Parliament escaped the 2009 expenses scandal without angry crowds torching Westminster but there is a sense politics remains broken.
UK Labour leader Ed Miliband was in Wales at the weekend with a message that his party had to change and open up to the public. He said that in the past big decisions had been taken by “less than six” people on “a sofa in Whitehall”.
Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain has chaired a review of party structures and with unblinking clarity his consultation document describes how the party lost touch with millions of voters.
The Conservatives are also aware that radical change is needed if the party is ever going to win an outright majority – though members may disagree strongly as to whether the solution is a shift to the left or right.
Christopher Shale, a friend of the Prime Minister who died at the Glastonbury festival, had prepared a memo in which he warned there was “no reason to join” the party and “lots of reasons not to.”
In the immediate term, we are likely to see even greater concentration on the handful of hyper-marginal seats where Westminster elections can be won and lost. David Cameron and Ed Miliband may regret the disconnect that exists between their parties and the wider electorate but unless there is a coup – and Labour does not go in for ejecting leaders mid-term – it is all but certain one of these men will become Prime Minister.
Mr Miliband has yet to set the world alight but successive seasons of strikes, library closures, and disintegrating pavements may be enough to convince voters it is time for a change. While he lacks Mr Cameron’s visceral delight in the challenge of charming a room full of strangers, he has the rare ability among politicians to listen to questions and engage thoughtfully; several years spent touring WIs, colleges, local radio stations and the like may be enough to build a public rapport.
But in each of the two main parties there is a hunger for a connection with the “common good” and a purpose in politics which goes beyond election-winning. Both the so-called Red Tories and the followers of “Blue Labour” want to rekindle excitement about community – the notion that we want healthier and happier neighbourhoods and not just bigger TVs in burglar-proof living rooms.
A search for values and not just votes is underway, the like of which we have not seen for at least a generation. This transcends the left-right division and shows that while our politics may not yet be repaired, there is great cause for hope.
A Thursday column
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
On the Streets of Paris
Years ago, my great friend Ali and I went to Paris to visit a clarinet-playing biochemist and the city knocked me out. It's so very, very close to Britain, the land of the Aberdeen Steak House, but when you step foot in the French capital it is as if you are sucked into a fantastical film.
So, after yonks of talking about how splendid it would be to go back to this grand maze of cafes and balconies, we headed over with a couple of grand friends.
My brother spent a year living with Claire and Phillip and I often wondered what it was like to live in their book-filled home. Based on the experience of three nights in a Monmartre apartment, I reckon it was pretty good. Each morning I'd stumble down and find Phillip had filled the tables with the most extraordinary treasures from a bakery that would make an Argonaut marvel.
Paris is like a film set in which everyone with even a walk-on part is perfectly cast. But the set design, is fantastic, too.
Is it any wonder the French are so good at making films when they've been masters at projecting light for centuries? Notre Dame is a masterpiece of cinematography.
But if you want a true widescreen experience, head over to the Musée de l'Orangerie.
Many of Monet's greatest hits ended up in Cardiff thanks to the inspired purchases of a pair of wealthy sisters... but there's nothing to match the immersive experience of sitting in front of one of these.
You start off admiring the technical achievement of these giant works but suddenly you're lost in the deep hues and in the world of Monet's imagination. The building is a wonderful creation, too. Very Frank Lloyd Wright, and filled with Picassos downstairs and a few fantastic works by Henri Rousseau.
The great thing about travelling with energetic companions is that they compel you to race between wonders rather than lounging in a cafe imagining how much fun it must have been to be Camus (who was supposedly quite a fine goalkeeper).
We did manage to nip into a few between downpours.
This one, next to the Sorbonne, is opposite the philosopher's bookshop (I kid ye not!) and has a splendid waiter who likes to take take hold of your camera...
It's just around the corner from somewhere Proust would like to saunter.
But we'd bought these smashing museum cards which allow you to queue-jump so there wasn't time to hang around a try on berets. Not when St-Chapelle is there to be experienced.
