Rejoice! More Thoughts on the Death of Thatcher

It's looking quite possible that "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead" will be the most downloaded track of the week by the time Thatcher's funeral takes place next Tuesday. Meanwhile, street parties have been taking place, along with chants of "Maggie Maggie Maggie: Dead Dead Dead!"

It's impossible to underestimate just how hated Thatcher had become in this country by the time her Conservative colleagues got together and kicked her out of her Prime Ministership, on the grounds that she'd become an electoral liability and was quite possibly losing the plot completely, along with most of her marbles.

Today the House of Commons was recalled so that the Conservative party could come back together to tell one another what a brilliant leader she had been. There were 8 hours or so of speeches, which is in quite a big contrast to the 3 speeches that were made in Parliament to mark the death of Winston Churchill those many years ago.

Jon Snow ‏@jonsnowC4
How come MPs/Lords recalled at our expense for Mrs T when they could hve returned 4 free next Monday, before funeral, a week after she died?

Tom Delargy ‏@derekrootboy
Labour MPs will feel ashamed of themselves for not having guts to stand up and be counted. Only Glenda Jackson did it. Well done. #Thatcher

Seumas Milne ‏@SeumasMilne
#Thatcherism wreaked 'most heinous social, economic & spiritual damage' on Britain: @GlendaJacksonMP spells it out http://bit.ly/153YKA9

Owen Jones ‏@OwenJones84
Good on Glenda Jackson for smashing the Thatcherism love fest, and telling the truth about the social devastation unleashed in the 1980s


Owen Jones wrote this superb article for The Independent:

Thatcherism was a national catastrophe that still poisons us

We are in the midst of the third great economic collapse since the Second World War: all three have taken place since Thatcherism launched its great crusade

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/owen-jones-thatcherism-was-a-national-catastrophe-that-still-poisons-us-8564858.html

This current crisis has roots in the Thatcherite free market experiment, which wiped out much of the country’s industrial base in favour of a deregulated financial sector.

Champions of Thatcherism hail the crippling of the trade unions, which were battered by anti-union laws, mass unemployment, and crushing defeats of strikes, not least after the rout of the iconic miners. This has not only left workers at the mercy of their bosses, but has made them poorer, too.

We could go on. Britain was one of the most equal Western European countries before the Thatcherite project began, and is now one of the most unequal.  Thatcherism is not just alive and well: it courses through the veins of British political life. The current government goes where Thatcherism did not dare in its privatisation of the NHS and sledgehammering of the welfare state.

The challenge ahead is the same as it was yesterday: to tear down the whole edifice of Thatcherism, heal Britain of the damage done, and build a country run in the interests of working people. It’s a fight we must all fight. The champagne is on ice until we win it.

Russell Brand wrote an equally impressive piece for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher

She became leader of the Conservatives the year I was born and prime minister when I was four. She remained in power till I was 15. I am, it's safe to say, one of Thatcher's children. How then do I feel on the day of this matriarchal mourning?

I see her in her hairy helmet, condescending on Nationwide, eviscerating eunuch MPs and baffled BBC fuddy duddies with her General Zodd stare and coldly condemning the IRA. And the miners. And the single mums. The dockers. The poll-tax rioters. The Brixton rioters, the Argentinians, teachers; everyone actually.

Thinking about it now, when I was a child she was just a strict woman telling everyone off and selling everything off. I didn't know what to think of this fearsome woman.

Perhaps my early apathy and indifference are a result of what Thatcher deliberately engendered, the idea that "there is no such thing as society", that we are alone on our journey through life, solitary atoms of consciousness.

Perhaps, though, Thatcher "the monster" didn't die yesterday from a stroke, perhaps that Thatcher died as she sobbed self-pitying tears as she was driven, defeated, from Downing Street, ousted by her own party.

I hope I'm not being reductive but it seems Thatcher's time in power was solely spent diminishing the resources of those who had least for the advancement of those who had most. I know from my own indulgence in selfish behaviour that it's much easier to get what you want if you remove from consideration the effect your actions will have on others.

Is that what made her so formidable, her ability to ignore the suffering of others?

If you behave like there's no such thing as society, in the end there isn't. Her death must be sad for the handful of people she was nice to and the rich people who got richer under her stewardship. It isn't sad for anyone else.

