Guy Beres

I highly recommend reading Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt’s article on the British election that wasn’t in the Guardian today, published as it is on the eve of the anniversary of Gordon Brown’s ascension to Prime Minister. The worrying thing for Gordon Brown and New Labour is that the article really does have the feel of a pre-emptive historical post-mortem to it. Apart from providing a fascinating account of the rationale for the “on-again, off-again” election debate that dragged throughout last year, this article also reinforces what seems to be the widespread public perception; namely that Brown and Labour are not doing enough to interest the voters.

This concluding excerpt sums things up quite nicely:

Brown remains branded in the public mind as a disingenuous ditherer. His aides insist his fate still ultimately rests with the economy, and claim his poll decline follows the downturn in the economy, rather than his decision to skip the election.

Many ministers believe his position is irretrievable, while others believe Brown may eventually recover if voters look to the future.

One cabinet loyalist says: “We can win the election. But we will only do that if it [the vote] is about our future. If it is a referendum on us, we can’t win.”

It is fairly clear that the current senior Labour team does not have the charisma or gravitas to charm its way to victory as the government may have had the ability to do previously, courtesy of figures like Tony Blair and Robin Cook. If Labour want to win the next election (seemingly now against the odds), they need to develop a compelling vision for the future and sell it to the electorate. There is no other way. David Cameron is winning and will win the “shininess” battle – Labour need to win (and be seen to win!) the battle on policy substance to stand a chance at the next poll.

ELSEWHERE Also worth a look are Martin Rowson’s merciless cartoons from the Guardian cataloguing the recent trials of the Brown Labour era.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone has a compelling column in The Guardian today providing a bit of an overview of the election results, the state of play in London and what it all means for the Labour Party in the UK. Livingstone does of course put something of a positive spin on the results – no mean feat given how fresh the wounds are – but what is perhaps more interesting is his take on what governments in the modern era need to do. Shunting the right/left paradigm to the side for just a moment, it’s worth having a bit of a think about these three objectives:

There are three tasks for a government and a mayor - to ensure the country and London are an economic success; to ensure everyone shares in that success; and to ensure that success is sustainable in the long run through improving the environment.

So in essence, Livingstone is suggesting that wealth, a fair wealth distribution and sustainability are the three objectives that government should strive for. Personally I think that’s a fairly neat conceptualisation of what good government should deliver in the modern era. If a society is prosperous, the prosperity is shared in an equitable manner and it is achieving its prosperity through a sustainable path, then it is probably going to be considered a successful society.

It is of course worth considering these three goals that Livingstone has highlighted in the context of the mayoral election results. With respect to prosperity – there is little doubting that London is one of the most prosperous cities in the world, and has been for what we would consider to be a considerable number of years. It’s difficult to gauge the extent to which Livingstone’s mayoralty on the city’s prosperity, but I would suggest that he has imparted a degree of increased prosperity to the city during his time in the top job. With respect to wealth distribution, the rhetoric has always been there with Ken, but I am not sure that he has achieved the outcomes that he would have liked. As he states himself in his column:

There is not the slightest evidence that “trickle down” - the automatic operation of the market - is a sufficient mechanism to ensure everyone shares in success or to deliver decent services. In London the shattering contrast, within a mile’s distance, of the wealth of the City of London and the poverty of Tower Hamlets shows this brutally.

On sustainability, lastly, Livingstone arguably has a record to be proud of. The introduction of the groundbreaking congestion charge has won worldwide plaudits and made London something of a model city when it comes to environmental considerations.

Ironically of course, despite doing quite well when marked against his own criteria, Livingstone did not manage to win the election. And why? Reading through some of the comments made on his column might give you some idea there. Sadly for the former mayor, I think the impact of the scandals that beset his mayoralty (e.g. the Lee Jasper affair) suggest that transparency or “good governance” is the crucial fourth element omitted from his wish list of societal goals. Boris Johnson of course proved quite the populist candidate, but one would have to think the result could have been different if Livingstone’s mayoralty was not dragged into the gutter in the months leading up to the election.

