If Cameron knew his inheritance was from tax haven money he must resign

What a pickle Cameron is in now.

With the leak of the papers from Panama based Mossack Fonseca it has been revealed that the Prime Minister's late father, Ian used their services and was able to ensure a company that he ran (Blairmore Holdings) was able to appear as if it was run offshore. This was done using various methods including Ian Cameron regularly flying to board meetings that were held abroad even though the bulk of the company's business was done in the UK.

Before I start, I should make clear that it seems pretty certain that neither Cameron's father, nor Cameron himself have done anything illegal.

However, David Cameron has benefited hugely from the schemes his father used. He has inherited a large amount of money from his father's estate and it looks very likely indeed that some UK tax was not paid on profits made by the company that may have provided that money in a way that is morally dubious to say the least.

Now you may argue firstly that as nothing illegal was done here there is nothing to see and we should move on as some are doing. I am afraid I profoundly disagree. Cameron has been banging on and on about tax avoidance (see here, here and here for examples from last year) for years now accusing those who engage in it of "morally wrong" behaviour. See here for his comments when comedian Jimmy Carr was caught out:



So the Prime Minister's position on this before this latest scandal blew up was crystal clear. People who are involved in avoiding UK tax by using clever schemes like making it seem like companies are based offshore when by any reasonable measure they are actually based in the UK are engaging in immoral behaviour and should pay their UK taxes. Indeed the pressure that comments he made above put on Carr forced him to pay more tax on his money and to stop the practise that was allowing him to avoid it.

That brings us to what should happen now.

Cameron's line so far has been variously to claim that this is a "family matter" and also that he has no shares nor any money held abroad. He made comments yesterday where he told us he simply has his PM's salary, some savings from which he gets some interest and one house in London that he rents out while he is in Downing Street (although this appears to ignore the house he has in his Oxfordshire constituency but let's let that one slide as to be fair he only has that because he is an MP).

Neither of these defences are good enough I'm afraid. It is not a "family matter" whether our Prime Minister has personally benefited from tax avoidance schemes that he has been campaigning and legislating against. It is very much our business. And his comments about his current finances ignore the history of where his "savings" came from in the first place. A classic politician's way of answering the question.

I am sure Cameron, who has a notoriously hot temper and has previously invoked his father as a huge influence on his life is furious about how this is all being reported. What he needs to do now to cauterize this is quite simple. If he knew nothing about the tax avoidance schemes his father's company used then he needs to work out how much tax would and should have been paid on what he inherited had those schemes not been used and write a cheque out to HMRC.

If however he did know what his father's company was doing and knowingly inherited a large amount of money where UK tax had not been paid in a "morally wrong" way (to use his own words) and then sat on it for years then his situation is much more stark.

I know others will take a different view but on manifest hypocrisy about finances I take a hard line. Under those circumstances he will have shown himself unfit for office and he must resign as Prime Minister.

Labour have forfeited any right to complain about boundary changes

So the (evil natch) Tories have got themselves a majority and are now going to press ahead with boundary reform. They intend to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and also to even up the number of voters in constituencies to within about a 5% margin. This is in contrast to the situation at the moment where there can be huge disparities between numbers of voters with some constituencies being 4 or 5 times the size of others.

Now before I get into how Labour have no right to whine about this let me just reiterate my long held position on our electoral system. I think First Past the Post is not fit for purpose. I think it hugely distorts results, forces parties to focus on a tiny number of swing voters in marginal seats and prevents new parties from getting a foothold hence allowing our atrophied and sclerotic politics to perpetuate.

But Labour don't agree with this. Since the Second World War they have been in power cumulatively for 30 years, most recently the 13 years from 1997 to 2010. In all those long years, and especially when Blair had his big majorities between 1997 and 2005 they could easily have put through a change to the electoral system to make it more proportional (or what I would call "fairer"). Indeed after the Jenkins Commission (set up by the new Labour government) reported in 1998 and recommended we change to a system of Alternative Vote Plus (a preferential system topped up to add proportionality) they would have had the perfect political opportunity. But they chose not to do this. The system that had served them so well and given them a huge majority was deemed fine and dandy. Blair has subsequently admitted as much.

The boundaries have long favoured Labour because of their vote distribution and the constituency sizes. Until the night of the long sgian dubhs they could expect to get significantly more seats than the Tories even if their vote share had been the same. It's questionable whether this is still the case following their rout in Scotland but nevertheless this held for many, many years.

So what we essentially had was an electoral system that was strongly bent in favour of the two main parties, Labour and the Tories, and then within that bending, it was bent a little further in favour of Labour than the Tories. Labour were fine with the massive bending towards the two main parties, and of course the extra bending towards them in favour of the Tories.

