La garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!

Watching the unseemly rush of Labour MSPs seeking elevation to the giddy heights of opposition leader, I can't help reflecting that it is, by and large, a prime example of ambition unfettered by talent.

Cathy Jamieson is the best of the lot, performing far better now than she ever did as a Minister, calm and considered, setting aside the shrill hectoring so beloved of some of her colleagues in favour of making a point. Her performance at FMQs was steady and well-handled, her dignity throughout the Wendy Alexander farce setting her well apart from her less sober fellow travellers.

I may have said this before, but the rest of them should stand back and admire as the one true leader steps forward to fill the void (it's a kind of anti-matter thing). She's been a superhero, holds fast to her principles, she can even bring her own scandal. She's an experienced election planner, she knows her history, she is most definitely one of life's visionaries, she's right up to date with all this modern technology stuff, and she even entertains the opposition.

What more could anyone want? Give us Helen Eadie! Eadie to leadie! Her contributions to debates are legendary and wonderful, her rapier-sharp analysis is at least in a par with anyone else in the Labour group, and people would flock to support her. Her questions to the First Minister would be fantabulous - we'd be able to sell tickets for that - and she can spot nuclear weapons on Google maps.

Go on Labour, have courage, choose a real hero!

Wendy Alexander resignation

Was this chap prescient?

Yes, she's resigned and we can get back to politics instead of her nonsense, but she resigned without any humility and without once apologising for her actions.

Instead of admitting she was wrong and saying sorry, she claimed that she was the victim of a 'partisan' decision and that she had been denied 'natural justice'. This is not true - she was investigated by an independent commissioner, judged by a jury of her peers and her actions were found wanting.

Her lack of good judgement has been her Achilles heel all along and her refusal, even now, to accept responsibility for her actions and their consequences is an indication of just how bad her judgement is.

She said in her statement that "My pursuers have sought the prize of political victory with little thought to the standing of the Parliament." It would be better argued that those who questioned her actions and their admissability did so to protect the standing of Parliament and not allow the reputation of Scottish politics to be further sullied. That determination to champion what is right is to be welcomed, not criticised.

What is clear is that Ms Alexander was under attack from within her own party. It was a series of leaks from within Labour that revealed all the information on her donations - the other parties active in Scotland were surprised, to say the least, to discover that anyone would seek donations to run an internal campaign, never mind donations on the scale revealed, it was a leak from within Labour that revealed the "Wonderful Wendy" cribsheets, and the continual dripping of negative stories from within Labour has been consistently undermining her.

Her policy platform was unstable and incoherent, her analysis of situations was abysmal, she shed staff one after another, she performed incredibly poorly in the chamber and just as badly outside it. She was bad for Labour, bad for Scottish politics and bad for Parliament, it is good that she has resigned, she should add some humility to that resignation.

It's time to get back to politics.

Trams - what are they good for?

Edinburgh trams. The SNP opposed them, the other parties all backed them. The combined votes of the other parties forced the Scottish Government to hand over the money and forced Edinburgh Council to crack on with the project.

In October I pointed out some of the problems with the case that had been made for trams.

In March I indicated some of the problems with construction.

In May I lifted the lid on the project shaving.

Earlier this week I pointed out the lack of anything concrete in the tram presentation.

Having taken a wee while to think about it, I'm absolutely convinced that this unnecessary vanity project is already out of control, that the business case is mince, and that we're going to resent the actions of Labour, the Lib Dems, the Conservatives and the Greens in pushing this madness on us.

In the hope of persuading people to try to salvage something from this, I'm going to do the following:

1. We were told at the briefing that the business case was so shiny that the entire cost could have been raised in the financial markets with one wee trip. I know a retired investment banker who still has excellent contacts in the international money markets so I'll ask him whether he'd fund the tram if he was still making decisions. I'll publish what he says.

and

2. I'm going to use the Freedom of Information legislation to get proper details about the state of the tram project.

Right, then, that's me off to ask.

Another poll

The Telegraph's end-of-month poll by Yougov shows the Conservatives even higher than the Grauniad's ICM poll earlier - by a point, 46% instead of 45%.

Labour's on 28% - which is actually up on last month when they had their lowest-ever poll rating. It appears that they are both taking votes from the Lib Dems - that party is now sitting on 15% - in the shoogly peg zone, Lib Dems took 22% in 2005 and appear to be getting seriously squeezed, they're likely to lose heavily in terms of number of seats taken.

