What does this picture tell us about how modern politics works?

1992 and all that

This picture was taken on 16th September 1992. That is the day that subsequently became known as "Black Wednesday" when sterling came crashing out the Exchange Rate Mechanism. It features then Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont explaining to the massed ranks of the media what had just happened regarding sterling.

But the reason why this picture has become more historic in recent years is because of who is lurking in the background. It is a fresh faced, 25 year old David Cameron (the one who looks a bit like he doesn't know where to put himself).

He was a special adviser to Lamont at that time which is why he is hovering there like a ghost at the feast.

Ever since Cameron's rise to prominence as Tory leader in 2005 I have found this picture quite fascinating for what it tells us about how modern politics works. As it has turned out, on the worst day of his career, Lamont happened to be standing next to the man who would end up being the very next Conservative Prime Minister after John Major. And yet at that point, that man was not even a Member of Parliament. In fact he wouldn't become one for nearly another nine years.

Of course some of that coincidence is down to the fact that the Tories were out of power after 1997 for a long time. If they'd got back in in say 2002 it would have been a different story. But if we think about the odds against the very next Conservative PM happening to be with the Chancellor on the darkest economic day for at least a generation (at that point) we start to see how strange that is if our politics is properly meritocratic.

If we start with an assumption that it is let's just look how unlikely what that picture tells us actually is. At any one time, there are around 40 million people in this country who are eligible to become Prime Minister. Let's say (being generous) that half of them have a conservative leaning and hence might at least agree with the party politically. If we had known on that day that the next Tory PM would be elected in 18 years time it could pretty much have been any of those people (or their demographic equivalents 18 years hence).

But it wasn't any of them. It was the man standing next to the Chancellor.

Our politics isn't very meritocratic. A fair few MPs get their seats because of who they know. Cameron followed a familiar path which was PPE at Oxbridge (or other high calibre university), special adviser, short period in private industry followed by selection for a safe seat for the 2001 election. From there he impressed his parliamentary colleagues (of course he knew the ropes well given his history) and by 2005 was Leader of the Opposition.

It is a well trodden route and once you understand how the political parties groom these bright young things and smooth the way for them into parliament and up the greasy pole, far from being surprising that Cameron ended up leader and PM it starts to look almost inevitable that him or one of his kind was quite likely to make it there. It is no coincidence that George Osborne also took a similar route to the top.

But the Tories have always been like this haven't they? Words in ears about "good chaps"? Funny handshakes etc.? We'd expect better from Labour wouldn't we?

1997 and all that

Uh oh....

Uxbridge Tory says politicians aren't allowed to have a sense of humour

@JamesCousins on Twitter has drawn my attention to this story about an Uxbridge Conservative councillor who has been ousted by his local Tory party and barred from standing as a candidate by them because of a joke quiz he did on Facebook entitled: "How sexy am I?".

This is a quote from Christopher White, branch chairman of Uxbridge Conservative Group:

"There is the issue of your lack of judgment over inappropriate material being placed by you on the social networking site Facebook. With deep regret, we have decided not to reselect you as a council candidate for the 2010 council elections."

Now there may be more going on than meets the eye here and there could be other reasons for this action but if it is true that he has been ousted because of his joke quiz then I am pretty much speechless.

As I have said time and again, what sort of people do we want in politics? Normal people who have a sense of humour and do things like jokey quizzes on Facebook to share with their friends or bland automatons who never say or do anything even vaguely controversial or indeed interesting?

I think it is clear what sort Mr White wants for his local Conservative party.

There is now a group on Facebook called "Tell the Tories to Re-Select Geoff Courtenay" which I have just joined.

Is there a better way than "Collective Responsibility"?

I have written in the past about how frustrating I find it that government ministers (and often shadow ministers) won't answer questions and how they speak in an anodyne sometimes meaningless language that can be almost impenetrable to anyone outside the Westminster village.

Of course what happens eventually is that ministers leave office and then in their post-political careers you often find that they are interesting people with interesting views and opinions about things. Almost the exact opposite of how they seemed when they were in office.

There are various reasons why our system of government causes this state of affairs but the main one is the principle of "Collective Responsibility". This is whereby all members of the government take responsibility for the decisions of that government. It is supposed to give us strong and clear government. It is the system we have used for hundreds of years with only a small number of temporary deviations (e.g. Wilson allowed members of his cabinet to campaign for and against membership of the EEC in the 1970s). It is also used by many governments throughout the world.

From my perspective though, I wonder if this way of doing things is fit for purpose any more. Here are a few negative consequences of collective responsibility:

