TTFN

Blogging is likely to be light, if not nonexistent, over the next week or so.

I am travelling with the Welsh Select Committee to China, where we will be taking evidence for our inquiry into globalisation and its impact on Wales (and, by extension, the whole of the UK).

I’ll see if I can use my PDA to post from Shanghai and Xiamen, but don’t hold your collective breath!

Mr Benn Again

Spoke yesterday in the opposition day debate on the government's handling of the foot and mouth outbreak.

The chamber was pretty full on the opposition side, but the government benches were virtually empty, underlining the fact that Labour have little interest in agriculture or in the rural way of life. There were only two speeches from the Labour back benches.

The Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, is a decent man. There were no calls for his resignation, principally because he had been in post for only a short time before the outbreak occurred. However, there is no doubt that there has been incompetence on an appalling scale in the management of the Pirbright laboratory, and it is quite unacceptable that, over two months after the event, no heads have rolled.

I asked the Secretary of State why the following words, which appeared in the original draft of his statement to the House on 8 October, had been removed by the time he actually delivered it:

“I have also agreed with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that Scotland should receive £8.1 million and Wales £6.5 million to assist them in countering the impacts of foot and mouth on their livestock farmers.”

I received no answer.

Kiss of Death

Early setback for Nick Clegg’s leadership bid. On my way through the lobby after PMQs, I spotted him in deep discussion with Lembit Opik.

Learn the lessons of history, Nick!

Shredder Fodder

Tremendous continuing press interest in the Brunstrom story. I've just been called by the Beeb, who want me to take part in a panel discussion tomorrow.

I am, frankly, surprised that the press continue to be surprised by Mr Brunstrom's repeated calls for drugs to be legalised, given that they come round as regularly as Pancake Tuesday. However, come round they do, and one has to respond, especially since his proposals are so obviously wrong and manifestly unacceptable.

The big disappointment on this occasion, however, is the stance of the police authority, who not only agreed to put Mr Brunstrom's report forward to the Home Office, but are also, bizarrely, considering affiliating to the pro-legalisation lobby group, Transform.

The authority quite clearly cannot stand up to their Chief Constable, who is apparently able to run rings around them. Their performance on this occasion is an excellent argument in favour of elected police commissioners, answerable to the public and able to set the policing agenda – and to be removed if they don't deliver. This is a major plank of Conservative policy and it can't be implemented a moment too soon.

To give the Home Office credit, Mr Brunstrom's report is clearly destined for the shredder as soon as it is delivered, if this response by drugs minister Vernon Coaker is anything to go by.

Breathing Space

The principal beneficiary of Ming's demise is, in the short term, Gordon Brown, from whom the media spotlight has shifted, if only temporarily.

The respite is unlikely to be prolonged, however. Later this week, Gordon travels to Portugal to discuss the final form of the EU Reform Treaty. Already, he is under fire from Labour colleagues such as Gisela Stuart, who, in today's Evening Standard, calls for a referendum. Her article, which is less than complimentary of her leader, concludes with the words: “If Labour can't trust the people, why should the people trust Labour?”

No doubt the whips will be having a quiet word with Ms Stuart, but I suspect she is only the first to put her head above the parapet. No wonder Brownite Labour MPs in the Strangers' bar were brittle tonight - especially one bespectacled member who is known to be close to Gordon.

Nihil nisi bonum...

I was in a meeting with a couple of dozen Conservative colleagues when the news came through on my BlackBerry that Ming Campbell had resigned as Lib Dem leader with immediate effect.

I interrupted the discussion to break the news to the assembled company.

As if on cue and in chorus, the simultaneous expletive “Damn!” rang out around the committee table.

High Drama

Mike German has announced that he would like to continue as leader of the Lib Dem group in the Welsh Assembly – but only until 2008, when he would step down.

Has German learned nothing from Tony Blair’s preannouncement of his own departure, which turned him into a dead man walking?

