Column published in the Newcastle Journal, Sat 1 December.
***
They say troubles come along in threes, and so, for Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Labour, it has proved – each one of them made and manufactured in the party’s North-East heartland.
First, there was Northern Rock, the first run on a British bank for more than 100 years. Then “Discgate,” or how a breach of adminstrative procedure at a government office in Washington caused the personal details of 25m people to go missing.
Now, potentially most damaging of all, a new police inquiry into Labour’s finances after a Newcastle businessman used middle-men and women to channel more than £600,000 into party funds.
Is it any wonder that some people at Westminster are starting to talk about the “Curse of the North?”
A conspiracy theorist might be sorely tempted to try to see links between the three, to point to some common thread of corruption or incompetence.
This part of the world has, after all, had a long history of Labour scandals, dating back to the days of T Dan Smith and Andy Cunningham in the 1970s.
There is, however, no such link. The confluence of these three North-East stories at the top of the national political agenda at the same time is no more than a bizarre coincidence.
But if it’s a somewhat happy coincidence for the region’s journalists and commentators, it is a very unhappy one for Mr Brown, who now finds not only his competence but his integrity called into question.
As far as both Northern Rock and Discgate are concerned, the focus on the Prime Minister’s role is only fair. Both happened on his watch, and as such his government has to take ultimately responsibility for them.
The David Abrahams affair is a slightly different matter, though. The vast majority of his dodgy donations were made during Tony Blair’s leadership, and it is only because it has taken until now for the scam to come to light that Mr Brown finds himself in the firing line.
Mr Brown has also acted swiftly to condemn the practices in question and to return the donations, although he should have gone further and called in the police himself before the Electoral Commission did so.
But even though the Prime Minister is almost certainly innocent of any personal involvement in the affair, it was inevitable in the current highly-charged political situation that the opposition parties would make him their main target.
Once again, the case of John Major provides an apt analogy. Amid all the Tory sleaaze of the mid-1990s, there was never the slightest evidence to suggest that he personally was anything other than a man of the highest integrity.
But that did not stop Labour targeting him, and eventually the electorate got the message.
Sir John remains sore to this day about the way he was treated, and the fact that New Labour’s aspirations to be “whiter than white” turned out to be so preposterously misplaced.
But the truth is that all is fair in love, war, and politics, and just as it fell to Mr Major to deal with a situation of others’ making, so it now falls to Mr Brown.
Of course, it didn’t help his cause that his deputy, Harriet Harman, was unwise enough to accept a donation of £5,000 for her deputy leadership campaign without checking where it had come from.
Mr Brown demonstrated his anger by effectively hanging her out to dry at his Prime Ministerial press conference on Tuesday, but her camp has now responded by claiming a Brown campaign organiser, Chris Leslie, told them to seek the donation.
Ms Harman is playing a very dangerous game here. If she thinks this crisis is primarily about ensuring her own personal political survival, she is very sadly mistaken.
In fact it’s no longer about her or Mr Brown. It is actually about the very survival of the Labour government.
As it is, it seems certain that there is more of the story to come out. To begin with, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has asked Durham Police to investigate the decision to allow Mr Abrahams to build a business park near the A1 south of the city.
This plan had been held up by Department of Transport objections until October 2006, when it was suddenly given the go-ahead.
The Department has denied that there is any link between its decision to allow the development and Mr Abrahams’ donations to the Labour Party, but in the current climate, such denials cannot necessarily be taken at face value.
There may be absolutely nothing to it. But if there is such a link, this is where the real scandal of the Abrahams affair may lie.
Secondly, Liberal Democrat candidate Greg Stone has called for an investigation into the Sedgefield by-election, and specifically whether any money was chanelled from Mr Abrahams into Labour’s campaign.
If it was, and this resulted in breaches of electoral law, it is more than possible that the Electoral Commission could order the contest to be rerun, in circumstances that could prove impossible for Labour to hold onto the seat.
