Campbell’s contempt for the truth

January 12, 2010 — admin

Alistair Campbell isn't getting his picture here - instead this is the result of the dossier he denies influencing

There are lots of reasons to have a problem with Alistair Campbell. My main beef with him is that by becoming the most notorious of “spin doctors” his bullying, goading and arrogant manner has tarnished the entire PR profession with his chippy, chalky brush. Whenever I tell people that I’m in Public Relations, they think of Alistair Campbell and assume I spend all day yelling obscenities down the phone to journalists and anyone else who cares to displease me.

As much fun as that sounds, it’s not the case. The second problem I have with him was perfectly illustrated by his appearance today in front of the Iraq Inquiry - that like his political master Tony Blair, he is incapable of admitting that he may have made mistakes while in his government position. We may have all swallowed the 45 minutes sophistry back in 2002 but it should be perfectly clear in 2010 that the dossiers of both September of that year and February 2003 were packed full of information that was at best selectively presented and leadingly phrased and at worst blatantly untrue.

Today, Campbell refused to accept any criticism of his role, he denied having over-ridden intelligence information with his own advice on “presentation” and said he totally stood by every word in the 2002 dossier. “You seem to be wanting me to say that Tony Blair signed up to saying, regardless of the facts and WMD, we are going to get rid of this guy,” he said. “It was not like this.” Well then, Alistair, exactly how was it?

Did Tony Blair not discuss regime change back in 2001 with President Bush? Was the emphasis of the dossier not changed from “may” have WMDs capable of a 45-minute launch to “has“? Lewes MP Norman Baker might be a little deluded about the death of Dr David Kelly (he thinks the government did it) but his interview on Sky News earlier (sadly not available on their website) showed just how discredited the Campbell sticking-to-the-guns stance is.

And while Campbell was confident and easily dealt with the tame questioning today from a panel whose body language reeked of mistrust for him, his “Je ne regrette rien” attitude doesn’t paint him in a sympathetic light. We can, no doubt, expect more of the same from Tony Blair when he appears in front of the inquiry too. He will say that he believed that the dossier was true, that the fact it has subsequently been shown to be a pile of fibs was not forseeable at the time and that he would probably have gone ahead in Iraq regardless of WMDs because he believe removing Saddam was the right thing to do.

Possibly it was, although it would be interesting to note the Iraqi people’s view on that subject, which has little to do on the whole with democracy and human rights and far more to do with tribal and religious considerations. But if getting rid of Saddam merited invasion, why are we not invading Zimbabwe, Iran, North Korea, Burma and, for that matter, China? Why don’t we intervene in Tibet or the drug wars of Mexico?

It is a shame that both Blair and Campbell are too battoned-down to understand that moral judgements are rarely applicable on a case-by-case basis; you either believe in a principle of removing dictators or you don’t – and if you do, you have to remove them everywhere. Unless there’s some other reason of course that we are not being told about. Surely not.

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Enquiring minds

November 24, 2009 — admin
Sir John Chilcot

Sir John Chilcot

It’s not unusual for the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre to be full but perhaps rarely are events held there that cause a queue to overflow outside. This morning, the Chilcot Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Iraq War began with Tony Blair expected to be among those giving evidence.

Now that he can no longer expect diplomatic immunity from prosecution after his EU presidential bid failed, this must be a nervous time for Mr Blair. Several newspapers have run stories suggesting that the facts of the matter are at significant variance to the official account of events, including that Blair denied military options were being considered when in fact they were.

What I hope will happen as a result of this inquiry is that we will know:

a) Whether or not Blair and others deliberately manipulated evidence, parliament and public opinion to go to war

b) Whether or not his central claim of “45 minutes from destruction” was true and how it originated

c) Why there was a woeful lack of planning for what happened after the Allies controlled Baghdad – the clock to insurgency then started ticking

d) How much US policy dictated British strategy in Iraq

We all suspect we know the answers, or at least many of them, to these questions. The picture emerging six years after invasion was that politicians exaggerated and spun their way to public approval for a war that the Americans wanted and that there was a price for not following them into.

