A sign of the times

The British domestic political story I commented on on Saturday gives rise to an interesting question, that question is contained in the title to this little piece.

The superannuated thug Damian McBride is not a Member of Parliament. He was not elected to anything, he had no ministerial duties and no government department to manage. No chain of responsibility made him answerable to the public for what he did nor was he required to answer to MPs in the House of Commons. Yet his downfall has been reported in a manner not seen when cabinet ministers have been forced out of office through incompetence or corruption. Such ministers have been replaced by promoting an equally incompetent government party lackey from the lower ranks of the ministerial pyramid and there has been no mention of their departure striking at the heart of the government machine. The Sunday newspapers were clear and consistent in their description of Mr McBride's as a seriously big fish. Jane Merrick of The Independent described him as "a proper scalp, one of the most prized in Westminster". The Sunday Times talked of him as "one of the prime minister's most senior lieutenants". In The Observer he was described as being part of "Brown's inner circle" and in the Mail on Sunday as an occupant of "Mr Brown's No 10 War Room".

It's a rather strange state of affairs that an unelected, unaccountable toady can be considered by the main commentariat as more significant to government than a cabinet minister. I suppose there might be an element of journalistic narcissism involved in that his job was to manipulate the information leaked to the press and the select band of recipients are bound to consider that a particularly important job. But there seems to be far more to it than that. Controlling the news and steering the message received by those who report the news are now major parts of the government machine, particularly in relation to the Prime Minister himself. I find this very disturbing.

One would have to be absurdly naive not to recognise that incumbent politicians want to stay in office and will always seek to put the best possible gloss on what they do. To that end they will need assistance and that assistance will cost money. The job of such assistants is, however, a party political job it is not a government job. They are employed to further the interests of the government as against the opposition parties. And by far their most important function will be to limit the damage done by the incumbent governing politicians' own mistakes. To have a unit in the Prime Minister's office, paid for by taxpayers, whose purpose is to further the interests of the governing party is a gross abuse of power; it exemplifies government for the government not government for the people.

And, of course, there is no easy way to stop it. If, as seems likely, the Conservatives defeat Labour at the next general election is there any realistic prospect of them not putting in place a similar unit filled with their own bullying, mendacious sycophants? The only way to prevent it is to enforce the supposed rule against civil servants engaging in party political activities. Ah, there's a big of a snag with that. Who can enforce it and how? It cannot be left to the Minister for the Civil Service because that is the Prime Minister. It could be done by the grand fromage of the civil service if only he were given the power, but that could draw him too closely into party politics because his decisions would be questions and his own impartiality brought into question by those on the wrong end of his verdicts. It could be done by a Parliamentary Select Committee, but they have a numerical balance in favour of the incumbent party.

I know not what the right solution is but one must be found because the more tightly the power over the dissemination of information is concentrated in 10 Downing Street the more isolated the Prime Minister (of whichever party) will be from both substantive criticism and the need to justify his policy positions. The more narrowly power is concentrated, the fewer the people who take decisions and the less scrutiny those decisions receive. Only one thing can result, bad government of ever-increasing badness as the Prime Minister withdraws further and further into his bunker to limit examination of, and debate about, his decisions and their effect.

McBride, McBrown, McUnfitforoffice

It doesn't seem so long ago that governments sought to persuade the electorate that they should be returned to office because they were more competent in present circumstances than the opposition parties. Anyone reading this from outside the UK will probably not know why I raise this topic, so let me give a little background.

Upper echelons of the UK government employ (at taxpayers' expense) a number of people whose role is to promote the government as a political entity rather than to promote its policies. Nominally they are not employed to do this because it would be a misuse of public funds, but it has been the reality since Tony Blair came into office in 1997 and is even more prevalent today. They are employed as civil servants but given a wholly party political role and no one seems to have the power to challenge it. Recently news was broken that one of these supposed public servants was planning a party-political campaign involving no policy debate at all. His plan was to launch smear attacks against opposition politicians suggesting, regardless of the truth and regardless of having supporting evidence, that they have misbehaved in the past and/or that relatives of theirs have flaws. His plan was disseminated to a select few by email and certain of those emails, or certain details from them, came to the attention of a blogger known as Guido Fawkes who timed his blowing of the whistle to perfection. Today the man who planned the exercise was forced out of his job. His name is Damian McBride, he was, and no doubt will remain, Gordon Brown's closest advisor.

