ABSOLUTELY TYRANNOUS

When I was a boy, the world was full of dictators. Joseph Stalin died in 1953 after having run the Soviet Union under his iron fist for thirty years following Lenin’s stroke in 1922. His successor (after a protracted power struggle) was the comedy character Nikita Khrushchev who was never taken seriously enough by the west to be seen as a dictator, save during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he ultimately bungled. For the last decade of Stalin’s rule until a dozen years after Khrushchev’s overthrow by Brezhnev and Kosygin on the same day that Harold Wilson first came to power in London in 1964, China was ruled by Chairman Mao. Mao Tse-tung (as we called Mao Zedong in those days) applied the same techniques of control as Stalin and all other traditional despots. He decreed a single-party, militarily-overseen state, he purged all opposition and dissent, he sat back while millions perished through famine and poverty and he surrounded himself with a cult of personality (which is pretty hard to achieve when you are in possession of no detectable personality of your own).

Kindly Uncle Joe

In the 1970s, ignorant of the real condition of life in China, some of us allowed ourselves to believe that Mao might be a force for good in the world, much as an earlier generation had bought into the myths about Russian state Communism. In those days in London, I was friendly with Ella Winter, the widow of the famed “muckraking” journalist Lincoln Steffens. Returning from an assignment in Moscow in 1921, Steffens remarked “I have been over into the future and it works”. It was Ella who rewrote that quote into the more memorable – and indeed oft cited – “I have seen the future and it works”. How progressive and liberal that must have seemed to thoughtful people when he said it, how blinkered and naïve it comes up now.

Chairman Miao the Pussy-Cat

Into the 1970s, there were still dictatorships on continental Europe as well as in the east. Francisco Franco, the bête noir of the left in Britain as well as in Spain for the three years before the outbreak of World War II, held power in Spain until his protracted death in 1975. Franco was the leader of the campaign from 1936 to bring down the left coalition government known as the Popular Front, first by coup d’état then, when that failed, by waging civil war. Many British youngsters volunteered to fight for the Popular Front against the Falangistas (among them, Jack Jones, George Orwell, Stephen Spender, James Robertson Justice and Esmond Romilly) and some lost their lives (mostly famously from Britain, John Cornford and David Guest).

The only man I ever knew who fought in the Spanish Civil War was Bernard Davies. I did a stint as television reviewer for the trade magazine Broadcast in the early ‘80s and Bernard was my long-serving predecessor. I felt it rather a privilege to know someone who had joined one of the most romantic crusades of twentieth-century history. But shortly before he died, it emerged that, to everyone’s acute embarrassment, Bernard had fought not in the International Brigade but for Franco.

Ranky-tanky little Franco

The salubrious Salazar

Besides the Generalissimo, there was António Salazar, absolute ruler of neighbouring Portugal for the thirty-six years to 1968. The party he founded, Estado Novo, held onto power until 1974, four years after Salazar’s death. Meanwhile, in 1967, a military coup in Greece pre-empted parliamentary elections – at which, so the pretext had it, there was a danger of Communists coming to power – and led to seven years of dictatorship by a military junta known as The Colonels. Under this, as under the Spanish and Portuguese tyrannies, there were not the millions of murders that characterised the reigns of Stalin and Mao. But dissenters were tortured and thrown into jail, where many of them died, freedom of the media was curtailed, economic policies were pursued to benefit the security of the regime rather than the people and all the usual police state methods were unleashed on society so that no one ever knew whom to trust.

Beware Greeks bearing arms

Many of the nations of Africa went the same way in the years following independence and, inspired by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of economics, regimes across the globe implemented social and political change that required repression in order to achieve what they intended (for a hair-raising account of these events, read Naomi Klein’s brilliant book The Shock Doctrine).

Today we watch at a safe (we hope) distance as regime change (or rather personnel change) begins to be contemplated in the world’s last mid-twentieth-century-style autocracy, North Korea. Recent footage released of the traditional endless military parade in Pyongyang has included one or shots of Kim Jong-un, the third son of the “dear leader”, Kim Jong-il. The boss has also let it be known that this unprepossessing young man is his anointed successor.

Kim III

Kim II

It does rather matter to all of us to have a sense that there is a coherent and encouraging answer to the question: is this man ready to lead a supposedly self-sufficient nuclear nation that, formally, is still in a state of war with its neighbour to the south? Contemplating his likeness, I can only think of what my late father would have remarked: “he looks half sharp”. But then Kim Jong-il is hardly Mr Dynamo radiating intelligence and guile either. His own late father, Kim Il-sung (who had the look of a jolly shopkeeper), was so beloved of his people (officially, at any rate) that he is referred to as the Eternal President. What he or his son have achieved – aside from beggaring millions of his people, extinguishing independent thought and establishing a society and culture of mind-destroying uniformity – is difficult to determine. Perhaps it is just as well that these dictators do not require electoral legitimacy. They might just get booted out of office.

Kim I

*********************************************

It’s common enough that the evening news makes me cry, rare that the emotion engendered is so welcome. The freeing of the miners trapped for two months underground in Chile has been a wondrous story and has provided a rare spectacle of joy in what is usually a picture of a planet galloping to its doom. The images of the Phoenix pod releasing one miner after another into the makeshift camp on the surface will come to invoke this particular year, alongside those of that little boy throwing his arms in the air as he is pulled from the rubble unthinkably many days after the Haitian earthquake.

Two other thoughts on this story: I loved the waiting wife who said of her trapped husband: “He seems to have changed a lot down there. He’s more humble now. I hope it lasts”. And thank heaven the Chilean president, to whom it fell to give his country’s roar, was the urbane and genial Sebastián Piñera (a sort of John Huston without the undertone of menace) and not the cruellest of South American dictators, Margaret Thatcher’s great friend Augusto Pinochet. He would have had the mine sealed so that the world did not know that catastrophes could occur under a dictatorship.

A RATHER SUSCEPTIBLE SHADOW CHANCELLOR?

Alan Johnson as shadow Chancellor: hands up those who saw that coming. Not Johnson himself, evidently. He has no departmental background in economics, only (as many have been quick to point out) in spending. His genial joke – that his first move would be to “pick up a primer, Economics for Beginners” – was a heedless error that will come back to haunt the opposition as coalition members twit him with it at every opportunity.

Alan Johnson is confident with one ...

What was Ed Miliband thinking? Too much, I venture. In making Johnson his choice (the positive part of the decision), he was certainly seeking to offer a contrast with the present Chancellor. This working class meritocrat has, at 60, seen some of the real world first hand and proved himself steady under fire in the latter years of Labour government. Some of his hitherto apparent niceness got rubbed off in his last government post as Home Secretary, where his stance on security, surveillance, police and drugs put him in the anti-progressive line of David Blunkett, Charles Clarke and John Reid. But along with his abiding amiability and self-deprecation, his ordinary-Joe image will draw attention to the 39 year-old George Osborne’s moneyed self-confidence and complete lack of any common touch. Johnson was also the first former minister to declare in favour of the leadership bid of David Miliband. In appointing him, leader Ed could hardly do more to appear properly conciliatory and collegiate.

... can get to two ...