These windows are amazing. They're so bright, it's as if you're perched on the branch of a Christmas tree that's draped in plutonium-powered lights.
When we left it was starting to rain again so we ducked into the complex next door where the 2,800 folk who were sent to the guillotine were locked up. It was fascinating to see a recreation of Marie Antoinette's quarters and the room were the Girondins feasted before their execution. But when I read that one of them tried to kill himself by plunging a stiletto into his heart I laboured under the misapprehension for quite a while until put right by Philip that this was an example of attempted suicide by shoe.
The Rodin Museum is a wonderful theme park. You can visit Disneyland Paris and be hugged by an anthropomorphic rodent (an experience I thoroughly enjoyed in younger years) and it's just as exciting to come face to face with the Thinker.
And the Gates of Hades is a terrifying tableau straight out of Danteland.
There's so much excitement about 3D cinema at the moment, but when you encounter Eve it's as if you're in the garden.
I'd been warned that a visit to the Mona Lisa is a horrendous experience. But while it was like being in a mosh-pit at the front of a concert it was quite exciting.
I was surprised the guards were quite happy for lunatic tourists to take flash photographs. But upstairs there wasn't such hysteria and the Louvre is an amazing building which pulls together spectacular architecture with vast open and airy spaces, a true airport of art.
The Pompidou Centre is also a gallery where the building is a sensation. Tantric chanting was amplified in the escalators running up the outside of the building which made the whole experience quite similar to what Jonah might have experienced in the digestive tracts of the whale. The stand-out work was Christ Among the Prisoners by a Spanish civil war artist.
But much of the finest art in this city is dotted along the bridges...
Or in the Palais du Jardin.
It's a grand place to escape the zooming traffic and the rather whiffy Metro.
It's also home to an amazing pair of creatures.
The orangutans were the most fantastic characters. Their curiosity, dexterity and strength contrasts with the sense of melancholy emanating from their cramped conditions.
And we spent our last hour in Paris in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where Parisian families race boats.
There wasn't much sunshine to soak up but the flowers in the thousands of elegant pots which line the perimeter of the palace are as bright as Neptune, Venus and Uranus on a good day.
And then it was time to scoot over to Gard du Nord, fly through a tunnel, and emerge a little dazed and very well exercised (but very well fed) at King's Cross. Great times. I can't wait to go back.
Cracks beneath the chandeliers
Lancaster House was once one of the most spectacular stately homes in London and is now the place the Government takes visiting minister when it wants to dazzle them with imperial splendour.
Located right next to the Prince of Wales’s Clarence House crash-pad, it emanates an opulence so ostentatious even Liberace would have wondered if there was a little too much gold leaf on the ceilings.
It was here that the Prime Minister took Barack Obama for a very civilised press conference, and this week it was the setting for the latest meeting of the British-Irish Council.
When Wales hosted this event in 2009, Cardiff’s Swalec Stadium was the setting and Northern Ireland First Minister took delight in outing his Sinn Fein deputy Martin McGuinness as a cricket fan.
Two years ago, there was something astonishing about a former IRA hard-man and a DUP politician who had a reputation for militancy sharing not just a platform but a chuckle.
The council was a peace process creation. Ulster unionists who had anxieties about cross-border bodies linking Belfast and Dublin could look at the BIC and see the Republic of Ireland pulled into a UK-dominated group.
The expensive, sometimes ethically dubious and often downright surreal efforts at pacifying Ulster occupied thousands of hours of Government time but succeeded in winding down one of the longest running conflicts in the industrialised world.
In the years since BIC was established in 1999, leaders on both islands have done a remarkable job of taking the gun out of Irish politics. At least, until Tuesday night.
A photographer was shot and wounded during a second night of rioting in East Belfast. Last July there were fierce riots in the north of the city, and the province is still haunted by the killing in April of Catholic policeman Ronan Kerr.
The IRA are no longer plotting to bomb office blocks in Canary Wharf and the architects of the peace process can take pride that erstwhile icons of sectarian division now sit together beneath the glittering chandeliers.
