Britannia Radio

SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 19.4.09
1. The last chance for a government that's lost the plot
Telegraph View: The Prime Minister and the Chancellor must make a 
complete break with the spin culture of the past and produce a Budget 
of austere integrity.

Fear and loathing at the heart of Government: the vortex of vicious 
smears, spin, recrimination and vendetta into which Labour has 
descended is not a pretty sight. At a time of acute national crisis 
the politicians supposed to be responsible for leading the country 
into economic recovery are fighting among themselves like stoats in a 
sack. The past week has been pure gothic horror. As the fallout from 
the Downing Street emails scandal continued to contaminate the 
political atmosphere, the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service 
not to proceed against Damian Green, shadow immigration minister, 
further discredited the already heavily compromised Home Secretary 
Jacqui Smith.

The damage was aggravated by the revelation that the real target of 
the police raid on Damian Green's House of Commons office was Shami 
Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, whom Andy Burnham, the Culture 
Secretary, was accused of smearing last year at the time of the 42-
day detention controversy. The clear inference is that, in the view 
of this Government, campaigning on human rights issues is a 
potentially criminal activity. The extent to which Labour has broken 
loose from all its traditional moorings was highlighted by the 
resignation from the party, after half a century, of veteran former 
MP Alice Mahon. Viewed from every perspective, a consensus is 
emerging: this Government is exhausted, Labour has lost the plot.

Narcissism has been the defining characteristic of Labour since 1997. 
The "narrative" was too often about Labour, too infrequently about 
the country. Insofar as the country featured in New Labour's vision, 
it was as a laboratory for social engineering experiments. Even Old 
Labour, at its worst, retained a genuine cultural and moral identity 
with one half of the nation - a regrettably sectarian division, but 
arguably preferable to having no roots at all.[I as a life-long Tory 
- now a 'would-be' one - found I could dislike their policies but 
respect their leaders.  Today "respect"  what's that mean ?  -cs]  
Now the consequences of New Labour's deracinated, hot-house isolation 
from the realities of the wider world have materialised in the shape 
of a serious recession against which 12 years of reckless prodigality 
have left us more defenceless than we ought to be.

What makes last week's governmental debacle especially unforgivable 
is the fact that it occurred on the eve of the most critical Budget 
since 1945. How can ministers, including the Prime Minister and 
Chancellor, be focused on it when they are engulfed in a crisis of 
smears and spin? The danger is that this unsavoury preoccupation 
could intrude into the Budget itself, with catastrophic consequences. 
It is crucial that this week's key offensive against the recession 
(for that is what it amounts to) should be ring-fenced against 
partisan game-playing and the kind of fiscal gesture politics we have 
seen too often in the past.

The markets are watching: it is imperative they should be reassured 
that Britain has a credible road map to recovery, rather than be 
moved to derision by yet another Gordon Brown public relations stunt  
[see my earlier " "Not much cheer in run-up to budget" with Brown's 
disastrous proposals -cs]  laced with candy-floss "initiatives". The 
shelf-life of these headline-courting non-events (remember citizens' 
juries, the capital investment programme for creating 100,000 
additional jobs, the National Internship Scheme, etc?) has 
demonstrated their extremely perishable nature. It was not 
reassuring, on the eve of the Budget, to see Peter Mandelson touting 
a £5,000 grant to allow people to buy electric cars, though no 
vehicles will qualify before 2011 at the earliest.

A Budget polluted with gimmicks and spin like that would be self-
defeating. It would persuade the markets that the British Government 
has no realistic answer to recession, that it intends to continue 
pursuing a somnambulist's course that will lead it eventually into 
the waiting room of the IMF benefits office. What is needed is for 
the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to make a complete break with 
the spin culture of the past and to produce a Budget of austere 
integrity. No fiscal sleight of hand,  no curlicues: an honest, 
uncomplicated, what-you-see-is-what-you-get blueprint for restoring 
Britain's public finances is the only effective solution.

This Budget must be predicated on one priority: the national 
interest. That means mapping out practical plans for controlling 
public expenditure. The Prime Minister must finally abandon his 
destructive inclination to put sticking-plaster on indebtedness by 
resorting to further borrowing. Instead, he needs to propose real and 
credible cuts in public spending. That may not sound much like a 
Brown Budget; but Britain's finances can no longer be run by Mr 
Micawber.

The criterion by which the Budget must be judged is a straightforward 
yardstick: is this going to promote or impede economic recovery?
If the Government delays its unambiguous conversion to fiscal 
rectitude beyond next Wednesday, hoping to get away with cosmetic 
adjustments, Britain will be in serious trouble. This really is the 
last bite at the cherry.
================AND -------->
2. Our next government needs a new way of governing
David Cameron will have to overhaul our political culture - and 
quickly, says Iain Martin.