The negative part of the decision was to exclude Mr & Mrs E Balls, not just from shadowing the Treasury but from any position the primary focus of which is economic. This indicates two threads: that Miliband intends to avoid any possibility of replicating the long war of attrition between Tony Blair as PM and Gordon Brown as Chancellor (a war now enshrined in legend whatever the truth of it) by handing economic policy to an ambitious factionalist and proven rival; and that he has no wish to pursue the Ballsian line of rewriting Alistair Darling’s economic policy.

... but three defeats him

It is intriguing that the three candidates who topped the shadow cabinet poll were, in order: Yvette Cooper, John Healey, the former housing minister, and Balls. All three were keen Ballsites in the leadership campaign. Miliband has made Healey shadow health secretary, safely away from economic policy. Cooper has the high-profile non-job (see earlier posting) of shadow Foreign Secretary. Balls will make a good fist of shadowing the Home Office and you can bet that Theresa May will not be sleeping easy this weekend.

Time will tell how far Miliband’s choice on economic policy is a missed opportunity. But with each day deepening the impression that Osborne and David Cameron – let alone the coalition government as a whole – have not wholly thought through the policies to address the deficit, Labour could have set to work to craft a distinctive and credible economic policy. Ed Balls – and by inference Yvette Cooper too, his wife also being an economist who long worked in the Treasury – had already begun the process of repositioning Darling’s approach as the centrepiece of his own leadership bid. There is a real danger now that the coalition will find itself forced to admit defeat in its attempt to eradicate the deficit before the next general election and that Labour will have accepted so many of the government’s measures that it will deprive itself of the widest ground on which to oppose Cameron’s re-election. Its position will be analogous to that of the Tories on the war against Iraq. I suspect that events are going to make Ed Balls’ proposals look more and more on-the-nose and Labour less and less smart in not pursuing them.

The government is running into trouble. How could they not have anticipated the nature and degree of the outrage that the announcement about child benefit provoked? Or if, as one or two commentators have suggested, Osborne did indeed see that reaction coming, why did he invite it ahead of the spending review rather than burying it among all the bad news that the big announcement will undoubtedly bring? The impression Cameron promptly gave of rowing back from the commitment and improvising ways of restoring some of the lost benefit looked merely amateurish.

And then how could they have imagined that ruthlessly culling quangos and other public bodies would simply be a clean and brutally efficient operation, inflicting pain only on the staffs of those organisations? Did it occur to no one that the functions performed by these bodies might be highly desirable and, in some cases, indispensable and that laying off well-remunerated people can be a costly business in at least the short term?

There are increasing indications that one or two ministers will not be able in all conscience to offer the demanded 25 percent cut in costs; Jeremy Hunt is not the only conscience-free member of the government, but he may not be in a large majority. One or two voices – Chris Huhne’s is the latest – have suggested gently that a goalpost or two might turn out to be moveable.

If Cameron is obliged to eat at least a side order of his words, it will not only be the Labour Party that is crowing. And ministerial contradictions and miscalculations are welcome in another way. They cannot credibly be blamed on the Labour government. An urgent task for Alan Johnson is to nail the history rewrite – in danger of being established by the coalition as generally accepted history – that the global recession was caused by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling’s policies over the last thirteen years and nothing at all to do with the policies of the banks, the greed of the private sector or the sub-prime mortgage disaster. Tory supporters already appear to believe that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Labour cabinet ministers who lost their seats at the general election.

The shadow cabinet certainly has an unfamiliar look. The obligation on Labour MPs to elect a minimum of six women candidates has propelled into the front line a number of women whose names mean nothing outside Westminster and the lobby. Indeed, Wikipedia is, at the time of writing, in the process of bringing its pages up to speed on the new women and only the last named of these new shadow cabinet members – Mary Creagh, Maria Eagle, Anne McKechin and Meg Hillier – has a facial likeness posted there. Maria Eagle is rather less well known than her twin Angela, partly because the latter has served longer in front line politics, partly because she was the first out lesbian in the house. The four newbies take as their respective portfolios rural affairs, transport, Scotland and energy. Angela Eagle takes over as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury from Liam Byrne who, having come last of those elected, is demoted to shadow the cabinet office.

Mary Creagh

Maria, the less blonde Eagle twin

Anne McKechin

and Meg Hillier

Should we deprecate the tokenism – if that is what it is – that elevates women at the expense of men of known talent: Stephen Twigg, David Lammy, Chris Bryant, Stephen Timms, Vernon Coaker, Chris Leslie, Gareth Thomas? Is it really of importance that women achieve some semblance of parity with men in the conduct of government? And is it useful and just to try to achieve it by manipulating eligibility for election? Some argue that no right ever won is as sure and satisfying if conceded by a benevolent dictatorship as when extracted by sustained guerrilla warfare. Anyway, who is to say that women are drawn to politicking and legislating and managing public affairs in such numbers as are men? And if they are not, is it because men and women broadly have distinct instincts and priorities or perhaps is it simply because the ascendancy of men has made the heights of politics an uncomfortable place for women to operate? I’m sure that the likes of Lady Astor, Margaret Bondfield and Ellen Wilkinson would have scoffed at quotas and all-women shortlists. But at the same time, all of them were constantly being undermined by male members and found that their sex was a daily issue.

Looking at the alphabetical list of those elected on Friday, before Miliband had dispensed their roles, I was struck by the fact that all the surnames came from the top half of the alphabet. Someone had a Guardian letter published about this today. My suspicion was that there are so many new members entitled to vote who know nothing of most of the candidates that they ticked names largely at random and ran out of votes before getting into the latter half of the ballot paper. In fact, however, it was a curious fluke of the field that only six of the 49 candidates possessed surnames beginning with a letter later than M. From among them, Miliband has preferred the unelected Shaun Woodward for his old portfolio of Northern Ireland, along with the also defeated Peter Hain shadowing his former role as Welsh Secretary. The only member of the late cabinet left with no front bench role is Ben Bradshaw. Rather sadly, Diane Abbott failed to get elected too. It remains to be seen whether Ed Miliband offers her a desirable second-rank post.

Will Miliband’s be a team to fight and frighten the coalition? I hope so because it’s vitally necessary. But I feel less than sanguine so far.

DRIVEN to DISTRACTION

My partner and I watch almost no sport on television – none at all in situ – and he takes no interest whatever in print coverage of it, whereas I do look at results (mostly where they pertain to teams within the county in which I was raised) and sometimes read about the characters in sport – insofar as there are any characters – who find themselves in positions that can be psychologically compelling … which largely means in practice managers of football teams. As people, players of any sport are deadly dull, only ever interviewed concerning their own performances and rarely showing any insight into their own psyches.

But we make an exception for golf. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s been said that sport played on a green surface is very restful on the eyes, but if that were the cause we would be watching lawn tennis, croquet, snooker and crown bowls too, let alone soccer, rugger and cricket.

Graeme McDowell celebrates the Ryder Cup win and shows what he's made of

My late mother was devoted to playing golf and involved herself deeply in the local club, serving as ladies’ secretary for a quarter of a century. I can remember how she fretted about preparing her first annual report (not that I was much help, a budding scribbler of around ten, though I’m sure I told her she would be fine) and how assured she had grown by the time she delivered her last report. My father never played the game, resented (sometimes openly) her “other life”, but enjoyed being a social member of the club. This was typical of him, never initiating anything himself and taking advantage of those who did, while grumbling about how inconvenienced he imagined – or more likely pretended – he was by the making of the arrangements, even though he didn’t object to enjoying himself in the upshot.

