Tag Archives: gordon brown

How to beat Gordon Brown

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Imagine the scene. It’s a few weeks before the next general election. Gordon Brown – now Prime Minister – is reeling off another of his lists of economic statistics. He is about to launch New Labour’s general election campaign centred – as they have all been – on their economic record.

Who as Liberal Democrat leader could match him economic fact for economic fact in the debate in Parliament? Who will persuade leading journalists during the subsequent forensic media cross-examination as regards those key pocket-book issues?

For me, the clear answer is Chris Huhne.

Chris’s record as an economist, successful businessman and senior economics journalist give him the skills and expertise to do just that.

Of course credibility is not the only thing.

Important to me too are the beliefs behind Chris’s economic credibility.

A strong belief in the environment – to be protected and restored by taxing the activities that damage it while using the revenues to provide alternatives such as better public transport.

A commitment to social justice, most importantly by taking the poorest out of income tax all together.

Chris has the right priorities for our party, and decades of experience campaigning for them.

But Chris also showed his strength of character long before entering politics.

One of his first assignments as a journalist was reporting undercover from India during Mrs Ghandi’s crisis.

Chris stood up to Robert Maxwell – continuing to report his wrongdoings despite having four libel writs outstanding.

This shows a certain bravery and principle that was sorely missing from many journalists who took the easy option and turned a blind eye to Maxwell’s crimes.

There are only a few short weeks between the election of our new leader and the vital May local election campaigns (including in my own patch – Haringey – where we hope to take control of the council from Labour).

We need a leader who will be absolutely sure-footed in dealing with the media from day one, if not before. In just the few weeks of this leadership campaign Chris has shown his ability to win media coverage – coming from 200-1 outsider to within sight of the winning post.

What’s more, Chris’s campaigning experience of facing down one of the best-funded Tory campaigns in southern England and winning also means that with him as leader we can be sure to have someone who actively and productively supports our campaigning activity and leads by example in using the latest campaign techniques.

That’s why so many of the MPs who were elected for the first time last May – like both myself (a huge swing from Labour) and Lorely Burt, winner of Solihull on a dramatic swing from the Tories – are backing Chris.

We’ve seen the benefits of fighting modern, cutting-edge campaigns in our own seats, winning from both Labour and the Tories – and want to see those ideas spread much, much further in the party.

The wealth of experience Chris would bring to being leader of our party is reflected in the breadth of support he has already built up – including such highly experienced participants in the political scene as Bill Rodgers (SDP founder and former leader in the House of Lords).

Bill has seen an awful lot of party leaders of all stripes come and go over the decades – far more than me! – and in his measure, Chris certainly has what it take to lead and to win.

With any leader, there’s always a careful balance to be struck between wanting someone who will lead and give direction on the one hand, and on the other hands having someone who will respect and work with the party’s – quite rightly democratic – policy-making process.

With Chris, we know what we’re getting. He’s already chaired the party’s key public services policy commission under Charles Kennedy – working successfully with all parts of the party to produce a distinctive, effective and liberal set of policies to improve our services and radically cut down the power of central government and central bureaucrats.

Outside the party too, Chris is rated as the man who can do it:

“Brains and political acumen to match Labour ministers” (Guardian)
“Fluent and persuasive” (Daily Telegraph)
“No political novice … he has long been one of the party’s key thinkers” (BBC)
“Strong reputation” (ITN)
“A high profile among Lib Dem members” (The Times)
“Able” (The Independent)

If you’re still not sure if you agree with me, or the Guardian, or the Daily Telegraph, or the BBC, or ITN, or The Times, or The Independent, or … (!), you can find out more about Chris at his website, www.chris2win.org

Alternatively, if you would like to hear what others are saying about Chris, why not have a look at http://www.bloggers4chris.org.uk – as a featured blogger, I really recommend it!

Local services for local people

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Interesting meeting with the committee running the St James Pre-School playgroup. Squeezed by Government and local council so that they can barely function. Too complicated to go into here – but long and short is that funding follows the child. The funding for those on Income Support falls short of the real cost of paying for the staff . So in order to fund the differential gap – the other parents have to make voluntary contributions – and most are willing. This school has only four on income support – so the other parents fund their own extra costs and sub these four – but in playgroups where there are overwhelmingly kids from families on income support – the whole thing is getting completely untenable. I suspect that is the Government’s intention – to squeeze until they are all forced to close or become private nurseries. They can then force everyone into schools or childrens’ centres and never mind the loss of the wonderful local groups in the community. I really hate this government at times.

