A man whose time has passed him by?

Throughout history there have been occasions when a man with particular accomplishments has met his moment and triumphed, no matter what weaknesses he may have possessed in other areas. All those are forgotten when man and moment collide and the result is momentous. One such could be said to be Winston Churchill, a politician with a patchy record until World War Two when his aggression and fighting spirit was right for the time.

Could the opposite be true of Gordon Brown? Everyone with an interest in British politics knows the story of the battle for the succession as leader of the Labour Party back in 1994 after the sad death of John Smith, and how that battle was won by Tony Blair over a meal with Gordon in a now famous London restaurant deal. How Gordon became our most successful Chancellor of the Exchequer in many years, striding the British political stage like a colossus, so powerful that he even frightened Blair, who, it is said, was afraid to move him from the Chancellor's job.



How Brown so fell out with Blair that he created a separate political machine, his acolytes briefing against the Prime Minister in ways reminiscent of the old Roman senate. Who could forget the brooding stocky figure hunched on the front benches, hardly able to look at his leader during Parliamentary debates?

Then, at last after playing the rather reluctant bridesmaid for thirteen years, Brown finally got the top job, the job he had long claimed was his destiny. A job he would now bestride in a manner similar to his Chancellorship - master of all he surveyed.

But what happened? Brown has had the job for 12 months and the impact he has had on the nation is rather like that of the school bully who has frightened everyone all term until someone pulls his trousers down in public and the aura of powerful invincibility is gone.

Gordon Brown suddenly looks like a loser. He looks like the man every Blairite warned against when the war between the two men became vitriolic. A man who made his name as an able lieutenant but who can't cope with the top job.

He began his term of office with a dither - should we or should we not hold an election to grant him a personal mandate, on which he finally chickened out - and that sense of dither has been the lingering impression ever since. Northern Rock Bank - should it be nationalised or not? The government hesitated for weeks and weeks over what to do until investor confidence was at rock bottom. We have had the disastrous data losses from various government bodies and departments. OK not Brown's fault personally but his appointed ministers don't really give an impression of being in control of the ship. Embarrassing, ludicrous statistics about immigrants from eastern Europe where the government was forced to admit it had underestimated by many thousands.

Tony Blair, for all my belief that he should have gone over Iraq, would have recognised the signs of a government in disarray and done something about it, even if it was a cosmetic press conference. He would have done something to show he was in control.

Brown looks tired, plodding and, at the moment, incapable of stamping his authority on the Labour government as it begins to fall further and further behind in the polls. Now even his own ministers are making veiled remarks like 'We need to sharpen our image with the public' Alistair Darling, Brown's replacement as Chancellor said this yesterday and it has to be a muted criticism of his leader.

When things start to go wrong, everything goes wrong. Brown flew to the United States on Tuesday to see Bush and the American bankers about the money markets and their impact here in the UK. It was a great opportunity to create a few headlines and show Brown in his image of world statesman but he - or his advisors - failed to spot the fact that Pope Benedict was flying in too. How did they manage that? The 'Guardian' newspaper summed it up by saying 'Great excitement in US as world leader flies in ....oh yeah, and the British Prime Minister arrived as well.'

Unless Brown can miraculously find the touch he once had as Chancellor and manage to convey some authority, the phrase 'dead man walking' seems grimly prophetic. But maybe the Blairites were right all along. Maybe Brown is a details man and cannot command the big picture..but something needs to change very soon or his political career, so star-studded for so long, will end in ignominy and defeat.

Amnesty UK earns its stripes!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Amnesty International UK Annual Conference held at Nottingham University and a very rewarding experience it was too. There was a lot of serious business, particularly a number of resolutions on matters of AIUK's future direction, the results of which I don't intend to publish here.

But one of the highlights of the Conference was the keynote speech by Sam Roddick, daughter of the late Anita of 'Body Shop'. Sam talked about the ways of getting Amnesty's message across to industry and commerce, and talked about big business being an organism which doesn't have to be invaded from the top. Pressure placed at all levels of companies can have a decisive effect, she said.

