Category Archives: Politics & current affairs

Margaret Thatcher – the woman who changed Britain

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The passing of Margaret Thatcher

The passing of Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher made history. She was Britain’s first woman prime minister – a landmark that will live in history books long after the controversies of her premiership have faded. She defeated an Argentinian dictator and British union barons. She sold off most nationalised industries. And she helped end the Cold War.

When she became prime minister in May 1979, Britain was in a sorry state. The winter of discontent in 1978/79 made her victory inevitable. While many felt sympathy for low paid workers fighting for higher pay, millions decided enough was enough – ‘we can’t go on like this’ was a common feeling. People were sickened by unions that intimidated members into going on strike and used mobs to enforce their will. Two governments had been destroyed by the unions, in 1974 and 1979. Thatcher was determined it wouldn’t happen again.

Yet Thatcher was often more cautious in her early days than her legend suggests. She gave in to the miners’ demands in 1981 rather than risk defeat. The early union reforms were modest. And privatisation wasn’t even mentioned in the 1979 election manifesto.

She was lucky in her enemies. Winning the Falklands War against the Argentinian junta – a brutal dictatorship that murdered thousands of its own people – ended her vulnerable early days when the SDP/Liberal Alliance was threatening the Tories and Labour alike. Arthur Scargill stupidly bullied the miners into the 1984/85 strike when winter was ending and coal stocks were high.

In time, she became more reckless, more strident, most famously in the disastrous poll tax. John Campbell showed graphically in volume two of his biography of Margaret Thatcher, Iron Lady, how disfunctional her government became in its last years because of her behaviour. Her fall in November 1990 was no surprise.

She also began the long decline of local pride and enterprise, thanks to the emasculation of local government. For the daughter of an alderman, she was indifferent to local initiative  and hostile to the idea of an alternative power base, leading to the abolition of Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council and the English metropolitan counties. Under her rule, Britain saw the rise of private wealth and public squalor, and a sense that selfishness was acceptable.

Labour isn't Working - most bitterly ironic Thatcher poster

Labour isn’t Working – Thatcher’s most cynical campaign poster, 1978

She was also callous in her indifference to the fate of communities devastated by the mass unemployment her government unleashed. The 1981 budget was one of the most brutal of the post war era, leading many to accuse her of using mass unemployment as a weapon to achieve her aims. (And in the doomed attempt to test the economic theory called monetarism.) Similarly, she deliberately shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the less well off in the move to indirect taxation. Her choice of St Francis’s prayer – “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony” – was cynical, as was the 1978 election poster condemning Labour for high unemployment, above. Under her rule, the jobless total reached three million for the first time since the 1930s.

Finally, Margaret Thatcher suffered the fate of someone who lived only for work. She had no hinterland, as Denis Healey put it. This made her a very bad member of the former prime ministers’ club, as her successor John Major found out to his cost.

On the day Margaret Thatcher died, it’s hard to imagine a time before her time in Downing Street. But my first Thatcher memory was her appearance as education secretary 40 years  on the BBC children’s programme Val Meets the VIPs. (Val was the Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton.) In October 1978, our family friends in Germany asked us what we thought of Mrs Thatcher. We explained we weren’t impressed by her stridency…

Tonight, Britain and the world is remembering Britain’s most remarkable postwar prime minister. Our country is the nation she created – for good and ill. None of her successors has matched her ability to explain their mission. And no man since 1979 has dared to suggest that a woman couldn’t be prime minister. That might be as great a legacy as any.

The Daily Mail, Mick Philpott and the welfare state

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An evil man, Mick Philpott, was jailed this week for killing six of his children by setting fire to his house.  His actions were, it seems, a grotesque attempt to frame his former lover for arson. An extraordinary and unique story – hardly a parable for the decline of a nation.

