Politics is back for the autumn, and I’m back too, having taken a break since August. I went to Cornwall for a week – more of which later. While I’ve been away there have been two big political stories here: Labour’s leadership, and the government’s cuts. Cuts first.

Everyone knows the UK has a serious budget deficit, and mounting debt, and that serious fiscal discipline is needed to get the country back on a sustainable path. In other words, we need public spending cuts, or tax rises, or both. The coalition government has been building up all summer to an announcement of its specific plans next Wednesday in Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne’s “Comprehensive Spending Review”. But the government has been trying to prepare the country for the scale and nature of the cuts by a series of announcements over the last couple of weeks. Child benefit, Osborne announced at the Conservative conference in Birmingham, will no longer be a universal benefit: households in which someone earns over £44,000 a year will lose it.

Conservative Party | CreativeCommons

Child benefit is currently called universal because literally every household with a child gets it. It amounts to about £1000 a year if you have one child, and £700 for each child you have after that. In effect, it’s a transfer of money from all childless taxpayers, no matter how poor, to parents no matter how rich. The original idea was to ensure all mothers received some direct help to bring up children  – and payment does normally go to the mother – without having to go through a bureaucratic process of form-filling and means-testing. A good system in a relatively poor and equal society without reliable contraception and in which few mothers work, like 1940s Britain. Not necessarily what you’d set up today.

The apparent public hostility to the announcement, though, tells you something about Britain right now. First, that cuts will be much easier to get through if they are visibly and undoubtedly fair: the big problem with the plan is that household in which both parents earn £40,000 will keep child benefit while those in which just one of them earns £44,000 will lose it. An obvious anomaly that the government is already scrambling to compensate for. But second, it shows you that much of middle-class middle England is in reality addicted to public subsidy although it doesn’t need it, in denial about the deficit and debt and will seize on any hint of “unfairness” in order to object to losing a penny. Third, though, it shows you that the British will moan and grumble about these cuts but unless they are really big, really surprising and really savage they will not strike or demonstrate in numbers, and certainly won’t try to bring the country to a halt like the French. I think the government needs to take care with its cuts, and will probably meet with horrified reactions from the English suburbs. I think it’ll get away with them, too, though, unless it’s politically inept.

William Hague, George Osborne and Nick Clegg | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

How will Labour react? That depends on its new leader – Ed, not David Miliband. I was wrong. I expected David to win, and he was preferred to his rivals by most Labour Party members and MPs. What lost it for him, just, was that more trade unions members (many of them had a vote in the contest) preferred the kid brother whose slightly more leftish stance earned him more union endorsements. It was not the ideal way for Ed to have won – he must now show he is not the unions’ boy – but win he did. David Miliband, an outstanding politician who looked and was ready to be Prime Minister, now appears to be a sort of internal political exile, and may only return to the front line when Ed succeeds – or fails.

Ed Miliband

Ed’s positioning of Labour is only slowly becoming clear. At his conference speech he told the country that war in Iraq was “wrong”, signalling a much less interventionist, much more cautious foreign policy certainly than Tony Blair’s. But in appointing his shadow team he raised eyebrows by appointing the Blairite Alan Johnson as his financial spokesman, noticeably keeping Labour’s power couple Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper well away from economic responsibilities. That shows he means to take a moderate approach to the cuts, resisting the temptation (which Balls gives every impression of wanting to give in to) to fight every cut as though the deficit can be ignored. In truth many serious economists see force in the Balls analysis, according to which the deficit is better turned around slowly and carefully in order to nurse the economy back to solid growth. Miliband, though, must fear the political trap of appearing to reject all retrenchment. It is, after all, politics that matters to his prospects over the next two years more than economics, and he may rightly suspect he will benefit from opposition to the cuts without adopting an apparently radical, vulnerable stance.

Francesca at Padstow, Cornwall

Cornwall was great. I stayed with my girlfriend (my “bird”, she said I should call her) Francesca in the village of St. Cleer, near Liskeard, in a converted Sunday School building that was just right for a couple, with an open-plan kitchen, a wood-burning stove and bath made for two. What we did was read, cook, drink too much scrumpy over Scrabble and visit Polruan and Padstow, Newquay and Polperro. Our rainy day took us to the Eden Project, the much-praised enviro-theme park near St. Austell, a place that was fairly interesting – but that lacked the “wow” factor for us and that, at £17 a head to get in, I’m reluctant to recommend. Much more fun is the monkey sanctuary further east  at St. Martin, near Looe, where you learn a lot about monkeys and get to eat at a brilliant vegetarian cafe.

Back to monkeying around in London now though, for the foreseeable.

A Pint of Bitter: Child benefit cuts and Labour’s new leader is a post from: Anglotopia.net

We’re in the “silly season” in Britain now, the period when Parliament is in recess and little happens politically until the party conferences in September. But nowadays, politics happens even in August – though the Prime Minister probably wishes it didn’t. First, in America last month, he said Britain had been the “junior partner” to the US in 1940, which didn’t so much wound anyone’s national pride as reveal a dodgy grasp of history – most British people are happy to accept we were the junior partner in war from the end of 1941. His outspoken remarks about Pakistan, during his visit to India, were surely no mistake but agreed with the US beforehand so as to send a signal to Pakistan’s government. Cameron’s batting technique was more suspect, though he still hit a 51-year-old Kapil Dev through mid-wicket. The fact that he used a tennis ball may have helped. But since coming back to this country, the PM has had a series of media appearances and public meetings – and has got into a bit of trouble.

The Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Most recently he said Iran already has a nuclear weapon, which is either a silly mistake, or else a silly leaking of white-hot intelligence. Before that, he suggested in response to a member of the public that social housing should not be “for life”.    Obviously people can buy houses or flats in the UK, or else rent in the private sector. But it’s also possible to apply to be housed by local government – or more usually these days, to be housed on behalf of your local council by a “housing association” – and to pay rent to them indefinitely. Cameron’s idea is a radical one: it would not just end the arguably socialist idea that social housing is an alternative and permanent lifestyle choice, but also Margaret Thatcher’s conception of a council house as “your home” – something you should be entitled to buy from the government and then own. The immediate problem was, though, that the idea hadn’t been agreed by the coalition, as was immediately pointed out in no uncertain terms by the Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes.

Simon Hughes | Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

Hughes is an interesting figure. Clearly on the left of his party, he’s long wanted to lead it, but never succeeded. He was elected to his post, but in truth practically handed it on a plate in a shrewd move by the real leader, Nick Clegg. Shrewd, because having Hughes as a sort of leader of the Liberal Democrats outside the coalition reassures members that the party’s identity has not been abandoned; shrewd because it means a powerful figure is able, as in this instance on social housing, to exert pressure on David Cameron from outside government, and publicly, as Clegg himself does privately on the inside; and shrewd because it means Hughes cannot actually plot to bring him down except by openly splitting the party. It gives Hughes a powerful role, but making it an official party one ties him into exercising it responsibly.

Apart from that, the Conservative right-winger’s right-winger, the disastrous former leader Iain Duncan Smith, set out some ideas for reforming welfare – a big part of public spending, on which the coalition really must make big savings. Duncan Smith has been devoting himself to social exclusion and poverty since he was ousted as leader in 2005 and has made a decent reputation as a radical and a reformer. But his brief is a tough one to deliver. In truth, making work pay in the way he wants to – by allowing those who find jobs to keep more of their welfare benefits for a transitional period – is likely to cost money rather than saving it. The most radical and immediately implementable idea that would unite two big Conservative themes – the “big society” of active citizens and welfare reform – would be to make receipt of unemployment benefits conditional on providing full-time public service, for instance as a charity volunteer. It’s so obvious that I think the government must already have decided not to dare.

Michael Keen | CreativeCommons

In London, the mayor Boris Johnson finally has a concrete, visible achievement: “Boris’s bikes”. At various places in central London you can now find a rack of sturdy bikes, any of which you can use for half an hour, free, or else pay to ride for longer. This is an idea that deserves to be popular, and which is stolen from Paris. It was even apparently first conceived by the previous mayor in fact, so isn’t Boris’s idea at all. But it’s a good one, and I can’t wait to have my first ride. A pity we don’t have proper bicycle lanes in London to spare the risk of life and limb.

The Merlin's Cave

I’ve spent most of the summer in London, but last weekend involved a brief respite from the big city: Francesca and I spent an afternoon in Chalfont St. Giles, a village in Buckinghamshire that can fairly be called “just outside” the modern megopolis. Unfortunately we found Milton’s cottage closed. But the Norman Parish Church of St. Giles is really worth a visit, with a quite magnificent turnstyle of a lychgate, plus a 15th century mural and 15th century pews. Of course we ended our outing with a pint, at the Merlin’s Cave. Not a marvellous pub, this, at least on the inside – it’s too focused on TV screens and the pool table. But the beer and scrumpy are fine, and its real glory is the huge beer garden stretching down behind the church towards the river and a fine weeping willow. The couple of hours we spent there reading and talking were some of the best of the summer – and it’s places and times like that that make you want to live in England. Big society? Let’s make England one big pub garden instead.

A Pint of Bitter: Cameron’s gaffes, Boris’s bikes and one big pub garden is a post from: Anglotopia.net

England crashed out of the World Cup. Of course. Their defeat, conceding four goals to Germany, was abject and depressing even by their own sorry standards, and led to an angry, vindictive inquest from supporters, giving edge to the despond that usually follows England’s exit. How is that stars like Rooney and Lampard can go to a tournament like that and simply not perform? How can the manager have stuck rigidly to an outdated tactical system? Why play Gerrard wide on the left? I epxected Fabio Capello to lose his job as England coach but someone, somewhere thinks he has learned enough from this experience to do better in future, that perhaps failure was not his fault. Or he may have been too expensive to sack. At any rate, England carry on as the football world’s most underachieving nation now that relentless Spain, tiring defences like matadors before sticking in one fatal goal in a way that’s impressive, like Rafael Nadal, rather than exciting, have managed to win the big one.

Tim Ellis | CreativeCommons

So it’s back to normal life, and the dreary reality of the coalition’s austerity Britain. Actually I suspect my countrymen and women of secretly salivating at the thought of cut-backs, somewhere in the recesses of our imaginations. Pride in past victory has lent a certain glamour to the grimness of rationing and make-do-and-mend, and I sense relish in some quarters at the thought that the coming years may make rigour pay, and our pleasures rarer and simpler. I share the feeling myself, to some extent. Compared to the old days, when wine was an unheard of luxury to most British people and clothes and books were made from special materials, we don’t even know what austerity means. We live lives of excess, for the most part, private debt is at levels that would have made 1950s housewives faint, and giving a few things up would do us good.

