Humanitarianism and the Iraq Inquiry

To the surprise of few, Tony Blair has made a robust case to the Chilcot inquiry for his decision to join the Americans in the invasion of Iraq. His presence reminds us of what we have lost. That we have learnt not much new should be no surprise to anyone. We have had several previous inquiries. But it is still useful to be reminded of two things: we've had lots of process discussion, but Blair has made clear that in the end this was a matter of his making a decision, whatever one's subsequent view of it. And we need Prime Ministers who can take decisions.

But the second point is the context of Blair's own experience, as set out in the 1999 Chicago speech, but also enacted in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, both of which would be illegal in the eyes of those who believe that any action not supported by China and Russia should never take place. I was not in no 10 at the time, so merely observed the debate from outside. But I personally was never entirely convinced of the way the WMD argument was deployed, while believing that Saddam should go not only because of the threat he posed to the region but also to his own people. At the time, I remember thinking that the strongest case made by Blair was a speech to the 2003 Labour spring conference where he used strong moral arguments to link the humanitarian to the WMD case. Blair's evidence to the inquiry that the aftermath planning was focused on humanitarian planning rather than unexpected Al Qaeda insurgency or Iranian-inspired terrorism was particularly interesting in this context.

When one remembers the 110,000 people who died as a result of the inaction in Bosnia of John Major and Bill Clinton or the million deaths as a result of the deplorable failure of the UN in Rwanda, it is to accept that we should never act to stop such murder, which is the corollary of what most of Blair's critics suggest. The real tragedy of the failings in the aftermath of the quick military victory, and the near-consensus in the West about what has resulted, is that it is likely to leave other genocidal leaders like Milosevic or Saddam to continue unfettered unless China changes the habits of a lifetime and opposes them.

This posting has been picked up by the keeptonyblairforpm blog

Educational inequality has reduced with Labour

As if Lord Ashcroft's millions and the greatly inflated Short money were not enough, one sometimes thinks listening to the radio each morning that the Government feels it needs to do more to assist the Conservative election campaign, with today's inequalities report the latest contribution to the self-flagellating narrative of Labour 'failure'.

To be fair, the Harman/Hills report does acknowledge that some Labour programmes have had an effect, like tax credits and early years' policy. But little is said upfront about the impact of education programmes like the academies, excellence in cities and the national challenge. And the strongest evidence that Labour has narrowed the gap in GCSE achievement between social classes (though it does acknowledge changes with ethnic minorities) is buried on page 266 of the report and draws on information in the 2007 Youth Cohort Study.

Figure 10.3 shows trends in this level of achievement by parental occupational social class for children in England and Wales, between 1989 and 1998 using one classification, and from 2000 to 2006 using the classification we used in the last sixchapters (National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification (NS-SEC)). In the first period, the gap between children with unskilled manual and with managerial/ professional parents widened from 40 to 49 percentage points, but in the second the gap between children with parents in routine and in higher professional occupations narrowed from 48 to 39 percentage points. So while this gap remains very wide (and we discuss in Chapter 6 how it develops over the school years), there are signs that it has narrowed a little in recent years.

Translated into plain English, what this means is that the poorest social group saw their GCSE results improve by 14 percentage points between 1999 and 2006 whereas the best off group saw only a six point rise. Indeed, the increase for lower professionals was 11 points and for lower supervisory groups twelve points. More recent figures - including last year's GCSE results allowing for free school meal take-up - suggest the gap has narrowed a bit further. By contrast, under the Tories there was a substantial widening of the gap in the years after the GCSE was introduced, with those in 'unskilled manual' groups seeing improvements less than half those of managerial/professional children. Hardly a sign of Labour failure, then.

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.

Kate McGarrigle 1946-2010

Obama's Massachusetts failure

Martha Coakley may be winning awards for ineptitude after her spectacular failure to hold onto Ted Kennedy's seat against the Republican insurgent Scott Brown in Massachusetts last night. And it would be hard to dream up a more inept candidate for a by-election (though some of us remember Labour's sterling efforts in the 1980s). But the result was not just a defeat for Coakley, it was a wake-up call to the White House about Obama's singular failure to communicate to middle America.

Looked at in policy terms, Obama has been a reasonably successful President. Viewed through the prism of foreign policy - aside from the Middle East - he has injected new respect for the USA. But with domestic voters, he has simply failed to engage on the issues that matter.

