By-election in Wakefield as disgraced MP resigns

Ahmad Khan, the Conservative MP for Wakefield, who was convicted of the sexual assault of a 15-year-old boy, is to resign from the Commons.

Steerpike on the Spectator website quotes his resignation statement:

Owing to long delays in the legal process, my constituents have already been without visible parliamentary representation for a year. Even in the best case scenario, anticipated legal proceedings could last many more months. 

I have therefore regrettably come to the conclusion that it is intolerable for constituents to go years without an MP who can amplify their voices in parliament. Representing them has been the honour of my life and they deserve better than this. Consequently I am resigning as MP for Wakefield and withdrawing from political life.

Ahmad Khan had originally said he would not resign as he is appealing against his conviction, But as Steerpike says, Crispin Blunt's statement in support of him earlier this week met with a strong backlash.

As the article goes on to point out, Wakefield was one of the more surprising Tory gains at the last election, having been solidly Labour since 1931.

Possible Labour candidates being mentioned include Mary Creagh, the defeated MP in 2019, and Ed Balls.

Pointless offers a warning to Change UK

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Change UK - or the Tiggers, as I still think of them - announced their Euro candidates today.

There are some names I recognise, notably the former Conservative cabinet minister Stephen Dorrell.

I note, however, that he is standing in the West Midlands rather than the East Midlands, where he was an MP for 36 years.

With Dorrell and a few other people we politicos have heard of - Rachel Johnson, Gavin Esler - the Tiggers must be feeling pleased with themselves.

But they should not feel too pleased.

Last year I pointed out how little most people know about politics:

Pointless is almost a mirror image of Family Fortunes, which rewarded contestants for being average not for being clever. 

Yet there are two subjects where Pointless contestants generally know little and find the thought they might know something to be so unreasonable as to be amusing. 

One is British politics and the other is geography.

After I had posted that, "the admirable Alwyn Turner" sent me the link to a post he had written in 2013.

It was about a round in Pointless that year where 100 people had been asked to name as many politicians as they could remember who had served in the Labour cabinets of either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. That is, any cabinet member between 1997 and 2010:

Top of the list was John Prescott, named by just 15 out of the 100 people. 

Then came: Ed Miliband - 13 out of 100 

Ed Balls -13 out of 100 

David Miliband - 12 out of 100 

Jack Straw - 7 out of 100 

Alistair Darling - 7 out of 100 

Peter Mandelson - 4 out of 100 

David Blunkett - 4 out of 100 

Clare Short - 2 out of 100 

Mo Mowlam - 1 out of 100 

Margaret Beckett - 1 out of 100 

We never found out whether my nominee, Ivor Richard, made it into the pointless category, because there were simply too many names to go through. But amongst those who rated not a single mention were: Andrew Adonis, Andy Burnham, Jack Cunningham, Charlie Falconer, Patricia Hewitt, Derry Irvine, Donald Dewar, Frank Dobson, Geoff Hoon, Margaret Jay, Alan Milburn and James Purnell.

So, as I say, the Tiggers should not feel to pleased with themselves tonight.

Incidentally, this second post was quoted without attribution on the Today programme by a Leading Political Commentator, who unfollowed me on Twitter when I pointed this out.

But I'm not bitter.

Chapter and verse from Pointless on how little interest most people take in politics

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A couple of days ago I wrote that the television quiz Pointless reminds us how little most people know about politics.

After I had done so, the admirable Alwyn Turner sent me the link to a post he wrote back in 2013 making the same point:

An edition of the TV game show Pointless this week had a round based on 100 people naming as many politicians as they could remember who had served in the Labour cabinets of either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. That is, any cabinet member between 1997 and 2010 ...

It's not a scientifically selected sample, but even so the results suggest just how completely uninterested in politics the public are.

Top of the list was John Prescott, named by just 15 out of the 100 people. Then came:

Ed Miliband - 13 out of 100
Ed Balls - 13 out of 100
David Miliband - 12 out of 100
Jack Straw - 7 out of 100
Alistair Darling - 7 out of 100
Peter Mandelson - 4 out of 100
David Blunkett - 4 out of 100
Clare Short - 2 out of 100
Mo Mowlam - 1 out of 100
Margaret Beckett - 1 out of 100 

We never found out whether my nominee, Ivor Richard, made it into the pointless category, because there were simply too many names to go through. But amongst those who rated not a single mention were: Andrew Adonis, Andy Burnham, Jack Cunningham, Charlie Falconer, Patricia Hewitt, Derry Irvine, Donald Dewar, Frank Dobson, Geoff Hoon, Margaret Jay, Alan Milburn and James Purnell.

