Six of the Best 564

"When he became leader of the Opposition, Corbyn was an unknown, even to his own side. Really, he was not of the Labour Party at all. He’s hardly followed the Labour whip, he disagreed with large amounts of what the party did when last in government, and he’s spent most of his time surrounded by a small coterie of like-minded outsiders." Jay Elwes on the takeover of Labour by a strange tribe.

Gordon Lishman writes writes about an economics motion the Social Liberal Forum will be submitting to the Liberal Democrat Conference.

You will find a good podcast about Labour's troubles on Political Betting.

"It almost seems as if the Chancellor doesn’t feel that improving house prices is possible. His range of policies set out in the Budget and Spending Review this year all point to him focussing on using public funds to ‘help’ people buy homes rather than improving market conditions. And, unsurprisingly, the problem is most acute in London." Joe Sarling explains how public funds are inflating the bubble in the capital's property prices.

Jim Holt reviews a new book on Sir Thomas Browne.

Footprints of London visits Churchill’s secret wartime facility at the former Down Street Underground station,

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Paddy Ashdown and Labour MP send joint letter on Syria

Embed from Getty Images

Paddy Ashdown and Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, have written a joint letter to David Cameron calling on him to involve the RAF in getting aid to the starving inhabitants of the of Madaya in Syria.

The letter begins:

The images and stories from besieged Madaya in Syria are truly shocking. 

According to reports, in the past month alone 31 civilians have died in Madaya as a result of starvation or attempted escape, while the UN estimates that 400,000 remain besieged across the country. 

We find it astonishing that so little has been done by the international community to break these sieges when life-saving medical and food aid are often only minutes away,

And they conclude:

We urge you to push the UN, in particular the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, to be far bolder in its aid delivery and stop asking unnecessary permission from the Syrian government. 

In the case that the UN continues to be denied access to these besieged areas by the Assad regime, the UK should strongly consider airdropping aid to those communities at risk of starvation. In some of these areas, the RAF is already flying anti-ISIS missions, and if necessary this is something we should press our European partners to support. 

Like the airdrops by the US in 2014 to the Yazidis in Iraq, and the leadership shown by the last Conservative Government to save lives with similar action in Northern Iraq, there are immediate steps we can take to stop more vulnerable people dying needlessly of hunger. We cannot sit by and watch this happen.

Read the full letter.

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Keith Vaz is back on Twitter

Here - a nation's exhales.

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Keith Vaz has deleted his Twitter account

A surprising move from such a publicity-hungry politician.

Later. A lot of people on Twitter are claiming he has deleted his Facebook account too.

Even later. He's back.

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The shorter Polly Toynbee

We're all doomed.

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The allegations against Greville Janner

What do to about Greville Janner?

Trying a dead man is surely an absurdity out of the Middle Ages, yet handing the affair over to Justice Lowell Goddard's general inquiry risks seems an inadequate response.

Could a separate, immediate inquiry be held in Leicester?

As to what the allegations are, there is a story in The Times today (and thus behind its paywall) under the headline 'Justice evaded by man with influential friends':

Had the case gone ahead, the court would have heard evidence that Lord Janner sometimes groomed boys for "relationships" and on other occasions acted opportunistically to grope and indecently assault teenagers. 

The alleged offences took place primarily in Leicestershire, when Lord Jenner was driven by his parliamentary interns to his constituency from London, where he preferred to spend most of his time. 

The Times is aware, however, that allegations have also been made concerning assaults on children at the Oasis swimming pool in central London. 

Former interns said that he had little interest in constituency work. One former intern gave evidence that the long drives to Leicester sometimes involved stops at particular children's homes and at service stations. 

That account links with evidence from one of the alleged victims, Hamish Baillie, who says that the MP first approached him when he was playing arcade games at Leicester Forest East service station in 1983. 

Mr Baillie believe that Janner was told his name and where to find him by Frank Beck, manager of the care home where he was a resident for nine months.

The Needle blog adds:

Sources familiar with the ‘trial of the facts’ had told The Needle that about 100 witnesses were due to give evidence against Janner and that the evidence was overwhelming.

