Will holding Sedgefield be Gordon’s first test?
February 25th, 2007
Blair planning to quit as an MP as soon as he steps down - report
According to what is billed as an “exclusive” by the News of the World this morning Tony Blair is planning to step down as MP immediately after leaving Downing Street this summer.
The paper says “He has told members of his local Labour Party in the north-east he does not want to “get in the way on the back benches..He had privately agreed to stay out of domestic politics for five years to give Gordon Brown a clear run as Prime Minister.”
So within only a month or so of taking over at Number 10 Gordon would face a by election in what was a predominantly mining seat with a long Labour history. In May 2005 Blair held Sedgefield with 58.9% of the vote with the Tories on 14.4% and the Lib Dems on 11.9%. That campaign was dominated by the campaign of Reg Keys - the father of a British serviceman killed in the Iraq War who got more than 10% of the vote.
On the face of it this should be an easy Labour hold but then by elections can always be tricky for governing parties. Although the Tories were in second place last time it is the Lib Dem party which has strength locally. Sedgefield Council has 7 Lib Dem councillors, one Tory, eight others, and 32 Labour.
There are council elections there in May and this might give a further indication of Labour strengths and weaknesses.
So the Sedgefield by election looks set to be the first public test of the Brown government. Could this be an opportunity for the Lib Dems?
Whatever this has the potential to cause problems for Labour’s new leader.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Q3 then. Still some 2s on Betfair.
No there’ll be too much local love for Tony. All he has to do is put his arm around the new Labour PPC and that guy walks it.
Rory Bremner rang Margaret Beckett impersonating Gordon Brown, got put through, and it was taped as she had a go at Alan Milburn & Steven Byers
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2020970,00.html
Amazing transcript. We need better security at the no. 10 switchboard. FWIW I think that’s the lowest of the low and Bremner looks like a total git. But everybody else will read it so I put the link on PB as it’s out there now.
[3] I agree - and you never know, the guy might be called Chérie…
A 5-year vow of silence, eh? So Blair’s already accepted that his endorsement of a candidate in the post-Brown, post-defeat Labour party will be the kiss of death - so put your money on John McDonnell being Labour’s next leader but one
One thing that doesn’t seem to get discussed here is how the rosier opinion polls (for the Tories) don’t seem to get translated into by-election results. Although, to be fair, I can’t recall the last by-election in the south of England which was a Labour-Tory scrap - mind you, I don’t have to, we have house experts in that kind of thing
In [4] for [3] read [2].
Meno to self: try to wake up before posting…
I saw an earlier quote to the same effect and wondered exactly what it meant: my interpretation was simply that he doesn’t want to do a Heath/Thatcher thing, muttering loudly in the background as the new leader puts out his stall. But for those of us who expect a Brown bounce, a by-election in Sedgfield with TB’s backing for the successor is probably about as good a basis as one could get in a mid-term by-election.
Commentator at 3: Bremner has always struck me as quite partisan: the stuff he did at the time of the Iraq war barely pretended to be satirical, and basically just put the anti-war case. But yes, this sort of thing is pretty disreputable. It won’t do Peter Hain any harm that he saw through him! I don’t think Bremner got much blood out of Margaret Beckett and he presumably sat on it till now as he thought it’d be a bit more newsworthy.
Nick, there are enormous security implications here. A guy just rings the no. 10 switchboard, sounds like Brown, and gets put through to the Foreign Secretary and can tape her?
What if they were discussing MI6 or security? What if he wasn’t just a comic?
It shocks me that there is no better security at no.10 than “This is Gordon Brown, let me speak to Margaret Beckett”.
3 etc
It’s highly irresponsible of Bremner. Those sugar negotiations are of huge importance to millions of people. The revelations might well have impacted them adversely.
I suspect he’s done little damage but it could easily have been worse. I agree with Nick, that Becket doesn’t come out of it badly at all. Everything she said was perfectly reasonable in what she thought was a private conversation between colleagues.
Hain was brilliant. All those years being spied on by the SA police served him well!
Btw, I always thought it was illegal to tape a private conversation without informing the other person.
Am I wrong?
3/6/7. Didn’t he do this before, getting to speak to Blair by pretending to be William Hague when Hague was leader of the opposition? Blair rumbled him straight away when Bremner called him ‘Tony’ rather than ‘Prime Minister’.
Nick - I don’t think Bremner is partisan. He’d probably call himself a satirist but is really just anti-establishment and anti-politician. I don’t know whether he genuinely has insufficient understanding of politics in government or simply ignores it because it gets in the way of his satire/critique. It’s not too difficult to be a backbench MP popular in the media for an independent line and speaking a popular case. And such MP’s play an important role. But governments often have hard decisions which would be criticised whatever decision is taken - and so Bremner does. He also has the benefit of hindsight, which governments don’t have when they’re taking the decisions.
If you can dig out his work from the mid-90s, I’m sure you’d find his attacks on the Conservative government to be just as vicious.
Wilson, Callaghan (mysteriously missing from the Labour Party’s history page: anyone know why?) and Major maintained a dignified silence after leaving office without immediately applying for the Chiltern Hundreds.
Back on thread, Sedgefield has also been gerrymandered to include part of Darlington Borough (the Tory-voting villages were cut out to ease Milburn’s path in Darlington itself). On the ground in those “orphan wards” the Lib Dems have ousted the Tories in one by-election (we all know what their one-off campaign machine can be like) and are running strongly, ahead of May locals in Darlington too.
So we’ll have two sets of local results to keep an eye on.
…& if you have a PM deciding to embark on illegal and criminal action in a way that threatens the security of the world then someone has to speak out. Gordon could have brought Blair down but he didn’t and he is culpable. And the pathetic Tories, including Cameron, were supportive. Good on Rory
Suspect Labour voters will be so relieved there has been a change , Labour will hold with an increased percentage majority.
