Tom Harris talks nonsense

I entirely agree with Alex Massie here: Tom Harris is being an idiot.  He is, obviously, entirely entitled to find Dan Hannan’s (masterly, excoriating etc) speech obnoxious.  You wouldn’t expect a Labour MP to enjoy it.  But this is preposterous.

What was truly repugnant about his speech was the total absence of any sense of patriotism. Some Tories on the extreme right of the party share the problem of some Republicans in the States: they don’t regard the head of government to be the nation’s leader unless he or she is also a member of their little party.

Gordon Brown isn’t just Labour’s prime minister; he’s Britain’s prime minister, and for any UK politician to launch such a disgraceful, personal attack on his country’s leader — in a foreign country — is nothing short of disgraceful.

Well there are a few points to be made in response to this nonsense.  The first is that not regarding the head of government to be the nation’s leader in the States is not the preserve of the Republicans – he’s obviously not been watching for the past eight years.  The second is that the old American convention of politics stopping at the waters edge is based on the fact that the President is not merely the head of government, but also the head of state.

That’s not the case in Britain.  We have a much better Head of State thanks, and the notion that Gordon Brown is my ‘leader’ is rather nauseating.  Hannan is an elected MEP and he was making a speech in the European Parliament in response to a speech made by Gordon Brown.  Brown is a politician, no more and no less.  He is not and should not be immune from criticism, wherever that criticism comes from.

Brown and Eden

As it’s crowing season here at the Reptile, let me cast my mind back to the summer of 2006.  I wrote a piece about Suez and, with the failure of Anthony Eden in mind wrote the following:

As for lessons we can take today from Suez, the most interesting can be drawn by analogy, by examining the character of Eden, the instigator and principal fall guy of the debacle. Eden was the gilded heir of a long-term leader: unparalleled leader in his field, a renowned expert on foreign affairs. Yet he had been made to wait too long for the top job, long enough that his strengths had calcified into potential weaknesses: an over-strong certainty of his own infallibility. By the time he finally succeeded to the leadership it was to be cataclysmic failure in his specific area of expertise that was to bring him down. Something for Gordon to ponder as he squats over the Treasury, biting his nails and brooding over the ultimate prize so far denied to him.

As the economic news gets worse and worse, along with Labour’s electoral prospects, Brown’s thoughts must be turning towards the question of his historical legacy.  I suspect it will be seen as a parallel with Eden – that Brown was never temperamentally suited to the leadership, that his apparent greatest strength was actually his downfall and that crown princes don’t make good kings.  Brown and Eden will be forever linked in the history books as representing respectively Britain’s largest foreign policy blunder and her largest economic blunder of modern times.  Happy days…

Scary stuff

This is absolutely mind-boggling. 

In the annals of a nation that has prided itself on keeping tabs on government debt since shortly after the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the state has never needed to borrow as much money. According to the Ernst & Young Item club, in the two years 2009-10 and 2010-11, the government will probably have to raise £350bn.

That is more debt bequeathed to its successor than the total borrowed by successive rulers and governments of Britain between 1691 and 1997, the year Labour was elected.

The prime reason that Britain’s finances are so utterly banjaxed is the precipitous collapse in tax revenues from the financial sector.  That, coupled with Brown’s belief that what is needed to repair the situation is ever greater injections of liquidity into the system, is going to cripple the economy for a generation.  And I’m not sure that Brown will be able to keep things going as they are – that is without substantial cuts in public spending, or tax rises, or interest rate rises – for another year and a bit.  We’re either going to see a sea-change in economic policy or, as I think is more and more likely, an election.

Gilt strikes and sloganeering

It was one of Mrs Thatcher’s most memorable sayings, that Socialists always eventually run out of other peoples’ money. George Osborne recently approximated this in his last budget response:

"In the end all Labour chancellors run out of money," he said with acid scorn, "and all Labour governments bring this country to the verge of bankruptcy."

Two bits of recent news have combine to make this look more and more imminent. The first, of course, was Mervyn King’s statement that the country was no longer in a financial position to afford another fiscal stimulus. In other words, the money has run out. The second was today’s news that the latest British gilt issue had failed to find sufficient buyers – the first gilt strike. In other words, we’re not even going to be able to borrow any more money.

It’s another reason why I suspect an election may be coming earlier than next year. And Harriet Harman’s performance in PMQs today adds a modicum of substance to this too. Her continuous stressing of Tory IHT plans, and references to ‘a millionaire’s manifesto’ along with renewed emphasis on the old ‘Tory cuts’ record look far more like electioneering than they look like Government. Watch this space.

