And another thing…

SOME might say that, as the author of a blog that did rather well in the last two Total Politics Blog Awards, I have more to lose than others by indulging in a boycott of this year’s contest, as proposed by Though Cowards Flinch.

The boycott is being suggested as a response to Total Politics publisher Iain Dale agreeing to interview Nick Griffin for the latest issue, a decision which resulted in the resignation of Labour MP Denis MacShane from the TP board.

And of course I sympathise. And I admit I raised an eyebrow when Iain announced on his blog that the interview was happening. But I won’t take part in the boycott, for a number of reasons.

The first of those is that Griffin and his odious chums are now democratically-elected representatives of the British people. I wish it were not so, but it is. And ignoring the BNP now isn’t too far from ignoring the views of however many people voted for them. Not a particularly democratic principle, I think you’ll find. And I trust that all those who now want to boycott Total Politics also refuse to watch Question Time…

Secondly, Total Politics is a magazine that political anoraks like us should be encouraging, not boycotting. In this anti-politics age, where celebrity tittle-tattle is considered more important than democracy, shouldn’t we value those very few magazines which seek to portray politics and politicians in a reasonably positive way?

Third, I started this blog to try to rebalance the blogosphere, to add what I hoped would be a popular and articulate Labour voice to the more popular right wing blogs. Large numbers of left-wing, Labour and progressive blogs boycotting the annual poll would effectively mean us retiring from the arena, making the results in the “Labour-supporting” and “Left-wing” categories meaningless. Another victory for the right-wing, then.

Fourth, I worry that the “no platform” argument is used too often as an alternative to addressing the issues which drive voters to abandon the mainstream parties in favour of the BNP in the first place. Yes, the BNP are racists, but that cannot be the end of the debate. And we can’t win the argument with someone to whom we refuse to listen.

Fifth: why is it always the Left which calls for boycotts? Why must that, rather than argument, be our gut reaction? That and banning stuff, obviously.

And lastly, I rather like those Total Politics widgets in the right hand column. They’re dinky.

IT’S NO secret that I’m on friendly terms with Tory blogger Iain Dale. But his post today is nothing less than a peurile attempt to smear a retiring Labour MP in a way which, had it been directed by a Labour blogger at a Tory MP, Iain would no doubt condemn.

So, what has he said, exactly?

The anouncement certainly came as a surprise to SNP activists in Rutherglen and Hamilton West since they’ve seen McAvoy out and about campaigning for what they assumed was his re-election.

“…for what they assumed was his re-election.”? So, MPs only campaign for their own re-election? They don’t campaign for, say, their own party generally? My predecessor, Lord Maxton, helps out during most elections here in Glasgow South; according to Iain Dale, that makes no sense because he’s not standing for election. Go figure.

It could of coyrse (sic) just be absolute coincidence that his announcement comes after Jim Devine claimed a male Labour whip advised him to claim his expsenses in the way he did.

Er, yes, it could be exactly that – coincidence. Plus the fact that Tommy is 66 years old, which, in most people’s view, would make his announcement entirely understandable.

This claim was followed up by the Labour Party launching an internal inquiry to identify the whip whom Jim Devine fingered:

Inquiry? If Jim Devine fingered the whip in question, then there would be no need for an inquiry. If he refused to name the whip, then what would be the point of an inquiry? It couldn’t possibly come to any conclusion about the whip’s identity, any more than you can identify unnamed MPs who brief to journalists.

Conciidentally that was also the day (February 10th) that John Ward suggested Tommy McAvoy may be the whip;

First of all, who’s John Ward? Oh, he’s a blogger? Well, why didn’t you say, then? Case closed…

Ward doesn’t offer any evidence at all to support his conclusion that it was Tommy, other than because he’d eliminated some of the other serving whips at the time. And his in-depth knowledge of the whips is rather exposed anyway when he says that Helen Jones “may terrify the bejesus out of most Labour MPs”. Hardly a description that a single Labour MP would recognise.

