Liberal Burblings

There’s been a very strange sight today. Theresa Villiers has been popping up all over the shop, saying Labour isn’t being bold enough with the high speed rail plans. The Tories want it faster and more extensive than Labour.

OK.

But hang on a minute. The Tory plans would cost anything between £20 billion and £30 billion.

So has our Theresa checked this with George Osborne? After all, he’s going round promising the mother of all cuts.

It’s all a bit strange. On the one hand we’ve got Georgie running round with his axe. On the other, Madame Villers is charging about shouting:

SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!

This site is an excellent resource which allows you to compare Obama to previous US Presidents at the same time in their term of office. Obama is on Day 410, at 49% approval. On the same day, Ronald , one of the most popular US presidents, was three points lower.

You have to admire the chutzpah of Sarah Palin. For months she has railed against Obama’s healthcare reform plan as “socialist” and “downright evil”, warning of “death panels”. She has also criticised Canada’s NHS-style healthcare system, saying:

Canada needs to reform its health care system and let the private sector take over some of what the government has absorbed.

So it is absolutely fascinating that Palin has now nonchalantly dropped the bombshell that she has, in the past routinely, when she was growing up, skipped over the border to Canada to take advantage of their publicly funded healthcare system.

This comes hot on the heels of the news that her grandson receives state funded healthcare provision.

The interesting thing about all this, is that she does just does not care, and bulldoses on regardless.

BBC Scotland, Pacific Quay, Glasgow

I’ve been lucky enough to visit Glasgow again. This time I was staying opposite the highly impressive BBC Scotland building on the south bank of the Clyde. It would perhaps be unkind to ask why they feel the need to have their lights on at night (see my photo above) when there are hardly any people in the offices. …And all that glass must increase the heating bill. But it is a wonderful looking building. It has the largest studio in the UK outside of London and “is the most modern broadcast centre in the UK”.

Before catching my train, I enjoyed the wonderful ambience of Glasgow Central station (see my photo below) and had a quick Foccacio at the marvellous Franco’s on the concourse. On my way home, once again the thrill of charging back on a Virgin Pendalino from Glasgow to Euston, was undiminished. It beats flying any day of the week.

Glasgow central station concourse

I find myself in rare agreement with Jack Straw. It is staggering that the main constitutional reform that the Tories are proposing is a cut in the number of MPs, at the exclusion of voting and other reforms. They are basically interested in reducing the number of Labour leaning constituencies, full stop.

Cameron frequently cites the examples of the Isle of Wight and Orkney and Shetland to support his argument, but they are the exceptions that prove the current rule. With O&S, to increase the size of the constituency you’d have to throw in a chunk of the mainland, which would be pretty silly. With the Isle of Wight to reduce the size of the constituency, you’d have to have part of the island thrown in with part of Hampshire.

With island communities, neither of those options make sense or provides any basis on which to redraw other constituencies.

This really is quite staggering. The outcome of the election rests on the economy. So the Conservatives would be making sure their economic maestro is seen everywhere, making the case for the great Tory economic policies, would they not?

Not a bit of it. George Osborne has been relegated to the backroom. OK, full marks to the Camster for recognising that our Gideon is a 24 carat drongo. But, come on, he’s meant to be the person who will be Chancellor in a few weeks, in the midst of a generational economic crisis. If Cameron can’t trust him to put the economic case to the public then 1) There will be a gaping void in the Tory platform and 2) You have to ask who will be Chancellor after the election? Will there be a quick coup to slip the well-worn suede shoes of Ken Clarke back into Number 11?

The Ashcroft affair is proving to have stout legs. We have very clearly moved beyond the simple non-dom status element and moved into two equally, if not more, serious areas:

1. Tony Blair and The Queen, and potential constitutional implications

The Observer today raises a new point:

The row over Lord Ashcroft’s donations to the Tory party threatened to erupt into a full-blown constitutional crisis last night as questions were raised over whether the Queen and the former prime minister, Tony Blair, had granted him a peerage under false pretences.

William Hague features as a central figure in the article. Much of it appears to revolve around the distinction between “resident” and “domiciled”.

2. Ashcroft accompanying Hague on trips

I find this element more disturbing than any of the rest. The Observer reports on a trip to the World Bank (scroll down half way):

The Observer has established that the peer met the head of the World Bank while accompanying the shadow foreign secretary on an official opposition visit to the United States last October.

The Belize-based billionaire, who has no official shadow front bench role, met Robert Zoellick, the influential financier, and then flew back with Hague in his private jet. The latest development will increase the pressure on Hague and Ashcroft to explain the influence Ashcroft has had over the Tories’ foreign policy. Critics have claimed that he bought access to business leaders and statesmen by paying for Hague’s flights.

