An A-Z

One would be excused to believe that nothing is going on in politics over the past ten days apart from the voyeurs posing as democracy advocates picking their way through the private lives of MPs. Dauershard presents an A to Z of more pressing issues, while trying to ignore Aga and Zanussi:

A is for Afghanistan: General Sir Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, spoke at the think tank Chatham House today, and that said the UK’s military reputation and special relationship with America has suffered from Iraq. Furthermore, he indicated that economic downturn will be used as an excuse to further squeeze defence budgets amid misallocation of resources on the Eurofighter Typhoon and MOD ineptitude. The UK is in a bloody, bitter and violent war in Afghanistan that it can scarcely afford. Dannatt said:

“The threat posed by al Qaeda-inspired Islamist extremism operating from within failed and failing states is pervasive, global and potentially deadly. So this is probably the struggle of our generation, perhaps our 30 years war, and not one that we want to fight on our own soil.” It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

B is for Brown: The walls continue to crumble around Fortress Brown. The cracks in his leadership are becoming increasingly difficult to plaster over. The PM needs to guide the sinking Labour ship with direction on leadership and policy, and stop playing catch up with the opposition.

C is for Cameron: There is a line in The Shawshank Redemption said by the narrator, Red: “He’s the only man I know who crawled through half a mile of shit and came out clean the other side.” The Tory leader has dealt with the current scandal smoothly, and with matronly efficiency. He kindly sent Dauershard an email this morning telling the party faithful that all the Shadow Cabinet claims have been published. Catch up Gordon.

D is for Downturn: There’s a recession on, don’t you know? Embarrassing growth forecasts, paltry micro-incentives for new cars, and the banks still not lending money, despite profits being generated – more action needed.

E is for European elections: it is nearly voting time. Thanks to The Telegraph, proportional representation, and the low standard of voter education, UKIP and (possibly) the other unsightly types are in for a sizeable harvest of MEPs. (Although it seems strange that UKIP are so desperate to get out of Europe by representing Britain in Europe: “Our policy is that we don’t want to be here?”)

F is for Freedom of information: a deeply misunderstood concept. Did you know Heather Brooke is an anagram of “Berate + hook her”?

G is for Gurkhas: the nation waits…

H is for Hope, Phil. The Care and Services Minister, clearly quite a nice chap, but surely an unpopular character in Westminster after getting out the cheque book for a bumper £42,000 pay-back.

I is for ID cards: Overpriced, effectiveness uncertain, civil liberty implications dire, unnecessary. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCwW_1rswyo for comic representation.

J is for John Graham: Another string ‘em up type whose letter to the Met Police Dauershard had the misfortune of reading today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/may/15/john-graham-mps-expenses-letter

K is for Khan, Sadiq: The Communities Minister is one of the more earnest and hard working members of the Labour Party. A critic of Blair, local government proponent and one of the few who talks sense about housing policy. Efficient too: additional costs allowance used? £0, total costs ranking 485th out of 645.

L is for Local elections: As local government gets more and more to do, Tories do it better – simple: “Of the 46 Conservative-controlled councils, 81 per cent are improving either “strongly” or “well”, as opposed to 71 per cent of Labour councils. Not one of the Liberal Democrats’ 14 councils is “improving strongly”, with 8 “improving well”, 5 “improving adequately” and 1 subject to review.” (Times, Thursday, from Audit Commission stats).

M is for Michael Martin MP: The police were on their way to Parliament, the Speaker didn’t get his way - even Sandy Toksvig made some mean (although comic) comments. He has done a solid job for nine years and calls for his resignation are hopelessly reactionary. Carswell, with his paltry 980 majority, ought to think about winning over his constituents rather than wasting time further shaking up the of the Commons. Mr Martin’s total expenses, incidentally, are 642nd out of 645 vs Carswell’s 209th (with maximum additional cost used).

N is for Nick ‘I’ve always said’ Clegg: A lot of fringe parties will be making substantial gains from the mainstream fallout on 4th June, but lets hope the Lib Dems are not one of them (see above). Nick Clegg has carved a smart niche in the past 12 months, but his style leers between shallow and transparent. On Monday it was announced that since 2007, classes with over 30 pupils have doubled. The Lib Dems would like to see classes at 15. Mad.

O is for Oliver Letwin: He had a plumbing bill, which happened to be under a tennis court. The inevitability of the follow up stories was depressing.

P is for Post Offices: The Post Office branch of Royal Mail announced a £40m profit, despite closing 1,500 outlets. Argument for need to close loss making rural Post Offices undermined.