Labour's problems are growing. Whether or not it's true, Brown appears to have taken on a bunker mentality and it's affecting the view people have of his party - 71% think his Government lacks direction and 61% say Brown is a liability. While I take John Major's point that Brown's family will be suffering and much of the criticism is personal rather than political, politics isn't a non-contact sport and Brown was part of the New Labour Project that eschewed proper political debate in favour of personality politics and presentation.

What's missing from the Telegraph story is the score for 'others' which will include the SNP on this UK poll. The figures for the other parties add up to 89% though, indicating that the SNP vote will still be incredibly strong.

Mind how you go!

UPDATE

Disaster for Labour news coming in just now - fifth place in the Henley vote behind the Greens and the BNP. Labour took only 3.1% - a drop of almost 12% and two places and a lost deposit.

The Lib Dems failed to make any impact on the Conservative vote, either, the Con vote actually going up by 3.5% - a swing of .81% from Lib Dem to Conservative, Lib Dem vote increasing by only 1.8%.

Only the Conservatives have anything to celebrate in Henley - a solid and improved result. They hadn't taken a casual vacancy since 1982 now they've taken two in a little over a month and will, of course, take a third victory on July 10th - unless ...

Full result:

John Howell (C) 19,796 (57%, +3.5%)
Stephen Kearney (LD) 9,680 (28%, +1.8%)
Mark Stevenson (Green) 1,321 (3.8%, +0.5%)
Timothy Rait (BNP) 1,243 (3.6%)
Richard McKenzie (Lab) 1,066 (3.1%, -11.7%)
Chris Adams (UKIP) 843 (2.4%, -0.1%)
Bananaman Owen (Loony) 242 (0.70%)
Derek Allpass (Eng Dem) 157 (0.45%)

C maj 10,116 (29.1%)
0.81% swing LD to C

Labour - will its members never learn?

I've been watching the coverage of the Standards Committee decision on Wendy Alexander today, and I must admit to a degree of astonishment at Labour's spin.

Instead of doing the obvious and honest thing - apologise, accept the penalty and move on - Labour appears determined to continue to argue the case that Wendy did nothing wrong. Wendy Alexander kept saying we should draw a line under it and move on but when presented with the chance to do just that Labour passed it up. Instead, Labour members have been claiming that all of Wendy's pain has been caused by the SNP.

For example, I've just seen David Whitton on Newsnight trying to bully his way through the difficulty - exactly the wrong approach. He made claims about what was in the Commissioner's report - I don't know whether he was right about it, but he shouldn't actually know what's in that report - it's not public. He also said that there was another complaint to be considered - he shouldn't know that either. So has David Whitton and an unnnamed co-conspirator broken the rules again to give him sight of documents or was he just making stuff up for effect?

Labour's farce should be over so we can all get back to talking about politics. Apologise, accept your punishment and move on.

Surely it's over now?

Code of Conduct
1.1.2 The schedule to the Act sets out the circumstances in which financial interests must be registered. In this Code and in the Act these interests are referred to as ‘registrable interests’. These registrable interests are described in detail in Section 2 of this Code. Penalties and criminal sanctions apply in the event of non compliance with the requirements for registration. If a Member is uncertain about any aspect of the operation of the Act or the Code, the Standards clerks may be asked for advice. However, each Member must ensure that the provisions of the Act are complied with and may additionally wish to seek independent legal and other professional advice prior to registration.

1.2.11 Where an interest is acquired after the initial registration, the procedure is largely the same as for initial registration. A Member must register an acquired interest by lodging a further written statement within 30 days after the date of acquisition (section 5 of the Act). The form of written statement is again the same as that provided for initial registration but in this case the Member fills in only the information relating to the acquired interest.

2.6: Gifts – schedule, paragraph 6
A member has a registrable interest:
(1) Where a member or a company in which the member has a controlling interest or a partnership of which the member is a partner, receives, or has received, a gift of heritable or moveable property or a gift of a benefit in kind and—
(a) the value the gift, at the date on which it was received exceeds 1 per cent of a member’s salary on that date (rounded down to the nearest £10); and
(b) that gift meets the prejudice test.


Seems perfectly clear to me, simple to understand, easy to follow. Any gift over £520 should be registered - even if it wasn't cash that was received, but just a benefit of some kind.

