The opportunity of the new politics

The Tories' obsession with party interest looked like it trumped their supposed concern for the national interest. Their unwillingness to cede any ground on electoral reform until tonight's grudging concession on the Alternative Vote suggested that their shrill concerns about the economy amount to nought. Instead they assumed that the Liberal Democrats would be bullied into doing a deal on their terms, where Cameron failed to win over sufficient voters through such an approach. Now they know otherwise, and their offer may be too little too late.

Gordon Brown's brave decision to stand down as leader is right both for the Labour Party and the country. It offers a chance of an alternative government. As I said here on Friday, the 320 votes that it would generally command (including 5 Northern Ireland MPs) means that it would only require the support of one of the DUP, SNP or PC to have a Commons majority given the absence of Sinn Fein and the neutrality of the Speaker.

It is important, however, that any new Government has a clear but minimalist agenda, which reflects the best of both parties' policies. It should certainly prioritise economic stability, with a clear timetable for the savings needed, and political reform, with the Additional Member System for Westminster elections a sensible compromise for a referendum. Labour's NHS guarantees should not be traded, and there must be a rigorous approach to welfare reform. On education, the pupil premium in education is a good idea, but it must be funded, and there should be renewed enthusiasm for academies. However, higher tuition fees for universities will be necessary, despite the Lib Dems misleading pitch to student voters. Where possible, investment in new schools and high-speed railways should continue. Equally, given Labour's losses in the South last week, it is vital that nothing is done to increase income taxes further: there are alternatives like VAT which hit luxuries but not food or children's clothing. A new government may wish to drop ID cards (though as a non-driver, I'd quite like one) but must be wary of losing traditional Labour support on crime or immigration.

A new outward-looking and forward-looking party leader like David Miliband has the chance to revive Labour's fortunes. It is vital that Labour does not choose a leader who has all Brown's faults but none of his virtues. And Gordon had his strengths, particularly on the economy; moreover our results last week were not as bad as many feared, particularly in local government. But equally there is no doubt that his leadership cost us a lot of seats in the South and South West. A new leader with a less statist approach to public services and a more open approach to the public has the chance to reconnect with those voters.

Today's changes offer an opportunity for genuine new politics, even though the odds may still be on a Tory-Lib Dem arrangement. Whether the opportunity succeeds will depend as much on whether the Tories offer a real vote on PR as it will on the ability of Labour to agree the right deal and retain the support of smaller parties through very tough decisions.

The power of debate

There is nothing the media likes more than stories about itself. So to be able to have not one, but three TV debates has meant a positive orgy of excitement on the broadcasts, as they salivate at the prospect of their being centre-stage with the three party leaders playing their assigned walk-on parts. That said, it is good that the debates are happening: they provide some focus to an otherwise tedious national campaign. There is plenty being said about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the leaders on TV. But let's not beat about the bush on this ahead of tonight's first debate. Nick Clegg is already a winner, simply by being there. David Cameron should walk the contest between himself and Brown: he can only lose if he allows his smug arrogant side to come across too obviously, and he imagines his sneering PMQs tone will work here. But as a consummate PR man who knows - and exudes - the value of style over substance, I would be astonished if he allows that to happen. Brown has the most to gain, and to lose. The campaign is being more closely fought than the heirs apparent at Millbank Tower assumed, and a strong performance would defy expectations though it is still unlikely to be a game-changer. With just 60 seconds to make points, this is a format for those who are better at mastering shallow soundbites rather than detailed debate. It will be an uphill struggle for the PM to gain the advantage in those circumstances. But while the significance of these debates is not nearly as great as the media self-obsessives would have us believe (TV was still relatively new during Kennedy-Nixon, after all) it is still an important step forward for British elections.

Cameron flunks it

David Cameron was the clear loser at PMQs. He failed to use the most open of open goals to good effect, and even got his figures wrong on the Tories' own story about per capita GDP. To follow my discussion with Paul Richards and Rachel Reeves about PMQs visit Progress Online.