All of us that grew up under Thatcher were taught that it is good to be selfish, that other people's pain is not your problem, that pain is in fact a weakness and suffering is deserved and shameful. Perhaps there is resentment because the clemency and respect that are being mawkishly displayed now by some and haughtily demanded of the rest of us at the impending, solemn ceremonial funeral, are values that her government and policies sought to annihilate.

I can't articulate with the skill of either of "the Marks" – Steel or Thomas – why Thatcher and Thatcherism were so bad for Britain but I do recall that even to a child her demeanour and every discernible action seemed to be to the detriment of our national spirit and identity. Her refusal to stand against apartheid, her civil war against the unions, her aggression towards our neighbours in Ireland and a taxation system that was devised in the dark ages, the bombing of a retreating ship – it's just not British.

Alex Nunns ‏@alexnunns
Under Thatcher, crime rose by 79%. http://www.redpepper.org.uk/dispelling-the-thatcher-myths/ …

Dispelling the Thatcher myths

Alex Nunns offers an antidote to the media fawning over Thatcher – and argues her biggest victory was getting her opponents to buy into her mythology

When a political leader dies it becomes compulsory to lie about their record. While much of Britain openly rejoiced at the death of Margaret Thatcher, the media snapped into reverential mode, giving over hours of airtime and several thousand miles of column inches to representatives of the ruling class to solemnly recite myths about her achievements.

This wouldn’t matter so much if, like Thatcher, these myths were dead, and weren’t still shaping our politics. But they are. So here are some of them, debunked.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did more to institutionalise Thatcherism than the woman herself. Before New Labour, in the early 1990s, in the midst of a recession, it was a truism that Thatcherism had been an economic failure. The fact that many of the myths discussed here have been revived is in large part due to New Labour. When even Thatcher’s opponents accept Thatcherism’s success, why should the media challenge the record?

Blair responded to her death by admitting (although understating) what everyone already knew, that ‘some of the changes she made in Britain were, in certain respects at least, retained by the 1997 Labour government’. It is often said that Blair’s only legacy will be Iraq, but he will also feature in the epilogue of every biography of Margaret Thatcher.

Thatcher tore at the social fabric of Britain, destroyed swathes of its economy and inflicted vindictive harm on large sections of its population. But she built nothing. Her main success was in the minds of her opponents.

Layer 515 . . . Spiritual Thoughts, The Future of Conservatism, Dumbogeddon, Right-Wing Stupidity, Left-Wing Timidity, and Schoolification

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Recent thoughts of the Dalai Lama

When we are angry we are blind to reality. Anger may bring us a temporary burst of energy, but that energy is blind and it blocks the part of our brain that distinguishes right from wrong. To deal with our problems, we need to be practical and realistic. If we are to be realistic, we need to use our human intelligence properly, which means we need a calm mind.

The very purpose of spirituality is self-discipline. Rather than criticizing others, we should evaluate and criticize ourselves. Ask yourself, what am I doing about my anger, my attachment, my pride, my jealousy? These are the things we should check in our day to day lives.

It is important that when pursing our own self-interest we should be “wise selfish” and not “foolish selfish”. Being foolish selfish means pursuing our own interests in a narrow, shortsighted way. Being wise selfish means taking a broader view and recognizing that our own long-term individual interest lies in the welfare of everyone. Being wise selfish means being compassionate.

There is a saying in Tibetan that “at the door of the miserable rich man sleeps the contented beggar.” The point of this saying is not that poverty is a virtue, but that happiness does not come from wealth, but from setting limits to one’s desires, and living within those limits with satisfaction.

Generosity is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness. When one desires to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being, then generosity - in action, word, and thought - is this desire put into practice. It is important to recognize the "generosity" here refers not just to giving in a material sense, but to generosity of the heart.

The creation of a more peaceful and happier society has to begin from the level of the individual, and from there it can expand to one's family, to one's neighborhood, to one's community and so on.

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The Future of Conservatism was yesterday's subject on Start The Week (Radio 4).

Hmmmm.

Peter Hitchens has never been a writer I'd bother to read, but at least he represents 'traditional' or 'one nation' conservatism - the party of Harold MacMillan or even Edward Heath, the kind of 'caring' conservatism that existed before Thatcher came along with her neo-conservative revolution, and made the Tory brand nasty and toxic: a party for the City, pro-greed, pro-selfish individual advancement, pro-privatisation, no such thing as society, etc.

