Are your dogs barking?

We’ve been stuck since 1892 with that now-exhausted metaphor:

Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion’s ability, but I saw by the Inspector’s face that his attention had been keenly aroused.

“You consider that to be important?” he asked.

“Exceedingly so.”

“Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

 ”The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Lloyd Evans’s PMQ sketch for the Spectator sought imaginative ways round (here’s another dead’un) that elephant in the room:

It was the croc that didn’t snap, the firework that failed to fly, the jeroboam that refused to go pop. Last week, David Cameron’s speech on Europe was supposed to heal a two-decade rift within the Tory family and to set Britain on a bold new course in our relationship with the continent. A week later and the great In-Out gamble didn’t rate a mention at PMQs. Not a peep. Not a syllable. Not a whisper. Ed Miliband didn’t bring it up either.

Once past the ritual exchange of abuse (or rather Cameron’s abuse when confronted by Miliband’s profession of reason), the main meat of PMQs:

• included two excellent questions (one historical, one equine)

and

• concluded with a poor ad-hominem response by Cameron to Gorgeous George Galloway’s ad-rem on double standards of foreign policy.

Let’s deal with the last of those first, here as Lloyd Evans saw it:

The session ended with a blood-soaked question from George Galloway. Referring to the latest troop-surge in Mali, he invited the PM to ‘adumbrate the differences between the throat-slitting jihadists’ of north Africa and ‘the equally bloodthirsty jihadist’ in Syria. Easy to answer convincingly but Cameron descended to mere abuse. ‘Wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator in the world, he will have the support of the right honourable gentleman.’

A pity he served up a slur rather than an argument against Galloway who, if nothing else, is a formidable debater.

 When the Speccie disses Cameron, as it does on a regular basis, there’s usually a grain of good sense involved somewhere. Though, but naturally, not on the visceral issues of Europe or renewables.

Galloway’s barb went home, and will fester. Because it came from Galloway, Cameron may endure it — at least until the Hercules descends at RAF Brize Norton and more body-bags from North or West Africa are delivered to Cameron’s back-door. Another, perhaps more dangerous wound was delivered from over Cameron’s shoulder.

Pontifical Sir Peter

Simon Hoggart, the wittiest of the lobby reporters and sketch-writers, has a regular vamp about Sir Peter Tapsell. Here, for example, from September 2011:

Does Sir Peter Tapsell actually exist? I ask the question following his own question – nay, speech – on Wednesday, which was magnificent. It could have been a pastiche of the perfect Tapsell address. I imagined his words being carved into tablets of polished black basalt, mounted in the British Museum, etched deep so that even the partially sighted can feel their way to his eternal wisdom.

Possibly Sir Peter is a mass thought form, created by Tory MPs, for whom he recalls their party as it used to be, and Labour MPs, who wish that it still was. Certainly it is true that the whole House looks forward keenly, yearningly, to his every word.

When the Father of the House arose in the middle of prime minister’s questions, a great throb of excitement ran along all benches, rather like the moment in a Victorian seance when the eerie manifestation of a dead Red Indian appeared above the fireplace. This moment of glee was followed, as it always, is by a hushed and expectant silence.

Malcolm will  be disappointed if tomorrow’s Guardian fails to include mention of lapidary inscription, or — at the very least — quills and vellum. Fortunately for the mirth and instruction of the nation, as Father of the House (the longest serving Member) Sir Peter has a proprietary right to be called at question time. So to today:

Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con): As my right hon. Friend sets forth on his pacific mission to Algeria, will he, with his great historical knowledge, bear in mind that when Louis Philippe sent his eldest son to Algeria in the 1840s on a similar venture, it took a century, massive casualties, the overthrow of the Third Republic and the genius of General de Gaulle to get the French army back out of the north African desert?

Hon. Members: Answer!

Mr Speaker: Order. We want to hear the Prime Minister’s answer to this question.

