Zack Polanski and Alistair Darling: Two soft rides from the Guardian

I'm late to the party on last week's Guardian interview with Zach Polanski, but I've still decided to come.

Reading it today, I find it's not the first time the Guardian has allowed the politician to present a carefully edited version of his past without challenge.

Zoe Williams¹ tells us that Polanksi:

started by joining the Lib Dems, and standing as a councillor in north London in 2016. “That was for one very clear reason,” he says. “Proportional representation – it’s always been really important to me.” He joined the Greens the following year...

But Polanski didn't stand in a London borough election: he stood for the Greater London Assembly. And, a prominent figure on social media, he clearly had higher ambitions with the Liberal Democrats. 

Some say he had his eye on the by-election in Richmond Park, and made up his mind to leave the Lib Dems once the local party decided to stick with Sarah Olney as their candidate.

And then there was that notorious article where he told a Sun journalist he could make her breasts bigger by using hypnosis.²

Reading it now, it looks like a puff piece for his business rather than a hatchet job. Yet Williams defends it on the grounds that "he was only just 30".

But this is not the first such interview I've seen in the Guardian. Here's Decca Aitkenhead profiling the late Alistair Darling back in 2008:

Studying law at Aberdeen, he stood for election in the student union, but not for a party. "I was just quite interested in getting things done." His manifesto favoured "strictly bread-and-butter issues, things like food prices in the student refectory". When he joined the Labour party in 1977, he never expected to be more than a member.

The truth was rather different and will surprise anyone who remembers Darling in days as Gordon Brown's chancellor.

Here's George Galloway remembering a meeting with Darling in 1973:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.

And joining Labour didn't curb his militant tendencies:

Later ... he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze.

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left.

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been.

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

A reader asks: So what's the moral of all this?

Liberal England replies: I suppose it's that you shouldn't believe everything you read in the Guardian.

The reader persists: That a bit obvious, isn't it?

Liberal England admits: I suppose it is. To be honest, I just wanted to repeat that George Galloway story one last time. Oh, and to show that I've found how to do the numbers for footnotes in superscript.³

Notes

1. Nevertheless, I won't hear a word against Zoe Williams: in my press officer days she was always a pleasure to deal with. Polly Toynbee, by contrast, once made me miss my train.
2. I'm not scandalised by that Sun article, it's just that it reminds me of when P.G. Wodehouse's Sir Roderick Spode, leader of the Black Shorts, turns out to be a designer of ladies' underwear. And Polanski's suggested strategy of concentrating on winning an urban, Corbynite vote will appeal to many Green members.
3. See?

When the Scottish Labour Party sent George Galloway to try to talk some sense into Alistair Darling

Time to wheel out one of this blog's favourite quotations. This is George Galloway writing in the Daily Record in March 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

The photograph shows the much missed Alistair Darling in those far off days.

Alistair Darling's politics were not as dull as people are saying

I'm sorry to hear of the death of Alistair Darling. We owe him our gratitude as, together with Gordon Brown, he did much to stabilise the world financial system after the global crisis of 2007-8.

He is being written of as an outwardly dull politician who was funny and charming in private life.

While such figures today seem to belong to a more civilised but vanished order, it's fair to say that Darling's politics were not always dull.

So let me, in a spirit of affection, repeat the George Galloway's reminiscences from the Daily Record in March 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

Yes, Darling's politics were once so exciting that the Scottish Labour Party sent George Galloway to talk some sense into him.

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.

Alistair Darling and councils setting illegal budgets

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I see Dawn Butler has spoken in praise of Labour councils that refused to set a balance budget because of the limits Margaret Thatcher's government set for them.

Which gives me a perfect excuse for reprinting one of this blog's favourite quotations.

Here is George Galloway reminiscing in 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

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

Embed from Getty Images

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."

Alistair Darling: From Black Dwarf to Morgan Stanley

Photo: Scottish Republican Socialist Movement

From BBC News:

Morgan Stanley has said former Chancellor Alistair Darling will join the bank's board of directors. 