The Blair/Hague thing wasn’t Bremner.
Re: Sedgefield and sympathy - anybody remember Monklands East?
4. IA - if you look at the local byelections over the last year (as you must to get a proper picture given the volatility from contest to contest) then the swing to the Tories from Labour is quite similar to that implied by the national polls, about 3-4%. So don’t get your hopes up
Re. the Bremner thing, I think it is hilarious.
- Find it unlikely Blair will step down, but if he does I reckon there will be a lot of anger at Brown locally for pushing Blair out and removing Sedgefield’s place of importance as the PM constituency.
Unless Blair really gets behind the new candidate, I think Labour might suffer a surprise shock here. Which will a) ruin Brown’s new premiership B0 give Blair the first taste of revenge.
Having said that - I don’t think Blair will be so dirty as to stand down!
Rory Bremner used to be highly amusing when he concentrated on his main skill (impersonations) and their use to genuinely satirise politics and politicians. I thought the program went seriously downhill around the time of Iraq though - partly because i think he was forced by the serious subject nature to stop looking for laughs. But then maybe i just don’t like really hard hitting satire.
The show has recovered its former glory in recent years, although like all satirical shows, it badly needs a change in political personnel to provide new material.
re 13. Want to bet on it? This will be either Labour with a much reduced majority or a Lib Dem gain.
Of course, this new threat may simply be another way of hanging on at No 10 for a while longer - make me go too early Gordon and you’ll lose Sedgefield!
If there is any substance in the story, it does mean that we can now safely discount the possibilities of Q4 and 2008 in the Blair Switch market, not that I’ve ever thought either was remotely likely.
I’m utterly shocked that Mike has missed the big political story of the day.
“Tory Leader Kills Bambi - Shock !!!!!!!”
It appears that Dave loves nothing better for Sunday lunch than Bambi and chips.
Eton, deer stalking, aristo background …. no there’s nothing stereotypical about this Conservative leader.
The purpose of people like Bremner surely is to prick the pompous, to make fun of those in power, who ever they are, more power to his elbow.
“Although the Tories were in second place last time it is the Lib Dem party which has strength locally. Sedgefield Council has 7 Lib Dem councillors, one Tory, eight others, and 32 Labour.”
Mike, I suppose you didn’t check 2003 local results so carefully. The Libdems have contested just 1 ward being part of Sedegefield constituency in 2003. I can’t see how contesting a ward becomes having local strenght.
Having said that, the fact that they didn’t even contest them doesn’t mean they don’t have potential. As someone said, they won a byelection in one those ward (a previously Tory ward) in the Darlington Council part of the constituency, a ward where they didn’t stand in 2003
23 Andrea. How dare Italians show their wares on this Sunday mourning.
22. The idea that we should somehow feel sorry for Margaret Beckett is certainly laughable.
25 Scallywag. You cad Sir !!
How could you make light of a woman whose beauty is closely related to a bag of spanners.
24 Scots in mourning, Andrea - rest of us laughing like drains.
:-) 
re 21. Sorry Jack - BAMBI BURGERS using turkey meat from Norfolk
“because i think he was forced by the serious subject nature to stop looking for laughs. But then maybe i just don’t like really hard hitting satire”
I agree that when satire stops being funny like Bremner’s has it just becomes a dull rant. Guido suffered from the same thing. When I first read his site it was sometimes genuinely funny. Now it is just a propaganda site-and not in any way satirical.
21.
It certainly is a controversial blood sport, Camerons so called secret love of stag shooting does not create the percieved change his PR team like to project.
The animal rights vote has gone, but then again don`t think the conservative party will be worried by that.
However Cameron might have wanted some of them in his massive tent.
27 PtP. It’s part of our carefully laid plan, ahead of the World Cup, to lull the rest of the rugby world into a sense of mirth and derision …… it’s working rather well.
However, it also looks like England have nicked the plan too !!
There are stories about Prezza wanting to decamp to the red benches before the next election. I can see that as being more likely than Blair. So long as Blair has his seat he always has the option to hit back hard at Gordon if he thinks he is abandoning his “legacy”. From Blair’s point of view the threat may help keep GB closer to his way. I saw a Labour blogger tipping Margaret Beckett for Leader of the Lords. So all in all by elections in Hull East or Derby South seem more likely than Sedgefield surely.
I was one of those rural people who was not sorry to see the end of fox hunting, although it upset some of my friends. I wouldn’t have campaigned against fox hunting etc. but felt its ‘time’ had come. Shooting like fishing I place in a different category, first of all there is a viable end product, food. Venison and game are very healthy foods which should be promoted much more than they are. I see nothing wrong with shooting deer, (the brace story is nonsense, I’m sure) or game.
An in-depth investigation by myself into the source of the Cameron drug taking shocker, has revealed that from an early age, Cameron was at the beck and call of one, Tony Blair, who kept him on a short leash, and encouraged him to move onto the sort of hard stuff he’d never experience within the old Tory party.
Cameron, who may pay dearly for flirting with the dangerous Blair, is fighting for political survival. His rival, on the other hand, is pissing his pants. We can reveal that in the early days, TB as he was known then, would leave his tag, a spray paint call sign, all over the corridors of power. We interviewed a snivelling penniless Tory smackhead who we found cowering in a corner of Westminster:
‘In the early days it was all pretty soft core, bit of a laugh, you know. ‘An then Tone started coming round wiv this heavy stuff he’d picked up in America, off this Bush man. He was messing wiv the wrong sort, man.’
We can reveal that Blair picked up his own pushing habit having been supplied by smack queen Margaret Thatcher for many years. She, in turn had been led astray by the sugar daddy of them all, Ronald Reagan.