Yet the Daily Mail immediately used the Philpott case as a weapon in its war against the welfare state in one of the most notorious front pages in recent years:

Hate crime: Daily Mail's Philpott front page

Hate crime: Daily Mail’s Philpott front page

No one should be surprised by the Mail’s cynical attempt to use the tragic deaths of six children to further its campaign against the welfare state. This is a paper that revels in spreading disharmony and fear. As Labour’s Dan Hodges points out in a Daily Telegraph blog:

In truth, it’s impossible to rationalise the logic of someone who pours petrol over their home, consigns six children to death, and then according to evidence presented in court “engaged in “horseplay” when he went to view his children’s bodies”. But one thing is certain, the man responsible for this act of barbarism is Mick Philpott, not William Beveridge.

The Mail’s Philpott front page is the latest move in a cynical campaign by the Conservative right wing and their media supporters to smear the poor and disadvantaged. At a time when thousands of families are struggling to make ends meet, the right is very deliberately attacking the postwar consensus that the state should help when hard times strike. At the same time, the coalition’s cabinet of millionaires is cutting benefits and imposing a bedroom tax, while cutting their own tax burden.

All that said, it’s entirely reasonable for the media and politicians to ask serious questions about how the welfare state operates. (In the same way that we should be able to talk about immigration openly and sensibly.) You don’t need to be a right winger to ask whether someone like Philpott should be paid over £54,000 a year by the state to father 17 children. As Dan Hodges said in his blog, the left can be just as cynical in exploiting the vulnerable for their own political purposes. But nothing quite matches the fact that the memory of six tragic children has been used by a newspaper that cares nothing about them, but everything about its hatred for Britain’s welfare state.

It’s not just papers like the Mail who exploited the Philpott story. Before the Derby killings,  Philpott appeared on so-called reality television shows. He became a minor celebrity. This violent and evil man became a figure of entertainment.

One final word. The Daily Mail would have us belief that benefits and allowances are easy to come by. But our family’s experience shows that the state can be callous. My mother is partially sighted. She is totally dependent on my father for support. They’re both in their eighties. They were totally entitled to attendance allowance. Yet she was turned down. The form was designed to ensure people’s applications failed, no matter how worthy their claim. Mum only got the money she deserved because her wonderful MP, Labour’s Alun Michael, took up her cause. (Alun is now  Police & Crime Commissioner for South Wales.) So much for the welfare state.

The state should be there for people when they need help. It often isn’t. But Britain’s millionaire cabinet and the Daily Mail’s calculating editor in chief Paul Dacre live in a different world. They will never comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as the press is meant to. No wonder they’ve formed a cynical alliance to prevent regulation of the press. How telling that they’re more concerned to punish the poor than condemn the bankers, like HBOS bosses Crosby, Hornby and Stevenson, who trousered millions while leaving the state to spend unimaginable billions clearing up their mess.

Let us mourn six tragic children without using them for political purposes.

Pope Francis and the Falklands

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The election of Argentina’s Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis has been seen by many as good news, as the world’s largest church chooses a non European leader for the first time in a millennium. But Bergoglio’s election has been met with misgivings in the Falkland Islands, as the new pope has supported Argentina’s claim to their homeland.

It’s not the first time the papacy has been entwined in the Falklands controversy. Back in 1982, Pope John Paul II’s impending visit to Britain coincided with Argentina’s invasion of the islands. As a result, the pope was forced to pay a ‘balancing’ visit to Argentina.

PS: read my post on the Falklands War, 30 years on. 

Chris Huhne: the liar who put lives at risk

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The disgrace of former Liberal Democrat cabinet minister Chris Huhne is a tragedy – in the sense that Greek dramatists would have understood. His weakness and foolishness has destroyed his family and his political career. He is sure to go to prison. All for a moment of madness when he tried to escape a speeding penalty.

But wait. The point overlooked in the acres of coverage of the story is that Huhne was a reckless risk taker who put lives at risk. The act of deception that destroyed his career was intended to avoid a driving ban. Yet just weeks later he was banned anyway, for using his mobile phone while driving. The man is a menace. And any sympathy we may have for his former wife – Huhne walked out on their 26 year marriage – is tempered by the fact she put other people at risk through their reckless act of conspiracy. (NB: she is reported to be planning to plead not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion.)