This posting was picked by the Guardian website.

Labour's accredited schools providers are a step forward

Gordon Brown's announcement today that the Government is accrediting the best academy providers, plus some universities and excellent secondary schools as schools providers, with parents having the power to demand change, is a significant step forward in Labour's schools policy. Until now, the party had appeared far too defensive about structural reform in the face of Michael Gove's Swedish free schools policies, and had been unprepared to take sufficient credit for Labour's academies, allowing the Tories to adopt them as their own.

The new policy will allow parents to demand a new school provider - choosing from those like the Harris Federation that are showing such success in academies, or from excellent schools like Outwood Grange - if their own school is failing. The local authority will be obliged to ballot parents on the plan but they can't ignore parents' wishes. The policy will apply as much to primary as secondary schools. Schools already have the right to opt for foundation or trust status, something a new provider is sure to demand.

The policy is certainly a less costly route to diversity in these straitened times. But there are some potential pitfalls. The first is that it doesn't extend the academies programme and freedoms as much as it should. Despite No 10's best efforts, there is still a blind spot about academy status in DCSF. All the schools that become part of the academy chains should be able to become academies, funded directly from Whitehall and fully independent of the local authority. Second, the government has missed an opportunity to reverse its silly opposition to primary academies: a chain of primary schools could be the ideal way to develop this approach. There are also important issues around how chains are inspected and held accountable, as Robert Hill argues in a new think piece for the National College.

Nevertheless, by moving onto a debate about the right structures needed to raise standards, Gordon Brown has finally put his stamp on an education policy that has been allowed to drift for too long with the lack of focus that came from trying to mesh schools and family policy in a single department. These new 'brands' of school could extend Tony Blair's academies' strengths in a fruitful direction. By combining new powers for parents, structural reform and a strong drive for minimum standards through the National Challenge, Labour is offering a serious alternative to the Tories' policies at a time when they are facing increasing questions about affordability and impact. Labour's manifesto should give this new policy the additional radical edge it deserves.

A version of this posting appears on the Public Finance blog.

Shouldn't the Charity Commission investigate this 'helpline'?

Until yesterday, I have to confess that I had never heard of the 'National Bullying Helpline', despite working closely with various anti-bullying charities in my time in government. And there are plenty of excellent organisations, like Kidscape and Bullying UK that provide good impartial advice on school bullying, for example.

But, I'm quite sure that nobody in their right mind would want to call this helpline in the future given its founder's blase attitude to confidentiality and her admission that the website refers people to a few favoured solicitors. I'm not surprised that one of the only non-partisan patrons of the 'helpline', Professor Cary Cooper has quit as a patron because of Christine Pratt's flagrant breach of confidentiality. But the whole saga also raises issues about the charitable status of the organisation, which were not satisfactorily dealt with by Mrs Pratt in her interviews today.

A registered charity should be resolutely non-partisan - actively seeking support from all three parties if politicians from one party are involved - yet the front page of this organisation's website boasts quotes only from Ann Widdecombe (who, to be fair, has commendably expressed outrage at Mrs Pratt's behaviour yesterday) and David Cameron.

And such an organisation should not just be impartial in its politics, but in the advice it offers. The Charity Commission says that where charities are used for 'significant private advantage', there may be grounds for removing an organisation's charitable status. There are 5,000 employment lawyers in the country, yet this charity seems to refer people to just five firms, one of which is apparently run by her husband (as Mrs Pratt admitted on the Today programme). There is nothing wrong with running a website and 'helpline' to promote firms of solicitors, and offering some potentially helpful free advice in the process, but I can't see why it should qualify for charitable status any more than the 'free half hour' that most solicitors offer new clients should qualify them for charitable status.

