A Pint of Bitter: Brown’s plan for May 6th; the BA strike; and England’s Achilles heel

So now we’re sure the general election will be held on May 6th. Not officially. Firm knowledge on the day Gordon Brown decides (and it is his personal decision) to take the short car ride to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament. Which she certainly will, according to constitutional convention and because Parliament is near is legal end in any case. No, the unofficial confirmation of the date comes from the other various announcements that have been made, for instance about the budget – that’ll be held next Wednesday, the 24th – and about the Parliamentary Easter recess, which is from 30th March to the 6th of April. It’s then – just less than three weeks away – that we expect Brown to see the Queen. The election is almost upon us.

What this tells us is, first, that the Prime Minister feels fairly confident about the economic statistics that will be published at the end of April, figures that will say whether Britain continues even a fragile recovery or slips back into recession. He still might panic and go to the country before then, but would be visibly running scared. If there’s a chance the figures will look good, there was always a strong argument for his waiting for them. They may be politically priceless for him. Secondly, they tell us Gordon Brown may be preparing for a short election campaign, something that surprises some political commentators, since the long attritional period of pre-election talk has seen Labour narrow the gap with the Conservatives. Why not stretch the fight out even longer?

For two reasons, I think. First, precisely because the “phoney election” is going so well for Labour. Brown wants to stretch this surprisingly helpful period out as long as possible before changing the dynamic to the real campaign. Second, because Labour wants to fight a new type of campaign. The party is in real financial trouble, and while money from trades unions will come, it needs to neutralise what will surely be the Conservatives’ bigger spending power. The idea is to replace the type of election we’ve become used to – leaders expensively touring the country in helicopters day in, day out, glad-handing voters – with a much more concentrated fight centred on the three massively important, and entirely new, leaders’ debates. It’s not just about money, either. Psychologically, Brown wants to follow the phoney election, in which Tory support has gone soft as doubts have crept in – with a short, sharp wake-up campaign to focus minds more intently than ever on the choice between him and David Cameron. I’m sure he believes a short, intense campaign will help create the drama of choice he wants to produce.

Two political issues have high saliency right now. First, the fact that Brown has had to correct his evidence to the Iraq inquiry, having wrongly claimed that defence spending rose in real terms in every year he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. That was a blunder that’s done him more harm that the spending record merits, in truth. Second, there’s the British Airways strike, planned to start on Saturday. The strike is politically embarrassing for the PM because the union involved, UNITE, is the biggest donor to the Labour Party. David Cameron tried at Prime Minister’s question time to make the strike a partisan issue; Brown must stay above it, and hope next week’s budget blows it out of the headlines. Yes, many people fly with BA. But in truth, the strike will affect Anglotopia readers, on average, more then the woman in the number 98 bus or the marginal Labour voter, who probably won’t leave the UK until summer, if then. And those Brits who are affected won’t necessarily blame the union or Gordon Brown.

In non-political news, England’s footballers are living up to two of their deserved reputations. First, John Terry who I wrote about a few weeks back (and who was later stripped of the England captaincy) is in trouble again, this time for injuring a steward while driving, apparently after having had a drink following a game. Second, it was always on the cards that one of England’s stars would be injured before the tournament: that always happens. If it happens to Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard, England really will be sunk. But it’s happened to David Beckham, still England’s most famous footballer internationally, although football watchers here know he’s past his best and would only have had a supporting role in the World Cup in any case. This is, in effect, the close of a distinguished sporting career. I’ve always thought Beckham overrated as a player, certainly not in the class of real England legends like Bobby Charlton or Bobby Moore. His considerable PR skills having gained him the international profile he enjoys. But even I can’t deny he was a very good player, who made important contributions that swung games for England at crucial times. Or that he was generally speaking a positive example of a well-behaved footballer. He once claimed to have no books in his expensive house, which didn’t impress me. But we may think worse of his coarser colleagues when he’s gone.

Beer? Happily, my local the Queensbury now sells real ale, I’m pleased to say: the quality of life in Willesden has just gone up a notch. Otherwise, I went to the Lamb, in Lamb’s Conduit Street, one of London’s fine old pubs, just north of Holborn. I’m very much hoping, whatever other cautious measures Alastair Darling takes in next week’s budget, that he doesn’t put more than a penny or so on a pint of beer. Much more than that, and all confidence could drain from my personal economy.

