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."

Project fear won't win the grammar school debate either

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The Remain campaign lost the referendum on British membership of the European Union because it was unable to articulate a single positive reason why voters should continue to support it.

As a result it relied upon Project Fear issuing increasingly blood-curdling warnings about the effects of Brexit which, though unfolding events may prove them largely justified, failed to convince.

Much the same thing is now happening in the debate over grammar schools. I have heard plenty of tales of the iniquities of grammar schools of earlier decades – what I once called “tales of short-trousered angst” in the Guardian – but almost no one talking about why you should want to send your child to a comprehensive.

There are other parallels. Back in February, while ticking off Emma Thompson, I wrote:

If we want the forces of light to win the referendum on British membership of the European Union then we have to get away that it is a project of the elites. 

Which may be a problem. While professionals arrange the harmonisation of qualifications across the continent to make it easy for them to take up agreeable employment abroad, the rest of us are faced with an influx of people who will work harder and expect lower wages. 

That, incidentally, why it is bizarre that David Cameron's demands centre on benefits for people from Poland. It is the Poles in jobs that British workers are afraid of. 

Academic research gives little support to the idea that immigrant labour depresses wages, but it does not feel that way to many people.

I suspect that same people are not impressed by the debate on grammar schools. They see the wealthy sending their children to private schools or buying houses in the catchment areas of successful comprehensives.

Then they are told that no policy changes that might benefit their own children can be allowed unless they benefit all children absolutely equally.

We are used to the professional left arguing that unless a reform can be introduced everywhere, all at once, then it should not be introduced at all.

This is best displayed by John Prescott’s reaction to the prospect of free schools:

"If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there." 

But the debate on comprehensives so far as also brought to mind Algernon’s remark in The Importance of Being Earnest:

“Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?” 

If we want voters to support comprehensive schools then we need to convince voters that they will be good for their children, not scare them or call them selfish.

Let’s end with a tweet that shows the way forward...

Very proud that I lead a comp school. The aim is to get 'grammar school' outcomes for all children, not just those already on track aged 11.

— Blatch Mr Harrold (@BMS_MrHarrold) September 10, 2016

Six of the Best 458

Lincoln Cathedral

John Prescott is widely regarded as one of the funniest politicians on Twitter. But, asks Peter Black, is he really responsible for his own Twitter feed?

"As I plod through my 20s, I've noticed a strange phenomenon: The music I loved as a teenager means more to me than ever—but with each passing year, the new songs on the radio sound like noisy nonsense." Mark Joseph Stern writes about the psychological basis of musical nostalgia for Slate.

The flooding of Mesolithic Doggerland and the emergence of Lincolnshire are mapped by Caitlin Green.

"The tiger stalked its way into the street where a curious boy, around nine years of age, reached out to stroke the back of the strange creature that had appeared before him. In an instant, the tiger whirled and gripping the boy’s shoulder in his jaws, ran off down the street in the direction of the docks." The East End explains the existence of a statue to be found near the entrance to Tobacco Dock.

Different Shades of Green watches Tom Abell make an impressive debut for Somerset.

Jennie Rigg has a recipe for an extremely boozy bread and butter pudding.

Headline of the Day

It comes, naturally, from the Shropshire Star:

Prescott hits town

Mutualism and free schools

Let's be generous and welcome a couple of initiatives from the other parties.

In this morning's Guardian Tessa Jowell had an article trailing the Progress lecture she gave this evening:

on the supply side, we need to do more than hold up the model of the relentlessly managed plc. We should look instead at other successful ways of delivering goods and services. There are important lessons to be learned from studying how the Co-op and John Lewis work, companies owned, respectively, by their customers and their staff.

Public services exist to serve, and are paid for by, the public, so it is the public that has the right to influence how those services are delivered, to build shared responsibility for them, and improve them by harnessing the efforts of both professionals and those they serve.

