Government

Another one for the Brown as Nixon folder, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester's column today: "'It’s about style of government,' says one senior figure due to give evidence [to the Iraq Inquiry]. 'Blair would have a war Cabinet, but a small caucus would meet beforehand. The civil servants were frustrated. Gordon is just as bad. He gives lots of time to Peter Mandelson and Shriti Vadera and ignores the officials. There’s a darker side to the Brown machine — he’s more suspicious. It’s cliquiness driven by paranoia rather than camaraderie, but it has the same result.

In the politics column this week, I write about how the Tories plan to hand over many of the traditional policy making powers of the Cabinet to a seven man policy board. The Cameroons are going to do this partly because it is a model that has worked well for them in oppoistion and that they are comfortable with but also because the Cabinet is just too large for effective, detailed discussions about policy. The shadow Cabinet currently has 34 members in it. In government, this number will have to drop by at least ten. But still, a 24 person group is, probably, too large to foster constructive and detailed debate. However, if the Cabinet was smaller, then it would be easier to restore it to its traditional role without sacrificing effectiveness.

So far as Downing Street is concerned, this morning's Sunday Times cover is a presentational nightmare. It reports that Peter Mandelson is calling on Brown to make him Foreign Secretary – a move which would create all kinds of internal difficulties for the PM. Sounds a little bizarre to me: we all know that Mandelson would, in theory, like the role which was once occupied by his grandfather, but would he really want it under such controversial circumstances and for what would likely be only six months? Perhaps not. But, true or no', it still feeds into the idea that the government is divided and self-obsessed. It's also the kind of story which could loosen Mandelson's grip on the government. Over the past year he's enjoyed a remarkable renaissance within the Labour Party.

Things never seem to go smoothly for Gordon.  On a day when the Telegraph carries details of his Whitehall savings programme, the FT has news that one of his closest allies, Ed Balls, is calling for relatively hefty spending increases elsewhere.  Apparently, Balls has asked the Treasury to grant his department – the Department for Children, Schools and Families – real-terms spending increases of 1.4 percent until 2014.  That's an extra £2.6 billion in total – and goes beyond previous Labour commitments to "protect" schools spending. It's a brassy move by Balls and one which is sure to aggravate his colleagues.

Despite his pronounced Europhile views, a Politics Home insider poll suggests that Clarke can remain in the Shadow Cabinet and join a prospective Euro-sceptic Cameron government. As Clarke is signed up to the Cameron plan, I doubt that Europe is necessarily the problem. Concern arises from Clarke's apparent unwillingness to fulfil the duties of his brief. One think tank supremo is quoted by Pol Home saying: “No. It isn’t just Europe, it’s his non-fondness to work hard, master a brief, do the hard slog. He likes being on television, but there’s more to being a Secretary of State than that, and plenty of current non-frontbenchers who would work.” This objection relates to Clarke’s age as well, but is age necessarily a problem?

Tim Montgomerie is right; Peter Oborne is at his best in the Mail today – a mix of relevant history and sharp analysis of current affairs. Like Callaghan and Major before him, Gordon Brown faces electoral defeat. Brown’s predicament is deep – consistently loathed by the electorate and the target of unhatched coups and constant intrigue. How does a prime minister defend a hopeless position? Does he govern in the best interests of the country, his party, or himself? Oborne remarks about the magnanimity of Callaghan and Major and notes that Brown has not followed their example. ‘The truth is that Gordon Brown is now governing Britain purely for partisan or even personal advantage rather than in the national interest.

Does Professor David Nutt's dismissal concern the impossibility of relaxing drugs legislation, or the relationship between experts and ministers? David Nutt was sacked because he spoke the unspeakable and criticised the government for failing to acknowledge the self-evident scientific truth that horse-riding, especially after quaffing sherry, is more dangerous than taking ecstasy and dancing maniacally in a night club. As Bruce Anderson notes in today’s Independent, it is impossible to have a rational debate about drugs. The politics of narcotics always trumps evidence.

One of the quickest wins that the next government could achieve is to change the power and accountability arrangements of Whitehall.  At the moment, there's a convoluted system in place where its difficult to apportion blame when a government department screws up.  Sure, a minister may take the media flak if, say, a department loses a data disk.  But the people in charge of the day-to-day running of a department tend to escape any substantive judgement on their performance.  As James Kirkup points out in the Telegraph today, "no permanent secretary has been formally dismissed for more than 70 years."  That's hardly a set-up to incite much more than complacency and atrophy.

Everyone knows that Martin Luther King had a dream. It featured eloquent, high-minded ambitions about little white girls and little black girls playing together in harmony. Alex Salmond has dreams too. In an utterance that should have resulted in immediate committal, he compared Kenny MacAskill to Mahatma Gandhi, and then, with the rhetorical panache of a Scottish Judge Jeffries, told the SNP conference that he wanted to see “Westminster dangling from a Scottish rope”. As visions of the future go, capital punishment is not as appealing as Dr Luther King’s evocation of Christian brotherhood; but, in the event of a hung parliament, Salmond’s dream might be realised.

David Brooks is the most influential American newspaper columnist and his column today is a paean of praise for George Osborne. He praises Osborne for offering not just pain but a “different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.” He goes on to argue that Cameron and Osborne’s responsibility agenda is something that the Republicans should copy. This isn’t the first time that Brooks, who Tim Montgomerie identified as a guru for Cameron back in 2007, has applauded the Tories.