Will the Johnston Inquiry Be Yet Another Whitewash?

I am afraid I am not going to join the echo chamber of welcomes (including from Dominic Grieve and David Davis) for this inquiry by Commander Ian Johnston into the Met's handling of the Damian Green case.

Ian Johnston was until recently an Assistant Commissioner in the Met and is a senior member of ACPO, the body which yesterday issued a public statement saying it had all been very well handled by the Met. ACPO have a reputation of sticking by their own. I hope I am proven wrong, but this bears all the hallmarks of a complete whitewash.

Baby P: A Tale of Two MPs

In a crisis some people come into their own. They ask the right questions, find the right words, keep calm and lead from the front. Others keep their counsel for worry of getting it wrong. They appear like a rabbit caught in the headlights and wait for others to lead while they play catch up.

In the Baby P case, LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone falls into the first category whole local Labour MP David Lammy belongs in the latter. Three weeks ago I praised Lynne Featherstone for doing exactly what a constituency MP should. I wrote...

Lynne Featherstone hasn't just reacted to the current crisis. She broached Haringey Council's leader in 2006 alerting him to the problems within the Children's Services department, yet he did nothing. Featherstone hasn't sought to play politics, but she is clear where the blame lies and is demanding that those responsible are held to account for their decisions and negligence. She has shown herself to be a very adept politician on this issue and it is unbelievable that she isn't being used more widely by the LibDems. Nick Clegg seems to have punished her for running Chris Huhne's leadership campaign. If he has any sense he will give her a leading job soon. She has more talent in her little toe that certain other LibDem women have in their whole bodies.

I don't take back a word of it. Since then, you'd have thought that David Lammy might have followed his neighbour's lead. Instead, there has been a wall of virtual silence from him, apart from one or two remarks which have left him with a huge amount of egg on his face. Paul Waugh makes the point for me...

Where once he just seemed focused on attacking the Lib Dems for scurrilous slurs on his local council, he now appears to have miraculously changed his mind....

November 19, BBC Radio 4's World At One programme:

"Over the course of the weekend, 61 headteachers that have more experience than you or I, or Lynne Featherstone, have offered their reassurance that they feel Haringey has been protecting children."

December 1, BBC News 24:

"Clearly lessons have not been learned. I think it is right that there is new leadership in Haringey. This is a very dark and sad day for the people of Haringey. In relation to young, vulnerable children who need protection, there have been deep failures. The report was littered with the words, 'inadequate', 'poor', 'management failures'. Against that backdrop, we need change. Change that must now come as a result of this inquiry."

It couldn't possibly be the case that Mr Lammy is shifting with the wind blown by a Very Important Cabinet Minister. Could it?

Five years ago I tipped Lammy to be Britain's first black Prime Minister. Just goes to show. Never trust my tips! He has been a lamentable Minister. Labour MPs despair at his embarrassing performances in the Commons where he continues to make a complete arse of himself. I saw an interview he did on Sky the other day about his "best friend" Barack Obama and he spoke so slowly I wondered if I was watching him on 33 and a third rather than 45rpm (that dates me, doesn't it). Lammy's performance as a constituency MP has been terrible, and most of his party know it. He does not deserve to be a minister.

I don't know what Nick Clegg's previous view of Lynne Featherstone was. But he must be impressed by the way she has conducted herself over the Baby P case. If there is any justice in this world there will be great things ahead for Miss F.

I apologise to Hornsey & Wood Green Conservatives for praising the woman who they are no doubt trying to oust at the next election, but there are sometimes in politics when you should recognise - and say openly - that an opponent has done well and risen to the occasion. This is one of those occasions.

Sharon Shoesmith's Brass Neck

Can anyone explain why Sharon Shoesmith and two of her colleagues at Haringey Council have been suspended on full pay? We were led to believe yesterday that they had been sacked.

Surely if she was sacked, she wouldn't have the brass neck to sue, would she? Sorry, as I was typing that I realised what the answer would be. The woman has no shame.

Nothing to Fear?

