Hail the people’s Gordon!

by Alan Tyers

It’s all hands to the pump for Gordon Brown as he attempts to save his sinking ship. Yesterday, we learned details of the forthcoming Queen’s Speech - a set of deliberately political, populist measures including putting the boot into bankers, snuggling up to the elderly, getting tough on knife crime and, for all we know, free jam for every reader and death squads for paedos.

Today, Brown is further playing to the gallery by suggesting that we might get the hell out of Afghanistan - something that the British public are polling very strongly in favour of.

It’s funny, now that this Government is in (presumably terminal) decline, it’s suddenly all about listening to what the punters want.

With British soldiers now dying in a hail of media attention, the PM reckons we should consider “a security handover” to the Afghans - i.e. sneak out of there as discretely as possible.

It was probably a bad idea to go to war there in the first place, but we decided to, and then we decided to stay. The situation does not appear to be getting any more, erm, secure - so why is it suddenly a good idea to get out?

There can be only one logical answer: Labour needs some quick political wins. What else can we expect between now and the general election? Anything populist and headline-grabbing, no matter the long-term implications, is my guess.

Brown letter day

by Alan Tyers

The ignoble sport of bear-baiting is alive and well: Gordon Brown has lurched into yet another crisis and his enemies at The Sun are getting stuck in.

The PM hand-wrote a letter to Jacqui Janes offering his condolences for the death in Afghanistan of her Grenadier Guardsman son, Jamie.

Brown managed to spell her name incorrectly, and made several other spelling (or handwriting) mistakes in the letter. Then - cringe, cringe - he phoned her up to say sorry, she recorded the conversation and handed it to The Sun. Manna from heaven to the Tory-backing boys in Wapping.

Personally, I think it’s a low blow: he wrote to her and phoned her personally and privately. I couldn’t argue that it’s not a matter of public interest, but it still seems a bit mean to serve him up to the unlovely red-top attack dogs.

Still, it certainly reveals a lot about the Prime Minister and his current state of mind. A lack of attention to detail, the inability to admit a mistake - “I think I was trying to say Janes, as your right name” - a total failure to communicate.

A more gifted politician and manipulator than Brown - Tony Blair, say, or Bill Clinton - would have played the card that he too has lost a child; or maybe even alluded to his disability and failing eyesight. It’s arguably to Brown’s credit that he didn’t. About all you can say is that he shouldn’t have written the letter if he can’t write her name correctly. It seems a modest amount to ask from the leader of the country.

Instead of grovelling, Brown tried to debate her on issues that she obviously knows a fair bit about, but is never going to bend on. That her son died because of underfunding is fixed 100% in her mind.

It’s not an argument he could ever win, and even if he could - who wants to defeat a grieving mother with stats and policy detail?

Nuclear option

by Alan Tyers

Britain's plans to cut its nuclear capability are encouraging, but we should go further.

Gordon Brown is to tell the UN that Britain will cut its nuclear submarine fleet by 25%. Interestingly, guess how many subs that actually means? Just one. We have four; soon we will have three.

The Government has also announced plans to cut its stockpile of Trident nuclear warheads from 200 to 160. These moves, proponents say, will prove to other countries that we’re serious about moving towards a nuclear-free world; and specifically, it will show Iran that we are not being hypocritical.

That’s the plan anyway.

But we will still have a lethal nuclear arsenal even after these cuts, so how Britain can honestly claim the moral high ground over any country that’s developing nukes is lost on me.

It might be that there’s a country or sub-national body insane enough to launch a nuclear attack on Britain - but I can’t see that nuclear stockpile would actually be any deterrent against what would have to be a religious or ideologically-driven suicide mission.

In short: if Iran, say, is going to try nuking us, it will do so whether we have missiles or not.

Might we be better off spending the money on current problems - Afghanistan, for example - that we can actually influence?

The plot thickos

by Alan Tyers

The convictions for the would-be bottle bombers are just the tip of the iceberg…

Good news, bad news, ugly fears for future news with the conviction of the three men who plotted to blow up planes with liquid bombs. Great that they have been brought to justice, a shame that it has cost us all about 135 million quid in police and legal fees, and worrying that there might be more where they came from.