But the time has come to ask what these men are delivering on their side of the bargain.
Northern Ireland took a delegation of 10 to the meeting compared to two from Wales, two from the Republic and three from Scotland. Is this gravy-train diplomacy still a force for peace, or are tribal chieftains prospering while the seeds for future conflict take root?
Before they are again invited to the setting for presidential garden parties it is imperative that these men who once did so much to stoke violent hatred act to quell the lethal passions in their own backyard.
A Thursday column
Located right next to the Prince of Wales’s Clarence House crash-pad, it emanates an opulence so ostentatious even Liberace would have wondered if there was a little too much gold leaf on the ceilings.
It was here that the Prime Minister took Barack Obama for a very civilised press conference, and this week it was the setting for the latest meeting of the British-Irish Council.
When Wales hosted this event in 2009, Cardiff’s Swalec Stadium was the setting and Northern Ireland First Minister took delight in outing his Sinn Fein deputy Martin McGuinness as a cricket fan.
Two years ago, there was something astonishing about a former IRA hard-man and a DUP politician who had a reputation for militancy sharing not just a platform but a chuckle.
The council was a peace process creation. Ulster unionists who had anxieties about cross-border bodies linking Belfast and Dublin could look at the BIC and see the Republic of Ireland pulled into a UK-dominated group.
The expensive, sometimes ethically dubious and often downright surreal efforts at pacifying Ulster occupied thousands of hours of Government time but succeeded in winding down one of the longest running conflicts in the industrialised world.
In the years since BIC was established in 1999, leaders on both islands have done a remarkable job of taking the gun out of Irish politics. At least, until Tuesday night.
A photographer was shot and wounded during a second night of rioting in East Belfast. Last July there were fierce riots in the north of the city, and the province is still haunted by the killing in April of Catholic policeman Ronan Kerr.
The IRA are no longer plotting to bomb office blocks in Canary Wharf and the architects of the peace process can take pride that erstwhile icons of sectarian division now sit together beneath the glittering chandeliers.
But the time has come to ask what these men are delivering on their side of the bargain.
Northern Ireland took a delegation of 10 to the meeting compared to two from Wales, two from the Republic and three from Scotland. Is this gravy-train diplomacy still a force for peace, or are tribal chieftains prospering while the seeds for future conflict take root?
Before they are again invited to the setting for presidential garden parties it is imperative that these men who once did so much to stoke violent hatred act to quell the lethal passions in their own backyard.
A Thursday column
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
On the Ups in the Downs
The late and very great Douglas Adams once said something along lines of "Nobody has ever said someone was as beautiful as an airport." (The memory that's been jogged dates back at least half my life so I'm sure someone can put me right.) Quite a few people might blush with pleasure if told they were as beautiful as Venice or Paris but telling a beloved that they remind you of London would neither start an evening well nor end a night on a high note. But this city has a beauty which is real and vital; on a sunny morning you can sense eight million people waking up. When you walk to work you can smell the flowers in their gardens which, like you, are arching into the sunlight. London is lived in and living. It has a heart that beats and a fine soul.
But like a great companion whose company burns so bright you need to escape periodically to stop your eyebrows burning, once in a while you must duck out of town. I made it to Hay-on-Wye for the book festival a few weeks ago and Melvyn Bragg preached the best sermon I've heard all year on the legacy of the KJV. A heck of a warm guy. And eating lunch on a rock on the Wye was a supreme pleasure.
Growing up, I heard English people talk about going for a walk "on the downs" and wondered what this involved. Now I know. Just a short way south of London are rolling meadows which are pretty enchanting.
The fresh air is so rich in oxygen that it knocks you out as if Morpheus had dropped a piano on your head. But the opportunity to use some long-rang vision and look out on a skyline unclutterd by anything but sky is rather wonderful. A day like this gives you the appetite to dive back into the smoke.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
A Boris-shaped Future
Boris Johnson’s suggestion that water from the hills and mountains of Wales and Scotland could be engineered to flow to drought-prone regions of England has already made a splash.
