Negotiations & The Financial Crisis

I have just been told - via Channel 4 News - that Europe is at an epic crossroads and standing on the brink. It is a vivid picture, which is being used to try to persuade us of the seriousness of economic negotiations taking place today to [yet again] cobble together a deal to save Greece. It will, almost certainly, cost more than the last final deal and will create yet more friction in other countries - particularly Germany - who will have to pay for it. The trouble is that the deal will almost certainly not work and, in the end, Greece will default. A writer in Money Week said that these days economic policy making was all too often a matter of putting off problems until next year or the year after or even the year after that. And, of course, the debts get bigger and bigger.

We must hope that the solutions that the politicians come up with here will really tackle our own problems. Negotiations between Tories and Lib-Dems are still continuing and seem to be getting somewhere. But now, in the middle of this it seems that Labour are pressing the Lib-Dems to join them. If necessary they will dump Gordon Brown. This manoeuvre has all the hallmarks of Mandelson fiddling about to the last. Does he, or anyone else in the Labour Party believe that it is possible or acceptable to cobble together a new government with a tiny majority using the celtic parties and introducing another unelected prime minister? It is ludicrous.

Hopefully, by tomorrow morning we will see the makings of the Tory-Lib-Dem coalition.

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The Treaty of Windsor

As I may have mentioned in these postings, I have been investigating my family history for a few years with the objective of putting it all together in a book. The project has grown so much that my writings to date suggest that my finished history will be on a scale that, by comparison, consigns such stories as War & Peace to the category of mere novelettes. I feel that my multi-volume work will need much editing before I proceed to publication. In searching the roots of my family I find myself in Lancashire in Tudor times and earlier when the county was still a wild place. I come up against land and allegiances tied to John of Gaunt [1340 - 1399], Duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III and ancestor of Plantagenet kings Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI and via his illegitimate line of the Beauforts to Henry VII, Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth. Not that our family was ever anything above the level of yeoman. It is just that John of Gaunt - who does not seem to have ever had anything very much to do with Lancashire or Lancaster - was an essential cog in a vast family that controlled England and the lives of the whole population. I have just delved into this complex family structure again when I noted [via the BBC] that today is the 724th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Windsor between England [not Britain of the UK] with Portugal; this treaty is still in-force and as such is the oldest such treaty still valid anywhere in the world. The treaty marked the alliance on the occasion of the marriage of John I of Portugal to Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt. The treaty was important in cementing an alliance that recognized Spain as a common enemy. The treaty was actually a revision of a document first signed in 1373. The treaty has been invoked many times over the centuries to bring Portugal into military actions - like the Peninsula War and WWII. It seems almost a pity that we have to record that Portugal is almost unique [I know that such a condition is impossible; it is either unique or it is not] among the countries of Europe in that during a period on 700+ years we have never gone to war against them.

All this makes recording May 9th as the anniversary of Colonel Thomas Blood's attempt to steal the crown jewels in 1671 - he failed to escape and the damaged jewellery was repaired - as a mere trifle in the eons of English history. Oddly, King Charles II pardoned the Irishman and gave him lands in Ireland. Perhaps, it is suggested, the king just loved an un-restructured rogue.

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Posturing Or Government?

This morning is a rather dreary May day with some light rain and a cool breeze from the east. I read on the BBC web-site that some rail fares have quadrupled in a year - because the railway companies have changed peak hours to include more of each day. More volcanic dust is drifting across from Iceland and Spanish air space is closed. Iceland - with a population of just over 300,000 and some dodgy banks - has been a troublesome country over the years. Remember the cod wars? Their volcanoes pose a continuous threat - it is even suggested that a volcano in 1787 and 1788 produced so much dust that harvests across the whole of Europe were affected, leading to hunger among the poorest people, increased deaths and, in France, the French Revolution. The dust seem to be by-passing us at the moment.

