CentreRight

Beware Lib Dems praising the virtues of coalitions in Scotland and Germany

The Lib Dems' Chris Huhne is wrong in this article in the FT in suggesting that coalition governments are good for fiscal crises. I have also encountered this argument from the Lib Dems at various constituency hustings. Here are the two examples they most often use to support their case.

The first is Scotland, where the Lib Dems were "in government" in coalition with Labour for many years, and how smoothly this worked, or so they say. Now, I am not an expert in Scottish politics, but my only point is this: the Scottish government's role is principally to manage expenditure in the country. By contrast, the next Government in Westminster will have to manage a difficult interrelated triangle of taxation, expenditure and borrowing. There are no Scottish gilts or other forms of debt. I am not aware of there being siginificant Scottish taxes, except for the ability to vary income tax rates which has never been used. The Scottish government is funded by a block grant, and is charged with spending it. The contrast between the two set-ups is extremely important, especially when we are in a fiscal crisis. It stands to reason that a stable coalition is much more achievable when the authority is only there to spend, not to raise taxes or issue debt as well.

The second example they use is Germany. Huhne is quite wrong to suggest that the CDU-FDP coalition there is working well. Don't take my word for it. Listen to the Germans themselves. Just check the reports from the English pages of Der Spiegel.

The coalition took some weeks to get itself together - despite the fact that the two parties had pledged to work together in advance of, and during, the September 2009 election.

Labour is loving the LibDem surge

There are now at least three post-debate election polls out, and all show a signficant increase in LibDem support, at the expense of both other parties. Two of the three even have the Liberal Democrats overtaking Labour.

Obviously, we will need to see whether this is sustained, but it is my view that there are two points we should be making, and also the link between the two:

1. That despite the apparent "surge" in LibDem support, it is Labour which benefits in terms of seats. e.g. even the ICM breakdown, which is the best for Labour, putting them in 2nd, not 3rd, is as follows: Labour 282 seats, Conservatives 257 seats, LibDems 74 seats. So here is the empirical proof for any assertion "vote Clegg, get Brown". Labour is the biggest party and the LibDems have agined a paltry 11 seats. Now, the LibDems may cry that it isn't their electoral system of choice, that this backs up their call for PR, but it doesn't stop it being a fact.

2. That one would expect Labour to be devastated by the thought of being in 3rd place, unheard of for a sitting Government. But far from it - Labour is wallowing in this. Check out the interview with Alan Johnson in today's Times. I haven't seen a Labour politician smiling so broadly since the Summer of 2007. The Labour twitterers have been very upbeat the last 48 hours. Ed Balls has said that "fortunes have turned". Now, you don't have to be a political junkie to be suspicious of a Party celebrating the fact it has moved from 2nd to 3rd?  Of course, the connection is back to point 1 above, that a LibDem surge now seems to be the only way for Labour to cling on to power.

Now, I think one can make these two points without going negative on the LibDems. I am not saying we shouldn't go negative, and there is definitely a case for pointing out, as Michael Gove put it, some of their more "eccentric" stances, but there are risks in attacking the LibDems, not least in the remaining two debates. There is much less risk in pointing out the two basic facts I have done above.

Pointing out Labour's reaction to the Clegg surge helps to remind people that the only way to get rid of Brown is to vote Conservative.

The weird world of UKIP candidates

It seems that every day there is a news story about that peculiar species, the UKIP Parliamentary Candidate.

Today, we have the good news that their candidate in Rochester and Strood is to stand down and instead support our excellent Conservative PPC there, Mark Reckless.

Yesterday, we heard that the UKIP candidate for Wells will not stand down, despite being asked to do so by his own Party, against a genuine Eurosceptic David Heathcoat-Amory, who has also been, in my view, the most effective Conservative Eurosceptic in Parliament in recent years. We have sat on the European Scrutiny Committee together. For all of us who believe we need more democracy in Europe, David's defeat by a Liberal Democrat, thanks to UKIP votes, would be a disaster for that cause.

Yesterday also, their candidate in Gloucester  slammed the Party's own posters, describing them as "highly offensive".

Two days ago, thair candidate in Ilford South resigned over offensive comments about the Queen

And on Tuesday night, their candidate against me in Chelsea and Fulham made an eye-catching election pledge at our first hustings - to move to Britain, if he is elected! To be fair to him, he is quite open on his own website that he does, in fact, live in Paris with his French wife.  

Now, that is 5 parliamentary candidates hitting national headlines in just the last 3 days. Is this a deliberate strategy, or does it show what we have always thought, that this is a Party in chaos?

