Layer 284 . . . Rising Hopes for a New Politics, the Clegg Ascendancy, Good Riddance To New Labour, Greens Turning Sharp Left, and Bank Crime

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This is from today's Observer - "My Vote . . . by Katharine Whitehorn":

"I voted Labour in 1997 - at least, that's what I thought I was doing. I didn't know then that Tony Blair was on record as saying he'd have been a Conservative, except it took too long to get to the top; nor that he shared with the Right a touching fundamentalist belief in the efficacy of the market; nor that no notice whatever would be taken of our marching against war in Iraq. I'll vote Lib Dem this time for several reasons. Vince Cable seems more sensible about the economy than most and Nick Clegg wowed us all on TV; but more to the point , I want a hung parliament. Then laws will actually have to be passed because parliament has so decided, not because they seemed a good idea on the sofa in 10 Downing Street. And I can't wait to see - I can dream, can't I? - a withering of the lunatic Whitehall mini-management of targets and box-ticking that has driven so many honest and competent professionals to desperation."

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Now where was I? . . . Oh yes - the Tories entering shit creek, and the rise of the Lib Dems.

Martin Kettle started his column yesterday with this:

The  Sun/You Gov poll on Saturday morning is the first proper national post-debate opinion poll. Its results are absolutely explosive. It shows the Conservatives on 33% (down 4% from the last YouGov), the Liberal Democrats on 30% (up 8%) and Labour on 28% (down 3%).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/17/1

Whereas Oxzen had predicted last Thursday - just before The Debate (Part 1) -

So mark my words - by the time this election takes place the Lib Dem share of the vote will have gone up by around 5% and the Greens by 3%, with the Tories down by 8% on current projections. What's more, the Lib Dems started the last campaign at around 18% and put on 6 percentage points, whereas this time they're starting from 24%.

So - sorry about that folks. A slight miscalculation. I'd assumed the Tories were on 39 or 40% and would come down 8% to 31 or 32%. Pretty accurate with the Lib Dems and their 30% though.

What's more, the Greens haven't really got going, yet, and there may be even more to come from the Lib Dems, since Clegg seems to have made an even better impression than I'd imagined.

What's even more, a ComRes poll for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror today puts the Tories on only 31%, with the Lib Dems on 29% and Labour on 27%.

At this rate and under first past the post the Lib Dems could end up with more than 100 seats, with Labour getting just over 250 seats and the Tories just under 250. Which means that the Lib Dems would easily hold the balance of power in a hung parliament. Excellent.

[Under a proper system of proportional representation Labour ought to get, on the current projections, around 182 seats, and the Tories around 215. No matter - if New Old Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens worked together for progressive policies then the Tories would never again get even a sniff of power or influence.]

The Tory party would then go back into civil war mode, and probably split, with the Cameroons on one side and The Nasty Party on the other, each of them fighting for the right to leadership and direction as Progressive Conservatives versus Traditional and True Conservatives.

Labour, of course, will need to have its own internal revolution, as Mandelson, Brown and the rest of the gang fight to stay in control, and their opponents let rip with as much aggression and determination to get rid of them as they can muster.

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On the back page of this week's London Review of Books, and on the back page of the Guardian's "Review" section in yesterday's paper, is an excellent advertisement for the New Left Review. In it they simply quote several passages from their archives, including this from Ralph Miliband, written in 1960 [yes - the father of David & Ed] -

The last election has shocked many more people into a recognition that the Labour Party is a sick party . . . Neither on issues of home affairs, nor in relation to Nato and foreign affairs generally, have the Labour leaders appeared as a clear alternative to the Tories. The reason for this is not that they were unable - somehow - to put over their case. The reason is that they were not such an alternative.

http://www.newleftreview.org/

There's also a quotation from the current edition of the review, in an article by Tony Wood called Good Riddance To New Labour -

The clinching argument against New Labour is one of simple democratic principle. Any government with a record as appalling as this one's deserves to be punished at the polls., if accountability to the voting public is to have any meaning. The specifics of Labour's years in power - one murderous war after another; slavish devotion to finance; promotion of rampant inequality; repeated assaults on civil liberties; fragmentation and privatisation of public services; endemic corruption - make plain that they fully merit being turfed out of office. Good riddance; this execrable government deserves to go.

