New Liam Byrne letter discovered

In the light of Liam Byrne's announcement today that suddenly instead of hating the idea of a benefits cap, Labour now think it doesn't go far enough a letter to Ed Miliband from Liam has been discovered.

No confidence in "Confidence and Supply"

Liam Byrne has come out in favour of a minority Labour government if there is a hung parliament where Labour are the largest party after the 2015 general election.

His view is that he thinks a minority Labour administration could achieve more than a coalition and also that the current government has "given coalitions a bad name".

In some ways this view is unsurprising. In the political memory of almost everyone in the contemporary PLP (at least in the Commons) they have never had to share power. Their experiences in government between 1997 and 2010 were of sole stewardship of the levers of government and it is hardly surprising that elements within would want to repeat that, even if the electorate did not want to give them a majority.

But there is an implicit assumption built into this idea from Byrne. For a minority government to have any stability it would require minor parties (likely including the Lib Dems) to be willing to agree a "Confidence and Supply" arrangement with Labour. This would mean them promising to support Labour in any confidence motion and also to allow budgets to pass.

I have previously detailed my views on confidence and supply explaining how I think it would give all of the downsides of a coalition but without many of the benefits. This would apply just as much in a potential arrangement with Labour as it would with the Conservatives.

I do not think my views on this are unusual. There are plenty in my own party who feel similarly, indeed that is one of the main reasons that the 2010 coalition went ahead as the alternatives were all worse in the views of the key negotiators.

So if Byrne's view prevails within Labour and they as the largest party in a hung parliament try to go for a minority government that is predicated on some pretty big assumptions about how smaller parties will fall into line and provide the day to day support needed to even perform the basic functions of a government. It is far from clear that would be forthcoming and it is somewhat arrogant in my view for Byrne to simply assume that it would and that somehow it would mean Labour could achieve more than it could in a coalition. In fact this is the same arrogance that Adonis betrayed in his book "5 Days in May" (that I reviewed here) where he and other senior Labour figures were convinced a coalition with the Lib Dems could work despite the maths not favouring such an arrangement based on a series of assumptions about how all the other parties would back them.

To an extent I can understand Byrne's wish to find a "better way" to govern were there to be a hung parliament. There is no denying that coalition has been tough and from the outside looking in to Labour politicians I can see why they might balk at such an arrangement themselves.

But the idea that a minority government would be better strikes me as tribalistic and short-sighted. Any minority government is unlikely to last more than a year or two and parties who show they are unwilling to work with others may well find they are punished at the ballot box at least as much if not more than those who are willing to take the risk of going into coalitions.

Gordon Brown is now seriously damaging his colleagues

There have been a number of occasions recently when I have heard cabinet ministers on TV and/or radio making complete idiots of themselves.

The reason seems to me largely because of Gordon Brown's incompetence or ridiculous political posturing. Here is an example:

On Radio 4's "Any Questions" this week there was a question about the Iraq Enquiry and Tessa Jowell tied herself up in knots. When questioned about why the government couldn't have taken the decision to hold it in public she insisted that it is not the place of a Minister to decide this and it must be for the inquiry head. However Jonathan Dimbleby pointed out to her that Gordon Brown had indeed decided on Monday that the inquiry had to be held in secret for "national security" reasons making a mockery of her statement that ministers cannot decide. The audience were unimpressed with jeers and even an attempt to start a slow hand clap. Jowell looked ridiculous and all because the truth is that Gordon Brown blundered by making the inquiry secret at a time when secrecy is a massively hot political topic. It should have been obvious to anyone advising Brown and Brown himself that a secret inquiry would never wash. It is political ineptitude of the highest order that this was allowed to be presented as the solution.

There are other examples too. Liam Byrne and Andy Burnham have both come across as blithering imbeciles in recent days as they have tried to argue that spending cuts are not spending cuts and refusing to answer straight questions. The reason for this is because Gordon Brown wants to be able to claim that the Tories will cut 10% whilst Labour will increase spending. The truth to anyone who spends more than 30 seconds with the figures is that Labour will have to cut heavily as well. In fact the 10% is from Labour's own figures! And yet Byrne and Burnham have been forced to go on air to argue that black is white and end up just looking silly.