In praise of Peter Tatchell

Peter Tatchell is once more in the news today which reminds me to write the blogpost I have had in my mind for a few weeks now. Normally, one would have to be careful here, as Peter Tatchell is an active member of another political party (the Greens), and may even be a parliamentary candidate, so this post should not be read in any way as an urge for readers to vote for him!

No, the reasons I have admired Peter Tatchell for some years are these: his consistency of approach to the issues which are important to him (notably gay rights, but human rights more widely as well), how his principles help him avoid the other tangles other Leftists seem to get themselves into (e.g. unlike, say, Ken Livingstone, Peter Tatchell speaks out strongly against homophobic Islamists) and his fearlessness (for example when trying to arrest Robert Mugabe.).

Peter Tatchell regularly emails all MPs with his campaigns. Most MPs will tell you they never read round-robin emails addressed to all MPs, but I almost always read those coming from Peter Tatchell, and he has recently highlighted the appalling new laws in Uganda against gays, as well as a myriad of other causes in recent years. I can't say I've agreed with every one of his campaigns, but he is often there first to highlight a forgotten injustice somewhere in the world.

Most of these campaigns have been in the public domain.

What I can tell readers is that this campaigning zeal has been going on for 30 years or more. ConHome readers will know that I have had my own run ins with the East German authorities in the years 1985-1990. Indeed, I still owe the East German government over 400 Deutschmarks for breaking their rules. 

Published and unpublished information in various East German archives has in recent years been of some embarrassment to British politicians, and not all of the Labour Party. The GDR kept substantial files on a surprisingly large number of influential people in Britain.

Reavealed: Labour's cavalier approach to data, charities and making money

Imagine if you had signed up to receive updates from a Government website, and then found your data transferred to the Labour Party? Or, like me, you have an interest in promoting better governance in Africa and sign up to receive updates, but then similarly finding yourself the recipient of emails telling you to vote Labour? Or, even, imagine if you can being a Labour activist, signing up to help Labour win the 2010 General Election, but then finding yourself afterwards sucked into Tony Blair's complex world of unusual companies, which publish no accounts, yet have permissions to operate in offshore locations?

All of these three scenarios have actually happened, or could happen, thanks to Tony Blair and the Labour Party. I have been working closely with Rob Mendick of the Sunday Telegraph in starting to reveal a complex web of links between the Government, Tony Blair, his charities, his businesses and the Labour Party.

Let me explain some of this complex web from my own experience.

On 17th June 2007, a few weeks before Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister, I signed up to receive emails from 10 Downing Street. I used an email address unique for the purpose. It was quite clear these emails were coming from the government - the sender was "@pmo.gov.uk" and the email confirmation to me states "Thank you for your interest in subscribing to the Number 10 email alerts". I still get these emails, generally every Friday, with news of what the Prime Minister has been doing. It is quite clear these are taxpayer-funded, non-party political, e.g. they sometimes have a section from Hansard with elements from PMQs deleted as "party political material". I still get these now, even though the occupant of Number 10 has changed.

So far, so good, but on 12th December 2007 I received an email from "The Office of Tony Blair", at the same unique email address described above. I had never subscribed to emails from this "Office". It became clear to me that my unique email address had been simply transferred from Number 10 to this new Office of Tony Blair, which I had not heard of until that point. I complained, but the "Office of Tony Blair" claimed that I had, in fact, signed up for emails from them directly. I was unable to prove that I hadn't, and the trail lead nowhere, even though I was clear that an unauthorised transfer of data from government to a private individual had occurred.

Is this the worst campaign video ever?

Rollo Miles is the Green Party candidate for Hammersmith, up against Shaun Bailey for the Conservatives. Here is his initial offering to the electorate.

Particular highlights include the balloon suddenly floating across the screen at around 0:50 and at 6:52 the statement that "if you want the same, vote Greens" before taking some considerable time to realise that he meant the opposite!

Update: The video was taken down by Mr Miles, but someone else has helpfully uploaded it to YouTube...

The word from Germany - thanks to Brown, Britain is now an economic "mini-power"

The big talk amongst London's foreign journalist community today is this remarkable article in Der Spiegel, on the PBR, entitled  "Britain shrinks to a mini-power".

Our disastrous Prime Minister is now used to receiving withering incoming fire  from German governments of all stripes. But the piece by Carsten Volkery in Der Spiegel breaks new ground, and is actually the best read article on their whole site. The word "Mini-Markt" is a German pun, meaning both a "mini-power" and something like a "corner shop". Volkery writes that Britain has moved from being a "model economy" to being "in ruins". The "public finances are disastrous", "the economic decay is alarming" and that "it seems unavoidable that the next Government will have to make drastic savings in places where it will hurt".