If your MP seems to have a heavy cold, can’t concentrate, and asks you for loans, contact The Drugs Hotline, where your call will be dealt with by recently beatified saints and a eunuch.
The story above is a satire or parody. It is entirely fictitious.
32. Byelections in Hull East and Derby South (on current boundary) will be very, very risky. In Hull East the Libdems have real local strenght and Derby South is a semi-marginal.
It would be pretty crazy to risk byelections there. That’s why I think they won’t be
“So long as Blair has his seat he always has the option to hit back hard at Gordon if he thinks he is abandoning his “legacy”. From Blair’s point of view the threat may help keep GB closer to his way”
I don’t think he needs being MP to do so. He can simply give an interview. He doesn’t need to be a backbencher to do so.
Good article Mike. Personally I think it would be bad for Tony Blair to stand down, as in bad form. That said it would not surprise me.
As for a by election test, as commentator says all Tony has to do is endorse a Labour candidate and he walks it. I can’t see it as anything other than a Labour hold.
However obviously a vastly reduced majority would look bad for Gordon.
29. ‘I agree that when satire stops being funny like Bremner’s has it just becomes a dull rant.’
What you of course mean is that once the satirists turn on Labour, you don’t find them funny anymore.
Re 5, Innocent, “Meno to self:”
What is a meno?
More from North of the Border
MINISTERS have secretly u-turned on their controversial policy of automatically relocating civil service jobs from Edinburgh to other parts of Scotland.
In the face of a damning Holyrood report on the jobs dispersal plan expected this week, the Scottish Executive has quietly scrapped its commitment to presume against Edinburgh when locating staff from new or reorganised departments.
The forced relocation policy has caused a series of massive rows in recent years. Moving one department to Inverness eventually cost taxpayers around £500,000 for every civil servant relocated from Edinburgh
On the drugs thing, (we can’t leave it alone, can we!) its ironic that the lad who gestured to Dave, has been arrested for possesion, why? Surely cannabis is, according to all of the Tory posters who sprang to Dave’s defence, a good thing, makes you more human etc. I do hope Mr Cameron will spring to this young man’s defence, and demand that no further action is taken against him.
Re 8, Peter, re taping, yes you are wrong. It is not illegal. It is arguably against the terms of the license to use the telephone line.
There may be restrictions on what you can do with the tape afterwards though. You can use it for your own personal records.
Companies are expected to say if they are recording a conversation, but that is more to do with trading standards.
The rules also changed when OffTel was replaced by OffCom. The former had specific rules on the subject the later does not.
Re 18, Mike, so if the Conservatives win it, will you eat your hat
Re 21, JackW, given the recent history of the Conservative and Labour party leaders since the war, an aristocratic public school boy would seem to fit more in to the leadership of the Labour party
Re 31, JackW,
perhaps it was a joint plan?
11 - I don’t understand the reference to gerrymandering . The constituency boundaries are almost unchanged and the rural Darlington wards were already in Sedgefield constituency , the reason being that if Darlington constituency boundaries were aligned with the Council boundaries it would have an excessive number of electors compared to other Durham constituencies . The query should be why these wards were included in Darlington Council originally .
Agree with Andrea at 36: staying on the backbenches wouldn’t be about holding on to influence. However he’s relentlessly clung to power for 10 years, and to the acquiring of power for most of the nineties, so I’m not sure it’s in his nature to leave everything at once. Surely as a backbencher he could support the transition more easily, and not give the impression he didn’t want to be anywhere near GB’s leadership.
I imagine that any by-election would be a walk-over, however an interesting strategy would be the ’see this as a local referendum against Gordon Brown, who forced Tony out’ from the opposition. Even so, the natural challenger is unclear, and although I’d expect the LDs to do well, squeezing the Tories would possible be too much of a challenge.
And as for Rory Bremner, I actually thought Beckett was reasonable and constructive, so came out of it quite well. And yes, respect for Peter Hain for rumbling him. (althought the article in the Grauniad is still wrong, it was Blaneau Gwent not Blaenau Ffestiniog!)
Finally, as a non-rugby fan, if England, Scotland and Wales play in the 6 nations (although in Soctland’s case, I know it’s debatable) why don’t Northern Ireland?
36. No but the By-Election itself would be a damocles sword to detonate at a time of Blair’s choosing. As an MP of course a speech in Parliament can still be devastating and shouldsn’t be discounted. Re Hull East and Derby South you’re quite right but it maybe more more important for GB in the latter to take the risk in order to satisfy all factions in his new cabinet. For the former well if TB makes the offer to Prezza on his way out and Prezza wants to accept (how can he be sure the offer will be made again), well there will be little GB can do about it.
Is not everyone overlooking something Segefield though. GB will be well aware of the risks. If he directly asks Blair not to do it, and Blair defies his Party Leader and does it anyway to force a contest that is either damagingly close or sees them beaten, virtually the entire Labour Party will se it as a stab in the back a’la Ramsay Macdonald. Of course TB may not care, but it would further cloud his legacy.
I think the Irish Rugby team can recruit both sides of the border!
47. Why would squeezing the Tories be any more of a challenge than Dunfermline East or for the indies in Blaenaue Gwent.
46. Where did you get your intelligence on Newport from. Are you optimistic. I find it very difficult to get accurate infor on Lib Dem doings. Are either you’re becalmed or operating well below the radar.
I see the Anyone but Gordon tendency are stirring again. Mail on Sunday quotes Frank Field describing Brown as mad and saying it would be disastrous if he became Prime Minister.
I think this fight is going to get very dirty.
“Finally, as a non-rugby fan, if England, Scotland and Wales play in the 6 nations (although in Scotland’s case, I know it’s debatable)”
We can but dream of puting out a side of world beaters that England managed to assemble yesterday.
As mentioned above the Irish rugby team has always recruited from both sides of the Border and games used to be played in Belfast as well as Dublin.
