What’s up with Prestwick

So, going back a couple of days… this Prestwick Airport thing.

At a time when the Government are coming under pressure from public opinion for not standing tough against the US on Lebanon and a whole host of other issues. A new Foreign Secretary in place wants to stamp her authority after a previous Foreign Secretary who wasn’t afraid to go off script.

All of a sudden, a complete nothing issue pops out of nowhere. The US are not following proper procedures in shipping bombs to Israel. It’s easy for Beckett, she gets to criticise the US over a complete non-issue. The US back down and say sorry.

Anyone would think it was all orchestrated to help the Government look independent without actually having to diverge from the US at all…

Denial of the week

Today’s Guardian has another article on the continuing question marks over Menzies Campbell’s leadership of the Lib Dems.

It features an unnamed senior Lib Dem denying that Kennedy is considering a comeback, with the following reasoning: “The idea of Charles coming back is a bit strange – can you think of another party leader who has done that?”

Yes, actually, we can.

The Times on Lamont/Lieberman

As predicted in yesterday’s blog, the New York Times has come out for Joe Lieberman’s oponent in the Connecticut primary, Ned Lamont.

Ned’s campaign has been extremely good so far. Slick, young and vibrant campaigning on a big issue for the Democratic Party, it shows how those who oppose the Bush agenda on Iraq can fight a positive, appealing campaign.

The Editorial says, “Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.“

Sunday papers in review

A very slow news day if you aren’t too interested in the Lebanon war, however there are some interesting bits and pieces…

The Observer reports on the Lib Dems facing yet another conference of debates over just how bad their leader is – this time it is Ming not Charlie. MPs are rallying though – one says of a recent Parliamentary party away day: “The only thing we didn’t do in terms of bonding was sit in a circle and sing ‘Kumbaya’.” Yeah, whatever. And no-one was wearing sandles.

The Sunday Times says that the Government is set to set the bar higher on Freedom of Information requests so it can block “the most difficult requests”. As someone that has received the “we need more time.doc” emailed letter six times from DEFRA on one issue over the last four months, this is not exactly great news.

The Sunday Telegraph has a puff piece complaining about the passage of the Companies Bill (the legislation formerly known as the company law reform bill). Those Tories are worried that the bill will make companies more accountable to consumers – this is one to watch, as Unions and trade justice groups are going to give anyone who opposes this Bill being improved an absolute kicking in the Autumn.

The News of the World says that Michael Portillo has been having an affair in his lunch breaks, and even invited his girlfriend for “romps” in his House of Commons office. I hope he closed the door.

Peter Mandelson has accused the US of greed in another row over the collapse of the WTO’s Doha Round of talks, according to the Observer. Words fail me on this article. Just when you look Mandelson couldn’t be more of a hypocrite, he ups his game and comes out with something like this.

Lastly, the Sunday Telegraph reports with glee that attendance at grammar schools has gone up by 27,000 since 1997. A real measure of failure on the part of the Education department. This is also an excuse for us to quote from Susan Crosland’s biography of her husband Tony: “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland.”

Unsurprisingly, there is not anything in the Independent worth reading.

New York Times to endorse Lieberman opponent

We could be a week or so away from a damning indictment of the Iraq war from America’s own voters.  We have written about the Connecticut primary election between Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate Joe “Jomentum” Lieberman and cable-entrepreneur and anti-war campaigner Ned Lamont. 

But now, according to bloggers in the US, the New York Times is set to endorse Lamont. I am sure an American reader will correct this if it is wrong but it would not be unlike the Guardian coming out for John McDonnell.  Its big news and should be seen as a blow to pro-war politicians on the left.

Gale farce

Debate has raged over at the LabourHome blog over the demand by Chris Gale, Chair of Chippenham CLP, that maverick Labour MP Kate Hoey be disciplined for her involvement in the Countryside Alliance.

Having apparently lost patience with the party’s democratic processes, he has now launched a campaign to deselect Hoey (“Hoey Must Go”) in the pages of The Independent.

Quite apart from his apparent total ignorance of reselection procedures (the CLP votes on whether or not to re-select the MP, there is no chance to put up another candidate against Hoey) and the fact that Hoey was unanimously reselected last time, this may land him in some hot water of his own.

