Moving on

It's been a fantastic week for those of us who love rugby, English (or for that matter French) rugby, especially if you can combine it with a deep and abiding distrust of the alleged capabilities of the waste of time and opportunity that currently occupies 10 Downing Street.

It's been fun, but it's time to move on. The biggest joke in the world (whom the Labour machinery will have to carry through the next few weeks and months) can get tedious after sufficient repetition, so it is time to put the easy gibes behind and get stuck into the lack of substance of the man.

There is a vast anaemic underbelly of thought in the NuLabour project that the country is waking up to, and is worth greater effort than picking over the current bones.

For all that though it's been a good week for anyone who distrusts Team Brown, so even though 95% of you have already seen it, let's leave it on a high, with what I understand to be Will Howells' efforts (H/T: Just about everyone):



Hope you enjoyed the honeymoon Gordon, that is as good as it will ever get, and it's over.

Things can only get worse.

Update: Yes, this time I mean it, I think...

A Question of Image

Not quite the finished article

I'd got half way through writing up my thoughts on the CSR/PBR in the commons today before an urgent call to action left it half-complete, but as far as I'm concerned Shane Greer has summed it up pretty well.

George Osborne performed pretty well today, but if I didn't follow these things as closely as I do I'd have to award the trophy, with as much enthusiasm as John Howard handed over the 2003 Rugby World Cup to Martin Johnson, to Darling. Macroeconomic announcements are my Achilles heel. I understand them after time and consideration, and the fundamentals are not that hard to grapple with, but in the few minutes at the dispatch box statements like these are the political equivalent of a skid-pan, being so easy to spin.

Osbourne did nothing wrong whatsoever. His positions, as far as I'm concerned with a a few hours' consideration were correct. In many ways his rhetoric was better, but overall, to be perfectly honest Darling did a better job. If I knew nothing outside that one debate I would have seen a strong governing party and a weak opposition grasping at straws. This is not the case, and initial media reaction seems to indicate the magnitude of Brown's cock up is coming home to roost in reactions to the exchanges, but this is not something that can be relied on to continue.

Greer highlights the key issues. I might take issue with the prominence of who sits near the main speaker; the management of front bench seating arrangements has always seemed a bit 'plastic' to me from NuLab, but then I watch probably more than a hundred times more Commons' coverage than most even being unattached to any party machinery, and I accept the fact that I am atypical.

On Osborne, in my opinion Shane is spot on. It was a very good performance in so many ways, yet for someone who is the closest in age to myself in the shadow cabinet he seemed young beyond his years. Yet he is good and spoke sense, and he should not be replaced on these trivial grounds. The Conservatives should not allow his opponents to do a 'Hague' on him, and allow minuscule issues of presentation to damage the public image of someone who has so much to offer.

I don't like the spin and image making, but the correlation that Shane makes about what Thatcher did presentation-wise is very apt. Thatcher took a few gibes from the voice coaching, but the overall effect was a huge win. I hate to say it, and for me Osborne is doing a good job as he is, but then it's not me he's selling to.

There are, in some small ways, issues of presentation where the Conservatives need to hold their nose and follow the concensus. For me, this is one.

My Enemy's Enemy is...

Socialist Worker -
Moron shall speak unto moron

...still a complete and utter waste of oxygen, and a source of much CO₂ that we could well dispense with.

If there was ever to be an award for the most ironically named newspaper or periodical, the only significant challenger to the Independent would be Socialist Worker. I guess 'Socialist Striker' or 'Socialist Layabout' would have been a little too frank - has anyone ever seen a 'horny handed son of toil' selling this pathetic rag? Assuming that is that the 'horny handed' bit refers to hard graft rather than what they do once they have picked up cash for the fortnight courtesy of those who actually, erm...work.

I would never claim this band of losers as unlikely bedfellows, but for all of that it was amusing to see their headline over the postal strike:

Strikers tell Brown: ‘We won’t bottle it’

Alan Walsh, branch secretary, Watford CWU

Source: Socialist Worker

It's good to see them taking the Conservative whip on attitudes to our loathsome Prime Minister.

It's good to see unity in the country, to have united left, right, and centre, including now the extreme left, and I suspect (though I have no intention of going to look) the extreme right, in universal derision is a pretty special achievement for Broon.

Measures of Success

Something else to ponder?

Oddly enough I was out and about in the Village a lot of the weekend. In amongst the boozed-up rugby watching there was actually a degree of serious political debate until we found out that Brown had wussed out.

I say serious, but I soon understood why politics and religion are subjects allegedly best kept out of the pub, when a friend who up to this point I had always assumed to be an intelligent person, declared that Neil Kinnock was, and I quote, "the best Prime Minister this country never had". So much for in vino veritas.

