The Obscurer

PRISTINA AND BELGRADE [Reuters] – As word spread of the momentous event that had occurred, the streets of Serbia and its would-be independent province of Kosovo thronged with people, many anxious to speak of their reaction to the news. While opinions diverged greatly, numerous Serbs and ethnic-Albanians collared any foreign journalist they could find, desperate for others to know how they felt about the historic decision.

In Belgrade, Nebojsa Pejovic, a 43-year-old Serbian accountant spoke for many when he said, “After what seems like an age of dither and delay we have ended up with this dreadful, catastrophic decision. This really is the worst of all possible outcomes. We now have the situation where the government will be making decisions on whether or not to foreclose on people’s loans in a falling housing market, and the taxpayer will bear the full risk of lending 100 billion pounds of mortgages in an uncertain housing market. This is the day when Labour’s reputation for economic competence died.”

Meanwhile in Pristina the view was more upbeat. “It has been a long, long road”, beamed a jubilant Beqir Ademi, a 21-year-old ethnic-Albanian student, “but belatedly the government has made the right decision. The first priority must be to work out the seriousness of the problems at the bank with an independent audit of its loan book. This must be conducted under the auspices of the Bank of England, not the FSA. Then the bank must stop irresponsible lending at more than the value of property, and aggressive deposit-taking. Finally, there will be difficult times ahead, especially for the employees, as the bank is downsized. However, there is now real hope for the long-term future of the bank when it is eventually sold in more satisfactory conditions.”

Fellow Kosovo Albanian Besmir Peci, a 38-year-old council worker, was typically delighted at the news but did have concerns for the future. “Nationalisation is better than the bank going to a consortium such as Virgin, which would make huge profits on the back of taxpayers, but the people I am really sorry for are all the bank’s original savers and all those who looked at their shares as some kind of nest egg, when they will be worth nothing now. But hopefully Northern Rock will now cease to be of quite such general interest and can move forward into a more stable and calmer environment than that which we’ve had for the last few weeks or months. I hope it’s nationalisation with a purpose and what we will need to see over a fairly short period of time is a plan of how to run the bank for the time being and also a plan for its future.”

While fireworks greeted the news in Pristina the mood was more downbeat in Belgrade, but there were few of the ugly scenes many had feared and predicted. In one isolated incident a stone-throwing mob of a few hundred, angry at what they saw as the weak regulatory regime that had allowed the original bank run to take place in September, set about attacking the nearest office of the FSA, but mistakenly targeted the embassy of the USA instead. The error was probably down to some confusion over the Cyrillic alphabet or something, I reckon.

RELATED STORIES:
Northern Rock to be nationalised.
Kosovo declares independence.

It is tempting to say that the two main political parties are almost identical to each other these days. Tempting, but wrong. There are still some significant differences; for example, I would rather set myself on fire than vote Conservative, whereas I think a mere scalding from a just-boiled kettle would be preferable to voting Labour, though only just. That’s quite a gulf.

But this squabbling between the Tories and Labour over who first thought of reviewing the police stop and search laws seems a sign of the times. It is not as if this is the first occasion that something like this has happened; there were similar complaints last year over the parties’ inheritance tax plans, and the accusations that one party is stealing the other’s clothes go round and round. There needn’t even be any policy in the first place for the parties to mirror each other; re-defining the term “brassneck”, the Tories have been accusing the government of dithering over Northern Rock since September, all the while shuffling around without a coherent thought to call their own on the subject. Well, that is until recently, since the odd shadow junior minister has now been allowed to appear in the media and, when pressed and pressed on the matter, eventually been permitted to mumble “administration”, sotto voce, in the hope that no one hears.

