David Blackburn

Friday

David Blackburn

Bercow defends the Legg letters

From our UK edition

The BBC reports that John Bercow will defend Sir Thomas Legg’s commission in an interview to be broadcast tomorrow. The Speaker makes two points. First, it is vital that the public are satisfied that MPs have “got the message” on expenses. And second he defended Sir Thomas’ retrospective charges on the grounds that there must be “consequences for past claims if they are shown to be wrong or extravagant.” Of course, the Speaker could hardly say anything else, lest he provoke a public march on Westminster, but the difference between the Speaker’s stance and that of Harriet Harman indicates that Bercow will not lie down and allow overbearing government or disgruntled MPs to walk all over him.

David Blackburn

The government’s greatest failing is ignoring advice

From our UK edition

On matters of mechanics, I take my mechanic’s advice; there would be little point in paying him if I turned around and thought: ‘Who needs brake pads, what does he know’. The government labours under the misapprehension that it is omniscient: the final extension of ‘nanny knows best’. But 12 years of Labour government has increased the gulf between rich and poor and educational standards have regressed. Advice that suggests an alternative path from that which was pre-ordained is dismissed, as if it were an unwanted cappuccino. Today sees the publication of a report into primary school education.

Thursday

David Blackburn

Speaker Bercow asserts himself

From our UK edition

Despite the circumstances of his election, Speaker Bercow is showing scant regard for the party who secured his election. First, he recommended that ministers who sat in the House of Lords, particularly the Lord Most High, should be cross-examined by MPs, and today he gave Battlin’ Bob a severe dressing down in the Commons. The very damning Gray report was debated today, and Ainsworth can hardly have been anticipating this event with generous thoughts and easy gaiety. To avoid total disaster, the cunning Defence Secretary played the ‘George Carmen card’ – that is, release the evidence an hour before the debate so that none of the participants have the time to read it. But this Speaker stands firm against the executive's skullduggery.

David Blackburn

The Equalities Commission plays straight into Griffin’s hands

From our UK edition

The BBC reports that Nick Griffin is to put an amended constitution before his party that will abolish the ‘White only’ membership clause. This is the result of legal action brought by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who proved that the clause was at odds with equality law. John Wadham, of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, told the BBC: "We are pleased the party has conceded this case and agreed to all of the Commission requirements. Political parties, like any other organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people." On the face of it, this should be welcome news, but the opposite is true.

David Blackburn

Ironically, Cameron can only deconstruct the state by manipulating central patronage

From our UK edition

If it remains a mystery that, 12 years after describing the House of Lords as an “affront to democracy”, Labour have not attempted wholesale reform, then look no further than the fact that Labour is the largest party in the upper chamber. As Ben Brogan notes, this causes Cameron a problem: ‘For the first time, a Conservative leader faces coming to power with an Upper House that will not reflect the outcome of the election. All those People's Peers created by Mr Blair have made Labour the biggest party on the red benches, with 213 to the Tories' 192. Add in 71 Lib Dems, and the unpredictability of 183 crossbenchers, and you see why Mr Cameron must as a matter of urgency redress the balance, or endure seeing his programme stymied by a Labour rearguard action.

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Labour’s future 

From our UK edition

Sky’s Jon Craig has the scoop that a rump of Blairite MPs and former ministers have formed a group called Labour Future. Headed by Charles Clarke and featuring Malcolm Wicks, Nick Raynsford, Denis Macshane, Parmjit Dhanda, Hugh Bayley, Meg Munn and crony-in-chief Charlie Falconer, this club's terms of membership are intense anti-Brown sentiment, and I wonder what the Foreign Secretary makes of this daring little coven? Craig’s informant has loftier ambitions: “It’s about setting out our agenda for the future and showing that Labour is not intellectually dead”. The underreported story of the summer was the suppression of Blairite thinking from Labour’s public discourse.

David Blackburn

500 more troops to Afghanistan

From our UK edition

Gordon Brown’s Afghanistan and Pakistan statement was virtually identical to the joint statement he gave with Battlin’ Bob in August. Once again, the government are pinning their hopes on a tactic called “Afghanisation” – by which they mean conducting operations alongside Afghan forces and police, and the steady extension of Kabul’s authority into the localities. I’ve debated this before, but I doubt that an Afghan police force that is drug tested because its officers consume opium prodigiously can be relied upon to even hand out parking tickets; and, more importantly, Nato’s strategy rests on the contestable assumption that ordinary Afghans believe that Afghanistan exists as a political entity and that they want a stake in it.

