Politics

Mark Seddon, the former Editor of The Tribune, had a launch party for his new book: Standing for Something at his publishers on Wednesday evening. Simon Hoggart briefly mentioned it in his diary piece in The Guardian yesterday. I taught Mark Economic History when I was a teacher (actually I was even head of history) two thousand years ago..........

I was an invited guest last night to the unveiling of a new commission by Antony Williams of Margaret Beckett MP, the first Labour woman MP to hold one of the three premier offices of state (Foreign Office). The event was held in the Attlee Suite by the Works of Art Committee of which I was a member and deputy chairman for 8 years so this was a commission under the old watch! Catch it at www.parliament.uk/art

I joined Alan Johnson MP and Chuka Ummana MP at a fund raising dinner last night for Val Shawcross, London Assembly Member, who is up for re-election in May. 

I was the first MP to ask for a debate in Parliament on the Barnett Formula for 23 years: 18/12/2001, Westminister Hall Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey): First, I want to thank Timothy Edmonds, who did a prodigious amount of work and produced an excellent Library research paper on the Barnett formula, which I am sure that many hon. Members will quote. I also thank Professor Iain McLean—a Scot—of Nuffield college, Oxford, who is currently working at Yale, and who helped me with

The HS2 rail link announced yesterday which is likely to be built not by 2026 but frankly much later. Without Government pump priming and tax support for construction companies it is virtually a non-starter. The original idea by Ove Arup was to create a hub at Heathrow and then link into Crosssrail which is due to be completed in 2015-ish. If the notion of HS2 is to help the economies of the major Midland and Northern cities like Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester then build those

When I suggested at a DCMS Select committee press session in 2004 that newspapers should have a yellow card and red card scheme if they misbehaved (the red card meant that they would not be allowed to be published the next day) I was given the roughest ride by journos present especially those from the Daily Mirror (Editor: Piers Morgan). Indeed, immediately after the session closed Mirror journos were dispatched to my constituency and the village I lived in. They tried to find as much gossip as

Dennis Skinner MP was our guest at my local Labour party ward meeting last night which we held in Parliament (thanks to Dennis).   He spoke about his time in the mines and his subsequent elevation to a local councillor and then as the MP for Bolsover (42 years man and boy). He lamented the state of modern politics where so many MPs come from Think Tanks or Policy groups and not from a "proper" job. He lamented much else as well.

There was a crackingly good debate and discussion at an FT-ie breakfast this morning. For one, the event was a sell out and for two, the panel was outstanding.  Lionel Barber, the FT's editor introduced the panel before making his way to the Leveson Inquiry to give evidence. They were: Guy Elliott, Chief Financial Officer, Rio Tinto Loretta Napoleoni, Economist & Bestselling Author, ‘Rogue Economics’, ‘Terror Incorporated’ & ‘Maonomics’ Ambassador Louis Susman, United...

Freedom for Syria 4715 killed since March 2011 308 children and babies killed 207 women killed 5000 protestors missing 30,000 detained 22,000 refugees have fled the country How come Russia and China cannot bring themselves to open their eyes to this slaughter? How come the EU or NATO or USA cannot intervene? And the Arab world says nothing Shame on us all.

Editorial Intelligence's review of the newspapers: EU VETO: The International Herald Tribune's Roger Cohen says the thing about the Euro-sceptics behind Cameron’s Brussels bungling is they turn past glory into posturing theater. Their nostalgia for British greatness is often no more than the trumpeting of a bunch of insular snobs who seem to have a hard time restraining their inner-fascist. The Independent's Steve Richards thinks Nick Clegg must now face up to the true nature of his...

The longer the distance from Cameron's decision to use his veto at the EU talks on Thursday evening/Friday morning the more it looks as if he put his surly backbenchers who loathe Europe with a passion ahead of the needs of the nation. 

I went with Jonathan Shaw and Sophie Radice (Giles's daughter) to the Labour Party's 1000 Club drinks party last night.

Alan Keen MP has passed away. I will post a longer note shortly.

On Thursday, I travelled up to Oundle School in Northamptonshire, to give a talk to their Year 12 and 13 History and Politics groups on New Labour......

Gordon Henderson MP has spent all his life loathing Europe; he's signed petitions, valued Nick Farrange as a politician (UKIP leader) but when he had the chance to represent his views and some of his constituents what happens? He sits in the Chamber for hours, fails to interrupt other speakers and sits on his hands and then votes against his own Government. Some MP then........... 

To show you connect with the "people" you organise an ePetition on the No.10 web site and agree that those with over 100,000 signatures (the California model) should be debated in the House of Commons. So far so good butt hen 100,000 including myself signed the Sheffield Wednesday/Liverpool petition which asked for all the relevant details of the deaths of the Liverpool fans to be put in the public domain. The result - a debate and a result as Theresa May, the Home Secretary agreed to do...

Pity there is no leadership from the Coalition whatsoever on what Europe should look like by 2015 that's because all they want is more local decision making. It cannot be right that MEPs are not answerable to their own domestic Parliaments. Rather than spend yet more eZillions going to Strasbourg once a month for a week (what a waste of tax payers money) they should have to report to their Parliaments to give an account of themselves. It'll never happen, but if it did, it would make...

Bailing out a country which clearly isn't fit to be in the the eurozone is a huge mistake. The Greeks should vote to start again and rebuild a modern, democratic state. It may be painful but no more public money should be used.  

The Euro was never constituted to act as a "bank" of last resort for its members. The fudge being put together for this week's meetings will cost the EU not just eZillions but prevent growth in all but Germany and push us all into another bout of recession. This tells you that most other members of the Eurozone do not have 21st century banking systems which are properly regulated. That this should still be the case nearly four years after the banking crisis tells you much about the...

I have just finished reading The Purple Book: A Progressive Future for Labour which is 18 essays by the party faithful largely responsible for the mess we are now in. It is a sad reflection that aside from Frank Field there is hardly anything in the any of the essays that stands out as being truly radical. We have been in a Blair-Brown time warp for too long. We need to break out from the past which is what Ed Miliband is trying to do.  