Peter Black must surely know that the time is ripe for him to strike and claim the leadership. He must not fall prey to the indecision that proved Gordon Brown’s downfall.

Go for it, Peter!

Ferrets in a Sack

Underlining Labour’s internal problems, today’s Sunday Times says that Blairites, including Blair himself, are rounding on Gordon, accusing him (quite fairly) of lack of vision. Tony Blair has apparently accused Gordon (again, quite fairly) of delivering an “empty” conference speech. A similar piece appears in the Observer, so it's pretty obvious that there's been a whole lotta briefin' goin' on.

It appears that a gaggle of allies of the former Prime Minister, including Charlie Falconer, the former Lord Chancellor, are queuing up to put the boot into the hapless Gordon while he is down. The former cabinet ministers Stephen Byers, Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn are, according to both newspapers, lining up a series of media appearances in which they plan to attack Gordon’s leadership.

Looks like the Labour party is beginning to disintegrate into the sort of internecine feuding that cost us so dear in the 1990s.

Onwards and Upwards

Excellent poll in today’s Telegraph, which shows the Tories on 43 per cent – our best showing for 15 years – with Labour down to 36 per cent. The Lib Dems have collapsed to 14 per cent, which must make Ming Campbell very vulnerable to a putsch.

As I blogged a few days ago, this has the feel of a watershed. Our policy announcements have been well received, and Labour’s brazen attempts to pinch them have backfired.

Most importantly, Gordon Brown has come across as even more of a spinner than Tony Blair, only lacking the charm, the political instinct and the bottle. His trouncing on Wednesday, furthermore, made him look weak and slow on his feet; people won’t vote for a loser.

To mix metaphors, I believe that the tide has turned. Labour are floundering and we are on the up. We have every prospect of winning the next election and must take advantage of the impetus so clearly indicated by the opinion polls.

Dead Horse

Interviewed this week by BBC Radio Wales, I said that Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom’s report to the North Wales police authority, in which he called for the decriminalisation of scheduled drugs, was a “counsel of despair”.

Interestingly, precisely the same expression has been employed by an ACPO spokeswoman quoted in today’s Western Mail.

Richard Brunstrom has been flogging this particular dead horse for far too long. It attracts lots of publicity for him but virtually no support from public, politicians or police. He would be very well advised to give it up as a lost cause.

I sincerely hope that the members of the police authority are sufficiently robust to tell him as much next week.

It's the Law

Spoke yesterday to the Colwyn Bay branch of Amnesty International on the theme of “It’s a free country… isn’t it?”

My argument was that state interference in our everyday lives was becoming increasingly intrusive, and we should be concerned about it. The audience seemed, on the whole, to agree with me, particularly on the question of ID cards, although there were one or two individuals who said that they really didn’t mind the state holding such extensive personal details about them on its databases.

Researching for the talk, I found out that, since Labour came to power, well over 3,000 new criminal offences have been created. Among the more entertaining ones are:

- selling grey squirrels;
- impersonating a traffic warden;
- offering air traffic control services without a licence;
- as a ship’s master, carrying grain without a copy of the International Grain Code on board;
- failing to nominate a neighbour to turn off a burglar alarm when one is away from home;
- importing potatoes knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that they are Polish potatoes;
- entering the hull of the Titanic without permission from the Secretary of State.

It is also now an offence, by virtue of the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998, to cause a nuclear explosion. This is a very comforting piece of legislation. It is an enormous relief to know that, if the UK is ever subjected to a nuclear attack, the authorities will be fully equipped with all the powers they need to bring the perpetrator to book.

Normal Service Resumed

Apologies for blogging silence yesterday. Phones and internet connection were down.

Normal service was resumed today, courtesy of Geraint of Openreach.

Watershed

Interesting article by Anatole Kaletsky, not noticeably a Tory supporter, in today’s Times.

