What's in a Name?

Basildon District Council's Conservative administration wants to change the name of the Council to Basildon Borough Council. This changes the Chairman of the Council to a Mayor, some stationary, and not a lot else. Total cost around £1000. So, why bother? Well, Basildon is surrounded by boroughs, they are pretty much the norm in Essex, and successive Chairmen of the Council have had to put up with being called the Mayor by, well, almost everyone outside of Basildon District. There is also another reason; Basildon proper was a New Town, but that was decades ago. The image the Council wants for Basildon District today is of a mature community, that no longer needs to be treated as a special case and which can compete with any of the Boroughs in Essex as a place to live and do business. Branding is important, and name is a key part of brand.

Anyway, to change to a Borough there has to be a two thirds majority for the motion at a Council meeting and then a petition is sent to the Queen. Pretty straightforward you would think, but no. The local Labour Party had the idea, pure genius this, of having a local referendum on the subject, and when that was refused their Councillors voted against becoming a borough. At once they decried the expenditure, wanted to spend a tens of thousands of pounds on a referendum, declared the matter unimportant, and put their opposition to it in their election material. Consistent they are not. Still, they like Gordon Brown.

Grammar Schools and Reality

David Willetts has been taking a bit of a caning over his comments on Grammar Schools. Well, frankly, he should have thought to put an exercise book down his shorts if was going to come up with lines like 'there is overwhelming evidence that such academic selection entrenches advantage, it does not spread it'. The 'advantage' that grammars entrench is the one children get from having parents that care about their education. This trait is not just confined to the middle class; I have personal experience of working-class families that supported their children into a grammar school and university education and middle class families that 'supported' their children into leaving school early to work at a Tesco checkout. But in the midst of poor delivery and damaging the Party's standing with its core support, there is a serious point: grammars schools simply are not the answer to education as it has to function in the 21st century. Academic selection is very good at finding those with a particularly strong academic bent and grammars are very good at developing them to a high level. What is also required, however, is a system that takes the vast majority of children of average academic ability and equips them to function in a high-skill, knowledge-based economy. It is no longer good enough to sift out the top 10-15%, because a modern developed economy requires a much higher proportion of people with a good education to function. Grammars have their place, and Willetts was wrong to think that to suggest that they weren't all of the answer he had to rubbish them, but something else is also required.

The problem is that the Labour government took education backwards in scrapping the Conservative grant-maintained system that was starting to work very well indeed. Then they had an epiphany on school independence, gifting us academies and foundation schools. Willetts is right to seek to build on that, but it is poor politics to stir up opposition by ineptly articulating a position that nearly everyone agrees with anyway.

No Contest

It's Brown by coronation. This is good news, for just about everyone except the Labour Party. A contested leadership election, even one as mismatched as the bout on offer, would have given Labour a rolling primetime six-week platform to lay out new policies and build new enthusiasm. Instead we got one press conference and a palpable sense of anticlimax. Brown looked smug, but already there are a few rumblings in the Labour blogsphere that this might have been a bit of an own goal by the great clunking fist.

Labour Party rules required that the MPs nominate candidates for the subsequent election. It did not require that they support the nominee, just that they nominate. However the PLP decided that getting in with the new boss was more important that little things like allowing the ordinary membership a voice, and it is inconceivable that they would have come to this conclusion unless it was also the view of Brown's campaign team. So, no election, which has a corollary of reduced legitimacy when the going gets tough, and the going is already pretty tough if you are a Labour MP in a southern marginal seat.

Democracy may be inconvenient for candidates to high office, but the alternatives can be far worse. Ask Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Wounded at Dunfermline

Labour got hammered in the Dunfermline and West Fyfe by-election. The safe Labour seat went Liberal Democrat, despite that party’s problems over the last few weeks and despite the close involvement of premier to be Gordon Brown. All are surprised, and the parties and pundits are grappling to discern the significance of the result. It’s a by-election, so nearly all explanations are valid: local factors; low turnout; voters knowing they wouldn’t change the government but wanting to protest and so on. In all of this some things are clear: people did want to protest and Gordon Brown is not the overwhelming force that Blair was at his height. Otherwise local difficulties could have been swept away by Labour chosen political message of government success now, and in the future with Gordon.

The problem for the government is two fold. In the short term bad by-elections make MPs nervous for their own electoral prospects. Now couple that with crunch votes in the commons on ID Cards and Terrorism this week and there is at least a small chance of a crisis. The longer term problem is Brown as Labour’s Plan A after Blair. Dunfermline might mean they need a Plan B.

Brown's Flag

A cohesive nation needs a national identity. It cannot be a collection of separate communities, each with their own completely separate values and beliefs. This is, or should be, common sense. Of course, it hasn’t been. Britain has had a cultural cringe that led to our own national flag being appropriated by the Far Right without anyone batting an eyelid. The good news is that attitudes are changing. The bad news is that the government is making a hash of it. They seem to be trying to build national identity while simultaneously restricting the freedom of speech, and thought. The idea seems to be that if no group can offend any other group then somehow they will all come together. Or at least glower at each other in silence.

Amid all of this Gordon Brown wraps himself in the Union Flag. His motives, at least, are clear. He is Scottish, very Scottish in fact. He is going to have an electoral problem in England, especially now that there is a Scottish parliament. The Saltaire and the Cross of St. George are no good to him. He needs the Union Jack.

Kennedy, truth at last

Charles Kennedy has finally come clean. He's an alcoholic. The dramatic announcement was designed to pre-empt the press, so it wasn't an unprompted bout of honesty. It also means that Kennedy has systematically lied to a very wide range of people on the subject for years, including many of his own colleagues. His announcement was coupled with defiance on the leadership question, with a leadership election involving all of the party membership in the offing.