I am besotted by all things Bletchley Park; there's nothing enigmatic about my warmth for the men and women who worked so hard for us and broke so many codes during WW2 to shorten it by maybe as much as three years. So another book on life there has just been devoured by YT and jolly good it was too. The extraordinary thing is that so many of the players - both large and small - have kept this very English story to themselves for so long. If you've not been to the HQ - go and see...

Derek: -   Thank you very much for giving us your views on House of Lords reform.  We had over 4,100 responses, including over 2,500 separate submissions in people’s own words.   We sent all your submissions to the joint committee on House of Lords reform on Wednesday - it came to 5,409 pages!  Separately, we also sent them our own, somewhat shorter submission, which took into account your responses to the survey we asked people to fill in.   Here’s what we’ve...

Incentizen: incentivising the citizen by Derek Wyatt   I subscribe to the 80:20 society. You know 80% of us pay our taxes whilst 20% either employ tax avoiding accountants or don’t work and have no intention of working. We pour policies and £millions at the 20% and hardly acknowledge the silent majority or now, the squeezed middle. Why is this?   Everywhere I shop I am treated as a citizen who needs a small reward to make me want to keep coming back. It started with Green Shield...

I went to my local Labour Party branch meeting last night at the Fabian Society's HQ in Dartmouth Street. Our guest speaker was Hannah Davies from One World Action which sadly is about to close after 22 years as a charity - I wonder how many other charities are in a similar position? One World has championed the rights of women all over the world. We also talked about the new Westminster Car Parking scheme which the Tories seemed to have done a u turn on; clean streets, the NHS

In a few minutes I will be on my feet in the House of Commons calling for the end of the feudal nature of England's land ownership legislation and the enshrining of co-operative housing in law. I will be introducing the Co-operative Housing Tenure Bill under the Ten Minute Rule. It is now harder than ever for young people to find a home of their own and if we are to address this issue it is time to look beyond the traditional options of ownership or tenancy. This Bill would open the way...

I went to hear Ahdaf Souier speak at a CAABU event last night at the Anglo Arab British Chamber of Commerce in Grosvenor Street last night. She is busy trying to complete her book on Cairo (fifteen years in the making) in time for publication on the anniversary of Tahrir Square on 25th January 2012.  She read some of the extracts from her book to a packed audience. From a British perspective the Military is sitting on its collective hands. This is because they know that if...

Go to www.edmiliband.org 

Liverpool  Labour Party Conference 2011 Ticket to Ride I have a soft spot for Liverpool. It has been central to the wealth of the nation for over 150 years but since WW2 the City, despite the swinging sixties and the Beatles and the stunning success of Liverpool FC et al, it partly lost its way.  Today, some of the old swagger is back especially around the Albert Dock which has been transformed. I first encountered it one dark, dank, cold February morning in 1958 as

Liverpool Labour Party Conference 2011 Day 1 A Hard Day's Night I was still ill this time last year to go to the Party Conference and so missed Ed's coronation which was a pity as I had supported him. In 2007, I had voted for Harriet Harman as deputy leader and she just crept in at the last. I had wanted a woman to be our deputy and was glad to see the Party is to enshrine this in our regulations. I had been ever present since 1994 when Paul , now the MP for Newcastle under Lyme,...

Liverpool Labour Party Conference 2011 Day 2 Good Morning, Good Morning I woke suddenly at just after 8am realising I and already missed my working breakfast. I was half dressed as I raced out of my hotel ..... I was part of the Shadow BIS team which had put on a whole day's alternative conference for FTSE100 companies and the like. I had agreed to the morning session before Ed Balls' big speech just after midday. I was not at my best. Balls' was good, coherent and sensible...

Liverpool Labour Party Conference 2011 Day 3 Yesterday Today I did two things. In the morning, I went to Tate Liverpool now in its 22nd year to see the Rene Magritte exhibition which was simply spectacular. About 800 people a day have been coming to it since it opened in late June (it runs until mid October) with many more at the weekend so my sense was that over 100,000 will have seen it which, given the recession, is very impressive. I left humming Paul Simon's "Rene and...

Liverpool Labour Party Conference 2011 I Want to Hold Your Hand Wyatt's Bumping Into Guide ***** Ten minutes or more conversation **** Five minutes *** A one minute Hello ** Hand shake or peck on the cheek * Business card exchange ***** Paul Farrelly MP, Jonathan Shaw, Neil Stewart, Tom Bradby (ITN), Alex Russell (Sport England), Tina Davy, Nigel Warner (ITV), Mary Fagan (ITV), Jack McConnell, **** Ed Miliband, Tom Levitt, Martha Kearney (Radio 4)F, Lucian Hudson (OU),...

Next week, Palestine will attempt to persuade the UNO it should be recognised as a country in its own right. Let's hope it is successful. It is time the country came in from the cold.

This is Alistair Darling's rather good book on the Banking Crisis which took over his life whilst Chancellor of The Exchequer. It has been widely reviewed and favourably too. Alistair isn't quite the dour Scot people make him out to be but he is a no nonsense sort of guy with a very safe pair of hands which he displayed in all his senior political positions in the Cabinet (Treasury/Social Security/Works & Pensions/Transport & Treasury again). Indeed only Jack Straw and...

The Credit Crunch began in 2008; the Vickers Report was published this morning. George Osborne says the reforms will be in place in 2019 eleven years late. Is it any wonder we have such a  dysfunctional democracy? Parties should go into the next election with the slogan "Protect the Bankers' Bonuses".

Remembering 9.11 I was at a lunch with the Motorola EMEA Board in The Strand when Anna, who ran my office in Parliament, paged me to tell me I ought to try and see a television screen immediately. I made an excuse found a set in the hotel only to see the one of the Twin Towers in smoke. Within half an hour I was back at my desk watching the second plane hit the second tower. You had to pinch yourself as it seemed like a scene from a movie not a real live event. At...

George Osborne said in today's The Observer that the plans announced earlier this week - which gives the power to levy UK taxes on UK citizens "hidden" bank accounts in Switzerland - is the beginning of a clamp down on all overseas accounts. This smells. We need first to put into the public domain the names of those UK taxpayers who have failed to legally pay their rightful taxes in the UK. We need to publicise the lawyers and accountants who have been their advisors. The UK...