Q is for Quangos: One of the most ludicrous claims by the Brown government is that increased funding can be financed by efficiency cuts. What ever was inefficient, should not have been so in the first place. £1 billion is spent on consultants from the private sector every year. NHS quangos alone absorb £2.5 billion – giving ‘costing an arm and a leg’ a new meaning.

R is for Referendum: are we getting one?

S is for Sieg Heil: This video is pretty old, but deserves many more views - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbgwR1pA1k0

T is for Tamiflu: All has gone quiet on the pig flu front (and who can deny a slight sense of disappointment).

U is for UKIP: The one policy party have the most entertaining piece of election material for next month’s elections – their paphlet contains the infamous picture of Winston Churchill making the V for Victory sign. Perhaps not as good as Nasty Nick Griffin’s party which (genuinely) features an airbourne Spitfire. What is this war obsession?

V is for Vince Cable: Oracle of disaster and a true wit. Few could come up with a line so cutting and amusing, when he accused Brown in PMQs of a "remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos."

W is for Woolas, Phil: One of Labour’s least likeable poodle ministers. See (G).

X is for Xenophobia: No need for much discussion, but Simon Darby who is the BNP’s deputy leader suggested a couple of weeks ago that Ugandans still fight with spears…

Y is for YouTube: The best place to see all the party election broadcasts. Reading the comments under any politics related video is a true joy, and clearly shows the price of democracy.

Z is for ZZZZzzzz: (Read in Channel 4’s Geordie announcer voice) “Day 10 in the expenses investigation…”

Expenses non-scandal leak hits the fan

The Telegraph went to town on leaked details about a number of cabinet ministers’ expenses today, in one of the most sensationalist pieces of journalism in the paper’s recent history. The stories literally covered the pages with not a single ‘non-expenses’ story from pages one to nine: red ink, photocopied faxes and aggressive insinuation – it had the works. No fewer than twenty stories appeared on the front nine pages on the topic (see appendix).

This is a deeply irresponsible move by The Telegraph. The implication of wrongdoing is intense, where there have been no rule violations. MPs take advantage of their £24,222 additional costs allowance – no surprise. The hacks at The Telegraph are in no position to suggest mock Tudor boards or loo seats are an inappropriate expenditure: that is the job of the bodies in the House.

The investigation, if you can call it that, will do no benefit to the right and Conservative cause. It will be the case that David Cameron will have a significant majority in twelve months time, regardless of the Telegraph’s campaign. The piece will extend pressure on all MPs from all parties to bring forward details of their accounts. But the perception of secrecy is wrong: the public could have known that Hazel Blears claimed her full allowance, to the pound, for many years by simply typing her name into Google, http://www.theyworkforyou.com/ lists all MPs expenses. It’s not that much of an exposure.

The media agenda – left or right – know that most of us are too short sighted to apply some reason and see beyond this storm in a tea cup. The self-satisfied and superior approach of those such as Heather Brooke is so backward: more transparency is not needed. Nick Clegg’s opportunism wasn’t much better – the ‘I’ve always argued’ approach is one thing that certainly is transparent.

Politics is being dragged through the mire at the most inappropriate time: recession, European and local elections, and a general election – all crucial – are fading to grey as a result of the fixation about 646 of our elected members earning an effective salary of £100,000. There are much greater injustices going on in the public sector.

Faith in Member’s of Parliament is at an all time low, along with voter turnout. The general elections of 2001 and 2005 saw 59 and 61 per cent of voters make their mark – terrible. Propaganda which detracts from an institution composed of mostly 100% honest and hard-working people is horribly unlikely to put low turnout into retreat.

The only redeeming feature of the twenty stories came in our learning that John Prescott spent the £4,800 maximum on his food allowance. But the most simple and fair solution for the flap is rather unpalatable but most sensible: increase MPs salaries, and cut the allowances. No ambiguity, no need for the gutter press to suck the life out of Parliament.

Today’s Telegraph
Page 1: “The truth about the Cabinet’s expenses”
Page 2: “Tricks of the trade, from shifting ‘second homes’ to profiting after taxpayer-funded renovations,” “Rules state that claims must be ‘value for money,’” “Civil servants rarely query the integrity of members”
Page 3: “Brown’s house swap that let him claim thousands,” “Brother has never been far from Prime Minister’s side,” “Bolt-hole a mile from No10”
Page 4: “Public paid the Chancellor’s stamp duty,” “The £1.7 million property built on the back of the MPs’ expenses system,” “Gardener queried necessity of the work he was asked to carry out”
Page 5: “Sorry but accountancy is not my strong suit, said Straw”
Page 6: “Claims for three properties in a year,” “Mandelson put in £3,000 bill as he was quitting as MP,” “Pergolas, planters and garden pots,” “£3,400 bill for new plumbing system after the water came out too hot”
Page 7: “Grant my expenses, or I may be facing divorce, minister pleads”
Page 8: “£30,000 improvements to group to go up in flames,” “No queries on $14,000 claim for stamp duty and fees,” “Millionaire minister received £100,000 to help pay mortgage,”
Page 9: “Two loo seats in two years, cost of life with Prezza”