Meanwhile some more good publicity for UKIP…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/25/nukip25.xml
I think the speculation over the leadership in the press is getting silly. One day one papper claims that Tony Blair will be led out of Downing Street in a black maria, the next day another paper predicts he will stay on for another term and the then NOTW claims he’s going to step down as an MP. The papers (and internet sites such as Guido Fawkes) have made themselves look foolish by hyping the non-story of ‘cash for honours’ and predicting that Tony Blair will immediately step down (which they have been doing for the past few years). Although this particular story sounds plausible I would think that by now they would have enough humility to admit that these ‘exclusives’ are rumours rather than facts.
The fact is that Tony Blair will step down sometime this summer (between the start of June and the end of August) and he will do so with honour, dignity and the satisfaction of a job well done, especially in the field of foriegn affairs). As Senator McCain put it a few days ago, he has shown an unprecedent level of courage in helping liberate Iraq and ignoring calls for an immediate unconditional exit (as opposed to an event dependant gradual drawdown).
53…and still more…!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1434608.ece
50.”Why would squeezing the Tories be any more of a challenge than Dunfermline East ”
well, the tories lost just 2.5% in Dunfermline West and considering that apart a visit from Cameron, they didn’t seem to have done much, it’s not a so big deal.
“. As an MP of course a speech in Parliament can still be devastating and shouldsn’t be discounted”
I don’t think that a speech in Parliament would have a much more devasting than an interview on BBC Sunday morning show.
“For the former well if TB makes the offer to Prezza on his way out and Prezza wants to accept (how can he be sure the offer will be made again), well there will be little GB can do about it.”
Prezza’s son is rumoured to be intersted in the Labour nomination to succeed his father. If his rumoured interest is true, well, I can’t see Prezza going to generate a byelection and so damaging his son chances (a Lab hold is much more likely in a GE than in a byelection)
Who the hell decides Scotsman headlines? Today they’ve the following headline:
“Sheridan ready to come out swinging in rematch”
I don’t believe this story. It’s not credible because it’s surely better for Labour to have Tony Blair on the back benches keeping a low profile and hardly ever turning up than risking losing a seat to the Lib Dems. Labour party strategists can hardly have failed to notice that the Lib Dems have won one in three by-elections over several decades, many of them on ludicrous swings. And if anything they’re getting better at it. Despite the ludicrous Lib Dem leadership campaign and the bounce for Cameron, out of
the last two they won one and just missed out on the other. (Hopefully someone will have persuaded Ming that campaigning in advance is allowable.) And if the Lib Dems believe this story, the leaflets will start flowing and the seat is lost already.
Admittedly losing a by-election is not such a big deal for Labour. They’d have a fair chance of winning it back in 2009 if they lost it after two years for a new Lib Dem MP to try to turn the seat. It’s only one seat. But the advantage of Blair getting out of Parliament is not much of one. He can just never turn up, and he’ll hardly get more publicity for being an MP than he’ll get for being ex-PM.
The only reason it might be credible is if it’s a really strong Blair personal desire, if he really seriously can’t face being in politics on the back benches with Gordon in charge.
Might Cherie go for the seat whenever he does step down?
re 18. Benedict - The Conservative don’t do by elections - least of all in a former mining area in County Durham. So YES - I will EAT MY HAT if the Tories win Sedgefield. They will get squeezed something rotten by the Lib Dems who will give Labour a run for their money.
56. True but that 2.5% helped, and it certainly helped in Blaenau Gwent, plus they did not prevent the anti Labour vote coalescing around the Lib Dems. In by elections it is vital to make it a two horse race as early as possible.
Re Parliament, I still think you understimate it. A slightly critical TV interview would be a shot across the bows. A speech in Parliament given how rarely TB appears there would be seen ultimate disavowal of GB. But I don’t think TB would ever go that far now matter how he felt. But he may like to threaten it.
Re Prezza I would bet Prezza would like a safer seat than his own Hull East for Prezza Jr. Even in a GE it is not the ultra safe thing it once was once Prezza himself goes. But hasten to add still a pretty good seat.
BTW very good piece on GB and the Tooting constituency in today’s ST.
Re 59, Mike, just getting that on record
What sort of hat do you wear?
“Might Cherie go for the seat whenever he does step down? ”
well, it’ll naturally depend if it’ll be a open shortlist or an all women shortlist.
Names suggested for Sedgefield includes: Durham councillor Paul Trippett, John Burton (Blair’s agent), Patrick McCourt (local leftist, backed by Amicus), Phil Wilson (worked for Blair)
54
Agree absolutely, Blair will go early summer, not before, every thing else is hysteria.
55
The tragedy for UKIP, I’m certainly not a supporter, is they do have a natural constituency, just about everyone I know. If UKIP ever did get, (unlikely) a charismatic, convincing leader they would certainly be a force to be reckoned with in the West Country.
58,
I think it is credible, why would he want to hang around for upto three years been critised for non attendance.
Better to have a clean break go to the USA and make some money.
As I don`t believe Prime Ministers in this country from what ever party get well paid for the amount of responsibily they undertake.
They must do it for their place in history, as they could get much better rewards and a less stressful career elswhere.
59 Mike S. Careful Mike, remember Rik nearly had to munch on one of his Mrs Shilling creations after his overly confident Bromley prediction !!
57 Andrea. Much
52 Max. Where you at Murrayfield yesterday ??
60.”True but that 2.5% helped, and it certainly helped in Blaenau Gwent”
In BG minor parties % went up as there was some tactical unwing campared to Peter Law’s original election.
“plus they did not prevent the anti Labour vote coalescing around the Lib Dems.”
yes, but that’s a different thing. You talked about squeeze, not about switching to the second placed party.