I trust the Charity Commission will now be taking a close look at whether the 'National Bullying Helpline' has lived up to its obligations as a charity. None of this is to defend unreasonable behaviour by the PM or anyone else in No 10: if it has happened, it should be dealt with appropriately. But Mrs Pratt has allowed her own prejudices to outweigh the duty she has to anyone who trusted her 'helpline' as a source of impartial advice and confidentiality. And far from gaining the positive publicity she presumably hoped to elicit through her media interventions yesterday, she has caused immeasurable damage to her own organisation.

Brown was right to do the ITV interview

With an audience of four million at 10.15 and a profile that no party political broadcast could replicate, of course Gordon Brown was right to do the interview with Piers Morgan last night. It showed a side of Brown that the public - and many of those who worked in government - rarely saw and he came across the better for it. To say that he shouldn't have talked about his family tragedies in such circumstances is as absurd as saying that politicians should never engage with mass appeal TV shows or talk to the Saturday supplement of The Times. Of course, one television programme won't change the political weather but it does help to leaven the caricature so assiduously cultivated by David Cameron and his media allies ahead of an election, as even Fraser Nelson recognises.

Out of recession

This morning's news that Britain is finally out of recession is hardly a great surprise. And the rate of growth in the last quarter may have been low. But it is welcome news, despite David Cameron's best efforts to rubbish the Government over it yesterday. There is a lot talked about what was done wrong during this recession. But credit where it is due, a lot has also been done right. The banks were saved from collapse by an intervention that may be controversial now, but for which there was no alternative. Unemployment has not risen as high as most pundits expected, nor have there been the repossessions there were in the 90s. One reason for that is surely the successful way that many of our best run firms weathered the rececession. Of course, there is still a big problem with youth unemployment, and Gordon Brown's announcement yesterday should help. But had we taken Cameron and George Osborne's advice that we should not only have had no stimulus and no quantitative easing, but that we should have slashed spending eighteen months ago, this would certainly not have been the case.

I have no doubt that we need a clear plan to bring the budget deficit down over the next five years, and that the Budget should start to set it out. However, we must try to strike a balance between gaining the benefits from future growth - including tax revenues - and spending cuts. The idea that 17% cuts can be absorbed easily in many aspects of public spending is wishful thinking. Even the smaller than expected unemployment rate makes a difference to potential revenues. A little humility from Osborne and Cameron on this of all days might show that they had even a little understanding of this.

Policies for aspiration

There are welcome signs of a greater coherence in Labour's message, as the flirtation with 'core vote' defeatism appears to have been buried. Alastair Darling's weekend interview with the Times, where he made no bones about the extent of the cuts needed, followed an excellent but overshadowed speech by Peter Mandelson on the economy. Gordon Brown's speech to the PLP today, focusing on the theme of aspiration, signals an end to the rather silly pre-Christmas flirtations with a core vote strategy, and daft talk of 'class war'. With Ed Balls determinedly on message this morning, there is hope that the party can show the focus it was starting to exhibit before it was so rudely interrupted last week.

However, the new themes need to be backed up in clear policy. Announcements need to better linked to those themes than today's laptops-for-all plan, which sounded bizarre in these austere times (even if it is just a rollout of a 2008 announcement). There must be serious policy linked to the theme of aspiration, not an effort to bolt it on to anything going. As James Purnell argues, in a thoughtful piece in today's Guardian, we need to ensure that the manifesto has the policies that express today's realities, whether in city regulation, a living wage, electoral reform or making school choice more tangible to parents. The strategy and policies must flow from the realities that are being properly acknowledged today.

The desire for revenge

I had to smile when I read Iain Dale's promotions for his publication of Peter Watt's account of his treatment by Gordon Brown during the party's funding problems. Iain says "the great thing about the book is that it doesn't read as though it is motivated by any desire for revenge." There is surely no other reason why this book would appear so close to a general election, and the Mail on Sunday extract doesn't exactly pull its punches when it comes to getting back at those whom Peter feels (with some justification) treated him shabbily, though its publication is regrettable. I have enjoyed working for politicians who made a point of looking after and caring about those who worked for them, and their families. The failure to provide enough such support in this case has clearly come at a high price.

