Political Wilderness, Civil War then Death

One of the most encouraging signs for Labour, following Ed Miliband's narrow win in the leadership election on Saturday, has been the rabid over reaction from the Tory press.

Red Ed, indeed.

The Sunday Times, perhaps getting a steer from its prodigious owner, put out a preposterous editorial about how Labour's 'lurch to the left' would leave them in the political wilderness. Turn the page and columnist, Martin Ivens, was talking up the actual death of the Labour Party.

I remember the early 80s when Labour did arrive at a state of unelectability. They had a weak, eccentric leader in Michael Foot. Ranks were sorely divided, in fact a significant number had defected to the bright and hopeful SDP. The miltant tendency was actually running cities like Liverpool. And the party's policies included huge liabilities like withdrawal from EEC, unilateral nuclear disarmament and the wholesale nationalisation of entire industries. To draw close comparisons to that episode of severe political turmoil in the party is frankly laughable.

Of course, our old chums at the Mail are happy to exorcise those ghosts again by trying to conjure up some great division, this time between the two Milibands. This is not spin; it's pure invention.

This morning's effort by Tim Shipman contained all the familiar phrases of an article where an editor has instructed the reporter to make mischief out of thin air, such as "insiders say" and "sources close to. " Contrary to all we know about the genial and genuinely affectionate brothers, Shipman was compelled to construct the basis of a potential civil war with factions ready to tear the party asunder.

"Some of Milibands closest friends, " he speculated, unconvincingly, "want him [David] to walk away because they fear his every public utterance will be viewed as a plot to oust his brother as Labour Leader." Be assured David will stand in next week's Shadow Cabinet elections and emerge with a very senior post.

I guess those editors who simply detest Labour are getting their revenge in early and are just thorougly piqued about how united HM's Opposition is. But they not building on a reality which people recognise; papers can exploit and exaggerate the public's perceptions; they cannot simply create them.

David Milband may have made a better leader in the long run but even this "vanquished sibling" knows the next election will be a straight fight between the two main parties. Labour, even suffering a "disastrous" defeat under Brown, is still only fifty seats behind. The right wing commentators are snapping but it's not fierceness but fear which is driving their anger.

Enough Already

No-one could accuse Labour of not being thorough on consulting the membership and wider public on the election of a new leader.

Since May, they have held dozens of meetings, many of them must have been almost identical. The BBC allowed them one last re-run of old slogans for Question Time on Thursday.

Of course, many who are voting have their old allegiances and new prejudices against former Ministers. But any neutral could see David Miliband stands head and shoulders above all candidates in stature, record, debating ability and even personal charm.

It seems frankly amazing his brother Ed has managed to make this a two-horse race. Besides sounding like (according to Rory Bremner) Tony Blar with a cold, he struggles to demonstrate any kind of heavyweight support. His boast of having endorsements as far and wide as "Frank Dobson and Frank Field" would have impressed no-one outside the Labour party and very few in it.

Diane Abott has carved a place in Parliament, is a good speaker (gave a a belter on 90 day detention) but her campaign has been lacklustre not helped by her pinning the cliched "heir to Blair" badge on Miliband (D) constantly.

Ed Balls has had a good summer. He gave Gove a good kicking on free schools and has got some meaty aphorisms into the media reminding what he's good at swinging. But that will earn him shadow chancellorship this time. His soft-spoken, nice guy act cuts no ice with people who really know what he's like behind closed doors.

Poor little Burnham could hardly get a word in on Thursday and Dimbleby, forgetful at the best of times, kept passing over him. When he did get a chance to speak he barked how he was the only candidate equi-distant politically from Blair and Brown. Hardly the most inspirational of qualifications.

By Saturday afternoon David will take up his post and soon cleave to mould of leader. The party needs one badly. The country could do with an Opposition too.

Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair

The Lib-Dems have not changed their party's name for several years now.

After the failure of the old 'Alliance' to make the big breakthrough in 1983, they adopted many nomenclature but retained essentially the same political identity. Even when they were briefly the LSDs, they can't have been in greater confusion in their political creed than they are now.

Just a few days before conference, Nick Clegg has refined his definition of liberal. It has shifted markedly since those TV debates in the Spring and is now does not resemble anything the Great Grandad of the party William Beveridge (above) would have recognised. Clegg takes it to mean, less sympathetic more self-reliant, less egalitarian in outcomes more materially ambitious.

In his Times article today, the DPM said of the forthcoming benefit cuts including for the disabled and elderly were "profoundly liberal". He went on, "welfare needs to become an engine of mobility...rather than to compensate the poor for their predicament." That could have been Keith Joseph speaking.

And what of the poor and their 'predicament' and those who are too old and infirm to acheive social mobility? If the Liberal side of the philosophy can be transformed what of social democracy?

