One Reason Tony Blair isn’t EU Overlord

I spent a couple of years as Tony Blair’s rep at the Party of European Socialists (PES).  It was led then, as now, by former Danish PM Poul-Nyrup Rasmussen.  There’s been some kind of law passed in Denmark requiring every Danish PM to be called Rasmussen (they’re on their third one on the trot, and they’ve all been unusually good), but Poul Nyrup was the original. Tony (and therefore UK Labour, and me)  had supported Guliano D’Amato of Italy against Poul to lead the PES in succession to Robin Cook.  Poul won, and this may have in it’s own way have been significant in Tony Blair’s failure to become EU Overlord yesterday.

The PES suffers from the fact that for most of the time, most of the members are in opposition, so they’re inclined to indulge themselves.  On the other hand, my role was to ignore not only self-induldgence but also commonsense.  At my last meeting, in Porto, I had to attend a meeting to agree the line the leaders would take at lunch – the biggy of the moment was denying the use of word ‘constitution’ and instead keeping the word ‘treaty’ in the final statement.  I spoke about the ‘importance’ of this point (i.e. for UK Labour) and my finely-honed political instincts told me I may have just swung it.  Er, no, 1-26. Again!  Poul tried to get me to be reasonable (the vote had to be unanimous to I was effectively veto-ing 26 members), as did everyone else, but reason didn’t enter into it.  I suddenly understood why it was me who’d been sent.

At lunch, the only PES party leader not present was Tony Blair.  John Prescott had turned up, memorably broken his teeth during his televised speech (and, actually, charmed everyone in his utterly inimitable way) and gone off to the dentist.  I was asked to attend the leaders lunch, but had turned up in jeans and T-shirt ready for a speedy departure.  It was descending into farce. A striking aspect of that Porto session, and others in Brussels as I recall, was the striking denunciation of Tony Blair by the PES-group leader in the European Parliament, Martin Schultz.  Frankly, Schultz spoke for the majority of PES member parties – there was a lot of nodding.  I’d cunningly avoided eating the regular fare at these events, preferring asbestos – I was flameproof, so I just smiled, but I knew I’d probably pay for it later.

Last week, the turning point in Tony Blair’s hopes of becoming a meaningful leader of Europe came when Gordon Brown was allegedly surprised at the vehemence of the PES opposition to his nominee.  The leading spokesman was one Martin Schultz.  I’m sure Poul Nyrup Rasmussen would have been nodding sagely (yet pleasantly, fraternally, as he always does) in the background.  Yet I can’t imagine Gordon had been so badly briefed as to have been surprised.  I’m sure he did his best, but if PES support for Tony’s candidature had even been a prerequisite then it was never a plan which was going to work. Never in a month of Sontags.

The Mail on Sunday (Scottish) article on Afghanistan

I wrote this article for the Scottish Mail on Sunday and thought I’d whack it up for those who don’t:  a. Read the paper, and b.  Live in Scotland. Comments appreciated.

Mail on Sunday click here once then a second time when the next link comes up to read my article. It’s a little slow, as there’s a big piccy on the article, so do be patient!

For more information on the Scottish Mail on Sunday click here.

By-election STATS

Just driven back from Springburn, in Glasgow, where I was alerted to Dave Maddox of the Scotman’s point that the Falkirk West by-election of Christmas 2000, where I was the beneficiary of a quite brilliant Labour campaign, was the highest ever turnout in a by-election.  It made me think of two things.

The SNP actually recorded more votes in the by-election than it did in the subsequent General Election.  That’s not a slur on the SNP, more of a testimony to parties’ abilities to get the vote out when it matters.  It’s a striking statistic.  In fact, my by-election was held a few days before Christmas and the relatively high turnout is all the more amazing for it.

In addition, David Kerr, who was my opponent in 2000 and whom I think has probably lost again tonight  (Springburn is very Labour and Willie Bain is a very strong, local, candidate) surely deserves a list MSP seat for the SNP in 2011.  I found him to be a thoroughly decent man and his successful career at the BBC was not a small thing to pass over (for the second time) in order to take on another task always likely to be beyond the reach of the SNP.  Again, I don’t mean to disparage the SNP; it’s simply a comment on David Kerr’s personal sacrifice for his cause.  It’s the wrong cause, of course (!) and he’s chosen to take the risk on, but the fact is that it’ll be hard for the BBC to take him back again and folk who stand up for something they believe in deserve a bit of support from those who can help.

