Dave Kean

With the questions I have about the man it was inevitable that I was going to get Blair’s memoirs. It does make me feel a little better that my money is going to the British Legion rather than his Tonyness.

Unlike most post career memoirs this one was written by the subject. Blair says that he wrote every word in longhand “on hundreds of notepads” and as the deadline approached he even had his blackberry taken away. I can believe that, he’s an OK writer, but the book would have benefited from fewer clichés and a few more reflective moments.

Unquestionably he is one of the best communicators as a speaker or interviewee. The moments he talked off the cuff and threw away the speeches was when he was at his best, and his best was brilliant (Labour conference in ’95 or ’96 where he talked about his belief and vision for the UK was astounding). In those moments he showed a passion and created a connection that is sorely missing from the book.

One of the most interesting things in the book were his thoughts on Gordon Brown, it’s clear that their relationship in later years was at best, poor. He admits to never really dealing with Brown and his allies when they started to undermine his position; this led to what some commentators called the “Blair-Brown civil war”. Perhaps his most important admission is that he knew Brown would be a disaster a premier (which he was) but did nothing to change the succession agreement between the two rivalries.

He writing does lead to a sort of honesty that’s missing from many of his contemporaries efforts. Unquestionably one of his biggest triumphs was the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. Yet in his discussions of that time he admits to stretching the truth to “breaking point” when trying to put together a settlement in Northern Ireland. Few, if any politicians are honest enough to admit that they were willing to deceive to make the right things happen.

This same emotional honest is missing from his justification for Iraq. He’s direct and clear that he still believes that it was the right thing to do.

He sees him self as a man who tried to bring out the positives in other, and there is significant evidence that this is the case. This is the man who got Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley to work together for peace in Northern Ireland, no one else could have managed that.

He does admit his admiration for George Bush, he calls him a man of genuine integrity and an idealist. You rather get the impression that Blair felt rather bent over by Bush and the relationship does not always reflect well on Blair. Again there is an honesty that was somewhat unexpected, but at the same time the mistakes are not truly acknowledged.

The title comes from his transition over the course of his premiership.

He started his term as a populist leader that completed the Labour journey to government started by Neil Kinnock and John Smith. Ten years later he had matured into a statesman led by his beliefs, popular or not. Ultimately he had to compromise and reshape some of his beliefs to become Labours longest serving PM, he’s open about the compromises he made and accepts where the journey ended was not where he wanted it to.

It’s interesting, and as these books inevitably do, it’s promises more than it delivers. However My Journey comes far closer than many of his peers in delivering something substantial.

Any general election day is something of a celebration of democracy: this one feels a little different, for only the second time in the last thirty years we may see a change of government. As I wrote a few weeks ago, this feel different from 1997, the mood is a lot darker and there is not the feeling of better days to come that was had when Tony Blair and New Labour swept the Conservatives from power so comprehensively.

The electorate once again has the chance to remind those who end up in Westminster just who their ultimate boss is. It’s not the whips or the party grandees, it’s the electorate they have been courting so determinedly for the last few weeks.

I think we all understand the country is in trouble. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have actually seen the books and if it’s as bad as we’ve been led to believe it may be the country is faced with the biggest peace time deficit ever.

Whenever the next Prime Minister is will have to face the debt that’s been run up and make a large number of tough decisions. As a country we have tried to mitigate the recession by spending money the country did not have. This money has to be paid back.

In Greece we can see what happens when a government and people live so far beyond their means. There has been a nationwide social breakdown followed by strikes, arson, rioting and today deaths. While I don’ believe that Britain could head down the same path as Greece, but if the government does not reduce it’s spending to match it’s income then massive social problems await.

Blair and Labour were elected in ’97 with a mandate to fix public services and that took money. This increase in public spending was affordable as long as the economy kept growing at a pace that supported it.