Mr Darling, who served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2007 to 2010, will take up the role in January ... 

Morgan Stanley's chief executive James Gorman said the US bank would "greatly benefit from his experience." 

"He brings strong leadership experience, as well as insight into both the global economy and the global financial system," said Mr Gorman. 

In 2014 members of Morgan Stanley's board of directors received $75,000 (£49,960) a year plus an additional $10,000 to $30,000 for leading or joining a committee within the board. Each board member also received $250,000 in stock awards.

All of which gives me an excuse to wheel out this blog's favourite quote from George Galloway.

Here he is reminiscing in the Daily Record in March 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

Camila Batmanghelidjh begins

Camilla Batmanghelidjh may well do good work (I don't know) but I always find her views incoherent #newsnight

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers) February 7, 2011

Why did Camila Batmanghelidjh enjoy such a high reputation for so long?

As Gaby Hinsliff pointed out back in August, one reason for her success was that she appealed to both the political right and left.

To the Conservatives, she embodied their dream of the Big Society.

And you can see its appeal. Government services can be impersonal and bureaucratic, their staff can sometimes seem most concerned with their own interests. (The obligatory political radicalism of those staff tends to stop just short of a point where it would question the need for their own existence.)

So you can understand the appeal of Batmanghelidjh and Kids Company. Here was a charity apparently doing an immense amount of good for a client group (badly behaved orphans) that conventional services were failing to help.

So Batmanghelidjh ticked all the boxes in the era when David Cameron was trying to detoxify his party, right down to her air of vaguely defined ethnicity. (It is hard to avoid thinking of Ali G interviewing politicians at this point.)

View image | gettyimages.com

But the left loved her too. The more lurid her stories about the conditions children faced, the more they proved the wickedness of the Coalition,

The fact that Alistair Darling had fought the 2010 general election promising spending cuts "tougher and deeper" than those implemented by Margaret Thatcher.

Labour activists preferred to take their lead from the ludicrous Sharon Hodgson:

The Lib Dems aided and abetted, this time by their Conservative masters, are at it again! 

They are literally time and again taking the food out of the mouths of society’s poorest children! 

I hope they are proud of themselves and the fact that this is what they actually seem to have come into politics for as they do it time and time again!

So Labour desperately wanted Batmanghelidjh's stories of feral children abandoned by statutory services to be true.

The truth is very different.

Ruth Bright has written a tremendous post about "the condescension of Camila" on Lib Dem Voice. She says:

Kids Company began in "my" patch as a councillor in Southwark. Between 1992 and 1994 my Lib Dem colleagues and I did a 400% canvass of the nearby, very deprived, Aylesbury Estate including Wendover the biggest continuous high-rise council block in Europe. We topped this canvass up throughout the next decade, also conducting a crime survey of 2,700 homes. 

In many years of door knocking in the area I had many complaints about Kids Company (not all justified) but I never met a single local person who had been helped by Kids Company. 

In an interview on Thursday to Channel 4’s admirable Afua Hirsch Camila showed extraordinary condescension when she said that the select committee members who questioned her were not the sort of people who visit the “ghettos”. 

My former ward of Faraday in Southwark can be a tough old place but it is not a “ghetto” nor is it likely to descend into “savagery” as Kids Company claimed in a risk assessment. It is easy to look around a high rise estate and assume the worst of the people who live there. But get a bus from the Aylesbury Estate at 5am and you will see people going in to London Bridge to clean City Hall, the Shard and many a prestigious office block. 

In my time as councillor a survey showed that an astonishing 81% of council tenants in the area felt that they could trust their neighbours.

Charities can do great work - and work that the statutory services would not consider. But people I know who work in the sector often come to the view that their services tend to prosper because of remarkable individuals and particular local circumstances.

What you cannot do it benchmark them and roll them out across the country, as official dogma now demands.

I suspect Camila Batmanghelidjh's career will ultimately prove a chapter in the history of public relations more than one in the history of children's services.

And the trustees of Kids Company have a lot of awkward questions to answer.