Much of the Parliamentary Party don't believe this and there is very deep unease among the grey beards of Steele, Ashdown, Kennedy and Campbell. So far only the solid principled Bob Russell (Colchester) has had the courage to speak his mind. On Monday, he challenged Osborne's casual remarks about how so many benefit claimaints were just following their 'lifestyle choice' known more commonly as being idle bastards.

There are many more from the old 'Sandle Brigade' who will re-state the reason they joined the party all those years ago. I would expect their voices to be heard next week, for all their recent Government experience even the Liberals could not suppress all dissent like the last Government.

Demolition Man

Political nerds love conference season. This autumn's round of composites and resolutions will be different not least having Tory and Liberals unable to attack each other. And to top it all the climax of the Labour leadership contest.

But traditionally we start with the TUC and the familiar barking of rotund unions lads and lasses. The tone this year is nothing short of seething anger. Even the mild-mannered Chair, Brendan Barber, described Tory Britain as a "dark, brutish more frightening place" and adding the coalition was more like "a demolition."

Of course RMT chief, Bob Crow, is well experienced in unleashing bilious anger at Conservatives. But Bob is a bit underrated intellectually, he seems to have softened his style a little and his words are beginning to resonate as quite sensible. Can it be true? When the cuts in public services are felt personally to millions in the ensuing months he may find himself almost liked. Even Boris Johnson agreed with Bob ("he's got a point") that the crisis was borne of reckless behaviour at the top of most of our banks.

The most striking theme about the speeches today was the lack of comment by the media about the role of banks and how the public had been mugged into thinking the annihilation of many vital services was in some way necessary pain. Perhaps there is something masochistic in the British nature. But at last we heard the genuine voices of the ordinary men and women who have had a stomach full of Coulson fed stories about "benefit scroungers" and "gold-plated public pensions."

The gap between the media misrepresentation and the rights of workers to protect their jobs was caught perfectly when Andrew Marr was asking Bob Crow about NOTW calling unions threat of strikes as "industrial suicide".

"That newspaper would say that as it doesn't recognise Trade Unions," a sticky pause ensued.

However even co-ordinated action from all parts of the membership will not reverse the disaster to come as one leader said, Thatcher started the attack on public services, "this lot mean to finish the job."

Shouting Fire in a Theatre

Unfortunately, the Terry Jones who has planned on burning a stack of the Koran on Saturday is not the one attached to Monty Pythons. Even if Python were at times equally controversial, they were never so artless and crude.

The Rev Terry Jones. a Pentecostal preacher from Florida is currently defying all denominations of the American churches, the whole of Congress and the Government, General Petreus, the Vatican and Nato by his desire to contront "extreme Islam." As the General in charge of the 100,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan put it, this act of idiocy and extremism would "incite violence and put our troops in danger."

It is pretty poor the Republicans have sought to make some political capital out of this highly tense situation. Rather than condemn it outright for the outrage it is, Boehner and Palin have equated it as equally "unwise" as building a Muslim Centre in Manhattan.

At any rate Jones is unmoved. He does not appear to be the usual kind of media whore. It's possible he really means it. Certainly the only way he will alter his memorial to 9/11 by burning holy books is by "praying" and seeking divine intervention. Give me strength.

In America everyone respects Jones's right to freedom of speech, even if the cost is tearing up all the mediation built between Islam and Christianity in recent years. At least in this country we draw a line on what is unacceptable as a protest.

Of course the British police can go too far and use powers to quell legitimate protest. But if Jones were in London he would stopped as it was considered anti-social behaviour, unconducive to the public good, a breach of the beach or a simple public order offence. Or they just go down and put the frighteners on him.

Rights should be balanced against responsibilities but in this situation the world can only wait for God to locate enough of Jones's few brain cells to get him to chuck it in.

Or with any luck strike him down.

Use Your Illusion

This is the image of the most senior drugs official in the United Nations, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

He was persuaded to write a response to the slew of Observer articles in favour of reforming the UN's ancient and obsolete drug control laws. His opening line underlined his mastery of obfuscation, deflection and deceit.

"The debate between those who dream of a world without drugs and those who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years. " The simple truth is, no such debate exists between these two utopian positions.

A world without drugs is an impossible goal because mankind has always sought some degree of intoxication and always will. It is not a dream but an illusion. It should not be the starting point of discussion when it has no place in reality.

Equally misleading his Costa's characterisation of reformers as people who would like a free-for-all on drugs where anyone is able to get as blitzed as they wish anytime. The drug reform lobby may hold differing opinions on the appropriate levels of controls but the shared objective is to reduce the harm from drugs. No serious organisation advocates abandoning all control and regulation.

So Costa's initial premise is wrong and what follows is a path through tortuous logic, with highly partial use of statistics and general points about human nature which defy all sense. Costa argues reforms would "unleash an epidemic of addiction". He asserts cocaine production over the last 10 years has stabilised omitting to mention 28,000 murders in the cocaine trade in Mexico in the last four years.