On the other hand, the dust of our General Election seems to be settling - slowly - although we still do not have a new government. Tories and Lib-Dems are carrying on discussions to see if they can form an alliance of some kind. There are reports coming out of opposition inside the Tory Party as well as from the Lib-Dem camp. Much seems to revolve around the matter of electoral reform. The Lib-Dems want it; the Tories do not. I can understand this but if we assume that the Lib-Dems do not go into a coalition because of this then they risk electoral oblivion and - I would argue - they will deserve it. As Harold Macmillan said many years ago, the biggest problems he had to deal with as prime minister were "Events, dear boy, events!" That is the situation for the Lib-Dems. There is no point in sticking for electoral reform if they are not part of a coalition. They can agree to back the Tories on specific issues without an alliance but this really amounts to responsibility without power and it will not make the Tories change the electoral system. In any case, a change in the electoral system will not matter until we have another general election, which, with a stable government, will be four years off. They can argue the merits of their case and, surely, a commission of all parties with a set timetable leading to either confirmation of the present system or a change - approved via a referendum - is an acceptable step forward. Nick Clegg has to trust David Cameron. If he does not, he needs to say so and give up on an alliance and on giving the country a stable government. If the Lib-Dems chicken out of this one they will exacerbate the UK's economic problems and after struggling on for some months, David Cameron will have another election and the Lib-Dems risk annihilation. I will repeat: the two parties have a duty to the country to form a stable government. Together they have the support of 60% of the electorate and, if they believe in democracy, then they have to come together. It is of no use waffling on about principles if you are never in a position to get anything done. It may be that some in each party are just posturing - hopefully, most of the beans and sandals wing of the old Liberals should now have gone to the Greens - but our economic woes do not allow for posturing. We need action by a stable government. Tories and Lib-Dems together would have a majority in parliament of 76, which is more than adequate and would allow for individual groups to disagree on specific bits of legislation without bringing down the government. We will probably know the best - or the worst - by Monday.

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An Alliance

It is 01.45 am on Saturday 8th May. With all the General Election results in the Tories have got 306 seats and it is clear that the only way of getting a government with an overall majority is via a full coalition government of Tories and Lib-Dems as I suggested earlier. In the middle of the afternoon David Cameron made a very clear proposal that the Lib-Dems should join them in a coalition to tackle Britain's problems. This was an encouraging announcement and was public supported by a number of prominent Tories like Sir John Major and Michael Portillo. While discussions were still going on this evening Ken Clarke and Lord Harris were interviewed by an overwrought Kirsty Wark on Newsnight who hammered away at the idea that no coalition was possible because the Lib-Dems could never accept the Tories ideas on electoral reform. She banged on and on and on about it until I was convinced that she was drunk, mad, insane or infected by aliens. What was the bloody woman on about. Had she been programmed or instructed by a dictatorial BBC megalomaniac to wreck any compromise deals? The two interviewees reacted with admirable courtesy and restraint as the demented woman screamed her manic rantings at them. She needs to be taken away for treatment.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown remains in Downing Street - as he should - until The Tories and Lib-Dems succeed in making a deal or failing to make a deal. In the first case, Gordon Brown must immediately go to Buckingham Palace to resign and advise the Queen to invite David Cameron to form a new government. It is the right thing to do yet many people are suggesting that the PM should get out of Downing Street at once because he has lost. He may have lost but if Cameron cannot put together a government then Gordon Brown has to try.

I hope we do get a Tory-Lib-Dem government. It is the right solution and reflects what the voters have demanded because together they carry 60% of the votes cast. What the people have said via the polls is that they do not like Labour but do not want to go the whole hog and give the Tories a massive majority. They want to see a government of co-operation and compromise. After all compromise can be the corner-stone of diplomacy.

In spite of their losses in the General Election, Labour are having success in the local elections picking up seats from all other parties. So in spite of all the difficulties and the abuse by the press, Gordon Brown has bounced back - when we consider the situation one year ago. The party may have taken a battering in the General Election but they have survived intact with the loss of only a couple of the big guns. The gains in the local elections should help soak up the tears.

I wonder who will be in charge of finances in the new government. Brown and Darling are much the most experienced in dealing with the financial problems but if Ken Clarke and Vince Cable can join with George Osborne in the coalition, they should be able to get to grips with the finances and the Greek tragedy.

And Gordon Brown can make a dignified exit.

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A Coalition Is Needed

Well, it's now 11.45 am and more General Election results are in. All the signs are that when all the results are in, the Tories will have 306 seats and with DUP support would have 316 seats. Labour and Lib-Dem together would have 317 seats. The only possible working arrangement is Tory and Lib-Dems and, whether they like it or not, that is what should happen. Otherwise, at this critical time, we will be without a stable government for weeks or months and in a situation that could only get worse. Now, we have to see if the politicians can cobble an agreement together and get on with the job.