Bankers 4 Labour...

Michael White, who I normally have quite a good deal of time for, writes an article about the ‘trilemma’ (© Niall Ferguson) facing the Tories which includes, as a cute little throwaway line,

Low-tax theorists don't feel comfortable with the huge monetary and fiscal stimuli which most governments, left and right, have deployed to undo damage done by Conservative-voting bankers.

These would, presumably, be Conservative voting bankers like Tom Hunter, Sir Ronald Cohen, Christopher Ondaatje, and so on and bloody on. The banker that everyone will immediately associate with the financial catastrophe will be Sir Fred Goodwin, mates with and knighted by Gordon “for services to banking. Just like the other architects McKillop, Crosbie and Blank. Rather hard to pin this one on the Tories I’d have thought.

Labour's endgame?

Further to those comments by Mervyn King stating that Britain no longer has the ready money for another fiscal stimulus, a thought occurs.  What the hell is Labour going to do for the next 15 months?  They have already abandoned their summer Comprehensive Spending Review, and it looks like the budget will be a cut-price affair.  They are avoiding saying what and where they will cut public spending, because it’s their last line of attack against the Tories.  It looks like they are aiming all their energies at scraping past the finishing post.  But can this really be dragged out for over a year?

Their entire economic policy is now in tatters.  Jack Straw is announcing fantasy politics ‘to be implemented some time in the next Parliament’.  No one seriously believes that an ID card system will be operational, or even irreversible, by June next year.  What are Labour going to do for a year?  It looks far more as though they are gearing up for an election sooner rather than later – at least judging by Brown’s performance in the Commons yesterday.

I’ve previously been sceptical about the prospect of an early election.  Labour will almost certainly lose it, and why lose this year when you can lose next?  But there is a tempting counter-argument now.  Labour can delay taking the horribly painful fiscal measures that will be needed for long enough to lose an election.  The Tories will then take the blame, and Labour will be well placed to berate them for every cut in the public sector, as well as for every rise in taxation.  It’s beginning to look like the least worst option for Labour, go early, minimise losses and leave the tidying up to the Tories.

Broke Britain

Mervyn King looks to have rather shot Gordon Brown’s fox on the fiscal stimulus.  It is, of course, the central plank in the Government’s economic policy that the world, following the heroic example of Chairman Gordon, needs another fiscal stimulus to preserve us all from the horrors of another depression.  Here’s the Chairman of the Bank of England:

"I'm sure the government will want to be cautious in this respect. There is no doubt we are facing very large fiscal deficits over the next 2-3 years.

"Given how big those deficits are, I think it would be sensible to be cautious about going further in using discretionary measures to expand the size of those deficits.

"The level of the fiscal position in the UK is not one that would say: 'Well, why don't we just engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion?'"

In other words, Britain’s too broke to afford it.  Any thoughts Gordon?

Social democracy

Tony Benn is fond of claiming that it was the Labour Party that saved Britain in WWII, because they voted against Chamberlain in the Norway debate.  Well, it’s a point of view I suppose, though it ignores the fact that Chamberlain won the debate, and that it was the opposition of Conservative MPs that forced his resignation.  Now Vernon Bogdanor has a similar sort of crack in an article in the New Statesman (it’s obviously the season for this).

The article itself is about how and whether ‘social democracy’ can survive and thrive in a post-recession political sphere, but the bit that caught my eye was this:

In Britain, the divisions on the left have helped encourage Conservative hegemony. From 1914 to 1964, there was just one government of the left with a comfortable overall majority, and this even though there probably was a progressive majority in Britain for much of that period, a majority that would have adopted more imaginative policies to deal with unemployment and the threat from dictators.

Well, there were really two dictatorships during this period, Hitlerite Germany and the Soviet Union.  Given the relatively benign position on Stalin and the Soviet Union taken by much of the Labour Party, at least until 1956 though it continued beyond that, you’d think that Bogdanor must be focusing on the mid-thirties and the age of appeasement.  But that surely can’t be the case – look at what Labour leader George Lansbury was saying Britain should do to react to the Nazi threat:

I would close every recruiting station, disband the Army and disarm the Air Force. I would abolish the whole dreadful equipment of war and say to the world "do your worst".

I’m not sure that’s better than a policy of appeasement coupled with intense re-armament.

If my aunt had balls...

