Clegg wrings his hands. ( ps That's not new)

Today's Times has plenty to send sane readers reaching for the nearest bucket. The prize for cringeworthiness must though go to the soon-to-go on hols Nick Clegg..

Talking about educational policy following the unceremonious and dubiously motivated departure of Michael Gove, possibly the highest achieving and certainly most energetic member of the Cameron cabinet, Nick has been speaking. "We need to reset the relationship (between government and the teaching unions), not I should stress by abandoning all government policy or reforms, but by ensuring that where there is debate and discussion between the teaching profession and the government, it is conducted in a spirit of mutual respect and that we seek out every opportunity to celebrate, and not always to denigrate, the fantastic work that teachers do."

Taking the last bit first, we note the absence between the words " that" and "teachers" the word "good". That's crucial. Everybody knows that good and excellent teachers are magnificent. Most also know that a minority are not good, not good at all. It's probably always been thus but it's an issue that has in the interests of the affected children to be tackled head on, however loud the howls of protest by the militant unions. Poor performance must never be celebrated. It simply can't be tolerated and everyone has to be aware of that. Good teachers will applaud being relieved of the burden of the inadequate ones. They, the good ones, the school heads, the pupils and most parents will know who they are but the unions will usually defend through thick and thin their "right" not to be sacked. That's absurd and not in the interests of the majority of the members who they are also meant to represent.

Then there are the weasel words  about not abandoning all government policy or reforms. Note the word all. It is key. Here Clegg is opening an avenue of comforting compromise to Gove's change resistant adversaries. He is cynically implying that, given a shot, the Lib Dems would be ready to curry favour with the supply side of the educational establishment by retreating from at least some of the reforms. He's giving no guarantees though. That would require balls, -and not of the Ed variety,- and he will always keep his on the fence. No wonder both major political parties fear having to do some sort of deal with his party after the next General Election. It is quite possible that neither would now contemplate a new coalition and would instead go for a minority government which would then go for an overall majority in a new election maybe six months later. In retrospect this is probably what the Conservatives should have done in 2010 as losing a second election against the spectre of a possible return of Gordon Brown should have been unthinkable.

Finally there are the words about "mutual respect", a very fashionable concept. Everyone it is said deserves respect or in some circles respek .The notion of it having to be earned rather than taken for granted is absent. The obsession with giving equal weight to,shall we say less well formed, ideas to as much more considered ones is of course very politically correct as well as nice , warm and fuzzy. It goes a long way to explaining why getting a lot of things done is a glacial process and why even some of the most energetic eventually lapse into tears and despair.

It seems that Mr Clegg chooses to fail to understand that a 5 year parliament is a very short period of time. Tony Blair had the same problem in his first term. He had some great and widely supported ideas on public service reform but thought he had all the time in the world to deliver them. He didn't. Iraq hove into sight at the beginning of his second term .That was the end of time and energy to focus on his original programme and what could have been a great political legacy began to turn to dust.  Michael Gove though understood it perfectly. To achieve anything it must be complete and robustly nailed into place within the five years, or it might never happen. That's why he came out of the trap fast, didn't waste too much time, trampled on a few feet but got his measures as far down the track as quickly as he could before Cameron's wobbly knees and Australian "How to Win" adviser derailed him.

As joint leader of the coalition, Clegg should be saying he's full of admiration for what Gove achieved and that if anyone thought that his departure indicated a government withdrawal from the hard parts they could think again as the reforms are here to stay. Instead, sadly increasingly true to form ,he opportunistically went into MCavity "I wasn't here mode". Expect to see more of that as the General Election approaches. 

Half way through the year...................

We are half way through 2014, heading into the British mid summer holiday-strewn time of year. How are we doing? (Let's leave sport out of this).

Already the Iraq mess looks worse by the day and intransigent President Maliki makes a unified solution ever more difficult. At home Andy Coulson has been banged up for phone hacking, albeit probably in a nice prison for the better classes of criminal rather than the real thing ,while all his co-defendents have been found not guilty. On the troublesome sports field the almost pointless England World Cup team headed home to Luton on their charter after their final defeat by diminutive Puerto Rico a team rated lower than Scotland in the Fifa ( that fine body of men) tables. What more can go wrong? Probably quite a lot actually but let's not be too miserable. It's mid summer after all.