Read the entire article here - http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2830

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This is in today's Observer:

Greens turn sharp left

The Greens are Britain's new, and only, leftwing party. If you don't believe me, read their manifesto

by Mary Fitzgerald

While Nick Clegg's performance in the first leadership debate has suddenly made the Lab-Con stranglehold on power look weaker, one of the most dramatic political developments of a generation has gone relatively unnoticed.

With their new manifesto, the Greens have transformed themselves from a single-issue outfit into Britain's new – and only – leftwing party. They have pledged soak-the-rich tax hikes, aimed at radically redistributing Britain's wealth and delivering social justice for all.

They will use some £112bn in new taxes by 2013 to fund higher minimum wages and pensions, free home insulation, free social care for the elderly, big tax breaks for people on lower incomes, as well as the expected huge investment in transport.

It's short-sighted not to see the wider significance of this shift. It's true that our first-past-the post system means the Green manifesto is of almost no relevance to the outcome on 6 May. But think ahead to the local elections.

The Green party is positioning itself, politically, as a radical alternative to the near-identical policy platforms trotted out this Thursday on ITV. The Greens are now aiming their message not just at the growing numbers who care about the environment, but those concerned about social justice as well.

Given the extent to which New Labour has moved to the centre, this will hold powerful sway among disenchanted one-time Labour voters, as well as with more radical left-wingers (note that Beatrix Campbell, a former Communist, is standing as a Green candidate in Hampstead and Kilburn). Meanwhile, taxes on airplanes and the other environmentally-focused policies appeal across the political spectrum: climate change, in Britain at least, is not exclusively a concern of leftist voters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/general-election-2010-green-party

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Andrew Rawnsley writes this today:

Nick Clegg's victory in the televised debate presents both his complacent rivals with some serious dilemmas

David Cameron's strategists are already arguing among themselves about how aggressively they should "take the fight" to Nick Clegg. For most of David Cameron's leadership, his approach has been to try to hug the Lib Dems to death. The Lib Dem leader disdained the Tory's attempts to love bomb him during the first debate. Influential voices around David Cameron are telling him to forget any more loving and concentrate on bombing. Their visceral instinct is to go for the Lib Dems as wet on crime, reckless on defence, soft on immigration and in love with Europe.

The risk for the Tories is that this lures David Cameron back on to Michael Howard territory and will look like a lurch to the right which is repulsive to the liberal, centrist voters that he needs. Michael Gove has already experimented with one line of attack by patronising the Lib Dems as "outside the mainstream and a little bit eccentric". The trouble for both the Tories and Labour is that being "outside the mainstream" does not look the least bit "eccentric" to the many voters distrustful of and disillusioned with the old duopoly. It looks jolly attractive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/election-television-debate

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A new politics is up for grabs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/general-election-2010-liberaldemocrats1

If you want a "well" hung parliament, your strategy should be very simple indeed: vote Lib Dem. Not only will that guarantee a Lib Dem bloc in parliament holding the balance of power, it will discredit the electoral system itself. Worst case scenario: a truly phenomenal number of people end up voting a Lib Dem government into office which will have a clear mandate to introduce proportional representation, Lords reform, stronger local government, more direct democracy and, in effect, give its own power away. So not much of a risk at all then.

What is needed at this stage is not nuanced psephological arguments but a clear, disruptive, brutal message: vote Liberal Democrat and change the system.

When my computer starts doing odd things, I don't spend hours faffing about trying to debug the operating system. I hit the reset button. When my phone jams, I hit the reset button.

Courtesy of Nick Clegg's phenomenal performance this week, a vote for the Liberal Democrats has just become the equivalent of a bloody great big reset button. You can either press that button on 6 May or sit there in your respective comfort zones complaining about nobody has any real power to change things. It really is up to you now.

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Finally, we're getting around to examining the operations of the big banks as actual fraud, and not just incompetence and stupidity:

Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake – it was a con

Hiding behind the complexities of our financial system, banks and other institutions are being accused of fraud and deception, with Goldman Sachs just the latest in the spotlight. This has become the most pressing election issue of all

by Will Hutton

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank . . . We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-regulators-civil-charges
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Layer 283 . . . Debating Leaders, Headteachers, Seldon, Factory Schools and Education

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The Debate

As I was saying yesterday, the Tories are surely starting to realise they're in big trouble. Not only did Nick Clegg emerge the clear winner in last night's TV debate - Cameron did very badly, though not quite as badly as Brown. Even so, the differential between Cameron and Brown was pretty miniscule. Far from coming third, Clegg trounced the other two. He wasn't that great, in my opinion, but he clearly had a lot of appeal for viewers who'd never previously taken notice of him.