Indeed, can we really expect citizens to take on greater responsibility for their own health, learning, and environmental impact, if public services fail to give them the right to shape the ways in which they deliver them? We can. By bringing users, employees, and others together as mutual members of the provider organisation we can successfully get to grips with the supply side of public service.

All good stuff, and let's not spoil it by asking why her government has done so little to further this agenda after 12 years in office. Note too that this is a Labour minister solemnly pointing out that "the relentlessly managed plc" is not the only possible model of organisation. Whatever happened to socialism.

On the Tory side, I take similar encouragement from the Guardian report that:

Hundreds of parent groups have come forward to set up schools under Conservative plans to overhaul the education system which could see new community-run primaries and secondaries given the go-ahead within months of a change of government, figures seen by the Guardian reveal.

If this policy is to have any point then the Tories are going to have to give up their plans to decide centrally how children should be taught and even what they should wear. But I am pleased it appears to proving popular.

Those who oppose it should beware of taking the John Prescott line:

"If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there."

House Points: Is Jack Straw the new Sarah Palin?

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

A moose in the lobby

Chris Huhne told us in his speech at the Bournemouth Conference that this government has introduced 3,600 new criminal offences since it came to power in 1997. "Labour’s new legislation takes the same amount of shelf space as 200 copies of War and Peace," he said. "And it is twice as heavy as John Prescott."

So it’s no surprise that a few of those offences have slipped through without anyone noticing. At Home Office questions on Monday the Labour MP David Drew raised the case of a friend and constituent who had been arrested at Kingsnorth climate camp for "aggressively picking up litter". Is it any wonder the Wombles are threatening to move to New York?

The work of reducing our liberties is now so great that Gordon Brown has been forced to split it between two cabinet ministers. While Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, was busy at the Commons dispatch box, Jack Straw, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, was making a speech down the road at the Royal Society of Arts.

There he invented something called the ‘criminal justice lobby’ and announced that it has been running Britain’s prisons for the past decade. This of nonsense, of course, and not just because it is ministers who runs our prisons. Anyone who works with public sector professionals will know how quickly they come to endorse every new twist of government thinking. They know which side their bread is buttered.

But try telling that to Straw. According to him, the members of this lobby are obsessed with the needs of offenders when they should be worrying about the victims of crime - though he was notably short of practical proposals for helping those victims. More punishment was his recipe. Worse than that, they insist on using long words like "criminogenic".

Believing in left-wing conspiracies, vengeful, anti-intellectual. Does Jack Straw remind you of anyone?

It’s Sarah Palin, of course. If you gave Straw a beehive hairdo and he started wearing his glasses again, it would be impossible to tell them apart. You betcha!

"Now on 'Autumn Watch’ we are going over to Simon King who is with some moose in Blackburn" "Thank you, Bill, and the news here is that the moose are looking distinctly nervous."

Pauline Prescott and Miss Marple in Bournemouth

Walking up the hill past the Bournemouth International Centre to the Highcliffe after appearing in the Liberal Revue last night, I was reminded of a couple of incidents from the history of that short, steep stretch of road.

In 1999 John Prescott was driven down it. When it was suggested this wasn't a very environmentally friendly thing to do and he should have walked instead, his defence was that he had taken the limo:

"Because of the security reasons for one thing and, second, my wife doesn't like to have her hair blown about."

And if you watch The Body in the Library, the first of the Miss Marple adaptations starring Joan Hickson, you will see that the Highcliffe and the road past it feature prominently.

The Body in the Library was shown at Christmas 1984, so was presumably filmed that summer. I attended my first Liberal Assembly at Bournemouth in the September of that year, so it is nice to have a record of how it looked in those days (if you ignore the extras in 1940s clothes).

That Liberal Assembly took place at the old Winter Gardens. The Bournemouth International Centre had just been built and the Liberal Party had been offered the chance to be the first organisation to hold an event there.

But the conference organisers thought, despite the offer of a juicy discount, it would not be a good idea for the party to act as guinea pigs and discover all the problems with the centre.