Back to Iraq. Despite the excesses of Saddam and the Baath Party weren't the Sunnis the west's best friends back in the days of Saddam? Not now. The extreme and fundamentalist organisation, Isis, has swept out of Syria and across northern Iraq leaving a bloody trail of murder in its wake and promising more for its opponents throughout the country.Using terror to subjugate its opponents and settle old scores is a primary weapon. No peace and reconciliation on their part. Indeed Isis has named itself as the successor to the Ottoman Empire and declared a "Caliphate" across a swathe of Syria and Iraq , while warning Muslims everywhere that they are now the boss and they had better get in line and do whatever the charming new Caliph tells them. That fortunately is unlikely but they have been extremely successful in marking out a domain and describing their ultimate ambitions (Watch out Spain). Meanwhile women are banished back to the home, most forms of pleasure are forbidden and mosques of rival groups are being demolished. The fate of any remaining Christians, their freedoms and buildings is clear.

There isn't much sign of peace and reconciliation from President Maliki either . His army has gone on the rampage and indulged in retaliatory killings of Sunnis. Not a wonderful response if he wants to keep the country together. He needs every friend or at least neutral he can  get and to be pushing for national unity if for no other reason than to encourage America to do more to keep his head out of the Isis noose.His actions don't make it easy for anyone to help him and just to rub the point in the Kurds, historically badly treated by everbody,  have staked out their share of the country and plenty of oil.

In the field of peace and reconciliation, post Arab Spring Egypt isn't doing any better. Again , rather than talk about peace and reconciliation President al Sisi is sharpening divisions between supporters of ousted democratically elected though equally divisive President Morsi .

Next door to the left in Libya, nasty but stable under Gadaffi, chaos and loss of life continues. To the right Israel and Hammas have escalated mutual provocation with Hammas looking determined to provoke Israel into serious bloodshed ,-probably mainly of its own people but the leadership has never cared much about that,- in an attempt to up the ante.

That's the Middle East.

Back home politics are already mired in what is going to be a long and tedious drag towards the General Election in May next year. From the autumn onwards it is going to look increasingly like a World War 1 battlefield.

We have just had what looks very much like a media-manufactured passport crisis. People,inevitably mainly hard working families spending the last of their hard earned cash on a holiday, have been finding that new passports have been taking longer than usual to come through. That's not surprising at this time of year and by shouting "crisis" from the rooftops the media have done their best to create one. Applications "inexplicably" surged in June and now the wait is another week or two. No surprise there. What would you do if you want to travel in say November? Yes, you've done it. Shout about a crisis and you make one.

This hulabaloo disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived when the perceived much bigger opportunity to castigate David Cameron came into sight. The dull, grey, Eurocrat, Luxemburg's Mr Junker, was about to become President of the EU. Few leaders actually wanted him. Some, including Merkel had indicated that they would help Cameron to block him but come the day they melted away and let something everybody knew wasn't the right answer happen. All very EU and exasperating to Cameron and most of thinking UK Plc.(that isn't all of it) to whom this spat exemplified much of what is wrong with the organisation. In the almost certain knowledge that he would lose the battle and it being too late to go back to a softly softly behind the curtains campaign, Dave went for broke and forced a vote. The result was that he stood alone. Howls of protest from the usual suspects including the CBI whose only interests here are those about their perception of what's good for business. They have none in the fundamental question of sovereignty and nor have Labour or the LibDems. Two these two Europe is a nice socialist place.  The reality is that the tactic was as good as any and better than many. By forcing a crisis Cameron is more likely to get something out of the whole affair than he would wringing his hands and begging for scraps of comfort from the overladen EU table. He does need though to reposition the argument . It should not be about concessions for Britain. it should be about a looser, much more free EU for everyone. The target should be the hugely expensive overweight and stifling apparatus which in business terms is simply an enormous overhead and most of all the ditching of the idea of an eventual European mega-state .No majority of its citizens anywhere has ever voted for that.

The next sky filling issue to roll in has been allegations of the "establishment" stifling reporting and evidence of widespread child abuse in high places until at least the 1980s. A wide ranging top level enquiry has been set up to expose who was up to what. All well and good but it will take a lot of time and many millions of pounds. There is also the risk that it will distract attention and resources from probing what is going on here and now, something instinctively popular with politicians. Its conclusions are likely to be pretty much what everybody already knows.  The "establishment" , including the aristocracy, political parties, the churches, schools (private boarding in particular) , and other high level enclosed groups, have indulged in some bad behaviours for centuries. These have been covered up directly and indirectly (He's terribly influential you know") enforced silence and a muzzled police force. Any career minded police officer will have been made very aware of cases where the message is "Go no further".

 Given a free shot  these powerful groups, now reinforced with some very sensitive celebrities, would keep it that way as we have seen from their promotion and support of  the media muzzling proposals coming out of the Leveson report. It is only recently that 24 hour rolling news coverage, a breakdown in respect for authority and authorities of all kinds has led to high level coverups and blindness being seriously challenged.