Hitchens pointed out that traditional Conservatism was supposed to be a party guided by Christian values. Today's conservatism is "completely uninterested in matters of morals and culture", and neither is it interested in "preserving the particularlity of Britain", hence it allowed industry to collapse, and allowed what's left of it to be sold off to the highest bidder - i.e. asset-stripper. He made it clear that in his view Thatcher and Reagan were walking disaster areas. Which is telling it like it is.

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George Monbiot also tells it like it is:

The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left

Conservativism may be the refuge of the dim. But the room for rightwing ideas is made by those too timid to properly object

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/06/right-stupidity-spreads-enabled-polite-left

Self-deprecating, too liberal for their own good, today's progressives stand back and watch, hands over their mouths, as the social vivisectionists of the right slice up a living society to see if its component parts can survive in isolation. Tied up in knots of reticence and self-doubt, they will not shout stop. Doing so requires an act of interruption, of presumption, for which they no longer possess a vocabulary.

Perhaps it is in the same spirit of liberal constipation that, with the exception of Charlie Brooker, we have been too polite to mention the Canadian study published last month in the journal Psychological Science, which revealed that people with conservative beliefs are likely to be of low intelligence. Paradoxically it was the Daily Mail that brought it to the attention of British readers last week. It feels crude, illiberal to point out that the other side is, on average, more stupid than our own. But this, the study suggests, is not unfounded generalisation but empirical fact.

It is by no means the first such paper. There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly "different" others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking.

The new study looks embarrassingly robust. Importantly, it shows that prejudice tends not to arise directly from low intelligence but from the conservative ideologies to which people of low intelligence are drawn. Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".

This is not to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. There are some very clever people in government, advising politicians, running thinktanks and writing for newspapers, who have acquired power and influence by promoting rightwing ideologies.

But what we now see among their parties – however intelligent their guiding spirits may be – is the abandonment of any pretence of high-minded conservatism. On both sides of the Atlantic, conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown in it. Whether they are promoting the idea that Barack Obama was not born in the US, that man-made climate change is an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy, or that the deficit results from the greed of the poor, they now appeal to the basest, stupidest impulses, and find that it does them no harm in the polls.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to what two former Republican ideologues, David Frum and Mike Lofgren, have been saying. Frum warns that "conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics". The result is a "shift to ever more extreme, ever more fantasy-based ideology" which has "ominous real-world consequences for American society".

Lofgren complains that "the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today". The Republican party, with its "prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science" is appealing to what he calls the "low-information voter", or the "misinformation voter". While most office holders probably don't believe the "reactionary and paranoid claptrap" they peddle, "they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base".

But when I survey this wreckage I wonder who the real idiots are. Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness". They fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or to make an uncluttered case for social justice, redistribution and regulation. The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism.

Yes, conservatism thrives on low intelligence and poor information. But the liberals in politics on both sides of the Atlantic continue to back off, yielding to the supremacy of the stupid. It's turkeys all the way down.

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Dumbogeddon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/05/daily-mail-calls-rightwingers-stupid

by Charlie Brooker

The Mail's report went on to detail the results of a study carried out by a group of Canadian academics, which appears to show some correlation between low childhood intelligence and rightwing politics. It also claimed that stupid people hold rightwing views in order to feel "safe". Other items they hold in order to feel safe include clubs, rocks and dustbin lids. But those are easy to let go of. Political beliefs get stuck to your hands. And the only way to remove them is to hold your brain under the hot tap and scrub vigorously for several decades.

As you might expect, many Mail Online readers didn't take kindly to a report that strived to paint them as simplistic, terrified dimwits. Many leapt from the tyres they were swinging in to furrow their brows and howl in anger. Others, tragically, began tapping rudimentary responses into the comments box. Which is where the tragi-fun really began.

"Sounds like a BBC study, type of thing they would waste the Licence fee on, load of Cods wallop," claimed Terry from Leicester, thereby managing to ignore the findings while simultaneously attacking public service broadcasting for something it hadn't done. For his next trick, Terry will learn to whistle and shit at the same time.

Not all the respondents were stupid. Some were merely deluded. Someone calling themselves "Hillside" from Sydney claimed: "I have an IQ over 200, have six degrees and diplomas and am 'right-wing', as are others I know at this higher level of intelligence." His IQ score is particularly impressive considering the maximum possible score on Mensa's preferred IQ test is 161.