Healthcare is clearly the issue that has mobilised so much anger and suspicion. Of course it is bizarre that Massachusetts, with far more 'socialised' medicine than Obama's latest plans, should be exercised by this. But people are not concerned about the plans, they are concerned at what they think they will do. In part, that is the fault of the crazed right and Fox News. But it is just as much about the inept way that Obama and his team (and Congress) have handled the issue. Instead of giving people simple explanations and clear choices, they have allowed the whole business to look like a threat cooked up in back door negotiations behind closed doors. That is a failure of leadership and a failure of communication by Obama.

As John B Judis of the New Republic puts it:

Obama’s lack of engagement with middle America has come to the surface and has contributed to his decline in popularity. This shortcoming has been evident in his style and choice of venues--he gave his endorsement of Coakley on Sunday at Northeastern University, in Boston, rather than at a union hall or public auditorium in Worcester or Springfield. It is also evident in his choice of advisors and spokespeople and in the way he has framed his programs.

He chose the former head of the New York Fed, Timothy Geithner, to be his chief economic spokesman during a financial crisis that was widely seen as the product of Wall Street. And in developing and presenting his policies on the banks, he didn’t put the kind of conditions on taxpayer assistance that would have assured middle America that they weren’t giving handouts to the wealthy.

In the case of his health care plan, he did not really have a spokesman, but ceded the public face of the policy to the congressional leadership....Where Obama invited a voter backlash was by letting the burden of reducing health care costs appear to fall on senior citizens and those middle-class workers who had acquired good health insurance through decades of union battles with management, and not on the insurance and drug companies. Obama ceded too much to the policy wonks who were devising intricate schemes to show they could cut the deficit. He took his eye of off the political imperative of keeping middle America in his corner.

The fact is that successful politicians need not only to be developing the right policies, they need to know how to communicate them to the voters. Obama showed his weakness reaching many middle class working people during the Democratic primaries. Many of us hoped that he had learned his lessons from that experience. If last night's results are not to be a precursor for a wipeout in the mid-terms, the President must recognise the need to restore clear messages about what he is doing and how.

Elitist perhaps, but not brazen

I've written for the Public Finance blog on David Cameron's proposed teacher training reforms.

David Cameron has said today that he wants to make teacher training ‘brazenly elitist’. His main proposals are to ban graduates with third class degrees from teacher training and to rebrand the Graduate Teacher Programme – which mainly targets career changers who want to enter teaching – as Teach Now.

Yet, while Cameron may be hoping to provoke some sort of a political row with the education world with these changes, the truth is that they are merely a logical extension of Labour’s teacher training reforms. The Tories’ last schools minister, Eric Forth, memorably bemoaned his party’s failure to reform teacher training, just months before the 1997 election. Labour was determined not to leave the system unreformed as a result.

So, since 1997, the proportion of teachers who train in schools (mainly as mature career changers) has grown from a handful to around a third of all trainees who can earn while they learn. The proportion of trainees with better degrees has risen too (though largely in line with the proportion of graduates awarded those qualifications). Teacher shortages have largely been eliminated with better salaries and golden hellos, though some gaps remain for specialist maths and science teachers. And the Teach First programme – of which the Tories are keen fans – has been placing elite university graduates for two years in inner city secondary schools, with over half of them making a career of teaching as a result.

Cameron’s plans take things further, particularly because of the focus they place on good degrees for all, and the greater focus on degrees from top universities. And there will undoubtedly be more reforms of what is taught in teacher training colleges – though they were shaken up too with the literacy and numeracy hours. All make sense, and also build on proposals by the Sutton Trust and Policy Exchange. But the Tories may be underestimating economic forces: it will be far easier to enforce the tougher recruitment targets in a recession when it is a recruiters’ market than when the graduate employment world becomes competitive again. Elitist this policy may be, but not especially brazen.