Other posts about Greville Janner on this blog include:

• Memories of Greville Janner and the trial of Frank Beck
• Keith Vaz and Greville Janner

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Labour MPs want to oust Jeremy Corbyn and make Alan Johnson new leader

I have no idea if the story is true - and Alan Johnson has shown no enthusiasm for being Labour leader when he has been asked to stand or lead a coup in the past - but the Mirror is reporting this evening:

Moderate Labour MPs want veteran MP Alan Johnson to step in as caretaker leader if they manage to oust Jeremy Corbyn . 

Four senior sources including members of the shadow cabinet have said they see the former Home Secretary as the best man to unite the party if Mr Corbyn was forced to step down. 

One shadow cabinet source said it was “a case of when, not if” Mr Corbyn is forced out by disgruntled MPs.

Liberal England: circulating unfounded rumours since 2004.

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The latest on "troubled Lucy Allan" from the Shropshire Star

Is being troubled worse than being embattled or beleagured?

Anyway, my favourite newspaper is the place to turn for the latest news on the Conservative MP for Telford.

The latest Shropshire Star story on her begins:

Troubled Lucy Allan has been asked to apologise for her comments about “bully boy” Labour councillors in the town – or face a lawsuit. 

The Telford MP launched a Facebook rant against “a small group of bully boy councillors, thugs and henchmen” who she claimed had hounded her for two years, before going on to name them. 

Members of the executive committee of the Telford Labour Party today published an open letter to Ms Allan in which they claim the comments made by the MP are “defamatory and untrue”.

And this morning the Telford Labour Party sent this tweet:

We can also confirm that one of our members has instructed Solicitors to act on his behalf.

— Telford Labour Party (@Telfordlabour) December 19, 2015

Elsewhere on the Star's website you can read the claims of Arianne Plumbly, who worked for Lucy Allan in her Telford office.

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Six of the Best 558

Labour moderates don't need a new party, they need new ideas and new purpose, argues Jonathan Todd.

Mike Smithson says that if you want the opinion polls to tell you who will win the next election you should look at the ratings of the leaders not the parties.

"Gideon Haigh summed it up in The Australian. 'The West Indies used to be baaaaaaad. Now they’re simply bad'." Peter Miller on the decline of a great test power.

Steve Galloway celebrates the restoration of Walmgate Bar and the east end of York Minster.

Inside the Box has an audio interview with Jonathan Stephens, who played Chubby Joe ("Going home for the holidays, ha ha what?") in the TV adaptation of A Box of Delights.

"Malcolm ... travelled the length and breadth of the country knocking them for six with his comedic performances as 'The Woman Who Knows', Nell Gwyn, Boudica, and the epitome of femininity the fabled 'Gibson Girl'. Flashbak on the unexpected career of the brother of Scott of the Antartic.

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Six of the Best 557

"In the current flare of details coming out about the Tatler Tory bullying affair, one group more than others has been scrambling for cover, and that is the Young Britons' Foundation." Random Scribbling Notepad tells us all about it.

"Pugh’s suggestion that Labour has a tendency to choose the wrong leader and to hang on to him too long is an interesting reflection in the light of the result of Labour’s recent leadership election." Keith Laybourn looks at some books on the history of the Labour Party.

Ian Marsh argues that policy convergence, cynical marketing strategies and the demise of party organisations have destroyed the infrastructures that once provided a platform for longer term policy debates.

Shadowplay remembers Fragment of Fear, a disturbing 1970 film starring David Hemmings and many familiar faces of the period.

While Sarah Miller Walters celebrates the Peter Sellers film Heavens Above.

The Gentle Author takes us to Bromley by Bow and the largest tidal mill in the world.

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How Thatcherites and Blairites buggered up Britain between them

I have a soft spot for The Age of Insecurity, a 1998 book by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson.

In part this is because, having bought a copy and sat down to read it, I found that I was quoted in it.

Since you ask, that quote runs:

In a letter to the Guardian on 15 September 1997, Jonathan Calder wrote: "Labour is effectively recasting unemployment as a form of individual delinquency."

So I can claim to have identified early on a trend that has continued right up to Iain Duncan Smith and his Work Capability Assessments.

The other reason I like the books is that it central analysis still seems spot on.

