Arrived home this evening to see appalling scenes outside BBC Televison Centre on Sky News.
I find it hard to think of anything more likely to hand a propaganda coup to the BNP.
Reasoned argument will defeat these people; violence and disorder won’t.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has criticised the Conservative party’s proposals to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.
No one can doubt that Mr Starmer is a highly respected authority on the subject of human rights. His former Doughty Street chambers specialise in that area of law and he was himself professionally involved as counsel in a number of high-profile human rights cases.
However, it cannot be denied that there is a significant level of dissatisfaction with the Human Rights Act and the way it has been seen to operate in practice; there was huge public concern, for example, over the inability of the Government to deport the convicted murderer of the headteacher, Philip Lawrence.
The Conservative party is right to address this concern and to undertake to amend the legislation as soon as possible.
Ultimately, however, as Mr Starmer knows, it will be a matter for Parliament; which is, as I am sure he’d agree, exactly as it should be.
Peter Hain makes an extraordinarily serious and unfair accusation against the BBC when he says that its executives have become “apologists” for the British National Party by allowing the BNP’s leader, Nick Griffin, to appear on Question Time this evening.
I have absolutely no doubt that the very last thing the BBC wants to do is to give airtime to Griffin and his loopy politics. However, he happens to be a Member of the European Parliament and over 900,000 people voted for the BNP at the last Euro election, so to deny him a platform would have been a clear act of political censorship.
Griffin, in the meantime, is openly laughing at the BBC, Hain and the rest of the political establishment in this morning’s Times:
“I thank the political class and their allies for being so stupid. The huge furore that the political class has created around it clearly gives us a whole new level of public recognition.”
Griffin is the leader of an unpleasant party of chancers which, despite its title, is deeply un-British. It is intolerant, xenophobic and atavistic and cynically abuses our dearest symbols – the Union flag, the Spitfire and even the image of the Conservative, sometime Liberal, Winston Churchill – for its own odious ends.
Griffin himself is a gadfly who knows how to use the media. He knew that to liken our generals to Nazi war criminals, as he did earlier this week, would gain him masses of free publicity. Hain’s strident reaction to his appearance on Question Time has handed him more of the same.
My own feeling is that the more that British people see of Griffin and his friends, the more they will be revolted.
The best way to destroy the BNP is to shine the spotlight on it.
PMQs today, and about half of the Government front bench, including the Prime Minister, are already wearing poppies. Almost none of the Opposition are, however.
The question is: when should one start to wear a poppy? There appears no hard and fast rule.
I usually defer wearing mine until 1 November, but, with the seemingly ceaseless flow of sombre news from Afghanistan, I think I may start a little earlier this year.
This blog will display the poppy until 11 November; do please click on it and follow the link to the Poppy Appeal website.
As regular readers will know, I was a late convert to Twitter. For a considerable time, I could see no purpose in tweeting, until some wise and less literal-minded individual than I pointed out that it was a useful vehicle for announcing blog posts: I didn’t have to restrict my messages slavishly to Twitter’s rubric that I was to record what I was actually doing at the time.
So I took it up and have been relatively pleased with the results; my blog hits have increased substantially and at the moment I have some 270 followers, or 270 individuals with whom I would otherwise never have communicated.
This afternoon, Lembit Öpik and I did an interview with the BBC’s Bethan James on the joys of tweeting. We agreed that it was quite good fun, but not a heavyweight way of communicating. We also agreed that it was probably a bit of a fad and would, sooner or later, disappear.
We could, of course, be entirely wrong. It may be that Twitter is the future of digital communication: short, sharp bursts of mostly banal consciousness that briefly register and then vanish into the ether.
However, I think we’re probably right. The fact is that Twitter doesn’t pay; its operators are keeping their options open as to how to transform it into a money-making vehicle. Lembit and I both agreed that if Twitter ever expected us to pay to use it, we’d probably give it up immediately. It’s also hard to see how it could ever be adapted to carry advertising.