Front page of the Guardian -

Leaders' debate: Nick Clegg seizes his moment in the TV spotlight

Lib Dem leader makes powerful pitch as he depicts his party as a significant change from Labour and the Conservatives

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/15/leaders-debate-nick-clegg-tv

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, stole the first televised leaders' debate in British political history by offering himself up as the fresh and honest alternative to two tired old parties in an electrifying, fast-moving, 90-minute primetime broadcast.

Clegg's revelatory performance, acknowledged by Labour, has the potential to change the political landscape, even if David Cameron, with the most to lose last night, will be relieved that in some of the instant reaction polls he came second, ahead of the prime minister.

Clegg, in effect introduced to the nation for the first time, said: "Don't let them tell you that the only choice is between two old parties that have been playing pass the parcel with your government for 65 years now making the same old promises, breaking the same old promises."

The charge reprised his opening claim when he pointed to the other two leaders, saying: "Now, they are going to tell you tonight that the only choice you have is between the two old parties who've been taking it in turns to run things for years."

In the first substantial poll conducted after the debate, Populus for the Times found Clegg the overwhelming winner with 61% and Cameron and Brown trailing on 22% and 17% respectively.

Clegg's stand-out moment for me was when he said,

"I think creativity's important in the classroom, and freedom for teachers and headteachers. What's also important is smaller class sizes. We should bring down class sizes in Primary schools to 20, and in Secondary schools 16."

Why the fuck couldn't Labour have said this back in '97? What's even worse is - they're not even saying it NOW! Anyone who thinks we'll never become a more enlightened society until all our children are properly educated in schools where there's academic freedom and freedom to innovate and balance the curriculum, must surely support this. Anyone who cares about our children being unhappy in their factory schools where "standards" are supposedly being "driven up" through more and more teaching to the tests, must surely support this. Anyone who cares about our children having proper opportunities to develop all of their intelligences in a balanced way must surely support this.

On the other hand, Cameron's worst moment was when he stupidly tried to justify upgrading Trident at a cost of hundreds of squillions by saying we need it to face up to the Iranians . . . and the Chinese! Heaven help us all - three nuclear-armed submarines against the Yellow Peril! What a moron! Who said China is a potential enemy of Britain? What a moron! How reliant is this country on Chinese trade, manufacturing and investment? What a moron! So Cameron thinks that one day we might need to nuke China?

On this evidence, the only yellow peril Cameron needs to be concerned about is Clegg and the Lib Dems.

This is from the Daily Telegraph! -

The leaders' debate could be the beginning of the end for David Cameron

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/maryriddell/100034912/the-leaders-debate-could-be-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-david-cameron/

by Mary Riddell

Though he stayed calm, Mr Cameron’s face seemed to register a growing horror. The Tory nighmare had been that he might lose out by appearing a master of presentation. If only.

 Nick Clegg did not exactly pirate the Cameron playbook. Instead he produced a more novel and convincing version. You could see from Mr Cameron’s eyes that he knew he had been out-Daved, both on image and policy. Mr Clegg’s line on Trident and his emphasis on stopping children becoming career criminals both belonged in the no-go terrain where ordinary politicians dare not stray.

Yesterday Mr Cameron looked ordinary.

The Lib Dems are celebrating today. Their polling is telling them that, even before the debate, they were making headway against the Tories in the South-west. Now they have their hopes set on the cathedral towns and beltway marginals where they could oust Labour. Much as Gordon Brown might cast lovesick glances towards a LibLab deal, Mr Clegg is going to play hard (and maybe improssible) to get.

But a relatively small shift towards the Lib Dems will help Labour anyway. And, should there be a hung Parliament, it seems unlikely, if not unthinkable, that Mr Clegg would ever do a deal with Mr Cameron.  Much as a handful of Lib Dem MPs would like it, policy differences and the LibDem party membership would almost certainly forbid such an accord.

No wonder Lord Mandelson and Alan Johnson were smiling . Brown got  it on substance and Clegg on style. This, they hope, could signify a match made in heaven. We shall see. There are many potential slips between now and polling day, but the Tories’ unsealed deal may have started to unravel.