To some, dirty tricks might seem a new phenomenon to UK national politics but the seeds were sown in the 1990s when the press happily latched on to stories of government ministers unable to keep their lusts within the marital bedroom. Previously no opposition party would seek party political advantage of such matters because they knew they had members (no pun intended, although it is a good one) who were just as guilty. But the tide was against the incumbent government, they had been in power for a long time and were showing signs of staleness. The Labour Party had few substantive policies on anything, most of it was just waffle, but they wanted power so they made the most of the moral turpitude of a few Conservative ministers. They found there were votes in it so they dressed it up further, the message was "you can't trust them, they are seedy philanderers". It was a pretty pointless exercise. No doubt it won a few votes but it could never win enough to make a difference, it was a tactic guaranteed to backfire in the long run.

Not long after they were elected in 1997 stories emerged of senior figures in the Labour government being as free and easy with their intimate juices as Conservative ministers had been. At that time it didn't matter, the tide had turned and they had been elected, the British people would give them a chance to prove themselves. Even the most vociferous critic of Conservative ministerial pork-swordsmanship, the ludicrous John Prescott, was eventually exposed for an affair with his diary secretary while his fearsome wife was busy enjoying the largesse of a minister's expense account to keep her bouffant suitably puffed. He called the previous government unfit to rule because they couldn't keep their trousers on, yet steadfastly refused to resign when found to be guilty of exactly the same thing. One might think the current government would shy away from personal attacks in light of their hypocrisy on the issue, but that would be to ignore the pitiful mental state of Gordon Brown, the man who thinks he saved the world.

Poor Gordon has shown no sign at all in his political career of being able to acknowledge that someone else might have a point. He seems to work in the very starkest black and white terms. He is also a lifelong adherent to the view that only the Labour Party should be in government. No matter what it takes, opposition parties should, in his feeble mind, be destroyed. It is, of course, the mindset of a dictator not of a democratic politician, yet it runs through his very marrow.

A smear campaign designed to denigrate opposition is very much poor Gordon's cup of tea. Nothing could please him more because he really believes that anyone who disagrees with him is unworthy. If you have any doubt about this, all you have to do is see how he answers questions. There are far too few opportunities to ask the Prime Minister questions and no opportunities to require him to answer them substantively. There is a half-hour session in the House of Commons every Wednesday, when I say every Wednesday I mean every Wednesday the House is sitting (which is disgracefully few). During that time the Leader of the Opposition, the leader of a minor party and a few backbench MPs ask questions, but they are never answered unless they ask the Prime Minister to heap praise upon himself. He is often asked perfectly sensible and calm questions by those who have doubts about his chosen path of action on one subject or another. His reaction every time is to attack. There is no debate, no explanation and no response of a type appropriate from a democratic politician.

Against that background we find that his closest advisor, a man he took with him as the lynchpin of his backroom staff when he usurped the office of Prime Minister, decided to launch a campaign of personal (not policy) attacks on political opponents of Gordon's clique. I ask myself what poor Gordon's reaction was when he heard that such attacks were planned. I ask myself whether he said "No, stop, that is not the way we do business" or "what a great idea, these evil deniers of my brilliance must be perverts and defectives, they must be exposed". Is there a middle ground? Frankly, I can't see that there is. This manoeuvre follows exactly the way our so-called Prime Minister thinks and acts.

He will try to distance himself from it, of course, because the press is on the story. We might never know whether poor Gordon had advance knowledge of the plan, but it can be said with absolute certainty that he approves of it. It fits his thinking exactly. No matter that members of his party are guilty of exactly the things opposition politicians would be accused of doing, to someone like Gordon there is a difference. His side of the political fence is right, so personal failings are neither here nor there. The opposite side of the political fence is wrong, so personal failings must be exposed because they prove the errors and flawed judgment of his opponents.

It's pathetically shallow. It's Gordon to a tee.

How many feet can a millipede fit in his mouth?

I was taken back many years on reading of the so-called Foreign Secretary's recent behaviour in India and his comments about the so-called "war on terror" (see here and here). When at university I sat on a college committee concerned with student accommodation in my capacity as president of my hall of residence. It seemed to me to be quite a responsibility. We had to decide both policy and detail on a wide range of matters having a direct impact on current and future students. It took time to prepare for the meetings and discussions were always thorough. On each issue we had to reach a decision acceptable to a majority and on the more contentious items that often required a degree of compromise and, indeed, of taking decisions we were unsure of but which we were persuaded were worth trying-out.