Inevitably predictions were called for on the likely outcome of a snap election. While I wished it were different, the best outcome I could back with any reasonable level of hope of it coming to pass was a very substantially reduced, but probably just about workable, Labour overall majority.

It's, all academic now, but it was interesting to consider what a 'workable majority' for Gordon Brown would have been. Conventionally figures of around 15-20 get bandied about, but I feel his target, even regardless of image problems, would have been much higher. For one simple reason; Scotland.

I've got absolutely no issue with Gordon Brown being Scottish whatsoever. The imbalances in public spending do not concern be greatly, reflecting as they do in the most part, real issues of need. The West Lothian Question is a more significant issue, being as it is at heart, one of fairness.

With the Conservatives securing a plurality of the vote in England in 2005, the prospects of this turning into a plurality, at least, of seats in England must have been a very real risk. Add in the fact that for all the best of SNP efforts that Brown would still have retained a significant portion of his 39 Scottish seats, Labour voting being at least as tribal north of the border as it is south of it, life could have got very difficult for Brown.

Blair managed, more or less, to avoid genuinely needing Scottish votes to secure the passage of English, or English and Welsh only measures. The few times this may have statistically have seemed to be the case it was possible to show that it would have been possible to whip it though without these votes being necessary.

To be seen to be passing such legislation on nearly every occasion with the votes of Scottish MPs whose constituents were unaffected by it would create an outcry, and on each occasion it happened the same clunking fist of political reality would land fair and square in the middle of Brown's ugly face.

With the effect of boundary changes, and a general improvement in Tory fortunes, it's actually very difficult to see how a Brown government would be able to function with much less of a majority than their current 68 were the Conservatives to make any further progress in England whatsoever.

It might seem strange to post on something that is now somewhat of a counter-factual effort, but I think it underlines how badly Brown has played his hand recently. There have just been a few short weeks when the polls suggested a similar or enhanced Labour majority, and without this level of support, a Labour government could end up in a self-destructive nightmare of it's own making.

If the Conservatives manage to avoid another bout of infighting then I've got a feeling that it's still going to be a tough decision for Brown even if he does put it off until 2009.

I've got a feeling the events of the last week or two will weigh very heavily on Brown long after the media have finally moved on.

Cheers Gordon!

No bounce back for Brown

I've finally managed to watch a re-run of Gordon's press conference today, having only been able to half-listen to it early on.

I suppose I should give the man some credit for bravery in facing a press pack who he has so completely mishandled in recent days.

That said, I've got a feeling he was backing some innate talent he believed would allow him to use the occasion to begin a fight back. If this is the case, he clearly does not possess the ability he thought he had.

Content-wise, there's very little to add to Iain Dale's live blogging, and Dizzy's similar efforts.

What struck me though was the body language, especially in the pauses between questions, presumably as the microphone was repositioned. He twitched, he fidgeted, he grimaced, and gurned, he scratched his head and god knows where else behind the lectern. It's hardly unfamiliar behaviour from Brown, but this was unusually intense and continuous.

I'm no expert on body language but he looked to be a very nervous man, becoming less and less sure of himself as the questions rained in, and the when he had the chance to make a well practised line of support for England's efforts in the rugby seemed to bring a very real sense of relief.

So why do I raise a glass to Gordon?

OK, I didn't predict the excuse Brown would use for his election climbdown, but my gut instinct on the no autumn election was finally justified.

It's not that it's saved me a diet of chapeau a l'orange for the coming week, but I managed to get £20 on a January-June 2009 general election on Betfair at a little better than 7 to 1. OK, I didn't quite catch that market at its peak, but it's a damn sight better than the little better than even money you can get now. Coupled with a smaller punt on the second half of 2009 at even better odds for insurance, I've got high hopes of finally screwing some money out of the miserable bastard.

Thanks Mr Brown!

Update 8:00PM:
I watched the Iraq announcement and debate earlier and felt I should add a comment. To be fair, Brown seemed a bit more comfortable on this ground. Cameron needs to be careful not to be seen to be playing too much politics with the issue himself. As I've posted before, I don't buy into the 'too old' line for Ming, but I thought his was a fairly tired performance on a subject that should be meat and drink.

Benn who followed on Foot and Mouth was bloody awful, robotic and dithery - needs some hints from dad. You could accuse some of the Conservative interventions of being opportunistic, but with such a poor ministerial performance they simply seemed like a party in the ascendancy.

Rational Environmentalism

How to vote blue to go green?

As someone who is often critical of BBC national radio news and current affairs output, it is a rare pleasure to recommend something to listen to, still available on the 'Listen Again' service.

It has been a busy weekend, both politically and on the Rugby front, but I did pause in my preparations for England's game yesterday when I heard something on the radio that actually made sense, and made a note to listen to the programme in full today.

Yesterday's 'Talking Politics' on Radio 4 was the last of the current season as normal Westminster service resumes, and tackled the thorny questions around climate change, but not from the normal dogmatic BBC position. It does appear that on this subject at least, some semblance of impartiality has returned.