Elliott and Atkinson argue that the supposed rise of freedom in the two decades before they wrote was only for freedom of a particular sort.

Money had certainly been set free by measures such as the abolition of exchange controls, but people actually enjoyed less freedom. That freedom had been eroded both by the Thatcherite war on unions and job security and by New Labour's enthusiasm for policing private life.

As they wrote:

The citizen now fears not only the P45 and the UB40, but the knock on the door from the child welfare inspector.

Again, that analysis seems prophetic today in a world where money travels the globe in microseconds and refugees die in the attempt to cross national borders.

I thought of The Age of Insecurity today when I read a post on the always excellent Stumbling and Mumbling blog: Workplace Coercion.

In it Chris Dillow ("Rutland's leading economic thinker"), who writes the blog, quotes the Guardian report of working conditions at Sports Direct:

All warehouse workers are kept onsite at the end of each shift in order to undergo a compulsory search by Sports Direct security staff, with the experience of the Guardian reporters suggesting this typically adds another hour and 15 minutes to the working week – which is unpaid.

He then asks why right-wing lovers of freedom are never heard criticising such arrangements.

Is it that they believe the labour markets function as the economic textbooks say they should? Is it that they fear any intervention in those markets will make things worse?

Or is it - and my money's on this one - that they care only about freedom for bosses, and not freedom for all.

The way that New Labour has contribute to the insecurity of the average Briton was also discussed in a Guardian article today by Tom Clark.

Clark argues that successful prime ministers - and he gives Attlee and Thatcher as examples - first argue against the conventional wisdom, then establish a new consensus and finally frame laws and institutions that cement it for years after they have stood down.

He goes on:

Now think of the apologetic nervousness with which New Labour did great things. Within a few years of passing the Human Rights Act, Jack Straw found it expedient to begin rubbishing it – so today Conservatives can now sound respectable in proposing to rip it up. 

Gordon Brown goaded the Tories into voting for the abolition of child poverty, but because nobody outside of Westminster was engaged in that argument, the Tories can today move the goalposts by redefining a poverty measure just before the poverty rate surges. 

New Labour’s tax credits dressed redistribution up as a tax cut. At the same time, the party indulged suspicions about welfare cheats with endless headlines about dedicated hotlines to dob in neighbours for swinging the lead, or lie detectors in jobcentres.

He concludes:

as Labour in parliament looks on in bewilderment at a voluntary party that appears to have lost all appetite for office, it should give some thought to the doctrine of power at any price, and the transient nature of its legacy.

That is unfair to Labour activists, most of who very much want power even if they have opted for a wrongheaded strategy of winning it.

But Clark is right that New Labour ducked arguments and tried to do good while sounding as though it was being nasty to people.

I think New Labour saw this as a way of keeping the middle classes happy, but its effect has been to bolster just those strands in working-class and lower middle-class thinking that make people unwilling to vote Labour.

But then me and Larry and Dan could have told you that almost 20 years ago.

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Liberal Democrats hold Market Harborough Logan ward

Many congratulations to Barbara Johnson and everyone who helped her for a great result in today's by-election.

Market Harborough Logan Ward

Lib Dems          402    45.2%  (+9.0)

Conservative     303    34.0%  (-1.3)

Labour                82     9.2%  (-5.9)

Green                 56     6.3%  (-7.1)

Ukip                   47     5.3%  (+5.3)

Lib Dem Hold

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Alistair Darling: From Black Dwarf to Morgan Stanley

Photo: Scottish Republican Socialist Movement

From BBC News:

Morgan Stanley has said former Chancellor Alistair Darling will join the bank's board of directors. 

Mr Darling, who served as the Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2007 to 2010, will take up the role in January ... 

Morgan Stanley's chief executive James Gorman said the US bank would "greatly benefit from his experience." 

"He brings strong leadership experience, as well as insight into both the global economy and the global financial system," said Mr Gorman. 

In 2014 members of Morgan Stanley's board of directors received $75,000 (£49,960) a year plus an additional $10,000 to $30,000 for leading or joining a committee within the board. Each board member also received $250,000 in stock awards.

All of which gives me an excuse to wheel out this blog's favourite quote from George Galloway.