A Pint of Bitter: MPs in the dock, a journalist questioned – and Gordon’s brown sugar

The huge scandal about MPs’ expenses that began last summer simply rolls on and on, and it’s becoming more confusing, not less, as audit upon audit comes together with reform upon reform. First Sir Thomas Legg audited the past expense claims of MPs, and ordered sums to be repaid – all the party leaders – Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg – being among those who had to repay money to the taxpayer. Then MPs appealed those findings to a judge appointed for the purpose, Sir Paul Kennedy – and some of them succeeded in having their bills reduced. On top of that, it’s no longer clear that another Kennedy, Sir Ian this time, who heads the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, will implement in full the recommendations for expense reform made by yet another knight of the realm Sir Chris Kelly, who chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life. Each new wrinkle in the tapestry seems, to many ordinary voters, a new opportunity for MPs to avoid responsibility for the misdeeds of the past; it is far from clear that most MPs truly yet “get it” or that Parliamentary culture has really changed.

There are, though, three MPs who certainly do “get” how serious this all is – because the Crown Prosecution Service has begun criminal proceedings against them for the offence of false accounting, a serious charge for which they could well, if found guilty, face imprisonment. Elliot Morley is the best known of the three Labour members, having served as a minister. He and David Chaytor MP are accused of claiming non-existent mortgage costs and rent on properties they owned, while Jim Devine MP is accused on claiming for cleaning and stationary on the basis of false invoices. A Tory member of the House of Lords is also being prosecuted. They first appear in court on March 11, and are unlikely to be tried until after the general election but their defence is already controversial – it’s thought they are likely to argue that as MPs their conduct was protected by Parliamentary privilege, and so in effect immune from prosecution. Privilege is an ancient and important constitutional principle protecting MPs from arrest for the things they say in Parliament. Whether privilege really covers expense claims, I doubt; if the courts rule that it does, the scandal will have taken yet another dramatic and controversial turn.

At the same time, a journalist is being questioned by police over his involvement in a man’s death many years ago. Ray Gosling is an outstanding journalist well known for documentaries and local broadcasting in the North and midlands, covering the unusual, the personal and the unglamorous sides of real life in an immediately recognisable style that could be deeply serious, literate but also ironic. I remember some of the work he did for Granada TV in the 70s and 80s – thoughtful broadcasting that drew you in. Here’s a (low quality, I’m afraid) video of him in his pomp, and here’s a more recent follow-up. In his most recent documentary for BBC East Midlands he’s confessed to smothering an unnamed lover who at some time in the past was dying from AIDS, and in incurable pain. The police presumably suspect him of murder. The police and CPS may have a difficult decision to make about whether a murder prosecution would be in the public interest – I can’t, myself, see how it would. Ray Gosling may take comfort in the knowledge that, whatever the professionals think, any trial would be before a jury – a system that is essentially fair and unbiased according to the findings of a major research report by Professor Cheryl Thomas of University College London. I hope Ray Gosling faces no charge. If he does, I hope he’s acquitted. And without for a moment suspecting him of cynical motives, I hope this incident, which has raised his profile massively, ends up with his making truckloads of money out of this. Because another tragedy is that Gosling was poor and on the verge of bankruptcy a few years ago. How can that happen to such a talented broadcaster? All too easily, I’m afraid, in our glamour-obsessed celebrity culture.

A different sort of confessional interview this week was Gordon Brown, who spoke on ITV last Sunday to Piers Morgan (the former Daily Mirror editor, and stalwart of ungoslinglike celeb culture) in an attempt to show his real character to the country. Those who don’t know much about Brown will be interested to see him discuss how he proposed to his wife Sarah on a windswept Scottish beach, and the death of their new-born daughter Jennifer. They may also be surprised by the young student radical Brown and his bevy of female fans – the “Brown Sugars”, who he seems to remember very well from the days of free love. I’d have advised him to open up much more about the distant past – even about sex – but even this quite cautious outing may have done him some good. Certainly Brown is a fascinating figure, however you view his politics – you may still be able to watch the interview for a couple of weeks on ITV Player.

