I’ve written a piece on Our Kingdom about the government’s meaningless new party funding proposals:

Hencke asserts that “The Conservatives have been blocked from targeting Labour marginals with spending that can run to tens of thousands of pounds a year by legislation which will limit all parties’ candidates to spending a maximum of £12,000 from October until the general election.” Straw’s proposals do nothing of the sort. What they do is return us to the pre-2000 situation whereby party spending limits are only “triggered” when a candidate is formally adopted by their party or declares themselves (inadvertently or otherwise).

Full article here.

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Is it me or is there a link between the government’s (possibly premature, possibly not) triumphalism about winning round the Labour rebels over the Terrorism Bill and the latest political crisis in Northern Ireland?

For weeks now, it has been well known that the Brown government has been courting the DUP with a view to persuading them to back them on the 42 days vote. If Jacqui Smith really did manage to sweet talk her own rebels last night however, then the DUP just lost their bargaining position. Cue: Sinn Fein raising the stakes and Shaun Woodward calling for devolution to be “completed“.

Obviously the arrival of Peter Robinson almost certainly is a catalyst as well, but I can’t help but feel Labour would be doing more to avoid this particular row this week if it didn’t feel confident about the terrorism bill next week.

No doubt they have also been bolstered by a breakaway group of Tories, lead by Ann Widdecombe who are planning to support the government plans. Widdecombe’s call for the act to be subject to an annual vote recalls the nonsense of the old Prevention of Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Act. Introduced by Roy Jenkins in 1974, this “temporary” measure was annually renewed until 2000 when Labour decided to drop the farce and make it permanent. That’s the problem with “temporary” security measures. You can always find “exceptional” reasons to keep them, politicians like to look tough by supporting them, and pretty soon they just become an accepted way of life.

Once again of course we appear to be looking at Cameron failing to hold discipline within his own ranks. If he calls for the vote on detention without charge to be a free vote, we know we’re really fucked. I’ve been saying this for years now, but letting your own backbenchers run rings around you like this is not leadership. I like to think that if this vote ends up being won by a small margin in which the Tory rebels are the decisive factor, the media might actually wake up to this, but I doubt it. Heaven help us if/when he becomes Prime Minister.

Finally, just a quick note to link to this letter which was published in the Guardian today. The Terrorism Bill is about a lot more than detention without charge but it looks like everything else will simply be waved through.

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Is it me or is there a disconnect between Ed Balls, the stalwart defender of playgrounds and opponent of compo culture, who two months ago was saying this:

“If you don’t want to do something a bit risky, too often people say ‘we can’t do that because of health and safety’.

“It is the risk aversion in some cases which stops things happening which I want to tackle head on,” he said.

…

The Government’s consultation paper says: “We need to work together as a society to create popular attitudes that embrace children in public space and challenge inappropriate ‘No Ball Games’ cultures.

“This means adults being willing to share public space with children and understand that play can, at times, test boundaries.”

And the killjoy who today was saying this:

“Tougher enforcement powers are needed to tackle under-age binge drinking, but enforcement measures alone are not the solution. We need a culture change, with everyone - from parents, the alcohol industry and young people - all taking more responsibility.”

You could argue I’m being unfair and comparing apples with oranges, but I do wonder. We’ve had ten years of this approach, providing people with more advice while making the law even more draconian at the same time. It doesn’t appear to have helped. It does appear to have gone hand in hand with a rise in anxiety about this issue.

Why do we need screeds of new health advice about safe alcohol limits? It isn’t as if young people are unaware that if they get drunk they lose the full use of their faculties; that’s kind of why they do it in the first place. And parents will either be the relatively responsible type who teach their kids how to drink socially, or the type who aren’t going to be interested in a leaflet giving them advice in the first place. What next? Parenting lessons?

It seems to me that youth binge drinking isn’t a problem in and of itself, it is a symptom. On the one hand you have a lack of facilities, meaning that kids have literally nothing else to do. On the other hand, increased hysteria about youth drinking has meant that instead of experimenting with alcohol in the relative safety of their local, they are doing their experimenting in either vast impersonal drinking halls (if they can afford it) or, more likely, downing Diamond White while sitting around in those playgrounds that Balls is so keen on.

The fact is, those sneaky night time park binges are as much a part of childhood as falling off climbing frames. The same anxiety that leads councils to closing down playgrounds is behind the current anxiety about youths drinking. Even if we had the best youth service in the world, generations of young people will go through that period in their lives. To use Balls’ own language, it is all about “testing boundaries”. Along with all other kinds of so-called anti-social behaviour, the main impact of turning naughtiness into a criminal offence has been to allow adults to excuse themselves of any responsibility for it. The result has been, young people are testing boundaries only to discover those boundaries growing ever larger.

Labour can’t really afford to have both Balls at the same time. To be fair on the man, he has previously expressed scepticism about the whole Blairite approach to anti-social behaviour in the past. His announcement today though just sounds like more of the same.

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Having a pop at Gordon Brown for failing to show his face in Crewe and Nantwich is all fair and good, but why does David Cameron have to go and spoil everything by talking unmitigated bullshit like this?

