Tom Watson: has he been reading my stuff?

I published the piece below in the New Statesman on Weds. I worried it would be seen as stirring the pot somewhat, but in fact its had lots of nice comments, including as many from Labour as the Lib Dems.

But can I point out the last line - and then this line from Tom Watson's Glastonbury blog, whichwas published Thursday morning just before he resigned.

Me: "Or to put it another way, Mr Howells: you may be happy to have "pragmatism over principle" etched on your gravestone. But it’s not why most activists go into politics".

Watson: "...I get a sense of understanding that I'd missed in the Leftfield debate the previous day. It's been missing from the Labour Party since Tony Blair marched us into the arid desert of pragmatism that was so electorally successful. It’s belief."

Spooky !!

Here's my New Statesman piece

While everyone else got irate about Kim Howells kicking off a 'unions vs. Blairites row' in his The World this Weekend interview (and I’m not about to intrude on private grief), I was shouting at the radio for a whole different reason. I appear to be in a minority of one, but why is it acceptable for senior politicians to say stuff like this about their own activists:

There are a lot of people inside the Labour movement who hate being in government because it means making very difficult decisions. They’d rather be a ginger group outside, they’d rather be calling for what we used to call ‘impossibilism’ because it sounded good and they fitted their rhetoric. It’s a nonsense of course…

Is it really a nonsense? And is it really "impossibilism"? I only ask because the progressive wing of politics seems to be terribly good at telling the folk who’ve been traipsing up and down the streets, banging on doors and shoving leaflets through letterboxes, that expecting their politicians to deliver some elements of party policy when they’re in power is 'naïve', a sign of political 'immaturity' or 'wishful thinking' and that we need to 'get real'. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Lib Dem councillors were told that:

If we try and turn back the clock, hankering for the comfort blanket of national opposition, seeking to airbrush out the difficult decisions we have had to take, we condemn our party to the worst possible fate - irrelevance, impotence, slow decline.

Now, I don’t think anyone expects their party to go into government and not make tough decisions. But it's not the tough decisions that get the activists irked. It’s the decisions that appear to be the diametrical opposite of either party philosophy or party policy that get everyone worked up. And if we didn’t, you fear that the Snooper's Charter would now be on the statute books and the original NHS white paper might have gone through on the nod.

It does seem odd to me that politicians can’t see that one of the reasons their stock is not so much in the gutter as several layers further down is exactly because they duck the difficult philosophical decisions in favour of 'what they can get through'; and why, when backbenchers from all parties refuse to knuckle under and back the party principle, they get applauded by activists and the electorate alike.

Lest we forget:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

Or to put it another way, Mr Howells: you may be happy to have "pragmatism over principle" etched on your gravestone. But it’s not why most activists go into politics.

Is Tom Watson's resignation letter any good? Depends on your politics it seems...

You can read Tom Watson's resignation letter here and make your own mind up; but if you ever doubted the tribal nature of British politics, then have a glance at the Twitter reaction, not to the news of his resignation - but to the views on the style of the letter...

Less interesting than UKIP....

Here's my latest piece from the New Statesman, which was meant to be all about why right wing Tory Eurosceptics may have done their party a favour in the run up to the 2015 election, but appears (if the headline is anything to go by) to also suggest that we need to get a little more radical...

If anyone thought the best way to herd Tory backbenchers back into line was a stiff telling off from Nick Clegg, then they were always destined to be disappointed. But I don’t suppose that was ever the real intention. It was probably more about two other things – ensuring the junior member of the coalition looked more adult (and more disciplined) than the senior side – and winding Tory MPs up to such an extent they go off on one and make a bit of a show of themselves. Again.

The latter hope seemed doomed to failure – surely Nick of all people waving the red rag at those Conservative backbench bulls was just too obvious a strategy, and they wouldn’t fall for it. But no, I’m wrong. John Redwood has manfully stepped up to the plate, pawing the ground, snorting with fury – and blaming all the woes of the world on the Lib Dems  - all this time wasted on boundary revisions, House of Lords reform, the AV referendum - our fault apparently.

Seeing as the political shenanigans of the last fortnight have been Tory-inspired (Euro referendums and splits on equal marriage), this seems a bit rich. But it also points to something else. That the Conservative backbenches remain fiercely unhappy with being in coalition and resent Lib Dem-inspired policy just as much as they resent not getting their own way on what they view as core Tory themes.

