Keir Starmer, Lord Alli and the good chap theory of government

Lord Hewart - see my review of Neil Hickman's book on him in the current Liberator - had little time for the argument that, because the Civil Service has such high standards, we shouldn't worry about civil servants being ungranted unexamined, quasi-judicial powers.

In a paper written for The Constitution Society in 2019, Andrew Blick and Peter Hennessy gave this attitude to government more generally a name:

In the UK, we have trusted politicians to behave themselves. We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be 'good chaps', knowing what the unwritten rules are and wanting to adhere to them, even if doing so might frustrate the attainment of their policy objectives, party political goals, or personal ambitions – the argument being that 'good chaps' (of different sexes) know where the undrawn lines are and come nowhere near to crossing them: hence ‘the good chap theory of government.’

I thought of this theory when I saw the defences of Keir Starmer decision to put himself in Lord Alli's debt that Labour supporters mounted on Twitter this morning. They boiled down to the claim that we needn't worry about it because Alli is a good chap - all he wanted in return for his donations was the election of a Labour government.

This may well be true, but another maxim that developed out of the rulings of Lord Hewart is that justice must not only be done: it must be seen to be done. In this case I think that means that though we may accept that Starmer has done no favours for Lord Alli, he still should not have put himself in this position.

My chief feeling about this affair is one of surprise that Labour had not seen that it might damage them - Private Eye noticed some time ago that Starmer has a fondness for freebies. Similarly, though it has been inflated by the media, I don't know what else Labour thinks it has given them to talk about since coming power. They seem to have gone from obsessive media management under Blair and Alastair Campbell to giving up any attempt at it.

And, yes, the Tories were far worse, but I've already argued here that whataboutery won't get Labour out of trouble here. I suggest Labour examines the idea of putting a frugal limit on how much an individual can donate to a political party. Until last week at least, many of their supporters seemed keen on it.

Tunes of Glory (1960): What happens when a victorious regiment comes home?

This post was written for Terence Towles Canote's 10th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon, where you will find plenty more articles on British cinema.

What is the most successful piece of casting against type in a British film? 

There’s Richard Attenborough’s turn as a bull of a Sergeant Major in Guns at Batasi. There’s James Fox as Chas in Performance, whose hooded eyes and half-smile haunt British gangster films to this day.

And there’s another candidate. How about Alec Guinness playing a hard-drinking officer in a Scottish regiment - red hair and all - who has been promoted from the ranks?

It may sound ridiculous, but you need only watch the trailer above to see that it’s not. In fact, Guinness’s performance as Major Jock Sinclair in Tunes of Glory reminds us what a peerless actor he was.

This post contains spoilers, but there's good news. You can watch the film on YouTube first if you wish (just don’t tell them I sent you).

Directed by Ronald Neame, Tunes of Glory is set in the barracks of a Scottish regiment just after the end of the second world war.

Though Jock Sinclair, in his own words, has led the regiment "from Dover to Berlin", he is still just a Major. He holds a brevet rank as Lieutenant Colonel, but as Wikipedia explains, brevet ranks are given as a reward but do not necessarily confer the authority and privileges of that higher rank.

We first see Sinclair holding court at the end of a regimental dinner - there are pipers and oceans of whisky. He has news: the regiment is getting a new colonel and it’s not him. It is to be Lieutenant Colonel Basil Barrow, who is played by John Mills.

The Wikipedia entry on Tunes of Glory has an admirable plot summary, so I’ll let it take up the tale for a little:

Colonel Barrow arrives a day early and finds the officers dancing rowdily. He declines sharing a whisky with Sinclair, taking a soft drink instead. They exchange histories. Sinclair enlisted as bandsman in Glasgow and rose through the ranks, Barrow came from Oxford University. He served with the battalion in 1933. Assigned to "special duties", he has lectured at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Sinclair humorously notes that he was in Barlinnie Prison's cooler for being drunk and disorderly one night in 1933. 

When Sinclair presses Barrow about his war years, he replies that he, too, was "in jail". Sinclair recalls that Barrow was a prisoner of the Japanese and belittles the experience - "officers' privileges and amateur dramatics". Barrow simply replies that Barlinnie would have been preferable.

At 3 am Sinclair is drinking with Major Scott, played by Dennis Price, and we hear his outburst to him: "I've acted Colonel, I should be Colonel, and by God... I bloody well will be Colonel!"

Barrow proves to be a martinet and is not prepared to cut the battle-weary regiment any slack. He takes particular exception to the rowdy style of Highland dancing they favour, and orders all the officers to take lessons so they dance they way he wants them to when he holds a cocktail party for the local gentry.

This reminds me that, in a recent episode of The Rest of Politics, Alastair Campbell was surprised to learn that Rory Stewart had dancing lessons when he held a gap-year commission in the Black Watch at the start of the 1990s.

Anyway, the dancing after the party gets rowdy despite Barrow’s efforts and, red faced and furious, he breaks up proceedings before fleeing in shame at his own behaviour. He knows that the bulk of his officers feel a loyalty to Sinclair that they do not feel to him, and the evening can only have made things worse. To the modern viewer, it seems obvious from this and from the collection of tics and twitches Mills deploys, that he is suffering post-traumatic stress from his wartime experiences.

I sometimes struggle to understand the esteem in which John Mills was held as an actor in Britain - he had an unfortunate habit of being cast in roles for which he was visibly too old - but he is good in Tunes of Glory. Particularly so, as his character is less immediately appealing than Alec Guinness’s and does not allow for the same bravura acting.

The clash between these two flawed characters has an almost Shakespearian heft. As the retired US Marine Corps infantry officer and historian Reed Bonadonna observes, it’s tempting to say that each has the qualities the other lacks – “Sinclair is a warrior and leader of men, but he’s hopeless as an organiser and disciplinarian.”

He goes on:

Despite their obvious differences, the two leads are similar in the sense that both are essentially lonely and unfulfilled. Both have been married but are now on their own. Sinclair has a grown daughter with whom he has a loving but somewhat distant relationship. Both are burdened by their memories of the war.