The Prime Minister: I can reassure my right hon. Friend that I am planning only to visit Algiers. I am sure he put down an urgent question at the time of the events to which he referred, and got a response.

Two things don’t come out in that bare Hansard transcript:

• Only those backbench and the Speaker’s interruptions saved Cameron, gave him recovery time.
• This was the second, in a row, of very effective questions. Cameron hadn’t done very well on the previous one, either:

Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab): On the subject of food safety, can the Prime Minister confirm that traces of stalking horse have been found in the Conservative party food chain?

The Prime Minister: Somewhere in my briefing, I had some very complicated information about the danger of particular drugs for horses entering the food chain, and I have to say the hon. Gentleman threw me completely with that ingenious pivot. The Conservative party has always stood for people who want to work hard and get on, and I am glad that all of my — all those behind me take that very seriously indeed.

The political cavy

Two years back, when Cameron shimmied off for the half-term break, we all had a moment of mirth:

Asked if he was in charge of the nation, Mr Clegg told Metro: ‘Yeah, I suppose I am. I forgot about that.’

Later that year, in August, Clegg was once again ‘in charge’:

London’s in flames and the economy’s going up in smoke . . . but don’t worry, I’m in charge, says calamity Clegg as Cameron and Osborne stay on holiday

Nick Clegg today insisted the Government was still working ‘very effectively’ despite David Cameron and George Osborne remaining abroad.

The Deputy Prime Minister rejected criticism over the three most powerful men in Westminster taking a holiday at the same time after returning to work.

He said: ‘I reject completely this notion that somehow this Government hasn’t been functioning very effectively indeed last week and this week.

‘I have been speaking to members of the Government. I spoke to the Prime Minister this morning, to the Chancellor last night, to the Home Secretary yesterday, to the Business Secretary, to the Energy Secretary, to the Foreign Secretary; we are in constant contact with each other and we are working effectively together as a team this week as we do every week of the year.’

The Pert Young Piece of Redfellow Hovel shrewdly noted that Clegg’s days of deputising seem to have been curtailed.

She made a comparison with the infant who was entrusted with the weekend care of the classroom guinea pig — but only the once.

Pork?

Since Malcolm posted The bottom of the barrel earlier today, he has had a sense of unease.

Let’s consider a couple of the road schemes, as itemised by  page 11 of today’s Times:

A14
£20m investment to reduce congestion, improve junctions and increase resilience.

This was the one that gave Malcolm a faint sniff of bacon being grilled.

It amounts to sorting out the link from Cambridge (the top end of the M11) to the A1(M). Yes, it should have been done a while back, probably as soon as the John Major Memorial Motorway (curiously convenient for Major’s home at Great Stukeley) between Alconbury and Peterborough was conceived:

IMPROVING the A14 was yesterday (Tuesday) named a Government priority by the Chancellor – with £20million for “immediate improvements” and a report on the road’s future by early 2012.

Chancellor George Osborne, presenting his Autumn Statement in Parliament, said money would be released for safety work and announced a study to find a long-term solution for the road.

The immediate funding will pay for junction upgrades at the Girton and Spittals interchanges and additional signage for drivers, while an all-options engagement programme, labelled ‘The A14 Challenge’, will give the public, businesses and local authorities their say.

The study will examine the potential of the previously-scrapped Fen Ditton to Ellington upgrade, assess other methods of reducing congestion – by improving freight alternatives and public transport – and the options for financing the project, possibly through a toll road.

That looks like a bit of bunce for two MPs: Jonathan Djanogly (Conservative, Huntingdon) and Shailesh Vara (Conservative, NW Cambridgeshire). Assuming the LibDem vote collapses (almost a given), and doesn’t go disproportionately Tory (as if), Vara could just about be in difficulties at the next General Election — especially if UKIP continues to make inroads into Tory core-support. So, Djanogly (who hasn’t had the happiest of relations with his constituency association) and Vara (small fluff over expenses) have both got feathers to stick in their caps, while all it has cost is a bit of tarmac and a lot of consultant fees.