Vacuous PMQs was frustrating

A pretty poor show in the Commons today: Brown clumsily evasive, Cameron unable to cash in fully on blunders, most Labour questions even more obsequious than usual, while the Tory backbench clowned around and also missed an opportunity. All expected an absolute humiliation for Brown – but it never happened. Cameron would offer a damning report of the government, and Brown would tell his opponent, as he has many times: the Conservatives don’t want to talk policy, and only care about gossip. Repeat ad infinitum.

In this tit for tat PMQs you might just about call it for Cameron, but the PM's repeated ‘listing’ of Labour’s triumphs and Cameron’s sniping was rather nondescript, and only revealed a few humorous moments. Nick Clegg was the only one to try and drum up some debate - about education. Brown’s response: another list.

See todays PMQs until Tuesday 12th May at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00k8wz9/Prime_Ministers_Questions_06_05_2009/

Labour are paving the way for their own demise (part I)

What a terrible week for Labour. The list of errors and embarrassments for Gordon Brown is sizeable: A defeat in the Commons over the Gurkhas, a 180 degree U-turn on MPs expenses (see the PM’s comedy turn at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBXj5l6ShpA), David Blunkett warned of a “catastrophic” collapse in trust in the government, Charles Clarke announced he is “ashamed to be a Labour MP,” and Hazel Blears wrote of Labour’s “lamentable failure to get our message across.” And this is not even the whole lot: other backbench Labour MPs have let their disgruntlement be known. Phew.

Poor Gordon must have thought it couldn’t get much worse after Damien McBride’s misdemeanours a few weeks ago, but this only marked the beginning of this string of hand-in-face moments. Harriet Harman’s valiant effort on BBC News this morning in defending the PM and declaring herself out of any leadership contest (which is probably a good thing, because she is not exactly the most popular cabinet member), didn’t fool anyone into believing that there was no trouble at the top in the Labour ranks.

Alan Johnson also offered his support to Leader Brown, but said “I’m not saying there are no circumstances” in which he would contest for the leadership. The weekend and today’s editorials followed a similar theme: “Brown is in his bunker, with a final, inevitable crisis to come” (Independent), “Blarite backlash in the battle for Labour’s soul” (Times) and, “Labour’s dilemmas: denial gets you nowhere” (Guardian). All rather gloomy.

This is a crucial month for politics: if Labour suffer miserably in the European and local elections in June, the cracks in the veneer of togetherness will deepen and become increasingly hard to conceal. Talk of a leadership contest should be the last thing Labour is concerned with. Even the fact there is talk of talk of a leadership contest is dreadful news. We can all remember the Tories’ crisis of identity not so many years ago: it cost the party dearly.

The Armed Forces and the Brigade of Gurkhas

Labour have an awkward relationship with the UK’s armed forces. The presence of troops in the Middle East has taken its toll the army and public finances: Army Chief General Richard Dannatt recently reminded us that British forces are over-committed leading to “severe impediment to the delivery of operational capability,” and previous equipment shortages in both Iraq and Afghanistan have been well documented by senior figures such as Colonel Tootal. The RAF, Royal Navy and Army are also facing recruitment and retention rate problems: the former too high and the latter too low.

Despite this, Labour have cut funding to the armed forces by 20 per cent since 1997 (Telegraph, April 1), which has left the forces with 46,000 less servicemen than it did twelve years ago, and the Territorial Army has witnessed a 38 per cent drop in members, with a deficit of 1,000 personnel.

And so to the long-suffering Gurkhas whose plight dominated the House and headlines today. Nick Clegg was right to attack Gordon Brown in PMQs, who fielded eight questions concerning Gurkhas (out of a total twenty) in a particularly evasive way:

“Let me say so there is no misunderstanding that the majority of the 4,000 who are coming into this country are below the rank of officer, and the suggestion being made that this is not the case is, is not, from the information I have, err, correct.”

According to Clegg and campaigners, the recent bit of Home Office rule-tinkering would only allow another 100 Gurkha veterans rights to move to the UK, rather than 4,000. Brown was adamant Labour had done the right thing by the Gurkhas, but this was not enough to prevent a humiliating government defeat in a vote earlier this evening. The vote was not binding, but as Martin Salter MP put it “the Prime Minister backed the wrong horse,” and the defeat is a PR disaster for the PM.