A Whitehall source said that Ashcroft was part of the delegation that went to the World Bank. “His presence certainly raised eyebrows among the Washington fraternity because he is not part of the official Foreign Office team,” he said

And on Friday the Guardian reported on a  trip to Cuba:

Lord Ashcroft was suspected by Britain’s ambassador to Cuba of attempting to develop business interests in the country while accompanying William Hague on an official shadow Foreign Office visit.

A memo sent to the Foreign Office by Dianna Melrose, the British envoy in Havana, states: “Ashcroft was sniffing out future business opportunities here – I think.” It was written after Ashcroft had flown Hague into the country for a meeting with Cuba’s foreign minister and visited the British embassy.

Disclosure of the note prompted further questions asking why Ashcroft is allowed to accompany Hague on official visits to meet dignitaries when he is not on the shadow foreign team. The Guardian has previously shown that Ashcroft met Chinese foreign affairs officials to discuss Belize hours after meeting Chinese leaders with Hague.

John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw who triggered an Electoral Commission investigation into Ashcroft’s company Bearwood Corporate Services, said the Tories should disclose where in the world Hague has been with Ashcroft, who they have met, and what was discussed.

“Ashcroft appears to be paying for William Hague’s flights to give him access into Cuba and other countries. This is particularly invidious considering William Hague’s foreign affairs portfolio.”

Yesterday Ashcroft’s spokesman denied having or pursuing any business interests in Cuba and said that Melrose’s assessment was wrong. “[The memo] speaks volumes about the business judgment of our lady in Havana,” he said. Hague’s spokesman declined to comment.

Hague’s three-day Cuban visit began on 15 March 2009, when he flew with Ashcroft into Havana, courtesy of a private jet from Flying Lion Ltd, a company controlled by the Belize-based billionaire. Hague has flown with the company on at least 10 occasions.

The British embassy in Havana was surprised to receive a telephone call from Hague in which he announced he was in the country and suggested a meeting.

Hague and Ashcroft held a 50-minute meeting with Melrose in her official residency in Havana, according to Cuban sources. Afterwards, she wrote a lengthy memo detailing the visit, which was then sent to London some weeks later.

One embassy official said: “It was unusual, to say the least. We get very few visiting dignitaries here. They came over for a meeting and talked openly about their meetings with Cuban government officials.”

These trips certainly require further explanation, that’s for sure. They might also raise the question “Why did Michael Ashcroft actually want to be a peer in the first place?” (and indeed why did the Tories want him to be a peer so much, purportedly in the national interest). That’s a question that could begin to be answered, perhaps, by the record of his performance in the House of Lords. That’s a subject touched on by the same article in the Guardian:

It is unclear what use the Tories have made of Ashcroft since he was awarded his peerage. He appears to have voted fewer than 200 times over the past decade, about 16% of the votes in the Lords during that period.

He has asked about 30 questions during the past four sessions of parliament. Six of those questions have related to Belize or the Turks and Caicos Islands. He has also asked a number of questions about the south Pacific island state of Nauru, and about a Royal Air Force base, which is occasionally used by his private jet.

Suffice it to say that Lord Ashcroft’s performance in the House of Lords seems to be a bit on …eh-hem… the wild side. A bit ‘rarefied’ shall we say? The subjects on which he has asked questions do not at first appear to be the sort which would greatly exercise the “man on the Clapham omnibus”.

What amazes me about the current row over Brown and funding for Iraq, is this. The logistics supply chain in a military situation is one of the most complex things man can devise. First, you have the labyrinthine complexity of planning and decision making in the Ministry of Defence and Whitehall. Then you have a multitude of lead times, ordering cycles, suppliers, equipment types. Then you have the vast distances involved. Then you have the dynamic situation on the ground.

At the one end of the discussion, the PM says:

…commanders were able to ask for equipment that they needed and I know of no occasion when they were turned down.

At the other end Lord Boyce says: 

It’s just not the case that the Ministry of Defence was given everything it needed.

It is possible for both of those statements to be true.

It amazes me that people think that a political and military logistics chain can be boiled down to whether or not one statement is true. It’s never that simple. (By the way, I’ve worked in logistics (albeit non-military) for 28 years.)

Oh, and the day a military commander says he’s got all the supplies he needs is the day pigs fly.

Well, the headlines said that Sarah Palin had made a debut as a stand-up comedian on the Jay Leno show in the States. I beg to differ. She made a debut as a pathetic excuse for a stand-up comedian. The forced laughter from the audience is excruciating. The jokes are rubbish. The delivery is pants.

I like her jeans, though.

We went to see Tim Vine last night at Newbury Corn Exchange. He was absolutely hilarious. But if someone told you that you were going to see a Christian comedian from the home counties who doesn’t swear, doesn’t tell blue jokes, and just tells, basically, quick one-liners based on puns, you’d expect not to be entertained. But in an unexpected way it is all very entertaining. He is quite mad.