Labels: Zac Goldsmith Labels: Peter Watt In short, we’re running to stand still, like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass - as voters move out of Labour’s seats into ours without the boundary reviews catching up with the change. Now stand back for a moment from the theory, and think about the practice – what all this means in brutal electoral terms. Return, for a moment, to my first figures – that illustrative general election in which later this year we win 40% of the vote to Labour’s 30%. Now assume, for the sake of the argument, that the majority of 8 is pushed up to 20 by progress in marginal seats and tactical unwind, and that this majority sees us out for four years. Go on to envisage that in 2014, after a tough and torrid term, we come in at 38% and Labour at no more than 30% An 8% – no mean achievement – has delivered a hung Parliament. Any Liberal inhibitions about dealing with Labour have melted away. Britain faces a Lab/Lib coalition. Let me clear about what I’m not trying to do. I’m not assuming that the next election’s in the bag: victory must be worked for. Nor am I attempting to forecast the next election, let alone the imponderable one after, or guess that the next Parliament will last four years. My purpose is different. I’m trying, as best I can, to illustrate the unfairness of the rules of the game. The voters have the right to a level electoral playing field, and if we win they must have one. Labels: Shirley Williams Labels: Peter Watt Tomorrow’s Sunday’s Tribune has explosives details on the Iris Robinson affair *or * more properly affairs. Link to follow when their site is updated. As well as describing the incredible fury and deep sadness that the Rev Ian Paisley has felt for the damage caused to the DUP following the revelations of the week, the real shock in the piece comes when the Sunday Tribune reveals that Mrs Robinson has had more affairs in the past. Suzanne Breen writes: Meanwhile, it emerged this weekend that Iris Robinson also had an affair with 19 year-old Kirk McCambley’s father, a butcher who died of cancer. She had another affair with a fellow DUP member in the 1980’s which was witnessed by the security forces. Further on in the piece: Iris Robinson’s affair with Kirk McCambley isn’t her first. She had an affair with a fellow DUP member in the 1980. It was witnessed by security force members voluntarily guarding the Robinsons’ home after the RUC officially withdrew protection over Peter Robinson’s loyalist invasion into Clontibret. For your information, the Invasion of Clontibret was took place in 1986. Shocking allegations and surely not the end! Labels: Douglas Alexander Labels: Peter Wattunday, January 10, 2010
Why I Published Peter Watt: A Reply to Sunder Katwala
Iain Dale 5:52 PM
Next Left's Sunder Katwala knows a thing about political publishing, albeit of the academic kind. We first met when I was at Politico's and he worked for Macmillan. He's written an article headlined WATT'S THE POINT?on Next Left this afternoon, which I think deserves a full reply, partly because he is under a few misapprehensions and partly because I think some of my readers might be interested in a few facts about the world of political publishing.
Let's go through his assertions one by one...1. Will Dale say what his initial print run is? I would be very surprised if it were over 2000 copies, and would guess it more likely to be less than half, or even a quarter, of that. (Pitch it low enough, and you could announce a sell-out and a reprint by next week!). I shall ask him.
Ask and ye shall receive. I think Sunder must be basing his estimate on his former world of academic publishing, where Macmillan would print 500 copies of a book and price it at £50. Print runs are a publisher's worst nightmare. On books like this you run the risk of getting it badly wrong. Back in 2000, the publisher of Edwina Currie's diaries printed 20,000, but had to pulp two thirds of them. The booktrade is very different nowadays. Sales are concentrated on three outlets - W H Smith, Waterstone's and Amazon. This means margins are far tighter and pricing is more competitive. You know that if you sell a book at an RRP of £16.99 each of those outlets will know between 30% and 50% off it from the word go. Economic madness, but there you are. We have pre orders for 8,000 copies - far more than I ever expected. There's no guarantee that all those will sell, but the fact that the book, after a mere 24 hours, is in Amazon's top 10 biography list and is about to enter its Hot 100 sellers, gives me confidence in its performance.2. I imagine the publisher and author would be in profit, though this will surely primarily depend on any largesse received from Mr Paul Dacre's chequebook rather than the great book-buying British public.
Not true from the publisher's point of view. It's normal that the author keeps the lion's share of any serialisation money, so our profits are very dependent on book sales.3. The main impact - the whole point - of such an exercise is the media and blogosphere political detonation. The book (co-authored by the Sunday Times' deputy political editor Isabel Oakeshott, making their non-serialisation of the book interesting) is simply a vehicle. It is certainly the type of serialisation which makes buying the book pretty redundant for any but the most dedicated anorak.
