Gordon Prentice - Talking Politics

Here is a Canadian take on what happened in Australia after Julia Gillard knifed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, snatched the crown and triggered a general election down under.

The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson argues that the Australian system “cuts out the party’s rank and file and contributes to elitism”.

I think that’s complete tosh but still…

Canadians have an interest in such matters.

Former finance minister, Paul Martin, conspired to oust the then Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien. He succeeded and then went on to lose the subsequent general election. The parallels with Broon are uncanny.

Anyway…

Here in the UK, Labour leaders are elected by a system which includes Jeffrey Simpson’s so called “rank and file”.

However, the influence of individual Party members is miniscule and, in any event, as soon as the new leader is anointed, any residual influence completely evaporates.

Our electoral college is truly Byzantine in its make-up, full of all sorts of weird and wonderful anomalies.

For example, only MPs can nominate for Leader but MPs and MEPs form one third of the Electoral College. Curiously, MSPs and AMs have no role – or didn’t the last time I looked.

No leader could conceivably be held to account by such a college. It would be impossible.

Perhaps, SHOCK! HORROR! we should leave the decision on the leadership to Labour MPs.

Surely the real prize for Party members is having a meaningful say over policy.

Just read Jon Trickett’s piece in the Guardian today telling us that Ed Milliband is his choice to lead Labour. Ed’s brother is too much of a Blairite.

My old friend Jon knows a thing or two about leaders having observed Broon at close quarters for a couple of years as his PPS.

For myself, I think we make way too much of leaders. They put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.

Yet so often we are dazzled by them. Or, worse still, we lionise them.

It seems to me that if they turn out to be less than they promise we should be able to get rid of them and move on.

Easier said than done.

So, even before the ballot papers go out for the leadership election I find myself thinking, rather prematurely, about how to dispense with their services when they are no longer required.

Once they are in the job you need a crowbar to get them out.

Term limits could be the answer but that would be a very radical step. (Although the Speaker has pledged he will only serve two full terms.)

After Broon’s short honeymoon, the mutterings of discontent began. He was struggling to be the kind of person he isn’t. And it showed. He promised the PLP a number of times that he would change. He would involve people and consult more. He never did.

Next month the PLP votes on revisions to its Standing Orders.

Instead of being led by the nose into giving up what little influence they have, Labour MPs should be demanding more responsibility and a greater say in the direction of the Party. And they should be pressing for real checks and balances on the leader’s powers.

Two years ago, when the writing was on the wall, I told my constituency party that Labour’s internal democracy had completely rusted up and that change was needed.

After the suffocating control freakery of the Blair Broon years, it feels liberating to be getting a new leader and that’s good.

But let’s not pin all our hopes on one person.

Even if he turns out to be Ed.

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So, Blair is giving the profits from his autobiography to the Royal British Legion.

I approve.

This welcome gesture will boost sales of his Journey.

I imagine lots of people, me included, would have gagged at adding to Blair’s millions and would never have countenanced buying the book. Now they can, with a clear conscience.

Whether it will be worth the money is quite another matter.

I recall Sir Christopher Meyer, appointed by Blair to be British Ambassador in Washington, being vilified for publishing his kiss and tell DC Confidential.

Baron Prescott fumed about his memoirs being “tittle tattle”. Jack Straw blew a gasket, condemning Meyer for breaking confidences.

Meyer took it all on the chin, mounted a spirited fightback and reportedly gave away the £250,000 he got for his serial indiscretions.

Meyer did, nevertheless, hold some things back. On page 238 he tells us he “had a handful of especially important contacts in the higher eschelons of the US administration. They were also personal friends. The history is too recent for me to name them. They were loyal and patriotic servants committed to carrying out the President’s policies.”

So what is Blair going to hold back? Quite a lot, I imagine.

He is not going to give us a blow by blow account of what happened in Crawford, Texas when he and Dubya decided to topple Saddam.

I suspect Blair’s tome will be, in part, an apologia for Iraq with few fresh insights and also a guide to “non ideological”, “we do what works” government. This was his thing.

Elsewhere… I notice that Sir Jeremy Greenstock is now publishing his own account of the Iraq imbroglio, the Cost of War: Iraq and the Paradox of Power. It is out in December.

Previous attempts by our former man in Baghdad to publish his version of events were blocked by the then Foreign Secretary, our old friend Jack Straw.

Jack, I dare say, is now working on his own memoirs.

I hope the Labour Opposition at Westminster block Francis Maude’s plans to axe the census. The one next year will go ahead but, then, that will be it.