On the one hand, something was obviously seriously wrong with ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali, key gang member Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar, the gang’s quartermaster. On the other, they don’t sound that unusual.

Ali, the brains of the outfit: born in London, engineering graduate, a dad. Did charity work in Pakistan, became outraged and then radicalised by seeing the displaced from Afghanistan. There must be plenty of others who have had similar life experiences.

High Wycombe-born Sarwar sounds like one of life’s losers: shy, failed student, low self-esteem, drifting in and out of lowly jobs, easily manipulated.

And as for fashion-conscious Hussain, who carried on with his part in the plot even once he knew that MI5 were onto him… well, they won’t be fighting over him for the prison quiz team, it seems fair to say.

Three unremarkable young Brits, selected, trained and manipulated by men much smarter than themselves and brainwashed into a truly evil plot. With whole communities apparently perusing separatist aims – Sharia law, segregated schooling - the soil is fertile for more bad seeds.

Hats off to the security forces for catching the bottle bombers before they could do anything devastating. But how do we, as a society, make it totally unappealing for the next generation even to consider getting involved in such hare-brained schemes?

Unwilling, unwitting stars of CCTV

by Greg McDonald

As figures released today reveal that the British state now spies on half a million of us every year, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman Chris Huhne is right that Britain has sleepwalked into a surveillance society.

From the CCTV camera checking when you left your local pub, to the sensor in your bin lid making sure your kebab didn’t end up in the recycling, the state is watching a whopping one in 78 of us every year.

So if you came to work on the bus this morning, any guesses which of your fellow passengers the state felt the need to spy on this year?

Could the threat to national security have been posed the little old lady with the bag of spuds tipping potato peel in the wrong receptacle? Or could we have been monitoring the shadowy figure in the dog collar with the habit of parking suspiciously close to a local church?

But as absurd as the Government’s approach is, there are seriously pressing issues here. In what’s now the most watched country in the world, our liberty is beginning to be seriously threatened.

And with a new snooping request made every 60 seconds, the Home Office’s claim to be “striking the right balance between individual privacy and collective security” makes it sound about as convincing as an Iranian returning officer.

Chris Huhne is correct that there can be no justification for spying on 500,000 of us a year – half a million people can’t be in the wrong.

Soldiers of misfortune

By Alan Tyers

The negative PR certainly writes itself: evil MOD seeks to weasel out of giving a few quid for injured war heroes.

Then again, running the armed forces shouldn’t be a popularity contest.

A soldier who was shot in the leg in Iraq was initially awarded £9,250; on appeal this was increased to £46,000. A marine who broke his leg in training saw his £8,250 compo bumped to to £28,750 on appeal.

The brass are appealing against the appeals, on the grounds of what basically sounds like double jeopardy: not only does the MoD have to pay out for the injuries, it has to pay out for subsequent problems caused by the injuries. It is clear, as Falklands veteran (and casualty) Simon Weston has said, that “the system is incredibly flawed”.

This is probably an unfashionable viewpoint, and obviously getting shot in the leg must be horrible but… isn’t putting up with the risk of getting shot at one of the defining features of the job of soldiering?

Despite what the papers would have us believe, it is possible for a British person to get through their daily life without being shot, stabbed or car-bombed into oblivion.

Surely the pay you get for joining the armed forces reflects the fact that it is a dangerous job? There are other life paths to choose.

If people are unable to work as a result of their injuries, then it is right that the state should take care of them.

But the payouts should be commensurate with the fact that the victim voluntarily chose to be in such a risky position in the first place, shouldn’t they?

Afghanistan – is the public mood changing?

by Alan Tyers

The news that Britain has lost eight troops in 24 hours has brought home how tough the situation is out there for our forces.

Underfunded and undersupplied, they are fighting a war to… er… a war to bring democracy and the rule of law to Afghanistan. Whether this goal could be achieved under any circumstances is debatable, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be working out at the moment.