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The End For Labour

It's 2.30 am on 7th May and all the signs are that later today we will have a Conservative government. It is not 100% clear yet whether they will have an overall majority but they won't be far off. If they do not, I think it is likely that David Cameron will try to govern with a minority government while he fixes the constituency boundaries and reduces the number of MPs to ensure that there is a built in Tory majority and that no longer will there be a weighting towards Labour. Then, when support for the Lib-Dems has faded away, he will go to the country again and get the overall majority that he wants - and we will be back to the same old politics which the public wants to get away from. The old system in which 30% of the vote is enough to give a big enough majority of seats to ignore the voting split. So far there has been no discussion of the percentage share of the vote last night but I think it will show yet again that even when the Lib-Dems increase their share of the vote it makes little difference to their number of seats unless they can surge past 30%. On the basis of current information the Labour Party plus Lib-Dems will still not have enough seats to form a majority government.

One of the most disturbing facts of this election has been the chaos at polling stations where all over the country people have been queuing for hours and have still been deprived of the right to vote because they could not get into the polling stations by 10.00 pm. In some places people had queued for 3 hours and still not got to vote. Is there any end to the incompetence of the people who run this country? Here we are reduced to the status of a banana republic unable to organise the simple matter of an election by providing enough polling stations and officers. In spite of hundreds of thousands of extra workers employed by the government over the last few years, this simple task was beyond them. It seems that some polling stations even ran out of ballot papers; others didn't even have up-to-date electoral rolls. The excuse is that the turnout has increased significantly. No it has not. It is up by 5% or 10%. We expected that and in olden days turnout was over 80%. How did we cope then? This really is the most staggering failure of local government. Many politicians have complained over many years about voter apathy; now when the numbers of voters goes up they cannot vote. Some returning officers should be sacked. These days they are paid gold-plated salaries and they should carry the can for such embarrassing failure. Should a country that cannot arrange for voters to put crosses on forms be allowed to have nuclear missiles?

I think tomorrow Gordon Brown will resign with dignity and the old warhorse will retire to the back benches. He is a decent man who did many good things over the years and was the longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in history. God knows who will lead the Labour Party. David Miliband? Alan Johnson?? Ed Miliband??? Harriet Harperson?????????????........ It all sounds like a horror comic. And alongside them David Cameron and George Osborne will be trying to learn how to navigate the boat and to help their rich friends. Still Lord Mandelson should be OK.

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Motherwell & Hibernian Draw

The final day of the election campaign and to celebrate Motherwell & Hibernian fought a 6 - 6 orgy of a draw to score the most ever goals in a Scottish Premier League match. Nick Clegg went down to Eastbourne for his final attempt to stimulate the voters; David Cameron rushed off to the oil terminal on Sullom Voe - or somewhere equally remote - as he continued to seek the obscure vote; and Gordon Brown headed home to Fife. Latest polls show the Tories in the lead but short of an overall majority and still more than a third of those declaring that they will vote have yet to make up their minds. I know the problem. It is impossible to vote for that which many of us want - a hung parliament that forces political parties to work together to solve our desperate problems. We will have to decide on the day via a hunch or calculated tactical vote where we place our cross. I have said over and over that I regard the Blair/Brown government as the worst in my life time. Gordon Brown is a decent man, grumpy and curmudgeonly perhaps, but he has men like Balls, Mandleson and Campbell around him - and that's depressing. Should we vote for Labour or suggest "in the name of God, Go?" Do we feel that like democracy that is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time, that we should stick with the devil we know - and all his experience? Or do we rid ourselves of Brown to replace him with something worse? If Cameron achieves an overall majority it will be with the support of less than 27% of the total electorate and then, like Mrs Thatcher, he will be free to run riot with anti-social legislation that benefits only the rich. He will also do everything in his power to scupper yet again the Liberal revival. The last thing he wants is any form of proportional representation. The only way that we can curb the excesses of right wing dogma is with an anti-Tory coalition government of Labour and the Lib-Dems. Coalition governments in Britain do have a good record in tackling serious problems in war and in peace times. At the moment no one can call the result. Tomorrow we will know the make-up of parliament even if we do not know the make-up of the government.

We live in hope that this election proves to be more than a triumph of hope over expectation.

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A Day of Anniversaries

Today is a day of interesting anniversaries.

Let us start with 1469 when Niccolo Machiavelli was born. A man whose cynical attitude to government and politics has given us the adjective Machiavellian, a word that has survived 550 years of government in the western world and shows no sign whatsoever of becoming redundant.

May 3rd 1926 was the day that the only General Strike in British history began. The Prime Minister, the smooth operating and experienced politician Stanley Baldwin, managed to get everyone back to work in nine days but the cause of the strike - the intention of coal mine owners to reduce miners' wages and to increase working hours - remained unresolved. The miners alone stayed on strike for another six months but then starving and unsupported they went back to work. They achieved almost nothing and many miners were put out of work for years before being hit again by the Great Depression.