The bit I particularly like is:

“The new Labour coalition, which so recently imagined itself as the ‘natural party of government’ for 21st-century Britain, looks increasingly like a temporary interlude in the long era of Conservative ideological dominance that began with the victory of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and still has decades to run. Politics, economics and ideology all now point in this same direction.”

Right on.

Bear Baiting

Well, he WAS kicked. And soundly.

You could tell Gordon Brown was nervous when he arrived in the chamber. He was still wearing his smart blue suit (a Timothy Everest number, apparently) and his erstwhile lucky lavender tie. But he was a bundle of nerves, twitching, running his hands through his hair and chatting ferociously to his neighbour, Alistair Darling, as Welsh Questions drew to a close, doing anything to avoid eye contact with the massed Tory benches opposite.

It couldn’t last. The tone was set by Bob Neill, Conservative MP for Bromley and Chislehurst. Would the Prime Minister, he asked, accompany him on a visit to his local council’s prize-winning recycling centre? If so, said Bob, he would be delighted to show him the bottle bank.

We roared. How we roared. Gordon looked taken aback by the wall of noise facing him. He blenched and gave some sort of answer, heaven knows what. The noise was deafening.

David Cameron took advantage of Gordon’s loss of composure, hitting him with a swift series of devastating questions. It was like Sonny Liston’s first encounter with Cassius Clay. Gordon lumbered about, flailing wildly and looking increasingly flat-footed and bad-tempered, as Cameron jabbed at him with taunt after taunt. When he told the House that he would have called off the election, even if he were sure of winning, there were derisive howls from our side and an embarrassed silence from Labour.

Cameron kept up the attack: “He is the first Prime Minister in history to flunk an election because he thought he was going to win it. Does he realise what a phoney he now looks? Has he found a single person who believes his excuses for cancelling the election?"

And so it went on. The Prime Minister was utterly destroyed. At the end of his half hour’s mauling he looked drained and defeated and his nice lavender blue tie was askew. It will, I suspect, take him a long time to recover from today’s annihilation.

Gordon Brown is no Tony Blair. He hasn’t his lightness of touch, his quick wit or his sheer instinct for survival. What’s more, he has shown himself, in the most humiliating way possible, to be far from the Clunking Fist he had been hyped up to be. Today, he was a patsy.

Oh, my prophetic soul

Those poor souls who are regular readers will recall that, on 8 September, blogging on the foot and mouth affair, I wrote:

“What sort of country have we become, where abject, monumental failure in public office is met with a shrug of the shoulders?

“No doubt we will soon be told by some Labour talking head that we will have to learn the lessons and move on.”

Consider now the following extract from Monday's Hansard (Hilary Benn's statement to the House):

“Finally, am I sorry that this has happened? I have already said that I am. Nobody would have wished this to happen, and I repeat that it should not have happened. But when something like this goes wrong—as it has—what is the important thing that we should do? We should learn the lessons, sort it out and make sure that it does not happen again.”

We really have got to get rid of them.

No, Darling

Looks like Alistair Darling has been learning a trick or two from Gordon. Only he doesn’t do it so well.

At the time of blogging, the Daily Telegraph seems to have been fooled into thinking that he announced a doubling of the inheritance tax threshold this afternoon.

He did nothing of the sort. What he did was to lump the two £300,000 IHT allowances of a married couple together and call it a single allowance of £600,000. If Gordon had announced it, he would have done it in a way that would have taken a couple of hours to suss out. By then, he would have been out of the chamber. When Alistair delivered the announcement, the scam was immediately obvious (except, it would seem, to the Telegraph).

What the announcement did, however, was demonstrate that Labour are badly rattled by our IHT policy. They will have to do better than produce flimflam such as this if they really want to counter it.

Scots Wahey!

The Parliamentary Conservative and Labour parties met at precisely the same hour yesterday – we in the Boothroyd Room, they, I think, in Committee Room 14.