Again, a total misreading of motives. Peter wanted to get his side of the story out. My interest in this book is commercial, rather than political. I took it on because I thought there was a fair chance of turning a profit on it. I hope to be proved right. Biteback is not a company with a political viewpoint. I'd be very happy to publish a similar book from a Conservative if I thought it would make a profit. We're publishing Nigel Farage's memoirs, which I imagine will not go down well with the Tories. I've commissioned three books relating to the LibDems recently. We're publishing a series of 7 books prior to the election called WHY VOTE? One book each for Labour, Conservatives, LibDems, Greens, UKIP, SNP and Plaid. Each party has been happy to cooperate. I do not expect the latter four to make a profit - we're doing it because we think it's a good thing for politics generally to have done it.
I have read the book. Sunder hasn't. It is most certainly not a book just for political anoraks. There's a real human story which hasn't come out in the serialisation so far. But he are right in one respect. If people feel they've read it all in the paper, they may not buy it. But bear in mind a serialisation is usually a maximum of 10,000 words. This book is 85,000 words long. And there's gold on virtually every page!4. If the tell-all memoir of Peter Watt would have not been an obvious candidate for the list of a mainstream publishing house, one might then observe the success of several key players from Britain's political right (particularly the Ashcroft-Montgomerie-Dale triumvirate) in realising the value of creating alternative media channels to make such interventions possible, through whatever combination of strategic funding and individual initiative is involved.
I disagree. I think a mainstream publisher would have seen exactly the same potential for this book as I did. And I know from emails I have had today that there are a couple of them who wish they had had the chance to sign it up. Peter and Isabel came to me because they thought I would know how to market a book like this and they would get personal treatment from me rather than being handed round from department to department in a big publisher. They also presumed we could act quickly, and they were right. I'm not sure what either Ashcroft or Montgomerie have to do with the price of fish here. And I don't think my personal online presence played any sort of role in their decision to sign up with Biteback at all.5. Whatever Watt's motivation - ego, financial gain, personal revenge, or a botched attempt to participate a weekend late in a farcical coup would all seem to be among the possible contenders - very few in his own party will thank him for his final destructive contribution to the party's general election effort.
Peter can speak for himself, but I have detected no sign of extreme bitterness of revenge in our conversations. He had a story to tell and wanted to tell it. This was the first real opportunity he has had since he was cleared by the Police. A book like this takes a long time to write. He's certainly not motivated by money. If he and Isabel had been they would have gone to a publisher with deeper pockets than us. The point about the botched coup is facile. No one knew it was coming. It would have been virtually impossible to plan the publication and serialisation around such an event. The publication date was set a month ago, and the serialisation was agreed shortly before Christmas. No conspiracy here, honest.
Of course there will be few people in the Labour Party who thank him. He never believed there would be. He would tell you that I went out of my way to warn him about the bile and venom that would come his way. The vicious Tweets that I have been seen today are evidence of that, but he and I both know that people react in this way when they know in their heart of hearts that there is truth in what is being said.
Peter feels a deep loyalty to the Labour Party, but that loyalty has been terribly abused. As he tweeted last night "loyalty is a two way thing". He is still a party member and donates money to the party. It is not his fault that the people at the top of the party he still loves treated him in such a terrible manner. And it is his right to tell his story of what happened, as there are clearly still people out there who believe that Gordon Brown was right to brand him a criminal, hours after telling him on the phone that he would "look after" him.
I am proud of the way we have published this book. And I hope it sends out a signal to anyone out there - whatever their politics - that Biteback is becoming the place to go to publish decent political literature. Take a look through THIS LIST of our upcoming titles and I think you'll be surprised at both the quantity and the quality.
So if you have a book idea, you know who to contact!Zac: No Cover Up & No Attempt at a Cover Up
Iain Dale 3:38 PM
What’s going on at the Sunday Times?
The Sunday Times has run an amazing article on its front page today, titled: “Tories covered up donations from Zac Goldsmith” and then “Conservatives in cash cover-up”.
The paper has created a damaging headline, and then uses its lengthy article to explain why the headline is totally unjustified, and why the story is a non-story. The Times already knows very well that there has been no cover up, no attempt at a cover up, and no possible reason for a cover up.
The article says that donations were made to the Conservative Party by a company called Unicorn Administration on behalf of some of its clients. That’s true. It says that the cheques had the names of the people for whom the donations were being written clearly on the top. It even states that “There is no suggestion that any of the donors or Unicorn acted improperly.”
So the paper accepts that there was no attempt made by me or any other donor to ‘hide behind’ a company.
Where then is the story that justifies this screaming front-page headline? The only issue is that the Conservative Party failed to register the donations under the name of Unicorn’s clients. But given that all of the clients in question are known Conservative Party donors, what possible reason would the Party have for wanting to ‘cover-up’ their identity?
At worst, it can only have been a minor administrative error by the Conservative Party compliance department. Perhaps the Times and its friends in the Lib Dem Attack Unit can come up with a motive? I can’t.And In At Number Ten, Goes Peter Watt
Iain Dale 3:05 PM
INSIDE OUT is already 121 in the Amazon chart and has entered the Top 10 Biography chart.