But let’s not forget that the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq has stretched to billions and billions of pounds that have be scraped away from areas such a local authority highways, Revenue Support Grant, policing and even the Armed Forces themselves. The person who approved every penny for this shallow, shambolic military intervention is now sat in No 10 Downing Street, all of 500m from the conference centre.

We should not forget his role in this. Yes, Blair wanted war. But he also wanted welfare reform, Euro membership and to follow Tory spending plans. Gordon didn’t seem to have a problem blocking these things – so why wasn’t he more vocal in his opposition of the war? His role in signing the cheques seems to have been swept under the carpet.

It is interesting to note, of course, that Woking MP Humfrey Malins voted against the Iraq War and resigned from his position on the shadow front bench in protest. How right he has been proven to have been.

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Blair ditches project

November 19, 2009 — admin
Herman's not a German but he's supported by them

Herman's not a German but he's supported by them

It’s okay, panic over – Tony Blair will not become President of Europe and we can all sleep a little easier. I don’t imagine for a second that the “winning candidate” – and I use the term advisedly given that I don’t remember receiving a polling card for this particular “election” – is going to do a vastly better job. Herman van Rompuy seems like a unpleasantly devout federalist who talks about standardised taxation and exectly the sorts of things that will have people running to UKIP.

It reinforces my belief that the UK and the EU are increasingly incompatible in terms of their future direction. What pro-EU Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don’t seem to get is that the European ideal is a Franco-Germanic concept designed to ensure those nations’ national interests remain predominant. I don’t blame them for that – for 200 years Britain pursued often brutal foreign policy to ensure our national interests were enforced – but we are surfing over a waterfall if we don’t recognise where the EU path is leading us.

The most scary thing for me is not the single currency, tax regime, foreign policy etc – it is the idea of Mr Rompuy being “named” as the EU leader and “chosen” by other leaders. This is exactly the kind of thing that the Politburo used to announce through Pravda and identical to the way that the Chinese president is “elected”. For me, the worrying thing about the EU is that it is sucking up the democratic mandate further and further from the people it seeks to govern. I can’t accept that this makes Europe safer, more harmonious or prosperous.

Tony Blair as EU President would have been a dreadful thing precisely because he holds the sort of centralising, anti-democratic tendencies that would re-inforce this worrying trend. Voting by region every five years is not democracy – no-one should sit in the European Parliament unless they have been directly elected by voters and I’m still not sure why if the European Commission is necessary it cannot be chosen out of the parliament in the same way as the cabinet in Westminster.

A separate EU presidential election ought to occur if we are to have an EU president. But since the chairman or woman of the EC ought to wield sufficient power, I cannot accept that a president is necessary in addition.

There is so much waste, so much interference and so much anti-democratic instinct in Brussels that DC should ignore it altogether for six years. Then, two years into his second term, he should hold a full EU membership referendum – once Britain has built up her economic and social strength once again – to settle this question once and for all. A strong Britain needs Europe and vice-versa – but my view is that leaving the EU would make us focus on what we as a nation want to be in 2050 and beyond.

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If only they’d learn

November 17, 2009 — admin
Michael Gove understands strategy rather than splurge

Michael Gove understands strategy rather than splurge

…That throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it unless you have the correct strategy to resolve the core issues. For Labour, far too many times the distinction between resources and strategy has not been made and extra resources has been the strategy. In the NHS, we’ve seen so much money wasted because it hasn’t been spent to address a problem, only to grab a headline.

Now Ed Balls wants an extra £2.6bn to help keep education funding on parity and protect it from cuts. It’s a typical, cynical example of the above. Yes, I’m all for money being spent on education. I believe strongly that there is a direct link between quality of education and later quality of life – I want to see people have the opportunity to become exactly whatever they want to be because that generates a happy and cohesive society. I can’t think of anywhere better to spend £2.6bn than in education.