What a change around. Perhaps it is because my political consciousness was forged and battle-hardened during the Thatcher years, but I still find this all quite peculiar. During the ‘eighties it was all but unheard of for Labour and the Conservatives to agree on anything, and often their disagreements were quite vicious. At that time any bad economic news was greeted with fury on the Labour benches – quite unlike the smug and gleeful hand-rubbing you currently sense from the Tories – and if a single proposal from either party had appeared to mimic a policy of the other you can only imagine it would have caused revulsion, soul-searching and self-flagellation on the part of the policy makers.

It is undoubtedly a good thing if political parties don’t reject a policy out of hand and out of dogma simply because it is part of the opposition’s manifesto, but I’m not sure we are any better off nowadays. Rather than seek to present their own firmly held beliefs in order to win the hearts and minds of the electorate all that seems to matter now is winning a handful of votes in a handful of swing seats; and yet all the while each party still instinctively opposes whatever the other party says, only on ever more spurious grounds. How can the government prevent people from being daft enough to leave a laptop in a car? How can the opposition prevent it in the future? The parties fight it out in wheezes and japes, through proposing unsolicited terror legislation in order to characterise the opposition as being weak on security when they’re not, or by asking a question at PMQs just a few days before a report is to be published on the very same subject – knowing full well that the prime minister can’t pre-empt the report – purely to portray him as someone who can’t answer a straight question.

All this rather than doing the job they are paid for doing; to introduce only the laws that are necessary, or to effectively hold the executive to account. It seems to me that Derek Conway’s sons aren’t the only ones to have received public money while failing to do the parliamentary work we should expect of them.

Peter Hain has resigned from the cabinet, following the news that the Electoral Commission, which had been investigating the late declaration of £103,000 in donations to his Labour deputy leadership campaign, has referred the matter to the police. I bet the cops can’t wait to get cracking, but in their haste I do hope they don’t get sidetracked by the whole case of the Progressive Policies Forum, where many of the donations are alleged to have originated, or “the think tank that hasn’t done any thinking”, as it is probably better known.

So? Can anyone tell me what’s suspicious about that? Isn’t that usually the score? I’m struggling to see the problem here. Since when has a think tank, any think tank, ever thunk? A misnomer if ever there was one, I’ve always thought their purpose is to commission reports that will bolster and support their pre-existing policies; that rather than actually think, their job is to start from a conclusion that concurs with their political philosophy and then work backwards to decide what questions should be being posed, like some sort of ideological Jeopardy. I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do, joining the dots like that, that it isn’t hard work, and time consuming; but can it really classify as thinking?

Well? Am I really so very, very wrong?

There appears to be something of a consensus in the air, that these are grim times indeed for Labour MPs; no doubt I’d feel the same if I were one, but I’m not so sure. As each new day seems to release a fresh embarrassment or disastrous development, it really must be the very best time to be a government minister embroiled in a scandal; before the ink has dried on the newspapers cataloguing your failings there seems an inevitability that there will be another mess along in a minute, appearing just around the corner and bumping you off the front page. Take Jacqui Smith for example; just a couple of weeks ago, during the furore over the 5000 illegal immigrants employed in security positions, she faced a welter of criticism and her job was on the line. By last week however, as she triumphantly announced a successful crackdown on firearms, the previous issue had been forgotten and her position seemed unassailable. Yes, these are surely great times to be a Labour MP; less so if you are the Labour PM.

It is also a great time to be a “political blogger” like that Guido Dale fellow, as your blog pretty much writes itself; why bother to flog a dead horse failing to raise the profile of some gossipy shite of no interest beyond your (impressive by blog standards, trivial in the grand scheme of things) readership? Now you can continue to undermine the monolithic MSM by fearlessly reporting the latest twist, turn or insider information the very minute you watch it on the Daily Politics or Newsnight. Sorted.