Then I dash to see a man who is unhappy about parking. I know – there are lots out there. He lives on a main road and bus route and is cross that Haringey Council have brought in pavement parking outside his house to stop buses getting stuck in Middle Lane and speed their progress. He doesn’t like the noise the buses make now they go faster and believes that the Council have lied on the their consultation document where they say that the pavement parking and double yellows on corners will improve things for residents. Well – I’m not the one to defend the Labour Council and they do lie. However, speeding up buses is necessary so that more people use public transport. But as a car and motorcycle enthusiast – he was not truly sold the argument that we need more and better public transport and the logic was lost on him. However, he is right about needing signs for school children, and better design of the pavement parking and am happy to take that up.

Then on to the TreeHouse Trust. This is an organisation formed out of desperation by parents of autistic children because the state offered care was hard to get and not necessarily the best. So some years on, TreeHouse have developed into a really fantastic group who have now built (temporarily in temporary buildings) a school for autistic children in Muswell Hill. It is fabulous. The care, the education, the pastoral care, the staff, the atmosphere, the ambition for the children was absolutely fantastic.

My fury is reserved for the trouble they have getting local councils (and they take from across the whole of London) to fund a child to be placed there. Yes – they are a bit more expensive than council places in special schools – but the care is so much geared to that very special condition.

Currently, I have been trying to get Haringey to fund a local child place there – but they refuse. The family are going to go into debt to send their son there.

Flew in and out of my youngest daughter’s school for a meeting about forthcoming art trip to Berlin and then met a delegation on behalf of Greek Cypriots.

And of course – today was Tony’s revenge. He always caps Brown. On the Monday you think Brown has got it in the bag – and damn it – by Tuesday lunchtime Tony has the conference eating out of his hand again. Gordon must be spitting as I reckon that was quite a clear indication that Blair is not hanging up his hat in the near future…

Who is Gordon Brown?

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Have a meeting at the pub (my constituency office is in the rooms upstairs of the Three Compasses pub). Sometimes I hold small one-to-one meetings downstairs in the pub itself – particularly in the morning when it is quiet before the lunchtime rush. The atmosphere is fabulously relaxing and I buy coffee or whatever and we sit on comfy sofas or chairs – and you get a lot more out of people in that way.

This meeting was particularly useful as the previous Monday, Mark Oaten (who is LibDem Shadow Home Secretary) had added prisons to my brief and I was about to visit Holloway Prison this coming Wednesday. So Lucy Russell, Director of Smart Justice, had come to lobby me about women prisoner’ issues – which was very fortuitous.

What struck me was how desperately disproportionate the consequences of prison often are for women and their family. To elucidate – punishment has an important role to play in society not just to keep the public safe but to be the price paid for unlawful behaviour. However, the majority of women serve less than six months. Going to prison more often than not means children in care or at the very least disturbed from their home; quite often loss of home and so on. So when you look at the total impact of the sentence, it’s much more than just the sentence itself. That needs to be remembered and dealt with.

Muswell Hill and Highgate Area Assembly in the evening. Not particularly well-attended and I swear I know virtually everyone there. The problem remains how to get ‘real’ people in greater numbers – at times other than when there is a CPZ proposal on the agenda when there is no shortage of attendees.

Tonight it would have been very useful if the council had made more effort to publicize the meeting as it was the opportunity for local residents to choose projects to fund from the local assembly’s budget. All the nominations were up on the wall and each resident in attendance got six green dot stickers to stick up. But lots of really great small projects nominated by various locals – and not really enough of the local residents there to indicate their preferences from which the local councillors then decide.

The main topics however were the future of Park Road Pool and trees. Good news-ish on the pool – it does have a future. Over the next few years lots of improvements promised and the community will still be able to use a room for local activities. Sounds good, but this being Haringey – we’ll see. They had done no work whatsoever on public transport for the venue – simply indicated that they were trying to expand the car park. That is fine (to a degree) but you do need to be able to get there by bus and there is only a very limited service since they removed the W2. Also – they had had no talks with Hornsey Central Hospital – who are just along the road and following my questions on this, work is going ahead on the site in the New Year.

The other main event of the day was watching Gordon Brown deliver his succession speech at the Labour conference. I was under-whelmed. I don’t think it is going to happen soon and I don’t think it is going to do Labour much good in the long run if he does succeed. He doesn’t know which way to play it – New or Old! In reality he has been relentlessly New Labour – so no idea why the ‘left’ think he may be their saviour. Who signed the cheques for the Iraq war? Who forced through part-privatisation of the Tube? Who insisted on top-up fees for students? And on and on.

