June 2009 Archives

ED BALLS is a funny fish isn't he? If you only read the newspapers, you'd think he was only in Government because he was a mate of Gordon Brown's.

He's been in the job of "children's secretary" (education secretary in old money) since Brown came to power, arguably one of the most important cabinet jobs.

But you're much more likely to see his name in the same sentence as "Brownite" or "plotter" or "loyalist" than you are close to the word "schools", "exams" or "league tables."

So we have a Tory MP who the Tories don't like as speaker. Great stuff, but yesterday's events suggested to me that our MPs still don't quite get how angry people are.

In a packed chamber (MPs love nothing more than talking about themselves, it appears) the 10 would-be speakers all stood up and delivered their speeches.

The beauty of 24-hour news is that they're always struggling to fill those hours, so seven-hour events like this are a god-send, and it meant that anyone who wanted to could watch the speeches (note to Tom Watson - this could be done anywhere, not just from the viewing gallery).

And, as one of those politics geeks watching from the outside, I found the laughing and joking, the sniggered at sentences which had unintentioned double meanings, the cheering and so on, proof that our MPs just don't get it.

Tom Watson, one of the recently departed band of cabinet members, this weekend argued the lobby system of reporting in Parliament needs to be opened up because too little is being reported.

Watson, famously linked with the "curry house coup" which sought to get rid of Tony Blair from Number 10, argues that only having a select band of reporters able to sit in Parliament, and have access to the daily Number 10 briefings - not to mention the many off-the-record chats which take place - does not lead to open government.

This sort of thought shouldn't be a surprise from Watson, who has championed the benefits of a digital age for a long time in Parliament, has a very active blog and was a regular user of Twitter back when most people sniggered at the thought of "tweeting".

Remember a few weeks ago when Hazel Blears, rattling around in her empty tin, was amplified momentarily by The Observer with her "Youtube if you want to" column?

Here are a few other comments from the same article:

"It's no substitute for knocking on doors or setting up a stall in the town centre."

"We need to have a relationship with the voters based on shared instincts and emotions."

"We put ourselves on the wrong side of the British sense of fair play, and no political party can stay there for long without dire consequences."

"We need to plug ourselves back into people's emotions and instincts and sound a little less ministerial and a little more human."

All of which can be summed in the belief that Labour MPs need to get out and meet the pubic, and respond to what the public wants.

An interesting email dropped into my inbox this week. It was a press release from the Chartered Institute of Journalists and was about the BNP, or rather how it felt the media should cover them.

The BNP's recent success (or rather, the absurdity of the the electoral system for European elections) has apparently made a lot of people think. Back before the election, I wrote a post which suggested that the idea that "journalists shouldn't give the BNP the oxygen of publicity" wasn't the best way to deal with a party who doesn't think twice before peddling mistruths in its pursuit of power.

Since the election, the National Union of Journalists, jumped out the trap with a call for its members to discuss how the media should report the BNP, or as it put it "The BNP's election victories have brought a new urgency to questions about how journalists should report fascists and racists."

The CIOJ doesn't feel the need for discussion. It's line is simple: Treat them like any other party, because, as it says: "Accurate reporting will undermine the strong support of such parties."

So Nick Griffin finally finds himself democratically elected to a position within democracy. The BNP leader has traipsed across the UK over recent years trying to gain a position of power and he now appears to think he's got it.

And while two MEPs from a party with its roots in the very far-right and which has a racist membership policy will never be good news, is the fact Griffin is joining the gravytrain to Europe really as bad as it looks?

I'd argue no. Nick Griffin has been elected into the North West on the back of some outpouring of outrage over immigration - he's got in thanks to a confusing version of proportional representation.

Bloody hell. With the bullets reigning down left, right and centre, it appears Gordon Brown has got something right.

Despite the ministers going left, right and centre, he still didn't see a full cabinet role for Caroline Flint, who shares many of the annoying traits which Hazel Blears has - an awful fixed smile, a voice which cuts glass and only gets higher when she doesn't get her own way and an inability to understand that other people may disagree with her.

And given her response to that decision, it appears he made the right one.

Last night, Caroline Flint said: "I am staying in the government.

"I have spent my entire ministerial career for six years now serving Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and I am very proud to be in a Labour government and very proud to be part of Gordon Brown's government."

So the resignations continue. Despite his Blaritie loyalties, the departure of Photoshop king James Purnell is a bit of a surprise.

Maybe not the fact that he is trying to topple Gordon Brown, but the fact he is being so honest about his motive for resigning.

In his letter to the PM, he wrote: "We both love the Labour Party. I have worked for it for 20 years and you for far longer. We know we owe it everything and it owes us nothing. I owe it to our party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may be. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more not less likely.

"We need to show that we are prepared to fight to be a credible government and have the courage to offer an alternative future. I am therefore calling on you to stand aside to give our party a fighting chance of winning."

David Cameron summed up things very well today: "The local government minister has resigned on the day before the local government elections."

Now why would Hazel Blears do that? Why would someone who apparently is devoted to the Labour Party go and resign the day before the local elections? Obviously, it's a safe bet she was due to get the push in Friday's reshuffle (which appears to be taking place as we speak now).

But does she really think that resigning in such a public way, and issuing a statement which could be read in one of a number of ways, is going to help the Labour crusade? Following on from her "youtube if you want to" comments last month, which she later claimed had been taken out of context (!), this latest episode suggests she is either stupid, or thinks we all are.

AMID the continuing expenses hype, a small fact appears to have become widely forgotten: there's an election on this week.

And while the weekend polls in the Sunday newspapers drew headlines about the collapse of Labour's support as a result of the expenses scandal, I think it's worth highlighting another point.

The BNP. There's been a lot of suggestion that the BNP would be the ones to profit from the general disgust which is widely believed to exist towards the three main political parties.

But, looking at the BNP's position, it's unchanged - still around the four and five per cent mark. In other words, the general electorate may be annoyed, but they aren't about to turn to the BNP to voice their opposition.