What on earth are they thinking?

This blog has had its disagreements with aspects of the Brown strategy. But there are signs that the PM is starting to recognise the deficiencies of the 'dividing lines' strategy. It is good to hear the PM acknowledging at PMQs that departmental cuts will be needed to cut the deficit, in contrast to the approach at the PBR, and talk of aspiration suggests a more promising approach than that of class war.

There was a time - perhaps in 2008 - when those who wanted to challenge Gordon's leadership might profitably have acted. They could even have done so after James Purnell resigned last year. But I fail to see the point of Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon's call for a Parliamentary Labour Party vote on Gordon's leadership four months from an election. In the absence of any cabinet support, it is pointless and damaging in the run up to the poll, not least because it will merely weaken the PM without securing change. What on earth are they thinking?

Election skirmishes

I've written this post for the Public Finance blog today.

There is no doubt that the apparently under-resourced Labour election team scored an early victory in the election battle yesterday. The party’s efforts to destabilise David Cameron’s launch of his personalised billboards and slimmed down health policy were effective. In election battles, it doesn’t really matter that not all the £34bn identified by Labour researchers was committed Tory spending: it forced them into a state of confusion over marriage tax breaks (a totemic issue for backbenchers and the Daily Mail) and plans to provide more single rooms in hospital wards.

The Tory machine should have been better prepared than it was for such attacks. But unless Labour itself clears up its own strategy, it may win the odd skirmish, but it will neither win the war nor force a hung parliament. Rachel Sylvester’s account in today’s Times of how Ed Balls and Lord Mandelson have very different approaches to the election campaign has a ring of truth about it. Where Mandelson has shown himself keener to keep the Blairite torch of reform alive in his department – exemplified in recent reports on universities and training – while despite initiatives like yesterday’s on one-to-one tuition, Balls has preferred to exaggerate his differences on schools with his Tory opponent Michael Gove rather than trumpet key Labour reforms such as academies that Gove has been carefully hijacking.

It isn’t just a matter of narrowing the dividing lines, it is also about the ground on which Labour fights the Tories. The Pre-Budget Report was an opportunity to restore Gordon Brown’s mantle of fiscal responsibility by highlighting the extent of planned cuts as well as proposals to protect schools and NHS budgets. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, would clearly have been more comfortable doing so. Instead, it was left to the Institute of Fiscal Studies to highlight what the Budget already contained. Instead of credit for honesty, the government was lambasted for its apparent shiftiness.

Labour needs to level with the electorate about its successes, failures and future plans. It cannot win an election spouting dubious dividing lines. Nor can it do so by ignoring the reformist agenda that helped win it three previous elections and which is crucial for middle class support in the marginals. There is certainly something pleasing about seeing David Cameron on the back foot for a day or two. But unless the government can articulate a stronger narrative of its own record, and a more credible sense of what it would do if it won a fourth term that appeals beyond the so-called core vote, Cameron will get his ‘year of change.’

Will class war win Labour a fourth term?

John Rentoul, who continues to illuminate his blog with examples of questions where the answer is 'No', has already gone a long way to deal with the notion that 'class war' will be answer to Labour's problems. Tom Harris does so well today too.

Naturally, those I speak to in No 10 deny that any strategy so crude is under way. And I wasn't alone in celebrating Gordon Brown's recent return to form at PMQs, when he had a few decent jokes about Eton and Cameron's crew. He and Osborne deserve to have their pomposity pricked a bit, and we need more such humour. But as someone who has been a part of Labour politics since the early eighties, I also know that it would be absurd and self-defeating to craft an election campaign around the theme.