As the western economies teeter on the brink of a second recession it is clear that everyone is no longer certain what the solution is? Nor is there unanimous agreement on what really causes growth especially at this moment in time. In his new book The End of Growth, which has just been published in the UK, Richard Heinberg suggests that the two current economic theories which have dominated since the mid 1930s are no longer relevant. They are (i) Keynes/Keynesian -...

The last of Chris Mullins' three volume set of Diaries - which he has produced since he stood down in May, 2010 after 23 years as the MP for Sunderland South - was published earlier this week. The first two covered 1999-2010 and were insightful, witty and penetrating in analysis and this one entitled A Walk-On Part is no different.   Whilst Diaries are a rarity in American political history - the two accounts of Obama's win in 2008 have been David Plouffe's The...

Towards the end of his life I had supper with Elwyn Jones, the former Attorney General and Lord Chancellor. I asked him if there was anything he regretted in the Justice system. He said that just after WW2 the judiciary felt that sentencing should be along the lines of a "Short, sharp shock" but they were convinced otherwise by the first wave of sociologists who said that offenders needed long sentences. Long sentences have never worked but it is my belief that until we...

The thought of one third of all babies born today reaching the age of 100 is hard to take in. How on earth will we have enough resources to look after them when they are in their 80s and 90s?  But we can't wait until then we have to make savings now. Here's one suggestion: The NHS will be free from the ages of 0-18 (25 if a part or full time student) and Over 70 Between 18-70 it will be compulsory to hold...

We are watching the slow death of the greatest nation in the world since 1917 as the Republicans in America play the worst kind of politics on The Hill. Have they not spotted the increase in poverty in their own country and the failure of successive governments to provide decent housing? Have they not understood the global presence of the BRIC countries? It was a hugely disappointing day for the world last night in Washington, DC: tea party or no tea party.

Just over two years ago, the Daily Telegraph dropped its MPs Expenses bombshell; The Speaker resigned which in itself was a first for hundreds of years; four MPs and a Peer are serving prison sentences whilst another Peer is awaiting sentence.  Today, less than eights days after the Milly Dowler hacking story surfaced, the Murdochs will be giving evidence at the DCMS Select committee and the Met Police will be back at another. Are we witnessing a repeat of the MPs...

Murdoch & Co: missing information: 1. Name of Police informants and pay; dates of when this started 2. Meeting schedules between them and News Int. staff or intermediaries 3. Emails from James Murdoch to other board members and senior staff about his settlement conditions with those people who'd had their phones hacked 4. Brookes-Coulson-J.Murdoch meetings and emails and phone records where appropriate  

Q. So there are thousands of mobiles which have been hacked. A. How many sub-contractors need to be employed to listen to all the tapes? Q. Have the tapes actually been listened to or have they been collected waiting for the time when a story breaks for them to be accessed? A. Hopefully this will become clear on Tuesday's Evidence session in Parliament.   

Lord Adonis chaired an excellent discussion between Alistair Darling MP and Sir Richard Lambert at the Institute for Government last night. www.editorialintelligence.com  

The Euro has continually climbed against the £ over the past four years; ten years ago 1 euro was worth 66p today it is close to 88p. In the same time Europe has expanded to include previous rogue Soviet states with rogue-like accountability in its Banking systems. Plus, there have been defaults in Ireland, Portugal and Greece with Italy and Spain not far behind as the euro comes under intense pressure.  And yet, and yet, the euro holds fast. How can this be? Italy's banking and...

The Murdoch Family have a number of balls in the air: In the UK ** resolve hacking scandal; rejig senior management roles; Rebekah Brooks moved to New York or LA ** 2011 - launch the Sun on Sunday; 2012-13 - sell the Sunday Times, The Times, The Sun and the Sun on Sunday newspapers; share price will be restored ** 2013+ - renew bid for BSkyB once newspapers have been sold; share price will go through the roof

I worked for BSkyB from 1995-1997 when I created what was to become dot.tv, a computer television channel for families. I was lucky enough to travel to Seattle, Washington, DC, NY, LA and Silicon Valley to witness the birth of the Net Generation and the launch of Netscape then the largest IPO in history. I raised $20m for my channel but it was sequestered by News Corp at a News International board meeting by the boss himself. BSkyB was the fastest moving media company in the UK in the late...

This Sunday will be the last edition of The News of The World.................

Every day I wake up and wonder am I the only person in the UK who hasn't had his phone hacked. There clearly was something profoundly wrong within the senior management team at the News of the World over the past eight years and its owners must act to fire all those involved. The PCC must be reformed and include non-editors and journalists if it to carry weight. The Met Police's relationship with both the NoW and The Sun needs an independent inquiry.

When Greece won the Olympic bid I went - before the Games and after them - to find out how on earth they could have funded the whole shebang. It was all smoke and mirrors. Even Stock Exchange fund managers couldn't tell me. The Olympics was small beer when compared to how on earth Greece managed to find itself inside the Eurozone. Politics came ahead of economics both inside Greece and the European Council of Ministers.   Greece has been run by three or four very...

How does this happen? I attended St George's Hospital, Tooting three weeks ago; the Consultant said I would be telephoned the next day for an out-patient session on how to dress my poor old legs; three weeks later and I've still heard nothing; I have left messages on the ansafone in the department but no-one has had the grace to respond......... We are all the biggest fans of the NHS but who manages it? I waited over four months for an appointment for a leg which has given my trouble

I have been in NY this week and have missed the furore over Greece, the EU and the future of the euro debates in Parliament. This morning I was reading my FT and saw in The Letters page that 10 newly elected 2010 Tory MPs had signed a letter which is headlined "An opportunity for the UK to shape Europe's post-crisis order". Knowing that Gordon Henderson, also elected in 2010, and avowedly anti-European, I looked for his signature. But alas, it was missing. Why? Is he not connected...

The last minute bail out by Germany of Greece has saved the euro for the moment. Standard & Poors comments about the state of the French and Italian economies should not surprise us; no-one quite knows what their debts are as their accountancy practices are hardly transparent especially in Government. Greece, Portugal, Ireland and maybe Spain but an Italy or a France and the euro is dead; how then does it keep its value? Who is buying or hedging?