Alistair Darling: From the International Marxist Group to the Lords

View image | gettyimages.com

Alastair Darling was given a peerage today, so it is time to remember how far this particular Lord has come.

Time, indeed, to wheel out my favourite George Galloway quote:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze.

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left.

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

When Labour sent George Galloway to talk some sense into Alistair Darling

With Alistair Darling back in the news and fighting to save the Union, it is again time to uncork one of this blog's favourite newspaper articles.

Here is George Galloway reminiscing for the Daily Record in March 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

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.

Vince Charming

After

• Lembit Opik (sort of)
• Sarah Teather
• David Laws
• Jeremy Thorpe
• Danny Alexander

you probably thought my collection of songs about Liberal and Liberal Democrat MPs was complete.

Not so.

Because here is a song about today's hero Vince Cable. There is even another one about him: Vince Cable's Way.

Thanks again to @abjtal on Twitter

When Labour sent George Galloway to talk some sense into Alistair Darling

Alistair Darling is a former chancellor of the exchequer and Labour's voice of moderation and wisdom. George Galloway is a tribune of the people and the only MP from a far-left grouping.

But, as I blogged back in September 2008, it wasn't always like that. My source was a Daily Record article by Galloway that has seems to have disappeared - though he still writes a column for the paper. Anyway, here is the story in Galloway's own words:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

And, no, this isn't an April Fools' story.

Charles Kennedy set to lead pro-Union campaign in referendum

A report in tomorrow's Guardian claims:

Alistair Darling, Charles Kennedy and the former Tory leader in Scotland, Annabel Goldie, are being lined up as the main faces of the pro-union campaign in the referendum on Scottish independence, sources in the three parties confirmed Wenesday [sic] night.

The report also says that Labour and Liberal Democrats have expressed the hope that David Cameron will adopt a lower profile in future.

Will Charles and co. be enough to save the Union? Certainly, the rise of the SNP has been greatly eased by the way that almost all the considerable figures in the other parties have chosen to make their careers at Westminster rather than Holyrood. He may now face more formidable opposition.

But, having been told when young that the future lay in great conglomerates, I grew up into a world more notable for the break up of multinational states - Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. It is hard to resist the feeling that the tides are at present in favour of the SNP.

Another question is how hard the Conservatives will try to save the Union. It used to lie at the heart of their identity, but in this way - as in so many others - the modern Conservative Party has little connection with traditional British Conservatism.

I doubt that David Cameron will want to be the prime minister on whose watch the United Kingdom broke up. But it is hard for him to resist the calculation that it would be much easier for the Conservatives to win a majority at Westminster if there were no Scottish members there.

And, as we were reminded in King's Lynn, to the average Tory member the Scots are just a bunch of ingrates who take more than their share of public spending.

The SNP, equally, is convinced that an independent Scotland would be much more prosperous. They cannot both be right.

My own suspicion is that the end of the Union would make surprisingly little difference to Scotland or England, which is why I find that I am not dismayed at the prospect.

House Points: Defending the Budget

My House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

"You've written an editorial," Deirdre grumbled. "Can you be funny next week?"

"Funny?" I said. "After all these years you tell me I'm meant to be funny?"

Labour carping

A few months ago Gordon Brown was still refusing to allow the word “cuts” to pass his lips – a refusal whose explanation probably needed a psychologist rather than an economist. Today it is the whole Labour Party that needs its bumps felt, because to a man and a woman they are pretending that no radical action on the deficit necessary.

Alistair Darling’s last budget committed Labour to public spending cuts and tax rises of £73bn, but you will not hear a single shadow cabinet member admit this. Instead they oppose every cut and tax rise the new government makes, with the result that their position lacks all credibility.

Labour is not being helped by its leadership contest. None of the candidates wants to suffer by telling party members a few home truths – such as that we have an unsustainable public sector deficit because the last government had to bail out the banks after spending too freely for several years.

So instead they attribute the less attractive features of the emergency budget to the inexplicable wickedness of the Tories – and of the Liberal Democrats. We shall have to wait until a new leader is in place before it is worth listening to Labour again.