That Policy Exchange report: Is Tim Leunig a closet Marxist?

The Tories and the media have missed the big story about Cities Unlimited, the Policy Exchange report on regional development policies. (You can download a PDF copy of it from the think tank's website.)

As James Graham pointed out this morning, the report's lead author Tim Leunig is a Liberal Democrat. Indeed, during my days on the party's federal policy committee he was something of a fixture on that committee's working parties.

Earlier this evening, debating the report with John Prescott on Channel 4 News, Tim said he was not a member of the Conservative or Labour parties - and said no more. He may be an academic, but he is not unworldly.

David Cameron has called Cities Unlimited "insane". My own reaction on reading it is quite different. While I like the idea of selling empty property cheaply to its neighbours and local control of development funds, it seems to me to be based on two quasi-Marxist assumptions. They are:

• contempt for piecemeal reform;
• the belief that it is the state's role to forecast how society and the economy will develop and then expedite that development.

Let me explain.

The assumption behind the report seems to be that unless regional development aid can be shown to have reduced regional disparities then it is a waste of time. The argument that it might be worth putting some effort into slowing the increase of those disparities is not even considered. Policy Exchange scorns our bourgeois liberalism: it wants revolution.

And I am puzzled by the idea that Oxford and Cambridge should be vastly expanded. Can government really predict where industry will wish to expand before industry knows itself? If government had made such decisions 25 years ago, just before the implications of information technology began to be realised, they would seem very strange to us now. How can we know that our own decisions will not look equally strange in 25 years' time?

I also wonder if this development might not be self-defeating in that it destroys the quality of life that attracts people to Oxford and Cambridge in the first place. I do not know Oxford well, but Cambridge, which was until recently a small city, has now outgrown its centre. As a result, that centre is now grossly overcrowded and I now rarely visit the place.

Of course, I may be wrong, but my point is that it is not possible for government or anyone else to know such things in advance. Therefore a less ambitious policy, not the Policy Exchange's picking of winners, is indicated.

A market economy is dynamic, and places do rise and fall. Some of the settlements where my Stiperstones lead miners lived have disappeared altogether. And Iflracombe in the late 1980s, a seaside resort abandoned by the railway and by most holidaymakers, is one of the saddest sites I have seen. Every B&B had its price in the window, trying to undercut the establishment next door.

Government cannot prevent such historical movements, but it seems to me it is worth trying to ameliorate their worst effects. And when I see a former mining village like Creswell, I cannot help thinking the fact that the most ambitious and able young people are leaving is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Alfred Austin on John Prescott

Alfred Austin is universally regarded as the worst Poet Laureate ever. Nevertheless, I find his words oddly comforting at this time of crisis:

Across the wires the electric message came:
"He is no better, he is much the same."

A nation holds its breath.

Andrew Marr disappoints trivia fans

I am watching the second part of Andrew Marr's A History of Modern Britain. Within a few minutes he has shown Anthony Eden and his wife departing for a cruise aboard the RMS Rangitata after he had resigned as prime minister over Suez and a clip from the film of Shelagh Delaney's play A Taste of Honey.

All very interesting.

BUT...

• He did not mention that the steward who looked after the Edens aboard the Rangitata was John Prescott;
• The clip from A Taste of Honey did not feature the young Hazel Blears.

This has to go down as a terrible missed opportunity.

Blair to resign on 9 May?

The First Post - "the online daily magazine" - has been getting very excited about this story from The Mole, its "Downing Street insider":

Tony Blair will finally announce his departure to the media on Wednesday May 9, triggering the Labour leadership succession. Weather permitting, he will tell us his decision on the Downing Street lawn.

The Mole can exclusively reveal that senior cabinet ministers including John Prescott are already clearing their diaries. It will be just over eight months after the rebellion, by Labour ministerial aides and MPs, that precipitated Blair's decision to go.