Pre-order it from Amazon HEREThe Compensation Culture (G)rit Large
Iain Dale 12:41 PM
Geoff Hoon has come under fire for his rather tactless comment that people should stop whingeing about the snow, and that if motorists are so concerned they should buy snow chains. However, I have some sympathy with this viewpoint.
When I lived in Germany motorists always had snow chains. They had to. They would also have winter tyres fitted. Clearly the expense of this in this country would be ludicrous, unless your car was absolutely vital to you in all weathers. Councils do have a duty to grit roads, but there is a balance to strike. Should they really invest millions of pounds in grit, gritter lorries and snow ploughs when they might only be needed once every ten or so years? If I were a councillor I doubt whether I'd vote to spend money on that over and above providing new education facilities.
But one things which does annoy me about this weather is that people in Britain seem to take no responsibility for keeping the pavement clear outside their own houses. In Germany and Switzerland it is a legal requirement for people to do that* - and not only that, but to grit the pavement too, if I remember rightly. In this country we just moan about the fact that the council has failed to get the snow of every inch of our pavements. Surely it isn't too much to ask to get people to clear their own part of the pavement each time snow falls?
And I stand by every word. Today's Telegraph story demonstrates the kind of "it's not my responsibility, guv" society we have become. Apparently people are being warned that if they clear the pavements outside their homes they could be sued if someone slips on any resultant ice. This is perverse. You do your citizenly duty and and then risk getting punished. It's the compensation culture writ large. And it's got to change. Government cannot do everything for us. Where we can, we have to act for ourselves. As someone once said, we cannot go on like this.
But here's an idea. Why don't we just change the law? Why don't we render it impossible to sue someone if they have done the right thing and cleared snow outside their property? Indeed, let's go one step futher and adopt the same laws that they have in Germany, Switzerland, the USA and Canada? All we need is an MP to do it... (get my [snow] drift?!)It IS SizeThat Matters
Iain Dale 12:00 PM
Paul Goodman has an excellent article on ConservativeHome pointing out the iniquities of the electoral boundaries. Do read the WHOLE THING, but here's a taster...Put aside, for a moment, the likelihood or otherwise of the vote dividing up in this way. Wave away, too, the rejoinder that all things are never equal, and that regional swings, local factors, tactical voting and so on must be taken into account. The big point remains: the rules of the game work against us. (I will stick to “rules of the game” rather than “electoral system”, because the latter suggests the matter of the voting system, which is extraneous to the case I wish to make.) In the big game between blues and reds, we start off several goals down – and that’s before taking into account that we start from a base of under 200 MPs.
Our four [Boundary] Commissions don’t work from the premise that equal constituency size trumps everything else. New Zealand allows a deviation of 5% from either side of the preferred size, or quota. America permits less than 1%. Our Commissions balk only at variations of more than 20%. Constituencies can’t cross county boundaries – pushing electorates over quota in growing areas. Finally, the process is slow. Reviews take place only once a decade, and the appeals process can be lengthy: have a look at Ed Balls’ failed attempt to stop the Boundary Commission’s changes to his seat, which went all the way to judicial review.
Liberal Democrats will no doubt seek to hijack this argument with comments about more general electoral reform. That is another debate for another blogpost. But can anyone seriously disagree that under our current system, it should be an aim for all consitituencies (with one or two obvious exceptions) to be of similar size?Book Review: Shirley Williams' Autobiography
Iain Dale 10:30 AM
This is a political autobiography which has had some mixed reviews. Some reviewers thought that Shirley Williams hadn't dished enough dirt. She was even nice about David Owen, wrote one disappointed reviewer. But isn't that the point? An autobiography is supposed to reflect the character of its author, and Shirley Williams, is, well, just plain nice.
Shirley was the first politician I ever met. When I was 15 she came to speak at my school in Saffron Walden. She was Education Secretary at the time. When I met her for lunch a couple of months ago she feigned to be rather horrified when I said it was her that had started me on the road to Thatcherism!
Perhaps the most unexpectedly interesting part of this book was about Shirley's childhood. With a mother called Vera Brittain and being evacuated to America for part of the war, it couldn't fail to have been eventful. She is also very open about her love life and speaks movingly of her relationship with her husband Dick Neustadt, an American political academic who died in 2003.
Dick was a regular customer at Politico's and loved to chew the political fat with me over the counter. He was a lovely man and they were both clearly very happy together.
I remember taking part in one of the Dinner with Portillo programmes, where the subject was Margaret Thatcher. I remember being quite intimidated by the establishment status of most of the other guests. Shirley was brilliant and sought to draw me into the conversation at every opportunity. But we all deferred to her. She was the star turn and she knew it.