The UK census is an invaluable time series going back over 210 years. Ad hoc surveys and alternative data sources cannot begin to substitute. I’ve blogged about this before.

And now the Canadian Federal Government, also Conservative, is about to abandon a key element of their five yearly census, the so-called “long form” which must be completed by a randomly selected 20% of all Canadian households.

In today’s Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, the former Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, Mel Cappe, together with distinguished academics describe the proposal as an attack on good government.

I agree.

They are calling on Canadian MPs to stand up and be counted. They want the three Opposition leaders to agree the text of a resolution to be put before the Canadian House of Commons to protect the integrity of the census.

MPs at Westminster should be doing the same.

Pakistan is everywhere.

The unfolding tragedy of Pakistan is happening before our eyes, in real time. We see the sheer scale of the devastation and shake our heads at the feeble response from the Pakistan Government.

Pakistan is a country that millions of people want to get out of. And, for them, the sooner the better.

Around 10,000 spouses come to the UK every year from Pakistan (although the most recent figures have dipped sharply) and I don‘t see this broad trend changing any time soon. The Coalition Government’s new language tests may slow things for a while but, inevitably, it will pick up again.

The reality is that Britain and Pakistan are locked in a lifelong embrace. There is no escape for either party.

So we should all take a keen interest in what is happening over there.

Over the years, I have followed Jason Burke’s travels through the Islamic world and I value his insights.

So I found his piece in last Sunday’s Observer a bit depressing. He describes talking to university students:

'Their view of the west, coloured by conspiracy theories about the true perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, antisemitism and anti-Zionism, a visceral anti-Americanism and a deep social conservatism, was overwhelmingly negative.'

If this is Pakistan's future talking, we should all be worried.

I rather like the idea of annual elections for the Shadow Cabinet.

And now this empowering annual event may go. The victim of a change to the PLP’s Standing Orders.

This is very bad news indeed.

When Labour is in Opposition who serves on the Shadow Cabinet is a matter for the PLP. When in Government, the Leader decides.

As a result, we had 13 years of nodding donkeys in the Cabinet (with a few honourable exceptions).

Margaret Beckett has drawn up proposals on behalf on a “working group” which will be voted on by the PLP next month.

Some of the proposals, if agreed, would dramatically increase the power of the Leader.

Is this really what we want?

When I was an MP I last voted for the “top team” in 1996. A lifetime - and many wars - ago.

Before he captured the Leadership Tony Blair bumped along at or near the bottom in the Shadow Cabinet elections.

But when he became Leader, the Cabinet became his fan club.

I recall Jack Straw telling a group of us over dinner what happened after he criticised, in Cabinet, Blair’s position on some issue.

Afterwards, Blair takes him to one side.

Jack, he says, I thought we were mates.

We are, says Jack. Loyally.

Well don’t take a different line from me in front of the Cabinet ever again, says Blair.

Today’s story in the Independent on Sunday talks dismissively of Clare Short and Gavin Strang.

Speaking personally, I'd rather have one Clare Short than, say, ten Geoff Hoons.

Anyway…. Why do we have this fetish about “strong” leaders? I much prefer collegiate leadership.

If the past is any guide, we shall elect a new Leader who will immediately want to stamp his (not her) authority on the Party.

Haven’t we had enough of all that?

We had one leader who thought he could walk on water and his successor was, frankly, dysfunctional. But they both were determined to make their mark early on.

Please. Not again.

I find it difficult to believe the President of Pakistan is still here in the UK when his country is being washed away by the worst monsoon floods in living memory.

And what on earth is he going to say tomorrow at the “community meeting” in Birmingham?

That he is better here, talking to the Party faithful, rather than back home in Pakistan?

His son, Bilawal Bhutto, the latest in the dynastic line and being groomed for the succession, has been told to stay away.

This is progress, of sorts.

The sight of Bilawal, yelling about a better future for Pakistan when the present is so utterly calamitous would make me squirm in embarrassment.

Can't Pay. Won't Pay

The appeal hearing took all of three minutes to dismiss Lambeth's case against me.

So I've still got my £60.

But what a hassle.

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Today is a big day for me.

I am up before an Adjudicator from the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service.

I am refusing to pay a £60 fine for parking in a bay with no parking meter – just the plinth on which it once stood.

In long correspondence with the parking commissars, I am told it is my responsibility to find a meter.

I explain there are no meters in the street where I parked nor in any of the adjacent streets. Residents’ parking only.

