Lance - the Corporate indignados

Cycling began with Lance Armstrong. It started around 1999 when he heroically won his first of seven tours whilst recovering from cancer. After the Festina scandal cycling was cleaned up and Lance was symbolic of a new era of cycling sweeping out the perfidious non-English speaking dopers.

Lance then beat a whole peleton of clean cyclists, ground them down, chewed then up and spat them out, gave them "the look". The corporate types loved him and flocked to him in droves. Sportives began to grow, much to the consternation of traditional cyclists who saw their beloved time trials getting less coverage in Cycling Weekly, and the brands followed - Trek bikes, Cyclops turbo trainers, Nike gear, US Postal gear, Chris Carmichael DVDs. They devoured "It's Not About the Bike". That was not enough to fuel the Lance fest so he had to write a second book "Every Second Counts".

Typical of corporate types who find a new hobby they had little interest in the sport before they were interested in it. They had no idea who the Cannibal was, the Badger, Greg LeMond or that Britain's until then greatest ever cyclist had died on Mont Ventoux after a toxic concoction of amphetemines and alcholol. Cycling was and always had always been a clean sport.

Those who actually knew something about the sport, whilst they hoped that Lance was clean,  thought that that was probably wishful thinking, especially when slowly the reputations of Armstrong's rivals started to topple - Pantani, Ulrich, Basso. On reflection though they suspected he was a doper who beat a field of dopers. At the end of the day he still had to ride his bike.

And then the USADA report putting him and his team under the kind of scrutiny given to no other trade team of that era.  Then a different narrative began. Armstrong was a shameless cheat and liar. He polluted the sport like no other. Armstrong invented doping and dragged to the sport to depths previously unheard of. The cottage industry continued, with journalists queuing up to make money out of Lance-villification. Quite a fall.

The corporates have been happy to follow the narrative, one can hear the sound of Livestrong gear being ripped up in disgust. From near deification Armstrong is now the worst human being ever to walk the earth. He should be thrown into prison, made to apologise individually to every fan who ever bought a Johann Bruynell nutrition guide or a Livestrong bracelet. A lifetime ban and stripping of titles is barely enough punishment. They are the new English indignados. Of course that shameless dopers like Vinokourov won Olympic gold and Contador still rides in the peleton nicely passed everyone by.

It's an easy narrative that nicely ignores the facts.

So where now for the corporates? No doubt they'll move on to their next sport, pick another hero to elevate to impossible levels, buy their kit, their books, ignore any history and once again act as though it didn't exist before them.

In Appraisal of Blair

Having finally finished Tony Blair's "A Journey" the impression I took away was of a vain and somewhat self-deluded character. This is probably harsh, many politicians on given closer scrutiny would probably share some of those characteristics.

Blair's Labour party colleagues are portrayed as mere walk on parts in the great story that is his life. Gordon Brown hovers in the background of the narrative like Stannis Baratheon wandering around Westeros, popping up now and again to cause trouble and stick a spanner in the works of the Blair/ Lannister state machine. Only fellow titans - Clinton, Bush, Sarkozy - are brought to life and given any character, Blair making clear who he considers to be his equals.

Blair is above the party and the nation in contrast to Margaret Thatcher, who he believes was a great prime minister, who was always Conservative and British.

A great deal of Blair's analysis seemed to be me to flawed hence my view on his vanity and self-delusion.

Here goes:

First. That Labour won the 1997 election entirely due to him. Really? Kinnock had eaten into the Conservative majority at two successive elections, whittling down John Major to around 20 seats in 1992. Ok places like Hove might not have moved to Labour if it wasn't for Blair but by 1997 the Tories so unpopular that any moderate Labour leader would have won by a landslide. The nation had had enough and across the country voters chose either Labour or LibDem depending on who was most likely to get the Tory out.

