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What are Tory ministers up to in Sudan?

30/01/2011, 12:31:33 PM

by James Watkins

The arid, sun drenched lands of southern Sudan may seem a long way from the corridors of Whitehall. But the actions of British ministers are raising eyebrows – and have led to real differences in the “special relationship” between the United States and Britain.

Right now, the count in a key referendum is taking place that is likely to lead to the world’s newest nation in southern Sudan being created this summer. Interim results are already out that shows there is, to date, 99% support for a new state. The referendum is going forward largely peacefully – with the exception of deadly violence in a key border area between northern and southern Sudan. The African Union is playing a critical role in this largely peaceful process with these efforts being hailed by former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, as a step forward for the continent.

But this referendum is taking place against a background where horrific violence between Sudanese forces and southern Sudanese militias had led to the deaths of 2 million people. Sudan is already scarred by the tragedy in the eastern Sudanese province of Darfur where the actions of the Sudanese government-backed militias have, according to the united nations, played a major role in the deaths of 300,000 people. As a consequence, the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the international criminal court on charges of genocide. (more…)

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NHS: Cumbrian case study shows Labour, not the Tories, are the reformers.

28/01/2011, 01:00:32 PM

By Jonathan Todd

Labour’s compassion built the NHS under Attlee and Labour’s investment saved the NHS under Blair and Brown. But it is Labour reform that has kept Cumbria’s community hospitals open and achieved better health outcomes in so doing. These successes are now threatened by Tory incompetence.

Gerry Robinson, the management guru who once tried to “fix the NHS”, bemoaned the lack of piloting contained in Andrew Lansley’s NHS plan on the Today programme last year. The presenter (Evan Davis, as I recall) then misdirected him towards Cumbria. While Cumbria may have much GP commissioning, it has benefitted from Labour reform, not opened a window on Lansley’s future.

The Financial Times reports that Cumbria offers “a glimpse into what the … government’s healthcare revolution could look like”. It may be that Lansley’s spinners have been whispering in the ears of Davis and the Financial Times, but Cumbria isn’t the first domino to fall in Lansley’s revolution. It is benefitting from a flowering of reform championed by Lord Darzi and patiently cultivated by NHS workers. Evolution would have meant more such reform, not a “grenade tossed into the PCTs”. (more…)

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Opposition is the world of the opportunist – lessons from the new shadow cabinet league table

28/01/2011, 07:00:43 AM

by Atul Hatwal

“I’m a proven campaigner” is a phrase that cropped up repeatedly on campaign literature during the shadow cabinet election. Everyone had a track record. But in what?

Opposition requires a very different set of skills to government. It’s not enough to be committed and pound the streets canvassing, important though that is. And being able to sift through a red box quickly isn’t particularly useful either.

Opposition is about holding the government to account.

Yesterday’s Uncut shadow cabinet “work effort” league table helps show who is working hard at building a record in opposition and who is not. The table isn’t meant to be the final word on performance, but it does shine a light on who is putting in the hours.

It also lays bare some common truths about how to oppose. They are exemplified at the top of the league, but also used skilfully by some of the shadow secretaries of state in the less high profile departments. (more…)

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Great leader, or nearly man?

27/01/2011, 05:00:10 PM

by Rob Marchant

He has always been seen as a heavyweight and a bruiser. He has experience of the treasury at the highest level and was well-respected there. He is ferociously intelligent, one of the brightest of all his Oxford contemporaries, who, famously, does not suffer fools gladly. And, despite failing in his bid to be elected leader, there is no doubting his importance as Labour’s de facto number two, at a time of great turmoil for both the party and the economy; a politician seen as a ballast of rigour against the madder and less thought-out ideas of some of his colleagues on the left.

Raise your glasses to 93 year-old Denis Healey, the most celebrated Labour-leader-who-never-was of my lifetime. John Rentoul’s coverage of Healey’s recent Mile End group speech added a couple of insights, but the essentials of the story are well established.

Of course, there are as many differences as similarities between Healey and Ed Balls. Unlike Balls, he was not an academic economist, but a double-first classicist who, despite his on-the-job training, learned his brief well and actually made it to be chancellor. (more…)

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The rhyme and reason for early intervention

27/01/2011, 07:00:55 AM

by Peter Watt

We need to intervene much earlier in a child’s life if we are to reverse the impact of poor parenting. This is the key message set out in Graham Allen MP’s recent report Early intervention: the next steps. It finds that:

“babies are born with 25 per cent of their brains developed, and there is then a rapid period of development so that by the age of 3 their brains are 80 per cent developed. In that period, neglect, the wrong type of parenting and other adverse experiences can have a profound effect on how children are emotionally ‘wired’. This will deeply influence their future responses to events and their ability to empathise with other people”.

And the report makes clear the consequences of poor parenting:

A child’s development score at just 22 months can serve as an accurate predictor of educational outcomes at 26 years.
Some 54 per cent of the incidence of depression in women and 58 per cent of suicide attempts by women have been attributed to adverse childhood experiences, according to a study in the US.
An authoritative study of boys assessed by nurses at age 3 as being ‘at risk’ found that they had two and a half times as many criminal convictions as the group deemed not to be at risk at age 21. Moreover, in the at-risk group, 55 per cent of the convictions were for violent offences, compared to 18 per cent for those who were deemed not to be at risk.

The report, commissioned and welcomed by the government, calls for cross-party acceptance of the benefits of early intervention. It also asks all parties to accept that late intervention is expensive and ineffective. A further report setting out funding options is promised in the summer. (more…)

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Cameron reaches a crossroads

26/01/2011, 03:00:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

David Cameron was fond of claiming that Gordon Brown “failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining”. Now his chancellor blames the economy’s 0.5% retraction on the snow.