I haven’t mentioned beer yet, I notice. I did, though, visit the Star in St. John’s Wood, a pretty pub with decent beer and a fire, spoiled somewhat by an intrusive telly and music, and by nasty, modern, square-block tables that are frankly out of place; and before that I went to the White Bear in Kennington, just south of the river, which is not great for beer but fantastic if you like to watch sports on big screens, which are many. There is a very good reason to visit the White Bear, though – it has a small theatre at the back and often puts on interesting fringe shows. If that wasn’t enough to make me feel okay about ordering yet another pint, I could remind myself that Gordon Brown admitted to regularly sinking six or so back in his Edinburgh days. Perhaps one day I’ll be as successful and unpopular as him.

A Pint of Bitter: Growth at last for Gordon; England’s captain John Terry with his shorts down

It’s always good to discover a new pub so good it becomes an instant favourite – and I was lucky to have that experience this week at the Old Mitre, tucked away in a little alley off Hatton Garden, just outside the boundary of the City. Superlatives come easily when discussing this pub. It’s traditional to the point of being genuinely old-fashioned, its leather-topped stools and benches and unusual arrangement of old, rustic tables giving it an eccentric, friendly feeling no interior designer could dream of. The beer is good, too –  we had Saltaire Blonde from Yorkshire and the outstandingly complex Gales’s Seafarer’s Ale. This place really is among the top drawer of London pubs.

The other good news this fortnight was that Britain is finally out of recession, after eighteenth months. Only just – growth was 0.1% in the last quarter of 2009 – but technically, the recession is over. If there’s not a “double dip”, that is. It’s been an odd recession, this, in Britain. There have been job losses, but not on the scale many expected. At least not yet. There have not been mass repossessions of homes, either, unlike in the last recession here, in the early 1990s. In fact, many of those who’ve stayed in work have been better off, because low interest rates have cut mortgage costs, in effect putting money in their pockets. In some ways, it’s been a phoney recession in which some of those who weren’t to blame for the credit crunch (those who’d saved since 2000, and more broadly all taxpayers) in effect paid to protect those who do share some responsibility for it (those who’d borrowed substantially over the same period, and highly-paid bank employees) from the consequences of their choices.

But is the recovery phoney? That’s the big question as spring approaches. The next quarter’s figures will come out in April, in the middle of our general election campaign so Gordon Brown badly needs them to show further growth, however sickly. Even more important than the figures, though, is the way people feel between now and May. Brown must hope that a little growth together with continued low interest rates and a canny budget will build confidence and create reasonable conditions for electioneering in May. He retains what control politicians can ever have over economic tides; but he is, more than any Prime Minister for decades, at the mercy of statistics and the animal spirits of voters.

The other important issue of timing is the Iraq inquiry of course – and we now know Brown will give evidence before the election, after all. Tony Blair’s appearance last week was a huge media event, triggering all the old arguments and debates that raged in 2003. The country is deeply divided over Iraq, to say the least: by two to one, or two and a bit to one, people feel Tony Blair’s policy was a disaster. But it matters little now to Blair how much opposition and anger he sets off. For Brown, though, the inquiry is a dangerous trap. It’s very hard to see how he can emerge from the inquiry’s scrutiny with his reputation enhanced – but he must at all costs avoid further damage.

Talking of our great leader’s political future reminds me I was also in the Kings Head this week, just east of Marylebone High Street, not far from Baker Street or Bond Street tube. It’s a shame this place has a TV screen and occasionally piped music – those things slightly spoil what’s otherwise another terrific pub with a very local feel. I especially recommend the bay window in the corner, which is a cosy place to curl up with a pint and a book, or a friend.

Another leader under pressure, and even more talked about down the pub, is the England football captain John Terry, a tough defender with a blunt style and current “Dad of the Year” who has apparently had an affair with the French underwear model girlfriend of an England and former Chelsea team-mate, Wayne Bridge. This is a hot-button affair in more ways than one. Terry initially obtained an order preventing publication on privacy grounds – and even preventing publication of the fact an order had been granted, in what’s known here as a “superinjunction” – but the High Court lifted it last week in another high-profile ruling in what’s become a controversial area of law in Britain. Controversial with the press, at least.

The case again brings to public attention the selfish, sexually sleazy culture of our overpaid footballers – Terry brings in over £150,000 every week – and the young women who are interested in their glamour and money. But more acutely, it has provoked a widespread fit of morality as many people feel, for rather ill-defined reasons, that Terry is no longer fit to captain the national side and ought to be stripped of the job by England’s Italian manager, Fabio Capello. This outbreak of moralism seems though to be less about Terry’s treatment of his wife than his treatment of a team-mate, which may tell us something profound and perhaps troubling about how we understand loyalty.