Alwyn rounded off his post by quoting from Pamela Hansford Johnson's 1962 novel An Error of Judgement:

"Could it really be that I am the only person in the world bored stiff, bored pallid, by politics?" a character asks, and is immediately put straight by another: "'No, we all are, those of us who aren't politicians. That's why we're the prey of the silly men, the posturing men. They don't get bored, not ever. We are the victims of their professional excitement."

Ed Davey: Ed Balls ate my homework

This morning someone tweeted a link to an interview Ed Davey gave when he joined the cabinet in 2012.

As well as telling the story of his extraordinary bravery in rescuing a woman from the tracks at Clapham Junction, it gives us an insight into Ed's schooldays.

He was head boy at the private Nottingham High School and one of his near contemporaries there was Ed Balls (whose father was a great campaigner for comprehensive education).

Ed Davey recalls:

"Ed Balls was in the year below me. I lent him my O-level history notes and he never gave them back."

Why I knew Ed Balls would be redeemed

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Ed Balls' weekly displays of high-class dad dancing have won him redemption. No longer a discredited, defeated politician he is now a loved celebrity.

What will he do next? He could use this new public affection to restart his political career. Or he may choose to spend his time travelling round Britain on trains and making programmes about it.

Some will have been surprised by this rebirth. But I find that I forecast it long before Balls' fall.

For in May 2009 I wrote:

Yet Ed Balls has a heart and may yet be redeemed. For, asked about his childhood reading by the Wakefield Express a couple of years ago, he remembered: 

a great series of kids' detective books by Malcolm Saville called the Lone Pine Adventures, which were all set in the Shropshire hills.

It seems I was right to assume that no one who grew up on Malcolm Saville can be all bad.

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"Labour should have the courage to stand up for what is right for Britain, which will be welcomed not just by the bulk of the 48 per cent (including most Labour voters) who voted to remain, but also many of the 52 per cent who are entitled to say that what is happening does not match what they were promised." Richard Corbett is right, but it became clear today that his party's leaders do not agree with him.

"Ed Balls’ performances on Strictly Come Dancing shed more light upon politics than is generally appreciated," argues Chris Dillow.

Martin Thompson offers a short biography of the architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott.

Freda Cooper reviews Magnus, a film about the world chess champion Magnus Carlsen who is currently defending his title in a match against Sergey Karjakin.

The actor David Troughton talks The Archers, Doctor Who and cricket with Heather Neill.

Radiolab explores why Americans were once terrified by quicksand but are not today...

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Peter Carrol reviews Ed Balls' memoirs.

"Lib Dem Glee Club is without a doubt, the weirdest event in British politics." Mikey Smith of the Daily Mirror ventures into the belly of the beast.

Roger Hermiston says the Liberal Democrats ignore one of their more recent heroes: Sir Archibald Sinclair. "Ultimately his legacy might well be, like Clegg, that he led the Liberals on a downward electoral path, but his is a compelling story, and there is much to chew over and admire in his years at the top of British political life."

Pop culture has worn out Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, explains Nick Murray.

Mark Cunliffe remembers Thick as Thieves, a 1974 TV sit com starring Bob Hoskins and John Thaw.

"There was always a hint of the West Country lumberjack to Trescothick's batting, defined by hefty forearms, scythes through the off side and a stubborn reticence to move his feet. But his runs underpinned England's progress to their 2005 summit." Tim Wigmore celebrates Marcus Trescothick.

On having something in common with Ed Balls

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Ed Balls' lunchtime interview on Test Match Special today revealed him as a more appealing personality than he ever appeared as a frontline politician.

It also revealed that we have something in common. We were both at the first day of the 1976 Trent Bridge test against the West Indies.

Those were the days when a lad could turn up at a test with a reasonable expectation of being able to pay on the gate and get in. I did just this at Edgbaston in 1974 and 1975, but was locked out at Trent Bridge in 1977.

I have two clear memories of that day in 1976.

The first is of Viv Richard coming down the wicket against Derek Underwood and hitting him back over deep extra cover for six. No one did that to Underwood.

The second is of being asked by two Australians for the name of an England fielder they did not recognise.

"That's Mike Brearley," I said.

Over the next five years he was to captain England to three series victories against Australia.

Did Labour hatred of the Lib Dems cost Ed Balls his career?

If Ed Balls' seat was under threat, what were all those activists doing in Sheffield Hallam?

— Atul Hatwal (@atulh) May 8, 2015

Atul Hatwal from Labour Uncut asked a good question.