Labour in the Sun

The Sun’s treatment of Gordon Brown over his letter to Jacqui Janes and his subsequent ‘phone call, sought to tread a fine line between attacking the PM for alleged neglect of our troops and mocking him for physical imperfection. I’m not sure they succeeded.

Moreover, many folk I’ve spoken with think that this newspaper seems to relish systematically exploiting a bereaved Mum: not a good look for any paper.  To be honest, I’m not sure that it quite does justice to Jacqui Janes, who’s clearly highly articulate and well able to look after herself.  And I also suspect that political journalists, such as Political Editor Tom Newton-Dunne, are less comfortable with the strategy than some higher up the tree.

Nevertheless, there is another fine line the Sun is walking and perilously close to stepping off.  It’s their attempts to attack the government on defence policy in Afghanistan without attacking any service personnel, who are responsible for planning for maintaining appropriate equipment levels for troops, overseeing operations in theater and making timely, albeit often very difficult operational decisions.

The simple fact is that every attack on the Labour government for equipment levels in Afghanistan is an attack on our uniformed services.  Ministers don’t just decide, in the first analysis, on equipment specs for any deployment.  They ask the services to put together force packages and then  more detailed planning is done by the same folk in uniform.  For example, it’s said we have around 20 helicopters in Afghanistan and that that’s far too few for the job. Well, when the decision was taken to deploy at our current levels, ministers would no more know the appropriate number of helicopters than they would be able to strip and assemble an SA80 – those are the jobs of uniformed professionals.   Those uniformed experts are of course presented with logistical constraints by their bosses, but if those bosses (including General Dannett) didn’t think the final force packages would work, they wouldn’t recommend them to government ministers.

It’s true that there will always have to be adjustments during conflict and that more kit, such as helis, are always welcome, and politicians are core to those  discussions and resource decisions.  But those who say that there should be twice as many helis, or  other technology and that includes comments about body armour etc, are literally attacking all those service personnel responsible for procuring kit and planning operations, not the government.

And here’s another harsh truth; sometimes people die because of command decisions taken on the ground.  Commanders are profoundly aware of this – it’s a heavy responsibility - that’s why they speak with passion when they laud the characters of their men and women who die.  Again, by knee-jerk blaming of politicians (rather than the enemy) for all our casualties, the Sun risks inviting other news agencies to look much more closely at command decisions.  At present, that thankfully doesn’t happen in the same way it does in other professions, such as social work.  Such a focus would hardly be welcomed by or helpful to our brilliant service folk.

The Sun’s game is essentially an extension of the Tories’.  But Liam Fox et al have the luxury of being able to used nuanced language rather than outright accusation - the latter is the Sun’s job.  So if the effect of ignorantly blaming every casualty on ministers is to bring greater media scrutiny of the military judgement of service personnel (and the Sharon Shoesmith-style vilification of some?), it’ll largely be on the Sun’s head.  There’s still time for them to step back and I do hope sensible professional journalists at the Sun take this opportunity with both hands.

Gordon Brown’s hand written letter

There’s something unusually unsavoury about the pursuit of Gordon Brown over his letter  to Guardsman Jamie Janes’ Mum, Jacqui.  A man of great moral strengths and some human weaknesses he’s the first to accept, he spends what must be an enormous amount of time over service casualties.  He feels the personal responsibility as deeply as any leader and no-one who’s spoken to him about it can reasonably doubt that. He writes personally, heartfelt, in what he knows is his own poor handwriting borne, as everyone knows, of poor eyesight, to every family affected. That’s a good thing, right?

Jacqui Janes has literally every right to say whatever she likes, expressing whatever emotions most of us can only imagine she feels, and her views deserve respect.  She’s special, and so are all like her.

But the rest of us aren’t.  The hounding of a man of manifestly good intent, the raising of handwriting over decent human concern, seems to me primarly about the wicked manipulation of decent people by thouroughly un-decent ones.  This is what it boils down to – “let’s exploit GB’s poor handwriting to insinuate that he doesn’t care; it’s isn’t true, but it serves our interests”.