In some ways I think it is true to say that Shirley Williams never achieved her full political potential. If things had been different she could have reached the very top. As she herself says, at times she lacked self confidence and perhaps wasn't quite ruthless enough. She was also too often in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is by no means a classic political autobiography. Too often it relates events but gives little fresh insight into them - that's especially true of her account of the history of the SDP. But it is a very enjoyable book, full of anecdote, endowed with more humour than I had expected and above all it is quite an honest book. Shirley is well aware of her own weaknesses and deficiencies and is quite content to write about them.
Shirley Williams has been a real character in our politics for forty years. I feel as if I grew up with her. I may not approve of many of her political beliefs, but I recognise a massive and historically important political figure when I see one. She rightly commands huge respect.
Buy the book HERE.How to PR a New Book
Iain Dale 9:00 AM
Yesterday evening, the news broke that my company, Biteback, is publishing Peter Watt's book INSIDE OUT. We've waited a long time for this and whenever you're dealing with a newspaper serialisation you're praying that nothing goes wrong. There's also that nagging doubt in the back of your mind that gnaws away. Have you misjudged it? Will anyone be interested after all? Well, I think it is safe to say that there has been quite a bit of interest!
So, as Cilla might say, let's have a quick reminder of the media coverage the book has had in the last few hours
If you add up all that lot, I reckon around 7 million people will be aware that the book is coming out. Now, all I need is for David Cameron to mention it during his interview with Andrew Marr.
Someone on Twitter last night had a go at Peter for taking his book to me to publish. He did it because he knows I know how to publish political books. I'd say the above list provides at least some evidence in that direction. And before anyone asks, yes, if I was asked to publish a book detailing similar things relating to the Tories, I would. Biteback is, like Total Politics, non partisan in its publishing.
A good night's work, I'd say. Job done.*
* And if I sound a bit self-satisfied, you're right. It's because I know when I've done something right!Saturday, January 09, 2010
Meanwhile, Back With Mrs Robinson...
Iain Dale 11:35 PM
Iris Robinson is in even more trouble tonight. This is the front page of tomorrow's Sunday Tribune. It alleges she had an affair with Kirk McCambley's father and another DUP member. Politics.ie reports...Quote of the Day: Wee Dougie Alexander
Iain Dale 10:33 PM
(Gordon Brown), and we don’t actually like him.
We have always thought the longer the British public had to get to know him,
the less they would like him as well."
Douglas Alexander MP, as quoted by Peter Watt in INSIDE OUT.Peter Watt: Gordon's Part in My Downfall
Iain Dale 10:06 PM
The Mail on Sunday are devoting six pages, including the front, to the Peter Watt story in tomorrow's paper. I'll add links when they are up on the Mail website but among the items discussed are these...
Peter Watt's book INSIDE OUT: MY STORY OF BETRAYAL AND COWARDICE AT THE HEART OF NEW LABOUR is published by Biteback on 25 January. preorder it HERE.
UPDATE: The Mail on Sunday editorial concerns the book too, HERE. Headlined - Glowering on his throne - The Mr Toad of Number Ten.
UPDATE 10.18pm: Simon Walters front page story is now on the Mail website HERE.
UPDATE 10.20pm: The first extract of the book is HERE.Peter Watt Tells His Story
Iain Dale 8:28 PM
At last I can reveal the book project which I have been dropping hints about on Twitter over the last few weeks. Peter Watt, you may remember, was General Secretary of the Labour Party throughout the Cash for Honours period and the election that never was. He was forced, by Gordon Brown, to resign his post following the David Abrahams 'Donorgate' affair. This is his story, which my company, Biteback is publishing. And believe you me, it is quite a story.
The book isn't published until 25 January, but over the next couple of weeks, starting tomorrow, the Mail on Sunday will be publishing extracts from it.
Some will say that it's ironic that I am publishing the book, bearing in mind some of the things I wrote about Peter at the time. He's obviously a very forgiving person! The book is a cracking tale and is written by Peter in co-operation with top political journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
When their agent sent me the book synopisis and two sample chapters I could hardly believe what I was reading. Virtually every page elicited an "Oh my God" or something stronger. But the great thing about the book is that it doesn't read as though it is motivated by any desire for revenge. It is a deeply - and at times very moving - human story, and one which anyone who has ever worked for a political party will easily relate to.
I can't reveal any contents of the book until they appear on the Mail on Sunday website, but believe you me, you won't be disappointed.
You can order the book from Amazon HERE.
Sunday 10 January 2010
Those on the left who are trying to equate the Zac Goldsmith donations with those of David Abraham and his acolytes would do well to read this statement from Zac, which he has given to ConservativeHome.
Last February I wrote this - and copped some flak for it....
"The truth is, Peter, we have spent ten years working with this guy
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