Barrow spent years in harsh and unproductive captivity. Sinclair suspects that his best days are over, and even that his wartime success was a fluke. They also share a keen sense of the burden and isolation of command. There is the hint of Othello in Tunes of Glory, with Barrow as the Moor and Sinclair as his Iago.

And it is Sinclair’s relationship with his daughter that brings things to a head. Unknown to Sinclair, but known to many others in the barracks, she has been going out with one of the regiment’s pipers. When he finally comes across them together, he strikes the corporal.

This is a clear court-martial offence and Barrow is first minded to bring charges against him. But he is put under pressure by almost everyone to deal with the matter himself. He goes to see Sinclair, who promises that he will be supportive in future if Barrow shows him leniency.

Against his better judgement, he decides against a court martial, only to find that Sinclair does not change at all. He still gives him no support and continues to drink with his 'babies', as he calls the  officers loyal to him. Humiliated, Barrow leaves them, goes upstairs and shoots himself.

Ironically, it is in his reaction to Barrow’s suicide that we see the best of Sinclair. His command of the situation and concern for the young soldier who found the body make us see why he was a good leader in battle and inspired respect and even affection in the men under him.

To assuage his guilt - "it’s not his body I fear, it’s his ghost," he says to himself at one point - he plans a grandiose funeral for Barrow. As he describes it to the other officers we hear the pipe band playing the 'tunes of glory', but it becomes clear to them that he has lost his reason and the room empties.

"Oh my babies, take me home," Sinclair pleads to Scott and another officer, and as he is driven away, the film ends. With one protagonist dead and the other driven mad, Tunes of Glory, it occurs to me, has unexpected parallels with Performance.

The supporting cast here is uniformly excellent. Dennis Price’s Major Scott is a typically disengaged Price character. We wonder if he is just a sardonic observer of the tragedy, or if he is the real Iago, encouraging Sinclair and Barrow to destroy one another so he can become Colonel amid the wreckage?

Gordon Jackson plays Captain Jimmy Cairns, the other officer who is there with Sinclair at the end. Yet he has also been Barrow’s right-hand man as he struggles to reform the regiment. Jackson always did have the knack of playing good men who were not dull, which is a rare gift. Certainly, the villains in British films of the Fifties are often surprising dark and alluring, whereas the heroes are just wet - compare Dirk Bogarde and Jimmy Hanley in The Blue Lamp.

Many of the other officers are played - and well played - by familiar faces: Gerald Harper, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Allan Cuthbertson (who you will recognise him from gourmet night at Fawlty Towers, if nowhere else). The Pipe Major is Duncan Macrae, who appeared in every film about Scotland made after the war and was always a welcome presence.

Sinclair’s daughter Morag is played by Susannah York in her first film role. Liberal Democrat readers may be interested to know that York was at RADA with our own Flick Rea. Trivia fans will be interested that Flick told me that a young man from Liverpool shared their classes for two terms but did not make the grade. So he returned North to the family business, to re-emerge a few years later as the manager of the Beatles.

Tunes of Glory is an exceptionally good film. As another American military writer, Jim Shufelt, says:

This is not a 'war movie', but Tunes of Glory features an intense portrayal of leadership, discipline and reintegration issues common to soldiers and units of any conflict, army, or time period.

He goes on to suggest that watching it could form part of current-day officers’ professional development.

This is not a surprise: the screenplay is by James Kennaway, adapted from his own novel of the same name. Kennaway himself held a commission in a Scottish regiment while doing his National Service. He was invited by the Colonel to apply for a permanent commission, but declined, in part because of the tensions between his fellow officers.

Tunes of Glory was on a list of 10 British films that should be better known I posted recently. Maybe you’ll find another there to enjoy?

My article on For a Fair Deal in the Conference issue of Liberator

The new issue of Liberator has been posted on the magazine's website in time for the Liberal Democrat Conference. It's issue 419 (September 2023) and you can download it for free.

I'll start posting Lord Bonkers' Diary here tomorrow, but first here's my article from this Liberator on For a Fair Deal, the policy document being presented to conference.

No Place Like Home Counties

“We want to use the by-election playbook across the Blue Wall,’ says one Lib Dem insider, encouraged by the party’s victories in Chesham, North Shropshire, Tiverton and Somerton.”

I don’t know how many ‘Lib Dem insiders’ there are, but they seem to spend most of their time in conversation with journalists. This one was talking to James Heale, who wrote about our plans for the general election in the Spectator:

The Lib Dems’ focus has been on early selections of respected community figures, raising their profile and finding a local twist on national issues: the NHS, cost of living and sewage. They are targeting the 34 seats in the south-east where they finished second to the Conservatives in 2019. Seats with a Tory majority of 2,000 or less were asked to find a candidate at the earliest opportunity to enable ‘an 18-month by-election’. There have been savvy selections in places such as Wimbledon and Winchester, where the local vet was chosen. New seats offer new opportunities too. In the freshly created constituency of Harpenden and Berkhamsted, the Lib Dem candidate has been bombarded by invitations to events by constituents who mistakenly believe she is the sitting MP.

And when you are fighting a by-election what you want in the policy field is a few appealing bullet points for your leaflets and nothing that will upset the voters you are targeting if they happen to find out about it. It’s best to keep this background in mind when reading For a Fair Deal, the overall policy paper being presented to the autumn conference of the Liberal Democrats in Bournemouth. 

Turn to the early chapters on the economy and on business and jobs, and you will find commitments to invest in infrastructure, innovation and skills. It also promises a ‘proper, one-off windfall tax on the super-profits of oil and gas producers and traders’ and action on the various loopholes that allow the very wealthy to pay tax at a lower rate than the rest of us.

Perks of the rich

All this is good in that it recognises that it is not wicked for governments to tax and spend – and the need for more capital spending on school and hospitals has become more apparent even since For a Fair Deal was published. In taking aim at the perks of the rich, it chooses the right target and one that will chime with the widespread anger at the approach of the current government, but you will search in vain for mention of a wealth tax or an attempt to square the circle of advocating economic growth at a time of environmental.

You will find a mention of Europe in these chapters in a pledge to:

Unlock British businesses’ global potential by bringing down trade barriers and building stronger future relationships with our closest trading partners, including by starting to fix the Conservatives’ botched deal with Europe following the four-step roadmap as set out in chapter 21.