Here in the Liberal Democrats we should remember an old Russian proverb that Soviet grandmasters were fond of quoting in their chess annotations: “He who says A must say B.” The meaning, as I always took it, was that once you embarked on a course of action you had to go through with it wholeheartedly.

In other words, having signed up for this coalition at the special conference with hardly a voice against, we have to recognise that its economic policy will inevitably be a compromise. And do not forget that, with his characteristic lugubrious charm, Vince Cable ensured that we had the strictest fiscal policy of any of the three main parties.

Besides, governing is not just a matter of economics: the timing of the necessary spending cuts was a matter of politics too. If a government does not make brave decisions in its early months, it is unlikely to make them at all. So there was never a chance of the coalition waiting until next year to act on the deficit.

House Points: In the green room at Ask the Chancellors

My House Points column from the current Liberal Democrat News. I liveblogged the debate while I was there.

Tough at the top

They have fierce security at television studios these days. It’s not just hard to get in: I saw Lord Bragg having trouble getting a turnstile to allow him and his swipe card to leave the building. Still, he is a Labour peer and no doubt it was all for security or health and safety, so welcome to the world you made, Melv.

I was there in the green room to report Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors on my blog. I could, of course, have done that just as well watching television at home, but you don’t get to hang out with the stars that way. Isn’t that Polly Toynbee over there? Simon Carr? Quentin Letts’ rear view?

The good news is that the general expectations before the event were fulfilled. Alistair Darling was worthy, likeable but dull. It’s hard to believe he was once Red Ally, the firebrand leader of Lothian Regional Council. Then he was so extreme that the Scottish Labour establishment sent George Galloway to reason with him.

George Osborne came over as a bright schoolboy, which must be a worry for a man of 38. Has Osborne, as William Hague did before him, reached the top too early in his career? Patience is one of the political virtues. It was noticeable that when he tried to patronise someone – it wasn’t clear whether the target was Vince Cable or the whole audience – the effect was merely ridiculous.

And then there was Vince. Before the debate began I wrote on Liberal England that he had the most to lose because his reputation stands so high. I need not have worried: he lived up to his billing. In particular, he went down the best of the three with the studio audience and showed his priceless ability to put the boot in very effectively whilst appearing to be above the fray.

Some Conservative commentators were so disappointed were with the way the evening went that they suggested that Vince had got most applause because the audience was packed with Liberal Democrats.

Not so. It was rigorously balanced. If a Tory did not turn up then a Labour and Lib Dem supporter were denied entry. I know: I talked to the people in charge of doing it.

Cartoon: Ask the Chancellors

Howard's cartoon from this week's Liberal Democrat News.

I give my own account of the event in the same issue.

Liveblogging Ask the Chancellors

Hello from the green room at Channel 4 studios on London's prestigious South Bank.

Channel 4 kindly asked if I would like to come and blog from the green room at this mildly historic event. So I said yes.

Already I have seen Quentin Letts, Polly Toynbee... and Lord Bragg struggling to get out of the building with his swipe card.

Still, I expect it is Security or Health and Safety or something, and he is a Labour peer. So welcome to the world you made, Melv.

So what are the prospects for tonight's event?

In a strange way, Vince Cable has the most to lose. So high is his reputation, that anything less than a display of extraordinary erudition will leave his fans disappointed.

But I have every faith in him. He is as the ability to appear above the fray whilst putting the boot in nicely. He will be fine.

Conversely, George Osborne has the most to gain. He is 38, yet I still find it natural to make jokes about hoping that someone has made sure he has washed his knees and pulled his socks up. is there more to him than the bright schoolboy? We may see tonight.

[Journalists gossiping next to me: There are stories in circulation about Tony Blair receiving hundreds of pounds worth of gifts and not declaring them.]

And Alistair Darling? He is slowly winning over the press as a great survivor. Given that he is the minister who introduced pension the 75p pension increase back in 2000, you can see their point.

Gordon Brown's announcement, albeit through gritted teeth, that he will continue as Chancellor, should Labour win the election, will have strengthened his hand.

