Leopard changes spots: Mail venerates an alleged illegal immigrant

Wonders never cease.

I hesitate to say Baroness Scotland should resign. What do they think in Scotland? - I wonder. I have enormous admiration for the lady.

However. The Mail says that she allegedly did not ask her Tongan employee to show her passport during a ten minute employment interview. As Attorney-General, you would have thought Baroness Scotland would have more sense.

However, reading the Mail story (someone has to, I suppose) one wonders whether the housekeeper is the villain of the piece. She'd been allegedly working illegally here for four years and there is an alleged forged second passport at the heart of the investigations into her.

Scotland (the Baroness not the country) has been fined £5,000 for not carrying out the right checks. Fair dues. But come off it, is an employee, even the Attorney General, meant to be a one person investigation unit in addition to their legal requirements (for the non-performance of which, the Baroness has already fessed up and paid her fine)?

And does this really impact on Baroness Scotland's discharge of her governmental duties? If someone can come up with some evidence of incompetance in her role, that would be different. Perhaps she was too busy concentrating on her governmental role to faff about with paperwork.

Having said that, there appears to have been shocking ignorance of the law shown by the Attorney-General and for that I have great sympathy with the calls for her to resign. But the housekeeper has presumably been paid by the Mail and they are using her story as knocking copy with which to beat Scotland. This seems to be a very unusual, some might say uncomfortable, position for the the Mail. Just read the Mail story and its rosy picture of the housekeeper. It's an extraordinary turnaround for the Mail.

Could Brown snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

No, actually. But seeing his determined face and his "I do not roll over" statement on the Beeb, one wonders if he might just do a John Major "soapbox" trick and get people's admiration for staying power. You never know, he could just snatch twenty seats for Labour at the next election.

At least, from his Beeb photo, he seems to have finally realised that it is a mistake for him to try to "smile". For that we can all be grateful, whatever our political persuasion.

Tory and Labour MPs earn up to 630 times more per hour than their constituents

The Mail on Sunday has an intriguing list (above - click on it to enlarge) of what MPs earn per hour on jobs outside parliament compared with the average hourly rate for their constituents. Patrick Cormack eat your heart out. The list shows the Top 40 who are all Labour and Tory MPs with one exception (Plaid Cymru). Take dear old Michael Gove. He earns £1437 an hour for four hours work writing articles - that 127 times the average hourly pay rate of his constituents. William Hague earns 114 times his constituents for advising a board meeting. John Gummer earns 630 times his constituents' hourly rate - £4,999 based on 20 minutes work on a conference call for which he was paid £1,666.

Also, surprise, surprise, Patrick Cormack is on the list! The very man who said recently that MPs pay should be doubled earns £191 an hour for advising a restoration firm - 21 times his average constiuent.

These figures do take hourly rates for very small lengths of activity and don't include preparation work, for example, for a board meeting.

But they certainly shoot the canard about MPs being hard done by (at least for this forty MPs and others like them with generously remunerated outside jobs)!

"Busting a gut" and other outlandishly disingenuous phrases

"Busting a gut"

That's what Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of Defence, the Right Honourable Robert William Ainsworth MP is doing. He's doing it to try to get more helicopters in operation in Afghanistan.

But hey, wait a sec. Gordon Brown says there are enough helicopters there. So Bobby Boy, sit back and pour yourself a long lager. No gut busting required here, mate.

There are eight Chinooks waiting to go out there.

...says our Bob. Excellent. Well done all round. And how long have they been waiting?

Er............. since 2002 actually.

Ah!

Oh dear.

But let's not concern ourselves. Boys are dying out there. But the Secretary of Defence is "busting a gut".

So, that's all right then.

Brown: Incapacity losing the hand of Prudence

Sir Fred Goodwin was a guest of the PM's at Chequers no more than six months before being forced to quit as RBS' boss. Is there any greater demonstration that Gordon Brown did not have a clue what was going on with the banks until they fell around his ears?

The words of William Blake might be relevant here (then again they might not be and I just include them anyway because they're good): "Prudence is a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity."

It seems that Gordon Brown's incapacity lost the courtship.

We have seen Lord Myners carrying the can for allowing Sir Fred to get away with a stupendous leaving package. Is it not clear from the Chequers guest list that Sir Fred's brownie point reservoir, in high places, was well and truly topped up when he needed it? Perhaps a tad more can-carrying should be done by G.Brown Esq.

