Tuesday, August 13, 2013 

Waiting for kingship.

Here's a question that doesn't seem to have an answer: just how long does it take someone to prepare to become king?  Depending on whether you measure it from when Mumsie became Queenie, or from when little Prince Charlie was born, the one and only Duchy Original has either been waiting in vain for 61 or 64 years.  Despite being the longest serving heir apparent in British history though (® Wikipedia), it seems he still isn't quite ready to take on the reins, at least if we're to believe successive governments.  Both the coalition and the last Labour government vetoed the release of 27 letters written by Charles to ministers over a seven-month period, although it was left to Dominic Grieve to explain this was necessary as to prevent anyone falling under the misapprehension that Chaz wasn't politically neutral when expressing his "most deeply held personal views and beliefs", when all he was merely doing was "preparing for kingship".

This latest defence of our glorious Prince of Wales comes after the Mail discovered that since 2010, Charles has had just the 36 meetings with ministers (or 53, if you count the ones with juniors as well).  That this is almost certainly more than some of those ministers have had with the prime minister is clearly nothing to be concerned about; no, according to Tim Loughton, one of those lucky enough to have dunked biscuits with his royal highness, it's a "grotesque caricature" to portray these meetings as lobbying sessions.  Rather, ol' big ears is a concerned citizen who just so happens to have the influence to get personal sessions with senior politicians, and he's "well briefed and knowledgeable", the engagements even "hugely beneficial".  Again, these meetings also help him to prepare for his "future role as king".

Indeed, Clarence House presents these cosy arrangements as being the "Prince's right", even his "duty", to bring his "unique perspective" and "reflect the many issues people raise with him personally".  If we were being cynical, which we're obviously not, then we might suggest at this point that discussions that consist precisely of Charles regaling ministers with all the jobs people he's met do might be a bit dull.  Clearly though, Charles is nothing if not a sponge, soaking up the concerns of ordinary people only to then drench the minister unlucky enough to have picked the short straw this month.

The first question then leads to a second.  If Chaz's preparing for kingship only ends once he's crowned, then just how did Brenda herself get ready to become queen?  Did she start preparing to become queen only once she was heir presumptive, was it from birth, or was it from when she took on public duties during WWII?  Did this involve bringing her "unique perspective" on how the war could be brought to an end sooner, or did she perhaps confine her views to the nationalisations of the Labour government after 1945?  Was there a meeting between Ernest Bevin and Liz on what should be done about India, maybe, or have a chat with Nye Bevan about the establishment of the NHS and the possible inclusion of homoeopathy?

Whichever it was, Lilibet prepared for her queenship for only a fraction of the time Charles has been doing so, and most tend to agree that on the whole, she's been fairly good at it.  Isn't it then perhaps time that the heir stopped preparing and maybe started, err, acting like an actual monarch?  Or is that too terrible a prospect for all concerned to consider?

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8/13/2013 06:35:00 pm | |

Wednesday, October 17, 2012 

An absurd decision for an absurd institution.

In the year of Brenda's diamond jubilee, you expect there to be a certain amount of royal bum-licking, just as you expect those Tory MPs still over-awed by the sheer majesty of generations of inbreeding to jump on anyone daring to suggest the monarchy isn't the most magnificent institution on the planet.  When the brown nosing reaches the heights it did in David Cameron's Conservative party conference speech though, where he described Lillibet as the "finest head of state on earth", it's difficult not to be staggered by the level of cynicism involved in such a statement.  

Never mind the implication that, regardless of the flaws of democracy and the individuals who put themselves forward for such a position, the hereditary passing on of patronage is still a superior system in the 21st century, it's the absurdity of saying such a thing at all.  Why celebrate the Queen's actual position when you can celebrate the person?  And moreover, why say it when it's the equivalent of saying The Sun is the best tabloid newspaper in the world, or indeed that Katie Price is the best topless model turned one person brand in the world?

This is the kind of mindset you have to enter in to to even begin to comprehend the decision by Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, to veto the release of 27 letters written by Prince Charles to various government departments over a seven-month period during 2004 and 2005, as ordered by a freedom of information tribunal.  The Guardian has been trying for 7 years to get the letters released under the FoI legislation, and is now considering appealing against the decision by successive governments not to do so at the High Court.