Finally, there have been suggestions that Mr Abrahams himself is a front-man for a mysterious overseas donor.
All in all, it is enough to make Labour long for the days when it was solely dependent on the trade unions for its funding.
Whatever comes next, though, one thing that is already clear is that Mr Brown’s ambitions to restore trust in British politics after the deceptions of the Blair years now lie in ruins.
It is a very sad conclusion for those of us who hoped Mr Brown could offer a fresh start, but it is going to be hard if not impossible for him to do that now.
Voters are starting to conclude that the job of restoring trust in British politics will require not just a change of leadership, but a change of government.
Increasingly, that seems to be the end to which all roads are now beginning to point.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Is Gordon Brown the Steve McClaren of British politics?
Column published in the Newcastle Journal on Saturday, November 24.
***
It’s a familiar enough story. Long-serving Number Two finally steps up to the top job after years of waiting for the boss to move on, only to see it all go to pot within a short space of time.
But am I talking about ex-England manager Steve McClaren – or Prime Minister Gordon Brown?
For all his achievements in getting Middlesbrough to the UEFA Cup Final, McClaren’s best work was done as a deputy - to Jim Smith at Derby, Alex Ferguson at Man U and Sven Goran Eriksson with England.
Will the history books similarly say Brown was better cast in a supporting role to Tony Blair? If so, the past week may well come to be seen as a defining moment.
One of the truest old sayings in politics is Harold Macmillan’s famous dictum that the biggest problem facing any government is “events, dear boy, events”
What I think he meant was that it is often a government’s ability to deal with the unexpected which determines its success or failure.
Before the summer break, the Brown government could do no wrong in this regard.
The attempted terrorist attacks, the floods, foot and mouth, even the early days of the Northern Rock crisis were all seen to have been calmly and competently dealt with.
But since then, thanks to what is now being described as the curse of the cancelled election, very little has gone right.
Northern Rock is a case in point. Chancellor Alistair Darling was seen to have successfully defused the initial crisis by acting to guarantee peoples’ savings and stemming September’s run on the bank.
A couple of months on, he finds himself under fire for having loaned the bank billions of pounds of public money, although not all would echo those criticisms.
As one experienced observer of the North-East scene told me this week, the key issue in this part of the world at least is not the future of the loans but of the Rock’s 5,700-strong workforce.
“There is a North-South divide in the coverage of this story. In the South, it’s all about the money. In the North, it’s all about the jobs,” he said.
Far more damaging for the government is the scandal of the loss of 25m people’s computerised records - a story which also originated in the North-East.
It began on 18 October at HM Revenue and Customs office in Washington when a junior official sent two CDs containing the records unregistered via courier.
As everyone now knows, the package failed to arrive, and ministers, including the Prime Minister and Chancellor, were eventually told about it on 10 November.
But it was not until this Wednesday that the whole affair was finally made public in a Commons statement by Mr Darling that brought gasps of astonishment from even his own side.
In the short-term, the extent of the political fall-out will depend on two things. Firstly, whether ministers are seen to have in any way sought to conceal the truth about the debacle.
The Tories are already alleging that email records show the government’s original account to be incorrect, in that HMRC senior managers were aware of the breach of procedure.
It will also depend, of course, on whether the lost discs do indeed end up falling into the wrong hands.
Although that is an obvious risk, it is probably just as likely that they will end up being used as ersatz coasters or as bird-scarers hanging off a beanpole in some suburban garden.
In the longer-term, though, the real damage to the government lies in the impression of sheer incompetence at the top that this and other recent political developments have created.
When he cancelled the election, Mr Brown memorably said that while he could have fought an election on “competence,” he wanted also to set out his “vision.”
Well, while we’ve still seen precious little evidence of the great vision, what wouldn’t Labour MPs give now for a little bit of basic competence?
In the words of one commentator: “Mr Brown’s political persona for the past decade has been built on his perceived capability. If that goes, he does not have much else left.”