Miliband should heed Callaghan's words on the Franks report

Harking back to the Franks inquiry into the Falklands just won't wash as an excuse to hold the Iraq war enquiry privately. The Franks inquiry was held nearly thirty years ago before the internet and the Freedom of Information Act.

(David Miliband) said the government was "determined to match" the Franks inquiry into the Falklands war, which he said had set the "gold standard" in terms of thoroughness and access to papers.

Gold standard! Perhaps David Miliband should read the withering words of former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan on the subject:

For 338 paragraphs he painted a splendid picture, delineated the light and the shade, and the glowing colours in it, and when Franks got to paragraph 339 he got fed up with the canvas he was painting, and chucked a bucket of whitewash over it.

If you read one thing today....

I would strongly recommend making it this superb analysis of events atop the New Labour project in the last few weeks from Andrew Rawnsley. He is particularly incisive on the relationship between Brown and Mandelson:

"What's he up to?" one senior Tory exclaimed to me the other day, simply unable to comprehend why Peter Mandelson saved Gordon Brown, the man with whom he conducted such an epically gory feud for 14 years before he returned to the cabinet last autumn. "They hate each other!"
Well, yes they did, but weirdly enough they have always loved each other too. It all goes back to the highly charged days that followed John Smith's death in 1994. Before then, Peter Mandelson was closer to Gordon Brown than he was to Tony Blair. It was the rational choice to back the younger Blair for leader when he was much more popular in the polls, with the media and with senior colleagues. Yet it provoked a wholly irrational response from Gordon Brown. The years of hate were so poisonous precisely because they were preceded by love.
Since his return, the two have rediscovered what they admired in each other before the great rupture. Peter tells friends that he has been "reintroduced" to Gordon's "good qualities. Gordon has clung to Peter's presentational flair, tactical nous, coolness in a crisis and loyalty in a crunch. It is highly doubtful that he would have survived the last fortnight without the presence of Baron Mandelson, the self-described "Prince of Stability" who bound in other members of the cabinet and guarded the Blairite flank.

The article is rich with Rawnsley's usual very funny epithets and spot-on judgments. I had quite a chuckle, as I read it in the sun in Newbury's "Peace Garden" (or one of them, by the canal). It occurred to me that Mr Rawnsley is very much my "high Priest" of political matters. I have read and enjoyed his columns ever since he was a slip of a lad fresh, from Uni, writing sketches in the Guardian and winning the "Newcomer of the Year" award. It is hard to imagine the British political scene without him.

Hazel Blears.............................I think I need a drink

Hazel Blears

.....................................................................................................................................................................

That's a blank pause of incredulity, by the way.

I mean, what can you say? According to Sky News:

She claims she had no idea that resigning on the eve of a very important election would have any effect.
"I genuinely thought I could go without it sparking off this huge firestorm. In hindsight that judgement was wrong," she said.
"I should have waited until after the election. The effect on the party is something I will live with forever."

.............................................................................................................................................................

That's another blank pause of incredulity. Let's see, Hazel Blears has been a professional in the world of politics since 1978 when she first joined Salford City Council as a trainee solicitor. OK, that was, at first, as a non-political officer but she would have been aware of political election cycles and that sort of thing.

So, she has thirty-one years of local and national political experience and she is asking us to believe that she had no idea that by resigning from the Cabinet of Her Majesty's Government on the day before a major election she would 'spark off a huge firestorm'.

.............................................................................................................................................................

I think I need a drink.

The National Democratic Renewal Council - eh?

The title almost gives me nervous hysterics. This body is supposed to be the engine room for driving democratic reform in this country. So, does it include all parties, the church, Women's Institute, Boys Brigade etc etc like the Constitutional Convention which gave birth to the Scottish Assembly? Er...no.

So what is it then?

Well, it's just a Cabinet sub-committee basically. Downing Street says lists its members and gives other details - or highlights the absence of details - of the council. The members are:

Jack Straw, Harriet Harman, Lord Mandelson, Alistair Darling, David Miliband, Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Douglas Alexander, John Denham, Shaun Woodward, Baroness Royall, Jim Murphy, Peter Hain, Michael Wills, Nick Brown and Steve Bassam (the Lords Chief Whip - to attend when Lords issues were discussed).

So, nothing to get excited about. As for voting reform...last night it seemed to be "in" and that the Alternative Vote shambles would be conscribed. Now, after a night's sleep, Brown doesn't seem to be sure whether it will be included and certainly won't suggest a specific system (thank goodness):

On electoral reform, Downing Street played down reports that Mr Brown will propose replacing the first-past-the-post system with an alternative system similar to that used in the London mayoral election, where voters number candidates in order of preference.