By Iain Martin

With the Prime Minister caught behaving like a cross between Richard 
Nixon and Inspector Clouseau, the path to the next election is clear. 
It will be difficult for David Cameron to win an overall majority, 
although I maintain, as I have done since Gordon Brown became Prime 
Minister, that the Tories will do it. But if, by next June, Cameron 
cannot at least ensure the Conservatives are the largest party in the 
Commons, then he will not have been trying very hard. [AND there 
would be no hope left -cs]

In that context, today's [ICM -er - a subsidiary of! -cs] poll for 
The Sunday Telegraph, the first in the wake of the McBride email 
imbroglio, is devastating for Brown. It shows Labour sinking back to 
26 points, 17 behind the Tories on 43. The government is dying. That 
would be fine if it was only Gordon Brown's own private nightmare, 
but it's not: we're all involved and the country is getting 
absolutely stuffed in the process.

In the circumstances, amid the growing stench of decay and distrust, 
the task facing any incoming government looks virtually impossible. 
There is such a feeling of disgust with the political class that no 
new government can expect to begin its work with much swelling of 
good will. Indeed, Cameron judges that he will be allowed only the 
briefest honeymoon even if his campaign trumpets a time for change. 
Yes, yes, of course it's time for a change, one imagines the voters 
saying wearily, but don't you lot always say that?

There is a widespread belief that, irrespective of party, our masters 
are expert only at claiming their expenses and knifing each other. 
Government is judged simply not to work.

Cameron's first task on entering Number 10 is to change that, 
quickly, and in a way clearly understood by a sceptical public. If he 
is to secure the time and leeway to get anything serious done in 
office, such as education reform, the first essential will be a quiet 
revolution in how Britain is governed. Gordon Brown talked of this on 
becoming a Prime Minister, but you needed your head examined if you 
thought he was serious about doing anything more than saying it.

Brown is the great centraliser, and Whitehall doesn't work properly 
largely because of what he and Tony Blair did to it as they built 
their rival camps. Brown's Treasury assumed too much power over other 
departments. He envisioned himself controlling the economy and 
domestic policy, while the PM would be left with international 
affairs, soundbites about the deaths of Diana and Frank Sinatra and 
other aspects of public relations.

Foolishly having agreed to this without understanding the 
implications, Blair realised that he had to respond. Out of the 
Cabinet Office he built a large team working for him - effectively a 
department of the PM - to compete with his Chancellor. Management 
consultants and assorted "gurus" (Lord Birt of the BBC, for goodness 
sake!) were given desks in Number 10 or beyond and drew charts of how 
government and the country could be made to work efficiently.

It was quite mad and the results have been disastrous. Cascading from 
these rival operations came competing targets and endless "eye-
catching initiatives" which cost much but achieved little. Most 
members of the Cabinet were not really masters in their own 
departments. They simply counted the days between counter-productive 
interventions by one or other arm, or both, of the controlling centre.

And so, despite attempts by Brown to show that this is no longer the 
way he works without Blair around, the McBride affair showed again 
that control is the dominant component in Brown's DNA. His henchmen's 
response to the challenge of the internet and blogging is 
instructive. They increase freedom and limit the possibility of 
centralised control, but Team Brown thought they could shape this new 
life-force from a bunker in Number 10.

The Tories, by contrast, need to govern quite differently; copying 
New Labour's approach would be deadly.

So far the signs are encouraging. A member of the shadow cabinet 
says: "In the 1980s you had about a dozen people working in Downing 
Street for Margaret, with her private office and the policy unit. 
That's all. You don't need a strong department of the prime minister. 
You need a strong PM who sets a clear direction and lets good people 
get on with it."

Likewise a Tory aide says: "David is simply not a control freak." As 
for the battered Civil Service: "there are good people, who need to 
be led."

That's a start, but it will hardly convince the public. For attitudes 
towards government to improve even a little, there must be a more 
extensive and dramatic programme of reform. The number of ministers 
must be sharply reduced - and Cameron is preparing to do this. There 
need to be far fewer special advisers, particularly at the centre of 
government. There is a Tory plan emerging to reduce the number of MPs 
- a long overdue reform.

All that is commendable. But the test will come when Cameron crosses 
the Downing Street threshold. Can he resist the lure of gimmicky 
Blairite initiatives? Can he admit, unlike the incumbent, that he 
cannot control everything? He should try.

==========================
SUNDAY TIMES 19.4.09
Ed Balls 'ran' Labour's smear unit

Isabel Oakeshott, Deputy Political Editor

ED BALLS, the schools secretary, used Damian McBride, the disgraced 
spin doctor, to smear ministerial rivals and advance his own 
ambitions, a Downing Street whistleblower has claimed..  [And who 
might that be ?  mmm!   Tom Watson trying to put a smokescreen over 
himself ?  Damian McBrude himself?  - nice folk! -cs]

In an explosive new twist to the e-mail affair, a No 10 insider has 
revealed that Balls was the mastermind behind a "dark arts" operation 
by McBride to undermine colleagues.

He claims the education secretary is running a destabilising "shadow 
operation" inside Downing Street to clear his path for the party 
leadership if Labour loses the next election.

The insider said: "There is now an operation within an operation at 
No 10 and it answers to Ed Balls."