Boris Johnson, the incoming Mayor of London, has looked to get off to a sensible (and popular!) start by announcing that alcohol consumption will no longer be permitted on public transport in the city. Speaking as someone mostly familiar with the public transport system in New South Wales in Australia, this seems at first glance to be a bit of a policy “no-brainer”. Alcohol consumption is of course already banned on buses and trains in New South Wales and has been for some time. Surely it is just plain common sense that giving people a license to get smashed on public transport is a recipe for commuter discord and unruly behaviour.

Unfortunately for Johnson, it seems he is just about to learn that delivering a policy entails more than simply announcing it. It appears that the new mayor has unveiled his policy with a rush of blood as if he were still a candidate rather than the city’s top elected official, without stopping to actually first talk to the people who he has thrust onto the frontline of crime deterrence:

“Our members are in a situation where it is difficult enough to get help from the British Transport police. They are going to have to face the wrath of people who are probably going to be drunk and angry at being forced off a train or bus and that is not right,” said a spokesman for the Rail and Maritime Transport union.

He added: “Train drivers, platform staff and bus drivers are not police. We were not consulted on this.

“It doesn’t seem to be very well thought out. We all want to improve passenger safety but the best way to do that is to talk to the people who work at the front line about the best way to do it.”

For the unfamiliar, public transport staff in London seem to habitually exclude themselves from security incidents on the vehicles they help support and administer. Partially this is no doubt a result of operational issues and a broader focus on keeping the whole system running efficiently. Is a single bus driver carrying a load of over fifty people really going to be in a position to deal with a situation where a single drunk on board starts annoying passengers? On a metro system where trains run every few minutes during peak hour, is it really going to be viable to hold up trains on the platform while public transport staff (e.g. not even police) attempt to eject people drinking alcohol on them?

It also appears Johnson has not announced the hidden costs associated with actually making this policy a reality. It is obvious to every person who uses public transport in London that the existing staff will be operationally unable to enforce this new policy; certainly not without training, and very likely not without quite a sizable increase in British Transport Police numbers.

While it seems like common sense at first glance, it would appear that this policy has been subjected to negligible consultation and scant consideration as to the operational implications. If this policy is to serve as an example of how Johnson is going to tackle problems facing London today, the entire city is going to get stuck in the mud pretty quickly.

“Red” Ken Livingstone’s reign as Mayor of London has come to an end over the last couple of days, with Tory candidate Boris Johnson easily winning the mayoral poll on May 1. Despite Johnson polling quite strongly in the weeks leading up to the election, I admit to being fairly surprised by the result. I did not really believe that Johnson was a serious candidate. His high profile background as a former satirical game show host and his often edgy forays into “humorous” wordplay have made him a star among the wealthy inner city set, but controversy still lingers. It is indeed odd to think that somebody who once thought nothing of using the term “piccaninny” to refer to African people is now the mayor of one of the most multiracial and cosmopolitan cities of the world. I am not sure if this reflects a magnanimous willingness of Londoners to forgive racism, an increasingly bitter dislike of Ken Livingstone’s more machiavallian tendencies or the modern political world’s obsession with celebrity. Possibly, at least in part, a combination of the three.

Strangely, at least based on what I have seen thus far, much of the media coverage of the London mayoral race and the associated council elections has been presented through the rubrik of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s trials and tribulations. The dismissal of Livingstone and the installment of Johnson in London has taken a back seat to the question of what this means for the leadership of Gordon Brown. To be honest, I am not sure how much can be read into it. It goes without saying that if an election was held tomorrow, it would be a brave Labour supporter indeed who would put money on a victory for Brown. On the other hand, there is still something a shadow of an expectation out there that sooner or later, the Prime Minister is going to shake off the cobwebs and punch through the current malaise besetting the Labour Party. Whether this latest setback proves to be the straw that breaks the back of this malaise remains to be seen.