Up in the Air

To see Jason Reitman's bittersweet comedy Up in the Air last night. The Juno director's latest offering has a brilliant and sparky cast led by George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a 'transition executive' who traverses America firing people. Bingham gives motivational speeches on living life from a near-empty rucksack, with no commitments and few possessions. drawn from his own experience of living from a cabin-size suitcase and a life spend in hotels and airports. His big goal in life is gaining ten million American Airlines miles, and he enjoys nothing more than the executive club privileges that go with regular Hilton stays. His life is threatened by two events: the emergence of an apparently equally transient frequent flyer Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga) as his occasional lover and the appearance of a young tech-savvy executive, Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) with her ideas of firing people through videoconferences. The story takes the apparently inevitable twists and turns of the Hollywood comedy. But this is Jason Reitman, so nothing is so readily predictable. A hugely enjoyable film.

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The Guardian: turning success into failure

All the papers have managed to bury - or ignore -the real achievement shown in yesterday's GCSE results, which saw particularly big inner city improvements. But the once Labour-supporting Guardian, which does at least do more than most to acknowledge the extent of the achievement, wins the prize for the "headline best designed to diminish a Labour government success" :

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ACCUSE GOVERNMENT OF IGNORING 'ORDINARY' TOWNS

Genius.

Labour's real educational achievement

The begrudgers in the commentariat have decided that Labour has failed the educational test. For them, there is no figure or fact that could dampen their prejudice. Yet, for more open-minded observers there is one spectacular success - the use of floor targets or minimum acceptable standards to drive up the performance of the weakest schools.

The approach was started by David Blunkett in 2000, and was revived by Ed Balls with his National Challenge. The success of the strategy depends upon real reform - with academies and trust schools - and strong leadership in secondary schools. And because the test of success - five good GCSEs including English and Maths achieved by at least 30% of pupils in a school - is a pretty tough one, even Michael Gove at his most churlish should find it hard to gainsay the achievement (though I doubt it will stop him trying).

Today's figures show that where there were 1600 secondary schools - one in two - that failed to reach this benchmark in 1997, there are only 247 today, including a drop from 439 in 2008. Remarkably, London now outperforms other regions. That is a spectacular success that is unmatched in reform programmes in other countries. The danger is that the Tories in their zealous idelological opposition to targets - even where they so clearly work - will take this pressure off schools and they will only realise its damaging impact only after it is too late. For today, though, it is time to recognise this signal achievement by headteachers and schools that has resulted from a Labour policy.

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.

The delusions of ideological certainty

By far the most fascinating article in today's papers is Andrew Anthony's tale in the Observer magazine of Malcolm Caldwell, a hopelessly deluded SOAS academic, whose faith in Pol Pot's deranged leadership of Cambodia was rewarded by his murder in a Phnom Penh guesthouse weeks before the Vietnamese invasion that ended the brutality. Even by the standards of 1970s communist apologists, Caldwell stood alone, with a stubborn unwillingness to allow his ideology to be upset by the facts on the ground. Anthony's is a telling footnote to a history that has still to be fully acknowledged in the trial of some of Pol Pot's most brutal henchmen.

The right balance?

I see that the schools minister Vernon Coaker is berating schools once again for keeping too much money in reserve, what a DCSF press release calls 'excess balances'. His predecessor Jim Knight had to retreat from a wholly unfair tax on school balances. Yet schools must cut these balances now, declares the minister. Why? Many schools save some money from one year to the next so that they can fund a particular project or guard against cuts in future years - something that can hardly be ruled out.

The fact that thousands of schools manage to budget a modest surplus - the government regards a 5% surplus in a secondary school as 'excessive' - should be a cause for celebration rather than deprecation, given the tighter finances that will start to hit schools soon. Surely, Mr Coaker would be better directing his ire at those 1,848 schools that are in deficit rather than those that find themselves able to budget efficiently and save for a (surely imminent) rainy day?

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.’

Dave's tribute to the BMA

John Rentoul is rightly disdainful of the producerist health policy reannounced by David Cameron today. The policy - which would scrap maximum waiting times for patients - has been developed by the BMA's spokesman Andrew Lansley, who occasionally fulfils the role of shadow health secretary, and it has been well documented on this blog.

So, there really is no excuse for anyone buying Dave's attempt to pretend that his sorry docment a great piece of radical thinking rather than a huge step backwards for patients. Yet the whole policy is being sold deceitfully to the electorate with a compliant media failing to explain what it really means. For example, I recently received a lengthy 'questionnaire' from William Rees Mogg's eccentric lad, Jacob, whose dad tells us in his Times ramblings each week is destined to become my local MP, asking whether we liked the Tory policy of getting rid of 'wasteful and harmful NHS targets' - or what today's 'draft manifesto' calls 'politically motivated process targets.'

