Skipper

Arriving back from holiday last Tuesday I saw an article which surprised and depressed me. A senior Cabinet minister whom I had long respected for his principled resignation over Iraq, had announced the sixties ideal of equality was no longer relevant to Labour. John Denham argued in a speech to the Fabian Society that research showing voters will accept disparities in income if based on genuine talent:

"sounds the death knell for the purely needs-based approach to fairness, and inequality which has dominated much left-liberal thinking since the 1960s...The left needs to stop holding up egalitarianism as the ideal. If we continue to believe that the egalitarian approach is really the right one, and we, somehow, have to find more cunning ways of getting there, we will fail.".

He went on to argue that Labour needed to rebuild a new electoral coalition as the one sustaining New Labour had collapsed.

The next day Roy Hattersley offered a reply to Denham arging that such a view was an 'abdication from the principles of social democracy'. On the need to construct a new electoral coalition he commented:

"Forget the idea that politicians with strong beliefs campaign for what they think right. Read the opinion polls. Consult the focus groups".

He concludes that the party will swing to the left after an election defeat come what may but sees the Denham tendency as a dangerous augury. I agree strongly. Has he not read the Spirit Level which proves to my satisfaction and many others that increased social and economic inequality is the perrenial concomitant of high crime, high drug use, mental illness, physical illness and low life expectancy. If we are not opposed to such social dysfunction, then what are we for, for God's sake?If Labour gives up its commitment to end inequality it might just as well close down its headquarters and surrender to Conservatism. Denham should surely realise this is no foundation for a revival of Labour's fortunes.

Skipper is off to Dubrovnik for a few days and then Ireland to attend his daughter's graduation (MSC in Nursing if you are interested). Should be back blogging in a week plus.

Ideally we should have a written constitution and the underlying precept of inclusivity in political parties would be enshrined in law. That we have not has allowed political parties which threaten what Bernard Crick would have called the 'procedural' values of democracy, to participate in the system with impunity hitherto.

There always seemed a contradiction about that, I have always thought. The simplistic version of democracy enjoins us to allow everyone to have their say and be elected if they can accumulate enough votes. But the inclusivity precept has been enshrined in law for some years now via the Race Relations Act and the BNP is allegedly in breach of three of its provisions. Given that the BNP would like to send immigrants back to where they come from, it is hardly surprising they discriminate against ethnic minorities by specifying their membership open to those who according to its constitution, are of

"'indigenous Caucasian' and defined 'ethnic groups' emanating from that race".

It's hard not to agree with Peter Tatchell who says:

"I am astonished that successive governments have allowed the BNP to get away with the exclusion of non-white people, many people who voted for them as a protest may not have done so if they had known."

Final thought: why do all the BNP supporters in the picture look like air stewardesses?

So I didn't choose the winner; nothing new in that. But listening to the likes of Nadine Dorries, Tory MP, and Nick Robinson this morning, it is obvious the election has only gone part of the way to solving the Speaker problem. I knew that Bercow was not liked in his own party but Robinson used the words 'heartily loathed', which suggests a more visceral disregard. Dorries said that only three Conservative MPs voted for Bercow; they mostly sat glum-faced after the result was announced; Cameron's enconium was a damning with very faint praise, as was Alan Duncan's on Today this morning.

Rumours abound that a group of Tories are planning to remove him once they are in office after next May. It would be a pity if this plan materialised but I doubt if it will. After a few months such ideas will seem absurdly petty and if and when they win, removing Bercow will appear the least of Tory priorities. But emotions are running high because, as Dorries suggested, the Conservatives feel Labour imposed the hated Bercow on them as a last act of spite before they lose the next election.

Why do they hate him so? Firstly because thery think he has curried favour with New Labour, moving swiftly from far right to the cusp of defection, probably encouraged by his Labour activist wife; illwishers suggest he 'discovered sex and the Labour party at the same time'. 'Turncoats' are pretty always close to the bottom of popularity polls in most organisations and Bercow was seen as someone virtually in Labour's ranks already. Secondly he is seen as extraordinarily bumptious and arrogant: not pretty character traits and ones which will prove major handicaps if the perception persists in office.

