The Met have lost the plot when it comes to students

It has been while I admit since I last posted. But then again things have been going quite well haven’t they. First of the ever wise British electorate kicked out choker Brown at the first opportunity he gave them and offered the vacancy to Cameron and his chums instead. Then Dave showed his fitness to govern by extending the very generous hand of partnership to Nick and his friends. An act of real leadership beyond even the imagination of Gordon Brown.

The Coalition continues to show the leadership to sort out the financial problems that this country faces and which Labour showed its complete lack of bottle to face up to.

One of which is the parlous state of financing of our universities. I was teaching in one London university last week and was shocked at the almost derelict state of the building. Labour recognised the problem of course, but true to form kicked it into the long grass until it became someone else’s responsibility to fix.

That is exactly what the Coalition is trying to do undermined at every turn, and this is the real reason for my post, by the completely useless Metropolitan Police Service. First of all their ‘intelligence led policing’ fails to figure out that 50,000 students marching past Conservative Party HQ might try to do what students have been doing since the 1960’s. In other words occupy the building.

Next, they over react by kettling several thousand schoolchildren for hours in the freezing cold in Whitehall by way of sadistic revenge for their previous humiliation. Then they seem surprised when the same schoolchildren fail to co-operate with the next planned kettling in Trafalgar Square and run amok throughout Westminster and Oxford Street, leading to 150 arrests.

The Met seem to have completely lost the plot and they had better recover it again pretty quickly or things might well get seriously out of hand next week when the student protest movement comes to a head during the vote in Parliament on the tuition fees bill.

Are we already in the post Brown era?

It might seem strange to say it whilst Gordon Brown is still firmly embedded in Downing Street, but are there unmistakeable signs that we have already entered the post Brown era?

Well, Barack Obama seems to think so for one. The lukewarm response he gave Brown in Washington this week, with a 30 minute meeting, no formal press conference and no couples photocall, contrasts sharply with the warm welcome that Blair was still receiving as recently as a couple of weeks ago at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Could it be that Obama has seen the writing on the wall and does not want to upset the Cameron administration in waiting? Particularly after that unattributed remark during his visit to London, according to the New Statesman , about Cameron being lightweight.

The jockying for post Brown position in the Labour Party is also in full swing again with Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson and even arch loyalist Alastair Darling daring to contradict the PM quite openly. Message control seems to have gone out of the window as the PM’s authority ebbs away.

In Whitehall too preparations are in hand  for the handover of power. Civil servants are starting to count the days until the election and are paying serious attention to Conservative plans for the future. This government is already starting to run out of time to get much more legislation through and anything controversial, such as the expansion of Heathrow, risks being immediately overturned. 

Exasperated Cabinet Ministers have even been heard to say to recalcitrant civil sevants "Why don’t you go and talk to the Tories right now then?". In the public affairs industry it is CCHQ staffers and political advisers who are sought after rather than yesterday’s men from the Labour Party.

The great ship of state takes some time to change course and the levers of power at national level are mostly still in Labour hands. But in London, Scotland and almost everywhere in local government Labour is already the party of opposition.

Authority, ideas and energy are all steadily ebbing away from the Brown administration and towards the Conservatives. Brown has one last hurrah left with the G20 April summit in London, but even there, as in Washington this week, the clearest message might be that the Brown era is already over.

Change has come to America

The inauguration today of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States is a momentous event in the political history of that great democratic nation.

It is famously 45 years since Martin Luther King predicted that the USA would elect an African-American president. Martin Luther King never saw his dream come to pass but he assuredly played a huge part in enabling it to do so.

So now we have a Martin Luther King for this century and a John F Kennedy all rolled into one. It is difficult to find the words to do justice to the iconic nature of the events that are taking place in Washington today. An incredible amount of hope and emotion and expectation have been heaped upon the head of Barack Obama. His election and inauguration have surely lifted the faith and hope not just of the United States but also of many other nations across the world that a brighter, more peaceful, future can lay ahead of us.

Some commentators have said that one man cannot hope to fulfil this overwhelming burden of expectation. That may be true, and the huge economic problems facing the United States will surely test the capability of the new president and his government to bring the country out of the deep recession into which it has fallen.

But watching the pictures coming in from Washington today the only conclusion that can be drawn is that something is taking place beyond economics and beyond politics. Barack Hussein Obama has already achieved what many people thought impossible. He has already played his part in fulfilling the dream of Martin Luther King and in doing so started the process of restoring the reputation of America across the world.

Change has today come to America.

The Tories are the green party once more

Brown Central is back in shoot itself in the foot mode with a vengance.

First, Lady Vadera sees the green shoots of recovery when all economic indicators in the real world show dramatically weakening prospects on housing, output and employment and an economy about to officially enter recession.