What Mr Brown should have realised is that most governments stand or fall on their reputation for competence rather than the brilliance of their “vision.” Ask John Major.
His own government’s reputation for competence disappeared down the plughole on 16 September 1992 – Black Wednesday - when he was forced effectively to devalue the pound.
It is still too early to call 21 November 2007 Brown’s Black Wednesday, but there are some obvious comparisons to be made.
One is that Mr Darling, like his predecessor-but-two Norman Lamont, does not possess the political authority to reassure either the public or the City in such troubled times.
There is, of course, a more charitable way of looking at all this – to say that it’s the kind of thing that could happen to any government at any time, and that Messrs Brown and Darling have just been unlucky.
You could say the same about Steve McClaren. It was not easy for him going into a crucial qualifier without his entire first-choice back four or two leading strikers.
But in the end, in politics as in football, you make your own luck, and it is no use governments relying on public sympathy to bail them out when they’ve clearly made a mess of things.
When it comes down to it, the electorate - like the FA - are a pretty unforgiving lot.
***
It’s a familiar enough story. Long-serving Number Two finally steps up to the top job after years of waiting for the boss to move on, only to see it all go to pot within a short space of time.
But am I talking about ex-England manager Steve McClaren – or Prime Minister Gordon Brown?
For all his achievements in getting Middlesbrough to the UEFA Cup Final, McClaren’s best work was done as a deputy - to Jim Smith at Derby, Alex Ferguson at Man U and Sven Goran Eriksson with England.
Will the history books similarly say Brown was better cast in a supporting role to Tony Blair? If so, the past week may well come to be seen as a defining moment.
One of the truest old sayings in politics is Harold Macmillan’s famous dictum that the biggest problem facing any government is “events, dear boy, events”
What I think he meant was that it is often a government’s ability to deal with the unexpected which determines its success or failure.
Before the summer break, the Brown government could do no wrong in this regard.
The attempted terrorist attacks, the floods, foot and mouth, even the early days of the Northern Rock crisis were all seen to have been calmly and competently dealt with.
But since then, thanks to what is now being described as the curse of the cancelled election, very little has gone right.
Northern Rock is a case in point. Chancellor Alistair Darling was seen to have successfully defused the initial crisis by acting to guarantee peoples’ savings and stemming September’s run on the bank.
A couple of months on, he finds himself under fire for having loaned the bank billions of pounds of public money, although not all would echo those criticisms.
As one experienced observer of the North-East scene told me this week, the key issue in this part of the world at least is not the future of the loans but of the Rock’s 5,700-strong workforce.
“There is a North-South divide in the coverage of this story. In the South, it’s all about the money. In the North, it’s all about the jobs,” he said.
Far more damaging for the government is the scandal of the loss of 25m people’s computerised records - a story which also originated in the North-East.
It began on 18 October at HM Revenue and Customs office in Washington when a junior official sent two CDs containing the records unregistered via courier.
As everyone now knows, the package failed to arrive, and ministers, including the Prime Minister and Chancellor, were eventually told about it on 10 November.
But it was not until this Wednesday that the whole affair was finally made public in a Commons statement by Mr Darling that brought gasps of astonishment from even his own side.
In the short-term, the extent of the political fall-out will depend on two things. Firstly, whether ministers are seen to have in any way sought to conceal the truth about the debacle.
The Tories are already alleging that email records show the government’s original account to be incorrect, in that HMRC senior managers were aware of the breach of procedure.
It will also depend, of course, on whether the lost discs do indeed end up falling into the wrong hands.
Although that is an obvious risk, it is probably just as likely that they will end up being used as ersatz coasters or as bird-scarers hanging off a beanpole in some suburban garden.
In the longer-term, though, the real damage to the government lies in the impression of sheer incompetence at the top that this and other recent political developments have created.
When he cancelled the election, Mr Brown memorably said that while he could have fought an election on “competence,” he wanted also to set out his “vision.”
