Dave of Arabia,- and a holiday recommendation.

David Cameron's end of summer term visit to the forces in Afghanistan will be handled  by his hosts with courtesy and professional tolerance. Most though have seen enough politicians' visits during their careers to treat apparent sincerity on these occasions with a pinch of salt. They know that the real audience is back home , but hope that in accepting that they will be receive some useful crumbs of comfort and recognition. Allowances for putting themselves in danger of a fatal or normal life destroying bullet or explosive device have been improved but are still insignificant in cost per day compared to such things as London transport staff , including the Euston train cleaners, bonuses for bravery (or even just doing their jobs and also receiving overtime as well) , in the face of the Olympics.

Beneath all the politico-speak everyone with a grain of sense or understanding of the world knows that the UK and its allies should never have put troops into Afghanistan and that it is a costly waste of lives and money. With all the best of naive intentions, once the foreign occupiers have left, Afghanistan is likely to face another unpleasant era of Taleban repression, and misery followed probably by some sort of revolt, tribal or national, which may or may not  produce a more liberal but also more corrupt regime. The west being there has not made the streets of London or anywhere else safer. The bad lads of the  Al Quaeda franchises have simply moved elsewhere, - not very far in many cases ,- but they are still around and there are more effcient, clinical and effective ways of dealing with them than old fashioned boots on the ground. Politically as the Conservative Party never issued a single bleat when Blair/Brown decided to emabark on another Middle East adventure/war they can't say they opposed it and are desparate to achieve "withdrawal with honour". The military though know that means more of their lives will be lost to protect the myth that the losses so far have been "worth it".

While enjoying his time in the dust, Mr Cameron is said also to have "demanded" that Assad leaves power in Syria. Nobody will argue against the fact that Assad and his unpleasant and vicious (if you opposed it) Baath Party rule was undemocratic and should give way to something with more time for human rights and less prone to killing its dissident citizens. They should not forget though, that like the Baath in Iraq, it was a secular regime and the numbers it killed are likely to be far less than those who are dying now and will die in the future western- inspired civil war. The west and the UK can not solve all the world's problems and be its policeman. Bad things will happen, nasty regimes will come and go but usually the really bad periods will be shorter if they are not fuelled , made more complex and worse or prolongued by external intervention. Yes, there are exceptions of course but they should be very, very few.

One would suggest that Mr. Cameron and many other politicians should include in their summer chillaxing some serious reading of  Middle Eastern history. Even Flashman could help the interested but less academic. Once better genned up on that, MPs of all parties should then be forced to spend another fortnight at least on serious study tours of the dyamism of South and North East Asia. They might at least then eventually return to Westminster with eyes a little more open and the brains of the more alert saying "Oh s---!" 

UK Parliament,- Nearly the summer hols.Gasp.!

Like someone in the desert clawing their last few yards to towards the oasis , for David Cameron the end of the parliamentary term just can't come soon enough. It's been a hell of a half and it now being Sunday  the temptation to join many others in bunking off early before the formal end of term on Tuesday must be very strong. Many of his colleagues may well already be on a sun kissed beach (Not here!)

Having since Easter and the budget had to make a series of reverses and in the past week delayed three things,-House of Lords reform, changes to and funding of old people's care and consultation on the future of London area airport capacity have made the Prime Minister look weak and indecisive. There has been tough talking,-eg on the EU and a referendum on it and on bankers' behaviours but perceived weakness in follow through. This inevitably raises the question; "Can he be trusted? Are we seeing his real agenda?"

How has once confident and energetic Cameron got into this mess? What are the underlying problems and why are they not being dealt with? What can he do about it and how?

There are a string of factors, some historic and some recent and current. Here are some:

a) HISTORIC:

-Until recently the Conservative Party had a number of grandees not far from the Prime Ministerial chair. They were a source of advice and guidance and powerful. In extremis they could pay a men (yes they were men) in white coats style visit to the Prime Minister and suggest tactfully or forceably that the time had come for a change. Although there are substantial influences and influencers still about, they do not now occupy the same position.

- Below these figures behind the curtains the demography of MPs was slanted towards the over 40 or 45 age groups. That has changed in all Parties as well as businesses over the last 15 or so years and the slant is now the other way. There are less scarred and battle hardened stalwarts who have seen it all before around to give advice and keep ministers away from cliff edges. The benefits are increased energy levels but they make the avoidance of cliff edges even more important.