“Re Prezza I would bet Prezza would like a safer seat than his own Hull East for Prezza Jr. Even in a GE it is not the ultra safe thing it once was once Prezza himself goes. But hasten to add still a pretty good seat”
There aren’t many other safer seats (available next time) in Yorkshire for him.
65 - Fortunately not Jack. I was up in Perth yesterday and very nice it was too!
60.”BTW very good piece on GB and the Tooting constituency in today’s ST”
ST…Sunday Times? Sunday Telegraph?
55. UKIP’s incompetence and irrelevance is a tragedy for Labour and the Lib Dems, but not for anyone else.
Peter The Punter. Back from India and if my calculations on the previous weeks IGIndex/YouGov ratings are correct am £11 richer - will accept a drink at the next PB party!
66. Should have made clear mean’t 2005 Blaenau Gwent, Yes was GE, but it took on all the air and unreality of a By-Election in practice.
Re Prezza Jr true, but I think Prezza has influence in a wider spread than Yorkshire.
68 Sunday Telegraph.
By the way, Labour’s claiming that a Tory-led coalition is the alternative to a Labour government (BBC online). Presumably this is total rubbish? Firstly, what are the chances of the Tories beating Plaid into second place? They may be reasonable but surely far from assured? Secondly, surely a more likely alternative is for either the Lib Dems (again) or Plaid to go into coalition with Labour. Is it plausible that either Plaid or the Lib Dems would go into coalition with the Tories in Wales, anyone? Evidently plaid claim not.
It’s the usual ’scare everyone with Tories’ tactic that they used against the Lib Dems in the 2005 election.
In both cases it’s a plausible (just) take on the situation, but so clearly biased.
67 Max. Yes I too enjoy Perth. I’m hoping to get to the Perth Racing Festival at the end of April. Great fun !!
OT. The MP for Klingon South on Sky with Adam Boulton !!
73 - O/T Got my first Lib Dem leaflet in T,E & L. Remarkably there wasn’t a bar chart in sight! Although even they may struggle to come up with figures that show it’s a two horse race in this particular constituency.
75 - its a 4 horse race but if Labour do struggle it is down to where their vote goes to. Penicuik and area could the key to determine who wins.
Any comments from our Lib Dem posters about Norman Baker coming out as a David Kelly conspiracy theorist? Seems ironic in the light of yesterday’s unflattering portrayal of Christopher Monckton…
71. Thanks
Correction
I missed out the be - its a 4 horse race but if Labour do struggle it is down to where their vote goes to. Penicuik and area could be the key to determine who wins.
77 - It’s not so much a ‘coming out’ - he’s been saying this/investigating it for ages, and it’s only getting publicity because of this BBC2 COnspiracies show. He’s also been the driving force behind disclosure of MPs expenses, which has proved embarassing for some. So it’s not like this is the only issue he’s concerned about.
Punter - do you have a link to the Tooting article? I lived there last year so would be interested.
77 - Personally I’ve always had a feeling that Kelly’s suicide was not properly investigated. Hutton seemed more about the BBC than his death and using it as a reason not to complete the coroners investigation not very satisfactory. Doubt it was a conspiracy, more that the Lord Chancellor didn’t want the publicity of an inquest focussing on the Government’s behaviour to Kelly.
Mike S “The Conservative don’t do by elections”.
As they say on the financial ads, past performance should not be taken as a guide to future performance.
70 Welcome back, Icarus! I made it £14 but am prepared to accept your figure.
Mike will be announcing details of the PB Book Launch Party shortly. If you can make it I’ll pay your entry - £13.50 - and we’ll call it quits?
Btw, I take it you didn’t pick up my big race selections yesterday? I know you have profited from these in the past.
82 Witan. Very true …. they might get worse !!
81 Ted I agree. The whole thing made me uneasy. it was too neat, too convenient and too quietly dealt with.
But that doesn’t mean he was murdered. It might mean he was pushed and shoved and harried and the government was embarrassed by what its over enthusiastic servants did?
72. Reasonable but not assured. Yes that’d be about right. It could easily be though the Tiries outpoll Plaid in votes but Plaid outpoll them in seats.
Re Plaid. As I understand it, they have ruled out a “Tory led” coalition but does not preclude some coalition with them. But this is unlikely at present.
72 - Could Conservatives take second place - Possibly.
Would Plaid join a Conservative-led coalition - Absolutely not.
Would Plaid try and lead a coalition with Conservatives as junior partners - possibly.
More likely scenario is that Plaid would join a Labour-led coalition, leaving the LDs out
re 82. But going from 1982 - when Jack W was still a lad and only in his 80s - until now without getting anywhere close to gaining a seat is a pretty appalling record. I feat that past performance is a guide to what can happen in the future.
82:
Think David Cameron parachuting into town attached to a giant blue parachute.
Tory canvassers all catwalk models who give out signed pictures of the candidate (and themselves) on the doorstep, and never stop smiling.
All Conservative leaflets in glossy technicolour with fashion advice and agony aunt column.
The candidate doesn’t get his point across through speeches, but instead performs his own rock songs to communicate his message.
Massive campaign rally with free food, drinks, live music and fund-raising ‘Hug a hoodie’ stall.
Tagline: ‘The Conservatives don’t do by-elections. But if they did, they’d probably be the best by-elections in the world.’
87. See you previous thread.
Re Sedgefield, for anything to work either Keys or the Lib Dems would have to agree not to stand backed the other IMHO really.
85 - well the accusation seems to be that he was murdered by the Iraqi secret services (he was apparantly high up on a hit list) so you don’t have to believe that there was a Government cover-up to back the idea that he was murdered.
86 - have Plaid commented on whether they would enter a Labour led coalition?
92. Their official line is that they will not rule anything out - with the excpetion of joining a Tory coaition. The issue of joining a Labour led-coalition was discussed at the time of the recent budget negotiations, but the official line again - is that formal dicussions will only take place after the election.
