Mandelson's star turn

Peter Mandelson’s animated speech to the Labour Party conference was just the tonic the dour symposium needed. His rousing performance, which targeted the Tories and also announced policy, was both self-indulgent and self-deprecating and seemed to inspire the party faithful to get over themselves and get on with the job of fighting the next election. Mandy’s theatrical performance was pure entertainment or as Sky News described it Mandy has recast himself “from pantomime villain to pantomime dame.” His best line, complete with hand gestures: "If I can come back, we can come back."

Poor Gordon, let’s see how he fares in comparison this afternoon.

Don’t underestimate the BNP, warns Nelson

Spectator editor Fraser Nelson offers an interesting perspective on the BNP/Question Time invitation on the magazine’s blog. Nelson, who trailed the nationalist party for a feature earlier this year, says Griffin is a more sophisticated and shrewd operator than the main parties give him credit for. Allowing him to appear on the BBC’s flagship political programme would work to the BNP’s electoral advantage, he argues.

Read Nelson’s post here.

Politicians interview pundits

From today's Guardian:

Question time
Politicians are normally the ones being grilled by journalists, but what happened when we asked them to swap roles? Who admits to missing a major scoop, who's cut off mid-sentence, who's quizzed about a wardrobe malfunction and whose bald head caught George Bush's eye?

George Osborne and Andrew Marr
Osborne: So being drunk made you miss the story?
Marr: That's a fair assessment

Ann Widdecombe and Jon Snow
Widdecombe: I have concluded the interview
Snow: We could have a PS

Diane Abbott and Nick Robinson
Robinson: George Bush once had a go at my bald head
Abbott: I think you had got to him

William Hague and Emily Maitlis
Hague: There was a moment - I don't know whether to raise it…
Maitlis: You're the first person to ask me about that…

Caroline Flint and Adam Boulton
Boulton: Debbie Harry trod on my toe once
Flint: At a concert?
Boulton: No, a nightclub in New York

New World Order

It's always nice to see more women among the G20 leaders. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who for so long was the sole non-WAG at such summits, has since last year been joined by Argentinean president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, bolstering the female ranks. But women are still notable by their absence in the routine photocall. What’s more, only last year, South African president Jacob Zuma (or his predecessor Thabo Mbeki) would have been the only black face among the twenty leaders of the world’s biggest economies. This year, the man in charge of the world’s most powerful nation, standing centre stage in the shot, is a black man with a white mother for whom being a global citizen isn’t just an abstract theory but a diverse reality that’s shaped his life. Say cheese, President Obama. It may not be the first time its happened but it’s the first time its happened since I began blogging. And I can’t help but bring it to wider attention.

Of course Gordon shouldn’t go… yet

Gordon Brown gives an interesting interview in this week’s New Statesman in which he answers calls for his resignation (from critics including - surprise, surprise - his old adversary Charles Clarke) by insisting he isn’t going anywhere. Of course he isn’t! He may be a ditherer but Gordon’s no quitter. This is a man who waited ten long years to get his hands on the top job. The thought of his days in the post he’s coveted since his youth being numbered must surely compel him to hang on for the duration of what little time he has left. For Brown to quit now would do us all a disservice, not least the electorate. We didn’t get the chance to vote him in to power so why should we be deprived of voting him out (or in, as the case may be)? New Labour would be arrogant to assume that the public’s malaise with the party of government for the last 12 years is purely to do with Gordon Brown. He may lack charisma but Labour would lack communal common sense if that’s what they truly believed. With or without Brown and his fireside chats and YouTube broadcasts, the likelihood is that Labour is going down in May 2010. They may as well go as gracefully as possible. That way, the party may be down but they won’t have to be out for a long stretch in the wilderness, as the doomsayers predict.

Read the full interview with Prime Minister Brown here.

Roundup of the news weeklies

1. How I Plan to Save the Planet
Gordon Brown sets out his vision for a greener world
Newsweek

2. Heroes of the Environment
Time magazine’s annual guide to the leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists and activists who are working to help the planet
Time

3. The 50 People Who Matter
A countdown of the world’s most important leaders plus an interview with Gordon Brown in which he says he won’t quit
New Statesman

4. How to Save the Labour Party
The rightwingers at The Spectator offer Labour advice on how to save themselves from the political wilderness
The Spectator

5. Spending cuts: Where the axe should fall
The Economist

Stage set for G20 talks

Obama snubs Brown

Did Barack Obama give Gordon Brown the cold shoulder in New York earlier this week? Let’s examine the evidence.