Under this piece there's the usual Torygraph nutter postings:

jmw1
Too many things against Cameron. He is a PR spin merchant. He thinks he is a Tory when the whole country knows he is some bastardised cross between a liberal and a Marxist and his policies seem to have been cobbled together from reading a Russian manual on how to run a co-operative. The real shame about the debate is that it does not allow us to glimpse the idea that there are other viable alternatives such as UKIP or BNP.

andrewa
“Clegg’s Triumph is Tories’ Worst Nightmare.”
No Mary, waking up next to you would be.

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An interesting letter in the Guardian this week:

A shared vision for education

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/apr/14/shared-vision-for-education

As headteachers, we were very concerned at the flight from consensus in the last stages of the education bill last week (Report, 8 April) and the blocking of a number of guarantees for children, including the right to one-to-one tuition. We see these guarantees as the culmination of unprecedented investment in schools over recent years. It is clear now that only the present government is committed to guaranteeing ringfenced and increased investment in all our schools.

The alternative proposals are not about steady investment in the whole system but the threat of across-the-board cuts coupled with boutique experiments borrowed as a result of naive educational tourism. These experiments will involve taking millions of pounds from existing schools to create artificial surplus places. There is absolutely no research consensus around the achievements of Swedish "free schools" or American charter schools. A few flatpack free schools will not reform a national system.

The educational landscape presently evolving is already a powerful force for change. It is led by a group of professionals who collaborate for the good of children, who have a shared vision for the whole system and think beyond the boundaries of their own schools. So please, no return to year zero.

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This is something I'd meant to comment on a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/19/state-schools-accused-pupils-automatons

State schools accused of turning pupils into 'well-drilled automatons'

Public school head calls for a 'holistic education' to create more well-rounded pupils

The state system is guilty of producing "factory schools" turning out young people "incapable of living full and autonomous lives", the headmaster of a leading public school claims today.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington college and Tony Blair's biographer, says too many students cannot think independently about their subjects, lack personal skills, and are "little more than well-drilled automatons" after an education that lacks intellectual depth and rigour.

He calls for all state schools to be given the opportunity for genuine independence, with legal freedom to make a profit, select pupils as they wish, and choose their own curriculum and exam system.

The school day should be longer so pupils can benefit from the kind of "holistic education", encompassing extensive programmes of sport, culture, and leadership training on offer in public schools.

"Too many state schools have become factories," Seldon writes in a pamphlet, An End To Factory Schools, for the Centre for Policy Studies. "Reluctant students are processed through a system closely controlled and monitored by the state … The new world does not need container-loads of young men and women whose knowledge is narrowly academic and subject-specific which they can regurgitate in splendid isolation in exams."

An unprecedented increase in education spending under Labour has failed to produce better schools, Seldon says. He argues that the "choking" influence of centralised oversight holds them back.

Many of the same problems are found in universities, he says. "There, too, individual students are obliged to meet the requirements of a pedestrian exam monolith, creative teaching is sacrificed to instruction and transmitting the right or approved answers, and students have an increasingly narrow quality of all-round education as higher education increasingly loses sight of its mission to educate the whole student."

Seldon makes 20 recommendations to ensure the return of "delight, gratitude and stimulus" in schools which have become too large, de-personalised and exam-focused. His changes include more active learning, with regular experiments making a return to science classrooms.

Schools should be free to set their own disciplinary regimes, with zero tolerance of bad behaviour; the exam system should be restructured to end the "stranglehold" of A-levels and GCSEs in England and Wales, which is failing pupils.

"By the early 21st century, the factory school model was all but complete," his potted history of state education says. "Children arrived at nursery school at three or four and left school at the age of 16 or 18. The production line for children in school consisted of lessons punctuated by bells, which resulted in classes trooping off to different parts of the factory, from which they eventually emerged 11 or more years later with exam passes as the validation of their personal and school career.

"The factory was owned and operated under the strict top-down instructions of government, who decreed everything that went on. It is the apogee of Fordism gone mad."

." Not all schools are bad, Seldon adds. They are full of remarkable teachers and hard-working students who sometimes achieve "extraordinary results on slender resources".

http://www.cps.org.uk/cps_catalog/an%20end%20to%20factory%20schools.pdf

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The Common Entrance automatons

Wellington College's head knocks state 'factory schools', yet his entrance exams see children being drilled as early as year four

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/22/anthony-seldon-education-factory-schools

by Francis Gilbert

Anthony Seldon is one of the most powerful figures in education today, so when he provides 20 recommendations for improving schools we should all take note. Given his ideological closeness with the Conservatives, he might be in government shortly, with his guidelines becoming the law.