I don’t blame the Sun or any other news agency, to tell you the truth.  It’s just the way it is – it’s ‘news’.  They’re professionals and they know what gets headlines, sales and advertisers.  But behind the papers, there are others.  And we know who they are, of course.

I think most decent folk will see this all for what it is.

Remembrance in Falkirk and Denny

I’m privileged to be laying wreaths at remembrance day ceremonies in my constituency tomorrow – in Falkirk and Denny.  All politicians of all parties will be doing the same thing. It’s the only profound thing we do.  I’m looking at the wreaths now and just thinking about how this week serves as a reminder of how decent people are.   As the ‘big’ wars of Harry Patch, then my Dad (he was in the Black Watch, then became a Para), Les, and my lovely step-Dad, Arthur (also Black Watch), recede, folk seem to be more and more aware of the sacrifice ordinary people have made, and make daily, to give us the stuff we’ve got today.  I’m a pretty fair target of people who hate the Iraq thing and I’ve come to understand the hard way (as ever) how people separate, quite perfectly, their worries about any one conflict and their far deeper sense of thanks for those who risk everything for us every day. This week seems like the time folk express their decency and humanity in the loveliest and most authentic way.

I’m no more qualified than anyone else to say any more than that. And it’s a side issue, really, but what increasingly seems like a reducto absurdum of the daily politics of hate seems gossamer thin, transient.  Who f****** cares?, as I would have said as a Black Watch jock.  Yet today, in the grander scheme, the reality is that everyone does.  Tomorrow, and on 11/11, I will, as always, ’manfully’ fight back tears at thoughts of the dead; the living wounded.  And so will everyone else.

I love this place.

Some thoughts on Afghanistan: the Taliban Paradox

There’s an odd paradox at the centre of our present stance on the Taliban.  On the one hand, every minister, soldier, spokesman tells us that if the Taliban were once again involved in the governance of Afghanistan this would inevitably lead to the return of AQ there.  On the other hand, we are told that we must now begin to talk to Taliban leaders.  But if we talk to them, what will they want from us?  They will ask to have some involvement in the running of Afghanistan?

If we assume that the Taliban we will talk with are rational then it’s reasonable to conclude that they’ll understand that a resurgent AQ will ruin any chance making progress.  So the assumption that Taliban=AQ seems at best questionable, surely?

Some thoughts on Afghanistan: Intelligence and Sacrifice

Two thoughts about Afghanistan.  Firstly (the media seemed to miss this) Kim Howell’s intervention in Westminster recently,was significant, and not just because he’s an ex-FCO minister but because he’s the present Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee in Parliament.  By the way that’s the committee appointed not by parliament but by the prime minister himself, which has oversight of the work of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Most media treatment of Afghanistan focuses upon military analyses of the situation on the ground, but it often misses the point, that it’s the analysis of where the greatest international risk lies which should be central to the discussion.  It is highly likely that Kim has been told by ‘the spooks’ where the greatest risk lies – and that place is not Afghanistan.  Maybe ‘the spooks’ are wrong, but it’s surely time for the proposition: that Afghanistan is the place of greatest risk to the safety of UK citizens was tested. This test should lead to the conclusion that we need many more intelligence folk and fewer military men speaking out about defence and terrorism on TV and Radio.

Secondly, the death of five soldiers at the hand of a British trained, Afghan policeman is far more serious than commentators or spokespeople have suggested.  In today’s papers, General Jim Dutton, Deputy Commander of ISAF, says  ‘this kind of thing is likely to happen  again’. Yesterday, another senior officer said  ‘we have to trust the uniform of the Afghan police’.   If there is a repeat of this terrible incident, it’s game over for UK forces there.   Operating procedures on the ground in Afghanistan will have already changed markedly as a result of this devastating breach of trust  - why, exactly, should any soldier ‘trust the uniform of the Afghan police’?  Would you?

New safety precautions will distance UK troops from their Afghan trainees and this will have the effect of  slowing down training and undermining good work – all this against a backdrop of a huge planned increase in projected numbers to be trained – our apparent ‘exit strategy’.