Now the government has announced the go-ahead for a third runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow Airport.

If there was one single issue that could create a broad-based coalition against the government and hand the Conservatives in particular the opportunity to re-establish their green credentials, then this is it. We have Brown Central, BAA, BA and Virgin on one side and the Tories, the Lib Dems, the Greens, a number of Brown’s own MPs and Cabinet, and most of the population of West London on the other.

The government has refused a vote in Parliament and ignored the overwhelming majority of the 70,000 responses to its public consultation who oppose the third runway. Brown still has a massive fight on his hands to get this through the planning process for what is almost certain to be a pyrrhic victory. This issue and the campaign against it will dominate the environmental agenda in the run up to the next election and is then highly likely to be over-turned by a new Conservative government.

In the meantime, the issue is an open goal for David Cameron and Boris Johnson who have cleverly got themselves on the right side of the argument with their counter-proposal for a high-speed rail link. This is one of those situations where being in government is not an advantage and Brown has found himself manoeuvred into a corner that he is going to find very difficult to get out of.

My sense is that the media narrative has just tipped against Brown once more. The Daily Mail are going for him with abandon, the Brown bounce appears to be over in the polls and the recession is starting to make itself felt on the high street and in the job centre. This time he might well find it impossible to get the narrative and his position in the polls back.

Are the printing presses about to roll?

With interest rates hitting their lowest level in history and no sign of the end of the economic downturn there is widespread speculation that the Treasury is about to start printing money. This, as George Osborne has said, is the last economic resort of a desperate government.

What is amazing is how quickly we have got here. Only a few months ago the Bank of England was keeping interest rates at 5% to stave off the threat of inflation. Now we have nationalised the banking system, thrown in billions of pounds of tax cuts, reduced interest rates to an all time low and are talking seriously about printing money or “quantitative easing” as Alistair Darling likes to call it.

The government is in hyperactive mode about the situation and the question for the Conservatives is  what should they do? Stung by the PM’s criticism that they are the “do nothing” party they have responded with a series of meaningless policy initiatives. Their latest wheeze is to pledge to cut government spending now and offer tax cuts for savers instead.

But this is meaningless rhetoric because they are not in government and they don’t have the power to implement it. Nor need they. They can afford to be the do nothing party right now because handling this mess is not their responsibility. They are Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. Their job is to oppose and criticise and hold the government to account for the mess they have created, not to solve it for them.

All they need to do is hold their nerve, not let the government off the hook and store up their ammunition for the real fight which lies ahead. And boy is there plenty of ammunition. A record house price crash, record devaluation of sterling, record national debt and now record low rates of interest. With all  these punches to throw the next election should be a mismatch, with the referee stepping in to halt the punishment being taken by the government before the end of round three.

The government is engaged in the biggest economic policy U-turn in history. Having sat on the sidelines for about 12 months too long they are now throwing the kitchen sink at an economy going rapidly down the drain. David Cameron just needs to hold his nerve, keep his powder dry and avoid the policy mantraps that Gordon Brown is trying to lure him into.

Does Broon believe he can do it?

Does Gordon Brown actually believe that he can win an election himself? I am not at all sure that he does and I think that the answer why might lie deep in his Scottish psyche.

Reading reports today in the Daily Mail and on the Political Betting blog that Brown might be exploring the possibility of handing Vince Cable the Chancellorship ahead of a general election has got me thinking. Brown definitely thinks that he deserves to win the next election and he certainly would not share power with anyone else unless he felt that he had no choice. The conclusion I am left with is that he believes he needs the Liberal Democrats on board to hang onto power.

Sure enough it would be a bold political move from the Prime Minister, showing a recently acquired ability to think outside the box in order to retain his grip on power. He deserves credit for that. However, it does betray a lack of inner belief that he can win an election by himself.

The is the same crippling lack of belief which made him concede the leadership of the Labour Party to Blair without a fight in 1994, and which made him so desperate to ensure that he was finally crowned Labour leader in 2007 without having to face even a nominal leadership election process.

Why should someone who has achieved the political heights that Brown has feel such self doubt? Well, that is probably a very complicated question, but part of the answer is likely to lie in the demographic identity of the opponents he has faced and his fear of what that means for him.

Tony Blair (notwithstanding his own Scottish roots), had enough of a public school, Oxbridge and ostensibly English background to appeal to English voters in sufficient numbers to topple John Major. And Cameron, of course, is the same. He is the the quintessential English toff, but with the same warmth and ability to connect to voters that Blair had in spades and Brown will never have.

Whether the suggested alliance with the Liberal Democrats has any truth to it at all is open to question. But the fact that it is even being talked about at this stage in the electoral cycle is perhaps most revealing.

Another year over, and a new one just begun

This is the traditional time of the year to review what has taken place over the last 12 months and to look ahead to what might transpire over the next 12.

