Consorting with the enemy?

Alan Milburn has attracted his share of flak for agreeing to act as a social mobility adviser to the coalition. John Prescott has tweeted:

So after Field & Hutton, Milburn becomes the 3rd collaborator. They collaborated to get Brown OUT. Now collaborating to keep Cameron IN

There's a lively debate running on the Labour Uncut website too. And there were plenty of groans when John Hutton agreed to chair the pensions review and Frank Field a welfare review.

But the naysayers are wrong to complain. There is plenty of things to criticise the coalition about - Friday's utterly absurd abolition of the Audit Commission is just the latest example - but this is not one of them. Of course, there's a political calculation involved, just as there was when Labour gave roles to Tories like Chris Patten.

But this is not the same as luring Labour MPs into the Tory party as happened when Labour welcomed Tory MPs like Shaun Woodward, Peter Temple-Morris and Alan Howarth into the party. Why is there such a tribal outcry about people who keep their politics whilst doing a job that they see as in the national interest, drawing on their own past experience? Nobody argues that the Republican Robert Gates should not work for President Obama and few would disagree that the socialist Bernard Kouchner is an able French foreign minister, appointed by President Sarkozy (although his socialist colleagues have displayed their tribalist tendencies by expelling him from the party).

And by appointing them, there's also a recognition by the government that these are talented people with a contribution to make on issues of national importance, and a greater contribution than anyone in the two governing parties. That's something that has Tories like Stephen Glover and Iain Dale seething. With the coalition so schizophrenic in its assessment of the Labour years, that is a good thing.

And it is something that Labour should be happy to celebrate in opposition as a valuable counter to the all-too-successful demonisation of our very real achievements in government. If we did so, we might start to win back more independent-minded lost voters more quickly.

The fallacy of citing Google hits

My old friend David Hughes, onetime Daily Mail political editor, has a rather uncharitable piece about John Prescott in today's Daily Telegraph, following his BBC documentary on class on Monday night. I have a higher opinion of Prescott than Hughes, though I also have no doubt that he has a chip on his shoulder about class, but I am more concerned with the error he makes at the start of his piece - it is one increasingly made by columnists seeking to give greater authority to their pieces while appearing in tune with the times. Hughes tells us:

If you Google "John Prescott" and "class", you will get 199,000 results. That's quite an obsession. Showing a hithero unimagined flair for enterprise, Prescott has now decided to turn it into an industry.

In fact, I was told that there were 110,000 hits when I did so. But never mind. When I tried "David Hughes" and "class", I got 51,000 hits. When I did the same for "David Cameron", the total soared to 373,000.

But that is less important than the fact that many of the so-called hits are either repetitious or of little relevance. Indeed, after 360-odd hits in the Prescott list, you are told that the rest have been omitted to avoid repetition. Even then, the hits include details about an American football enthusiast called John Prescott. It used to be said there were lies, damned lies and statistics. Now it seems we must add 'Google results' to the list. Columnists beware.