A political source at No 10 said the Prime Minister was expected to say only that discussions would form part of the wider debate on renewal of British democracy, but any changes would have to be subject to a referendum.

He is not expected to put his weight behind any particular voting method or make firm proposals for electoral reform at this stage.

So, that could mean anything then. Great.

But we can be a bit hopeful that it is, sort of, on the agenda, at last. One thing's for sure, this is the last chance we have for Westminster voting reform for a good many years. As soon as the Tories get their mits on power they will pull the shutters down and the only "reform" there will be is a complete redrawing of the constituency boundaries to kill off about 50 natural Labour constituencies and keep the Tories in power for a generation.

Brown's confrontation with Labour MPs - blow by blow

Paul Waugh of the Evening Standard really is an awesome political reporter. He's assembled a blow by blow account of the Labour parliamentary party meeting last night. It is here.

The dead man walks on

Iain Dale says that Cameron is delighted about last night's Parliamentary Labour party meeting outcome:

Brown remains in situ. He's swinging from the gibbet but there is no one courageous enough at the top of the Labour Party to pull the rope tight around his neck.

I don't think courage enters into it. I very much doubt that either Alan Johnson or David Milliband want the poisoned chalice of the Labour leadership at the moment. They would not have any real leeway to radically change policies at this stage and they would just caretake the party until it goes down to an ignominious defeat. Why not give Brown that privilege? Perhaps nearer June 4th 2010, one of them might think it would be nice to go into the election leading the Labour party with a honeymoon effect surrounding them...I don't know.

I am struck by something I wrote about Brown a year ago in a post entitled: "Gordon Brown: One sandwich short of a picnic"- which is still true today:

To put it bluntly, (Brown) won't be a success as Prime Minister as long as he has a hole in his bottom.

Labour's long march to the gallows

Quite a night. The Tories win Wales for the first time since 1918! The governing party on 15.7%!

I would have thought that Labour activists, MPs and supporters are seething with embarrassment that they let in Nick Griffin and that a second BNP MEP was elected. That is likely to shock them to the core and make them deeply ashamed of themselves.

Tonight's Parliamentary Labour Party meeting will be an angry one.

But my guess is that Brown will survive. What is the alternative? Milliband obviously doesn't want to take over for 9 months then lose an election, so he's biding his time. It'll be Alan Johnson. And? What good will that do? You can't tell me that in the fifth year of a government he is going to suddenly change all the policies he ought to change (Dump ID cards, Dump Post office part-privatisation, bring in Nick Clegg's 100 days reform plan etc etc). He can't do it. You need a general election to have a mandate for any radical changes and, in any case, the Labour party as a corpus doesn't have any agreement on an alternative manifesto or policy platform at this stage. And, Johnson would have the added impediment of continually being asked what mandate he has to be Prime Minister (more so than Brown currently).

So, all Labour can do is stagger on under Brown or Johnson until the constitutional parking meter in Downing Street goes onto red and they have to call a slaughter election.

Which brings me to the Conservatives - who "held their own" in the Euro elections. It was hardly a rocket-charged performance. If the Tories had performed in the high forties or low fifties then perhaps Brown would be toast this morning. But UKIP aren't likely to repeat their success at a General Election, so that might be Brown's salvation (if spending another 9 months in limos and No 10 can be called "salvation" when, metaphorically, you have a baying mob outside No 10 and people taking potshots at your limo with rotten tomatoes).

The Alan Sugar bluffer's guide to politics

An entertaining couplet of Alan Sugar interviews here on PoliticsHome. He's not joining the government and will be a non-political adviser on business - "a Giant Dragon's Den but not with my money". He says he understands he will become a peer but when asked if he would take the Labour Whip he said: "I'm sorry I'm not sure what that means. I'm not familiar with the technicalities of all this."

He also said he had checked his new role with the BBC and it was OK - so Dominic Grieve can go boil his head.

But the bit I found funny was this:

He went on to criticise the media's coverage of recent events. "The country is driven by this giant reality show. You, Paxman and the chubby fellow who hangs outside Downing Street," he said.
"Cameron at the moment must think he's won the lottery and it's you lot winding up the public," he said.

Who is this "chubby fellow" he is on about? It's not Gary O'Donoghue (pictured below) par chance, is it?

Or could he be referring to the svelte Adam Boulton?

Crack open the champagne!

...Or a rambling personal note on the council election results.