And on and on it will go as Brown continues to blunder and try to map out non-existant dividing lines. Liam Byrne, Andy Burnham and many other cabinet ministers will be hoping to have long futures as politicians. But what I can see happening over the next year is what happened to almost all of John Major's cabinet. The stench of decay that pervades this administration will cling to all who are in it, especially the ones brave enough to go onto the media and argue Brown's distorted nonsense. The public will associate them too strongly with this rotten government and it will be impossible for them to dissociate themselves from it.

Brown will have no significant political future after the next election but by his actions he is now condemning the next generation of Labour politicians to many, many years in the wilderness as he taints them all with his poisonous politics.

It actually makes me wonder if James Purnell is smarter than the lot of them put together.

Is public opinion way ahead of MPs on drug policy reform?

I have been an advocate of a more progressive approach to drug policy in this country for a long time. The current laws just aren't working and the fact that there are about 100,000% more heroin users now than in 1971 when the current drug laws came into effect is but one of a myriad of facts that prove this.

However this is one area where politicians are terrified to say anything for fear of being painted as "SOFT ON DRUGS" by the press and their parliamentary opponents who seemingly never fail to oblige whenever one of them does briefly pop their head above the parapet. This all seems to stem from a perception that the public will not stand for any sort of liberalisation. But I wonder if that is the case.

I have noticed a number of times recently when I have heard or seen this issue debated that the majority of people taking part seem to agree that the current system has utterly failed and a significant number seem very open to (or even fully advocating) the idea of liberalisation of the laws. I am talking about looking at the comments posted after articles in newspapers and listening to debates on the radio. I recall one such debate on Victoria Derbyshire's Radio 5 phone in show last year which was ostensibly about the reclassification of Cannabis from class B to class C and virtually every caller said that was a stupid debate, that the real debate should be whether they are legalised and in their view they should. There were numerous different people of different ages in the space of about 20 minutes on the phone in. Something similar happened on an "Any Answers" phone in on Radio 4 last year.

I came across this article today by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, a very well respected journalist who is asking if it is time to seriously discuss legalising drugs. I mention it not so much for the article (which is good and worth reading) but for the comments below it. I have only had time to read about the first 100 or so (out of 400-odd at last count) but they are overwhelmingly in agreement that drugs should be legalised. There are lots of very well thought out and argued reasons for this. I would say 70% or 80% of the comments are in favour.

Now of course this is just a few anecdotal instances I have noted but I think this could be significant. Politicians act as if there is a huge groundswell of feeling against even talking about the potential for reform in this area and I am just not seeing it. This seems to be a classic case of the political and media classes conspiring with each other to keep debate about a particular issue completely under wraps and I cannot for the life of me fathom why this should be.

I accept there are arguments on both sides for this but the argument never seems to be had. When was the last time you heard a senior politicains seriously engage with the issues on this subject? The last time I recall the question being raised on BBC Question Time, Liam Byrne responding for the government came out with a load of nonsense about how ecstacy is dangerous because he is a father or something along those lines. Completely failing to engage with the issue and appealing to emotion, a classic non-argument. The only person on that panel who actually engaged with it was Monty Don, a TV gardener!

I wonder when politicians will realise that public opinion has already moved way outside the confines of the narrow strictures they have imposed upon themselves?

Liam Byrne was unintelligible on Today this morning

I listened to the 8:10am interview with Liam Byrne and Phillip Hammond this morning on the Radio 4 Today programme and I could hardly understand a word of what Liam Byrne was saying.

He kept talking about "tough choices" and "difficult decisions" but as far as I could tell he didn't answer a single one of John Humphries questions, he just blethered on about Tory cuts whilst failing to acknowledge that Labour will on their own figures have to cut too.

It is absolutely pathetic. Do politicians who do this, really think they are fooling anyone? They just come across as evasive and in Byrne's case today unintelligible. I follow politics very closely and have a fair grasp of the economic issues involved but I did not understand what Byrne was on about by the end of the interview.

I almost get tired of saying this but if politicians want to understand why people feel so disengaged from politics, they should listen to Byrne from this morning and try to put themselves in the shoes of an ordinary voter.