Unsurprisingly the Tories, while happy with the overall massive bending towards the two main parties were not happy with this extra bias towards Labour. They saw an opportunity to "fix" this problematic (for them) part of the system by evening up the constituency sizes and reducing their number. They were (and are) able to use the cover of "making the system fairer" even though the effect will be to bend things more in their favour. Analysis suggests it may give them another 20 or so seats compared to what they would get at the moment. It's not an exact science but most observers agree it will be to their benefit.

And of course Labour are not happy with this change. There are cries of "foul" and "gerrymandering". But they've brought this on entirely themselves. A rotten system that was bent in favour of red/blue hegemony but slightly more towards red will now be a rotten system that will be bent a little more towards blue. But the Tory argument that evening up the constituency sizes will be fairer is very hard to rebut. It is unfair that there is such disparity in the system and Labour could get more seats than the Tories for the same vote. If you accept the premise that FPTP is the best system (as Labour clearly have every time they achieve power) then you simply don't have a leg to stand on trying to claim what the Tories are doing is unfair.

I'd scrap the whole lot and change it to multi-member constituencies using a preferential voting system. But Labour have never done anything like that for Westminster and there are no signs they want that now. Maybe after another 15 years of opposition (which is looking increasingly likely with the Corbyn/McDonnell nexus) they'll change their mind again. Although even if they do I'd have no confidence in them actually changing things were they ever to fluke back into power again.

But in the meantime the best thing they can do about the incipient Tory changes is pipe down.

They long ago forfeited any right to complain about "unfairness" in our electoral system.

The unaccountability of Nick Clegg

Something that has been bubbling under for a while with me is a niggling feeling that Nick Clegg hasn't really been held to account for the utter devastation that the Lib Dems suffered back in May. Sure he resigned and is now just a lowly backbench MP. And indeed he is now in the somewhat excruciating position of not being able to step down as any subsequent by-election under current circumstances would probably lose the Lib Dems another seat that they can ill afford to squander.

So perhaps that combination is enough. And yet I feel that somehow it is not.

I was a Lib Dem from 2008 to 2013 and I still very much consider myself a fellow traveller at least with the membership if not the leadership in the latter years of the coalition. I was excited by the vibrancy of the party in the run up to 2010 and after the coalition was formed I was genuinely optimistic about the possibility of real political reform and a strong liberal flavour to the government that would play out over the following 5 years.

Sadly it was not really to be. At least not in any meaningful and sustainable way. Despite the promises the only political reform we got were fixed term parliaments which were only really instituted to protect the Lib Dems from their larger coalition partner and they were set at 5 years rather than the more accountable and liberal 4 years that most campaigners for this change wanted to see. Apart from that, electoral reform at Westminster, Lords reform and other measures people like me wanted to see fell by the wayside.

In addition to that a number of measures that most liberals would never have wanted to see on the statute books were rammed through in the teeth of party opposition. Secret courts were a resignation issue for some, most notably Jo Shaw who made the best political speech I have ever seen in person from the podium at the 2013 Lib Dem conference. I nearly left myself at that point but stayed on in hope only to drift away disillusioned later that same year. There were other things as well, tuition fees, 45p tax rate etc. etc. etc. I don't need to go through the list. Most people reading this will know them all by rote.

But politics is tough and it certainly wouldn't be fair to blame Clegg for all of those, although he was complicit.

There are some things though for which the blame squarely falls on his shoulders. I'll highlight just three here although there are more.

Firstly the complete lack of any attempt to change the way PMQs was practised at all. Clegg stood in for Cameron at PMQs many, many times. And instead of using the opportunity to do it differently, perhaps taking a more emollient tone and not constantly bashing anyone who criticised the government he did the exact opposite. He used the bully pulpit to attack the opposition over and over again. In many respects he was worse than Cameron. It made him look like Just Another Tory. Indeed after he resigned as leader he cited "sitting next to the Prime Minister" at PMQs as one of his biggest mistakes because of the "optics". He is right about that but it is much much worse than he states because of the way he himself carried out the same duties.

I asked Clegg about this very subject when I interviewed him in September 2012 and he claimed that he would have liked to change PMQs but when he had made slight attempts to move in this direction he had been branded as "ineffective and weak" and hence he had had no choice but to stick to the bearpit style. But this just simply is not good enough. What was the point of having a Lib Dem Deputy PM taking PMQs if when he deputised for the PM he made no difference to how it was practised and more importantly gave no inkling of how a liberal PM could do it? He had a responsibility to show how liberals in general and Lib Dems in particular were not happy with the current system and would change things. On this particular point he completely and totally failed.