This is a little like Private Eye’s ‘continued on page 94’ as chapter 21 or ‘International’ is For a Fair Deal’s final chapter and the one where you feel a commitment to give children an hour’s teaching a week in Esperanto would be hidden if conference voted it through. Yet it’s where we find what should be at the heart of those early chapters:

We are determined to repair the damage that the Conservatives’ deal with Europe has done to the economy, especially farmers, fishers and small businesses. … Finally, once the ties of trust have been restored, we would aim to place the UK-EU relationship on a more formal and stable footing by seeking to join the Single Market.

Because there is no sensible policy on economic growth that does not involve lifting the sanctions we imposed on ourselves by leaving the Single Market, and that is true whatever position you took on Brexit. This is why Labour should be talking about rejoining it and why even intelligent Leavers – those who really do want to ‘make Brexit work’ – should support this policy too. (The unintelligent Leavers want Brexit to fail so they can announce that have been betrayed and wallow in self-pity.)

Interviewed on Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s second podcast Leading at the start of the month, Ed Davey declined to say that the Liberal Democrats wanted to see Britain back in the European Union. He was happy to talk about our instinctive internationalism, but that was as far as he would go. He dwelt on the need to develop a language that would take people with us, which is something, it is true, the official Leave campaign spectacularly failed to do in the EU referendum campaign. Above all, he did not want to return to the divisive politics of those days.

Yet it’s hard to see how an issue like Brexit can ever stop being divisive. The 1975 referendum on whether Britain should remain a member of the European Economic Community was won by more than two votes to one, but it did not reconcile the losers to Britain’s increasing involvement with European institutions. No one would argue that the 2016 referendum campaign was good for British politics – Labour activists going to by-elections now have to be told not to insult any Conservative voters they came across – but the case for rejoining the Single Market has to be made and the debate has to be won. As sensible Conservatives has learnt to their cost, if you try to buy off the Brexit ultras they simply bank your concessions and come back for more.

This determination to avoid being ‘divisive’ may well have one eye on the general good of British politics, but the other is firmly on those 34 seats in the South East of England. Because I’ve heard that word ‘divisive’ somewhere else recently – when Munira Wilson, the party’s education spokesperson, talked to the education magazine Schools Week:

These days, Wilson … is sceptical that grammar schools help with social mobility, believing entry is “a case of who can afford to coach their children to go”.

While it would be “divisive” to close existing grammar schools, she “wouldn’t necessarily” create new ones.

Evading the Leopard

I will admit to nostalgia for the days when the products of council grammar schools outshone academically the products of expensive private schools, but that was in an era when those private school had not yet noticed there was no longer an Empire to man and so continued to prize an ability to evade the school leopard above book learning. Once they caught up with the modern world – and it took only two or three decades – money began to tell and we soon learnt that what was really divisive was selection at 11 and the private/public divide.

Munira Wilson did talk about making private schools work harder to justify their charitable status, but none of that has made its way into For a Fair Deal. So instead let me quote the former Conservative education minister George Walden on why that divide damages us all:

In no other European country do the moneyed and professional classes  – lawyers, surgeons, businessmen, accountants, diplomats, newspaper and TV editors, judges, directors, archbishops, air chief marshals, senior academics, Tory ministers, artists, authors, top civil servants  – in addition to the statistically insignificant but eye-catching cohort of aristocracy and royalty, reject the system of education used by the overwhelming majority pretty well out of hand, as an inferior product.

In no modern democracy except Britain is tribalism in education so entrenched that the two main political parties send their children to different schools.

There are some sensible reforms suggested in this chapter, though no sign of our previous view that schools were too dominated by testing and Ofsted inspections. You can see why Schools Week got the impression that we have rather lost interest in education.

Reflecting Ed Davey’s interests, the chapters on climate change and energy, and those on health and care, are among the most convincing. Climate change is ‘the biggest threat to human existence’ and we ‘urgently need to limit temperature rises to 1.5°C or we will face irreversible change’ – no worries about being divisive there. And these statements are accompanied by a series of strong policies, including:

• Cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2045.
• Invest significantly in renewable power so that 80% of the UK’s electricity is generated from renewables by 2030.
• Provide free retrofits for low-income homes and generous tax incentives for other households to reduce energy consumption, emissions, fuel bills and reliance on gas, and help to end fuel poverty
• Plant at least 60 million trees a year to help reach net zero and restore woodland habitats, and increase the use of sustainable wood in construction.

The chapter on care emphasises the importance of social care and the crisis in which it currently finds itself. Strikingly, it calls for free personal care to be introduced, ‘based on the model introduced by the Liberal Democrats in government in Scotland in 2002’. In the health chapter, we call for patients to have the right to see their GP within seven days or within 24 hours if it is urgent and recognise that to make this a reality we will have to recruit and train more doctors. The seven-day wait would not so long ago have been seen as unacceptable, but this is where this Conservative government has left us.

It doesn’t do to be churlish. If the policies laid out in For A Fair Deal were enacted, Britain would be a better place, but reading it has left me with two unanswered questions. Are the Liberal Democrats in any sense a radical party? And if they are, is it possible to build such a party on the votes of comfortably off residents of the Home Counties?

Jonathan Calder is a member of the Liberator Collective.

Ed Davey interviewed by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart

As well as The Rest is Politics, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart have a second podcast called Leading. And the latest guest on that is our own Ed Davey.

The billing for the show runs:

What was it like for the Liberal Democrats in coalition? Would Ed Davey be prepared to work alongside Keir Starmer in another coalition government? Is tactical voting a good idea? Join Rory and Alastair as they speak with leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, to discuss all these questions and more.

Yet what you remember from it most is Ed talking about his family and experiences of being a carer.

That's a tribute to him as a man, but also suggests  the party doesn't yet have a full set of appealing and easily communicable policies in place for the next election.

GUEST POST A tour of some top political podcasts

Ruth Bright listens to some of the most popular political podcasts so you don't have to.