- The Party was historically very strong on research, policy compilation and planning. From 1948 to 1980 it had its own Staff College at Swinton Castle near Masham in Yorkshire which ran ongoing seminars, policy weekends and other events covering everything from training of local agents, running election campaigns to high level ideology and policy. This was in addition to Central Office activity in London and participants ranged from university students to ministers. Amongst other things these sessions gave a constant feedback loop from all over Britain. They also gave party managers a good knowledge of MPs, part workers and activists which made it easier to further train and develop them and make sure that their individual skills were appropriately and usefully deployed. The specialist subject weekends in particular gave people personal informal access to ministers to the benefit of both. Altogether Swinton, the Party's third edition of a Staff College performed a number of very useful  functions and strengthened the organisation in ways similar to those deployed by private sector businesses at the time. There is no clear successor to it. One result is this lack of people planning and another the absence of an ongoing coherent master plan to fit a clearly defined political philosophy.(see more on the latter below).

- At grass roots level, there were Working Mens' ( yes, men) Conservative Clubs and the like up and down the country. These were self supporting and brought in true working class members and others to whom alternatives such as the middle class dating agency,- The Young Conservatives,- did not appeal. These have now almost universally disappeared.

b) CURRENT:

-The top of the party leadership is very narrowly based with a strong Eton, Oxbridge and southern England contingent. It lacks reach to and empathy with much beyond north Oxfordshire. It also looks awkward when trying to look like a party of the people. In the home county shires the Conservative Party  looks more like a social networking rather than a political organisation. It is unattractive to new joiners, particularly the young and less well off.  Few gatherings of the faithful are outside Monday to Friday and it doesn't usually go out to find new and more diverse recruits. Many would find themselves uncomfortable if they did turn up.

- Cameron's handling of dissenters has become tetchy. He clearly feels they should be more sympathetic about his extremely difficult task of keeping the ever immature Lib Dems in the coalition but for their part they feel he is not being strong enough in tellingt them to get in line and accept that without this coalition they would not have a sniff of power. In retrospect it might have been better for the Conservatives to take power as a minority government in 2010, court and early defeat and then win a new General Election in Auntumn 2010 while any idea of a return by Labour would almost certainly have been enough to ensure a working majority.

- There is no central , passionately driven political philosophy from which all policies coherently flow. As result what is done looks patchy and too easily looks like reaction rather than action. The revived Old Labour is much clearer in its objectives, particularly now that its deep seated antipathy to the rich and successful has been reinforced by the behaviour of the easily pilloried bankers. This target has also usefully diverted attention from them fact that only a year ago the naughty step was shared by expenses -fiddling politicians of all parties. Ed Miliband and his union sponsors are heavily back into class warfare and believe it will deliver the desired majority in the next General Election.

- As result of its very tight inner core, the parliamentary party is feeling sore and not listened to. Ministers find themselves strongly supporting policy only to find that without consultation or even reasonable notice it suddenly changes beneath their feet and they are left looking and feeling daft and worse,- ill informed. and out of the loop.There is also a growing feeling that the weekly Minister's Questions session  is not being handled well. Ed Miliband's performance is getting better and he is offsiding the unvarying Cameron Head Prefect approach. A more thoughful and statesmanlike approach would play well inside and outside parliament. As Prime Minister it is up to Cameron to make the change and he could claim it as a major shift in the way British politics is conducted. It's an opportunity which he should seize. Fun though schoolroom or university debating society knockabout has been, the public taste for it is fast diminishing. It's time to move on to genuine explaination of issues and options, adult analysis and still good but well informed debate.

- Labour is much more focused on creating an agenda of activity. It can afford to be as it doesn't have to actually do anything,- just say the words. It has deployed Lord Adonis to produce a  new industrial strategy and is working hard on other initiatives to polish its credentials and paper over its always disastrous enonomic performance in the hopes of looking like the cavalry coming over the hill in 2015 or earlier should the coalition really collapse. The party is even allowing Blair and Mandelson to sidle up to the warm places by the fire and make their inputs. This is clever in keeping them on side but will not be electorally popular if it becomes too obvious. The current Blair campaign for rehabilitation is conspicuous but the real public taste for more of the couple is,-or his coterie,-is doubtful.

- Labour is much cleverer in producing and repeating for ever dog whistle words and pharses which, even if only through sheer repetition, gain traction and come to be believed. They include; "Too fast, too soon" (debt reduction), "Out of touch" (class and wealth overtones) and recently "Shambles" (easily attatched to any foulup which can remotely be attributed to government). Partly due to their lack of experience is political streetfighting ,the Conservatives do not seem to recognise and far less counter these. No doubt Labour get some assistance in this area from the legacy unions who have used the tactic for generations.

- Obsorne's failure to explain and sell the budget has put the government on the back foot and make them appear inept throughout this session. There were good reasons for the actions taken and having decided to go with them Osborne should have stuck to his guns. Instead in the face of media,-led , or even manufactured,-onslaughts he and Cameron have made too many concessions and allowed themselves to be portrayed as weak and vacillating. If the party and had a good steeetwise Alistair Campbell lookalike they would have stood firm or never got into the public relations mess in the first place.