And then there were the student union representatives. Not a single meeting passed without them calling for a vote of no confidence in the college Principal or secretary or a head of one department or another or the chairman of the committee or, more often than not, a number of the above. Only the tea lady escaped the need for instant dismissal in the furtherance of the revolution. Thank goodness she never forgot the biscuits.

It really was quite pathetic to see serious business interrupted by such selfish juvenile pranks, but that was the way of the world. It served only one purpose, to ensure their views would never be assumed to be worthy of respect. I decided from my first day not to get involved in student politics and felt entirely vindicated by the pointless posing of those who did. Since then I have sometimes wasted time wondering whether those egotistical radicals ever grew up. Because I cannot remember their names I will probably never find out although I think I have a fair idea that they did not. I draw that inference from the behaviour in government over the last eleven years of other student radicals. Exactly what I witnessed has been seen time and time again on the national political arena. Classic recent examples have come in simple Harriet's support for the legalisation of discrimination on the ground of gender and hapless Jacqui Smith's temper tantrums any time one of her shallow and impractical proposals has hit the buffers. For these people debate is an empty concept. Their minds are made up and they are determined to get their way. Whether or not the subject under discussion has anything to do with what they want and whether or not serious flaws are disclosed in their predetermined conclusion, they do not understand anything other than "me me me". Until recently this was just a domestic problem.

Since 1997 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been relegated steadily in importance. Robin Cook was almost credible as Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw was an ineffectual in that job as in every other he has had in government and Margaret Beckett was an insult to the office acting purely as a mouthpiece for the Prime Minister. It was inconceivable that any of those three would act like a student union radical when dealing with senior politicians of a friendly sovereign state - Cook because he had too much sense, Straw because he doesn't believe in anything and Beckett because it was never in the script handed to her from 10 Downing Street. Now we have David Miliband, a man unconstrained by any such qualifications. He is cut from the same cloth as simple Harriet and hapless Jacqui, albeit a somewhat more intelligent cloth than either of them. He is a student revolutionary who has never grown up.

Respecting the view of others and being prepared to act as though you respect them are essential qualities in the world of diplomacy. You do not take a swipe at an outgoing US President by criticising the term "war on terror" that he used to justify policies you supported. If you do you will find his successor including a rebuff to your juvenile grandstanding in his inauguration speech. Nor do you harangue senior ministers from India about their approach to Kashmir. If you do you will find the enormously powerful Indian press reporting every damning criticism of your overbearing attitude and your ignorance of how sensitive an issue Kashmir is in Indian politics.

When I heard about these examples of Miliband's dentopodiatry I cast my mind back not just to the brainless student lefties I encountered in my youth but also to other recent Foreign Secretaries. Not just the three I have already mentioned but their predecessors in the previous two governments: Malcolm Rifkind, Douglas Hurd, John Major (very briefly), Sir Geoffrey Howe, Francis Pym, Lord Carrington, David Owen, Anthony Crosland and James Callaghan. It is unimaginable that even the most bullish of these (probably David Owen) would have been so crass as to upset two massively powerful friendly governments, especially not in quick succession

Diplomacy requires tact and discretion. It is about seeking to advance a position by siding yourself with the person you are seeking to influence and working from the inside, not by antagonising them and trying to impose your will from outside. On that college committee (so long ago that Cif was still called Jif and Mr Muscle was just a twinkle in Vim's eye) I learned a valuable lesson in persuasion from the student union politicos - put up the backs of those you need to influence and you do your cause a double disservice. They are reluctant to agree with you because you seem to be trying to force them into a particular position and they are also reluctant to give your argument credence because you have exposed that you lack judgment. How will the new American administration and the Indian government view David Miliband from now on? Well, let me put it another way. How would you view David Miliband if you were them? Would you hang on his every word thinking he is someone who is on your side and shares your values or would you be wary lest you become the next victim of a verbal attack or find he seeks to interfere in a domestic issue of little relevance to his job?

Fortunately there is little sign of any issue arising on which either America or India needs to seek support from the UK Foreign Office in the near future. Let's hope that remains the position until Miliband is no longer in office. How much damage he has done to relations with other countries remains to be seen.

What's wrong with being wrong?

Once, but only once, I heard someone say "I am never wrong" and mean it. He was the father of a boy in my class at primary school and you could never meet a more ignorant man in your life. Nothing about his existence gave rise to praise. He was uneducated, rude and vulgar, beat his wife and treated his children like slaves, indeed beat his children and treated his wife like a slave. Because I knew one of his sons I encountered him occasionally and learned how lucky I was to have my parents as parents rather than a pig-headed fool like him. More than anything else it was his "I am never wrong" comment that affected me because it was said in answer to a question my friend asked him. "What's the capital of America Dad?" "New York". My friend's mother chipped in with "I think it's Washington" and the look from husband to wife was a mixture of fear and hatred. Fear that his dominance would be challenged and hatred of being exposed as an ignoramus. Had I not been there she would have got another beating, maybe she did after I went home. "It's New York" he snarled "I'm never wrong."

