PC Blair Plods Off At Last

Publicity-seeking politically correct policeman, Sir Ian Blair, had a ball playing politics and that was his downfall. He's quit but the Force won't go with him.

Since he was shoe-horned into the top job by his namesake, Blair has been instrumental in helping the Met become just another puppet of the New Labour propaganda machine. 

The dislike for Blair in the Met was widespread and rampant. The only real question is why did it take him so long to be forced out. 

Announcing his resignation after three years in the job, Blair said he would stand down "in the best interests of the people of London and the Metropolitan Police Service". Add to that in the best interests of democracy and he would be getting closer the mark. 

Blair became just too political, cosying up to his government masters and making quite a few gaffs and enemies on the way. He just got too big for his policeman's boots. Everyone saw him as Blair by name and Blair by nature. Secretly taping conversations with the attorney-general was just a bit too Nixon.

That may be fine in a banana republic where the police and politicians are one of the same but it not the function of the police in a modern democracy.

Blair was fingered for his handling of events surrounding the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. And was at the centre of a very public spat over a racism row involving the Met's most senior Asian officer.

On top of that, he is at the centre of an inquiry into awarding contracts to one his pals. 


The silly man is still playing politics. Blaming it all on London mayor, Boris Johnson, saying he'd lost his backing, is a pathetic and lame excuse for his own aloof arrogance. Johnson had the guts to stand up to him. 

Now he's going to quit, the question is who is going to replace him. It's time for a copper's copper, someone who will try to put some clear blue water between the police and the politicians, not the Watergate tapes guy in the cartoon.

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Cabinet Throws Its Toys Out Of The Pram

Brown's cabinet cry babies are threatening to throw their toys out of the pram, if he tries it on with a cabinet shuffle. Faced with a botched-up job on the Bradford & Bingley buy-out and the Blairites in open revolt, it seems Brown has been outmanoeuvred and nowhere left to turn. 

The Daily Mail reports that Brown's plans to shuffle the pack were "in turmoil last night as senior ministers threatened to resign if he tries to move them."

"Sources said they expect the Prime Minister to put off a major reshuffle amid fears it could prompt all-out war at the top of the Government."

The list is growing longer by the day, after Kelly jumped ship or was thrown overboard and then promptly nailed her Miliband colours to the mast. 

Hoon says he doesn't was to go to Brussels. Miliband and Johnson want to stay in their job, or have Brown's job. Purnell and Darling reckon they are quite comfy. 

What a smug, arrogant lot they are. 

The move comes as news of the government's B&B buy-out was leaked to the BBC's Robert Preston. A double edged sword.

In the heady days of Brown's big moment, he tried to scupper the Tory conference with an election that never was and a troop withdrawal from Iraq that never was. 

The timing of the B&B buy-out wrong-footed the Conservatives and left Cameron and Osborne  frantically having to rearrange their notes and speeches. 

And for the Blarites, any whiff of a major reshuffle now would look like closing the door after the economic horse has bolted. 

Now it could be a tinkering round the edges but a reshuffle that never was. In the cunning world of Brown anything is possible - it just takes him a little while to get round to it.

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Brown Should Face Death With Dignity

Watching Brown and the sad spectacle that used to be called the Labour Party conference, smacks of the Wizard of Oz. A horse by any other colour is still a horse. Someone should humanely put them out of their misery. All Brown and his ministers can do is look for a brain, urge delegates not to lose heart and hold their nerve. 

Prescott was doing what he has been doing for years, trying to rally the troops. Only no one was listening to his tired, old rant. Campbell tried not to sound like a bully and gave a few empty words to camera, cruelly captioned as the "former spin doctor" by Channel 4 News. 

Ministers try to sound fresh but just regurgitate the spin and hype set out for them in craftily worded press releases. 

Miliband, in his cliché ridden leader-in-waiting speech, tried to appear a bit more Brown but came across as a Blair schoolboy.

Doomsday Darling repeated the economic warning of hard times ahead and then proceeded to do what the government has always done and borrow itself out of trouble. 

The side-show of a Blairite leadership challenge is just that - a side-show.