A May 9 announcement will mean Blair leaving Number 10 for the last time at the end of June, 10 years and eight weeks after taking office.

Blair will be able to attend his final EU and G8 summits before going. The disappointment will be that he will not be able to match Thatcher's 11 and a half years as PM.

The Mole calculates that Gordon Brown (for it will be he) will take over as prime minister early in July.

John Prescott and Sir Anthony Eden

I have referred a couple of times to the story that, when Eden took a cruise after his resignation over Suez, his cabin steward was a young John Prescott. Even so, I feared that it was a little too good to be true.

The pleasing truth is that it really did happen. To learn more, read this page on the BBC website or listen to Prescott at Your Service on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday 31 January at 11 a.m. or Sunday 4 February at 1.30 p.m.

Suez: Fifty years on

Good stuff from Alex Wilcock on Love and Liberty:

Fifty years ago today, Egypt’s President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. The British Prime Minister compared him to Hitler, and mounted an invasion with a remarkably small number of allies; it all ended in tears. The BBC website’s ‘Eden: A man under strain’ calls him a man who “entered Downing Street as… dashing and glamorous” but left “with his reputation in tatters”. Anthony Blair must be wishing comparisons with Anthony Eden weren’t so glaring on this anniversary. I wish they weren’t, too. Mr Eden’s tragedy was that he didn’t have America on his side. Mr Blair’s is that he does.

He goes on to quote a prescient passage from Conrad Russell which is well worth reading.

There is another link between Blair and Eden which Alex does not mention. Ian Jack wrote in the Guardian on 29 May 2004:

An exhausted Eden resigned on January 9 1957 and he and his wife set sail from Tilbury to New Zealand (which had been a staunch ally) on January 18. The ship was the RMS Rangitata and the Edens' cabin steward was John Prescott, who sometimes fought on-deck boxing matches for the entertainment of the passengers, sometimes won them, and sometimes was presented with his prize (beer or wine) by the ex-prime minister or his wife.

The Bonkers Code

The July issue of Liberator is now with subscribers, so it is time to post Lord Bonkers' latest diary. You can find an archive of them on his own website.

Monday
To London for the launch of my new book The Bonkers Code. I had the idea for it when I was told that an American chap was making a fortune out of the tale of a sinister conspiracy. I took a particular interest in this as I understood my interlocutor to be saying that the conspiracy was conducted by the SDP – I posted sentries and called out the militia without delay. A little fine-tuning of my ear trumpet revealed, to my understandable relief, that the sinister organisation at the heart of the book was not the SDP but Opus Dei, but even so it set me thinking. What if, after Joseph of Arimathea had brought Liberalism to England, he had conducted a marriage with, say, an ancestor of Nancy Seear? And what if that marriage had produced offspring whose heirs are amongst us even today? I retired to the Library at once to dictate the whole thing to my Literary Secretary.

Tuesday
In recent days there has been a great deal of ill-informed comment about our Deputy Prime Minister’s penchant for the game of croquet; he has suffered obloquy and had contumely poured over him – and dried contumely is a devil to brush off one’s jacket. The charge seems to be that by indulging in this pastime Prescott is betraying his proletarian roots. What rot! Have these people never been to Kingston upon Hull? If they did so they would see games of croquet taking place on every street corner, allotment and piece of waste ground. After a hard day’s trawling, there is nothing the doughty citizen of that historic city enjoys more than tying his whippet to a hoop and wielding the mallet in his shirtsleeves. Granted the game is a little rougher than that one encounters in the Home Counties – and features a more prominent role for dried fish – but to dismiss it as the preserve of the aristocracy betrays the most dreadful ignorance.