To judge by what we know of Chaz's personal interests, you'd imagine that the letters in question must be terminally boring.  Tessa Jowell spoke today of his interest in the "perceived lack of traditional skills such as stone masonry and hedge laying", which you can file alongside his fascination with chocolate box architecture, homeopathy, fox hunting and the dangers of nanotechnology.  Not a bit of it, if we're to believe Grieve. 

According to his statement, were these 27 letters to be released, there's the very real danger that Charles would be seen to be disagreeing with government policy, endangering his party political neutrality.  Moreover, the letters while containing nothing improper, do reflect his "most deeply held personal views and beliefs" and "are in many cases particularly frank".  At the same time however, Grieve argues that Charles is doing nothing more than engaging in what would fall under the "tripartite convention" once he becomes monarch, whereby he is perfectly allowed to make his own personal views known to ministers.  Hence his lobbying of them is simply part of his "preparing for kingship".

As arguments go, this has to be one of the most spectacularly fatuous to have been given by an otherwise decent minister for some time.  If we take Grieve at his word, his statement implies that the next in line to the throne (or indeed, any of the others who come after Charles in the line of succession, as you never know when we might have a Nepalese style massacre on our hands) is preparing for their ascent to the throne from the moment they are born until they either become monarch or die waiting.  Anything they write to a minister, regardless of how inappropriate or party political, is therefore part of their preparation for their future role.  Despite it being us serfs who pay for the royals to continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed, we're not allowed to know how they lobby in private and how this might influence government policy because, err, it might encourage us to believe they're not politically neutral after all.  We're meant to just take at face value the insistence of ministers that they are.  Indeed, if we were to know, then it would damage the very concept of "preparing for kingship".

And so ministers of the capability of Grieve have to humiliate themselves to ensure that the rantings of a Prince are protected and the monarchy as a whole is not embarrassed.  There's a very simple choice here for Charles: either emulate your mother and let your views be known truly in private, or renounce your title and join the rest of us proles at the back of the queue in getting our letters read and answered.  Alternatively, we could just decide that Elizabeth the II will also be Elizabeth the Last, solving the whole wretched problem. Clearly though, when the Saxe-Coburgs make for the "finest head[s] of state on earth", homeopaths or not, the end of this rotten anomaly seems as far away as ever.

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10/17/2012 09:52:00 pm | |

Wednesday, February 02, 2011 

Screaming until sick and contempt of court.

Whenever a tabloid newspaper starts screaming about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, even if in reality the real freedom being threatened is the freedom to print endless stories about which pinheaded footballer is shagging which slapper this week, it often pays to wonder what else happens to be going on at the same time. After all, even while it doesn't normally take much for the ever put upon souls of what used to be Fleet Street to start bleating about how their livelihood is being threatened by the onward march of a stifling privacy law, it's more often than not also a device to distract from some previous unpleasantness they've been involved in which is either about to be exposed or settled in court.

At the moment of course the spectre of the phone-hacking scandal continues to hang heavy, mainly over the tabloids but it wouldn't be a surprise if eventually some of the former broadsheets were also pulled in, their high minded principles on just what is and isn't permissible and what is and isn't in the public interest likely to be shown to be just as dubious as those of their looked down upon colleagues in the gutter press. As much as the Sun's bilious outrage of yesterday was also helpful in deflecting attention away from the antics of the hacks on its sister newspaper, its main objective other than ranting about the injustice of it all appears to have been to let everyone know about how dedicated the paper is to such things as the rule of law. By a strange coincidence, today just happened to be the day the attorney general took the Sun and the Daily Mail up before the beak over what he considers to have been a flagrant breach of the Contempt of Court Act.

While we won't get the full details until Lord Justice Owen and Moses reach a decision, the case involves not the print versions but internet sites of the two papers. Both it seems published a photograph of Ryan Ward, subsequently convicted of the murder of Craig Wass. The photograph of Ward, apparently showing him posing with "what seemed to be a gun", presumably came to the attention of the defence in the case, who tried to use it to get the jury discharged, something the judge decided wasn't necessary as he didn't believe any of its members had been influenced by material available on the internet. This is an issue of increasing concern as, despite instruction by the judge, it's suspected that many performing jury service have gone home midway through a case and searched the internet for those they've been hearing evidence about. With newspaper websites often archiving initial reports on investigations into murders, as well as social networking sites containing profiles which can often be incriminating in themselves, it's something of a wonder that such a case hasn't come before the High Court before.