The modern Welsh nationalist movement was galvanised by the flooding of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn Valley to provide water for Liverpool. On YouTube, you can watch the ghostly underwater images of the flooded village.
This latest visionary outpouring from London’s Mayor may well have prompted the Prime Minister to mutter: “There he goes again...”
It was unthinkable that a polymathic pontificator such as Boris would constrain his public utterances to strictly “devolved” subjects. There is only so much that a man who can sing in Greek in the shower could say about bikes, Routemaster buses and union regulations for Tube operators before being overcome by the urge to play with the office fire extinguisher.
Boris has a beady-eyed readiness to comment on issues beyond his immediate responsibilities and it is likely this willingness to step on the toes of Westminster will spread as devolution matures.
If he spies a water shortage on his doorstep and comes up with a pan-UK solution he is not going to censor himself. First ministers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are increasingly aware of how UK Government spending on projects such as the Olympics and defence affect their budgets, and they know that the closure of a passport office or a shift in benefits policy will crank up pressure on local government social services.
SNP leader Alex Salmond’s push for a referendum on independence poses the true possibility of an imminent break-up of the United Kingdom – something which until recently would have been the definition of a Westminster issue.
The UK has become a multipolar country, with first ministers bargaining with Whitehall mandarins and seeking to out-flank cabinet ministers. But this does not mean the UK’s future will be defined by nationalist separatism.
Just as it is (almost) unthinkable that Boris will advocate the secession of London and the founding of an Athenian-style city state, US governors who attack Washington DC as a modern Carthage, the source of vice and moral decay, are considered defenders and reformers and not dismantlers of the union. Without a shred of irony, state politicians who aspire to be president condemn those who dwell in the capital as dilettante tax-spenders.
This creative tension is held up as proof of the vibrancy of American democracy. So if first ministers take on the PM with gusto in the months and years ahead it does not mean that Britain is splintering; rather, this beast is in the throes of evolution.
A Thursday column
The modern Welsh nationalist movement was galvanised by the flooding of Capel Celyn in the Tryweryn Valley to provide water for Liverpool. On YouTube, you can watch the ghostly underwater images of the flooded village.
This latest visionary outpouring from London’s Mayor may well have prompted the Prime Minister to mutter: “There he goes again...”
It was unthinkable that a polymathic pontificator such as Boris would constrain his public utterances to strictly “devolved” subjects. There is only so much that a man who can sing in Greek in the shower could say about bikes, Routemaster buses and union regulations for Tube operators before being overcome by the urge to play with the office fire extinguisher.
Boris has a beady-eyed readiness to comment on issues beyond his immediate responsibilities and it is likely this willingness to step on the toes of Westminster will spread as devolution matures.
If he spies a water shortage on his doorstep and comes up with a pan-UK solution he is not going to censor himself. First ministers in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are increasingly aware of how UK Government spending on projects such as the Olympics and defence affect their budgets, and they know that the closure of a passport office or a shift in benefits policy will crank up pressure on local government social services.
SNP leader Alex Salmond’s push for a referendum on independence poses the true possibility of an imminent break-up of the United Kingdom – something which until recently would have been the definition of a Westminster issue.
The UK has become a multipolar country, with first ministers bargaining with Whitehall mandarins and seeking to out-flank cabinet ministers. But this does not mean the UK’s future will be defined by nationalist separatism.
Just as it is (almost) unthinkable that Boris will advocate the secession of London and the founding of an Athenian-style city state, US governors who attack Washington DC as a modern Carthage, the source of vice and moral decay, are considered defenders and reformers and not dismantlers of the union. Without a shred of irony, state politicians who aspire to be president condemn those who dwell in the capital as dilettante tax-spenders.
This creative tension is held up as proof of the vibrancy of American democracy. So if first ministers take on the PM with gusto in the months and years ahead it does not mean that Britain is splintering; rather, this beast is in the throes of evolution.
A Thursday column
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Restless Days
Politicians are aspiring polymaths born with a low boredom threshold.
