It’s 3/1 that he’ll be out this year
November 21st, 2007
Will Gordon be saying “move over Darling”?
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling cannot have expected good headlines this morning and reproduced above are a selection of the front pages. There’s no denying it - this is bad.
There’s no respite on the inside pages. The Sun’s leader sums it up simply under the headline “Strike Two”.
This is a story that looks as though it could dog the government for months if not years. The big political question is how much Brown will be dragged into it. It was his move, while chancellor, that merged the Inland Revenue and the Customs and it was his drive for savings that saw many jobs go.
Squeezing further efficiencies out of the public sector, promised by all parties, might be more difficult after what at least one of the papers is now calling “discgate”.
Another consequence could be a collapse in confidence in the government’s ability to run massive IT systems where data on tens of millions of people is stored. Certainly it changes the terms of the ID card debate.
Will Darling survive? Yesterday lunchtime you could have got 8/1 with William Hill that he would be out by the end of the year. By early evening that had tightened to 3/1 - a price that seems about right.
Meanwhile, in what must already feel like a very long week for ministers, it is only Wednesday and at midday there will be PMQs. I wonder how Cameron will play it? Maybe he would be wise to follow the approach of George Osborne yesterday and take a low-key approach.
The PMQs thread This will be published at 11.45am
Mike Smithson
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So… is it about time someone started up a ‘Next Chancellor’ market?
Oops, looks like there already is one. Please ignore these comments, then…
Excuse my technical ignorance, but how is it actually physically possible to bung 25 million personal records onto just two CDs?
Posted from the previous thread, o/t on the Smith question:
——————-
What a lot of nonsense on here about Ian Smith. For the majority of you who seem relatively ill-educated about all this (Lewis, Roger et al), I would refer you to mainstream academia which would pointedly argue that the whole point about Rhodesia in its successful 1960s incarnation, is that it *wasn’t* like South Africa (in its absence I can only direct you to Wikipedia and the like). Not having the stiff, racist Afrikaaner heritage, Ian Smith and his party were in fact attempting to run a paternalistic, albeit still clearly discriminatory, system of government in which all people, black and white, would be educated and have the means of taking advantage of economic growth and wealth creation.
Of course by the 1970s, with the Communist-inspired uprisings in the country, Rhodesia did lapse into the kind of extremist counter-terrorism so prevalent in comparable situations in South America et al - that is what Amnesty was complaining about. However this has little if anything to do with the period of UDI and the driving principles of the early years of the Smith regime. Smith ultimately did not help himself, either. Permanent, unpragmatic resistance to allowing blacks into power was not sustainable, and I don’t think Rik is arguing that it was or should have been the case. White Rhodesians also created a rod for their own backs by refusing to engage with the new black administration thrust on them, instead retreating into their own world of separation. The British offered a system of power-sharing and slow, peaceful transition but Smith petulantly refused it, wantint instead to pursue his own paternalistic dream.
However any comparison with South African apartheid is a complete historical travesty and I think it is that specific charge which Rhodesians that I know so hate, from liberal accusers whose knowledge of what period is sketchy at best. Most white Rhodesians abhored the Afrikaans attitude towards blacks and saw their own system, rightly or wrongly, as completely different and morally its far superior. Tarring them with the same brush is to do a great disservice both to the white settlers and the millions of free, black families who worked hard and built their lives in a country which afforded them stability and comparative wealth, an island of civility in a sea of contemporary barbarism.
So I think those mindless critics of Smith should pipe down and do some reading before they proffer their opinions again.
More insomnia.
I think your third paragraph is absolutely spot on. The public sector staff cuts built into the government’s spending plans (and as you rightly say, implicitly supported by the other two parties) are la-la land (and totally unbusinesslike: business identifies economies first, valorises later - not the other way around).
What actually happens? Staff go “off count”: temps, agencies, contractors. Might not matter if civil servants (and local authority, NHS managers etc) knew how to commission services. By and large they don’t - it’s as different from line management as running a blog is from writing computer code.
Back to politics. This is surely the “tipping point” - the one thing that’s much much worse for a governing party than people hating them is people pitying them - which is what happened to the Tories after the ERM fiasco. And what will happen to Labour now.
How can they go on with ID cards? I doubt they could find a single cross-bench peer, let alone a newspaper leader-writer, who thinks they’re a good idea after this, for a start. How can they not go on with them, a manifesto commitment after all?
I wonder if, deep in his heart, Nick Palmer (and I don’t mean this personally, of course, but simply that he represents a certain type of MP, born in the 1940s/1950s, class of 1997, sitting for a seat outside the Labour “heartland”) actually wants to go through another election campaign. After all, there’s no dishonour in retiring after twelve or thirteen years in the job. Our Nick’s no quitter, but I’m equally sure that he has a fair few colleagues who will now become more attentive to their GP’s view of the health implications of the Parliamentary lifestyle…
Innocent. This self serving junta would not let a little thing like manifesto commitments get in the way of political expediency. The ID card system will be a bit like the European Constitution - abandon it today, call it something else tomorrow and bring it in under the radar.
Darling’s resignation letter has been lost in the post.
“I wonder how Cameron will play it?” This may be the mark of whether he is ready to be Prime Minister. This could be the Westland moment and I am sure, like Margaret Thatcher, brown expects the worse. The question is whether Cameron will trun out to be another Kinnock and let the PM off the hook. I don’t believe the be the case from the evidence of the last few weeks of PMQs but we shall see.
“I wonder how Cameron will play it?” This may be the mark of whether he is ready to be Prime Minister. This could be the Westland moment and I am sure, like Margaret Thatcher, brown expects the worse. The question is whether Cameron will trun out to be another Kinnock and let the PM off the hook. I don’t believe the be the case from the evidence of the last few weeks of PMQs but we shall see.
“I wonder how Cameron will play it?” This may be the mark of whether he is ready to be Prime Minister. This could be the Westland moment and I am sure, like Margaret Thatcher, brown expects the worse. The question is whether Cameron will trun out to be another Kinnock and let the PM off the hook. I don’t believe the be the case from the evidence of the last few weeks of PMQs but we shall see.
“I wonder how Cameron will play it?”
This may be the mark of whether he is ready to be Prime Minister and the electrorate perceive him as such.
This could be his “Westland moment” and I am sure, like Margaret Thatcher, Brown expects the worse. The question is whether Cameron will turn out to be another Kinnock and let the PM off the hook. The evidence of the last few weeks of PMQs suggests otherwise but we shall see.
Apologies for the multiple postings - the broadband connection seems to be playing up - can I blame Darling for that as well!!!