The 'Listen Again' archive for the show is here and it can also be downloaded as an MP3 podcast here.

The programme features an interview with “Sceptical Environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, in which he makes his case in a concise, powerful and highly convincing manner. For those who don't know Lomborg's line on how even if you accept man made climate change as fact, that currently approaches to dealing with it are backwards looking and come at an unacceptable human cost, I would suggest you take a listen. For those already au fait with the Lomborg manifesto there are a couple of nice digs at Al Gore to enjoy.

Focus group guru, Frank Luntz, has some fascinating insights in to green issues from a Conservative perspective. He looks at how David Cameron can take the popularity boost that his espousment of green politics has given himself and the party, and look to move from this to truly effective policy without relying on the current 'tax and punish' thinking that dominates the mindset of environmentalists of different political hues.

Finally the panel discussion features Fraser Nelson of The Spectator, Peter Hitchens, who, I'm sure purely by accident, makes the occasional constructive contribution, and they even manage to find a Green party spokesperson, Jenny Jones, who seems to be some distance from the flat-earth, anti-human wing of her party.

I'm not all that interested in green politics most of the time. As I've posted before, I have a deep distrust of some of the green lobby's policy of non-debate on the science of climate change. Another source of scepticism comes from my memories of being told in high school that we had to conserve fossil fuels as they would run out in the first decade of the 20th century. Except of course, they haven't, and we have found massive new reserves and technologies to exploit them. I can't help feeling that the emergence of a new problem, requiring exactly the same solutions once the old argument lost its potency was just a little too convenient.

I buy more into the arguments about security of energy supply, but I guess this is a harder line to push. If you ask the man in the street if he's worried that his gas bill is kept down only by buying from a sometimes hostile Russia, he'll shrug his shoulders and say 'so what?'; ditto petrol from the Middle East. A nice little story line about the end of life on Earth as we know it is a much easier message to infiltrate into the public's consciousness.

Like some of the comment in the programme, I did like the subtle shift of Tory green policy, putting it under the general 'security' banner.

For all my general scepticism, I did enjoy this show. Many of the points put forward would apply equally to tackling security of energy supply, and the moral case that we should tackle other global problems of higher priority first was very powerful.

For once, well done the BBC.

Competition Corner

It's time to liven things up with a little competition, and the name of the game is 'spot the odd one out'.

I have, completely at random, selected three team captains who have recently choked badly on the public stage. While two of them can hold their heads high, having proved to the world, time and time again, that they are amongst the all-time greatest at what they do, and are held in universally high regard amongst their peers, friend and foe alike, the other is slimy piece of sh** who cannot escape the reality that it is not simply the case that their team underperformed on the night, but that their captaincy is now a major issue.

So, from the pictures above, who is the lying little toe-rag? Who is the self-important toad who has had the worst week of all? Who is the weakest link?

(Hint: Stirling Morlock and Richie McCaw have not had a good night, but they are bloody good rugby players who have not, to my knowledge, destroyed their country's pension systems, or demonstrated cowardice beyond the call of duty in the face of the enemy. Nor have they themselves spent the last two weeks playing silly playground games.)

(Apologies for another post on the same theme...but there's been precious little to enjoy on this front since 2003!)

News Round-up

This (or rather yesterday) has been a very good day, so as much as I hate tabloid (or even quality) headlines normally, they need to be appreciated:

To be impartial I will start with the Guardian:

Jonny kicks Aussies where it hurts
Ohhhh and are they hurting tonight

From Sky, just to show some originality:

Jonny Kicks Aussies Where It Hurts - Again
Actually I'm pretty sure Wilkinson would 'fess up to not having a great game; the name Sky were searching for on Google is Sheridan, or, to be honest anyone up front other than penalty-factory Worsley.

As usual New York Times comment takes time to reach us:

Two Shiite Leaders in Iraq Reach a Peace Agreement
No, there is only one Gordon Brown, but I'm still amazed he could broker a peace agreement, even with himself when he had so many other fibs to tell.

Only one headline spoilt the weekend, from the Guardian:

Mugabe can attend summit, says Merkel
Sarko good, Merkel bad, it's what my instincts still say and this is the sort of dross I expected.

It doesn't matter what colour rosette you might identify with, right is right, wrong is wrong, and Merkel is someone best avoided. David Cameron should restore his former distance.

It's the image that sticks in the mind, and Sky are just following the pack:

'Weak' Brown Rules Out Early Election
The single quotes don't mitigate the image of a second rate strategist that has been left in the public's mind

Back to home ground, to the Telegraph that I grew up with:

BBC head 'refused to sign resignation'
I feel some sympathy. As a wholly owned subsidiary of the governing party you really are entitled to expect that the same rules about resigning when you do a bad job should apply to you too.