Second. Blair characterises many of his fellow PLP members as being over idealistic on domestic policy. Blair confesses to being pragmatic rather than idealistic and portrays himself as being the voice of reason dragging his party, often kicking and screaming, into the real world. Having little time for idealism, it is strange then that that pragmatism deserted Blair when it came to foreign policy. Believing that he could use Her Majesty's armed forces to deliver democracy throughout the world and often likening critics of his wars, especially Kosovo, as 1930s appeasers I believe Blair was naive. Had Blair being a more realistic abroad and more idealistic at home, I believe he would have been a better prime miniter.

Third. The succession. Blair admits he stalled the succession to Brown until he was convinced that he was fully on the New Labour agenda. Eventually frustrated Brown felt his hand was forced and ousted Blair in a party coup. It seems hard to blame him. Blair seemed to lack the emotional intelligence he felt was deficient in Brown. If he wished to move on how would he put constraints on Brown's premiership any more than an England football manager could refuse to move until he had okayed the tactics of his successor?

Fourth and the weakest of Blair's analysis in my view. He continually warns his party not to "move an inch from New Labour". This is ironic as the three greatest vote losers from 1997 to 2010 were the war in Iraq, tuition fees and continuing Thatcher laissez-faire economic policies. All of these were firmly new and not old Labour policies. Those policies which could be considered traditional Labour - minimum wage, increased health and education expenditure - did not cost Labour a single vote. I suspect had he renationalised the rail network and energy/water utilties this would not have cost him a single vote either.

Five. And most disappointing. In the final chapter he gives his current view of the world. He disagrees with Keynesian economists and his own party believing free market economics are right and that government "should get out of the way". I thought this was especially weak and then I remembered Blair enjoys a lucractive consultancy post with Morgan Stanley.

In the end I felt more intrigued in going back to that shadowly character in the background - Gordon Brown - and wanting to find out more. Whilst Blair strides the globe on lucrative lecture tours, Gordon Brown runs a charity.

Cameron out of control?

Regular readers of my blog, yes I know you could all meet in a phone box, will remember that last summer in my blog "Cameron the Macc Lad" I suggested that the early sign's of Cameron's premiership hinted at a Prime Minister who would be found to be badly out of his depth when faced with a crisis. I don't want to be smug but remember where you read it first.

If "Things Can Only Get Better" was the Blair's chosen song then perhaps an apt song for Cameron would be U2's "Out of Control". Over the past year Cameron has given little impression of being in control of either his cabinet or the country he was elected to run. Cameron has looked well equipped on PR but ill equipped on savvy and judgement.

Here goes:

1. U turn on the sell-off of Forestry Commission land and even worse Cameron's failure to make an example of and sack Spelman, the idiotic minister behind this.

2. Lansley and the NHS

3. Libya - one thing you could usually credit any Conservative prime minister with was a hard-headed foreign policy. Not Cameron who wanted to Libya to be his "Sierra Leone", one of the most creditable and moral British interventions over the past ten years.
Some commentators may give Blair with very little but on Sierra Leone he got it very right. Cameron did not feel he could pass up on a similar opportunity on Libya and thought that Gaddaffi would nicely do a runner like Mubarak in Egypt. Cue lots of grateful Libyan's and great publicity for Dave. Except that as anyone who ever knew anything about Libya could tell you, such as Tory boy, fellow blogger and all round good bloke @piloti001, Gadaffi would not go quietly. Now we have a messy and expensive foreign policy intervention with no clear end game in sight.

4. News of the World - heralded Miliband's rebirth as Leader of the Opposition. Miliband ran rings around Cameron from the off, set the agenda whilst Cameron dithered, and gained everything he wanted - an enquiry, Brooks resignation and a dismantling of a large component of the right wing spin machine. Cameron was left humiliated and weakened both publically and within in his own party.

5. The riots - for the so-called party of law and order both Cameron and May looked not only badly out of control they seemed not even to know the country they lived in. Now both have managed to get themselves embroiled in a row with senior police officers, something neither Thatcher nor Blair would ever have allowed.

So in conclusion Cameron is a Prime Minster who has serious questions over his competency. He has shown himself to be politically inastute, unable to control his cabinet and slow to respond to or even understand a crisis.

Where it all went wrong for Our Nick

So as all predicted the LibDems lost the AV referendum and lots of their councillors will now have to find new interests to fill up their spare time. And the only people who seem to be surprised by this are the LibDems themselves.