Several Liberal Democrats tweeted yesterday evening that Labour activists were delighted when the Tories defeated a Liberal Democrat minister.

Well, we all get excited at counts, but this does rather suggest that Labour's hatred of us Lib Dems was warping their judgement.

Could it be that they got so excited by the prospect of defeating Nick Clegg that they neglected Ed Balls seat elsewhere in Yorkshire?

This would have been foolish both because Labour does not win seats like Sheffield Hallam and because there was speculation back in 2010 that Ed Balls could be vulnerable in Morley and Outwood.

Austerity: Will Labour activists still stick their fingers in their ears?

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For those prepared to listen it has always been clear that a Labour government would implement austerity policies too.

During the last general election campaign Alistair Darling conceded that if Labour were re-elected it would its  public spending cuts will be "tougher and deeper" than those implemented by Margaret Thatcher.

And in October 2013 Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and business secretary, vowed to be tougher on benefit claimants than the Tories.

Yet through all this Labour activists have clung to the belief that austerity was all down to the personal wickedness of Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers and would be reversed as soon as Labour came to power.

Will Ed Balls' speech today finally make them return to the same planet the rest of us live on?

I quote:

People know we are the party of jobs, living standards and fairness for working people. 

But they also need to know that we will balance the books and make the sums add up and that we won’t duck the difficult decisions we will face if they return us to government. 

Working people have had to balance their own books. 

And they are clear that the government needs to balance its books too. 

So Labour will balance the books in the next parliament. 

These will be our tough fiscal rules. We will get the current budget into surplus and the national debt falling as soon as possible in the next parliament. 

Tough fiscal rules that our National Policy Forum endorsed in July, demonstrating that, however difficult, our party can unite in tough times to agree a radical, credible and fully costed programme for government. 

And we will legislate for these tough fiscal rules in the first year after the election and they will be independently monitored by the Office for Budget Responsibility. 

So in our manifesto there will be no proposals for any new spending paid for by additional borrowing. 

No spending commitments without saying where the money is coming from. 

Because we will not make promises we cannot keep and cannot afford.

It ought to, but my money is on their continuing to stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la".

A Labour government would cut spending as much as the Coalition

Yesterday Labour's national policy forum confirmed that an incoming Labour government would keep to the Coalition's spending plans for 2015-16. An attempt to commit Labour to abandoning those plans was defeated by 125 to 14.

So next time you see a Labour politician, blogger or tweeter demanding more spending on something, you can ask them what taxes they would raise or cuts they would make elsewhere to fund it.

I certainly would not defend all the Coalition's spending decisions. I think the cuts to local government have been too severe - in fact, given that the worse is still to come, I wonder if it will be politically possible for those cuts to be made in full.

But what this vote does mean is that Labour wants to have any intellectual credibility then it is going to have to curb its reflex reaction of promising more spending on every issue that comes up. That will not come easy to most Labour activists.

The Guardian reports Ed Balls as saying after the vote:

"We will balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling as soon as possible in the next parliament."

That is pretty much what Tim Farron said when we bloggers interviewed him on Saturday. I wondered if it was not too fiscally constrictive, but his position is fast emerging as the new orthodoxy.

Vince Cable gives a Commons master class - at the expense of Ed Balls

Vince Cable's response to Ed Balls in the Budget debate yesterday was a work of art and deserves to be quoted at some length:

I have calculated that this is the 18th Budget to which I have responded in some capacity, and the fourth directly to the shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls. However, since he wrote many of the others, I was probably responding to him indirectly. Having heard the right hon. Gentleman over the years, I have picked up on some traits. First, he obviously has a capacity for a crunchy, memorable soundbite that often turns out to be wrong. I think he was the author of the phrase “No more boom and bust”, the consequences of which we are still living with. I also think he was the author of “triple-dip recession”, which of course we never had. 

When we first had these exchanges a couple of years ago, the right hon. Gentleman had a very good football chant going on the Back Benches behind him: “Growth down, inflation up. Unemployment up.” Now of course we have growth up, unemployment down and inflation down. His current favourite is the “millionaires’ tax cut”, which I would find a little more persuasive had I not sat on the Opposition Benches for 10 years being lectured by him and his boss that any increase in the top rate of tax above 40% would be counterproductive and damaging to the economy. 

One feature of the right hon. Gentleman’s speeches that we all look forward to is the annual conjuring trick, and the 10 different ways we could use a bankers’ bonus tax. The rabbit out of the hat trick gets progressively more difficult because the rabbit gets bigger and the hat gets smaller as time passes, so I shall remind him of some of the figures. 