Well, while we’ve still seen precious little evidence of the great vision, what wouldn’t Labour MPs give now for a little bit of basic competence?
In the words of one commentator: “Mr Brown’s political persona for the past decade has been built on his perceived capability. If that goes, he does not have much else left.”
What Mr Brown should have realised is that most governments stand or fall on their reputation for competence rather than the brilliance of their “vision.” Ask John Major.
His own government’s reputation for competence disappeared down the plughole on 16 September 1992 – Black Wednesday - when he was forced effectively to devalue the pound.
It is still too early to call 21 November 2007 Brown’s Black Wednesday, but there are some obvious comparisons to be made.
One is that Mr Darling, like his predecessor-but-two Norman Lamont, does not possess the political authority to reassure either the public or the City in such troubled times.
There is, of course, a more charitable way of looking at all this – to say that it’s the kind of thing that could happen to any government at any time, and that Messrs Brown and Darling have just been unlucky.
You could say the same about Steve McClaren. It was not easy for him going into a crucial qualifier without his entire first-choice back four or two leading strikers.
But in the end, in politics as in football, you make your own luck, and it is no use governments relying on public sympathy to bail them out when they’ve clearly made a mess of things.
When it comes down to it, the electorate - like the FA - are a pretty unforgiving lot.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
A fond farewell
It was a wreck when I bought it back in 1989, and it took me the best part of ten years to turn it into a comfortable place to live. But this little house in Belper became our home and although we have now had to move on in order to accommodate our growing family, it hurt to have to say goodbye. My only consolations are the memories of so many wonderful times spent here down the years, and the knowledge that this beloved house has now gone to two delightful people who will shortly be starting out on their married life together. I hope it will be as great a blessing to them as it has been for me.
Here are some pictures of the house looking at its best earlier this year after all the years of hard work and restoration had been completed. It's how I would like to remember it.
It's nothing much to look at on the outside, I know, but there was treasure within.
It's nothing much to look at on the outside, I know, but there was treasure within.
The lounge area with the original fireplace I discovered while removing a partition. A local man born in the house later told me it had been covered up since the 40s.
The dining room area, scene of some great evenings and Christmas meals down the years.
The dining room area, scene of some great evenings and Christmas meals down the years.
All roads led to and from the kitchen, the hub of the house.
My downstairs study area was a real oasis of calm away from the rest of the family. In latter years, much blogging was done from this room!
A room which went through many owners, from a friend who stayed here for a few riotous months in the summer of 1990, to my son George who had it for the last three years.
The garden, constructed from a concrete wilderness, was my proudest achievement, and many of my happiest hours at the house were spent here.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Left in the slow lane
Column published in the Newcastle Journal on Saturday 17 November.
***
This week, as David Miliband set out his vision for the future of Europe, the South of England finally fufilled a part of its European destiny by gaining a high-speed rail connection to the continent for the first time.
Thanks to the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, travellers were able to get on a train in London mid-morning, and arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris in time for a late-ish lunch before hitting the culture spots.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch....yet another hard-hitting report warned that the North-East risked being left in the slow lane unless its transport connections were dramatically improved.
As the French might say: plus ca change.
It was always intended that the North-East would be linked with Eurostar. Back in the 1980s when the Channel Tunnel Bill first went through Parliament, it was a lively issue among MPs from the northern regions.
As a result of their protestations, it was made a requirement of the Act that the regions, as well as London, would benefit from the Tunnel project.
A number of "regional eurostars" were subsequently ordered and built, but they were never deployed and the rolling stock was eventually used elsewhere on the rail network.
By the late 1990s, ministers no longer made any pretence that the Channel link would help the North. It became, rather, yet another in the long list of major infrastructure projects designed to benefit the capital.
Making that continental link a reality now depends on the construction of a new high-speed link from the North of England that will link with the St Pancras terminal.
Despite a marked shift of emphasis towards new investment in transport, the Brown government has refused to make this scheme a priority and that seems unlikely to change within the next decade.