Rumours of a cabinet reshuffle have been flying about for some time now and Monday 14th July looks like the date. Inevitably pure rumour has been added to by leaks, one courtesy of a loudly spoken mobile "I'm on the train" conversation by a young lady out to impress her fellow travellers. Why do these people do it? We constantly hear details of confidential upcoming contracts, the transgressions of Flossie or Bill who "just can't hack it" who come Monday are about to be fired. Too much information. Unless we are a competitor or a friend of Flossie or Bill,- which we might be,- we just don't want to know. Back to this Monday it looks as if Dave will be out to convince that he has no problems with women. The boys had therefore better not get too excited. It's not entirely about best person for the job.

Whatever the cabinet looks like by Monday evening , the reshuffle and a few new smiling faces are very unlikely to deal with a problem currently common to the top of all three parties. The Conservative and Labour leaders are surrounded by small coteries of long standing trusted mates, some going back to school days. Nick Clegg on the other hand is surrounded by 20 paid advisors. Maybe his supposed old mates perhaps either don't exist or are suspected as maybe having long knives in their pockets. In all three cases the result is that the men themselves are seen as remote from other MPs, let alone party members. They are surrounded by a wall of gatekeepers and minders who keep the boss free of contamination by real contact with lesser mortals. The everlasting stage managed meetings between political suits and the masses in the form of teachers, nurses, smarty turned out factory workers etc don't hack it. The masses aren't daft.

Any new ministers will not have much time to be be seen displaying their wisdom, gravitas and deservedness on live TV before Parliament breaks up for its very long summer recess/hols. School,- which many of its members have never mentally left those days behind so they are still free to think in terms of prefects, sports and even the occasional beatings,- breaks up on July 30th. It does not then return with its tuck boxes and suntans from overseas fact finding tours until 13th October. The prefects and pupils ,all of course strictly ranked by seniority, then have to manage nearly a whole month before the Half Term Exeat begins on 11th November. After that, hey ho, it's just a month until they head home for Christmas.

Thumbnail guide to Britain's Euro Elections outcomes.

- Contrary to expectations nobody other than the LibDems got a bloody nose. The percentage take of the votes and the resultant numbers of MEPs came to:

                                                      %                                        MEPs

UKIP                                         27.49                                      24
Labour                                       25.40                                      20
Conservative                             23.93                                     19
Greens                                        07.87                                     03
Lib Dem                                     06.87                                      01

-Although  Labour on the left  came out marginally ahead of the Conservatives, the combined Conservative and UKIP vote on the right soundly beat them by gaining 51.42 of the total share and 43 MEPs against 20
Even the cave dwelling Greens did better than the LibDems. The message here is that if anyone on the right thinks they are likely to get what they want by voting UKIP at the General Election in May 2015 they are going to be sorely disappointed. All they will achieve is a socialist , interventionist tax and spend Labour government, something the majority clearly don't want. Even less will they like the resultant Prime Minister, Ed Milliband who clearly doesn't like them.

-The UKIP win, much hyped in advance and since by the media, should not yet cause too much hysteria and panic in the ranks of any party. Its ingredients are too complex and mixed in likely lifespan to benefit from kneejerks. Careful and wise (now that might be a problem) consideration over the summer is required. One factor affecting a string of constituencies along the line of Britain's major north-south high speed railway line HS2 is how those Conservative voters who opted for UKIP because they opportunistically oppose the project will vote next year. As above, if these people really insist on voting UKIP out of rail-rage all they will do is to let Labour, whose project it originally was  in. If that happens HS 2 will still go ahead but possibly with some cost saving reductions by reducing Chiltern and other landowner- protecting tunnels and cuttings. Labour doesn't much care for the vociferous rural lobby and why shouldn't the Liverpudlians, Mancunians be able to enjoy the much vaunted outstanding scenery they will pass through in their hundreds of thousands?

-Nigel Farage comes over as a man of the people, the sort of bloke anyone could have a good chat with anywhere. He's also the sort of man who you would be likely to meet in the pub, cafe, bus, anywhere. None of the Party leaders get anywhere near that. As result much of what they say, however good or bad is simply filtered out. People stop listening. They are not taken in by carefully arranged and managed PR photoshoots in schools and hospitals (mainly) and selected faux "man of the people" surroundings and they certainly don't like feeling they are being spoken down to.

- David Cameron opens his mouth too often about too many issues ranging from football managers to anything else he thinks might make him look as if he is feeling people's pain, whatever it is. Dave is probably a nice enough bloke, has limited life experiences outside his own small coterie and caste and is never going to break out of that mould. He is an average manager, not a leader and certainly not a man driven by a vision of Britain and the world in 50, 25 ,10 years time or probably even tomorrow morning.