But there’s a couple of points here. If education is, as Tony Blair claimed, at the heart of the New Labour agenda, why on earth wasn’t this “extra” £2.6bn factored into the spending plans? It is completely irresponsible for Ed Balls to go cap in hand and try to bounce the Treasury into exceeding their budgeted spending. As a former Treasury advisor, you’d think that Balls might know that. It’s not something that appears to have escaped Alistair Darling’s notice.

And second is that there is absolutely no evidence that if Ed Balls got his way the £2.6bn would make any difference to the state of education in this country. I believe that the government’s spending in education has been wasteful and misdirected and that the experience given to young people could be improved without new money and even with less. Once again, Balls is after the headline, he’s after the political quick-fix – trying to pin the Conservatives down over matching his commitment – and it’s the mark of a government on its way out.

Maybe there are questions over whether the same money can be spent on education in the short-term future – particularly if you include all the off-balance sheet PFI spending that the government is less keen to boast about. What I do know is that the public favours spending cuts over tax rises to plug this Labour government’s disastrous financial legacy and Michael Gove’s education spending will be targetted at addressing issues, improving standards and not just at picking up coverage on the front page of the FT.

Posted in Economy, Education, Labour. Tags: , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Dying for stability

November 2, 2009 — admin
Staff Sgt Schmid - "the best of the best of the best"

Staff Sgt Schmid - "better than the best of the best"

I was listening to the radio today while discussion centred on the latest soldier to die in Afghanistan, Staff Sgt Olaf Schmid, who was killed defusing his 65th roadside bomb earlier this week. It is difficult to imagine more handsome tributes being paid to any individual. His commanding officer called him 

“simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met. No matter how difficult or lethal the task which lay in front of us, he was the man who only saw solutions.”

He continued by called him “better than the best of the best” and another colleague said he was a “once-in-a-generation” man. But the most moving tribute came from his widow Christina, who wrote that she had lost her “soulmate” and “best friend“.

“Oz was a phenomenal husband and loving father who was cruelly murdered on his last day of a relentless five-month tour. The pain of losing him is overwhelming. I take comfort knowing he saved countless lives with his hard work.”

Reading out her statement on 5Live, Peter Allen sounded as if he was struggling. It’s easy to appreciate why. Olaf Schmid faced danger and death every single day in his line of work, tackling explosive devices so that others didn’t have to. I’m in awe of anyone with such courage and selfless duty – I don’t know whether I would be able to muster the same in similar circumstances and am proud to live in a nation where others can.

To single out Staff Sgt Schmid – brilliant though he clearly was – is perhaps a touch incongruous because each of the 224 British personnel killed in Afghanistan have made exactly the same sacrifice. But his death co-incided with the absolute farce of the Aghan elections - or at least they were supposed to be plural before one of the candidates threw his toys out of the pram and withdrew in a move designed to embarrass the Allied Forces and Afghan government.

We are left with a president Hamid Karzai who is discredited because he never won the election outright, is seen as close to the Allies and has presided over corruption everywhere. We have an opposition that he been motivated by a sense of injustice and could create instability within the country. We have a resurgant Taliban using the elections as an excuse, as if they need one, for violence and US and UK forces trying to hold the whole thing together for reasons known only to their political masters.

I supported the original invasion of Afghanistan, mostly because Tony Blair told me that we would find Osama Bin Laden there and bring him to justice as well as cut off his major allies, the Taliban. It transpires that Osama is probably holed up in our “ally” Pakistan and the Taliban don’t particularly like him that much – most of his support comes from another one of our “allies”, Saudi Arabia.

So it’s on days like this I have to ask what on earth we are doing sending our brilliant young men and women with families and dreams to die in some scorched and featureless part of the world that we have failed to subdue before? It may not be on the scale of the Somme but Helmand seems similarly detached from meaningful objectives.