Carlisle MP Eric Martlew, a member of the Transport Select Committee, is among those who has continued to lobby strongly for the idea, but even if it happens it seems overwhelmingly likely that it will be built up the West Coast.
That will be okay for Mr Martlew's constituents, but it will still leave the North-East's major conurbations cut off from the rail map of Europe.
The region's roads are faring little better. This week's report by the Road Users’ Alliance became the latest to warn that the region risked economic isolation because of its low-grade road network.
It pointed out that the North-East has just 36 miles of motorway compared to 406 miles in the South-East and the most number of cars per kilometre of motorway in England - 17,343.
Then, of course, there is the interminable problem of the A1 dualling.
A few weeks' back, The Journal's Graeme Whitfield revealed on his newsroom blog that this newspaper had considered a novel proposal to try to kick start the long-delayed project.
"In recent weeks we have been discussing the possibility of throwing The Journal's support at the next General Election behind a political party - even the Conservatives - if they would pledge to dual the A1," he wrote.
Graeme added: "We hadn't made a decision on this, but today the Tories have come out and said that they won't upgrade the road for 10 years at least, so that's that."
Perhaps the Tories deserve some credit for simply being honest. We have, after all, been here before with pledges to dual the A1
In an interview with in 1996, Tony Blair said it would be "a priority" for a Labour government. What he didn't say was how much or more accurately how little of one it would be.
The fact that five of New Labour's seven transport secretaries have been Scots - Gavin Strang, John Reid, Helen Liddell, Gus Macdonald and Alistair Darling - only rubbed salt into the wound.
The Scottish section of the route has of course long since been upgraded as a result of their £1bn-plus annual funding advantage.
Why is it so low a priority for national government? Well, partly because it is trapped in something of a vicious circle regards the statistical case for the upgrade.
Its traffic levels do not currently justify the spending, say ministers, as a result of which the road remains unimproved, as a result of which fewer people use it than would otherwise be the case.
It is also partly because opposition parties dare not promise anything these days that resembles a spending commitment.
Had the Tories agreed to a deal in return for The Journal's backing, they would immediately have been besieged by similar requests from every other area of the country.
In more than ten years of writing for The Journal, there has been no bigger single recurring issue in the region than the question of its transport links.
The whole case for the elected regional assembly eventually foundered, in my view, on the fact that it wouldn't have had significant powers over transport funding - certainly not enough to dual the A1.
Yet for all the dominance the issue has exerted in the region's politics, it has seemed for most of that time as if the region has been talking to itself.
Will this week's report finally signal a change of direction? At the moment, it looks about as likely as Tunisia joining the EU.
***
This week, as David Miliband set out his vision for the future of Europe, the South of England finally fufilled a part of its European destiny by gaining a high-speed rail connection to the continent for the first time.
Thanks to the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, travellers were able to get on a train in London mid-morning, and arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris in time for a late-ish lunch before hitting the culture spots.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch....yet another hard-hitting report warned that the North-East risked being left in the slow lane unless its transport connections were dramatically improved.
As the French might say: plus ca change.
It was always intended that the North-East would be linked with Eurostar. Back in the 1980s when the Channel Tunnel Bill first went through Parliament, it was a lively issue among MPs from the northern regions.
As a result of their protestations, it was made a requirement of the Act that the regions, as well as London, would benefit from the Tunnel project.
A number of "regional eurostars" were subsequently ordered and built, but they were never deployed and the rolling stock was eventually used elsewhere on the rail network.
By the late 1990s, ministers no longer made any pretence that the Channel link would help the North. It became, rather, yet another in the long list of major infrastructure projects designed to benefit the capital.
Making that continental link a reality now depends on the construction of a new high-speed link from the North of England that will link with the St Pancras terminal.
Despite a marked shift of emphasis towards new investment in transport, the Brown government has refused to make this scheme a priority and that seems unlikely to change within the next decade.