Preapring for Oxfam's "Make do and Mend" fashion event | Ruth Geach | CreativeCommons

It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that the country needs the extremest fiscal rigour possible. Most people I sense accept the government’s view that early, decisive action in needed to reduce Britain’s deficit as quickly as possible. It’s an argument that seems to have been won since the election rather than before it; no doubt the trouble in Greece has helped convince people we don’t want to go there. Perhaps what’s happening shows that the change of government was the best thing for the country because, while many people I think accept Labour’s Keynesian stimulus spending helped the country through the recession (unemployment is lower and fewer people have lost their homes than we might have feared), they’d have found it hard to accept that same government cutting back. The incoming government can do so with much more good will – for the moment at least. Their project is a difficult one, though, and if private sector growth does not pick up it may turn impossible. They have to hope it does – and that their own cuts don’t suppress it.

One of the things the coalition has resorted to in its economy drive is to ask us how they can save money. I think this is a good idea – I’ve even sent in my own suggestions. It may be true that this is more about public morale, but I do think government should consult people individually (rather than simply engage with lobby groups) and that the internet is, realistically, the only way of doing that. Inevitably this sort of exercise is bound to attract the mad, the nasty and the comical. My own favourite was the suggestion that we should sell the England football team, an idea that, together with every other idea, appears unfortunately to have been taken down from the site now. The main objection commenters made was that it wouldn’t raise much money.

Downing Street | CreativeCommons

One way a citizen can make money out of government is to publish political memoirs, as Peter, Lord Mandelson, has done within days, practically, of losing his job as effective deputy to the Prime Minister. The memoirs are being serialised in the Times – which means I can’t link you to an extract, the Times now hiding behind a “pay wall”. A pity. Mandelson’s alienated his few friends in the Labour party with this apparently warts-and-all account of the poisonous relations between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown: he quotes Blair as calling Brown “mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption”, which is not high praise for his successor. I’m glad Mandelson has published, though. The book will reveal little the public wasn’t aware of in at least a vague sense: that Blair and Brown came to hate each other after 1994 has been obvious. What it does do, though, is make it difficult for Labour politicians to deny it any longer. It may also suggest that Brown was more at fault than Blair. If I read it soon, I’ll let you know.

Jonathan and Jackie and the George

It’s not long since I wrote about the George, but I must mention my visit there last week – because it was to have a beer with Jonathan and Jackie, who were in London for a visit. On one of the most sweltering days of the summer we took refuge in the cool interior and downed plenty of salt and vinegar crisps as well as (in my case) a couple of pints of George Ale. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll see them again – but I don’t think it’ll be long!

A Pint of Bitter: Football failure, fiscal austerity and the third man is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Away from government, the contest for the Labour leadership is beginning to take shape. Nowadays following election defeats, Prime Ministers depart the political scene very quickly indeed. John Major famously went to watch cricket after he was beaten in 1997; this time, Gordon Brown left quickly for Scotland. But was that a good idea? Brown had already resigned as Labour leader before he was ousted as PM, of course, in a desperate attempt to tempt the Liberal Democrats to back some alternative Labour leader. Should he have stayed on as leader of the opposition, as James Callaghan did after his defeat by Margaret Thatcher in 1979?

Labour's five leadership candidates | Courtesy of David Miliband's campaign

I think so; Labour needs space and time to rethink what it’s about after Blair and Brown, and Brown could have served his party well by soldiering on for a year. Against that, some argued that the new coalition government could, just, stumble and break up early on. Labour must be refreshed with a new leader in time for any surprise election. And the Callaghan precedent is not a happy one: when he did eventually stand down in 1980, Labour tore itself apart. In any event Brown had gone, and the real question was whether replacing him should be quick or slow affair. The party’s National Executive Committee opted for a slow contest but initially gave only a very short period for candidates to be nominated. That deadline was extended after pressure from many Labour members, and in the end five candidates achieved the figure of 33 nominations from MPs in order to stand – one, Diane Abbott, only with the help of one of her opponents, David Miliband, who had promised to offer her his nomination if she was one short near the deadline.

Diane Abbott | Alex Hilton | CreativeCommons

Miliband’s move was not merely generous: it was good Machiavellian politics. Diane Abbott is an attractive personality and well known from her appearances on the BBC’s This Week. She’s by a clear margin the most left-wing of the would-be leaders, and is likely to attract many votes that might otherwise have attached themselves to Miliband’s younger brother Ed, who is also standing, funnily enough. Many thoughtful Labour figures came out early in support of Ed, who is clearly positioning himself to the left of David, especially on Iraq which seems bizarrely to be a key issue, though British troops left Iraq last year.

Ed Miliband | Dept. of Energy and Climate Change | CreativeCommons

I doubt Ed Miliband’s campaign is really going anywhere in spite of his attractive personality and ability to appeal to those who want Labour to be a little more greenish, a little more leftish – especially now that Diane Abbott will take votes from his left. Ed Balls is making a decent fist of opposing the coalition, forcefully and vocally. He’s too exhaustingly associated with the Brownite past to win, but his truculent tribalism will go down well with a lot of Labour members, and I think he’ll do reasonably well. Andy Burnham is the out-and-out ultra Blairite candidate, and unlikely to do well. Could Diane Abbott cause a surprise? Yes and no. I think she’ll do surprisingly well, and may well come ahead of Burnham and Ed Miliband. But she is simply too metropolitan to attract enough of the Scottish, Welsh, northern and midland support she’d need to actually become Labour leader. I expect David Miliband to win. If you can use the BBC iPlayer, you can watch the Newsnight hustings from earlier this week and decide for yourself who Labour should choose.

Politics has been largely forgotten for the moment, though – being eclipsed for the next few weeks by the World Cup, of course. Here in England that means a familiar emotional trajectory of cautious hope before the tournament, through gloom once England have played their first match, then a surge of irrational confidence when they win their second, to be followed not long afterwards by fatalistic acceptance of defeat. England supporters reckon it’s a successful World Cup if the confidence stage lasts for at least two matches before England go out in the quarter-final. As I write, we’re in the gloom phase, having drawn with the USA, for heaven’s sake, in part thanks to Robert Green’s mad blunder. After England beat Algeria tonight – which they surely will, won’t they? – we’ll go straight into unjustified exuberance. But the good teams – Germany and especially Argentina – lie in wait beyond. If England can beat any of them, get your binoculars out and look for pigs overhead. The strange thing is, England have two of the best players in the competition, in Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. If the rest of the team could perform well enough for these two to show the world what they can do – then England really could do well. Cautious hope again, you see?

Carl Gardner | CreativeCommons

Let me finish with a pub, the Perseverance, in Lamb’s Conduit Street just off High Holborn. This was a surprise stop on a sunny day, but not a bad pub, serving food and with live music. I enjoyed the Thwaites’ Wainwright bitter, sitting outside in conversation about British and Dutch politics (they’ve just had an election, too; and are likely to have a conservative-liberal coalition, like us) and taking in the odd but fun atmosphere of this quirky bit of central London. The Perseverance takes second place in this street to the excellent Lamb, but there’s no disgrace in that. I expect to be back.

A Pint of Bitter: Labour’s leaders and England’s World Cup is a post from: Anglotopia.net

In one way, Britain’s new government – the coalition, as we’re beginning to call it – resembles the  administration it replaced, rather than representing a break from it. Just as Labour government since 1997 was dominated by the relationship between two men, so this government is clearly based on and revolves around the obvious chemistry between David Cameron and his deputy Nick Clegg. Their first joint press conference in the Downing Street rose garden was an almost embarrassing love-in, partly because the two men do visibly get on well, and partly I suspect because of their shared exhilaration at sealing their deal, each having demonstrated political panache and each now tasting the reward of power. Do watch it here if you want a flavour of how the Conservative-LibDem government started. The two men’s reaction to the question 18 minutes in tells you a lot.

Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

And the new government is, as Alastair Campbell said on the BBC’s Question Time on Thursday, motoring. Since I last wrote, the coalition has published a detailed programme for government, fleshing out what it’s proposing to the country. Some of the agreement is unsurprising: the coalition will take urgent action to reduce Britain’s budget deficit, it will reform banking and it will legislate to reverse what it sees as Labour’s authoritarian measures, getting rid of the planned identity card scheme, for instance, and reducing the scope of the national DNA database. Some of it is clearly compromise – on European policy, on human rights and on immigration. But other parts of the agreement are much less expected.

The coalition Cabinet | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Most controversial has been a complex but important proposal to require a super-majority of 55% of MPs to vote in favour of an early dissolution of Parliament and a general election within five years. Parliament’s term is not fixed like that of the American Congress: at the moment, the Prime Minister can ask the Queen for an election at any time, and most Prime Ministers do so before they are legally required to, usually after about four years. And if the governing party loses its majority in the House of Commons, a vote of no confidence in the government usually triggers an election. The coalition wants to change that for a number of reasons. Liberal Democrats for their part believe in “fixed-term Parliaments“: they have long wanted to remove the PM’s power to initiate elections, which they believe should happen at regular intervals even if the government changes in the meantime. But they also want to remove David Cameron’s ability to undermine the coalition by seeking an election they don’t want. For the Conservatives, abandoning that unilateral right only makes sense if, equally, the Liberal Democrats lose the ability to leave the coalition and join with other parties to force an election. Since non-Conservatives are 53% of the House, settling on 55% as the threshold suits both parties’ aims admirably. But it is precisely this transparently partisan benefit that makes the proposal highly controversial. I’ve written against it myself.

The other surprise proposal is to grant anonymity to rape suspects, a policy that was adopted a few years ago by the Liberal Democrat conference but which most political junkies, never mind the general public, were unaware of. Women who report being raped have been granted anonymity since the 1970s, when the protection was brought in to encourage them to come forward, but this is a rare exception to the principle here that justice should be in public. There is a strand of opinion that thinks defendants in rape cases should be given “equal treatment” with their alleged victims; but strong resistance to this idea comes especially from feminists who see the policy as pandering to the idea that false rape allegations are widespread. The 55% policy will be the first of these to cause real turbulence, as it’s an immediate priority for this year and was trailed in the Queen’s speech – which you can see in its entirety here. There’s no suggestion of a criminal law, sexual offences or criminal justice bill in this session, so the row about rape anonymity will be postponed for the moment.

David Laws | Liberal Democrats | Alex Folkes | fishnik.com | CreativeCommons

But nonetheless, the coalition has already run into a serious, unexpected difficulty. Its early star was David Laws, the rather dashing Liberal Democrat and new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. This is always an important post: it’s effectively deputy to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and is itself a Cabinet post often held by future Chancellors such as John Major and Alistair Darling. But because the Chief Secretary is specifically responsible for public spending levels, it’s even more important than usual at this time of budget cutting. It was Laws who announced the detail of the government’s immediate savings package at the Treasury last week, and it was he who defended them in Parliament. He’s become the pin-up of fiscal conservatives who admire his parsimony in small things as well as big. So it comes as a massive blow to both him and the new government that this Saturday morning the Daily Telegraph reported his having claimed expenses to pay rent to his partner, contrary to Parliamentary rules, since 2006.

