Infected Salmond

The moral, technical and political arguments over Trump-not-quite-a-gate (and despite the efforts of some bloggers, I’m in agreement with Josh Lyman that there’s no way this qualifies as a gate) have been thoroughly covered by our Scottish colleagues. What strikes me about the whole affair however is how nice it is, particularly from a Welsh perspective, to see that nationalists in power are affected by the same diseases as any other shade of politician would be; Megaprojectitis.

Because you just know that at some stage this thought went through Alex Salmond’s head;

There is this weird price range, between £500 million and £2.5 billion, where politicians will do anything to get something built, no matter how stupid the thing is or how stupid the building is. I’d hazard that it was the price tag more than anything that persuaded Blair to plough on with the Dome; some part of him knew it was insane to do so, but that was shouted down by the incessant cry of SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS!

I suspect it also explains why the original Olympic budget was exactly the size it was; anything above £2.5 billion and the primary thought changes from “Man, that would be great for the economy!” to “Man, that would be unpopular with taxpayers!”

Either way, it will be interesting to see how Plaid deal with the disease, although on the evidence of the Wylfa row, Wales Millennium Centre and Ieuan Air, the omens are not good…

The Contractual Obligation Blog Entry

My general strategy with this blog is to consciously not be topical, mainly because I think there are lots of people who are better at it than me but also in order to highlight things that are in greater need of attention. Nevertheless, it would probably be churlish of me not to offer some form of quasi-obituary of the Reverend Blair (or Father Blair, as he may soon be), not least because of my other blogging strategy.

It is important, I feel, that when we bandy around words like “good” and “great” that we have some semantic understanding of what they mean. This is particularly important given the number of deluded Labour members (as if there’s any other kind any more) who will undoubtedly try and pin “great” on him merely for winning three elections. Margaret Thatcher is a great Prime Minister, but not because she won three elections against the Winter of Discontent, The Longest Suicide Note In History and what can only be described as Neil Kinnock. Similarly, victory over Grey Peas Man, Tory Boy and the Vampire of Folkestone is not the stuff of greatness; being in the right place at the right time just isn’t enough.

Greatness, if such can be defined in Prime Ministerial terms, is surely a question of ideas; whether you changed what it meant to be British or to live in Britain. Goodness is more subjective; it might almost be summarised as leaving the place in a better state than you found it, combined with a sense of the mood of the piece. For example, it’s pretty much self-evident that Thatcher changed the very fabric of Britishness, so she is certainly great. Conversely, whatever your views on the necessity of what she did and the results in her time, there is a pervading sense with Thatcher that she did it with spite and with malice, something that is surely disqualifying from being a good Prime Minister.

The question, then, is simple; has Blair fundamentally changed life in Britain? My answer would have to be historical. Attlee was great, unquestionably, by my criteria. After him, there is the long rule of Butskellism, followed of course by Thatcher. In this chain, Blair’s contribution is largely to provide half of the name for the new Butskellism; Blameronism has a nice alliterative touch with its predecessor, at least.

But the real disqualifier from greatness is that Blair never faced the electoral math, never had to worry about losing an election. From 1997 to 2001 he did everything right, laid a foundation and guaranteed the landslide second term. Given what we know of that night at Granita, a great Blair would have opened up in 2001 with a second term on the scale of Thatcher’s, then jumped ship at the end and handed it to Gordon, avoided the lame duck years and made a real difference. As it is, he blew his political capital on Iraq (something for which I’m clear that 9/11 was only the excuse, not the cause) and resorted to hanging on for the supposed vindication of a third term.

I suppose it all comes down to my abiding memory of the Blair years; that arrival at Downing Street on May 2^nd. I know that I felt like the crowds I saw that day; yes, I know now that those crowds were merely the first products of the spin that was to follow, but I still know that that is how I and my whole family felt. Blair had a mandate like no Prime Minister since Attlee, and he blew it fiddling around the edges and playing “Onward, Christian Soldier” in Iraq. Far from greatness, that was a betrayal like few others in British political history. Until the grass roots of the Labour party realise that and come to terms with their abject complicity in it, that betrayal can only continue in the hands of the man from Kirkcaldy.

Principles ± 3%

One of the things that continues to fascinate me about the Dear Leader is his continual insistence that nothing he has done in government constitutes an abandonment of Labour principles. As with so many of the Rev. A.R.P. Blair’s mantras, it has been accepted with religious fervour by the party faithful. Which in itself is no bad thing, except that you get the feeling that in this case, Tony actually believes his own hype, a trait that is usually catastrophic for a politician.

There is a justification for it. That the politicians haven’t yet picked it up and slung it back at him is understandable, since the justification is not political, it is statistical. That I have picked it up is understandable, since I’m a scientist, not a politician. And that calling it rubbish is an insult to garbage everywhere goes without saying…

Amongst the trees of policy it’s easy to miss the woods of society, this being just one of the reasons joined-up government remains a myth. The “genius” of statecraft is that it reverses the equation, and merely asks what the endpoint for society as a whole looks like. With Mrs. Thatcher this was largely irrelevant,both because she never hid her use of statecraft and never cared about society.

But Blair does care, if only because being quasi-Catholic has to result in an overwhelming sense of guilt sooner or later. This is a problem when your sole ambition in life is to keep the Labour party in power by whatever means possible (retaining power and making a positive difference being mutually exclusive goals in an era when anyone named Dacre is running a national news organisation).

The answer, however, is also within statecraft. If you consider your political belief system as a whole and add it all up, there has to be an endgame, a sum total of what your principles are meant to achieve. That then sets a target for your government to achieve. In statecraft you’re pretty much not allowed to act on the basis of any of your principles, so you potter along doing what appears to work.

The trick is that, if the sum total of what you do looks even ever so slightly like the target of your principles, even if you have to tilt your head and squint to make it happen, you can claim that your principles have not been abandoned. In statecraft, the means do not matter, only the ends.

So when Blair opens up on the achievements spiel, as he does at least twice in every Prime Minister’s Questions, it is vital that we stop getting caught in its headlights. Yes, New Labour have achieved some things in the last ten years, but that’s like saying England did well making 157-7 chasing Australia’s 290-3. To win the battle we must ask the question the public want answered;

“You were a Labour Prime Minister elected twice with three-figure majorities, this is what we expected you to deliver; why did you fail so miserably?”