Politics should rise above playground abuse

Eric Pickles is not a slim man, you may have noticed, and he has long been subjected to the familiar jeers of the ‘who ate all the pies?’ sort - in this, he is a successor to John Prescott. Ed Balls is afflicted by a stammer – it is, for example, ‘impossible’ for him to start a sentence with an H. It is largely kept under control but it has emerged at a few moments, ruining high profile appearances in the House of Commons and prompting mockery.

Ed Miliband can appear socially awkward and seems unable to eat a bacon sandwich in public without pulling a face which looks as though he has swallowed a particularly energetic wasp, much to the amusement of many. Gordon Brown is Scottish and blind in one eye, justifying the charmless Jeremy Clarkson’s description of him as a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’.

Picking on such characteristics, over which people have little control, reflects the standard pattern of primary school bullying. In such circumstances it may provoke guffaws amongst a bully’s peers, laughter amongst a gaggle of skinny teenagers on a chilly, windswept sports pitch; but by the time most of us reach the sixth-form and the junior common room, it is those slinging such abuse who look like the idiot. But in politics, pitifully, this bullying remains a daily feature of the soap opera.

For all the high profile and worthy campaigns against bullying, it sadly seems increasingly to invade public life and appear as a form of entertainment. A couple of weeks ago The Apprentice returned to our television, expanded to include 20 candidates, all - probably deliberately - selected for their ability to behave with competing ghastliness. The seam running through the show seems to be bullying, the wannabes competing viciously between each other while Alan Sugar barks nastily from above. Perhaps the absence of this mean streak made The Great British Bake-Off such a success.

There is, of course, a rich history of clever, acid – and frequently rude – barbs being flung across the chamber of the House of Commons but it is too easy to look back with rose-tinted spectacles and paint politicians of the past as master orators, always ready with a cleverly constructed aside. Few will forget the hitherto mild-mannered, 'dead sheep', Geoffrey Howe bringing out his rapier and sticking it into his colleague and boss with such vigour.  For every perfectly judged quip, such as when Michael Foot said of Norman Tebbit, ‘It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat’, there was a Tony Banks. The late, former Sports Minister, once dismissed Margaret Thatcher as a ‘half-mad old bag lady’ and said, when Hague became Conservative leader, they had ‘elected a foetus as the party leader’, adding ‘I bet a lot of them wish they had not voted against abortion now’. 

We can look much further back into our political record. Lord Kenneth Baker, who held several cabinet posts under Margaret Thatcher, is a great enthusiast of political caricature, which has a long, venerable, and excoriating, history. He is a trustee of The Cartoon Museum and collects 18th century cartoons, recognising the importance of works by the likes of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson. These artists could be particularly vicious, never shy of focusing on a public figure's physical defects if it suited them. Gillray reserved special scorn for the Whig politician Charles James Fox, who often appeared, gruesomely, in his works:

Charles James Fox sharing a chamber pot with Lord North (a modern twist of this can be found here)

Baker himself, wasn't spared. Inspired, perhaps, by his oleaginous image, he was transmogrified into a slug by the Spitting Image team, though it was his decision to douse himself liberally with hair oil.

At what point does a clever - if deadly - political putdown become school-boy nastiness? Footballers are constantly reminded that they are role models and what they do on the football pitch is replicated up and down the country. Spit excessively, and children playing footie in the school yard will spit; swear and they will swear.

Politicians also bear this responsibility. The jibes above have little or nothing to do with the achievements - or otherwise - of our politicians, they focus on aspects the individual is powerless to alter. Mockery becomes cruelty when the victim is powerless to resist. When politicians descend to such cheap ridicule so casually, it is no wonder that public forums - such as social media - can become dominated with equally facile abuse. Politicians will not always succeed but they should try, if only for the sake of healthy debate in public life, to aspire to something better.

HS2 needs an alternative, not just scrapping

There is an ever-so-slim danger the Labour Party might soon have a firm policy to defend as Shadow Chancellor Ed
Balls gave the clearest indication yet the opposition are preparing to dump their support for HighSpeed 2 (HS2). In his conference speech, the Labour bruiser repeated his line that there would be no ‘blank cheque’ for the inevitably controversial scheme. 

