Just because the government has been shown to be disgracefully casual in its handling of confidential personal data doesn’t mean that the Brown administration is proposing to do anything radical about it. That’s not just an uninformed, cynical take on what’s happening. It’s also the view
of Rosemary Jay, Head of the Information Law team at Pinsent Masons (the law firm that publishes OUT-LAW.COM)
Category Archives: GordonWatch
The mother-in-law for Foreign Affairs
I was idly browsing and came on this picture of David Miliband and wondered if he was the youngest Foreign Secretary ever. He has amazing hair — like astroturf that’s been sprayed jet black. Will it go grey as the strains of office multiply?
And then I came on this passage in Janet Flanner’s New Yorker dispatch from Paris for June 23, 1948:
The most worried, wearied, unthanked, and necessary public servant in any government today is its Minister for Foreign Affairs. He is like a mother-in-law — in the bosom of the family, yet not of it. Essentially, he is related to a world outside, a go-between harried by what the family thinks is its due and by what the neighbours say it deserves, which is invariably a lot less.
She was writing about Georges Bidault, the French Foreign Minister of the time, but her observation is generalisable. For example: As Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher was pathologically suspicious of the Foreign Office. Just as the Ministry of Agriculture was effectively the ministry for farmers, she reasoned, so the Foreign Office was the ministry for foreigners, and so she installed her own policy advisers in Number 10 and ran an independent foreign policy from there. Gordon Brown is also a control freak, so perhaps it is legitimate to worry about young Miliband’s hair.
Permissible donors
Hmmm…. Strange how confused various people seem to have been about who is and is not a ‘permissible donor’ within the meaning of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (c. 41). Here’s what Section 54 says:
Permissible donors
(1) A donation received by a registered party must not be accepted by the party if—
(a) the person by whom the donation would be made is not, at the time of its receipt by the party, a permissible donor; or
(b) the party is (whether because the donation is given anonymously or by reason of any deception or concealment or otherwise) unable to ascertain the identity of that person.
(2) For the purposes of this Part the following are permissible donors—
(a) an individual registered in an electoral register;
(b) a company—
(i) registered under the [1985 c. 6.] Companies Act 1985 or the [S.I. 1986/1032 (N.I. 6).] Companies (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, and
(ii) incorporated within the United Kingdom or another member State,
which carries on business in the United Kingdom;
(c) a registered party;
(d) a trade union entered in the list kept under the [1992 c. 52.] Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 or the [S.I. 1992/807 (N.I.5).] Industrial Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1992;
(e) a building society (within the meaning of the [1986 c. 53.] Building Societies Act 1986);
(f) a limited liability partnership registered under the [2000 c. 12.] Limited Liability Partnerships Act 2000, or any corresponding enactment in force in Northern Ireland, which carries on business in the United Kingdom;
(g) a friendly society registered under the [1974 c. 46.] Friendly Societies Act 1974 or a society registered (or deemed to be registered) under the [1965 c. 12.] Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 or the [1969 c. 24.] Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Northern Ireland) 1969; and
(h) any unincorporated association of two or more persons which does not fall within any of the preceding paragraphs but which carries on business or other activities wholly or mainly in the United Kingdom and whose main office is there.
Seems clear enough, doesn’t it? I suppose the Labour party could argue that, under 1(b), since they knew that Mr Abrahams was really the man behind all those donations, then it was all ok, because he is, after all, clearly a ‘permissible donor’. So it might all hinge on how feeble the ‘anonymising’ dodges were.
Gordon Brown in a nutshell
The Bagehot column in the Economist gets it about right:
It is true, or seems to be, that Mr Brown is maniacally ambitious but politically timid. He is intellectually curious but cripplingly indecisive. Witness the barrage of procrastinating policy reviews that he unleashes in every speech; unsurprisingly, more were set up this week, after the tragicomic loss of two doomsday discs by the revenue and customs service (HMRC). It is true, as the uncharitable gave warning, that Mr Brown copes badly with criticism—so badly, it turns out, that he sometimes shakes with pain and rage. He appoints supposedly independent ministers, then bullies them into line-toeing submission. He shies from blame when it is due and sucks up credit when it is not.
Unfortunately, the gristle and the guts—the ugly secrets of the Brown abattoir—have been gruesomely displayed for all to see. During the non-election fiasco in October, the country witnessed the low political calculation and fake ecumenicism, the shallow bombast and obfuscation, the indecision and ultimately the cowardice. In the first days of the Northern Rock crisis, it saw—or rather didn’t see—Mr Brown hide behind the sofa that he kept in Number 10 when Tony Blair left, just as he kept the uncollegial approach to government associated with it. Those who thought he could shuffle off his old skin when he realised his prime-ministerial dream, or at least that his psychological tics would not warp his tenure, seem to have been wrong. For Mr Brown, perhaps personality is destiny after all.