David Blackburn

PMQs Live Blog | 14 October 2009

From our UK edition

So Parliament is back, and so, too, is PMQs.  Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 12:02: And we're off. Brown pays his respects to those who have lost their lives in Afghanistan and lists their names. Very sombre and he has pitched it right. There are a lot of names; it takes five minutes to read them. It's extremely moving. 12:06: Ann Winterton on the Lisbon Treaty. Brown replies by praising the troops in Afghanistan - over doing it as ever. Swipes the sovereignty aside. 12:07: Tony Wright: "Is it more dangerous when politicians become generals, or generals become politicians". 12:08: Now Cameron's on his feet. A question about the 'military covenant' - General Dannatt's chief bugbear.

David Blackburn

Only the catharsis of a general election can end the expenses saga 

From our UK edition

I've just had a novel and very disturbing experience: I agreed with Harriet Harman. This was no Pauline conversion, but the Leader of the House's suggestion that it is the Commons, not party leaders, that must rescue parliament's reputation and restore public trust is self-evident: only parliament can renew itself.  Of course party leaders have an input and direct the debate, and have much to gain in being seen to expunge the rot. But the disquiet of backbenchers, even virtuous reformers such as Martin Salter, Ann Widdecombe and Norman Baker, illustrates that only MPs can change the rules that govern them: as they will resist what they see as unfair.

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Legg Commission: full Shadow Cabinet details

From our UK edition

The damage to the Shadow Cabinet caused by Sir Thomas Legg has been published. All in all it’s not too bad for the Tories. Ken Clarke tops the list with £4,733 on gardening and cleaning expenses. In terms of comparing figures between the parties, an arresting and emotive issue to the public, the Tories are once again ahead, a point that reinforced by the fact that far from all of Labour's and the Lib Dem's frontliners have declared their exposure. However, there might be problems for the Tories in the future. David Cameron and George Osborne both need to produce more information about their mortgage claims. Overall though, the Shadow Cabinet has escaped embarrassment and the public’s ire. Whether Cameron will convince his backbenchers to follow suit remains to be seen.

David Blackburn

Under these criteria, the legal case against the repayment of expenses is unanswerable

From our UK edition

Sir Thomas Legg’s statement is yet to be published, but I’ve trawled through the internet and made some calls to discover its contents. It is plain that Sir Thomas has imposed rules retrospectively. His remit was to enforce the ‘rules and standards in force at the time’. The Green Book, however badly written, should have been his sole source of reference; instead he cites the ‘fundamental principles of propriety’, defined by him, as criteria for passing judgement. His reason for doing so is obvious: these claims were outrageous. But that is a moral judgement, not a legal argument to enforce repayment. He states that the Commons Fees Office allowed ‘disproportionate claims that must be judged to have been in breach of the rules’.

David Blackburn

Widdecombe defies Cameron over the Legg letters

From our UK edition

The Tory leadership’s line on Sir Thomas Legg’s expense repayment demands is clear. Mr Cameron told GMTV: “Repay or you cannot stand as Conservative MP”.   The public’s justified outrage at expenses is such that party leaders must take a stand and discipline MPs, deemed to have transgressed rules or to have exploited the second home allowance. But, as I wrote yesterday, the Legg Commission exceeded its remit, acting as judge rather than auditor. As such, MPs are right to resist Sir Thomas’ demands: Parliament urgently needs reform, but there is a clear problem that reform will be inaugurated by a commission that ignored its terms of reference. This is an unpopular viewpoint, deeply unpopular.

Monday

David Blackburn

The Commons closes ranks

From our UK edition

They are all in it together. This morning’s papers lead with the story that Members’ Estimate Committee will challenge Sir Thomas Legg’s demands that MPs repay excessive expense claims, on the grounds that Sir Thomas’ has applied retrospective rules on maintenance grants. Many MPs will take legal action to avoid repayment. The pro-transparency MP John Mann told the Guardian: “The Legg team have clearly got problems, because [MPs] don't have the receipts for a lot of this stuff. Clearly, if someone has managed to get [a claim] signed off by the fees office then they have a case when asked to repay. "There could be as many as 200 MPs who refuse to pay anything.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Davis for Home Secretary?