A campaign to discipline a Labour MP for criticising colleagues in public which, erm, criticises a Labour MP in public, may look more than a tad hypocritical. There are also rules about that kind of behaviour – the Labour Party’s code of conduct expressly forbidding disparaging other candidates in a selection process. If Gale himself is on Labour’s parliamentary panel – and perhaps he had his own name in mind as the mystery opponent to Hoey – he has just flagrantly broken his own signed agreement to follow the code.

Gale himself is an “interesting” character. A cursory examination of his blog displays what must rank as one of the most skewed senses of priorities in UK politics, as evidenced by his outrage that the Royal Navy are not evacuating British pets from Lebanon. Never mind that there is a massive humanitarian crisis and hundreds of deaths – we must save Tiddles!

The Daily wouldn’t like to speculate that he is a strange obssessive who whiles away his empty days sat in a darkened basement hunched over a computer, madly scanning the net for any mention of the targets of his obssession. But he has managed to find time out of his busy social life over the past couple of months to post screeds of venomous rantings and green ink letters to newspapers about Kate Hoey – just a few examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here (before we got bored) plus the occasional anonymous comment on any Labour blog he can find.

Every now and again he drags his gaze away from fluffy animals to pen paeons of praise for Tony Blair.

Given this prodigious output it is perhaps surprising that Gale not only failed to present any evidence whatsoever of Hoey being involved in any anti-Labour campaigning, but continually refused to answer any of the counter-arguments against his motion at LabourHome, resorting instead to increasingly hysterical ranting at anyone who did not agree.

His claim that the Countryside Alliance had stitched up the Conservative leadership election to ensure that a fox-hunter was leader of the opposition also suggests that a shade of paranoia may be kicking in.

No doubt he will blame the global fox-hunting conspiracy should he find that an exasperated Vauxhall CLP lose patience with him interfering in their selection and undermining their Labour MP in the national press and begins to take an interest in disciplinary action of its own. Others horrified by his totalitarian views on internal democracy may also be watching.

Perhaps he should just heed his own advice: “If we fight internal battles, rather than campaign on our record, the only winners will be the Tories”.

Scandinavian disappointment

Checking through yesterday’s search terms that people used to get onto this blog. On the list is “adult swedish-blogs”. All I can say is someone must have been very disappointed.

Independent schools launch class war

Not always the first in line to stand up for Oxford University, it was with a strange feeling of conflicting emotions that I read in today’s Guardian the launch of a “furious” attack on the college by this country’s top independent schools.

Leaving aside the question of when we started calling private elitist schools “independent schools”, these posh types are deeply jazzed off that their high fees will no longer guarantee free tickets into the country’s allegedly best university (and then onto run the country).

They are unhappy that Oxford has developed a system for encouraging bright pupils from poorer areas into the university, and has announced it will take into account the toil and determination it takes to succeed in a struggling state school, when deciding who to interview.

This means that if there are two candidates with equal grades, Oxford will not choose the one that got good grades because of the excessive riches of their daddy, but will instead will plump for the kid that had to clamber over brawling drug dealers just to get into class.

This scheme is so patently fair and sensible that it has, inevitably, driven the independent schools into a frenzy of self-righteousness. Martin Stephen, high master (high master?!?!) of St Paul’s school in Londonis livid.And not livid like normal people. He is livid like people who are victims of actual injustices:

“The means is at the very least primitive, at worst it is immoral … The absolute tragedy would be if Oxford turned down candidates who had done well. That makes a complete travesty of social and moral justice…. It is just as bad to discriminate against a young person because they have done well as it is to discriminate because they are disadvantaged.”

Crickey! “Immoral!” “Discriminate!” “Tragedy!” Reading that, you’d think that perhaps Oxford were proposing bring back slavery rather than a modern way of deciding who to let into a university.

Director of undergraduate admissions, Helen Carasso, told the Guardian “I imagine that there will be a small increase in numbers of [students with poorer backgrounds], but they are people who probably should have been here anyway who were probably being disadvantaged by the system before.”

I am not usually for Oxbridge types, but if Oxford follow this system through then they have nailed it. Good on them. But given the fact that none of this would be happening but for the fact that we have a (reasonably) progressive government in place, it is interesting to compare and contrast this sensible and fair approach of Oxford to private schools with Alan Johnson’s strange* comments last week praising the “independent sector”.

* – strange for their content, and strange that he doesn’t seem to care that he will have lost a good few votes for his deputy leadership campaign.

Those Tories get new ladies on board

The Tory Party’s efforts to be more friendly to The Ladies is in full swing under the guise of Women2win, whose task it is to propel more Tory ladies into winnable seats, thus presenting an image of a modern, inclusive party similar to Blair’s New Labour in 97.