Whatever it does or does not tell us about that, it reminds us that the England team is a bunch of overindulged underperformers who not only have less skill but are far more easily distracted by girls, cars and clubs than their Italian, Brazilian or German opponents. If I were you I’d have my money on them, not England, for the World Cup in South Africa this summer.

Are British Politicians Bought and Sold by Special Interests Like in the US?

It was with great dismay last week that I read the headlines regarding the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down campaign finance laws that block corporations from directly funding elections. It felt like a betrayal. It’s absurd to give the same rights to a corporation as you do a person.

Our Congress is an inept, useless body that only exists as a funnel of special interest money. You ever wonder why almost nothing ever gets done? It’s because our Representatives and Senators are owned by corporations and it’s so totally blatant it’s almost laughable. With this SCOTUS decision now corporations can pretty much write blank checks for elections.

It’s wrong. It’s disgusting. And it makes me really want to get out of this country.

But wait. One must research these things and ensure that the place he ends up is actually better. So, I wondered, are politicians in Britain blatantly owned by corporations? Do special interests run the show in Parliament? Who exactly funds British elections and funds individual candidates.

The answer is surprising.

I decided to ask our columnist Carl Gardner – who writes ‘A Pint of Bitter’ and occasionally touches on political issues. He’s more knowledgable on these matters than I could ever hope to be – he’s a lawyer after all that used to work for the British government. His answers were illuminating and motivating.

The short answer is no – British politicians are not bought and sold by special interests or corporations. The whole elctoral system is fundamentally different.

From Carl:

We don’t feel companies own candidates, no. There are several differences between you and us on this.

First, although corporate donations go to all kinds of parties, overwhelmingly they go to the Conservatives. Labour is mainly dependent on funding from trades unions. Labour right now is in huge debt while the Tories are in surplus.

Second, generally speaking companies and donors fund the parties rather than candidates. Individual funding only really happens when people fight for party office, for instance in a leadership contest.

He goes onto explain that elections are more scaled down affairs than we’re used to in the US:

We have limits on what parties can spend both nationally and locally on elections – and these are policed by the EC. I think it’s this that protects us from (what seems to us) the excess of US elections, where spending seems to matter disproportionately. Also political advertising on TV and (I think) radio is banned here, so that’s one less thing they can spend on. The big spending here is I think on helicopters, posters and polling nationally, plus conferences I guess and on leaflets delivered door-to-door locally. The main parties are given free, equal air time by the major broadcasters.

I think (as do others) that we should reduce the spending limits even further – maybe let inflation eat away at them – so that politicians have to rely more and more on free publicity like meetings and news media.

On Lobbyists and influence:

We have lobbyists, yes – they have codes of conduct and so on – and there have been scandals. Google “cash for questions”, “Fayed and Hamilton” and “cash for honours”! But there is no general feeling here that politicians have been bought by interests. The two exceptions perhaps are that it’s sometimes argued Labour is “in hock” to the unions; and there is real and widespread concern here about Rupert Murdoch’s influence on politics, which comes not through donations but through the (perceived) power of the Sun newspaper. It now supports the Tories, and it’s noticeable how closely their media policy now reflects his aims.

And finally he has some comments on the types of people that become MP’s:

What i’d worry about if I were American is how many senators are millionaires. It looks a bit like plutocracy, not democracy. Some MPs here are rich, yes, but most aren’t, and there really isn’t an increasing tendency for them to be rich. Many of them go straight to Parliament from teaching, nursing, lecturing and so on. Our problem is that it’s all about networking now, so far too many of them are “career politicians” working for think-tanks, unions and the parties before being elected, and never having had “real jobs”. Alan Johnson is interesting: he was once a postman, then leader of the postal union – hence his being a Labour MP. Same with John Prescott: a ship’s steward, then seamen’s union leader, then Labour MP.

So, there you have it – it seems to me that the British political system is much more sensible than the way we conduct things here. It’s just absurd that a candidate has to spend $1 billion to win the presidential election. The money could be better spent on so much else. Britain’s political system is by no means perfect. There is no perfect system. But it looks a lot less dysfunctional than the system we created for ourselves. I’ll be interested to see how the upcoming election turns out and how much actually changes.

