Month: May 2009

Today we hear that Joanna Lumley has come out in support of the Green Party. It all sounds lovely but it means that whilst appearing to be an apolitical campaigner for good causes Lumley is in fact probably quite leftish and she will be a happy bedfellow with the extremely left-wing Green Party.

I know it is unfashionable to use terms such as leftwing and rightwing nowadays but the move of Labour towards the contested middle ground has left the old left looking for a new home. Some have found it in Respect and for the forthcoming Euro elections the No2EU campaign. Others are hiding in the Green Party. I say hiding because they do not push leaflets through your door with the word socialist highlighted but it does not take too much research to work out that the Green Party is essentially a socialist party in all but name.

Alan Johnson is viewed by some people as having the potential to be the next leader of the Labour party. It is clear from his pronouncements on proportional representation today in the Times that he is only interested in the narrow interests of the Labour party and has no interest in what is good for our country. He wants to confuse people by mixing the issue of reforming the behaviour of MPs with the issue of reforming the electoral system. In doing so Johnson is showing his true colours. In the Times he proposes that we have a referendum on the Alternative Vote Plus (AV+) system of proportional representation proposed by Roy Jenkins.

In 1997 the Labour manifesto promised:

We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system.

Whatever happened to that idea? In 1998 Roy Jenkins produced the Jenkins report which proposed the AV+ system of PR for the House of Commons. It did not suit Labour (because it would have reduced their majority) and the whole idea was dropped. Twelve years later Johnson raises it again because he thinks it has the power to clip the wings of the next Conservative government. Does Johnson think we have no memory?

The AV+ system of proportional representation is not that different from the little understood AMS system used by the London Assembly in 2000 and then again in 2004 and 2008. That system has given us a BNP member and a number of Green and UKIP members and a toothless scrutiny body. Great. Nice one Alan.

The biggest challenge for our next government will be tackling our country’s out of control debt. There is no way that we need a watered-down, PR type Parliament to tackle this challenge. In 2005 the largest home nation, England, voted for a Tory government but had to submit to a Labour government willed by the smaller home nations. We need a large Conservative majority at the next general election to allow our next government to do its job. Johnson is not part of the solution.

The news has just broken that Michael Martin will announce his resignation this afternoon. Good. The expenses scandal, and it is a scandal of the most damaging kind, is the product of a generation of MPs who have not realised that the world has moved on. They all need to go and it is appropriate that Martin is the first to go.

The Romans had a military punishment called decimation. The word is misused often but its original use was for a punishment of legions that either showed cowardice in battle or were mutinous. One in ten were killed to buck up the remainder. Whether it is by deselection or by voter action against incumbents who think that they can cling on at the next general election we need to see something like the one in ten MPs who have committed the worst expenses fiddles cleared out.

David Cameron has been making a lot of the right sounds and indeed has reminded Tory constituency associations that they have the power to deal with bad eggs. There is a grass roots move in the Labour party to get their NEC to do the same thing in the Labour party. Apparently 175 councillors and Parliamentary candidates have signed a letter urging the NEC to act. Their words are pretty withering:

We are writing to you to register our protest at the conduct of many Labour MPs, ministers and cabinet ministers in allowance and expense claims funded by hard working British taxpayers during the tenure of this Parliament. We are also gravely concerned that the Party Leadership has failed to take charge of a critical situation on an issue so fundamentally defining to the character and reputation of our Party, its supporters and activists.

Unsurprisingly I couldn’t identify any Ealing names on the list. Our Labour lot are not known for their freedom of thought.

Similarly the LibDems grassroots are on the warpath.

I have just written the letter below to my MP, Virendra Sharma.

You can do the same. Just follow this link.

I have just spent 20 of the most tedious minutes of my life listening to speaker Martin’s statement on MPs expenses. The upshot of it was “I am ploughing on regardless”.

Martin has come to symbolise this whole scandal. It became clear from the points of order raised that Martin’s statement was inadequate. In response to a point of order from LibDem MP Susan Kramer Martin made it clear that it was a matter for the government as to whether Douglas Carswell’s motion of no confidence in the speaker is debated and voted on tomorrow.

So Martin’s fate is in Gordon Brown’s hands. If Brown does not allow a debate and a vote then he will rightly become the centre of the storm. Let’s see how brave Brown is!

Today the Labour Party have come out with a typically mendacious party political broadcast. It is shot through with Gordon Brown’s dividing lines. One of Labour’s actors, “Tina”, says:

David Cameron would cut a £160m from crime-fighting budgets right now, that is the equivalent of losing three and half thousand police officers, how can we afford to take this risk?

At their Cameron knocking website cameronsconservatives.co.uk they go on to say:

David Cameron wants to cut public spending this year – in the middle of a recession – by £5 billion. Most departments including the Home Office would be restricted to a smaller, 1 per cent, real increase in their budgets this year. For the Home Office, that would mean having £160 million less this year in the middle of a recession to spend on fighting crime and protecting the UK’s borders.

Since January, the Conservatives have failed to set out exactly how the Home Office would be expected to reduce its spending in this way in the middle of a recession. But £160 million is the equivalent to the cost of employing 3,500 police officers.

It really is not hard to work out how to take £160 million out of the Home Office budget right now without touching a single front line crime fighter. Just have a quick look at the 2008 Home Office Departmental Report. Here are a few facts and figures:

• Administration budget for 2009/10 £419 million – seems like a good place to start
• Home Secretary’s private office staff – 69 people
• Communications Directorate staff – 171 people
• Human Resources – 468 people
• Accountants – 655 people
• Total Home Office headquarters staff – 3,182
• Number of civil servants earning over £100K – 37 people

You can see their run rate on consultancy spending here – about £130 million a year.

Let me at them.