You've got to believe that someone in the Labour party will now have the decency to tell Wendy Alexander that it's over, or move a vote of no confidence? A wee shove and the pain will be over for her, she can go and do something she's good at instead.

Tramlining across the universe ...

I've just been to a briefing on the Edinburgh Tram Project. It was lovely - a pretty film of the trams operating (computer generated, calm down laddie), a Powerpoint presentation with lots of slides with lots and lots of words (no information, but plenty words), and a Q&A session.

I'll give them this - they believe in miracles, it's a kind of "build it and they will come" attitude, and they're full of aspiration - with absolutely no idea whatsoever how to fulfil any of those aspirations. There was a lot of talk about making Edinburgh the leading centre for all kinds of things but no route-map for getting there.

Then we got down to the questions (some asked by me, some by David McLetchie MSP of the Conservatives) -

Q: How much of the developers' contributions have been received?

A: Er - dunno. But we think we've got £24 million of the £45 million identified.

Q: So about half is identified but you don't know how much is in?

A: Well, we're confident we'll get it.

Q: How's the slowdown in the housing market affecting things?

A: Well, it means that the developer contributions will come much later than we thought, but they'll come.

Q: So you'll have to pay more for financing costs because of the slowdown?

A: Well, we'll have to rearrange financing.

Q: Is there a penalty for not committing to 1b in time?

A: Well, it costs us £3.2 million if we don't commit by March next year, but it's a cost we've got to pay rather than a penalty.

Q: See how you're £54 million short of the money you need for 1b - how are you going to raise that?

A: Well, we'll ask the council and the Government for it.

Q: The Government has already made clear that it was giving £500 million and not a penny more and that was the resolution of Parliament as well. Whose responsibility is it to raise the money? (Well asked, Mr McLetchie)

A: The council will be responsible, but we'll find it somehow.

Q: Where will you find this missing £54 million? Has there been any scoping done of possible avenues of finance?

A: We'll find it. There's some scoping started.

Q: Streetscaping works - they're not included, are they?

A: No, they're extra.

Q: Where are you finding the money for them?

A: We'll ask the Government and Scottish Enterprise and other people.

Q: There's a big hole in this, isn't there? (paraphrasing)

A: No, no, if we'd taken this business case to London or Munich we'd have raised the money no bother from the private sector.

Q: If you could raise all the money from the private sector, why don't you raise the bit you need for 1b from there?

A: Ah well, we've got a plan in place.

Q: See how your business plan is predicated on there being enough customers at the Waterfront and that's not happening, is that not a problem?

A: Ah, well, we've got to build the trams before the developers will build the houses.

Q: Aren't you depending on developer contributions for the cost of the trams?

A: Ah, well, it's a bit chicken and egg there...

Q: You need the people down there to use the trams according to your business case, so if the house building has slowed down and they won't be built until the tram is in place, your business case is toast, isn't it?

A: Well, it means that it won't make money for a while.

And so it went on. The insistence that the business case was sound in spite of the blindingly obvious point that it was about as sound as a £7 note, the starry-eyed ambition to build tramlines everywhere without any idea of where the capital investment would come from, the grim determination to pretend that no problem has ever laughed up its sleeve at the Project.

You know, they actually told us that we should be optimistic instead of challenging the inadequacies of this scheme - there's none so blind as those who will not see.

We never even got onto the concessionary fares - one of the essential funding streams in the business case and one they know they're not getting - but one they've still left in.

More tea?

Pssssst - wanna buy a Prime Minister?

Hardly used, just a year old, very good at U-turns, going cheap...

A poll in the Grauniad has Cameron's Conservatives 20% in the lead - that takes them into landslide territory, a possible 400 Conservative MPs out of 644 - Labour could be losing previously 'safe' seats all over the place.

Of course, Scotland will, as always, be different - although the Conservatives are making a recovery here it's very slow going for them, two or three seats this turn perhaps - the collapse of Labour will be mirrored by a surge in SNP support (as indicated by the story in the paper "Backing for other parties, at 10%, is up one on last month, partly because of the strong nationalist performance in Scotland.")

Cameron won't be facing any challenge from the Libdems either - they dropped two points as well and they'll continue to get squeezed, quite likely losing all of the gains they made while the Conservatives were in disarray. They're still suffering from the way Charlie Kennedy was treated and Clegg simply doesn't have the nous to know what an appropriate way for a senior politician to behave would be.