I doubt many voters understand that what this really means is moving from 18 week to 18 month waiting times for treatment or from 4 to 12 hour waits in A&E, or scrapping cancer treatment targets. But then they'll surely be thrilled to know that while they languish on a hospital trolley they can go online and see if any other A&E had a better record the previous year. Isn't it about time the Tories' ludicrous 'health policy' got the scrutiny it deserves?

My top ten lists

This blog may not get the readership of some. But I am impressed that there have been 11,556 unique visitors with 28,843 page views since January 1, 2009. Quite a few of those visitors are regulars too, and I wish you all a happy new year.

For the record, here are the ten most read posts (at least among those accessed directly) during 2009 (some had been written in 2008) and the ten blogs that sent me most readers. The data is drawn from Google Analytics.


1. Field or Bercow: Make a maverick moderniser speaker
2. Eating out in Keynsham
3. Alan Johnson was right to sack Prof Nutt
4. Irish woes
5. Rising above party politics?
6. The death of Fianna Fail?
7. Is the tax rise good politics?
8. Ireland looks at tuition fees again
9. Ireland shows the Tory approach to the recession in action
10. Christmas in Garmisch-Partenkirchen

And here are my main sources of traffic, aside from those who come to the site directly, or via Google, AOL or Bing search engines:

1. Hopi Sen
2. Iain Dale
3. Matthew Taylor
4. Bloggers4Labour
5. Total Politics
6. British Blogs
7. Scenes from the Battleground
8. John Rentoul
9. Tom Watson
10. Progress Online

Thanks to all those blogs for mentioning posts or listing this blog in their blogrolls.

Eurostar adding insult to injury

"Our strong advice to customers holding bookings in the next few days is only to travel if absolutely necessary," proclaims to hapless Eurostar chief exec Richard Brown in full page ads in today's papers. "If you are holding a booking now and Christmas Eve, we wil happiy refund your ticket." Fat chance - do have a go if you hold a pair of non-refundable tickets as I do and you will be treated to fatuous emails on a par with what it now seems passes for customer service in this outfit. Having forked out for flights - and been speedily reimbursed by German rail for their leg of our journey to Cologne - I don't intend to give up. But given that they want the seats so badly, perhaps they could ensure their website did the job it should?

6.30pm Update: After a lot of fiddling around the Eurostar website, I have found a link here which others messed about by Eurostar might find useful. Of course, it says nothing about those of us due to travel tomorrow, but it does explain how to ensure they pay our bills. I certainly intend to do so. Now I just have to hope that the snow coming down here at Stansted doesn't prevent us making Cologne tomorrow! At least, we seem to be the least affected London airport tonight.

6 FEB Update: I'm pleased to report that Eurostar have finally paid for the cost of our flights and refunded our train fare and an unused London hotel. Once they got their act together in early January, things were much more satisfactory. My letters were responded to by email with promised payments. But there is an object lesson here for other companies in how not only to do the right thing but to be clear from the start that you intend to do so.

Eco-smug to eco-mug Christmas travel

That'll teach me. Last week, as the British Airways strike looked likely to be happenening, I took satisfaction on this blog at having taken the environmentally friendly option of planning to travel by train to Germany this week. I had reckoned without the cretinously inept leadership of Eurostar, and its utter contempt for passengers. Last night, after much prevarication, we settled on a flight to Cologne (where we had planned to break our journey) tomorrow morning rather than waiting until 6pm today to see whether or not Eurostar could be bothered to let us travel early on Tuesday morning. I may have lost some money on the deal, though unlike Eurostar, German railways refunded the Brussels-Cologne leg instantly online, but at least (weather permitting) we have a good chance of getting to Germany tomorrow morning (where we still plan a lengthy German rail journey to Bavaria). Christian Wolmar (as usual) was absolutely spot on in his Today interview this morning about the way Eurostar has handled this whole shambles. They have not only done themselves huge damage, they have set back the cause of rail travel to Europe immeasurably. Heads should roll as soon as this shambles is sorted out. It's back to the plane for winter travel to Europe after this.

In the meantime, Happy Christmas to all my regular blog readers.