12:Yes
I think Darling will survive in the short term simply because for a new PM to lose such a senior colleague only 5 months in hte role would be politically devastating. Gordon will resist for as long as possible. I thought before Gordon took over that Darling would be a mistake as Chancellor as it would feel like Gordon was still running the Treasury. If Darling is forced out either now or slips away quietly when the torrent has subsided then I think the best option for Brown would be to go for Straw who looks like he at least has an independent thought in his head and is not a complete Brownie creature. The absolute worst replacement would be Balls, but I think that is extremely unlikely.
The question is not whether Darling stays or goes but whether Cameron can pin this (and NR and QinetiQ) on Brown.
14 - I disagree. I would think that Balls would have to be the massive favorite, however misjudged it would be. If Darling goes, Brown will conclude that it was he wasn’t very good, and didn’t understand the Treasury, not that it was because he was subservient to Gordon. He obviously won’t think that of Balls, whose only obstacle before (for Gordon) was his inexperience and lack of Govt roles. Now he’s in the cabinet i doubt that Gordon would view that as an obstacle any more.
16 - Maybe, but it would be a disaster as it would confirm the view that Gord surrounds himself with a coterie of sycophants. I just find it weird that things are disintegrating so rapidly for Labour at the moment. Maybe things will change but this is beginning to resemble a vicious cycle where each issue feeds off the previous and into the next. I wonder if Gordon regrets not having that election.
Morning all.
I read over my posts from yesterday. I apologise for how histrionic they were.
The truth is that I’m in shock. Last night I ranted at my girlfriend for at least an hour about it, had difficulty sleeping, etc. I suppose it’s a there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-I reaction: If even 1% of this had happened to me, my career would be over.
Honestly, though, I don’t think the Chancellor will go. Not over this, anyway.
In fact, if there was a market with any decent liquidity I’d be looking to lay off at that price. The Sun talking about “strike 2″ is quite perceptive: It’ll take another major cock-up to dispatch either Darling or Smith - and experience shows that the Home Office is much more accident-prone than the Treasury.
This episode has affected my betting, though.
On Betfair, I had fairly large “back” positions in place for Labour at 3.95 on the “overall majority”, and at 2.75 on the “most seats” markets. I’ve now cancelled both of these.
(I put both offers in after laying heavily during the early stages of the Brown Bounce. My betting’s fairly conservative, and I’d been hoping to move from being very strongly up on tory majority & hung parl but neutral on labour to being moderately green on all three.)
Betfair’s great for building up long-term positions, so it’s ideal for this situation. A sane government’s response would be to set up thorough strategic & policy reviews, followed by a forensic auditing process to turn up any past transgressions.
I’d estimate that the reviews will take six months, and the audit maybe three times that. So, make it a two year process - during which time, there’ll be a continual stream of stories about small and mid-sized privacy issues / general bad practice (ie. two or three orders of magnitude smaller than yesterday’s).
Gabble - a government apparatchik - was quite telling yesterday. If his insouciance is representative of the attitude towards information security management within gov circles, then I guarantee that the amount of merde waiting to be uncovered is enough to drown Labour’s chances at the next election.
16. Even Brown can’t believe that Blinky Balls will be a good choice as Chancellor. He’ll go for Straw as soon as possible. I think the stress is now starting to get to Gordon - he is starting to resemble a one-eyed tramp wearing Sir Alastair Burnett’s wig.
Good Morning,
Well, I thought Darling made the best out of a very bad hand he was dealt in the House yesterday. A very measured, sober statement. Once again, it was left to Vince Cable to ask the more important questions.
This is a Civil Service cock-up of the highest order, but that’s the deal, isn’t it? The politicians get the glory when things go right and they also get the blame when things go wrong - even if they have nothing to do with it!
As regards Labour’s appetite for a fourth term, please let me assure you that we are still hungry for government because no matter how hard it gets, how difficult the media or opposition is being, it is infinately preferable to the impotence of opposition.
Re. 5, yes, this could well be Labour’s Jump the Shark moment (except The Fonz would probably be a better Chancellor than Alistair Darling). I don’t think there was pity towards the Major government (the electorate was fairly pitiless on May 1st 97), or towards this one. What there is (though just as lethal) is scorn.
Straw for new Chancellor if Brown has any sense. That’s a big if, though, so it may well be Ed Balls (the money markets would know that Balls had the ear of his boss, but his presentational skills are an absolute joke).
Hi Innocent - Thanks for the good wishes, but certainly I want to fight the good fight again - I was blooded in the 1983 election and nothing will ever compare with that for a perfect storm.
The missing element here, as with Northern Rock, is a sense that a Tory government would have done anything differently. Reductions in civil service numbers? The Tories wanted more reductions. Insufficient monitoring of Northern Rock? The Tories have just proposed to scrap regulation of the mortgage market.
And in any case the question of staff numbers won’t wash as an excuse. Putting 25 million records on a couple of CDs and sending them off even by internal mail is an extreme breach of the rules for handling of personal data: it’s simply very bad practice rather than an overworked chap making a slip. I do agree that it’s a wake-up call for any organisation that thinks its staff are following data protection guidelines to find out if they actually are!
A damning article in the Independent
http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/hamish_mcrae/article3179606.ece
Nick Palmer suggests that no other party would have handled Northern Rock differently. Vince Cable has been going on about the credit bubble problem for years and has been roundly ignored by Brown. A similar story over the ‘database state’; plenty of people have been saying for years that this trend is dangerous. I work in IT and the subject regularly comes up, with the unanimous conclusion that the government can’t possibly hope to have a secure, accurate and comprehensive database of anything, let alone the database they want to have for ID cards.
This isn’t just political opposition, it’s professional opinion that the whole scheme is simply unworkable. Watching Jane Kennedy on Newsnight last night, it is clear that the government won’t accept it, and they seem to think that as long as they admit that they’ve ‘learned a lesson’, people will trust them to try again. At some point in a government’s life, that line has to stop working.
Incidentally much comment about Osborne’s “measured” performance yesterday. The fact that the Conservatives aren’t calling for Darling’s resignation is the most damning thing of all! They clearly realise that he is far more useful to them in post than out.
24 - yes, Nick still seems wedded to this fantasy that on day one of assuming office the Conservatives will do an enormous volte face and start backing ID cards.
Having just watched Mr Darling interviewed on Sky News I am undecided as to whether he is incompetent or a liar.
He blamed the run on Northern Rock on the problems in the USA rather than the dubious criteria that Northern Rock has in place for mortgage lending.
I shall be helping myself to some of the 3/1 available about his speedy departure.
The only “wake up call” the vast majority of the public want is for “Bottler Brown” to call a general election and let the people decide.
I look forward to PMQ’s today.
Anatole. For the leader of a country which has never had more than a 5% white population to declare “I don’t believe in Black Majority rule ever - not in a thousand years” doesn’t suggest-as you do-that he was a fine and enlightened leader! I went to school with a Rhodesian who used to boast that he was allowed to beat with whips his father’s farm workers.