Iain then dredges up some well-worn stuff about Tommy’s property purchases in London, almost as if, in some way, that linked him to Devine. Which it doesn’t. At all. In any conceivable way.

But as far as investigative or intuitive journalism goes, this is the “best” bit”:

Finally, and as an aside, I’ve noticed of late that suggestions for friends on Facebook have been throwing up a significant number of Labour MPs. It made me wonder if they were setting up pages as part of their re-election campaigns.

If it is for re-election why did Tommy McAvoy set one up if he was retiring anyway?

You see what he did there? “It made me wonder if they were setting up pages as part of their re-election campaigns.” It made him wonder? And if a piece of information causes a Tory blogger to wonder about the possibility of something, then that is evidence, is it? “If it is for re-election…” If. IF!

Iain clearly doesn’t understand either the Labour Party or parliament itself. Why should he? He’s neither a Labour Party member nor an MP (yet). Many Labour MPs choose to go through the mandatory reselection process which occurs during each parliament for one of three reasons: they want to stand again; they haven’t made up their mind about whether to stand again and want to keep their options open; or they intend to stand down but would prefer to announce closer to the election.

I was surprised to discover that Tommy is even as old as 66 – he’s certainly a very young-looking 66 – but who can honestly blame him for wanting to stand down after 23 years as an MP and 13 years as a government whip?

The claims Iain makes are entirely unfounded and unjustified. They are gossip, nothing more. And to suggest, with a nod and a wink, that Tommy has somehow been pressed by the party into standing down against his wishes is nothing more than a smear against a good man about whom Iain Dale knows nothing.

IS IT just me, or do I detect a certain level of nervousness among some of the right-wing blogmeisters?

As two polls put Labour within seven and eight points of the Tories, and Cameron looks for a policy – any policy – on which to perform a U-turn, Tory asumptions about being swept to power on a tidal wave of enthusiasm for Dave seem to be thinner on the ground of late.

The only person who seems absolutely convinced beyond doubt that they’re heading to an unambiguous win, if not a landslide, is Iain Dale, who interprets the retirement of a 65-year-old Labour MP as defeatism (but presumably sees the retirement of a 65-year-old Tory as a sensible move to make way for an aspiring minister).

Yet, look through some of the comments left by cyberTories on this and other blogs. Just sample some of the vitriol used by them to attack the government and Gordon Brown personally. According to them, this is the worst government in history. We’re regarded by every single voter as traitorous, incompetent liars. We’ve burdoned the next five thousand generations of Britons with a billion and a half pounds of debt each. And that’s before they get to the personalised attacks on Gordon’s character and mental health.

And yet, and yet…

Surely, if there were any validity in these silly accusations, the Tories would indeed be heading for a landslide? That at the end of the longest and deepest recession for half a century the Tories can barely get their opinion poll lead into double figures and their own poll rating above 40 per cent says a great deal about the suspcion with which David Cameron is viewed by sensible voters.

You have to wonder what the polls would look like if the Tories had elected a charismatic and trustworthy leader instead of him (presuming, of course, that such an alternative been available at the time)?

And if you turn down the volume of the telly and listen carefully, that sound you can just about hear in the distance is the sound of fingernails at Conservative Central Office being chewed to the quick.

I’LL GET straight to the point: any attempt at regulating blogs would be doomed to failure from the start. And it’s a bonkers idea anyway.

But the prospect of it happening has been the blogosphere’s darkest nightmare for a very long time, and until now I’ve always considered it as something of a straw man. Unfortunately, it’s none other than Baroness Buscombe, chairperson of the Press Complaints Commission, who has raised this as a serious prospect.

According to Ian Burrell of The Independent:

She wants to examine the possibility that the PCC’s role should be extended to cover the blogosphere, which is becoming an increasing source of breaking news and boasts some of the media’s highest-profile commentators, such as the political bloggers Iain Dale and Guido Fawkes. Do readers of such sites, and people mentioned on them, deserve the same rights of redress that the PCC offers in respect of newspapers and their sites?

Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated,” Baroness Buscombe told me. “Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it’s news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It’s a very interesting area and quite challenging.”

Look, if anyone in the UK regards a political blog as somewhere to pick up objective news and analysis, then they don’t deserve the protection of an “independent regulator”; they deserve to be force-fed every nutcase conspiracy theory and viscious smear going. If you want news, buy a newspaper, or visit a news organisation’s website. I’m a fan and a friend of Dale’s but even he wouldn’t pretend that he’s a source of objective political news and analysis.

The suggestion could only have been made by someone with absolutely no notion of what blogs are, and how and why they operate. My only consolation is that the suggestion hasn’t come from the government.

The Baroness says that the if the PPC wanted to consider bringing blogs under its remit, such a move “would involve discussion with the press industry, the public and bloggers (who would presumably have to volunteer to come beneath the PCC’s umbrella).”

Oh, dear me. Well, good luck with that, Baroness. I’ll be interested to see what you conclude. But, in common with most other bloggers worth their name, And another thing… will never come under the regulation of the PCC or anyone else.

This is what I had to say in April about the government’s previous attempt to regulate blogs.

UPDATE on Wednesday at 9.20 am: Okay, folks, just relax. Guido has done what I should have done before publishing the above and actually asked the PPC about their intentions blog-wise. Nothing to see here, apparently. No plans to regulate blogs. Well, okay, then….

FASCINATING to watch the Conservative Party convulse over the prospect of all-women shortlists. Been there, seen it, done, it, bought the tee-shirt…

I admit that as a young man with parliamentary ambitions in the early 1990s, I was not a strong vocal supporter of all-women shortlists in the Labour Party. Even today, I’m resigned to their inevitability rather than enthusiastic about them.

Faced with the prospect of losing my chance even to put myself forward as a Labour candidate on account of the fact that I was born male, various male comrades and I started to discuss what could be done – within party rules, of course – to frustrate the party’s aim of imposing all-women shortlists.

The key, we concluded, was mandatory reselection. Once in each parliament, every Labour MP hoping to continue in parliament must be reselected to fight the subsequent election. It was suggested that, in a seat where the (usually male) MP was intending to retire, and where there might be a prospect of the national party imposing an all-women shortlist, then a “mock deselection” could be organised. Instead of announcing publicly that he intended to retire, the incumbent would instead announce he was planning to stand again. An aspiring young (male) candidate would then mount a challenge to the MP’s continuing candidacy, a challenge to which the incumbent would mysteriously succumb. No retirement, so no vacancy, so no imposition of all-women shortlist.

Genius, eh?

Undoubtedly, there will be those in the Conservative Party who will consider pursuing such cynical strategies. But they’re wasting their time. What did for all-women shortlists in the 1990s was the fact that employment law made them illegal. That’s no longer the case.

I still don’t support all-women shortlists. On the other hand, I can’t see any alternative to increasing the numbers of women in the Commons. And there’s no doubt that, in Labour’s experience, whenever an all-women shortlist is announced, a much wider range of female candidates are encouraged to apply, secure in the knowledge that it won’t be a carve-up to the advantage of a favoured son.

I’ll be interested to see how this debate pans out in the Conservative Party.

MY TORY chum, Iain Dale, is optimistically punting Louise “Sarah Palin is my political heroine” Bagshawe’s recent Tweets as articulating Tory European policy “better than either David Cameron or Eric Pickles did this morning”:

Here’s our policy on Lisbon: we oppose it, and we want a referendum. And if it’s not ratified by polling day, we’ll have one. And if it is?

If it is, we’ll announce what we do about its lack of legitimacy then. The Tories: crossing bridges when we come to them.

Labour hates it when David Cameron is pragmatic. It’s sweet how desperate for a Euro-split they are. This sceptic is fine w/ being practical.