First of all, if you lost your seat in the elections, regardless of your party label or lack of it, do remember that losing at an election is God's/Fate's (delete as applicable) way of telling you to live a little.

Stephen Tall gives a very balanced view of the LibDems' performance here.

Overall, the Liberal Democrats projected share of the vote is cause for opening up the champagne! Trebles all round!

It's at 28%, compared to the Tories' 38% - just a ten point gap between us and the Tories. Compare that to the opinion polls in July/August 2008 when we were regularly twenty seven points - yes - count them - twenty seven points behind the Tories. If you don't believe me then look at this graph, which shows the LibDems around 18% in July/August 2008, with the Tories on around 45%.

Also, after all the nonsense we have had over the last few years about leaders, we have at last got a leader who is performing brilliantly, particularly over the last few weeks. Nick Clegg was particularly good and omnipresent on the media yesterday. This is cause for great rejoicing.

Oh, and, by golly, by gosh, we have at last got something which might be loosely described as that precious, precious commodity which the Liberal Democrats have searched and searched and searched for, for many long years. Yes, you guessed it - a narrative!

And let's savour Bristol a little shall we? Barbara Janke and her team have been plugging away at Bristol for many years. This is not an overnight success story. If you go back to the 1995 elections, Labour held a staggering 53 seats on Bristol City Council, with the LibDems on 9 and Tories on 6. So, little by little, the Bristol LibDems have plugged away and gradually built up their representation on the city council to the current level: LibDems 36, Labour 16, Tories 17, Greens 1. Well done team Bristol!

By the way, before any LibDems get too depressed, or indeed any Tories get too elated, they should look at this excellent analysis from Duncan Stott on Split Horizons. It shows that the Tories have grabbed seats way above their vote share. For example, in Staffordshire they won 79% of the seats with only 43% of the votes. How can that be good for democracy? Indeed, I'd argue that it isn't even good for the Conservatives. In a few years time they will get over-complacent, knackered and out of touch from too many council cabals, and then the electorate will take their revenge on them. It's all rather pointless.

I'd like now to focus on Cornwall and congratulate my fellow countryfolk (from, admittedly, my airey-fairey vantage point of exile in in a county where the trees go straight up and round) on establishing Cornwall Council. Yay! At long last!

And many congratulations to the Liberal Democrats for establishing an excellent representation on the new council - 38 seats. That, for Cornwall, is actually very good, bearing in mind it is an area with a tradition of many Indpendent councillors. I am particularly cheered that the whole of the Bude and Stratton area is now represented by LibDem councillors! Hurrah! So, many congratulations to Nathan Bale in Bude North and Stratton, Nigel Pearce in Bude South and Paula Dolphin in Flexbury and Poughill. This is a marvellous full house, when you consider that the area has been represented by independents (as well as some Liberal Democrats more recently) for many many years.

It was also good to see Glenton Brown being elected in Tintagel, a LibDem hat-trick in Launceston and a very strong LibDem showing both in Newquay and Penzance.

Many congratulations to Robin (Lord) Teverson on being elected for St Mewan ward and congratulations to David Hughes for being elected for Tywardreath ward, or the Du Maurier ward, if you prefer it (which you probably don't).

Finally, I would note that no Labour candidates were elected to Cornwall council. This is remarkable when you consider that Labour has traditionally been strong in the Redruth-Cambourne-Falmouth area. They used to have the MP going back years when Dr John Dunwoody held it, then Cathy Atherton from 1997. Indeed Cathy Atherton tried to get elected to the council in Carn Brea North but come third. The nearest Labour came anywhere to winning a seat was in Redruth North where they came 2nd.

Norwich parliamentary by-election coming up!

It seems that Mr Gibson is somewhat peeved with the Labour bigwigs and has taken his ball away. Geoff Hoon and Tony McNulty have left the government. This is an extraordinary day.

Brown is safe

That's how it looks to me after the events of the last two hours.

The Tories don't want Brown to go anyway - it would be a disaster for them - so Cameron laid off making any particularly "killer" remarks (he could have done a John Smith, for example) in this week's PMQs.

Brown's early reshuffle this morning has had an amazing effect on that email which was alleged to be circulating amongst Labour MPs. It's stopped going round for now, says the BBC's John Piper. Additionally, none of the big hitters - Johnson, Miliband, Hutton - who could have killed off Brown, have done so. Well that says it all doesn't it? Brown is safe.

Brown has also neatly pre-empted the bulk of the council results coming in, and grabbed the initiative/headlines.