27. A rather pointlessly emotive comment of the kind designed to minimise thought and maximise reaction. If your read my posting, Roger, I do not say he was a fine and enlightened leader. Merely that he and the Rhodesia he set up, was not one premised on racial segregation or white racist superiority, and has nothing to do with apartheid. Once again I would suggest you try reading something - even the most basic things available on the internet such as Wikipedia, but better yet some more academic tomes, before you make statements on the subject.
Have sadly been away from pb.c due to work and family commitments recently, but yesterday’s threads were a fascinating read. Thanks to all posters - even Gabble and Rik W for the comedy asides.
I’m also in database management as part of my job, and it was very clear who knew what they were talking about - there is no way that ANY member of staff should be able to export in any format a list of entirely unencrypted data such as bank account details. Our company employs 40 people, and has access to various university databases. If we can get this right, why can’t a government executive agency? And what exactly did they think they were doing anyway?
But as Black Wednesday proved, these moments are purely about the Government - whether the opposition would actually have done anything different is by the by; it happened on Labour’s watch and that’s what it’ll be remembered for.
I was asked to ‘declare’ on the LD leadership last night - I’m afraid I can’t as I’m still undecided, but I’m happy to say how I see it, although I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this is helpful in terms of seeing how LD members think.
Firstly, and the bottom line, the new leader will be a massive improvement on the past 18 months. I keep saying that I said it then, but I’m more and more of the opinion that we made a massive mistake last time in not getting Vince Cable as leader - and that it will take a long time to recover from that mistake, whatever we do this time.
At the start of the campaign, I was happy to go with Clegg, radical, inspiring, and articulate. However I’ve not been convinced that he is quite as strong as his supporters make out, and the pb.c hustings were significant here. Huhne is not as natural a leader, but seems to do well under pressure, and has more experience and perhaps a more distinctive policy position. However he does seem to have come unstuck over the last few days, the calamity clegg issue is a non-story, but doesn’t look good.
What is currently swinging it for me, is Clegg saying that he wanted to expose David Cameron’s attempts to be a liberal conservative, whereas Huhne wants to focus on attacking the Government. This is surely the job of an opposition party, and I am far more comfortable with what Cameron is saying than I was with his predecessors’ policies, and certainly compared to what the Government are doing. Even if we took every Tory seat, we’d still fail to shift the Government if we don’t make progress against Labour, and Huhne seems to be a better negotiator, more consensual, whereas I’m worried that Clegg will have a ‘anyone but the Tories’ approach which put me off Ming so much. So undecided, but if the deadline for ballots to be returned was today, I’d nervously vote for Huhne.
Darling has just said that although the data was “password-protected”, it was unencrypted.
Password protection without encryption is worthless and pointless, and it’s not even clear what it means (since if it’s not encrypted, it’s not protected).
27. By the way Roger, I would hazard that your love of the “headline grabbing” element of everything you see (in this case the quote from Smith on blacks having power) rather than attempting to understand the underlying reality of a situation, is precisely the kind of thing that has got your beloved Labour party into its travails. So very, very Blairite.
Are there any odds available on NuLabour being taken to Court alleging breach of the Data Protection Act in the missing CD fiasco?
I am contemplating instructing Cherie Booth of Matrix Chambers on a “no win no fee” basis if she will take on the case.
BTW if the “Notting Hill Gang” adopt for a softly softly approach I do hope that Vince Cable will land a knockout blow at PMQ’s
25. Alex I agree. It’s smart politics not asking for Darling’s resignation.If they did the affair could disappear with his resignation. Interestingly Huhne is the only serious politician calling for him to go which is one of many good reasons why he would be such a poor leader.
27 Roger. “I went to school with a Rhodesian who used to boast that he was allowed to beat with whips his father’s farm workers.” A right nasty piece of work, obviously.
Mind you, your socialist chum Mugabe makes him look like a sunday school teacher.
(28 - I am genuinely intrigued how you can reconcile your claim that UDI Rhodesia “was not one premised on racial segregation or white racist superiority” with Ian Smith’s own undoubted statement, “I don’t believe in Black Majority rule ever - not in a thousand years”, as quoted by Roger.
But this was last night’s controversy….)
Re 22: I hope the big difference is they would not have started from here!!
On Northern Rock, every effort should have been made to deal with the problem as soon as it emerged. This would have been behind closed doors with the LloydsTSB solution for example being pursued. I worked for Rolls Royce in 1971 when it was nationalised - largely as a way of preventing it falling in American hands. I know it is a different era, but few within the company (not even non main board directors) knew what was going on late afternoon the day before. The media did not play even part of the story until News at Ten. It came as a shock when the news was announced but it had all been done quietly and efficiently.
On HMRC, I believe the issue is much more fundamental. It revolves around the size of Government - do we want “big” government? The present administration does and has gone,inter alia, for massive organisational solutions including large integrated computer systems. The problem that came to light yesterday is likely to be just the tip of what is lying underneath the surface. Other systems are having problems - GPs let alone patients are relucted about their integrated system. Yesterdays problem was an operational one but the underlying issues are of philosophy and direction of the state.
The timing of the lost computer disk fiasco is unfortunate for the govt because it’s drowned out some better news on the Northern Rock front - two serious bidders appear to have emerged today - see http://tinyurl.com/38ekf9.
I think Darling will get through this OK because he can’t be held responsible for an operational error of this type - catastrophic though it is.
But there are political implications.
As well as the ID cards issue there is the question of putting NHS patients’ data on a national “spine”, accessible by a huge number of NHS staff. This has been largely opposed by medics but up to now the govt has been pushing it. If this crisis brings about a rethink on such mega-IT schemes then that’s no bad thing in my opinion.
37) A fair amount of discussion going on about The Spine in the Guardian Yesterday, even before the full details of the HMCR problem emerged. I wrote a piece on it here
The fact that the data lost is only password protected leads me to believe someone has just created a big zip file of the details and then added a password. Won’t take long for anyone to get the data from this. The fact it was not encrypted is beyond belief in this day and age. Possibly written to 2 DVD’s rather than 2 cd’s as that would be a bit tight with the amount of data.
37. I am not sure how this is ‘good news’. It implies the tax payer will still be on the hook for 3 years and suggests the bidders values the shares at virtually nothing. I concede its better than total melt down and given everythinge else in Nu-Labour is indeed in melt down, I guess it counts as better news.
On HMRC (or in fact NR) I really cant see how Nu-Labour spin that the Tories would have done the same has any sort of intellectual rigour at all.
Oh and if you need a really good laugh to cheer you up read Charlie Whelan’s piece of dellusional nonsense in the Telegraph comment section (sorry cant get link to work). It really is priceless. (and a little disturbing in that it tries to use the loss of Brown’s child to garner sympathy).
29
Having watched Newsnight last night, it is clear the Gov’t are just ignoring expert advice on their database policy.