Former PM Blair said earlier this week that we need a President for Europe, no doubt still hoping it would be him (though surely Peter Mandelson would want to stand against him - that's if he has time after running the World Bank before breakfast). Europe is bankrupt; not financially, not morally, not socially but politically so Blair has a point. Worse, there is a crisis of corporate confidence in where growth in any of our economies is going to come from as India and China steam on...

Bob Marshall-Andrews, former MP for Medway, actor, rugby player and QC, was in fine fettle at the launch of his book: Off Message (Profile) on Thursday evening. I caught up with Wendy and her son Dillon Woods (from Cry Freedom fame) though that was 14 years ago, a couple or recovering MPs and some old soaks (I wonder what they call me?). The Publishers failed to have enough books on hand so I have ordered mine from Amazon and much look forward to reading it. On his day he can be the...

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/VP6EHT/ FX9QHQ/ZV5JW4/KCKYNP/H0PYL/OS/h  John Edwards's indictment brings to mind the quote "Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely". Here is its origins: It arose as a quotation by John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902). The historian and moralist, who was otherwise known simply as Lord Acton: he expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: "Power tends to...

Today's London newspapers End of life care Daily Mail: How do you want to die? GP charter offers seven pledges to the terminally ill The Guardian: Royal colleges create charter for terminally ill patients NHS reforms   The Guardian (NHS blog): Dying people need integrated services, not open competition, says Help the Hospices   The Guardian: GP consortiums ‘may not be accountable’ for £60bn NHS spend Elderly care BBC News: Letter warns over long term care...

Royal College of GPs End of Life Care Patient Charter A charter for the care of people who are nearing the end of their life "You matter because you are you, you matter to the last moment of your life and we will do all we can, not only to let you die peacefully, but to help you live until you die" Dame Cicely Saunders. We want to offer people who are nearing the end of their life the highest quality of care and support. We wish to help you live as well as you can, for as long as

Political stage management has reached new heights (or depths) these past two weeks. First, we had a very sensible and low key - over due - first visit of our monarch to Ireland since independence. Then President O'Bama arrived as part one of his Family Mystery tour to claim Mickey O'bama as a long lost cousin. How we lapped it up and how he seized the moment and the glass of Guinness (was HRH Prince Philip's anguish look at his glass the longest scowl in...

The vacancy at the top of the IMF should go to one of the BRIC companies. We are fooling ourselves by backing Christine Lagarde, the French Finance Minister, and we're only doing this to spite former PM Gordon Brown. Brown's work at the IMF in 2007-08 was central to the saving of the world's economies. For David Cameron and especially George Osborne to line up behind Lagarde shows a meanness of spirit but leaving that to one side either we understand the essence of globalisation or we make...

Hardly a day goes by without some further news that this or that part of the existing NHS Bill, currently on pause, has been altered..... In case you're confused here's some help: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12177084 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12750695 . http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/topics/governance_regulation_and_accountability/index.html#keypoints http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8379284/Andrew-Lansley-signals-retreat-over-NHS-reforms.html

Chris Huhne MP, a Secretary of State no less,  may have hung himself out to dry. Presumably, he filled in and then signed the form about the "speeding offence" ..........his soon-to-be ex-wife took the wrap (not the first partner to be asked to do so judging from a breakfast I was at earlier in the week).  Do you mean he cannot recall doing this or that his car was in his wife's name?   I think we should be told before the bell

Mitch Daniels, Governor, Indiana since 2004 Nothing much happens in Indiana except Indianapolis: it's a middle American state with a lot of middling. And then there's Mitch Daniels. He still isn't sure about putting his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination; he hates the fund-raising and endless dinners which it inevitably brings. So what if the fund raising could be done by another group of supporters? Enter George W Bush and the Republican team from...

Let's make some assumptions - Scotland is going to distance itself from England and Wales over the next five years whether that be by moving to fiscal independence first or complete independence (are they different propositions?). The House of Lords is not going to be reformed but an unelected House is no longer appropriate. The answer? Four lower Parliaments - England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland - with equal powers but bound together by a UK Senate (which is what the House...

I had a lunch arranged with Jon Cruddas at the Cork & Bottle which was great fun; moving on from Leicester Square I bumped into Ed Balls and for good measure then met the shadow BIS team in the late afternoon.   The talking points were Andrew Rawnsley's article in The Observer and Ed Miliband's inner council meeting on Sunday morning.

The Ivy League universities aren't quite what you think. London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk

Last week you win a majority of the seats in a Scottish Parliament and then you announce you will at some stage hold a referendum on independence. Does Alex Salmond pose one, two or three questions on the Ballot paper? One would be too strong asking voters for a Yes or a No. Three might be confusing but if they were: a) full independence b) full fiscal independence or c) a compromise on both you'd likely vote for b) but at least the voters would be able to give an indication of what...

If the Lib Dems lose another Secretary of State or VIP politician (David Laws) then Cameron must reflect on whether his coalition partners are up for it.. What price a general election in September, 2012 just after the warm glow of the London Olympics?

WE can argue about why we are voting on AV on the same day as some elections across the UK but the fact is today is the day to change British politics forever. In 1997, 2001 and 2005 I was never elected by 50% of the voters and the only way that your MP can claim he has the authority of a majority of the voters is for there to be a change to AV. So today change the political landscape forever and vote AV. Of course the Tories don't want it, it would hurt them the most. They claim...

When all the plaudits die down and the US political machinery trains its fire on its own dire economy, the fact remains that last week all the Republican Presidential hopefuls could ask for was President Obama's birth certificate. You couldn't really make it up. America: a country where less than 50% bother to vote for their own president, where $billions is spent on such elections and yet they have the nerve to espouse their democratic message around the world as though its...

Lords a Leapin'    On Wednesday, I was a rare visitor to the House of Lords to have lunch with my old mucker, John Maxton, now Lord Maxton, with whom I shared four years,  when he was an MP, on the DCMS Select Committee chaired by Geraldo Kaufmann MP.    Nick Clegg's favourite song maybe As Tears Go By, by the wistful Marianne Faithfull, sponsored by Kleenex, but his understanding of networking is slight..... Here is the Lord's...