In my early teens, Mum attempted to get me interested in playing golf and I had a lesson or two. Looking back, I suspect that I submitted to this because the club professional, one of whose main tasks was giving lessons, was an absolute dreamboat in his 20s. But I didn’t have much aptitude or application for driving, chipping and putting and it didn’t last. The young pro sadly died in a car accident, one of the first fatalities to be actually caused by one of the then new-fangled seatbelts, the buckle of which pierced his liver.

Ryder Cup WAGs on parade

I sometimes watched golf on television with Mum, as much to enjoy her enthusiasm as to generate any of my own. That certainly wasn’t because of the alleged restfulness of green, for we were watching in black and white. What’s more, the outside broadcast cameras had only a certain range, it being impractical to cable them across thousands of yards at a public event, so the players would in turn disappear from the coverage between, say, the seventh and the thirteenth holes. The greatest consolation was the ripe and cultivated commentary of fruity old Henry Longhurst.

These days, the BBC only has rights to coverage of the Open and highlights of the Masters and the Ryder Cup among the major tournaments. We’re certainly not going to pay for a general sports satellite package just to get a chance to watch the US Open and the PGA, the other majors in men’s golf. And we didn’t watch all of what was available of the Ryder Cup. Being a sport viewer is incredibly time-consuming. Even a game of darts lasts long enough to remind you that you could be reading Proust instead.

Mr & Mrs Corey Pavin show their colours

But what we did see was enthralling enough, or it would have been if the news hadn’t already revealed the results before each day’s highlights began. Yesterday, The Guardian asked its sports section readers if Graeme McDowell should be BBC Sports Personality of the Year and an amazing 88 percent voted ‘yes’ according to today’s result. It fell to McDowell (with his playing partner, fellow Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy) to win the match that clinched the Ryder Cup but, in truth, it might have fallen to any member of the team. Ian Poulter and Luke Donald both accumulated higher match-winning scores than did McDowell – The Guardian named Donald ‘Man of the Match’ – and Lee Westwood was generally deemed to have been the team leader on the course. Most of all, the victory was credited to the non-playing captain, Colin Montgomerie, who put his own demons aside and managed his team with tremendous aplomb. Monty is certainly the most intriguingly complicated character in British golf and more often the victim rather than the begetter of lurid headlines about his private affairs (cf a certain T Woods). I don’t see why a backroom boy shouldn’t be hailed as Personality of the Year but perhaps the rules insist that only players of sports are eligible.

Tiger and Elin before the storm

McDowell of course did win the US Open in June, the first European player to do so in forty years. Even with that win, he is placed only 13th (behind Westwood, Donald and McIlroy) in the current world rankings. Paul Casey, who didn’t automatically qualify for the European Ryder Cup team and wasn’t one of the captain’s three personal picks either, is the third Englishman currently in the world top ten. Yanks make up half the top tier and Woods is still number 1 despite his continuing indifferent form.

American golfers in particular make me wonder why I am remotely interested in the sport. I’m sure that, were I to find myself stuck in a lift with any two of them, I would have opened a vein long before we were rescued. Almost without exception, all professional American golfers are Christian fundamentalist Republicans, though at least, as far as I know, none of them thanks god when he wins, as the German Bernhard Langer was wont to do. But their preferred pastimes are killing animals for ‘sport’ and being gung-ho about the military. The American Ryder Cup captain, Corey Pavin, even called in some US military man to give his team an – in every sense, no doubt – over-the-top pep talk. Pavin used to sport a cloney moustache and we thought he was gay. His independently-minded wife clearly contradicts us. She is Vietnamese, a refugee from the fall of Saigon. Though she may not quite fit the profile of US golf WAGs – virtually all looking like Playboy centrefolds and inclined to the blonde – she has done her share of “glamour” posing.

Craig Stadler, one of the big players of the past ...

This class of air-hostessy, air-headed, cheesecake girls are programmed to gold-dig and golfing pros are a good catch. There will not have been anyone playing in the Ryder Cup who isn’t a millionaire, most of them several times over. Tiger Woods’ ex-wife, Elin Nordegren, is the template for golfing wives (and evidently the possessor of an image that draws much interest, for the presence of her name earlier on this blog has brought it more visitors than any other single search criterion). From what we have glimpsed of the club hostesses, cocktail waitresses and “glamour” models with whom Tiger amused himself during his marriage, his taste in sexual partners is no more sophisticated and no less blowsily obvious than that of his fellow American pros.

... and John Daley, never "in regulation"

Golfers may be a catch financially but few of them are any sort of catch by any other standard. It is a curiosity of golf that fitness is not a given. Indeed, golf is a game that men are apt to take up when they retire. To call some famous golfers “out of shape” would be to treat them kindly. You also certainly don’t need to be good-looking – golf is not a sport that attracts groupies, as far as I am aware (unlike football and tennis). Probably the main reason for Woods’ dominance of the game for so long is that he is one of the very few players actually built like an athlete.

That rare creature, a golfer who looks like a pop star: this is Camilo Villegas

Golfing prowess is down to having accurate vision, the ability to develop and adapt the way you swing the various clubs, the particular strength to hit a ball a long way, the knack of applying spin to a shot and the judgment (and experience) to know which particular club to use in each given circumstance. These gifts are what propel the likes of McIlroy and Rickie Fowler into professional golf at a young age and then into a quick acceptance on the lucrative American tour. Woods – like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer before him – clearly had these gifts in particular abundance. Those gifts can desert you and your career can go into free fall, especially when you've won a major: think of Ian Baker-Finch, Lee Janzen, David Duval and indeed Corey Pavin. But one hell of a lot of golf playing depends upon luck which is why, once a special player like Woods has lost his dominance, anyone in the field might win a major and why no seeding system is ever going to make sense in golf. The luck comes in many forms – luck with the wind, the bounce, the lie, the camber of any particular part of the green, the knap and condition of the grass, the time of day that you tee off, the relative intrusion of extraneous noise and movement while you address the ball.

Villegas lines up a putt: don't even think about it

It’s a curious world indeed, with all its mysterious jargon: addressing the ball, having the honour, winning 4 and 2, eagle 2, 3 iron, back 9, laying up, holing out, pin high, matchplay, lofted club, plugged, hooked, chip and run, free drop, in regulation, the turn. And a passing glance might suggest that it is played only by old men in bad clothes with equally old men in worse clothes carrying their bags for them. But it’s a game that can turn on a sixpence and which guarantees nothing. Who could forget Nick Faldo winning the 1996 Masters after Greg 'The Great White Shark' Norman gradually squandered a six-stroke lead? Or Tom Watson, rising 60 and always a popular favourite, almost winning a sixth Open championship last year and suddenly losing his way at the last? It’s a very strange game and I find it no less strange that someone like me can be captivated by it.

A SHADOW of the MAN HE WAS

We shall learn tomorrow afternoon whether David Miliband intends to serve on his brother’s shadow cabinet team or leave front-line politics, perhaps for good. “Why would he not stand?” you ask. “Isn’t Ed begging him to do so?” Well, of course, Ed is bound to do so for form’s sake. But in many ways, it would make his task a lot clearer, if not necessarily a lot easier, if his elder brother did walk away.