One of my regular blog readers, Alan Douglas, has a letter in both The Times and Telegraph this morning.

Sir, We are frequently told that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear”.

Not so. I fear having to prove I have nothing to hide.

Alan Douglas

East Grinstead, W Sussex

Well done Alan!

The Daley Dozen: Monday

1. Burning our Money says Baby P was killed by a box ticking mentality.
2. Paul Waugh is highly cynical about the timing of the release of the Baby P report.
3. Danny Finkelstein lists his Ten Worst Political Gaffes. Well, not his own, you understand!
4. Tory Diary exposes the EPP's lying, cheating ways. Again.
5. Labour blogger Peter Kenyon reckons the Tories should be charged with treason for "talking down Sterling" I kid you not. I wonder what he thinks Gordon Brown should be charged with for causing it to plummet in the first place.
6. Matt Wardman on Obama's turnout and fundraising myths.
7. Martin Bright finds himself getting angry at the Progress conference ... about Damian Green.
8. Andrew Porter thinks DD is about to take on the Speaker.
9. Cicero's Songs says the Speaker should apologise and then depart.
10. LibDem Voice has an astonishing revelation about Haringey's Chief Executive.
11. Red Box on the Chris Galley press conference and what constitutes inducement.
12. Nadine isn't feeling much love for Jacqui Smith.

Leaked Email From Harman: No Tories or LibDems Invited

The Conservatives have been sent an email by mistake, which details a meeting taking place tomorrow organised by the Leader of the House of Commons Harriet Harman to discuss the Speaker's Statement to the House. Invited to the meeting are Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw, as well as Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms and the Parliamentary Clerk, Malcolm Jack and a representative from the Speaker's Office. Strangely the Tories and LibDems have not been invited.

The email was sent by mistake to the office of Shadow Cabinet member Philip Hammond. No doubt he will soon be arrested.

The email says that "the meeting will discuss considerations in advance of the Speakers (sic) statement on Police action and Parliament". It is perfectly proper for Harriet Harman to call a meeting to discuss the government's line on such a statement. Attached to the email is Harriet Harman's agenda for the meeting, which is clearly an attempt to influence what would be in the Speaker's statement.


What is improper is for Harriet Harman to call a meeting seeking to influence the content of that Statement by the Speaker, which is presumably what she is intending to do by inviting the Speaker's Office, the Parliamentary Clerk and Serjeant at Arms. If there is to be a meeting to discuss arrangements for the Speaker's statement then the Opposition parties have a right to influence the arrangements for that Statement.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve commented tonight: "This is a completely improper meeting convened by the government privately with the Commons authorities and senior civil servants to manage the Speaker's statement without representation from other parliamentarians. This is precisely the sort of leak that should make it into the public domain. We insist on being present at this meeting along with representatives from all political parties to discuss the issues on the agenda."

UPDATE: From the BBC Website...

A spokesman for Ms Harman said the meeting had "nothing to do with the contents" of the statement. "The content of the speaker's statement is entirely a matter for the speaker," he said.
"The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the parliamentary business and handling of issues that arise from the fact that the speaker's statement and the Queen's Speech will be happening on the same day."

It's beyond parody, isn't it?

Stand By: Breaking News Story in a Moment

Just been tipped off that a big Damian Green related story is about to break. More here in a couple of mins...

Can It Really Be True That Jacqui Smith Knew Nothing?

Former UK Ambassador to Ukbekhistan Craig Murray has entered the fray in the Damian Green case with some potentially explosive allegations. He attacks Jack Straw for denying all knowledge of the incident, although I suspect his fire is slightly misdirected. Instead, his anecdote blows to pieces the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's contention that Home Secretaries never interfere in police matters. Let me quote most of his post...

Jack Straw, so called Justice Minister, denies that he had any foreknowledge of the arrest of Damian Green. Jack Straw denied directly to the BBC in the documentary "The Ambassador's Last Stand", and denied to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, that he had any part in the false accusations laid against me or in my removal as Ambassador for raising human rights concerns. Yet, as detailed in Murder in Samarkand, I have obtained documents in Jack Straw's own handwriting, directing the process, and he held at least three meetings with Sir John Kerr to organise it.