Andrew Lansley's attempts to force a greater degree of private companies in to run the NHS have hit the buffers. This may or may not be good for Trinity Hospice. If the reforms are slowed down and delayed to 2014-15 then in an election cycle the chances are they will be postponed until after 2015.

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/1BAF0O/V1GPVU/WOZQM7/7NP8JW/N2UEZ/36/h

Why are the Tories so hostile to such a sensible change to the voting system as the Alternative Vote and why has the Sunday Times come out in support of the status quo? Consider what happened to me at the General Elections of 1997, 2001 and 2005. I won with less than 40% of the total votes cast. How can this be democratic? The Alternative Vote gives voters more choice to elect an MP closest to their own beliefs. Voters will list the candidates in order of preference and...

What are Budgets for? We had two last year. We had one yesterday. No-one really understands them as the detail, as ever, is always in the detail - witness the fuss already about the 1p reduction in fuel duty which may be clawed back by the oil companies who dislike the extra tax on their profits. Budgets are old fashioned political nonsense. FTSE 100 companies work on three year rolling budgets and then more especially one year and as importantly, each quarter. They have shareholders...

The Committee invites written submissions which should arrive no later than 4 April 2011.   E-mail submissions are preferred and should be in Word format (not PDF) and sent to proccom@parliament.uk. Postal submissions should be sent to the Clerk, Procedure Committee, Journal Office, House of Commons, London  SW1A 0AA. Further information can be obtained from the Clerk at this address or by telephone on 0207 219 3318. Committees make public much of the evidence they receive during

Bangladesh (I visited it for a week last year) is, according to Transparency International, the third most corrupt country in the world. Small wonder that its judiciary primed by its politicians - it is sometimes difficult to tell them apart - moved this week to ensure Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, was barred as a board director. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on micro-financing and his bank has helped over 8 million families - that's 8 million more than

What possessed Caroline Spelman to open up the possibility of the privatisation of our forests? Was there an edict from No.10? Was it her impotent civil servants who'd be told to find something to privatise to help her ailing career? We may never know but in the space of a week a dreadful policy, incoherently presented by Spelman has been binned. The Tories simply do not have the common touch.

Read the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman's Care & Compassion report on old people in the NHS and wonder why compensation for a mistake which leads to death is only worth £2000 and why no-one was fired........ www.ombudsman.org.uk www.tsoshop.co.uk

David Cameron has spent three days trying to justify his BigSoc idea. Given the Economy and the NHS look as though they will require major u-turns during 2011 it does seem rather odd that he should try and convince the nation of its merits. At every county, unitary and borough council level there are substantial cuts and maybe as many as 500,000 pubic servants will be made redundant during the year. He asks if local politicians would make more of them redundant rather than squeeze...

There's a very nasty smell and it is coming from the Met Police and senior staff at the News of The World. It looks as if the hacking of the mobile phones of a larger number of senior people in the media spotlight is endemic. It also looks as if there is an unhealthy relationship between the Met Police and some staff at the News of The World. David Cameron must stop supporting News Corp. He must instigate a new review of hacking to be carried out by another police force other

Over the past few years there have been a number of books examining how we might change society. Consider: Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein's Nudge (which Cameron thinks is A1) Charles Leadbetter's  We-Think & Matthew Bishop & Michael Green's Philanthro-Capitalism But the subject that needs to be re-visited is Trust. This was the name of book by Anthony Seldon, it was rushed out in 2009 at the time of the MPs...

This morning I attended the Edelman breakfast on their Trust Barometer now in its 11th Year. Check it out at www.edelman.com The Report will feature in the FT tomorrow and be launched officially at Davos on Friday.

Say what you like about the current political firmament but the media likes nothing more than a scandal; this week it was rather like waiting for buses for an age and then along come 2 or 3......... Andy Coulson had to go. The illegal hacking by News of the World journalists whilst he was Editor is causing great anxiety inside NewsCorp just at a time when they are seeking to buy BSkyB. Tony Blair's evidence on why we went to war with Iraq looks flimsier by the week. It was Labour's...

I was interviewed this evening just after SIX about MPs' pay, the resignation of Alan Johnson and what I am currently doing with my life.....

The Fabian New Year Conference at the Institute of Education was packed today to hear Ed Miliband speak. He poured vitriol on Clegg and Cameron and rightly so. They have one argument for all their savage cuts "Labour mismanagement". There is an element of truth in that accusation. But the world wide banking fiasco has been air brushed away by the Clegg-Cameroon teams. And now we see that they have refused to reign in the bankers despite the £billions of public money we have paid to...

So let's review the spin: Elwyn Watkins, the defeated Lib Dem candidate in the May, 2010 General Election subsequently brought a successful legal case against the winning Labour candidate, Phil Woolas (who won by a mere 103 votes) after two high court judges had ruled that he had told lies about Watkins in campaign literature. If there was any sympathy with Watkins he should have won this seat by a landslide. Instead his lack lustre campaign, unusual for the Lib Dems...

The Oldham & Saddleworth by-election on Thursday could result in a win for Labour. Polls cannot make up their minds (as if they have them) as to whether the Lib Dems or the Tories will be pushed into third place. A win for Labour would be a vindication of the work the local party and its previous MP have accomplished over 13 years.   The Coalition will fall apart at some stage - the really active members of the Lib Dems won't want to join Cleggy in the Tories and will finally

Voter YES in the upcoming referendum to change the voting system The supporters of the old politics have a problem. They refuse to defend the current system, and as has been reported this week in the Financial Times, they are now even confused about which MPs support them. We need you to write to your MP and ask them if they're for Yes or for No. Take a moment now to explain to your MP why you want change. And if they don't want change, ask them why they support first past the post.

