And another thing…

COMPARE and contrast the following two statements:

• The government should butt out of our lives and allow adults to make their own choices without nanny state interference.

• The government’s job is to tell us what kind of relationship would suit us best, and to spend our money doing so.

You see what I did there? I took a well-worn right wing mantra and I turned it back on the Tory leadership. Goodness me! I’m quite the John Bird, aren’t I? Well, maybe not…

But what strikes me about Cameron’s latest pronouncements is that he’s sounding more like a Tory blogger and less like a Prime Minister-in-waiting. “Ooh, isn’t this health and safety stuff annoying? You know, I had that Dan Hannan in the back of the cab last week – lovely bloke…”

And now we have his own version of political “dividing lines”, this time on the subject of marriage. Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of marriage – I’ve done it twice, after all. But I’m not going to tell anyone else that if they don’t get married, they’re letting themselves, or their children, or society down.

Even when I wrote “The return of morality” a few months ago, I wasn’t suggesting that every teenage girl who gets pregnant should marry the father – I was saying that they should avoid pregnancy altogether because all too often (but not in every case) the state has to meet the cost of the choices they’ve made.

Just because the government isn’t going to restore the married couple’s tax alowance abolished by the current Shadow Business Secretary under the last Tory government, that does not mean we don’t want to celebrate marriage. In my opinion, and in the opinion of most people, marriage is (fanfare, please…) A Good Thing. But it may not be right for everyone. It’s simply not possible for some, so why should they be told that there is a better, superior government-designed template for adult relationships to which they should aspire?

Cameron is being dishonest. He told the Mail:

Labour’s pathological inability to recognise that marriage is a good thing puts them on completely the wrong side of their own dividing line. Ed Balls seems to see marriage as irrelevant. I don’t think it is

Labour’s “pathological inability”? What’s he on about? What’s “pathological” about saying that it’s not the government’s job to tell people who aren’t married that they should be? What’s “pathological” about saying that it’s up to individuals, not the government, to decide if marriage is for them? Given that most of the Cabinet are in married relationships (in Ed Balls’s case, with another member of the Cabinet) how can Cameron say Labour are refusing to recognise that marriage is a good thing?

Or does he just like using big words like “pathological”, even when he doesn’t know what they mean?

As a government, our focus should be on children, not on the legal relationship between their parents. Child poverty is a stain on our society and its eradication must continue to be a priority for every government. So how, exactly, at a time when sweeping budget cuts are being predicted across government, will it help to offer tax breaks to childless, married couples, gay or straight?

I understand the political instinct to want to wave a magic wand and instantly transform society so that everyone was married with two and a half kids and no-one ever got divorced and we all lived happily ever after. But we can’t. And even if we could, we shouldn’t.

IF YOU wanted to devise a sure-fire strategy for making the BNP more popular and for increasing resentment against this country’s Muslim minority, you could do no better than the “anti-war” protests in Luton yesterday.

To greet British troops returning from active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan with placards denouncing them as “butchers” is beyond disgusting. It’s the British equivalent of the the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, whose members famously (infamously) picket the funerals of US soldiers by displaying “God hates fags” banners.

I don’t know whether the protesters are deliberately trying to damage race relations (I suspect they don’t care one way or the other) but they will certainly succeed.

And I feel it’s only a matter of time before someone starts laying into The Daily Mail for carrying this story so prominently on its front page. But why shouldn’t it? It’s a perfectly valid story in which many people are interested. Most other papers carried it anyway, albeit in their inside pages.

In this case, we should blame the message, not the messenger. Those who chose to stir up racial tensions by staging an inappropriate and unnecessary protest are the ones who should take the blame for they damage they have done.

CONGRATULATIONS to me old mucker, Ben Brogan, who has jumped ship from The Daily Mail to a high-falutin’ job with his previous employer, The Daily Telegraph.

I’ve known Benedict since his days at the Glasgow Herald; he’s one of the nicest people I know in the media and always plays with a straight bat. I’ll miss his blog at the Mail, but no doubt it will re-emerge in some form or other.