This cuts no ice with the enforcers.

How far afield am I expected to roam in the search for a meter?

Silence.

Why wasn’t the bay suspended?

No answer.

No fewer than 29 pages from the Lambeth Parking gauleiters (based in Worthing) detail the nature of my offence.

There are countless references to regulations that, in a previous life, I probably nodded through without a second thought.

I see that one page in the bundle tells me that the parking machine was not broken.

But no mention of the fact it wasn’t there.

I figure it is going to cost them a lot more than £60 to get £60 out of me.

China eyes Liverpool

After my prescient blog post yesterday, I wake up to hear this on the Today programme:

The Chinese government's investment arm is backing tycoon Kenny Huang's bid to buy Liverpool Football Club. The BBC's Beijing correspondent Chris Hogg examines why the China Investment Corporation may be interested in English Premiership football.

Today we read that Santander will gobble up 318 branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland making it the biggest high street bank in the UK.

Santander is a bank on steroids, expanding everywhere.

When the deal goes through it will have 1,643 branches compared with HSBC’s 1,369.

Most people knew very little about Santander until fairly recently when it kicked open the saloon door. It bought Abbey and absorbed it. It swallowed Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley

It got me thinking. What would be the public reaction if the biggest high street bank in the UK were, say, the Bank of China?

Yes, I know, there would be a million regulatory hoops to go through. But stranger things happen.

The Chinese have a sizeable stake in Barclays.

China is awash with money. It is hoovering up assets all over the world.

You thought Volvo was quintessentially Swedish. Wrong. Ford sold it to the Chinese Zhejiang Geely Holdings for £1.2 billion.

And, just a few months ago, the same Geely took a 51% stake in Manganese Bronze, the maker of the iconic London Black cabs.

The list lengthens daily.

Should we be worried?

I think so.

Edna Greenwood

I am saddened to hear of the death, at 64, of Edna Greenwood.

Edna was a trade unionist to her fingertips, active in the GMB in East Lancashire for as long as I can remember. Our paths crossed from time to time.

Helen Christie and Richard MacSween say she was politicised by the Silentnight strike in Barnoldswick in the 1980s which left such a bitter legacy.

It was a strike that divided the town, and families, for years afterwards.

Edna’s politics and her trade unionism were shaped by her own life experience.

She saw trade unions as the first – and possibly the only - line of defence for working people and their families.

I am sorry she is gone.

The President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, arrives in London tomorrow, leaving behind him a country in turmoil.

We hear of the worst floods in 80 years. Walls of water sweeping away houses, roads and bridges.

The BBC is reporting a staggering 2.5 million people are affected.

Only a few days ago, there was yet another tragedy. An Airbus, flying into the capital from Karachi, is enveloped in monsoon rains and crashes into a wooded hillside near Islamabad killing over 150 people.

As if this isn't enough, the country is being accused of incubating terrorism.

Pakistanis are understandably angry and upset at how they are portrayed by much of the world’s media.

On the one hand, they are viewed as tragic victims of natural disasters and countless other calamities and, on the other, they are branded as unreliable partners in the battle against violent extremism.

David Cameron says Pakistan can’t be trusted. That’s the long and the short of it.

I have always believed the people of Pakistan deserve better government than they get.

I recall talking about Pakistan’s woes earlier this year with Mohammed Sarwar, the former MP for Glasgow Central.

Over a cup of tea in the Commons tearoom, he made a simple observation that stayed with me.

Things would never change, he said, only half in jest, until the country’s leaders stayed put in Pakistan when they left office.

Their assets should remain in Pakistan, not be squirreled away in London, New York or Switzerland.

As it happens, I was going to blog about Mr 10%.

But today is not the day.

There is something pitiful about being on the sofa yet having no influence.

Yet this is John Prescott’s own assessment of himself.  On Iraq, the big man had no influence.

The former Deputy Prime Minister was simply the loyal lieutenant doing his master’s bidding.

Despite telling the Chilcott Inquiry that he found much of the intelligence on Iraq “tittle tattle” Prescott rallied support for the war within a supine Cabinet.

Of course, there was never any danger that I would be in the same room as the sofa, never mind sitting on it.

But along with so many others in the PLP and outside, I realised we were being led up the garden path to war.

In August 2002, in my monthly report to the Pendle Labour Party, I explained that Blair was assuring people that no decisions were likely to be made in the short term.

This was all part of the strategy of stringing everyone along even as the drum beat was getting progressively louder.

Prescott was in a position to do something about it. But he chose not to.

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