On and on the comments went, turning a rather stark write-up of a daft-sounding study into a sublime piece of live online performance art. A chimps' tea party of the damned. The Mail has long been a master at trolling lefties; now it's mischievously turned on its own readers, and the results could only be funnier if the website came with free plastic lawn furniture for them to lob at the screen. You couldn't make it up.

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Education & Zeitgeist Corner


Sue Palmer (Toxic Childhood) spoke well on the Today programme this morning on "schoolification" - "The mechanical target-driven model of education."

For more thoughts on education versus schooling, click this blog:

And take a look at this editorial:

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Good article in Guardian Education today by Michael Rosen:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/feb/06/michael-rosen-gove-curriculum-schools

Dear Mr Gove: Michael Rosen's letter from a curious parent

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Layer 360 . . . Budget Cuts, Lobbies, Special Pleading, Advice for Leaders, and Twelve Things We've Learned About Conservatism and IDS

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Simon Jenkins is his usual ascerbic self in his column today - tackling the sharp-elbowed middle classes and their lobbyists for their special pleading against budget cuts; in particular Nicholas Serota, bankers, the armed forces, the security industry, scientists, academics, etc.

When the ship sinks, the elite grab all the lifeboats

Gilded professionals mobilise friends in the media to lobby against cuts – if only the poor could do the same

We all defend the thing we love. But the glaring exceptionalism of cuts lobbying paralyses sensible argument and distorts it against the poor and inarticulate. They cannot sidle up to ministers at parties and throw insults about civilisation on chatshows. They must endure the jibe that "the only real savings are in benefits", and see their entitlements drain away to protect elite subsidies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/05/quango-lobby-cuts-welfare-state

He should have gone on to say that all of these lobbyists should only have a right to state their case AFTER they have made a case for the poor and the inarticulate to be protected from cuts. Let them all say why the least well-off should have their wellbeing and their incomes ring-fenced before they make out a case for themselves.

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Leadership and the Tao

As promised - advice for our new political leaders.

Strength is not the same as force.

A true leader concentrates on the accomplishment of tasks and is minimally visible.

Leaders must be creative but also receptive - devoted, moderate and correct.

A leader must be open, calm, sincere, and serious. S/he proceeds along the path of non-contrivance.

Darkness is a confusion which moves the leader on to subsequent enlightenment.

A leader is known by his associates. Union with ignorant and foolish people will reflect poorly.

A leader who walks with and among his people knows greatness and is humble. A leader grows through humility.
[nb Cameron insisting on walking around Whitehall, from Downing Street to Parliament, etc?]

The leader develops himself inwardly while at the same time developing others outwardly.

Lacking humility, a leader and his organisation become empty, disrespectful and lazy.

Fame and profit are not your targets. Spiritual values and virtues allow for no degeneration.

The true leader avoids negligence and eagerness. Do not look for "quick fixes". Moving ahead too quickly results in sudden regression.

A true leader always seeks guidance and help.

Sincerity will gain the leader acceptance and success. Inward truthfulness dissipates acquired influences.

There is a time for a leader to examine his own growth and the growth of others. Build upon strength.

The leader disregards falsehood and keeps truth. Decisiveness requires and demands true understanding. The quality of actions is based on understanding. Decisiveness is acting with unfailing clarity and clear understanding.

The leader chooses and holds fast to the good. Inwardly observing truth and falsehood, the leader nourishes the right and is rid of the wrong.

The leader must move with true naturalness and spontaneity, and ignore outside influence and human desires. Failure to achieve a condition of sensitivity results in humiliation.

Clever words and external artificialities do not represent true sensitivity.

Great power must be kept in balance. Self-mastery allows the leader to have inwardly enough strength, and to be powerful without being excessively so.

Following the path of Tao . . . virtue and correctness lead to the achievement of great power.

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Worth a read:

Conservative conference: 10 things I've learned

Andrew Sparrow lists the most important things this year's event in Birmingham has taught him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/oct/06/10-things-learned-conservatives-conference

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Conservative party conference: 12 things we learned about Iain Duncan Smith

Here are some of the things we discovered when Andrew Rawnsley interviewed the work and pensions secretary last night

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/oct/06/conservative-conference-iain-duncan-smith

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Layer 359 . . . Enlightenment, Freedom, Philosophy, Neuroscience, Modern Conservativism, Progressive Politics, Fairness, Leadership and the Tao

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Start The Week - Radio 4 - Andrew Marr

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr

Sheila Stephenson - "Enlightenment"

"Playwright Shelagh Stephenson also explores family tensions in her new play, about what happens when a missing child returns home."

