Ed Balls' trap for Andrew Rawnsley

Ed Balls said something that I thought was worth highlighting when he was on Andrew Marr's show this morning. He was discussing the bullying allegations against Brown and as part of his attempt to discredit Andrew Rawnsley (the author of the book containing the revelations) he pointed out that for two weeks running now, Rawnsley has published pieces defending his work. According to Balls, that is evidence that his book is full of holes.

It is indeed true that Rawnsley has published two op-ed pieces on consecutive weeks in The Observer that have sought to defend his work and reputation. the first one, last week was pre-emptive and the second one was responding to some of the criticisms this week.

But hang on minute. His pre-emptive piece was in order to try and neutralise some of the attacks that he knew would be coming his way from the formidable Labour spin machine (as indeed proved the case during the week) and the second piece was again responding to the smears from the same machine.

What was Rawnsley to do instead? Leave the field entirely open to Labour allowing them to besmirch and smear him and his reputation as much as they liked? He had every right to defend himself and his work. The fact that Balls is trying to use this as a way to smear him further is just silly.

It is an example though of the sort of Catch-22 traps that New Labour are very adept at laying. Just because they sound superficially reasonable though does not mean that they are.

It is time spin like this was fully exposed for the hollow nonsense it really is.

Mandelson "took his medicine like a man" from Brown?

Discussions about Gordon Brown and his alleged temper have been reverberating around the political sphere in the last day or so triggered by extracts from Andrew Rawnsley's latest book being published in the Observer today.

Lord Mandelson was on the Andrew Marr show earlier today doing his bit and batting for his boss. He did his best to try and belittle the revelations and was spinning that it is good to have a passionate and driven person in No 10.

But then Marr asked him specifically if he had ever been hit by Brown. I was expecting a straightforward denial but instead he refused to deny it, said something about it being no secret that they have had their moments and that he (Mandelson) "took his medicine like a man". Is this an admission that Brown did indeed hit Mandelson at some point? If not then why did Mandelson, who always thinks very carefully about how he parses his statements not just say so?

It seems an odd way to try and dampen down the story to me.

Gordon Brown - Liberals do not love you I am afraid

Following Cameron's recent attempts at love-bombing the Lib Dems, Gordon Brown was also at it this morning during his Andrew Marr interview. Here's what he had to say:

I think our policies appeal to liberal voters because you know we are for Alternative Vote system, we're for reform of the House of Lords, we're for the right of recalling members of parliament who commit fraud and equally at the same time we have policies on the environment and we've got policies on civil liberties that are not dissimilar to them (the Lib Dems).

Now putting aside the irritant that he continually referred to us as "The Liberal Party" (to coin a Ting-Tings-ism, that's not our name) let's have a closer look at the policies that he thinks appeal to liberal voters:

1. Alternative Vote system. The main reason that "liberal" voters as he terms it are in favour of electoral reform is because they want a more proportional system that delivers a much more fair and representative result. As I have blogged about on numerous occasions (most recently here), the Alternative Vote system is not proportional and can actually be even less proportional than our current First Past the Post system. I don't know any liberal minded people who think that what Brown is offering in this area will tempt them into voting Labour. Also, even if a few were tempted, look what happened the last time Labour promised a referendum on a change to the electoral system in 1997. They reneged as soon as they were in power.
2. Reform of the House of Lords. That's fair enough as far as it goes and we certainly do need to reform the upper chamber. However, again look at what has happened in the last 13 years. Labour abolished (most of) the hereditary peers but have left the rest of the chamber largely unchanged. It was kicked into the long grass because it suited them. Jack Straw recently suggested that it could take another 12 years at least before we could have a fully reformed House of Lords. It's far too little and far too slow.
3. The right of recalling MPs. Well I would be in favour of this but frankly, how can we even be in a position where that cannot currently happen? My current MP, Andrew MacKay has been was forced to stand down (for the next election) in May last year after a public meeting where hundreds of his constituents (including myself) expressed their fury at how much money he and his wife Julie Kirkbride had claimed for "second homes" by nominating each others houses as their second homes (it is estimated to be well over £100,000). And yet, he has not paid anything back and it is looking very likely now that he will get away with paying nothing back. In the meantime, from what I am hearing here in the constituency he is very rarely seen out and about any more. He appears to have gone into semi-retirement early but of course he is still being paid from the public purse and because he will be stepping down at the next election he will get a nice little resettlement allowance. People here are furious that he can do this and there is nothing that we can do. So whilst I am pleased that looks like it will now be addressed Brown should get no credit. He is only acting because his hand is being forced and did nothing in the long years when MPs like MacKay were filling their boots.
4. Environmental policies. Labour so seem to have some positive aspirations on this subject but look at how compromised they have become in office. Where is the massive investment in renewable technologies like there has been in some European countries? Where is the huge improvement in public transport infrastructure we were promised before 1997? Instead we have promises that nuclear power is the big answer which is in direct contravention to Lib Dem policy. We also have fake "public consultations" about airport expansion spun to make it look like local people are in favour.
5. Civil liberties policies that "are not too dissimilar" to the Liberals. Eh? How can he have the brass neck to even say these words? This is the most authoritarian government in British history. They are hell-bent on introducing ID cards backed by a massively intrusive database and have mustered (and lost) every argument they could think of for them. They have increased detention without charge to 28 days and have tried to increase it to 90 and 42 days respectively in the last few years. Photographers are regularly harrassed and sometimes even arrested by police for trying to take photographs of public landmarks. They have introduced the "Vetting and Barring" scheme which will likely lead to millions of people in this country having to be security checked before they can do favours for local groups and organisations such as giving lifts to children, hence many of them I suspect won't volunteer any more. They have introduced suspicion and fear into many aspects of our community life and it would not be an exaggeration to say that they have started to destroy our community cohesion*. The idea that Labour's policies are anything like Lib Dem policies on civil liberties is utterly laughable. Yet Andrew Marr didn't even bat an eyelid.