When it stopped growing a couple of years ago swift, and potentially unpopular action was required. To be frank, I think Brown bottled it, with worried too much about being reelected rather than doing the right thing for the country

This election is unlike any other. In 1979 the country was feeling the pain, we were in the aftermath of the winter of discontent and inflation was rampant. It was obvious to all that the economy needed to be sorted and it turns out Thatcher was willing to risk her popularity and was the person to do it.

War and a Labour party that was all but unelectable aided her subsequent election wins, but the wins in the 80’ were based upon an economy made possible by the difficult choices and occasionally painful policies her government followed when they first came to power.

I also believe the same policies divided the country in a way never seem before. There were those who made fortunes off her policies, and a huge subclass that were left behind. Her government squandered billions of North Sea oil money and billions more raised by selling publicly owned companies.

The problems with the economy today are less immediate to most people, the power is there and rubbish does not lay uncollected in the street. The tough decisions were put off by Gordon Brown, but they are still there to be made.

The Australian government did the right thing, they made unpopular decisions and decided to live with the results. It hurt, and is still hurting, but the country will come out of the recession in better shape because of it. Whoever is living in Number 10 next week will have to make hard, painful and unpopular decisions. I hope they do the right thing for the country, not the right things for the polls.

One thing I don’t understand is that if Labour has identified 6 Billion in efficiency savings, why have they waited until now to implement them. They have seen the state of borrowing and if they truly waited until the election to roll out these savings it’s truly criminal to waste billions in taxpayers money.

Labour has had something of a deathbed conversion to a principal of Proportional Representation. An idea that the Lib Dems have held dear for many elections.

This election has become more than who leads, but also something of a referendum on PR and its merits. The Lib Dems have waged a very intense and successful campaign over the last month; a significant amount of credit for this must go to Nick Clegg.

I think the Liberal Democrats and their growth as a true contender over the last month reflect an overwhelming national mood for real change. Business as usual for has left a country full of disenfranchised voters who are tired of the old politics and the professional politicians who see an election as a career more rather than the opportunity to better the world for the people they represent.

Proportional representation will not fix that, but it will give the UK something important: a parliament that is a true reflection of one of the most vibrant and diverse countries on earth. I think this election has shown that the two-party system is unrepresentative of the country and perhaps it’s time is done.

David Cameron promises a different version of Conservative Government than offered in the past. I think he deserves credit for moving to the political center ground and going some distance to making the Tory’s electable, a feat so many other leaders have failed to do. He has forced the party to become accept diversity; reject the Thatcherism that the party grandees embrace so surely. These are the people who have kept the Conservatives on the opposition benches for the last 134 years.

However his message that it’s going to be different has not been conveyed very well. There are contradictions and very little detail, the manifesto and promises sit there with little information to convey what it really means. He is message on people taking more responsibility for their lives and choices is an interesting argument against “big government”, but high among his policies is getting rid of the Human Rights Act. The one thing the people have to protect themselves.

In another contradiction the Cameron talks of “united and equal” taxation, while advocating inheritance tax cuts for the wealthy. At the same time the party plans to continue the recovery with both austerity and spending pledges at the same time.

In a two party world the other choice would be embracing five more years of Labour government under Gordon Brown. There is no question that Labour have achieved much in the last three terms, the saving of the NHS, investment in education and a minimum wage are huge items of agenda the party delivered.

Hand in hand with revitalizing these services, we were promised reform. The inefficiency still exists and has grown in the last few years with all sorts of Quangos and legions of managers in the NHS. If Brown says they can find 6 Billion in savings this year, why have they not done it already? Politicians the world over forget whose money it is they are spending.

In this campaign Brown has failed to inspire me with a vision for the future or provided an argument for giving Labour another chance.

For many the second biggest issue on the table is the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was maybe the most important foreign policy call of the past sixty years. Labour lied, the Tories backed them and both were catastrophically wrong.

The Liberal Democrats have become a significant factor in this election and when this is all said and done there is every chance they become that party that makes, or breaks a minority government through a formal pact.