The scandal seems to be dividing opinion. David Laws clearly wanted to keep his relationship private; and neither his sexuality nor his desire for privacy are matters of scandal or controversy in Britain, where people increasingly take pride in seeing such things as irrelevant to public life. Some, and not only Liberal Democrats, defend Laws on the basis that he was simply trying to maintain his privacy and that, by claiming for the rent he paid to his partner he actually saved public money, as compared with what he could have claimed had the pair openly bought and shared a property. Certainly, Laws is attracting some sympathy on a human level and because his visible competence has made him look the right man, in the right job at the right time. But this is a very serious business. Laws seems to have plainly broken the rules, which since 2006 have prohibited payments from expenses going to MPs’ partners, and this exposure resurrects the poisonous expenses scandal of last year. Not only that: this apparent abuse of taxpayers’ money comes from the very man – a rich man, at that, who it’s said retired from the City, a millionaire, at 28 – whose duty it is to make the nation face the need for austerity in the use of public funds. This is a sad story of a talented man brought down by a collision between 1950s-style prejudice, or the fear of it, and the fierce new mood of fiscal rectitude in Britain. I’m afraid he’ll probably have to go; perhaps even has gone before you read this.

Maybe next time there’ll be a little less politics to write about, and a little more room for pubs.

A Pint of Bitter: UK Coalition government, and how men’s relationships matter is a post from: Anglotopia.net

This has been a truly unusual, historic week in British politics. As I delivered Labour’s final leaflet in my London constituency, I felt Labour was coming back slightly. Not enough to win, perhaps, but enough to stave off disaster. Election night itself was reasonably dramatic – we spent hours wondering whether the Conservatives might still gain a majority in Parliament – but it was a night that teased us. By dawn it was clear that the Tories hadn’t quite made it. We would have a “hung Parliament”, no party having a majority. With 306 of the 650 seats, David Cameron’s Conservatives would have great difficulty governing as a minority; Labour, with only 258 seats, would have no chance of doing so. The only stable majority could be formed by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats somehow working together – and that was the truth that politicians grasped early last Friday.

Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Nick Clegg was first, saying the Conservatives – with more seats and more votes than anyone else – had the right to prove they could govern in the national interest. David Cameron acted quickly and more boldly than expected, making a comprehensive offer to open talks about forming a stable government. Gordon Brown emerged from 10 Downing Street to say the other parties could take what time they needed – and that he was ready to talk to Nick Clegg if Tory-LibDem negotiations foundered. The horse-trading began.

The BBC's Nick Robinson reporting on Cameron's "big offer" | Tom Page | CreativeCommons

On Saturday it looked as though agreement could happen very quickly. Tory and Liberal Democrat teams got on well and were clearly engaged in real detail. The mood music was so good that, by Sunday, we wondered why a deal hadn’t been closed. And on Monday, it seemed almost to fall apart when the LibDem MPs met and asked for clarification on various items. At that point, Gordon Brown’s machiavallian instincts showed one final time, as, announcing his own departure as Labour leader, he in effect invited Liberal Democrats to speak to him instead. Was it a last, desperate throw by a man clutching at a last few months of power? Or was it just a low tactic to poison Tory-LibDem relations and damage the new government from the start? We may never know. But for a moment it did throw everything into confusion. Most Liberal Democrats dream, in truth, of an arrangement with Labour, not the Tories, and they found siren Labour calls hard to resist. What killed it was partly the arithmetic – Labour and the LibDems together would still be a majority, dependent on the tolerance of Scottish, Welsh and Irish nationalists – and partly the resistance of a number of prominent Labour MPs for whom clinging on to power would damage Labour and give the country unstable government. Reality took hold again yesterday, when the Tory-LibDem contract was finally signed.

Gordon Brown left Downing Street to offer his resignation to Her Majesty – early on Tuesday evening,  in a final touch of spin, to deny David Cameron a “new dawn” arrival at Number 10. Even before his deal was signed, David Cameron was clearly the man most likely to command a Parliamentary majority, and was summon by the Queen to form a new government as Prime Minister. And we now know the rough shape of that new government. Under Cameron, Nick Clegg will be deputy Prime Minister, and a number of Liberal Democrats will be in Cabinet, including Vince Cable as Business Secretary and David Laws as Chief Secretary to the Treasury – the cutter-in-chief role.

Downing Street | CreativeCommons

The political significance of this week is huge. It marks the end of New Labour, at least in this manifestation. A political era that began with the death of Labour leader John Smith in 1994, and dominated by Tony Blair and his modernising philosophy, will be over. It is the first time Conservatives have defeated Labour to return to power since Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But much, more more historic is the fact that this will be the first peacetime coalition, and the first time Liberals have been in government, since 1935. The political effects are likely to be enormous, too. The Conservative party has survived the civil war that has lasted since Margaret Thatcher was removed from office, and has finally recovered enough to take office. But it remains damaged, without the swagger and confidence it once had. How it fares from now will turn on how well  ministers deal with the serious fiscal position they face, and on David Cameron’s performance as Prime Minister. There’s an upside to the compromises he has had to make to Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats: he is free from the shackles of his own campaign pledges, and can discard his less popular policies. He’s been dealt an unusual hand, and has the chance to play it with skill.

The Liberal Democrats have achieved office for the first time, a development that marks their coming of age. I expect their popularity to decrease somewhat as they lose their opposition identity and are tainted by power. I also think there’s a risk they might even split: tensions are bound to surface in a party divided between the left-leaning majority and the more genuinely centrist group around Nick Clegg. They’ve also lost their dream of proportional representation, not just this time but I suspect for some time. Britain has tasted, this week, what coalition politics is like, and most people have disliked the backroom wheeler-dealing it involves. Exciting though the spectacle may be, it seems undemocratic. I’d be surprised if, at the next election, the two main parties do not increase their share of the vote. There’s a vocal lobby for proportional representation, but I doubt many people support it. We can probably forget it for a while.

President Obama calls David Cameron | Prime Minister's Office | CreativeCommons

Labour is defeated, but not crushed, to the relief of many of its supporters, and its leader Gordon Brown – a divisive and poor leader – is leaving. Opposition to a government making deep cuts and facing certain difficulty gives it a big opportunity to rebuild, and opportunity made all the greater with the effective removal of its competitor on the centre-left. Ideally, Labour would take some time to rethink its new direction. Gordon Brown, with his last-ditch resignation as leader to lure the LibDems into talks, may have done Labour a final bad turn by accelerating its leadership contest unnecessarily. David Miliband is the front runner already, and most expect the fight to be between him and Ed Balls. I’d caution, though, against ruling out Jon Cruddas, who I think stands a good chance of leading Labour by this autumn.

If the British constitution is a fine old stately home, this week we’ve revisited a disused and dusty wing. Absence made the heart grow briefly fonder. I expect, though, that we’ll only visit again if we must.

A Pint of Bitter: a hung Parliament, and a new kind of government is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Last time I wrote, we’d just had the first election debate and it looked as though Nick Clegg’s strong performance promised a breakthrough for his party. It did: Cleggmania swept the country and the Liberal Democrats leapt in the polls, ahead of Labour, making this the most unusual general election for years. It looks now as though the LibDem peak has passed: Labour may have just squeaked back into second place. But this is still the most three-cornered election in living memory, and looks like resulting indecisively in a hung Parliament. We’ll see next week.

Adam Tinworth | CreativeCommons

The campaign has been a disaster for Labour, in all frankness. Gordon Brown always had an uphill fight to stay in power, after 13 years in office and against the background of the credit crunch, the recession and a ballooning national debt. He had to take huge risks. But they’ve just not worked for him. The big gamble was to agree to televised debates, but he’s not landed the kind of punches he was hoping for. He’s not performed all that badly in fact: last night’s final debate was his most combative and best performance even though he looked shattered. But his hope was always to blow David Cameron in particular away with his gravitas, and with luck to embarrass or browbeat the Tory leader into some sort of blunder – perhaps last night, when the questions focused on the economy. It never happened, and most viewers think Brown lost all three debates. Otherwise the campaign has been lacklustre at best. And “bigotgate” didn’t help. Gordon Brown, visiting Rochdale and being cornered by Gillian Duffy, dealt pretty well with her policy concerns, concerns that included the deficit and immigration. But, forgetting to switch off his TV microphone when he got into his getaway car, he was caught calling her a “bigoted woman” and seeming to blame his staff for what he thought a disastrous encounter. See his reaction when his words are put back to him. It’s just ridiculous, you might say.

Dominic Campbell | CreativeCommons

Most people’s immediate reaction was to think this would destroy him completely, and that Labour would plunge further in the polls – but oddly, that’s not happened. Why not? First I think because most British voters are pretty forgiving about small hypocrisies and muck-ups. We know we ourselves are two-faced, and might smile at someone in public, only to insult them in private. Second, many people seem to me to have felt the broadcasters overdid this story – it got wall-to-wall coverage, and I think many people started to feel it was unfair to Brown. On top of that, “bigotgate” happened at a fortunate time for Brown, just as the final debate was about to happen and just as voters’ minds are turning away from surface and presentation, and, finally, towards policy and substance – causing a certain frustration with this sort of trivia. Lastly, though, and less reassuringly for Gordon Brown, many people already dislike him and think him a rude, out of touch bully and boor. His poll ratings may just be incapable of sinking much further because he’s already down to Labour’s 25%+ core vote.

Dominic Campbell | CreativeCommons

David Cameron, though, must also be hugely frustrated: with such an unpopular government, such a widely disliked Prime Minister and with such a difficult economic outlook, he and his party should be streets ahead by now, with over 40% in the polls. Stuck at about 35% as I write, he looks likely to have the most seats in the next Parliament, but no majority. If that’s next week’s result it will be a most unpleasing kind of victory for the Conservatives – and will feel more like a sort of defeat. What’s happened? The global economic crisis is what happened. Of course in one way that’s helped David Cameron. But in another, it threw his 2005 strategy off balance. He had presented himself as a fresh, optimistic face of a more open, modern Conservatism, committed to public services and the environment. But circumstances have forced him back towards an older, drier, more money-minded Toryism focused on cutting public spending and resisting immigration and Europe. That’s been an unpopular stance for at least 15 years, and precisely what Cameron had succeeded in dragging his party away from. Their retreat to that place left a gap for the fresh, optimistic Nick Clegg to fill – which he did.