Der Spiegel draws special reference to the fact that the motherland will soon be overtaken by the economes of its former colonies, India and Canada.

Brown's people, doubtless cowering in the corner this morning, must be pleased that, as the article is only available in German, at least their boss can't actually read about our national humiliation.

Lessons from the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution, 20 years ago today

Today (17th November) is the day when Czechs and Slovaks commemorate their 1989 Revolution. Doubtless, this anniversary won't get as much coverage as that of the fall of the Berlin Wall last week, nor as much as the 20th anniversary of the execution of Ceausescu in Romania next month.

Nevertheless, there are probably more features of the Czechoslovak Revolution of 1989 which have a greater applicability to today's struggles for democracy and freedom, which I will explain shortly.

First, a little context. As I thought might happen, much more attention was paid last week to the actual fall of the Wall, rather than the forty years of hurt (for want of a better term) for the East German people that led up to it. It was rather like commemorating the end of World War Two solely with footage of V.E. Day parties. Like the East Germans, the Czech and Slovak peoples also suffered horribly under Communism, and we should remember those who either didn't make it through the experience, those who were gravely damaged by it, either physically, mentally or financially, and those who lost the best years of their lives to it.

I spent a lot of 1989 in Czechoslovakia. I was one of around a dozen UK students of the Czech and Slovak languages. In that year, I organised the first ever university exchange between Cambridge and the elite Universita Karlova (Charles University) in Prague, where I had studied myself two summers before. Around twenty Czechs came to Britain for the month of July, and we returned there for the month of September. I was back again in November (photo above), as the calls rang out for "Havel hrada" (Václav Havel to the castle, meaning the seat of government). Having been immersed in student life at the Charles University, and having met some of the dissident activists at various Prague theatres, I knew some of the people involved at the bottom end of the revolution, who were key in fanning out from Prague taking the message into the provinces in the weeks after 17th November.

Enough of personal reminiscences, however. There is no point having experiences unless one is prepared to draw lessons from them, and here are the lessons from the Velvet Revolution as I saw it then and see it now, and why of the three main revolutions of the autumn of 1989, this one has the most relevance today.

First, the Czechoslovak revolution was almost entirely non-violent. In fact, I think I am right in saying that nobody died at all. Enough has been written elsewhere about the importance of non-violence, but for the students of 1989, non-violence was both an end in itself, as well as a means. The symbol opposite (my camera in 1989 was poor) of the red line through the truncheon was seen all over Prague.

Second, that the Czechs and Slovaks through the dissident group Charter 77 confounded many sceptics, especially in the West, by actually seeking to campaign to make sure that their government abided by the international agreements it had signed, in this case, the Helsinki Accords of 1975. Nobody in power in the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia expected anyone to take seriously their own newly-acquired legal obligations to safeguard the human rights of their own peoples - least of all the people themselves. For me, this shows that international human rights accords can and do make a difference, and why we should always seek to make dictatorships sign these kinds of agreements, as they give people suffering under those dictatorships hope and a legal basis for their campaigns.

Third, the importance of figureheads in revolutionary movements from below. Very few people can now name any of the figures involved in the East German revolution. The Eastern part of Germany has underperformed politically ever since, at least until Angela Merkel became Chancellor in 2005. In Romania, if the revolution could be put down to any one individual it was to someone who wasn't even Romanian at all, but to László Tőkés, the ethnic Hungarian priest who started the revolt in Timişoara. In Czechoslovakia, dissident playwright Václav Havel and even the former Prime Minister during the 1968 Prague Spring, Alexander Dubček, gave the movement names and figureheads. This revolution was a grassroots effort, especially as thousands of students, actors and actresses went forth from Prague to spread the message.

Finally, Czechoslovakia had the strongest democratic tradition of any of the former Soviet satellites. Between 1919 and the Munich Agreement in 1938, the country was the only functioning democracy for all of those years in any of the Central and Eastern European countries which would eventually join the European Union in 2004 and 2007. Indeed, its democracy in the Inter-War Years was one of the best in Europe. There was even a history of resistance to being part of a multi-national conglomerate state, whether the Austro-Hungarian empire, Greater Germany or, at this point, the Soviet Empire. Although the democracy had been extinguished 60 years previously, there was still a collective memory in 1989 which was important. Like Tim Montgomerie, I am wary of drawing exaggerated comparisons between the EU and historic multi-national European empires, but I for one know that Czech history would have weighed heavily on Václav Klaus as he considered whether to sign the Lisbon Treaty just a few weeks ago.

