thoughts

It’s looking bleak for Labour in Scotland; I don’t think we’re helping ourselves. It needs the repetition and belief of the points made by Gordon Brown about pooled sovereignty and optimism for the future together. Banging on about Sturgeon’s proposed deficit, while it’s a mistake, stays in the same place that it would seem that many “No” voters resent, the allegation that Scotland can’t be independent, while preying on economic insecurity. It’s the insecurity that Ed Miliband is looking to lead people to rescue themselves from. …

I have just seen the Channel 4 TV play, Coalition, about the circumstances and events that led to the formation of the Con-Dem coalition in 2010. It is written by James Graham who also wrote “This House” about the Labour Government, from 1974-79. Not bad! Others have spoken of the magical portrayal by Mark Gatciss of Peter Mandelson. My highlights are the complex illustration of Gus O’Donnell, who starts the play trying to control the negotiations and the outgoing government but whose last words are to admonish Jeremy Heyward (his eventual successor) for suggesting that electoral reform wouldn’t answer the problem of the vacuity of political choice. (It’d be interesting to know how accurate these and other speeches are.)

I was also impressed with the words used from Brown’s resignation speech, to make Britain, “fairer, more tolerant, greener, more democratic, more prosperous and more just”.

There’s a speech from Clegg about winning and losing the election, on votes and seats. If true, and provided he remains Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal Democrats, these words may come to haunt him. He asked how could a defeated leader continue as Prime Minister and how could a coalition of the second and third placed parties have a legitimacy. While Labour have not spoken in public about their plans should they need to talk to the LibDems, I certainly don’t feel that it would be respectful to the electorate for Clegg to just make a new coalition with himself as DPM. One of the arguments against proportional voting systems is that it would embed the centre in parliament, possibly irrespective of their popularity. The centre party would need to be much more sensitive to the politics of the nation then any of today’s parties would seem to be. Coalitions in the UK have been acts of change, an incumbent government has never lost an election and sustained themselves through power sharing, at least not since universal suffrage. The play also alleges that the LibDem demand for Brown’s resignation was a ploy, but the extent to which it had democratic legitimacy, makes a Labour Party with parliamentary plurality, refusing to work with Clegg both a quid pro quo and an important democratic precedent.

The play also shows that it was Labour and Gordon Brown that pulled the plug on the negotiations, I have always felt that the LibDems got a bad deal. This may be one of the reasons why. …

RAF Typhoons scrambled to intercept Russian warplanes in UK airspace. Just as well the UK collaborated with the French and Italians since it was they who wanted an air defence variant; mind you we lack a ground attack ‘plane.

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What Ed said when launching the manifesto, the tag line is, “We believe that Britain only succeeds when working families succeed” but the obverse is that just because it’s working for the few, be they rent takers, landlords, entrepreneurs or press barons doesn’t mean its working for everyone, in fact it’s a proof point that it isn’t. NB A leader of the Labour Party said that, although his words are better than mine.

I also like the line that Cameron strongly stands against the weak, and also does the opposite.

Miliband points out that the NHS needs staff, which will be provided, Labour will prohibit profit in the NHS and repeal the Tory’s Health and Social Care bill which is also their platform for privatisation. No wonder the Tories offer to fund increases in the NHS; it’ll go straight into the pockets of the privateers and finance houses.

Some who abandoned Labour over the war in Iraq might want to see what Ed says, the lessons have been learned. We’ll not act alone again.

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They’ve made a film of the legal case around the “recovery” of Klimt’s “Woman in Gold”, and by recovery we mean the judicial transportation from a public gallery in Austria to a private collection in the USA. I am torn between being fascinated by the story and outraged by its outcome. …

I watched “Johnny Mnemonic”, again over the weekend. I had forgotten that Gibson had the screen writing credit. Johnny is a short story, published most recently in “Burning Chrome” and gets three paragraphs in “Neuromancer”, the first of his “Sprawl” trilogy; in the film  the book’s Molly becomes Jane, played by Dina Meyer, who doesn’t do it for me although to my mind it’s mainly the writing. Molly Millions is hard core, street samurai. The film is also more broadly inspired than just the short story, borrowing a number of ideas from Gibson’s Virtual Lights trilogy. It’s almost as if Gibson didn’t expect to get another chance on film. …

By the end of the day, the attempt to paint Labour as nuclear disarmers, has turned into a debate on personal decency, started by Fallon’s disgraceful personal slurs about Miliband’s fratricide. The Tories, of course, come off worse. …