Is anyone else addicted to political podcasts? Is help available for this addiction? While I look for a cure, here is an affectionate tribute to a few favourites. Perhaps you will recognize them and love them too.

First we go live to The Rest is Politics:

Nicey: It’s been a super-duper week for us at politics podcast HQ. Yet another sell-out gig for us at the Palladium. Did I ever tell you about the time I walked barefoot through Kazakhstan...?

Gritty: Yes Nicey. I met Princess Di you know.

Nicey: Yes, yes.

Gritty: Fiona thought she fancied me. It’s in me diaries. There are eight volumes.

Nicey: Yes, yes Gritty. But as I was saying. When I was a civil servant I nipped out for a sandwich at Pret on Victoria Street, but did a detour to walk barefoot through Kazakhstan instead. It taught me much about many juxtapositions.

Gritty: You are a nice guy Nicey, but let’s face it: you're a bit posh. As Tony said during the Iraq war... 

Nicey: Yes Gritty you are Greggs to my Pret. We're chalk and cheese; that’s the secret of our success. Anyway… back to my time barefoot in Kazakhstan…

Over at the Lib Dem Podcast: 

Presenter: I collect nerdy facts about the Lib Dems. Fortunately many others like my nerdy Lib Dem facts so I am a big success. 

Council leader: We win elections decade in, decade out. We win big. Anyone can do it. We Focus till we drop. 

Presenter: I don’t wish to be indelicate, but I've seen better literature. But you certainly win big. 

Council leader: We are wokers and winners. I mean workers and winners. 

Presenter: Hang on I think I have heard that before… 

 And here'sthe Newsnight alumni podcast The News Agents: 

Ems: I am simply exasperated with Boris Johnson. What a wanker. Trump? He’s is a tosser too. Right? I mean, right? I did a celebrated interview with Prince Andrew you know. 

Other Newsnight escapee: Yes, yes Ems we know. (I thought I was going to be working with Chris Mason). 

And on and on ad infinitum, while I look for that cure...

Ruth Bright has been a Liberal Democrat councillor in Southwark and parliamentary candidate for Hampshire East.

John Major is not a Nigerian but a Victorian

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Simon Hoggart had a theory about John Major's way of speaking:

It was always my theory that John Major was a Nigerian who had learned English from the battered paperbacks he had borrowed at an up-country British Council library. Hence his curiously dated language, such as "fine words butter no parsnips".

But the latest edition of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart's Leading podcast makes it clear that this is not the reason Major talks the way he does.

The true explanation is that John Major is a Victorian. or at least learnt many figures of speech from a Victorian. His father was born in 1879 and was 64 when Major was born.

In the presenters' discussion after the interview, Campbell suggests that Major's old-fashioned way of talking was one of the things that made him popular and that he owes it to his unusual background.

If we want better public health we must defend local sports facilities

In a recent The Rest is Politics podcast, Alastair Campbell talked about the way many countries see sport as responsibility of the health ministry. In Britain, however, it's lumped in with culture as one of those things that are nice to have but where government spending when can be cut when times are hard.

John Harris has an article in the Guardian today looking at the results of this mistaken policy:

Clearly, this is a country that needs to get better at looking after itself. But while glaring facts about the intersection of poverty and ill health are serially ignored, public health is also hindered and damaged by a dismal failure to join up one area of policy with another. 

If you want particularly vivid proof of that very British syndrome, try this: as hospitals break and buckle, local leisure centres and swimming pools are also in the midst of crisis.

Piece through the news archives, and there it all is: recent closures in such places as Huddersfield, Milton Keynes, Rye in East Sussex, Coventry and Hull. In Gateshead, people are waiting for a council decision about two big leisure centres, which could spell the end of pools, gyms and squash courts. 

One high-profile local doctor recently nailed what is at stake: "Take a poor area with massive health inequalities. Remove the last remaining public exercise facilities from the poorest bits of said poor areas. Watch what happens to health. It’s an experiment that the people of Gateshead don’t deserve to be a part of."

It's already happened in Swindon, where there is a campaign to reopen the listed Oasis Leisure Centre, which has been closed since November 2020. The video above shows what the town has lost - it already feels like a relic of a lost civilisation.

Because it's Swindon, I thought of Richard Jefferies and a passage from Bevis that I have quoted before.

In it, an astounded farm labourer watches two boys swimming:

For seventy years he had laboured in that place, and never once gone out of sight of the high Down yonder, and in all that seventy years no one till Bevis and Mark, and now their pupil Jack, had learned to swim. ...

Very likely no one had learned since the Norman Conquest. When the forests were enclosed and the commonality forbidden to hunt, the spirit of enterprising exercise died out of them. Certainly it is a fact that until quite recently you might search a village from end to end and not find a swimmer; and most probably if you found one now he would be something of a traveller, and not a home-staying man.

The increasing polarisation of incomes in Britain means Jefferies may here be giving us a picture, not of our past, but our future.

Alastair Campbell's Charles Kennedy Memorial Lecture

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Alastair Campbell gave this year's Charles Kennedy Memorial Lecture in Fort William in August.

He has now posted the text of that lecture on his website:

It was funny to watch the vox pops in Fort William after his death. Virtually everyone said "oh yes, I always voted for Charles." Amazing he lost really! But he would have seen the funny side of that too. 

There was pain in his defeat, but no bitterness. I never once heard him express bitterness about his ousting as Lib Dem leader either. He knew his colleagues had a point. They knew – and he knew they knew – that unless he cracked his drink problem, a bigger problem was coming their way. 

That being said, as the Lib Dems surveyed the wreckage of their party after the last two elections, they might recall his warning that if they got into bed with the Tories they would use them, abuse them and then destroy them.

Alastair Campbell to give the Charles Kennedy Memorial Lecture

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How times change! This year's annual Charles Kennedy Memorial Lecture will be given by the former Labour director of communications Alastair Campbell.

The lecture will take place, reports the BBC, the fifth Lochaber Ideas Week.

With the advent of Jeremy Corbyn and the fading of memories of the controversy over the Iraq War, Campbell does not seem such an odd choice today.