But for sheer chutzpah, for me the strapline of the day has to go the Sydney Morning Herald with its headline on the All Blicks:

You've got to choking!
Well, at least it will probably environmentally sound for the ABs to share a plane with the Wallabies as far as Singapore.

For the avoidance of all doubt, the writer of this blog reserves his rights to make ample use of the word 'choking' in reference to the All Blacks and Wallabies for at least four more years, and, in the case of Gordon Brown, for the probably more limited time he remains Prime Minister.

Oh Me of Little Faith

Inaccurate I know...Even in death,
this wallaby has secured possession.

England 12 - 10 Australia

I'm not eating humble pie on this particular outcome as even having looked at the prospect of England being on the plane home from the Rugby World Cup tonight, I know the game well enough never to completely write off an England team with its back against the wall. England had few options but played every one they had to the absolute best of their ability. It wasn't pretty, but it was exciting in its own brutal, tense, terrifying way.

Out in the Village I've never seen so much gold disappear so quickly since Brown's knock-down bullion sale, though much to his credit Doktor Doob has taken it on his chin even if his Australia shirt has too disappeared.

A fantastic effort by everyone from 1-15 but especially those in the single digits. I'm sure the outcome will have given a big boost to France in tonight's other game, given that a similar Aussie scrum gave the All Blacks a lot of trouble this year. It's still unlikely, but it's a timely reminder that anything is possible if you can do the basics right and give it 110%.

Even the what I have read so far of the Australian Press seems to admit the better team won after some of the mud slinging of the last week, galling though it must be to see England eject the Wallabies from the World cup for the third time in six World Cups and take, if my memory serves me rightly, a 3-1 lead in World Cup encounters.

For months I've been saying that getting to the semis would be a fantastic, if unlikely, defence of the world title for England, so obviously I'm pretty happy (not as in p***ed - it was too tense to drink!) right now.

Not as Red as People Think?

ECJ - Old Tricks?

One of Gordon's red lines that is.

I've been mulling over this piece from the EU Observer on and off all day.

Fundamentally it pertains to Brown's supposed red-line over judicial cooperation in criminal matters:

Britain won a concession in that the European Court of Justice will not have jurisdiction over EU legislation in the field of police cooperation and judicial cooperation in criminal matters for five years - but only for EU legislation agreed before the treaty comes into force, something expected in 2009.

...

However, the protocol also suggests that if the UK wants to extend the exclusion of the court for longer than the five years then it will be excluded from the legislation in this area that was in place before 2009.

Source: EU Observer

Now I don't claim for a minute to fully understand the implications of this, which is hardly surprising as this the whole point of the revamped constitution, but I don't like the sound of it.

I don't like it, not as a kneejerk reaction to all things EU, but surely if the mechanisms by which we will be governed that we might well have dumped upon us by Brown is right in 2009, it should also be right in 2019; five year windows seem just like a nice excuse for the old "we told you this when we signed the treaty, it was always going to be like this, no point complaining now" strategy.

Sunset clauses are fine, even a good idea, for normal legislation, but constitutional arrangements permanence and enduring principals are essential.

I suspect what the issue here is the worry that the ECJ will use its increasingly bizarre leaps of logic to bypass the opt-outs that have been secured, often simply by declaring that it is illogical to deny powers to the EU in area 'X' where they already have control of seemingly unrelated area 'Y'.

Brown would obviously take an enormous kicking if the ECJ showed one of his red lines proved to be worthless almost before the ink was dry on the treaty. Five years down the line with the provision not renewed? The electorate forget easily and it's just another issue where, shock horror, the government were conned by Brussels; shrug of the shoulders, "well if it could happen to Thatcher it could happen to anyone".

It is either right that that the ECJ has jurisdiction in these areas, or it is not right. The passing of five years, conveniently the maximum lifespan of a UK Parliament, should change nothing.

The article goes on to conclude that "In general, the provisional rules would make it harder to opt out of the laws in the first place", and this, in of itself cannot be good news, when you look at how hard it was to neutralise the ridiculous 'Swastika Ban' legislation.

I've never understood the mad rush to harmonise judicial procedures or criminal law anyway. We've lived quite happily in a union of states with different criminal law and different judicial systems since at least 1707. Scotland has differences from England's criminal law up to and including the treatment of various types of homicide; it's juries are different sizes and can return different verdicts. How many terrorists have gone unpunished because of this? When ever have the public clamoured for the simplicity of uniformity?

That said, the image of a British jury acquitting a defendant, simply because counsel for the defence revealed that the offence of which they were charged was not wanted by Westminster and was forced upon us by a cock-up in a morally illegitimate, unwanted treaty is quite appealing. The impotence of the EU machinery in face of a long-ignored people would we wonderful to behold.

Europhiles should be careful what they wish for.