when he sees how this plays with the home support. The SNP would be playing in a different league all right: it’s relegation time for the nationalist club. ”

  But the old firm is adamant that its future lies in getting a piece of the UK action.   The club is contemplating taking legal action against the BBC if it tries to lock the SNP out of future live action coverage. “At the end of the day, we’re itching to get our kit on and show what we’re made of against the top English firms”, said an SNP insider. “We need to get access to the UK media where the real money is.  That’s the carrot at the end of the tunnel .    Top commentator Lonnie Donnegan said: “It may seem a no brainer for the nationalists.   But if they can’t stand the heat they really should stay out of the ring” ”.  

Alex Salmond will "hang Westminster from a Scottish rope"

SORRY, FOR SOME REASON THE SEVEN COMMENTS ON THIS PAGE GOT LOST IN EDITING. DIDN'T DELETE THEM.


  When it comes to attention-seeking, no one does it better than Alex Salmond.  The SNP leader’s pre-conference interview with the Tory-leaning Daily Telegraph at the weekend was a classic of its kind .  “There’s a vast overwhelming majority of people in Scotland”, said the First Minister,  “who rather like the idea of a Westminster parliament hung by a Scottish rope.”  Leave aside whether this “vast majority” of Scots has given a second’s thought to what might happen if the Conservatives fail to win an outright majority at the next general election, I’m really not sure that Scots actually want to dangle Westminster on a rope.

  But the intention is to provoke and provoke it does. Talk like that gets many English Tory MPs puce with rage - believe me, I’ve seen it and had to dodge the foam-flecked rebuttals. Given half a chance they’d be swinging the rope over the nearest Westminster lamppost and hanging Alex Salmond from it.  Conservative backbenchers talk about Salmond as if he were a wily, streetwise leader of a post colonial national liberation movement - a devilish cunning demagogue who is not to be trusted as far as he can be thrown, and given Alex’s fondness for pies, that’s not far. 

   This presumably is what Salmond wants.   It’s not the first time the SNP leader has tweaked English noses.  Earlier this year, he promised that he would make Westminster “dance to a Scottish jig” after the general election by holding the balance of power in the House of Commons.  In fact, it would be the Liberal Democrats who would almost certainly be doing the jigging, since they’ll be the likely king makers.  But Alex isn’t bothered about the arithmetic - just  the reaction.  Similarly, the threat of legal action if the BBC televises a UK party leader’s debate without Alex’s participation is another way of reminding an anglo-centric media that there is another party in Scotland.  

  Now, you might ask whether it is fitting for a national leader, the First Minister of Scotland, to be thumbing his nose quite so rudely at the mother of parliaments.  Isn’t the SNP line supposed to be that,  as their answer to the West Lothian Questions, they withdraw from Commons votes on legislation that affects only England?  If so, shouldn’t they be standing aside from any coalition king-making that determines the government of England?  And, anyway, is it wise to appear so cocksure confident of winning 25 seats, when most commentators think the SNP will be lucky to win half that?  Is Alex heading for a fall? 

   Well, you accuse Salmond of over-ambition at your peril - look what happened in 2007.  Moreover, his cheek  has a  purpose. The SNP leader’s calculation is that if and when there is a Conservative government in Westminster, the Scottish political game changes over night.  Scottish politics will become a contest between Labour and the SNP over who can best defend Scotland against Tory cuts.  Labour will have a couple of hundred MPs;, the SNP will have say 20 at the  most, but numbers aren't everything.  The SNP won power in the Scottish parliament, not because the Scottish voters want independence - though some do - but because they saw the SNP as best bet for fighting Scotland’s corner against London.  Scotland’s traditional party, Labour, seemed to have lost its voice. With a Cameron government, Scottish Labour will regain it very rapidly, and will be leading the public sector unions in their campaign against job losses.  You can already see the posters : that picture of Cameron and the Bullingdon Berties, with the caption “All in it together? Vote Labour”.  

   With a Tory government pushing through radical spending cuts, it is imperative that the SNP first of all presents these as Tory cuts imposed on Scotland from London - otherwise, as the Scottish government, they’ll get the blame for all those care homes closing and teachers not getting jobs.  Secondly, that they show they're best able to promoting Scotland’s interests, and won’t just be innocent bystanders as George Osborne wields the axe. 

  Labour will say that this is their historic mission, and that you can’t trust the nationalists. Yesterday, the Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy,  launched Labour’s “Vote SNP, Get Tory” campaign, claiming that the SNP can do nothing other than make life easier for the Tories in office. Just look at what they’ve been doing in Scotland, Labour will say.  The SNP have been the “Tories little helpers” pushing through cuts because, like the Tories, they like it.   The Scottish Tories, says Murphy, are “Thatcher’s grandchildren” and the nats are their tartan Tory playmates.  

   So, after the election we will have not one but two anti-Tory parties vying to take on London. Not surprisingly, this is making some UK Tories begin to wonder if a constitutional confrontation might not be the wild card in the first term of a Cameron government.  Alex Salmond is itching for a fight, and there are a lot of English Conservatives who would dearly like to give him one.  Cameron has already conceded that he might have a “shortage of mandate” in Scotland, and that it might be difficult to push through an austerity budget.   For this reason, Tories grouped around the website ConservativeHome want Cameron to call an early referendum to marginalise the SNP, and demonstrate that most Scots want to stay in the union.  (I note that Tories like Annabel Goldie now say they oppose “Alex Salmond’s referendum” and haven’t actually ruled out a Cameron one}. The Liberal Democrats are coming round to a referendum, and the intriguing question is whether Labour might also decide that the way to shoot the nationalist fox is to hold the referendum Alex so desperately wants.  After all, Wendy wanted one. 

   Now, Cameron and Brown insist they’ll “do nothing that damages the Union” but I can’t help thinking that there is a lot in it for all the unionist parties now to call Salmond’s bluff, turn the tables and show that Scotland isn’t dancing to the nationalist jig, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor.  Show him that in politics as in life, the only thing that’s worse than not getting what you want, is getting it. That’s if the unionist parties have the bottle.