The party has traditional appealed to the working middle classes. Labours record on defeating poverty and being a spokesman for the working class remains unmatched, but for me they, and in particular Gordon Brown has not done enough. The Lib Dems are philosophically closer to Labour than Cameron and the Tories, but could they work with a Labour party led by Brown?

After decades of being on the outside of the two-party political system and not being heard, Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem center message has been heard very clearly in a way I’ve not seem in my lifetime. Today both Labour and the Conservatives must be second guessing the decision to invite Nick Clegg to the debates.

“What I’m interested in is the big poll on 6 May, when people really have to choose five more years of Gordon Brown – the uncertainty, the bickering, the haggling of a hung parliament – or a decisive clean break with the Conservatives.”  David Cameroon

Is it really as simple as that? Perhaps it is, but a hung parliament could potentially force debate and compromise. With a huge Labour majority these are things that have been missing for the last 13 years.

After the Labour landslide victories in the ’97 (179 seat majority) and ’01 (167 seat majority) general elections there was no requirement for Labour to worry what the opposition had to say. The last election in 2005 was not quite as overwhelming a victory, giving Labour a still substantial 66 seat majority.

For the last 13 years Labour had a very comfortable working majority, with the loyalty to the party rather than the electorate it’s meant unpopular legislation can still be railroaded through in comfort with the minimum of debate. There have been once or twice that the party whips have had to do a little work, but the MP’s understand where their loyalty lay.

The opposition is relegated to a rather noisy, but ultimately inconsequential role.

There is no check and balance to the government and they are allowed to operate with relative impunity.

Looking back to 2001 and 2002, having a 167 seat majority when some very controversial laws and motions were being revised (extended detention without charge, ID cards and the war in Iraq) meant that the wants and desires of the electorate were not necessarily considered.

Looking at it in a rather simplistic way I do think that a functional pack made up of a couple of the current parties could be a good thing for government and would certainly add a check to the system that has been missing since the tine Conservative majority of the mid 90’s. A Labour-Lib Dem pact (anti-Conservative more than anything else) seems the obvious alignment. The Lib Dems are philosophically a lot closer to Labour than the Cameron and the Conservatives. To give some additional credit to Nick Clegg, he’s done a rather good job in differentiating the party from the big two during the last year and taking a lot of the ground in the political center Under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy the party seemed a little further to the left than today.

Gordon Brown admitted he made some mistakes when he listened to banking lobbyists and loosened regulations on their clients. Like the banking regulators in many other countries they put the banks interest before that of their customers and the public in general.

After becoming PM Brown has said that regulations should have been tighter around the world, however his statements during an interview in ITV’s Tonight program contradict his previous position that as chancellor he did everything he could and the banking crisis was largely the fault of American regulators.

Of course David Cameron jumped straight onto this with: “Gordon Brown told us two things: he said this all came from America and he said his judgment was right in every regard. He is now saying that those two things are not true, that there were big mistakes made here in Britain in the regulatory system that he designed.”

Brown followed his admission that he screwed up by listening to lobbyists with “So I’ve learnt from that. So you don’t listen to the industry when they say, ‘This is good for us’. You’ve got to talk about the whole public interest.”

In another interesting admission during the interview he said he’s not very good at the whole PR side of politics. And this is news to whom exactly?

Interestingly after this interview aired the election polls tightened a little. There is now 4% (down from 5% yesterday) between the two major parties in some of the polls. Polls once again show that a minority or hung parliament is a distinct possibility.

Labour published their manifesto today, Cameroon and the Conservatives tomorrow and the third of the major parties, the Lib-Dems release theirs on Wednesday.

Brown said Labour has a plan for the future and their first priority is to secure the recovery. Any party that says continuing the recovery is anything other than job #1 will be dead in the water, so no shocks there..

Labours manifesto harboured no was no real surprises (as these things generally don’t). There were some minor give aways and one fairly major one that looks a lot like a bribe. Labour is offering a “living wage” to all those employed by the government, this is to lead by example and show the government can be a good employer. Under Labour the public sector has grown by close to 600,000 over the last 13 years.