On being sacked, I very openly leaked a number of government documents concerning UK policy, the use of torture material by our intelligence services, and the government's attempts to frame me. Most of these documents were classified more highly than the documents leaked to Damian Green, like this one for example:

Yet when I leaked a number of highly classified documents, openly on the internet with my name and address, did the police come knocking at my door? No, they did not. They consulted Home Secretary John Reid, who consulted Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. They concluded that they should seek to kill the story, and not generate publicity by arresting me.

Does anybody really believe that Ministers decided whether someone as obscure as I should be arrested, but were not consulted on whether Damian Green should be arrested?

No, not sure I do either.

Mr Speaker Must Clear Up What He Was Told

I was about to write a lengthy post about the role (real or imagined) played by the Director of Public Prosecutions in the arrest of Damian Green, but Ben Brogan has beaten me to it. It seems to me it is of crucial importance to establish whether Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms, was indeed told by the Police that the DPP had approved the search of Damian Green's office. She maintains that's exactly what she was told. The Police have remained silent on the issue, while the DPP has denied any involvement. Mr Speaker needs to clear up that issue on Wednesday.

Ben Brogan fingers the Parliamentary Clerk - now the most senior official of the House of Commons - as the man with questions to answer.

When the Speaker comes to make his statement on Wednesday to MPs, he will of course be relying on the three officials in front of him for advice in the event of any 'trouble'. And the senior official giving advice? Why, none other than the Parliamentary Clerk, Dr Malcolm Jack.

It was only very recently that the Serjeant at Arms was downgraded to a more junior role with a 50% salary cut. In the past, the position has always been held by a retired military man. All of the Serjeants I have met over 25 years have struck the fear of God into many of those who dealt with them, and would have been more than capable of telling a representative of the Met where he could shove his search warrant. Jill Pay does not have that authority, and from what I know of Dr Jack he is more a Reverend Slope figure.

But in the end this was Mr Speaker's call. Rumour has it that as soon as Parliament was prorogued on Wednesday evening he hot footed it north. Did he know what was brewing before he left the building, and if so, why didn't he change his plans?

No Wonder Damian Green Was Offended

I've written a short piece for COMMENT IS FREE on the use of the word 'grooming' in the Damian Green case. Here's an extract...

According to an internet dictionary, the word grooming means: "The act of attempting to gain the trust of a minor with the intention of having a sexual relationship with him or her."...It's what Tony is doing to Max's daughter in EastEnders at the moment...

Is it any wonder that Conservative MP Damian Green was incensed that this word was used during his interrogation by counter-terror police on Friday? He was accused of "grooming" a 26-year-old civil servant, Chris Galley, to provide him with official Home Office documents. Galley had, it appears, applied for a job in Green's office but was rejected for the post. It's difficult to see how any rational being, let alone a professional police officer could imagine how this could happen. Perhaps in their fevered imaginations they imagine Green saying to Galley: "Sorry, I'm not going to give you the job, oh, and by the way, can you give me some leaked documents?"

It's preposterous...

Read more HERE. Some of the comments are interesting, and it's not often that I say that about a CiF article's comments!

And What About You, Ms Shoesmith?

Not before time, this morning has seen the resignations of the leader of Haringey Council George Meehan and the Cabinet Member for Children's Services, Liz Sawtry. But still no word on the future of the Director of Children's Services Sharon Shoesmith. If she had any sense of honour she too would be resigning today. No doubt she is holding out for a big fat payoff. That would be outraegous.

UPDATE: A couple of minutes after posting this it was announced that Ed Balls had sacked her. Good on him.