In any case, London now has a new mayor, and it is a man who several conservative commentators have described as someone unfit for the job, and the infamous British National Party’s second choice in the mayoral race. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson has a lot to prove. London will need to have the new, uncontroversial, spin doctored Boris of the mayoral election campaign holding the reins, rather than the toff-oriented comic wit of years past. If that old, more popular (among some) Boris returns, things could get a bit ugly.

ELSEWHERE: Charlie Brooker provided a comical summary for The Guardian as to why Johnson is a dubious choice.

For many years during the era of the Blair Government here in the United Kingdom, Scotsman and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown was regarded as the Prime Minister to be when Tony finally decided to step down and out of the public limelight. From what I can gather, Brown, unlike Blair in his latter days, was regarded quite favourably by many and attracted a certain degree of respect across the political divide. His avuncular character and his studied approach to politics made him, perhaps, Britain’s incarnation of Kim Beazley. While Blair’s approach to politics made him the focal point of the Labour Party while he was Prime Minister, it was seemingly always quietly observed that the brilliant Gordon Brown, behind the scenes, was one of the key driving forces for some of the better things the Labour Party did policy-wise. If Tony Blair was New Labour’s doyen of spin, Gordon Brown was thought of in some circles as Old Labour’s comparatively quiet doyen of policy. Saatchi’s infamous advertising slogan said it all. With Gordon, there really is no flash.

It has not yet been a year since Gordon Brown was anointed (without the shadow of any real competition for the role) as Prime Minister, back in June 2007. Brown seemed to hit the ground running as a leader during the early months, but since that time, something, for some reason, has been amiss. A public that had gorged itself on glossy and effective spin during the Blair years now found itself observing a somewhat grizzled Scot, prone to grumbling and often short of a trick in the charisma stakes. The association of Brown, in a sense, with “Old Labour” has proven to be an albatross. The Tory leader, David Cameron, looks comparatively young, fresh, and full of energy, and if the current trend continues, looks likely to be the next Prime Minister of Britain. It is a sign of the times that this characterisation of Brown from comedian Rory Bremner (published in The Guardian this weekend) hits Gordon’s plight so squarely on the head:

It’s a bit like having an uncle who’s been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the past 10 years, and you go down to see what he’s up to, and you look through the window - and there’s nothing there.

For the majority of the past year, the question of Brown’s leadership has been handled with kid gloves by the media. Brown has been attacked mercilessly on no end of absurd fronts, of course, but the question of whether he really was the best person to lead the Labour Party at this time has not been raised very often at all. Unfortunately, but in a realistic sense fairly, it seems some in the professional media are starting to lose patience with the Prime Minister’s performance. Martin Kettle has quite a stinging opinion piece in The Guardian today that could well lead to a snowballing of leadership speculation:

Brown is not ready to give up, but nor is he confident he can win the public’s support back. For whatever reason, he lacks the certainty of his predecessor. Even when Blair was wrong, he was clear about where he was heading. But Brown lacks Blair’s confidence - and this is now corrosive. “The challenge is primarily psychological,” says a senior minister, “It’s about being confident.” “He simply doesn’t know what to do,” responds a senior backbencher. “There’s no sense of direction whatever. There’s nothing there.”

I would like to believe that policy really is king, and that all that Gordon Brown has to do to lift Labour’s flagging fortunes is to hit back at the Opposition with a wave of thoughtful, progressive policy reform. Reality, of course, is crueler and more fickle. Despite the fact that there probably isn’t so much of a hair’s breadth between Kim Beazley and Kevin Rudd in a policy sense on quite a lot of issues that one might consider, Beazley was unable to achieve in his three stints as Opposition Leader what Rudd achieved in his first. Leadership is as much about presentation as it is about policy, and at the moment, Gordon Brown is looking very much like the poor cousin of Tony Blair in this regard. “The flash” was not just there for show with Blair; it was needed.