So Twitter may ultimately disappear altogether; I think it probably will.
Until then, I’ll carry on using it. But I’m still not a fan.
Speculation that Barry Sheerman is about to announce that he will stand against the Brown loyalist Tony Lloyd for the chairmanship of the Parliamentary Labour party was not dampened by his appearance on this morning’s Today programme.
Mr Sheerman was appearing in his capacity of chairman of the Children, Schools and Families select committee, which had failed to endorse the appointment of Maggie Atkinson as Children’s Commissioner for England, but had been overruled by the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls.
It was natural that Mr Sheerman should express his concern at Mr Balls’s failure to heed the committee’s recommendation, but he did not need to go quite so far as to call Mr Balls “a bit of a bully” or to refer to the decision as a “bad day for Parliamentary democracy”.
Such trenchant criticism of the Prime Minister’s closest ally gives a fair indication of Mr Sheerman’s frame of mind.
Gordon Brown had better watch out.
The Daily Post today splashes a story headlined North Wales patients will not have to travel south for neurosurgery, which tells us that the Welsh health minister, Edwina Hart, has announced plans to improve neuroscience services for North Wales patients, reducing their need to travel for treatment whilst retaining the cherished links with Walton:
An additional neurology service will be developed in North Wales with better services at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Bodelwyddan, Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor and Wrexham Maelor Hospital.
The piece has strong echoes of a story that appeared as long ago as 16 July, 2008, on the BBC News website, which informed us that:
A north Wales Neurology Service will be based at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Bodelwyddan, Denbighshire with enhanced services at Ysbyty Gwynedd in Bangor, Gwynedd, and Wrexham’s Maelor Hospital.
The repetition of the message serves to underline that Mrs Hart has now totally, absolutely, one-hundred-per-cent, recanted and repented of her notorious July 2007 announcement that she expected North Wales patients to travel to Cardiff or Swansea for brain surgery. The barmy policy established for her an unenviable reputation as the Cruella de Vil of Welsh politics; it will be some time before she loses it in North Wales.
Mrs Hart is a candidate for the leadership of the Labour group in the Welsh Assembly and, if successful, will become the First Minister of Wales.
A very long day today, which started with a breakfast panel discussion organised by the CBI at Northop Hall.
Other panellists were Greg Evans, formerly of Wylfa nuclear power station, local Labour MP David Hanson, Caernarfon’s Hywel Williams and Montgomery Lib Dem Lembit Öpik.
Lembit surprised me with his enthusiastic advocacy of nuclear power, acknowledging that he was out of step with the rest of his party. Hywel was not keen on nuclear, but acknowledged that his Assembly group leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones, was all for a new station at Wylfa, contrary to Plaid policy. David was a bit lukewarm on nuclear, but recognised that it was probably necessary. I said I couldn’t see any real alternative to nuclear as a reliable, non-carbon emitting form of baseload generation.
The last question, from a member of the audience, was: “What positive changes do you envisage for North Wales after David Cameron has become Prime Minister?”
I rather enjoyed that one.
Driving home from London, I listen to the PM programme. It includes interviews with a Labour whip, who sounds terminally depressed, and Bob Marshall-Andrews, MP for Medway, who says he is hoping for a Labour defeat at the next general election, because a narrow victory for the party could result in its limping along for three or four years, followed by a wipe-out that could lead to its complete disintegration.
The collapse of fighting spirit in the Labour ranks is deeply worrying; it’s not what politicians do.
I do hope they buck up soon; we want an exciting election.
A deeply sombre PMQs today, in which the Prime Minister read out the names of 37 British dead in Afghanistan, was leavened somewhat by the last question, a trademark short jab from Sir Michael Spicer, and a respectable answer from the Prime Minister:
Sir Michael Spicer (West Worcestershire) (Con): Will the Prime Minister confirm that he will soldier on to the bitter end?
The Prime Minister: We have got a programme for Government. Unfortunately, the other side do not.