They like the idea of appearing on Any Questions and being quizzed on issues ranging from the latest Peruvian banana crisis to whether it’s appropriate for Lady Gaga to dress as a camouflaged ostrich.
If they were just policy wonks they could enjoy a happy life in academia, think tanks or the civil service; if they were only social crusaders, they could join a charity or pressure group; if they were merely in love with the limelight they would have auditioned for the RSC.
But the political animal wants to be tested daily and to live out a drama on a public stage. David Cameron did not leave a lucrative life in television-land and head back to Westminster where he had once been a youthful researcher because he wanted a quiet life.
From 2008 onwards, it was clear that if he won power he would be not be a chequebook-PM, dishing out cash for pleasure-domes during a time of plenty. He would have to lead the country during radically straightened times.
But it is unlikely when he stepped into Downing St having sealed a historic deal with the Liberal Democrats that he thought he might be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Yet when he chaired yesterday’s gathering of first ministers from across the UK such a possibility would not have seemed ridiculous.
The implications of an SNP majority government in Scotland intent on staging a referendum on independence grow starker by the day.
With a little help from the likes of former Labour Home Secretary John Reid he killed off any chance of electoral reform in this year’s AV referendum. The battle to knock independence on the head will excite much deeper, more fiery passions; he will be determined not to go down in history as a PM who failed to win a majority and then failed to save the union from this existential threat to its existence.
Mr Cameron will also come under pressure from international counterparts to thwart Alex Salmond’s ambitions. Spain will not want the UK to set a precedent for the secession of the Basque region and Catalonia; nor will France want to wave goodbye to Corsica in a springtime for EU nationalism; and Quebec nationalists would draw the conclusion that if Scotland can make a bid for Braveheart-style freedom in the 21st century, why should the unity of Canada be sacred?
Despite such epic challenges and a growing number of policy headaches in England, Mr Cameron seems oddly at ease in his prime ministerial predicament. It is the life he wanted.
A Thursday column
They like the idea of appearing on Any Questions and being quizzed on issues ranging from the latest Peruvian banana crisis to whether it’s appropriate for Lady Gaga to dress as a camouflaged ostrich.
If they were just policy wonks they could enjoy a happy life in academia, think tanks or the civil service; if they were only social crusaders, they could join a charity or pressure group; if they were merely in love with the limelight they would have auditioned for the RSC.
But the political animal wants to be tested daily and to live out a drama on a public stage. David Cameron did not leave a lucrative life in television-land and head back to Westminster where he had once been a youthful researcher because he wanted a quiet life.
From 2008 onwards, it was clear that if he won power he would be not be a chequebook-PM, dishing out cash for pleasure-domes during a time of plenty. He would have to lead the country during radically straightened times.
But it is unlikely when he stepped into Downing St having sealed a historic deal with the Liberal Democrats that he thought he might be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Yet when he chaired yesterday’s gathering of first ministers from across the UK such a possibility would not have seemed ridiculous.
The implications of an SNP majority government in Scotland intent on staging a referendum on independence grow starker by the day.
With a little help from the likes of former Labour Home Secretary John Reid he killed off any chance of electoral reform in this year’s AV referendum. The battle to knock independence on the head will excite much deeper, more fiery passions; he will be determined not to go down in history as a PM who failed to win a majority and then failed to save the union from this existential threat to its existence.
Mr Cameron will also come under pressure from international counterparts to thwart Alex Salmond’s ambitions. Spain will not want the UK to set a precedent for the secession of the Basque region and Catalonia; nor will France want to wave goodbye to Corsica in a springtime for EU nationalism; and Quebec nationalists would draw the conclusion that if Scotland can make a bid for Braveheart-style freedom in the 21st century, why should the unity of Canada be sacred?
Despite such epic challenges and a growing number of policy headaches in England, Mr Cameron seems oddly at ease in his prime ministerial predicament. It is the life he wanted.
A Thursday column
Thursday, June 02, 2011
The i-Word
The first ministers of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland gathered in Edinburgh this week to call on the UK Government to support their “progress agenda” – but where is it progressing?
