Uk politics

With the resignation of Eric Joyce as PPS to the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth, the question of why Britain is part of the NATO-led Afghan mission has taken on new force. No doubt the Prime Minister will explain what he sees as the reasons when he speaks at IISS later today. But just because Gordon Brown supports a policy does not make it wrong. Here are the reasons why we should remain engaged: 1. To deny Al Qaeda a safe-haven from which to train and organise attacks on the West. Though terrorism can be organized in Oldham, Hamburg and Marseilles, Al Qaeda still believes it needs safe-havens in places like Afghanistan. 2. To prevent a new generation of terrorists and insurgencies of getting the mother of all propaganda coups by having routed NATO.

Who really freed the Lockerbie bomber? The question cannot be answered by deliberately looking in the wrong place. And for the fortnight since Kenny MacAskill, Scotland’s Justice Secretary, announced Mr Megrahi’s release that is what journalists have been doing, obsessively. Reporting with the pack mentality that often misdirects them, British newspapers have tried to prove that Gordon Brown authorised the release. Instead they have demonstrated only that the Prime Minister wanted Megrahi to be transferred to Libya under the prisoner transfer scheme, and that he had no power to make it happen. Granted, Mr Brown and the British Cabinet desired a result that would have appalled Americans nearly as much as the actual outcome has. But their view did not prevail.

This morning's political firecracker comes courtesy of Martin Kettle in the Guardian, who claims that a group of Labour figures are moving to oust Brown in October: "An active network of MPs and peers now exists, involving some names you might expect, but also others – including big ones – whose participation would surprise you. This group, like probably the majority of Labour MPs, accepts that Brown is a liability to his party's election prospects. Unlike the majority, though, they claim to think something can be done about it. They believe the window of opportunity, if it comes, will be in the two or three weeks after October 12. If Brown can be pushed, then this is the time. They say they are ready to try.

In his insightful article on Brown and the forthcoming G20 summit, Francis Elliot writes a sentence which should terrify Labour supporters: "[Gordon Brown] has already decided that his only hope of a comeback in the polls lies with the economy." Sure, we all know that Team Brown has been putting a lot of hope in a green shoots strategy.  But, as we've pointed out on Coffee House before, there's little reason to believe that an economic recovery will deliver a significant boost for the Government.  If that's all that the PM has, then his situation is looking more hopeless than ever.

The Telegraph’s Andrew Porter reports that UKIP leader Nigel Farage will stand against Speaker Bercow in Buckingham at the next election. Farage explained his decisision: “This man represents all that is wrong with British politics today. He was embroiled in the expenses saga and he presides over a Parliament that virtually does nothing.” Farage has more than an outside chance of winning this very safe Tory seat. It’s fair to say that Bercow’s expense claims and his election as Speaker, facilitated almost exclusively by Mr Brown’s MPs, have not endeared him to the party faithful – even Tim Montgomerie confides he’d be tempted to vote UKIP if he were registered in Buckingham.

Reading the transcript of Gordon Brown’s interview with the FT one is struck by how little of a domestic policy message Brown has. Say what you like about Labour’s mantra in 2001 and 2005 of Labour investment versus Tory cuts but it was clear. By contrast, Brown’s attempt to explain his new dividing lines to the FT is distinctly muddled. Brown’s main line is that things could have been a lot worse without the government’s action. But that is, of course, a hypothetical. It also seems doubtful that the public will share this view or forget who was Chancellor in the decade before the crisis. Brown then moves on to what he thinks will be the battleground for the next election.

I’ve just re-read Cameron’s article in the Times and it contains one section that might come back to haunt him, should he become Prime Minister. He writes: ‘Many will be disgusted by the suggestion that ministers in Whitehall encouraged al-Megrahi’s release — and did so for commercial reasons. Diplomacy often involves hard-nosed backroom deals. It would be naive to think otherwise. But there need to be lines you are not prepared to cross; values you will not compromise, whatever deal you broker. I believe even to hint that a convicted terrorist could be used as makeweight for trade is a betrayal of everything that Britain stands for.’  I agree with Cameron.

It is clear that the al-Megrahi release has damaged Labour, not least because their collective refusal to condemn, or at least have an opinion on, the release of the Lockerbie bomber has confirmed that the government is totally out of touch with public opinion. On the other hand, David Cameron has played a blinder. In stark contrast to the Prime Minister’s Trappist monk act, Cameron has led this issue, voicing considered condemnations of Kenny MacAskill’s decision, the government’s reticence and the its supposedly ethical foreign policy. Cameron writes a piece in today’s Times branding the entire affair a ‘fiasco’ and a ‘failure of judgement by the Scottish government...the British government...and the Prime Minister’.