When the right hon. Gentleman was City Minister and presiding over all of this, the total bankers’ bonus pool was something in the order of £11.3 billion, and it was £11.5 billion the following year when the Labour Government brought in a bankers’ bonus tax. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which monitors these things, the bankers’ bonus pool was £1.6 billion last year. In the current year, it is estimated to be £1.3 billion. That is one-tenth of the size of the bonus pool on which the original tax was placed. We are then left with the question that is at the core of his fiscal policy: how is he going to get £3 billion in tax out of a £1.5 billion bonus pool? The charitable way to describe that is as a mathematical puzzle. We ought to refer it to the new Turing institute to investigate. 

I should perhaps declare one self-interest. I do not have an interest in the millionaires’ tax, but compared with both the shadow Chancellor and the Chancellor I am more likely to take advantage of the relaxation in the annuity rules. It is worth recalling that over many years I came to this House on many Friday mornings, with Back Benchers from my own party and Conservative Opposition MPs, to try to achieve this reform. We were confronted with relentless stonewalling by the Labour Government of the day, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a part and in which he participated directly, with the very simple message that pensioners were far too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with their own pension savings. This is one of the really big, major positive changes to come out of the Budget.

It is worth reading his whole speech. Thrill as he swats away what are supposed to be telling interventions from Labour backbenchers.

What is wrong with Ed Balls may not be what you think

We are frequently told that if Labour came to power and Ed Balls became chancellor he would borrow and spend too much and bankrupt the country.

Nonsense.

The truth is that the chancellor, whoever he or she was, would have very little room for manoeuvre.

So the correct charge is against Ed Balls in not that he would be profligate but that he is promising policies he knows he would not be able to deliver.

Occasionally the truth seeps out from Labour.

Back in March 2010, at the start of the general election campaign, Alistair Darling admitted that

Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances.

And in October last year the Guardian told us this:

Labour will be tougher than the Tories when it comes to slashing the benefits bill, Rachel Reeves, the new shadow work and pensions secretary, has insisted in her first interview since winning promotion in Ed Miliband's frontbench reshuffle.

But for the most part it is easier for Labour to pretend that the constrains that have hobbled the Coalition would not apply to them. That way, they keep their activists and supporters in the press happy.

Labour sounds the retreat over its list of target seats

Labour Uncut reports a "reprioritisation" of the party's list of 106 key seats:

Underpinning this reappraisal are two broader developments: first, the increasing effort Labour is having to devote to retaining marginal seats it already holds and second, the party’s flagging performance in the south. 

At the last election Labour won 17 seats where the majority was only in three figures. Although Labour’s vote in these seats will undoubtedly be bolstered by defections from the Lib Dems, there is a real danger that anti-Labour supporters of the coalition parties will switch their votes to maximise the chances for a Labour defeat – after all, both the Tories and the Lib Dems will be standing on the same economic record. 

In 2011, when Debbie Abrahams won the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election, it was notable that the Lib Dem vote held up, sustained largely by massive switching from the Tories. 

If this type of behaviour were replicated at the next election then Labour could face losing large numbers of seats, with shadow cabinet members like Gloria De Piero, who had a majority at the last election of 192, under threat.

Labour Uncut goes on to name Dover, Crawley and Battersea as examples of Southern seats where the party is struggling to make progress.

It quotes a party source as saying that Labour’s realistic target list is nearer 60 than 106, and concludes:

In effect, Labour is now targeting a coalition with the Lib Dems following the next election.

This would certainly explain Ed Balls' wooing of Nick Clegg, though perhaps not Ed Miliband's new-found wish to save the middle class.

Ed Balls' truth train does not stop at every station

Gus O’Donnell's review, published yesterday, made it clear that the last Labour government at Westminster was very keen to see Abdelbaset al-Megrahi returned to Libya. But journalists trying to find ministers who had openly lied about that face were struggling to find one with a hand in the cookie jar.

Until they remembered that in September 2009 Ed Balls had told Radio 4's Today programme: ""None of us wanted to see the release of al-Megrahi."

I would not be too concerned - there are, after all, good reason to suspect that al-Megrahi had nothing to do with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 - it's just that Ed Balls has recent form.

A couple or weekends ago he twice told Andrew Marr that the last Labour government had not run a structural deficit. Nick Thornsby has the precise quotes - and the figures that proves Balls was not telling the truth.

So Ed Balls is a formidable politician - but don't forget to count the teaspoons while he is around.