The armed forces have featured in the news this week more than coverage might suggest. Aside from contention regarding the admittance of Gurkhas to the UK as citizens, the elite Special Air Service regiment are to receive increased funding, and the TA is to become further integrated with the regular Army. This ‘strategizing’ will stretch the army further, with a higher percentage of committed forces, and is simply a nod toward further budget culls.

A fresh approach to defence is needed in the UK, from Gurkhas to Trident replacement. The PMQ mêlée and successive vote today showed how influential the military cause can be, and if people see £1.4bn being spent on a package to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions, £20bn on nuclear weapons, £175bn on bank bailouts and fiscal stimulus, state pensions for ex-servicemen seems small-fry by comparison.

Join the Gurkha Justice Campaign and sign the petition at: http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/.

Regulation in tomorrow's capitalism

The collapse of Enron in 2001, the largest in American corporate history, poured scrutiny over the way in which government and big business interact. As the scandal unfurled, the energy giant’s share prices tumbled from $90 per share to less than 50¢, and the financial and political fallout was stark. Aside from the Dow Jones and FTSE taking a battering for a couple of months, there were scores of red faces in politics, where the disgraced Enron had made sizeable donations to major parties on both sides of the Atlantic.

Investors and employees were stunned when it was revealed that the company’s success was founded on fictional profits, creative accounting and fraud. Total global investment exposure to the meltdown was estimated at $4bn, and further disgruntlement was directed at the auditors and regulators who failed to control these malpractices. Heads rolled at Enron’s auditors, Anderson, which was stopped from auditing public companies and ultimately folded, and the deregulated energy markets from which Enron won and lost on were reformed and tightened up significantly.

The current global credit crisis mirrors aspects of Enron on a much wider scale: the combination of unchecked risk-taking in potentially volatile markets, lack of transparency of information, and low levels of accountability and responsibility framed the conditions for the systemic failures demonstrated in the finance markets and economy in the past 18 months.

The difference between the two cases is that the UK economy was not brought down to recession by the shredding of important documents, illegal share-selling and practices which could at best be described as Machiavellian – far from it – the UK economy suffered under a system that brought financial stability and a solid economy for the best part of a decade.

So what went wrong? Explanations and scapegoats for the ‘crunch’ have got increasingly convoluted and confusing. Bankers, regulators, auditors and politicians have all taken a portion of the blame. The truth is that the whole system paved the way for our predicament: high-risk and high-level lending and borrowing, lack of regulatory powers and loose fiscal and monetary policy are just a few sound bites that begin to explain it. The long and short of it is this: capitalism dropped the ball, and it was allowed to do so. To avoid such disasters in the future, the system of financial regulation needs to be completely overhauled.

It is hard to see how the City of London had been able to be so reckless, where the Financial Services Authority has the job of enforcing a dizzyingly large amount of financial rules with its 2,800 staff. Between 2002 and today, the FSA have levied £108 million in fines for various offences. In December 2002, the Royal Bank of Scotland was fined £750,000 by the FSA for failing to carry out mandatory checks to prevent money-laundering, and within 24 hours RBS’s shares fell 43p – nearly 3 per cent. But why are fines such as this not enough to deter financial institutions from malpractice? Quite simply, the fines are not stiff enough to be a disincentive: RBS’s £750k mistake represents only 0.01% of its £6,451 million profit for 2002.

Besides its lack of power, the FSA alone is not an appropriate institution to address the mess. Whether or not we believe Lord Turner’s view – that the FSA were pressured into ‘light touch’ regulation by the politicians – is of less significance: the regulator did not react to warning signals from Northern Rock and allowed the bank to operate without risk mitigation months before the bank’s collapse. The FSA acknowledged it failures, albeit conditionally, but the politics of regulation is too cheap an excuse for errors of the magnitude that have been witnessed.

Policy makers have been slow to acknowledge both the impact of the crisis, and the need to restructure the institutions that allowed it to happen. The G20 economic summit last week finally addressed the question, ‘we’re here now, so what are we going to do about it?’ Aside from the shorter term solutions of substantial fiscal stimulus, the summit unveiled a number of new measures that look to address dodgy practices in finance.

These include banks being forced to hold more capital during boom, upping the scrutiny and effectiveness of ratings agencies, setting up a central clearing house for derivatives, changes to the awarding of bonuses and, of course, sharpening the tools of the financial regulators. Far from being a hindrance, these measures will serve the financial industry as much as they do financial stability as a whole, especially in the long run.