To appeal to the squeezed middle class there was some minor tax credits, but that’s about it.

No increase in income tax rates in the next Parliament. No commitment to increase VAT (sales tax), but they did promise not to extend VAT to food, children’s clothes, books, newspapers and public transport fares.

Brown added a shot straight at one of the perceived weakness of the conservatives, taxation.  “We have not raised VAT since 1997, the only party that has raised VAT in the last 25 years is the Conservative Party.”

The economy thankfully gets lots of play and there is a commitment to halving the deficit over the next four years and some additional funds (sounds like venture capitol seed money) to “green” businesses. For a significant number of voters it’s going to come down to who is most trusted, or perhaps is least distrusted, to run the economy.

A lot of it seems like “business as usual with a lot of talk about the positives and minimizing the negative. There was little to no detail about where the spending cuts are going to be, the government have acknowledged they are coming and they will be deep, but have said they will not affect “front line” services.

Economists compare the depth of the cuts needed to those put in place by the Thatcher government in the early 80’s. Those cut a lot of public services, including the NHS, rather severely.

My first flick through the manifesto indicates it’s about hope. Along with showing that Labour should be trusted for another four years and don’t let the conservatives wreck the recovery.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the upcoming election. In 1997 Tony Blair promised the electorate real change and asked us to give Labour the mandate to go and make those changes. He got his mandate through a landslide election.

May 7th could dawn with the same optimism we felt when New Labour swept aside the Tory old guard and promised us a new tomorrow. As we watch the opening salvoes in the election fight I don’t see the same excitement, the same promise of a bright future.

This election is shaping up to follow the traditional pattern; the parties and their spin doctors spend the next four weeks talking about how the other guy is wrong, that it does not all add up and that there are “black holes” in their budget figures. This election could rapidly devolve into mud slinging, dirty lies and twisted half truths.

There is an alternative to the “business as usual” election race for the bottom. Someone could see this as an opportunity to truly engage the electorate and set out their vision for Britain in 2015.

Voters are not stupid; we see that the present government is in trouble and seems to be running out of ideas. Just for once I’d like to hear from the politicians that they understand what we want, and repeat it back to the electorate just so we can hear it.

After the lies over Iraq, the sexing up of dossiers, the expenses scandal and the usual run of illegitimate children and affairs we deserve to be respected. We have lost trust in our elected representatives. This is why the mood and desire for change is different from that in 1997.

Today it’s legal for an MP to simultaneously work as a paid lobbyist and still take their seat in the House of Commons. It’s not just the rules that need to change. To the outsider looking in there is a culture of entitlement, and that needs to be put right.

After the expenses scandal none of the parties dare claim the ethical high ground in the way Tony Blair and Labour could in 1997. They offered the country a real change from the Conservative culture of sleaze.

If politicians can treat us with respect, then maybe we could start believe in British politicians once more. All we ask is that our representatives let us know they hear our problems and remember who they represent when they take their seat in Westminster

Our demands are not much. We want fiscal responsibility from our leaders; we want them to lead by example, we want personal freedom to pursue opportunity and a safety net for those who need it. We want to be responsible and just ask the chance to be so.

There are too many professional politicians in parliament, too many MPs of questionable quality who have never worked a day in the real world in their lives. They seek power not to make a better Britain, but to build a career in politics.

The sad truth is that MP’s are not beholden to the people that elected them, but to the party whips. They are too indebted to the party to show real independence. Parliament should be controlled by it’s members, it should be more transparent and better understood by the voters.

Having spent most of the last month in London has been rather tough at times, however feeding my ongoing interest of British politics has been one of the bright spots. Dad is a Daily Mail reader, previously he got the Mirror untill that paper got caught in the race for the bottom a few years ago.