Irish woes

DUBLIN - As if the economic woes that public servant friends tell me has led to them taking 19pc effective salary cuts in the past year were not enough, Ireland is gripped by three sordid sex-related scandals this weekend. The fallout from the report into the Dublin Catholic archdiocese's failure to deal properly with its paedophile priests claimed the scalp of the Bishop Murray of Limerick, a fomer Dublin bishop, this week and looks set to bring down several more bishops in the coming weeks, as the Church's position is only saved by the hard-headed realism of the capital's current archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

But, if anything., the scandal is being overshadowed this weekend by reports that Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams's brother, also a party activist, allegedly raped his own daughter, and is on the run from the police, giving the Republican chief a mighty headache and questions to answer over what he knew.

Then the small Kerry town of Listowel, home of the late great satirist John B Keane, has come to represent a small-mindedness that the Celtic Tiger was supposed to have changed after a local sex-attacker with good connections gained a strong visible show of support this week from townspeople and a local priest (since forced to resign) after he was sentenced, while his badly beaten victim was shunned for her impertinence in bringing charges.

As the country tries to enjoy Christmas - despite the ludicrous cost of living leading to a boom in border town stores - Irish people are wondering can things be any worse in 2010?

This post has been picked up by Iain Dale.

A Serious Man

To see the Coen Brothers' latest film, A Serious Man, last night. One of the brothers' best films, this is a dark comedy about a midwestern Jewish professor Larry Kopnik whose life is beginning to resemble the car crash that occurs during the movie. His wife is leaving him for the insufferable Sy, his students are bribing him, his racist neighbour is making life hell, his rabbis offer trite tales instead of the wisdom he seeks and he faces constant calls from Dick Dutton demanding payment for albums he didn't order from a music club. All this takes place as his son prepares for his Bar Mitzvah, and the film is not only laced with a wonderful sense of time - 1967 - and place, together with an affectionate portrait of the Jewish community with which the Brothers are so familiar. There is uniformly excellent acting, especially from the relatively unknown Michael Stuhlbarg as Kopnik, with great support from Richard Kind as his wayward brother and Fred Melamed as Sy. Not to be missed.

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.

A bad day for democracy. Really?

When even Unite's general secretary Tony Woodley thought that the BA unions' decision to strike was 'a bit over the top', it is hardly surprising that the courts have struck down this weird attempt by some in Unite to revive the spirit of Derek Hatton's Merseyside as part of Unite's brotherly internal politics. It may well be the case that Willie Walsh, no slouch in taking on the unions at Aer Lingus in his day, wants to impose rather than negotiate crew levels that are apparently similar to those used by BA staff at Gatwick. But the idea that a 12 day strike, which would cripple the airline and send loyal passengers elsewhere in droves, was the best way to address these issues was absurd. Perhaps the court action will allow some sense to prevail - as well as letting many people enjoy a happy Christmas. And I can't say I'm sorry that my flight back from Munich on 3 January is less uncertain, either.

Eco-smug Christmas travel

I have every sympathy with the thousands of passengers who will find themselves stranded by the BA unions' strike vote today. A couple of years ago, we found ourselves caught up in the chaos of a fogbound Heathrow as we got ready for a Christmas trip to Bavaria. Most BA flights to Munich were cancelled. Though our flight did take off, the lack of information, masses of woebegone passengers and shambolic airport management made us vow to avoid Heathrow - and BA - before Christmas in future. So, making the same trip next week, we have taken the eco-friendly option and booked via Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn, stopping in Cologne en route. But, we are due to fly back from Munich by BA - on January 3rd.

Labour's PBR council gains

It is often fascinating to compare the Westminster media bubble view with the public reaction to events like the PBR. So, Luke's set of last night's council by-election results, including big swings to Labour in several marginals, is well worth a read. They add to the picture from most recent polls of a swing away from the Tories, which George Osborne's shrill response to the PBR won't have helped. Highlights include three Labour gains, in Dorset, Nuneaton and Hampshire, and big swings to Labour in the Hastings and Rye and Westminster North parliamentary marginals.