Wednesday
I have been reading more about these Opus Dei people. Did you know that Ruth Kelly, the woman with the deep voice and strange hairstyle who was briefly in charge of the nation’s schools (presumably on the grounds that she attended both Millfield and Westminster herself), is one of them? Apparently they wear spiked bracelets around their thighs – it can’t have made question time in the House any easier for her. Just imagine it: You are trying to find the figures for the number of children taking Hard Sums in the Soke of Peterborough in your folder when you suddenly feel the most ghastly pain. No wonder she struggled sometimes. Still, Mr Gladstone would scourge himself at the drop of a hat, and no one thought any the less of him for it.

Thursday
At the village shop I encounter my old friend Mark Oaten – his days as Rising Star the Indian brave now far behind him, I fear. “Another gross of Kit-Kat, Mr Patel,” he demands, and I am not surprised to see that he has a bit of a tummy on him. It transpires that he is trying to obtain a Golden Ticket that will win him ingress to something called “The Big Brother House” and numerous appearances on the electric television as a result. He assures me that this is the key to his rehabilitation, but I have my doubts. Mind you, I did see our own Julia Goldsworthy take part in some form of sports day, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Friday
The morning brings news that the first printing of The Bonkers Code has already sold out: I allow myself a second helping of kedgeree. When I stroll down to the village, however, I find the place in turmoil. So vast are the crowds come to view the ceiling painting of the Circumcision of the National Liberals (to which I allude in the book) that PC Heath has had to be called for to steward them. When I return home I receive an angry telephone call from the clubhouse at Rosslyn Park where equally large numbers are demanding a site of their painting of “The First Lady Bonkers Going Over From A Five-Yard Scrum”. Then I hear cries from the garden and hurry out to find Meadowcroft, a broom in one hand and an orchard doughty in the other, driving away some people who are trying to dig up my lawn to look for the first edition of Mill’s On Liberty, the discovery of which marks the denouement of my bestseller. “They liter’ry types be nothing but trouble,” my gardener opines. I join in with a rolled-up copy of the High Leicestershire Radical and we soon command the field.

Saturday
Donning the velvet smoking jacket and wielding the cigarette holder – you know what we writers are – I go through the morning’s post: an invitation to judge the next Booker prize; another to open the annual Hull vs Grimsby croquet match; a letter asking me how to spell ‘Mississippi’; a parcel of books to review for The Times Literary Supplement. I think the literary life will suit me down to the ground.

Sunday
You may recall that poor Menzies Campbell was bullied into promising to sell his Jag during the leadership contest – he tells me that Clegg and Teather were the ringleaders. I suggested that he keep it in one of my outbuildings here at the Hall until the fuss has blown over, and he gratefully accepted the offer. This evening I decide to take her for a spin, as we don’t want her getting out of condition. As I bowl along the lanes of Rutland I ponder how to spend my windfall from the success of The Bonkers Code (I have been fielding calls from Hollywood moguls all day). The Reverend Hughes is always launching appeals to repair the roof of St Asquith’s; the Home for Retired Canvassers at Herne Bay would appreciate a cheque, no doubt; I might treat myself to another race horse – it is simply years since I won the Derby; perhaps some jube-jubes for the Well-Behaved Orphans?

At this point in my revelry there is a frightful bang and I find that I have driven the Jag into someone’s garden fence. I beat a hasty retreat, only to wake in the small hours alarmed lest the registration number has been snapped by one of these new cameras the police have everywhere. (Rather unsporting, don’t you think?) Remembering, however, that the Jag is still registered in Ming’s name, I turn over and soon go back to sleep.

Prescott after a resignation

Back in May 1994 I posted this anecdote on my anthology blog Serendib. It describes what Sir Anthony Eden did after he resigned as prime minister over Suez. What was then a pleasing trivial connection may be about to become a grand irony or a satisfying closure.

An exhausted Eden resigned on January 9 1957 and he and his wife set sail from Tilbury to New Zealand (which had been a staunch ally) on January 18. The ship was the RMS Rangitata and the Edens' cabin steward was John Prescott, who sometimes fought on-deck boxing matches for the entertainment of the passengers, sometimes won them, and sometimes was presented with his prize (beer or wine) by the ex-prime minister or his wife.