That memory sticks in my mind because I knew he was wrong. In those days children of eight or nine learned the major capital cities. And I could not believe that someone who was wrong could assert with a threatening swagger that he was right. In our house a question asked of either parent might be answered with assurance but if the answer was questioned someone got out the encyclopaedia and we all read the relevant entry. There was no shame in being wrong, instead there was delight in being able to discard ignorance and replace it with fact.

We all make mistakes, some factual and some of judgment. We learn and improve by being corrected. For reasons I do not understand, being wrong is now seen in some quarters as shameful.

Apprenticeships for skilled jobs like bricklaying and plumbing used to take five or seven years. No more than half that time was concerned with teaching the technical skills, the rest was about how to correct your mistakes. The apprentices were not being patronised by being told they will make mistakes, they were being taught a vital lesson in life. If you make a mistake which affects someone else you need to know how to put things right. It's far easier to walk away from an error than to face it and correct it, but when your livelihood depends on the outcome of your work a failure to put things right will disqualify you from future employment. What will not only disqualify you from future employment but lead to a claim for compensation is a stubborn refusal to admit that anything is wrong, even when the brick wall falls down or the new pipework leaks as soon as the water supply is turned on.

Judges make mistakes. That is why we have a Court of Appeal. The judges who have their decisions overturned all have great experience in the law. I came across a couple of duffers who simply weren't up to it, but only a couple. The vast majority have many years of successful practice behind them and work with great dedication to decide cases as fairly as they can, yet still their decisions are overturned. It does not make them incompetent it just illustrates that, like everyone else, they make mistakes. Judges in the Court of Appeal get things wrong and are overturned by the Law Lords sitting in our highest court. Even the Law Lords occasionally get something wrong and have to reverse one of their previous decisions. This must be put in context. They are people of staggering intellectual ability and vast experience and still sometimes their judgment is at fault. There is nothing wrong with that, it is all part of the advancement of learning.

In my junior years in the law I sometimes wondered how judges coped with having a decision overturned by the Court of Appeal. As I got older and had personal friends who were judges I found out from the horse's mouth. They don't like it but they also hear appeals from lower courts and sometimes overturn those decisions. They know it is not a personal insult, it is just an aspect of ordinary life. We all make mistakes. They go to court again the next day, learn from what the Court of Appeal said and continue doing the best they can.

Too many politicians think it necessary to defend bad decisions long after they have been proved to be bad. They think it would be a sign of weakness if they did otherwise. How wrong they are. Admitting errors and taking the necessary steps to correct them is a sign of strength not a sign of weakness.

Margaret Thatcher was not good at admitting errors, in fact I cannot readily recall her ever doing so. That was a major part of her downfall. John Major admitted the error of entering the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and, having done so, was able to rebuild the economy together Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor. More than once Tony Blair shrugged his shoulders during an interview and admitted a policy mistake, saying it seemed likely to work and having the courage to admit it didn't. Many would say he made far more mistakes he has not acknowledged, and that might well be true, but at least he admitted some.

The present incumbent has never made a mistake in his life, according to him. It is his single greatest weakness. Everything that has gone wrong in the last year has been the fault of someone or something other than Gordon Brown, or so he claims. Credit bubble leading to recession? That's the naughty banks' fault for lending too much money, not his fault for encouraging them to do so and still less his fault for doing exactly the same. Energy crisis? That's the fault of the naughty oil companies, not his fault for spending taxpayers' money on gimmicks rather than power stations.

Not everything wrong in Britain is directly Gordon Brown's fault. Some things are, however, and the longer he denies it the more pitiful he becomes. His speech to the Labour conference yesterday was his final chance to act like a human being. Instead, as his party risks sinking below the political waterline, there was no "yes we got this that and the other wrong, but we have corrected those mistakes by doing these things right" it was all "I got it right all along, trust me". I was reminded of the vile father of my childhood friend. The man who was always right in his own mind was almost always wrong in the real world.

The man who is always right in his own mind is an ignorant bully, always has been and always will be.

