Who is this man?


Answers on a postcard:

Comrade Brown and I both fail to conquor America ...

Rumours that I have been spying on Gordon Browns trip to the USA are wide of the mark. I have indeed been enjoying the Florida sunshine (but not the endless queing for theme-park rides with my children) but my trip was strictly R&R.

In contrast to the breathless manner in which the BBC have been covering the possibility of a woman ot a black man reaching the White House, very little news about politics seems to reach the media in America.

Worse news still for Gordon Brown is that his visit here was only mentioned once in any media that I saw or heard on two weeks; and then in the context of an apparent possibility that he might be ousted in a coup by disgruntled Labour MP's if his poll ratings haven’t improved by the autumn. I take much of what I read and hear in the newspapers with a pinch of salt at the best of times but this daft story surely wasn’t being reported in England... was it?

Curiosity got the better of me and by my second-to-last night I couldn't resist the temptation to take a sneaky peak at Politicalbetting.com where, sure enough, a book has been opened on the probability of someone else leading Labour into the next election.

It's all too predictable for the press, bored with the lack of news on the politics front, to make a story where there isn't one; I just don't believe that the Labour party have the guts or the organisation to even contemplate such a move and in any case their constitution makes removing a sitting PM almost impossible.

Which means the rumor must be based on the premise that Brown will 'do the decent thing' and fall on his sword; if asked to by his peers. If he ever believed that the best interests of the Labour movement would be served by stepping aside I suspect he just might consider it; but I cannot imagine that he would ever be so self-aware.

Gordon Brown suffers from the worst kind of arrogance: he believes his work is his purpose - his divine destiny- even more than Tony Blair did. I do believe the stories that Brown is not enjoying being PM; I don't doubt he finds the intrusive nature of the job difficult and utterly despises having his personality and character endlessly picked over by commentators (like me...) who he believes to be immeasurably inferior to him.

In fact the more the job is a trial, the harder he finds it, the more he will believe that it is the ‘right’ thing for him to be doing.

He may well be indecisive, mendacious and paranoid but he isn't a quitter. For some Labour insiders to hope otherwise shows a complete lack of understanding for the personality of their leader.

Good or bad they are stuck with him. Like most voters in England, America failed to appreciate Gordons greatness. In fact they failed to notice him at all.

Perhaps Lord Desai is right when he says 'Gordon Brown was put on this earth to remind everyone how good Tony Blair was."

MP's face more humiliation over their allowances.

The House of Commons authorities have been forced to give up a small amount of detail concerning some MP's allowances and once again the newspapers are awash with lurid tales of John Prescotts eating habits and Gordon Browns TV choices.

The range of allowances given to MP's fall into three broad categories:
1) expenses for the provision of and for running their constituency office and staff,
2) expenses connected to communicating with their electorate, and
3) expenses connected to the costs involved in working in London and/or maintaining a home in their constituency, travel and personal costs.

There have been consistent problems with some MP's claims in all three categories. Early on under the new scheme several Labour MP's got into trouble for claiming the costs of offices that it turned out their political parties were using (all costs are not supposed to be for political campaigning, only dealing with constituents) and numerous MP's including our own have found themselves under very close scrutiny for employing family members in their parliamentary or constituency office.

Then there has been the concerns over using both the new £10,000 'communications allowance' and the annual report to promote MP's and boost their chances of re-election. Conservatives have promised to abolish the communications allowance if elected and the annual report rules will be tightened up to ensure that each MP publishes to an approved format.

The third area is probably the one that causes the most concern. Nearly all MP's are able to claim what is a tax free housing allowance that is around £2,000 a month and most of them take the view that it's a ligitimate part of their 'pay'. But MP's who had a London home already, or who get one for free, found that they couldn't claim mortgage or rent which seemd unfair; so the HOC authorities settled on a scheme whereby other 'costs' could be claimed instead, which is where the infamous John Lewis List comes in. MP's simply ensured that they claimed the money they felt they were 'entitled to' for other things that were 'essential costs incurred in connection with maintaining a second home' that added up to the allowance total.

Frankly the system is nonsense. In industry and in the civil service their are lots of cases where employees need to be based in two places, or need to maintain two homes; and very rarely would an employer start some stupid scheme like this.

What should happen is that MP's salaries should reflect the costs of the job more accurately and MP's should then pay for their own accommodation from their own pocket. If one MP wants to live in a caravan and then save for retirement while another wants to fork out for a flat screen TV and a flat in Canary Wharf then it should be their own business and no-one else's.

The political drawback, of course, is that to maintain the lifestyle to which MP's have become accustomed you would have to increase their salary by a lot more than the £20,000 housing allowance because it is tax free. You would be looking at a basic salary for MP's of about £100,000 and the headlines would be screaming "MP's award themselves a 65% payrise".

And we all remember what happens to elected representatives who award themselves 65% increases, don't we?

So in spite of promises by MP's for reform of the system I expect another fudge on the question of MP's housing allowances this summer, and more revelations and political damage next Autumn as a result.

Blog Updates: I am on holiday for a fortnight from this weekend.

A new era for Africa?

The latest rumours leaking out from Harare today suggest that the actual election results from the Zimbabwe elections at the weekend are about 60% MDC in the Parliament and 55% Tsvangerai 40% Mugabe in the Presidential.


The bogosphere is alive with stories of Generals refusing to support the man who put them there, fearing that the level of opposition is just too high.

Apparently, although hotly denied officially, South Africans are in Harare trying to negotiate some kind of a settlement for Mugabe to leave peacefully on his own terms.