Finally, and back to the main point. Whilst for most of us, the lasting images of 1989 are probably those of people crowding on top of the Berlin Wall, partying amongst the fireworks, or of Nicolai Ceausescu's battered and pathetic corpse, it is the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution, with its urge for non-violence, its grassroots nature, its popular figureheads and most of all its origin in the very legal agreements guaranteeing human rights signed by the country's tyrannical leaders which most makes it a model for liberation struggles across the world today.

Join our campaign to out Clem Attlee!

If anyone needed more proof that the Conservatives are now the party of the NHS, take a look at the attitude of the political parties in Tower Hamlets in East London to Clem Attlee, its founding father, as reported by Iain Dale yesterday.

Outside Limehouse Public Library there is this historic statue of the legendary Labour Prime Minister, Clem Attlee, for many the founder of the NHS. The statue was unveiled by another historic Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, in 1988.

In the Members' Lobby of the House of Commons, Attlee is one of the four 20th century Prime Ministers deemed worthy of a full statue (along with Lloyd George, Churchill and Lady Thatcher). Whatever one's views of his politics, few could deny Attlee's historic importance to twentieth century Britain.

In Fulham, I live next door to the Clem Attlee estate, which is well-maintained by our local Conservative Council. However, it is Stepney and Limehouse where Clem Attlee has particularly strong local connections. Attlee was elected Mayor of Stepney exactly 90 years ago (enlarge on the Council minutes given below, kindly provided to me by Cllr Peter Golds, our Group Leader in Tower Hamlets) on 10th November 1919. He is listed as Major Clement Richard Attlee, living at 638, Commercial Road East.

And this is what the statue looks like today. In the picture with me are our local PPC Cllr Tim Archer and Group Leader Cllr Peter Golds.

The statue has now been boarded up for four years. The historic library in behind was closed down in 2003, and the building, despite being listed, lies empty. Rumours abound that the Labour Council is seeking to sell the building for property development, and that is why the statue is not re-emerging, as it too is earmarked for demolition. The statue was boarded up, I believe, four years ago.

Whatever the reasons for the Council's callous indifference, and whatever one thinks of Attlee's politics in the first place, this is a disgraceful abandonment of local heritage in the East End of London of one of Britain's most significant twentieth century figures.

To join the local campaign, contact our PPC, Cllr. Tim Archer, here

Below are the Council minutes from 1919:

 

Will we all be up for Ed Balls?

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure to spend the day in Yorkshire with our excellent Parliamentary Candidate for Morley & Outwood, Antony Calvert. Antony is a former local councillor and attended a local comprehensive in the constituency, and is dedicated to representing his local area in Parliament. He is up against Ed Balls, who defends a notional majority of 9,784, and yesterday I thought I would take a look at how this key race is shaping up.

I think our chances here are very good. Antony is an "über-local", and talks eloquently and well about the challenges facing the local area. He lives and breathes Morley and Outwood. Balls, meanwhile, has suffered from being first elected only in 2005, but being parachuted into a top job almost straight away into the Cabinet. This means that he is both well known (even notorious, as we shall see) but equally never seen in Morley & Outwood. The new seat is actually mainly from Colin Challen MP's current constituency, who has been forcibly stood down to make way for Balls. Further, Balls could make a claim to be from Norwich, or Nottingham or even the Oxford University Conservative Association (and hence the FCS), but definitely not Yorkshire. And worth noting, in the last local elections in May 2008, Labour came fourth, behind the Conservatives, the BNP and the Morley Borough Independents. So we have a lot of cause for optimism.

We were hard pressed to find anyone with a good word to say for Balls. Antony Calvert and I visited various local schools, thinking here at least there might be someone who had a good word to say for the Secretary of State for Education. We met plenty of good heads, good teachers and enthusiastic pupils. But we didn't meet anyone who liked Ed Balls. The head teacher of a large local comprehensive, Rodillian School (outside of which Antony Calvert and I are pictured, at the very top), said he wanted "more independence for schools", and wanted "schools to be left alone", and pleaded for "no more reams of initiatives". He was scornful of the National Challenge, a government flagship initiative to turn around lagging schools. He felt that national government was trying to steal the praise for his own achievements, in return for a small extra grant.

Another head, who is best not named for obvious reasons, introduced me and Antony Calvert to his sixth formers, many of whom will be able to vote for the first time in 2010, urged them to vote, but for anyone "other than that dreadful Ed Balls".

The head teacher of the independent day school, Silcoates (with Antony and I, above left), gave me an astonishing heap of documentation which he is required to complete to satisfy Ed Balls's Independent Schools Inspectorate. The surveys were depressing. There was a self-assessment survey inviting the head to rank his own health & safety measures on a scale from excellent to unsatisfactory. There was even a self-assessment form for himself, to rank the leadership of the school from excellent to unsatisfactory. As the Head put it to me, "if the leadership here were unsatisfactory, then we would be out of business". Presumably, this would be long before any DCSF bureaucrat had digested the self-assessment form.