Whether the case was started under the previous attorney general or not we also don't seem to know, at least not from the initial reporting. If it is purely the work of Dominic Grieve, then it does suggest that he's taking a more active approach to contempt than his Labour predecessors at times did: he had already previously stepped in to remind the media of their duties during the period of mass speculation concerning the murder of Joanna Yeates. It's also worth remembering that Grieve during his brief spell as shadow home secretary had the audacity to tell then Sun editor Rebekah Brooks (nee Wade) to her face that he thought her coverage of crime was too sensationalist, prompting Brooks to inform David Cameron that he unless he was moved out of the post the Sun wouldn't be able to support the Conservatives at the election.

There's definitely a fine line to be drawn between the potential for jury members to be influenced by information easily available on the internet and the potential impact such rules can have on the good practice of the archiving of material. There's also the other hurdle to be circumvented, that even if material hosted on servers in the UK can be removed or temporarily taken down, reports and potentially prejudicial information hosted abroad will almost certainly remain. These distinctions don't however seem to have influenced either of those representing the Mail and Sun, who instead decided to focus on the laughably weak arguments that there was an "insubstantial" risk of prejudice as the judge had repeatedly warned jurors not to consult the internet, as if his word was enough to ensure that they wouldn't so much as touch a computer screen after they had gone home of an evening, and the even more ridiculous claim from the Sun's representative that as the image was "poor quality" there was an "extremely small risk" any juror would have prejudiced by it. Presumably the article noted the fact that the defendant in the case appeared to be posing with a gun, or did the piece consist solely of an unexplained blurry photograph of someone holding something?

Whatever the judgement reached and the consequences it has for a media that has changed vastly since the contempt act was drawn up in 1981, it's always good to know that regardless of the inexorable passing of time, there's every reason to remain cynical about the motives of a newspaper that cries freedom just before it finds itself in the dock.

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2/02/2011 11:59:00 pm | |

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 

A welcome back to Ken Clarke.

Probably the most astonishing thing about the last few months politically has been one of the things that has been barely touched on: just how badly the Conservatives have been doing when they should be, by rights, decimating Labour in the polls and potentially getting ready for government. By badly we have to keep things in perspective: at no point has Labour actually regained the lead in the opinion polls, although it has come strikingly close to it in some. Looking back historically however, Labour after the 92 election consistently led the Conservatives in the polls, sometimes by ludicrous figures of 25%+. The Conservatives for a while managed comparable figures in the middle of last year, before the second Brown bounce after the bail out took full effect.

Things have since improved, the gloom of January, the ever rising toll of job losses, and now increasingly the beleaguered nature of both Brown and Darling, no longer looking like they know what they're doing, or rather at least not radiating the confidence which infected the former during the initial stages of the banking crisis, all coming into effect.

Less immediate will be the impact of the bringing back of Ken Clarke, a move long mooted and encouraged but which still seemed unlikely. Looking at the Conservative front bench today, excepting Clarke, it was impossible not to see a group of grey men, one which you'd find it difficult to have any confidence in. The wider Conservative reshuffle, and Cameron's strange refusal to bring back the irascible David Davis, still apparently smarting from his decision to resign and fight for a principle, said much the same: for all the boasts that Cameron's shadow cabinet now contains more women than Brown's, all, except for perhaps Theresa May, moved to Shadow Work and Pensions, are in the jobs which rarely result in them appearing on our screens. Similarly mystifying was the move of Chris Grayling, a true grey, underwhelming man if ever there was one, to shadow home secretary. When we have a government which is so apparently wedded to the casual dilution, even evaporation of our civil liberties, you want someone in the seat opposite to have something approaching credentials for fighting against such policies. Say what you will about Davis's support for capital punishment and hard-line approach to immigration, you knew where he stood on ID cards, 42 days and everything in-between. His first replacement Dominic Grieve, moved back to his former job as shadow justice secretary, was never likely to live up to Davis's success in outliving, even bringing down consecutive home secretaries, but apart from his supposed libertarian leanings he made truly abysmal speeches and comments on the Human Rights Act and came across as having been promoted above his competence.

