Martin Bright

Friday

Martin Bright

The Oxbridge Elitism Debate: Lynne Featherstone Intervenes

I always worry about attacks on the so-called elitism of our top universities. It strikes me that academic excellence must always be the "sine qua non" of access to the best institutions in the country. It must be in the interests of those institutions to open their doors to the widest possible pool of talent. And of course Oxford, Cambridge and other institutions must look for potential in students from state school backgrounds as well as taking the ready-made products of the public school system.  But this is not as simple as it sounds.

Martin Bright

What Do We Know?

I had the pleasure of guesting on Jon Pienaar's political podcast yesterday. Inevitably we ended up talking about the death of Ivan Cameron and found ourselves lost for words. But Jon made a very interesting point. He noted that the story showed how little we really know about the lives of our prominent politicians, however much we might think they are public property. We talked about whether this tragedy will change the way we do politics in this country and decided that it probably won't. Jon raised the example of the death of Labour leader John Smith, when everyone thought everything would change and nothing did. But I think something has changed in the public perception of David Cameron.

Thursday

Martin Bright

The RBS Bailout

A friend has just pointed out this extraordinary quote from The Times article on Fred Goodwin (I have stripped him of his knighthood as the government should). “The handout means that RBS will have received more than £45 billion in public funds, equivalent to a penny on income taxes for more than a decade” I had to read this several times and then kick myself, rub my eyes and then kick myself again. Can we please ensure that Fred Goodwin walks away with no pension as a starting point?

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Let’s Look at Who really undermined Cabinet Government

So Jack Straw has been the subject of an email scam. I hear some fraudster was putting it about that he was a politician of principle. His veto on the release the Cabinet minutes in the run-up to the Iraq war is a disgrace. The man who introduced the Freedom of Information Act has become the minister for secrecy. Listening to Charlie Falconer trying to justify the veto on the Today programme was just embarrassing. The idea that such a release would undermine Cabinet government is an insult to our intelligence. If the series of inquiries into the Iraq War have revealed anything it is that that the Blair administration had scant regard for the niceties of Cabinet consultation.

Tuesday

Martin Bright

Peter Mandelson’s Funny Bone

I'm still recovering from Lord Mandelson's deeply peculiar behaviour during his interview with Nick Robinson on the Ten O'Clock News. He was talking perfectly calmly (too calmly) about the row over his plans to sell of 30 per cent of the Post Office. Nick Robinson made the perfectly valid and uncontroverisal point that it may seem odd to people that the government is planning to part-privatise a public service while nationalising the banks. For Mandelson this was a real side-splitter. I thought he was going to fall off his chair. Sorry to get all sanctimonious about this. But did anyone else find this funny. Mandelson was arguing that the "taxpayer" could not be expected to foot the bill for the Post Office's £8 million liabilities.

Monday

Martin Bright

Why is Lord Ashcroft so important to David Cameron?

The Conservative Party's reliance on Michael Ashcroft has always mystified me. How a once great political party has allowed itself to become quite so dependent on one man, I will never know? The conventional wisdom is that his money rescued the Tories from the abyss. It is certainly true that Ashcroft's pamphlet, Smell the Coffee, was a cogent analysis of the reasons behind the Tories' defeat in the 2005 election. But his continued position at the heart of the Conservative Party machine can only really be explained by a nagging feeling of insecurity within an organisation that has grown used to defeat. Now the Electoral Commission has finally decided that donations made by Bearwood Corporate Services to the Conservative Party deserve serious scrutiny.

Martin Bright

Don’t Mention the Legacy!

As the Cabinet meets in Southampton today there is one issue that will be strictly off the agenda: the Brown legacy. I have it on very good authority that Gordon and those around him will not even allow the subject to be discussed in case it suggests that he knows the next election is lost. People coming to him with new ideas are told not to use the "L word". I think this is very unwise. How can the Prime Minister expect anyone to come to him with innovative recession-busting ideas unless they can talk in terms of the legacy such projects will leave behind? No. 10 needs to get real. We are living through exceptional times that demand exceptional imagination.

Martin Bright

The Faultline At The Heart of the Government

Francis Elliott's story in The Times this morning is well-sourced and identifies the dangerous faultline that runs through the Labour Party right up to the Cabinet. Francis reports that Lord Mandelson is (once again) considering ripping up the equality legislation announced inthe Queen's speech because of fears of its effect on small businesses during the recession. He will do so in the face of fierce opposition from Harriet Harman, but surely calculates that the mood of the country (and certainly the business community) will be with him. The trouble is that this blows a hole in what remains of the New Labour political settlement.

Sunday

Martin Bright

Bloody Students: The Next Generation

I've been teaching the politics specialism at City University's journalism course and I've been pleasantly surprised how much fun it has been. I was warned before I started that my student would be barely literate, apathetic lumps with just a passing knowledge of British politics. I was surprised how few of them regularly read a newspaper, but I have found them, for the most part, well informed and engaged. My job is to provide them with insights into the job of a political reporter, which mainly involved me droning on about my scoops and great victories over the forces of darkness. But from time to time I wheel out a special guest.

Martin Bright

Here’s the Latest From Your Neo-Con Socialist

I was always shocked by the level of vitriol among New Statesman and Guardian readers when a writer stepped away from the comfort zone of received wisdom and cuddly "I'm a nice person too" leftie-ness. Suggest that perhaps Hamas is anything other than a resistance movement or that people who vote Conservative might be people too and the sky falls in. Where the stock term of self-righteous abuse used to be "fascist" - remember Rick from the Young Ones? - it is now "neo-con", which consigns the target  to the same ideological hell as George W. Bush. Since I've started this new blog I have not been called a neo-con. Instead, the insult of choice is "socialist".