• Ministers find it difficult to answer questions put to them. I can understand how hard the strait-jacket of CR must make it for ministers. They are asked questions but sometimes they are not exactly sure what the government line is or exactly what their colleagues may have said so they waffle or give an answer that is non-committal. Or they use well learned tactics to shift the ground onto something they are comfortable answering and answer this instead. It takes considerable intelligence and talent to be able to navigate this sort of minefield but isn't this ultimately a waste of time and energy that could be better spent? We find out eventually what ministers really thought in their memoirs or through other means. It's a facade that we all know exists and they know we know. And we know they know we know. Etc.
• Interviewers pick at ministers in order to try and provoke a "gaffe". Interviewers often know where the fissure points are in government and which ministers may not be "fully on board" for certain policies so they will try and trap them into saying something that is not 100% consistent with something one or more of their colleagues has said previously. Then this is pounced on as a "gaffe". I can see that sometimes this could serve a purpose if a policy is weak or ill-thought through and the interviewer is trying to expose this but more often than not it is just a game of cat and mouse between interviewed and interviewee. Experienced politicians will not fall into these traps but they do it by again, speaking in an impenetrable language.
• We don't get to know what our elected representatives really think about things. We voted for them. They are often intelligent people who have risen to the top of their profession. They are supposed to represent us and yet what we get is anodyne waffle because they are forbidden to tell us what they really think.
• The real decisions get thrashed out behind closed doors and the public don't get a say in any sort of nuance about how those decisions are reached. We simply have the blunt instrument of "keep 'em" or "chuck 'em out" once every four or five years. In the meantime we don't get any sort of a say.

I am sure there are loads more but that will do for starters.

My wife (who is not directly involved with politics herself) will often say to me "Why won't they answer the question?" or "What is she on about?" when I am watching political programmes. She is a very well educated professional person but she is turned off by the sort of display she regularly sees like this and I struggle to answer her (and other non-political friends who ask me the same) questions on this. I try to explain to them why ministers can't really say what they mean or think but the more I do it, the more it just all seems so artificial and yes, silly.

It is this sort of thing that continues the public's disengagement with politics. It makes them think politicians are all liars because they hear them say one thing in government and then later when they have left office, something completely different. It has people shouting at their radios and TVs in frustration that for seventh time Minister X has avoided answering Humphries or Paxman's question.

Now, after all my criticism I am not going to pretend there are any easy answers to this. This culture and way of doing things is deeply embedded in our politics.

There must be things we can do to improve it though, surely? I think that one of the problems is that the people who could do something about it, the politicians themselves are so ensconsed in the current system that they cannot see the wood for the trees and it would almost be like speaking alien to them to get them to engage with doing things differently.

I am not a political scientist or academic but here are a couple of ideas to throw into the mix as to how we could improve this situation. I am sure there will be problems with what I suggest but I offer them as starting points for discussion. Hopefully other people will be able to contribute their thoughts in the comments below too.

Here goes:

• Allow more votes to be treated as "conscience votes" are now. These are usually reserved for things like votes on the death penatly or stem cell research. But could this not also be extended to other areas?
• Allow ministers to be honest about their views. I am a director of a company and I run my it with 4 other people who attend management meetings. Of course we do not always agree on everything and we sometimes have quite heated debates but we take the decisions and act upon them accordingly. However, when I am talking to our staff, I don't feel obliged to pretend that I personally agreed with everything that was decided. If asked I feel able to give my honest view about things but can explain that I lost the argument and it has been decided to do something a certain way and we will do our best to make it work. Why can't ministers work on this sort of principle? It would mean they could be more honest about their views and we, the public would know what they were thinking and I would know which ministers were aligned with me on which issues. (I am sure commenters will have views on this one!)

I am also interested to hear whether others have ideas about how to change things in this area. I can't be the first person to have lamented the existing system and its shortcomings.

If I get a decent amount of response I might do another post on this later on.

One final point, I am not politically naive. I know how hard it would be to change the culture we have but to anyone who thinks this is all pie in the sky I would ask what do you propose instead to help re-engage the electorate with politics?

Should opponents call Gordon Brown a liar?

There has been various talk in the blogosphere and in newspaper comments recently about how Gordon Brown is not being honest when it comes to Labour's spending plans after the next election. There is a debate going on as to whether it would make sense for David Cameron or other opponents of his to call him a liar directly.

I have even read a suggestion that Cameron should do it at PMQs and then refuse to take it back thus breaking parliamentary procedure to underline how serious the situation is.

I am sure Cameron won't do this and I would be surprised if any senior politician does it in the chamber. They will find forms of words that mean the same thing but fall short of actually doing it. I can understand why as well. It would drag the whole debate down.

That however does not stop the media and bloggers from doing it. As we have already seen recently, Fraser Nelson has put his head above the parapet to widespread acclaim for having the guts to stand up to Ed Balls.

This needs to happen more. Labour will only get away with it if their lies remain unexposed but I think they underestimate the power of the blogosphere and the new media.

Brown is embarking upon a dangerous experiment and it is one that I think he will eventually regret.

Why do Charlotte and James feel they cannot stand?

There has been a lot of response to Charlotte Gore's post last week where she ruled herself out of standing as PPC for Halifax and gave a number of reasons why she felt she was not suitable to be one ever. Here is a flavour:

Amongst the many reasons why I would make a terrible PPC my personal favourite is this blog. Oh, it’ll take a day or so, but any campaign run by me could be derailed very quickly by finding a few choice quotes. Charlotte Gore wants to axe the welfare state! Charlotte Gore wants to cut spending! Charlotte Gore is pro Business and anti Union! Charlotte Gore wants to legalise drugs! Charlotte Gore thinks the BNP should be allowed on television! That’s just the start of it. There’s enough in this blog to kill any political career one hundred times over.

she also drafts the following letter:

Dear Halifax,

I’m looking for someone. It might be you. It might be someone you know. This is someone who’s sick of politicians and sick of mainstream politics. That’s most of us these days, and who could blame us?