Brown’s Major moment
Readers with long memories will remember the moment when, as his administration was sliding into chaos, John Major revealed in an interview that he sometimes tucked his shirt into his underpants. This interesting sartorial detail was instantly fastened upon by the Guardian‘s Steve Bell, who from then on always portrayed Major with his Y-fronts outside his suit. Well, guess what?
Where’s Blair?
Nice column by Stryker McGuire…
Blair’s politics live on most vividly in Brown himself. It’s uncanny the way the new prime minister has both killed Blair and shamelessly assumed his mantle. He’s amassed impressive popular support as the anti-Blair with a serious, nonflashy style that sets him apart from Blair, whose presentational pizzazz came to be deplored as spin by an electorate that turned angry after the invasion of Iraq. And yet, like Blair before him, he’s continued to develop hard-line policies on such issues as immigration and crime. He’s proposed locking up for five years anybody in illegal possession of a gun, for example. Such measures help to tighten Labour’s hold on the political center ground that was so key to the party’s Blair-led landslide in 1997. “It’s very clear that [Brown is] determined to continue being a New Labour politician,” says Blair’s erstwhile ideologist-in-chief, the sociologist Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics. “You’ve got to grasp the center ground, and his strategy is to squeeze the Tories out toward the edges.”
The Brooning of Labour
If, like me, you were repelled by the unctuous vapouring of Gordon Brown’s Conference Speech, then you’ll enjoy Ross McKibbin’s acerbic commentary in the current LRB. Sample:
How problematic Brown’s policies were and are has been demonstrated by the Northern Rock affair. In the short term, of course, its difficulties were not the doing of the government. Northern Rock was the victim of a crisis in the international banking system caused by unwise mortgage lending in the United States. In the longer term, however, Brown, New Labour and much of the country’s political and financial elite have acquiesced, with more or less enthusiasm, in a financial regime which began in this country with the abolition of credit restrictions by the Thatcher government. Although there were arguments in favour of abolition it was always very risky – just as the present colossal levels of personal indebtedness (essential to Labour’s electoral success) are very risky. That it came to a run on a bank – something that has not happened in Britain for 150 years, not even in the international financial crisis of 1931 when the stability of the British banking system was the wonder of the world – shows how instinctively (and understandably) nervous people are of this regime. Furthermore, Brown’s system of regulation worked badly. It was he who divided regulatory responsibility between the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England – which was asking for trouble – and it was he who extended the autonomy of the Bank, with predictable results.
The truth is that — as McKibbin points out — much of what is most detestable about New Labour — its authoritarianism, contempt for civil liberties, adulation of ‘wealth creation’, micromanagerial obsessiveness over ‘targets’, PFI, etc. — are actually more Brown’s creations than Blair’s. The only difference is that Brown is now varnishing them with a new layer of patriotic tosh about “Britishness”, “British values”, etc. If the Tories weren’t so pathetic there might be some hope of unhorsing the pompous ass.
Will he or won’t he?
From Stryker McGuire’s blog…
He won’t. Which is to say British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will not call a snap election for the autumn after less than four months in office despite the current swirl of rumors and speculation. Hedge: nothing in politics is certain — but I really don’t think a precipitious election makes sense. More importantly, Brown’s inner circle, and Brown himself, don’t think it makes sense…
Gordon and the prancing fops
Good God! Janet Daley thinks Gordon Brown is rather good.
In a time of national threat we don’t want cuddly; we want serious and stern. Charm might be nice when politics is becalmed and day-to-day living is secure, but gravitas is a whole lot better when there are unknown numbers of people in your midst ready to commit random mass murder. When a nation is in danger, it judges its leader (or potential leader) by his character, rather than his personality. So if the contest between Mr Brown’s governing style and David Cameron’s opposition is really to be, as my colleague Boris Johnson wrote on this page last week, between humourless Labour Roundheads and jolly Tory Cavaliers, then God pity the Conservatives. The last thing that the electorate will welcome now is the opportunity to be governed by prancing fops.
You say goodbye, I say hello
Lovely use of time-lapse photography…
Guardian photographer Dan Chung’s time-lapse view of number 10 Downing Street compresses Tony’s departure and Gordon’s arrival into 30 seconds. Don’t blink…
Thanks to Pete for spotting it.