Carlisle MP Eric Martlew, a member of the Transport Select Committee, is among those who has continued to lobby strongly for the idea, but even if it happens it seems overwhelmingly likely that it will be built up the West Coast.
That will be okay for Mr Martlew's constituents, but it will still leave the North-East's major conurbations cut off from the rail map of Europe.
The region's roads are faring little better. This week's report by the Road Users’ Alliance became the latest to warn that the region risked economic isolation because of its low-grade road network.
It pointed out that the North-East has just 36 miles of motorway compared to 406 miles in the South-East and the most number of cars per kilometre of motorway in England - 17,343.
Then, of course, there is the interminable problem of the A1 dualling.
A few weeks' back, The Journal's Graeme Whitfield revealed on his newsroom blog that this newspaper had considered a novel proposal to try to kick start the long-delayed project.
"In recent weeks we have been discussing the possibility of throwing The Journal's support at the next General Election behind a political party - even the Conservatives - if they would pledge to dual the A1," he wrote.
Graeme added: "We hadn't made a decision on this, but today the Tories have come out and said that they won't upgrade the road for 10 years at least, so that's that."
Perhaps the Tories deserve some credit for simply being honest. We have, after all, been here before with pledges to dual the A1
In an interview with in 1996, Tony Blair said it would be "a priority" for a Labour government. What he didn't say was how much or more accurately how little of one it would be.
The fact that five of New Labour's seven transport secretaries have been Scots - Gavin Strang, John Reid, Helen Liddell, Gus Macdonald and Alistair Darling - only rubbed salt into the wound.
The Scottish section of the route has of course long since been upgraded as a result of their £1bn-plus annual funding advantage.
Why is it so low a priority for national government? Well, partly because it is trapped in something of a vicious circle regards the statistical case for the upgrade.
Its traffic levels do not currently justify the spending, say ministers, as a result of which the road remains unimproved, as a result of which fewer people use it than would otherwise be the case.
It is also partly because opposition parties dare not promise anything these days that resembles a spending commitment.
Had the Tories agreed to a deal in return for The Journal's backing, they would immediately have been besieged by similar requests from every other area of the country.
In more than ten years of writing for The Journal, there has been no bigger single recurring issue in the region than the question of its transport links.
The whole case for the elected regional assembly eventually foundered, in my view, on the fact that it wouldn't have had significant powers over transport funding - certainly not enough to dual the A1.
Yet for all the dominance the issue has exerted in the region's politics, it has seemed for most of that time as if the region has been talking to itself.
Will this week's report finally signal a change of direction? At the moment, it looks about as likely as Tunisia joining the EU.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Bottler Brown must learn to build
Column published in the Newcastle Journal on Saturday, 10 November.
***
Whatever else is said about Gordon Brown, one thing on which his opponents and supporters alike have usually been able to agree is that he is a master strategist, a consummate politician.
They may well have a point. One does not manage to remain heir-apparent to the Labour leadership for 13 years, and then succeed to the top job unchallenged, without being something of a canny operator.
But there has been precious little evidence of Gordon’s legendary political skills in relation to his handling of this year’s Queen’s Speech, which was unveiled to MPs on Tuesday.
Since becoming Prime Minister, he has managed to hoist himself by his own petard not once, but twice over an event which should have been a great opportunity for him to set out his plans for Britain.
First, he revealed most of the contents of the package four months early in his pre-Queen’s Speech statement in July, thereby diluting the impact of most of the announcements made this week.
Second, he has talked far too much over recent weeks about needing to set out his “vision,” setting the bar for this workmanlike but distinctly un-visionary package unrealistically high.
So it was inevitable that, as Queen’s Speeches go, the programme announced on Tuesday would be a damper squib than some of recent vintage.
Sure, it contained some genuinely new and progressive ideas. But if the country was waiting for Gordon to unveil the “Big Idea” or connecting narrative that will define his government, it is still waiting.