The first and most pressing matter is that of the Shadow Chancellor’s identity. Before one speculates, one must of course make assumptions about who will be standing for election to the Labour front bench – the composition of the leading team is always decided by the parliamentary party when Labour is in opposition – and who of those will prevail. It’s safe to calculate that, provided they stand, all of the following will be elected: David Miliband, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, Alan Johnson, Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, John Denham, Douglas Alexander and Peter Hain. I’m sure Diane Abbott will get in too. Jack Straw and Alistair Darling have already announced their intention to stand down and Harriet Harman, as Deputy Leader (she has not had to face re-election at this conference), is an ex officio member. That leaves another nine places to be filled. At the time of writing, more than forty names have been put forward. Six seats are reserved for women candidates.

"luv u, bro"

During the leadership campaign, Ed Balls made a cogent case – usually implicit but latterly explicit – for himself to be Shadow Chancellor. He is prepared, as no other Labour politician seems to be, to reconsider the deficit reduction target set by the former Chancellor and retiring shadow Alistair Darling. He has also played a strong hand in debate with his present opposite number, Michael Gove the Education Secretary. In his initial address to conference after being elected leader, Ed Miliband paid particularly warm tribute to both Balls and Andy Burnham, suggesting that both have reason to hope for important posts.

Miliband is reported to have offered his brother the shadow chancellorship. David Miliband is not a trained economist. Balls is, and so is his wife Yvette Cooper, another candidate to shadow George Osborne. Moreover, David’s instinct is to cleave to Darling’s caution. But Ed Miliband would be far better advised to mount a strong opposition to the coalition government’s autumn programme of cuts. Even if the Labour stance is – as far as the notion has meaning – “wrong” in economic terms, it is strategically more urgent for the party to position itself where it can be seen as supporting those who will be impoverished as a result of the spending review rather than appearing as merely a paler version of the government by lying somewhere along a continuum of parties ranged against those whose only unequivocal support is the trades unions.

Ed Miliband: the message writ small

The International Monetary Fund yesterday endorsed Osborne’s policy thus far. Naturally, Osborne has trumpeted this support and is fully entitled to do so. But the IMF is not the holy see. It is only one judgment on government policy. And the IMF is not a government, does not have a welfare state to oversee, does not have to balance fiscal policy with social policy and indeed against electability. Put another way, the IMF’s interest is purely monetary. A government’s must also be political, strategic and even moral.

So if I were Ed Miliband, I would discount Ed Balls’ compelling claim on Labour’s economic policy only if I were absolutely sure that a) I wanted to pursue a different but at least equally convincing route to that of Balls; and b) that I will not, by denying a shrewd and combative operator like Balls, be storing up factional trouble for the future. The Tory press would love Balls to be the face of Labour’s attack against the spending review and the refrain of “Two Red Eds” would be trotted out at every verse end. But a confident leader can ride that and, once the electorate’s anger with the cuts is roused, be in position to represent it in parliament and spearhead it on the streets.

Foreign Secretary and friend: those were the days

So why not simply keep David Miliband as Shadow Foreign Secretary? It places him in a policy area that would provoke less media speculation about fraternal disagreement. But the fact is that, to be brutally candid, Shadow Foreign Secretary is a non-job. Having been Foreign Secretary for real for three years, David Miliband knows that better than anyone. The broad strokes of foreign policy are inevitably painted by the Prime Minister, the one who deals directly with fellow first ministers, presidents and, in some cases, monarchs and emperors. Leaders who begin to see their foreign ministers as potentially over-mighty are apt to move them back into domestic concerns. Tony Blair did this to Robin Cook and, from his point of view, was justified when, as Leader of the House, Cook resigned from the government over the imminent invasion of Iraq. Had Cook still been Foreign Secretary in 2003, matters might have panned out differently – more difficult for Blair, certainly. (I imagine Cook would be very content at Ed Miliband’s elevation).

The foreign secretaryship is a very high-powered function of diplomacy. But it is impossible to act at all meaningfully as a diplomat unless you meet people and, moreover, people who are the ones making international decisions (i.e. your opposite numbers). Shadow Foreign Secretaries don’t do that because they are not in power. Looking back on foreign affairs spokesmen in previous shadow cabinets, it’s striking how often the opposition leader of the day has put someone “out of the way” in the role.

Ed ponders his shadow cabinet options

Every Shadow Foreign Secretary in the last half-century who also served as Foreign Secretary in government was either about to do so or had just done so (like Miliband) and was awaiting new shadow dispensations. The one exception is Francis Pym, a previous Shadow Foreign Secretary to whom Margaret Thatcher reluctantly turned in government when Peter Carrington abruptly resigned at the height of the Falklands War. Otherwise, it’s striking how often the Shadow Foreign Secretary was someone who obviously wouldn’t get the role in government: Alf Robens, Nye Bevan, Christopher Soames, Geoffrey Rippon, John Davies, Peter Shore, Gerald Kaufman, Jack Cunningham, John Maples, Francis Maude. Liam Fox was William Hague’s predecessor as Shadow Foreign Secretary and has developed such a scratchy relationship with his leader in government that he may well be lucky to survive Cameron’s first reshuffle as Defence Secretary.

Shadowing the Foreign Office offers few opportunities to make policy, largely because the shadow is uniquely out of the loop on what the government is doing. That is certainly one of the reasons why there is almost always broad consensus between government and opposition parties on foreign affairs, save when those affairs are dividing government – Suez and various matters concerning the EU, for instance. A still-ambitious elder brother twiddling his thumbs over his foreign brief might be fatally tempted into putting more than his two-penn’orth into domestic policy discussions.

The Glenn Miller Band: one of the results of putting 'Miliband' in Google Images

The only other possibility, then, would be for David Miliband to shadow Theresa May at the Home Office. That would work. Home affairs can be a notorious bear trap, tempting its exponents into much more repressive policy than they or anyone else thought they might espouse. Miliband’s mettle would be tested and at least he would have a proper job to do. But to accommodate him, Ed Miliband would have to demote Alan Johnson, Home Secretary in government until the election and a well-respected fellow. Johnson wouldn’t suit foreign affairs and the shadow leadership of the House (as high-profile as consolation prizes come) surely must be reserved for Harriet Harman after her gracious and sure-footed stint as acting leader.

Then there is Andy Burnham to consider. He has made a lot of his Health brief and might be persuaded that letting him develop it further is a just reward. But if discernible promotion is his desire, the Home Office would clearly fill the bill. So Ed Miliband has no shortage of urgent claimants on shadowing the three high offices of state – the Exchequer, the FO and the Home Office – and anything less for his brother would certainly be deemed an insult. It seems that, from Ed Miliband’s viewpoint as well as from that of Davld’s very publicly aggrieved wife, it would be best if the elder brother left the stage. And my guess is that he will.

UNEASY LIES the ED that WEARS the CROWN

Barely has he been Labour leader for five minutes and the Cassandras of the commentariat are writing his political obituary. Ed Miliband must be fed up with the media already, let alone with the Tory Party. The soubriquet ‘Red Ed’ – as though Dave Nellist had returned to the House after a long and thorough fanshen under the combined tutelage of Derek Hatton, Derek Robinson, Linda Bellos, Frances Morrell, Danny Le Rouge, Robin Blackburn, Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn, Eric Heffer, Joan Maynard, Ian Mikardo, the WRP and the Angry Brigade and had promptly mounted the kind of putsch not seen in Labour politics since Ken Livingstone ousted the late Andrew McIntosh from the leadership of the old GLC – is as illiterate as it is puerile.