88 Mike S I agree completely, but it is equally dangerous to assume that because the LibDems have done well over the last 15 years that that performance will continue or that the shambles of the Tory efforts will be perpetual. In the 50’s and 60′ it was the Tories who had the ‘get out the vote’ machine. Like actors, political parties are only as good as their last performance.
The Tory party has quietly been working on the way it deals with by elections, but I don’t expect great things too soon. But I have little doubt that it will get better. And, in the way of all things the LibDems will get worse. Why? I don’t know, but nothing stays up for ever.
89 Don’t give Maude idea’s.. though on second thoughts…..
95 idea’s - where did that apostrophe sneak in! blushes…
88 Mike S. Ah yes, sigh, when I was in my eighties ….. dancing the light fandango with Mrs T !!
Jack W is 104.
Out to lunch now …. laters.
88. The Tories did win the Scottish parliament byelection at Ayr, though, Mike.
46 - The existing Darlington Unitary Authority arose in 1997 on the ashes of the previous 1973 boundaries - which combined the original county borough and the old rural district council. This explains why the rural wards are attached to the town.
Despite substantial complaints from the rural communities at the time of the 2003 determination by the Boundary Commission, there were no material changes. But wards attached to Sedgefield lie to the South and West of the town - Sedgefield itself lies to the North and East. Anyone from the villages looking to meet their local MP (or at least his agent) has to drive THROUGH their own town of Darlington and out the other side.
Doubtless the equalisation of constituency rolls appeals to tidy minds. But the partition places solidly Tory pockets in a deeply safe Labour seat, and not in a seat that has changed hands twice in living memory, Lab to Con in 1983, Con to Lab in 1992. Odd that…
12. “Gordon could have brought Blair down but he didn’t and he is culpable.”
He used Blair’s weakness to do what he thought was more important for Britain, which was kill the euro (the speech to parliament regarding this was in June 2003). Was this the truly the most important thing at the time? History may judge Yes. The Iraq war would have happened anyway, with or without Britain, and it hasn’t really impacted domestic British life, while the euro definitely would have changed everything. I suppose it depends on whether you think ministers first duty is to their own voters or to world events.
I think people fail to grasp that the second term was always going to be the term where Blair asserted himself, to reclaim back govt from Brown, who had pretty much dominated the first term (which interestingly, the public remembers fondly, even though Brown’s colleagues don’t).
If it hadn’t been Iraq, it would have been the Euro. Blair on election night of 2001 thought the Euro was going to be his legacy and he was backed by the majority of the cabinet. It’s very rare that individual ministers manage to thwart a policy on their own - and Brown and the euro might be Britain’s only example, and he only won in the end because of Iraq weakening the PM and causing a rift with France and Germany.
What would the second term have been like if the euro referendum had dominated rather than Iraq? I think the govt might have been in danger of losing the 2005 election, because the main opposition was against the euro, and the public was against it too. Whereas in the actual 2005 election, the main opposition was not against Iraq.
41. Re the boy arrested for cannabis possession - yes, Cameron should certainly be arguing that the most the boy suffers from is writing out Latin lines. Otherwise it’s the case of the law treating delinquent poor boys different from delinquent rich ones.
100 - Snowflake, nice try but I think a tagged youth with a criminal history boasting about his use of drugs in the national press is a little different from a 15 year old, otherwise law abiding one. Yes I do think it’s different strokes for different blokes - I’d expect the police/schools to treat a 15 year old poor youth with social sanctions and a warning as well if it was his first offence.
100/41 - Not at all. Cameron was never arrested for possession of cannabis. How the law would have treated him if he had is mere speculation.
It could easily be argued that it is in the boy’s interests to be dealt with harshly, even sent to prison, IF the opportunity is taken to put him into a proper programme of rehabilitation. As a general rule, indeed, such an approach may be far more appropriate for somebody like him, where there appear to be to alternative “corrective mechanisms” available.
“A delinquent rich one” on the other hand will likely have far stronger social and, especially, familial, pressures which could be brought to bear. It is also, as a general rule, far more likely that “the delinquent rich one” will grow out of the habit over the course of time, and it is unlikely to harm his long term prospects (so on balance, not using drastic sanctions is clearly not in his interests. David Cameron is a pretty good example of that.
On the subject of “different sanctions for different classes of people” - I thought this was a brilliant idea, and not at all as stupid as it seems at first glance.
re 81, Ted, Hutton was not qualified to conduct an inquest. In many ways he did not do one, rather investigated the other circumstances around it.
102. Cameron should have been arrested for possesion of cannabis - he wasn’t because his headmaster chose to protect him and not tell the police.
As for your argument that it’s in the interests of the poor boy to be treated very harshly, but not the rich boy because apparently wealth is some protector… words fail me. If wealth was any protector then Cameron wouldn’t have been on drugs in the first place, would he? You are on really dangerous ground when you say that the punishment for breaking the law should depend on how wealthy you are. And yes, family and parenting skills are very important, but the Cameron example indicates that this isn’t the only issue, somtimes the boy himself is intrinsically wayward and even the best parents can’t control him. As for your point about Cameron growing out of the habit - the man himself has refused to say that he has.
104. The answers to my earlier jibe are depressingly predicatable. Whether or not you support his conclusions, Monckton has written a properly argued critque of the global warming thesis - yet he is dismissed by the Lib Dems as a wild-eyed nutter.
Meanwhile a senior Lib Dem MP makes wild, unsubstantiated claims about an individual being murdered - yet that is apparently OK. It seems that anything connected with Iraq or the Middle East generally leads to a complete loss of perspective among the golden horde.