Here he is reminiscing in the Daily Record in March 2008:

When I first met him 35 years ago Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf. 

Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council. Faced with swinging government spending cuts which would have decimated the council services or electorally ruinous increases in the rates, Alistair came up with a creative wheeze. 

The council, he said, should refuse to set a rate or even agree a budget at all, plunging the local authority into illegality and a vortex of creative accounting leading to bankruptcy. 

Surprisingly, this strategy had some celebrated friends. There was "Red Ted" Knight, the leader of Lambeth council, in London, and Red Ken Livingstone newly elected leader of Greater London Council. Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. 

The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair's bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher's despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time. 

The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy, pointing out that thousands of workers from home helps to headteachers would lose their jobs as a result and that the council leaders - including him - would be sequestrated, bankrupted and possibly incarcerated. How different things might have been. 

Anyway, I well remember Red Ally's denunciation of myself as a "reformist", then just about the unkindest cut I could have imagined.

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Keith Vaz eyes the speaker's chair

View image | gettyimages.com

"Keith Vaz has two ambitions. He is hoping that he will get a knighthood, and he would like to be the next speaker. 

"You can tell this by the way he is slavishly applauding the new Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at Parliamentary Labour party meetings. He also seems to be tempering his criticism of the Tories."

So says an unnamed Labour MP in a new story on Exaro.

A similarly unnamed Conservative MP adds there:

"There is no question that Keith Vaz fancies the job of speaker as he is very ambitious. He is very well connected and very friendly with the current speaker."

The idea of Vaz as speaker comes straight from a Trollope novel, but this is not the first time it has been floated.

In December 2013 the Telegraph told us:

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, has emerged as a surprise contender to be the next Speaker of the House of Commons. MPs confirmed that the Labour MP's name has been doing the rounds as a possible replacement for John Bercow, who is due to stand down in the middle of the next Parliament.

We can only pray for the preservation of Lindsay Hoyle.

But be warned. The Commons can do strange things when it comes to choosing a speaker,

In 2000 the two front benches wanted Sir George Young to succeed Betty Boothroyd, but the swollen ranks of Labour backbenchers decided that a Labour house required a Labour speaker.

So Michael Martin was hoisted into the chair and sat there, red faced and scowling, until the expenses scandal meant his inadequacies could no longer be tolerated.

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Greviile Janner is unfit to stand trial

From the Guardian website this morning:

Lord Janner has been formally found unfit to stand trial regarding a string of historical sexual offences at a hearing at the Old Bailey. 

The peer and former Labour MP is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, which is incurable, severe and has left him unable to participate in a trial, four experts who have examined him have agreed. 

The decision on Monday means that there will not be a full criminal trial to hear the claims against Janner, which span three decades. 

Instead, he is expected to face a “trial of the facts”, where the jury is asked to decide – on the basis of evidence adduced by prosecution lawyers and by lawyers who put the case for the defence – whether or not the accused did the acts he or she was charged with.

Such a trial of facts may sound an unusual procedure to the layperson but, as I pointed out in April, it is not that rare.

And a trial of the facts in the case of an MP who is unfit to plead too place as recently as 2012.

Later. Read Mr Justice Openshaw's full judgment (PDF).

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The real enemy of the Corbynistas

Nick Cohen gets it right in the Observer tomorrow:

The Corbynites’ real enemies are not Tories, whom they rather respect for standing up for the interests of their class, but Labour MPs who fail to show the required radical virtue and betray the leftwing cause. 

They don’t mutter darkly that there will be “no hiding place” for Tory MPs who voted in favour of bombing Isis. They don’t scream that Conservative women are “witches” and “cows”. They don’t deliver death threats to David Cameron. 

Their virtuous hatred is righteously reserved for their own side and its ugliness will destroy the myth of leftwing decency more thoroughly than the right ever could.

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Lord Bonkers called for Hilary Benn to be Labour leader in 2006

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Hilary Benn's summing up for the opposition in the debate on Syria this evening was a triumph.

Its defence of liberal civilisation and emphasis on international cooperation are precisely what have been missing from the debate this week.

Many will see him as the Labour Party's king over the water and reason that only Jeremy Corbyn's vanity and three-pound Trots stand between them and a respectable result at the next election.