He's kept his main rival nice and close to him - Johnson moves to the Home Office (where I think he will do a reasonably good job). That will satisfy Johnson fans, to an extent.

The only resignation so far this morning is John Hutton but that appears to be a loyal resignation, if there is such a thing.

What is amazing is that Darling is staying at the Treasury. Apparently he refused offers of other roles - which speaks volumes about the balance of power in the government.

But Brown can rest easy in Number 10 for a few more months and James Purnell is now looking like a bit of a wassock.

Mind you, this post certainly comes into the category of those I might later regret. I might have to eat my words earlier than I expect!

Johnson is Home Secretary - Denham to Communities - Hutton to leave cabinet - Straw and Darling remain in post

Update 12:23: Guess wrong - Yvette Cooper for Work and Pensions seems the most likely one now, according to the Beeb.

Update 12:05: Denham is to be Comunities Secretary. Yvette Cooper for Health? That would be my guess.

Update 10.30: Hutton to leave cabinet for "personal reasons". Prescott lays into Harman on Labour Home.

And I resisted the temptation to put "+++" on the title, you'll notice.

Yes, Brown is staggering blithely on. I am surprised that Darling is staying as Chancellor after the various nods and winks of the last week. It is great that Brown finally found someone to be Home Secretary and Alan Johnson will make a good one. I've always thought John Denham is a reasonably sound chap - but he fulfils the main criteria needed for a minister at the moment - he is one of the dwindling band of Brown loyalists.

Mandelson is staying as business secretary - so no Alan Sugar in the government then. Update: But he will be an "Enterprise Tsar" (whatever that means - I suspect it means simply complying with the Lyndon Johnson motto of preferring to have people inside the tent....)

It seems that Browns very prompt reshuffle has headed off the backbencher email at the pass.

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson says: One of the organisers of the round robin e-mail calling for the prime minister to go has said the early reshuffle has made their tactics "far more difficult" - they may delay until after council election results are known and "may not send the letter around at all".

Psst...another rumour from the Tweetdeck

Paul Waugh, who has consistently provided excellent bits and bobs from Westminster, says that "the word in Westminster is" (as they say) that a Cabinet Minister will resign as soon as the polls close at 10pm tonight.

This came to me via Twitter.

Incidentally, you can see a collection of most of the LibDem Twitterers here. All their Tweets scroll up as they happen. They are in overdrive today from various committee rooms, polling stations, phone canvassing banks etc etc.

I am a great fan of James Graham's Tweets. A couple hours ago he tweeted with this classic:

Darwinian selection in action in our electoral system. UKIP voters confused by 'folding': http://tinyurl.com/pm262j

Alan Sugar to join government?

It's getting to the stage that anybody going into Number Ten promotes a new rumour as to who is being asked to join the government. The milkman comes up to the door with his milk and the headlines fire off immediately...."Milkman tapped for Cabinet role" etc (or, more likely these days: "Milkman turns down role in government").

Anyway, Alan Sugar has visited this morning prompting headlines that....you know the rest. It's on the FT website, though, so it must be true. Mind you, there was a rumour the Sugar was joining the government at the time of the last reshuffle and that turned out to be...nonsense.

Can Brown actually form a government?

Pulling together various reports, it seems that John Reid and David Blunkett have turned down roles in Gordon Brown's government. These reports came from the Independent (amongst others) and a "senior Labour source".

There's also a loose rumour that John Reid, perhaps performing the role of the men in grey suits single-handedly (with, perhaps, a finger or twain of Single Malt thrown in), told Brown to resign, after refusing to join his government as Home Secretary.

(Number Ten say Reid and Brown talked about football. So there's a crisis engulfing Brown and he is spending his time chatting about football and ringing up Simon Cowell to ask how Susan Boyle is - great.)

Thirdly, there is a rumour via Sky News (who don't have the highest credibility at the moment, admittedly, but it was also reported widely including in the Telegraph) that Alastair Darling turned down the role of Home Secretary.

With this sort of rate of refusal, one wonders whether Brown can actually credibly form a government to run the country from next Monday onwards!

It's possible Blunkett was also sounded out for Home Secretary. So, if true (and much of this is in the twilight zone of rumour) that would make three people - Blunkett, Reid and Darling - who have refused the role of Home Secretary this week.

That surely must rate as a record, does it not?

But come off it, if three eminently suitable, experienced politicians turn down the key and senior role of Home Secretary, then surely the game is up and there is nothing left but to jump into the limousine for a relaxing ride to Buck House for a refreshing cup of tea and a soothing chat with our Betty, is there not?