That's not to say that there aren't individual actions that can be vote-winners. The PBR attack on bankers' bonuses is believed by Downing Street insiders to explain last week's remarkable council by-election victories. But it is to recognise that Labour will not win by developing absurd dividing lines which place Labour on the wrong side of aspiration. Becoming a party of aspiration was - and remains - the essential insight behind New Labour's continued electoral successes. And it would be absurd to throw it away on the illusion that a greater number of so-called core voters might be persuaded to turn out in May (the idea that there will be a March poll seems fanciful) if they heard the call to the barricades.

Instead, Labour needs to have a much sharper message about what it can do and what it can't do, as well as what it has done. It is understandable that ministers didn't want to reveal the entire departmental budgets ahead of a post-election spending review. And given the uncertainty of the result, it is quite sensible too. Look at what happened when 'priorities' were revealed in defence this week. However, it was a tactical mistake to try to obscure the overall size of likely cuts in the years ahead in last week's PBR statement when it was patently obvious that the IFS would have its own figures within 24 hours. And the government should have been clearer that decisions to raise national insurance or top rate income tax are a temporary and regrettable measure, not a cause for celebration.

At the same time, Labour must do more to highlight its approach to the public services - and its successes which get routinely rubbished by partisan pundits. Despite some criticisms by my friends at Progress, Andy Burnham's health statement last week was a decent attempt to explain a clear approach to NHS reform, even if it was a bit neutered by attempts to please some of the unions. Tessa Jowell has interesting ideas on mutualism. Andrew Adonis is doing remarkable things at transport, showing what Labour should have done ten years ago. Peter Mandelson has grappled the question of university fees and produced a decent plan on skills (just a shame there's no money with it). But elsewhere, the government's approach suffers from a confused message and a perverse willingness to cede ground to the Conservatives on Labour innovations, particularly on schools and academies.

Despite a lot of talk about failures to narrow the gap under Labour, the truth is that chances have been considerably improved for the working classes as opposed to the 'underclass' - those who voted for Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 - with the greatest improvements in health and education for those groups. [See here for example, go to the Excel table 4.1.1]. They might resent the bankers, but they're not interested in class war or dodgy dividing lines (something Cameron could suffer for as much as Labour). But crude attempts to compare the top and bottom 10% social groups don't bring out their improvements. And those voters do want some straight talk from the Labour government that many of them elected, which means an honest appraisal of the last 12 years and an honest assessment of what could be done with a fourth term. And they need to hear it from all the Government.

It may not have quite the same ring to it, but a message to ministers to give it to the voters straight could help bring back many of those who now say they will vote for other parties. It is rather more likely to do so than recreating the Tooting Liberation Front.

Game, set and match to Brown

The polls must be getting to David Cameron. He was hopeless at PMQs today, having got his facts wrong last week. And Gordon Brown was on witty sparkling form. Whatever is now in the water at No 10, the PM needs to drink more of it. And whoever is crafting his lines deserves a medal. Dave can't afford a third outing as hopeless as this for him.

Playing politics with the law

Michael Gove has been on Today bemoaning the level of 'electioneering' in today's Queen's Speech, suggesting that such tactics would have been beyond previous Prime Ministers. I presume Michael was having a laugh. Otherwise, I must have been dreaming when John Major invented 'a grammar school in every town' just ahead of the 1997 election - the policy Michael and David Willetts have wisely binned - and extended assisted places in their last legislation as a way of creating silly dividing lines with Labour on education (which we managed to turn to our advantage with a policy of cutting infant class sizes instead).

In fact, today's measures are surprisingly strong for a government that is supposed to have run out of steam. The new national care service blueprint is a long overdue way of addressing a major concern for many families. The earlier guarantee of an 18-week waiting time for treatment shows how far the NHS has come since 1997, and matters hugely to patients, but it does challenge the BMA spokesman and part-time shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley who would happily see waiting times back at eighteen months, if it kept his consultant chums happy. The parent and pupil guarantees may be more reflective of what already exists, but they are an important statement of measures that matter. And the commitments on fiscal responsibility answer the charge that the Government is not ready to cut the deficit. There is no reason why the Tories should oppose any of them - or object to their introduction.