Another event of May 3rd was the opening by King George VI of the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the Thames in 1951. I remember this quite clearly from cinema newsreels, although I never went to London to visit. The event was intended to exhibit Britain recovering from WWII and to an extent it succeeded. The only survivor of the exhibition is the Royal Festival Hall, which in spite of much criticism has settled comfortably into its place on the south bank of the river. It is not brash, it is architecturally undistinguished but, to me, it always feels like a much loved friend. It has now become so accepted as a "national treasure" that in 1988 it gained the status of Grade I listing - the first post-war building to be so classified. In these days of energy efficiency and conservation it is worth noting that even in 1952 the Royal Festival Hall was operating a very efficient heat pump system linked to the River Thames for its heating and cooling. The whole of the Festival of Britain was planned by the old London County Council and it employed its own architects to design the Festival Hall. The LCC planned for the first concert in the hall to be conducted by Arturo Toscanini - a man with somewhat tenuous connections to London, I would have thought - but the great maestro was ill and his place was taken by the English duo of Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult - but not, I suppose, both at the same time. The thing about the hall that appeals most is its being open to the public all day and ever day to visit the shops and restaurants, etc. It is a living building in a way that the architecturally more impressive Sidney Opera House is not. On my one and only visit to that exalted building, it struck me as more a mausoleum than a living opera house.

Other events of 3rd May include births of Bing Crosby [1903], Richard D'Oyly Carte [1844], Engelbert Humperdinck [1936] and such happenings as the demolishing of Worcestershire County bowling when, in 1934, that greatest of all batsmen, Don Bradman scored 206 runs against them at the County Ground in 3½ hours.

I suppose all dates are "historic" in some way. David Cameron may care to consider that on May 3rd 1979 the country elected Margaret Thatcher and caused eighteen years of uninterrupted Tory government. He must hope that he can do something similar on May 6th. He cannot, of course achieve an overall majority. If he does not - and the likelihood is that he will struggle to have 300 seats in the House of Commons - then we must have some kind of coalition or a weak minority government. In that situation, we must hope that Labour and the Lib-Dems can cobble together a proper working coalition capable of governing effectively for at least two years. David Cameron's Tories, I am sure will do everything in their power to maintain the first past the post electoral system and try to build up an entrenched Tory majority in England. On the economy Brown is right and we have to give that prime consideration in deciding whom we will vote for. I hope we get the right result.

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A National Government

Only four more days to go before the nation has to decide on a new government. Many - including me - are still undecided and an important reason is that the right answer is "None of the Above". But if we take this route by nor voting or deliberately spoiling the ballot paper, we will get a government selected by others. The problem is that I cannot vote for what I really want. The No.1 problem that swamps all others is the economy. Even the problem is not simple and the answer is almost impossible to control. Only this morning the parties are again waffling on about £6 billion of cuts here or there. It is irrelevant bollocks. I remember incidents in the past where the powers that be argued about paper clips when the major problems were ignored. I think we are in that territory here. The politicians argued about things they could get their collective minds around while ignoring the monumental and complex problems that they could understand.

Let's put the problem simply - again. With present levels of government income, we need to cut government spending by 25% to just stop the deficit getting any bigger. If we do that immediately, we will potentially put 1½ million government employees out of work, reduce government income still further as the unemployment increase had a knock-on depressing effect on every part of the economy and put even more people out of work. In areas like the NE it would cause almost total economic collapse. We would be heading for another Great Depression. Whatever government is in office, it has to re-structure the economy, transfer labour from paper shifting bureaucracy into manufacturing and services which we can sell abroad and has to get young people properly educated to an appropriate level to enable them to meet the national needs and it has to encourage in every way possible the re-building of our industries. It will take 50 years to complete but we need to make a start going in the right direction. We cannot have a government that is not prepared to look beyond the next General Election.

It has been proposed that we build a new high speed railway network. This project should go ahead but only if we are determined to do it by using British companies and workers in all aspects of the project. Sure, we would have to buy some things from elsewhere but it should nor amount to more than about 15%. Building these railways is a vast capital project that will need a great deal of sophisticated engineering that we can subsequently sell to others. It will encourage more overseas investment in our country. Britain is after all, the country that built railways for the world. We should be ashamed if we cannot do it again. George and Robert Stephenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and the great railway engineers from the past you should all be living at this hour.