None too far distance we have a bigger-ticket item:

A14 Kettering Bypass
£110m for widening between Junctions 7 and 9.

The Tory MP for Kettering is Philip Hollobone. The boundary review would make the constituency co-terminous with the borough. In 1995-99 and 2001-3 Labour had political control of Kettering council. Hollobone’s seat therefore becomes more marginal.

That’s as far as Malcolm has reached in looking at the political implications of these projects. A quick flick of some of the others — Nine Elms (Tory Wandsworth) gets a whiff of a link to the Northern Line tube, the Oxford-Bedford rail link (restoring, in part, the old Varsity line, largely across Tory constituencies) — also has overtones of a partisan timbre.

Doubtless others will take up the chase.

Oink. Oink.

The bottom of the barrel

If we need convincing that times are hard, look no further than, eponymously,  The Times‘s list of les Grands Projets that are supposed to bring Britain out of its slough of economic despond. Or as David Wighton’s piece puts it: Quick fixes to get economy up to speed.

Wighton sets the scene:

Thirty-five road and rail projects got the go-ahead yesterday as George Osborne made infrastructure investment the centre of his economic package.

So, where’s Blasted Boris’s airport (some £50 billion)? After all, that has again been a main feature in The Times these recent days, even given the Wighton Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval as recently as … well implicitly, today, actually:

Maintaining a hub airport was identified as a key government commitment yesterday as part of 500 infrastructure projects worth more than £250 billion to be deliver over the next few years.

Only later, in the fourth paragraph,do we realise this is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, because:

About two-thirds of the £250 billion will come from the private sector and the Government is in talks with two sets of British pension funds that are expected to invest more than £20 billion over the next five to ten years.

£20 billion! Wowza! That’s a whole 8% of the £250 billion already at the “in talks” stage. Perhaps a third or a quarter of just one year’s income received by UK pensions funds  —money that has to be invested somewhere. Convincing, what? And the UK pensions pot totals in excess of a trillion — so there’s a contribution, even if not a staggering one.

But George Osborne is sadly not thinking as BIG as Mr Wighton. He is proposing those 35 projects cost much as £5 billion for the next three years. Which is a fair bit of difference — a factor of fifty-fold reduction to be a trifle more precise.

And those 35 projects really do scrape the tun’s bum:

• a by-pass for Immingham (£6.3 million);
• up-grades on the Tyne and Wear Metro (£4 million);
• replacing a railway bridge in Derby (£6.9 million);
• a couple of park-and-ride schemes in York (£21.9 million, which seems a grotesque inflation);
• a bus station in Rochdale (£11.5 million).

But what really caught Malcolm’s eye was the item for “More Sheffield supertrams”. Malcolm has ridden the Sheffield trams, and (like those of Nottingham, but sadly not that intended to bring the Croydon trams into and across central London) they are very nice indeed. Still, can anyone imagine a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer  — a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Lloyd George, a Churchill, even (heaven help us!) a Philip Snowden — bragging about four extra trams for Sheffield?

What’s the time, Mr Wolf?

Half past kidding time.Time to kid again.

Except this is no playground game.

Two Sundays back, Malcolm was struck by Andrew Rawnsley’s opener:

What do the following have in common? Angela Merkel, cold weather, Ed Balls, Silvio Berlusconi, the wedding of William Windsor and Kate Middleton, British civil servants, Brussels bureaucrats, people concerned about global warming, employment tribunals, trade unions, banks, bank holidays, Liberal Democrats, energy prices, Gordon Brown and the world?

The answer is that they have all been deployed as excuses by members of the government for why the economy is so dire. The proliferation of alibis offered by ministers, and their inability to stick to the same one, is a symptom of increasing desperation about the unravelling of their economic strategy.