There’s only one tiny problem with this attempt to paper over the cracks in the Tory Party before it all comes crashing down like a Glasgow MP’s bedroom ceiling: if the treaty is ratified before the general election, then, by definition, Cameron will have time before polling day to tell us what he will do. There would be no justification for waiting until after polling day finally to announce what he actually meant by “we would not let matters rest there.”

The nation holds its breath.

I’M NOT at all sure if my personal endorsement will help or hinder Iain Dale in his attempt to become his party’s official candidate in Bracknell.

There are seven candidates, one of whom will be chosen in what Iain calls an “open primary”, but which will be more like a caucus – anyone who’s registered to vote in the Bracknell constituency can turn up at Blue Mountain Golf Club on Saturday 17 October and vote for who they would like to see as Tory candidate in the seat being vacated by Andrew MacKay.

I confess I don’t know any of the other candidates, but I’ve come to know Iain quite well over the past couple of years and I would count him as a friend. Politically, he’s wrong on just about everything, of course (well, he is a Tory, after all) but I genuinely believe he would be an asset to the Parliamentary Conservative Party if he were to achieve his ambition. This is someone with a significant political achievement to his name; Iain Dale buit the template for serious political blogging in the UK and no-one has yet managed to improve on it.

He’s also honest, principled and speaks his mind. And his head certainly wouldn’t be turned by the prospect of front bench responsibilities.

If you’re a voter in Bracknell, even if you normally vote for a party other than the Tories, I hope you’ll seriously consider lending your vote to Dale.

And then, whoever wins the Tory nomination, remember to vote Labour at the general election.

MY PROGRESS towards total domination of the Labour Party has been slow but steady. According to Iain Dale and Brian Brivati’s annual Top 100 Most Influential Left Wingers list, I’ve soared to a dizzy 93rd place – up six places since last year.

I wonder what position I would have been in had GB not sacked me last October?

Just another fifteen and a half years of this and I’ll hit that number one spot! Bwah, ha, ha…!

AS USUAL, someone else has put a case more lucidly and intelligently than I managed. So I’ve used Stuart Sharpe’s excellent analysis of the PoliticsHome controversy as an opportunity to add him belatedly to my blogroll.

I had made the point in the thread to Iain’s post on the subject that Ashcroft’s purchase of PoliticsHome was comparable to a buy-out by Peter Mandelson. How would Conservative members of the PH100 panel have reacted to that, I wonder? But Stuart has a much sharper (ahem!) comparison

Iain Dale has attacked the resignations as ‘the worst kind of gesture politics’, but really there is more to it than that. One wonders how Tim Montgomerie would have reacted, for instance, if PoliticsHome had been bought by Unite – I’m not certain such a change of ownership would have been met with a simple shrug. It seems the biggest issue (for the more serious people) isn’t the money from Lord Ashcroft but the fact that Andrew Rawnsley and Martin Bright have withdrawn their support from the project.

I agree with the last point entirely: I have no problem with a Tory owning PoliticsHome; I have more (but not insurmountable) problems with Ashcroft owning it; but when senior and respected journalists lose faith in its impartiality, members of the PH100 panel cannot be expected to shore up its credibility.

I HAVE another “#1″ rating to add to my other three, it seems. And there was me thinking Dale had finished his series of announcements on rankings in the Total Politics Blog Poll 2009. I hope Hopi Sen isn’t too aggrieved…

The top ten Labour blogs, according to votes by blog readers:

1 Tom Harris MP
2 Hopi Sen
3 LabourList
4 Alastair Campbell
5 Luke Akehurst
6 Next Left
7 Sadie’s Tavern
8 Blackburn Labour
9 Kerry McCarthy MP
10 Bickerstaffe Record

There’s only one more category in which I may have a chance: Scottish Blogging Labour Ex-Ministers Over Six Feet Tall Who Like Doctor Who. I did well in that last year but I’m not counting my chickens this time round…