I don’t think Labour can simply ignore the question of the leadership, in the somewhat yellow belief that Gordon Brown will lead the party to the next election, come what may. Brown himself and the senior members of the party should privately set a timetable detailing at what point other options for the leadership should be considered, if indeed Brown’s political fortunes continue to stagnate over the coming months as they are presently. I don’t doubt that the Prime Minister means well and is doing his darnedest to win over the punters, but he must, for the sake of the Labour Party, be judged on results, not just his efforts. The media and the party’s kid gloves must come off, because the current malaise is toxic and unsustainable.

The London mayoral elections fall on Thursday May 1 this year, with Labour’s incumbent mayor Ken Livingstone facing a tough challenge from Tory stand-up comedian Boris Johnson and Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick. Such is the highly multicultural and multinational population of London that even Australians on relatively temporary visas such as myself are allowed to vote; I plan to vote for Ken.The putrid fruit of Johnson’s campaign, which is running almost exclusively on the steam of Johnson’s slapstick celebrity, arrived in my mail slot just the other day. I thought it might be worth sharing.

For those who don’t have magical super-magnifying vision, Tory London Assembly candidate Kit Malthouse’s best arguments against re-electing Ken Livingstone appear to be: 

1) People who drive large, high-polluting “Chelsea tractors” around London - which probably has one of the best public transport systems in the world - shouldn’t pay an increased congestion charge.

2) A sixth runway at Heathrow is a bad idea. Ken isn’t running on any policy of expanding Heathrow further, but Kit still thinks it is a bad idea.

In a survey, Malthouse also highlights three “representative” Labour “policies” and asks residents if they are for or against the proposals. The policies are summarised on the survey in an extremely fair and balanced way, as you can see:

Sometimes politics really does want to make you vomit. 

The Guardian refers to it as Tony Blair’s one great unquestionable success; the attainment of peace in Northern Ireland. Great Hatred, Little Room, is a new book from senior Blair aide Jonathan Powell focusing on the heavy negotiations between Blair and the IRA, and follows in the footsteps of Alastair Campbell’s epic but gripping The Blair Years. Showcasing as it does one of the great diplomatic success stories of the modern era, Powell’s book offers renewed hope for peacemaking, and serves as a reminder of what can be achieved through talking to your enemies and trying desperately and doggedly to work towards common ground. At one stage, as The Guardian breathlessly reported today, Blair sought to engage in meetings with masked IRA leaders if need be in order to keep the peace process alive. One wonders where this determination to forge peace through diplomatic means went to around the time that the decision to go all the way in Iraq was made, without the requisite planning or indeed a robust moral and legal justification.

Powell also quite bravely has come out in support of talking with the Taliban and Al’Qaida. Perhaps it is symptomatic of the action-oriented political mood of the moment that someone supporting such a position is newsworthy in itself:

Western governments must talk to terror groups including al-Qaida and the Taliban if they hope to secure a long-term halt to their campaigns of violence, according to the man who for more than a decade was Tony Blair’s most influential aide and adviser.

…

Powell said: “There’s nothing to say to al-Qaida and they’ve got nothing to say to us at the moment, but at some stage you’re going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution. And that means you need the ability to talk.”

The great danger in governments reaching out to groups like Al’Qaeda as essentially “equals” across a bargaining table is that it offers an air of legitimacy to them. Effectively, by extending a hand of negotiation, there is no doubting that we would be sending an implicit message that engaging in terrorist activity and defying international law is a way to get a seat at the big table. Nor can the situation with Northern Ireland be reasonably compared to the situation the Western world faces with terrorist cells draped in the banner of fundamentalist Islam. The potential threats that the world faces in relation to global terrorism are amorphous, decentralised, and constantly shifting. In the same way that it doesn’t really make sense for governments to negotiate with a small number of “representative” murderers in an effort to stamp out murder in society, negotiating with a representative group of terrorists in an effort to stamp out terrorism is clearly not going to prove to be a final solution to the problem.

