They Blog For You

  The Speaker allowed me a bit of licence today. There was an emergency question on the sacking of service personnel. My Question sought to raise the National Audit Office's report of last week on  the failures of supplies to be delivered on time. What Hansard does not report is [...]

                    This week-end has seen numerous briefings against the Health Secretary. I have found him to be one of  the best informed, and  most accessible of Cabinet Ministers. He knows his brief well, is aware of the problems of piloting through change to the NHS, and has already secured the [...]

One of the perils of politicians is that no sooner have they made a grand pronouncement on the sweep of history, as they perceive it, than events immediately conspire to prove that they had totally misread the runes and that the opposite is true.   That seems the fate of David Miliband [...]

                  Based on doorstep conversations recently, and visits to speak to Conservative Associations, I encounter the following attitudes. Many Conservatives now see the Coaliti0n government as heavily Lib Dem influenced. They tell me they want changes in policy, to reflect the poor financial condition of the country and the preponderance [...]

  One day in parliament Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): To underline his claim that prisons are well run, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman remind the House of the precise number of prisons that are free of the use of illegal drugs? Mr Clarke: I would not like to guarantee that [...]

It’s difficult to get excited about the AV referendum.   It will probably be won not because of the merits of the AV system, not even because most people necessarily understand what it means, but because by 5 May the Tories, who are campaigning hard for a ‘no’ vote, will be very unpopular.   However, [...]

  No party ever prepares for opposition. Even predictable defeats are a shock and a trigger for prolonged misery. Nigel Fisher’s book ‘How to be in opposition’ is a tale of years of arid futility occasionally enlivened by minor triumphs. Heroes of past oppositions are described for our admiration and encouragement. Neil [...]

British foreign policy towards Libya looks to have been pretty disastrous. For years we suck up to the tyrants of Tripoli.  Images of Blair and co shaking hands with the rulers who gave us Lockerbie make us look irresolute.  Our own moral disarmament can only [...]

Ted Heath came to office with a sense of what he wanted to achieve. But without knowing how to make it happen, he u-turned.   What began as the Selsdon agenda to decentralise economic control ended with a prices and incomes policy.  A generation later, Tony Blair exhausted a mountain of political [...]

  On March 3rd, the Public Administration Select Committee heard from Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude. here are a selection on uncorrected exchanges. Tremble for the future of the country.     Q194  Paul Flynn: I think I feel inspired by this born‑again socialism that we are hearing this morning.  You do not believe in [...]

It’s not just the bizarre and botched SAS raid ending up in shaming capture by some Libyan farmworkers, a whole series of other revelations are coming to light about Britain’s opportunistic dealings with Gadaffi’s unsavoury regime.   It casts a revealing light, amid the usual grandiose declarations of foreign policy, on [...]

It’s been a day of wild accusations.    The Commons debate on the Big Society was marked by an assurance by a Tory that it does not included volunteers being asking to conduct brain surgery. But he did paint a nightmare Kafkaesque view of Labour society in which people were forbidden to [...]

“The dominant sensation for a new prime minister on entering Number 10” writes Jonathan Powell in The New Machiavelli “will be how difficult it is to make anything happen. .... A new prime minister pulls on the levers of power and nothing happens”. Today’s newspapers tell us that Downing Street is [...]

    You could not make it up. I have been banging on about the potentially corrupting revolving door. Top Civil Servants, Ministers, Generals could be tempted by retirement job prospects into acting for their own interests rather than those of the country. That is why the watchdog (ACOBA) to be given teeth. Sir [...]

  The Big Society was investigated this morning by the Public Administration Committee. Here is the first report which is subject to corrections. Yes, you will find to hard to believe.   Witnesses: Justine Greening MP, Economic Secretary, HM Treasury, and Nick Hurd MP,  Minister for Civil Society, Cabinet Office, gave evidence.    Q137 Paul [...]

Today the lucky members of the Public Administration Committee visited the hallowed lair of Facebook. This is the sumptuous world of numbers exploding exponentionally, of a conversation that involves a billion faces worldwide.   Chairman Bernard Jenkin led us to the plush nerve centre in the backstreets behind Oxford Street. We were welcome [...]

Not for the first time the Lockerbie narrative is being distorted out of all recognition for political ends, first by the US-UK governments in the 1990s, then by the UK Government and the Scottish Executive in 2009, and now by Cameron in his statement to the Commons yesterday.   Cameron’s line was that [...]

  Newsnights’ Michael Crick claims to have inside knowledge of Tory plans to safeguard their MPs after the reductions in seat. Their cunning plan is to guarantee that no Tory loses out by the loss of the 50 seats. Among those they hope to nudge up to the upper house are Roger [...]

The revolving door hit Brussels today. As I have been nagging for Britain on this for the past three years I was invited to the hearing in the International Press Centre today.  The most curious recent British cases are the happy one of Gordon Brown  giving £250,000 to charity - all of [...]

Yesterday was a day of shame, the day they denationalised the NHS.   Yet at the second reading of the Bill in the House of Commons the main line of defence of the increasingly isolated Andrew Lansley, who is clearly out of his depth, was that the Tories are only carrying on [...]