The other canard that the Tories and the right wing press are striving to establish as fact is that Ed Miliband is the mindless creature of the unions, taking his orders each morning from Moscow via Bob Crowe. Here’s the quote (in full) that Tory MP Priti Patel gave for this morning’s Observer: “As the trade unions exert a vice-like grip on Ed, there will be no fresh thinking as Labour reverts to its ideological comfort zone. Instead of taking responsibility for his part in bringing Britain to the brink of ruin, expect nothing more than Miliband having his strings pulled by union barons”.

It’s tempting to confine one’s response to: “That’s Mr Miliband to you, young lady”. But as this quote was clearly given to her by Tory Central Office and reproduced obediently and verbatim by her, we should pay it heed as reflecting the official line. The evidence for the origin lies in the final two words: Priti (if I may make so familiar) is way too young ever to have had recourse to the phrase “union barons” by herself.

Ed in tooth and claw

So the Tory line – hot-wired into those of today’s Tory papers that I have set eyes on (The Sunday Times as hard copy and The Sunday Telegraph on line) – is that Ed Miliband’s warning to his brother against a return to the “comfort zone” of New Labour is to be twisted round and used against him, that Labour disagreeing with any of the Con-Dem measures to reduce the deficit is evidence of Labour recidivism (so forget “the opposition’s duty to oppose” of hallowed tradition, as well as the fact that Miliband has said he will not oppose any measure purely for the sake of it), and that Miliband cannot be taken seriously until he has done personal penance for all Labour’s misdemeanours, including enclosures, the Glencoe Massacre, Suez, the sinking of the Belgrano, poll tax, Cecil Parkinson, David Mellor and Neil Hamilton.

But let’s look at this seriously. The “unions’ vice-like grip” is the one that – if the evidence of steadier news outlets like the BBC be any guide – is going to be hardest to shrug off. So what is the evidence? Well, Ed Miliband is sponsored as an MP by the T&G. So are Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. So are Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman. So is Frank Field, who is now doing a job for the Con-Dem coalition, David Cameron having decided to perpetuate the “big tent” policy of Brown and Blair before him. Blair was also sponsored by the T&G. Burnham is further sponsored by Unison, as is Miliband’s close ally Sadiq Khan.

And anyway look at the voting patterns in the leadership ballot. In the first count, before Diane Abbott was eliminated, Ed Miliband got only 4.5 percent more of the union vote than did his brother and only 6.5 percent more when the elimination of Ed Balls had led to the last configuration of the numbers. To make such sweepingly categorical claims for what the vote means when it is so close – only 1.3 percent difference in the whole voting college – is mere ignorant folly.

Ed Miliband addresses conference

Still scared of Miliband’s strings being pulled by the unions? The fact is that Labour depends on financial help from those unions, just as the Tories and the Lib Dems need funding from business. The difference is that union funding is open and transparent and comes with no detectable strings attached, pulled or otherwise. If Ms Patel can point to any legislation in history enacted by a Labour government and show that it was dictated by unions in the teeth of what Labour MPs and/or the party membership wanted, I will eat my cloth cap.

There was a resonant exchange on BBC1’s Question Time ten days ago, a special edition featuring all five Labour leadership candidates. A London firefighter in the audience said that she and her work colleagues were being “sacked on November 25th and forced to sign a new contract with unfair working conditions”. Moderator David Dimbleby asked the panel if firefighters were justified in going on strike. Diane Abbott waded in on “what ordinary workers have to do when faced with losing their jobs”. Perhaps believing that he had had a good shake on an earlier question, Dimbleby permitted Andy Burnham only a yes-or-no answer and he said yes. David Miliband was more cautious which drew a few groans from the audience and spurred him to say sharply: “any politician saying yes glibly to firefighters going on strike has to think very, very carefully about the consequences”. Ed Balls agreed, sticking to points he’d already made about the importance of negotiation. And Ed Miliband agreed too, emphasising that “a responsible government and a responsible fire authority would do everything possible to get round the table and discuss”. Not much evidence of union string-pulling there.

I wished Dimbleby had permitted Burnham and Abbott to speak further to their supportive instinct for firefighters downing tools, if that is what it comes to. It has always seemed to me that denying workers in supposedly essential services the right to strike is no more than a means to reduce their rights. Withdrawal of labour is the only action workers possess that is as powerful in their hands as dismissal is in the hands of management. If health workers, police, firefighters and other front line services are penalized by management because management can, because the workers have no power to fight for their rights, the inevitable upshot will be that workers will leave the service and that management will be obliged to seek cheap labour from overseas. Such measures bring their own complications.

The Miliband brothers take distinctive stances

Strike action is habitually portrayed in the media as a deplorable eventuality because it inconveniences the public. The implication – often very clearly intended – is that the workers are at fault in resorting to stoppages. Look at the coverage of action by staff at BA, for instance. But industrial action is frequently precipitated by management intransigence, insensitivity and sometimes deliberate provocation, all eventualities impossible to illustrate in news footage and newspaper shots. Because this cannot be shown, reporters lazily portray the calling of strike action as the moment of breakdown so that unions are habitually seen as the aggressors. If Ed Miliband really wants to do unions a favour, he should sit down with news managers and hammer out a new approach to the way industrial relations are portrayed in the media.

Not that he would get very far. The media is far more interested in David Miliband’s next move than in any statements of policy or philosophy by the new party leader, certainly if Nick Robinson’s reports for the BBC today have been any guide. What job will Ed offer David? What job does he want? Will he walk away? This is all ludicrously presumptuous. Voting on the composition of the shadow cabinet does not begin until October 4th. Ed Miliband will not decide on filling the posts until he sees to whom he has to offer them. He may well have some dispensations in mind but the MPs’ election of the cabinet members can spring some intriguing surprises. It would be good if reporters could put their soap opera instincts to one side and stop writing about the Miliband brothers as though they might be some kind of grown-up version of the Mitchell brothers in EastEnders.

Finally there is this constant refrain about Labour “taking responsibility” – and, worse, “apologizing” – for the conditions that furnish the rationale for the Con-Dem coalition to make its ideological assault on public services. Miliband is wise to stick to his line that the Labour government made mistakes and that ‘New Labour’ is dead and buried and it’s time to move on. But he has nothing to apologize for concerning Labour’s handling of the economy. He needs to remind the coalition that the then wholly independent banking sector was not implementing Labour government policy when it financed bad debts in Britain and especially in the USA. Alistair Darling kept Britain out of double dip recession, something George Osborne may yet prove unable to do.

In any case, this politics of the gesture that butters no parsnips is not for grown-ups. The coalition will soon enough have plenty of mistakes of its own to be sorry for.

HOLY JOE

The state visit of Joseph Ratzinger to Britain has prompted in me some further reflection on religion, just as any Pope worth his salt would hope. The major theme his holiness developed while here was the danger of “aggressive secularism” overtaking these islands. I do not think it unreasonable to suggest that the deliverance of such a critical assessment strays beyond the purview of the good manners traditionally expected of a guest, but that’s the modern world for you.