Liberal Democrats may also feel a degree of identification with another of the week's guest lecturers, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

We should listen to Tony Blair's interview with Alastair Campbell

There was a sharp tweet from John Lubbock earlier today:

Facebook arguments between Labour and Lib Dem members:
Labour: 'Nick Clegg'.
Liberal: 'Tony Blair'.

Theresa May: HAHAHA 100 seat majority.

— John Lubbock (@jwsal) May 14, 2017

As a description of debate between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, that is accurate.

But I have the discouraging feeling that Tony Blair may be as good as it gets for the centre left. If that feeling is well founded, it means that both parties will have to come to terms with him.

At any rate, the exchange between Blair and Alastair Campbell in the video above is useful in its honesty about the problems of being in politics and being prepared to oppose the interests of big business.

And one of the few advantages of having been blogging for so long is that I can refer you to what I wrote when Blair stood down as prime minister:

Today's media consensus is that the public has undergone a long process of disillusionment with Tony Blair. 

My own experience has been the reverse. When he was first elected it seemed obvious to me that he was an actor more than a statesman - and a terribly bad actor at that. All those speeches with his voice thick with unshed tears - the best known is his reaction to the death of the Princess of Wales, but there were many more - were so palpably insincere that I was convinced that the public would see through him any day. 

Well, it took years to happen, and by the time it did I started to find myself with a grudging respect for his longevity and skill as a political operator. Still, I cannot pretend to be anything other than delighted that he is going.

Maybe I would not have been so delighted if I had foreseen what was to follow him.

Alastair Campbell suspects David Cameron is too posh to push

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Alastair Campbell comments on the strangely ineffectual Conservative campaign so far:

Miliband looks, sounds and acts like he is up for the fight. Cameron doesn’t. 

Either he just resents all this challenging of his record and being held to account, and frankly sees this election as something of an irritant. Or, he has had enough and can’t wait for the day he is off doing something else. Whatever it is, he is not giving the sense – to the public or, importantly, his team – of a man with a winning mindset.

We know from five years of PMQs that Cameron's inner Flashman is never far from the surface, so the former explanation may be the right one. Who are these people to question me?

But Campbell prefers the latter explanation and offers some ingenious evidence for it:

A few straws in the wind to support my view. The refusal to go head to head with Ed Miliband after all he said about the importance of such debates. The fact that he signalled, under no pressure to do so, that he would not fight a third election if he won this one. T 

he fact that his wife and children sat in the gallery for the final PMQs of this session. It reminded me of footballers taking their kids out as mascots on the last home game before retirement. Was he thinking, even subconsciously, that they might never get the chance to see him at that Despatch Box again? 

The lack of energy and imagination in the campaign. The lack of hunger, as shown by the decision to keep him away from any risk, any member of the public other than those his handlers know are ‘safe.’ (The media are letting him away with this but that will change when boredom really sets in.) 

The fact that he seems to prefer talking about his family than he does about policy and the big challenges facing the country and the world. The fact he has yet to say or do anything interesting or memorable since the campaign began.

Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that Conservative strategy is in trouble. Having found that attacking Ed Miliband and saying "long-term economic plan" a lot is not going to cut it, they have now fallen back on attempting to bribe the electorate.

The failure of the political class and the appeal of Alan Johnson

I am not the greatest admirer of Alan Johnson - his appearances of This Week, where his highlight of the week is invariably an event that proves he was right about everything when he was home secretary, can be irritating - but if Labour has any sense the party will find a way of deposing Ed Miliband and crowning him as leader.

Why? In part it is because Miliband fails the greatest test for a leader of the opposition: you cannot imagine him as prime minister.

And in part it is because of his flawed campaigning since 2010. Even if you agree with them that the Conservatives and the Liberal Demcocrats are evil, you still want to know what Labour would do differently. And of that we have little idea.

But above all the greater electability of Johnson is a mark of the self-defeating hegemony of the political class. (I realise this post lacks a definition of that class, but they are much like elephants - you know one when you see one.)

Ed Miliband's c.v. - adviser to Gordon Brown, cabinet minister, party leader - is at once the ideal of that class and a guarantee that he will have little appeal to anyone else.

This should not be such a surprise. Fairly or not, the two most prominent members of this class within Blair's inner circle were also its two members most disliked by the public. Step forward Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell.

Meanwule Alan Johnson has had a life outside this class - as a failed musician, postman and trade union leader. That almost in itself is enough to make him more appealing than most politicians.

Perhaps this view of the political class is unfair - perhaps things were always like this. Certainly, there were plenty of political dynasties in the past. But this modern distrust of professional politicians  is widely entertained, and the attitudes of many young politicos does nothing to discourage it.

I doubt Labour will find a way of making him leader, but they would have a much better chance at the next election if they did.

HS2: The man in Whitehall knows best again

Last night's This Week on BBC1 discussed the plans for HS2. The guests (sort of) representing the three main parties - Michael Portillo for the Conservatives, Alastair Campbell for Labour and Miranda Green for the Liberal Democrats - were in agreement. Not only must HS2 go ahead, but any local environmental objections to it are inherently ridiculous and must be ignored.

If politics goes in cycles then this is pretty much where I came in. We are once again living in an age where the man in Whitehall knows best and environmental concerns are seen as the enthusiasms of an eccentric fringe.

Maybe I am prejudiced by my East Midlands perspective, but the HS2 scheme seems a great irrelevance. The benefits claimed for it are not based on much research and if you want to boost the economy of the region there are many better ways of spending billions than building a station halfway between Nottingham and Derby. Incremental improvements to existing services are less glamorous but farm more useful.

Indeed, I suspect many travellers will prefer to use the existing line to St Pancras, particularly when it has been electrified, because it has stations close to the centres of those cities.

The disqualification of MPs on mental health grounds

Included in Nick Clegg's announcement of the government's new mental health strategy yesterday was the news that Section 141 of the Mental Health Act is the be abolished. This is the law that states that an MP must be removed from the House once he or she has been detained under mental health legislation for more than six months.

This morning Archbishop Cranmer - a blogger who believes that God is a Conservative and votes for Iain Duncan Smith in internal party elections - tweeted:

Is Clegg abolishing Lunacy Act because it was enacted after one Liberal went insane in 1886 and was used to oust another Liberal in 1916?