I am very much looking forward to the televised debates over the next few months. I expect that Brown will not have the balls to make these sort of statements during them because he surely knows that Nick Clegg will never let him get away with it and he would actually end up looking very foolish.

* Incidentally, Jenni Russell has an excellent piece on how Labour's policies are destroying communities in The Sunday Times today here.

Gordon Brown - pathetic performance on Andy Marr's show

I have just finished watching Gordon Brown on Andrew Marr's show. Anyone who followed me on Twitter will have seen how frustrated and annoyed I got as the interview went on.

As Iain Dale points out, he didn't answer any of the questions however Iain seems to think it was an impressive performance and I can see what he means from a technical politician perspective (i.e. Marr could not really lay a glove on him) but the overall impression Brown gave off was woeful in my opinion. At one point he even said about MPs expenses "It doesn't matter how it happened."! How can it not matter and how can someone who thinks that possibly be part of the solution?

What the nation needs at the moment is leadership and Gordon did not do this. He was evasive about MPs expenses. He claimed it was nothing to do with him and insisted that the had been trying to sort the system out for years. Mendacious bullshit in my considered opinion. He has been trying to block the release of this stuff for years and all of the so called "reforms" that he was puffing about today have come to naught. He still doesn't get it either. He seems to think that electoral reform is a fringe issue and that there are much more important issues like votes at 16! Don't get me wrong, I think doing that would be a good thing but is it really more important than re-enfranchising millions of people whose votes currently do not count at all due to accidents of geography under the First Past The Post system.

He also tried to claim that the MPs expenses scandal actually reinforces the need for the First Past the Post electoral system!? His warped logic seemed to be something to do with the ability to kick out individual MPs at an election. This completely misses how hard it is to do this under FPTP and how any voters who wish to vote for the party of the errant candidate and find themselves forced to vote for another party to kick that candidate out are also disenfranchised for that election. Single Transferable Vote would solve all this but Marr did not even put this to him and Marr surely must know that? If he doesn't then someone else needs to be doing the interviewing.

Towards the end of the interview he said that a panel would be convened to look at all these issues and come up with proposals but when pressed it transpired that it would be formed of government ministers. When Helena Kennedy in the post interview sofa bit tried to press him to agree to a Citizen's Convention on these issues he just batted it away and said "wait and see what they come up with" with a big smirk on his face. This. Man. Is. Incapable. Of. Fixing. The. System.

After David Cameron's rather will o' the wisp proposals on reform that seem to promise nothing earlier this week it must surely be becoming clear to people that the only party who are serious about change are the Lib Dems. Indeed Andrew Rawnsley is now on board and writes about electoral reform in today's Observer. Here is a snippet:

A minority of Labour politicians are sincere on this subject, but Labour as a party is completely untrustworthy on electoral reform. It flirts with the idea when it is in opposition or becomes afraid that it is about to lose office. As soon as it has power, Labour forgets its promises.

Only one of the main parties has been a consistent and persistent advocate of a democratised House of Lords, a reformed Commons, fixed-term parliaments and the rest of the menu of truly sweeping constitutional reform. That party is the Liberal Democrats. They have also, incidentally, come out of the expenses scandal much less sleazed than either Labour or the Tories.

And he concludes with:

If you want to maximise the chances of securing serious constitutional reform, then the party to vote for is the Lib Dems.

Amen Mr Rawnsley. You won't get proper change from parties with such a vested interest in the existing system. Full stop.