We think we have freedom and control of our lives - but the world is a connected place and our lives are shaped, if not determined, by "events", and by other people.

Is it possible to reach "an enlightenment of acceptance"?

Jonathan Franzen - "hailed as a 'Great American Novelist' for his latest book, Freedom. Amidst the backdrop of the war on terror, environmental disaster and class war, Franzen chronicles the lives, choices and compromises of one family."

These are certainly big themes - class war, the war on terror and the environment. As is 'freedom'. Thank goodness there's at least one major novelist who's willing and able to deal with the major issues of our day. Economic crisis, gun ownership, overpopulation, overcrowded streets and roads . . . Huge moral challenges . . . confronting the basic weakness - the punyness - of individuals.

We need a 'sustaining narrative' of our times? [People need to know what point is there in being alive!]

"Philosophy is under attack as advances in neuroscience question many of its assumptions, and yet Barry Smith argues that the science of the mind needs philosophers now more than ever, to make sense of its new discoveries."

Our starting point is our own experience - it's assumed to be the one thing we can rely on. Apparently. Neuroscience is now able to show that the world is a construct brought into being by a combination of different parts of the brain. Lose one part, and the world appears very different. Taste is not a simple thing, for example - it depends to a large extent on sight and touch and even memories of past tastes.

As for our sense of self . . .

We have suites of opinion-making systems. [Logic, empathy, intuition, sensory perception and instinct all interconnect and interact and shape our feelings and emotions, our opinions and perceptions.]

[Which is why we need to educate ALL of our intelligences, and train them to work together.]

"Robert Douglas-Fairhurst celebrates the great Victorian journalist Henry Mayhew and his captivating portraits of life on the streets of London."

Mayhew was an Establishment man, but also an outsider. (A Boris?) Very good at describing the sights, sounds and smells of the streets, which in the 19th C were full of many more different types of people - different trades, ways of speaking, ways of dressing. Did he become a pompous moraliser? (Like Boris?) A cartoonist and caricaturist? "The undiscovered country of the poor." This is what Polly Toynbee wrote about when she went 'underground', lived in a council flat and took jobs on the minimum wage. The poor are always with us?

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Progressive Politics?

And so to the Tory Party conference. Not literally - obviously. But I'm drawn to it like a political moth to a flame; or like a cyberfly to a pile of poo.

Only this year it doesn't smell quite so crappy - so far. Then again, it's still only Tuesday morning.

Take David Cameron. On the Andrew Marr TV programme on Sunday he again managed to look and sound like a human being - a feat too difficult for the likes of Michael Howard, Iain Duncan Smith, William Hague and John Major -  quite a range: from prince of darkness to chartered accountant.

He appeared reasonable and rational, and spoke about taking decisions in the national interest. Maybe his predecessors said similar things, but with Cameron there appears to be a real human being talking and not just a scheming, shifty, lying, cheating politician. I still say that his painful experiences of parenthood, sickness and bereavement have given him a proper grounding in what disability, emotional intelligence and compassion really mean.

His two main themes at the moment appear to be the provision of a "good State pension system" and the creation of a "refreshingly radical" benefits system [put forward by IDS] that actually encourages work by not penalising people when they take jobs and come off benefits.

"This is NOT the Conservative party of old!"

Well – even Cameron is now using the F word - fairness!

He's also saying the NHS budget will continue to grow IN REAL TERMS.

On yesterday's Today programme George Osborne, also sounding sane and reasonable,  was also talking about the intention to adopt Iain Duncan Smith's proposals and create a single benefits system that's fit for purpose, that doesn't penalise people who take on jobs (though they WILL HAVE TO take jobs that are offered) and will actually cost the State MORE in the short run.

Osborne also says they have decided to stop paying family allowances to people who are on higher rate taxes.

Bloody hell. Why didn't New Labour take on these issues?

It's not really possible to like Osborne and Cameron, because they are, after all, Tory toffs. But credit where it's due - they speak calmly, courteously, clearly and reasonably. They may be misguided, but they seem sincere in what they believe, and whilst their economic policies may well plunge the country into an even deeper industrial and financial crisis, they are, after all, doing what Tories traditionally do, but with a touch of liberalism and speaking the language of 'fairness'.