Mind your own business Hazel

There is a long-established tradition that the governments of the UK and the USA do not comment on forthcoming elections in the other country. It is a sensible tradition because, generally speaking, we are on the same side and the new Prime Minister or President will have to work with his opposite number across the Atlantic. A sure recipe for a rocky relationship is the knowledge that the person you have to work with wanted you to lose.

No surprise then that Labour has openly supported Mr Obama. It started with the Prime Minister who issued a statement praising Obama's policy platform, naturally he said it was not him when challenged by the McCain team but no head has rolled so we know he was, yet again, lying to escape the consequences of an error of judgment. Then Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman, criticised Mrs Palin on Question Time. Poor Harriet is such an arrogant woman she thinks she is above the rules in every sphere. And most recently the utterly pathetic Hazel Blears joined in, seeking to justify herself by saying the Democratic Party is Labour's sister party.

The only example I can recall of an incumbent American President doing something similar was when the moveable feast of slime that is Bill Clinton was less than flattering about John Major in the run up to the 1997 general election.

What is so curious is that they feel it necessary to give an opinion when it is remarkably easy to keep to the rules. If asked about a candidate you say "the election in the USA is a matter for the American people, I am sure we can work well with whoever they choose". If asked to comment on policy in the other country you say "it is not for me to comment on the policies put forward by the candidates". So simple, all it takes is a little respect for the right of the voters to make their choice. One thing is certain, for every American swayed by an endorsement there will be at least one determined to give the interfering Brits a bloody nose. Or is it curious?

A feature of politics of the left is that it is a mission to change things for the better by government activity. Taking decisions for other people is absolutely at the heart of their philosophy. Politics of the right is, or should be, based on the belief that people should be left to take their own decisions and government should decide as little as possible for them. Against that background it is, perhaps, not surprising that someone mired in a bog of "I know what's best for you" thinking will carry that view into every area. As usual it will do their cause more harm than good.

It's time to be nasty to Gordon

I chose the name of this blog before I had any idea what I would write, but there are many subjects on which my opinions are firm so "bigot" seemed appropriate somewhere in the equation. As the weeks have rolled on it has become clear that my musings are, perhaps, not all that bigoted after all. For example, usually I choose not to attribute motives to actions I disagree with because I feel it serves little if any purpose to do so. Mine is not a swear-blog, it is just an opportunity for me to throw out some views - many ill-formed, some reasonably sound, all matters of interest to me. Sometimes, however, I have to touch on a subject that makes me want to be really nasty. Nothing, at this stage of British history, prods my nasty button like the current government. It is all the rage to rage and I want to throw in my modest contribution. It is time to talk bluntly about Gordon Brown and that requires me to be nasty.

I have to start by asking what qualities are required to be an effective Prime Minister. It seems to me that there are too many to count but leadership is undeniably the first quality, leadership of the government and leadership of the country.

How does Gordon rate as a leader of his team? Not being in the cabinet I cannot speak from first-hand knowledge so I have to rely on what I have observed, read and heard. If we take his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer it is plain beyond argument that he did not trust other members of the cabinet. His biannual budgets were only disclosed to the Prime Minister shortly before they were delivered and policy in all departments was affected by his need to interfere. It was not enough for him to set the budget for each department, he needed to oversee how that budget was spent. One might observe that the bunch of shocking incompetents appointed to high office since 1997 did not deserve to be trusted, but that is a different issue, the fact is he did not trust them. That is not a sign of a good leader of a team.

His leadership of the country has been non-existent. He started by saying that he wanted to let us know his vision for Britain. That was the correct starting point, because it was only fair to let the country know whether it would be more of the same or something different. All I can remember of that vision is "British jobs for British workers" (completely illegal under EU law), a proposal to tax plastic carrier bags and today's great initiative of holding cabinet meetings outside London. These are not leadership of a country they are ad hoc gimmicks. Everything else he has done in the last year has been a reaction to events, usually a panicked reaction when events had overtaken him. Sometimes events overtake even the most competent Prime Minister for a short while, but qualities of leadership and judgment can bring matters back under control. Gordon's problem is that he is not a leader.

Leaders need to believe that people will follow them, they need confidence in their own ability to lead. Confidence in your ability to make a sound judgment is one thing, confidence that other people will follow your judgment simply because you say so is another thing entirely. People only follow their leader when they have confidence in his judgment.

Today Michael Vaughan resigned as England's cricket captain. His batting has not been at its best for some time, but he knew, and followers of cricket knew, that the players respected his ability as a captain to guide the progress of the game. It was not his fault that England lost to South Africa yesterday, he tried every trick in the book to combat the South African batsmen. Things started to drift away before tea but he took command, changed the field and swapped his bowlers around to maximise the chance of an England victory. The defeat was despite his captaincy not because of it.