Pride and Prejudice

The programme at Bath Theatre Royal reminds us - as if we needed reminding - that Pride and Prejudice is a perennial favourite for film-makers and fillers of the Sunday night TV schedules. So it was brave of Simon Reade to attempt Jane Austen's familiar classic for the stage in this new Bath production. Susan Hampshire plays a nice comic turn as Mrs Bennett, while Peter Ellis is credible as her long-suffering husband. The production is split into 18 quick changing scenes with members of the 17-strong cast filling in as trees and statues to provide some light relief along the way (shades here of the recent 39 Steps production). From there, the verdict must be more mixed. Newcomer Katie Lightfoot is excellent as Lizzie, Tom Mothersdale plays Mr Collins with appropriate absurdity, and Carolyn Pickles is a suitably sinister Lady Catherine de Bourgh. But other members of the cast suffer from their lack of acting experience: Nicholas Taylor's boyish Darcy inevitably draws comparisons with Colin Firth. Still, it is a credible attempt to dramatise the Austen novel, and it was well-received by the predominantly female Bath audience.

Just 18% of NUT members back their union's planned test boycott

The Guardian reports the humiliating lack of interest among NUT members in the SATs boycott that has had Ed Balls and Michael Gove scrabbling to appease the teaching unions. Apparently, only 25% of NUT members bothered to vote, and 75% of them wanted a boycott. In other words, just 18.5% of NUT members felt strongly enough about the issue (that teaching union leaders say is top of teachers' agendas) to support the boycott which would damage children's education and futures. If the NUT doesn't now abandon its efforts to obscure schools that fail their pupils, ministers - and their Tory shadows - must stand up to their silliness and robustly defend the only externally marked tests that pupils are required to sit in primary school as a vital measure of accountability. We should hear no more about replacing tests with teacher-marked assessments whether at the end of primary or the start of secondary school.

Budget balance

Doubtless there will be plenty of grumbles about today's pre-budget report in the days ahead. Some will say that the cuts should be deeper - though a 0.8% increase a year for two years is pretty deep, especially once the welfare budget is considered - while there will be complaints about the national insurance rise. But the real problem for the Tories is that the more they rant, the less they tell us about what they would really do instead. I've just been watching shadow chief secretary Philip Hammond on Sky News who had nothing but rhetoric to contribute to the debate. Indeed, what impressed most about the PBR speech was the unflashy authority of Alastair Darling, whose stature has grown greatly in the financial crisis, which compared starkly what the shrill response of George Osborne, who has experienced a big dip in his reputation by calling it wrong last year. The idea that Osborne could be allowed to let his economic ignorance loose on the economy in six months time is something that really ought to worry the markets.

Pots and Kettles

Gordon Brown gets the better of David Cameron at PMQs for once, with a few decent jokes at Dave's expense. And this is 'petty and spiteful', whines the Tory leader. Yet most weeks, Dave regales the House with the pettiest most spiteful gossip about the PM from the week's press. Pots and kettles, anyone?

Betrayal?

Today's Daily Telegraph editorial repeats the lie that standards in health and education have got worse under Labour, claiming that this amounts to a 'betrayal' of voters. Really? In health, waiting times are down to an 18-week maximum, where 18 months was common in 1997. A&E waits are down to four hours and trolley crises have disappeared. In education, just 52% of primary pupils got a level 4 in both English and Maths in 1997. This year, despite a small drop, 72% did so. In secondary schools, there were 1600 - or half of all secondary - schools in 1997 where fewer than 30% of pupils gained five decent GCSEs including English and Maths. This year there were just 270. There are over 1500 new schools built and lots of new hospitals and GP centres.

The argument on 'education productivity' is ludicrous. Using the definition favoured by ONS it would be possible to achieve greater educational productivity by increasing class sizes (which have fallen) and by replacing experienced teachers (whose numbers have grown) with classroom assistants. Had the Labour government done so, it would indeed have been guilty of betrayal. And, incidentally, if the Tories increase surplus places to allow new schools, they will find that it may increase choice, but it will also probably reduce 'productivity'.

Choice advice needs to improve

I've written a column for today's TES arguing that more needs to be done to ensure that disadvantaged parents get better independent advice on school choice:

The chief schools adjudicator Ian Craig made headlines last month when he proposed a crackdown on parents lying to get a place in a good school. And Schools Secretary Ed Balls was quick to propose fines and other sanctions for the wrongdoers.

But they both appeared to ignore an equally worrying issue, even though it also featured in the adjudicator's annual report: poor choice advice.

Disadvantaged families have been missing out on the help they need to get their preferred school. This failure to engage the families who need the most support has grown apparent under Labour, but it also risks undermining the Conservatives' plans to open the system up to new schools.