I stayed with Frank and Lyndy Sobey over the weekend. We have been close friends for forty years since we were students at St.Luke's College, Exeter. Indeed, Frank was one of my two vice-presidents when I was President of the Students' Union! We went to an NUS Conference at Margate when a young Jack Straw was our President.  Yesterday afternoon, as the weather was so wonderful, we went up to Dartmoor where amongst the isolation, we took in Dartmoor Prison - it would be hard to find

What kind of management, having failed to clear snow from its runways for three days because of a lack of equipment, sees its passengers waiting for the same three days and switches off the heating at Heathrow at 10pm??? Step forward the dreadful lot who own Heathrow: GRUPO FERROVIAL. Why were people subjected to queuing outside in the cold at Eurostar? Here's what should happen next: ** a new independent regulator (paid for by the owners of airports and the airlines who use them)...

No amount of sticking plaster will save the Lib Dems as a party with integrity. They have sold their birthright to the Tories who are gleeful at their ongoing demise. They will be decimated in the local elections in May and indeed if anyone is actually examining the odd by-election result at county or local council level (e.g. Dover) they are hardly registering a vote.  Those Lib Dem ministers who know the deal is over should step aside and rejoin their own party before it...

Secretary of State Vince Cable MP caught in a Daily Telegraph sting should do the decent thing and join the Labour Party.

Julian Assange has done the global citizen a service by putting online the US sourced leaks known affectionately as wikileaks. The recent spate which may last another month are being coordinated with the working cooperation of, at least, The Guardian (UK),  the New York Times (USA) & Le Monde (France).  In essence what is at stake here is whose information is it? Does it belong to Governments or does it belong to its citizens who elect...

Ask any Tory candidate in the May 2010 Election and they would have told you that Labour's noise about pending cuts to the Educational Maintenance Allowances and to Sure Starts should the Tories win were absolutely baseless. David Cameron said they'd be no cuts to either EMA or Sure Starts but guess what? EMAs are to go and Sure Starts have been cut by at least 11% and their funding is no longer ring fenced.  It is simply outrageous to close the two most important elements which have

The venue: Edelman in Victoria Street, SW1 The topic: The Big Society The Speakers: Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civil Society, John Armitt, ODA, Peter Oborne, Daily Telegraph, Kevin Maguire, Daily Mirror and John Sauven of Greenpeace The Chairman: Robert Phillips, Edelman CEO The debate: www.edelman.com The question from me: I posed the question that just as Bonhoeffer had predicted the church would become the social church after WW2 -viz Oxfam, War on Want, Shelter, Samaritans et

We have 165 UK universities of one form or another. If we are going to increase tuition fees and reduce income from overseas students by capping their numbers (what's the sense of this when they pay full fees of c£20k?) then the first question which needs to be asked is what is the purpose of Higher Education for the next 30 years and once we have settled that argument we should then find ways of funding it. China will overtake America as the lead economy by 2020. India will be fourth,...

Andrew Rawnsley's article in today The Observer about the reasons why we should support a change to the first past the post system was spot on. When I was an MP (1997-2010) I always wanted to be elected by 50% +1 of the population. The only way this is possible is to bring in some kind of Alternative Vote. The nation has a chance to vote on this next May in a referendum. How sad then that the old soaks of the Labour Party happy to be branded New Labour under Blair but who could not

Last night the South African Embassy played host to a screening of The Sixteenth Man a documentary film about John Carlin's book Playing the Enemy which then became the Hollywood movie: Invictus. John introduced the film and took questions. Unusually, the film has been shown on television in the USA and South Africa but shamefully not a single broadcaster has come forward to show it in the UK. Given the wall to wall coverage rugby is having as we move towards next year's Rugby...

All Change Again in China? Over the past few weeks there have been a number of articles about Xi Jinping. First up was The Economist two weeks ago followed by The Sunday Times and now today The Observer. See: www.economist.com www.thesundaytimesonline.co.uk www.observer.giardian.co.uk It may be premature but he could be the next leader of China in 2012. Last month he was appointed vice chair of the Central Military Commission under President Hu Jintao.

Only in America could you spend $130 million to try to win the Governorship of California and lose as Meg Whitman did earlier this week. £130 million? Is the US version of democracy always about the man or woman with the most money who should win?? How can this be an exportable value to the rest of the world viz Iraq and Afghanistan? There's hardly been a bleep about this in the US media......

The plans for Higher Education announced by David Willetts on Wednesday in Parliament look as though they were done on the back of an envelope. Two questions failed to be asked: What should our university pattern look like for the next 25 years in a world in which China and India will overtake USA? How should we fund this pattern? Instead we have a plan for short termism which will help no-one - not UKplc, not our universities and certainly not our students. There's not even an...

Imagine, you were elected as a brand new Congress member in 2008, you've just sorted your house, family, children's education and barely started to understand how the House works when midway through your first year you have to start working for your election in 18 months time. Bonkers? Welcome to the US system no wonder voter turnout is rarely above 50%. For how much longer can America really claim it has the best democracy in the world?

This morning's radio and television coverage of the heads of MPs....... http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ newsid_9127000/9127549.stm   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ entertainment-arts-11625272    

There are essentially two Schools of Economics when a country is faced with a recession. The first has been beautifully exposed in Naomi Klein's book: The Shock Doctrine yet it is the course of action the ConDem coalition parties in the UK have decided to take. The tabloids would call it "Slash & Burn" but the more serious would describe it as "Making  a thinner state".....that is apparently you can create growth and employment by reducing...

Tony Blair's A Journey has sold 209,175 at the last count easily the top selling autobiography of the year. Others doing well include: Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love which has clocked an amazing 321,460 copies and The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry which has sold 102,145 books.

It is nearly forty years ago since I first read a Woodward book albeit with his co-author Carl Bernstein: it was the famous All The President's Men and then its follow up The Final Days. I was transfixed and still have the paperbacks in my library and a video of the film which even shook my children when we watched it a couple of years ago. I wonder whether the Clinton-Lewinsky affair will one day receive the white carpet treatment?   More recently (the past decade) I have read

You have to hope that Lord Browne's Report started with: What is the UK's university sector for before he then tells how it ought to be funded? Here's what would be in my Report: 1. A compulsory gap year between school and university including a three month paid compulsory national social service scheme 2. The introduction of an Ofsted for teaching at undergraduate level and a secondary assessment of whether all universities are fit for purpose. 3. Those students at school...