Does it matter in the bigger scheme of things? Is it not more important that Mr Brown simply gets on with the job of providing competent, low-key government than setting out highfaluting “visions?”
Well, if you had asked me that question a few months back, I would have said yes. After ten years of Tony Blair, the country was not necessarily looking for more of that style of government.
But Mr Brown’s not-the-general-election announcement changed all that. By justifying the delay on the grounds that he needed to set out his vision, he thereby obliged himself to come up with one.
As the commentator Jonathan Freedland pointed out this week, it was the wrong word. What he should have said was programme – “something less than a grand vision but more inspiring than a mere to-do list."
But if there was no single Big Idea in the Speech, there were at least an interesting collection of small or medium-sizes ones.
Of these, the one that seems likely to have the biggest impact in the longer-term is the plan to allow all parents, not just those of children under six, to request flexible working arrangements from their employers.
There is some evidence that Mr Brown’s people were trying to spin this as the real headline-grabber from the Speech, perhaps trying to take some of the inevitable focus off the plan to increase 28-day detention.
But the problem with trying to sell addressing the work-life balance as Labour’s new “Big Idea” is that it’s yet another policy that David Cameron’s Tories actually thought of first.
Of the other more overtly “progressive” proposals in the package, all raise potentially difficult choices for Labour.
The pledge to build 3m more new homes by 2020, for instance, will doubtless make it easier for some people on lower incomes to get onto the housing ladder – but only slightly.
One recent report claimed that raising the target from 2.6m to 3m will mean that average house prices are just seven times’ average earnings by 2020 as opposed to eight times’.
Set against that marginal benefit is the potentially huge cost to the environment, and the impact on regional economies of concentrating yet more development in the South East.
Then there’s the plan to ensure people stay on in some form of education to the age of 18, hailed by some as potentially the biggest boost to equality of opportunity in a generation.
Well, maybe, although at the end of the day there’s only so many people who can be chiefs, but to my mind it shows a bit of a lack of joined-up thinking.
We already allow 16-year-olds to marry, own property, and pay taxes, while this government also wants to give them the right to help decide who should run the country.
But at the same time, they are now telling 16-year-olds that they are not capable of making their own decisions about whether or not they should stay in full-time education.
So much for what was in the Speech – what should have been in it? Well, there seems to be a growing consensus across the political spectrum that the biggest statement of intent Mr Brown could have made would have been to scrap ID cards.
As well have saving him £5.6bn, it could have enabled him to make some headway with the so-called “liberty” agenda he outlined a couple of weeks ago.
He should also have been bolder in his proposed constitutional innovations, perhaps by announcing a Speaker's Conference on electoral reform, or even bringing in fixed-term four-year Parliaments to ensure no repeat of the non-election debacle.
Such initiatives would certainly have grabbed the headlines. Whether they would have amounted to a “vision” though is another question.
If Mr Brown is still looking for that big idea, that connecting narrative that would neatly sum up what his government is about, he could do a lot worse in my view than the word “building.”
He could start with housing, and go on from there. Building homes. Building trust. Building equality of opportunity. Building the future.
It’s not an airy-fairy vision, not the kind of thing Mr Blair would have come out with, but it’s solid, workmanlike, and sounds authentically Mr Brown’s.
From bottler Brown to builder Brown. It’s not a bad route-map to election victory.
***
Whatever else is said about Gordon Brown, one thing on which his opponents and supporters alike have usually been able to agree is that he is a master strategist, a consummate politician.
They may well have a point. One does not manage to remain heir-apparent to the Labour leadership for 13 years, and then succeed to the top job unchallenged, without being something of a canny operator.
But there has been precious little evidence of Gordon’s legendary political skills in relation to his handling of this year’s Queen’s Speech, which was unveiled to MPs on Tuesday.
Since becoming Prime Minister, he has managed to hoist himself by his own petard not once, but twice over an event which should have been a great opportunity for him to set out his plans for Britain.