Sam's speech was lively, feisty and smart - and undoubtedly went down a treat with the many young students present at the Conference, which was clearly one of the reasons for inviting her. Youngsters saw a keynote speaker who was prepared to shed the 'cardigans and anoraks' image that a few seem to have about Amnesty members, and the kids loved it.

The invitation to Sam seemed to me something of a gamble too, particularly given her unique way of plugging human rights. For example she was instrumental in organising a parade of naked women through the centre of London to highlight the problems of sex workers and the accompanying images may have raised the blood pressure of a few more traditional members of the organisation.



Sam not only talked about her human rights work but spoke also about her own business Coco-de-Mer which sells erotic lingerie...and more. And here was another example of Amnesty taking a deep breath and risking the accusation of sending out mixed messages. You see Amnesty has a passionate and deep commitment to the 'Stop Violence Against Women' campaign, and Sam Roddick's company sells......spanking implements.

The IOC is in cloud cuckoo-land!

The following scenes occurred this afternoon when the Olympic torch was ceremonially paraded through London. Protesters hijacked the intended joyous spirit of the Olympiad by trying to douse the torch with a fire extinguisher, wrench it from the hands of one of the runners, TV presenter Konnie Huq, and at every stage of the journey through London, protesters running into the road, blocking the runners and trying to grab the torch.



People like Lord Coe of the British Olympic Committee have voiced their support for the China games and given the opinion that 'sport and politics should be separate'. Whenever I hear this complacent self-satisfied view I nearly grind the enamel off my teeth. Some of these people live in cloud cuckoo-land. China was always going to be a controversial choice because of its human rights record and , once the Tibetan situation hit the front pages, one could predict the mayhem that would follow in its wake, not just in Tibet, but in backlash reactions to the Chinese holding the Games at all. Of course you cannot separate sport and politics and certainly not as represented by the Olympic Games, the most prestigious, most focussed event on earth which will draw the worlds attention on China in a way never before possible,



The Chinese leadership will get a wealth of kudos from a successful Games so is it not reasonable to expect those who abhor the excesses of the Chinese regime to try and prevent that happening and to draw attention to the hypocrisy of handing the Olympics to a country with such a stain on its record?



China executes (and this is the KNOWN figure) nearly 2000 people a year, not simply for capital crimes but for offences like embezzlement and tax fraud. China has been accused of forcibly harvesting the organs of prisoners for medical research, though proof is difficult to come by. People have been locked up for years simply for protesting about their homes being forcibly demolished to make way for Olympic Stadia. The great Chinese firewall obstructs people from using search engines to access western or democratic sites. The list of abuses is endless..and then there is Tibet.



The powers that be in the International Olympic Committee and the British Olympic Committee will, I fear, have to continue snorting with horrified indignation into their ports and brandy, lamenting loudly that all this protesting is so embarrassing and 'just not cricket'. I'm afraid they live in ivory towers if they think the Olympics should be sacrosanct and that the problems emanating from the policies of Beijing have nothing to do with them. They will have to get used to seeing ever increasing protests from ever more determined people as the Olympics get closer..and the protesters have my unqualified support!

Bring on the clowns!

"Isn't it rich?
Aren't we a pair?
You with your pint in your hand
my head full of air..."

Well that could be an apt duet for the current and previous Deputy Leaders of the Labour Party, John 'Prezza' Prescott and, the latest incumbent, the dreadful Harriet Harman. This woman, once sacked in 1998 for reaching a level beyond her own competence, and who only got there because she was a Labour Party apparatchik, a Blair babe of the utmost reliability.

Well now she is deputy leader of the party of government, the party which keeps banging on about how much safer and freer from crime the country is than it used to be. How much Labour's investment in the police has reduced violent crime. Of course nobody believes a word of it but I have never seen a spectacle so ludicrous as a Minister of State, touring her own London constituency of Peckham wearing a police stab jacket DESPITE being surrounded by three police officers.



What a wonderful vote of confidence this gives to the governments anti crime policies, not to mention tremendous reassurance for the residents of Peckham who were rightly indignant about the Minister's antics!

Harman is a protected species - God alone knows why. She seems to rise above the level of her own incompetence time and time again yet she keeps rising to the top like bacteria in a bottle of milk.