One does know what he means, of course. The history of aggressive secularism in the west is baleful at best. Think of the Crusades, a succession of vicious attacks by atheists on innocent Moslems. Then there were the Marian Persecutions, perpetrated by non-believers on English Protestants. The Massacre of the Huguenots was conducted by adherents of paganism, the Thirty Years’ War was entirely devoid of religious content and. in our own time, there has been the murderous conflict between Humanists and Rationalists in Northern Ireland. And no one expects the Secular Inquisition.

It was two notably unbelieving leaders who dragged the west into two invasions of Middle East countries, Mr Bush and Mr Blair. The aggressive secularism of these two men has underlined the deplorable absence of Catholicism in the modern world. Nations such as Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Portugal, Germany, the Irish Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latin America, the South American continent and large swathes of Africa have been wholly purged of Roman influence. Secularism is indeed rampant everywhere.

Ratzinger in working togs

Should we mourn supernatural superstition? I have cogitated on the matter anew but it remains my conviction that the more rational are the people and their leaders, the better is their chance of surviving into the 22nd century. And what is the nature of the dogma to which Ratzinger cleaves? It is, it seems to me, an earnest of a mind’s desire never to grow up. It is a sort of outward show of stunted development. An adult’s delusion about a divinity is a close parallel to a child’s entertainment of the notion of Father Christmas: the main distinction is that parents promulgate the myth of the benign old gentleman in the sky who bestows gifts with a certain amount of tongue in cheek. And of course nations do not go to war over Saint Nicholas (though the only time I seriously came to blows in my childhood was in defence of my Yuletide idol’s honour).

People like Ratzinger, who make a good living out of the supernatural, are – in Catholicism, Buddhism, the Shakers, the Brahmacharya state in the Sannyasa order of Hinduism and so on – celibates. They are in effect pre-pubescent. How can they know anything about life in the world if they have never experienced a full relationship with another adult? No doubt they will counter that their spiritual calling is a greater and purer existence. It isn’t; it’s a safer, smaller and more ignorant existence. We who live in mature relationships know that better than they ever can.

St Peter's Basilica – perhaps a gnat's overstated?

Life in the Vatican is not so much pure and spiritual as opulent, cushioned and self-important, like that of some caliph ruling over a barbaric kingdom. Ratzinger the fabled intellectual may pass his days tickling the ivories in Mozart fantasias, poring over illuminated manuscript and sucking quail’s eggs from between the buttocks of choristers but he doesn’t get to engage with the real world, save by waving from his bullet-proof popemobile and swapping sermons with the heads of rival churches like Rowan Williams. I don’t imagine he takes Private Eye or even The New Yorker. Do you see him reading Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy or Sarah Waters or indeed Günter Grass, Umberto Eco or (ha ha) Aldo Busi? Has he watched The Sopranos? Has he any idea what the world is like?

“There was a certain rich man,” writes Saint Luke in his Gospel, “which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day” [17:19]. But he goes to hell and the beggar who lies at his gate ascends to heaven. I have no idea whether Ratzinger is in his own right a rich man but he has the papal benefice for life and he will live in splendour all his days. The Catholic church rarely has much to say on the matter of world poverty, probably because of its own conspicuous wealth. No church has ever followed the teaching of Christ in this regard: “Go thy way, sell whatever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven” [Mark 10:21]. It is from this chapter that the famous homily derives: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” [10:25].

Not your neighbourhood library but the one in the Vatican Museum

The entire trick of supernatural delusion was to construct an unverifiable promise of reward in the hereafter, what unionists and other capitalism sceptics traditionally call “jam tomorrow” (actually a phrase of Lewis Carroll’s). The promise was designed to throw a misleading crumb to the underprivileged and deprived while the clerics lived on velvet as their reward from the privileged and depraved for their part in keeping the peasants quiescent. It’s a nifty trick and it clearly still works, even with all that we know about physiognomy and psychology.

What it doesn’t do, though, is address real problems. Having put its philosophical responsibilities in the hands of immature, unworldly men, the Catholic church blithely decides that the only function of the sexual act is procreation and that therefore birth control is “sinful” because it condones unproductive lust; thereby the church condemns countless generations of dogma-fearing peasants to swarms of unwanted children that they cannot afford to feed. The church congratulates itself on swelling its numbers by encouraging its adherents to breed like rabbits.

The crown of the holy Roman expire, a nice little bauble in the Vatican collection

Ratzinger has nothing useful to say about population control, about planned parenthood, about HIV/Aids and other diseases spread by anal penetration of women by men (the customary method of avoiding conception in Africa), or indeed about climate change, globalization, international capital, food distribution, starvation, sub-prime mortgage lending or any of the other pressing concerns on which a papal edict might discomfort the church’s rich friends. And don’t get me started on child abuse. It butters no parsnips for Ratzinger to meet and listen politely to a few carefully chosen “victims” or to express his “sorrow” – the BBC’s James Robbins called it “the Pope’s most outspoken apology to date”, a strange choice of adjective. What the church must do is take responsibility for its own long history of cover-up, to hand offending clerics over to the civil authorities instead of giving them sanctuary, hiding them in obscure parishes and handing them mild penances, and to make practical and substantial reparations to all the victims in a manner that may be seen in some serious way to cost the holy see.

NO PIPE of PEACE for the TEA P

I worry about the Democrats. The conventional wisdom in the party right now is that the continuing and seemingly irresistible invasion of the Republicans by outsiders backed by the so-called Tea Party in general and Sarah Palin in particular is in fact good for the Obama administration. How so? Because, Democrats argue, these “extremists” will repel mainstream opinion in the mid-term elections and preserve the hold on Congress if not the Senate for the Democrats. Well, I wouldn’t bank on it.

In the American system, party nominations for office are chosen in most states by ballots held during the summer of election year and open to any voter registered with the party. These votes determine who gets to fight the Democrat v Republican run-offs in November. The system ensures that, however slick and/or corrupt the party machine might be in any particular state, outsiders who have the money and/or catch a wave can still snatch the right to represent the party in the real election. So far, eight establishment Republican senatorial candidates have been knocked out of those run-offs by candidates without experience of office but with Tea Party and/or Palin backing. Gubernatorial and congressional scalps have also been taken in this insurgency. The views of all of these candidates are more or less off the chart of the politics known to Washington.

Take a look at the website of Carl Paladino who, in Tuesday’s ballot, secured the Republican nomination for the governorship of New York State: it’s at http://paladinoforthepeople.com. His opening foray, concerning the nomination, goes [his caps and bold]: IF WE LEARNED ANYTHING TONIGHT, IT’S THAT NEW YORKERS ARE MAD AS HELL, AND WE'RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! It’s tempting to counter: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” or perhaps “Hooray for Captain Spalding”. But what’s scary about Paladino is that he certainly means it. If you click on ‘Play Video’ on his site, the man himself rises up and addresses you and it’s like you’re being shaken down by the mob.

