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Osborne Gate

Wiltshire Coroner David Masters pulled no punches in his report on the tragic death of ten servicemen in Hercules XV179 near Baghdad in 2005. He is clear that had suppressant foam been fitted in the wing tanks there is at least a chance that the plane could have landed and saved their lives; he has some tough questions to ask about why the RAF chose to ignore a 2002 recommendation that the foam should be fitted, and why a number of documents about it all seem to have been shredded in the meantime; he highlights an intelligence failing – that two US Black Hawk helicopters had been fired on in exactly that area that morning – and questions why the US Military refused to give evidence to his enquiry. There are all sorts of questions to be asked and lessons to be learned here, and I will make it my business to do so.

Parliament meanwhile was passing the highly controversial Human Embryos Bill, with me being one of the 140 or so MPs to vote against it. I favoured some of its proposals. Using cows eggs rather than human ones for experiments seems to me rather sensible, and as Chairman of the All Party Group for Multiple Sclerosis, I am encouraged by the idea that some such experimentation just may find the causes – and therefore the cure – for that terrible disease. But some other parts of the Bill – such as the ludicrous notion that a child’s birth certificate could feature two women as the natural parents – made it overall unacceptable to me. Parliament also passed the Climate Change Bill – a matter, of course, of vital importance to us all and to the future of our Globe. The debate rages on about the Credit Crunch, banking collapse, Stock Exchange in free fall, employment and inflation on the up, and the outlook economically grizzly in every way. Who is to blame and what can we do about it? Borrowing our way out of it, and spending shed loads of money on public projects in a Keynesian sort of way strikes me as being exactly the sort of thing NOT to do.

The outcome of the US Presidential race is, of course, of huge importance in itself. But I am also worried about the risk of violence from terrorists, or even internationally some time between 4^th November and the installation of the new President in January. There has even been talk of a possible Israeli strike against Iran during that period, which would risk terrible consequences. The World remains an incredibly dangerous place – if you were Osama Bin Laden what would you be doing to worsen the effects of the economic crisis on the hated West? There were two debates in Parliament this week, in which I took part, to question the strategic reason for our continuing presence in Afghanistan, and Secretary of State John Hutton’s commitment that we would have to stay there ‘for decades’, and to argue the case for stronger armed forces to face the continuing threat from International Terror, despite rumours that the Government’s over-borrowing may result in deep and damaging defence cuts.

With all of those hugely important issues swirling around, and with many aspects of all of our futures hanging in the balance, I have to say that I find the media’s fixation with ‘Osborne- Gate’ pretty grating. Russian Oligarchs, Yachts in Corfu, the oleaginous Lord Mandelson and the rest of it is pretty peripheral stuff. It has led to some press speculation that it may herald an earlier General Election than the 2010, which most people had hitherto been predicting. It is perhaps a mark of the calibre of the Mandelson project that trying to character assassinate the Shadow Chancellor in this way should form a key part of his stratagem to try to win any such election. I hope that, by contrast we will all be able to focus not on personalities, gossip, plots, insinuations, but on those great and pressing issues facing us all.

Superman or Icarus

There’s something unnerving about the Prime Minister’s depiction of himself as some kind of International Superman flying round the world attending assorted summits and saving our banking system; and something rather unrealistic about the “Brown Bounce” which, as a result, he now seems to be enjoying in the polls. Hang on just a minute, there, Gordon. Am I getting mixed up, or are you the same Gordon Brown who sold our gold at the bottom of the market and as Chancellor presided over the highest spending and booming administration, who removed the requirement that the Bank of England should supervise the banking system, who is now facing inflation at 5.2% and a predicted unemployment of 3 million in the next 12 months, and about whose economy most people seem to be predicting a `1920’s style depression?

I very much welcome David Cameron’s change of tone signalled last Friday in a speech in the City of London. It is right that we in her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition have been relatively supportive of the Government in the eye of the storm. It would have been wrong had we further destabilised the markets by any excessively party political attacks. And we do indeed agree with very much of what Messrs Brown and Darling have done in recent weeks - the nationalisation of the Royal Bank of Scotland, for example. But all of that need not mean that we should fail to do our democratic duty of pointing out what we believe to be wrong with HMG, nor where we disagree with them, nor indeed who is to blame.