All the immediate comparisons regarding Clarke's re-entry to the shadow cabinet were to Brown's far more surprising offering of a job to Mandelson, to whom Clarke will shadow, but to compare the two any further than that is more than a disservice to Ken. Both might be widely disliked amongst the parties' respective core supporters, but Clarke is lovable, affable and endearing when Mandelson is a person you suspect only a mother could truly love. Doubtless that is part of the reason why Mandelson succeeded in most of what he did outside of his resignations; even those that loathed him seem to have a grudging respect. Clarke on the other hand has always been, along with Alan Duncan, regardless of his involvement with Vitoil, the "acceptable" Conservative, the ones that don't instantly set your teeth on edge. Compared to George Osborne, supposedly having lessons in how not to make people resort to violence on hearing or seeing him, there simply isn't a contest. It helps also that as Cameron retorted at PMQs today, he has something of a shining record as the last Conservative chancellor.

It might well have been coincidence, but today was also the first PMQs for quite some time when Cameron comprehensively scored a victory. Brown was so desperate to change the subject away from the economy that he brought up the completely irrelevant fact of Clarke's differences with most of his Tory colleagues on Europe, when surely more damaging would have been Clarke's also apparent agreement with Brown on the need for a stimulus, that the VAT cut wasn't completely idiotic or a "bombshell" as the Conservatives portrayed it, and that anyone going into the next election promising tax cuts was asking for trouble. For someone who appeared to be finally getting better at the dispatch box, it was embarrassing, and the silence on the Labour benches was eerily apparent.

When criticising Conservative politicians you can't of course ignore the fact that there are much the same problems on the Labour benches, with the added disadvantage that these less than promising individuals are actually in power. The only consolation is that we know the Conservatives would introduce even more swingeing reforms of benefits than James Purnell is proposing; there is however no one quite as pompous or over-promoted on the opposite side as Geoff "Buff" Hoon, and that only Harriet Harman could possibly be so utterly stupid as to try to block freedom of information requests on MP's spending in the current economic situation. Not that the Tory shadows would be much better in the same jobs, and indeed, the idea of George Osborne being chancellor is terrifying in the extreme. Likewise, Eric Pickles, the new party chairman, who is doubtless very popular with the Tory grassroots, seems such a throwback to Thatcherite days that he appears to have the exact same bulk as the pre-diet Nigel Lawson.

The bringing back of Clarke bears further comparison to Brown's strategy for a further reason: while Brown has been apparently desperate to put back together the original New Labour coalition, sans Blair, with the equally dislikable Alan Milburn also brought back into the fold, Clarke is from an even earlier era. The difference is that his stretches in Thatcher's government, and spell as, however humourously aesthetically, health secretary, have been all but forgotten. We instead remember him as chancellor, as the successive leadership challenger that could have restored the Tories' fortunes earlier if only he could have closed the chasm between himself and the rest of the party over Europe. Mandelson and the rest just remind us, quite rightly, of spin and the decadence now in retrospect of the early New Labour years. He might well be, as Lord Tebbit characterised him, lazy, but his laziness might just be the thing that convinces those uncertain of the economics of Osborne that there is something of substance there after all.

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1/21/2009 11:59:00 pm | |

Monday, September 29, 2008 

Our new overlords.

If the Liberal Democrats' conference was overshadowed by "Meltdown Monday" two weeks ago, the Conservatives hardly seem to be cursing their luck for suffering the same fate. Even with the polls suggesting that Labour's conference, or rather, Gordon Brown's well-received speech, has given the government a boost, the edict from on high was obvious: try not to look too triumphalist.

Accordingly, even if the swinging dicks in the party are on the inside brimming with confidence which only the most expensive private education followed by Oxbridge can provide you with, their faces and actions must be the opposite: stern, determined, serious. It's almost reminiscent of a faintly apocalyptic sect that are constantly reminded that they are living in the last days, and that The End could come at any time; when it does, they must be ready, lest the outsiders be put off by their exuberance at being saved whilst all around them are set to burn in economic hellfire.