Therein is the problem – who really is Gordon Brown?

Liberal Democrat conference, Blackpool

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My bags are packed and I hi-tailed it out of town on Saturday morning from Euston. On the train, I sit down and the woman across the aisle from me immediately asks me if I am Lynne Featherstone. I cannot tell a lie! Actually, she turned out to be a constituent living in Creighton Avenue on her way to Glasgow to visit her Mum and we had a few enjoyable hours putting the world to rights; if only we were in charge!

Blackpool may well be a wonderful place for stag nights and hen parties for the young, drunk and noisy, but – sober and middle-aged, truly sorry and no offence meant, it would not be my first choice. Every time I enter the Winter Gardens – which is the conference centre – I try and imagine what nightmares were haunting the author of the design brief. Must have been truly evil!

The Conference Hotel is adequate – but is nowhere near the Winter Gardens and so the delegates are consigned to spending a good part of each day travelling between the two from main hall debates at the Winter Garden to all the fringe meetings at the main hotel and others. In fact, the local authority provided a free shuttle bus – but hardly anyone was told.

But to the business. My guess is – as always – that the media will focus on whether Lib Dems are going to the right or the left and whether Charlie boy’s leadership will be challenged. I turn out to be right on both counts. I do one fringe meeting on the right/left kafuffle. The title of the event is ‘Can the Liberal Democrats be part of a Progressive Consensus’? This is hosted by the Independent Newspaper and chaired by Steve Richards who does the early Sunday morning politics show on GMTV. (You can read my speech on my website).

I have a go a Gordon Brown – basically. Don’t believe he is capable of a consensus – progressive or otherwise. Or more accurately, Brown’s progressive consensus is just that – OK so long as you agree with him. Anyway – as everyone knows – I think Brown is a coward who keeps his head down below the parapet when the going gets tough, votes a straight New Labour ticket, is the author of the astronomically expensive and appalling part-privatisation of the tube and who broods in the shadows whilst waiting for Tony’s tide to go out.

But what the media really, really want – is for the Liberal Democrats to tear themselves apart on the basis that those of us who fight or represent old Tory seats will want to shift to the right and those of us who fight or represent old Labour seats (like me) will want to be on the centre-left of the political spectrum.

Clearly a disappointing night then as all four of us speakers – Simon Hughes, David Laws, Vince Cable and myself – in one way or another all argue that it isn’t a matter of right left – it’s about Liberal values. Especially when the Labour government is knee-jerking poorly thought out legislation into being and striking at the principles of justice and freedom that make our country what it is.

The other great debate going on is about multiculturalism and what it means to be British, particularly after 7/7.

Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, has thrown down the gauntlet with a nifty little sound bite: ‘we are sleepwalking our way into segregation’. His thesis being that we live in our cultural enclaves and mix less and less. Statement of the bleeding obvious I should say – although it strikes me lots of politicos are fundamentally in denial whilst a Sky TV poll clearly puts over 80% + of real people in line with that thesis.

I get two bites at this issue. I speak at a fringe meeting and then there is also a debate in the main hall.

For the debate, conference has introduced a new format where representatives send in their preferred topic for a discussion on an urgent issue. There is no motion or vote – but people’s views are taken back and with further work and consultation a motion will then be brought back to the next conference for decision. It’s my job to summate the debate.

I have my own views too- and whilst I do think we are becoming a segregated society, I don’t think the 7/7 bombers were making a statement about poverty or alienation when they blew us up or that solving the issues of poverty and alienation in our ethnic communities will have anything but a tiny effect on terrorism in ours or any Western country. Terrorists don’t generally come from the poorest or most alienated.

However, history has given us a bit of a lesson about where extremists go to find fodder for their causes. So whilst tackling poverty and alienation won’t directly stop terrorism, it will help make it harder for terrorists to recruit support in future.

I also chair two of the keynote speeches in the main hall. The second one is for my Home Affairs team leader – Mark Oaten – our Shadow Home Secretary. So with only a sentence or two to say I introduce him as the ‘toughest Liberal I know’ – a phrase picked up by the media sketch writers for the Telegraph and the Guardian! Mark had said a couple of days earlier that he would kill me if I introduced him thus – but I did it purposefully as I believe that ‘tough liberalism’ is the way forward – particularly in terms of law and order.

Mark gave a bravura speech.