So I agree: there will be more and equally damaging failures of IT policy.
Spouting in response about procedures as the Labour spokeswoman did was to miss the entire point of the discussion.
If the Information Commissioner does te job properly I would expect huge fines on individuals… but I am sure I am whistling in the wind..
26 - Yes Mr Brown, what about that general election?
I learnt a number of things about this situation from BBC radio yesterday evening:
In the interests of security, audits of large data compilations should be carried out by the auditor coming to the organisation to be audited and NOT by having data sent from the data centre to the auditor. The NAO appears to be as much at fault as HRMRC in the present case, and both organisations are amateurish.
The information could be useful to terrorists as well as to criminals.
These large Government data bases have a fundamental design flaw in that each has to be accessed by a large number of people (a figure of 300,000 was quoted, I think for the new medical data base). It is inevitable that one or two of these folk will either be incompetent or wish to deliberately obtain data for illegal ends. This fits in with comment 24.
So sacking Alistair Darling will achieve little: the faults run all the way through the Government system, with its mania for large data bases, and involve many Labour Ministers, the present PM and his predecessor. As a result, the financial and personal security of much of the population has been compromised.
So Mr Brown, what about that general election?
Anatole. I didn’t think we ought to interrupt this thread. My interest in politics came from my best friend at school’s family being kicked out of South Africa and the stories he told me of that country at that time. It made me angry in a way nothing has since. I understand what you are saying about ‘paternalism. When I went to South Africa for the first time in 1990 the racism wasn’t as I expected-unlike for example Florida in the ’80’s. It took a strangely paternalistic form but nonetheless it was a society based on a belief in the superiority of the white race.
Northern Rock down 20% to 80p as of 8.30
The tipping point was the election that wasn’t, and Brown’s appalling performance to the press after. All a downward slide from there.
I am actually pleased with this- the plans for ID cards, and the children’s database will now be shelved. Infact why bother with paying millions for a children’s database when you can just pop the data on couple of discs?
As I have long suspected the next election will be purely about whether the Tories can win a majority, and will almost certainly be 2010.
Anatole @ 28.
It is frustrating to see you and a small band of fellow Conservatives such as Mr Willis continue to defend Ian Smith and his ugly period of office as anything other than an anathema to the principles of Conservatism that I have long cherished.
Ian Smith was an odious white supremacist who sought to deny fundamental human rights to the black majority and was prepared to use the full weight of the white state to torture, murder, wage war and deploy chemical and biolgical weapons on opponents.
The re-writing of history comes from those who use the cloak of the vile Mugabe regime to compare Smith in some favourable light, partly because he was able for a period to run the economy without the bailiffs turning up.
As someone with extended family in Rhodesia at the time of UDI it wasn’t only black resistance that Smith attempted to crush but also that group of white Rhodesians who knew in the long term that Smith’s vision of “never in a thousand years” was doomed to failure.
Finally your attempt to stiffle debate by some form of pseudo intellectual vice is unworthy. Those of us who lived through UDI through the prism of our close families do not need to read “academic tomes” to understand the shocking nature of the Smith government and all he stood for.
22. Firstly, credit to you for coming on and posting at a bit of a bad spot for Labour.
However, I’m afraid I think your arguments fall into the ‘true-ish, but irrelevant’ category. Would a different party have acted differently? Who knows? Who cares? It’s this government in charge and this government holding the buck. And on both NR and datagate, it’s failed pretty badly. Would Labour have acted differently over the ERM? Probably not, but the Tories rightly took the rap because whoever else might have supported the policy, they were the ones implementing it. What would Labour have done in response to the 1987 stock-market crash - the cutting of interest rates in no small part set off the inflation that lead to the early ’90s recession. But it was the Conservatives in charge and the Conservatives who rightly took the blame. Did Labour lose out for supporting disarmament in the 1930s, even after Hitler came to power? No, because it was the Tory-lead National government that pursued appeasement (with a great deal of backing in the country at the time). If you are in government, you get the credit when events go right and take the hit when they don’t. That’s political life. In any case, I do think the Tories would have handled NR differently and wouldn’t have been panicked into giving such broad commitments to savers.
A similar case runs for the data loss. Was Alistair Darling directly responsible? No, and probably not indirectly either - though Brown might be. Still, it’s happened on his watch.
As for whether he’ll go, not over this - but The Sun is right with its ’strike two’ comment. One more blunder and it’s curtains. That’s not a happy position to be in for a chancellor whose borrowing is running well over plan and will need to start trimming spending or putting up taxes.
Who could take over? Sadly, Balls is rightly the favourite. It might still be a bit early for him but I wouldn’t put it past Brown by any means to appoint an MP of thirty months experience to the second most powerful government post. After that, Straw and Johnson are possibilities, as is David Miliband - though to be forced into that decision would no doubt stick in his throat. What he really needs is to start building some bridges within the Labour Party and demonstrating a commitment to a government of all the talents; how about John Reid?! (Yes, I know it’s not going to happen, but it’s less ridiculous than the appointment of Churchill in 1924).
44 - Hi Tyson,
Fact is, no one knows what will happen to any of the parties between now and the next GE. As we have seen from the last week, anything is possible!
“I am contemplating instructing Cherie Booth of Matrix Chambers on a “no win no fee” basis if she will take on the case.”
I’m sure that when her and Tone stop wetting themselves with laughter (and frankly, it’s just one comedy of errors after another right now), she’d be delighted to take it on!
Am I the only one who doesn’t get the Sun’s headline? What’s this got to do with toilets? If it was a case of “something with Darling” in it, surely “Move over Darling” would have been more appropriate?
Has any paper started up “the Great National CD Hunt” yet? (Not had chance to look at any yet)
As for PMQs, can DC “borrow” some extra questions from someone else? - how on earth is 6 going to be enough with everything he needs to ask GB about today?
47- redflump- the thought of the Tories coming back hardly holds me with joy.
Roger, you are displaying that tendency amongst so-called “liberals” which so infuriates people about the politically correct classes. You are displaying no will to engage in the intellectual historical debate over an issue, and instead have the simple motive of wanting to shut down debate on such topics because of your strong preconceptions - and fears - about the “real” motivations behind anyone who would want to question what you consider to be “common knowledge” or mainstream thought. You don’t like the idea of anyone attempting to rehabilitate a figure like Ian Smith because you are unable intellectually to extracate this esoteric line of thought with some sort of more general emotive support for the regime (probably because you yourself would never separate the two) - and evidently chronology and the concept of progression plays no role in your idea of history. However I would suggest that in this instance it is even more absurd, as you are basing your prejudices not on the country in question but on that of a neighbour which you have conveniently transposed into the original. You have little if any knowledge of Rhodesia and its complex history; what you have is an amalgam of tabloid news headlines and half-remembered mythology from perhaps two decades ago or more, about apartheid in South Africa. You have then lazily conflated the white Rhodesians of Ian Smith with the Afrikaans in order to produce a hazy picture of “white oppressors” and “black slaves” (knowing you, deep in the caverns of your brain you have probably thrown in an element of slave-owning ‘Old South’ confederacy into the mix as well).