I also find Mr Brown’s constant claims that this is a Global Crisis and therefore nothing to do with him both unconvincing and rather irritating. There can be no doubt that it is Global. But Mr Brown is the PM of the fourth largest economy in the world; most economists seem to be in agreement that things are worse here than elsewhere, and that Mr Brown ‘failed to mend the holes in the roof while the sun was shining’. His constant mantra that New Labour meant an “end to boom and bust”, his over-use of the word “prudence” and his fiscal rules which have turned out to be rules only in the good times, and are immediately abandoned when the economy turns down; all of those things are testament to the shambles which Gordon Brown has made of our economy. And I would much prefer it if instead of sheltering behind some kind of Internationalism, indeed trying to benefit from it by positioning himself as international statesman, he would simply square up to the fact that he got a great deal of the management of our economy fatally wrong over the last 11 years, and that he personally is to a significant degree to blame for it.

All of this reminds me of his ten Budget speeches, which were broadly welcomed by the pundits on the day of the debate, but unravelled to a significant degree by the Sunday papers. Before he has a chance to call a snap election to benefit from his ‘bounce’, Mr Brown may well find himself crashing back to earth, more like Icarus than Superman?

Keeping Your Head

Parliament’s first week back has been extraordinary.  As the debt-fuelled excesses of the last ten years bring capitalism crashing around our ears, as the entire world holds its collective breath to see whether we are in for recession, unemployment, bankruptcy and worse, as the world’s leaders flit around from summit to summit and produce ever more dramatic rescue packages costing eye-watering amounts of money which are so vast as to be incomprehensible; as all of that goes on around us, political and Parliamentary and constituency life feels remarkably mundane and normal.

There have been statements from the Chancellor and Prime Minister, but we in Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition have quite rightly sought to avoid rocking the markets any further by acquiescing in what is proposed.  I personally cannot help worrying that we are stacking up problems for the future – the Government are risking a vast swathe of taxpayers’ money, borrowing is at astronomic levels, and there will be a price to pay in the ordinary public finances for many years to come, especially if in the end the effort proves fruitless.  But for now, we must keep our heads down and get on with ordinary life.

That’s why I asked a question about copyright on behalf of Purton-based band Pendragon on Monday, attended a debate about the South West Regional Spatial Strategy, had lunch with the Parliamentary Minerals Group to discuss the Cotswold Water Park, went to a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reception and did a live news interview for ITV West on Tuesday about the Minety gypsies; asked a question about the “Social Exclusion Unit” immediately before PMQs on Wednesday; took part in Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine Show on Thursday about Calne RBL’s parcels for our troops initiative and then rushed back to the Chamber to take part in a defence debate, especially raising RAF Lyneham topics on Thursday; chaired the opening of the excellent if intellectually challenging Thomas Hobbes Conference in Malmesbury and attended Caroline Appelbe’s outstanding art show in Little Somerford on Friday, had surgeries in Chippenham and Corsham on Saturday followed by an BBC West Interview about redundancies at Dyson; attended the absolutely brilliant parade in Wootton Bassett in Sunday, by which the RAF thanked the people of the town for the respects which they regularly pay to our war dead; and then spent 12 hours in Newmarket at the AGM of The Association of British Riding Schools of which I am President, before returning to Westminster for another no doubt similar week.

Tacitly supporting the Government in their efforts to calm the markets as we have been doing for the last week or so, despite niggling worries that it won’t work and may even make things worse in the long-run, reminds me rather of the feeling that I had in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003 when the Opposition (although not I) supported the Government’s invasion of Iraq.  I knew it wasn’t right, and resigned my post as Shadow Defence Minister over it, although in the end I abstained in the main vote to avoid rocking too many boats.  I have always felt that perhaps I should have made more of a fuss then, and slightly wonder if I should be today?

But for now I shall take Rudyard Kipling’s advice about “Keeping your head…when all around are losing theirs,” and just get on with my ordinary - sometimes mundane but highly satisfactory public life.

Equinox

Have you ever noticed what dramatic events occur a week or so either side of the Equinox?  There are of course equinoctial storms every year, very often those truly dramatic ones with widespread fallen trees and the like, sometimes extreme weather oddities like tidal waves and huge tides.  But it has also always seemed to me that dramatic events of other kinds tend to occur at or around the Autumn Equinox.  Stock Exchanges collapse; massive changes in politics and current affairs; even personal disturbances of one kind or another.  “There is a tide in the affairs of men……”

2008 has been an extreme example.  Tropical storms in the Caribbean; dramatic International events such as the removal of the Pakistani President which may well have such far-reaching consequences for Global peace; The Credit Crunch and extreme volatility in all markets (which, after all could have happened more or less any time for the last six months at least); the biggest bail-out in the history of banking, massive collapses in house prices, the possible end of capitalism and banking as we have known it for 200 years; And now we have the return to the  domestic political scene of that Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson.

