Anything you can't do

Jacqui Smith still has a long way to becoming the worst Home Secretary in British history. But she's definitely making progress. Out on his own is still Reginald Maudling (left) whose deft handling of Northern Ireland included internment and Bloody Sunday (which he defended stoutly). He was eventually booted out by Ted Heath in 1972 when he was found to be 'eyebrows deep' in a corruption scandal over multi-million pound building contracts.

Jacqui has, of late, shown she has picked up some of the pure bluster and bold dogmatic idiocy of our Reg. Her Achilles heel appears to be her small-minded, self-certainty. A perfect example was her veto-ing of new Immigration Minister, the barely half-witted, Phil Woolas, from appearing on BBC's Question Time. After two weeks in the job, Woolas had shown little, if any, command of his brief and could only supply journos with tough-sounding but illogical statements on immigration.

Officially, she wanted a Minister with more experience of economic matters to be espousing the Government line and demanded Tony McNulty be Woolas's sub. Firstly, McNulty's expertise is police and security matters. Second, any Minister, indeed any guest, on Question Time is expected to be able to pontificate on any area of domestic policy or world affairs. Third, it is not for Home Secretaries to set the panel on political discussion programmes. The Beeb quite rightly told Jacqs they had editorial integrity to preserve and if she wanted an empty chair then so be it. As it was, Roy Hattersley stood in and showed them all how it's done: with patience and good humour.

It was only the next day, it was revealed the Home Office figures on violent crime had been fiddled to project a much more reassuring view of the risk of violence. Crime has certainly fallen significantly in ten years although the public's perception is the opposite. Any suspicion of creative counting by the Government on crime figures was bound to provoke a big press reaction. But even Jacqus was not quite ready for the Sun's banner headline in 160 point letters, "GBH: Grievous Bloody Hypocrisy."

Ms Smith's has put in a consistently amateurish display in recent weeks. Her response to the Lords' thrashing of the 42-days detention clause by almost 200 votes was poor by her own very low standards. But to shout from the dispatch box, "I, for one, take the issue of security seriously," when many of those who opposed it were former senior officers in the security services, was pretty shameful stuff.

On Tuesday, Jacqui was up in front of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights to answer for her speech. Senior Tory MP, Richard Shepherd, could not easily hide his contempt for Ms Smith, particularly as the 'softies' on terrorist included his pal Lord (Peter) Carrington, ex-Foreign Sec and veteran of the D-Day landings. "Why are you as Home Secretary making assertions like this in an important speech?" bellowed Shepherd. "It is an incredible position for a very new home secretary to launch into an attack on people who have been protecting our liberties for a very long time". Her own side called her views merely, "trenchant" while others plumped for the more apt, "offensive."

She made a feeble attempt at defence but had only the refuge of party politics to protect herself with. "My comments specifically were aimed at opposition parties who despite having numerous attempts to engage in a process of bringing us to a consensus has failed to move one jot throughout the whole of the process," she opined. Lord Onslow said she was confusing consensus with people not agreeing with her. Certainly true, but Jacqui Smith also mistakes robust defence with obnoxious arrogance. Just like old Reg.

Don't you forget about me

It's been an amazing year for Cameron. The only major activity his party has engaged in, is publishing six very general policy discussion documents from which one could derive almost any manifesto. And yet the Conservatives have moved from a 10-point deficit last September to a long-established 20-point lead. How do those polls make the smug egotists of his inner Cabinet (Osbourne, Maude, Hague and Gove) feel? Their ears must glow hot in anticipation of their Ministerial briefs and travelling the world as team Cameron.

The problem with Cameron, as Alistair Campbell says in every public utterance, is he's done nothing to earn such a 'winning lead'. Brown's woeful display as PM has been the entire reason for Dave's illusory popularity. Now Brown is enjoying a very good war in the City there has been a minor panic in Tory ranks as their lead rapidly comes under threat.

So it was pure ego and selfism which inspired Cameron to stand up at the crack on Friday morning at Bloomberg's to ditch the days old agreement to support Govt action through the market crisis. (I watched Cameron decrying Brown's disastrous economic management while FTSE flashed above him showing a rise of 400 points that morning.)

Politics is like comedy - timing is everything. Early Friday morning is a really poor time to chose for hitting the news and the weekend papers so it was a bad tactic. But it's a poor strategy too to be shouting, "listen to what I think," when the economic storm is still raging. It's certainly too early to start taking lots of long-term decisions on the resolution. And Cameron will have to eat platefuls more humble pie than even John McCain when it comes to his previous utterances on de-regulation. Haven't seen much of free-marketeer John Redwood lately. It was only two weeks ago, he told Tory conference in Government, they would, "repeal 54 different pieces of regulation in our first de-regulation bill".

Cameron's argument, Britain should have followed the example of responsible conservatism like ex-Australian PM John Howard, is specious. Australia's relatively stable position is almost entirely derived from selling collossal amounts of raw materials to China. We'll see how they fare as global recession bites this year and next. First Secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper put it well when she said, Cameron has been engaging in "juvenile political games".

Cameron's speech was obviously rushed, it must have been to contain excrutiating lines such as, "we need to do far better in bringing into everyday use technologies that are still in laboratories and developing in the laboratory technologies that haven’t even been thought of yet." Wise words, eh Dave.

New opinion polls are expected in a day or two and Brown is bound to benefit from his 'bank managerial' calm through the crisis. Cameron doesn't like to include many 'grey beards' in his team. It shows more political immaturity and flashes of real arrogance that he cannot take criticism from those who have the experience he obviously lacks. At last, it is starting to show.

Yeah, Whatever

No-one could seriously suggest political speeches are as eloquent as they once were, even in recent history. In US politics, there has been an intense purge of the articulate; John McCain has even made a point of attacking Obama's eloquence. In Britain there is also an embarrassment about using expressive and literate phraseology. There has been an intellectual retreat into using business-like soundbites.

There is no better example than the abysmal over use of the words, 'whatever it takes.' It will have not escaped your notice Brown and Darling have been doing just that in an attempt, in economic terms, to plug the gaping hole in the dam. I've rather lost track of how many tens of Billions have been doled to whom and for what reason.

The use of "whatever it takes" is now pervasive; yesterday Harriet Harman standing in for Gord at PMQs said the Government would, "do whatever it takes to back up our small business sector". The implication of the phrase is a kind of emotional bluntness. HH was trying to say, 'I get how important this is and I want to demonstrate my absolute commitment to its resolution.' But she might as well have said, 'we'll be trying 200 percent'. Or add the ultimate in pathetic verbal gestures, "and I feel very strongly about it."

The words "whatever it takes" are also empty of purpose; they imply, there is no plan, no well-considered strategy, just a pledge to chuck resourses at a problem in the vain hope it goes away.

John F. Kennedy's eloquence easily eclipsed Obama's and its worth reminding yourself of a time when leaders were not scared to be expressive. Here's the link to his inaugural speech in 1961.

http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres56.html

If you read carefully you will notice within the speech JFK still says the equivalent of 'whatever it takes'. But in those days you would say something like," we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty". Present day speech writers would attack such lucidity with a red-pen demanding several re-writes. Nowadays if it can't be summarised in a three word headline, it's not considered worth saying.