It beggars belief that Huhne thought he could lie his way out of this scandal. He did everything he could to have the case thrown out. That is unforgivable. It makes his likely sentence far worse. And at a time when politicians have a very poor reputation, he has reinforced the view that we cannot trust them – that lying is a natural reflex.That’s very unfair to the many principled people in politics.

The saddest aspect of the case is the bitter estrangement between Huhne and his son Peter, revealed in text message exchanges. That reflects the marriage break up as well as the perjury. Any father reading Peter’s texts would have shuddered at the fate of this father-son relationship. A Greek tragedy.

David Cameron, Harold Wilson and Euro referendums

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David Cameron has opened a new chapter in Britain’s troubled membership of what we now call the European Union. He says his party will hold a referendum to decide whether we should stay in the EU, should it win the 2015 general election. He will campaign for Britain to stay, provided he is happy with whatever new settlement he negotiates with Britain’s EU partners.

Any referendum will be the first on Europe since Harold Wilson’s Labour government’s 1975 poll settled the issue for a generation. At the time, it was seen as a clever fix for Labour’s internal war about Europe. (Typical Wilson…) But within five years the party was at war again, leading to the SDP breakaway. Time will tell if Cameron’s move will be any more successful.

I was 11 when Britain voted in 1975. We had a day off school as Cardiff High was being used as a polling station. I remember telling friends we should pull out – I even stuck a copy of the No campaign’s leaflet inside the lid of my school desk. (My friends were sensibly more concerned about whether Bay City Rollers would make number 1.)

In time, I became convinced that Britain should be a positive, active member of what we now call the EU. But I have always been concerned by the madder aspects of the EU: the stupidity of the Common Agricultural Policy, the bureaucracy and lack of democracy. I hate the way the Irish have been told to rerun referendums until they get the ‘right’ result. This is not an institution that inspires love or affection in sensible folk.

I happened to listen to David Cameron’s speech live on BBC Radio 5 Live on Wednesday. It struck me as a very cleverly constructed case for change. I particularly liked the way the prime minister accepted the role the EU played in ending Europe’s eternal wars. He was right to say Europe’s single market was its biggest strength. No sensible person can argue against the idea that the EU desperately needs to change if Europe is to flourish and compete against China, India and Brazil.

Yet Cameron’s move is so blatantly a bid to secure party unity that it’s hard to see it succeeding. Europe isn’t an issue that most people care about – except in the Westminster village. Cameron is unlikely to win an overall majority in 2015, which means he won’t be the one to hold a Euro poll. Unlike Harold Wilson, that wily politician who dominated British politics for over a decade in the 1960s and 1970s.

Remembering Douglas Smith Hon FCIPR

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UPDATED 20.35 4 January 2012 with comment from Bob Skinner

Britain’s PR profession is today mourning a legend: Douglas Smith, one of the best known public affairs practitioners of the past 50 years.

Doug, who died of a heart attack just before Christmas, was president of the (Chartered) Institute of Public Relations the year I joined the institute, 1990. He also chaired the Public Relations Consultants Association. Doug set up Westminster Advisers and was also involved with a number of other public affairs agencies. It’s ironic that Doug died when debate is raging again about Britain’s membership of the European Union. Early in his career, he worked as a press officer with Ted Heath on Britain’s first (unsuccessful) bid to join the EU’s forerunner, the EEC.

Doug helped the triumphant 1989 campaign against Foxley Wood, a proposed new town in Hampshire – taking advantage of the growing concern about the impact of large developments on the environment.

I first met Doug soon after that triumph, when I was working for Eagle Star insurance, one of his clients. (Eagle Star was proposing a similar new town, Micheldever Station; the outcome was the same – eventually.)