Secondly cleaving far too closely to the Conservatives in the early years of the coalition. The "Rose Garden" press conference was clearly a misstep but it was indicative of a wider problem about how the party presented themselves. On the media and in parliament they went on and on and on about how there was a strong Lib Dem flavour to the government. They pounced on research that suggested 75% of their manifesto had ended up in government trumpeting this from the highest rooftops. But all this just made the Lib Dems look like they were crypto-Tories; when the cuts started kicking in, the tuition fees were raised, the NHS reforms were announced and all the other policies that were anathema to 2/3rds of the voters who backed Clegg in 2010 they "owned" the entire lot. There was no serious attempt to distance the party from these policies in government from the top level. Indeed Clegg seemed to revel in what he was doing, at one point light heartedly quoting Blair saying "It's worse than you think, I actually believe in the policies.". By the time the "differentiation" strategy kicked in in the last year or so of the parliament it was far, far too late.

The final one I want to focus on is how totally misguided Clegg's long term political strategy was. He seemed totally convinced that there were a huge swathe of liberal leaning voters out there who had previously gone for the Tories but now the Lib Dems had demonstrated they could do government they would come flocking to the yellow banner. And that these voters would replace all the lefties who had previously backed the party. Time and again at conference we members were all assured that the leadership knew exactly what it was doing and it would all come good. After the wipeouts in local elections and in 2014 losing all but one MEP (a devastating result for "The Party of Europe) the members were urged to keep the faith.

It was all wishful thinking. In May this year the electorate delivered their verdict. The Lib Dems lost 83% of their seats. They are now down to 8 MPs. There are some projections (that I take seriously) that suggest that in 2020 after the boundary changes they could be down to 4 MPs. They are a shadow of their former selves and are likely to be a political irrelevance for a generation or more.

I'm not saying there were any easy answers after the 2010 general election. There weren't. As I have argued many many times Clegg took the only option for stable government for 5 years and his party have paid in my view a disproportionate price for effectively putting the country before party.

But Clegg and his aides were complicit in a large number of tactical and strategic mistakes that made the ultimate result 5 years later even worse than it needed to be. They didn't listen to the many many voices from both inside and outside the party urging them to change tack. Clegg refused to stand down in June 2014 after the Euro elections when it was obvious to almost all political observers that he was a busted electoral flush.

I have no specific recipe for what sort of "punishment" Clegg should now undergo. Indeed it is unrealistic and probably even churlish to think there is one. But the party, its current and future leaderships and its members should think very carefully before pursuing the line that Clegg was very brave to do what he did and that the party in any way owes him a debt of gratitude. They should also all do their best to try and make sure he does not ultimately become a well respected and loved grandee of the party (like say Paddy Ashdown) who is listened to and has great influence in the future direction of the party.

He made some major errors that have cost both the party and ultimately the country in terms of much reduced liberal influence in parliament for many years to come.

At the very least he should be held accountable for that.

How the Labour party will now be slowly destroyed by our electoral system

Here we go again. Mark banging on about electoral reform.

Well guilty as charged. However I really do feel it is going to play a substantial, probably pivotal role in the evolving disintegration of the Labour Party.

Before I lay out my thesis I should make it clear that despite my obvious opposition to New Labour's more authoritarian aspects and also to the sheer opportunism of the party in opposition between 2010 and 2015 I certainly do not wish to see its demise as a serious political force. Most of my family were Labour supporters when I was growing up. I was delighted with Blair's victory in 1997 and indeed enthusiastically voted for the party in both 1997 and 2001. If I was going to have to choose between 20 years of hegemony from Labour or the Tories I would choose Labour. They are closer to my own political philosophy than the Conservative Party for sure.

But it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that the Labour Party as it is currently constituted will not be here within a decade or two. We have seen a confluence of factors that now militate against its long term survival.

Firstly the membership has changed beyond all recognition from even 6 months ago, let alone 6 years ago. The extraordinary rise of Jeremy Corbyn who only squeaked into the ballot due to acts of charity by several Labour MPs who would never have dreamed he could win and certainly would never have done so had they realised this has triggered an influx of hundreds of thousands of new members, both full and "supporter" level, but all of whom have a vote in leadership elections. Many of these new members are what we used to refer to as "hard left" or even if they don't recognise themselves as such are certainly fellow travellers with much of what the hard left stands for.

Secondly Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and their acolytes now have their hands firmly on the levers of power within the party. And despite their denials it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Momentum group set up to support Corbyn's aims is organising at a grassroots level and will eventually either through confrontation or attrition start to replace more moderate Labour MPs with candidates who are "one of them" to adapt one of Thatcher's most famous phrases.

Thirdly, the mere fact that Corbyn is the leader and groups like Momentum are now so active is leading to more and more people who were previously members of Trotskyist groups and other parties like the SWP etc. joining or in some cases re-joining the Labour Party. They feel like they have got their party back and are swelling the numbers.

A combination of these factors make it almost impossible for Corbyn to be dislodged. He won in the first round with 59.5% of the vote. This is a crushing victory. Burnham only managed 20%. And by way of comparison Blair only got 57% when he stood and won in 1994. Corbyn is master of all he surveys within the party. And the fact that if anything the membership now compared to a few months ago is likely to be even more Corbynite makes it even more difficult to imagine him being successfully challenged.