A public mood of distant disinterest is gradually turning to one of real worry about our troops, a view echoed by former Army chief Sir Mike Jackson on BBC Radio 5 Live.

Even people who are unsure whether Britain should be in Afghanistan in the first place found themselves galvanised by the despicable protests of Muslim extremists at the memorial parade for dead soldiers a couple of months ago.

And the drip-drip of stories about underfunding and shoddy equipment foisted on the troops is further building public support for the individual soldiers, while hardening opposition to their presence there.

How many more dead soldiers will the public put up with before there is a concerted movement to withdraw from Afghanistan?

Nothing to Hyde?

by Alan Tyers

Today’s the fourth anniversary of the 7/7 bombings: there’s a memorial being unveiled in Hyde Park, but no public inquiry.

Saba Mozakka, who is one of six relatives of the deceased on the memorial’s project board, said: “We think it is truly incredible and reflects the importance of the people commemorated.”

But the authorities do not think that their deaths were important enough to have a full public inquiry into how the events of four years ago came to pass. This is despite calls for the same from relatives, the public, and even a former head of counter-terrorism.

Some idiots have concocted a conspiracy theory about the attacks. They believe that the absence of a public inquiry means the Government did it. This is laughable and contemptible: like our shambolic Government could put together such a complex operation.

An inquiry into the bombings is going in front of the Commons Home Affairs Committee today, although it’s hard to have too much faith in these sort of closed-shop investigations these days.

The Committee will no doubt find that police and security services did all they could, and that the events of 7/7 were beyond their skill to avert. OK then. So is there any reason to suppose there won’t be another similar attack? No, not really.

Tessa Jowell and Prince Charles (the dream team) were at Hyde Park today. Who will be unveiling the next monument to “important people”?

Why it's still wrong to negotiate with kidnappers

by Greg McDonald

Our hearts go out to the families of Jason Creswell and Jason Swindlehurst, the two British hostages whose bodies have been identified in Iraq.

Our thoughts are also with the families of the three Britons who remain captive. Their daily suffering is unimaginable, and as the extremist militia responsible demand the release of Shia prisoners in the next months, we can all understand calls for any demand to be met if it brings the innocent safely home.

But, and as harsh as it seems to say this right now, we must stand firm in support of the British Government’s policy of not making concessions to hostage-takers.

The cold truth is that bowing to demands will only act as a spur to future kidnappers. We will never know how many lives the policy of refusing to negotiate has already saved.

If there was any doubt that concessions don’t work, the militants surely vanquished it by following up the release of Laith al-Khazali from a US detention centre in Baghdad this month with the handover of the bodies of two men long since dead.

This latest awful chapter in the wider tragedy of the Iraq story should hammer home the need for an open inquiry into what Britain was ever doing in Iraq in the first place.

Today, though, our hearts go out to the families of the deceased, and our hopes lie with those charged with securing the safe release of the remaining hostages.

Another coat of whitewash

by Alan Tyers

There will be an inquiry into the Iraq war – but it will take place behind closed doors.

Gordon Brown says this will mean witnesses “can be as candid as possible”. Is he suggesting that they would just have lied if the inquiry were public? Surely an accurate recounting of events should be the absolute minimum ambition?

This behind-closed-doors process will, it goes without saying, cost a lot of money. And it will take a lot of time – conveniently enough, the findings of this mysterious panel will not be released until after the next General Election.

David Miliband says that all bar the most sensitive information will be published. That sounds like a pretty moveable screen to hide behind.

Oh, and the Prime Minister assures everyone that the inquiry will not “apportion blame” for this shameful and costly war. That’s alright then.

As Mr Brown and his twitchy helpers lurch from one disaster to the next, this decision to go private is yet another indication that they regard the business of government as something that wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the ghastly public sticking their noses in. A fully public inquiry into the Iraq debacle was what the country needed and wanted, however inconvenient it might have been for the ruling party.

Remember: you work for us, Mr Brown (for the time being, at least).