It won’t wash, so get off your high-horse! There is no point trying to set up a straw man and painting Rik and others of defending Ian Smith and attempting a thinly veiled smear of labelling any non-compliant commentators as racists. Until you make an attempt to understand what really went on, you are to all intents and purposes only managing a slightly more up-market version of breaching Godwin’s Law.
46 - joking aside, I do tend to concur with Nick P. This could just have easily have been the first major crisis for an incoming Cameron Govt to handle. It doesn’t seem to be directly related to any particular policy decision - more the stupid actions of the tea boy, rather than some overworked staff member finding shortcuts - and I think both Brown and Darling can reasonably say “what could we have done”?
Does raise questions though about why this has taken so long to come out. Surely an open government would have told people about this when first known, not “let’s hope we find ‘em and then people need never be told”.
Capt Sp (37) said: The timing of the lost computer disk fiasco is unfortunate for the govt because it’s drowned out some better news on the Northern Rock front - two serious bidders appear to have emerged today.
The timing is unfortunate?? When would be a good time Captain?? Two more serious bidders?? But nowhere near the current share price (79p last time I looked). This government, led (and totally controlled) by GB has been one incompetent mess after another. I’m a mere voter who has an interest in current affairs, and along with members of my family (live in a Labour marginal) and work colleagues (I work for the Met) find this all farcical. I along with others now find the Conservatives decontaminated after the 1990s and a serious alternative to the current bunch of game players. And the sad thing, is that the Labour sympathisers on here think that a big piece of positive news will lift the gloom and restore Labour to 1997/2001 levels.
I’ve got news for you: it’s only going to get worse. People can’t get the credit they used to get; house prices/values are stagnating or falling, so people can’t remortgage to extract equity; therefore, the economy will slow, perhaps recede. Gordon’s big plus point and bargaining chip, The Economy, has just burst.
This government is going to die a slow death from a thousand cuts, and it’s going to be played out for another 2 and a half years before the next GE!
47. Yes but (as Labour supporters have been using as a positive), it is Labour currently in power with the (in)ability to actually do things and consequently it is much more likely that if things go wrong it will be in respect of the operation of government.
With the LD’s and Conservatives its only really scandal or grassroot cock ups that can happen and they have much less resonance. Of ourse something could go very right for Labour in government but looking at the current and forecast economic and political situation and given most of Brown’s “vision” doesnt seem to come to fruition until we are all dead its diffcult to see what could happen that can remove the taint of the last two months.
I guess the best Labour can hope for is that very little happens and that this all becomes a distant memory. However, I am defintley backing a 2010 election and selling labour.
46 - Balls as Chancellor. What a delicious prospect!
As one puppet chancellor follows another, with GB still pulling all the levers, one could reasonably invert Heseltine’s famous comment and say: “When it comes to the economy, it’s not Balls’ - it’s Brown’s”
45. Peter, what utter tripe. I will ignore the pointless and unprovable “some of my best friends are … ” argument and simply ask you this: do you deny that historians consider Rhodesia very different in its development and philosophy to the South African apartheid regime? And if so (given that the answer is a clear yes), in what senses? What does this tell you?
And as for you calling *me* “pseudo” - all I can say is, damned cheek!
52 - Aaron, I understand and respect what you say, but the fact is we just don’t know what will happen in the next two years. Labour *may* be on its way out, the Tories *may* be on their way to govt. Although one shocking event (or series of events) can blow all of that out of the water.
Its still all to play for and Labour are not just going to meekly leave government. The Tories will have to fight for it.
I imagine that papers will commission polls to see what the result of this farce is. If fieldwork takes place today, when would they come out?
I heard a good point raised on the radio.
Jane Kennedy was asked if this was now the death knell for the introduction of ID cards.
“Oh no ” she answered “the computer system for that will be much more modern and up to date”This rather begs the question of why money spent on developing an IT system for ID cards should not have been spent on upgrading the HMRC system.
Yet more unjoined up thinking from the govt.
This is where Labour are going to start to struggle because even the Redflumps of this world must now be scratching their heads and thinking that the general public will soon lose total confidence in this administration.That is if they havent done so already.
2the
Nick Palmer [22] “…..an extreme breach of the rules for handling of personal data: it’s simply very bad practice rather than an overworked chap making a slip.”
Nick I am not sure are you blaming the “junior” or the system? That the system allowed this to be done by anyone: boss, junior, or cleaner is the problem. But the system didn’t just happen, it was planned with objectives being set before it was designed. If it was designed as a secure system and the workers found away round to make their jobs easier, as seems to be being implied, then it was not a secure system.
How many more copies were made? Can they be made now? Someone suggested that the data should have been sent by data transfer - like sending the text message to your wife when you meant it to go to the girlfriend perhaps.
The problem is having all the data in one place and that is the problem with ID cards - they seem to be being designed to help ID theft rather than stop it.
Drop ID cards and at the very least sack the FST - the Minister responsible for HMRC - With the tax collection system clearly in chaos, further problems such as lack of revenue will be along shortly.
51 A pleasantly balanced post from you this morning, Bob, but I cannot agree that it is just down to a stupid tea boy.
As many commentators here and elsewhere have pointed out, it should not be possible for a junior to commit such an error, and this suggests woefully inadequate management and systems.
The Government, and Brown in particular, is also culpable for the administrative mayhem it has wrought in the Civil Service, the merging of Customs and HMRC being one of the more spectacular and high profile examples.
56 - RF, At the moment, Labour are dancing round a Maypole, pretending everything is ok. As people spend less, tax receipts will stagnate, public borrowing will go up even further and even more people will want out (of this Labour mess. After all, we can’t really call it Government, that would imply Labour are in control).
The Tories are indeed fighting for the next GE, which GB fired the starting gun for. We’re only 6 months on from GB ascending to PM. The decline, nay, bombing of GB as an effective PM is astonishing. Ordinary people are flabbargasted. Look at the polls (and trends), and especially in the battleground marginals. After all, losing 10,000 votes in a safe seat is meaningless; losing 2,000 votes in a marginal is far more catastrophic.
55. etc. Anatole - very good sequence of posts on Rhodesia. Nice to see some reasoned argument rather than the hysterical ravings of Roger et al.
59 Yes, Icarus, that is what astonishes me.
I can remember from my days in the Civil Service that it was actually quite difficult to obtain information about people, even in small amounts and for perfectly legitimate purposes. The ‘disc’ episode indicates that any oik can readily access and copy masses of sensitive data without any kind of check.