The person I’m looking for gets angry that the Government takes £10 billion pounds - more than twice as much as the once mighty HBOS ever earnt before tax - from cigarette duties alone. They get furious that £30 worth of petrol includes £20 of tax… and for what? This person feels ill when they discover the Government is now spending more than the entire British population takes home in wages, and they ask: For what? Where is the money going?

This person looks around and sees a country brought to its knees, surviving only on loans from the rest of the world. This person knows that Halifax’s biggest employer is the council, and it makes this person angry to think that a town that was at the very heart of the industrial revolution could be sunk so low as to survive only on scraps from the Government table. This person thinks we should be better than this.

But that’s not all. The person I’m looking for looks around and sees a country where trainspotters - of all people - are arrested under anti-terrorism laws and where it has become illegal to take photographs of the police. They see a Government determined to censor the internet, to monitor their emails and internet use. They see more and more rules and laws telling people how they should live and behave: Don’t eat. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink. Don’t drive. Don’t say this. Don’t say that. Don’t vote for them. This person thinks Governments are supposed to be servants of the people, not the other way around.

If you see this person, will you pass on a message? I’d be very grateful. The message is this: “You are missed. Please come back.”

Yours Sincerely,

Charlotte Gore

I posted the following in the comments on the thread:

Charlotte. I feel very strongly that people like you should stand. The very fact that you have the guts and integrity to make your strongly held views known and back them up with robust argument and intellectual rigour makes you an ideal candidate to run for parliament and hold the government to account when you get there.

I understand where you are coming from but I absolutely hate, repeat HATE the fact that many people by the time they get into parliament are anodyne speak your weight robots who speak an almost unintelligble language and appear to have no serious beliefs or underpinning to their views.

So what if you have said a few things that would get the Daily Mail riled? They need to be taken on. It is only through people like you that it will ever happen.

I understand that this is a difficult seat to fight and it would likely be for naught so I am not even necessarily saying you should go for this one but please, please do not rule yourself out from ever standing which is what you seem to be saying.

Later on James Graham of Quaequam Blog fame posted the following comment:

I think you are right and that some of the people on this thread are quite naive: you are totally unsuitable candidate material. If it is any consolation, I am too.

While I think it would be a nod in the right direction, a change in the ‘boring’ electoral system ultimately won’t make either of us more electable either.

I don’t actually think it is that bad that the people who tend to rise to the top of politics have relatively porous views. MPs have to be all-rounders. What you haven’t addressed is how frustrating your life would be battling away at your libertarian agenda in a Parliament where the vast majority of MPs were at best indifferent. How long would it be able to maintain your interest? It would certainly bore me. Why else do single issue political parties like UKIP adopt stance that they won’t actually do any work in the Parliament they are elected to, and just hoover up the expenses for five years?

There are hundreds of different ways to make a difference in politics. Just concentrate on those.

Just to quickly summarise:

Charlotte's argument against herself being suitable seems to be twofold. Firstly she thinks that her views are too extreme and could easily be used against her. Secondly the fact that many of her views are stridently set out on her blog for all to see means that she can't even use the time honoured method of keeping quiet about her real views on things.

James' argument is that MPs have to be good all-rounders (Jacks of all trades, Masters of none?) and that someone like Charlotte with very passionate views on civil liberties for example would quickly tire of the drudgery of the day to day life of an MP dealing with myriad important but often unexciting issues.

I completely and totally disagree with James' and Charlotte's assertions that they are unsuitable to stand as parliamentary candidates. I have not met either of them (yet) but I have interacted with them online and read enough of their blog posts to be able to say with confidence that our parliament would be enhanced were they to be elected MPs. Of this I am sure.

I am 34 years old. I only joined a political party (the Lib Dems) a year ago. I have been fascinated with politics for as long as I can remember but I sated my political appetite by hoovering up political newspaper comment (and latterly political blogs) as well as watching all the TV programmes and analysis. For years I thought that I did not want to get directly involved in politics itself and was happy to sit on the sidelines.

However I decided last year that I had had enough of doing this and I wanted to get involved. I was so tired of seeing politicians not answer questions and not engage with issues properly when involved in "debate". I cannot express how strongly I feel that politics should be open to everyone and not conducted in a secret code only accessible to people who have followed it closely for 20 years and who are able to parse things to understand what is really meant. I find it absolutely infuriating that most politicians find it impossible to be straight with people.

So what if someone thinks that the current drug laws are not working. To me that is self evident from looking at the objective facts. It should not be a political career destroying taboo to talk about this. It should not be off-limits to be honest about what we think should happen with public spending or taxes either. These issues are central to any serious debate about the political direction of the country and we have allowed our senior politicians to reduce the issues to a preposterous game of "YOU WANT TO CUT X THOUSAND TEACHERS!!1" and "YOU WANT TO INTRODUCE A TAX BOMBSHELL!!!11".

I am utterly, utterly sick of this way of politics being played out. UTTERLY. This is why I got involved and I refuse to play the game by these pathetic rules. I do say what I really think about things, I agree with much of what Charlotte says and am delighted to see her saying it.

I am distressed to see James also ruling himself out. His blog-posts are meticulously and precisely crafted to communicate whatever message he wishes to get across and are often persuasive in a way that I myself aspire to on here. James is one of the reasons I both joined the party and got more heavily involved in blogging. If there was any justice, James would already be an MP!