Bankers’ bonuses must relate to the risks they are taking – big bonuses for high risk trading cannot continue; credit derivative trades (which sent Lehman Brothers under, sending shocks through markets globally) will now be carefully controlled through the central clearing house; The Financial Stability Forum, which has been in existence for ten years, has been given much more muscle and will now act as a global super-regulator which currently includes 20 countries, and will work with the IMF to spot looming financial disasters.

All of these measures seek to address aspects that have been missing from western financial systems: transparency, accountability and responsibility. Voices which still advocate the reign of the unchecked market in this debate have got increasingly softer. Critics of increased regulation believe that it will simply create rules which banks will find new ways to meet while still operating irresponsibly. Similar free market rhetoric undercuts this argument: as long as incentives for compliance/disincentives for violation of the rules are strong enough, then we begin to see an operable system.

Besides these points, debate has moved on from free markets vs. regulation as the way forward: in reality the possible solution is not polarised between the two. Competition can still thrive with rules – the public sector is not looking to encroach on the markets any more than necessary to create conditions for sustainable competition and economic growth. The UK does not have to fear the City being uncompetitive as a result of stricter rules, as the subscription to change has been international where most leaders at the G20 recognise the interconnected nature of economies and see the advantages of enhanced policy cooperation.

The system of corporate governance is undergoing essential changes, and as Peter Larsen succinctly puts it: “The global financial system as we know it was forged by deregulation underpinned by belief in free markets. That approach failed. The task now is to prove it can be set running again with better brakes and better steering.”

MP Expenses and The Daily Mail

It is always amusing when a scene from the Houses of Commons flashes onto the news, and the attendance at a debate or vote is so miserably sparse that it will have my father effing and blinding at the television about the state of democracy. It is even more amusing to see pictures from tonight's House where "Gordon Brown has suggested scrapping the controversial second home payment for MPs in a shake-up of allowances" (BBC News Online)... the place was packed to the rafters.


Any slightly scandalous story about MPs' expenses makes for an easy groan. It is nothing short of a wet dream for readers of The Daily Mail. Richard Littlejohn was so outraged that a £10 bill for pornography got onto Jacqui Smith's expenses claim that he felt compelled to write TWO (emphasis added for tabloid effect) pieces on the topic in one day, one entitled "Not even in the Augean sleaze of the Major years did we have a Home Secretary claiming porn on expenses," which he followed up with, "MPs' snouts are so deep in the trough we can't see their curly tails". Littlejohn was incensed with rage, and comments ranged from the far reaching,

"The Smith-Timneys epitomise the kind of institutionally-corrupt, smug New Labour entitlement junkies who believe that the taxpayer should pick up the entire bill for their work, rest and play - even if that includes hard-core porn."

to the absurd,

"She looked guilty. She is guilty. The sooner someone like Smith or McNulty is put in the dock at the Old Bailey, the better."

to the admittedly rather funny,

"I visited the Television X website to check out the schedule. In alphabetical order, it starts with 'Anal Boutique' and goes downhill from there."

I am not sure MPs deserve to be strung up for using their expense accounts. For their average level of professional experience, a salary of £70,000 is not by any means vast, and many MPs who are former lawyers, political advisers or city types, would fair much more favourably in financial terms in the private sector. Therefore this income is supplemented by generous expense allowances. In 1976, when Michael Foot was leader of the House, MPs wanted a pay rise but it seemed insensitive to commit to such a thing amid trade union tensions, so allowances increased and this is how it remained.

This is not to say the expenses system is working. MPs need clearer guidelines about what they can and cannot do, rather than some wild notion of using personal moral judgement to decide how much is claimed. Some MPs whose constituencies are less than a one hour commute from Westminster should be pressured or forced to rethink their arrangements. A second home should be just that, and have clear stipulations on the number of nights per year that must be spent in an address in order for it to be called a 'main residence'.

The calls for the 'self-serving pig' MPs to step into the dock for trial, however, are a little sad and show an incapacity for an intelligent input. Littlejohn seems to be confused about the difference between theft and expenses. As the highest paid journalist at The Daily Mail (he earns £700,000 per annum for two columns a week) who dodges tax by living in a Florida mansion for a big chunk of the year, Littlejohn should pick his targets more carefully and try to use some evidence, proportionality, and balance in his writing. Its just so dull. If we believe The Daily Mail is little more than a tax on the ignorant, and borrow a little of Littlejohn's bent rhetoric, then he is just as guilty as the MPs he complains about. In the meantime, someone needs to get him a stiff drink to calm him down.