The government's overarching strategy is to cling on to power until the bitter end. Any successful challenger would have to call an election sooner rather than later and face a wipe out. So the strategy is to limp along for the next 18 months. 

Even the grandee of the Labour Party, Tony Benn, has given up on conference and taken his bat home. Writing in the Sunday Times, Benn hit the nail on the head. "It’s Labour’s policies that the voters don’t like." Now that's from a guy who knows a thing or two about Labour Party politics!

Brown made his appearance on Sunday, wearing what at first appeared to be a hair shirt, admitting he'd made a few mistakes and telling the BBC "he will do better". But the wizard in sackcloth and ashes soon turned out to be the same bloke behind the curtain. 

Brown tried to play the sympathy card. He was a "pretty ordinary guy". Only the last person to try that on with a "pretty straight sort of guy" defence was Blair, after being exposed in the Bernie Ecclestone scandal - and that 'pretty straight guy' is now wanted for war crimes. 

Then, as always, Brown went and spoilt it all by saying something stupid and droning on about everything being the fault of global this and that and again he's just "getting on with the job". 

Brown must realise that voters have seen through the light touch decade and the smoke and mirrors of the economic mess which is actually his fault.

Sun political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, echoed the views made here on Friday, that it is Brown who should shoulder the blame for the economic mess. 

Unlike here though, Kavanagh doesn't call for Brown to face death with dignity - because in his view, he is already dead. 

"They are ready to pretend the corpse in Labour’s shop window is still alive and kicking. Gordon is already a dead man walking. The trouble is that, as Chancellor, Gordon ran the economy in much the same way as the bosses of troubled companies such as HBOS and Northern Rock. While preaching “prudence”, he doubled spending and borrowed like there was no tomorrow. Mr Brown blames America for the global economic crisis. But none of this came out of a clear blue sky." 

So it will be a "keynote" speech full of flats in Manchester later today, because no one is really coming to his Party.

It is a just a huge trade fair, as Benn put it. Sucking up to anyone who may wield a bit of power and influence. And a few speeches from the thick skinned, selfish and arrogant government ministers and hangers on. 

The trade union movement showed some teeth at the TUC conference, only to be put in its place by the New Labour bosses firmly entrenched in the movement. 

The same is happening at conference, packed with a grace and favour New Labour mob and a craftily rewritten Blair Rule Book which will stifle any debate on any issue of importance. 

So where is the debate on whether we should be wasting billions of pounds on a pointless and unwinable war in Afghanistan? When exactly will the troops be pulled out of Iraq? Where is the policy stand on Trident? 

Where is any debate on the merits of bringing some strategic utilities and services into public ownership for the public good? And where is the demand for a windfall tax on the greed energy companies?

These were thrown out at the same time as Walter Wolfgang was manhandled out of the 2005 conference by New Labour's thugs, for daring to utter the word "rubbish". These people have short memories. 

Those debates centring on true Labour values are still going on but have been forced out into the cold in the dozens of fringe meetings surrounding the main conference.

What is needed from a prime minister and leader of the dying Labour Party, is strong leadership and real policies to tackle the rising inflation, creeping unemployment and the spiral of the debt culture. 

Brown cannot hope to raise the spirits in Manchester today. Deep depression is now deep-rooted. Even electric shock treatment would just blow a fuse.

If Brown only had a heart, a brain, some nerve and went with honour, he could go the way of the tin man, straw man and lion and return home with some dignity. 

And the irony is that if Brown did have the courage to own up to fact that the current mess is of his own making and do the honourable thing and call a snap general election to let the people decide - his popularity would probably soar.

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MRSA Spin Kicks Off Labour Conference Hype

The Labour Party conference hasn't begun but the spinning and hype has. Today's offering is a pathetic attempt to cover Brown's and health secretary, Alan Johnson's back, over MRSA. 

The announcement that hospitals are getting to grips with MRSA is designed to get them of the hook, after the disasterous £50m gimmick of the hospital 'deep clean' that never was trumpeted at the beginning of the year. 

Brown has got in on the act saying what a "tremendous achievement" it all is.