Up to a point, Your Grace.

In fact only one MP has ever been disqualified on mental health grounds. He was Charles Leach, Liberal MP for Colne Valley between January 1910 (when he defeated the mysterious Victor Grayson) and 1916.

Wikipedia describes his health problems as follows:

Appointed as a Chaplain to the Armed Forces, 4th class, during the First World War, his duty was to visit the wounded in the London Military Hospitals. In 1915 the strain of this and his parliamentary duties became too much and he dropped out of public life. It was reported that he had suffered a nervous breakdown, and had to move to a nursing home in London. In reality it was much starker and he had been committed to Northumberland House, Green Lanes, a private lunatic asylum. He was declared to be suffering from an unsound mind, brain deterioration and loss of memory. This would appear to have some physical cause and may well have been vascular dementia cause by small strokes or similar. Some eight months later he was found still to be of unsound mind and his seat was declared vacant.

The resultant by-election was won for the Liberals by Frederick Mallalieu, whose daughter Ann is a Labour peer and was once a near fixture on Any Questions?

Leach was disqualified under was the Luncacy (Vacating of Seats) Act of 1886, which must be where Cranmer got that date from.

However, a footnote on the webpage Causes of Byelections since the ‘Reform Act’ says:

There was at least one case before the passage of this Act of a Member found to be of unsound mind, who could not be deprived of his seat - John Bell, MP for Thirsk in July 1849.

And there is a Wikipedia page for John Bell too:

In July 1849 a Commission of Lunacy was held to determine the state of mind of John Bell, the sitting MP for Thirsk. A succession of witnesses was called, each of whom testified concerning Bell's mental state, repeating his belief that he was a bird. Bell also told his relatives and acquaintances that, while he was a bird, he could fly much better than a bird, because he kept his shoulders oiled. After the medical witnesses unanimously agreed that Bell was totally incompetent of caring for himself, the jury returned its verdict that Bell was of unsound mind.

Despite this, it was found impossible to remove him from his seat and he continued as the Member for Thirsk until his death in 1851.

Bell, the Archbishop will be happy to learn, was a Liberal too.

It first became possible to disqualify MPs on mental health grounds under the 1886 Act. This was succeeded by provisons in the the Mental Health Act 1959 and then Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

Let us leave the last word to Alastair Campbell:

If it is true that the government, at Clegg’s insistence, is intending to repeal section 141 of the Mental Health Act as part of the mental health strategy announced today, that is a good and welcome thing.

I tried to get the last government to do it, not least when with Rethink, Mind and other charities I gave evidence to the Speaker’s Conference, but failed. It will not change many lives, but it is an important symbol. Section 141 means that MPs can lose their seat if they become mentally ill. No such measure exists for long-term physical health. It is therefore a piece of straightforward discrimination which fuels the stigma and taboo surrounding mental illness.

No Health Without Mental Health

This morning Nick Clegg and Paul Burstow launched the government's new strategy No Health Without Mental Health. You can watch Paul explain the strategy in the video above.

No Health Without Mental Health will see an extra £400m put into mental services, with particular emphasis into helping service veterans and children.

It is legitimate to count this announcement as a Liberal Democrat achievement in government, as mental health was the subject of one of Nick Clegg's first speeches as leader. There is, however, widespread agreement on the way forward: Nick was even praised in a blog post by Alastair Campbell today.

This announcement was of particular interest to me because I spent part of the day emailing my employers' response to journalists. You can find it in this news story on our website.

It was certainly pleasing to see the emphasis on psychological or "talking" therapies, like cognitive behavioural therapy, in the new strategy. There is considerable evidence that they are more effective than traditional medical approaches to mental illness and they certainly do less harm - see this Daily Mail story (which began life with another of my press releases).

Would losing Andy Coulson be so bad for David Cameron?

The idea that the editor of a national newspaper would not insist on knowing the sources of a controversial story before he published it is absurd. That is why it is so hard to believe that Andy Coulson was not aware the News of the World journalists were engaged in phone hacking.

But will it be such a disaster for David Cameron if Coulson is forced to resign?

When Coulson went to work for him, the appointment was widely seen as marking a change in Conservative strategy. Coulson would provide some red meat for the redtops, in contrast to the touchy feely approach which Cameron and Steve Hilton had hitherto adopted.

Given that I believe this approach was a touch of genius that detoxified the Conservative brand and brought the party close to the near impossible feat of winning the last election, I do not think that losing Coulson would be such a blow.

Those in the Conservative Party who were enthused by Coulson's appointment were generally those who yearned for a return to the triumphs of the Hague and Duncan-Smith years. In short, they were the people whom Cameron prospered by ignoring.

It is also worth pointing out that the Coaliton government's handling of the media has not been particularly surefooted.

Of course, Coulson's resignation might dent Cameron's clean and competent image. And the real real reason for Coulson's appointment was probably that he was in good standing with Rupert Murdoch.

But at the heart of the idea that losing Coulson would be a disaster is our modern overestimation of the importance of the press officer. As I found that I wrote five years ago:

Take Alastair Campbell. In the years before New Labour won its first election he acquired the most colossal reputation - part bully, part magician.

Yet when he acted as press office for the British Lions rugby tour earlier this year no one praised his efforts. They were either ignored or slated. No one said: "The team lost all three tests horribly, but I thought the press operation was first rate."

Similarly, Campbell acquired his reputation in the years running up to 1997 because it was obvious from a long way out that Blair was going to win. Therefore political journalists had to establish good relations with him and his future cabinet ministers. Therefore Campbell had great power over them.

In the end press officers, whatever grand titles they are given, are just not that important. So I suspect David Cameron would survive Coulson's departure with surprising ease.

Six of the Best 63

Callooh! Callay! Lynne Featherstone has won the Orange Digital Election Award for "the best use of digital campaigning by a candidate".

Caron's Musings thinks that Iain Dale should get his own radio show and Helen Duffett should be a regular guest.