The path towards a lasting peace lies with uniting the Western world with the moderate and secular Islamic world against extremists who defy the rule of law. The relative few who act on their grievances in violent ways should not be given the time of day.

ELSEWHERE: Seamus has another angle on the Powell book over at Club Troppo.

It’s probably fair to say that alcohol is both a social good and a social evil in modern society. On the positive side, a moderate intake of alcohol allows people to relax and disconnect from the stresses of their everyday lives. Although it varies from person to person and also depends on just how much you drink, there is a fairly broad consensus that drinking the “right” amount of alcohol is good for your physical health. On the flip side of the coin, alcohol use and abuse is broadly responsible for thousands of deaths each year. The negative influence that alcohol abuse has on society spans the spectrum of one’s imagination; from causing motoring accidents, through to physical assault and rape, poor financial decision-making, degraded social responsibility, and long-term illness such as coronary disease. When one considers in full the many and varied ills that alcohol abuse brings to the table, it is hard not to compare and contrast the vehemently strong anti-smoking sentiment that is palpable in modern Western societies to the fairly lackadaisical gaze with which we view alcohol abuse. It’s okay to be a raging drunk, but don’t you dare smoke!

Of late, there have been some soft murmurings around the traps that perhaps this broad public tolerance of alcohol abuse might be slowly coming to a close. In Australia, Kevin Rudd has recently announced a new advertising campaign targeting binge drinking, which is welcome, but of course, is not going to be enough in itself to make deep inroads into the problem. Over here in the UK, in handing down his first Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling has put his neck out with a slightly more practical measure and one that seems unthinkable in the political climate back home; a tax hike on alcohol:

British finance minister Alistair Darling announced on Wednesday that alcohol duty will increase by 6 percent above the inflation rate with hefty rises in beer, wine and spirits coming in at midnight on Sunday.

In his first budget, Darling told parliament that beer will rise by 4 pence a pint, cider by 3p a litre, wine by 14p a bottle and spirits by 55p a bottle, marking the first rise in duties on spirits in more than a decade.

The lift on the duties on spirits is by no means insubstantial, but one has to wonder whether these increases are really going to do anything other than increase the volume of funds flowing into the government’s coffers. An extra 4 pence on a pint of beer is not going to make anybody (particularly if they are drunk!) think twice about ordering another round. Nor is another extra 14 pence on a bottle of wine going to force the country’s chardonnay socialists and blue-bloods call it a night after the first bottle or two. You could buy seven bottles of wine before noticing that you’ve even spent a pound more than usual, which is more than enough to send most people into cloud cuckoo land.

Clearly governments have it tough politically when tackling issues related to alcohol abuse, but making inroads on this issue is a worthy endeavour for any government in today’s belligerently hedonistic world. Practical measures like tax increases might be the right path to take if implemented sensibly, in a way that people can understand and comprehend. A hardline education campaign reminding society just how much trauma is caused by well-meaning folks having too much to drink is probably just what the doctor ordered. Such a campaign has worked wonders over a period of several decades in relation to tobacco. The right campaign with strong backing from civil society can do the same for alcohol abuse.

The British Labour Party has published a list of its top fifty achievements in office since Tony Blair lead “New Labour” to power all the way back in 1997, on a wave of enthusiastic public support. As is often the case with lists of this nature, what has been omitted from the list is arguably just as interesting as what has actually been listed. There is not a single reference to the “war on terror” or any related measures aimed at improving security for British citizens. There is not a single reference to the war on Iraq. There is not a single reference to the Blair Government’s involvement in the conflict in the Balkans during the late 1990’s. There is not a single reference to the party’s somewhat conflicted position on adopting the Euro. In total, this all seems to represent an implicit admission by the party that the Labour Party’s foreign policy actions over the last decade are not something which it is proud of.