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On The Andrew Marr Show this morning Ed Balls claimed that the last Labour government did not run a structural deficit. Nick Thornsby's Blog has the figures that prove it did.

"I took the trouble of looking up how often as Tommy McAvoy he had spoken in the House of Commons in the last four years. The answer was just once in four years when he muttered just four words. Now as Lord McAvoy he has spoken 77 times on this Bill." On Liberal Democrat Voice, Chris Rennard reports on Labour's filibustering on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill in the House of Lords.

In a very personal post on his A Liberal Helping blog, Matthew Hulbert writes of how his father leaving home made him a Liberal Democrat. (That sounds remarkably like the opening to my own article about Harborough's Liberal history in the Journal of Liberal History, 68.)

Asked, by the current government, to review 10 Labour initiatives in a bid to help inform future policy, Professor Janet Walker of Newcastle University and Professor Cam Donaldson of Glasgow Caledonian University, said: "The most depressing conclusion from our review is that despite substantial social resources having been spent on pilots, pathfinders, evaluations and the roll-out of programmes, there is no hard evidence as to their effectiveness." Community Care on the difficulty of discovering whether all that public spending does any good.

The self-explanatory No Police Spies website was launched recently.

Transition Leicester has the latest on the campaign to protect Aylestone Meadows in Leicester from development associated with sports pitches.

Ed Balls will challenge subeditors

The BBC soon changed the headline on this report, but it remains in the RSS feed.

The departure of Alan Johnson and the dangers of Ed Balls

The announcement of Alan Johnson's resignation came just as I was leaving work. Guido Fawkes suggests there will be a scandal in the Sunday papers and implicates Ed Balls in its leaking. (Later: Tomorrow's Daily Mail suggests a different story is behind his resignation.)

Whatever the truth of that, Johnson never looked comfortable as shadow chancellor. His appointment has to count as a bad error by Ed Miliband, ranking alongside his naming of Phil Woolas as shadow immigration minister - though at least the latter showed a wicked sense of humour.

When Ed Balls was passed over as shadow chancellor I suggested that it was a sign of weakness rather than strength on Ed Miliband's part:

I am reminded of the way the England selectors used to leave out good players (John Snow, Phil Edmonds) because they might be disruptive or hard to control.

Well, Miliband has his star fast bowler now.

Will Balls strengthen the Labour team? He certainly knows his economics, but he is heavily implicated in the failures of the Brown years. More importantly, his instinct will be to return to a Brownite "Labour investment vs Tory cuts" attack.

If Ed Miliband does not try to rein him in then, however popular this approach is in the short term, Labour will lack credibility as an alternative government come the next election. If Miliband does try to rein him in, there will be fireworks.

If there is scandal brewing over Alan Johnson then he might have been doomed whatever job he was given. But he is a likeable politician and would have been an asset to the shadow cabinet in an elder statesman role - something like shadow foreign secretary or shadow leader of the House. I am sorry to see him go.

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Are the Tories giving the Lib Dems a free ride in Oldham East? asks Mark Ferguson on LabourList. He adds: "Although Labour are the bookies' favourites for the January 13th poll, sources close to the Labour campaign have suggested that they expect a close race. Having the Tories take things easily will certainly make things more difficult for Labour."

Jerry Hayes on ThinkPolitics gives another take on the forthcoming by-election: "The potential victim in this strange little event is MiliEd. He will be out classed and outshined by Balls. he will give the impression of being the organ grinder’s monkey If, in the unlikely event that Labour, wins he will only get some of the credit, but there will be screams to move Balls to a more visible role. Screams that MiliEd would be unwise to ignore, but loathe to act on."

Craig Dearden-Phillips on Social Enterprise asks another question: Are mutuals fit for purpose? "What does all this mean for public services? Perhaps the strongest message I got is that for the magic of employee ownership to work, it is vital that employee ownership is as near-total as possible."

Paul Linford offers his review of the political year 2010.

The career of Blake Edwards is celebrated by Self-Styled Siren.

While Andrew Hickey marks the passing of Captain Beefheart: "Beefheart is actually less original than his music sounds, but he was one of the great imaginative *synthesists* of all time, putting together the timbre of Chicago blues with the tonalities and rhythms of Ornette Coleman, and adding beat poetry on top."

Nick Clegg is the Spectator's Politician of the Year

The Spectator held its annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards ceremony earlier this evening. And congratulations to Nick Clegg for being named the magazine's Politician of the Year.

You can find the full list of awards on the Spectator website.

Incidentally, you don't have to be a right-winger to win one of them. Ed Balls was named Parliamentarian of the Year.