So what happens now? There’s always the unexpected – who knows what further gaffes Gordon Brown is capable of. But I expect Tory support to firm up a little as undecideds decide. Labour support may also firm, and LibDem poll support is likely to fall. All Labour supporters must hope so, because if they really did come third, as has seemed likely, that would be a terrible, historic defeat. If the Conservatives manage somehow to scrape a majority, the LibDems would have a good moral claim to be the real opposition; there might be no way back, for Labour, from there. If on the other hand we get a hung Parliament – as seems likely – history will be made anyway. Unless the Tories are close enough to a majority to try to govern on their own, we may have a period of coalition government or at least inter-party cooperation, something that would change the political game here dramatically, and perhaps for good.

Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

Who would govern with whom? That’s the big question. Under our constitutional system, Gordon Brown as the incumbent will have the first chance to negotiate another party’s support. But if Labour and the LibDems can do a deal, it’s almost certain someone other than him would be Prime Minister – and the most likely someone else is Nick Clegg. If they can’t, Clegg may negotiate with Cameron – but if he does he may well split his party at the moment of its greatest triumph. The political possibilities are awesome, and the week after the vote looks like being much, much more dramatic than the week before. Is it obvious I’ve no idea what’s going to happen? Almost anything could.

A Pint of Bitter: The final British Eelction debate, “bigotgate” – and the least predictable election for decades is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I wouldn’t say there was election fever in Britain; most of the election campaign’s first week has been uninspiring, dull stuff without real controversy or passion. That may be because the two big parties both have such visible weaknesses (Gordon Brown, for Labour; most things except David Cameron, for the Conservatives); it may be because of the general mood of quiet, surly anger against politicians not entirely caused by the expenses scandal of last year, but very much sharpened by it. It may be that this election will turn out in the end to be truly dramatic, but that the drama will begin only after the votes have been counted – that is my suspicion. In fact, though, general elections usually begin like this, with a sluggish yawn. At some point we forget the dull ache all over and fever breaks out. Perhaps that’s now happened after Thursday’s debate. More of that below.

Sarah Teather and Vince Cable with Brent activists | Liberal Democrats | Creative Commons

But first, the manifestos. Traditionally in the first week of the campaign each party issues a manifesto – a book or booklet outlining what its programme will be for the next Parliament. What it would do in government, in other words. Manifestos are mysterious things, hugely varying in length and style, and anyway not much read by voters. It used to be that you had to buy them, if you were interested (by law the parties had to sell them; they couldn’t give them away), so no one other than political geeks ever did. And manifestos only tell you so much: a party is in no way bound to carry out its manifesto pledges, and is likely to do many more things, if it gets power, than are contained in its pages. Look at Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 manifesto, for instance – you’ll find no mention of the privatisation agenda that became so important a component of Thatcherism, except for the suggestion of a partial sale of one small organisation. If you’re interested in British political history, you can read old manifestos here. Another interesting website is The Straight Choice, which has now collected and archived over a thousand British election leaflets.

David Cameron | Conservative Party | Creative Commons

This time, manifestos are online. Labour’s, much mocked for it Maoist imagery, promises to secure the fragile economic recovery, and to protect front-line public services, and to deliver constitutional reform including change to the electoral system and even work towards a written constitution. The Conservative Manifesto invites us to “join the government” and pledges to stop Labour’s planned national insurance rise for employers – a kind of payroll tax and to cut the deficit more quickly, while protecting the National Health Service. It promises tougher rules on immigration and a radically different approach on Europe, changing the law to protect the British constitution from EU encroachment. The Liberal Democrats promise fair taxes – including removing all those earning under ï¿¡10,000 a year from tax altogether – and, as they always do, substantial constitutional change including a move to proportional representation.

leaflets I've been sent in Brent Central

Locally, there’s not massive evidence of campaigning yet, at least in my part of London: Brent Central constituency is a rare Labour-LibDem marginal where two current MPs – Labour’s Dawn Butler and the LibDem Sarah Teather, who has the advantage of being one of her side’s most televised faces – fight each other because boundary changes have extinguished their existing seats. There have been a few leaflets, mainly from the LibDems, and there are a few posters around – but nothing at all from the Conservatives, which reflects the highly targeted way all the parties campaign these days. All the declared candidates for Brent Central are listed here, by the way. The leaders have as usual been touring the country wildly in what seems the most “presidential” campaign yet in the UK. This is a development many British people are depressed by: we want politics to be about parties and issues rather than about personalities, or at least we say we do. But somehow, election by election, the focus on the style and personalities of the leaders, and even of their wives, continues inexorably.

Which brings me to last night’s debate between the leaders – a truly historic moment in British politics, since we’ve never had such a thing before, a fact that may amaze Americans and Europeans for whom this sort of thing has long been a fixture. Why has it never happened before? Perhaps precisely because of our traditional preference for seeing politics as a team sport. More importantly, there’s never been agreement before now because it’s never been in the interests of all the party leaders to take part. Conventional wisdom here has been that whoever is in the lead can only lose from a debate: Tony Blair for instance avoided a debate in every election he fought, because he was streets ahead and had nothing to gain. This time, though, things are different. Gordon Brown wanted a debate because he is, or was, so far behind, needed to gamble on a game-changer and, more cynically, want to neutralise the Conservatives’ ability to outspend him in the campaign by focusing the whole election on the equalising format of television. The question is why David Cameron, who was so far ahead, agreed; I think the answer must be that, since he personally is by far his party’s strongest asset and Gordon Brown is by far Labour’s biggest problem, he was happy to make the election a man-to-man contest.

the very first UK TV leaders' election debate

But to comply with the requirement to achieve balance the broadcasters has to include the LibDem leader Nick Clegg – and last night he was the clear winner. You can watch the full 90 minute debate here. Clegg relaxed into the format much more quickly than did the other two, an impression that I think stuck in viewer’s minds even as the other men got into their strides. Although at times he hesitated and looked to his notes, he also on occasion managed to communicate to the audience in front of him and at home much more effectively than his opponents.

The strategy of the others was intriguing: David Cameron steered clear of strong attacks on Gordon Brown, his own polls apparently having told him that goes down badly with voters. But he’ll surely have to revise that before the next debate, having seemed relatively ineffectual in the face of Gordon Brown’s reasonably effective combativeness. He only really impressed in the way you might have expected from such a normally capable public performer right at the end with his prepared speech – though Frank Luntz, the American pollster who’s been hired by the Sun, has been saying this morning he felt that speech came over as too personal and “American” for British voters’ tastes. Brown certainly didn’t land the kind of blow he was hoping for – most people think he didn’t shine. But he’ll be delighted not to have been beaten by Cameron, and that Clegg has done so well. It might not help his candidate here in Brent, but the normal conventional wisdom here (which might not hold quite as usual this time, it should be said) is that LibDem success hurts the Tories more than it does Labour; plus, he’ll be hoping for tactical votes from those in Labour-Tory marginals who are attracted to Clegg (hence his keenness to tell us he “agrees with Nick”).

I think this debate has shaken up the campaign considerably. It wasn’t hugely exciting, but in imposing Nick Clegg so firmly on the scene, it may well shift votes. Clegg is already the most powerful liberal in Britain since Lloyd George. If he can perform as well as this in the next two debates, and avoids blunders, he could achieve his party’s most serious breakthrough yet and have a decisive influence in or over the next government. Remember, too, that his economic spokesman Vince Cable is the most popular and trusted major politician in the country, so you can expect to see them together as often as the LibDems can possibly manage it. A hung Parliament – where no party has a majority – was a real possibility even before last night. Now, it looks like the most likely outcome. And that could change Britain for good.

Just three weeks to go…

A Pint of Bitter: British Election Campaign Week 1 – Lib Dem Clegg wins first TV debate is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Last week’s budget wasn’t much to write abroad about – very few of us here expected it would be. In truth Alistair Darling had very little room for manoeuvre, Britain’s budget deficit being so high at just under ï¿¡170 billion. Some government backbenchers might have wanted to bribe the electors with a giveaway budget: one of the great Labour myths is that it lost the 1970 election because the then Chancellor, Roy Jenkins, opted for fiscal rectitude in his pre-election budget, rather than indulgence. The Jenkins path was forced upon Darling, though. There was simply no money to give away. In any event, the now unsackable and uncontrollable Chancellor clearly believes that the voters are fed up of, and unimpressed by, the apparently dishonest financial sleight of hand Gordon Brown consistently used when he was responsible for the country’s finances. So he opted for solidity by choice and necessity. Tax on cider has gone up, which won’t please the West Country – but then the Labour vote there is low anyway. The rest of the budget was small beer. Even so, conservative and business commentators lambasted him for not doing more to convince the world he plans to reduce the UK’s national debt, which is only going up. My one complaint was that he did not renew his tax on bankers’ bonuses – surely that would have been a popular move, and would have brought in a useful couple of billion.

Alistair Darling | HM Treasury | CreativeCommons

All of which set the scene for this week’s “Chancellors’ Debate” on Channel 4, which you can see extensive highlights of here. As expected, the Liberal Democrat Vince Cable was perceived to “win” the debate. Even a few years ago there were signs that Cable had a rare political gift – I remember the American pollster Frank Luntz spotting in BBC focus groups that he was notably more trusted than other economic spokesmen. Since the global crisis, though, his reputation has soared along with the deficit, and Liberal Democrats must wish, desperately, that he were their leader. A couple of years ago they dumped their old one (Ming Campbell, who’d got the top job off the back of his star performance as foreign spokesman, leading opposition to the Iraq war) precisely for being too old, and replaced him with the less solid, but more telegenic Nick Clegg. Clegg has been doing reasonably well recently but is still untested, while the other old stager Cable would be the obvious choice now.

Vince Cable | Alex Folkes/Fishnik/Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

What’s strange about the current political situation, though, is that Alistair Darling’s boringly “stolid” strategy seems to be paying off – and the Conservative challenge to have become distinctly wobbly. It’s very hard to interpret recent polling because some polls still show Conservative leads of around 10%, and the average lead is something like 6 or 7%; but the common feeling of commentators is that that lead is narrowing. Governments here usually narrow opposition leads during election campaigns, so if current trends continue, we may have the closest general election in Britain for decades. Why aren’t the Tories doing better? Surely, with the country’s finances in such a state and against a tired government with an unloved leader, they should be roaring towards power? Tony Blair’s old strategist Alastair Campbell thinks the answer is that their offering is confused; here’s the Times piece he refers to, which agrees. I think the problem for the Conservatives is that they’ve been caught out badly by the banking crisis and recession – in a way, rather like the Liberal Democrats have.