One of those charged with these efforts is MP Bernard Jenkin’s wife Anne, a formidable campaigner, who wrote last year in the Sunday Express, “However you spin it, the situation is dire. We have to face the facts. The Party has lost its appeal to women. It no longer talks about issues which interest women. It speaks in a language that means nothing to women. “

Perhaps an example of how to talk to women is a charity swimming bash promoted by Anne Jenkin Consultants. On display will not only be politicians and political journalists, but also “Stringfellow Angels and Page 3 girls cheerleading.”

And who says that the Tories don’t know how to speak to ladies.

Labour leadership: from the annals of history

Lest we forget what a bad leadership election campaign from the left can do, let’s cast our gaze back to 1988.

Guardian, October 3, 1988

Kinnock wins mandate to reform party: Hattersely’s triple triumph in Labour electoral college

By JOHN CARVEL, Chief Political Correspondent

Mr Neil Kinnock lasty night claimed a mandate to modernise the Labour Party, after his overwhelming defeat of Mr Tony Benn in a leadership contest showing that the Left’s hold on constituency opinion has further weakened since its heday at the turn of the decade.

Mr Kinnock got 88.6 per cent of the vote, and Mr Roy Hattersley, who fought with him on a joint ticket, scored 66.8 per cent in the contest for deputy, against 23.7 per cent for Mr John Prescott and 9.5 per cent for Mr Eric Heffer.

The Kinnock-Hattersley camp was quick to point out that the figures gave Mr Hattersely a majoirity in all three parts of the electoral college: the unions, the MPs, and the constituencies where he outpolled Mr Prescott by more than 2 to 1.

Although a full analysis of the statistics was not yet published, Mr Hattersley’s supporters claimed a sharp disparity in the results from constituencies where party members had been balloted on the issue.

They said thqt in these areas there had been nearly 90 per cent backing for Mr Hattersley, whereas in consitutencies where the decision was left to general committees, Mr Hattersley had trailed his rivals.

Although Mr Kinnock had dismissed the contest a s a potentially damaging distraction from reviving Labour’s electoral appeal, he was last night arguing that it had become a referendum which gave hima mandate for his reform of policy and organisation.

He said: ‘We want to use this great victory to secure a greater victory at the next general election.’ He congratulated those who ahd resisted the temptation to turn the contest into the ‘intorverted distractive, desctructive contest it could so easily have been’.

Conference managers have ensured that the week’s debates in Blackpool will not produce too many results to rock the boat. Resolutions on defgence and the treatment of industries privatised by the Conservatives have been composited with sufficient vagueness to avoid the possibility of any clear reverse.

Mr Kinnock lost one vote on defence at yesterday’s pre-conference meeting of his national executive, but htis appears to have been more due to faulty briefing by party officials than any deeper political reason.

The conference, with Mr Kinnock in the chair for its first sitting, accepted the ruling that nothing could be done to expel Mr Eric Hammond’s electricians’ union, the EETPU, from attendance in spite of expulsion from the TUC.

The result is that the conference seems set to put through the first stage of Labour’s policy review, coupled with changes in membership rules designed to he;pp recruitment.

Mr Kinnock’s election victory was expected, but Mr Hattersley’s result was better than expected. He got 78.35 per cent of the trades union vote, 60.36 per cent of the constituencies and 57.92 of the MPs. To have done better in the constituencies than the Parliamentary Labour Party was a surprise for him.

Mr John Prescott got 21.64 per cent of the unions, 26.15 per cent of the constituencies and 23.98 per cent of the MPs. Mr Eric Heffer got 0.02 per cent of the unions, 13.49 per cent of the constituencies and 18.1 per cent of the MPs. The surprise for Mr heffer was that he did better among the MPs than in the constituencies.

Mr John Prescott said last night that he would not stand for the deputy leadership again during this parliament. He will seek re-election to the shadow cabinet and his supporters are taking at face value an assurance by Mr Kinnock that he would not be vitimised.

Mr Prescott said his campaign had killed the myth that contests had to cause bitterness. He asserted that one effect of his candidacy was the party’s new commitment to a wider national membership and greater local participation. ‘The message is sinking in. It is a victory for our campaign.’

Mr Benn made clar that the result this time would bot be the end of struggle. At fringe meetings he warned that the prupose of the conference was to ‘repudiate the basis on which this party was founded’.

Guardian