- There is a failure in the Conservative radar to anticipate and pick up problems and then to deal with them decisively  before they run out of control.  As result they tend to run into trouble far too often when a bit of thought or advice would have steered them away from it. Civil servants have not given them all the help they might have either. Nothing to do with "cuts" to the service, their pensions etc of course.

c) SO.... time for a summer starting with a good holiday to blow away feelings of exhaustion and all the rest and then a rethink of how to come out of the traps in October renewed, refreshed, with  a "Just do it" approach and some big, broad strokes instead of microfiddling, delay, enquiries and reassessments. The  last few month's feeling of the country wading through glutinous mud must be banished and a new one of energy and action created. If that doesn't happen the prospect of this being a one term government will begin to loom and for Cameron & Co it will be self , not Miliband, inflicted.   

A flood of a week........

Thanks to the wrong sort of jetstream- that's the summer version flowing to the south of the UK rather than the north,- the country and other parts of northern Europe have continued to enjoy a summer of records,- the wettest, greyest, coldest for many decades. The national spirit could certainly do with a lift but this definately isn't it. What's worse, the forecasters are beginning to make precautionary pessimistic noises about August ,-and that means the OLYMPICS (if we aren't breaching copyright by mentioning the word. If we are, sorry, convert it to "THE EVENT") .We have carefully built the main stadia, waiting areas, Q ing areas and almost everywhere ,apart from the big big 1,500 seater McDonalds, with no roofs. Never will so many unwillingly purchased big Macs with fries have been eaten as slowly as "guests" spin out the undercover time their purchases have bought.  Fair risk you might think, it's summer after all. We did the same for the British farewell part of the Hong Kong handover pre-ceremonies in July 1997 . This led to a right royal soaking for everyone from Prince Charles downwards and from that we discovered that massed umbrellas don't hack it. In fact , thanks to a fascinating dynamic, they guarantee not a steady drizzle down the back of the assembled necks and the front of assembled dresses but real all-penetrating deluges delivered at irregular but ever more frequent intervals. We don't learn though.  We can only recommend to our many guests that to deal with the situation they adopt that weary British expression " Mustn't grumble" as their Olympic experience, along with the McD's fries, descends into a soggy nightmare.

Other things though have been flitting across our field of view. The banking fraternity has been at it again,- or was in 2008. This time they stand accused of chummily rigging the Libor short term inter-bank interest rates and presumably not to the customers' advantage. Cosy emails are said to flitted across desks, thanking colleagues in other banks for their help and promising lots of free coffees , no doubt exchangeable for Bollingers, for the nod or wink. Chief baddy in the dock this time was Barclays and it's flamboyant leader Bob Diamond (see previous Twigaview). He went down to face a group of investigating MPs at Westminster, irritatingly patronised them all, but was certainly not about to say "Yup, I dunnit. I'll go". It was others shortly afterwards declared " You dunnit, you're going". The whole thing has caused much excitement in the Westminster village/fourth form, the highlight being an Osborne/Balls front bench slugfest. All entertaining stuff and enough to make ever polite Scandinavian  MPs and ever passive (Farage excepted )MEPs cringe for its lack of quiet finesse.     

Some sensible things have happened though. Defence Minister Philip Hammond's undertaking to slim the British Army down from around 120,000 to 80,000 makes good sense despite all the sensitivities about cap badges, past glories, victories, valiant defeats and proud but now antiquated divisions and loyalties. Some brutal cuts have been imposed in the Ministry Defence and not all of them wonderful or even immediately sensible. They have been necessary though to jolt the Ministry and the armed forces leadership (still some donkeys about just as a hundred years ago) , into new ways of doing things. The need for a new cost effectiveness and post WW 2 ways of fighting are obvious. Hi tech weaponry, sophisticated surveillance systems communications and pilotless aircraft are amongst the game changers .The structure and numbers deployed in more traditional roles have been slow to adapt so there is no alternative now but to force the pace and achieve a sharp focus on how to accomplish the tasks with less money, less manpower but higher technology and cleverer project definition and negotiating/contracting/purchasing skills to make sure that now a cent is wasted.

Over in the Home Office there have been some more bad days. Track has been lost of 120,000 people who should have left the UK and apparently haven't, though they may have. That sounds like an underestimate. There is no way of knowing. Why? Very simply , John Major's government abolished outbound immigration checks.  Every other country or group of countries (eg the EU Shengen area)  in the world counts non nationals in and then counts them out. This way they have a record of for how long all are admitted and, usually computer based, systems flag up who hasn't left when they should. The arm of the law goes after them and does the job. The UK though has no idea who has left and when. At one time there was talk of outbound checks being restored by 2012 but there is no sign of this and no additional manpower appears to have been recruited to do them.  The Conservatives created this situation. Labour the did nothing about it for 13 years and now the Conservatives again, hoisted by one size fits all public sector manpower cuts, appear unable to cut through the confusion and say " Just do it".