It was almost as if I hadn't been away.....first the East Kent Gazette, in Sittingbourne, runs a piece about my having given 30 or so artefacts to the local musuem in East Street which I had collected as the local MP over the past 13 years, then BBC Radio Kent does a live interview with me about Ed Miliband because I suspect I was the only former Labour MP from a Kent constituency who voted for him and finally, Your Swale called, to do an interview about......"What's it like being...

I do hope David Miliband stays inside the Labour shadow cabinet but it would be understandable if he went off to Harvard or to work for Hillary Clinton. And though last night's unseemly media fest was all about whether he would stay, today's focus was on Ed as he delivered his first leader's speech. And jolly good it was too. He has a lot to do and he outlined just how much in his amusing speech where he seemed quite an ease despite probably not having slept much this past 72 hours....

One of the joys of stepping down from Parliament has been the new time I have had for others and other things. Today was no exception as I had lunch with Mark Fisher who'd also stood down this year after 27 years as MP for Stoke on Trent. He had had two brain operations in the New Year and rightly thought his longer term health should come first plus, and more importantly, he was marrying Gilly, so why not a fresh start? He cooked me lunch up in W10 and we chatted for a day and...

Ed Miliband is the new leader of the Labour Party; he just beat his brother David by 1.3%. I backed Ed from day one and was also a small contributor to his campaign. He is the change candidate we need to move the party forward to the next Election. I think the current electoral college is wrong and it should be one member one vote.

If we are really to be a creditable national party again we need to revise our rules. There are two areas which need immediate revision: Leadership Elections 1. Capped at £25k per candidate; one free mail to all members 2. One vote for every member; why should an MP's vote be worth 600 x that of a member? OVOM. 

Lost in the current publishing frenzy over Blair's autocriography is Giles Radice's excellent "Trio - inside the Blair, Brown, Mandelson Project". Radice likes comparison biographies and another good read is his "The Tortoise and The Hares: Attlee, Bevin, Cripps, Dalton and Morrison"

According to a Tory source four Government departments have agreed cuts with the Treasury of between 30% and 40% but none of them managed the demanding 40%........This will be pretty devastating when the cuts come in for 2011-2012 which will make the latter part of 2011 miserable for many. It is not yet clear how the ConDems hope to create more jobs.

Oxford University's new School of Government announced formally yesterday - the Leonard Blavatnik School of Government no less (he has generously donated £75m!) may at some stage mean re-thinking PPE.......

Blair's A Journey tops sales after two weeks of 150,000; Mandelson's absurd named Third Man fails to reach 60,000 despite the hype. Meanwhile Andrew Rawnsley's The End of the Party is now out in paperback with additional chapters highlighting the painful Labour defeat in May and the five days which subsequently shook Whitehall. 

First the confessions, I worked as a freelance for The Times in 1982-83 (Owned by NewsCorp) and for BSkyB (largest shareholder, NewsCorp) in 1995-97. When Rupert Murdoch bought The Times he saved it; it has probably never made a profit. Is it a good newspaper? It is. His other stable mates The Sunday Times, the News of the World and The Sun have mostly recorded annual profits as do some of their web sites.  When Rupert Murdoch established Sky in 1987-88 it was a huge financial...

The Trade Union Conference at Manchester yesterday lay bare some of the nation's anxieties about the 40% cuts in most Government departments, as if you could cut that much and still deliver any worthwhile services? The what-if scenario is what if George Osborne's efforts take the UK economy, just as it is recovering, thanks to the Labour Government's slowly slowly methodology, into a second recession? What will be its plans for growth then and what will its plans be for...

Ed Miliband looks set to become the new leader of the Labour Party. In polls in yesterday's papers it looks as though his low lying, grass roots campaign based on some aspects of Obama's viral campaigns back in 2008, could lead to him winning after the second or third votes have been redistributed. It is clearly wrong and against our party's democratic principles for David Miliband to have raised over £300k for his campaign. A point Andy Burnham, the only non-London based...

Blair's autobiography "A Journey" leads the way open to a possible follow up called "An Arrival" but, notwithstanding its title, it has sold and sold and sold with figures suggesting it broke all records with nearly 100,000 being bought in its opening week. This despite having to pull out of one public signing and one launch party.  It maybe that Peter Mandelson thought he was being clever by bringing forward his own book to capture attention but sales have fallen away...

I'm sure it will have come as some relief that the William Hague story was absent across the red top Sunday newspapers yesterday. There will come a time soon in the UK, as has happened elsewhere, when Bloggers will be sued for defamation and ISPs may well be caught up in an individual case as the carriers of said information. It was embarrassing for the body politic and for the nation as a whole that William Hague had to divulge private information about his wife with...

It is important - if you do not want David Miliband as your choice for the Labour leadership - how you vote in the election. If you vote first for Diane Abbott, Andy Burnham or Ed Balls please make sure you place Ed Miliband 2nd on your ballot paper.

Ballot papers are being delivered across London today.

Having been quoted in an Andrew Rawnsley book* I thought my chances of further fame were decidely limited until today when Amazon delivered me Chris Mullins' Volume 2 Decline & Fall where I make four lines about the 2007 fiasco over the General Election that wasn't. * Andrew Rawnsley The End of the Party 

There's no real surprise that the media has a story about Mandelson supporting David M only that he cannot quite come out and say that - unusually for him. Of course, Blair's book is released on Wednesday the day we all receive our ballot slips for the leadership of the Party. He is bound to use the event to support David Miliband. It is hardly surprising that the two people responsible for New Labour and all its faults want to keep themselves and their ideology going so...

Ed Miliband was in brilliant form on Friday lunchtime when he addressed a full house at the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre. It is becoming clearer by the day that he is the only change candidate of the five standing for the Labour leadership and I sense the only one who can really take on Cameron. When the PM's private conversations are leaked telling us he fears David Miliband it shows you that actually he fears his brother more. It was the same in 2005 when Cameron...

The General Election in Australia is close, maybe one, maybe two, seats in it. The strangest part of the whole operation is seeing Tony "Abbo" Abott's name up there as the next possible PM for Oz. Tony came to Queen's College, Oxford in 1981 and played in the Blues XV against Australia (3 Ella Brothers to boot) where we lost 19-11 but were ahead at half time. He played at prop, I think at lose head and must have thought he was destined for a Blue in the Centenary Varsity match...