From our UK edition

The Express’ William Hickey column reports that David Davis, not Chris Grayling, will serve as Home Secretary should the Tories win the election. Here’s what Hickey heard: ‘I’m now told there have been mounting whispers among MPs that Grayling could lose out to David Davis for the Home Secretary’s job should the Tories win the general election. Only this week Davis, who stood down from the shadow post last year in order to champion civil liberties at a by-election, signalled he was ready to return to frontbench politics if offered a “proper job”.

Saturday

David Blackburn

The Italian Right prepares for life without Berlusconi

From our UK edition

Silvio Berlusconi has said that he’s "the most persecuted man in the history of the world and the history of men", despite having "spent millions on judges", before checking himself and saying “lawyers”. Now I can think of several other candidates for this unfortunate accolade, but there’s no doubt that the loss of his immunity has left Berlusconi on the rack and facing imminent legal proceedings. Even if Berlusconi starts spending millions on judges it’s unlikely to save his political career. If Patrizia D'Addario’s more sordid disclosures are credible then Berlusconi is used to a little persecution, but the Right in Italy is not used to life without Berlusconi.

David Blackburn

A shaming episode

From our UK edition

The Culture Secretary would be advised to keep his fingers to himself. Following Wednesday’s Twitter gaffe, he let fly on Twitter once again. His target was David Cameron’s demolition of the state. All Bradshaw hit was Cameron’s dead son Ivan. He tweeted: ‘the camerons got good nhs care thanks to Labour’s investment and reform. Is this the ‘big government’ the derides.’ (sic) Bradshaw then issued a clarification, not an apology, on Twitter: ‘it wasn’t meant to be offensive. Point is they will the ends but not the means. Need positive government to deliver these things.

Friday

David Blackburn

The Tories’ post-conference bounce

From our UK edition

Breaking news on Politics Home: the Tories have a 17 point lead in the polls following their party conference and Cameron's speech. The Conservatives stand at 44%, Labour at 27% and the Liberal Democrats at 17%. That would suggest a job well done by Cameron and Tories in Manchester, and that Cameron's speech resonated with the public, because this is a sharp bounce from polls at the beginning of the week, which had the Tories placed between 37% and 40%. Obviously, these bounces don't last: consider that Labour is dropping back after its 5-point conference climb last week. But this bodes well for the Tories' momentum as the election draws near.

David Blackburn

One last chance on Lisbon?

From our UK edition

The Independent reports that the Czech Republic’s Euroscpetic President, Vaclav Klaus, is seeking to opt-out of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. His argument is that Charter, which would come into force as soon as the Lisbon treaty was ratified, will lessen national sovereignty over social policy. During negotiations at the time of the treaty’s inception, the UK and Poland obtained a “protocol” measure to ensure that the Charter didn’t create new rights – effectively the last gasp opt-out the Czech seek now. Klaus describes his request as a “footnote”; it’s anything but. EU diplomats make it clear that negotiations would have to open.

David Blackburn

That Wellington became Prime Minister is irrelevant to the Dannatt case

From our UK edition

General Dannatt denies that he’s been in cahoots with the Tories. He gave a lecture last night and said: “[David Cameron] put it to me that he was concerned that his defence team - at a time when defence was really important, and Afghanistan was really critical - lacked expert understanding. "And would I be prepared to advise his team, and, if the Conservatives win the election, would I be prepared to take a peerage and maybe join his ministerial team… it was a recent decision and indicates that there was no long-term plot." Only a bolus of ministers, who believed they could smear a General who was renowned for his frugality over expenses, could be preposterous enough to suggest that Dannatt was a Tory mole all along.

David Blackburn

Should Cameron have told us how he will do it?

From our UK edition

The left’s criticism of Cameron’s speech is that it contained no new policies and that begs the question: how will Cameron set the people free? Steve Richards has an essential article on the subject in today’s Independent. Here are the key paragraphs: ‘Against quite a few paragraphs in Cameron's speech I wrote a single word: "How?" I used to do the same with Blair's early speeches only to discover in 1997 that he had no answers to the question in several key policy areas. Most fundamentally it is still not at all clear how Cameron plans to reduce what he calls Labour's debt crisis.