Mr Cameron taunted him by saying his predecessor as PM, Tony Blair, “led from the front” at by-elections.

During the Blair years it was a standing joke, as it is now, that the Prime Minister never attended by-elections. Indeed, in the last general election, using a picture of Tony Blair (almost always with George Bush) on your literature was one of the easiest ways to pick up votes (assuming you aren’t the Labour Party of course). Blair was ballot box poison, at least after 2003.

David Cameron, having as he does a bit of a schoolboy crush on Tony Blair, may like to think different, but that’s the way it goes.

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Labour’s campaign in Crewe and Nantwich appears to go from low to new low (James Schneider). It is the most unjustifiably bad behaviour I have seen since Birmingham Hodge Hill in 2004 (and there’s been some steep competition, believe me).

I’m fascinated that they are using “con man” on their literature. I’ve always understood this to be a definite no-no on election literature (even when using against a CONservative) as it creeps beyond the garden of mockery and legitimate criticism and into the realm of defamation. But then, I suppose there isn’t much point in suing a political party that is bankrupt.

The use of the “one of us” slogan is interesting. Is Dunwoody comparing herself to Margaret Thatcher here? Or is it intended to evoke memories of this iconic scene from Tod Browning’s Freaks:

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The most amazing thing about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is the sheer amount of column inches it has generated in the national press. As a by-election veteran (I confess, I haven’t gone to this one), I’m used to fighting the great fight in eminently winnable seats (which of course, we went on to win) and yet have the media completely oblivious to the fact right up until the day before polling day when they finally get around to sending a monkey up to see what is going on.

Not that I’m complaining, mind. The more they ignore a by-election in the run up, the bigger the splash on the front pages when we win. The fact that the Tories are being presented as a near-certainty will dampen the impact if they win and make them look silly if they lose. The fact that Labour’s dirty by-election tricks are finally getting a good airing is also gratifying, although it is a shame it is being presented as a one-off when they play this game every single fucking time.

What is bizarre is the way journalists keep calling it a “safe Labour seat.” Dunwoody only had a 7,000 majority and when you’ve been an MP as long as she has, most of that will be down to a personal vote. I don’t know the area’s political history but the Tories have completely eclipsed Labour in local government.

If the Tories had had as good a prospect as this to fight during their doldrums in 1998, it would still have been amazing if they had gone on to lose.

Make no mistake: this by-election is for the Tories to lose. If they can’t win this, they will be back to where they were last summer. I’m not making any predictions either way here, but let’s not kid ourselves about them having a massive job ahead of them, eh?

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I was amused last week to read that NUS’ decision to drop its opposition to tuition fees marked “the final decline in student radicalism” - we went way past that stage over a decade ago!

Back when I was a student I remember the then president of NUS going round the country urging student unions to ditch their policies on restoring student grants with a view to stopping the “Tory” plan to introduce tuition fees. That president was one Jim Murphy. One of his first acts as an MP just a year later was to vote in tuition fees.

That incident taught me several important lessons about trusting Labour politicians further than I could throw them. At the time I liked to think NUS itself was salvageable. Now I’m not so sure.

Because actually the problem in NUS isn’t ultimately Labour, it is the low level of participation. If the level of support the hard left enjoys in NUS was in any way reflective of the student population, we would have significantly more than one hard left MP sitting in the Commons right now. The Lib Dems have always done well with students and always done shockingly bad at converting that level of support into influence in NUS. Why? Because no sane student (i.e. one who is statistically likely to vote Lib Dem) goes anywhere near NUS.

NUS is like a little part of the Labour movement that a few of us non-Labour supporting souls are allowed a insight into during our formative years. All the main features are there: delegations that get casually manipulated by their leaders whenever it suits them; policy making by conference resolution; corporatist identity politics to keep under-represented groups under control. It’s a horrendous vision - a little like Dante’s Divine Comedy (for the record, Murphy is in the Ninth Circle). Remember the character Jonah in the Torchwood episode Adrift who screamed for 20 hours every day? He did this because in the middle of the Dark Star he looked into there was an NUS compositing session going on. I happen to know for a fact that this detail was removed from the final script at the insistence of Jack Straw.

The problem is, however much Labour behave like two-faced bastards in it, you wouldn’t really want the other side to get its own way either. At least Labour have a toehold in reality - the Alliance of Workers Liberty and their cohorts can’t even claim that.

And the biggest joke? After spending years fighting or working with these various factions in NUS, no matter where they came from politically you are likely to find them pounding the streets working to get Labour elected come election time. Despite the fact that everyone seems to place so much stock in being an “independent” in NUS politics, pretty much the only people in it who aren’t card carrying members of the Labour Party are the card carrying Lib Dems and Tories. And even then you can never be sure.

NUS doesn’t represent students. Even as a political activist I spent much of my time at university doing things like amateur dramatics and helping to run the film society. These sort of activities are the lifeblood of student unions, yet the only people NUS is interested in engaging with are political hacks. That essential truth has not changed in 30 years. Until it does, it does not matter how much the bozos du jour try invoking the “spirit of ‘68″ they will be ignored, and rightly so. They are just like so many King Cnuts. To any students out there my advice is to do what I didn’t: get involved in your local disaffiliation campaign today!