In the world of hospital targets, nothing is what it seems. The managers have learnt how to play the game. Just move the goalposts a bit and everything looks good. Introduce a few gimmicks and brush it under the bed.

Of course the overall rate has fallen - the way MRSA is reported has been fiddled with, to make it look better than it really is. 

And even the positive spin could not hide the fact that in England, from April to June 2008 there were 836 cases reported. Why start at April? Why not February or March? Or were the reported cases too bad to be included.

And what hospital really wants to admit that its wards are still filthy and people are more ill when they leave hospital than when they go in? 

Not surprisingly, the figure announced are just for MRSA. They don't include C.difficile. Those figures won't be out until - after the Party conference. 

Where's the routine screening for everyone, before they are admitted on to a ward? Where's the bank of single-bed isolation rooms, for anyone suspected of carrying the bugs? Where is the army of dedicated non-contract cleaners, on a decent wage, needed to keep this in check? 

Hospital staff are trying to tackle an embedded problem with few resources and only hard work and dedication. 

Instead we just get a few hospital managers massaging the figures because they're worried about their jobs. And a government happy to go along with it.

Expect more of this spin in the days ahead and treat it all with a pinch of salt.

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Nightmare On Downing Street

As the nightmare on Wall Street unfolded, attention switched to the nightmare on Downing Street, in the whodunit, 'Who killed Gordon Brown?', with Blair's bruiser, John Reid's name now in the frame.

Cabinet ministers traipsed out of their meeting trying to pretend they were focussed on the global economy - until insider briefings made it clear a lesson in 'unity' had been delivered and everyone had been told to toe that line. 

But with the two cabinet front-runners now seemingly taking back seats in public and any backlash from a true Labour left looking unlikely, any leadership challenge is, for the moment, being put on the back burner. 

The attacks on Brown continue, the latest claiming he's more unpoplular than Neville 'pieces in our time' Chamberlain.

It seems they could hold fire until after the Labour Party conference and until the Glenrothes by-election is out of the way, giving a straight run to a general election in the spring. 

The Blairite plot has its origins in Blair's Progress group with Miliband and Johnson emerging as cabinet challengers. 

But Brown's Downing Street nightmare got worse yesterday when scottish minister David Cairns became the first government minister to quit in protest over his leadership.

Many of the Brown protestors have links with former home secretary, John Reid. His former parliamentary private secretary, Siobhain McDonagh, was the first MP to go public. She was joined by Joan Ryan, who served under Reid as a home office minister. And Cairns's first job in Westminster was as a researcher for McDonagh. Joan Ryan, another 'rebel' MP, was a junior minister under Reid at the home office.

Reid is no friend of Brown and diappeared off the political radar after Brown was crowned leader last year.

Reid has experience at the top of many government departments and would be quite capable of mounting a leadership challenge. 

He’s been careful to distance himself from the Brown government and could hold his own, for however long Labour can clings on to power. Even if he lost the next election, he can just go back to his beloved Celtic FC.

(Thanks to comics artist, Nick Miller, for his 'Judge John Reid' trying to lay down the law at the home office)

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New Labour V True Labour Battle Begins

The battle for control of the Labour Party has begun. Blairites and Brownites are jockeying for position. The real fight is over ownership.

As the Orange Party predicted this will be a summer of discontent.

On the one hand, New Labour, in its many disguises and reincarnations, trying to cling on to power and become electable again.

On the other, True Labour, never happy with the way the Party was highjacked back in the 90s.

There's no love lost between the two sides. They've always made very uneasy bedfellows.

The Milibandwaggon has caused some outrage in the Party with his election manifesto in the Guardian and TV and radio election broadcasts. Many in the Party don't like this upstart heir to Blair. He is just too full of New Labour flannel.

Now True Labour have raised the stakes with MP John McDonnell throwing his hat into the ring and calling for a leadership election.

Why is it worth listening to this "left-wing Labour rebel"? Because he's neither left wing - nor a rebel. That's just a label used by some, to scare off voters.

Many in the media class will probably try to freeze him out. After all, they are part of the New Labour elite.