The deeply depressing thing, apart from that fact that all the banks are going to collapse tomorrow leaving us in a Threads-like future eating rats to survive, is that the Conservatives truly do look like the government in waiting. A party flush with cash and the knowledge that they probably already have the next election in the bag is always likely to be able to put such a powerful show on, but that it's so apparently natural is what digs in and inspires anxiety. Not only are they appealling aesthetically, but also on policy they are finally starting to cobble together something approaching the beginnings of a manifesto. Their plan to set-up an Office for Budget Responsibility to monitor government spending is one of those simple ideas which is all the more effective for it. The announcement that they will not build a third runway at Heathrow and instead opt for a high-speed TGV line between St Pancras and Leeds was a master stroke - pissing off all the right people while further underlining their "green" credentials. It's hardly likely to win over the real greens, but those worried about about the contribution of flying to CO2 emissions will likely be impressed.

Take as a further example George Osborne, who ought to be on an absolute hiding to nothing. He's young, resembles a caricature of the smarmy, upper-class snob that spent his tender years smashing up restaurants when he wasn't shovelling white powder up his nostrils, with a face so punchable it's a marvel that he hasn't got a broken nose and a good number of teeth missing, knows next to nothing about economics, and has all the charm (to this writer at least) of a self-portrait of Kate Moss drawn in lipstick and Pete Doherty's blood. Instead his speech was pretty much as good as it could have been: for a party that has been absolutely anonymous on the economic fall-out of the past two weeks, he came across as ready to take over the reins should become available. The message about the cupboard being bare with there being no possibility of sharing the proceeds of growth, as they promised and as Vince Cable mocked them for, with a recession about to bite may have been stating the obvious but was still jarring. He declared that the party was over, and while you somehow doubt that is by any means the thinking within the Tory party, he undoubtedly meant it. While acknowledging the party's own role in deregulating the City while encouraging the housing bubble, he attacked the bankers "partly responsible" harder if anything than New Labour has ever dared to or would dare to.

There was of course chutzpah along with the clarity, Osborne hilariously claiming that they were "not bedazzled and don't fawn over big money", just as a Dispatches documentary showed that a donation of £50,000 to the party brought membership to the Leader's Club, where they could argue the toss over Champagne with Cameron, but the right tone had been struck. It will though be the promise of a two-year council tax freeze that gets the headlines, despite the cupboard from where it was presumably pulled being bare. This has all the makings of being just as much a con as the inheritance pledge was, with many being under the illusion that they will benefit when they most likely won't, as councils will have to decide to take part, before you even bother to actually look at the figures. None of this though will matter, just as the IHT pledge didn't last year, as the Conservatives are getting away with their promises barely being examined, as Labour's invariably weren't prior to 97.

This was further apparent when Andrew Lansley stepped up to the lectern, holding forth on the NHS just as Osborne had stated that the party was over. His big promise was a single room for any patient who wanted one, despite the unlikeliness of there being any extra cash to deliver such a bold pledge. When you consider that the NHS cannot even currently deliver single-sex wards, this was the sort of unachievable ideal that the Tories would have once criticised, and which Labour would have been crucified for as yet more wasted spending. He had previously promised to end the constant reforms under New Labour by introducing even more reforms, but this time ones which will democratise, empower and free the staff, as if Labour hadn't sold their constant rejiggings on exactly the same buzzwords. The contradictory, contrary thinking would have been mocked normally, but these are not normal times, and with the economy taking precedence over everything, Lansley and the party will probably be glad that few will take much notice.

There's likely to be more such flummery tomorrow, when the favourite Conservative subject, the "broken society", will be the main topic. Dominic Grieve, fresh from attacking multiculturalism as he enters one of the most multicultural cities in the country, will apparently offer changes in the law to help "have-a-go heroes" who are supposedly being prosecuted for daring to interfere when they see crimes occurring, often highlighted by the tabloids who hardly ever report the full real story, such as when they were outraged by the man and son who were arrested after they performed a citizen's arrest on a boy who had err, allegedly committed a crime the day before. He will also look to change health and safety laws supposedly stopping the police from doing their jobs, highlighting the case of Jordan Lyon, which err, involved community support officers, and as this blog has previously noted, was not the scandal which it was made out to be, as the boy had already disappeared from sight when they arrived and the police themselves were there within a few minutes of that.

The underlings though have been thoroughly overshadow by Osborne, just as they will be also by Cameron. While Osborne ineffectively threw back the "novice" tag at Gordon Brown, something not shown in many bulletins, his "stop go" soundbite will have a struck a chord with those tired of a government which has just one strength remaining, the experience of Brown in a crisis. This, lamentably, may be the end of even that.

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9/29/2008 11:59:00 pm | |

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