That is now quite a meme among columnists, and here is Martin Wolf, in his blog for the FT, reprising it as a punch-line

The big facts are that the UK is set for a lost decade and a longer period of stringency than expected. The government’s position is that there is no alternative. That has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So blame foreigners: that always works.

Wolf’s piece is devastating, and particularly so since it is delivered from the highest financial platform in town. What Wolf was saying, far more eloquently than Malcolm’s gloss, is tomorrow’s orthodoxy:

• that Osborne was the warm-up: the main event was the OBR report down-grading “growth” predictions — we have, in effect “lost” 3.5% of 2013′s GDP between last March and now, and with it one huge whack of “structural” deficit;
• that what is on offer from Osborne is regressive (the burden falls unconscionably on the poor), and moreover
• that “credit easing” is less about boosting the economy than lowering borrowing costs — which puts into proportion that swagger about the disparity between UK and German borrowing costs,
• and that the British obsession with a “property-owning democracy” skews the economy by throwing money at domestic bricks-and-mortar when the Germans prudently put it into industrial investment;
• that any Treasury plan to restructure or, in the current argot, “rebalance” the economy has given way to gimmickry — in other words, eighteen months into this ConDem thing, the government has completely lost the plot.

In all that, Wolf manages a vicious swipe at the Thatcherite “right-to-buy”:

why should gifts be made to people fortunate enough to live in social accommodation? This is not really a “right to buy”. It is a right to loot.

Any time now Cameron will start considering his “legacy”, that specious divide between the failed politician and the venerated statesman. About the same time Osborne will be looking for his ace-trump to see off Blasted Boris in the Tory inheritance stakes. As things stand, all either will be remembered for is that massive embuggerance of Britain’s “lost decade”, of which the main beneficiary will be Alex Salmond and the SNP.

Who steals my purse steals trash …

Malcolm has never been wholly convinced by the outraged postures struck by Damian Green. Nor the chorus in unison of outraged journos and similar reptiles.

Green was in receipt of stolen goods. Admittedly, the stuff was of little worth, which is why he is not under the cosh of the Official Secrets Act. He was apparently “aiding and abetting misconduct in public office” (which comes down to professional disloyalty and political subversion) by encouraging — or, at very least, countenancing — a wannabe, Chris Galley, pilfering from his employer.

So, to continue:

… ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

Othello, III.iii. 155–161

Green has one strike in his favour: he is not a lawyer. He is, however, intimate with that other main Guild and Mystery which controls our affairs: he is an ex-journo himself, a former business editor for the Times and then for ITN. He is not, therefore, entirely an innocent.

Furthermore, if Green had used his ill-gotten gains in the House, with his Parliamentary privilege, there could be no gainsaying. In practice, he seems to have expended them by currying favour with other journos, notably those of the Times.

The main doubt hanging over Green is not his actions: they speak amply for themselves. It is his forename. Note the number of mispellings as “Damien“, often through the Guild and Mystery itself. The BBC and Sky have also made the error.

So Malcolm was cheered to find Rod Liddle in the Speccie already saying much of this, in a similar vein, under the title:

The law applies to Damian Green, too

Liddle says, pungently (his piece employs a nice conceit derived from “grooming”):

The Damian Green case is perfectly straightforward, if you are not a copper. If Green conspired with his pet civil servant to illegally obtain documents, then he probably has a case to answer. If you acquire stolen material, the correct procedure is to return it to its owners or hand it over to the police, rather than exploit it for personal and party political gain. If you think that the material you’ve seen is important and in the public interest, then you should use the political and legal system to insist that such material should be accessible to the public. This seems pompous and sort of unjournalistic, but then I always have a problem, a sneaking worry, when the entire journalistic establishment is united in its outrage, as has been the case following Mr Green’s arrest. And I don’t understand why laws which apply to the rest of us should not also apply to the otherwise first-rate Damian Green.

‘Nuff said?

Well, not quite.