A Pint of Bitter: Choudary banned, Blair and Iraq (again) – and UK joblessness down

Last time, I wrote about Anjem Choudary and his Islamist gang, Islam4UK. Well I doubt I’ll be writing about them again, because since then they’ve managed to get themselves banned. The government has power to “proscribe” organisations under Britain’s terrorist legislation, and Home Secretary Alan Johnson, spurred no doubt by the controversy over Islam4UK’s suggested Wootton Bassett March, has decided now is the time to ban this lot. It won’t last long: Islam4UK was itself at least the third manifestation of this outfit, and no doubt it will pop up again under another name. Choudary will make it as hard as he can for the government to ban him again. If he turns up in Cricklewood I might escape into the Windmill, which markets itself these days as a sort of gastropub.

Otherwise, I doubt I’ll be going back quickly. There’s no real beer, it plays bad music too loudly, it has a pointless telly and a stark, uncomfortable, trying-hard to-be-hip feel that puts me off. A pity; this is potentially a cracking pub, with some lovely interior features. Much as I love old pubs, if I can’t have real beer I’d rather drink in a relaxed, welcoming space like the bar of the Hampstead Theatre, just near Swiss Cottage tube, than in the noise, gloom and awkwardness of the Windmill.

The Iraq war is of course no news to anyone, but the hearings of Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry is quite a big story this January. There have been a number of inquiries into aspects of the Iraq war: the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances leading up to the death of Dr. Kelly, for instance, and the Butler inquiry into the government’s use of intelligence. This, though, is the proper inquiry many people have been pressing for for years into the whole thing – the government’s decision to invade together with America, the conduct of the war and the reconstruction of Iraq. Minds here are basically made up: a clear majority of British people think the war was wrong, and perhaps half the country thinks Tony Blair took Britain to war by deliberately misleading the public about Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons programmes. Some even see him as a war criminal. What’s less often reported is that there seems to be perhaps a third of the British public who continue to support Blair over Iraq. That third includes me, I should disclose.

Two weeks ago, Tony Blair’s former press secretary Aliastair Campbell – an enormously influential figure in his administration, and the combative inspiration for Malcolm Tucker of The Thick of It and In The Loop – stoutly defended the government’s public presentation of the case for action in 2002-3. This week, Jack Straw who was Foreign Secretary at the time has been defending his own role. The real action comes next week, though, as Tony Blair himself is called to give evidence in public for the first time, as is Lord Goldsmith, who as Attorney General advised that military action was lawful. Many opponents of the war see this as a sort of trial by ordeal for Tony Blair – a chance to grill him and “call him to account” in public – and hope the inquiry’s final report will damn him irretrievably. I doubt that will happen – it’s bound to criticise him to some extent but I think the worst it might do would be to conclude that the war was contrary to international law, as the Dutch inquiry did recently. I’m not sure it will do that. There’s also a  belief among some that the inquiry is an establishment stitch-up, and is bound to end up in a whitewash.

It’s possible that individual performances by the key players could change some minds – I suspect Lord Goldsmith may be able to make a minority reconsider the commonly and often unquestioningly held opinion that the war was clearly unlawful – but I doubt views are now shiftable, really. The real political (as opposed to historical) importance of the inquiry it that it revives the salience of Iraq in the run up to the general election. Will Gordon Brown have to give evidence before then? At the moment he’s not due to, and it’s up to the inquiry itself to decide. But he will hope and pray that he does not. Close scrutiny now of financial decisions he made then about military equipment would intensify the already heavy pressure on him; in any event, he needs to avoid being linked more closely than he already is to the political poison that is Iraq. The timing of his appearance is crucial.

What will please Gordon Brown is that unemployment is down, surprisingly. He needs to be able to argue in May that his policies through the recession have changed jobs and enabled early recovery – and if the figures continue on this trend, he may be able to make that case persuasively. Timing again will be crucial: his last chance, perhaps, is if next year’s budget combined with economic trends contrive to produce some sense of relief and confidence, before the effect of tax rises and spending cuts really bites on the public mind. He has a serious uphill struggle – but don’t count him out completely yet.

Earlier I mentioned the relaxed Hampstead Theatre bar: even better is the bar of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. There’s no real beer here either – which is truly a great pity. Otherwise, though, this is a surprisingly good place for a drink – roomy, relaxed (a customer started playing the grand piano when I was there last night) with lots of comfy sofas and free wifi, which is especially nice for bloggers and anyone who wants to tweet, say, about their visit to London. All in the middle of London’s leading arts centre. I’ll be there again soon – and back with you in two weeks.

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