Extraordinary, and frightening.
61-You are totally correct.
How much longer wil GB be able to say that Labour are pumping more money into Education and Health.The money just will not be there to do so and in the NHS it is only the quite enourmous sums of money being thrown at it that are papering over the ever widening cracks.
Once this becomes apparent to the puble then the govt will be as the Talking Heads title said “On the road to nowhere”
61 - Labour people (and I am one) are not dancing round a maypole or burying their heads in the sand at all. You seem to think that just because the government hasn’t resigned en mass and given Cammy the premiership that we are in denial. Believe me, I and my friends in the party are under no illusions as to the mess we are in at the moment. But it would be silly to write *anyone* off just yet.
Will Brown crack, I wonder? Can he risk losing his most high-profile cabinet appointment after just a few months in office? Will he try and use someone else as the scapegoat for this disaster?
Talk about political carnage. It’s like watching a gory movie - it’s painful to watch, and yet you are transfixed by the whole event.
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/look-at-the-latest-mess-you-have-made-darling/
I want to see if LabourHome is even covering this.
Mike it’s not bad - don’t you know that the official party line is that it’s a storm in a teacup and the public won’t be worrying their pretty little heads about it.
It is not just the HMRC end of discgate: why did the NAO want the data, who requested it, and in what form?
In my experience with IT, it is invariably the people receiving the data who specify the format, since it is important they can read it.
52. Aaron S - house prices can’t carry on inflating for ever, sometimes they have to go down as well as up, and Labour has been better at taming the British housing tiger than the conservatives. Don’t you remember the sky-high interest rates and repossessions?
I don’t agree at all that the Tories are “decontaminated”. I quote a para from Chief Vulcan Redwood’s recent competitiveness report.
“5. Mortgage Regulation. We see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance, as it is the lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.”
They’re still bonkers, still the same old Tories.
46 I think we have lived in a media and party politically inspired bubble which has (?deliberately) mixed the short and long term. It has called for immediate action, consequences, resignation etc etc every time a major problem has appeared. Irrespective of whether others are partly to blame - or, as in this case, systems and mindsets. And, incidentally, don’t let the private sector off the hook - there are equally mindset problems there.
It is becoming clearer every day that we are facing a major crisis in the world re- global warming, and as GB actually acknowledged a couple of days ago, major actions are required from Governments, companies and every one of us for many years to come. How we adapt is open to question, but there is no doubt we will have to adapt. The paradigm shift needed which will involve us questioning everything we do, and the actual ways, materials, energy etc we use to achieve ends, is far from being thought about or accepted by a majority. The way we do party politics and media practice needs to be at the forefront of this.
How should this work in practice? It seems to be a waste of time and energy to attack Darling as merely the figurehead at the top. The mindset which has encouraged ever faster IT systems clearly needs looking at analytically. This is not the only blunder to have arisen from the “speed and cost are everything” mindset, but because it involves half the population, more or less, it is potentially a good place to start, rather than old paradigm “find someone to blame” actions.
Anatole @ 55.
I do you the courtesy of accepting your comments at face value, perhaps you would do me the same courtesy. Thank you.
Clearly South Africa and Rhodesia varied in their approach to white only rule and developed policies tailoried to the driving force behind their respective leaders and parties. However the fundaments were clear in both cases ; to ensure that white supremacy continued and to deny the black majority democratic rights in the process.
70. All getting a bit desperate by the Labour spinners this morning, isn’t it?
73 - “Alwyas look on the bright side of life…….”
re 58 yes Darling spouted absolute rubbish about ID cards on the Today programme as well.
55, 62 etc (and last night). I like the idea that it ‘is reasoned argument’ to support Ian Smith and ‘hysterical raving’ to point out that Ian Smith might possibly have been a white supremacist, who used the full force of an apartheid-like state to surpress political opposition - detention wiothout trial, summary execution etc - all the sort of things the despot Mugabe uses today.
Unlike Conservative posters here I’m not prepared to see Smith rehabilitated - because he and his type (and their apologists) deny basic human rights and belive that because of the colour of some people’s skins they can be treated as inferior beings.
72. Exactly. There can be no excuse at all for perpetration of white majority rule. None Mr. Smith was a 20th century politician and must be judged by those standards. It is Mugabe who wrecked Zimbabwe, not black rule - Mugabe’s rule. I would urge anybody in receipt of the Conservative whip at any level to think long and hard before defending somebody who denied black people equal voting rights and representation in their own country. In my view such an attitude were it to come to the attention of central office could get you deselected. You might argue that Smith did some efficient things, but you must accept the premise that he was a despot. Benevolent maybe, but that can never be an excuse. All human beings are equal.
Dan @ 76.
I’m sure most Conservative posters, myself and John O included, are well aware of the shameful shortcomings of the Smith regime. Please do not group us all in the Mr Willis camp and I promise not to align you with the ever endearing Colin W.
77. How charmingly naive
48. Re the Sun headline, it was a not so great pun on the song “Skip to my Lou my darling”. Amusingly the song also contains the line, “There’s a little red wagon. Paint it blue!”
78 Hear hear, kindly do me the courtesy of not associating me with defence of a white supremacist
65. That’s what the Tories in the 90’s said, as well.
I agree with you to some extent though, Redflump. This event does not necessarily *mean* the Tories will win the next election. It does, however, sum up the incompetence of the current government, to an extent that I think it’s very safe to say the probability of a Tory victory has risen considerably.
71
It’s too late. I do not wish to be defeatist but even the Guardian says the UK will have a snowball’s chance in hell of meeting its 2020 objective of 20% power through renewables.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/20/climatechange.comment
The Gov’t is incoherent on this: carbon capture projects abandonned, no new projects started and under our planning laws not a hope of anything new being built before 2012 if we started now. Of course, we’re not. 2 years consultation first.
And the finances are not there..
And we’re going to have to build new power stations by 2015 to replace closing down Magnox Nuclear stations. Kings Norton is going to be coal.
Sorry but it’s a mess
80 - yeah, I figured that, just didn’t get the relevance. I wondered if the Chancellor had a Steve McClaren-like toilet ‘event’ somewhere along the line? Presumably it was just an awful pun then?
71. Yes, the crisis of global warming of course. Don’t vote those nasty Tories in when you can have McCavity Broon’s… wait for it… Plastic Bag Hotline! Give it a dial for all your recycling woes!
Single handedly McCavity saves the world from floods and pestilence with his mighty telephonic panacea.
There are of course plenty of racist regimes in the world, it was just that the hand-wringing liberals get very upset about a White one, even thirty years on.
For instance, Malaysia suppresses the Chinese minority - if you are Chinese you will need to score roughly 3 A’s to go to university, whereas the Malays have a much lower mark, because of places reserved for them. There is also housing, ownership of companies, and numerous other advantages enforced, purely based on the colour of the person’s skin - if they are of Chinese appearance, they are discriminated against.