I shall be voting for Ed Miliband in the Labour Candidate Elections. I believe like Neil Kinnock and a host of others that he will provide the best opposition to the ConDem coalition and help us rebuild the party. He is also the only real CHANGE candidate. At the moment it is a straight race between Ed and his brother David. The other three may struggle: Ed Balls has Gordon Brown in his DNA and would be blamed for ever and a day by the opposition for the state of the...

Over the past three months I have bumped into a number of retired MPs and former Ministers. To a man and a woman they have said they do not miss the place and are grateful to have found some kind of work even if it is only one or two days (16 hours) a week. Some have said that for this they are being paid more than their £65k p.a. salary as an MP (80-100 hours a week). Pay and Conditions are simply dreadful for MPs and becoming worse (no sane person could have...

Political watchers have at least, in my memory, taken a keen interest in the first 100 days of any new Administration. The first I can recall was JFK's in 1960 where his inauguration speech set out his hopes, dreams and aspirations for the free world aka the United States of America. Blair had a 100 Days in 1997 but not in 2001 or 2005. Brown, having copied much of JFK, including writing a book on Courage, had his 100 days taken away from him by what Macmillan called "Events, Dear Boy"...

We have four male candidates all from the same gene pool: David Miliband (favourite) Ed Miliband (second favourite) Ed Balls Andy Burnham and one one-off gene pooler: Diane Abbott The four male candidates usually have a combination of the following: Oxford or Cambridge educated Think Tankery backgrounds No.10, No.11 or DCMS Policy wonkers Teaching and or research including Harvard Shipped-in to safe seats in 2001 or 2005 None have had their hands dirtied by working in

It cannot be too long before Charles Kennedy MP and Sir Menzies Campbell MP lead the Lib Dems out of the coalition back to a Liberal Party. But since that would marginalise still further a "Liberal" party the sensible thing to do would be to seek accommodation with the Labour Party. Clearly, Clegg has been too clever by half in seeking a relationship with the Tories (but brilliant Cameron for pulling it off). In next May's local elections the Lib Dems will come near to exctinction.

Sometime on Tuesday afternoon the implications of George Osborne's first Budget will be known. There has already been much leakage but not yet on a BP scale. The Budget will have to be taken as a five year effort to right the deficit. Thus we are in for the long haul. If George's gets it right the Tories will be re-elected in 2015. If he doesn't then the Coalition will be over much sooner than we could have expected. The arguments have been well rehearsed. J.M.Keynes would have...

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition has settled down after its first five weeks in power. Tory grandees who could have been expected to have been Ministers are still seething but have so far kept their powder dry. As ever "Events" will move in their favour at some time in the next 2 years.  Into this mix come two unknowns.  The first is election reform which may lead to some kind of proportional representation though the electorate will have a chance to vote first on which - if any -

There is much inevitable criticism of any oil company when something catastrophic happens such as a giant oil leak. BP has been in the daily news for so long you begin to fear for its Communications team who must be up all the UK hours of work and then have to stay at their phones for when Texas and Louisiana wakes up. I expect they are sleeping at HQ. And naturally, Tony Hayward, the head honcho at BP takes the flak. There has though been a deafening silence from the US...

Well, well, well, three weeks in and we have our first casualty of the Coalition....David Laws, the Chief Secretary of the Treasury, has had to resign because he had submitted bills for over £40,000 for his second home even though the address which he gave was the same as his lover's. This has been outlawed since 2006. You have to ask, notwithstanding his abject apologies, how he thought it was legal in the first place. Imagine any MP (man or woman) living with their...

With Europe proudly promoting two versions of itself – the Euro zone and the non-Euro zone countries – where is its leadership?   It seems as if the bankers are doing the work trying to save the Euro – pilloried last week by none other than Joseph Stieglitz - and demanding new rules on Budgets et al. This is not the way to run an association of 27 countries.   There has to be a root and branch reform of the inner workings of the EU and an insistence that MEPs must also be...

In these era of 24 Hour News Channels coupled with the immediacy of Facebook groups and Twitter, the one thing the political class has not resolved is how to cope with their demands.   There are two ways to respond. The first is not to respond at all. The second is to use the new media as your own versions of Sky News, or Nick Robinson Must Go or Alastair Campbell for Pope. In some ways the No.10 web site was moving in that direction but under the new Posh & Clegg regime who knows....

What a conundrum now faces Nick Clegg and his Lib Dem MPs (let alone his own party members). If they support the Tories for a minimum of 2 years – the idea that it can go any longer is clever selling by David Cameron – and then are wiped out at the next election without reforms to the voting system then they will be signing their own death warrants: nothing more: nothing less.   If they do not persuade Cameron of the need for STV or Proportional Representation but agree to the Economic...

It’s not possible that a single 90 minute television programme could alter the next 20 years of UK politics because if it is, the opposition will request them on a monthly basis. That’s how it seemed, um, only two weeks ago when Clegg legged it.   Since then Team Cameron has tried a number of different strands. It has given up on policy. We have no idea how they will save £70 billion or more. And the rather creepy Tory newspapers – Sunday Times, Sun, Mail, Telegraph and Express – have...

Ten days ago, Nick Clegg, leader of a small party known as the Liberal Democrats, appeared in the first ever televised debate with Gordon Brown and David Cameron, leaders respectively of the Labour and Tory parties. He blew them away.   In ten days time, the nation goes to the polls. For the first time since 1945, the pollsters haven’t a clue who will win. This is because the electoral system is broken. An MP can be elected with less than 34% of the votes cast in a constituency and...

Has Politics become the new Pools? It looks as if it is a question of which perm will win in the General Election (due on 6th May 2010) in what was supposd to be a two horse race. Perm 1 David Cameron - looking quite queasy these days - wins outright Perm 2 David Cameron has the most seats but not an overall majority Perm 3 Gordon Brown is in Perm 2 spot Perm 4 Nick Clegg's Lib Dems win 100-120 seats Perm 5 was Perm 3 Gordon Brown seeks an...