She’d be my uncle.  There’s an article in the Guardian today where they have canvassed cabinet Ministers as to Labour’s prospects in the next election.  A sort of ‘view from the bunker’ if you will.  Surprise, surprise they are upbeat and optimistic – at least for the benefit of the press.  The cause of their optimism is perhaps a little delusional though.

Ministers were buoyed by the Guardian/ICM poll finding that if the economy picks up in advance of an election - a mighty if - the Labour vote could increase by as much as eight points. The finding confirmed the volatility of the electorate.

It is indeed a mighty if – there’s no sign of the economy picking up in time for an election in 2010, and even if it did the visible indicators would inevitably be lagging behind.  It’s also a pretty hefty could.

It also plays (again) on this polling volatility that Labour are pinning their hopes on.  It isn’t true though.  The polls have followed a pretty sure pattern since October 2007 – Labour have fluctuated between the middle twenties and the low thirties.  The Tories have fluctuated between the low forties and the upper forties.  That’s a solid pattern and not a wild swing.  There’s a lot less hope out there than they like.

Perfect neutrality

We hear a lot about political impartiality from the media these days – especially about how any suggestion that there is a bias against the Tories is nonsense.  Bearing that in mind, I’ve found a perfect example of this fabled even-handedness in today’s Guardian.

Who is right about the miners' strike - Kinnock or Scargill?

Wait – you mean there’s a third option?

Tactics vs. Strategy

Steve Richards is one of a few journalists who are well worth reading, despite their tendency towards a somewhat Panglossian analysis of Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.  In today’s Independent Richards looks at what Peter Hain has had to say recently about the future prospects of the Labour Party.  Hain’s case, essentially, is that this Government has failed to articulate any sort of convincing narrative.  Obviously, I would tend to go along with this analysis – I lurve political narrative.  Richards also seems to agree:

His broader analysis reflects what a lot of ministers and Labour MPs are saying in private: that there needs to be much greater sense of direction if they are not going to be slaughtered at the election.

Part of this goes to what has been Gordon Brown’s biggest single failing as Prime Minister – his lack of strategy.  So much of what he has done has been driven by short-term political positioning.  Look back to the early days, the ostentatious ‘tax cuts’ the recruitment of Tory defectors, the invitation of Margaret Thatcher to tea: all these were done with the aim of positioning the Tories to disadvantage.  I wrote about this at the time, and said then that the relentless party-politicking indulged in by Brown was bad Government.  It’s turned out to be bad politics as well.

Ferret time

One of the less edifying (but hey! Still fun) aspects of the death throes of this Government has been watching the various no-marks, dropkicks and child-frighteners begin the positioning process for after the election.  Is it going to be David Miliband?  Yvette Cooper?  Jon Cruddas?  Uncle Tom Cobbley?  Well, on one level, who cares?  In ten years time it will be as if we were still worrying about Gillian Shepherd and Stephen Dorrell.  This lot are doomed, and that grows more certain the longer they cling onto power.

But, on another level, it’s an important question.  Labour will, barring unforeseen events, be one of the two largest parties in the Commons for a long time to come.  The make-up of an opposition is important, not only for the party itself, but for the Government – the absence of a credible opposition certainly did Tony Blair no favours.  In light of that, it must be seen as discouraging that Harriet Harman appears to be the bookies favourite.

Now, my colleague has long believed that Harman is the inevitable future leader for Labour, and I’ve been coming around to his way of thinking.  Despite her obvious shortcomings (her shrillness, her fondness for the abolition of the rule of law, that sort of thing) she has been playing a pretty shrewd game of capturing the left of the Parliamentary party.  If there is to be a Labour leadership election after the General Election (and, joking aside, it’s pretty hard to see how this could be anything other than a Labour defeat, even if they defy gravity and deny the Tories a majority) then the parliamentary party will be greatly reduced in numbers – and the majority of those losing their seats will be the newer, more ‘Blairite’ MPs.  This should scupper the hopes of Purnell, Burnham, Miliband D and so on.  Straw is too old to be anything other than a caretaker leader.  Who’s left?  Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Jon Cruddas, possibly Yvette Cooper and Harriet Harman.  Doesn’t look so outlandish in that context does it?