Of course, I could have done this from home watching the TV - which is all I am doing here - but they do give you free coffee.

Polly Toynbee, for it is she, is being asked on TV how far this debate will set the scene for the leaders' debates in the general election proper. I suspect the dynamics will be different here. Nick Clegg may struggle to get into the debate: Vince, I suspect, will have no such problems here.

@channel4news has just tweeted:

EXCLUSIVE: Key themes on #askthechancellors agenda are 1) public finances, spending cuts, tax rises, 2) banks, bonuses & regulation, 3) jobs.

Channel 4 News now reporting that no oil has been found off the Falklands.

That's my suggested economic policy buggered.

Someone has just reached Liberal England by searching for "big cats in Ratlinghope". Hello Shropshire!

Channel 4 Ask the Chancellors page.

Here we go!

The set makes it look like a rather dull quiz show.

First George Osborne. Deal with debt. Cut waste. In favour of enterprise and hard-working people.

Vince Cable. We warned about the bubble. There have to be cuts. The banks must lend to good British companies. Hard work, thrift, fewer prima donnas. Tax cuts for lower earners paid for by taxes on rich.

Alistair Darling. We can get through this provided we continue to support people. Get borrowing down to cut deficit, but protect front-line services. Secure jobs in the future.

That more or less confirmed what we already think of them.

What personal qualities do you have that will make you the best Chancellor?

Vince Cable: A lot of experience. I warned about the boom. When the crisis came, I advocated policies that the government, to its credit, did adopt.

Alistair Darling. Tenacity. Had to deal with unimagined problems to ensure the banks could open the doors the next day. My judgement has been right. His sense of fairness drives everything he does in politics.

George Osborne. Shadow Chancellor five five years. Part of a team. His values are support for people who work hard and save hard. it is not my money.

And he keeps his desk tidy.

Why don't you come clean on cuts?

Darling: I will at the next spending review.

Osborne: "We are all in this together." That never caught on, did it? I was the first to call for cuts. We cannot afford benefits to the rich. "This is our national debt." That certainly won't catch on.

Cable: We have set out £15bn of spending cuts, only party to do that. Defence cuts, including Trident. Swathes of bureaucracy overrunning local government. Surveillance state.

Now they are being allowed to debate this between them. Osborne saying we need cuts and everyone agrees with him. Oh no they don't, says Darling. You have been calling for spending cuts, but instead (muffed this a bit) you use the first spare money you find for tax cuts.

Vince gets first applause from the audience for talking about Osborne's "fictional savings".

Osborne getting snotty already. Not coming over well.

Vince now making Darling answer questions like an examiner. Class.

Will cuts be deeper than Thatcher's?

Yes, yes and yes.

Can you guarantee that NHS services will not be harmed by cuts?

Osborne. David Cameron asked me to ensure that we spend more every year.

Darling. We have doubled expenditure on the NHS. We will keep to the standards we have established.

Cable. None of us can give a guarantee like that. If we save money on NHS admin it should first go to neglected areas like mental health. But you cannot ring fence health or you will have massive cuts elsewhere.

Osborne name checks David Cameron again on NHS spending. A sign of his strength or weakness on the subject?

Will you cut pensions?

Darling people must be treated fairly.

Osborne. A cap on big public sector pensions. Audit how much public sector pensions are costing within week.

Cable. It is outrageous that highly paid public sector employees (including MPs) have such large pensions. This needs cross-party agreement.

Nice Darling dig at Osborne over lack of consensus on social care.

Vince calls for cross-party approach to whole crisis. (Can I be Chancellor please?)

Osborne having second go against "death tax". So how will you pay for it, posh boy?

Osborne still doing it. Trying to patronise the Chancellor. Failing.

Will you increase income tax or VAT?

Vince: We will cut income tax for lower earners. About £700 a year for average earner. Fully costed package.

Osborne: There will be some tax rises, but we will stop National Insurance increases.

Darling: No one wants to increase taxes, but... If I promise to cut taxes you will ask how I can afford to do it.

Osborne scores point against Darling, but it is Darling who gets the applause with a smart reply.