UPDATE: Had a strange critique of this post from someone who appears to some up my criticism (i.e. anti-NOLSie Leninist who happens to be a card carrying Labour Party member):

Here is the view that these reforms are positively awful but we can’t possibly, y’know, re-democratise the NUS because that puts us in league with the AWL oiks - crivens!

For starters, I didn’t get into the proposals to “redemocratise” NUS at all, mainly because I don’t know - or care - what they are. But the question is, how do you define democracy?

It’s a problem we have in the Lib Dems as well. For a lot of people in the left, democracy equals votes, lots of them, on everything. Voice, access and participation is a complete irrelevance. In my day and I suspect this continues, the left in NUS is focussed solely on the politics of turning up and that the more people this alienates who thus don’t bother to take an interest in student politics, the better since it makes things simpler and more manageable.

My criticism was that student politics doesn’t even attempt to engage with the vast majority of students with much wider and more eclectic interests than politics. More decision making by conference resolution won’t change that. Clearly it isn’t even on David Semple’s radar, which pretty much makes my point for me.

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The row brewing within the Labour Party over whether or not to withdraw the whip from the IWannaReferendum Three is an interesting one.

Predictably, over at Iain Dale’s gaffer, the cries are all “Stalinist!” even after I pointed out that the only party to withdraw the whip over a vote on a treaty referendum is the Conservative Party and FedUp reminded them about Howard Flight. Field, Hooey and Stuart are being hailed as giants and giantesses of political stature.

But hang on a minute. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with their stance, they are supporting a campaign that is actively campaigning against Labour MPs in marginal seats. In the case of Stuart, she is a member of the advisory group which presumably agreed that strategy.

And what is Iain’s view of rebels who happen to believe in something he doesn’t share? Like Clare Short?

If I were a Labour supporter I would be furious at the kick in the teeth she has administered to the Party which made her.

The gulag was too good for her - but what’s the difference?

A couple of footnotes. I observed two weeks ago that IVantToBiteYourFinger.com had just 35,000 signatures on it - in six months they got 5,000 fewer signatures than the Independent got in a month for electoral reform. Now it has 36,000 signatures - this is not a campaign that is going anywhere.

Back in September I predicted that Gordon Brown had a strategy aimed at boring the public to death on Europe. Despite the fact that events took a life of their own regarding the early election - and a May poll is obviously right out now - I stand by the bore-us theory and as far as I can see it’s working (why are the Tories floundering in the polls at the moment just as the Lib Dems and Labour are rallying?).

And before we get too chummy with Labour, we should remember this report by Frank Field of what Hoon has been saying about what the Eurosceptics tactics should be:

“The chief whip suggested we should instead campaign in Liberal seats. I am happy to take that idea on board. I am in the business of ensuring that Labour fulfils its manifesto pledge.”

I’m not sure what’s worse - Hoon’s “principled” stance or his understanding of basic strategy (bear in mind this man sent thousands of troops into Iraq).

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Say what you like about the Labour government, they are experts at the art of splitting the difference. Even when they lose, by and large they win. For example, the existing rules on allowing terrorist suspects to be locked up for 28 days without charge was a “compromise” eked out of the last time they tried getting their 90 days proposal through.

It looks as if the Labour backbenchers are in no mood to fall for that one again and enough of them will join the Lib Dems and Tories to block the 42 days proposal. But is that the whole story? I was not, for example, previously aware that the counter-terrorism bill included scope for Home Secretaries to ban coroner juries with a stroke of a pen in the interests of “national security“. It sounds like a dreadful idea, but in the kerfuffle over 42 days, how much attention will be paid to it? And for that matter, how many other clauses in this bill are we likely to be concerned about?

Could it be that Jacqui Smith is prepared to lose “42 days” so long as the debate surrounding it succeeds in obscuring all the other bad laws she intends to get through the backdoor? Scrutiny in the Lords can only block so much.

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The battlelines over localism are being formed in Scotland. What happens there directly affects the debate over decentralisation in England.

I haven’t been following this closely but my understanding is this: the SNP, which over time plan to replace council tax with a system of local income tax, have worked out a deal with local government whereby local authorities agree to freeze council tax in exchange for a very significant reduction in ringfencing by the Scottish executive. Labour are now hopping up and down making scary predictions about how this will hurt vulnerable people.

In a sense, they both have a point. Local government in Scotland as well as England has very few revenue raising powers and any squeeze will necessitates cuts being made somewhere, and it would not be surprising if the quietest voices had their funding cut the most. But Labour’s solution to this problem is simply to clobber local government with red tape, not to give it more freedom.

There’s another factor that needs to be considered as well: electoral reform in local government last year and the huge numbers of balanced councils it has produced will mean that this year’s budgets will be under more intense scrutiny than ever before. If Labour wishes to defend the vulnerable, by and large they will have their chance, but in the council chamber not Holyrood.

On balance then, I side with the SNP here. Sadly, if Labour are like this in opposition, it doesn’t bode well for getting localism out of them in government either.

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