Doug was a joy to work with: astute, professional, brilliantly connected and above all joyous company. Over lunch in Westminster in 1998, after I left Eagle Star, he was full of ideas about what I might do next. ‘Why don’t you write the definitive book about PR for the insurance industry?” he asked me. ‘You’d be perfect for it!” I never wrote the book – I didn’t share Doug’s confidence in my expertise, and doubted whether the industry’s PR needs were distinct enough to justify the publication. But the encounter was typical of Doug’s concern for a colleague and enthusiasm for a new project.

Enthusiasm – that was the essence of Doug. He brought energy and passion to everything he did, whether it was making a case for or against a new development, explaining the vital need to educate people on the danger of fires – or sharing his love of cricket. His infectious, slightly high-pitched laugh made any meeting or party unforgettable.

I last met Doug last July, at my first CIPR fellows’ lunch at the House of Lords. Happily, my father Bob Skinner, a 1973 CIPR Fellow, joined me and greeted Doug years after they cooperated as PR local government pioneers. Dad gave Doug a copy of his book about his career in PR and journalism, Don’t Hold the Front Page. On a glorious summer’s day, Doug’s smile illuminated the terrace of the House.

Thanks for the laughter and memories, Doug.

PS: My father, Bob Skinner, adds:

“Doug was exceptional. He was the most effective advocate and supporter of local government I have ever met and that commitment continued throughout his incredibly distinguished career that reached national and international level. And he never lost that enthusiasm for local government, which he served so well in many ways.”

Leveson: David Cameron, the press barons’ friend

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“What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages.”

So said Stanley Baldwin in 1931. (The phrase was provided by his cousin, Rudyard Kipling.) He could have been talking about today’s press barons, and their criminal behaviour.

His current day successor as Tory prime minister is made of different stuff. He sided with the press barons and rejected the central recommendation of the Leveson report: proper regulation of this unruly industry, backed by statute.

Cameron naturally cloaked in noble concepts his rejection of the recommendations of the inquiry he himself set up:

“The issue of principle is that for the first time we would have crossed the rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land. We should I believe be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press.”

A moment’s consideration shows this to be utter nonsense. Parliament has passed countless laws that infringe free speech and a free speech, in many cases for profoundly sensible reasons. (The obvious one is the contempt laws that try to prevent the judicial process being compromised by unfair reporting. Yet the odious tabloid press ignored those laws in its rush to destroy the reputation of Christopher Jefferies, the landlord of murdered Joanna Yeates.)

It’s no surprise that Cameron rushed to rubbish Leveson: like too many politicians, he was unhealthily close to the press barons who have behaved so appallingly. (He rushed to show that Leveson cleared him of any deal with News International, ignoring the fact that a deal was unnecessary: a nudge and a wink was enough, as it was with Tony Blair’s relationship with the Murdoch empire.)

Here are just a few examples of why the argument against statute-backed regulation is so weak:

  • Our criminal and civil justice systems are even more important defences of freedom than the press. Has anyone ever suggested they are weaker for being statute-based?
  • Politicians and journalists claim to fear politicians getting involved in the press. Haven’t they noticed that three out of four chairmen of the useless Press Complaints Commission were Tory peers? And that two of them are lobbying on behalf of the press proprietors against statutory regulation, regardless of the public interest?
  • The press has had countless opportunities to put its own house in order. As long ago as 1991, Tory minister David Mellor said the press was supping in last chance saloon. Twenty years on, it’s still at the bar. If there’s a regulator in the last chance saloon, it might as well be called Ofpiss.
  • Tory and Labour politicians have rightly demanded stronger regulation of industries and professions that have proved inadequate, corrupt and self serving. They have passed laws to enforce that regulation. Yet David Cameron thinks the press should escape scot-free. This is simply not on.
  • Press barons cannot be allowed to choose to be regulated, as Express owner Richard Desmond has exercised to stay out of the Press Complaints Commission. (His titles acted despicably in libelling Madeleine McCann’s parents.) We need legislation to ensure that the likes of Desmond never have this choice again.
  • Legislation and international agreements provide a strong defence of freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Britain was a powerful influence in the creation of the European Convention of Human Rights over 60 years ago. Labour incorporated the ECHR into British law in the Human Rights Act. Yet many Tories opposed both. So much for their concern for freedom of expression.
  • Opponents of the idea of statutory press regulation argue that it’s unnecessary as phone hacking and other press outrages were infringements of existing laws. Yet the point is pointless: the press ignored the law. It needs greater enforcement controls.