Now, while at present this makes them look a tad like the swivel-eyed half of the coalition, I don’t wonder if, come a general election, it won’t begin to play well. While the Tories may be responding to the UKIP threat more than anything else, I am beginning to wonder if, entirely by accident, it’s the Tories who are moving towards a coherent position for 2015, while we in the Lib Dems look like the straight laced, steady as you go, slightly conformist middle men.

In this age of rejection of the identikit politician, could it be that, in looking like a slightly more coherent version of the fastest growing political force in the country, the Tory right are getting into a position where they can pull all sorts of rabbits from hats?

Private Eye agrees with me...

A few weeks ago I asked the Question

If David Cameron only entered politics now, would he even be a Tory?

over at The New Statesman...

And now it would appear Private Eye thinks the same...

You spend years writing a blog and building a profile; then this arrives...

Today I had a VERY nice note from Zac...

Dear Resident,

A big part of the job of being an MP involves cooperating and liaising with your local Councillors. These men and women do a hugely important job representing their residents and running Richmond borough. Without their energy and competence, my job would be a great deal more difficult.

With the 2014 Council elections now less than a year way, I am writing to ask you whether you have ever considered running as a Conservative council candidate? The Richmond Borough Conservatives would like to hear from committed local people who are interested in standing for election across the borough. 

You don't need any political experience. We are looking for people who have an affinity with local Conservative ideals and who love their local community and want to serve their neighbours on the council.

If you are interested or would like to learn more, please email us at candidates@rpnkconservatives.co.uk with your contact details and someone will get in touch. 

Best wishes,

Zac Goldsmith 
MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston

I guess he doesn't read this blog nor my stuff at The New Statesman :-) Honestly, it's not like I don't write to him all the time...

Anyway, we had a nice e mail exchange over it...

You see Nick. you'll have to be nicer to me.... hahahahahahahahahahahahahah......

Shouldn't largest, in Lib Dem Land, mean share of vote?

I wrote a piece for the New Statesman yesterday asking what the word 'largest'  means, when Andrew Stunnell says that we will talk to the largest party after the next general election first if a coalition is necessary/a possibility. Do we mean 'most seats' or 'largest share of the vote' as a split of something like 34% Labour, 36% Tories would make Labour largest in seats, but not vote share.

By common consensus, I think its understood that by largest we mean 'seats' as this is the most likely party to form a government. But I'd like to pose a slightly different question - as a party that wishes to replace FPTP with PR, shouldn't we automatically talk to the party who have the largest share of vote before anyone else?

Now of course, for us to have to make this call, requires a fairly unique set of circumstances to come about. But as Labour's poll numbers slip, the economy improves, our support in incumbent seats solidifies and potentially some of that UKIP support goes back to the Tories for a general election - it could all fall into place.

This then begs another question; already the current coalition government is increasingly fractious; some of the key Tory election promises, most obviously a referendum on the EU, are not on our agenda (I'm not sure it shouldn't be, I'm not afraid of a referendum, but that's a whole different story...) - could we actually do a deal with the Tories? As things stand, I can't really imagine it - not least because would the Tory back benches really wear it?

Why do people keep asking when will UKIP have it's first MP? They've already had one...

I keep reading speculation about who will be UKIP's first MP - from  very well respected commentators as well. Cathy Newman was up to it again in The Telegraph today, suggesting it may well be Nadine Dorries...

"Now the Tory high command is in the crazy position of being held to ransom by a backbencher - terrified of the prospect that UKIP might claim its first Commons scalp. "

...and of course there is frequent speculation that Nigel Frage - who of course was UKIPs first ever by election candidate, in Eastleigh in 1994, could 'take the title' of first UKIP MP.

But actually he can't; nor can Nadine, nor can Diane James, nor can Neil Hamilton. They can only be second. Because there has already been a UKIP MP.

Bob Spink, A Tory MP, defected to UKIP in April 2008. Now, it wasn't a happy state of affairs. He left UKIP in November 2008 having disagreed with the leadership on a number of issues, and continued to sit as an Independent before losing at the 2010 General Election. I believe he even disputes if he took the UKIP whip now.

But none the less, he maintains the record of being the first UKIP MP. But sadly (for him at least) he appears to be something of a forgotten man of politics.