A week ago today, Alastair Campbell gave a comprehensive and well-argued defence of Tony Blair’s speech about the modern media.

Whilst I don’t agree with Mr Campbell, much of what he says in his post is interesting, and I’d strongly urge you to read the whole thing. But I just wanted to pull out this little bit:

The PM went through some of the many changes that we put in place when I was at Number 10 to try to improve things. On the record briefings, Freedom of Information, TB’s monthly press conferences … Nick Robinson made a very revealing comment about this a while back … The trouble was, he said, that TB was so good at them they became boring. In other words, unless the elected politician was screwing up, saying something hugely controversial, or fitting into the media’s preordained agenda, they can cut to some pimply youth in Downing Street telling you what the politician actually meant.

You’ll note that Alastair Campbell thinks Blair was good because he wasn’t controversial. He thinks that the fact that Mr Blair never says anything to offend anyone is a good thing. It’s an interesting point of view.

If your aim in life is to get elected and stay elected – power for power’s sake – then never doing anything to offend anyone is clearly the best way forward. If you want to get elected because you have real beliefs, and you want to change the country for the better, then you’re going to have to tread on some toes.

Undoubtedly, Tony Blair has trodden on toes. But wouldn’t he be a much better PM if he engaged with the issues, and argued for his point of view, rather than saying nothing controversial, not engaging with the argument, and just using a huge Parliamentary majority to perform his wishes whilst never offending anyone?

Is it not better to engage the electorate and convince them of your argument, rather than merely placating them? Sure, you’ll alienate sections of the population, but you’ll have a loyal following of those who believe in your cause, and who support you because they believe you’re doing the right thing, rather than supporting you because you ‘don’t seem too bad’.

It might be the bigger political risk, but surely it’s the more noble course – and certainly not indicative of ‘screwing up’.

The greatest politicians are, almost without exception, divisive in their time – either in their country or their party. Thatcher and Churchill are probably the greatest Prime Ministers of the 20th Century, yet both were controversial in their own way. They certainly offended people – and it changed the country (arguably) for the better.

Have we really come to a situation where the hunger for power is such that our politicians want it for its own sake? Have we really come so far from political idealism? I fear so, but dearly hope not.

Since last Thursday, when the story of the refusal of Tul Bahadur Pun’s immigration application broke, I’ve been contacted by a quite extraordinary range of people asking me to support his appeal – from people I’ve never met, to fellow bloggers, to personal friends, to TV presenters. Mr Pun has, intentionally or otherwise, become the cause célèbre of students, social networkers, and bloggers nationwide (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), but I’m not so sure about his case.

Tul Bahadur Pun is an 84 year-old Nepalese citizen. He’s lived in Nepal for most of his life, and, like may 84 year-olds, has developed a collection of medical conditions – in his case, heart problems, asthma, and diabetes. In his home country of Nepal, medication is not regularly available for his consumption, and so he’d like to move to Britain.

Mr Pun has no family in Britain. He has no-one to support him. He wants to move here to use the services of the NHS, and no doubt rely on Social Services for his social requirements. He is the classical immigrant ‘drain on society’ that the Daily Mail is forever seeking to vilify.

Yet a huge amount of support has surrounded Mr Pun’s case, as he fought for 18 years with the Indian Army and was awarded the Victoria Cross for his efforts with the allied forces during the Second World War. Does that entitle him to British citizenship? By current immigration rules? No. Morally? I’m not sure.

If you read around his case, you’ll come across a lot of emotive stuff about him being denied entry to Britain on the basis that he ‘failed to demonstrate strong ties to the UK’. In immigration terms, this means he’ll be reliant on the state, and so saying that receipt of the VC ‘demonstrates strong ties’ is misleading. You’ll also note that this was only one of several reasons why his application was denied, another being that it was not demonstrated that regular medication would actually improve his condition. Try to find the full text of his rejection has beaten me, which makes it difficult to make an informed judgement on the case.

But more sinister about the whole campaign for which Mr Pun has become the poster-boy is that thousands of people are being urged to sign a Downing Street petition calling for all Ghurkas to have the right to come and settle in the UK. People who support this one individual case are being urged to support a campaign that has quite different aims to merely allowing Mr Pun access to healthcare. It’s extrapolation from one emotive case to the cases of many, and however sympathetic I might feel towards Mr Pun, the underhand way in which his lawyers are playing this game is despicable.

If we open our doors to all Ghurkas, who else are we to admit? Is every US soldier that has served alongside British comrades in Iraq to be entitled to NHS care because of the shocking state of medical care in their home country? And besides, why are we limiting ourselves to those who have made a military contribution to the country? Are there not many others who’ve made an equally large contribution, with equally large personal sacrifice, who deserve citizenship too? I’m sure as Brits we have plenty of our own examples of Clara Maass, but our national obsession with remembering and honouring militarian sacrifices means that they are tragically forgotten. Many, many people risk their lives for the good of this country day after day – only the tiniest proportion of them are military personnel.