We should be increasing our investment into green energy via wind turbines and water power as well as improving the overall performances of existing power generation systems, road and rail vehicles, etc. there is much that can be done.

But can we get a government that can do it? The new government will have to get public finances under control and get the economy growing at something like 3% per annum [or better] and cut down on paper shifting. It is wrong to restrict the areas in which we can save money wasted on pointless administration. The NHS suffers on many occasions because it has its organisation disrupted by unorganised patients demanding treatment. But surely, it does not need one bureaucrat for every bed!

Such a re-organisation of the economy would be complicated still further by the turmoil in other countries. The European Union is in deep trouble and if the problems of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy cannot be resolved - no mean task - then the Euro will either collapse completely - very possible - or the currency will devalue by perhaps 30% and that will knock back onto our ability to export. It may also devalue our currency as well. At this moment. the only currency that I feel confident will be capable of recovering is the dollar. But there are economies around the world that are basically sound and/or are expanding - like Canada, Australia, Brazil, China and South East Asia generally. I think India and Russia will grow but much more unpredictably. We need to improve our ties with these.

I would like a coalition or national government - which is more likely to take the right serious decisions than a one-party government that has every daft idea it comes up with dictated by dogma. Mrs Thatcher sold off our national assets to foreigners while banging on about the principle that private monopolies were somehow more efficient than public monopolies. There was a never a shred of evidence to support this but it is still quoted as a holy grail of right wing economic management. Look what we did to those old fashioned and very effective organisations called Building Societies. All of those that became free market banks have collapsed and some even gone into foreign ownership. How has this benefited our economy? Lacking Stanley Baldwin and Clement Attlee, my national government would be made up under Gordon Brown - surly and bad-tempered - as PM with Alistair Darling, Vince Cable and Ken Clark combined into a financial team that would be give all the authority they needed to sort out the economy. The other major posts in government would be spread between the parties. But I cannot vote for a national government. My best hope will be an alliance of Labour and the Lib-Dems. And we don't want to hear about the parties squabbling about who does what. Most of us believe that together politicians and the financial institutes got us into this mess, so now you can sort it out.

Will it happen? Don't hold your breath!

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Is There Life After Bigot-gate?

Tonight Gordon Brown was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on BBC Newsnight. It was a strange set - also used in interviewing the other two main party leaders - in which the two men appeared sitting on a couple of chairs in the middle of what appeared to be the middle of a wide open empty floor of an abandoned office block. Where they the last men standing in UK Ltd and about to put the lights off as they left? Apparently, this was the first time that Mr Paxman had interviewed Gordon Brown since he became Prime Minister. In fact he performed very well. He seemed quite relaxed and not ready to be bamboozled by Paxman into saying what he did not want to say. He was very eloquent in re-stating as he and his chancellor have both done for some time, that cutting back on government spending should not begin until the economic recovery is well advanced. It is an argument with some merit but he should still face up to advising what he will cut when the time comes. I do not think he can ring fence things which account for almost 33% of all government expenditure and say that those areas will not be cut back. The biggest is the NHS and there is no doubt that the service is weighted down rather heavily with excessive bureaucracy.

I think that Gordon Brown is a fundamentally decent man but corrupted so much by the monstrosity that is New Labour - that artificial contrivance of Mandelson and Blair and spun by Alistair Campbell - none of whom ever had any political principles whatsoever - that he has lost his ability to judge anything correctly. Yet with all his faults I still tend to think that he is the best man to be PM. He appears to have a stature that the other two just do not have and I think also that their lack of experience is a big negative. I don't think that either of the other two leaders are bad men either but they are very rich and have come from very privileged backgrounds.

But as Gordon Brown fights on in this General Election, there are yet more rumours about plots in the Labour Party to get rid of him and - God helps us - replace him with "the dream team" of David Miliband and Alan Johnson. Are they all insane? Dream team? It is more a ghastly nightmare. And if the dream team is so good, why has this General Election been all about Gordon Brown? Why have we seen almost nothing of other senior party figures on hustings or touring the country and putting the party's case?

I rather feel at this point that with all pressures removed and with nothing to lose Gordon Brown will perform better that he has done at any time in the last three weeks. He could even laugh when Paxman asked him why he thought that nobody liked him. The fundamental problem for Gordon Brown is just that he has been the man in charge, first during his ten years at the treasury and then three years as PM and he has allowed the economic mess to develop without putting the brakes on. Even before the financial crisis we had government debt that was far too high.

We will probably have a hung parliament but how the government will pan out is still impossible to say.

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