On behalf of the Guild and Mystery, we have defence witnesses such as the venerable Alan Watkins, not quite a spent fire, illuminating the embers of the Sindie. Malcolm’s reading of Watkins goes back to the Sixties, when his political commentaries made the New Statesman essential study and a weekly delight. Malcolm knows that Watkins can harrumph for Wales, as much as the Hefferlump does for Essex. Therefore Malcolm was not surprised by Watkins’ clearing of throat:

The loftier peaks of our system of government are almost always enshrouded by mist. From time to time, however, the weather changes, the tops of the mountains become visible, and a watery sun sheds a little light on what may lie at the summits. But usually the fog descends once again, while the citizens gazing upwards are no wiser than they were before.

We shall have to wait for tomorrow’s debate before drawing any conclusions about the arrest of Mr Damian Green and the strange behaviour of Mr Speaker Martin, not to mention other assorted functionaries scattered around the palace of Westminster, in addition to the constabulary.

Yes, indeed, and that is about as much clarity as Watkins offers in re: Green. However, Watkins does refer usefully to past discombobulations:

• To illustrate how there are ways of defusing a situation, Watkins recalls January 1987. Thatcher’s Leader of the House, John Biffen exercised considerable and characteristic legerdemain avoiding a BBC Scotland film (fronted by Ludovic Kennedy, the Zircon spy satellite project) being shown in Parliament and thereby circumventing a Government ban.
• To discuss the nature of Parliamentary privilege, Watkins harks back to the Duncan Sandys affair of 1938. This is a dredging of memory beyond even the Welsh Wizard, who would then barely have climbed out of the pram. The episode puts Green and his screams of pain in perspective.

The Sandys of time, 1938

Sandys was Churchill’s newly-acquired son-in-law, and Tory MP for Lambeth (the notion of Lambeth having a Tory as MP is, itself, somewhat confusing). Sandys had information about anti-aircraft defence. Decently, on 17th June, he wrote to the Secretary-of-State for War (those were days before political correctness applied to ministerial titles) in advance of submitting parliamentary questions. Sandys explained, as reported in Hansard of 27th June, what happened next:

… on Thursday last I received a letter from the Attorney-General asking me to go and see him that evening. At this interview the Attorney-General informed me that the question which I had sent to the Secretary of State for War showed, in the opinion of the War Office, a knowledge of matters covered by the Official Secrets Act, and he asked me to reveal the sources of my information. He added that I was under a legal obligation to do so. When I inquired what would be the consequences, were I to refuse to comply with his request, he read me the text of Section 6 of the Official Secrets Act and pointed out that I might render myself liable to a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years.

Sandys kept his counsel, and approached the Speaker for a ruling on whether to raise the issue in the House. Back to Sandys’ speech:

On being informed of this, the Attorney-General asked me to come and see him again, and told me that I had been under a misapprehension if I had thought that he had been threatening me with the use of the powers of interrogation under the Official Secrets Act. He offered to give me an assurance that “there was at present no intention” to use these powers against me. However, I contended that since the withdrawal of the threat of the use of these powers was qualified by the words “at present” the position, in my opinion, remained unaltered. Thereupon my right hon. and learned Friend offered to drop the words “at present” and to give me an assurance that “there was no intention” to take this action against me. But I pointed out that an “intention” might subsequently be changed. In reply to this the Attorney-General said that he was not free to give me more than this rather limited assurance without first obtaining the consent of the Secretary of State for War, who was away in Scotland. However, after I had told the Attorney-General that I was not inclined to abandon my intention to raise this matter in the House, he eventually offered to write me a letter giving an unqualified promise that in no circumstances would these powers of interrogation be enforced against me. I thanked him for this assurance, but told him that I could still not give him any undertaking to drop the matter, since this was a question which concerned not merely myself, but equally all other Members of the House of Commons, and it was in my opinion most desirable that the position of Members under the Official Secrets Act should be clarified without further delay.