Paladino: an offer New Yorkers should refuse

And just in case you imagine that being governor will satisfy him, he has included a mugshot of that most reactionary of Democratic presidents, Grover Cleveland, with the tagline: “the last NY governor from Buffalo became President of the United States”. Under Cleveland’s uncompromising gaze is the date 1883 when the first of his three terms began. Under Paladino’s menacing grin, it says “2011?” Quite what might happen in that non-election year is hard to fathom. Is that when Paladino will announce, from his governor’s office in Albany, that he is running for president in 2012? For do not doubt that he intends to win the governorship in November. His Democratic opponent will be Andrew, elder son of the much-loved former governor Mario Cuomo and presently the state’s Attorney General. On his site, Paladino gives us a flavour of the terms in which he will savage his rival: “ALL ANDREW OFFERS IS THE STATUS CUOMO” [his bold].

In California last June, the Republican candidacy to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor was won by Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and the fourth wealthiest woman in the state. She has spent some $120m of her personal wealth on her campaign so far and, if she beats the Democrat candidate, the retread Jerry Brown, in November, she will be the most right wing governor of the state since Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Whitman’s movie quote on her own website should be: “Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon – we have the stars”.

Whitman: running through her spare change

Whitman’s relationship with the Tea Party is a little patchy, though their support is not confined to candidates of more modest means. Christine O’Donnell, who won Delaware against the odds on Tuesday, only prevented a mortgage company auctioning her house in 2008 by selling it to her lawyer. She remains in dispute with the IRS over her taxes and the Tea Party’s funding support was central to her win, doubtless inspired by the fact that she is a Sarah Palin clone. Paladino, on the other hand, is a self-made multi-millionaire.

It would be foolish to underestimate the success that candidates like these have already enjoyed and to discount the possibility that they could replicate it against an unusually defensive bunch of Democratic incumbents. For anyone like me who had hoped that Barack Obama would prove to be America’s equivalent of Nelson Mandela, the turn-around in 21 months has been deeply dismaying. It is not as if his presidency has looked remotely like a failure. I suspect that it is more to do with subjective perception than objective analysis.

O'Connell: Palin imitation

Obama’s elevation was very specifically steered by notions of hope and change and competence (“yes we can”). This not only drew a sharp contrast with the flounderings of George W Bush, it was also handily underlined by the unfocussed campaign of the Republican candidate, John McCain, in the 2008 election. Well, hope of course is a momentary emotion and change is pretty hard to effect quickly. The competence thing turns out in practice to be something of a red herring. Obama has achieved much, though not as yet a discernible climb out of the economic crisis that he inherited. But what he hasn’t managed to do is to make the American people love him. And that’s much more important.

When you watch him perform, it’s not really so surprising. As articulate, thoughtful, focussed and analytical as he is, Obama comes over like a college professor. His warmth is not apparent. He never seems relaxed or engaging enough, which is why several commentators have urged him to deploy the first lady more often.

Americans – indeed, perhaps voters the world over – aren’t unduly interested in competence or thoughtfulness. Not enough wanted George McGovern or Walter Mondale or Michael Dukakis to be president, no doubt because those clever, earnest men were seen as what Richard Nixon damned as “pointy heads”. The people seem to prefer a chief executive with whom they feel comfortable. The folksiest chief of modern times, Reagan, is the one they most hanker for and miss. They feel they could have sat in a bar and had a drink with Reagan and passed the time of day pleasantly. The bar room image has changed in recent years, however. Now the politicians and pundits come across like the bar fly leaning on the counter and giving it out relentlessly. What is extraordinary is that the stupid, ignorant prejudices that sustain the proverbial bar room blowhard have been elevated into a vote-winning philosophy.

It didn’t matter that Ronald Reagan was a know-nothing president, like George W and, though it pains me to suggest it of a man who has grown mightily since leaving office, like Jimmy Carter. All three came across as relaxed, easy-going guys, at least when campaigning. This works with the voters. So does the image of an experienced father-figure, like Eisenhower or LBJ or Bush Sr. So does a smart and/or charismatic persona: Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton (who got the folksy as well) and Obama. But Obama’s charisma has waned and it is endangered by the possibility of being pitched against a new rival who, however ignorant, is clearly a star.

Obama: but can we yet?

Know-nothing presidents are unusually dependent on their advisors and so the crucial ingredient in their administrations is the identity of those to whom they listen. Sarah Palin, if she were to become the first woman head of state in the US, would be the know-least-of-all-time president, but don’t imagine for one moment that such an apparent disadvantage makes her unelectable. That is what most Washington observers currently believe but I submit that they’re wrong. Palin is electoral dynamite, much more so now than when she was number two to McCain. Her biggest hurdle to beating Obama in 2012 would be the presidential debates, where her uneradicable vapidity would be under intense scrutiny. But that by itself would not necessarily be sufficient to rule her out of electability. Obama might make the strategic mistake of being – or seeming (much more difficult to control) – lofty. And whereas it was Obama who was galvanising the electorate in 2008 and bringing thousands of first-time voters (not necessarily all young voters) to join the voting queues, in 2012 it would be Palin who would be achieving that effect. The poor blacks who turned out in pride and excitement two years ago might be too indifferent to bother two years hence.

From the safety – the present safety, anyway – of Europe, the Tea Party and Palin and their candidates look just like what they are: the lunatic fringe. But they don’t think of themselves as any kind of fringe. They have a righteous belief that they stand for the true American way. Whether they have any real sense of what they might unleash is another matter.

Palin: what the hell do I know?

As the know-nothing-to-beat-the-band president, Palin would be uniquely dependent upon and uniquely susceptible to the ultra neocons who would pour back into Washington, seeing her as their creature. Which of them would pose the greatest danger to our very survival? The new-generation Friedmanites? The pre-emptive strike advocates? The climate change deniers? All of these would see their chance. Palin would be swiftly told that higher rates of tax must be abolished along with Obama’s healthcare reforms, with only the evocation of the magic name of Reagan needed to persuade her that “trickledown” economics were the most successful since the war. She would be under immediate pressure to order a nuclear strike against Tehran, having no understanding of the consequences (does she even know in which country to find Tehran?) And all measures taken to combat global warming would be reversed, just as George W Bush tore up the Tokyo Accord.

My fear that Palin will be the 45th President is real. She has already written herself more than a footnote in modern politics. If she gains the highest office, she will go down in history. I fear that that history might be vanishingly short because life on earth might well not survive her administration.

LIFESTYLES of the POOR and INFAMOUS

“Divide and rule” was ever the default position of Tories wielding power and George Osborne the Chancellor has wasted no time in invoking its methodology to drum up support for the dreaded Spending Review that is now only five and a half weeks hence. What he required for the role of scapegoat was a sector of the community that has little spending power, relatively few cheerleaders, no electoral influence (i.e. people who vote Labour anyway) and, best of all, a propensity to be cast as feckless ne’er-do-wells by the Tory press. Of course! Who else? Those who receive state benefits.

Here is what Osborne told BBC political editor Nick Robinson on Thursday: “The welfare bill has got completely out of control. There are five million people living on permanent out-of-work benefits. That is a tragedy for them and fiscally unsustainable for us as a country. We can’t afford it any more. So we need real welfare reform and there will be further welfare cuts on the 20th of October. I think this will be done in a way that encourages people into work. But there will be further welfare cuts. They will amount to several billion pounds additional to what I announced in the budget. Because I think the people of this country understand this choice and they have chosen for us as a government to push further on welfare reform”.