Balls's behaviour has provoked a backlash from ministers, who fear 
his ambition is distracting the government from fighting the 
recession. Some insiders believe the shadow operation threatens to 
destroy Labour's hopes of winning the general election.  [What planet 
do they inhabit? -cs]

The whistleblower, who has had a ringside seat on the power struggles 
inside No 10, claims that Balls:
- Engineered McBride's move from civil servant to special adviser
- Repeatedly protected McBride when colleagues called for him to be 
sacked
- Was in constant contact with McBride, sending him up to 20 e-mails 
a day
- Instructed McBride to brief against cabinet rivals
- Exploits a weekly "strategy" meeting, which he chairs at Downing 
Street, to shore up his power base.

The whistleblower claims the prime minister is "strangely naive" 
about Balls's activities: "He doesn't see what's going on. He 
unwittingly helps Ed by sidelining the ministers Ed sees as a threat."

All the claims are denied by Balls, who labelled them "completely 
fabricated and malevolent nonsense"  [That proves they come from 
Downing Street -cs[ . A spokesman for Brown also dismissed the claims.

Senior Labour figures have confirmed there is widespread anxiety 
about Balls's activities. The revelations will fuel concern that the 
government is in terminal decline, with senior ministers more worried 
about positioning themselves for life after defeat than about 
rescuing the economy.

The whistleblower, who has never spoken to the media before, was 
prompted to speak out through loyalty to Brown and the Labour party. 
He was angered by an interview given by Balls last week in which he 
distanced himself from McBride, who was forced to resign over plans 
to spread scurrilous rumours about senior Tories.

"In that interview, Ed called Damian 'Mr McBride' as if he barely 
knew him. In fact, Ed was running McBride. It was Ed who first 
spotted McBride's talent, Ed who was behind his appointment as a 
special adviser and Ed who made sure he stayed in the job. Recently, 
McBride has been working almost entirely for him," the whistleblower 
said.

Investigations by The Sunday Times have revealed that before the e-
mail scandal, at least eight senior government figures urged Brown to 
dismiss McBride amid concerns that he was a liability. They included 
Lord Mandelson, the business secretary; Harriet Harman, the deputy 
Labour leader; Alastair Campbell, the former spin doctor; Lord 
Carter, the former No 10 strategy chief; Douglas Alexander, Labour's 
election supremo; and two other Downing Street officials, David Muir 
and Nick Stace. It is understood Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet 
secretary, also raised concerns.

According to the insider, on each occasion Balls protected McBride, 
persuading Brown he was too valuable to lose: "Even before we got to 
Downing Street there were discussions about whether it was wise for 
McBride to come too. Some thought he should stay at the Treasury. But 
Ed blocked it."

Balls, who has worked alongside Brown for 15 years, has made little 
secret of his ambition to become chancellor, saying only a month ago 
in an interview that he would "love" the job. Publicly he has claimed 
to have no "plan" to become party leader.

The insider claims Balls used McBride to help clear his path, 
"instructing" the spin doctor to brief against colleagues who could 
be a threat. Among his alleged targets were Alexander, David 
Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the home 
secretary. He claims Balls hopes to replace Darling in the next 
reshuffle.

The whistleblower revealed that Balls was given the chairmanship of a 
weekly "strategy" meeting inside No 10 as a "sop" after the return of 
Mandelson to government. Regular attendees include Tom Watson, the 
junior cabinet minister, Charlie Whelan, political director of Unite, 
[Why should HE be there after being sacked ? -cs]  the UK's largest 
trade union, and, until his resignation last week, McBride. Liam 
Byrne, another cabinet minister, also plays a prominent role but is 
not regarded as part of Balls's "shadow operation".

The whistleblower accused Balls of using the meetings to further his 
own agenda.

There is no suggestion Balls was aware of McBride's plans to spread 
scurrilous rumours about David Cameron, the Tory leader, and George 
Osborne, the shadow chancellor. But Labour figures smeared by McBride 
believe the education secretary was behind their treatment.

A spokesman for Balls said: "These allegations are completely 
fabricated and malevolent nonsense without any foundation in fact. 
The only fact is that Ed Balls and Liam Byrne have jointly chaired a 
meeting on Wednesday afternoons at the express request of the prime 
minister.
"Other than that, Ed has spent all his time trying to do his best for 
children and young people. He has always acted in the best interests 
of the Labour government."

A spokesman for Brown rejected the allegations as "absurd and 
preposterous", denying that Balls had instructed McBride to brief 
against ministers. He said there was "nothing unusual" in the level 
of e-mail correspondence between Balls and McBride.

Last night it emerged that Ray Collins, Labour's general secretary, 
had attended a meeting to discuss the setting-up of a website for 
attacking prominent Tories. However, Collins denies any knowledge of 
the McBride smear e-mails. A complaint about last week's coverage of 
the Damian McBride affair was made by Frances Osborne to the Press 
Complaints Commission. That complaint was resolved after The Sunday 
Times agreed not to republish Mr McBride's untrue smears in relation 
to Mrs Osborne and to remove specific references to them from our 
website