So even the people who might be expected to know him best had little to commend in Ed Balls. I would urge any ConHome readers, if you are looking for an exciting challenge in the coming election, then why not go and help Antony Calvert in Morley and Outwood. You can contact him here. Or join his famous "Balls out for a tenner" campaign, which was a conference hit this year.

You never know, in future years, the question might just be "were you up for Ed Balls?"  

Some thoughts on the German elections

The BBC was reporting even some hours after the exit polls were pointing strongly to a CDU - CSU - FDP coalition that its correspondent says "there is no great appetite for such a coalition and that people prefer the status quo."

At the German embassy "Wahlparty" ("election party") yesterday evening (pictured here), and unlike the BBC, few were surprised by the outcome. Many were relieved, especially with the end of the unloved Grand Coalition of the CDU/CSU and the SPD.

At the embassy, Baroness Neville-Jones and I flew the Conservative flag. Of Labour and LibDem politicians, there was no sign.

ConservativeHome carried an excellent post yesterday on why Angela Merkel and Germany would both benefit from a so-called black-yellow coalition (CDU/CSU and FDP together), and I wouldn't digress from that opinion, except to say that:

1. Diplomats at the embassy tonight are expecting little change from the new coalition in terms of policy. It will be more stable, but Merkel will still be in charge, and she will want to stay in the centre ground, even though her new coalition partners are now generally to the right of her on economic issues at least, not to the left.

2. Fundamentally, Merkel has faced some criticism about the German economy, but has done much better with the public finances. I have blogged before from the CDU Party Conference of how Germany did repair the roof when the sun was shining, eliminating the budget deficit in the good years of 2005 - 2007.

3. The result is not in itself a total success for the CDU and especially the CSU - their vote shares are actually down on 2005 - but it is an unmitigated disaster for the SPD, Labour's sister party. Not only is their vote share a record low, but they are now out of government entirely for the first time in eleven years. Their two left wing rivals - the Greens and the Left Party - both hit record highs. The CDU and CSU are certain to remain the leading centre right parties. The same cannot be said of the SPD on the left.

4. In the long term, the German political system is suffering from its PR voting system, and the five-party politics it has thrown up. This is especially true when there is one party of the five - the Left Party - who nobody else wants to team up with. I have blogged about this before here.

5. Despite our differences over the EPP, Conservative - CDU/CSU cooperation remains strong. Merkel in particular will welcome seeing some budgetary sense coming from London under a David Cameron government, after the months of denial from Gordon Brown. Meanwhile, everyone is looking forward to what I think will be a unique time next year when all four major EU countries are led from the Centre Right.

Hansard since 1950 now online - read Lady Thatcher's maiden speech, etc

I might not be the first to point this out, but Parliament now has Hansard available online from, it seems, 1950 onwards. As ever, TheyWorkForYou.com provides a much-improved search engine. The first searchable Winston Churchill speech is him welcoming the Speaker to the chair in 1950 after the General Election of that year.  

Margaret Thatcher was first elected in 1959, and I knew she had introduced a private member's bill to make Local Council meetings open to the public. What I didn't know was that her maiden speech was the one introducing the Bill! This is really remarkable - both events are quite nerve-inducing, the maiden speech and introducing a private member's bill, but to do both at once is really quite something! Characteristically, she wastes little time with the conventions of the House, where maiden speeches are traidtionally uncontroversial, praise one's predecessor and talk about the constituency. Here is how her speech starts:

Mrs Margaret Thatcher (Finchley)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a maiden speech, but I know that the constituency of Finchley which I have the honour to represent would not wish me to do other than come straight to the point and address myself to the matter before the House.

and then she is straight into the Bill!

Obama in Moscow to spend 10 hours in talks with Medvedev; 90 minutes with Putin. The scores for Brown? zero and zero

I might be sounding like a broken record here on Centre Right, but I was amazed to read in Der Spiegel today that President Obama is to spend TEN hours in bilateral talks with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev today and tomorrow, and 90 minutes with Prime Minister Putin.

What have been Gordon Brown's scores since he became our unelected Prime Minister in 2007? Zero and zero. As I have blogged before, he has never met Vladimir Putin in that time, and has only met Medvedev as part of multilateral meetings like the 2008 NATO summit and the 2009 G20 meeting.