Choice advisers were one of three measures introduced in Tony Blair's controversial schools white paper in 2005 which were intended to ensure that, as new academies and trust schools were established, they were accessible to children from poorer homes. Along with greater flexibility in free school transport (since 2008, it applies to a choice of three schools, not just that deemed acceptable by the local authority) and an admissions code that encouraged random selection or lotteries and ability banding, choice advisers were meant to be advocates for those without the pushy elbows.

Without such measures, parents might fall foul not only of fraud by other families, but also the inbuilt unfairness of an admissions system that too often reflects the size of the family mortgage. I was Blair's adviser at the time, and we always recognised that choice advisers should be wholly independent of the local authority; ideally they should include people drawn from the communities that needed help, including the white working classes and some minority ethnic communities.

I had been particularly struck, for example, by the success of a young Somali woman graduate in persuading Muslim mothers in a Bristol school of the value of their daughters continuing in education after their GCSEs. And I'd spoken to parent support workers from the voluntary sector who made a real difference to how parents related to their children's education in east London.

The good news in Dr Craig's report is that all but one local authority now provide choice advice. Moreover, many have linked them to other parent or family information services, giving them a degree of independence, though limited funds. And local authorities believe the advisers are doing a good job helping parents navigate the applications timetable.

The bad news is that the service is too often poorly targeted. As Dr Craig says: "Some (local authorities) have found it difficult to prioritise the most 'needy' ... consequently, those who would benefit the most have not necessarily received the level of support that they otherwise might, and the choice advice service is not maximising its contribution to fairness."

To be fair, the best authorities do inform people of the service, placing leaflets in supermarkets, children's centres and doctors' surgeries. Some have public sessions at shopping centres, and many are happy to visit parents in their homes.

But the service is inevitably hampered by time constraints and anxieties that suggest many of the advisers are not being drawn from the communities themselves. A significant number would not attend an appeal hearing, fearing "blame" if parents lost their appeal. A separate analysis by academics from Sheffield Hallam University, commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, suggests that where local authorities used arms-length parent partnerships to deliver choice advice, rather than basing them in existing admissions teams, they received "more in-depth support and guidance", often including "repeated home visits" and joint school visits. The report said that when choice advice is well targeted and staffed, it can play a "small but important part in making the admissions process fairer and easy to navigate".

Critics of choice advice - and school choice generally - say it is a poor substitute for making every school a good school. It isn't - we need to do both. But even if that happens, some schools will still be better than others, and may offer different strengths or facilities. And with the academies programme being extended and Conservative plans to allow new providers to develop new primary and secondary schools, poorer parents will need such support more than ever.

Of course, not all parents will want to share the angst of the metropolitan middle classes. The Sheffield researchers noted that for many favouring their local catchment school, "accessibility and their child's happiness were more important than the educational performance of schools". Choice advisers can only advise them of their options.

Yet, while the middle classes make the most of what choices are available to them - including opportunities to work with new providers where there is dissatisfaction with local schools - it is vital that such advice is available, impartially and from trusted sources. Once parents have the advice, they must get the support they need if they want to apply beyond their local school.

But so long as schools only offer places to those in an immediate catchment area, the choices for many others will remain limited. A real success of academies has been in attracting a genuine social mix, either with banding or lotteries or because they are located in poorer areas. Other good schools should be encouraged to open some of their places up to a wider cross-section of families.

So, Ed Balls should do more to encourage all authorities to follow best practice and encourage genuinely fairer admissions. His Tory shadow, Michael Gove, should stop pretending that without the right support and open admissions policies, his plans for a Swedish-style system will do much to improve social mobility. Unless politicians get admissions policies and advice right, the poorest pupils will only enjoy Hobson's choice.

False dividing lines

I have this column in today's Independent, arguing that the 'choices' being presented on schools by Ed Balls and Michael Gove represent false dividing lines, but there are areas of real difference where both politicians should be challenged.

The Queen's Speech was all about dividing lines. The Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, suggested huge differences with his Tory shadow, Michael Gove, over their policies on school diversity. Mr Gove happily joined in, contrasting his plans with those of his opponent.