George Osborne | Ewan McIntosh | CreativeCommons

In 2005 when he became leader, David Cameron launched the Tory party in a new direction, trying to ditch the old image of being in favour of cuts in public services and tax cuts for the rich (an approach that had lost them three elections running, don’t forget) in favour of a much more upbeat message of concern for the environment, health and the quality of life. But just as the Tories had successfully case off doom, gloom came to meet them. Now, events have forced their Shadow Chancellor George Osborne back into arguing for deeper, faster spending cuts, which is comfortable, natural territory for them, but means  they can’t help appearing to have turned one way then the other in recent years, with many voters not really knowing what they stand for. So far, so understandable. But they have also made errors, like allowing themselves still to be cast as tax-cutters for the rich. I’m a Labour supporter, so I’m naturally biased, but there is a real feeling here that some voters – especially fed-up previously Labour voters – are looking hard at the Conservatives and are less sure than they were about defecting. It’s not as obvious as it once seemed that they’ll win on May 6th. But who will? Will anyone?

The civil service is certainly planning for the possibility that no one will. This level of organisation for the eventuality of a hung parliament – one in which no party has a Parliamentary majority – is new, but surely sensible. The civil service is the one institution that can provide continuity and offer practical support to politicians if they need to hammer out an agreement for government this summer. The rule is, basically, that Gordon Brown continues in power until it’s clear he can’t, and someone else can, command a majority in Parliament. That could mean even if defeated, he stays in Downing Street for days or even weeks while he tries to put together some sort of deal with the Liberal Democrats. I’m not sure that a hung parliament would be a disaster for the country: a very close election will undoubtedly be good for political engagement here, and a minority government of either colour depending on Liberal Democrat support could be more stable and effective in dealing with the economic crisis than many fear. What would be damaging, though, is a prolonged period of uncertainty – especially if the leader of the biggest appears appears to be trying to hold on to power illegitimately. Whatever else happens, I hope we don’t go there.

The Seven Stars

Booze-wise, I was in the Seven Stars last week, in Carey Street just behind the Royal Courts of Justice. If I had to name London’s best pub, this is one of the three that come instantly to mind. It’s cosy in winter, and the simple, music-free inside is a brilliant place for conversation. The beer’s terrific (it’s Adnams plus a guest beer or two) and it’s worth ordering food here, too – they serve more interesting than usual pub food, which gives the place a really old-fashioned, almost “eighteenth century tavern” feel. It’s right opposite the back entrance to the High Court, so has a very legal theme – and a nice black cat, apparently called Thomas Paine. I’ll be back in the summer when the place is at its very best, with punters crowding the street outside. I wonder which of the three men above will be in Number 11 Downing Street by then – and how much my beer will cost.

A Pint of Bitter: Could Darling’s dullness and Tory wobbles give Britain a hung Parliament? is a post from: Anglotopia.net

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.

Downing Street | CreativeCommons

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.

Caribb | CreativeCommons

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.

CLF | CreativeCommons

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.

Inside the Lamb | Ewan-M | CreativeCommons

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: Brown’s plan for May 6th; the BA strike; and England’s Achilles heel is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I know I usually write about the political controversies and manoeuverings of the day: matters such as the taxes of Lord Ashcroft and the return of Labour in the polls do matter. But some things matter more, and I want to devote my words on this occasion entirely to the life and ideas of Michael Foot, who died this week aged 96. He was well known here in Britain as a politician from the 1950s to the 1980s, when he led the Labour Party, and as a writer. He’s a particularly English figure, less well known abroad: but no understanding of our politics especially since 1980 is complete without considering his career.

Michael Foot | Bob Naylor, CreativeCommons

Foot was born in Plymouth in 1913, into a family of Liberal Methodists, and the roundhead tradition of radical Christian dissent was a key influence on Foot – though he became a convinced atheist. His father was also an obsessive book buyer and reader, habits that rubbed thick on to young Michael, who steeped himself in the English romanticism of Byron and Shelley and who in later life wrote serious studies of Swift and H. G. Wells. He was an unusual, exceptionally literate and intellectual politician of a kind rarely seen. At Oxford he was first a left-wing Liberal, but became a socialist in the early 1930s. This was the time of the marked decline of the Liberal Party; socialism in all its forms had recently emerged, in Soviet Communism (which Foot rejected both then and throughout his life) and with the coming of Labour government in Britain in the 1920s. He was far from the first Liberal radical to join Labour, which must have seemed the “happening” party, as we’d now put it, for a young and passionate radical anxious for social justice, for peace and to oppose fascism.

Michael Foot in 1945 | Still from "The Way We Live" directed by Jill Craigie

He was a journalist for Tribune (for whom George Orwell also wrote, later) and then editor of the Evening Standard; during the war the short book Guilty Men, which he co-wrote in a few days with two colleagues, caused something of a sensation with its indictment of the pre-war appeasers – Chamberlain, Baldwin, Halifax and the rest. Then in 1945 he was elected to Parliament for Plymouth Devonport, which he held for ten years. During the 1950s Foot was a prominent “Bevanite”: a supporter of Aneurin (“Nye”) Bevan, the charismatic Welsh ex-miner and leader of the left who had established the National Health Service as health minister after the war but who had fallen out with the Labour leadership first over prescription charges, then the H-bomb. Foot was vehemently opposed to Britain’s adoption of nuclear weaponry and felt shocked and bewildered when Bevan famously drew back from outright unilateral disarmament in 1957. But he still revered his mentor; and when Bevan died in 1960, Foot re-entered Parliament at the resulting Ebbw Vale by-election. And used his time in opposition to write the first volume of his biography of the great man, arguably his most important literary work, completed in the early seventies after a period spent as Labour’s most prominent backbench critic under the first government of Harold Wilson.

Nye Bevan in 1954 | Associated Press

Foot then surprisingly embarked upon an career as an ultra-loyalist minister in the 1970s under  Wilson and then Jim Callaghan, first as employment minister, then negotiating with the Liberals to keep the Labour government afloat. But it sank in the end; and in the early years of Margaret Thatcher’s rule, Labour turned sharply left – and began to tear itself apart. Tony Benn was the most prominent and controversial figure on the left, an austere, calculating figure, inspiring to some and sinister to others. The rise of Benn, and the resulting shift in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament and left-wing, anti-European policies enabled Foot to become leader. But he faced  constant internal opposition from Benn who, having welcomed Foot’s leadership, tried to both use and destroy it, and to capture Labour for his own ends. To much of the moderate left, Labour was no longer home, and Foot failed to prevent some MPs leaving to form the Social Democratic Party, now long gone but which can be seen as a forerunner of Tony Blair’s “New Labour” vision. Foot had failed to keep Labour united: and it went down to its worst, most notorious defeat in the general election of 1983.

Tony Benn | Nice Logo, CreativeCommons

To his credit, Foot had successfully faced down Tony Benn and he started the campaign to root out  “Militant”, an extraordinary Trotskyist sect that was attempting to take Labour over from within.  I thought then, and still think that Foot was wrong on all the big issues in the 1980s. I now realise though that Labour’s wasted years were less his fault than the fault of others. I can see that Foot and Bevan had a good case in the 1950s against Britain’s testing and making the bomb. But the 1980s would have been the wrong time to adopt unilateral nuclear disarmament and remove US bases. The United States and NATO had adopted a tough stance to Moscow’s increasing militarism, and unilateral desertion of that strategy by Britain would at best helped Kremlin hardliners delay their own disarmament. On Europe, to withdraw immediately, less than a decade after our joining, after the voters had decided overwhelmingly to stay in and without consulting them further, would have been a foreign policy disaster. Yet it was Labour’s policy under Michael Foot.

Even so, I think he has important things to teach us. He consistently wanted international control of nuclear weapons, and their ultimate abolition – admirable aims, and in my view it is right for Britain to support Barack Obama now in his efforts to move us just a few short steps along that road. And perhaps now it is finally right for Britain to ask whether it is right to remain a nuclear weapons state. On Europe, all but a few on the Labour side have now abandoned Foot’s thinking, and I would certainly not argue for Euroscepticism. But he reminds us that Euroscepticism is not an intrinsically Conservative attitude and that liberal internationalism does not require support for all the works of Brussels. Michael Foot was a sturdy romantic whose passion and idealism deserve our respect, and whose writing will remain rightly admired. His was a very English strain of radicalism, and I don’t think it’s right to assume his ideas are dead. Foot’s thinking represents a strong underlying current of independence and dissent that you can still find among some Tories as well as in green, libertarian and anti-capitalist circles. I expect it to attach before long to some new great movement – and for Foot to be rediscovered and referenced in a generation to come. if you’d like to know more, listen to this excellent Radio 4 programme about his life.

Barring the death of some other political giant, normal service will be resumed next time.

A Pint of Bitter: Michael Foot, 1913-2010; writer, minister, leader is a post from: Anglotopia.net

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.

Elliott Morley | Steve Punter | CreativeCommons

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.

The White Bear, Kennington

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.

Piers Morgan | thisiscow | CreativeCommons

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.

The Star, St. John's Wood

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: MPs in the dock, a journalist questioned – and Gordon’s brown sugar is a post from: Anglotopia.net

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 Old Mitre

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.

Henry Bloomfield | CreativeCommons

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.

The King's Head

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.

John Terry | zawtowers | CreativeCommons

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.

A Pint of Bitter: Growth at last for Gordon; England’s captain John Terry with his shorts down is a post from: Anglotopia.net

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.

The Windmill, Cricklewood

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.

Hampstead Theatre bar

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.

Center for American Progress | CreativeCommons

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.

The bar at the Royal Festival Hall

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.

A Pint of Bitter: Choudary banned, Blair and Iraq (again) – and UK joblessness down is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Happy New Year! Snow is on the ground again in London. It’s not like much of the rest of the country: my parents are actually snowed in, up North. There’s no infrastructural breakdown here, apart from the predictable tube delays. But cold, it certainly is. Ideal weather for settling down with a warming pint of winter beer somewhere like the St. Stephen’s Tavern, right by Westminster tube station, where Francesca and I enjoyed a pint of Pickled Partridge. This pub is much better than you’d think, being in such a tourist-grabbing spot practically underneath Big Ben. It’s plushly Victorian, very welcoming and has good beer – I like it. As do Scots musicians in kilts and the gin-drinking ladies who admire them. It was New Year’s Day. It doesn’t seem a very political pub, though – for that, I recommend the Red Lion, just round the corner opposite Downing Street.

St. Stephen's Tavern

Twenty-ten may only be minutes old, but believe it or not, Gordon Brown’s leadership is in question yet again. There’s been constant muttering: Labour MPs and Labour supporters know their party would be likely to do better with someone else at this year’s general election, and crucially, no one in Britain can imagine him serving as PM until 2014. He survived a serious crisis last June, when one of his Cabinet resigned, calling for a change at the top. Brown was vulnerable then – I thought he’d resign – but the Foreign Secretary David Miliband (much admired by Hillary Clinton) thought better of challenging Brown at that moment – he “bottled out”, as his critics would put it. I and many others thought Brown’s survival then made him safe until the election. But two former ministers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, astonished everyone on Wednesday by calling for a secret ballot of Labour MPs to decide once and for all whether Gordon Brown should lead Labour on polling day.