I know this isn’t a particularly fashionable view to hold, but I do feel a little bit sorry for Gordon Brown in this all. After all his reputation for being a Macavity figure always absent when things go awry, in the event all manner of disasters have dropped on his toes since day one, most of which I don’t think he can convincingly be blamed for (although in fairness, nor can he really take so much of the credit for the competent handling of the floods, foot and mouth, terrorism and so on, but he does, continually.) Some attempts to make him appear culpable for the Northern Rock and Child Benefit incidents seem to be wishful thinking on the part of some commentators, while the more accurate criticisms of Brown – that he lacks a “vision”, is an uncharismatic Commons performer, that he does not possess Blair’s seamless ability to spin in a lawyerly manner – aren’t bad qualities at all in my book. In truth the tipping point in the criticism of Brown was over his (perfectly sensible) decision not to hold an election; before that, in the eyes of the media and public opinion he could almost do no wrong whatever problems came his way, the focus was instead on David Cameron as he suffered over grammar schools and had the very nerve to fulfil an appointment in Rwanda while his constituency was flooded. After Brown’s non-election call it now appears he can do no right, and events have given him little option but to roll with the punches at every PMQs. It is a quite surreal turnaround.

It has become conventional wisdom to say that if you don’t have a “vision” then you need to govern on competence. Now, I would have thought competence wasn’t an optional extra, and that in its absence a “vision” shouldn’t be suffiecient to paper over the cracks, but anyway competence has been in pretty short supply recently; in all fairness, though, I find it hard to lay the blame for incidents like the bizarre security practices at the HMRC directly at the door of Number 10. At least the most recent story over party funding can be clearly associated with the Labour party itself, but for me it is still not enough; these latest errors are more operational or administrative matters than policy matters, and it is the latter that I think we should concentrate on. To a large extent the Tories were kicked out in 1997 due to sleaze and Black Wednesday, but they were terrible reasons for voting in Labour; the Tories had provided far more damning evidence for a change of government during their period in office. So it is with Gordon Brown, that rather than criticise him for being buffeted by events largely beyond his control he should instead be in the firing line for his continued push for ID cards regardless, and his baseless proposal to extend the period for detaining suspected terrorists beyond the current 28 days.

But who cares about that rubbish when we have a scandal? Not the papers, that’s for sure, as they act in accordance with their bizarre sense of priorities; I dare say I’m not the first to notice that judging by the media’s reaction the very worst thing the Sudanese government has engaged in recently is to have gaoled a teacher for naming a teddy Mohammed. Is that all? I must give credit, mind, to the Sudanese judicial system whose actions have been admirably swift, if crazy; but then if you do insist on crazy laws then you can get crazy situations, both abroad and back at home. And the seemingly bizarre incident of Samina Malik and the legislation behind it is for me a far more valid criticism of this government than some of the more newsworthy recent incidents.

Regarding these recent disasters I actually think Gordon Brown is making the best of a bad job. In admitting wrongdoing and (so far) co-operating with the police over the funding issue he is acting very differently to the way Blair behaved and that is refreshing; although you could say he has little choice I’m not sure that’s true. If you do want to criticise Brown it should be over the stupid things he has actually said – such as the “British jobs for British workers” quote, whatever that means – rather than the fact that he lacks a sense of humour. Criticise his government for drift by all means, but not because of an “impression of drift”, as I have read numerous times; that is as nonsensical as the government’s assertion that we should create laws to “send a signal” to this, that or the other, when we should only create laws for a definite purpose. And again, the carefree and thoughtless way this government apporaches legislation is another, more important matter that we should be criticising them for more often.

Is there any chance we can debate genuine matters of policy and their effects anytime soon? Perhaps we will see a media wind-down up to Christmas and a new broom for the New Year; but while the funding row still seems to have legs, and God knows what other revelation are still to come out, I wouldn’t bet on it.

PostScript; this post has been sat in my drafts folder since Friday, when a trip to the pub, a shop at the Christmas markets, goddamn work and other things prevented me from giving it a final read through. So here – with a few minor amendments due to the intervening chronology, and in the spirit of the Labour party’s current “get the bad stuff out in the open” policy – it is. Now; let’s click “publish” and release the trackback spam.