Both are happy to characterise their opposite number as the devil incarnate – Balls the arch-centraliser, undermining academy independence, or Gove the arch-privatiser, who would ignore the plight of the weakest schools. Of course, there is a grain of truth in the charges. Mr Balls has tweaked academy independence, forcing co-operation with local authorities. But he has not changed their fundamental character, and has expanded their number to 200, with 100 more due to open next year.

Mr Gove does want Swedish-style independent state-funded schools, promoted by parents and school chains. But they would be not-for-profit and he would turn the 100 worst schools into academies, a policy similar to the Balls idea of forcing change on schools where at least 30 per cent of pupils don't get five good GCSEs.

Indeed, Mr Gove would probably be able to achieve his main aims through existing
legislation introduced by Labour, which already promotes competition for new schools and is intended to empower parents unhappy with existing school choices. That explains why the main legislation he cited for a Tory government's first Queen's Speech was an extension of teachers' powers to confiscate, and an abolition of the exclusion appeals panels that send just 60 out of 8,000 excluded pupils back to their schools each year.

By exaggerating each other's differences on discipline and diversity they are misleading the public and are in danger of underestimating the weaknesses of their own policies. By doing so, they could be threatening their own success.

One big spur for recent improvement has been floor targets, including the expectation that at least 30 per cent of pupils in a school achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths. With similar challenges to primary schools, a swathe of poorly performing schools has improved. Where 1,600 secondary schools fell below the GCSE threshold in 1997, only 270 do so today. And while the pressure was most effective with poor performers, comprehensives at 70 per cent or above have doubled in the same period.

While other targets may have been crude – and with the Treasury's help, certainly too numerous – floor targets have been Labour's greatest success. Yet instead of extending this challenge, Mr Gove would abandon it, making it harder to judge the success of his policies on replacing failing schools or extending competition. This is a real dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives. And it deserves to be highlighted more than the supposed dangers of their Swedish schools policy.

Indeed, by acceding to the Tories' false dividing lines on diversity, Labour is in danger of ceding its big education successes to them. Academies are a Labour innovation. A big reason for their success – their results improve twice as fast as other schools – is their independence from local authorities.

This doesn't mean academies don't want to work with their local councils, rather that
any partnerships with them would be stronger because both parties are engaged voluntarily. Indeed some of the strongest community work I've seen has been in academies. Tony Blair recognised this when he extended foundation and introduced
trust schools, which though funded through councils, own their own buildings and employ their own staff.

But while both academies and trust schools have expanded since Mr Balls became Schools Secretary, he has also tried to force rather than empower co-operation. Instead of extending such bureaucracy, Labour should be outflanking the Conservatives in their support for independent academies. And instead of exaggerating differences, the Conservatives should start to explain how we might judge the success of their schools policy – with goals based on exam results, not just the number of new schools. Doing so would serve schools, parents and pupils much better than the false choices being served up by both parties at the moment.

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.

A Scottish tale of broken promises, localism and wishful thinking

A delicious cautionary tale from North of the border, as Scottish education minister Fiona Hyslop is demoted for the failure of the SNP's class size policy. Local authorities were given cash to employ more teachers to cut primary class sizes for younger pupils to 18. But being good localists, the SNP let them spend the money as they wished. They even drew up a vacuous agreement with the Scottish local authorities' association, COSLA.

Funny enough, the councils had other plans for the cash. The result: a fall in teacher numbers of 1,348 over the last year, more embarrassment for Alex Salmond and Ms Hyslop forced to spend more time visiting art galleries. To be fair, the average class size in primaries did fall - from 23.2 to 23.1 but as the BBC reported, 13.2% of P1-P3 pupils were in class sizes of 18 or fewer, a figure which was unchanged from 2008.

When Labour cut infant class sizes to 30 or below in its first term, it did so by a combination of legal sanction and intensive monitoring of every authority with large class sizes. Ministers knew exactly which schools were not meeting the pledge. Money was directly targeted to those schools. Even then, the need to allow flexibility on in-year entry means that up to 20,000 infants (compared with 450,000 in 1997) will find themselves in an over-large class in any given year. This approach may seem unduly centralist - but it was the only way that politicians could keep a promise so specific. And the literacy and numeracy strategies were probably rather more important to standards.

As the 2010 election approaches, voters should ask politicians south of the border when they promise simultaneously to free schools and impose more traditional teaching and rules on all pupils, how exactly they plan to square the circle?