First, he revealed most of the contents of the package four months early in his pre-Queen’s Speech statement in July, thereby diluting the impact of most of the announcements made this week.
Second, he has talked far too much over recent weeks about needing to set out his “vision,” setting the bar for this workmanlike but distinctly un-visionary package unrealistically high.
So it was inevitable that, as Queen’s Speeches go, the programme announced on Tuesday would be a damper squib than some of recent vintage.
Sure, it contained some genuinely new and progressive ideas. But if the country was waiting for Gordon to unveil the “Big Idea” or connecting narrative that will define his government, it is still waiting.
Does it matter in the bigger scheme of things? Is it not more important that Mr Brown simply gets on with the job of providing competent, low-key government than setting out highfaluting “visions?”
Well, if you had asked me that question a few months back, I would have said yes. After ten years of Tony Blair, the country was not necessarily looking for more of that style of government.
But Mr Brown’s not-the-general-election announcement changed all that. By justifying the delay on the grounds that he needed to set out his vision, he thereby obliged himself to come up with one.
As the commentator Jonathan Freedland pointed out this week, it was the wrong word. What he should have said was programme – “something less than a grand vision but more inspiring than a mere to-do list."
But if there was no single Big Idea in the Speech, there were at least an interesting collection of small or medium-sizes ones.
Of these, the one that seems likely to have the biggest impact in the longer-term is the plan to allow all parents, not just those of children under six, to request flexible working arrangements from their employers.
There is some evidence that Mr Brown’s people were trying to spin this as the real headline-grabber from the Speech, perhaps trying to take some of the inevitable focus off the plan to increase 28-day detention.
But the problem with trying to sell addressing the work-life balance as Labour’s new “Big Idea” is that it’s yet another policy that David Cameron’s Tories actually thought of first.
Of the other more overtly “progressive” proposals in the package, all raise potentially difficult choices for Labour.
The pledge to build 3m more new homes by 2020, for instance, will doubtless make it easier for some people on lower incomes to get onto the housing ladder – but only slightly.
One recent report claimed that raising the target from 2.6m to 3m will mean that average house prices are just seven times’ average earnings by 2020 as opposed to eight times’.
Set against that marginal benefit is the potentially huge cost to the environment, and the impact on regional economies of concentrating yet more development in the South East.
Then there’s the plan to ensure people stay on in some form of education to the age of 18, hailed by some as potentially the biggest boost to equality of opportunity in a generation.
Well, maybe, although at the end of the day there’s only so many people who can be chiefs, but to my mind it shows a bit of a lack of joined-up thinking.
We already allow 16-year-olds to marry, own property, and pay taxes, while this government also wants to give them the right to help decide who should run the country.
But at the same time, they are now telling 16-year-olds that they are not capable of making their own decisions about whether or not they should stay in full-time education.
So much for what was in the Speech – what should have been in it? Well, there seems to be a growing consensus across the political spectrum that the biggest statement of intent Mr Brown could have made would have been to scrap ID cards.
As well have saving him £5.6bn, it could have enabled him to make some headway with the so-called “liberty” agenda he outlined a couple of weeks ago.
He should also have been bolder in his proposed constitutional innovations, perhaps by announcing a Speaker's Conference on electoral reform, or even bringing in fixed-term four-year Parliaments to ensure no repeat of the non-election debacle.
Such initiatives would certainly have grabbed the headlines. Whether they would have amounted to a “vision” though is another question.
If Mr Brown is still looking for that big idea, that connecting narrative that would neatly sum up what his government is about, he could do a lot worse in my view than the word “building.”
He could start with housing, and go on from there. Building homes. Building trust. Building equality of opportunity. Building the future.
It’s not an airy-fairy vision, not the kind of thing Mr Blair would have come out with, but it’s solid, workmanlike, and sounds authentically Mr Brown’s.
From bottler Brown to builder Brown. It’s not a bad route-map to election victory.
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