We had the chance to elect a decent politician as Deputy Leader last year - Jon Cruddas would have done an excellent job. Instead we are lumbered with this brainless clothes horse. The Labour Party is spiralling towards defeat at the next General Election and with people like Harman in key positions its not hard to see why!

Sarkozy mirrors my own hopes

As I may have indicated before on this blog, I am an unashamed Francophile. I have never shared the sentiments of some of my fellow citizens, based partly on distorted war time accounts and the views of some of our red-top 'little England' newspapers, that the French are cowardly, deceitful, hostile and most of all, anti-British. I have spent many a delightful holiday across the Channel and found nothing but kindness and friendship wherever I have gone. Of course the French are different, as the Germans are different, and the Americans for that matter, not merely in their customs and style but in their attitudes to the world.

There have been times in our mutual history when Britain and France have been at loggerheads, most recently we fell out over Iraq, but that situation is largely behind us now and its time to look to the future. Sometimes we have even been at each others throats, but we are now at a point in our history which reflects the mood of France's President Nicolas Sarkozy in his hope that Britain and France can move from 'a position of cordiality to a state of friendship'.



There will be some reactionary elements on both sides of the Channel who view this idea with suspicion but it really is time that any lingering coolness disappeared. Sarkozy is genuine but, of course, he has an agenda but it is an agenda with which I agree. Unfortunately he might have to convince Gordon Brown. Sarkozy is prepared to put France back in to NATO, from which it was withdrawn by President de Gaulle over 40 years ago. This is a giant step for Sarkozy, and a risky one, because there are many in France who see NATO as an American puppet organisation with which they want no truck.

He wants, in return, a guarantee of senior positions for French officers - understandable as France, along with Britain, is the biggest military power in Europe. He also wants - and here I concur enthusiastically and Gordon Brown does not - a British committment to a European Defence Force, outside NATO, which is completely independent of American involvement. Sarkozy is concerned -as am I - that too close a military tie to US interests actually handicaps the ability of the European Union states to act as peacemakers and handicaps their development as a self sufficient union of states capable of a political and military voice in the world.

The current American administration has been very hostile to a European Defence Force over which America had no overseeing role, though that may change after the November election. Gordon Brown, though, like his predecessor, is very strongly pro the Atlantic alliance and will not do anything to jeopardise Britain's relationship with the United States.




It's understandable, given the strength of US/British relations but I think it's wrong to be so deferential . Brown may be wise to wait until next year to see what wind is blowing from the White House, and, having heard McCain last night, I believe even if the Republicans win there might be a fresh air blowing through US foreign policy with regard to the US stepping back a little from this stranglehold it currently exerts on its allies. But then Brown should move, regardless of American attitudes, and, along with Sarkozy and Merkel of Germany, push hard for an American acceptance of an EDF.

But, on the main thrust of Sarkozy's message, I think the British PM should grasp it with both hands. Let's try and put stupid Anglo-French squabbling behind us and move into a future where all the states of the EU are genuine friends not merely neighbours of convenience.

Brown shows his naivety

This week, far from reinforcing his authority, our stumbling Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, stuttered through yet another crisis which he should have foreseen and which has resulted in a humiliating climb down.



The issue, of course, was animal-human embryo research where experiments to combine animal and human embryo tissue, creating what are known as cytoplasmic hybrids. These hybrids will be used specifically to look at the development of aberrant cells and to, hopefully, provide a major advance in the treatment of such diseases as Parkinson's disease and muscular dystrophy. There is no suggestion that such laboratory embryo cells would ever be transplanted into a womb and thus risk producing 'monsters'. The development which has allowed scientists to do this could be one of the greatest breaks for over 100 years in the treatment of serious disease.

Predictably the research, and the proposal to allow it, has fallen foul of the Roman Catholic Church who have spread alarmist views about the ethical consequences of such research and, in fact, have spread untruths about it. This should surprise no one, other than devout Catholics, for all through its history the Church has had a vested interest in spreading disinformation and preserving the ignorance of its acolytes.