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Distant relations

October 31, 2009 — admin
Michal Kaminski - a problematic past, but pragmatism must overcome principle

Michal Kaminski - a problematic past, but pragmatism must overcome principle

With Tony Blair having failed to get a job that doesn’t exist, Vaclav Klaus is going to have to do something seriously amazing to hold off on signing the Lisbon Treaty for another seven months. The Labour Party desperately wants it signed because it knows a Conservative Party promising a referendum on this issue will gain votes that it would not otherwise get – once the issue is dead it is a significant disadvantage to DC. If this happen, he needs to steady the ship and take stock rather than be rushed into knee-jerk European policy - while keeping on with the message that we should have had a referendum if Gordon Brown had kept his promises.

If I were him I wouldn’t be making hay over Europe. There is still a thorny issue of Conservative partners in the EP that is a tricky one to avoid. By asking for David Miliband to apologise over his comments at the party conference, DC is raising a tricky issue unecessarily and is hardly likely to succeed in his  request. Voters will turn a blind eye to Michal Kaminski for the moment to get rid of Gordon but sooner or later, the Grauniad, the Liberal Democrats and Mr Miliband will get this issue further into the mainstream.

The essence of this issue is the different ways the nations of the EU see the European Parliament. For France and Germany, the architects of the EU, the parliament is an important body that they see as having a consequential role in their domestic policy and the policies across the continent that they are trying to control influence. Other countries such as Italy and Greece ignore the EP and its deliberations completely, whereas eastern European nations look at it hopefully, doing as they are told in order to gain as much financial benefit as possible.

Only Britain frames the European Parliament around the federalism/sovereignty debate. So we position ourselves with those other European groups who on this issue and this issue alone align with our place in this arena. For Labour, it’s the socialist group, for the Lib Dems it’s the Liberal Group. For the Conservatives, though, the centre-right EPP grouping – while aligned on issues of economics and social policy – is not aligned on the sovereignty question because those governments don’t see the EU in that way.

Those groups that do focus on the sovereignty question in other countries tend to be small because it is a low priority in other parts of Europe. It so happens that some of their members have unfortunate pasts. I’m not delighted with this but if it’s a choice between falling into line with the federalists and gritting our teeth to stand up for what we believe in on the greatest political question of the age, I can accept it – just.

Update 1/11: Okay, so it’s only the Grauniad foraying around in the trash but this story gives an idea of the kind of trouble that could be in line for DC unless he lays off the European stuff a bit. Being criticised by other European leaders will go down well with some people but not with others. He needs to concentrate on the election winners – the NHS, schools, the economy. Europe at the moment is a mug’s game and the more he looks at it the more he will be pressurised into stating his position. It’s playing into Labour’s hands.

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Don’t let the grin win

October 27, 2009 — admin
At least the man on the left has experience of being president...

At least the man on the left has experience of being president...

There’s a great website with a petition to sign up to if you want to stop Tony Blair becoming President of Europe. It would be even nicer if there was an election on the subject, come to think of it – but that’s the EU for you. Even if we voted for that Dutch chap or the bloke from Luxembourg instead, we’d probably have to have a re-run until the “correct” president was elected. A bit like in Afghanistan.

Anyway, please feel free to make your way to Stop Blair! and do your bit to ensure that the grinning idiot doesn’t get to do to Europe what he did to Britain. And please bear in mind that if he gets the job, he’ll be pushing for PM to abandon the Good Ship Brown in favour of becoming his Foreign Minister. I can’t think of anything worse – nor a more suitable set of corrupt and lofty institutions for them to preside over.

Of course if you are really desperate to stop Blair, you could always sign the Lib Dem petition of Scottish MEP George Lyon. I hope it’s better than all their other ones.

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Blair Wish Project

October 26, 2009 — admin
Putin in reverse - former PM wants to be your President

Putin in reverse - former PM wants to be your President

Things really are hotting up in Europe. Firstly, we’ve got the “will he, won’t he?” saga about the European constitution with the Czech president Vaclav Klaus – rapidly becoming a hero of Eurosceptics – trying to hold out on the Lisbon Treaty as long as possible. I can’t find it now but I read this morning in one of the papers that he was trying to get a ruling in a Czech court that the treaty had to go to a referendum in the Czech republic – this is probably the only tactic that would be able to hold up the process until May next year.