He makes the point that there are other ways to contribute and of course he is correct. Most people involved do not end up as MPs and there are councils and all sorts of other positions within and outside of the party from where people of passion and commitment can contribute. But I still think that the fact that both of these extremely talented people feel they are unsuitable for our primary political chamber speaks volumes not about them, but about how completely bereft the system that we, the people of this country have allowed the political class to construct.

I am not really sure what else to say about this now other than I am determined to do what I can from my little corner to push for politicians generally and Lib Dems in particular to hold themselves up to a better standard. This might sound like a platitude but it is not. I have been banging on about this sort of thing ever since I started blogging.

I will continue to be honest about my views on issues and if/when I find myself a victim of smears from things I have said or written about I will defend myself to the utmost. I am not going to take this lying down because if I do I will be letting this tired and discredited way of doing politics win.

I didn't get involved after all those years on the sidelines to allow that to happen.

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 this an off the record briefing from David Miliband?

Paul Waugh has highlighted something interesting. Apparently there has been an off the record briefing by "allies of the Foreign Secretary" in The Independent which rubbish Ed Balls in relation to his comments about the Iraq inquiry.

Now I am not saying that Ed Balls does not deserve this, he is a big boy and can doubtless take it as he so often dishes it out, but the comments contrast sharply with David Miliband's calls last week for the media to:

abandon unattributable briefings, saying all politicians’ spokesmen should be named, or not quoted by media outlets. "The gotcha culture of politics is not in anyone’s interests"

So presumably Mr Miliband is not happy with this latest development and will insist that the person involved be named. And if the Indy will not name them, Mr Miliband should name them himself in order to strike a blow against the spin and counter spin culture he clearly wants to change.

Oh, and if it turns out to have been Mr Miliband himself then surely his commitment to what he said last week is shot to ribbons?

Politicians will be held to account more easily in the future

Fraser Nelson wrote an excellent and widely praised blog post on the Spectator blog on Thursday entitled "Why Brown will get caught out this time round". In it he argues that Brown's usual trick of completely misrepresenting his opponent's position and then hammering away at it until it seeps into the public conscience is going to be much more difficult to achieve with hundreds or thousands of citizen journalists in the form of bloggers pulling apart his terminological inexactitudes.

An aspect of the future of politics and holding politicians to account though that Fraser did not highlight is the wealth of on the record data that is available through search engines to ordinary people.

I remember when Brown first became Prime Minister in 2007 and Cameron was asking if he would agree to a televised debate during the eventual General Election campaign. Brown high-handedly dismissed the idea claiming that we do not have a presidential system in this country. Unfortunately for Brown he was on the record in an interview on BBC Breakfast Time from 1987 calling for Margaret Thatcher to do exactly what Cameron had been arguing for. This was embrassing for the PM and I think is one of the things that helped propagate the idea that he is not straightforward with people as it was widely reported.

The thing is though that finding that clip must have been quite difficult. I have just tried to find it on Youtube and was not able to for example. It probably took a researcher to trawl back through restricted archive footage to get hold of it because it was from 1987 when the world wide web was a still a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee's eye.

I had a similar problem a few days ago trying to find a source for something I recall happening duirng the dog days of the John Major administration in about 1996. I remembered an advisor or somesuch having resigned and claimed that the government of the time acted "as if they had a divine right to govern". I remembered the exact quote but could not find an online source for it. I guess 1996 is too early for it to have been put on websites as a matter of course.

The thing is though that most of the main politicians of the present and certainly over the next few years (Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, David Miliband, Alan Johnson) have all come to prominence during a period when everything that they have ever said or done on the record will be recorded somewhere on the web (newspaper web sites, blogs, Youtube etc. etc.) and therefore in say 5 or 10 years time it is going to be very difficult for any of them to say or do things that go against firmly stated previous positions which may have been done for positioning purposes at the time but come back to haunt them without good and well explained reason.

But the most important aspect of this ties in with what Fraser was saying. Everybody has access to this information, not just journalists or TV archivists. If for example David Miliband is PM in 10 years time we bloggers would have instant access to all of his previous utterances and he will know that any position he takes will have to be able to be reconciled with this. We, the public will hold him directly to account; he will not be able to control the agenda through friendly journalists.

I think that the eventual effect of this will be more honest politics. The politicians who are more honest and are not easily able to be taken apart and hung by their own previous words will prosper in this new environment. The internet will be a liberating influence in a plethora of ways. Dinosaurs like Gordon Brown just don't get this but he will be part of the past soon enough partly undone by the new technology.

If David Cameron became Prime Minister next year, an interesting situation will arise in the run up to the subsequent General Election. Mr Cameron is on record thousands of times all archived across the web calling for a televised debate between the leaders. It would be almost impossible for him to credibly refuse it when the boot is on the other foot. That is one small example of how the technology will change the future of politics.

I for one am very much looking forward to this.

MPs cannot be allowed to prevent electoral reform

I am a big fan of This Week. I always try and watch it and have generally been very impressed with Michael Portillo in the last few years. He seems to have his finger on the pulse of most political issues. That's why I listened with particular interest last night when the discussion was about electoral reform.

Portillo seems to be under the rather odd impression that anything except the First Past the Post system is crazy. He was arguing that the only reason the BNP got MEPs was because of the "crazy" PR system. Andrew Neil tried to press upon him that it might be the fact that almost a million people voted for them but he was having none of it.