Vince says we are going to have a difficult decade. We have to keep society together and be fair. The rich must pay a bit more.

Cable asks Osborne if he supports a tax on banks to pay for public support. A little beside the point.

Can they rule out VAT increase? Darling, no. Cable, no but it would be dodging the question if we did.

Missed a question there, but Osborne using a Blairite "many and few" construction. Had to mentally check himself that he was getting it right.

Cable we are being held to ransom by super-rich. "Pin-striped Scargills." Clap, you buggers.

Darling. People can move around more these days, but there is no sign we are scaring them away.

Is it the Chancellor's job to make us more equal?

Cable: Yes.

Darling: Yes.

Both talk about "fairness".

Osborne: Sort of says yes. Interesting.

Darling defends tax credits to wealthier families. Hard to see how they help the poor.

Vince has a dig on inheritance tax and gets applause.

Question on bankers' bonuses

Vince good reply on splitting investment banking from high street banking.

Darling: Bonuses should be for good performance not taken for granted. But defends big banks. That's socialism for you.

Osborne: Bank tax now, even without international agreement. Attacks head of Barclay's.

Battery getting low

Vince: Banks must lend more to businesses.

Osborne: Bank regulation must change.

Both painting Darling as weak on this.

Question: None of you predicted banking collapse. Why should we trust you now?

Darling talks about future.

Osborne: The Tories did worry about debt.

Cable: Some of did want - and he applauded for it. Every demutalised building society has collapsed. But it was worse - "such greed and incompetence" - than he imagined.

Student scared of future. Will I get a job and be able to buy a house?

Osborne: More student places (eh?) Better help for unemployed. "A work programme." Diverting the rivers of Central Asia to water the Uzbek cotton fields?

Darling: There is some good news - offshore wind technology. If government works in partnership, there will be jobs in future.

Cable: Government cannot create jobs but we can make sure that the banks lend to the companies that do. Some public works on renovating old properties. But some of the cuts we are going to make will affect jobs.

Osborne says much the same thing now.

Closing statements

Darling: We have made the right judgement calls over the past two years. We will work with private sector to create jobs. Trust us.

Cable: Financial discipline, make banks lend. Who do you trust? Labour got us into this mess. Remember the Tories. Dig at rich backers gets applause. We are not beholden to super-rich or unions. We want change - but it has to be a change for better not the worst.

Osborne: There will be a Conservative government or a Labour government. We have the ideas and energy. It is your choice.

And that is it.

No big winners or losers, which meant that it was good for the Lib Dems as Vince's reputation will remain high.

Interesting that it was the left-wing points that got applause. The audience was very carefully politically balanced, so that may be significant.

Just met Chris Huhne: "a clear win for Vince."

Now for the train home...

Much later. Home again in Market Harborough.

Several days later. This became the raw material for a House Points column in Liberal Democrat News.

When Alistair Darling was Red Ally

With the would-be chancellors' debate on Channel 4 this evening, this is a good time to recall that Alistair Darling was not always the monochrome figure he appears today.

As I once recorded on this blog, before Darling joined Labour he was a member of the Trotskyite International Marxist Group. And in his early Labour days, he was a hard-left council leader in the mould of Ted Knight or Derek Hatton.

So extreme was he that the Scottish Labour establishment sent George Galloway along to talk some sense into him.

Galloway later remembered those days:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze.

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy.

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left ...

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been.

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

Why Labour has turned on cider drinkers

When the Conservatives announced plans to increase tax on "problem drinks" in March 2008 I thought of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act and its strictures against "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats".

Such attempts to single out a particular areas of society for harsher treatment are inherently unattractive. And they don't work either. I fear that, however much we disapprove of it, young people will always contrive to find ways of enjoying themselves.

Still, when the Tories come up with a foolish, populist idea there is a better than even chance that Labour will copy it. And I suspect that this Tory plan was one of the parents of Alistair Darling's huge increase in the tax on cider in today's Budget.

And could it be that the fact that there are so few Labour seats in cider-producing areas encouraged him to go down this road too?