But no matter, Gordon Brown should have used a lot more political savvy than he did when the issue of allowing the development of this research came to Parliament. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties allowed a free vote for their MPs, well aware of the moral dilemma pressure from the RC church would create among their Catholic MPs. Brown should have shown the same degree of comprehension. Insttead he insisted that the Labour Party would be subject to a three line whip. If we are going to appoint Roman Catholics to government, then it must be fairly obvious that there are going to be times when ingrained dogma flies in the face of logic, and this was just such an occasion. It should have been obvious to Brown that senior members of his government, like Ruth Kelly - a member of Opus Dei - would be terribly compromised by having to make the choice between her Church and her Party, and there were rumours that she, and other Catholics, would resign rather than vote for such a measure.



Brown has, of course, had to climb down with further damage to his reputation as a man in control of his government. He needs some good luck, and some sound decision making, over the next 12 months if the Labour Party is not to crash to humiliating defeat at the next General Election. Can't you just hear Tony Blair saying, "Don't blame me. I told you he wasn't up to the job!"

American triumph...or tragedy?

This week I watched a 35 minute speech by an American politician that was so good, it could have been given by one of Europe's best. In fact it was one of the finest political speeches I have heard in my life. And that's not to say that American politicians are incapable of giving good speeches - the history books are littered with them. But this man had his back to the wall. Despite having accrued a large number of electoral votes already, this man sensed that he was in trouble because of stories circulating about the influence of his former pastor. And he had to deal with it.

Now most American politicians when they have their backs to the wall fall back on devices they know will grab a particularly sensitive area of the American psyche, a crude hand on heart 'God bless America' patriotism accompanied by a lachrymose, heart-rending appeal to the emotions which would do credit to Gwynneth Paltrow.

But not this man. He knew he had to resolve doubts which had been placed in the minds of the electorate about his own attitudes and about the links to others. And he did it. He did it wonderfully with a mature, rational and very calm speech which ought to have elevated him 20% points in the opinion polls. Unfortunately it did not.

He talked, calmly and sensibly, about the issue of race in America - not in a melodramatic fashion, but he told his audience about the chance men like him had been given because of the sacrifices and the experiences of men and women of previous generations. He did not applaud the anti American comments made by his former pastor but he didn't disown the man either. Instead he talked about the strengths and weaknesses of the United States, of his Pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and not least of himself. He said that the angry 'God damn America' comments which Pastor Wright had reportedly made were fashioned in a climate, and a bygone age when black men and women were oppressed and suffering. He said he thought the Pastor was wrong, and that American society had developed and was capable of developing further. He went on to list Pastor Wright's service record, of the work he had done in the community, and how the Pastor had helped young black people, like the speaker himself, towards understanding his faith. He went on to talk of a unifying coalition which his candidacy had stimulated and how he believed he could go on from there to a position where that sense of unity could be directed from the top.

He talked about his own background and his awareness of, despite being a black man, his privilege and his education which gave him the awareness of history and social change and how it fed his desire to do more.

The speech was as honest and laudable a political statement as has been my privilege to hear.

The speaker was, of course, Barack Obama and I am beginning to believe that if there is any justice in the world, come November 2008, this man will be President-elect of the United States.

But sadly I don't believe there is any justice in the world. I believe there are forces in the United States determined to wreck Obama's band wagon and already the wheels are becoming dangerously loose. Hilary Clinton had a lead in Pennsylvania before the disclosures about Pastor Wright and now it is massive. Even in North Carolina where Obama once held a huge lead, that lead is now down to 1 point. I fear that the American public will only read what they want to read, hear what they want to hear, and any careful crafted media campaign which suggests any anti-American feeling by anyone linked to Obama will make sure that his candidacy goes down the tubes. By the time it comes to the National Democratic Convention, he will maybe have too many delegates to be beaten in a straight vote but maybe he will have lost the momentum and the Super Delegates will be called upon to choose the nominee, which could well be Hillary Clinton.

Either way, in national polls, John McCain has taken a lead over both of them and, as I said in earlier posts, I suspect that when push comes to shove, American voters will elect an elderly conservative white man, same as they usually do, and the opportunity for a really revolutionary, radical change in American attitudes to the outside world will have been sadly and tragically lost.