In the Guardian (CiF) McDonnell writes:

"If Miliband, Harman, Purnell, Johnson or any others fancy their chances as leader of the Labour party why don't they just explain why and have a go? Writing articles, holding press conferences and having your friends brief the media are clearly designed to stake a claim for the leadership, so why not be straight about your intentions?"

McDonnell continues:

"There just can't be another coronation for the leader of the party. Our members and the electorate just wouldn't put up with another one. I am up for a leadership election at any time but it has to be about beliefs, about a political analysis of the world and about the political solutions we can promote to regain control over the destiny of our planet."

A letter of support for McDonnell is currently doing the rounds of the Labour Party. If that letter is published in a national newspaper as promised, it will be interesting to see just how many grass roots members and indeed MPs lend their support.

And more importantly where popular cabinet minister, Alan Johnson, stands on this issue.

The Party knows New Labour can't win the next election. No matter what face they put up front, the Conservatives and SNP will wipe the floor with them.

In the Scottish and English Labour heartlands, with True Labour, they may have a fighting chance. And that's what really worries Cameron and Salmond.

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Labour's Phoney War Hots Up

Brown hadn't even got round to taking off his jacket, before wannabe prime minister Harriet Harperson started to measure up the curtains at No 10. Today it was the turn of foreign secretary, David Miliband.

Miliband is making his leadership bid in the Guardian and TV, ahead of his meet-the-voters UK tour in the autumn.

Harman fired the opening shots for the big guns in the phoney war. She was in there like shot. Bossing people around, calling meetings, showing her family around the new place. And having the cheek to announce one of her pet policies, on changing murder laws, in the full glare of the TV cameras.

She even appeared on last night's BBC TV 'News' with one of those official red dispatch boxes carefully placed next to her. What's she got in there? Probably the same 'to-do' list as Miliband. No1 Plot to get rid of Brown. No2 Deny everything.

Is there anyone brave enough to put this woman in her place. She's the deputy leader of a political party, that's all. She is not the deputy prime minister. And she only got a seat in the cabinet because she's Leader of the Commons.

Apparently we only have to suffer her for a week. Then it's musical political chairs and the turn of someone else. Why not let all the contenders for prime minister have a go?

Harman's had her chance, so let's try the others. Miliboy, of course, but also Jack Straw and don't forget John Cruddas and John McDonnell to balance things out. And don't leave out the popular postie, Alan Johnson - if anyone can find him.

In his TV election broadcast speech today, Miliband is sounding more like a young Blair everyday. His spin doctors and image consultants may think they've helped create a winner - but many see him as an upstart.

Just be thankful Blair didn't give himself a peerage. Otherwise he'd be back on the sofa.

"Hi guys, what's new?"

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Fat Is Still A Political Issue

Some of our food is full of crap. That's why the nation's getting fat. That's why heart disease and diabetes are so high. Disgusting but telling us nothing we didn't know already.

Tonight's Channel 4 Dispatches 'Sandwiches Unwrapped' will show sandwiches are too high in salt, fat and unmentionables.

Obesity is one of those issues the government likes to make a fuss of every now and again. Health secretary, Alan Johnson, is making a big thing about it at the moment.

But if the government was really committed to improving our health and tackling obesity, it would take urgent action on the root cause - a disgusting stealth fat called trans-fat. Give food manufacturers an ultimatum to stop peddling it and ban it outright.

This artificially produced chemical, comes under a few disguises like hydrogenated vegetable oil and is hidden in a lot of our food.

Trans-fats are used because they're cheap. They bulk-up products and give processed foods a longer shelf-life. They are used for frying and baking and turn up in all sorts of processed foods and ready-made mixes.

For years they've been singled out as not just causing obesity but cancer, diabetes liver dysfunction, infertility - you name it, these nasties are responsible.

The Ban Trans Fat campaign is a model of US consumer-led politics. Not afraid to take on the big boys, it's leading the way in the States.

New York City recently banned trans-fats from foods. So has Philadelphia and Seattle. And now Arnie is set to terminate the trannies. California has become the first US state to ban restaurants and food retailers from using trans-fats.