I am very disappointed with how unwilling the political old guard are to engage with the idea that FPTP might not be fit for purpose. We are a much more pluralistic country now than we were 50 years ago and our electoral system just does not reflect that.

Another thing that really hit home with me was when both Portillo and Diane Abbott talked about the political reality of getting a referendum on electoral reform through the House of Commons. They are both clearly of the view that irrespective of whatever Gordon Brown or Alan Johnson might wish to happen, many Labour MPs and virtually all Tory MPs would be against such an idea, thus they would not even allow a referendum on it.

This has had me thinking even more deeply about this issue. I have heard people say what I am about to say before but the whole expenses debacle brings it home even more clearly.

MPs as a group cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of democracy or of the country when it comes to the system that is used to elect them. They have too much vested interest in the existing system. Whatever they might say, they have already proved themselves incapable of doing what is right for the country/taxpayers with the expenses debacle. They were in charge of their own system of claims and remuneration and it is now abundantly clear that it was stacked massively in favour of them being able to claim almost anything they liked to their own personal advantage. They came up with all sorts of arguments against changing the system for years and years, tried to cover up the truth of what was going on and the only reason things are now changing is because all the information got out into the public domain. Now all political leaders and virtually all MPs accept it has to change and they could not, after all be trusted.

Exactly the same situation applies to the electoral system for the House of Commons. the First Past the Post system is completely unfair. It allows governments to be formed with 55% of the seats on 35% of the vote. It disenfranchises millions of people across the country. In fact the only people who really count at election time are the 100,000 or so swing voters in the marginal constituencies. I am afraid that having listened to the arguments from the MPs who are opponents of electoral reform they are mostly spurious and designed to fit into neat soundbites that can be used to shoot down the arguments of reformers without properly engaging with the issues.

What is missing from the debate on electoral reform is the sort of huge spasm of revulsion that the expenses scandal has caused. That is why the parallels between the two situations need to be highlighted at every opportunity.

Why should we take MPs at their word that FPTP is the right system when it massively favours many of them and effectively gives them tenure for life? They are in complete control of the terms and conditions of their own employment. They have already proved that they cannot be trusted when it comes to deciding these sorts of terms.

The solution is for a citizens convention populated by ordinary people chosen in the same way as juries are chosen (but with more than 12 members) who are given the time and space to look at all the different systems and come to a conclusion about which is the best one to change to. This can then be put to the country in a referendum. I favour Single Transferable Vote but I am happy to go with whatever the convention chooses.

I repeat, we should not trust MPs as a group to do what is right for the country on this issue. They are only human and they have too much of a vested interest in the current system. the time has come for this to change.

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.

Barbara Follett's Folly

Lordy, lordy. It's difficult to know where to begin with the revelations about MPs that are now coming thick and fast from The Telegraph.

There is lots of comment elsewhere but I wanted to focus firstly on this particular vignette:

Barbara Follett, the multi-millionaire Tourism Minister, claimed for private security patrols outside her London home costing more than £25,000. The parliamentary fees office, which is supposed to monitor claims, warned Mrs Follett that her claims may appear "excessive" if made public, but she was not deterred, saying she felt unsafe in Soho after being mugged.

WTF!? She got mugged so the tax payer was forced to shell out more than the average UK salary to make her feel a bit safer!? I got mugged when I was a student. It was a horrible experience and I felt very unsafe walking around at night for years afterwards. I would have loved private security patrols around my house but of course I live on Planet Earth.

The claims for toilet seats and refurbishment of second homes are disgusting but at least they have some vague relevance to an MPs ability to live in 2 different homes (as an aside it is clear that they have massively taken the mickey on these and they will certainly deservedly lose this perk) but to get a taxpayer funded private police force because you were mugged? That is so far removed from the reality of everyday people that I would be amazed if Follett (who has a majority of 3,139) is not turfed out in 12 months. Her Stevenage constituency party would do well to deselect her before that.

Oh, and one final thing, her husband is a multi-millionaire author for whom £25,000 would have been nothing and yet she still sent us the bill.

UPDATE: ConstantlyFurious in the comments has suggested that there should actually be a by-election and has a blog post to this effect too. Her behaviour is so egregious here that it might become inevitable. Is that the Chiltern Hundreds I can hear a callin'...

Why is this Government so incompetent?

The mortgage rescue scheme that this Government announced with such a fanfare last September but didn't actually introduce until January has so far only helped one household. Yes, that's right one.

I am getting so sick of them announcing some measure or other that they claim will help all sorts of people, only to find a while later that either they have not been implemented or have hardly helped anybody.

Ministers constantly use the announcements of these schemes to beat the opposition parties over the head with. It is as if the announcement is all that is needed and is then job done.

This Government in particular is terrible at administration. I think one of the reasons for this must be that most of the members of the administration have never run their own business and some of them have spent their entire working lives in politics. For them, making the speech is the job as far as they are concerned. They have never known anything different.

Something which I have been meaning to write about for a while is the sets of skills that a successful politician needs. They need to be able to speak with confidence in public with few notes. They need to be able to remember a brief. They need to be able to ingratiate themselves with enough members of a constituency party to get selected so this means they need to be charismatic. They need to be able to look like they are answering a question when in fact they are studiously not answering it. And they need to be able to use language in such a way as it sounds like they are agreeing with anything and everything that their party colleagues have ever said on any subject. I am sure there are other skills too but these seem to me to be the main ones.