Downing Street | Creative Commons

In truth, this was an attempt to remove him, veiled only flimsily. It didn’t work. The coup was ineptly timed – Labour MPs were e-mailed the idea just as Gordon Brown was giving an unusually strong performance at Prime Minister’s question time in Parliament – and failed to trigger the ministerial resignations it aimed at provoking. It was much too narrowly based, coming from the New Labour right rather than an alliance of the right, centre and left, which could unseat Brown. And it’s come far too late, with only weeks left before Brown must go to the country. If Hoon and Hewitt really wanted, as they said, to settle the leadership question, then they’ve succeeded. Gordon Brown is now surely unremovable internally. The tepid loyalty displayed by some of his Cabinet weakens him politically outside the Labour Party, though: David Miliband could only say

I am working closely with the prime minister on foreign policy issues and support the re-election campaign for a Labour government that he is leading

a tactically bad response that surely damages his future. I think he’s missed his chance to be Prime Minister, and will never have another. Worse for UK PLC, Alistair Darling made the bare statement that

The prime minister and I met this afternoon and we discussed how we take forward economic policies to secure the recovery. I won’t be deflected from that.

What international markets and credit rating firms think of that evidence of unity at the top of H.M. Government, as they scrutinise Britain’s deficit-reduction plans, I don’t know.

Possible fans of Anjem Choudary | corono | Creative Commons

There was just time before the New Year Coup for another media storm to be shrewdly created by Britain’s leading Islamist, Anjem Choudary. He announced the intention of his group “Islam4UK“, which wants the UK to convert wholesale to radical Islam and to be subject to sharia law, to hold a procession in the market town of Wootton Bassett. It’s not a stronghold of Islam. It’s the nearest town to the RAF Lyneham, where the bodies of British soliders killed in Afghanistan land on return to the UK, and the public have taken to lining the streets as a mark of respect as their remains are driven through the town. There’s little doubt this obviously provocative march, if it was ever seriously planned, will be prevented. The Home Secretary Alan Johnson has already said he’ll stop it. But Choudary has succeeded in what was no doubt his primary aim, of gaining publicity for his strange outfit. It’s difficult to know how seriously to take him: few Muslims will agree with much he says, and his ideas are so extreme, they are unlikely to have any wide appeal. But the connection of Islamist ideology with violence, and that fact that a few vulnerable people can be susceptible to radicalisation and extremism in the service of mad ideas, means his activities can’t be dismissed as harmless crankery.

The Cittie of Yorke

Before I go, I should mention the Cittie of Yorke, a fine, quirky old pub on High Holborn, just by the entrance to Gray’s Inn, where I enjoyed a beer a few days ago. The small booths in the main, back bar are packed with young lawyers and Bar students if you don’t take your seat by 5.30. It’s a place with many memories for me, of drunken nights worrying about advocacy tests, and is one of the few grand old London pubs to have improved in recent times – the Sam Smith’s beer (real ale, but not with a great reputation among drinkers) has improved, there’s not a bad wheat beer alternative, and reasonable food is served. This is quite a good stop for visitors to legal London who are interested in seeing young professional London getting plastered in quaint olde surroundings. I don’t expect to see Anjem Choudary in there. I expect he’d close it down; which is one more reason to oppose him.

A Pint of Bitter: Gordon Brown survives brief blizzard Coup Attempt, Islam in the UK and Much More! is a post from: Anglotopia.net

What’s your image of Christmas in England? I bet it involves a crisp layer of snow underfoot, or at least a white scene visible from the windows of a cosy house as you tuck into your eighteenth mince pie (my mum’s are especially good).  Much as we’d all love a white Christmas here, it’s a most rare, elusive thing. I can’t remember one – in the sense of there being fresh snow on the ground on Christmas Day itself – since the early 1970s. Whether it’s the global warming they failed to tackle at Copenhagen, a shift in the earth’s axis or something, Christmas just seems a tiny little bit early for snow in England these days, although snow by early January is not nearly so uncommon. That week or two seems to make a lot of difference.

Northwick Park underground station

And perhaps it’s just as well, because another great English tradition is that as soon as it does snow, the entire country’s infrastructure instantly collapses and no one can go anywhere. This year, as you know, snow has come early for a change – and so has the resulting “travel chaos”. I’ll be driving from London to not far from Manchester on Christmas Eve, and expect the normal three to four hour journey to take more like six hours. I suppose it allows us to have a good old English moan. And at least the pre-Christmas tradition of parties and boozing wasn’t interrupted: my main Christmas “do” this year was in Pinner – on the very north-western edge of London – with colleagues from the hospital radio station I volunteer for, Radio Northwick Park. We got through an unexpected amount of Europe’s wine at Café Rouge before carrying on with beer at the Queen’s Head pub, where they were serving an excellent rich and ruddy Christmas ale, Batemans’ Rosey Nosey.

From yuletide traditions to political traditions, and one we’ve not had here in Britain: TV debates at election time. Unlike in the States, where Presidential debates are expected, they don’t happen in Britain, mainly because the leader whose party is ahead in the polls has felt they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose from such an encounter. But perhaps because Gordon Brown is so far behind in the opinion polls, he’s decided he should take the big risk of agreeing to debates; and his Conservative opponent David Cameron can’t afford to run scared. So at next year’s general election, there’ll be a series of three 90-minute debates, one on each of the BBC, ITV and Sky. And each debate will in fact be a three-way affair including the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, as well as the two main contenders.

Nick Clegg | Liberal Democrats | CreativeCommons

That in fact is the least discussed yet I think most important effect of the debates: they will give Nick Clegg exposure on equal terms with the two main party leaders, and (unless he performs abysmally) are bound to boost his standing and that of his third party. In an election that could yet be very close, that effect may be significant. If I were Clegg, I’d also be pressing for an economic debate between the parties’ Treasury spokesmen (something that has happened before) which would be a great showcase for Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ strongest asset, whose reputation has risen throughout the recession. Anyway, the debates are Nick Clegg’s best Christmas present for many years. Of the “big two”, David Cameron is the one with more to lose: the long format may help Gordon Brown demonstrate some of the substance and depth his supporters claim, and they must hope he can expose Cameron as superficial, glib and arrogant in comparison. Is Brown capable of landing a killer blow? He is a heavyweight, and anything is possible: the debates are a risk well worth his taking. But he needs a knock-out blow. If I were advising David Cameron I’d tell him to keep calm, float like a butterfly and just make sure the desperate Prime Minister’s big clunking fist doesn’t connect with his chin. If he stays on his feet and does not allow Clegg to outshine him, he’ll have achieved all he needs to.

The Speaker, Westminster

Talking of Westminster things, one of London’s very best pubs and an excellent place to visit if you’re near Parliament or Westminster Abbey is The Speaker, on the corner of Great Peter Street and Abbey Orchard Street, which was looking very seasonal and celebratory last night as I downed yet more Rosey Nosey with some old civil service friends. If you’re interested, the beer is available outside the UK now; the pub, though, remains firmly in Westminster. It’s named after the Speaker of the House of Commons, of course.

Infuriatingly, it looks as though the cold patch will be over by Thursday, giving way to the usual grey and damp rather than white Christmas, with just a bit of slush to remind us what might have been. A pity. Midnight on Christmas Eve, when everyone’s arrived wherever they’ll be spending the next 48 hours, would be the perfect time for the air to chill and the flakes to fall. It could happen one day. While we wait, have a good Christmas 2009. I expect to: I’ll be reading, watching the BBC and downing Christmas pudding (if I can manage it after the turkey, pork and stuffing) and a lot of those mince pies. I’ll see you again in general election year, 2010.

A Pint of Bitter: England’s Snow, Pies and Nick Clegg’s Present is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Would he bash the bankers? And how hard? That was the question everyone was asking here this week in advance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s “Pre-Budget Report”, which Alistair Darling gave in the House of Commons on Wednesday. By the wonders of the interwebs, you can see his statement or read the full published report. The big financial and fiscal event of the year in the UK is the budget itself in the Spring, when the Chancellor sets new levels of tax and (if he can) offers new public spending commitments; but he also traditionally makes this interim report which has gained special importance this year partly because of the approaching election – if there’s time for a proper budget next year it’ll be a purely political one rather than having much real economic significance – and partly because of growing public unease about this year’s bonus round for London’s rich bankers.

H.M. Treasury | CreativeCommons

All the focus on bankers actually obscured the big picture, which is that Britain, with its huge budget deficit, faces serious public spending cuts in years ahead – and tax increases now. Everyone will soon notice this, either because they’re paying more tax, national insurance contributions (in theory a sort of special tax meant to pay for the NHS and social security, but which in reality affects people like just another “stream” of income tax) or VAT, because their public sector pay is held down or because of cuts in local services. The real political argument is not about whether austerity is needed – it’s simply about whether fiscal wisdom requires the cuts to come sooner (the Conservative position) or whether economic recovery requires them to come later (the government line). And who should pay most. Thankfully I can just about afford still to eat at places like Medcalf, in Islington’s Exmouth Market, an old butcher’s shop now converted into a cool and chichi eatery that serves a decent pint of Adnams beer, too. The kind of restaurant, a little further east, where lunch costs an awful lot more, may now “suffer”, however.

Medcalf | King Coyote | CreativeCommons

Britain’s banks have all, one way or another, benefited from taxpayer support over the last couple of years, and the whole UK financial services industry – previously thought of as a huge success story – would have collapsed had it not been for public funds. Yet Britain’s banks have seemed determined to award their best-paid staff massive bonuses again this Christmas, just as in the mad boom times – even the board of RBS, propped up by billions of our tax pounds and owned by the government, was threatening only last week to resign if Alistair Darling blocked its bonus plans. Many people here boil with anger at the idea that the bailout should fund the high-roller lifestyles of a few people in the City; and the bankers’ argument, that big bonuses are needed to keep these “talented” people in London rather than New York or Zurich is simply laughed at if raised in the pub, City “talent” having helped cause the financial crash in the first place.

Well, if they still want to pay those bonuses, they can. But it’ll cost them. Darling announced a new tax, not on the recipients of the bonuses, but on the banks that pay them: if a bank pays anyone a bonus of more than £25,000 this year, it will have to pay a levy to the government of 50% of the excess. Predictably, this has angered rich people in the City, though strangely enough they oppose it both on the grounds it will make them leave Britain and on the grounds that it won’t work. Serious critical analysis from the talented? Or mere gut resentment from the spoiled rich? I know what I think.