Governor Schwarzenegger said the new laws, are a "strong step toward creating a healthier future".

Over here the picture's not so healthy. Denmark and Switzerland have banned them. Countries where people only eat a fresh, healthy Mediterranean diet don't need to bother so much. In the UK, some supermarkets have banned them from own label foods.

But the government's main response to trans-fats is to do nothing much. A review here, a voluntary code there.

So it's left to us to turn into the food police. To hunt down the ingredient in tiny print on the packaging and take pot-luck with the rest of our food.

A review by the New England Journal of Medicine reckons there's a strong link between trans-fats and coronary heart disease and getting rid could prevent one fifth of heart attacks each year.

The British Medical Association and new government-funded research are warning that a quarter of all children in the UK will be obese by 2020.

The government response? As well as spending millions of pounds on posters and pointless campaigns, from September, parents will be given an obesity report for all 4-11 year olds. That will make us all feel so much better - and as guilty as hell.

So why doesn't the government just cut the crap, ban these trans-fats and cut out the crap. If Arnie can do it, why can't we?

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Private Pickle Over Polyclinics

Health secretary, Alan Johnson, has been keeping his head down, since his empty promise to 'Deep Clean' hospitals and get rid of those nasty super bugs. Now he's in a pickle over poly-clinics, facing the wrath of doctors and patients over New Labour's plans for private super-surgeries.

Johnson, the former postie, is just delivering the message. The privatisation plan is the brain-child of one of Brown's GOATS, Prof Lord Sir Baron Ari Darzi of Denham, (no kidding), the surgeon-turned-health minister who's now taken the knife to the NHS.

The British Medical Association is due to hand in a petition to Downing Street today signed by hundreds of thousands of patients (over a million according to the BBC/Telegraph) objecting to the 'threat to close' their local GPs' surgeries.

There's something reasuring about popping down to your cosy GP surgery when you're not well and having a chat with a doctor who knows you and your family history. It makes you feel better already.

Not so with this latest Big Idea. These are mega-clinics - up to 25 GPs in a huge building - and no doubt all run and owned by private health care companies.

When will it all end? Will Brown ever listen to the warning signs or is he just in self-destruct mode?

After the 10p tax fiasco and the 42 days detention debacle, Brown is now set to do battle with the doctors and more importantly the patients.

Picture: Tim Sanders

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IT's A Disaster

Billions of pounds have been squandered in New Labour's love affair with big, hugely expensive IT computer projects. Can they be that gullible to be taken in by smooth talking IT salesmen?

Like salesmen the world over they promise everything and deliver just a huge hole in the pocket (and nothing on time and on budget). Maybe New Labour just likes spending billions of pounds of our cash. It makes them feel important.

In the last decade of New Labour, we've seen many of them crash and burn. Huge IT projects at the MoD and Dept of Work and Pensions end up as embarrassing financial fiascos.

But it is the NHS's Connecting for Health (CfH) computer that's the big daddy. The biggest non-military IT computer project in the world. Costing a staggering £12.7 billion (and that just the official figure).

The NHS IT programme, launched in 2002 in the heyday of New Labour, is already years late.

Until recently, the whole project was shrouded in secrecy, with all sorts of legal injunctions in place to stop reporting. The National Audit Office (NAO), supposedly the big public spending watchdog (well, big on the its previous bosses' expenses) dithered and delayed any report on progress or cost. 

Now the plans will face further delays after a contract with one of the big three key suppliers was terminated.

The Conservatives say the government's attempts to "ram through a top-down, centralised, one-size-fits-all central NHS computer system" has come "crashing down around their ears". That's putting it mildly.

Why not just scrap it and spend the money on, well, how about the NHS? 

Do something about the filthy wards (whatever happened to Johnson's Deep Clean gimmick - come to think of it whatever happened to Alan Johnson?), the appalling hospital contract food (don't even go there) and the third rate service (because the debt ridden hospitals have to spend the cash on paying off the PFI loans). 

£13 billion of our money down the drain and into the pockets of the international IT consultants. It's enough to make you feel sick.

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