Ministerial perks

Ed Vaizey and Iain Dale have argued that the perk of the ministerial car and driver is just one example of a luxury we should no longer be awarding ministers.  It’s a relatively low cost saving, but could of course be aggregated with a great many others.  Tom Harris defends the limo here, saying that hair-shirting MPs is a silly idea, that having a car and driver is a very welcome thing after a late night at the House of Commons, and that all this is getting out of hand:

Yes, a ministerial car is a perk. So let’s hear it for perks! Because if you’ve just had a 12- or a 14- hour day and you’re leaving the Commons after the last vote, it’s wonderful to be able to slide into the seat of a car and relax while you’re taken home, knowing you’ll be lucky to get six hours sleep before your ministerial diary kicks in the next morning. I don’t grudge that privilege to any serving minister and I wouldn’t begrudge any future Tory minister, either.

Well, a couple of points are probably in order here.  Fine, let’s hear it for perks.  Having a car to drive you home after work or work functions is a pretty regular benefit that executives in private companies get.  It is, of course, taxable as a benefit in kind.  Astonishingly (I bet you can see where this is going) the ministerial limo is not taxable.  14 hour days are not the preserve of MPs – the rest of us have to manage ourselves.

A thought does occur, however.  After a long day in the office, if you can’t face public transport and haven’t got your own car, there’s this wonderful service where, for a small fee, a car and a driver will appear and drive you all the way home.  Taxis I think they’re called…

It's not like we weren't warned...

To all those Labour MPs and supporters who are struggling to understand why their party is now trailing the Conservatives by 15-20 points in the opinion polls, can I direct them to the diaries of Chris Mullin?  Lets look at the man you bundled into office without a competition, and expected the British public to fall in love with…

Sitting on the terrace, I was joined by a member of the Blair inner circle. Conversation turned to Gordon. I mentioned that, following my departure from government, I had received a handwritten letter from Gordon saying how much he had enjoyed working with me. It seems every former Minister has received an identical letter. He must have been up half the night writing them. Gordon's machine churns night and day. My friend was scathing. 'He's mad, quite mad.'

 
'What do you mean?' 'Gordon is obsessive, paranoid, secretive and lacking in personal skills. He's been responsible for two absolutely mad privatisations - air traffic control and the London Underground - and all this talk about privatising the NHS is coming out of the Treasury - I'd probably pack it in if Gordon became leader.'

There we have it: obsessive, paranoid, secretive and lacking in personal skills.  Does that sound like an election-winning combination?

Alan Johnson attacks

Now, I’m never entirely certain as to the efficacy of the black arts of political propaganda and ‘lines to take’.  Surely, however, this is one of those things, like mushrooms, that grow best in the dark.  Allowing a new line of attack to appear, as if from nowhere, and insinuate itself into the minds of the people – that’s surely the goal.  Can I think of any examples?  I suppose the Tories’ attempts to exploit the inability of Brown to say sorry for anything might be a good one.  First you create situations which demand an apology, then you highlight Brown’s failure to offer one.  Rinse and repeat.

What you surely don’t do is flag up this process in advance.  For all the proverbial idiocy of the people, we don’t tend to like being played like fools, especially if the precise course of that play is laid out for all to see.  So it was a bit of a surprise to see the piece ‘by’ Alan Johnson in today’s Guardian.  Entitled The Cameron veneer: Their leader may sound un-Tory. But his sweet talk on public services hides a reactionary policy the piece sets out the position that, although Cameron seems nice and reasonable, underneath it all is the same old Tory party.

Now this is a plausible and attractive line of attack – certainly better than the toff, chameleon or reactionary lines.  But it’s impact is surely diminished by the fact that Johnson more or less announced that he was going to give this a try a couple of weeks ago.

It just makes it so crashingly obvious that this is just another attempt to find an attack that sticks.  It’s surely letting in too much daylight on the magic of the dark arts.

Unelected, unaccountable.

Ken Clarke was apparently on traditional barnstorming form in the Commons yesterday.  But then Clarke against Ian Pearson has a rather lop-sided look to it.  This is a genuine problem that Brown has had since ascending to the Premiership – his cabinet has been woefully thin on Commons presence.  The ‘big beasts’ of the Brown administration – the Milibands, Darling, Cooper, Balls and the like – are not particularly impressive Commons performers in the Heseltine/Clarke/Howard mould – or even the Reid/Blunkett/Prescott/Cook mould.  Brown himself usually comes off second best at PMQs, where his training as Chancellor has left him prone to sorghum yield statistics and an inability to change direction swiftly.