LITERALLY millions of incensed licence payers jammed the BBC switchboard yesterday after foul-mouthed billionaire presenter Jonathan Ross made his latest tasteless gaffe.

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population gasped in horror as spoiled fop-and-a-dandy Ross confessed he had not watched the Queen’s address to the nation on Christmas Day!

“I slept all the way through it, I must admit,” he smirked during his Saturday morning Radio 2 show. The lisping lothario also offended viewers with more foul-mouthed abuse, remarking flippantly that he didn’t “give a damn” about whether Eastenders or Coronation Street is the most popular soap on the box.

One pensioner listener could barely speak through her anger. Ena Sharples (99) of Weatherfield, near Manchester, said: “I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! He slept through Her Majesty’s speech! He might as well have called for her to be beheaded! And this is what I’m paying my licence fee for? Disgusting! He should be sacked right away. And given a right good kicking.”

Another listener, 120-year-old retired army general, Sir Edward Ponsonby-Sachs, fumed: “This chap should be taken out and flogged, simple as that. To think that my licence fee is used entirely to pay for this traitor’s salary so that he can spend his days making filthy phone calls to members of the Royal Family makes my blood boil.”

Ross compounded his crimes earlier today when, he saw reporters going methodically through his dustbin outside his plush, expensive London home paid for by TV licence payers, he angrily blasted: “Look, would you mind leaving me alone? I’m a bit tired.”

The BBC Board of Governors was today expected to issue a statement about Ross’s behaviour. A spokesman for the BBC said: “I’m sorry, what’s your question? I’m not following you.” 

(Hat-tip to The Daily Mail.)

Sorry I wasn’t blogging yesterday. Events, dear boy…

To a constituency event today in the constituency, a family fun day organised by the Greater Pollok Integration Network at King George V playing fields in Kennishead. Unexpectedly asked to say a few words from the main stage; actually I wasn’t there in any official capacity, more because Ronnie and Reggie are bouncy castle addicts and they promised to hurt us if we didn’t take them.

As I was coming off the stage, a well-known local community activist collared me and said: “You and I don’t agree on much…” (Uh-oh, thought I) “but I totally agreed with what you were saying in the papers last week.”

I’ve been getting this a lot. Labour MPs in particular have concluded that any colleague who gets done over by the Daily Mail must, by definition, be A Good Thing. I recently had a conversation with a former member of the cabinet who still hasn’t forgiven the Mail for the Zinoviev letter.

The Mail Online has described my blog post as “Mr Harris’s ‘cheer up’ message”.

I know it’s only the Mail, but for the record, I absolutely was not telling people to cheer up. I was simply asking why people in the current generation – even those who aren’t suffering as much from the current economic slowdown – aren’t as happy as our parents’ generation. Am I being too optimistic in expecting a grown-up debate about this?

I’ve always been aware of the pitfalls to blogging, especially as an MP and more especially as a minister. With every post I’ve written, I’ve asked myself: would I be comfortable if this found its way into, let’s say, The Daily Mail? Well, I’m about to find out.

Today, as I was driving home up the M6, I received two calls from journalists. Apparently Philip Hammond, the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is a fan of my blog and has decided my comments about people being miserable are worthy of exploiting for party political reasons. So read the Mail tomorrow.

Seems a shame if ministers and MPs can’t provoke a debate about serious subjects without having some headline-chaser making capital out of it.

UPDATE (10.40pm): BBC Five Live have just invited me to be on their show just after eleven tonight to defend my “insensitive” comments. And I’ve just switched on Sky News to find I’m the front page splash in the Mail. Golly!

The Daily Mail’s running yet another hatchet piece on Cherie Blair, according to the review of the papers on BBC News. Apparently she’s bought another property. At this point you’re entitled to say “And?” And… that’s it. The newspaper that prides itself on being the voice of the home-owning middle classes is running a hate campaign against a successful and wealthy woman on the grounds that… er… that she’s a successful and wealthy woman. Oh, and she’s married to our former prime minister.

And here’s me thinking that the politics of envy was the exclusive preserve of the Left.