Would a re-elected New Labour be doing any better? Probably not. And we'd still have to listen to the same old tedious, pompous and ridiculous voices of the same old Brownites and Blairites  . . . spinning, blathering, patronising, droning . . . on and on. I never, ever, want to hear the voices of Mandelson, Brown, Straw, Adonis, let alone Blears, Prescott, Hewitt, Burnham, Jowell and co EVER again.

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Fair's Fair and Instinctual Intelligence

Anyone who's spent time around kids knows that they're experts on fairness. They're born with a precise understanding of what's fair and what isn't. They will tell YOU whether something is fair or not, and will get very upset if you're too stupid to recognise unfairness.

Kids have much to learn about fairness as they grow up, but haven't we all? We clearly have unfairness meters built into our brains. Unfortunately they're not all calibrated precisely the same, which means that fairness is something we constantly argue about. We develop a better awareness of real fairness as we learn about the different aspects of privilege, disadvantage, inequality, level playing fields, and so on.

Is it fair that the banks are still handing out several billions in 'bonuses' to those within their ranks? Is it fair that so many families still live in what are virtually slums? Is it fair that house prices and rents are so high? Is it fair that public sector workers will now be deliberately made redundant by the coalition, instead of becoming 'redeployed', as it were, if and when jobs become available in the private sector?

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Leadership
Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley, PPE Oxford, no doubt means well and probably has a heart of gold. She's Labour through and through. She's married to the very likeable Andrew Marr. And she writes hopeless, out of touch, middle of the road rubbish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Ashley

Her latest piece - "A sharply defined Miliband can pierce a fuzzy coalition" - is itself a piece of hopeless, fuzzy tosh.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/03/cameron-miliband-leader-labour-coalition?

The strapline says - "Cameron's laid-back regime lacks the clarity of real leadership. The new man in opposition has to fashion a different path"

Bearing in mind that Jackie was a supporter of both Blair and Brown it's not at all clear she has a clue about effective leadership, or that she's in any position to advise Cameron on his leadership shortcomings, or that she's ever had any leadership experience of anything ever in her life.

She says -

Cameron's style of leadership is a response to Gordon Brown's iron fist. The new prime minister has been laid back almost to the horizontal. True, he has had some huge upheavals in his personal life over the summer, but even before that colleagues were complaining that he took so much time off, and delegated too airily. His admission that he has seven hours of sleep a night will amaze former colleagues of Brown, who got used to being woken at all hours of the day and night by him. If Brown's failing was to imprint a single "true path" and punish all deviationists, perhaps Cameron's will turn out to be the absence of central control.

Central control, see? Dopey Jackie is of the old school that still thinks political parties should be Stalinist and managerial, rather than democratic and collegiate. Here's Cameron making the point that the coalition is a true collective, and has restored government by cabinet, through democratic discussion and proper collective responsibility, and there's Jackie advising him to become the great clunking fist of central control.

What else does she say? What pearls of wisdom does she have to offer young Ed?

"He needs to reach out to bruised and resentful colleagues. He must show he understands business and "gets" middle England. But above all, he needs self-confident personal definition – the clarity of real leadership. For that's just what this cosy, self-congratulatory, fuzzy coalition seems to lack."

"Understands business"? "Gets middle England"? What is this patronising shit?

"Needs to reach out to bruised and resentful colleagues"? No he doesn't. He needs to tell them to fuck off with their bruises and their resentment, and count themselves lucky not to have the shit kicked out of them after all the New Labour bollocks they've been dealing in and making a career from.

"Self confident personal definition"? Like a high-tech 1080p TV maybe?

Oh yes - "REAL leadership". As opposed to imaginary leadership, or unreal leadership or leadership that's just a mirage.

I'd like to send Jackie copies of some books that might help her to understand that what Cameron is doing is perhaps extremely wise, thoughtful and progressive. Here's three for starters:

1. The New Leaders    by Daniel Goleman

2. The Tao of Leadership    by John Heider

3. The Tao of Management    by Bob Messing
For Jackie's benefit, and for Ed Miliband's benefit, I'm going to quote from these books in the next couple of blogs. I'll just leave her with this one thought for today:

Seventeen

The very highest is barely known by men.
Then comes that which they know and love.
Then that which is feared.
Then that which is despised.

He who does not trust enough will not be trusted.

When actions are performed
Without unnecessary speech,
People say, "We did it!"

Tao Te Ching

It's worth checking out the CiF comments on Jackie's piece. There are plenty of people who do, in fact, "get it".
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