This is a bizarre state of affairs. If the shunning of Russia is deliberate and, let's face it, there might be good reasons for a boycott, given Russia' s appalling behaviour over Aleksandr Litvinenko, Georgia and the expulsion of British diplomats in 2007, then our PM is making a ham fist of it - a silent boycott does nobody any favours. If it is just that Brown, unlike Obama, has simply not bothered to give relations with Russia the time they need, then that is a shocking indictment of our Prime Minister's approach to international relations, and we can surely do better than this.

How not to be Prime Ministerial on a PM visit

Today, Gordon Brown and Ed Balls visited a school in my constituency, I was told to help launch the Government's new White Paper on schools. With my constituency being the closest marginal to Westminster, we are used to a few ministerial and shadow ministerial visits over the last ten years, but never I have I seen such manouvrings and political jockeying by officials as with today's.

As has become traditional with this Government - and contrary to the Commons Conventions and Courtesies - neither Brown nor Balls notified me of their visit. I found out from the Local Education Authority. When I arrived at the school 10 minutes early, waiting for me was a Ms Izzet from Ed Balls's office, who loudly announced, in front of an ITN camera crew, that I was "not invited". This was a new first - not only not told of a ministerial visit to my constituency, I was actively disinvited. The head Teacher of the excellent Fulham Cross School was being put in a very difficult position. Clearly, nobody had ever heard of a civil servant attempting to ban a Member of Parliament from a public facility in his own constituency. Realising that I wasn't moving, and in front of dozens of children eagerly awaiting the visit, Ms Izzet then tried to entice me to an office for "some refreshments". She was trying anything to get me out of the way, in a way that is outrageous to a Member of Parliament in his own constituency. Ms Izzet told me that I hadn't even myself visited the school, which was a lie, and that I would make the visit "political" - which was a bit rich coming from a Balls adviser.

Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader of the Council arrived, and Ms Izzet was remarkably and improbably even more confrontational towards him, even though the School was Council property and the Council is the Local Education Authority. She then proceeded to try to dupe Stephen and me into believing that Brown and Balls were coming in by a different entrance, and there was even a decoy posse of security people to help do the job.

We eventually got back into our own school, and were then treated to an hour of pure pantomime. The children, mainly 15 or 16 were on great form and were clearly thrilled by the visit. Brown's chatter, however, was embarrassing. Balls asked in the most patronising way he could about the quality of the food and about school sport, and seemed to have limited interest in the educational achievements.

Brown made a number of faux pas. His worst was to meet the same Italian teacher twice in 15 minutes and attempt to have the same conversation with her, forgetting he had already met her. Each time he told her he was looking forward to going to Italy next week (presumably on some official business, hard to imagine he is going on holiday), and he suggested she take the children to Rome "as that is where they have the ancient...." (he didn't finish the sentence, searching for the word monuments or sites, I suppose). Sometimes Balls had to add the words Brown was searching for, like "ambition" at one point.

Brown and Balls learned that the school is a specialist language school. I told them that French, Spanish and Italian were taught. One of the staff added that Arabic is also taught to those for whom it is a home language. "Arabic, that is a difficult langauge" said Brown; er, but not if it is your home language I suggest.

It has been much commented on before, but Brown's chatter at this sort of event is dire. Balls is little better. The school did a fantastic job under some pressure from the officials, but the overriding memory of this Prime Ministerial visit to my constituency is that Brown and Balls surround themselves with officials who might be even more hectoring and bullying than their masters.

Obama goes to Moscow next week. Will Brown ever make it?

Whatever one thinks about Vladimir Putin/ Dmitri Medvedev's government in Russia, one cannot deny that Russia is an important player in its own right, as well as in current hotspots like Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea, all of which border Russia or its former empire.

President Obama clearly sees this, and is making his first visit to the country next week less than six months after taking office. The talks will cover non-proliferation, disarmament and the key regional issues where Russia is an important player.

This is in stark contrast to Gordon Brown, who, as I blogged here in February, has not visited Russia for years, and hasn't met Vladimir Putin anywhere since he became PM in 2007.

As David Hughes at the Telegraph pointed out last year, in 2000 Blair made sure he was the first Western leader to meet Putin (rather like he was with Obama too, for that matter!). So as British relations with Iran hit an all-time low, Brown has no friends in the region to call on who might help.

Walked to work today - and after an an hour and a half of listening to Gordon Brown, I wonder why I bothered

In recent weeks, I have appreciated that there have been some advantages in not having a taxpayer-funded second home! Nevertheless, despite being an Inner London MP, it can take a while to get to Parliament when there is no tube and the buses are full - about a 90 minute walk from Fulham. Many of my constituents were making similar or even longer walks, faced with the tube strike.