It is worth bearing in mind as well that if Corbyn is challenged, then according to the Labour Party rules he is on the ballot by default. This means he would no longer need the nominations of 35 Labour MPs to be a candidate in any future election.

The only way I can see the hard left cabal being ousted in the forseeable future would be if Corbyn himself decided to stand down. I wouldn't completely rule this out. It is possible that over the course of the coming months and perhaps couple of years he gets so worn down by the constant attacks from both inside and outside his party and from the media that he eventually chooses to throw in the towel. I have to say though that at the moment this seems pretty unlikely. He appears to be enjoying the job more and more and I doubt he will eschew the chance to remake the party in his own image.

And even if Corbyn did stand down I am certain another left winger, probably McDonnell or someone similar would stand for the leadership. And although the 35 MP threshold would kick in, given how hugely the membership has changed this year I would imagine there would be huge pressure on MPs to at least allow a left winger onto the ballot (who would then of course win). If MPs prevented this I would predict out and out civil war between the membership and the PLP with dozens of deselections happening in short order. Momentum might be largely keeping their powder dry for now but they would definitely not stand for that and they know they have the power to hold the MPs to ransom.

Perhaps the most important question arising from all of this though is why is it happening at all? How can we have a membership of a party that is so at odds with the vast majority of its own MPs? Why is someone like Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell even in the same party as say Peter Mandelson or Tristram Hunt or Liz Kendall? It doesn't really make much sense. Those people should really be in a completely different party to each other. Their aims and political anchors are in completely different places.

It's because of the electoral system stupid.

Of course in an ideal world Corbyn and Kendall would be in totally different parties. It was clear during the leadership campaign that they agreed on very little substantively. The problem is that if the hard left or the moderates wanted to split off and form another party the electoral system would punish both sides for doing this. In safe Labour seats where the Tory vote is very weak the left would probably be OK and the Labour Party and Splitters Party could fight each other for those constituencies. But in the vast swathe of marginals and semi-marginals against the Tories or other seats where e.g. UKIP or the Greens or the Lib Dems can run a united Labour Party close a split Labour Party would be a disaster for the left. In dozens, perhaps well over a hundred seats we would see the Tories primarily and perhaps other parties more marginally reap the rewards. Not because these other parties have necessarily done anything to deserve winning these seats but because Labour had split and First Past the Post awards seats to the largest plurality. In simple terms if Labour hold a seat with 50% of the vote where the Tories last time got 30% and Labour splits into two parties where each split party gets 25% of the vote the Tories win even if they still only get 30%.

Of course Labour knows all of this. If they have any doubt they just need to look to recent history and see what happened when Labour split during the 1980s when the Gang of Four formed the SDP. In the following two general elections both Labour and the SDP were hugely punished for being separate parties and the result was 16 more years of Tory government.

If we had a different electoral system based on some form of proportionality a decision to split would be much easier as even if the vote split down the middle (or more likely say the hard left got 10% of the vote and the moderates got 20% or 25% of the vote) then they would get seats allocated in roughly those proportions. And then following an election it's possible that those parties, perhaps in conjunction with others could form a government. But their respective electoral strengths would be clear and the coalition would be formed after an election rather than being forced to cram a load of people who loath and barely even understand each other's politics into the same party before an election.

But we don't have a system like this. And this is why by far and away the most likely scenario is that the Labour Party does not split and instead remains one single party. And slowly but surely that one single party is in the process of destroying itself. The constant off (and increasingly on) the record briefings against each other, the incredulity of many Labour MPs at the behaviour of the leadership (just look at the video of Tom Watson's face when McDonnell recently pulled out Mao's Little Red Book at the despatch box for this in microcosm), the grassroots organising to punish MPs who deviate from the Corbynite line. And eventually, inevitably the proof that Corbyn is unelectable in 2020. But even when this happens that won't stop the hard left. They simply will never accept that their programme is unpopular. They will blame anything but themselves and will instead carry on with their purity drive.

They will eventually after years of this be a hollowed out force with MPs fallen by the wayside replaced with true believers.

This could have been avoided or at least mitigated if the party had been able to separate into the more natural political groupings that common sense would dictate. But that can't happen. Our electoral system simply will not allow it.

It would be easy for someone like me who has campaigned for electoral reform for a long time often in the teeth of opposition from dinosaurs on the Labour benches to find this highly amusing. It is only 4 years since we had the chance to make a change to AV that could have helped facilitate a much better situation for the current Labour Party. But many within Labour fought tooth and nail to prevent this relatively minor but important progressive change to our system and they won. So they will now reap what they sowed.