If we look at it from a different perspective we can see the task Michael Vaughan faced yesterday. England started the day in a good position but they were facing an extremely good team, man-for-man probably a more skilled team, and there would be a time when South Africa took the advantage. Rather than looking at what Michael Vaughan did through our televisions, let's try to be him and see the challenge he faced. The opposition start piling on the runs and one of your bowlers is not on good form. What do you have to do? You have to change thing, you have to work out a plan. "I'll have 4 overs of swing up the hill and some spin down the hill, then switch the end of the spinner and give them some pure pace downhill, see how that works." "I'll move the field to give the impression the bowler is planning to attack leg stump when in fact he's planning to attack off." "I wanted 4 overs of swing, it's not working after 2, I'll change tack, take him off after 3 and give the fast man a go." Whatever the tactics are they can only be implemented if you have confidence in your team to perform and the confidence of your team in your decisions. I bet there wasn't a single England player on the pitch yesterday who would have swapped their position for Vaughan's and every one of them would have looked at how he manipulated his bowlers and fielders and said he did exactly what a good leader should do. It didn't work, but that isn't the point, the point is that he had the character to do it rather than let the game drift away without a fight.

Gordon has not displayed any such qualities in his year as Prime Minister. There has been no guiding of events, no experimentation to try to outflank his opponents, no anticipation of what might happen, no plan to cut the attack off at the pass. We have had a year of horses bolting and stable doors being slammed with a lot of noise long after the nags have run three Grand Nationals and been dragged to the glue factory. The simple fact is that the man is not a leader. He is not a leader of his team and he is not a leader of the country. Nothing can change that, it is a matter of character. And that is why Gordon must be condemned.

There is nothing wrong with not being a leader provided you never seek a position of leadership. This man fought tooth-and-nail to become Prime Minister. Maybe he did not know he is not a leader, some might think, but I believe that can never be the case. We all learn from an early age whether we are leaders or followers, we witness it in countless things we do during our lives and only an arrogant fraud seeks leadership despite knowing he is unsuited to it. Gordon sought the premiership out of pure selfish arrogance. He wanted to be able to say he'd done it. He knew he wasn't up to the job but he didn't care, he just wanted to be there.

Gordon Brown has made Britain his fag-hag.

Government by sit-com

The essence of situation comedy is exactly what the description "situation comedy" dictates. Characters between whom there are conflicts are brought together in situations which amuse. One of the secrets of good situation comedy is that the writers know when to stop. The time to stop is when the natural situations that can arise between the characters have been exhausted. If they do not stop at that stage there are only two ways the show can go; it can repeat situations which have already been exploited or it can descend into the absurd and become a parody of itself. Either course results in damage to the brand.

It was desperately sad to see Steptoe & Son extended beyond its natural life by the use of increasingly far-fetched scenarios. When it started it had a point, it exposed the relationship of the two main characters and made clever and incisive observations about both the characters and the situation in which they found themselves. In later series we found Albert and Harold dressing up in silly costumes and getting involved in situations which simply could not happen in real life. It was still amusing, but it was not its old brilliant self. Like watching a favourite aunt succumb to Alzheimer's disease we saw a slow and irreversible decline. Much though we loved her we hoped she will soon be put out of her misery because we knew there was no way back. Those who never enjoyed the show might have taken pleasure from the decline but for those who relied on it for their entertainment the hurt ran deep.

Today we learn that a House of Commons committee is to propose a nationwide 9pm curfew for children with a whole series of penalties available to be used against the children themselves and their parents. The reasoning behind it is that a spate of stabbings of teenagers by teenagers has occurred during the evening and at night in public places, so to prevent this happening again all teenagers must be kept off the street. It seems to have received a warm reception from the government and we can expect a ministerial announcement imminently. Curfews are for true emergencies, to be imposed for a short time to combat the risk of looting or the spread of disease. They have no part to play in normal everyday life and are fundamentally inconsistent with government and policing by consent.

It is the type of authoritarian knee-jerk reaction we can expect from a government which has run out of steam. No longer able to inspire confidence through sensible measures it is donning fruit-adorned hats, flowery taffeta frocks and pink handbags and is mincing down the road hoping to raise a giggle. And let us not forget that this is not the first sign of terminal decline. We had a Prime Ministerial decree against plastic carrier bags (on goes the fruity hat), the u-turn over the 10p tax rate (zip-up the flowery frock), £100billion is to be spent on windmills (pick-up the pink handbag), Harriet Harman introduces a law to allow employers to do something they can do already (are my stocking seams straight?), the Prime Minister says we must not waste food (look, I'm wearing suspenders) and now a curfew (whoops dear, see how I walk ... mince, mince mince).