By chance, 90 minutes is the length of time the Prime Minister has been talking today, first at PMQs, and now making his incredible statement on "constitutional renewal". Brown's rhetoric has reached new levels of unreality and hypocrisy. He says he wants the Government and the House of Commons to be "more accountable to the people" - only days after appointing 7 members of the House of Lords to the Cabinet. He says that "we must all face up to the expenses issue" - he's a bit late on this one. He is going to publish the expenses of all MPs going back the last three years. He does need to keep up here, that's what the Daily Telegraph have got already, and even they, after 22 daily instalments, had to conclude that the news agenda had moved on. Brown's statement was met with derision from the Opposition parties, and resigned boredom from his own side.

The only man in the Chamber who looked at all active was Ed Balls, who was moving around, catching little conversations with any Labour MP who would give him the time. With Damian McBride's departure, and Ian Austin's promotion, Balls is the main Brown cheerleader. In fact, Ed Balls is to Gordon Brown as Andrei Lugovoi is to Vladimir Putin - a guided assassin, dripping poison wherever he goes, and contaminating the environment for everyone else.

As Sir George Young accurately describes, the Commons these days only meets for two meaningful days a week, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tonight, as I do the long walk home, I will wonder if even those days are worthwhile. The malaise around the place has reached a new high, and anyone watching today's events will wonder what course of action could lead to proper reform other than calling a General Election, leading to the convening of a new Parliament

Why Germany can take some pride in how it has dealt with its Nazi past

Der Spiegel reports that Germany is still actively pursuing a small number of alleged Nazi-era war criminals, although U.S. authorities have just granted a temporary stay on the extradition of the accused John Demjanjuk to face trial in Germany. I know some ConHome readers will disagree, but I say 'well done, Germany' for pursuing these cases, but this is not the main point of this post.

The Demjanjuk case highlights a problem I have been observing for some 25 years now, which is how Germany has been dealing with its difficult and abhorrent past, and what lessons there might be for other nations which are seeking to come to terms with their own history, a process for which the Germans have a characteristically long and precise compound noun, Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I write this as someone who is neither German, nor Jewish, nor Eastern European, but I am going to try to draw on the experience of all of these in writing this piece.

This post is not about the merit of pursuing war criminals from the 1940s per se, nor about the evils of the Holocaust, but about how I believe that Germany, or more specifically, West Germany, has done a pretty good job of securing a proper understanding by its people of the magnitude of what happened in 1933-1945, of the depth of human depravity reached in those years, and of the proper significance of Jewish culture in German history overall. Others might well take note.

Where spin meets the politics of envy - Labour's new policy to publish Council chiefs' salaries

In its death throes, this Government is combining the worst aspects of Old Labour (like class war and the politics of envy) with the worst of New Labour (such as spin and deceit).

Take for example this new announcement, "Councils to reveal bosses pay". The Government, we are told, is planning to make local councils publish the salaries of their chief executives. Now, I have some sympathy with the sentiments here. I for one have been saying for years that local authority senior officers in general are overpaid.

But why are they paid so much? And why have their pay rates hugely accelerated under this Labour government, especially in the period when the majority of Councils were also Labour controlled, in the years 1994 - 2004? Now that most of these Councils are Conservative-controlled, Labour thinks it has a ready-made campaign on its hands - effectively to throw stones and envious glances at senior officers in Tory-run Councils.

All eyes on when Brown will meet Obama - but when will he meet Vladimir Putin?

Speculation has been rampant in recent weeks on who amongst world leaders will be the first to meet President Obama, when and where. Gordon Brown, in particular, has been desperate to attach himself to the world's new star attraction.

But what about Britain's other important international relationships? Surprisingly, I can find no concrete proof that Brown has ever met Vladimir Putin since he succeeded Blair in June 2007. There is a single uncorroborated report that they met in the sidelines of the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest. In response to my Parliamentary question, however, Brown is opaque to say the least on whether he has met Putin since June 2007. Other than that, it seems Brown met Putin when he was Chancellor in early 2006. If I am wrong, and if they have met more often than this, then why is Brown so unwilling to say so?

German Finance Minister considers a possible collapse of the Euro

Der Spiegel is this weekend carrying a fascinating article speculating in some detail about what might happen if a Eurozone country needed to be bailed out by the other members. Peer Steinbrück, the German Finance Minister, who had some choice words about Gordon Brown's VAT cut and budget deficit in December, has spoken out again, this time saying that

"We have a few countries in the euro zone who are getting into difficulties with their payments."

He added that Ireland, especially, is currently in a "very difficult situation". Der Spiegel examines in some detail how and in what circumstances a Euro member could be bailed out.

But the really tough questions have not been asked - would the German public, at a time when they were themselves facing a deepening recession, countenance paying for a costly bailout of a country the size of Italy? Ireland maybe, but surely nothing larger. And if the German public have no appetite, then surely none other will?