However, when Michael Gove told us what crucial legislation he was planning, the best he could do was to declare more powers of confiscation for headteachers. Since heads have had significantly extended powers in this area under Labour, it is doubtful these are quite as crucial as he pretends. The measures he wants could probably be introduced through secondary legislation or ministerial guidance. But then if he is elected, he will want to have a first education bill to give the impression that he is 'changing' things 'radically'. How shocking it would be to see such blatant politicking with legislation and Her Majesty's precious time.

Personal letters

There is something hugely distasteful in the Sun's exploitation of a mother's grief this morning to take a political pop at Gordon Brown. It would surely have been far easier for the PM to have topped and tailed a typewritten letter that had been properly spellchecked by his staff.

Because he has decided - honourably - to write the letters himself in a handwriting that Sun journalists and editors must know to be authentically his, down to the poor spelling, we are treated to an excruciating example of the lobby at its worst. Gordon has never had Tony Blair's sureness of touch in dealing with such matters. But on this occasion, he was trying to do the right thing. As Iain Dale says, we should cut him a little slack for that.

Through the media lens

Of course, it matters that Labour will not have the backing of the Sun at the next general election - even if their 'verdict' is based on a wilful distortion of Labour's record. (100,000 more primary pupils each year get good reading or maths scores, for example, and the proportion gaining five good GCSEs including English and Maths is a third up on 1997. And since those improvements reflect differential improvements in different social classes, ethnic groups and schools, they cannot be lazily attributed to 'grade inflation'.)

But it is also the case that the support of the paper has been lukewarm since the 2005 poll and virtually non-existent since Tony Blair stepped down. But what is perhaps as interesting is to see the reaction that ordinary people who actually watched Gordon Brown's speech yesterday had to it, before they were told what to think by their newspapers.

YouGov have been doing some interesting conference polling, and they found a remarkably strong instant reaction among those who saw the speech. 63% of those who watched it rated it a 'good' or 'excellent' speech. 50% of people thought the PM was doing well as PM and 51% rated him a capable leader. This shows how important it is that Gordon Brown and his ministers find more ways to get their message across to voters through live broadcast events, unmediated by the commentariat. Cue lots of TV debates, then.

Gordon draws the election battle lines

Gordon Brown had to give it his all in today's Labour conference speech. He was much more relaxed than he has been for several years, and his speech had a thematic fluency and flow that has too often been lacking in Brown speeches of late.

Starting with a well-paced reminder of Labour's greatest hits, he posited the challenges and choices that face him and the country in an unusually long attack on the Tories. "Times of great challenge mean choices of great consequence," was a good line, and helps underline exactly how he dealt with the economic crisis in ways that the Tories would not have done. He also made a good effort to link the ideology of the collapse to that of the Conservatives. This was a sharp and fierce attack on the judgments of David Cameron and his front bench team, and sets the scene for a strong counterattack in the months ahead.

But what is more important to voters is knowing what Labour would do in the next five years, if it were re-elected. And the idea that this would be the first Labour government of the post-recession age was a good one. Linking himself to British innovation and a green economy helped give that legs (even with a crowd-pleasing nod to the Post Office). Pledging to increase school spending brought clarity after Ed Balls's recent announcement, which was always about recycling existing funds.

But it was his plans for tough love and an attack on anti-social behaviour that could make most difference. State homes for single mums and the new family intervention project with 50,000 families could, if it is allowed to work, make a huge difference to crime, education and welfare bills, and the evidence from Dundee is compelling. Both cancer test maximum waits and more personal care were both provide strong vote-winning policies.