One for the Laydees

Mark Pack on LibDem Voice highlights some research by Rallings & Thrasher on female representation on local authorities and as council election candidates. These are the figures for female candidates at the 2008 council elections (2007 figures are in brackets)

31% (30%) of Conservative candidates were female
31% (30%) of Labour candidates were female
34% (34) of Liberal Democrat candidates were female

“28-29%” (29%) of Conservative councillors are female
“28-29%” (31%) of Labour councillors are female
“A third” (34%) of Liberal Democrats councillors are female

Rallings & Thrasher conclude that...

The proportion of men and women candidates contesting local elections now appears fixed in the ratio 2:1 and the rapid rise in women candidates during the second half of the 1980s has stopped … There is just one authority, Purbeck District Council, where women candidates outnumbered the men. By contrast, there are three local authorities in Wales where the proportion of women is fewer than one in five candidates. Another trend that continues is for the percentage of women elected to be slightly less than the percentage of women candidates.

It would be interesting to know the proportions of selected parliamentary candidates for the three parties. I know the Conservatives at one stage were up to 35% but I suspect this has fallen back to around 30% now. Anyone got the comparable Labour & LibDem figures?

It seems to me that these figures at a parliamentary level will rarely rise beyond the low thirties if the proportion of approved candidates who are female remains so low (ie, those approved but not yet selected). A good way of attracting more female parliamentary candidates is to encourage more female councillors.

Jackie Rips Jaqui to Pieces

It's not often that readers of this blog will agree with Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley, but she has a cracker of a column today. She rips Jacqui Smith to shreds. Here's an excerpt...

We have a pyramid of authority in this country and parliament, not the police, stands at its apex. For as long as I can remember, Labour MPs have expressed scepticism and even outrage at some police actions, going back to the handling of the miners' strike, the use of sus laws, the pursuit of Whitehall moles in the Thatcher years, and scandals such as the Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes cases. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the particular cases, it was clearly the duty of politicians to express themselves forcibly.

You can't separate politics from policing, and you never have been able to: political judgments are so often behind what the police do. In this case, it is simply risible to push off the responsibility for the invasion of Green's home and offices by anti-terrorist officers on to the police and nameless "officials". If the home secretary did not know, she should have done. She knew there was a leak inquiry, that it was becoming a criminal investigation, and that one of her own officials had been arrested. Are we really to believe that she did not know he had been a Tory activist and had not wondered whether Tory MPs might be drawn in? Are we to accept that she looked the other way, and now feels proud of this strange incuriosity?

Her highest title is not, actually, home secretary. She is first a member of parliament. Her first duty is to the parliamentary democracy that sustains us all, and that means protecting the rights of elected members to carry out their democratic job.

Smith should have found out what was being contemplated by the police and then intervened to stop it. Far from being "Stalinist", that would have been the proportionate, liberal and sensible thing. Having failed to do that, she should then have apologised to Green.

Great stuff. The full column can be read HERE.

The Euro & the People That "Matter"

So who are these "people who matter"? The President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso has let the cat out of the bag and told French radio that the subject of the euro is back on the agenda for leading UK politicians. "I know that the majority in Britain are still opposed, but there is a period of consideration under way and the people who matter in Britain are currently thinking about it,"he said. Barroso only really talks to senior government ministers so one assumes that he means the likes of Brown, Darling, Mandelson, Miliband and Balls. There are very few other Ministers who "matter".

Apparently the global credit crunch means we should be looking to give up our currency - although the way Labour are going it's becoming increasingly worthless anyway. This conveniently ignores the view expressed by many leading economists that whatever you think of the government's measures, a British government would have been completely hamstrung (like Ireland has been) if it had been part of the euro.

As William Hague has said this morning:

Keeping the pound is vital for Britain’s economic future. We need interest rates that are right for Britain, not the rest of Europe. There are no circumstances in which the next Conservative Government will propose joining the Euro. If Labour ministers still want to get Britain into the euro they should come out and say so. We will be putting questions to the Government to find out what conversations have been going on.

November Statporn

577,971 Individual Readers in the Last 12 Months

Traffic in November was marginally down from October - with absolute uniques at 64,552. Year on year, traffic has increased by nearly 50%. More than half a million individual people have read this blog over the last twelve months.