If the economic outlook weren’t gloomy enough, the residents of my home town Warrington also have to cope with the news that they have Britain’s worst quality of life. Apparently. To be fair to the Audit Commission, it’s not to blame for “branding” Warrington in this way; the media is, for the way it’s reported this. But both the exercise itself and the reporting have something absurd to them. The criteria used by the Audit Commission build in serious elements of relativity and quality-blindness: it is not the amount of crime that counts, for instance, but the reoffending rate among those young people who do offend, however many or few of them there are; and whether their ethnic profile matches that of the community. I think it must follow that Warrington could improve its rating by catching fewer repeat offenders, and perhaps letting them off selectively by race. And it is not how well Warrington assesses children with “special educational needs” that counts (how could that be measured?) but how many of the resulting “statements” are issued within 26 weeks. It follows that Warrington could improve by doing them worse, but quicker. Hardly surprising, given this sort of tick-box “performance management” approach, that Warrington should now suddenly be “red flagged”, in strange contrast to last year. Warrington is far from paradise, but (although I’ll avoid doing a Boris by naming anywhere else) anyone who says it’s the worst place in Britain to live simply proves there are many other towns they’ve never visited.

Inside the Ring O' Bells, Lower Stretton, Warrington

The quality of some things in Warrington remains beyond doubt, though, including the Ring O’Bells, just south of the town on the way towards Antrobus, in Lower Stretton – an old-fashioned pub, this, with a real fire and a Christmas tree, and where Francesca and I went for a pint with my parents last weekend. I’m sure they’re looking forward to an early visit from the Audit Commission’s beer tasters, service speed acceleration inspectors, Christmas tree decoration-load assessors and fire warmth intensification measurers. And I dare say the Ring O’Bells will also be safe from anyone’s cuts.

A Pint of Bitter: Taxing, Cutting and Measuring – The State of Britain’s Finances is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I was delighted to discover a new drinking establishment very near me last week – it’s new to me, anyway – the Crown Hotel in Cricklewood. There are two bars, the busy front one and the pleasanter hotel bar at the side, with comfy sofas and real beer – which is why it appeals to me. It has speakers and music, which is a drawback (I like pubs to sound like pubs – of people and drink, not music) but otherwise it’s lovely. They even have newspapers for you to read.

sarflondondunc/CreativeCommons

And talking of the Crown (good link, eh?), last week the Queen opened Parliament, and gave her speech. It’s important not to confuse the Queen’s speech with the Queen’s Christmas broadcast – although, annoyingly, the British often do. MPs are elected all at once for a period of up to five years. But each year in November, a new “session” of Parliament begins, Her Majesty comes to sit on her throne in the House of Lords to open the session and tell Parliament about the legislative plans of her government. She doesn’t run the government of course – the speech is actually written by Gordon Brown and his colleagues – but she does appoint ministers, all government is carried on in her name and legislation becomes law only when she gives Royal assent (last refused by Queen Anne in 1707), which is why she has this ceremonial role.

UK Parliament/CreativeCommons

The ceremony tells you a lot about British history and the constitution in fact. The Queen comes to the House of Lords, not the Commons; no monarch has entered the House of Commons since Charles I in 1642 - and you may remember what happened to him. She sends her servant “Black Rod” to summon MPs to come to the Lords to hear her speech – symbolically they shut the door on him initially to show Parliament will assert its independence (a principle developed further in the United States as the separation of powers) but in due course Gordon Brown and the rest stand at the back of the Lords chamber, behind the massed ranks of peers in their ermine robes. The order of precedence effectively reverses power relations here: those who really govern are due least deference and fawning. That’s the way we like it. The BBC has a video of the Queen’s speech, and you can also see a BBC news report about the speech and a piece about it on the BBC’s leading current affair show, Newsnight.

UK Parliament/CreativeCommons

Otherwise, I was at the Calthorpe Arms on Gray’s Inn Road (a fine traditional local with decent Young’s ale) when I heard the news that Herman van Rompuy (who?) is to be the first “President of the European Council” now that the Lisbon Treaty is in force, and that Baroness Ashton (who’s not very well known here either) is to be the EU’s High Representative, or “foreign minister”. No one really knows how powerful these posts will be, though the fact that European leaders have chosen the low-profile Belgian prime minister rather than, say, Tony Blair (who was widely thought to be in the running) suggests the Presidency will be a coordinating rather than a leadership role. Cathy Ashton’s appointment has been received with some puzzlement: she does have some international experience, having been EU trade commissioner for a year, and no one doubts her competence. But hers has been a truly astonishing career, in which since 1997 she has reached the dizzy heights of the international stage by pure patronage and international haggling, without the need ever to stand for elected office. Oddly, in the very democratic United States, this might seem normal: Condy Rice was never elected to anything of course. And we’re used ourselves to unelected people sometimes holding powerful positions, like Lord Mandelson, who’s effectively deputy Prime Minister (he was previously an elected MP, at least). But to some of us, Baroness Ashton’s meteoric, never-elected progress seems slightly strange.

rjw1/CreativeCommons

Brown, now. Not Gordon Brown but Harry Brown, a British film in cinemas here now, and starring Sir Michael Caine (gosh, we’re keen on these titles, aren’t we?) as a old Royal Marine who once served in Northern Ireland but turns vigilante to rid his South London estate of drugs ‘n’ thugs. I’m not sure if it’ll be seen by many people outside the UK. It’s been screened at film festivals in Toronto and Santa Monica, and on its cinematic quality it certainly deserves to be seen. I’m uneasy though about the film’s social message: its view of London and youth crime is bleak in the extreme and it encourages a despairing, panicky view of “broken Britain” that I reckon we could do without. You can see the trailer here. If you do get to see it, notice how important the pub is in the story. I wouldn’t fancy drinking there myself, mind.

A Pint of Bitter: Queen and Crown, Baroness and Brown is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I celebrated Halloween at one of my local cinemas, the excellent Lexi in Kensal Rise (where they also occasionally broadcast opera live from the New York Met; I had to miss Turandot last Saturday, unfortunately). The film was Dracula – Prince of Darkness, an outstanding piece of vintage schlock horror from the legendary Hammer film studios. An appropriately scary time was had by all, but I didn’t win the outfit competition, unfortunately, and red wine had to do for blood. Notice, though, how the English tourists in this film venture naively into the mitteleuropäisch unknown, only to meet their doom. Less than week later on 5 November, bonfires raged in London and fireworks cracked, to celebrate the torture and execution in 1606 of the traitor Guy Fawkes – an Englishman trained in Europe in the use of explosives, who as everyone knows tried to blow up Parliament. I know of no reason why that treason should ever be forgot. Take that film, and that date, and you begin to understand the horror all things continental can inspire in these islands. Europe, to some, is inherently a plot against Britain: who ventures there is a goner; who returns, a traitor.

The Sutton Arms, Clerkenwell

Which is why David Cameron’s change of policy on Europe, announced on the evening of November 4th, was such a dangerous move, and why he’s ended up, extraordinarily, being compared to the notorious Nazi collaborators Quisling and Marshal Pétain.

Europe has long been a fault-line in British politics, especially in the Conservative Party – John Major’s government was seriously undermined by some of his own backbenchers who thought he’d given too much power to Brussels in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1991. Another Treaty, another Tory leader on the rack. The ill-advised European Constitution aimed to reform EU institutions and create the post of “President of Europe” – a job Tony Blair has been linked with – but was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. But undead, like Dracula it rose from the grave as the Treaty of Lisbon, with much of the same content. Tony Blair had promised the British people a referendum on the Constitution; Gordon Brown decided not to hold one on the Lisbon Treaty, a decision blasted by Conservative leader David Cameron who made a “cast-iron guarantee” that he’d hold one. Finally, after numerous to-ings and fro-ings, in the heart of Europe Czech President Vaclav Klaus was last week the final European leader to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, which will come into force by the end of this year.

On which news, David Cameron has said that, if elected Prime Minister next year, he will not, after all, give voters a referendum:

The Lisbon Treaty has now been ratified by every one of the twenty seven member states of the European Union, and our campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty is therefore over.

Why? Because it is no longer a Treaty: it is being incorporated into the law of the European Union.

What Cameron did promise, though, was first, that under him, never again would power be transferred to the EU without a referendum; second, he’d bring in a “National Sovereignty Act”  to “make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country” and thirdly, that he’d negotiate the transfer of power of social and employment policy back from Europe to Britain.

The Churchill Arms - Ian Varley, Creative Commons

This is a key moment in Cameron’s campaign to win power for the Conservatives. The new policy remains a radical one in truth: to secure an opt-out from European social law would be an important retreat by the UK from its engagement with the EU, and a major setback for European integration. It isn’t easy to see how he can successfully negotiate it without seriously undermining the UK’s membership. Yet the fury of his own supporters who wanted to see a referendum come what may shows the potential this issue has to destroy him and his government if he’s in Downing Street next year.

He’s absolutely right: a referendum now would be utterly pointless. The UK has now ratified this Treaty and cannot simply opt out of it now the whole EU will be based on it. That would be to leave the EU, which has never been his policy (though it is, openly or secretly, that of some of his Tory detractors). But that cuts no ice with hard-line Eurosceptics among his own ranks, who want a referendum – any sort of referendum – regardless. Talk of a referendum is just a sort of code, though. What the backlash against Cameron shows is that many of his own supporters are utterly committed to the “Eurosceptic” cause and his premiership, if it happens, will be just as troubled by them as John Major’s was. The slightest failure to “stand up to” the EU will lead to accusations that he’s been bitten by the bloodsucking vampires of Brussels, and calls for him to be hung, drawn and quartered.

The Waterman's Arms, Richmond

Drinking? I was outside the Sutton Arms in Clerkenwell, which is definitely the best part of this decent but overamplified pub. I also drank in the excellent and utterly untraitorlike Churchill Arms, an Irish-run pub in Notting Hill that’s as British as could be, and where the Red Fox autumn ale is outstanding. And finally I was in another good Irish pub, the Waterman’s Arms in Richmond, drinking Youngs Winter Warmer.

A Pint of Bitter: Eurotreason and plot! is a post from: Anglotopia.net

I promised you London; and London it is. One sure-fire way of winding up the English is to call London “London, England” as though any one is likely to confuse it with London, West Virginia or London, Arkansas. Yes, yes, yes, okay – there’s a London in Canada, a London in Australia and quite a few Londons in the States, as well as the famous one on the Thames. But they’re the ones that need further explanation, surely, at least from a British point of view. As it happens, though, even the national location of the London was questioned this week.

the view from North London - southwards from Islington

The biggest political and media event of the last couple of weeks was undoubtedly the appearance of Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, on the BBC’s political discussion programme Question Time. The BNP represents the anti-immigration (and many would say racist) far right in Britain. When it started in the 80s, the BNP was openly racist – and Griffin has in the past denied the Holocaust and been convicted of distributing racially inflammatory material. Since he became leader he has moderated its image, following the example of successful far-right parties in Europe, but most people think this is merely a tactic – and the BNP has only recently been forced by the courts to open its membership to non-whites. Against a background of serious dissatisfaction with mainstream political parties, this summer his party gained two seats in the European Parliament. Hence the controversial appearance on the BBC, which is legally bound to be politically impartial.