I hate to think what they will come up with next but it won't be The Office or Frasier, it will be Mr Humphreys dressed as Mrs Slocombe's pussy.

Can history be kind to Gordon?

Poor Gordon, all those years as Chancellor of the Exchequer followed by a successful mini-coup to force Tony to leave office early, crowned new Labour Party leader by acclamation and then into the limo to be invited by Mrs Queen to take office as Prime Minister. Floods and oropodiatric pestilence rained down upon the British people within weeks but Gordon saved the day. So, why "poor" Gordon?

Well, just look at him now. Inflation is back, government coffers are empty despite record taxation, his party's finances even worse, Labour candidates annihilated at every election, whispers even from cabinet ministers that he isn't up to the job and, perhaps worst of all for him, he gives the impression to many of us of a man out of his depth and with no able people around him to take some of the burden (not that he would delegate if he had that option). Is there a way back? Of course anything can happen in politics but it is always wise to find comparable situations from history and see whether they point us to a conclusion.

The previous Prime Minister but one, John Major, faced similar difficulties after the collapse of the ERM in September 1992. One significant similarity between then and now is the character of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. John Major appointed Norman Lamont to that position in 1990. It seemed a logical appointment he had been very effective, if not particularly inspiring, in previous cabinet positions within the Treasury and had achieved a good reputation as Major's second-in-command. Mr Darling was also seen as a "safe pair of hands", firmly wedded to Gordon's economic policies and with significant cabinet experience behind him.

Both Lamont and Darling, however, appeared to completely lose control when the excrement hit the fan. The pattern was exactly the same - "we're doing the right thing, we've made the right decisions, we're sticking to our guns, you'll see in the long run, there will be no change of policy, there is no need to change policy, a change of policy would be bad for Britain" followed just a few days later by a complete u-turn delivered with a look of almost palpable personal humiliation on their faces.

Lamont lasted just six months and from then until now has blamed Major for the whole mess. But Major then had a great stroke of good fortune, his choice as Lamont's successor, Ken Clarke, proved to be an inspired selection. Freed from the ERM Clarke's careful stewardship (building on many good things done by Lamont) led not only to economic stability and growth but was coupled with Clarke's natural skills as a communicator so that the improvement was sold effectively. We can argue until the cows come home about John Major's suitability for the top job but there can be no denying that a strong economy was bequeathed to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair in 1997. Had Norman Lamont remained in office he might or might not have achieved the same, we will never know. What we do know is that Major as Prime Minister and Clarke as Chancellor presided over an economy which went from strength to strength. When the election came in 1997 it was not the general state of the economy that lost it for Major. He was allowed a second chance with his second Chancellor and had a clear run of 4 years to turn things round.

Gordon Brown's position is rather different. He, like Major, is saddled with a Chancellor who has been seen to panic and to be guided by events rather than leading them; but Brown does not seem to have a Ken Clarke to turn to. To make things worse, any systemic problem in the economy must be laid squarely on Brown's plate because he was Chancellor for 10 years and exercised greater power in that role than any of his post-War predecessors. To make things worse again he has less than 2 years to turn the current disaster into the glowing success he has always claimed the British economy to be on his watch.

Any critic of John Major can be blunted, at least in part, by reference to the performance of the economy from 1993 to 1997. His part in the 1992 debacle was mitigated by future events. In contrast, there simply is not enough time for the current adverse circumstances to work their way through the system and allow significant recovery. Gordon Brown, if still in office in 2010, will go to the people with his boasts of having brought permanent stability still ringing in their ears while the reality will not match his claims - claims that are not only false but also an admission that primary responsibility for difficulties lies with him. He can fiddle with other policies but at least 3 "re-launches" of his Premiership have been attempted over the last year and still he is in the doldrums, so we cannot infer that he will be judged by any policy other than the economy.

He has no one to blame, no one to hide behind and no time to recover. Poor Gordon, indeed.

What a hopeless shower

Have we ever before been a government so anonymous and devoid of character?