And he said:

‘The question is – not just whether a new high speed line is a good idea or a bad idea, but whether it is the best to spend £50 billion for the future of our country.’

As someone who fails to be convinced by the pro-HS2 arguments I should be pleased, but alarm bells are ringing in my head that simply scrapping the scheme – which has already cost hundreds of millions of pounds without so much as a piece of ballast being put into place – will simply result in lethargy filling the vacuum. HS2 needs to be replaced with a coherent, well-argued, realistic vision of Britain’s rail network, not scrapped in favour of our traditional shambolic, day-to-day, knee-jerk, panicky, management which has typified much of Britain’s transport policy for so many years.

Even the most maniacal supporters of HS2 – and on Twitter there are inevitably some CAPITAL LETTER SHOUTING fanatics who clearly weren’t allowed into debating societies – must accept the case for HS2 has not been won. 

Yes, capacity on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) is an issue but alternatives have not been exhaustively sought. The business case is flimsy, the dangers of sucking money from the regions into London – rather than the other way round – are just ignored, and the passenger number predictions are likely to be exaggerated, much as HS1’s were.

The problem is frequently, those arguing the strongest for HS2 are the ones who have the most financially to gain from the train line; their assertions cannot simply be taken at face value.

The issue of vested interests undermined KPMG’s report when it was released a fortnight or so ago. It was commissioned by HS2; obviously it would focus on the positives. And it had some glaring omissions as highlighted by Robert Peston here. He wrote that:

‘….many of the gains to the regions that KPMG calculates are based on the reasonable notion that companies will be established in places where transport links are better. But it has taken no account of whether those regions actually contain available land to site new or biggest companies or have people with relevant skills to employ.’

He added, damningly, that KPMG was ‘ignoring one of the fundamental causes of lacklustre growth in many parts of the UK, which is a shortage of skilled labour and of easily and readily available land’.

It's too late for the coalition government to abandon it as too much capital, political and other kinds, has been invested. And while this may just be another politician trying to keep all people happy all the time, with its eye-wateringly hefty price tag,  it is very easy to see why Ed Balls and senior Labour figures might want to ditch the whole plan. Suddenly, they would have made huge savings and could plot to redirect the money into their pet projects. But the whole rail network could lose undoubtedly needed investment and suffer as a consequence.

Already, a Labour source has indicated that while Balls is committed in principle to the rail link, he has no alternative route in mind. No mention of more east-west connections, more electrification, or countrywide fast broadband provision to negate the need to travel at all. 

The most convincing and articulate champion of HS2 is Andrew Adonis. The project's architect, he is a genuine train enthusiast. As transport secretary he took the radical step of taking trains around the country, to actually experience what train travellers had to put up with. In his August New Statesman article he was scathing about the management failures already besetting the project, bemoaning the complete lack of legislation for even the first phase of the line to Birmingham after three years of coalition government. He has urged for the creation of an HS2 minister to get a semblance of coherence and control on the project. Neither the coalition or the opposition has responded to his pleas and created such a role.

We are yet to hear what he makes of Labour's latest prevarication but I imagine it would a blend of annoyance, anger and disappointment.  If HS2 does get ditched, it will need someone like him to pick up the pieces and forge an alternate vision.

Update

We have now heard what Andrew Adonis has to say about Balls' HS2 threat. Speaking at  fringe event in Brighton, he said: 

'I'm very mindful of HS2 and where we are on this too. We cannot as a party preach long-termism and not practise it ourselves. We have got to be very clear about that.
We are the party that started HS2. I published the plan three years ago. We set the whole thing our, we set out the rationale, including capacity.
'We went through the whole thing. We did a major job of work.
'You have got to in politics, you cannot say that your principles and all that apply to other people but they don't apply to you when short term political advantage might rear its head. We have got to stick with this. It's very important.'

And, bitterly, he told the New Statesman the only thing the coalition had done 'since coming to office is add £10bn to it'.

He's clearly still flying the flag.