Recently in UK, there have been some encouraging signs from establishment figures like Sir Ian Gilmore and media outlets (Independent) who have declared an end to the fallacy of 'controlling' drugs as anything other than a disaster. Unfortunately the Government's latest thinking on a Drugs Strategy is as idealogical as the UN with great emphasis on abstinence not treatment. They even suggest "whole family intervention" where all the relatives of a drug user arrive at a pre-arranged place and surround him. No doubt it will be God's love that doth save his soul.

One big problem with Costa's and IDS's perspective is the assumption taking drugs is all about addiction. Most drug use does not involve dependence. Ten million people in Britain have tried cannabis but levels of addiction are present in only a few thousand. Ecstasy is not addictive, even most cocaine users can take it or leave it.

There seems to have most anxiety, in recent years, about cannabis in the country prompting cross party support for increasing penalties on a drug Gordon Brown called "lethal." It is perverse that cannabis use has plummetted since 1998 falling by 45%. It seems astonishing the long line of drug Ministers have not sought to trumpet this success. But this war on drugs is more like the perpetual war in Oceania in Orwell's 1984. For the war to continue Governments must continue to fight and fail.

Staying Power

Last July, I wrote about the curious news cycle surrounding the story of NOTW phone tapping.

It was no surprise News International papers did not touch it but then neither did the Telegraph or the Mail. The BBC ran a sensational story about Rebekah Wade being bugged which immediately disappeared.

Now the issue has been rejuvenated following an interview in the New York Times of former Screws hack, Sean Hoare. And we see the pattern repeating itself with certain titles scrupulously not reporting this major story.

The papers probably have different motives; editors in the Murdoch stable are more anxious about accusations of illegality and denials of journalistic malfeasance by their sister paper NOTW. Others simply don't wish to expose the PM's Comms supremo Andy Coulson and formr editor of NOTW, to any more damaging allegations.

We already know hundreds of prominent people had their mobile phones tapped illegally. Some like Max Clifford and PFA chair Gordon Taylor were paid off handsomely. John Prescott was a highly likely candidate for being bugged but finds the Met Police won't tell him whether he was or not.

If they think for a minute JP's loss of Ministerial status in May has diminished his ability to get to the airwaves and embarass them, then the Plod are very much mistaken. The entire behaviour of senior Met officers in the context of this inquiry has been bizarre.

They appear to be covering for the unsatisfactory level of scrutiny they applied to general journalistic practise at NOTW following the conviction and imprisonment of former hack Glenn Mulcaire. It must be at least doubtful he was the only one carrying out all the phone taps so others higher up still have questions to answer about how much was authorised, by whom and to what level. The unfortunate impression the Met are giving is protecting the Tory's press secretary.

The police and No 10 all point incessantly to "no new evidence". Tory Minister, Alan Duncan, listed all parties who agreed there was nothing more to investigate including the less than impartial "News International lawyers."

The words of Sean Hoare to the NYT were dismissed out of hand because of his previous problems with drink and drugs as if he were still drunk and stoned now. I heard him interviewed and he sounded quite lucid and I don't think he was hallucinating when he said he was expected to access celebrities' voicemail.

Labour have not gained much political capital from some of the Cons policy slip ups but here is a golden chance to get at Cameron's cabal. Prescott means it when he says he will initiate a judicial review if the matter is not progressed. That's what this scandal needs, a proper court case when Coulson can be put on the stand under oath.

Everybody Out

It would take a quite an extra-ordinary circumstance for me to volunteer to share a (twin) hotel room with a male work colleague. And I would never chose to do so if the company was going to pick up the tab and I had several million in the bank anyway.

So to do so "occassionally" could be described as somewhat eccentric behaviour during the election campaign by the shadow Foreign Sec. Now he is First Secretary of State, he should be a little more circumspect about his associations as a married man.

The blogger, Guido Fawkes, has made a series of perfectly legitimate observations based on an FOI request and journalistic inquiry about Hague and his close friend, adviser and colleague, 25 year-old graduate Christopher Myers.

Fawkes described Hague's statement detailing his wife, Ffion's difficulty in conceiving as "nuclear". Certainly a well-chosen word, for very rarely, if ever, is BBC's Nick Robinson lost for words like he was last night.

The Evening Standard suggested today he drafted this personal statement, stressing his heterosexuality, after taking advice from the machiavellian George Osborne. A tangled web indeed. At least George did not, seemingly, advise a photo op of little Hague playing rugger and relaxing after with a plate of rare roast beef and pint of frothy Yorkshire bitter.

The commentators, who have been around related stories for nearly twenty years, have failed to attack Guido and have instead considered Hague's other friendship with Sebastian Coe.

Hague has clearly pinned his entire political career on that statement; it was more of an instruction to media organisations to cease speculating but seven front pages ensued. As Max Clifford said, "it turned a small story into a big one."

Ever the one to support the "normal" MP, Norman Tebbit described Hague as "naive at best, foolish at worst." It wasn't quite clear whether he meant sharing a room with another man or denying its significance.