So brings to a close a wretched year in government. It's been a year of extraordinary political naiviety, vanity and arrogance.

So where did it all go wrong for Our Nick?

1. The received view is that the biggest mistake was entering government with the perfidious Tories in the first place. Wrong! Nick Clegg was absolutely right and had very little choice but to enter into Coalition. No matter how fraught the experience of government, Clegg made the right judgement as to have refused would have made his party look like perenial lovers of oppostion, more comfortable with pontificating, protesting and preaching than actually getting things done. That so far has been the only sound judgement Clegg has made.

2. The love-in with Dave. Many Liberal voters defecting from Labour felt instantly betrayed by the Coalition. Any sensivity to this was lost on Our Nick who openly seemed to be enjoying himself. Credit for him for being honest but he should have taken a more business like approach to proceedings. The LibDems were suddenly a party of the centre right.

3. Sheffield Forgemasters. Ah Sheffield! Sheffield Forgemasters was Our Nick's "Sheffield". Cleggs's response to questioning why a loan was being scrapped was to feign righteous indignation and acuse Labour of deliberating setting up an unaffordable loan knowing that a subsequent government would have to scrap it. It was Labour, he protested, who had let down the people of Sheffield.

4. Tuition fees.

5. Lack of humility. In goverment the LibDems adopted the same self-righteous tone of protest that they used in opposition. Anyone who opposed or disagreed with their views simply didn't understand it. If the disagreement was from a member of the Labour Party they were railed at for creating such a financial mess in the first place and invited to get on their knees in contrition and beg the country for forgiveness. On one memorable Question Time Normal Lamb, this remember was the LibDem MP who likened himself to an anti-apartheid protestor working from within, squarely laid the blame for tuition fees upon Labour. No one likes a prig. No one likes a politician who ducks responsibility.

6. The NHS - the LibDem passed on their one chance to demonstrate they were creditable Coalition party and that they were capable of reigning in the Tories. Had they blocked and thrown out this unpopular legislation they would have been widely praised, all nicely in time for the AV referendum. Inexplicably the parliamentary party chose to openly back this. The "pause" in proceedings fooled no one.

7. And finally, the final stupidest, naiveistist, vainist and politically suicidal reason of them all - the constant abuse directed at the Labour Party. The AV referendum needed Labour supporters to get it through. The Tories were opposed, the LibDems for and Labour divided. Needing the backing and goodwill of Labour voters, what did the LibDems do? From the off take a hostile and antagonistic approach to Labour, ridiculing them at every turn, shrieking at them in a way that outshone even the most virulent Tory backbencher. Utter utter stupidity.

So there it ends dear reader, you reap what you sow. With some astute political savvy it needed not have been like this at all.

The LibDems will now indulge in ritual and deep self-pity and in looking for reasons they will blame Labour and the Tories in equal measure. The last people they will blame are themselves.

The problem with AV

The arguments for AV seem to be as follows i) whilst it isn't PR it shows that the current system is reformable and will be a short step to better electoral reform ii) the current system is far worse iii) it will give the Lib Dems more seats and iv) Andrew Rawnsley supports it.

Normally argument iv would be a good enough reason for me. Rawners is a fine and astute political columnist. i)and ii) are quite persuasive, as Polly Toynbee points out, who wants to risk a return to the 80s where an extreme Tory government changed the country radically without a majority consent of the people?

And then there's option iii).

Estimates are the the Lib Dems would have gained over thirty more seats at the last general election, over twenty of which would have come from the Tories. We would now have a Lib Lab government, David Milliband would be having regular love-ins with Nick Clegg and there'd be no Andrew Lansley.

The world alas has moved on, the Lib Dems reneged on their promises on tuition fees, they enthusiastically back Lansley and to anyone who doesn't agree with them, they adopt the same self-righteous tone of protest that they adopted in opposition and simply suggest that we don't understand it.

And therein lies the problem. The biggest block to AV is the LibDems themselves.