Year on Year Absolute Unique Visitors +46%
1 Dec 2007-30 Nov 2008 577,971 1 Dec 2006-30 Nov 2007 396,883

Absolute Unique Visitors +39% year on year
November 2008 64,552 - November 2007 46,334 - Oct 2008 67,764

Visits +24% year on year
November 2008 303,353 - November 2007 245,361 - Oct 2008 - 320,456

Page Loads +20% year on year
November 2008 432,211 - November 2007 361,305 - Oct 2008 446,383

Here are my top 20 linking sites (ie incoming hits) for November, according to Google Analytics.

1. - Guido Fawkes 19,958 (24,710)
2. - ConservativeHome 13,700 (14,764)
3. - Spectator Coffee House 10,630 (12,248)
4. - PoliticalBetting 5,565 (6,541)
5. +2 Biased BBC 3,084 (1,760)
6. -1 Dizzy Thinks 3,055 (2,810)
7. NEW Bastard Old Holborn 2,275 (-)
8. -2 Daniel Finkelstein & Red Box 1,775 (2,175)
9. -1 Ben Brogan 1,221 (1,288)
10. +1 Obnoxio the Clown 1,205 (1,156)
11. +1 Telegraph blogs 1,120 (1,134)
12. -3 Bloggerheads 999 (1,151)
13. +2 Little Man in a Toque 899 (816)
14. -1 Devil's Kitchen 891 (861)
15. +3 Bob Piper 764 (733)
16. -6 Tom Harris 822 (1,121)
17. -1 Daily Referendum 781 (810)
18. NEW Recess Monkey 778 (-)
19. - Archbishop Cranmer 709 (702)
20. -6 SNP Tactical Voting 565 (840)

Some popular search phrases

"muslin sex free"
"premiership footballers naked"
"k-y jelly"
"how to give spanking"

Source: All figures are from Google Analytics.

Monday Mash Up

Gordon Brown's Purge begins. Apparently. Some of us thought it began some time ago...

The Daley Dozen: Sunday

1. Richard North of EU Referendum has finally lost not only the plot but what remained of his marbles.
2. Liam Halligan says we are being ruled by a bunch of charlatans.
3. Quaequam reckons Professor Vernon Bogdanor has gone mental over Damian Green.
4. Jane Griffiths fisks Martin Salter. And not for the first time.
5. ConHome reports on the selection of a 19 year old as parliamentary candidate for Durham.
6. LibDem Yorksire Gob lives up to her name and lays into Nick Clegg in no uncertain terms.
7. Fraser Nelson thinks our system of government has overreached itself.
8. LibDem Voice readers are also none too impressed by Clegg's reshuffle comments. Chris Rennard quotes me in defence of his leader. Never thought I would see the day!
9. Cranmer wishes his readers a Happy New Abortion.
10. John Redwood remains unimpressed by Sunday newspaper reporting of the PBR.
11. Tom Watson wants suggestions for 50 people who should twitter. And he's already got 27!
12. Jane Merrick on her new blog says thank God for Harriet Harman. Sort of.

Ten New Blogs

Evil G
Cherry Hinton Road - Cambridge Tory councillor
Jess the Dog - Scottish Conservative/SNP blog
Sleepwalking Britain - Libertarian
Clameur de Haro - Jersey politics & economics
Cassius Writes - Right of centre
World of JR - Conservative youth blog
De Spencer - Fiscal Conservative, social liberal
Mark Reckons - LibDem
Mike Hobday - Labour candidate in Welwyn & Hatfield

These blogs aren't necessarily newly created, but I haven't known about them before and they had not, until now, appeared in the TP Blog Directory.

Visit the Total Politics Blog Directory which contains more than 1,670 blogs. If you know of one which isn't there, please fill in the Submit a New Blog form on the left hand side of THIS page.

Book Review: Sir David Mitchell's Memoirs

I have known former Tory MP Sir David Mitchell on and off for more than twenty years. Around eight years ago he t