It has to be said that Griffin’s performance was pretty poor: in my view and that of many others, he was exposed pretty comprehensively as a bigot with negative views about non-whites and gays. Absurdly, he tried to wriggle out of saying whether he accepted the historical fact of the Holocaust by claiming European law prevents him from doing so, and he faced sustained attacks from the other panellists and from members of the audience. But what made him look even more ridiculous than the debate itself was his complaint afterwards that the show was unfair, the London audience being drawn from “a City that is no longer British” because “dominated by ethnic minorities”.

So I’ll be more tolerant in future of Americans who speak about London, England. At least they know what country London’s in.

Speaking of London’s essential Englishness and the changes it’s undergone, I’ve been doing lots of outside boozing these last few days, first at the Camden Head in Islington (it’s where my girlfriend, Francesca, lives) which serves good Cornish beer from Sharp’s Brewery and which makes ample provision for smokers – outdoors drinking, having been a summer-only pastime in England since time immemorial has become fashionable all year round since smoking inside pubs was banned a couple of years ago. Only hardy souls will keep doing it all throught the winter. But in mild late October as the clocks go back, Londoners are grabbing their last chance to sit outside in comfort. My other watering-hole recently was the Prince of Wales, not far from Victoria Station, which probably is best on the outside, although it’s also friendly and has very good beer – including this excellent one from a new London brewery, Sambrook’s. Notice the box selling poppies for the annual poppy appeal, which might be a good cue to mention this interesting anti-BNP website.

inside the Prince of Wales

Finally, one of the country’s most traditional institutions is faced with possible sudden change and contemplating an uncertain, divided future. The Church of England has long been a compromise of a typically English kind – in a sense Catholic, claiming to represent the continuing tradition of Christianity since it arrived in England, and in a sense Protestant, since it rejects the authority of the Pope and Rome. It’s a kind of national church, with the Queen nominally at its head (it was founded by Henry VIII of course) and although most British people nowadays aren’t part of it, it’s a national institution, like the NHS or the BBC: the place where anyone can get married, or buried. For a long time now it’s consisted of three parts: the Evangelicals, the “Liberals” and the Anglo-Catholics, the last the most traditionalist and the most upset, first by the ordination of women priests and the prospect the Church will soon have women bishops, and secondly by what they think of as liberal attitudes to homosexuality within the Church (an idea that surprises most non-believers). Well, now the Pope has made a move that threatens the delicate balance, by offering dissenting Anglo-Catholic priests a home in the Roman Church. It’s an extraordinary move, this: Church of England priests can be married, and would remain so if reordained as Catholics, in spite of the fact that Catholic priests must be celibate. It’s an aggressive move, too, taking advantage of divisions within the Anglican church to try and poach priests and establish the Catholic Church as the leading voice of conservative Christianity in England in advance of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain next year.

How many will leave? I’ve no idea. But if it’s anything like the thousand some people have been estimating, then the Church of England will be changed significantly: it will be be more liberal, more evangelical and less traditional. Whether the departure of those who’ve been slowing reform will free the Church and energise it, or whether it will be a further step in its decline – only time will tell. Next time, I’ll tell you about something else.

A Pint of Bitter: London, England is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Southwold

Strange: I spend most of my time in London, and will usually be writing London thoughts, dreamed up in London pubs; yet in this, my first piece for Anglotopia, nothing at all happens in London. The thoughts have been thought and the beer has been drunk elsewhere.

Lavenham, Suffolk

In Suffolk first, where I escaped in September with my girlfriend Francesca. Suffolk’s a lovely, varied county that looms surprisingly small in the English imagination. We stayed at Belchamp Walter, near Sudbury, a quiet corner of Suffolk, but with its attractions: we visited Gainsborough’s house in Sudbury itself, the place where the great 18th-century portraitist was brought up. His best work is elsewhere, notably at Tate Britain in London, but interesting early works are here as well as some later substantial paintings and temporary exhibitions. We spent another afternoon in Lavenham, a village with a incredible number of well-preserved early modern buildings in chocolate-box colours: yellow, pink and powder-blue. For some anglophiles, Lavenham is a dream of Ye Olde Englandde of longge aggoe. We found it a bit overly twee, to be honest, but  cream tea at the National Trust tea-room on the main square is good. Beer seemed rude, somehow, in Lavenham.

Fish and chips on Aldeburgh beach

From there to Aldeburgh and Southwold, two of the best coastal towns in England. Aldeburgh is the smaller, a town made famous by Benjamin Britten, who lived here for many years and  immortalised the area’s fishing culture in his opera Peter Grimes. I recommend the Cross Keys pub (good beer, a traditional, quiet atmosphere and an outside yard with a view of the sea) but the must-do Aldeburgh experience is fish and chips on the beach – queue around the corner at the fish shop on the High Street, and sit on the pebbles watching the sky turn dim to the sound of the North Sea. Southwold is a little bigger, and more seasidey: you’re more likely to see ice cream being consumed on its sandy beach, and men in shorts drinking summer ale on the green outside the Red Lion. Beer is especially important, as Southwold is home to Adnams’ brewery, perhaps the most successful of England’s brewers to retain a distinctly local identity. Southwold has definite quirks, though: the lighthouse is worth a visit, as is the amazing Sailor’s Reading Room, filled with salty memorabilia and photographs of old sea-dogs. You could do worse than finish your evening at the Lord Nelson, the centre of Southwold life, just behind the Reading Room.

The Lord Nelson, Southwold

The transition from summer to autumn is a marked in England by a series of ritual events: the last night of the Proms, the whimpering close of the cricket season and the political conference season. At Bournemouth, the Liberal Democrats seized attention by promising a “mansion tax” on houses worth more than a million pounds, a policy that would astonish most Americans with its popularity here. Labour were at Brighton, where Gordon Brown – now safe in his embattled leadership and sure to lead the party into the election next spring – surprised most observers by giving a slightly less laboured platform speech than usual, and by showing a little more inspiration. Brown is a compelling figure of tragic proportions. No one doubts his intellectual power and political strengths: Brown is like FDR mixed with LBJ, a towering, visionary party bully with deep commitments, nursing profound feuds. Can he possibly hold on to power next year? No one here thinks so except Brown himself. Labour is well behind in the polls, hovering round historic lows, and Brown seems a cursed figure, able to do nothing right. Don’t count him out completely, though. Brown’s sheer resilience should never be forgotten, and it will not be over until he’s dragged physically from his Downing Street bunker.

Away from the seaside, Conservatives gathered last week in Manchester. Their leader David Cameron shows few signs of euphoria – and wisely. Though universally expected to be Prime Minister next year, he does not inspire great enthusiasm among the public, who are more tired of  Labour government then they are thirsting for the Tories. Cameron and his shadow chancellor George Osborne took risks by revealing some of their plans to tackle Britain’s big debt and deficit – they will raise the state pension age to 66 more quickly than under current government plans, for instance. Gordon Brown now has something to attack – and he will. The Tories did, though, deftly retreated from their pledge to raise inheritance tax thresholds, a policy that would have helped the richest most. That pledge was perhaps their weakest point, and has been downgraded to an aspiration.

The Grandé Lounge at the Philharmonic, Liverpool

Francesca and I followed the Tories to Manchester – this weekend we spent Saturday among the crowds of shoppers in King Street and St. Ann’s Square. Recession? What recession? The stalls at the Manchester Food Festival seemed to be doing fine business. Sunday took us to Liverpool, and its amazing cathedrals at either end of Hope Street. The Anglican building is an amazing edifice, massive and staggering in its scale. The Catholic cathedral is a sixties affair, more interesting as a historical piece than in itself, perhaps, but a landmark of Liverpool nonetheless. Our last stop was Liverpool’s third cathedral – the Philharmonic, also on Hope Street, and one of England’s historic pubs. We sat in the absurdly named but fabulous Grandé Lounge at the back, drinking a toffee-flavoured Hallowe’en brew. This weekend at least, Autumn tasted fine in Liverpool.

I promise you relentless London, next time.

A Pint of Bitter: Anywhere but London… is a post from: Anglotopia.net

Editor’s Note: Our latest contributor here at Anglotopia is Carl – a British Blogger who has kindly consented to gives us fortnightly updates from the mysterious land that is Great Britain. Check out Carl’s own blog here.

Today I’m posting the first of my fortnightly column for Anglotopia. Let me introduce myself, and what I’ll be writing about!

I’m from the North originally – a place called Warrington, between Liverpool and Manchester – and I still sound as northern as the day I moved south, over twenty years ago now. I live in London, specifically Willesden, just on the edge of Zone 2 on the Jubilee Line. I’ve been a lawyer… but don’t hold that against me. I trained a barrister and worked as a legal adviser for the government for about twelve years, till a mid-life crisis hit me. I’m supposed to be writing two books; in the meantime I’m scraping together a bohemian existence doing some consultancy, some teaching and some writing, including on my own blogs, Head of Legal, which is (pretty obviously) my legal one, and the one that has my name on it, where I write about politics, books, films and all that. I contribute to The Wardman Wire, too.

“What do they know of England“, Kipling asked, “who only England know?” I’m a Europhile, having lived for a year in France and with friends there and in Austria; I love the States, too, having family in Las Vegas and a love of New York. I hope to go to Canada soon too to visit friends there. But I love England and London, love introducing friends to places I know here, and I’m going to enjoy writing about what is here, and what’s happening. I’ll be banging on about a whole bag of things, but you’ll notice some of my obsessions. They’re politics – I’ll be keeping you up to date on what’s going on in Westminster; culture, which sounds pretentious, but means I’ll be telling you about London’s cinemas, bookshops, galleries and theatres plus things overheard here, and conversations had. And finally, since many of those things have been overheard and many of those conversations had in pubs, I’ll be telling you about some of my favourites in London, plus some of those I loathe.

Hence the title I’ve chosen – “A Pint of Bitter”. Bitter, for those who don’t know, is what we call the most popular type of English ale – as distinct from the fizzy yellow stuff they sell in less happier lands, and here too regrettably. I’m not intending to be sour – just, like a pint of bitter, unmistakeably English, friendly and conducive to talk. I hope you enjoy it!

Introducing A Pint of Bitter: Me and my Pint is a post from: Anglotopia.net