But I do not find this situation amusing. It is deadly serious. Because the consequence will be probably 20 years at least of Tory governments. A Tory party who knew very well what they were doing when they blocked any chance of a proportional system during the 2010 Lib Dem coalition negotiations and a Tory party who pulled out all the stops (in alliance with those Labour dinosaurs) to prevent AV in 2011.

I suspect eventually Labour will come to see how they have shafted themselves in the long term through their refusal to countenance a more progressive electoral system.

But it will be too late by then. They won't have enough MPs to make any difference any more.

My radio show - 09/12/2015 - Professional Poker Playing and Radio Presenting

I do these most weeks between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I talk to professional poker player Neil Channing about his life at the felt and how he fell into this rather unusual line of work and to DJ Rick Edwards about his career behind the mic.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:


Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My radio show - 25/11/2015 - Votes at 16, Autumn Statement and In Vision TV Continuity

I do these most weeks between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I talk to Henry Hill of Conservative Home about votes at 16 and Osborne's Autumn Statement and to cultural commentator and old school TV expert Steve Williams about in-vision TV continuity and why it's largely died out

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:


Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My radio show tonight at 8:30pm - Votes at 16 and has Osborne dodged a bullet?

On my Music Mill FM show tonight from 8:30pm:

First I'll be joined by assistant Editor of Conservative Home Henry Hill about votes at 16. 16 and 17 year olds had a vote in the Scottish referendum last year and the Lords have now voted for similar for the impending EU referendum. Would this be a good thing? Do under 18s understand the issues well enough to make an informed decision?

We'll also spend some time discussing the Chancellor's Autumn Statement today. Has he dodged the tax-credits bullet? And if so how has he managed to execute a U-turn that may have severely damaged the career of lesser politicians?

Then later we'll be joined by old-school TV enthusiast Steve Williams to discuss in-vision continuity. If you recall, back in the day, mainly on ITV lots of the regions had continuity announcers who we could see, usually sitting behind a desk. In some ways this gave the viewer a strong connection with the station in a way that perhaps we don't get any more. Have we lost something here? And could they be set for a comeback with some of the hyper-local TV stations that have started recently?

If you want to listen live the best way is either to find "Music Mill FM" on the TuneIn Radio app if you have a mobile device or via this link from a browser.

If you want to get in touch during the show I'm on twitter @MarkReckons – you can tweet your thoughts about today's topics or anything else. You can also e-mail me on markreckons@live.co.uk either during the show or if you're listening to the podcast version any time afterwards.

I will also be uploading a recording of the show to the House of Comments podcast feed in the next day or two as usual.

My radio show - 18/11/2015 - Nuclear deterrence and Police Commissioners

I do these most weeks between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I am joined by Emeritus Professor of War History at Kings College London Lawrence Freedman to discuss the nuclear deterrent and by Conservative candidate for Police and Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall Alison Hernandez to discuss her campaign and politics more generally.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My radio show - 11/11/2015 - FOI, Corbyn and Lib Dems

I do these most weeks between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I speak to media expert and former Labour adviser Paul Blanchard about Freedom of Information reform and how Jeremy Corbyn is doing and also former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Kelly-Marie Blundell about how her party is getting on 6 months after the general election

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My radio show tonight at 8:30pm - FOI/Grayling and Lib Dems 6 months on from the election

On my Music Mill FM show tonight from 8:30pm:

I'll be speaking to media expert Paul Blanchard about the changes that the government are currently planning to Freedom of Information. In particular we'll be focusing on some comments that Justice minister Chris Grayling recently made about how FOI requests are apparently being “abused” by journalists.

Then later we'll be joined by Lib Dem activist and former parliamentary candidate Kelly-Marie Blundell to discuss how her party is now doing six months into the new parliament. With their number of MPs reduced from 57 to 8 are they still an effective force? Is the electorate perhaps starting to think they've had enough of a kicking and are starting to listen to them again?

If you want to listen live the best way is either to find "Music Mill FM" on the TuneIn Radio app if you have a mobile device or via this link from a browser.

If you want to get in touch during the show I'm on twitter @MarkReckons – you can tweet your thoughts about today's topics or anything else. You can also e-mail me on markreckons@live.co.uk either during the show or if you're listening to the podcast version any time afterwards.

I will also be uploading a recording of the show to the House of Comments podcast feed in the next day or two as usual.

My Show on Music Mill FM - 04/11/2015

I'll be doing these most weeks now between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I speak to journalist and BBC Radio 4 Analysis presenter Jo Fidgen about the ethics of eating meat and also to the comedienne Wendy Wason about fulfilling different roles in our busy lives and how much room is left for the real us. We also try to answer the question as to why Postman Pat is so incompetent.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My News Show on Music Mill FM - 21/10/2015

I'll be doing these most weeks now between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I speak to drug law reform campaigner Steve Rolles about the current drug laws and how they might change and then to chief spokesperson for the pressure group Republic about the monarchy and republicanism as well as Jeremy Corbyn's recent royal related problems.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My News Show on Music Mill FM - 14/10/2015

I'll be doing these every week now between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I speak to head of press for UKIP Gawain Towler about the EU referendum and technology journalist Nicole Kobie about broadband coverage and so called "not spots" in the light of a debate on this subject by MPs this week.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My Radio News Show on Music Mill FM - 07/10/2015

I had my radio hosting debut yesterday on Music Mill FM.

