Thursday, April 28, 2005

Hang your head in shame, Mr Howard

Link Tories just as guilty in war fiasco
BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Blair faces Iraq legal pressure

It was the Tories who made the war possible. Without them, Tony Blair could not have got his majority in the House of Commons. And now they want to pin the blame on Blair, and get off themselves scot-free.

But it won't wash, Mr Howard.

Today's revelations - that Lord Goldsmith gave earlier advice suggesting that a second resolution in the UN would be a safer course - are bad for Blair. True, it's the kind of advice that any lawyer would give: take the safer course, don't expose yourself.

But it doesn't help Howard. From the point of view of the Tories, what Goldsmith said is utterly, utterly irrelevant. Because the Tories decided off their own bat that the war would be legal. They were not the ones in the cabinet meeting listening to Goldsmith a few days later promising that war would be legal. They were not invited to that meeting.

Instead, they made their own minds up, just as the Liberal-Democrats did. But the difference: we concluded that the war would not be legal. They decided to back it.

Did we need the government to tell us whether it would be legal or not? Would we have believed them anyway?

Of course not.

And neither did the Tories. If Goldsmith's advice to cabinet was upgraded, then the Tories must have played the same murky game with their own consciences.

We could see the war was wrong. Why couldn't they?

The answer is, of course they could. But they chose, as a piece of political strategy, to support a war because they thought it would do them good with the electorate.

We chose not to, even though we were warned it might lose us our seats.

We were proved right, they were proved wrong.

And they should have the good grace to admit it, and move on.

But no. Desperate to get some political leverage out of it, Michael Howard now accuses Blair of being a liar.

Perhaps he is. Personally, I believe that Tony Blair was sincere but wrong. I question his competence, not his honesty.

But the Tories? If anyone is behaving dishonestly, and has behaved dishonestly, it is they.

Hang your head in shame, Mr Howard. You deserve to be punished for this at the polls, and if the opinion surveys are anything to go by, you will be.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Look who's watching who

BBC NEWS | Election 2005 | Election 2005 | Lib Dems triumph in ratings war

More than half of the people watching TV at the time watched the Liberal Democrat party election broadcast when it was broadcast at quarter to seven on Wednesday evening. Overall, it pulled in 13.2 million viewers -- ahead of the Tories at 12.8 million and Labour at 11.9 million.

Pick of the bunch, then, and arguably more popular than Doctor Who. What's more, it was probably the cheapest to make. Labour hired in Oscar-winning film director Anthony Minghella. A sound choice, perhaps, since he specialises in fiction.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Who killed MG Rover? "I" said Patricia Hewitt

Link Tonight's events have been absolutely extraordinary. Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt announced that MG Rover had called in the receivers, and that 6,000 jobs were on the line.

This is bizarre enough. The government does not announce that a privately run business has called in the receivers, the business does it itself.

But it's worse. Because, according to MG Rover, Hewitt's claim is completely untrue.

They had not called in the administrators. They had not called in the receivers. They had not called in the liquidators.

At this time, if it was to have any hope of survival, MG Rover needed maximum confidence. It had to put up a united front with the government and its stakeholders to show that it was a worthwhile deal.

Now all hope of that is gone. Patricia Hewitt has dealt it a devastating blow. The prophecy is self-fulfilling -- by jumping the gun and saying that adminstrators have been called in, she has made it certain that they will be called in.

Could MG Rover have survived? I don't know. But there was still a fighting chance.

Now, there is almost none.

Bad news, perhaps, for the government in an election campaign. But devastating news for the 16,000 people whose jobs are now on the line. It may mean that Labour lose a few seats. They deserve to. But it means that thousands of hardworking people -- many the main or only breadwinner in their families -- will be stranded, with little prospect of future employment.

Who killed MG Rover? "I" said Patricia Hewitt.

To have failed to help MG Rover adequately is a shame. To have dealt its death blow is a scandal.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

At last we're off

Link Everybody knew that it was going to be May 5th.

But now, finally, the waiting is over and the General Election has been announced.

What's it really going to be like? There will be flurries of promises and counter promises, accusations and counter-accusations. The desperate will play dirty tricks, and likely as not lose whatever trust the electorate had in them.

But this time things are subtly different. This isn't just an election about government, it's an election about politics itself.

Do people really care? Do they trust anyone enough still to vote for them?

One major political party (you can probably guess which) has an average age of membership of over 65. How many of them will be out on the doors? Another is still smarting from the colossal loss of support from its own grass roots after the war in Iraq.

Let's be certain about this. The hard left and the hard right have nowhere to go but their own parties. Well, the hard right have UKIP, but after the Kilroy-Silk affair no-one is betting on them winning a Westminster seat. The question about the hard left is, will they bother to vote at all?

Politics itself is on trial.

At this election the electorate are not asking 'who do I trust most?' but 'who do I trust at all?'

No political party can really claim to have been pure and clean in all its dealings over the past four years.

But one party does stand head and shoulders above the other two. The Liberal-Democrats said what they meant and meant what they said. Consistently. Whether it was popular or unpopular. Because trust has to be the gold-standard in politics for politics to be worth anything at all.

This election, go for gold.