Seeing Margaret Thatcher on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street made Spiderplant Land "feel sick to the pit of my stomach and re-awakened my anti Tory sentiment". Maybe I am mellowing, but to me it was just extending a courtesy to a former prime minister - albeit one she is reported never to have shown to Jim Callaghan. And as time goes on, the changes of the 1980s look less like the product of Thatcher's personal wickedness and more like the inevitable breakdown of the 1945 settlement. And I never liked school milk anyway.

Did Alastair Campbell pay towards Ed Balls ousting attempt? asks Mark Reckons. I doubt it very much but am doing my bit to pass the rumour on.

Paul Remfry, UKIP, Weaver Vale looks at plans for Glasgow to build its own Stonehenge, in part as tribute to Professor Alexander Thom, proponent of the Megalithic yard.

And Narrowboat Starcross tackles Foxton locks near Market Harborough.

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer

Here is an interesting film. It came, not from LoveFilm, but form Amazon. In fact, on looking back over this blog I found they sent it in error. I had ordered Sir Henry at Rawlinson End.

But I kept the DVD (having seen the film once before - on television in the 1970s) and finally got round to watching it the other day.

Viewed today, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is at once a period piece and strangely prophetic.

It is a period piece because so many familiar faces from earlier British films are in it - Ronald Fraser, Denis Price, Michael Trubshawe. It is also a period piece of the presence of Peter Cook, John Cleese and Graham Chapman. It was shot as the sixties were drawing to a close and Monty Python was about to become the big thing in television comedy (rivalled only by Arthur Lowe, also in the film, and Dad's Army).

The film is prophetic because Rimmer, played by Peter Cook, uses the techniques of public relations and consumer research to become prime minister and then subvert the constitution. On its release the film was seen as fanciful, but it turns out to have anticipated Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson by 25 years.

A few years ago Peter Cook was chosen as the top British comedian by other British comedians. I once spoke about him to Adrian Slade, the former president of the Liberal Democrats, who is the man who auditioned him for the Cambridge Footlights.

Adrian said that Cook was the funniest conversationalist he has ever met - he would make you laugh all evening, though you could remember nothing of what he had said the following morning. However, said Adrian, to be good in revue it is enough to pull on a hat and do a funny voice. That does not make you an actor.

Peter Cook's career bears this observation out as his limitations with an actor are often on display. Michael Rimmer, however, is an outsider whose past is a mystery to us, so Cook's slightly wooden quality and the limited degree to which he engages with the other characters somehow suite the role.

For this reason the claim by William Cook, in a Guardian article a couple of years ago, that The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer is a turkey is well wide of the mark. The film is slow to start, with an extra beat after each joke which suggests someone did not trust the script or the audience. But it soon warms up and the satire is relevant even today - or perhaps more today.

The DVD also has an amiable and informative commentary by the director Kevin Billington - almost 40 years on he too is surprised at the film's relevance today and its occasional spots of gratuitous sexism.

Finally, a glimpse of the film...

My Liberator article on Nick Clegg's The Liberal Moment

I never did quite finish my series on Nick Clegg's pamphlet The Liberal Moment - the last posting on it I can find concerns chapter 7.

But I did write an article on it for the latest issue of Liberator.


Man of the Moment

Nick Clegg became leader of the Liberal Democrats without most of us knowing very much about him or his politics. He entered the leadership contest with Chris Huhne as the favourite and fought a favourite’s campaign by declining to become involved in detailed policy discussions. Before that he had served a term as MEP for the East Midlands and then inherited what is probably the nearest thing to a safe seat that the Lib Dems possess.

He did speak at a Liberator fringe meeting while still an MEP, advocating what he termed “crunchy” liberalism and attacking over-regulation, but he was careful to confine himself to matters that were the concern of the European parliament and not to trespass on the concerns of his Westminster colleagues. Even since he became leader, it has been hard, despite such apparently guileless outbursts as “our shopping list of commitments will be far, far, far, far, far shorter”, to say what Cleggism is or even which causes are closest to his heart.

So the appearance of The Liberal Moment is welcome. Published by the think tank Demos, it is billed as being about the future of “progressive” politics. Nick argues that:

progressives are to avoid being marginalised by an ideologically barren Conservative party, bereft of any discernible convictions other than a sense of entitlement that it is now their turn to govern, then the progressive forces in British politics must regroup under a new banner. I believe that liberalism offers the rallying point for a resurgent progressive movement in Britain.

The arguments that there is a free-floating progressive spirit at work in British society that has sometimes alighted upon the Labour Party and sometimes upon the Liberal Party or the Liberal Democrats never convinces, but in the course of the pamphlet we do discover more about our leader and his political views.

Progressivism
Perhaps because he is writing for Demos and aiming his words principally at a socialist audience, Nick is at pains to argue that Labour and the Liberal Democrats are essentially on the same side or at least face a common enemy. So he draws a distinction between progressives and conservatives:

At the core of progressive thought is the idea that we are on a journey forward to a better, and especially more socially just, society; it’s a political ideology that stems from a restless, optimistic ambition for change and transformation. At the core of conservative thought is a determination to preserve, protect and defend. Conservatives are primarily governed by caution about the unintended consequences of change, reluctant to change the status quo, especially to alter the social pecking order in society. Conservatives tend to believe we are at risk of decline if we don’t protect things as they are; progressives tend to believe we are capable of more, and better, if only we change the way things are.

This sounds inspiring and probably reflects the way that most Liberal Democrats would differentiate themselves from the Conservatives if asked, but there are several problems with it. The first is that much Liberal Democrat campaigning is precisely concerned with preserving, protecting and defending, whether it is saving local post offices, opposing new housing development or standing up for village schools. The second is that an awareness of the unintended consequences of change is not confined to conservatives, because it is precisely what differentiates liberals from socialists; certainly, Nick is very aware of these consequences in this critique of Labour later in this pamphlet. The third problem is that the conservatives’ support of the free market often leads them to adopt policies that undermine society’s pecking order, but it would be unfair to expect anyone to unravel the contradictions of conservatism in a single pamphlet – you would be struggling if you had a whole library to do it.