Nobody cares much it seems.
Will Brown be at PMQs today or has he gone off to Uganda, as many thought would be the case yesterday?
Those defending the government should ask themselves who rammed through the merger between Customs and Revenue, lost 25,000 staff, including many key mangers, tried to merge cultures and systems without sufficient planning and left a mess?
And since that merger there have been a series of data security breaches of increasing severity. And who ignored the professionals advice on such systems again and again?
And since this merger of disparates have tax systems such as VAT and Tax Credits got better or worse?
And whose Permanent Secretary was rewarded for this sterling work by being made Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service?
Clue: it was not, amazingly, Jim Hacker.
The irony, if it is irony, is that Ian Smith helped to bring about the dictatorship and mess that Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is now in.
If he had overseen a gradual move towards democracy, he would have improved the chances of avoiding a mad man like Mugabe gaining control. The democratic systems, checks and balances would have been put in place along with a substantial black middle class.
Smith’s regime has been used by Mugabe and his gangsters to justify their actions.
77 - I think jeff is right. A very naive posting. By that same standard almost all British politicians pre-1960’s should be condemned as perpetrating minority rule as they believe in and supported the British Empire and all it stood for. It just illustrates the fallacy of using 21st Century standards to judge things that happened in the past, a common trick of the left (unless of course a ruler describes themselves as a Socialist!).
Of course Ian Smith was not perfect, but he should be seen in the historical context of the time and judged by the stability and economic success he brought to all of his people. NO-one has yet refuted my point that he helped develop Rhodesia into the breadbasket of southern Africa despite having fewer natural resources than most of its neighbours. The rantings of Dan Falchikov also cannot refute the evidence that vast numbers of black people chose to live under this “Murderous tyrant” becasue they could work and live and put food on their families tables. Contrast that with the truly evil Mugabe!
I’m afraid that for once I cant really agree with any of Mike’s points in today’s post. The loss of the data had nothing to do with the merger of the IR and HMCE (are people saying that was a bad idea because some post got lost despite all the studies before the fact identifying the potential savings from the merger and pointing out how unique the UK was to have split its tax-collecting function into two departments?). It had nothing to do with job cuts either (excpet, perhaps, that the may have cut one job too few ;-). Though again are people against efficiency savings in the civil service now?!) It doesnt really say much about the government’s ability to handle large IT projects either. This was not about IT infrastructure it was about data protection processes.
I cant quite believe that anyone can seriously suggest this is the type of thing a Chancellor’s (or Paymaster General’s even) head should roll for. You want them to be responsible for every individual cock-up of every individual civil servant now? In a previous life the department I worked for received cd’s like this through the post on a regular basis. The difference was that all sensitive fields such as names, addresses, bank account details were ommitted or scrambled (we didnt nee them for what we did). We were regularly (and rightly) grilled by the sending department asking why we needed each field they were supplying. The NAO may have had a reason for needing these details but it better be a good reason. If they didnt HMRC will have to say why they sent them. In any case there is no excuse for the manner in which they were sent.
Nevertheless it is pretty clear that Smith set a course for the country that led to Mugabe. A less “paternalistic” leader prepared to engage with all communities, might have spared the country that fate. It’s a sad, sorry tale of massive egos selling their people down the river.
78 - Of course Peter. Fair point! Rik W = Colin W (perhaps they are the same person?)
First of all! I hope TNT aren’t going to walk away, ’scott free’ their contract should certainly not be renewed!
Some months ago, Gypsy-Rose Coldstone pointed out that the poisoned chalice of a third term, could only be survived by an early general election. Not only that, but losing was preferable, to continuing without a reinforced mandate. Unwisely GB did not take my advice, and he is now paying the price.
To break the cycle of disaster, the government should not do, what governments always do, hunker down, hope for better times, go mad!
Now is the time for the ‘Gottdamerung Option’ (good title for a novel, seant please note) to do something which changes the whole nature of political debate, something which would take everyones breath away, everything else gets put on the back burner.
Two referendums, one on the EU, in or out, one in Scotland on the union, in or out. Both to be held on the same day, first Thursday
in May 2008. The government will of course be arguing for the, ’status quo’ and making it quite clear that if it is defeated on either option, it will immediately resign and call a general election.
On Smith, he should have taken Wilson’s offer back in the sixties, if he had, Rober Mugabe, would be living on his teachers pension.
86 - matthew that is EXACTLY right. Where is the hand wringing from the left about Sri Lanka, Fiji, Turkey, Malaysia etc etc. They only seem to get exercised about so called white oppression and are quite happy to ignore that perpetrated by other groups!
89 - there is much in what you say!
73. I think it’s always a bit desperate to try and dismiss an argument you can’t answer by calling it “spin”.
Off to a meeting now, back about midday.
matthew @ 86.
Detestation of a racist regimes is most certainly not the preserve of “hand-wringing liberals”.
As a Conservative member of over 40 years standing, such regimes have always profoundly offended my political philosophy and my Christian principles.
I wouldn’t take the 3/1 on Darling to be out this year. Even if Brown and/or Darling decide he cannot be Chancellor at the election, Darling might as well be left to clear up the c**p. There’s not a better alternative under this sort of pressure. Plus Brown surely doesn’t want Ministers to be forced out by gross incompetence by junior civil servants. And it will just turn the spotlight all the more on Brown if Darling goes. Obviously something else could happen or Darling might just decide he’s had enough. Brown sacking him over this is most unlikely, in my view.
22
‘The missing element here, as with Northern Rock, is a sense that a Tory government would have done anything differently. Reductions in civil service numbers? The Tories wanted more reductions. Insufficient monitoring of Northern Rock? The Tories have just proposed to scrap regulation of the mortgage market.’
It was Brown that wanted to call an election for short term political reasons and the NR offices were in a Labour heartland,hence the rushed quick fix.
It was Brown that changed the banking regulations which many experts agree allowed NR to reach crisis point without being picked up earlier.
It was Darling (clearly on the instructions of Brown) that claimed back in September that taxpayers money would be safe and repaid in full,which he has already reneged on.
It was Brown that was responsible for the clearly shambolic merger of the Customs and Revenue services.
It was clear from the Cambridge Professor on Newsnight last night, that Brown has been the main blocker to the upgrades and security improvements to government computer systems which have been put forward on numerous occassions but ignored.
Why don’t you for once put your hands up and agree that your party has screwed up badly instead of the cock & bull excuses that you use in your post,which is quite honsestly the type of unintelligent rubbish we would expect from Sean Simon or Roger.
91
You miss the point. A Government should act in our interests. It should ensure its civil servants do likewise. If they do not - as proven to be the case by history of lost data, the Gov’t should have management systems in place to ensure failures are fixed.