Now those skills might be vital to climb the greasy pole and get selected, elected and then promoted to ministerial office. However I would argue that there are much more important skills that are needed for someone to be a government minister. And herein lies the problem. If you go for a job interview for a senior position in the private sector let's say Head of Marketing, you will be expected to have done marketing for many years followed by having previously been a Head of Marketing somewhere else (or at least a deputy or equivalent). You would stand virtually no chance of getting the job without being able to demonstrate aptitude and the correct skills and experience for the position.

Contrast this with how ministers are appointed. The PM chooses them on the basis of keeping a balance of positions within the party, loyalty to the whip, longevity of time in parliament, popularity of the individual (usually from them having made good speeches), alignment with his own political views etc. etc. etc. There is no interview or aptitude testing. They are just dropped in at the deep end without the requisite skills or any meaningful training. And these people then end up in charge of Multi-billion pound budgets.

It is no wonder that there are so many cock-ups. I am not really sure what the answer is because when they bring in ministers from outside they often also become croppers. They are usually much better at the administrative side but come a cropper on the political side. There are very few people, certainly in the Labour Party who straddle both. It is generally better in the Lib Dem and Tory parties because many of their MPs have run their own businesses so they have a better idea about this sort of thing.

Georgia Gould is too young to be an MP

There have been some shenanigans going on with the selection for Labour's candidate in the fairly safe seat of Erith and Thamesmead in south-east London. After tampering with a ballot box and allegations flying around, the process has been suspended.

One of the candidates to become the PPC is Georgia Gould who is the 22 year old daughter of Philip Gould, Tony Blair's longstanding pollster. There are quotes from local activists that they feel the process is being stitched up in her favour by the central party.

I don't particularly want to dwell on the ins and outs of this selection process. However I do feel that 22 or 23 is just too young to become an MP. When you are that young you have very little experience of life or business or, "the real world". Assuming you went to university, you have only just graduated and are just starting to make your way. It would be far better to go and get several years experience of real life before trying to become an MP.

Of course Georgia Gould is not an ordinary 22 year old given who her father is and she is likely to have been exposed to politics from a very young age. However, the fact that she is a serious candidate for this fairly safe Labour seat at such a young age is part of the problem we have with politics at the moment. She is clearly part of the political classes and the attempt to parachute her into this seat is symptomatic of a broken system. Why are Labour so keen to get her into parliament? Is she likely to be a strong independent voice who sticks up for her constituents, or is she likely to be lobby fodder who will do what she is told by the party leadersip in the hope of becoming a (perhaps the youngest ever) cabinet or shadow cabinet minister at some point?

My advice to Georgia is to get some real world experience and come back in 5 or 10 years time with that under your belt, and then try to get selected under your own steam, not by getting the party hierarchy to smooth the way for you. You will be a better politician and will be much more respected for doing it this way.

Lib Dems lead on second homes!

It's great to see that we are taking to lead on the second homes issue. Peter Hoskin has reported this today on the Spectator Coffee House blog.

Sarah Teather has released a statement that says:


"It is completely unacceptable that London MPs living within commuting distance of Westminster are allowed to claim money for a second home. Thousands of Londoners travel to work in Central London every single day, so why on earth shouldn’t their MPs?

The London second homes scandal doesn’t just damage individual MPs, it damages Parliament and our democracy.

It’s time that Parliament cleaned up its act. A full inquiry would be welcome, but unless Labour and Conservative MPs are prepared to vote for change it will continue to be business as usual at Westminster."


I am 100% behind this. It is exactly what we should be doing. As Irfan Ahmed posted a couple of weeks ago, Lib Dem MPs score higher than all the other parties in every catergory when constituents have been surveyed. We are clearly trusted by people and I would argue it is our duty to tackle this sort of behaviour as the two main parties clearly will not.

What I don't want to happen however is for the instances involving Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty to get completely lost in these calls for change. I still feel that they have a moral duty to accept they have strayed well outside the bounds of acceptable conduct, even if what they did is not strictly against the rules as they are currently constituted.

UPDATE: Alix has just posted a good article on this subject on LDV here.

McNulty's spin makes it worse

The news that has come out today that Tony McNulty has been claiming a second home allowance of around £14,000 per year for occasional use of his parents house 8 miles or so from his own house is another shocking example of how politicians are fleecing the tax payer.

There can be no excuse for this sort of behaviour. McNulty has been at pains to insist that he has not broken any rules. I am sure he is correct but in that case the rules are absolutely rotten.

He has already launched a pre-emptive strike on the criticism he obviously knew he was going to get by firstly explaining that he has stopped claiming the allowance (as of January this year) and secondly that he thinks the rules should be overhauled so that the second home claim can only be made if an MP lives at least 60 miles from Westminster.

Mr McNulty obviously thinks that this is politically very clever attempting to neutralise any attacks on him and trying to show himself on the morally correct side. However in my view this makes it even worse. Either he has just changed his mind in the light of the problems that other senior politicians in similar situations have encountered in which case it calls into question his previous judgement and his statements are just spin or, if he has thought this for a long time then it shows that he knew that what he was doing was morally wrong but he continued to do it for many years anyway.