It went quite well I thought. I forgot to put my fader up for a few second at the start until my producer gesticulated at me and I turned it on. I also had a problem getting the first song started but after that it seemed to flow pretty well and I really enjoyed it. I'll be doing these every week now between 8:30pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday evenings. You can listen to the station live here.

This week I talked to Conservative commentator Rupert Myers about the Tory conference and author and cultural commentator Tim Worthington about famous TV defections of the past following Robert Peston's move from the BBC to become ITV's political editor.

You can also hear my attempt at an impression of Alan "Fluff" Freeman doing a chart countdown.

I have put an edited (sans music) version of the show on the House of Comments podcast feed so if you subscribe you should get it automatically.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast.

My radio broadcast hosting debut tonight at 8:30pm

Tonight at 8:30pm I am going to be hosting my first ever radio show for an hour, from a proper studio and everything!

I am very excited about this and am grateful to the good people of Music Mill FM for having asked me to do this. I have been a guest on radio shows lots of times but never the host so this a new departure for me. We did a pilot last week and it went quite well so fingers crossed this one does too.

The show is a light hearted look at a couple of the week's top stories. We will have guests and also music from Music Mill's own recording studio.

The topics for tonight will be Tory conference (naturally) in general and Cameron's speech in particular. We are also going to cover top TV defections in the light of Robert Peston's move to ITV.

If you want to listen live the best way is either to find "Music Mill FM" on the TuneIn Radio app if you have a mobile device or via this link from a browser.

I will also be uploading a recording of the show to the House of Comments podcast feed in the next day or two.

Wish me luck!

Cameron renages on his Lords proportionality promise to spite UKIP

I don't like Nigel Farage. I don't like his attitude or his approach to things. I don't care for many of his party's policies especially the twin planks of leaving the EU come what may and blaming everything on immigration.

However I am also a democrat. It is shocking that at the recent general election UKIP got 13% of the vote and 0.15% of the seats in the Commons. Absolutely shocking. That is the sort of disparity that the First Past the Post system can throw up as we all know.

But not to fear. We knew that Cameron would at least try to redress the balance in parliament somewhat through Lords appointments wouldn't he? Because during the last parliament he told us that until the Lords was properly reformed to be largely or wholly elected appointments would be made to create a chamber reflective of the votes cast at the most recent general election. Look, it was in his first programme for government in 2010:

In the interim, lords appointments will be made with the objective of creating a second chamber reflective of the share of the vote secured by the political parties in the last general election.

So presumably Cameron will have appointed some UKIP peers today in his latest honours? For proper proportionality there would need to be about 100 of them but to be fair we couldn't have expected him to do it that quickly. He's appointed 45 today. So how many of them are UKIP? 15? 10? 5? Surely 3 or 4 of them?

None. Zero. Zip. Zilch.

This is a flagrant renaging on a political promise. And it was an important promise. Because everyone knows the Commons is not proportional. But Cameron assured us he would redress this in the second chamber. And he has gone back on his word.

It seems pretty obvious to me why he has done this. He hates Nigel Farage. And he hates UKIP. He is worried what they would do with a decent tranche of peers. So out of malice, spite and political cowardice he is not going to appoint any of them to the upper chamber.

With a slick turn of phrase Cameron recently made a statement on this subject that sounds very similar to his promise in 2010:

It is important the House of Lords in some way reflects the situation in the House of Commons. At the moment it is well away from that. I’m not proposing to get there in one go. [But] it is important to make sure the House of Lords more accurately reflects the situation in the House of Commons. That’s been the position with prime ministers for a very, very long time and for very good and fair reason.

He has subtly changed his wording to say the Lords should now reflect the "situation" in the Commons rather than the "votes" for the Commons. That almost seems like a semantic distinction at first glance but it makes all the difference in the world. Because the "situation" in the Commons is a result of the FPTP system which as we know gave UKIP 1 seat when they should have had 82 of them. And Cameron is now trying to use this as justification to give UKIP no extra peers. They already have 3 Lords, all of whom used to be Tories and defected.

It is also worth pointing out that Cameron is making up the rules on the fly here whilst trying to sound like he is just fitting in with what previous PMs have done. It's not true. There has never been a rule that the Lords should be reflective of the situation in the Commons as Meg Russell points out in this recent Constitution Unit post.