I’m not holding my breath that the legal system of any of the member states would give a judgement against the EU. I think it is likely that the treaty will have to be signed by the end of the year; certainly that is the line being spun by Klaus’s inner circle to the press. Such a line clearly relieves the political pressure on him. But at the same time, some signals from Conservative bigwigs suggest everything is not as it seems. We shall see.

David Miliband is not among the doubters, as he made his pitch for the EU Foreign Secretary post today. But the most worrying thing about this whole business is the idea of Tony Blair as the President of Europe. As far as I’m concerned, the whole concept of a European President is a totally obnoxious and febrile one for the very reason that someone like Blair was always going to end up holding it.

The centre-right have a majority in the European parliament, yet the European Commission is stuffed full of socialists and the only real contenders for President are left of centre as well. That’s the EU for you - made by socialists, for socialists regardless of what the voters of Europe think. We elect 650-odd troughers to go and sit in a bi-local theatre of buffoonery also known as the European Parliament while the people who make the decisions remain from the same political class and persuasion that dreamed up the silly European sophistry to start with.

The idea of Blair sitting on top of them all as a “reward” for his achievements is poetic. Remind me again about his achievements – the failure to reform welfare, the failure to reform the NHS, badly botched constitutional tinkering, opening our borders to immigration without provision of proper infrastructure, cash for honours, a PR disaster in Kosovo and two illegal wars in the Middle East. More importantly, he failed to persuade Britain to go into the Euro and by the end of his tenure – where politics was changed for the worse – event the British people had had enough of him.

Like PM, all you need is a few years on the lecture circuit and all is forgiven in British politics. Sometimes, like in the case of Sir John Major, who was badly let down by his greedy and complacent parliamentary party, that it a good thing. But Blair’s failures were all his own and the result of a hubris that badly let down large sections of this country.

For goodness’ sake, let’s not give him the opportunity to do the same to the whole of Europe.

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Green around the gills

October 19, 2009 — admin

Is it me or is Gordon Brown’s spiel about the environment particularly uninspiring? All the stuff about “no plan B“, warning us of “catastrophe” and calling on the world to achieve a “momentous” agreement?

We’ve been hearing this kind of rhetoric for years – first from Tony Blair and then from the PM. To be fair, John Major’s government did practically nothing to bring the green agenda to the fore and Labour has pushed European legislation to force recycling and better environmental standards. I’m heartened that DC sees this as a plank of his manifesto.

But really, is tired cliches all the PM can manage on this subject? Where are the ideas, the suggestions, the commitments? If he can’t get excited – or exciting – on this subject, what hope is there for him?

Or perhaps he realises that without the rapidly-developing nations on board, the Copenhagen gathering is little more than a fortnight of lame talk.

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Cameron's four-letter rant

July 29, 2009 — simonashall

Well, here’s the thing. DC went on Absolute Radio this morning and – presumably completely on purpose – used the words “twat” and “piss” (the latter as a verb) to get his point across.

Swearing doesn’t really bother me much; having worked in a newsroom for the former part of my career I got pretty used to it and even, I dare say, may have uttered a few choice phrases myself.

But there’s no need for DC to stoop to this kind of “Hague’s baseball cap” lowest common denominator. He’s a great interviewee and superb speaker with effective messages. He has a talent, like Tony Blair had, of capturing the issues that the public care about.

So I agree with David Hughes’s analysis in the Telegraph – it’s all a bit desperate and contrived. I thought Peter Mandelson had cornered the market there with his “underdog” confession on behalf of Labour. Sadly I was wrong.

More worryingly, this whole episode wasn’t spontaneous despite the immediate apology. The apology itself calls into question the tactic – did he mean to use those words? If not, why did he? If he meant to, why apologise? Is this a double bluff? Or a triple? It’s all a bit confused and DC, who’s normally spot on with this PR stuff, seems to have made a bad call.

The Telegraph Tories won’t like it and although they’ll probably vote for him anyway, it will leave a strange, unfamiliar taste in the mouth. That’s sometimes necessary – but surely not here?

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