So let me point out that Lord Bonkers advised them to turn to Benn back in 2006:

A word of advice to the New Party: if you do succeed in tipping Blair out of the window, don’t replace him with that dour Brown fellow. Try someone younger and fresher like Tony Benn’s charming daughter Hilary or one of the Millipede brothers.

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Six of the Best 554

Photo: Andreas Trepte

"The real case against the party leader, that most Labour MPs know in their hearts but dare not say openly, is not that a Corbyn government is unlikely, but that a Corbyn government would be disastrous." Peter Kellner gets it right on Labour and Jeremy Corbyn.

Ian Cummins endorses a study suggesting that Work Capability Assessments are linked with an increase in suicides.

"It is no coincidence that the notion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights is spreading globally at the exact moment that old boundaries are collapsing in the era of the digital revolution, mass migration, and international commodity markets." Mark Gevisser explains why repressive states are losing the battle against sexual freedom.

Dr Anna Arrowsmith says we are using the term 'mansplaining' incorrectly.

Dan Brown tells us about the status of the curlew in the UK and the work that needs to be done to safeguard the future of this wonderful bird.

The trap streets mentioned in Doctor Who the other week really are a thing. Londonist will tell you all about them.

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Greville Janner's alleged victims may claim £2.5m in damages

From the Leicester Mercury:

Six men who say they were sexually abused by former Leicester MP Greville Janner are expected to submit a claim for up to £2.5 million in damages. 

Lawyers acting for the men, who claim the 87-year-old committed the offences against them decades ago, indicated the scale of their potential damages claim at the High Court in London on Tuesday. 

Details of the claim are to be formally served on Lord Janner's legal team, which must happen before the end of November. 

Lord Janner, who was MP for Leicester West for 27 years from 1970, is accused of 15 counts of indecent assault and seven counts of other sexual offences against a total of nine complainants.

The report also reminds us of the current state of play in the Crown prosecution of Lord Janner:

A judge ruled in September that Lord Janner would be put on trial next year for alleged historical child sexual abuse. 

That hearing is scheduled to take place on Monday, February 22. 

The peer is said to suffer from severe dementia and the early symptoms of Parkinson's disease. 

A hearing to assess whether he is fit to stand trial is due to take place on Monday, December 7. 

If that hearing decides he is unfit to stand trial, a court might conduct a "trial of the facts". 

That would mean a jury would hear evidence from alleged victims and decide whether he committed the abuse, although there would be no finding of guilt or a conviction. 

In total, the peer faces 22 allegations of sexual offences against nine boys and men between 1963 and 1988. 

He has not entered pleas to any of the allegations.

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Alan Johnson shows the good and bad sides of mainstream Labour

There is no doubt about the bust up of the day. It is Alan Johnson's pummelling of Simon Hardy from what is laughing called 'Left Unity' on the Daily Politics this lunchtime.

Johnson was absolutely right to question Hardy's blithe assumption that only his groupuscule of the left stands against racism, austerity and war.

He was right to defend the record of the Labour governments of which he was a part:

we introduced the minimum wage, when we introduced the education maintenance allowance, when we introduced sure start children’s centres, when we reduced child poverty, when we attacked pensioner poverty, when we gave trade unionists the right to be represented, the right not to be sacked for going on strike.

Part of Labour's problem is that it has made so little effort to defend the Blair and Brown years. Blair, like Harold Wilson before him, has become a nonperson despite winning multiple elections for the party.

Where Johnson was completely wrong was where he complained that Hardy is "a middle-class intellectual".

Of course he is. Labour needs middle-class intellectuals. Labour wins when it manages to persuade both the working class and middle-class intellectuals to vote for it.

Yes, it must be galling for someone like Johnson to be lectured on the meaning of socialism, but his attitude does remind you of stories about how moderate Labourites used to behave when they were in the ascendancy back in the Fifties and Sixties.

Then, if someone applied to join the party, the local membership secretary would call. If he saw books in the house the candidate would be told that the party was full.

Still, if Labour is to return to sanity, let alone government, then the party's mainstream will have to emulate Johnson's fighting spirit.

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