Historically my family is a center voting, concentrating on issues that matter to us (less about immigration and more about the economy). Dad has some sympathy with UKIP, but in what used to be one of the safest Tory seats around (Guildford) he’s typically voted Lib-dems (or Lib, or SDP and so on as appropriate). After 91 years of Conservative representation in Westminster Guildford returned a Lib-Dem MP in ’01. The Lib-dems only narrowly (by 347 votes) lost the seat to the Conservatives in the 2005 election.

The good news today is that Gordon Brown will have finally done the right thing and called an election to get himself a genuine mandate to lead, rather than the backroom deals that allowed him to replace Tony Blair. Having said that indications are that Gordon will not get than mandate from the electorate next month.

That doesn’t mean I think the Tories would be inherently much better than the incumbent in No. 10 marvelous either though. To me it seems they may be the least worse option on the table. The party is making lots of promises (it’s election time after all, promise the earth and hope the voters buy it) but under it all seem to understand that the solution to the country’s problem do not lie in ever increasing spending and spiraling debt.

While Parliament does not actually dissolve for another week, this was the start of a month of what may be some of the fiercest and perhaps most spun campaigning for many years. The conservatives are desperate to show that they are a good choice, but have yet to really gain any traction on Browns handling of the economy. I think Labour really see this as a winnable election.

The one thing all the parties should be most concerned with this time is voter turnout. The ongoing expenses scandal along with the lobbying busts over the last few weeks have lowered how people feel about politicians even further (and the existing bar was set comically low), this could mean that a lot of people really can’t be bothered to vote. If the turnout is lower than during the 2001 and 2005 general elections (about 60% in round numbers) then serious questions need to asked about how the electorate view Westminster overall.

The answers may not be pleasant for the career politicians, but if they wish to make Westminster relevant once again they had better take notice.

An election is coming in the UK, last summer I started getting e-mail from Labour, the Lib Dems, the Torys and UK Independence Party. All were looking for my vote in the imminent British general election. Brown can leave polling day as late as early June, but the serious money is on May 6^th as polling day.

The process is far different from the US. The date the country goes to the polls is only announced a little over four weeks beforehand. The incumbent PM goes to the Queen, asks for parliament to be dissolved and the race is on.

For the next four weeks the battle-busses and chartered airplanes take the party leaders, Members of Parliament, their staff, spin doctors and advisors up and down the country stumping for votes.

Even from a distance I find British politics far more coulourful and entertaining than domestic politics at home in the US. Ultimately because my vote is cast in one of the safest Labour seats in the country it’s actually fairly irrelevant, but I will take part in the process and vote in the election.

Some American friends are familiar with Prime Ministers Question Time, it’s shown on one of the more marginal cable channels on a Sunday evening, and are fascinated by the whole process. I thing Question Time actually shows off the best parts of the British process, it forces the PM to actually answer the questions, deal with the traditional heckling, attempt to show some form of leadership and respect the traditions of the House of Commons.

I sat and watched PMQT a few weeks ago and Gordon Brown answered questions ranging from hospital bed availability in a rural hospital to international treaties.

From a distance (with a serious nod to the newspapers and some parts of the new media world) six months ago it looked as though the Conservatives (AKA Tories) had Brown on the ropes and the election all but wrapped up. The economy was all that mattered, lets not forget that before taking over the top job Brown had spent years at number 11 Downing Street as chancellor and was (quite rightfully by the way) getting a lot of the blame for the state of the British economy.

The upcoming general election is really about one thing – The Economy – somehow David Cameron has been unable to make any serious capital out of the way Brown has handled of the downturn. If this continues and the Tories really can’t gain traction on this issue then the election becomes a far closer run thing.

The feeling is different from the situation in 1997, at that point the country wanted change more than they wanted Labour. Blair provided hope, promised change and assured us it was going to be different in the future. It was as close to a revolution as I’ve ever seen in British politics. Today the conservatives are desperate to give the same message, and either the message is not being heard, or it’s not being believed. Personally I think it’s the second, trust in government to do the right thing seems to be non-existent after the expenses scandal, lies about Iraq and bailing out the banks.