-Ed Milliband isn't a forward looking visionary either. Any vision he has is from the rear view mirror. He is stuck in the same old grooves. His Marxist father sits heavily on one shoulder and Unite's Len McClusky on the other. Both are people of the past and both drag him there too. When faced with any situation he can only trot out the same old phrases designed, through constant repetition,to take insidious root in the electorates' sub conscious. Increasingly though they irritate and make said electors feel an urge to throw up. How many more times must we hear "The cost of living crisis" , "Hard working families" (what about hard working singles, bone idle families etc?), "For the many not the few" and the rest. Apart from the cost of living crisis many of the rest go back to Gordon Brown's time. Didn't he do well? Do people really, really want a re-run?

Nick Clegg was beaten and truly routed but has so far held up remarkably well against the subsequent LibDem plots, attempted coups, rumours of deep divisions and disloyalties. Such things are the substance of top level or even bottom level (something maybe we should be careful of talking about unless we stray into other contraversial territory) politics. Every politician needs to keep firmly in sight former UK diplomat Percy Craddock's warning: "It isn't the other side you've got to worry about. It's your own." The same goes in much of business and industry but that's another story. It's very lonely at the top and real friends are very few. Caesar may have be the best known to be surprised by Brutus but the tally of Bruti grows relentlessly.

Next up in the elections game is the Newark by-election this week. Here the focus is on an older UKIP candidate versus a shiny new young wealthy, London based Tory boy straight out of standard box. When will they ever learn? A UKIP win against a      Tory majority is almost unthinkable but..................... This could be the tail and of the Euro election UKIP bubble. Then comes the will they, won't they, debate over whether the UKIP vote is just a one-off protest against the current state of UK politics and politicians with their attendant whiffs of  shallowness, greed, self interest, lack of vision and class issues or whether it is something more deep rooted. In some areas it probably is here to stay at least for a while. In others, voters should think very carefully about what they really want and who/what they are really voting for. Certainly the most likely effect of a big UKIP vote in may 2015 is a Milliband-led Labour government. One way to ensure HS2 and another London runway is built maybe as that is where they were in 2010, but the downsides to another 5 years (at least ) of Brownite style government may not be something at the top of everyone's list of preferences. 

Thought for the day...............

................... for service providers and manufacturers.

If you can do it right why do it wrong?

Thumbnail Guide to Britain's Euro Elections.

It's pretty difficult to imagine an event causing less excitement than next week's elections to the European Parliament. What looks like a tragedy for democracy is simply a reflection of the fact that few believe that the European Parliament is really anything about democracy and that it anything but a rubber stamp for decisions taken totally undemocratically by the European Commission who listen only to the heads of France and Germany but otherwise more or less cook up whatever they want to in the furtherance of the thing Britain has never believed in-"Ever closer (political) unity".

Some will go to the polls if only to give the current trio of lacklustre and uninspiring main party political leaders a kicking by voting for UKIP whose only assets are an excellent speaker in the form of Nigel Farage who also comes over as a human sort of bloke who speaks an  intelligible language. This is something none of the others are or do  His other big plus is that fact that he is "None of the above".

So what are all the leaflets saying to urge us into the empty polling booths and then bothering to do anything other than spoil our ballots? Write-ins are not acceptable so scrawling "Plonker" in any box disenfranchises you for this session.

First leaflet though the door was the GREENS offering all sorts of rights including not to be make to work too hard,  not to be eaten too often (if you are an animal), and not to be able to read on still nights when the windmills aren't going round. They were pretty hot on everybody being virtuous, shifting cash from those who create or make wealth to those who don't and generally living a pretty chilled out life and in winter a very chilled out one as all those nasty power stations will have closed. Nice sunlit uplands for all then. Their leaflet is now on its way to recycling,- as they would wish.

Next in were the LIBDEMS. Yes, they are having a go. Read their stuff. They are making a difference. Stopping Tories being nasty. Dishing out hot school meals. Cost,- what's that? Also keen on recycling. OK folks. Thankyou. Your wish is met.

LABOUR sent a pic of Ed. Not sure why they bother in rural Bucks though handy down the pub as an extra feature on the dart board. Gets a good laugh though. Talked about the cost of living crisis. Don't they target their leaflets by area or maybe they've never been to rural Bucks?