It’s claimed that the prime minister’s people tried five times to arrange a meeting with the American president but were consistently snubbed. The president’s men have denied this, of course, but the probable motivation for Obama’s behaviour makes his alleged actions all the more understandable.

The release of the Lockerbie bomber offended American sensibilities. It went to the heart of US pride. Americans see the decision to send Abdelbasset al-Megrahi back to his native Libya on compassionate grounds as an affront to their suffering. And since the American justice system is based on retribution not redemption, someone has to pay for Britain’s ‘crime’ against the US and that person is Gordon Brown.

Gaddafi at the UN: Cause for concern

Since no one is taking Colonel Gaddafi’s 95 minute diatribe at the UN seriously, I’d like to express a little concern for the Libyan leader’s strange physical appearance. Gaddafi looks like he took a detour to Beverly Hills en route to New York and paid a painful visit to Dr 90210. Not a good look, Mr President!

Sydney dust bowl - Is this the future?

A foretaste of global warming, Sydney, Australia is shrouded in red dust. Could this be the calm before the storm? However will Prof Plimer explain this?

Jungle highlights need for proper immigration debate

Yesterday (Tuesday, 23 September) on Channel 4 News, a UN spokesman compared the clearing of the French ‘jungle’ migrant camp to Darfur, saying that the situation needed to be put in perspective. While it’s true that the massive displacement and humanitarian catastrophe in southern Sudan doesn’t attract nearly as many headlines, the 'jungle’ site needs to be considered on its own unique merits.

Illegal immigration isn’t just France’s problem but Europe’s and if any country should be at the forefront of developing the continent’s response to migration it’s Britain. Migrants from Afghanistan are hardly risking their lives to enter the UK solely for economic reasons (and even if they were what would be so wrong in that?). Had the coalition not gone to war on their homeland, creating exceptional circumstances, they wouldn’t be on our doorstep today. What they are fleeing from is far worse than what they are running to thanks, in part, to our intervention.

While I fundamentally believe in the free and unrestricted movement of people, in the real world in which we live today, this isn’t practical. But images of rickety boats filled with human cargo, trafficked Africans, tantamount to slave ships, are shocking and disturbing and tell of the sheer desperation of human beings.

Splashes like The Daily Express’ front page (‘Keep Out, Britain’s Full’) play to the alarmists and stifle any rational debate on immigration policy. It turns people on either side of the spectrum in to extremists and reduces the discussion to simple terms. Migration is a complex issue and as long as we allow agenda-driven media like The Express and The Mail to frame the debate, we’ll be confined to narrow, biased bantering when what is required is a thorough national discussion.

Baroness Scotland makes my blood boil

I had a lot of sympathy for Baroness Scotland until, that is, I saw her on last night’s news blithely defending herself. What infuriated me most was the way she flippantly dismissed her transgression, comparing it to forgetting to pay the Congestion Charge, a ‘technical breach of the law’, a civil offence not a criminal one. The whole explanation smacked of arrogance. The Baroness would do better to accept her £5000 fine with a degree of humility than try to justify her law breaking. In fact, it’s her haughty attempts to explain away her misdemenour that turn a minor administrative error in to a potentially sackable/resignable offence. It’s not her position she should reconsider. It's her attitude.

Sarkozy on trial by media

My favourite world leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, is in the news for taking former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin to court for his alleged conspiratorial meddling in the Clearstream affair. This comes as no surprise to me, having just read Sarkozy’s brilliant exposition of his political thinking in his 2007 memoir, Testimony.

The Sarko/de Villepin case has been painted as a class struggle, a power struggle and an abuse of power by sections of the media, who fail to understand the president’s motivations. Sarko’s actions against de Villepin are wholly in line with his principles, not his emotions, as his detractors would have us believe. For him to do anything other than seek the truth about his rival’s involvement in a smear campaign from which he was ultimately vindicated would be against everything Sarkozy believes and, love him or loathe him, Sarkozy is a man of conviction (no pun intended).