Bill Wiggin and I bumped into John Reid on our way back from our respective meetings. John was remarkably chipper and chatty, all smiles. A touch of schadenfreude, perhaps, having just witnessed the discomfiture of his auld rival?

Mr Benn

The Iraq statement was followed by a one-hour statement by Defra Secretary, Hilary Benn, on the foot and mouth and bluetongue outbreaks. The Tory side of the chamber was full, with many members, myself included, trying, but failing, to catch the Speaker’s eye.

Hilary Benn is a quite different character from Gordon Brown; he was, in terms, apologetic for the release of the FMD virus from the Pirbright establishment. He promised a rather meagre package of support for the farming industry and said that the "devolved administrations" in Wales and Scotland were also providing some help - out of their existing resources, it would appear.

The support, though welcome, is inadequate and will not prevent many farmers going to the wall. One member asked about further compensation; Benn said that it was not government policy to indemnify in respect of “consequential economic loss” – which is what most farmers have sustained.

The NFU is taking counsel’s opinion on the prospects of its members successfully suing for damages over their losses resulting from the FMD affair. Benn’s remarks make it clear that the government intends to resist any such claim.

Brown Down

Gordon Brown appeared before the Commons today for the first time since his humiliating election climbdown. The chamber was, predictably, full, but he didn’t get the kicking he may still receive on Wednesday at Prime Minister’s Questions.

The occasion, frankly didn’t allow for it. He was making a statement on Britain’s future involvement in Iraq and the sensitivity of the issue left no room for Parliamentary histrionics.

However, there was genuine disgust on our side for what we saw as the Prime Minister’s use of the British garrison in Basra last week as a backdrop for his slippery reannouncement of troop withdrawals. Everyone felt that that had put him beyond the pale.

David Cameron summed up the feeling of the Conservative benches when he said: "This isn’t just double counting of government spending. This is not just spinning the good bits of a Budget and burying all the bad news in a footnote. This is about dealing with people’s lives and the families of our brave servicemen. Does he now agree this is just not an acceptable way for a Prime Minister to behave?"

Gordon had no answer. He looked awful, utterly depressed. The events of last weekend have clearly shaken him badly.

Back to School

Drove to London this afternoon; there were apparently yet more problems on the perennially difficult North Wales line: two changes required, and no guarantee of getting here in less than 6 hours - 8 hours would probably be more like it. So I drove, and the journey wasn't too bad until I hit a long queue at High Wycombe.

Opened the door of the flat to find a mountain of mail, mostly junk.

Tomorrow is the first day of Parliament after the summer recess. I'm looking forward to it, because we will have our tails up and Labour will be deeply depressed. But I'm nevertheless disappointed that there was no election. I think we would have won it. As it is, I think there is a real possibility that Gordon will go the full distance, right up to May, 2010.

No Guts Gordon (2)

I wonder how he's going to explain this away?

Scaremongers' Convention

Attended a convention of scaremongers at Colwyn Bay town hall last night.

For those of you who have not been following the story, this was a meeting called to protest at the plans of Edwina Hart, Welsh Assembly health minister, to require North Wales patients to travel to South Wales for elective neurosurgery. The town hall was packed, with more than 100 people attending. The media were also out in force.

There was an impressive degree of political consensus on display. My friend and colleague, Hywel Williams, Plaid Cymru MP for Caernarfon, spoke against the proposals and in favour of continuing the present links with Walton. Two local Labour councillors expressed their disgust at Mrs. Hart's scheme and said that they were going to take part in a delegation to Cardiff to see her.

Most moving, however, were the patients and relatives of patients who spoke of their appreciation for what the Walton centre had done for them. Nobody wanted to have to travel to South Wales.

Edwina Hart is all over the shop on this issue now. She was invited to attend the meeting, but declined to do so. On Thursday evening, she sent me an e-mailed letter telling me that the meeting had been arranged on a “false premise”. No decision had been made, she said, to require patients to travel to South Wales, and any suggestion to the contrary was "scaremongering".