What I would like to see from the Labour Party here in the UK is a refreshing outburst of honesty. Accompanying this inescapably jaundiced list of fifty greatest achievements over the last decade, why not issue a list of the party’s ten greatest failures over the last decade, and then issue a comprehensive policy platform to address each of these failures? The Howard Government did the best it could to hide its numerous policy failures over the years, and by the end had far too much pride (or perhaps, hubris) to highlight the things it had done wrong and the things it could have done better. Its favoured approach was to soldier on practically regardless of what ordinary people thought of its policies, admitting as little fault as possible, and persistently attacking the Opposition’s credibility. That approach worked a treat in 2004 when Mark Latham proved quite vulnerable to a sustained smear campaign centred on his experience and temperament, but Kevin Rudd proved a much more teflon-like Opposition leader throughout 2007 and the rest is now history.

The British Labour Government, with a new leader in Gordon Brown, has an excellent opportunity to make a clean break from the past, and set a dynamic new course for the future. This may well entail the public disownment of some of the less attractive political legacies of the Blair years, but unless a clean break with the past is made, it is all too easy to see a similar scenario enfolding at the next election in Britain as unfolded in Australia last year. There are lots of criticisms that one can make of Tory Leader David Cameron, but he is certainly an Opposition Leader of the teflon-coated variety. That means that Gordon Brown in his team need to start rolling out some big, positive policy ideas if they are to emerge triumphant from the next election.

Being a member of parliament is doubtless far from an easy job. In addition to all the public opprobrium regarding politicians and the dirty world of politics more generally, today’s twenty-four hour news cycle ensures that the average politician works far more than fourty hours per week. The need for almost perpetual preparation and briefing on public policy issues and of course the media issues of the day induces many of our representatives to put in hours day and night, no matter what day of the week it might be. Consequently, it’s easy to conceive how someone with a full-time job in politics could become quite estranged indeed from their partner and immediate family. In Australia, I imagine it must be particularly tough for those serving parliamentarians who live more than an hour’s flight away from Canberra.

One imagines that UK Tory MP Derek Conway had seeing his family in mind when he originally decided to hire his wife and two of his sons to work in his parliamentary office. In the last week, unfortunately, things have now turned a bit pear-shaped. A House of Commons committee found that one of his sons, Henry, was paid some £32,000 for “research work”, and that his other son Freddie was paid £45,000 while he was studying full-time at Newcastle University. In a turn of events that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must be thanking the gods for, Mr. Conway has hence been suspended from parliament, forced to repay £13,000, and now plans to leave politics at the next general election.Since the discovery, which has blotted out headlines in London over the last few days, Tory leader David Cameron has made a somewhat nervous discovery:

David Cameron yesterday disclosed that his party whips had discovered more than 70 of the 193 Conservative MPs employ members of their family.

In the wake of the Derek Conway scandal, the Conservative leader said he would be requiring his front bench from April 1 to disclose in the register of MPs’ interests if they were employing family members.

Now it’s not really surprising that a fairly large proportion of MPs in the UK (or in Australia, one would think) employ a family member or two. To a fairly strong extent, particularly for those in high profile positions, a life in politics forces one’s partner and family to come along for the ride or to be isolated altogether. However, it does make sense that some formal controls are put in place to ensure that MPs do not abuse their privileges. Cameron’s move is an intelligent one, although one would have to think that legislating some safeguards in this area would probably be a good thing for the Brown Labour Government to do.Of course, for the time being, I am sure all three major parties in the UK are desperately checking with all their parliamentarians to verify that nothing suspect is going on, before they come out in a truly aggressive way for increased transparency.

Does anybody know what the rules state in this area in Australian federal politics? If I had to guess, it would be that Australian federal parliamentarians need not publicly register who is working for them at any given time. Sounds like one for Special Minister of State John Faulkner to investigate further, in the light of this scandal in the UK. You would have to think there are one or two parliamentarians around the traps across the country who are abusing the privileges of their offices.

ELSEWHERE: The Daily Mail, from the Murdoch stable, has been particularly scathing about the affair.