No it is quite clear what Cameron is doing. He is using the brute force power of patronage his position gives him to prevent UKIP from getting any more representation in the Lords. There is no justification for this so he's making up one based on a non-existent precedent.

Remember this next time he claims to be a democrat or that he is a fair man.

He is clearly neither.

House of Comments - Episode 129 - The Corgasm

The latest House of Comments podcast is now out.

This week the podcast is back for a(nother) one off special during the current podcast hiatus. I am joined by Editor of Politics.co.uk Ian Dunt to discuss the remarkable surge of Jeremy Corbyn and its current and likely future effects.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.

Labour doesn't have any values - so how can new members be required to support them?

I was amused this morning to see that Mark Steel, one of the most outspoken left-wing activists in the media has been banned from joining the Labour Party because he doesn't "support their values":

Well - an e-mail from Labour says my application has been rejected as I 'don't support their values'. Maybe I was meant to invade Iraq.

— Mark Steel (@mrmarksteel) August 12, 2015

Now in Mr Steel's case there seems to be some question mark over whether he is still a member of the SWP which could be another reason why he has not been allowed to join and vote in the current leadership contest. But it is worth looking a little bit more closely at the given reason for his rejection, the charge that he does not support their values. Because Labour currently doesn't really have any values.

I don't mean this glibly. I mean it literally.

Labour have just (badly) lost an election that they and many of the rest of us thought they would win, or at least they would form the next government in the aftermath of it. That hasn't happened and they seem to be going through some sort of collective nervous breakdown as a result.

It certainly wasn't clear what the party stood for in the previous parliament. Indeed that is one of the reasons they lost. They spent the first 3 or 4 years of it opposing every single cut the coalition government made and then in the last year or so suddenly tried to turn on a sixpence and claim they were the party of fiscal responsibility (whilst still opposing many of the cuts and claiming they were ideological). They also campaigned hard on the NHS claiming that the coalition was "privatising it" despite having themselves extended private provision whilst in office (at one point under Andy Burnham). There are various other examples of where they either said or did one thing in office and another when in early opposition and then yet another in the run-up to the election. No wonder people were confused.

I saw a journalist remark the other day that when they approached the Labour Party to ask what its values were in order to clarify they were directed to read "Clause 4" of the Labour Party constitution. Here it is as modifed in 1995 under Blair's early leadership:

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect

That's fair enough as far as it goes but it's difficult to pin down how this would relate to specific policy positions. For example (apart from the special case of the banks in 2008 when there was a huge crisis and any government would have had to act) how many nationalisations did Labour undertake whilst in office? Because reading that clause you might presume they'd have taken the opportunity to renationalise all sorts of stuff to fit in with their "value" of power, wealth and opportunity remaining in the hands of the many, not the few. Of course they barely nationalised anything and social mobility went into reverse between 1997 and 2010. Or how about their values of "tolerance and respect" and living "freely". I'm not sure how that could be reconciled with their attempts in office to push through 90 days detention without trial or their steadfast backing of the hopelessly illiberal and broken drugs laws to pick two of many egregious examples.

So it is far from clear how the Labour Party of the last 20 years and its actions in office could be reconciled with its own Clause 4 that the party machine directs people to read to check they are not to be an unperson.

But it's worse than that. Because Labour are in the middle of a leadership campaign. A leadership campaign that could very well hugely change the party's stance and approach to all sorts of things. Which would surely mean its values had changed?

As an example, imagine a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn and a Labour Party led by Liz Kendall. They would be so different from each other as to be almost unrecognisable as the same party, certainly after the leader had got their hands on the party levers and had had some time to reshape it in their own image. The idea that there is a specific set of values that irrespective of who wins the leadership the party will stick to come what may is laughable. Corbyn has already explicitly stated he'd like to change Clause 4 if he wins.

So it is a nonsense for Labour to cast people out for not sharing their values when they are at best highly flexible and more realistically something akin to Will-o'-the-wisp.

On Corbyn: What if the rules have changed?

Like many seasoned Westminster watchers I have been somewhat amused by the recent travails of the Labour Party.

There were three candidates of the centre/centre left (Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall) all of whom managed to get the requisite number of nominations from MPs (35) to stand in the contest. But there was also a figure that many people had never even heard of who wanted to enter the race. The very left-wing MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn.

Enough MPs "lent" Corbyn their nominations in the interests of having a wide debate and hence he also entered the contest.

Since then to say he's been a disrupter to the contest would be a gross understatement. Polls have indicated that he could actually win and the other candidates have been scrabbling around desperately trying to work out how to respond to the rise of the red tide.

Also like many seasoned Westminster watchers I have been assuming that Corbyn has very little chance of winning (despite what the polls say - remember the general election?!) and that if he was to somehow manage to win he'd have absolutely no chance of becoming Prime Minister.

But what if we're all wrong?