He is a clever politician but he is being too clever by half here. If he thinks that what he has done is wrong and this Damascene conversion is for real then he should pay back the £60,000 he has claimed for this over the last few years.

Us hard pressed tax payers could do with the money.

Government arrogance

Peter Hoskin's post on Coffee House this morning reminded me about some thoughts I have had regarding the way government is conducted in this country. The main part of his post discusses how Gordon Brown and the Treasury were made aware in 2004 of the shortcomings in financial regulation with respect to Northern Rock but they had not considered it a priority and did nothing about it.

This is an all too familiar tale. Sometimes I feel like I have been living in a parallel universe for the last few years. I remember people like Vince Cable and others warning about the debt fuelled bubble and I also remember the high handed way the concerns were dismissed by Brown and other ministers. What is even more worrying about the latest revelations is that it seems as though a similar attitude was also being shown to the government's own advisers.

Of course, now Brown is trying to claim he was for tighter regulation but could not get international assent for what he wanted. This really does not ring true at all from I what remember seeing and hearing.

The thing is, this sort of high-handed attitude and approach is actively encouraged by our electoral system and system of government. The majority government is elected (with a minority of the votes) and ministers are appointed to their posts. They are all from the same party and once their line is decided, all of them defend to the hilt what they are doing. No dissent is brooked internally and of course all external criticism is defended against with counter attacks if they are deemed necessary. From what I can tell, this often becomes tribal and is almost done reflexively without any real analysis of the content of the criticism. As an aside I have even seen Labour MPs publicly state that they are voting along party lines even though they disagree with a policy. This is all considered fair game by the political classes.

But why does it have to be like this? Whenever the idea of electoral reform and/or coalition government is brought up you get an avalanche of comments from the political classes along the lines of "it leads to weak government". But have any of them taken a serious look at the consequences of our current system? Perhaps if there were more independent voices in the government and consideration had to be given to views outside those postulated for tribal political advantage, the results of policy would actually be better. Just imagine if Vince Cable had been in a powerful position in the cabinet over the last few years. I think most people would agree that we would be in a better position now.

Just remember all of this the next time you see a minister mindlessly dismissing external criticism. This sort of approach does nobody any favours in the end.

Caroline Spelman gets away with it too...

Following the lack of anything being done about Jacqui Smith's shameful manipulation of the MPs expenses system to her financial advantage, it looks like Caroline Spelman is also getting away with paying someone who appeared to be doing little more than nannying duties for her out of the public purse when this is not allowed by the rules.

Jon Craig on the Sky News blog reports that she has been made to repay £9,600 in "overpayments" but the judgement appears to have been very sympathetic and it looks like she is off the hook politically.

I was at the the Convention of Modern Liberty at the weekend and during one of the sessions, Peter Oborne said that the Westminster system is structured in such a way as it is now effectively the political classes in a conspiracy against ordinary people in this country. When I see the Tories and Labour behaving like this and getting away with it I can't help but wonder if he is right.

Jacqui Smith is getting away with it...

It's not often I agree so strongly with Simon Heffer but his column in the Telegraph today is pretty close to what I think about how some of the political class in this country behaves, with particular reference to Jacqui Smith.

Amongst others, he makes the following point:

"We know Miss Smith's game. She will struggle to hold her seat at the next election, as Labour will struggle to hold the country. Faced not just with the loss of a ministerial salary but also an MP's one (with all its juicy expenses), and with life in the House of Lords perhaps no longer a gravy train, it makes sense to coin it in while you can. This includes having her husband on her payroll, too. If lean times hit the Smith household, there should be a bit of fat to live off while the Job Centre does its work."

I am sorry to say that I think he is spot on here. I did not mention it in my previous post about lodgergate (as nobody else seems to be calling it!) but I did wonder if her behaviour could at least in part be explained by the fact that she has very little to lose because she will likely be out of parliament at the next election.

Irrespective of all of this, I find it shocking that the parliamentary standards commisioner can have dismissed the case against Smith so lightly. He claims that there is not enough evidence against her. So the only conclusion I can draw from this is that if with such an obvious case of manipulating the system to claim that kipping in a spare room round at your sisters (when your husband, children and most of your personal effects are in a house 100 miles away where you appear to spend the majority of your nights, your own website refers to you "still living in Redditch" and your own spokesman in an attempted defence referred to your Redditch house as your "home") can be claimed as your primary residence then the system is very, very broken. I am very saddened that more of a fuss has not been made of this by the media and other politicians.

Guido has been making a lot of running on this story (hattip to him for the Smith website bit above) and has written to the commissioner himself about this. I fully support his attempts to question this situation and keep the media's eye on it.

Jacqui Smith and Lodgergate

This story in the Mail on Sunday does not look at all good for Jacqui Smith. There are allegations that she is claiming her primary residence as being a house in London that her sister owns and hence can have claimed up to £20,000 per year for this residence. The estimated cost of the police protection she requires because of her residential choice is close to £200,000. As Home Secretary she could have a grace and favour apartment which already has police protection anyway but she refuses to.

In order to be able to legitimately claim the £20,000 per year, the rules state that MPs must get value for money. According to the article they are also warned to "avoid any arrangement which may give rise to an accusation that you are, or someone close to you is, obtaining an immediate benefit or subsidy from public funds".