There was a time, not so long ago, when the cabinet comprised people of weight and substance who were known to the public. Every political party comprises various factions with differing views of policy and a convention grew up of including in cabinet senior members of the government party who had actually done something in their lives. It was all based on the quaint notion that debate between able people with significant experiences is likely to produce sound and consistent policy. That does not mean it will result in policies that work, but it was thought to be a better system than having decisions that affect the whole country being taken by just a few chums who all think essentially the same thing on every issue.

James Callaghan’s cabinet always comprised senior figures from the unalloyed Trotskyite wing of the Labour Party as well as those, like him, whose experience had tempered youthful naivety. They all had in common a desire to maintain the United Kingdom as a bastion of Marxist social and economic policy and the cabinet system of policy-making allowed that shared belief to be put into practice. But such people as Denis Healey, Shirley Williams, Anthony Wedgwood-Benn and David Owen were known to all and able to speak out on issues concerning their departmental responsibilities without having to ask for a script from 10 Downing Street.

When the post-War Marxist experiment had run its course and the Conservative Party was returned to power in 1979 policy continued to be made collectively in cabinet. Margaret Thatcher’s first cabinet included William Whitelaw, Francis Pym, James Prior and Michael Heseltine, all of whom differed radically from her on many issues of policy, as well as Keith Joseph, Sir Geoffrey Howe, Lord Hailsham and others with records of substantial success in the world outside Westminster. Like her, many had been senior members of Edward Heath’s government and, as such, had been party to the continuation of the central Socialist philosophy of the post-war consensus, but they were figures of substance and experience who were able to hone policy by discussion from a position of genuine knowledge; and whose faces and names were known to the public.

Even as Mrs Thatcher ventured into more esoteric territory in her third government, she continued to include in her cabinet people of great substance with public profiles such as Douglas Hurd, Tom King, Kenneth Clarke, Nigel Lawson and Nicholas Ridley. The same was true of John Major’s governments in which Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd, Tony Newton, William Hague, Peter Lilley, Michael Howard and others were figures people knew and could identify as senior members of government.

Who do we have now? I doubt that most members of the public could name more than three or four cabinet members. That is hardly surprising because none of them seems to have any real departmental responsibility any more and every public appearance is a trial by ordeal – we can almost hear them asking “what was the answer Gordon gave me for that question?” We have a cabinet of anonymous Blair-Brown clones with no experience of business, little experience of the law (other than by passing innumerable new laws which even they do not understand), hardly any of them has ever employed someone (other than friends or relatives through their Parliamentary expenses allowance), none of them has created a real job for anyone and none of them is allowed to speak his or her mind in public (apart from Harriet Harman who speaks what little there is of her mind and comes a cropper every time).

Just look at who we have been given in the three great Offices of State.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is Alastair Darling. He was a solicitor for five years then a barrister for three before entering Parliament. I have no reason to doubt that he was a thoroughly competent practitioner in both branches of the legal profession, but he was not in either field long enough to achieve any distinction. Appointed, at least in part, because he had succeeded in keeping his foot out of his mouth in early ministerial positions he has lurched from crisis to crisis at the Exchequer and appears to be nothing more than Gordon Brown’s glove puppet. His flapping at the Dispatch Box when announcing Gordon’s half-baked non-solution to the 10p tax rate debacle was quite sickening.

As Home Secretary we have Jacqui Smith. Words fail me. She did, I readily concede, enjoy a degree of success in her eleven years as a teacher before entering Parliament, attaining the position of Head of Economics at a comprehensive school (and no, I do not say that disparagingly). No experience of the law, one year in the cabinet as Chief Whip, no experience heading a government department, no public profile and then she becomes Home Secretary. One might expect such promotion for an outstanding theorist with a record of innovative or inspirational thinking, but she is not, she is a party functionary.

The Foreign Secretary, David Milliband, is a different kettle of fish. It cannot be said that he does not have ideas. He was, after all, Tony Blair’s chief policy adviser (or some such title) from 1994 until 2001 and can, therefore, claim partial responsibility for turning the United Kingdom into a bankrupt country in which the state spies on its people more than even the Stasi managed in East Germany. But does he have any real substance? A succession of pitiful media performances was topped by a truly breathtaking display of smug incompetence on Question Time a week or two ago. One must not be too nasty to Mr Milliband because he succeeded the most appalling and inappropriate appointment to the position of Foreign Secretary in history, Margaret Beckett.

Can anything better be said of the rest of the cabinet? Not by me. I can think of only one senior member of the government who has achieved distinction in a field outside politics and that is the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland. She was one of the youngest people (and the first Black woman) to be made a QC and was hugely successful as a barrister.

The anonymity of the rest of them is truly scary.