Hurrying back to my office through Westminster Hall after buying a sandwich in the cafeteria this evening, I heard the sound of the organ rising up from the chapel of St Mary Undercroft, accompanying the voices of the Commons choir rehearsing the Hallelujah Chorus.
Two immediate emotions: what a beautiful place this is; and how quickly the year is passing.
Tomorrow, the Welsh Grand Committee will debate the proposed Welsh Language legislative competence order (LCO).
The LCO has attracted a considerable amount of attention in Wales and was the subject of a report by the Welsh select committee shortly before the Parliamentary recess. The committee expressed a number of concerns about the original draft order and made several recommendations as to how it could be improved.
Last week, Peter Hain, the Secretary of State, issued his response to the select committee’s report, in which he accepted many of its recommendations. The order, he said, would be amended to reflect that.
So far, so good; and, as regular readers will know, I am a strong supporter of the Grand Committee, so I am pleased that it will now have the opportunity of debating the LCO.
There is, however, one significant problem: the amended draft order has not yet been published. This means that the Grand Committee will, ludicrously enough, be debating a document that none of its members – not even the Secretary of State – has yet seen.
I know that Peter is anxious to show he is cracking on with the LCO, but this, frankly, is ridiculous. It shows no respect for Parliament or the people of Wales and makes a mockery of the legislative process.
If the Grand Committee’s debate is to mean anything, it should be postponed until the new draft LCO has been published.
Posted in Peter Hain, Welsh Affairs Committee, Welsh Grand Committee
Tagged Politics
There was a rash of statements to the House this afternoon, including one by the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, on the al-Megrahi affair, which still leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth and has done immense damage to Britain’s international standing.
William Hague, speaking for the opposition, made a hugely pertinent comment on the actions of the Scottish Executive in releasing al-Megrahi:
One of the most bizarre aspects of the decision to release al-Megrahi was the fact that the Scottish Executive, having concluded that they could not transfer him under the prisoner transfer agreement because it would breach assurances given to the United States, then concluded that it was appropriate to release him altogether. Would it not have been more sensible to conclude that if it was inappropriate to return him to Libya as a prisoner, it was even more inappropriate to release him as a free man?
It will be interesting to hear the Scottish justice minister’s response.
Extraordinary piece by John Rentoul, who opines in today’s Independent that David Cameron made a dud speech at the Manchester conference and that Labour can win the general election provided it ditches Gordon.
Rentoul should get out and talk to people more. Everyone I have spoken to since Thursday – by no means all of them Conservatives – have agreed that Cameron’s speech was perfectly pitched, offering a serious assessment of the desperateness of the nation’s economic and social predicament, coupled with a vision of hope for the future.
What’s more, the polls – including today’s ICM for the News of the World, which gives the Conservatives a 19 point lead – show the Tories pulling further away since the close of the conference. The NOTW also puts the Conservatives ahead of Labour in 9 out of 10 policy areas.
I’m taking nothing for granted, of course, but it’s hard to see the rationale for Rentoul’s assertion that “Cameron is the big loser from the conference season”. On the contrary, I think he played a blinder and Labour must be deeply depressed.
In an interesting, not to say quixotic, attempt at repositioning, Gordon Brown, in an interview in the Telegraph this morning, seeks to portray himself as a sunny optimist, in contrast to the doom-and-gloom mongers of the Conservative party.
It is “simply not true”, says Mr Brown, that tough economic times lie ahead. No, says the PM, his drive for economic growth will pull the country out of recession; with Gordon at the helm, Labour are going to let the good times roll.
Gratifying as it is to see this hitherto unsuspected Louis Armstrong side to the Prime Minister’s personality, it is unlikely that his new line will cut much ice with an informed electorate. The Treasury’s own figures indicate that:
In the circumstances, it’s rather hard to see that the Tories are being anything other than totally realistic when they warn of hard years to come. Giving a cheery whistle, as Gordon appears to be advising, isn’t really going to help an awful lot.