The Gov’t sat supinley as data protection failed not once, or twice but multiple times. they were advised by experts their policies were wrong.
They did nowt. That is not incompetence : it’s a “we don’t recognise there is a problem” which is far worse.
(And your point on NAO is irrelevant: data has been sent for years. They are an AUDIT function)
The only way to make politicians realise they have a problem and do something - short of a GE- is to fire them.
Pour encourager les autres. As Voltaire said under not dissimilar circumstances.
Plus ca change…
86. Mugabe is more racist than Ian Smith ever was - and the main victims of that have been black - the Matabele minority.
When thousands of them were brutally massacred in the 1980s, where were the pompous types like ‘Roger’ and ‘test’ then, one wonders?
Not interested, of course.
Smith wanted to keep Mugabe out of power because he knew what a disaster would ensue if Mugabe gained it - and Smith has been proved right. I can understand why simplistic liberals find Smith’s vindication hard to stomach, but it’s time to accept it.
91 Neil The immediate problem was a lack of data security and control.
But ensuring that is in place and effective is a management function.
But if the owners (aka the government) of the organisation then insist on a reorganisation and merger with another institution with a different culture and purpose (although both deal with taxes in one form or another) without proper care and attention, where the owners drop many of the managers, then it is hardly surprising that there are not effective active systems in place.
Worse still when the owners (aka the government) seem byte-shy and poor managers themselves: they do not understand the problem so are unable or unwilling to deal with it.
The test question is this: if the two departments had not been merged would the same problem have occurred? Do we know of such data security problems before the merger?
re 94 good plan Coldstone. But I think I would go for one referendum on the EU. And one on voting system!
90 - At what point Rik are you going to stop digging and condemn Rhodesia under Smith for crimes against humanity - judged by 20th century standards?
It is not ‘hysterical ranting’ to point out that Smith was a torturer and murderer. He was not as quoted by you:
- a great leader of his country
- wise leadership
- a benign and successful leader
- ensured 15 years of good rule and relative economic success
- Ian Smith - may he rest in peace in the land he loved
- He was a more courageous leader than Heath.
That sounds like a eulogy to me.
97
Hmmm I seem to remember Mrs T saying, (when leader of the opposition) that the, ‘Rodesians where our kith and kin and she would be having no truck with a blood stained Marxist like Robert Mugabe. When she spoke of ‘Kith and Kin’ I don’t think she was referring to the blacks in Rhodesia.
During that period Smith was an enormous hero to Conservatives, Conservative Conferences, were always marked by some speaker giving support to Smith and getting a thunderous round of applause in return.
98. Darling will not go because he will use that clever little NuLab amendment to the (once honourable) doctrine of ministerial responsibility:
“I will not resign because the problem happened on my watch. I will do what any good minister would do and stay on in the job to sort these matters out. It is what the public expects of their government.”
It actually makes me cringe when I think how circumvented ministerial responsibility has become, and how brazenly stupid the above statement, reproduced fairly faithfully by plenty of NuLab ministers, actually looks when compared to any other job in the country (Unless you’re head of the Met, of course!).
103
Delete where applicable!
95 - Thank Heavens for Peter Jacques and Test. Or are we too to be classified as hand-wringing lefties
I don’t often post here but I was quite surprised by the Rhodesia posts and the obvious strong feelings behind them. Anatole, I don’t really understand your motivation for posting - you seem to be setting up your own straw man. I don’t think that Roger et al. are making the argument that Smith’s Rhodesia had similarities to apartheid South Africa for it’s own sake. You may be right - there are significant differences between the two regimes, and there were differing motivations driving the two states.
Whether Smith intended or did not intend to set up a state on similar principles to apartheid SA should clearly be given less, perhaps no, consideration when judging his regime. One’s motivations clearly cannot be afforded credit in the same way as one’s actions.
However, their underlying argument is that Ian Smith’s regime was an odious, ugly and racist one, and I frankly think that most ‘mainstream academics’ would agree. In your opinion, what would such an academic make of a primary source such as Smith’s “never in a thousand years” quote? Or of the state-tolerated barbarism of the Rhodesian armed forces during the civil war?
piet @ 101.
I think you’ll find that Ian Smith wanted to keep Mugabe out of power for two reasons. Firstly Mugabe wasn’t white and secondly Smith wanted power for himself.
Further it didn’t take a genius to reckon that Mugabe would go the way of many first term post colonial rulers and turn into a despotic tyrant.
Peter Jacques, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not lumping me in with “white supremacists” either. However I would still beckon all from your equestrian heights and point out that Rik has not, to my knowledge, posted a single message where he has “supported”, as you call it, Smith’s regime; no-one is saying that he was “a good man”, but he should be understood in context. If you can’t even accept this idea then there is little point of further discussion.
As for myself, as a historian my main concern is that people should understand what actually happened rather than making ill-founded assumptions - and I completely stand by my analysis of Roger and others’ responses. By the way, I would say that essentially you are wrong to characterise that as the main difference between the two countries, and again academic sources will demonstrate this. Blacks were barred from very few areas of life in Rhodesia other than politics - for instance land-ownership, business entrepreneurship, &c. Ian Smith did not trust blacks to run the country, but was not against their participation in most of life. He was racist, in a 19th century way, but it was distinctly *not* the same kind of mentality that Afrikaans had in implementing apartheid in South Africa. I continue to press home this point - the two must not be conflated.
I really find it extraordinary that my posting at 4, can be seen as anything other than a fair and objective rendering of the situation in Rhodesia. I really think knee-jerk critics of that posting should step back and have a think about what they are saying, as I do think negative reaction to it is just a little bit pathetic.
110: Mugabe’s behaviour does not vindicate Smith it simply proves that blacks are as capable of despotism as all other races and post colonial angst still makes politicans scared.
Neil @ 91 — no, this is not about office juniors. It is about the organisational and political cultures where the NAO thinks nothing of asking for this data and HMRC sees no objection to providing it. It is the casual disregard of the public’s reasonable expectations of privacy for which ministers must be held responsible.
It is Cameron’s job to pin this on Brown. If Cameron attacks whoever entrusted the CDs to TNT, then he will have failed as surely as Kinnock did over Westland.
4 111
“Most white Rhodesians abhored the Afrikaans attitude towards blacks and saw their own system, rightly or wrongly, as completely different and morally its far superior”
From those Whenwes I met in SA, I would agree with the above..
I worked in SA during the last days of apartheid… when it was obviously doomed .. and it was a nasty oppressive government.
Smith was not like that but he was blinkered and as you say did himself and the whites he represented no favours.
Mugabe is a typical tribal despot. Supported by Mbeki who has similar but less pronounced leanings.
All the rest if flimflam and imo a complete waste of bandwidth.
The Chinese in Africa don’t give a stuff. They want /need and will get resources. Period. Makes the Americans look left wing liberals:-))