From all that, we can see why the Met Police have dug around for some legal basis, other than the Official Secrets Act, to justify pursuing Green. It also suggests that the Hefferlump’s parpings go over the top, working himself into a tizz over:

warped politicians … [and]  … our old friend Lord Rumba of Rio – the artist formerly known as Peter Mandelson – doing an imitation of almost demented self-righteousness about the Green affair, claiming that Tory protests were merely a tactic to divert attention from their wrongdoing.

When Lord Rumba ran the Labour press office in the Eighties, the party specialised in exploiting leaks about the wicked Tory government of Margaret Thatcher. He has changed his tune since then, as men without scruple or conventional morality are wont to do.

The Hefferlump is capable of the odd transgression of “scruple or conventional morality“. He is happy to bask in the glow of having coined that emblematic term, “Essex Man”. As Malcolm has previously noted, it was a blatant act of recycling.

Anecdotage: not mad, but several stops beyond Barking

The Financial Times political correspondent went to Havering-Upminster in the October 1974 General Election: statistically, this seat was the tipping-point — if Labour could take it, there would be a majority for Harold Wilson. In fact, as the insiders (including the Labour candidate) were aware, it was not that simple.

That Labour candidate, flannelling as best he could when the correspondent’s professional appraisal came up against glowing optimism, proffered the notion that there was an “Upminster man”, with bougeois trappings but more liberal tendencies. All of which, suitably sanitised, was presented in the Pink ‘Un.

None of which is as profound as the tragedy of the Moor of Venice.

Idle questions

Perhaps, on reflection, the attempt at a punch-line in the previous post was unfair; and therefore Iain Dale’s response (see comments thereon) has merit.

Malcolm’s only excuse is his contempt for the overwheening arrogance of Tory bloggers. For months we have been assured that the second coming is just around the corner, that a General Election could be foregone as a mere inconvenient formality, that the Bullingdon boys are reincarnations of Demosthenes and Cicero.

To be honest, Malcolm finds the weekly Wednesday tournament a bit of a bore. It somehow reminds Malcolm of that New Statesman competition, many years ago. The task was to invent desperate small-ads for The Stage. These used, in Malcolm’s recollection, to fill a complete page, as variety entertainers burnished limited, provincial talents with a name and a slogan. One of the Statesman‘s prize-winners was the imaginary performer whose vaunt was:

Sixty years a stripper.

When Malcolm first took an interest in PMQs, the star-act was Harold Macmillan, who seemed, towards the end, a potential understudy for Laurence Olivier’s Archie Rice. Or, more properly, since The Entertainer was received as a satire on the state of Britain in 1960, a case of life imitating art imitating life.

Wilson chewed up Home twice a week. Wilson and Heath would have been declared a mismatch by the Boxing Board of Control; but it was obvious that both were merely working through, and often against their assumed personae. By then, the idea of “questions” had long been subsumed into sound-bites. Callaghan did his twice-weekly “Sunny Jim” show, with mixed success. Thatcher screeched, bludgeoned, and surfed on Whip-induced waves of Tory adulation. Major could occasionally be as endearing as he could generally be pathetic. Blair was, perhaps, the greatest ham-actor of them all.

No: PMQs rarely becomes a memorable parliamentary occasion. Even more rarely is any useful light shed.

Malcolm noticed that his own critique of today’s matinée was not dissimilar to that of Nick Assinder at politicshome. Assinder built a workmanlike literary conceit:

As bombshells go, that was a bit of a disappointment. Like the bonfire night “Vesuvius” that squirts with the power of a damp match rather than erupting with a force capable of destroying whole civilisations.

He concluded that the froth and frottage amounted to:

the now well rehearsed election campaign slogans – as this is surely what they will become – that Mr Brown is to pay for his borrowing binge with a tax bombshell, and that Mr Cameron is the do nothing leader of a do nothing party.

But it was all a bit like resorting to the sparklers when the bigger display had failed to set the world alight, as it were.

Bring down the curtain.