So Cameron looks to be in an incredibly strong position - his party has its highest rating for 20 years and Labour is playing sweet chariot (74% of people said that the change from Blair to Brown was a change for the worse and only 24% of people think that Labour in its current state has a chance of winning the next election).

Labour's position has weakened as Labour MPs queued up to cave in on issues they had previously expounded on as great matters of conscience, with claims like "I was given assurances that these powers would never be used" adding to the increasing distrust that people have for the shifting sands of Labour's slow disintegration.

There is no such thing as a safe seat, votes do not belong to parties, they belong to individual electors. Every elector has the right to choose a different individual or party to vote for at every election. Labour appears to be running on tramlines straight into learning that lesson the hardest way possible.

We're facing, once again, the prospect of the Conservatives being in power in the UK but with very few seats in Scotland. The choice facing Scotland will be whether to elect SNP MPs who will work for Scotland's best interests whatever the situation or Labour MPs who will, once again, use that situation to promote grudge and grievance against rule from Westminster.

Scotland has moved on, politics in Scotland has moved on, and will continue to move away from that political sclerosis. It's unfortunate that Labour hasn't managed to move as politics changed, but Scotland will continue to grow and improve in any case.

The next couple of years will mark an interesting time in politics - the decline and possible fall of the Labour party while Scotland moves on. An SNP Government in Edinburgh, a Conservative Government in London and an independence referendum - we truly live in interesting times.

So this Calman Commission thing ...

A chap I know is pretty expert on Freedom of Information. Sad, I know, but it keeps him happy - he should get himself a deerstalker in my opinion.

Anyway, he had a wee look at the Commission for Repainting Devolution website recently, stroked his chin and said "hang on, these fellows think Freedom of Information doesn't apply to them".

In his usual manner he pondered the situation and is forming a view that, since the Commission is a creature of the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body, it is covered by the Freedom of Information legislation whether they like it or not.

That should give them a few headaches, given their desire to keep everything secret. Which brings us onto another point, John Loughton, erstwhile Big Brother winner, recently spent a couple of months being filmed 24 hours a day - including during private moments like using the toilet. Bit late to start being coy, is it not?

I mentioned the war but I think I got away with it

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to consult widely, think deeply, and come up with a constitutional future for Scotland. How's that grab you?"

"Er, OK, but see this consult widely bit - can I just do it but not widely? I'll get back to you on the other bits."

Ken Calman, Commission on repainting devolution, has sent forth his handmaidens into the committee room to decide upon the rules of engagement with this fine upstanding body. With one voice and a few strangled croaks they have decided to eschew all this open and public nonsense and get straight into the shadows. Here's some of the rules they've set:

1. Group members will seek advice informally instead of asking experts (experts in the constitution?) - apparently the members of the group are the experts - paragraph 4

2. Closed doors meetings are fine for discussing Scotland's future - para 6

3. They'll need to write stuff down - para 7

4. But they won't publish it unless Simon says they can - ibid

5. It's fine for one of the group members to hear something down the pub and enter it into evidence - para 8 - but only if they write it down and ask permission to publish it - para 7

6. There could be value in having meetings in different places with invited attendees (really, they said 'could') - para 9

7. They might invite experts (apparently in spite of being experts themselves) - para 10

8. Meetings open to the public will not be appropriate for this Commission - para 11

9. George Parr will chair all meetings - I made that one up

10. They'll select 'representatives' of the wider population to take part in focus groups - para 12 (maybe George Parr is chairing it)

11. They're going to make themselves known - para 14 - coming soon, the merchandising ...

12. An open-ended call for evidence would produce an "unfocused response", so they'll tell you that they'll be asking questions later - para 15

13. There's this website wot the Commission's got, right, so use that for gathering the opinions of the people of Scotland, right? Apparently not, that carries "considerable risks", but they might consider a questionnaire - para 17

14. None of the Commission members is to go 'off-message', and they've not to tell on Simon - para 20

Do I scorn too much? Well, they've considered the questionnaire and gone into a wee dwam, so the Commission now encourages you to write in, preferably in email but they don't intend to go publishing things. There's a policy on handling submissions, and it says:

They'll publish most of the submissions it receives - para 2

But nothing wholly or partially outside the remit - para 3 (don't mention your groceries)

They'll be reformatted and edited - para 4

Tom Lehrer retired in disgust, claiming that satire was dead when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. I think the Committee to Repaint Devolution has proven that reports of satire's death were mildly exaggerated.

Bring on George Parr!