Interestingly it appears that many people view both the major parties as untrustworthy, not just the incumbent.

With worries about tax hikes and cuts in services the Conservatives are vulnerable. If this fear were to grow the Torys may be unable to really take Labour to the cleaners in May. If this were to happen the country is faced with the possibility of a minority or hung parliament.

If neither party have a majority in the House of Commons all of a sudden Nick Clegg and the Lib-Dems become both the major parties best friend. Heading into the election the Lib-Dems have 63 seats in parliament and won 22% of the vote in the 2005 election.

I did not know much about Clegg, he seems to be a true centralist. Previously the Lib-Dems appeared to have a slightly left of center position, that seemed to be the natural politics of previous leaders like Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown.

From a distance it seems that under Nick Cleggs leadership the party has moved a little further right. However in an impressive balancing act it is more of a true a more central position, rather than towards the Conservatives.

During the month before the election there will be a series of televised debates, and somehow Clegg got an invite to join Brown and Cameron on stage and make them a three-way affair. This is what third party leaders dream of, equal billing with the big two and a chance to show why they should be involved.

Of course the Conservative attacks may start working and people could start believing in Cameron as a potential PM. If these occur then I think on May 8^th we find Cameron moving into Number 10 and a nice working majority in the house, if neither of those things happen then potentially Clegg and his list of demands become very important.

Untill the mid 80′s the unions in the UK held considerable power, they elected political leaders, could force changes of government and to this day hold substantial power in the British Labour party.

John Smith was only Labour leader for a brief time, under his leadership the party accelerated the reforms started by Neil Kinnock that were designed to make the party electable on a national level once again. Had this reinvention of the party not happened I think it would have been almost impossible for Labour to come to power in 1997 under Tony Blair.

Arguably John Smiths biggest single contribution to making the Labour party relevant was getting rid of the trade union block votes and despite considerable trade union opposition establishing a policy of “one-member, one-vote”. Previously the unions had dominated the party by owning huge blocks of votes, the number depended on the number of members of that particular union and together far outweighed the ordinary members of the party. This policy of bloc-votes dated back to an attempt by other political parties to delay the formation of the party in the late 1800′s.

A series of strikes action by multiple unions during the winter of 1978-79, known as the “Winter of discontent” clearly contributed to the downfall of the James Callaghan’s Labour government. Ironically Callaghan was a staunch a trade-unionist (and could not have become Labour leader had he not) but also a realist. Inflation was high, the economy was shaky and the government had appealed for unions to exercise pay restraint, as part of the government’s policy to control inflation.

The government attempted to limit unions to a 5% pay rise led, this call was ignored when Ford negotiated a 18% pay rise with it’s manufacturing unions and the rest of the motor sector was required to followed suit.  This led to government requests for pay restraint to being widely ignored across the private sector.

This led to widespread official and unofficial strikes across the country in both the private and public sectors starting in late ’78. Lorry drivers, power station workers, rubbish collectors, rail workers, nurses, ambulance drivers and perhaps most infamously grave diggers all walked out. This led to a feeling of crisis in the country. I recall nightly scenes of picketed hospitals, heaps of rubbish, piles of coffins and sitting in the living room with lit candles as we lost power once again.

The effect on public opinion was considerable, in a little over three months Labour went from a 5% lead over the Tories in the polls to 20% behind. This led to Callahan’s government loosing a vote of no-confidence in the house and directly led to the Conservative victory in the 1979 general election.

A major part of the Conservative election platform was to control the growing power and boldness of the unions. The Conservatives under Thatcher made calling a legal strike far more difficult. Wild cat strikes (no-notice walk outs), closed shops (mandatory union membership) and flying pickets (pickets brought in from other trade unions) were all outlawed. The legislation was seen by many as a direct response to the winter of 78/79 that led to the vote of no-confidence in the Callahan government.