Of course, there is now a reassuring competent performer back in the Cabinet in the form of Peter Mandelson.  He’s a very effective debater, with a slightly comic-book sinuousness and pantomime villain sinister quality – it’s a shame he shaved of his moustache, as he can’t now twirl it in a dastardly fashion.  But, of course, he’s not in the Commons.  No more is Shriti Vadera, who has been Brown’s primary adviser for years.  Nor is the new City Minister Lord Myners.  Lord West, Lord Jones – whenever Brown has looked for talent he has had to do so outside the confines of his Parliamentary party.  This is understandable on sheer quality grounds, but, as David Cameron says, it’s not a good thing for democracy.

It is, however, symptomatic of Labour’s general contempt for Parliament.  Both Brown and Blair have appalling voting and attendance records; both have presided over a culture where nothing is ever announced in the chamber; neither have any respect for the role of the Commons in Government, seeing it as a nuisance at best.  The return of Mandelson is, to some extent, an exception to the general rule here, given that he was an MP and has been parachuted back in again as an expert politician.  But the proper place for the Executive is predominantly within the Commons where they can be held to account.  The debasement of the Upper House by this Government has all but emasculated it as a genuine revisional chamber – and the willingness of Labour peers to accept cash in return for amending legislation is, as FA said, less of a surprise than a confirmation.

It is to be hoped that Labour’s neglect of, and contempt for, Parliament is rewarded fittingly at the next election – in opposition they might just rediscover the importance of being able to hold an over-might executive to account.

What do we make of this?

The Com Res survey in the Independent is fascinating for two reasons.  The first is that it confirms that the bounce in Labour support is now over.  I would direct you to Anthony Wells’s masterly summary here as to the reasons for this.  Put briefly, Labour’s support has tracked very closely the levels of economic optimism in the country.  The recapitalisation of the banks was spun by Labour, and reported more or less uncritically by the media, as the answer to the economic crisis.  It wasn’t, and this is now becoming ever more apparent.  Labour’s fortunes will slide with the economy.

And if you think that’s bad news for Brown, take a look at this from the Com Res:

But asked how they would vote if the Tories committed themselves to a lower level of public spending than Labour and to try not to raise taxes – Mr Cameron's current policy – 49 per cent said Tory, 32 per cent Labour and 11 per cent the Liberal Democrats.

There was a similar result when people were asked how they would vote if Labour committed itself to higher public spending than the Tories and admitted it was likely to mean an increase in some personal taxes – Mr Brown's current position. The figures were: Tory 48 per cent, Labour 30 per cent, Liberal Democrats 13 per cent.

This is, explicitly, the policy difference between the parties at present – and it is a divide that is currently planned to form the basis of Labour’s message.  You can bet your life too that this is a message that Cameron and the Tories will force home at every opportunity.  Gordon Brown has planned every electoral campaign as a dichotomy between increased spending with Labour, or Tory cuts.  What’s he going to do now?

Sucking up to yourself

I think it may have been Matthew Parris who said about Peter Mandelson that all quotes made about him by ‘friends’, ‘colleagues’ and ‘people close to him’ were actually made by Mandelson himself.   Since reading that, I find all articles about Mandelson wonderfully funny.  Have a look at Rachel Sylvester’s excellent article in the Times (and on a side-note, should anyone be surprised that the Barclays are now eviscerating Sark?  After all, they’ve already eviscerated the Telegraph):

The man who was once described affectionately by his own aides as the “sinister minister” is said by some to be the “real Deputy Prime Minister” who is always hopping into No 10

Definitely Mandelson.

Ministers describe him as a “dominant force” in any meeting he attends.

Yup.

“Peter's been around with Gordon for a long time and there's a sense that they are equals,” a Cabinet minister says. “Peter didn't ask for this, he wants nothing.”

And again.

In the Lords, he has charmed the tea ladies and the doormen as well as the Members. “They all swoon when he comes in,” one peer says. “He could have been born to enter this place, he's a natural Lord.”

A bit obvious perhaps?

One member of the Cabinet tells colleagues only half in jest there is something “homoerotic” about how the British political class is obsessed by the Business Secretary.

This is getting too easy.

“People are in awe of him, the man has an aura,” says another minister. “Labour people think he can bring back the magic of the early years, that he has an ability to project a vision of change.”

OK, I’ll stop now.  But the thing is that it’s only too easy to imagine Mandelson saying all these things about himself.  The man is an object lesson in auto-fellatio – why get others to do what you can do yourself?