Responding to further questions from Robinson, Osborne continued: “We’re going to reform the out-of-work benefit system so that there is a very strong incentive for people who can work to get work”. And he went on: “People who think that it’s a lifestyle choice to sit on out-of-work benefit – it’s not somebody desperately looking for a job, someone really making the effort to go out there every day to find work, but the person who sits there and says ‘you know what, this is a lifestyle choice for me’. That lifestyle choice is going to come to an end … The money won’t be there to support that lifestyle choice”.

The robber baronet

Accordingly, Osborne says he intends to cut unemployment benefit by £4billion in addition to the £11bn cut already flagged in his budget in June. There cannot be any argument that a cut of £15bn in the provision made by the state for those whose income is not sufficient to live on will make a catastrophic difference to thousands of people. Osborne’s argument seems to be that the undeserving poor make up such a large proportion of those he describes as “living on out-of-work benefits” that cutting them adrift is morally justifiable.

But is it true that those who abuse the welfare state – who make, as Osborne characterises it, a “lifestyle choice” to “sit on” benefit – are costing the country so much? On the anecdotal evidence of the reports that Robinson filed prior to his interview with the Chancellor, it would appear that many people believe and resent that abuse is widespread. But Robinson failed to ask them – or if he did, the answers were not broadcast – whether they personally knew any benefit cheats and, if so, how many. Do you know any? I don’t. I know people who are looking for work and who are already living brutally constrained lives before Osborne slashes the meagre support to which they have hitherto been entitled.

A cartoon originally placed here has evidently been removed by the artist; a pity, as we are all the poorer (including him) for its removal

What is the level of benefit fraud in Britain? Is it commensurate with the threat of the Jews that was perceived in Germany in the 1930s? Does it resemble the level of immigration that, in Margaret Thatcher’s estimation in the 1970s, was about to “swamp our culture”? According to the government’s own figures, benefit fraud robbed the public purse of £900m in 2008-09. I don’t know how that figure is computed and I certainly don’t believe it is that high. But even accepting it as a credible rate, it means that Osborne proposes to cut benefit to those who do deserve it by the government’s own measure, who are entitled to it by previous standards of welfare, who have contributed to it by their earlier National Insurance payments, and who, in Osborne’s words, are “desperately looking for a job, really making the effort to go out there every day to find work” by the vast sum of £14bn.

Reading the words of Osborne above, you will have noticed – unless you are so besotted a Tory that you swallow what he says without question – that he uses the phrase “welfare reform” and the rather different phrase “welfare cuts” as though they might be interchangeable; hence, I think, we need to assume that they are interchangeable. Reform is a spin term for cuts. If “the money won’t be there to support [the] lifestyle choice” of living on benefit – where the “choice” is unjustifiable in Osborne’s eyes – it also won’t be there for people who have no choice about their “lifestyle” and who are out of work because there is no work, people whose situation Osborne lightly describes as “a tragedy” while he cynically sharpens his axe.

A cartoon originally placed here has evidently been removed by the artist; a pity, as we are all the poorer (including him) for its removal

The Spending Review, be under no illusion, is going to create immediately a large amount of new unemployment. The state is a major employer. The coalition government is committed to reducing the patronage of the state by between 25 and 40 percent. That means that capital projects will be among the first to fall – these are, by their nature, dependent on a substantial workforce – and a number of enterprises will be wound up, pushing into the jobs market personnel whose work experience will have been particular and whose job prospects will hence will be the poorer. The number of people to whom Osborne will lightly offer the term “tragedy” will be huge.

The thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, newly unemployed will be seeking, as they will be entitled to seek, social security support to replace their lost income. But Osborne is cutting the welfare budget ahead of this inevitable surge in those out of work. What else can we expect but hardship of a depth not seen in this country since the beginning of the 1930s, when a series of marches on London climaxed in the National Hunger March of September 1932. These cuts will create a new class divide between haves and have nots, between those in work and those out of benefit.

I do not suppose that George Osborne has any experience of job-seeking. The heir to a baronetcy and the lucrative firm of Osborne & Little, interior design suppliers to the quality, has never wanted for a penny and is thought to be worth the better part of £5m. He would find it an instructive experience to register his details on one or two of the many on-line employment sites that have grown up to service the jobs market. I have done this, to see how it works. It is not an encouraging experience.

Such sites customarily ask you to supply some information that would, you might think, narrow the choice of vacancies to which the service alerts you. I entered a number of provisos – that I would want to work from home, that I don’t drive, that I am looking for a post in the environs of Bath. So I get offered driving duties in London, posts in various countries in Africa and cold-calling jobs that I wouldn’t take if they offered shares in the company and the bonus levels of an arbitrageur (and for which anyway I am grossly overqualified). Friends who are job-seeking in earnest report that this is getting off lightly, that you can spend hours each day wading through farcically unsuitable and irrelevant links and that, even if you find a post for which you feel you can reasonably apply, you never ever receive any kind of response to your application.

Clint Eastwood was among those imploring Osborne not to cancel funding for the UK Film Council

Now how are the government’s attack dogs going to determine who is, in Osborne’s words, “somebody desperately looking for a job, someone really making the effort to go out there every day to find work”? Are they going to confiscate their computers to check how diligent have been their searches? The fact is that, in a buyer’s market, the seller is seriously disadvantaged and when unemployment is climbing, the out-of-work are less and less able to find work. Osborne’s remedy for this, he seems keen for us to believe, is to reduce if not remove entirely the support that the state has previously granted to those for whom employment prospects are ranged between scant and void. The result will be inevitable: on the one hand, numbers of people losing their homes and drifting into homelessness, families breaking up, suicides, depression and despair; on the other, civil unrest, lawlessness, rises in chronic addiction and in street and house crime at a time when the numbers of police on the street are in rapid decline.

That the rationale offered for slashing benefit is that there is far too much benefit fraud is as cruel as it is cynical. Unemployment for the three months to the end of June was 2.46m. A whole million of those unemployed people, for one reason or another, claimed no Jobseeker’s Allowance. By this time next year, who knows what the unemployment rate will be, especially if the feared double-dip recession materialises? Brendan Barber of the TUC, speaking on Any Questions?, astutely called the present period, ahead of the Spending Review, “the phoney war”.

Osborne by Steve Bell

The best we can look forward to, in my view, is a new winter of discontent. Indeed, I hope that the people will rise up and not stand for the ideologically-motivated punishment of those who are perceived as “weak” by this government that thinks every unpopular measure can be justified by the simple and simple-minded expedient of blaming the last administration. Osborne’s mantra that “we are all in this together” is as big a lie as this government has yet told. There will be no “together” until he and his colleagues address the fiscal and pay-restraint responsibilities of the banks (that are, after all, presently owned in great part by the public), the widening gap – yes, it certainly widened disgracefully under Labour – between rich and poor, and the vast amounts that the Treasury misses because of tax evasion both blatant (non-doms, for instance) and sly (through clever accountancy). Caning the weakest and calling it fair is pure cant.

A postscript to Mary Riddell’s remark that I mentioned in the previous posting, ‘Smear Studies’: while The Guardian and the BBC have long given up on the subject of William Hague, The Daily Telegraph prolongs it yet again today by running on the front page a photograph of Hague with his wife, thereby to justify showing additionally (and yet again) a shot of Hague with Christopher Myers and rehearsing once more the tired bones of the story.