I think our ‘exit strategy’ is becoming more obvious and it can not wait for a competent Afghan police force to emerge. I sense that Gordon Brown is thinking along these lines too and his speech today suggests that.

Some questions about Afghanistan and US

Kim Howells told me about this Guardian piece while we were waiting in the division lobby. The key question for us all to consider now, is whether, what we are doing in Afghanistan is the best way of serving our UK interests.  Kim suggests not: he says we need to put more effort into what we are doing here in the UK, instead.  I  agree with him.  The trouble for us in the UK at present is that we do not seem to be articulating, in any clear sense, a UK foreign policy which is separable from our US interests.  Our European allies do this perfectly well, while we do not.  We may criticise them for being less active than us in fighting in Afghanistan, yet are the streets in mainland Europe less safe than in the UK?  Clearly not.  So how do we justify the daily sacrifice made by our remarkable service personnel in Afghanistan?  We too often hear how we,punch above our weight?  We have a special relationship?  There is a wider geopolitical benefit?  Is any of that measurable or reasonable?  If it were, we might expect our ministers not to simply look to the US each time we reach a watershed.  We might also expect the price of our effort to merit civilised improvements, perhaps the end of Karzai’s law permitting men to starve their wives (only in extremis, mind).  But no.  Last night on Newsnight, Douglas Alexander, DFID Secretary of State, was reduced to stressing that we’d done the decent thing and ‘mentioned the matter’ to Karzai.

How can we raise our heads and call Karzai president?  Perhaps in the same way we call Mugabe president? Yet it’s literally sickening to hear ministers laud the election process there as somehow valid, ‘albeit flawed’, as somehow legitimising the loss of soldier’s lives.  The fact is that the obvious corruption there demands our condemnation and nothing less.

Perhaps Afghanistan is best organised regionally for now – this is a technical matter but it should be part of our national dialogue.  Instead, we have generals telling us we’re not trying to create Surrey or Switzerland in Afghanistan, that we have a far lower (but unstated) objective.  In truth, it’s the job of politicians, not generals, to express the views of our constituents.  I know what mine think.  They think UK troops are the best in the world and they’ll support them to the ends of the earth.  But they no longer accept, without question, the simple, and quite possibly wrong, proposition that the best way of protecting  families living here in the UK is by following the US whip, however decent their president, however professional their troops.

Europe is failing because we to fail to work together on important areas of foreign policy and essentially security policy.  Maybe that’s about to change.  For now, the UK must take a cold, hard look at how we can best serve the interests of our own people.  A rational analysis, is being proposed by Kim Howells: we should listen. It is a matter of the greatest urgency.

FKUK: Local and Global

I’m a member of the UK board of Globe International. We’re essentially an international group of legislators who seek to ensure that our governments aim as high as possible on the green agenda.  Most recently, we met in Copenhagen in the run-up to COP15 where Prime Minister Rassmussen of Denmark stressed his determination to keep pressing ahead despite the scale of the challenge as reported elsewhere in the media.  Right wing blogs are often quoted as saying that global warming is nothing to do with us.

When I look around my constituency, Falkirk there are plenty of green shoots. There are lots of businesses and other organisations who see the business sense of helping improve the environment, and Im meeting more and more of them these days.  Here are three great small projects which aim to make a difference locally. I was privileged to open  Johnsons Cleaners GreenEarth Branch in Tesco Grahamestone Retail Park this week.  They have a new process which eschews the old chemicals and is proving really popular with customers.  Softexpand Miniframe computer has one of three new contracts given out in Scotland so far. Ross Mcphaden of Arm-it.co.uk local ICT support business is  hoping to put Falkirk  ahead in Scotland for responsible ecofriendly approach to office  and educational computing and is offering training to young people in the field too.  Then, as ever, there’s Falkirk’s branch of Friends of the Earth and the 10:10 campaign. I’ve signed up to this,  with the aim of cutting my carbon footprint by (at least) 10% during 2010.

I’m looking forward to supporting these practical green ideas and many more in my constituency now and in 2010.  If there’s anything you want to draw my attention to, I’d be only too pleased to help.