Will it all work? Kennedy calculates that he will win a ballot of the entire membership, as opposed to the MPs where the result would be in doubt. He also calculates that his admission will elicit sympathy from many people. I am not so sure about his mathematics. Many of his MPs will be furious, and he had major problems there already. His serial dishonesty about drinking will wreck his credibility with the media and the press will probably not be kind. Both pressures could yet force him out. The nightmare for the Liberal Democrats though might be that he is right. Suppose he wins a ballot of Liberal Democrat members? Much of the parliamentary party does not support him. Ask the Tories what it is like if the members pick a leader the MPs cannot work with.

If not Brown then who?

When Blair steps down then Gordon Brown will smoothly assume the leadership of the Labour party and the prime ministership, at least that is the assumption. Things might not be so simple though. On a basic political level it is no longer clear that Labour would get a boost from a Brown leadership. In fact at least one poll has suggested that they would slip a few points. Back bench Labour MPs sitting on marginal seats do pay attention to such things. Then there is the actual leadership process itself. Would Gordon Brown be the only candidate? Hardly likely, at least there would be a candidate from the left and then there is a contest, not a coronation. Would the number of contestants stay at two? Hardly likely, unless Brown was clearly an overwhelming electoral asset, and he isn’t. Finally there is the worst kept secret in British politics, that Blair and Brown can’t stand each other. Tony Blair hands over the highest office in the land to Gordon Brown? Hardly likely.

If not Brown, then who? This is the question. Blair’s cabinet are a pretty undistinguished bunch or at least cabinet discipline had prevented members distinguishing themselves. If any one of them is serious about succeeding Blair they will have to start organising at some point, and standing out from their colleagues. More likely Blair’s successor isn’t in the Cabinet, but in the junior ministerial ranks, today a comparative unknown. After all, there is a recent precedent for a younger, lesser-known candidate unexpectedly getting the top job.

Labour on Tories on Terrorists

Conservatives have apparently abandoned the cross-party approach to the Northern Ireland peace process after the party refused to back the government’s plan to allow terrorist fugitives fled abroad to return home without having to answer for their crimes. This is a wildly exaggerated accusation from the Labour government and also quite puzzling. It was the Conservatives who began the peace process in the first place and who supported it through its most difficult days. To suggest that they are reneging at this late stage so ridiculous that it borders on the bizarre. The puzzling bit is why the proposal about sought suspects is even being put forward at all as it has never figured hitherto.

Now, in many ways the Northern Ireland process has been an object lesson in how to bring a protracted and bitter struggle to an end. Both sides have ended up with less then they think that they deserve and it has been painful for almost all concerned. There have been unpalatable concessions that have seen murderers, Republican and Loyalist, walking the streets again long before they should have been let out to see the light of day. But in the end there is peace, and the absence of war is worth a great deal. As many have said you make peace with your enemies, not your friends, and no-one is likely to be entirely satisfied with the outcome in such circumstances. The government’s latest move is causing even less satisfaction than usual though. It’s not just the Conservatives this time. The Liberal Democrats, the Unionists and even the moderate Nationalists think this is a step too far. Labour’s approach is less cross-party than one-party.

Hain attacks Tories on N Ireland

Future Politics

Globalisation and free trade are the best engines of wealth creation the world has ever seen. There is no more real argument about this. Alternative economic models have been tried, variations on Communism, Nationalism and the like, and they have all failed slowly or failed quickly. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a nation should just throw open its borders and let the entire world in. Trade is complex and short-term competition into a relatively undeveloped economy can have catastrophic effects on some sectors, which translates into people ruined and out of work. That is what trade negotiations in all their intricacy are about.

Some people still cling to old, failed systems from the 20th century. Some people want to go even further back to some mythical pastoral past, as if that could even feed the world’s population never mind raise people out of poverty. What there doesn’t seem to be much debate about is what lies ahead. It has taken recent hikes in the oil price to put future energy supply to the forefront of politics and technological effort. Global Warming certainly didn’t do that. There are other things though. Advances in robotics will probably push the cost of manufacturing down even further, and maybe eliminate the comparative advantage of developing nations. Cheap labour means nothing when that labour isn’t paid anything. The continuing advances in computing will change advanced nations out of all recognition over the coming decades, especially if Artificial Intelligence in the true sense of the word becomes available.

What principles and politics will sustain us in 2025? What should we be doing now?

BT Technology Timeline 2006-2051

Class education

John Prescott wants a class war. His reaction to Eton-educated David Cameron’s leadership of the Conservative party has nothing to do with issues and everything to do with background. Because Cameron went to a good school he is the enemy, never mind that the Labour cabinet is filled with men and women who went to selective schools. Prescott thinks he can rally the Labour party as the party of workers against the middle-class. It would be interesting to see him try it, but the Labour party collectively are not idiots. Supposed class divisions have limited traction among British voters and Labour’s strategists know it. Issues are want count, and there is a serious issue in all of this.

Education has come full circle, from the abolition of Grant-Maintained schools in 1997 back to the proposal for Self-Governing Trust schools today. The government has finally recognised that it is better for schools to run themselves than to be branch offices of a monolithic education authority. Enter Prescott and his cronies stage left, with their cries of a two-tier education system and their terror of academic selection. Their instinct is to level down education, so that it is equal for all even if it is equally bad. The last thing they want is for schools to be free to improve themselves because some would end up better than others. That might end up benefiting the middle-class and they cannot have that.

Hang on a moment though, isn’t Prescott a Cabinet Minister? Doesn’t he have a duty to support government policy? In the midst of the class war it appears that the Prime Minister’s authority is the first casualty.

Class war: Prescott attacks Blair's education reforms and Cameron's 'Eton Mafia'