In his latest pamphlet, An End to Factory Schools, he characterises our state schools as "factory schools", turning out students who are "incapable of living full and autonomous lives". He is particularly condemning of the sorts of pupils the current exam system produces, saying: "The new world does not need container-loads of young men and women whose knowledge is narrowly academic and subject-specific which they can regurgitate in splendid isolation in exams."

I find this point particularly ironic since he is the headteacher of Wellington College, a highly selective, fee-paying school that requires its prospective pupils to take a battery of tests before even entering. These exams include the Common Entrance, a succession of highly specious tests that have scarcely changed in decades. To gain good marks in the Common Entrance, most pupils are drilled within inches of their lives by their "prep" schools.

I withdrew my eight-year-old son from his prep school and put him in the local state primary precisely because I didn't want him turned into a Common Entrance automaton: the school he was at was already drilling the poor children in year four to take a test they would sit at 13 years of age! Since he's been at the local, inner-city primary, he's really flourished precisely because the teachers don't treat the children like robots. And yet, Seldon pretends to be someone who nurtures the happiness of his pupils. If he did, he would end Wellington's entrance exams immediately.

But he won't – because he believes in schools being allowed to select their pupils. Any teacher knows that school selection leads to a chronic "exam factory" mentality. I've taught for 20 years in the state sector and never seen pupils treated as poorly in this regard as they are in the private sector. The reason why the private sector gets great results is not because of the quality of teaching – which is often dismally poor – but because they ruthlessly cream off the best kids and teach relentlessly to the test. It is true that this attitude has seeped into the state sector in recent years, but it's not nearly as bad in state schools as in fee-paying ones.

Seldon wants a "free-school" system such as the one promoted by the Tories, where parents are given a voucher that is equivalent to the value of their child's education and would be able to spend it where they want. Private companies would be able to set up schools in the same way as shops – a free market for schools. These schools would be funded by the taxpayer but not accountable to the taxpayer because private companies, not locally elected people, would dominate the governing bodies.

Such a system would mean well-connected self-publicists such as Seldon will profit hugely, contracting their dubious services to the state – Wellington College has already "sponsored" an academy. Contrary to what Seldon says, the evidence from the US suggests that these privately run schools provide a significantly worse education than their state-run counterparts. Above all, the evidence suggests that all schools should be accountable to the taxpayer, otherwise unaccountable private companies, organisations and individuals profit while children's education suffers.

Seldon's big idea is that "trust" should enter our society again: that we should trust our public workers more. It's hard to disagree with this obvious sentiment, but the central problem is that it's very hard to trust much of what Seldon says. I certainly don't.

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Layer 282 . . . Witch Hunts, Balls, Ofsted, The Big Debate and The Big Society

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Another excellent column by Jenni Russell this week -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/13/baby-p-case-good-witch-hunt?

The Baby P inquiry shows witch-hunts still thrive

The pressure was on Ed Balls to serve up a head to the howling crowd – and the public checks to ensure calm utterly failed

The version of events we'd been fed – that the chief responsibility for the tragedy could fairly be laid at the door of one highly incompetent and publicly vilified executive, Sharon Shoesmith – turned out to be frighteningly unreliable.

Instead, we read about pressure on Ofsted to produce the results the secretary of state required, endless rewritings of a supposedly independent report until it did exactly that, and the stunning failure of Ofsted to produce any of the evidence of this happening until the court hearings dealing with it had ended. We can't afford to ignore a sequence of events that suggests how easily the government can manipulate information to suit its purposes, and how responsive public servants can be to political and media demands. They can't be relied upon, on this evidence, to be disinterested searchers after truth and solutions when things go wrong. Some simply want to protect themselves from criticism and find someone to blame.

In response to this, and a comment I posted, 1nn1t posted this excellent piece -

   @Oxzen

We can only remain hopeful that one day people who were involved in or are aware of school inspections where there was collusion between Ofsted and local authority officers to condemn and get rid of particular headteachers will have the courage to come forward with the evidence.

Ofsted has from from the beginning. Remember Islington Green:

    Chris Woodhead, a now-discredited former chief inspector of schools for Ofsted, condemned Islington Green as a "failing school" after ignoring the judgement of senior inspectors.

The leader of Ofsted, now and at the time of the Haringey case, is Christine Gilbert

    Divorced from her first husband, she met then councillor and later government minister Tony McNulty when she was Director of Education for the London Borough of Harrow. The couple married in September 2002 in Hammersmith and Fulham.