Thirdly, he is known for disrespecting colleagues, for example, correcting their grammar under his breath; now that would irritate even the most equable of colleagues. I just wonder though, if there is not a fourth reason. I recall a very senior adviser to a former Tory PM telling me he was sure Leon Brittan had his career derailed partly because of residual anti-semitism in the senior ranks of the Conservative Party. Bercow, as we know, is the son of a humble Jewish taxi-driver.

But all this can disappear. All Bercow needs to do is to make a big success of his new job and this gossip will become the merest historical froth. He will have to demonstrate he is totally committed to his stated rerform agenda and deploy industrial quantities more of the charm which his hustings speech and acceptance remarks suggests he has.

If I had a vote for Speaker today, I reckon I'd cast it for Ann Widdicombe. Whatever her negative points- and her shrill voice must be among them- she is sincere, sqeaky clean(a bit too squeaky, I hear you say) on expenses and she is clever. I think she could become another Betty Boothroyd. She is a bit schoolmistressy I agree, but maybe that's what the Commons needs right now to restore its authority.

And what about the others? I do hope Margaret Beckett doesn't get it. She'd be competent and worthy but, after a long period of Labour Speakers it must be fair for a Conservative to get the job for a spell. More importantly, Margaret would be so boring! Sir George Young is also mentioned as a strong runner. He seems OK, but there were a few expenses questions about him weren't there? and maybe we have enough old Etonians knocking around the centres of power right now.

As for John Bercow, he may have changed his spots from when he was the last hope of stern and unbending Thatcherism but, I can well recall disliking him then quite a bit and his candidacy smacks a bit too much of 'last gasp' careerism to me.

No, Widdy ticks all the boxes for me, though a decade ago I would not have backed her conduct a bus let alone the Commons. I have respected the way she has taken much criticism for being a fusty old rightwing spinster but has remained unashamedly true to who she is. And she has bottle, something you need from time to time as Speaker. She says she's standing down next election, so only a stop-gap Speaker? I reckon she'd stay on if she got the gig.

I know the Expenses Scandal has died down a bit but, before it fades, I would like to post this wonderful footage of a piece of wonderful hypocrisy.

I do hope this footage is still available to historians when they come to write this one up in years to come. Thank you Alan Duncan, we are forever in your debt, also Gavin Trait's to whom the hat-tip.

I note that at least a couple of the candidates for Speaker, due to be chosen next Monday, are urging that PMQs be ended. I agree the weekly sessions seldom produce much clarity or elucidation of complexity and it also can resemble a farmyard, resonating with animal cries. I could also be argued that, being the most widely observed aspect of the Commons, have assisted the low opinion of politics by voters.

But I for one would be sad to see it go. Politics can be boring and inaccessible to the electorate; it is by nature complex and difficult. But PMQs
is an interlude in the week when a dash of colour,understandable to all, is added to the grey and sepia of public life. The gladiatorial aspect of the encounter can cause the baying and the pathetic attempts at soundbites, but at least we see our two major national leaders, facing up to each other in the theatre of the House of Commons. And wit and quickness of repartee is an indication of an important quality in my book.

How well the leaders perform is not of great moment to voters- Hague's brilliant showings against Blair, didn't help his poll ratings- but PMQs provides an opportunity for party leaders to rally their troops and inspire them for what should be a nationally important national debate on different ways to solve our problems. Other legislatures-I'm thinking of the Scandinavian ones especially- are incredibly dull and uninspiring. It is interesting also that PMQs is regularly watched in the USA on CSpan; across the Atlantic the president is never interrogated, challenged or even spoken to roughly by members of the legislature. Future Speakers, please don't deny our system one of its few unique and genuinely entertaining features.