The people attending the meeting, however, thought otherwise. Given the clear and unambiguous policy announcement made by Mrs. Hart on 4 July, their scepticism is understandable. What she said was this:

“My overriding aim is to secure as many services as can be safely provided within Wales’s boundaries. Of course, there will always be rare conditions and highly specialist services that can only be supported by populations greater than the population of Wales. This means that, in order to get the best possible treatment, there will always be some patients who must travel outside Wales for the services that they require. However, where the Welsh population base is sufficient to support an in-country service, that is the way in which I wish to proceed.

“Therefore, in the case of adult neurosurgery, the approach that I now intend to adopt is one in which we will look as actively as possible at redirecting additional elective work generated inside Wales to the two centres at Swansea and Cardiff. I stress that I am talking here about planned operations; I have no intention of transferring emergency work from outside the area into south Wales. However, where patients know sufficiently in advance to be able to plan for the operations required, I think that planning can allow for that work to be undertaken within Wales, particularly where that may make the difference between having a Welsh-based service or the prospect of having to give up that service.”

Now Mrs. Hart is apparently suggesting, in a letter written to Labour Assembly members, that there is no question of neurosurgery patients having to travel for treatment. That statement is at odds with suggestions she has made in previous correspondence that consideration is being given to providing financial support for patients who need to travel.

Mrs. Hart would be well advised to perform as graceful a u-turn as possible on this issue. In her understandable enthusiasm to save the neurosurgery unit at Swansea, she has stirred up the biggest political hornets' nest North Wales has seen for very many years.

Laundry

Drove back late from Ruthin, where I spoke at the annual general meeting of the Civic Association, under the chairmanship of the energetic Bobby Feeley.

Radio 4 News tells me that three new polls show Labour’s lead over the Conservatives to have been severely trimmed, with one actually showing us neck and neck. The pundit says that this may very possibly put Gordon off going to the country.

I do hope he is wrong. I badly want an election. Labour have done such damage to my patch, to say nothing of the country as a whole, that I think we have more than a fighting chance of turfing them out.

But the decision lies with Gordon. And Gordon has got no bottle. We may have to wait a while longer. I will pack four shirts on Sunday, not just two.

Farmers' Meeting

Unfortunately, was not able to stay at Blackpool to hear David Cameron’s speech. Instead, I listened to it on a very crackly Radio Five Live. It sounded good, but I understand that it was even more impressive on TV. David apparently spoke for well over an hour without notes.

I had to leave the conference early, to attend a meeting of farmers at Ruthin. Peter Ainsworth, shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, also attended, to hear to their concerns over the foot and mouth affair.

I learned shortly before the meeting that the restrictions on sales to the EU are to be relaxed next week. This is, in itself, welcome news, but the recommencement of trade will not be sufficient to compensate the farmers for their financial losses over the past couple of months.

The government simply has to listen to the farmers. Given that it is itself responsible for the FMD outbreak, it also has to accelerate the process of considering their claims for compensation. The NFU is taking legal advice as to whether it has a case against the government. My own view, for what it is worth, is that it is the government’s slapdash supervision of the Pirbright laboratory that has resulted in this damage to the British farming industry. It therefore has a duty to push through its consideration of the compensation claims, without the need for farmers to go to court. This it should be doing as a matter of urgency. Whether it will wish to carry out such an unpalatable exercise immediately before a General Election is another matter.

Balloon going up

Back from Blackpool, after three hectic and exciting days. Most of the representatives agree that it has been an excellent conference and, certainly, it is one of the best I can remember.

There is no doubt that election fever is in the air. Before going to Blackpool, I thought that Gordon would not risk an autumn poll, but now I am pretty convinced that the General Election will be held on 1 November.

Time to buy a pair of comfy shoes. I’ll need them.