Ever since the financial crisis of 2008 I have been wondering when things will change politically. I don't mean in terms of the Tories getting in and implementing austerity or even the coalition (that was bound to happen eventually when the dice fell that way). I mean something much more fundamental. The crisis demonstrated that the way we have our economy (and politics) structured is woefully wrong. The banks took reckless risks with everyone else's money and then when they were standing on the brink the taxpayer stepped in and bailed them out to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds, making a mockery of the term "Moral Hazard".

So far there has been remarkably little actual change in response to this complete and utter failure of our structures, despite the fact that we have all paid the price both literally and figuratively. Growth has been much forestalled, the economy is much weaker than it was before 2008 and many millions of us have had to readjust our longer term plans. But the banks and the institutions that prop them up haven't really changed very much at all.

This is what I mean when I ask if all of us old hands are wrong.

The received wisdom which has seemed to be true ever since Thatcher came to power is that parties, whether of the left or right have to run on the centre ground and also tack towards the direction of the party in power when in opposition (cf Blair in the mid-90s and Cameron in the late 00s). But what if the rules have changed and we just haven't realised it yet? Given how devastating the financial crisis has been, a realignment of politics and a recasting of the rules is actually now overdue. Could it be coming in the form of a 66 year old socialist who can easily be mocked up to look like Obi Wan Kenobie?

However the 2015 general election would appear superficially to contradict this thesis. Didn't the result prove that Labour should have run a more centrist campaign? That's what most of the commentators (including me) have been saying since 7th May.

The truth is the result of the election is a very, very mixed bag and there is a lot of noise which makes it difficult to correctly read any signal that may be contained within it. Firstly there was the UKIP surge which led to them getting 13% of the vote and thus distorting what would have been the results in dozen of constituencies. This affected both Tories and Labour but seemingly more so Labour. There was also the (lesser but still very real) similar effect of the Greens again mostly affecting Labour. Then there was the collapse of the Lib Dem vote which allowed the Tories to capture many more seats than they would otherwise have done. Indeed the Tories increased their vote by 0.8% but managed to get 25 more seats than in 2010 due to these disparate effects. There was also the huge effect of the SNP in Scotland who actually ran on an anti-austerity ticket and almost swept the entire board there.

That still doesn't fully answer what happened with Labour though. They increased their vote by over 1% but actually lost a couple of dozen seats. But by wide consent Ed Miliband was a bad leader. He was uncharismatic, unfocused, chopped and changed during the parliament allowing his shadow ministers to oppose almost all the cuts and then latterly trying to claim Labour could be "trusted" on the economy when he had allowed the Tories to paint them as profligate and set the agenda. On all of these scores Corbyn would be more consistent than Miliband. He is charismatic, very focused and would clearly stick to his line of opposing austerity. He is also a breath of fresh air as Evan Davis pointed out last night on Newsnight after interviewing Andy Burnham (who was typically evasive on various questions as most modern politicians are) Corbyn simply answers the questions. He doesn't faff about trying to triangulate or refusing to accept the premise of the question. Sure, this could eventually trip him up but from what I have seen so far it merely makes him look like he believes what he says and his word can be trusted, unlike so many of his Labour colleagues.

It is also worth noting that in many of the policy positions Corbyn took in the 80s and 90s he has subsequently been vindicated. For example he was in favour of equal marriage and against section 28 when it was not fashionable to be so, he talked to Sinn Fein when the official government line was to claim they were beyond the pale (and dub their voices over with actors on TV) while at the very same time secretly talking to them which ultimately led to the peace process. He is also in favour of policies such as renationalisation of the railways and the energy companies which have high levels of public support. What the political classes try to paint as extreme are actually often fairly popular positions. It is very difficult to read how a leader and a party that fully backed these policies would now fare as it simply hasn't been tried for several decades.

I could be reading this all wrong. In many ways it would be more comforting for me if this analysis is wrong because if it is right then lots of what I think I know about politics and how to follow it is also wrong. Ever since I have been interested in it (and even before that) the rules have been set in stone and those deviating from them have paid a high price.

I just wonder though if we need to prepare ourselves for a shock. At the moment Corbyn is set to win the internal contest. And if he does, perhaps, just perhaps his chances of becoming PM are a fair bit higher than received wisdom would suggest.

House of Comments - Episode 128 - The Living Wage Budget

The latest House of Comments podcast is now out.

This week the podcast is back for a one off special during the current podcast hiatus. I am joined by the Guardian political columnist Rafael Behr to discuss George Osborne's "Living Wage" budget and its political consequences.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Other podcasting software e.g. for Android can be pointed here to subscribe.

Or you can listen to the embedded episode below here:



Any feedback welcomed in the comments below.


PS: A big thanks to Audioboom for hosting the podcast. We would also like to thank Kevin MacLeod from Incompetech.com for our theme music.