Of course the wintry weather did growth no favours. But George Osborne’s feline political skills eluded him big time yesterday. Did the figures come as a surprise? Caught on the hop? Blaming the elements is reminiscent of the howlers Norman Lamont used to make when he was chancellor. “Je ne regrette rien“, George?
Perhaps he just realised he had nowhere to hide. After all, a government that has removed the roof tiles is to blame for yesterday’s atrocious growth figures.
This deterioration in the economy is theirs and theirs alone. Q2 and Q3 growth was reasonable; evidence of Norman Lamont’s infamous “green shoots” breaking through.

But these have been choked off by the £6 billion worth of cuts the government made last year and the endless sabre-rattling about cuts to come which has squashed consumer confidence.

George Osborne has not made the laws of economics redundant. Poleaxing tentative growth with a slew of tax rises and spending cuts as the economy crawls out of recession was always going to lead to this. Labour was right last May: the Tories cannot be trusted to secure the recovery. (more…)

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What video game characters would our political leaders be?

26/01/2011, 11:30:58 AM

by Ian Silvera

As a gaming enthusiast, I welcomed the news that 16 MPs from across the political divide attended the recent Parliamentary games day. But putting the joystick in their hands is all very well. What would happen were they on the other side of that screen? What video game characters would our political leaders be?

Ed Miliband – Gordon Freeman in Half-Life

Caricatured as a political geek with Machiavellian undertones, the leader of the opposition could be mistaken for the main protaganist in the Half-Life series. A stereotypical “geek” complete with thick-rimmed glasses and a PhD in theoretical physics, Gordon Freeman is a hero in gaming circles. His appeal? Not your typical gun-toting, alien killing, muscle-bound gym monkey, Freeman is a cool, calculated killer who would certainly approve of Mr Miliband’s rise to power. Like his equivalent at the dispatch box, while sometimes quiet and unseen, when Freeman does speak, it is usually notable and damning. With this in mind, like Freeman, it would be dangerous to think of Miliband as a shrinking violent. Personal attacks will not stop this ambitious man’s progress. (more…)

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Why did the police not investigate phone hacking leads?

26/01/2011, 08:35:20 AM

by Tom Watson

I’m not a lawyer but the phone hacking scandal has meant I’ve had to act like one.

If you told me a year ago that I would have read Archbold, the criminal lawyer’s bible, inside out, I would have laughed. I’m the digi-guy. I read Clay Shirky, not boring legal text books. But then Tom Crone, the slick in-house lawyer for News International, tried to remove me from the culture, media and sport select committee. It was an act of aggression that finally convinced me that I had no choice but to get to the bottom of this murky affair, once and for all. Phone hacking took over from the future of the Internet as a policy preoccupation. I look forward to the day when I can return to Shirky.

When I read the section of Archbold on perverting the course of public justice, the whole hacking saga came into focus.

“The offence may be committed where acts are done with the intention of concealing the fact that a crime has been committed, although no proceedings in respect of it are pending or have commenced”,

says Archbold in the 2009 Edition, page 2631.

This week, the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, confirmed that he would examine all new evidence in the News of the World phone hacking saga.

I’ve made the case that he should be investigating a potential attempt to pervert the course of public justice. As fragments of evidence have been forced out of news international and the metropolitan police service by civil litigants and Parliamentary enquiries, the case for a deep investigation by an outside force is now, I think, insurmountable. (more…)

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Economic slow-down: it’s not the snow, it’s confidence

25/01/2011, 04:00:02 PM

by Pat McFadden

When this government was elected they decided to cut public spending sharply and ditch Labour’s industrial strategy at the same time. The first obviously got the lion’s share of the headlines, but two events in recent days have highlighted the folly of their second decision.

First, Sir Richard Lambert chose his final speech yesterday as director general of the CBI to bemoan the lack of vision from the government on what the future UK economy might look like, or any plan for the future. He talked of politics triumphing over sensible policy on a range of issues from aviation policy to the immigration cap to the cash starved local enterprise partnerships, which are being set up in place of regional development agencies. As Sir Richard pointed out, “it’s not enough just to slam on the spending brakes. Measures that cut spending but killed demand would actually make matters worse”.

Second, this morning’s GDP figures came as a shock to markets. And George Osborne’s attempt to blame the snow will fool no one. The really worrying thing about today’s figures is that they come before the impact of the VAT rise and the spending cuts which will kick in from March. Rather than snow, I suspect the real impact has been on confidence, which is why responsibility must lie at the door of the government. (more…)

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Ed Cojones: is he really Zorro, or is he Don Diego Vega?

25/01/2011, 07:00:31 AM

by Dan Hodges

Just when did Ed Balls become Ed Cojones? What was the time, date and place we first set eyes on the dashing, marauding, Cordobes-clad conquistador?

There are few clues in his childhood. He was born in Norfolk. Very flat, Norfolk. He attended a private, all boys school, where he reportedly enjoyed the violin. Bit girly, the violin.

At Oxford, he studied PPE, and then went on to Harvard. All very Ivy League. Finally, he came home and joined the Financial Times. Not much by way of tits, sport and Freddie Starr’s hamster at the FT.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Ed Balls has the biography of a wimp. A number-crunching, classical music-playing, pretty boy from the sticks.

Now contrast with some of the headlines from the weekend. “Ed Miliband’s rottweiler Ed Balls”; “Ed balls loves to knee cap his opponents”; “Ed Balls; aggressive, passionate, smart”.

Where did this guy spring from? How did Don Diego Vega turn into Zorro? (more…)

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