Opinions will wax and wane about whether this was a bold Prime Ministerial burying of ancient hatchets in the greater interests of the UK economy or a  desperate attempt by a failing PM to bolster his support amongst his sworn enemies.  My own instinct having watched Mr Mandelson operating over many years is that Mr Brown should have supped with a much longer spoon, and that plots, conspiracies, gossip, briefing of the press and general mayhem will result from this particular appointment.  After all, the Blairites who Mr Brown was presumably seeking to appease actually hate that arch-Blairite Mr Mandelson almost as much as the Brownies.  And I personally regret the passing of Ruth Kelly and Des Browne, both of whom are good friends and sound and sensible people.

The two Party Conferences passed much as predicted, the end result probably being a kind of no-score draw.  But now real battle will commence as Parliament returns for its “Wash-Up” session leading up to the State Opening of Parliament and the Queen’s speech at a surprisingly late 4 December.  There are a group of highly controversial bills which we will have to complete - or ditch - in that period, including the Embryology Bill which I shall now vote against and some kind of fudge with regards to the EU Constitution which cannot now be signed off thanks to our friends in the Irish Republic.

The Credit Crunch and the Economy will of course dominate our discussions, and for the good of the Country and the people we represent, all sides of the House will be seeking to cooperate to avoid meltdown in our banking systems, and the economic slump which would assuredly follow.  (Why were we not recalled to discuss it? We should have been.)  Afghanistan and International affairs, especially with regard to Pakistan and Palestine will be bubbling along worryingly, with an ever greater terrorist threat to mainland Britain.  The US Elections on 4 November will be gripping – I am told that the polls are wildly misleading, and that all we can be sure of is that it is a close-run battle; and the period between then and the installation of the new President after Christmas may well be a period of disturbance especially in International Affairs of almost equinoctial proportions.

We are condemned to live in exciting times indeed.

Conferences

You may have thought that Gordon Brown was facing a difficult Party Conference, but as I write on the Friday before the Tory one, it is my view that David Cameron’s challenge is even trickier.

In the old days of course the Party Conferences were rather starchy events.  The ladies wore hats at the Tories’, old men in mufflers at Labour, serious discussions behind closed doors about party policy, the traditional ‘smoke filled rooms.’  Well it’s all different now.  The Liberals must have had a Conference, but I fear that the excellent Mr Clegg barely registered on our Richter Scales.  Labour was as dull and forgettable as the party managers wanted it to be, Gordon Brown’s speech full of his habitual meaningless clichés, and enlightened only by that marvellous moment when Sarah Brown ‘stood by her man’.  Well done her, I’d say!  That ‘novice’ David Miliband having been made to look small, and the worst excesses of rebellion avoided, you could have heard the collective sighs of relief round the bars in Manchester – at least until that bungled (or was it?) resignation/sacking of that rather nice and certainly principled Ruth Kelly.  That aside, Mr Brown has lived to fight another day.

Now on the face of it, Labour’s discomfort, the Tories’ massive lead in the polls, David Cameron’s huge popularity and our raft of fresh and interesting ideas ought to make the forthcoming Tory Conference one of our best ever.  And I hope it will be.  I hope that speaker after speaker will take to the platform, and more importantly to the Fringe platforms to lay out in a quiet, serious and modest way what we will do in Government.  We must not be triumphalist, nor complacent, nor must we glory in Labour’s discomfort.  (Well, not too much anyhow.)  The people need to see us as a level-headed, down-to earth and above all competent Government-in-Waiting.

After all, what we are talking about here is not just “It’s our turn now.”  We are faced with some of the gravest problems at least since the end of the Cold War, probably since 1945.  I have to admit that I don’t quite follow what’s happening on Wall Street and the City, but it’s not hard to tell how big it is.  A $700 billion rescue package – the equivalent of $2000 for every family in America – demonstrates how very seriously they are taking it on that side of the Atlantic.  If only I was confident that the Brown/Darling duo had the same grip over here.  The Great Depression in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, the General Strike, hardship and poverty was one of the contributory factors to the Second World War, and the World did not truly recover for a generation – until the ‘sixties effectively.  Get this banking crisis wrong and we could be facing something similar.

And that comes on top of an international situation, the gravity of which we should not forget – Pakistan, Afghan, Iraq and Iran, Israel/Palestine, International Terrorism.  Add a Western financial meltdown to that toxic brew, and who knows what kind of a world we will leave for our grandchildren.

So now is not the time for Party Politics.  It’s not the time for spin and PR.  Now is the time for true greatness, statesmanship; and I hope that by the time you read this column you will agree that those are qualities which my colleagues in the Conservative Party have demonstrated in Birmingham all week.

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