Brown's embrace of alternative voting is welcome and long overdue, and making a commitment to a referendum in the next parliament could put Cameron on the spot. With plans for further Lords reform and parliamentary recalls, there is real substance on the political reform agenda.

Overall, a clearer embrace of the mainstream majority is welcome. It needs to be followed through in a new language from all ministers, so that voters see very clearly the choices on offer at the next election. There needs to be a much sharper link to public service reform in the months ahead - but reform which recognises that minimum standards and choice go together.

In the end, this was a well-judged speech by Brown which laid out the choices better than he has done before and which showed how wrong the commentariat are to write him off. He may be criticised for too many spending pledges, but provided they are matched by genuine savings elsewhere, they will have credibility. By giving the level of detail he has on policy, he also presents a challenge to Cameron next week to do the same. The speech was never going to be a game-changer. But there is more than enough here to start making the battle a serious contest again. And that's as much as could expect.

Andrew Marr's descent into the gutter

It is quite extraordinary to hear the justifications being made for Andrew Marr's decision to ask Gordon Brown whether he took pills for depression yesterday, even after the rumours spread on some blogs had been categorically denied by Downing Street. I am astonished that my old friend Barney Jones, who edits the programme, thought this fair game. This was the sort of gutter journalism from which the programme is usually immune, and its absence is one reason I watch the programme fairly religiously.

The sole purpose of the question was to embarrass the Prime Minister and ensure that any headlines in today's newspapers focused on this issue rather than what was otherwise a strong interview by the PM with a good policy announcement on the banks attached to it. As Alastair Campbell put it on his blog:

I know it will give him the passing satisfaction of pats on the back from journos whose backs he pats when they come on to do their 'excellent, as ever' reviews of the papers. But it was low stuff. I'm sure Andrew would agree that everyone has certain areas of their life that they'd prefer not to be asked about live on TV.

The amorality of diplomacy

David Miliband was not at his best on the Today programme this morning as he tried to explain the Government's position on Libya and the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi. In part, this was due to the inexplicable failure of Gordon Brown to explain the Government's position clearly.

It would seem to be this. First, it is good that Libya has given up WMDs and terrorism, and is now co-operative with rather than antipathetic to western nations, particularly Britain. Second, there are important trade interests with Libya, including oil. Third, while the Government was not actively seeking the release of al-Meghrahi, nor was it going to stand in the way of a Scottish government doing so either as part of the prison transfer arrangements or on compassionate grounds. By saying that Brown didn't want his death in prison, Bill Rammell was simply saying this. After all, it was a Scottish decision. The fourth point that hasn't been made as strongly as it should is a clear reiteration of abhorrence about the Lockerbie bombing and its horrendous death toll, and its perpetrator, which is why relatives are so angry about the Scottish decision.

But, that said, this is a defensible if uncomfortable position for the UK government to take, not least because Libya's abandonment of terrorism and WMDs has probably saved many lives. The problem has been that the government has not made its case, at least until yesterday, or attempted to defend it, particularly in the United States, a country that has rarely been shy in advancing national trade or security interests, even under Barack Obama.

Of course, it is abhorrent that al-Meghrahi has been released. But does anybody believe for a minute that if St Dave gets his hands on the keys to No 10 he would not act as Bill Rammell did in similar circumstances? It was noticeable that Cameron did not properly answer Jim Naughtie's question this morning, asking whether faced with a Libyan question as to whether the UK government wanted al-Megrahi to die in a British prison, in a situation where vital security and trade interests were at stake, he would say 'of course I do' rather than use a more diplomatic form of words. Of course, he wouldn't, as David Blackburn points out at the Spectator. Cameron, too, needs to level with the public.

Blame Brown for everything

The Local Government Association, a body now controlled by the Conservatives, commissioned a report which proposed means testing free bus passes for the elderly. So how does the Daily Mail respond to this outrageous plan in a report commissioned by the Tories?

Scrap our free bus passes? That'll be your ticket to ballot box oblivion, Mr Brown