As someone has said, there is a play to be written about an elderly Eden expounding his wisdom to the young Prescott.

Don Foster on John Prescott

It is ludicrous to say that John Prescott was not involved in the planning process for casinos.

There were numerous links between Mr Prescott's department and the casino legislation. John Prescott chaired the Domestic Affairs Cabinet Committee, with links to the independent advisory panel recommending the location of new casinos to the Government. The ODPM was also responsible for establishing a new planning category for casinos and in its report makes detailed comments on the regeneration benefits of casinos.

It is clear that there are still serious questions that require full and frank answers from Mr Prescott.

Quite.

Iain Dale will be on Newsnight later tonight to discuss this affair - see his blog for the latest developments. Part of its interest is that the running is being made by bloggers, with the BBC taking a more cautious approach.

Prescott on the way out?

Tomorrow's Daily Mail reports that John Prescott is coming under pressure on the following grounds (some more damning than others):

• Gambling insiders revealed he was the "driving force" behind the Government's plans for new super casinos;
• He met Mr Anschutz on seven occasions to discuss regeneration of the Dome
• Cabinet ministers are worried Mr Prescott is "losing it";
• Blairite PR guru Matthew Freud played a pivotal role in getting Mr Anschutz access to Government ministers;
• Mr Prescott visited a giant casino in Australia at the height of the row over the Gambling Bill in 2004 - although the visit was blandly described at the time as a 'regeneration site visit'.

Meanwhile, bloggers - notably Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale - are reopening the questions about his private life.

The Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze

This review of the Little Red Book appears in today's Liberal Democrat News.

The Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze
Edited by Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes
Politico's Media, 2006, £7.99

Tony Blair came to power in 1997 pledged to be whiter than white. "You are not here to enjoy the trappings of power," he told his MPs, "but to do a job and to uphold the highest standards in public life."

How have they measured up? Not very well, this chunky little paperback suggests. Peter Mandleson's mortgage, Bernie Ecclestone's donation, the dodgy dossier... are all here.

The Little Red Book was written in a unique way. The editors had the idea on Blair's Black Wednesday - the day Charles Clarke admitted foreign criminals had been released without being considered for deportation, John Prescott admitted to an affair and the nurses booed Patricia Hewitt.

They compiled a list of 101 scandals and invited Britain's bloggers - people who write political weblogs on the Internet - to write them up. They did so over a weekend (my entry covers Downing Street's attempts to muscle in on the Queen Mother's funeral arrangements) and the book appeared a fortnight later.

Inevitably the results are uneven, but they are great fun too. This is a superior version of those little volumes bookshops keep by the till and readers keep by the loo. If there is too much sniggering over sex - Ron Davies' badger watching is the least of our worries - there is also plenty of serious stuff. And if it has a Tory feel, more Lib Dems should have got involved.

Are there lessons to be drawn? Any government in power this long would be frayed at the edges, and I have long argued that Labour's emphasis on sleaze before 1997 was a way of disguising how little they differed from the Tories.

But there is something new about the way this government uses the media to attack anyone who crosses it. When Iain Duncan Smith revealed a lady called Rose Addis had been neglected in hospital, rumours were spread that she was a racist who had refused to be treated by black nurses. The Women's Institute and Paddington rail crash survivors suffered similar experiences.

So there is good reason to buy The Little Red Book - wherever you decide to keep it.

Jonathan Calder

Labour's deputy leadership debate

And an impressive debate it is, with weighty contributions on both sides.

Here is Andy Burnham making a nuanced case for Prescott to continue in office:

"I feel very strongly that John Prescott has done an excellent job for this government and he has been an excellent deputy prime minister. He has my full support in the job."

Some, however, have put much thought into whom they should support in Prescott's place:

David Kidney, MP for Stafford, reported that he would back “whoever Gordon [Brown] wants”.