I (and you will thank me for this) am not going to go through every fringe I spoke at – but I was allowed to pontificate on a much wider range of subjects than ever before. In my previous incarnation I was kept pretty much to my policing and transport portfolios. This time – outside of my usual training sessions for the party on ‘How we Won Hornsey & Wood Green’ and ‘Grow your Own Target Seat’, I covered Lords – the Last Bastion of Freedom?, What Difference would Electoral Reform make to Women? (not a great deal in my view); The Future of our Towns; Making the Breakthrough (or how to get our arses into gear in the 100+ seats we are second to Labour in for next time); Blogging and so on.

New experience for me (it is always great to do something you have never done before) was something called GNS. I had to go and do the radio responses on what Mark Oaten had said about breaking the consensus around Labour’s proposed new terrorist legislation. Whilst we support three of the proposals – an offence of training for terrorism, incitement to terrorism and acts preparatory to terrorism – we can’t support an offence ‘glorification of terrorism’ or the ‘three months detention without trial’. Briefly – the ‘glorification’ one is just too wide a definition. It would turn into a feast for lawyers all interpreting (as is their job) but with such a wide spectrum that it would be very hard for such legislation to be effective – and you don’t want the real terrorist dodging around the new legislation because it is poor and they have a good lawyer.

The other – three months detention – strikes at the very heart of our principles of justice – and is another form of internment. Moreover, having seen how stop and search works in practice when I was on the Metropolitan Police Authority – it would be just too easy for profiling to lead to autom
atic three month detention on suspicion – and suspicion as we tragically know from the Met shooting an innocent Br
azilian isn’t enough. And if after 14 days they need more evidence and more time, there are other ways. They currently put people under surveillance and the numbers are not such that that would be too difficult or expensive. In fact it might very well concentrate the police mind on intelligence-based evidence rather than suspicion. Three months internment would make them casual in their rigour.

Anyway – none of this was the point of my tale. The tale was about the GNS process. I was to speak for eight minutes to each BBC radio station around the country – live! So with headphones on in a tiny studio and with an electronics box – one after another station around the country dialled me up and did the interview. It was pretty tough going. I was just brilliant by about the fifth one – when I had got all my best lines in place – but definitely going off the boil with over-confidence by the ninth! But – as I say – had never even heard of this type of interview before.

And so – the rest was a late dinner with friends and pretty early to bed – and yes – it really was all work!

Underspending on transport

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Mayor’s Question Time at the London Assembly. Always a bundle of fun. I am leading for the LibDem group with a question on Mayor Livingstone’s (lack of) success at getting money out of the government. In fact, the transport grant is going down – less money equals no successes by the Mayor!

Sods law (and probably no coincidence) in his update report to the Assembly Livingstone announces that the Government has decided to ‘allow’ prudential borrowing – and Ken’s application for £400m has been granted. Labour’s in a hole over transport and trying to dig itself out and through Ken a lifeline.

Obviously Labour’s polling is showing that people are fed up so suddenly – Bob’s your uncle, it’s OK to borrow.

I’ve long argued that the GLA should have the power to raise money through bonds (prudential borrowing isn’t quite that but is a form of it). Given how Gordon Brown has always firmly refused to allow this, I guess it is a sign of Labour’s political troubles that he’s finally had to relent a bit.

Of course, this totally undermined the thrust of my questionning – but a quick bit of thinking and I ran through the above with the Mayor and reminded him that it was now even more important to make the case for London as the Government in future could simply say – “well you can borrow” and reduce what should rightly be paid for by the Government still further.

I then drifted onto the Mayor’s £350million underspend on the tube. I think Ken is misleading the Assembly and I am trying to flush him out on what this is really about. He keeps saying ‘it isn’t me who is underspending, it’s just that the private companies haven’t sent in all their bills’.

Not so – there are no bills due. In fact, the service charge on the PPP money is always up front – so that’s a bit of a porky.

Ken slithers around on this one – but basically admits that I am right about the money being up front. So I ask him to publish a list of the projects he thinks are in the pipeline and will have to be paid for with price-tag and time-line. He wriggles into ‘commercial confidentiality’ as a get out of this.

But it’s not over yet – my allotted time for questionning runs out (and we have a very rigorous Assembly Chair who is a stickler for timings). But I’ll be back!

During question time a group of young people from the Haringey Youth Forum are present to see how London is run. Afterwards I go to Committee Room 9 where the youngsters are having sandwiches and take questions from them. Bright kids, bright questions.