Look out for my review of Testimony in a later post.

China comes up trumps at UN Climate Summit

The UN summit on climate change is taking place today and the issue of how to tackle the global environmental threat has rarely been so high on the political agenda. The spotlight is focused squarely on the United States, whose failure to sign up to the Kyoto agreement stalled an earlier attempt at a treaty and cost the world vital time in reversing the effects of industrialisation. American leadership is more critical now than ever but Barack Obama’s plate is already full with domestic affairs and his hands are effectively tied. Unless the US can commit to quantifiable targets then the hope for a worthwhile agreement in Copenhagen in December is futile. We watch and wait in earnest.

Update
China forced America’s hand by announcing that they will cut their greenhouse gas emissions to 2005 levels by 2020. At last, something of note to write home about! Now let’s see if the Americans will keep up with the Jintaos, I mean, Joneses, come December.

Good week/bad week

(Or how the fickle hand of fate can affect political fortunes)

Bad week
Barack Obama
The sh*t really hit the fan for President Obama last week with reactionary protests against his healthcare reforms and accusations of lying/racism. The Prez was forced to go on the offensive with a marathon media blitz but this, unsurprisingly, also drew criticism. The honeymoon period is most definitely over. Troubled times ahead...

Ed Balls
The Education Secretary caused a furore when he announced plans for educational spending cuts by getting rid of up to 3,000 head teachers and creating federated schools. Nick Clegg called the proposals “madness” while George Osborne got the chance to momentarily deflect attention away from his own sizeable troubles (see below).

George Osborne
Much has been written about Osborne’s misjudgment on the ‘secret tax’ fiasco and I, for one, won’t add to the struggling shadow chancellor’s predicament by writing anymore. See here.

The meat and bones of the elections

Vince Cable, that titan of the Liberal Democrats, today announced that his party will levy a tax on properties worth over £1million should they come in to power. Unlikely though this is, it gets to the heart of what politics is, or at least, should be, about.

The meat and bones of policy, particularly relevant in the current vacuum of personality, is vital in order to get back to the real debate that needs to take place in order to provide voters with a clear choice at the polls. Whether you believe in redistribution or not, the arguments that will arise from the proposed ‘Mansion Tax’ will be fundamental and will help draw a line between the three main parties. This is good news since there’ve been times over the last few years when Red, Yellow and Blue have been anything but black and white. Let the debate begin!

Ed drops the Ball too early

So the gauntlet was thrown down when Gordon Brown was finally forced to concede planned cuts in public spending. And first out of the block to take up the challenge of laying out reduced spending plans was Education Secretary, Ed Balls. On Sunday, he made public his proposed educational reforms, including getting rid of a sizeable amount of head teachers and federating schools. Balls probably thought he was seizing the day by being so quick off the mark and, in a sense, his willingness to make his plans known is admirable.

But had he thought about it just a little longer, he’d have realised that it was in his best interests to hold fire. Because education, like healthcare, is the sacred cow of British society. While the electorate will grudgingly consider cuts to transport, environment and even defence, they will not be so open-minded when it comes to slashing education budgets. Balls should’ve considered this and waited before adding his controversial irons to an already raging fire. Perhaps Osborne’s blooper will overshadow Balls’ blunder and the education secretary will remember that he was once a spin doctor extraordinaire before his next unnecessary venture in the press.

Osborne: Flailing not failing

Watching George Osborne yesterday trying to defend himself against a barrage of questions from Sky News political editor Adam Boulton made for uncomfortable viewing. It was clear to everyone, including probably Osborne himself, that he made an unwise move in ‘outing’ the government’s allegedly secret tax rises, increases which the Treasury had published for all who wished to see in last year’s budget. Not only did this recklessness makes Osborne look bad and call in to doubt his credibility to effectively be the country’s second in command, but it also reflects badly on David Cameron and the Conservatives.

The whole sorry incident reminds me of the Sarah Palin affair, which the Democrats used so successfully to their advantage in the 2008 US presidential campaign. Just when the Republicans thought they’d trumped their opponents by unveiling a female vice-presidential running mate, the Democrats ran a campaign asking the public whether they’d trust Palin, an inexperienced governor from Alaska, to run the country should something happen to old man McCain. This is the Osborne situation in a nutshell.