Martin Bright

Anyone Feel Sorry for Tessa Jowell?

I have already been teased by the readers of this blog for suggesting that it was possible to feel sympathy for Tessa Jowell and her family over the conviction of her solicitor husband David Mills. Now you have the chance to read my thoughts on the Olympics minister at more length in today's Observer, where I have written a profile of Jowell.  It is easy to understand why the traditional left despises Jowell. For them she is the very essence of the business-worshipping Blairite. Jowell herself would not be entirely unhappy about this.

Friday

Martin Bright

The Irresistible Rise of the Liberal Democrats

If there is one message Labour and Conservative politicians should take into the next election it is never to underestimate the Liberal Democrats. They always do better than you expect them to, especially in an electoral system where there is no rational reason to vote for them. There have now been two opinion polls this month putting them at 22 per cent, the level they reached at the last general election and a high-water mark in recent times. Could it be that the Liberal Democrats under Clegg and Cable can make a pitch to overtake Labour and become the real opposition to the resurgent Tories? Martin Kettle certainly thinks so in today's Guardian. He makes an interesting case.

Martin Bright

The Adrian Mole Generation Should Step up to the Plate

It's perhaps a step too far to mix a reference from a popular work of 1980s satirical fiction with a phrase borrowed from baseball in the headline of this piece, but somehow it seemed to capture the situation. With increased speculation about Harriet Harman's leadership ambitions the time has come for the younger generation of Labour politicians (most of whom are a simillar age to Sue Townsend's hero) to start sticking their heads aboove the parapet. A name that seems to be emerging as a possible runner is Treasury minister Yvette Cooper. I have often wondered whether we would ever see a husband and wife team in No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street . It would certainly make the living arrangements easier.

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Can the Artists Transform Our High Streets?

It can't have escaped people's notice that shops in our high streets are being boarded up at quite an alarming rate. I've noticed it in central London, but also in north Wales last week and in Sussex and Surrey this week. Lewes was looking particularly down-at-heel as I passed through: like it was bracing itself for something even more awful. I felt mixed emotions at the Guardian's piece on the re-use of shops by artists. For all sorts of reasons, I am cheered by the fact that creative people are thinking their way out of the recession. But at the same time this really does confirm just how bad things have become.

Tuesday

Martin Bright

Mills sent down – Lampl turns up

Two stories with no connection really, apart from their capacity to raise an eyebrow. I wondered if David Mills, the estranged husband of Olympics minister Tessa Jowell would ever be convicted but that day has finally come. I remember having lunch with Jowell just after she split from Mills (at the Savoy Grill, naturally) and it was obvious to me that she still had feelings for the controversial lawyer. She explained to me that he was a great man, much misunderstood. I would understand if I got to know him, she said. There were tears in her eyes. I once accused Jowell of helping Italianise British politics, but I wouldn't have wished this on her and her family.

Monday

Martin Bright

Never Underestimate the Lib Dems

I know we are not supposed to take ComRes polls too seriously but there's one aspect of the Independent on Sunday poll at the weekend that I really rings true. It may not quite be the case that Lib Dem support is up by seven percentage points and Labour down by seven. But I am convinced that the Lib Dems are not being squeezed in quite the way we are led to believe. The perspective of the Westminster bubble is particularly cruel on Nick Clegg's merry band. Anyone who has seen the orangey-yellow machine in full flight in local or national elections will know it is a force to be reckoned with. Clegg himself may be unfortunate to have the most popular politician in Britain as his deputy.

Martin Bright

Can The Government Dig Itself Out ? (2)

From the response to the last post on this subject I get the impression that people around here don't much care if the government can did itself out or not. Some readers of The Bright Stuff have asked how I can justify wanting Labour to win the next election? But more of that later. First I want to examine the horror of the situation a little. I have finally read the Independent on Sunday's interview with HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore. Jaw-dropping or what! It's always wrong to leave the Sindy till last in the weekend reading pile because so often it punches above its weight. It would be one of the saddest victims of the recession if it is forced to close.

Martin Bright

Reporting protest

Anyone who has ever been on a protest march or felt the heady frission of student rebelliousness should check out Hugo Rifkind's piece in the Times today. A really subtle piece of reporting, with no hint of the usual establishment sneer. What's fascinating about his observations the history of student revolt is how similar the present wave of sit-ins is to the protests of the past. The latest generation of student revolutionaries use the Israeli action in Gaza as their starting point but their real gripe is with global capitalism. They know as little about the realities of life in Isreal's occupied territories as their precursors in the 1968 "events" knew about Vietnam. Their unwitting alliance with the Islamic extreme right is unfortunate.

Sunday

Martin Bright

Can the Government Dig Itself Out?

If you just read one newspaper today you'd know things were getting pretty bad for Gordon Brown. Let's take the Observer for example: not exactly a hostile paper to the government over the years. Beyond the story of the defection of former DWP advisor David Freud to the Tory front bench, there's a terribly damaging piece of analysis from Andrew Rawnsley. He observes that a serious split has opened up in Cabinet between the "no contrition" camp and those who believe the Prime Minister should find a way of showing some humility over his role in the economic crisis. As readers of this column know, Downing Street has been taking a close interest in President Obama's recent public apology. But as a ministerial source told Rawnsley: "Gordon will never change.