In Yorkshire Ofsted is used by LEAs as an attack dog to drive out heads. The story goes like this:

LEA and Head don't get on.

Ofsted starts programme of snap inspections.

LEA institutes agressive discussions of Osted reports.

More snap inspections - easily failed because, eg "the school Safeguarding Policy Document wasn't provided to the Inspectors within x minutes of their requesting it" or "The school has carried out all necessary CRB checks but the information has been stored separately rather than on "a single central record"." or more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7530212/Top-public-schools-fail-new-inspections.html

More agressive discussions. Heads by now suffering from stress.

Head called to meeting with big cheeses in Town Hall. Cheeses propose to Head that he take early retirement on grounds of sickness with pension enhancement.

Conditions of offer by cheeses:

1 Impending retirement not to be mentioned to staff/pupils/parents.

2 Retirement will take effect from this next mid-term Friday afternoon.

3 The 'retiring' head will sign a gagging contract preventing him disclosing anything of the events, circumstances and terms of his sudden departure.

Some heads have refused such offers. They then receive a series of off-the-record chats and phone calls from senior LEA staff pointing out to them the advantages of accepting the 'retirement offer'.

Why, do you imagine, so few teachers any longer wish to become Head Teachers?

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Back to the Election - and the Big Debate

Tonight's the night - the moment political anoraks have been waiting for - the first of the 'debates' between between Brown, Cameron and Clegg, live on ITV.

The Tories are in big trouble, and I think they know it. What's more there's nothing they can do about it. Their brand is what it is.

The further this election goes on, and the more that voters come to realise that Clegg, Cable, Hughes, Ashdown and co are a decent bunch of people with genuine social democratic and liberal instincts, the more that many of these voters will make up their minds to switch their votes from the despised New Labour to the Lib Dems instead of to the other "major" party, with huge consequences for Tory hopes in the marginal and "winnable" seats.

What's more, as the campaign rolls forward, the Green Party and its very able leadership will attract not only protest voters but also those who like what they see in terms of policies that the Labour party should have but forward but in fact haven't.

Voters are not as stupid and as fickle as politicians often think, and the memory of Thatcher will last for more than a generation or two. During the years of the Thatcher ascendency the Tory party congratulated itself on having such a political colossus as their leader - right up to the point when they and everyone else suddenly realised that she was a true nutter who had exposed Toryism in all its true character by smashing the lingering post-war social-democratic consensus, with terrible consequences for British industry and the majority of the working class electorate. John Major, by winning an election, made matters worse for the long-term good of the Tory party and not better, since it was on his watch that the 'bastards' and the sleazeballs of Torydom were thoroughly exposed.

So mark my words - by the time this election takes place the Lib Dem share of the vote will have gone up by around 5% and the Greens by 3%, with the Tories down by 8% on current projections. What's more, the Lib Dems started the last campaign at around 18% and put on 6 percentage points, whereas this time they're starting from 24%. And this time they have the benefit of being the party of Vince Cable, who was virtually the only politician who foresaw the financial crash, and has become the man most voters would like to have as chancellor.

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On the Today programme one of the presenters reminded us of one of the dictums of Groucho Marx - "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them - I have others."

A Hazel Bloody Blears interview was broadcast in which she was asked whether or not it's surprising that people are turned off politics thanks to the expenses scandals, Iraq, etc, - to which she replied, unsurprisingly, in her usual pathetic and useless way, by saying that people feel "excluded" because politicians too often speak in jargon.

So here's someone who's clearly learned a lesson. Her answer to all of this nation's ills is that politicians just have to stop speaking in jargon - and then all will be well again with our political culture.

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Meanwhile, in the Guardian, Marina Hyde's campaign trail has taken her to the launch of the UKIP manifesto:

Kicking off the launch proper, the deputy-leader, David Campbell-Bannerman, promised policies "from animal welfare to pubs" – truly, the full gamut of thinking from Y to Z.

When Farage announced he would be devoting his energies to standing against the speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham, the party's top job was taken over by former Tory peer Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the sort of patrician dullard you pray not to be seated next to at dinner.

Before long, it was on to Ukip's proposed ban of the burqa and niqab in public "and some private" buildings. How were they going to enforce that?

"We haven't said private buildings," countered Pearson.

Well you have. It's in your manifesto. "Have we?" his lordship wondered of his more junior colleagues. Doubtless he'll get round to reading the 15-page document in good time.