Banking left

Gordon Brown is having a good crisis.  Polls are moving and public perception seems to have moved with them.  To an extent this is inevitable – storms are not considered to be good times to change the skipper – but Brown (and Mandelson, whose appointment will look better and better until the day he is forced to resign in scandal) have managed crucially to manage the news cycle, and to control the message.  Brown is the great helmsman, steering the ship of state through treacherous waters (caused, naturally, by America); the Tories are do-nothing layabouts, who believe that the people should suffer through a recession they would do nothing to prevent.

Clear, simple messages put forward continuously: that’s the way to structure a narrative.  And it doesn’t seem to matter that the message is essentially dishonest.  This recession has been triggered by a collapse in bank lending.  This collapse has happened because the banks have lent too widely, on too little capital, for too long, trusting that the risk of default had been so widely dispersed by structured financial products that it no longer mattered.

That theory now having been tested to destruction, the banks have been told that they need to return to old-fashioned prudent lending.  Which they are doing, rather desperately trying to prop up their balance sheets and restore some capital adequacy.  And the price of that is that there is less money to be lent out.  Another factor – the Government, as part of their bail-out conditions, has insisted that the banks invest heavily in treasury bonds, gilts.  This has crowded out private sector lending.  A third factor – the money lent to the banks by the taxpayer has been lent at a rate of 12-13%.  This is why complaining that they are not passing on the benefit of the interest-rate cuts is fatuous.  Borrowing at 12 and lending at 2 is a short route to bankruptcy – again.  The old bankers dictum: ‘borrow at 2, lend at 3, go home at 4’.

So in fact the Government’s message contains a glaring contradiction: this crisis happened because of lax lending policies by the banks; the banks need to return to those policies as soon as possible.  Got it?

There is another problem here.  The reasons that the banks were encouraged to loosen their lending practices was to allow the poorer in society access to credit on better terms than loan sharks.  Those calling for a return to the bank manager and interviews before mortgages are effectively calling for a return to lending money only to ‘the right sort of chap’.  Being ‘the right sort of chap’ myself, I wouldn’t be particularly affected by this, but I’m not sure that this is really in line with Labour policy.

So there is a lack of internal consistency with the Government’s plans to deal with the recession.  Do they want a reform in bank lending?  If so they must be prepared to accept that lending will dramatically diminish.  Alternatively, do they just want to bail out the ship’s bad-debt bilges, allowing the good times to keep on rolling?  If so, they’re going to need a bigger bucket.

Monday blues

It’s really very depressing.  On the one hand, the recent kerfuffle about Damian Green, the Met police and the breaching of Parliamentary privilege and prestige has made great news – Iain’s site has been jammed, and it’s got me blogging again.  On the other, it really is, as Bob Marshall-Andrews said on Any Questions, so miserably in line with this Government’s whole attitude towards civil liberties that the question of whether any Government ministers were involved in the process is basically irrelevant.  If they weren’t, the argument goes, then they have clearly so debased the entire nexus between police and politics that the police thought they didn’t even need to involve the Government.

90 days’ detention without charge (hell, 42 days – wait even 28 days.  Under the Tories this was, what 48 hours?  Five days maybe?), DNA databases for the innocent and guilty alike, ID cards, the restriction of trial by jury, the abolition of the double jeopardy rule, the niggling restrictions on free speech, the numerous retrospective laws, the proposed right of the police to demand identification on the street, the curtailing of Parliamentary debates, the transformation of the House of Lords into a wholly appointed chamber, the mass expansion of political SpAds into the civil service.  Enough.  Labour has debased the political landscape, tarnishing everything it has touched.

But Westward look!  The land is bright.  This Government really is on its last legs.  2010 will see a General Election; the Tories will win; the task of returning probity and accountability to politics can begin.  Hmm.  Maybe.  I don’t feel particularly confident that it will.  The rampant expansion of the executive didn’t begin under Tony Blair, after all.  Why should David Cameron reverse it?  Does any Government really put shadowy principles of democratic accountability ahead of the concrete accretion of power?

There’s a sense of Augean stables about politics and government at the moment.  Partly this is due to John Lewis lists, and Conway and Balls-esque abuses of the expenses system.  But it’s also partly to with the nature of Government.  Executives seek to build up power.  Progressives seek to limit the power of institutions.  Progressive Governments do both – ripping down the Establishment, and filling the vacuum with more executive power.  Why should a new Tory Government take difficult procedural steps to ensure that its job will be more difficult?  Why should they consciously reduce the powers that they have to combat terrorism, or unemployment, or leaks?  “Because it’s the right thing to do!” we declare ringingly.  Maybe, but do you really hold out much hope that this is a winning argument?  As I say, it really is very depressing.