A misunderstanding from roger about what satire is, humour is the occasional by product, the aim of satire isn’t to humour it is to hurt. As such Bremner has almost been the official opposition at times, his inclusion of Bird and Fortune, who cut their teeth against the Macmillan administration, and you have a veritable half century of holding governments up to ridicule.
Dictionary -
A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, *or* wit (the emphasis mine).
107. But don’t you think Bremner is too angry to do satire and humour well? Compare him to Jon Stewart of The Daily Show. Stewart has a really light deft touch and is genuinely funny. Whereas Bremner was so angry he forgot to be funny.
108. Bremner sticks it to everyone in the political classes/elite and long may he carry on. He has given parties of all colour a fair bit of hell at times and good on him.
Re 100 Snowflake, “41. Re the boy arrested for cannabis possession - yes, Cameron should certainly be arguing that the most the boy suffers from is writing out Latin lines. Otherwise it’s the case of the law treating delinquent poor boys different from delinquent rich ones.”
As I understand it, Cameron is alleged to have been part of a group which smoked some cannabis. There is no suggestion that he either bought or possessed any. Could I possibly suggest that you don’t make any libelous remarks on this one either.
Furthermore there is always the question of getting caught by the police. 25 years ago you have to wonder what a state school would have done. Would they have called the police in the prosecute all concerned?
That said perhaps the police arrested this “hoodie” because he was a “trouble maker” and possession is all they could get him for.
What is clear is that an elected politician has no place micromanaging the police. He is involved in the setting of policy.
108 - Sometimes Bremner does something to be funny (and usually succeeds) at other times (such as Iraq) he is doing it to hurt (and, again, he usually succeeds).
That so many people have got the wrong end of the stick about satire is not Bremner’s fault (and you still seem to gauge success as how funny it is, despite what I had posted).
Satire is only sometimes supposed to be funny, once you understand that there’s no problem.
Re 105 Snowflake “Cameron should have been arrested for possesion of cannabis - he wasn’t because his headmaster chose to protect him and not tell the police.”
There you go, mis spelling possession and being libelous at the same time!
Where is your evidence that he ever possessed cannabis?
Oh, and if it gets quiet around here there are a few new articles on my blog
http://aconservatives.blogspot.com/
112. People got caught smoking cannabis at my comprehensive school. They were suspended with no police involvement.
ot. Anyone noticed the similarity between Hilay Clinton and Gordon Brown. It just hit me as i was reading an article in the Sunday Times about US politics.
Hilary Clinton is well known to her electorate
GB is too
HC played second fiddle to her husband but was arguably the hand that guided him
GB played second fiddle to TB but was etc etc
HC is not afraid to deploy attacks on opponents quickly if they criticise her
GB has history here - Nick Brown etc
HC is a somewhat polarising figure but has strong grass roots support
GB can bring out strong negative feelings but has a popular party base
HC has problems with image and warmth
GB has problems with image and warmth
arguably they are both likely to be next leaders of their country
Re 114, Thanks Jimbo. I wonder what Snowflake would have to say about this delinquency?
Bremner’s saitirisation of the LDs I find probably more funny than his attacks on our political opponents. Not too keen on what he did with Beckett though.
100 I knew there was a reason I find Brown more appealing than most here seem to…
105 - just a minor point of fact; the 1982 Eton Cannabis scandal was pretty big in the papers at the time. It involved the drugs squad and the college was searched by police. If I remember correctly some pupils were detained and interrogated by the police. I can’t prove it but I would think that the Headmaster and Police discussed what actions would be taken. Not surprisingly the sanctions differed according to the seriousness of the pupils involvement. I know of similiar cases in comprehensives - Police on the whole prefer to warn and leave it to parents and schools to deal with, except for cases of dealers.
112?
110. “Cameron is alleged to have been part of a group which smoked some cannabis. There is no suggestion that he either bought or possessed any”
Cameron has admitted to amoking cannabis at school according to this article.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2010584,00.html
It’s pretty much impossible to smoke it without possessing it. “Possess” = to own. Are you claiming he was allowed to smoke cannabis without buying it first? Even if someone gave it to him as a gift, once a gift is given, the recipient owns it.
Am also amused that after stating the other day it was normal and desirable to take cannabis, Tories are now talking about the desirability of punishing boys in possession of it. The issue of enforcing laws on others that you break yourself will come up over and over for Cameron.
Snowflake, has Tony Blair ever taken cannabis?
115.”GB has history here - Nick Brown etc”
what has Nick Brown done?
120 - Your naivety is almost touching in this day and age, have you never heard of passing around a joint? I’ve never had anything to do with that sort of thing and I get the picture, where have you been to be so out of touch?
I agree with Mike that a much reduced Labour majority, or LD gain, would be likely if the NoW story is correct. Why? Because apart from the usual factors, voters always get annoyed at by-elections being called for any reason short of death, and they take their anger out on the party of the departing MP. This explains why there was a higher swing in Birmingham Hodge Hill (resignation of Terry Davis) than in Leicester South three years ago, why the Tories very nearly lost Beckenham in November 97 (resignation of Piers Merchant), why the Tories lost Ribble Valley in 91 (Waddington’s appointment as Leader of the Lords, though the poll tax played a part), why the Tories very nearly lost Willie Whitelaw’s seat just weeks after their landslide victory in the 83 GE (Leader of the Lords again), and helps explain why Labour lost Birmingham Stechford (Hodge Hill’s predecessor) and Ashfield in 77 (both caused by the resignations of Jenkins and Marquand to go to Brussels) plus Workington in 76 (Fred Peart’s elevation to Leader of the House of Lords).
Brown couldn’t stop Blair resigning, but if he makes Beckett Leader of the Lords (causing a difficult by-election in Derby South, which the second-placed LDs would probably win, not least when the seat has plenty of Muslims angry about the Iraq war) he can’t say he wasn’t warned by historical precedent…
121. Blair has said he hasn’t. Brown has said he hasn’t Miliband has also said he hasn’t. (And you can tell by looking at Miliband - he’s a year older than Cameron, but looks a good decade younger - clean living really tells when people get to their forties. Also take a look at the pictures of Blair when he was 40 - he looked as young as Miliband.)