It certainly has been a roller coaster of a year in both politics and economics. The fortunes of political parties have risen and fallen with the economy, although not in the way one might have expected.

The government seems, perversely, to have gained strength as the economy has gone down the pan, whilst the opposition is mired in uncertainty as to how to respond. The PM is even said to be gaining in confidence that he might win an election called early in 2009.

Such a course of action would be the ultimate in hubris, even from a politician who seems to specialise in it. Still, if he thinks that he can escape responsibility for his stewardship of the economy over the last 10 years, and persuade the electorate that he deserves another go at it, then let him try. The only person he is fooling is himself.

My guess though is that his nerve will not hold. A politician who avoids contested elections at all costs is not likely to have the bottom to throw himself on the mercy of the electorate before he has to. Even now, at the height of his comeback, he is trailing in the polls and only bad news lies ahead of him.

For all their uncertainty, the Conservatives do seem to have got themselves on the right side of the tax and spend debate. With the national debt at the one trillion mark the electorate finally seem to have switched away from the idea of yet more public spending and towards the tax cuts that they instinctively believe the Conservatives will offer.

The PM is more likely to wait for something to turn up than to cut and run, but the chances of that happening are about the same percentage as interests rates will be next year, between one and zero.

Parliamentary privilege

A lot of words have been written over the past few days about the notion of parliamentary privilege and the damage that has been done by the Old Bill trampling all over it with their hob nail boots on.

Having a few years of inside knowledge about the workings of the constabulary I am always led to the conclusion that the cock-up theory is much more likely to be closer to the truth than the conspiracy theory. That is almost certainly true of the Damien Green saga.

It is in neither the police nor the government’s interests for this amount of fuss to be made of the leak of some embarrassing government secrets, which are now receiving a fresh airing. All the government wanted was to scare off the civil servants who are leaking like a sieve at the moment. But when they decided to bring in the police they lost control of where this would all end and it is now likely to end in tears.

The police are like a dog with a bone, once they have hold of it they won’t let go until it is taken away from them by the CPS. They also lack the political nous to understand how many ancient parliamentary codes they have broken in pursuing Damien Green right inside the Houses of Parliament.

This sorry saga has already resulted in frustration for the government who have lost control of the political agenda again. But it might also end in some serious woes for New Scotland Yard who in the wake of this new fiasco, hard on the heels of the cash for honours crusade and the Ian Blair years, might well find this one catastrophe too many.

With the division of political responsibility between the Home Secretary and the Mayor London, the Metropolitan Police might well find itself broken into two separate parts. A local police service for London and a second national service responsible for terrorism and protection duties. If that happens then it would only have itself to blame.

A winter of discontent?

Some of these days it seems like we are back in the 1970’s again. The commanding heights of the economy are being nationalised, the unemployment lines are beginning to form, a Labour government is piling up the national debt and it seems like a trip to see the IMF for a bail out might be just around the corner.

True enough the unions are not the power that they were back then, Thatcher saw to that, but are we heading for another winter of discontent? The government seem to be falling back on the old left of centre certainties of taxing the rich to pay for a public spending spree, whilst the opposition are promising to hold back public spending and return to fiscal responsibility.

The economic news looks certain to get worse over the coming winter months with no prospect of a pick up in the spring. The Prime Minister claims to be investing in the national interest, to shorten the recession, even though the national debt is ballooning to unheard of heights. It is already clear that he is investing to boost his own political position in a complete U-turn from his previous position of prudence.

More disturbingly, however, the suspicion is also gaining ground that he might be turning into a reckless gambler with the public finances now it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is the Conservatives rather than him who will be picking up the final bill. In this scenario he has nothing to lose. Either it works and he gets the credit, or its fails and someone else has to pay for it. 

If the fiscal stimulus does nothing to halt the economic free fall we might find a winter of discontent turning into a spring and summer of discontent for some years to come.

Time for a change

Rhetor, as the name suggests, is a blog aimed at advancing the political discourse by seeking to publish and argue the views of the author and entering into debate with any posters who choose to engage with me.

The author, who has not revealed his identity because of his day job, is a libertarian conservative. I marched against Thatcher in the 1980’s whilst studying politics at my redbrick university, voted for Tony Blair when I thought things could only get better in 1997, and am now persuaded that David Cameron’s project to detoxify the Conservative Party is indeed genuine.

My professor of politics taught me that power in the UK is cyclical and that one of the strengths of the great British public is the willingness to give the other lot a chance when they are fed up with the party in power.   

It seems to me that this moment has now arrived. There is a choice in the UK today between a party and leader in government that has grown too accustomed to power and a party that has been forced to reinvent itself through long years of opposition.

In the UK, as in the USA, it is indeed time for a change.