Yet another posting on the bonus culture

A lot has been said in recent days on banking bonuses, including two interesting posts on CentreRight from Mark Field and Andrew Lilico yesterday. We have heard condemnation yesterday from leaders of all three political parties for proposals from some of our state-owned banks to pay substantial bonuses.

I worked for eight years in derivatives on a trading floor. Even as a former banker, whose remuneration in the 1980s and 1990s was very dependent on bonuses, I have to agree with the anti-bonus argument, and I agree with much of what was said by Mark Field.

Those arguing for the bonuses make various points. Some say that bank employees in divisions which were or are profitable should not have to carry the can for those who came close to bringing down their institutions. Others argue that ending all bonuses would merely leave good quality and productive employees to seek a job in another (e.g. non-UK) bank, at a time when our banks need to keep hold of productive and revenue-generating employees (and it is worth remembering that the 12% coupon on the Government's preference shares has to be re-paid somehow). One also needs to bear in mind that in the case of many employees, the so-called "bonus" is something of a misnomer, as it can constitute a very significant percentage of the total compensation. A "discretionary element of the salary" might be a more accurate description.

The first of Germany's big year of elections is this Sunday

I have previously blogged on CentreRight about key elections last year in the German bellweather state of Hessen, which saw the two main German parties level pegging after a remarkable campaign when the CDU declined by 12 points, widely attributed to clumsy anti-immigrant rhetoric.

This Sunday sees a re-run. Hessen is a key swing state in Germany, and this time the CDU is set to win comfortably, mainly due to an incompetent dalliance of the local SPD with the far-Left Linke Partei. For more, see this article in Der Spiegel.

The main German federal elections occur this September. Der Spiegel draws a similar conclusion to the one I drew last March, that Germany is struggling with the mathematics of a five party system. The current "grand Coalition", where more than 80% of voters end up having voted for the government, is unwieldy and sometimes unable to make tough decisions, and probably not healthy for democracy, not least as the "opposition" tends to be formed by small, disparate parties which have no chance themselves to put forward any realistic alternative programme for government.

The German stimulus package is more inspired by us than by Labour

Controversy raged last month over whether the German government was following the same economic approach as Gordon Brown or not. German SPD finance minsiter, Peer Steinbrueck, memorably remarked that Brown was introducing "crass Keynesianism" and that on Brown's VAT cut, "all this will do is raise Britain’s debt to a level that will take a whole generation to work off." CDU/CSU budget spokesman Steffen Kampeter, Angela Merkel's right-hand man on the budget, went even further, calling Brown's approach "a complete failure of Labour policy".

Today, Brown has been meeting Merkel in Berlin. The German Government has this week outlined a further fiscal stimulus package. Brown's people are claiming that the Germans have now been converted to his approach of borrow and spend.

Having gone through the entire document agreed by the German coalition partners, I can tell ConHome readers that nothing could be further from the truth.

The troubled BBC World Service

Three years ago, the BBC World Service embarked on radical change. Radio services to Eastern Europe were closed down and the Russian service pared back, all to fund new TV stations in Arabic and Persian.

I cannot disagree in principle with some of this. It seemed to make sense that countries like Poland and the Czech Republic now being fully-fledged democracies, in NATO and in the EU, and with lively independent media of their own, that they were no longer in need of a UK taxpayer-funded BBC World Service. I did suggest at the time that a memorial be created to those like Georgi Markov who gave their lives broadcasting for freedom. Meanwhile, there were strong foreign policy reasons to bring alternative voices into the Arab world and into Iran.

Harman's PMQ gaffe: "We need debt to rise"

In an otherwise low-key PMQs today, there was an excellent question from my colleague Shailesh Vara, reminding us of Brown's speech as Shadow Chancellor to Labour Pary Conference in 1995, when he said that "we cannot build a new Jerusalem on a mountain of debt".

Harman told us in response that "we need debt to rise".

Now, I think one might be able to make an argument that debt tends to rise in a recession, or that one could follow a Keynesian approach (which I and most readers would strongly disagree with) that a rise in debt is a consequence of a fiscal stimulus or growth in public spending or both.

But I had yet to hear anyone suggest that a rise in debt is in itself a virtue. Given that Harman, on matters economic, tends to parrot the words of her boss, I can only assume that these words are likely to be straight from the horse's mouth. We have had a national debt for 350 years or so now - I doubt if any monarch or government in that time has made its increase a deliberate act of policy. Or maybe what she really meant to say is this: "we need debt to rise to make life as difficult as possible for David Cameron's incoming government."