Writing in the Independent on Sunday (20 September), John Rentoul summed up the Conservatives’ predicament without Cameron, which he concluded would be like, well, the Conservatives of the past 12 years, a rudderless ship with no one competent enough to steer the helm. The Tories have no plausible leaders-in-waiting and are a one man party, he concluded. Labour should take heed of Rentoul’s assessment, learn from the Democrats experience, exploit Cameron’s and Osborne’s combined inexperience and run with it.

That said, Osborne is flailing not failing. Up until last week, Osborne has been a reliable sideman to the ever budding Cameron. The whole tax debacle was an error in judgment but not a fatal blow to Osborne’s long-term prospects. What the Chancellor-in-waiting needs to do is retreat for a week, let the storm blow over and come back with solutions, not create problems, at the Conservatives’ conference in a fortnight’s time.

Change the script

If, like me, you’re a bit of a news nerd then the Sunday morning politicofest is must-see TV. Starting with The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1, moving on to Sunday Live with Adam Boulton on Sky News before switching back to Auntie for The Politics Show, the weekly fix of punditry and party political banter is addictive stuff. As the advert for Marr’s show goes, it’s like reading all the Sunday papers and their supplements in one easy hit.

So, forgive me for being finicky but shouldn’t the producers of these respective shows do their homework so they’re not duplicating each other’s content? On today’s Andrew Marr Show at 9am was Nick Clegg and Dame Shirley Williams. An hour later, Nick Clegg inevitably turns up on Adam Boulton and so too does, yes, you guessed it, Dame Shirley Williams (in fact, Williams’ went AWOL and didn’t make it to the show for her planned appearance but you get my point). Luckily, The Politics Show was a Clegg free, Williams free zone because, even an ardent politico like me, couldn’t stand triple helpings of the same rehashed dish.

A vote for the Greens is a wasted vote, says Clegg

I find it ironic that Nick Clegg, writing in today’s Independent on Sunday (20 September), claims that a vote for the Green Party is a wasted vote. While it’s true that the Greens are on the relative fringes of the political spectrum, the wasted vote argument is one that’s often leveled at Clegg’s own party by both the Tories and Labour quite convincingly to the LibDems’s detriment. Perhaps if potential LibDem voters heeded the calls of their main opponents then the Liberals would be as small as the Greens?

No vote is a wasted vote as long as it’s cast with conviction, in clear conscience. Every political movement must start from somewhere and the Greens, by nature of their single issue politics, will never be as significant as the three main rivals. But I would contend that Green supporters aren’t merely registering a protest vote when they register a ballot for the party but are voting wholly in line with their beliefs and unique interests. The same couldn’t be said of sometime LibDem voters whose sole purpose is to give the government or the main opposition a bloody nose.

If Clegg wants to form an alliance with the Greens then he should take that up with his party. Otherwise, voters will vote for whatever party they believe will put their primary interests first.

Clegg finally in the spotlight as conference season gets under way

The Liberal Democrat conference is in full swing and party leader Nick Clegg is finally being allowed to step in to the limelight. Its been easy to forget that there are three main parties contesting the next election given the lack of column inches the LibDems have managed to generate, whether through fault of their own or because of a general lack of interest in the UK’s third party. As such, the LibDems seem to be making the most of what little media attention they’re currently getting and are using the increased coverage to showcase what they’re all about after being in the shadows for so long.

Earlier today (Sunday, 20 September), Clegg took centre stage to take questions from party activists on a whole range of issues. An interesting question came from a youth member about the use of the Internet as a campaigning tool and how much the party would be employing the Net to target potential or floating voters. Clegg, quite rightly, played down the use of the Net alone to connect with hard-to-reach groups, saying that there was no substitute for grassroots campaigning. He also reiterated the conference’s Fresh Start theme by spelling out the party’s three main priorities – sustainable, green, economic growth; young people; and, rather boldly, reinventing politics.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Clegg will assert himself in the public consciousness over the coming days because a revived LibDems is equally beneficial to voters and the party alike.