This is an intersting story with the potential to make a massive difference to the entire continent of Africa.

Firstly, if as we all hope and pray, the Mugabe regime ends relatively peacefully this will have been the second occasion this year that genuine democratic change has occurred in previous trouble spots in Africa without resorting to a major civil war (East Africa was the first) and secondly, it will prove that African nations can work together to support the peoples of each nation on the continenent, because on both occasions change will have been brought about for Africans, by Africans without any interference of outsiders.

One of the primary ingredients for economic growth and prosperity for any nation is investment and in the modern world that means encouraging international business and global investors.

Those investors require punitive returns bordering on exploitation in order to risk their money in regions and countries controlled on the whim of a dictator or where the rule of law is absent.

But in contrast, in African countries where the rule of law and a free democracy is proven to be established - and especially where it has been tested and found resiliant- external investment has flourished, the length of term for investors has extended massively and most important the level of return needed to attract their money has diminished, leaving more in the productive economy and creating wealth there.

So the implications o a relatively peaceful handover of power from Mugabe to someone else run much wider than just Zimbabwe, the whole continent of Africa could benefit.

It's a bit early to tell, and we may yet be disappointed, but Africa could be on the threshold of a major new era of stability, peace and growing prosperity.

Update April 4th - sadly the latest news coming from Harare is much less promising that when I wrote this. I will post again as and when we know what is actually going to happen.

Will the cycling story be good or bad for Cameron?

The Mirror have run a story that David Cameron has ridden his bike through a red light, and down a one-way-street the wrong way on his regular cycle ride from his home in Notting Hill to the Houses of Parliament.

They followed him using a reporter on another bike and video recorded his journeys over three weeks, Mr Cameron apparently likes to ride to the 'office' at least once a week if his schedule permits it.

Their story was intended to damage the future Prime Minister (The Mirror is a strongly Labour supporting paper) but the fact that they and their Labour friends imagined it would harm him says more about how off the mark they have become than about Mr Camerons fitness for office.

The story is a big boost for David Cameron indeed, if it had been anyone but the Mirror publishing it I would probably have guessed this story was a plant by Camerons new press guru Andy Coulson.

Reminding people that he still regularly cycles to work is yet more proof that he is a regular guy not subverted by the trappings of power and status.

And as for jumping a red light on a push bike (in London) - well lets see - but I think the public will rate it as making him normal, not criminal.

I note two things, even the BBC highlighted how 'one minute he is cycling to work, the next he is meeting world leaders' and Cameron was heavily defended by cycling campaign group CTC.

CTC Director Kevin Mayne told the BBC

"It shows what an ass cycling regulation [and] traffic management is in this country at the moment... we campaign in CTC for things like opening up one-way streets, which are allowed all over Europe,"

"[Mr Cameron] is a yard in front of the white line in front of the Houses of Parliament - frankly, that's where I'd go to get away from the cars, he was hardly jumping the light" .

You can watch the video here:

Tory poll lead growing rapidly

A series of polls have given all of us Tories a huge boost to already very high morale in the party.

On Sunday there was a Yougov poll in the Sunday Times that showed us at our best level of support against Labour since the days of Micheal Foot in 1983; with a 16% lead over Labour. ICM in the News of the World followed with a poll that showed our support up 6% on a month earlier and now the March ICM poll for the Guardian, which has just been published, gives the following shares - CON 42% (+2): LAB 29% (-2): LD 21% (+1).

If these figures are reproduced at the next General Election the Tories will win with a 60 seat majority.

All pollsters warn that one poll is not enough to reveal a change in sentiment but equally all agree that several that say the same do.

So it is clear that far from putting a stop to the rot of Gordon Browns Government the budget has made the Labour Party as unpopular today as it was in 1983 when their radical anti nuclear pro-nationalisation election manifesto was described by a shadow cabinet minister as "the longest suicide note in history".

And the Lib Dems must be relieved that their support seems to be holding firm against Labour, too. After a rocky patch leading up to Nick Cleggs election Lib Dem support sagged below the psychologically important 16% level but in these three polls they have bounced back to near their 2005 election total.

This isn't just fence-sitting, this is Lib Dem fence-sitting.

The Liberal Democrats bizarre decision not to vote either way over the EU treaty yesterday has refined sitting on the fence into an art form. For Nick Clegg -in his first big decision- to demand that his MP's sit on their hands on pain of resignation is simply breathtaking stupidity, especially at a time when many people are wondering just what exactly our Lib Dem MP actually does for the money he and his wife are paid.

Adrian Sanders position is especially ludicrous, this is the man who has never accepted our mayoral system (adopted fair and square after a referendum); refuses to offer us a referendum on probably the most import decision faced by Britain since he became MP, yet claims there is a 'need' for a referendum on whether Torbay has one casino or two.

In eleven years at Westminster our MP has achieved nothing for the people of Torbay. I am afraid that last week was the shameful pinnacle of an utterly ineffectual political career.

In order to get elected here in 2005 Mr Sanders solemnly promised voters that he would back a referendum and has blatantly reneged on that promise, something that at almost a quarter of his rather more honourable colleagues felt they couldn't do. He already holds the accolade for having polled the lowest vote of any MP in Torbays history, and I don't doubt that the dwindling numbers of people voting Lib Dem in Torbay will shrink further as a result of this week; but the real damage is not just to Adrians chances of ever being trusted again, it is that even fewer people will see the point in turning out to vote at all.