As I stated in a previous blog, for a party that expected to be in Coalition for so long, they proved remarkably inept operators. Who on earth now would like these unprincipled and deceitful rogues deciding who does and who doesn't form future governments?

If the AV referendum is lost then all future electoral reform will be shelved for a very long time and Lib Dems wil have no one to blame but themselves.

Retoxifying the Conservative Brand

For regular readers of my blog - yes hands up all two of you - you will remember that last year whilst suggesting that David Cameron would prove to be a lightweight prime minister, I noted his excellent savvy in managing the media and the party political machine.

Cameron's great achievement was "detoxifying the Tory brand" and removing the epithet "same old Tories". His aim was to prove to the public that the Tories could be trusted with public services and that the sky would not fall in. Central to all of this of course was the Tories achilles' heal the NHS, so much so that Cameron loudly exclaimed across numerous election billboards "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS".

My prediction at the beginning of the Coalition that treading a careful line of deficit reduction and welfare reform the Tories would win the next general election by around thirty seats. I suspected that the Thatcherite excesses of previous Tory governments would be shelved until a second or even third term of office. The Tories would slowly but surely build up trust and move only to change things once they were sure of picking a fight they could win. That is of course what Mrs T, the darling of Cameron, Osbourne and Gove, would have done.

Which makes the announcements of most radical reform of the NHS even more astounding. The savvy which Cameron had prior to the election seems to have well and truly deserted him. Despite the condescending diatribes from Conservative ministers on Question Time they seem not to grasp at all the central cause of the public's concern, that on the NHS voters simply don't trust them.

The proposed NHS reforms will cost the Coalition the next general election. The Tories are already seen as a party that has a fanatical agenda to privatise public services irrespective of public support to do so. The LibDems will not be forgiven for standing by and letting his happen either.

Even if, as is rumoured, Lansley is sacked and the reform stalled, the damage has already been done, the Tory brand has been retoxified. Quite why Cameron has let so much pre-election graft become undone so quickly is bizarre. Cameron gives the impression that losing the next election is a small price to pay for unleashing an irreversible Thatcherite storm upon the nation's public services.

Or as Ed Miliband wrote in the Independent yesterday:

"As for "red Toryism", "compassionate Conservatism", that funny tree logo, the huskies and "going green" – these were the cloaks they wore to confuse the voters. What we are witnessing now is the recontamination of the Tory party."

So I revise my view, I maintain still that Cameron is a lightweight Prime Minister but I now add that his abilities as political operator must be seriously in question too. Not since Gordon Brown's election that never was, has a PM done so much instant damage to his own credibility.

Cameron was said he was the "heir to Blair", how much he has to learn from the old master.

LibDems more crap than incompetent

Early this month I blogged that rather than being unprincipled and duplicitious, the LibDems were simply incompetent. That they were out of their depth in government and that David Cameron had run rings around them.

After the relevations in the Daily Telegraph I know have to strengthen that view and state that they are just plain crap.

The Telegraph has given an interesting window upon their mentality and their complete lack of self-awareness. First we have the fantasy world of Norman Baker who likened himself to an anti-apartheid MP who fought to change from within. Er ... perhaps Fraggle Rock might be a more suitable place than the Houses of Parliament?

Then Michael Moore who admitted tuition fees were a car crash. Followed by David Heath who said he was "wholly against" tuition fees. Quite why neither in that case simply voted against them is not clear. As Eleanor of Aquitaine said to Richard in James Goldman's "Lion in Winter" = "Departing is a simple act. You put the left foot down and then the right." The "No" chamber is over there lads.

On a more serious note though, that the LibDems are so crap is a serious cause for worry. The Tories clearly do not expect to win the next election which is why they trying to enact what they hope is irreversible change at such a rapid pace.

The LibDems were unable to bring themselves to stop tuition fees so how on earth can we trust them to moderate or stop another Tory wheeze like Lansley's highly unpopular NHS reform?

If they cannot reign in the Tories and act as responsible Coalition partners then the LibDems should do the decent thing and step down. Now these Thatcherite policies are out in the open we should have another General Election and decide once and for all whether we want them.