The bigger question about Leveson is what it didn’t consider. Ignoring the influence of the online world was a big failure. (Understandable in 1999; inexplicable in 2012.) As the admirable Emily Bell pointed out in the Guardian (before Leveson’s publication), “to put “the internet” within the scope of Leveson would be as daft as it would be futile, and to regulate the press further, without having a broader definition of who “the press” might be, is a recipe for irrelevance.”

Yet I sense that we will soon see the end of the wild west era of the internet, at least in major countries. (We got a hint of that in Lord McAlpine’s actions against Twitter users who libelled him over the false BBC Newsnight allegations.)

Leveson didn’t get everything right. In the first few pages of his report, he called the Mail on Sunday the Sunday Mail (a very different title). More seriously, he misunderstands the importance of protecting sources. Yet overall, he offers a historic new settlement between the press and the people. Politicians and the media should seize the chance.

Church of England: time for disestablishment

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Today’s disgraceful decision by the Church of England’s general synod not to ‘allow’ women to become bishops underlined the medieval attitude of that organisation towards women. (The use of the word ‘allow’ in the synod vote tells you all you need to know about the church’s  attitude towards women.)

The consequence must be the end of the cosy relationship between church and state. It’s time for England to follow the other home countries and disestablish the Anglican church. Or to apply equality laws to the church. It cannot have it both ways.

It was quite bizarre listening to a female opponent of women bishops telling BBC Radio 5 Live that the decision was a victory for unity. How can discriminating against half the human race be described as unity? As always, this troubled organisation shows a genius for shooting itself in the foot.

George Entwistle’s Radio 4 Today exit interview

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BBC’s Chris Patten and George Entwistle: losing control. Photo: BBC

Listening to BBC director general George Entwistle’s interview with John Humphrys on Today this morning was like witnessing a car crash in slow motion. Humphrys was as amazed as anyone else that Entwistle was totally unaware that Newsnight was broadcasting a report that all but named a top Tory as a paedophile. The allegation was totally false. The interview must surely represent Entwistle’s BBC exit interview.

After Newsnight’s disastrous scrapping of its exposure of Jimmy Savile as a serial child abuser, it’s impossible to understand how this new report wasn’t seen as an obvious one to refer to the highest levels. (Entwistle is supposed to be the BBC’s editor in chief.) Yet the top man was as hopelessly out of touch as over the Savile saga.

It shows a complete failure of management. Any competent chief executive would have put the BBC on a war footing over the past six weeks. He (or she) would have insisted any sensitive issue that might escalate the BBC’s crisis must be referred to him. He’d have made sure that top executives were on top of any situation. Yet what does Entwistle do? Nothing, if the latest Newsnight own goal is any indication.

It was painful to listen to Entwistle’s pathetic excuses during today’s Humphrys interview. Why didn’t he intervene? He was giving a speech. He was out. Why didn’t he see the tweet 24 hours before Newsnight’s broadcast telling the world what it would be reporting? He only looks at Twitter occasionally and missed it. (So why didn’t the BBC PR bosses alert him?)

Entwistle once again came across as a thoroughly decent man who would have made an excellent middle ranking official. But he’s no leader. He has learned nothing from the events of the last six months. His reaction to the latest disaster? Asking for yet another inquiry. That’s not leadership. It’s desperately delaying the inevitable: his resignation.

UPDATE: George Entwistle tonight resigned as the 15th director general of the BBC after less than three months.

Here’s the transcript of the Humphrys v Entwistle Today interview.