120 - snowflake read the article you posted - nowhere is Cameron quoted. It’s a report, almost certainly true, but not confirmed by either Cameron or the Headmaster concerned.
Suggest you also read
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1431922.ece
126. The article begins “David Cameron got into serious trouble at Eton after admitting smoking cannabis, it was revealed last night.”
A pretty strong statement. If it was untrue, Cameron would immediately have said so, and asked the Guardian to issue a retraction.
127 - No he wouldn’t. How would that fit in with his “No comment” policy?
The fact that Miliband looks a decade younger than Cameron is more an indication that Miliband looks in his 30s than Cameron looks in his 50s. You must have seen some bad photos.
125 - Isn’t Blair an ex-smoker? Hardly seems clean living by your puritanical standards snowlake.
Milliband does look younger than he is - largely attributable to sporting a moustache like a 14 year old schoolboy - but so do lots of people. I’m 26 but was still getting asked for ID to go into pubs untill a coupls of years ago due to my boyish charm and youthful good looks. This is despite smoking since I was 16, eating copious amounts of deep fried pies, pizzas, Mars Bars etc and probably drinking too much.
Some of us are just naturally blessed.
125 - and we must believe Blair mustn’t we, he’s such a history of truthfulness. I probably do in this case - his university persona was much the earnest public schoolboy trying hard to be “with it “with his rock band and schoolboy rebelliousness.
129 - Yes, Tony Blair smoked from the age of 20 until his marriage at 27.
Max Lucky you! - I was talking to a girl last night who i presumed to be my age, just like she thought I was her age, only problem, she was 28 and i’m 22
still it all worked out ok in the end:wink:
129 - to be fair to Snowflake, Max, we’ll have to reserve judgement until we see your photos as you hit 40
Coldstone makes a very fair point. If Cameron was only being a normal human being smoking Cannabis at Eton why is the young boy from the Wythenshawe estate being arrested? Surely their isn’t one law for Old Etonians and another for Old Royal Oak High Schoolians?
But unfortunately this isn’t the only cloud on Dave’s horizon. Tory Peer Lord Black is about to face ‘the fraud trial of the century’ according to the Observer. The North American and Canadian papers (of which Conrad owned a mere 400) are apparently holding their front pages…As dicey Peerage stories go this should trump Levy by quite a distance!
….And then there is that Burlington story that just wont go away. Melanie P posted “that” photo a couple of weeks ago the significance of which was pointed out on this site. Since then it has featured in a story in the Guardian and to-day in the Observer. It can only be a matter of time before pictures of Osborne wearing a hang Mandela tee-shirt completes the image.
Though I don’t find personality politics attractive after Howard called Blair a “Liar” on a 48 sheet the genie is out of the bag.
129. “This is despite smoking since I was 16, eating copious amounts of deep fried pies, pizzas, Mars Bars etc and probably drinking too much.”
I blame your wild lifestill for your postings about Annabel Goldie’s sexy status
Back on thread, how much do MPs get paid? How big are their ancillary allowances? When you have answered those in your own mind, consider another question: How big is Tony Blair’s mortgage?
It’s a no-brainer. He will not stand down mid term. There is too much downside for him, and not enough upside. He can sit it out for three years, bank the salary, enhance the pension and enjoy himself. He can still do speaking gigs in the US or whatever, and have a bit of a sabattical. He doesn’t even have to visit the constituency. The next big job will still be there for him when he stands down at the General Election.
Snowflake, your PC puritanism is becoming laughable, as is your naivety. In order to understand what is meant by criminal possession of drugs you should probably look into the wording of the law rather than a dictionary term!
Second, even if Cameron was in possession, its quite common for criminal behaviour at school not to be reported to the police. Perhaps in your desirable world a schoolboy scrap should be handed over to the police and the perpetrators should be dealth with through the criminal justice system? And what about writing on desks? Criminal vandalism! The truth is that it is up to the headmaster’s discretion how an incident on school property should be dealth with, in terms of what is best for the student. Seeing that Cameron is now in the privy council, I think the headmaster’s decision seems to have been well justified. I’m sure he would have done the same for an otherwise well-behaved, poorer child’s first offence. Your charges of class conspiracy won’t wash here!
As for your suggestion that politicians should interfere in individual legal cases says much about your views on police independence. If only they could do it for the cash-for-honours probe, eh?
134. Here we go again! Because the *only* difference between the gun gesture kid and Cameron is family income, right? Try not to be so damn blinkered in your views!
134 Roger, do you & snowflake get a weekly briefing from Ed Balls? “This week we want you post about….”. Arguments certainly bear the imprint of that master of the airwaves and I could say they are B***s. As for the “I don’t believe in personality politics but..” excuse, thats the certain sign it’s all personality politics.
134 - at least get the name of the Club right, Roger
Don’t really understand the George Osborne reference at all.
The problem we now have with photos is how easy it is to create a completely fabricated (and indistinguishable from real) one. Moving images are more difficult but still possible if the cost is worth it.
I suppose somebody involved in advertising would have access to people who could create such an incriminating picture?
Perhaps Snowflake you might like to address international law and the part that Blair, backed by Brown, have had in attacking sovereign states that were not posing a threat to the UK without having any UN sanction. As has been said recently at least Tony believed he was doing right. What’s Brown’s excuse - he did not want to mess up his chance of being PM! He could have resigned over Iraq and would have almost certainly brought down Blair. He didn’t and must share much of the blame.
Cameron and most of the Tories were culpable too but they did not have any power.
Now this is real crime we are talking about.