Their joint statement called for “financial, constitutional and policy reform” but the countdown for a referendum on Scottish independence is ticking loudly.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is still aglow with electoral glory after he led the SNP to a historic majority in last month’s elections. Not for him piddling coalitions or trifling stability pacts; like a vintage-era Maradona he has the proven ability to set a goal and score.
Northern Ireland effectively has two first ministers, and nominal deputy Martin McGuinness likes the word “independence” very much. Sinn Fein strategists are undoubtedly envisaging with glee how the Scottish debate on independence – never mind a Yes vote – will encourage people to consider a future for these islands in which the UK no longer exists.
Last month’s Ipsos Mori research found just 36% of UK respondents think Scotland will never be independent.
Meanwhile, the UK Government is committed to reducing the number of Welsh MPs by a quarter and will shortly launch a commission on whether they should be able to vote on English-only matters; as the Treasury-imposed cuts bite, we can expect the Welsh Government to fight harder for major changes to the funding formula used to allocate it cash.
These tensions mean that when David Cameron sits down with the heads of government of the UK nations at the forthcoming joint-ministerial committee he will be in danger of looking like the First Minister of England rather than the PM of a contented UK. In little more than a decade, devolution has put the leaders of pro-secession parties into power and pressed a giant question mark across the UK.
The leaders of Labour and Plaid Cymru face a headache at this time. Talk about independence will only intensify in the next couple of years and increasing vocal English voices may also argue the union is an expensive hangover from days of empire. The issue is not going to go away.
Will Carwyn Jones give his beleaguered Scottish Labour colleagues a crash course in how to win elections and beat nationalists and thus become the de facto Celtic poster boy for left-leaning unionism? And will Plaid Cymru – which launched an “independence initiative” in 2009 but subsequently muffled use of the i-word – decide that ambiguity and equivocation are unlikely to win at the polls and instead embrace with gusto the agenda of their Scottish compatriots?
This is a debate Wales cannot sit out.
A Thursday column
Their joint statement called for “financial, constitutional and policy reform” but the countdown for a referendum on Scottish independence is ticking loudly.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is still aglow with electoral glory after he led the SNP to a historic majority in last month’s elections. Not for him piddling coalitions or trifling stability pacts; like a vintage-era Maradona he has the proven ability to set a goal and score.
Northern Ireland effectively has two first ministers, and nominal deputy Martin McGuinness likes the word “independence” very much. Sinn Fein strategists are undoubtedly envisaging with glee how the Scottish debate on independence – never mind a Yes vote – will encourage people to consider a future for these islands in which the UK no longer exists.
Last month’s Ipsos Mori research found just 36% of UK respondents think Scotland will never be independent.
Meanwhile, the UK Government is committed to reducing the number of Welsh MPs by a quarter and will shortly launch a commission on whether they should be able to vote on English-only matters; as the Treasury-imposed cuts bite, we can expect the Welsh Government to fight harder for major changes to the funding formula used to allocate it cash.
These tensions mean that when David Cameron sits down with the heads of government of the UK nations at the forthcoming joint-ministerial committee he will be in danger of looking like the First Minister of England rather than the PM of a contented UK. In little more than a decade, devolution has put the leaders of pro-secession parties into power and pressed a giant question mark across the UK.
The leaders of Labour and Plaid Cymru face a headache at this time. Talk about independence will only intensify in the next couple of years and increasing vocal English voices may also argue the union is an expensive hangover from days of empire. The issue is not going to go away.
Will Carwyn Jones give his beleaguered Scottish Labour colleagues a crash course in how to win elections and beat nationalists and thus become the de facto Celtic poster boy for left-leaning unionism? And will Plaid Cymru – which launched an “independence initiative” in 2009 but subsequently muffled use of the i-word – decide that ambiguity and equivocation are unlikely to win at the polls and instead embrace with gusto the agenda of their Scottish compatriots?
This is a debate Wales cannot sit out.
A Thursday column
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