The part of that article that seems most damning to me however is this:

The allowance must not be used to meet the costs of rent or a mortgage from 'a partner or family member'. And the rules say an MP's 'main home' will normally be 'a matter of fact' and 'where you spend more nights than any other'.

So if the primary residence is to be claimed against, then she should be there on average for the majority of nights. Her spokesman when asked stated: "She tends to go home Thursday evenings and returns on Sunday or Monday." which has been pointed out is an average of three and a half days per week, not a majority and it will be interesting to see how many Mondays as opposed to Sundays there actually are.

The thing that I found most interesting here however is that when this was pointed out to the spokesman, he said: "She doesn't count the number of nights.". In that case, how is she supposed to be able to know which is her primary residence!? The spokesman is trying to make it seem like a trivial irrelevance that is beneath the HS to be bothering with details like how many nights she spends at her primary residence. However because it is critical to determining if the rules have been broken, this is nonsense. Either she has not spent the bulk of her nights there which means it looks like the rules have been broken or she has. Ignorance should be no defence. Imagine if I could not be bothered to count how much tax I needed to pay each year and just submitted what I reckoned was right? Would I be able to get away with this?

I think it is worth mentioning also that the spokesman said "She goes home on Thursday evenings...". This could be a slip of the tongue but even he seems to be referring to her Redditch residence as her home which most people usually use to mean her primary residence.

Guido has pointed out that her advisers claims that the fees office have cleared her claim is disingenuous as they take the members word for it. This is typical Campbellesque spin to try and limit the damage which shows how deep the mire the HS could be in here.

This all smells very bad to me and does not augur at all well for her prospects of holding onto her position as Home Secretary.

Morus of Political Betting thinks that she will be able to tough all of this out and that Gordon Brown will do everything he can to save her. I was going to argue against this and that the allegations are so serious that once the media feeding frenzy starts her position will become untenable. However I have just had a look on the BBC News website and I cannot see any reference to this story, even on the Politics page so maybe he is right. It will be a disgrace if this is not followed up rigourously by the rest of the media. Perhaps this is another situation where bloggers may have to do the media's duty for them...?

Further blog reaction here, here and here.

MP's Salary Dilemma

The story today about Labour peers allegedly being paid for influencing legislation which I have posted about separately here has reminded me of something else I have been meaning to post for a while.

MPs are allowed to have interests outside the house and are allowed to hold down other jobs, consultancies, directorships etc. as long as they declare everything. To many "ordinary" people this seems quite odd as they already have what would appear to be at least a full time job in representing tens of thousands of constituents and also holding the government to account and debating and voting for legislation in the chamber.

The dilemma that many of these MPs face is that although they are currently paid £63,291 (see here for source) this is absolutely huge compared to the average salary (around £25,000 - see here). MPs know this and so they are generally fairly muted when it comes to complaining about their salaries and they daren't try to push it up too much for fear of a voter backlash when they already earn more than 2.5 x average earnings.

The big difference though is that MPs are not really drawn from the "average" population. They are disproportionately represented by lawyers, barristers, business leaders and people from other professions and backgrounds where they could command a salary much higher than £63K. It is unsurprising therefore that there is a feeling amongst some MPs (albeit as I said largely hidden) that they are not very well paid.

They do of course get very generous expenses which to an extent compensates for this. I fully concede that there is a justifcation for some and perhaps a lot of the expenses they are given as it pays for research and admin staff and also accomodation in London which is of course important if the MP does not represent a London seat. However the expenses should only be used for what is necessary. they should not be used to buy plasma TVs and to refit kitchens. The rest of us have to pay for this sort of thing, why should MPs be any different?

My view is that MPs are paid more than enough for the job they do. If they want to earn the sort of money that they could earn outside the Commons then they should apply to be appointed to the office of the Chiltern Hundreds or the Steward of the Manor of Northstead and allow somebody who really wants the job to take their place - there are no shortage of applicants!

I also think that although it is important for MPs to have experience outside the Commons, this should come before they take their seat, not during. This may make it less likely that very young people would become MPs but that may not be such a bad thing as a bit of life experience first is warranted I feel. There would still, I am sure be exceptional politicians who make it there very young.

As for expenses, well I have a few ideas in this area too:

1) MPs researchers and assistants should be paid for directly by the state. There should be monitoring of this to be sure that this is done fairly (e.g. MPs with a particularly "busy" constituency may need more help than some others). The jobs should be given to the best candidate in an open process, not necessarily given to wives, children, friends etc. unless they happen to be the best qualified.

2) The state could purchase (or build, or adapt one or more of its existing buildings) into a large accomodation block for MPs. They would be able to use their flat within this to live in when they needed to be in London and it could operate like a military baracks or halls of residence whereby meals etc. were provided, thus allowing them to concentrate on the busy job in hand that they have. The flats would be furnished to a reasonable standard already. There would be no need to provide money to them for accomodation and they would not realise any capital gains in the end as the property would revert to the state. I understand there are practical problems with this but with the political will they could be overcome.

3) MPs would still be given expenses for things like travel to and from their constituency etc. but all receipts will need to be kept and they would need to put in a expense claim which if necessary may require justifcation like us mere mortals have to.

I realise this may not make me very popular amongst MPs (of all parties) but they have to realise how bad they look to the public and it will take some sort of radical reform like this to restore public confidence in this area.