On the roads it has been revealed that our crumbling infrastructure is indeed crumbling. The knackered concrete of the M4 flyovers linking the west and Heathrow Airport with the centre of London has again been found to have worrying cracks and has immediately been closed again in the hopes that at least temporary repairs may be possible before, yes, the Olympics. The world's busiest international airport is thereby devoid of  its direct road route into town. The government is said to be looking for "shovel ready " infrastructure projects to help kickstart the economy. The west London overhead sections of the M4 need a complete rebuild and could even be widened at the same time.There are few similar projects available. Most take years of planning applications, enquiries and appeals before it's even possible to buy a shovel. Heres's a big one ready to go. It could probably get away without planning approvals as technically it is just a massive repair. Again an opportunity for "Just do it" . Chances? Such urgency is not British and doubtless a line of Sir Humphreys await with extended feet.

Elsewhere on the transport infrastructure scene, the largely Chiltern based anti-High Speed (railway) lobby have been delighted to hear that the passenger forcasts for HS 1 (the link between the Channel Tunnel and St Pancras ) were highly overoptimistic and the line's debt will increase by over £4 bn by 2020. They are very much in "Told you so mode" and back to shouting "There is no business case for HS2". Wrong- there is of course a very good one. Forget some of the inept calculations about the economics of working time saved en route. The simple facts are that we need to build for the 21st century, we have an expanding population and economy, rail track capacity to "the north" will be full by 2020, we need to separate long distance express services from short haul, slower moving commuter trains and even slower but also increasing freight trains , all of which get in each others' way. Adding tracks to additional lines means that there are huge , efficiency draining, complications so that solution which is often claimed to be easy is impractical. Lastly those who confuse this project with the need for additional Heathrow runways or a new airport  are mistaken. The two projects are entirely separate and neither removes the need for the other.

Those were some of the features of another rain sodden British summer week. There will be more in the next seven days.

EU- Dave gets tough.. or maybe not.

We said that it's dangerous whenever the UK's man Cameron gets amongst the Eurofolk amongst whom he would dearly love to feel at home,- one of the gang. Maybe it's because ex Etonians aren't used to being excluded from exclusive groups, but once near them he does seem to get excessively "I'm really one of you, one of the top table too" . He positively radiates puppyish excitement in the presence of Hollande (where did he come from all of a sudden?) , Merkels and even Barrosso. Heaven help us all.

The result was that he returned home in the early hours of Friday in a sort of "Peace in our time" mode, but aware that might not go down too well with a hundred or so of his MPs or even growing numbers of the electorate who feel that the principles of democracy warrant at least being asked about the future of their country or whether they still want to have one or in reality just be a county or province of Greater Europe. It is after all a rather fundamental question especially as it far from certain that all of Britain's potential future rulers are great Anglophiles or even like us at all. We may have bailed out a good number of them in the past century or so and fought several others but neither group appears to actually love us. No wonder something makes Dave and others excluded. Some, Nick , for example don't want to be excluded for a minute longer, whatever the illiberal cost ( it's amazing how illiberal most Liberals are when faced with anything but their own warm, fuzzy "hello sky, hello flowers " point of view.) and are prepared to go sign up to any internationalist pan-anything.

What we have seen and heard since Dave's return therefore is meant to be a sop to the Eurosceptics and those who would like to be asked what they think. He says we do need some changes to the EU relationship though how deep and far reaching is left for another time, and yes, there may be a day when we are better informed and more to be trusted to give the right answer in a referendum of some sort, but we aren't ready and adult enough to be asked just yet. Sorry children but your leaders just can't let you self harm.

Well intended though it is , this isn't going to satisfy or even kid anyone. Worse, it doesn't sound like the words of a tough leader prepared to fight to the death for what the vast majority wants (Superstate , no, Free trade Area ,- yes) at the expense of losing his place at the top table or in the prefects room of the European Academy. Worse for the Cameron and the Conservatives ot opens the way for the politically well organised Miliband to simply promise a referendum and after that all he can do is visibly play catchup. Just as Osborne was wrong footed by Balls urging the delay/dropping of the fuel tax rise the day before he announced it, the Tories will again have allowed Labour to proclaim "We said it first" if Dave does later match the promise,- as he would have to.

Again, the Tory machine is caught flying blind with its radar simply not identifying what lies before it and what opportunities each statement or action opens up or closes down for its opponents. Ther should be some final warnings and P45s floating around in Tory headquarters.

Footnote: Also conspicuous in Labour's Alexanders' criticism of Dave's non announcement was again the closing word "Shambles". As we noted before ,there has long been consistent dogwhistle word or one liner in almost anything any Labour speaker says about anything. It's very clever, lethal even and the Tories have no counter measure .