Tag-teaming Pearson was the more seasoned media hand Nigel Farage, who has an enduring line in misplaced confidence. "I don't want to be rude about the other parties – that's not my style," he smiled knowingly, in the manner of a man who fondly imagines he has a style other than "affable berk".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/general-election-ukip-manifesto-launch

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Simon Hoggart, meanwhile, was at the launch of the Tory manifesto:

DIY government? It's scary

The Tories launched their manifesto in Battersea power station, site of the Pink Floyd album cover with the flying pig.

Finally David Cameron introduced the Conservative manifesto, which is a dark blue hardback and looks like a tombstone. The theme is that the next government can save money by getting people to do the work themselves, whether taking planning decisions, holding elected representatives to account, saving local pubs and post offices, appointing the chief constable, checking wasteful public expenditure online or founding new schools.

"It's about we, the people!" said Mr Cameron, with great conviction and terrible grammar. "We're all in this together. Join us, in forming the next government of Britain."

Gosh, life is going to be busy under the Tories. It's lucky their campaign against waste means there will be mass sackings. Otherwise nobody would have the time to do everything the "Big Society" demands of us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/conservative-manifesto-simon-hoggarts-sketch

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Labour, Tories and Lib Dems clash ahead of key TV debate

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/14/general-election-tv-debates-row

Gordon Brown has received a boost on the eve of today's televised leaders' debate after more than 50 economists from around the world signed a letter backing his handling of the economy. The letter, from 58 academics, was organised by Labour, and comes as a response to a letter from business leaders criticising Labour's planned increase in national insurance.

The British signatories include the Labour peers Lords Layard and Peston; the crossbench peer Lord Skidelsky, who is the biographer of John Maynard Keynes; and Sir David Hendry, a fellow of Nuffield College Oxford. They are supporters of a Keynesian stimulus for the economy.

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Gordon Brown admits banks needed more regulation

PM says the government should have been tougher on the banks

Gordon Brown has admitted mistakes in regulating the banks, accusing the City of lobbying against greater scrutiny before the financial crisis plunged Britain into recession.

Brown had previously blamed the scale of the recession mainly on the international financial crisis and the refusal of other countries to agree to tighter international surveillance of the banks.

In an ITV interview due to be broadcast tonight, Brown admits he had been influenced by bankers' lobbying.

"In the 1990s, the banks, they all came to us and said, 'Look, we don't want to be regulated, we want to be free of regulation.' ... And all the complaints I was getting from people was, 'Look you're regulating them too much.'

"The truth is that globally and nationally we should have been regulating them more. So I've learnt from that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/13/gordon-brown-banking-sector-regulation

WFTYS. We fucking told you so!

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Deborah Orr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/15/government-govern-affairs-powerful

[Here's] the part missing from David Cameron's vision of a grassroots-up, sober, self-help society. It was not ordinary people who needed the state to keep them in line – fearful authoritarian religious leaders did that. It was the ruling elite, who abused their power without restraint, that made "big government" necessary.

All Britain wants or needs really, is a government that will persuade the powerful that it is right to behave in a manner that is responsible, humane and generous, and help the people who can't help themselves.

We have had 13 years of a government that thought it could do the latter, without doing the former. Come 6 May, we might just end up with a government that is eager to do neither.

'stonepark' commented with this quotation:

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.Without a prison, there can be no delinquents.
We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket,he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property.We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."

John (Fire) Lame Deer
Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

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Drunkeness, Violence and Spiritual Intelligence

Also on the Today programme this week was a piece about our culture of drunkeness and violence - and STILL nobody has any answers, other than more crackdowns and "toughness".

How long will it take before people in general and politicians in particular begin to admit that we have to begin at the beginning - with young children in school - helping them to develop emotional intelligence, social intelligence and spiritual intelligence, together with a capacity for lovingkindness, a belief in the value of meditation, and a determination to be non-violent?

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Pope in the Poop

The pope should stand trial

Why is anyone surprised when Christopher Hitchens and I call for the prosecution of the pope? There is a clear case to answer

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/13/pope-prosecution-dawkins?

Sexual abuse of children is not unique to the Roman Catholic church, and Joseph Ratzinger is not one of those priests who raped altar boys while in a position of dominance and trust. But as so often it is the subsequent cover-ups, even more than the original crimes, that do most to discredit an institution, and here the pope is in real trouble.

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