Nick also offers an historical argument to support the idea of progressivism as a force in British politics. He adopts Roy Jenkins’ idea that there was a tragic split on the left around the time of the First World War and cites Peter Clarke’s book Liberals and Social Democrats as evidence of this. This is a work that was often referred to in the Alliance years, but it is questionable whether those who referred to it had read more than the title. Certainly, it was something of a Rorschach test: those who supported the Alliance project saw it as evidence that liberals and social democrats used to be the same thing, whereas those who thought themselves radical liberals were thrilled by Clarke’s rediscovery of a forgotten ideology quite separate from social democracy.

As Nick tells it the progressive spirit – which functions here as a sort of anti-conservative Holy Ghost – alighted upon the Labour Party after World War I, with the Liberal Party lost in a new collectivist world. This is an odd argument: this collectivist world was as much Lloyd George’s creation as anyone else’s, and Lloyd George had a better grasp of collectivist remedies in the inter-war economic crisis. Besides, it is clear from this pamphlet that Nick is an instinctive anti-collectivist, so it is not clear why he is so keen on Labour’s adoption of this approach. The problem must lie with the whole idea of “progressivism”, but there is something wonderfully eccentric about a party leader writing (or at least putting his name to) a pamphlet that discusses the Liberal Party's performance in the 1923 general election in some detail.

Nick’s views
Even if we reject the idea that is intermittently presented as its key, there is much to be learned from The Liberal Moment, particularly about Nick Clegg. The thinker that emerges from these pages is instinctively in favour of liberty and local control, optimistic and at ease with policy development from Europe.

Take the chapter on green issues. Although it is titled “The Environmental Crisis”, it is free from the “We’re all doomed” rhetoric that dominates discussion in this field. Nick deals principally with the problem of meeting Britain’s future power generation needs without increasing CO2 emissions. He does not want to see an expansion of coal our nuclear generation: instead he sees microgeneration as the answer, with local opposition to developments like wind farms being overcome by giving communities as stake in them:

it was the people, not the government, who did most of the hard work, putting up much of the capital and making the commitments necessary: by 2001 over 100,000 families belonged to wind turbine cooperatives, which had installed 86 per cent of all the wind turbines in Denmark. By 2004 over 150,000 were either members or owned turbines, and about 5,500 turbines had been installed.

You cannot fault Nick for his liberalism here, even if you doubt that wind power will fill the whole of this new generation gap or that it will be so easy to accept people to accept what would amount to a vast industrialisation of the countryside.

When he turns to the economy Nick is more conventional and there is little here that we have not heard from Vince Cable over recent months. He attacks Labour for pushing for the deregulation of financial markets and doing nothing to curb spiralling levels of debt in the British economy. He goes on to criticise the centralisation of power in the inner circle of government, which is relevant here because, in a neat formulation, "winner-takes-all politics produces winner-takes-all economies". Then Nick calls for a reinvention of the banking system, dispersing power within the sector: "regulation must match the scope of financial institutions and operate across borders where necessary, recognising that no one nation state can adequately control multinational businesses". And there must be a limit to the size of banks too - those that are too big to fail are too big.

Add a name check for the Glass-Steagall Act and you will probably conclude that, while this is all good stuff, it is nothing we have not heard before. So it is good to see Nick finish his economic chapter by rediscovering the lost Liberal cause of employee ownership of companies. In the old Liberal Party this policy appealed to both Victorian individualists and 1960s syndicalists. But in the SDP years it was allowed to dwindle into the belief that if people had a few shares in the company they worked for they were less likely to go on strike.

There is the inevitable chapter on constitutional reform: there are too many quangos; Britain is too centralised; we need a written constitution; donations to political parties must be capped; and we need electoral reform. All of it true and worth repeating.

“Progressivism” makes a return in the chapter on “the social crisis”, where we are told that there is “one principle that pierces right to the heart of everything progressives stand for: fairness”. The concept of fairness is popular with focus groups, but that is because we all believes are views are fair; it is not that Conservatives oppose fairness, it is just that they have a different conception of it from other people. This makes it hard to believe that fairness can penetrate to the heart of anything.

Nick goes on to make his familiar point that "a child born today in the poorest neighbourhood in Sheffield will die on average fourteen years before a child born in the most affluent neighbourhood a few miles away". If I read that once more I shall be tempted to ask why he got himself selected as PPC for that affluent neighbourhood.

Familiar too is Nick’s remedy: the pupil premium scheme whereby schools will be funded more generously if they accept children from poorer backgrounds. Universities’ enthusiasm for foreign students suggests that educational establishments will be keen to accept students who bring a higher income, but I have never seen it Nick explain how he would sell this policy to middle-class parents who would be simultaneously paying for this scheme and seeing their children excluded from the best schools because of it. Everyone agrees we need more good schools, but if the pupil premium does no more than redistribute children between the existing good and bad ones, it is hard to see that it will be popular with voters or begin to justify the claims Nick routinely makes for it.

Who do you think you are?
Nick Clegg faces a problem in that the public does not know him well and that those who do recognise him probably imagine that he is very like David Cameron. Team Clegg is obviously aware of this and tried to counter the impression in Nick’s speech at Bournemouth with a weak joke about Brad Pitt. The Liberal Moment suggests that what makes Nick Clegg different is his European background and that the roots of his liberalism can be found there too.

In the age of Alastair Campbell and The Thick of It the conventional wisdom is that politicians must at all costs appear ordinary, but maybe the real Nick Clegg is more interesting than he has been allowed to appear so far? He might go down better with the public if they were allowed to see more of this side of him.

Labour staff face DNA tests over ballot box tampering

You have to laugh.

From the Sunday Times:

In a move that has been labelled “bonkers” by insiders, Ray Collins, Labour’s general secretary, wants to collect samples from all workers at the party’s Victoria Street headquarters who could have been involved in spoiling ballot papers in the bitter contest for the constituency of Erith and Thamesmead.

Among the candidates running for selection was Georgia Gould, 22, the daughter of Lord Gould, one of the architects of New Labour. The selection process was marred by claims that she was being “parachuted” into the safe seat by the Labour party machine and being given unfair help by powerful figures including Alastair Campbell and Tessa Jowell.

A hustings in April had to be called off after seals were broken on a ballot box containing postal votes at party headquarters.