Then in came Nige and UKIP. Great colours purple and yellow and they do stand out in the fields among the rapeseed flowers at this time of year.  Nige is good in the pub and enjoys the unspeakable sin of a fag (no we aren't talking of past top public school goings on here) so knows how to come over as the man to make a difference. God help us if he were ever able to but that's another story. He knows his markets so the Chiltern version of his bit of recycling trumpets his opposition to HS 2 tearing the life and soul out of a strip of land about 50 yards wide and twelve miles long through a part of the hills unparalleled  in beauty except for in the next valley, and he next, and the next. By taking this stance,-which will get him votes is these hills,- he identifies himself as standing alongside the GREENS, something that couldn't be further from his dreams. The fact is that they and he are "Do nothing, Change nothing, Hurrah for Old England and warm ale" parties. Off to the bin with this one though many households will treasure it and his party is likely to get the biggest vote and therefore the most British MEPs. If anyone wanted an argument against proportional representation that's a pretty good one.

Last, just today came the CONSERVATIVES with pic of polished, groomed hair Dave looking very Dave. In fairness though he had something to say. He and his friends haven't grasped the most powerful argument is that they really want to stay in Europe but a Europe changed for ALL participants, not just Britain. A Europe once and for all shorn of the "Ever closer union" dream of the hard core and ever more powerful unelected and dictatorial Eurocrats. That's the real Tory argument. They just don't put it across right. However, like them or not, they are the only party offering an alternative to grovelling subservience ("because of the jobs") to an increasingly powerful ,dictatorial and hugely expensive (= massive overhead on everything EU members do, making them ever less competitive in the world) centralising monster. For that reason there is no option but to give them the X on the day and hope for the best. Their blurb though, including the pic of Dave, can join the rest in the recycling bin.

Oh dear Dave...

Our Prime Minister's PR antennae, seldom wonderful, seem to have been extraordinarily anaesthetised lately. He will never be a man of the people. He just isn't one but nor is Ed or little Nick.They can't help it .None of them have ever really ever been out and about with real ones. As result he has always struggled a bit with understanding human reactions outside the various bubbles he has inhabited (Eton, Oxford, PR, Westminster) . Usually though advisers have managed to steer him around the deeper potholes.

Not these last couple of weeks.

First there was the visit to John Lewis and his speech to staff saying that generally he only shopped at Waitrose because, to paraphrase down to the real meaning, he found a better class of people there. To rub it in and make sure that Sainsbury staff and customer understood the reality he went on to say that he only used their Chipping Norton branch because the town didn't have Waitrose. Not clever for a man whose biggest albatross is a common belief that he and his party are toffs and only really for toffs.

Then there has been the case of Culture Secretary, Maria Miller and her slightly overpaid accomodation allowance.  The independent parliamentary commissioner for standards recommended that she should repay £ £45,000 .This was reduced to £5,800  by the Parliamentary Standards Committee whose three non MP lay members have no vote . No reasons were given, at least publicly .They also found that her attitude to the investigation had breached the parliamentary code of conduct and insisted that she apologise to the Commons. She obliged flatly in 34 seconds flat. In length and style that simply wasn't good enough . It raised a furore and gave the Opposition a sitting duck house. To make it worse and add to the damage, in an old style display of ranks closing around mates, many senior Tories defended Ms Miller in her decision not to resign her cabinet post. All seen as very honourable within the group maybe but Dave should have been told that this one was insensitive, potentially toxic and gaining hostile legs amongst a public whose distrust of politicians , and especially Tory ones, is a major issue. Here was the opportunity for him to square his jaw and say resolutely that he and the party had zero tolerance in these sorts of case and she must therefore go. Instead he flunked it and very went out on a very public limb by firmly supporting her. Today she has resigned . That makes Dave's support  an image tarnishing ,vote losing waste of time. He should have anticipated the end game and gone straight to it. The affair now becomes not just an understanding issue but one of judgement one too.  As a footnote Mr Cameron said he hoped she would be back in the cabinet in due course. Again, oh dear.

Parliament has just arrived at the Easter Recess and this afternoon members will be flowing out of the doors in end of term, caps in the air mode. There must be a sense of weary relief as they do so and a feeling in the Cameron camp that it hasn't come a moment too soon . The boss presumably at some stage will head for the harsh world of real life in the Cotswolds. Dangerous. He may have to go to Sainsburys for heaven's sake. 

Historic dessert at Windsor?

Last night HM Queen Elizabeth hosted a dinner at Windsor Castle for Irish President Higgins. Among the diners were representatives from Northern Ireland including former IRA commander Martin McGuinness.

The dessert may have raised an eyebrow or two:

"Vanilla ice cream bombe with Balmoral redcurrent centre"

Hmm.  Phillip's choice?