Mr Pun fought for the wellbeing of a grateful nation, and did so with exceptional bravery. Nonetheless, he did so voluntarily, of his own free will. He now has health problems unrelated to his service, but would like something back from the country for which he gave so much. I’m not sure we’re morally obliged to provide it, but it seems mean-spirited at best to deny citizenship and care to the exceptional Mr Pun, and I will make those views known to the relevant people in the relevant ways.

But who else, out of the thousands of people who apply for immigration each year, is exceptional? How do we define who ‘deserves’ our help and who doesn’t? The fact is, we condemn an awful lot of people to receiving poor medical care every year, and every one of those cases is a tragedy – but a necessary tragedy if we want to retain the level of health and social care we universally provide to citizens of our fine country.

The question is not about Mr Pun, and certainly not about allowing Mr Pun and all of his comrades have open access to the UK. The question is much bigger than that. And I have no answers.

Gordon Brown has enough nominations to ensure that he will not face a challenger for the Labour leadership. So now he has to fight a six-week election against, erm, nobody. To me, that seems a bit silly. But maybe that’s why I’m not a politician.

This morning, Tony Blair was ‘delighted’ to back Gordon Brown as the next Prime Minister. I bet it hurt, and probably stuck in his throat a little. Nothing could have pained him more.

So not surprising, then, that Blair decided to get back at Brown by scheduling a speech for the same time as Brown’s campaign launch. It’s no accident – Alistair Campbell’s famed grid system tells us that. It’s clearly a spoiler.

Yesterday, Andrew Neil was practically running a book on when Blair’s first coded jibe about Blair would happen, and one commentator suggested it would be today. Looks like he was right.

Everybody with the ability to communicate appears to be commenting today on Tony Blair’s legacy today, after he announced that he would resign on 27th July.

It’s easy to point out that he’s buried bad news to the end, choosing to use the day of an interest rate rise to announcing his ‘departure timetable’, something perhaps more familiar to a steam train than a politician. Not to mention the burying of the news that the cost of the ID card scheme has increased by £840m.

It’s easy to point out that he’s the King of Soundbites to the end: “The best nation on Earth”.

It’s easy to point out that his departure had the same theme tune as his arrival, Things Can Only Get Better, and wonder when it was most true.

It’s all-to-easy for people like me to knock Blair’s achievement. We can criticise him for his sofa-style of government, his five wars, his failures.

But for all his faults, he is the first Labour Leader to secure three successive election victories. He has introduced policies which have made the country better – the minimum wage being a case in point. He is the first ‘celebrity’ Prime Minister. And he’s a very successful politician.

His legacy will be the war in Iraq – his biggest failure. His defence of his less successful policies – “I did what I thought was right” – reveals, perhaps, his biggest failing: Government should not take decisions based upon the whim of the Prime Minister – however well intentioned – but on the facts, considered opinion from experts in their field, Cabinet discussion and debate, and Parliamentary process.

It’s a legacy, but not, I think, the one he wanted.

The issue of the incongruity of having a Minister for Women but no Minister for Men is raising it’s ugly head again, with a new campaign blog – The Rights Of Man – calling for the creation of the post.

At first-glance, it’s the kind of idea that looks like the creation of a job for the sake of balancing out the appearance of government. It looks a little bit like political correctness with no particular aim and nothing in particular to achieve. It possibly even seems a little anti-feminist.

But actually, as the blog’s priority list for a Minister for Men shows, there are quite a few predominantly male-orientated issues, just as there are for women:

1. Make improving the educational attainment of boys a priority
2. Make the state recognise/support male domestic violence victims
3. Improve care and funding for prostate/testicular cancer sufferers
4. Make judges enforce child contact orders
5. Support equal parenting laws
6. Provide better help and retraining for unemployed men
7. Force a review of the CSA maintenance criteria where the mother has left her husband for another man, re-married or has simply walked out of a marriage with the children
8. Support anonymity for men accused of rape, unless found guilty
9. Improve care and support for men suffering from depression
10. Campaign against anti-male propaganda and male sterotyping in the media
11. Support equal sentencing criteria for men and women
12. Stop the political disenfranchisement of individual men by abolishing all-women shortlists and priority lists

Whilst I don’t agree with all of those points, it does illustrate that there is real work to be done in the world of masculism. So, as a proposal, perhaps a Minister for Men is not all that silly an idea after all.

FLASH: John Reid is to resign as Home Secretary when Tony Blair resigns as Prime Minister ‘towards the end of June’. So now we know when Blair and Reid be packing their bags. Will Patricia Hewitt follow? Almost certainly.

Voting is (sort of) underway in the French Presidential elections. Nicholas Sarkozy is, of course, taking on Segolene Royal to become President of France.

Most of the world seem to think that Royal is the better candidate, and hence, most likely, the French will vote for Sarkozy to piss everyone off. It seems to be what they do best. My trusted, reliable informant is predicting a Sarkozy win, and it does look like he’s ahead in the campaign. It’d be nice to see Royal win, though.

That’s about the limit of my knowledge on French Presidential politics. Rather pathetic, really. So, for better quality, more in-depth coverage, check out the Social Europe Blog. Going by that name, I’m guessing the coverage won’t be exactly unbiased, but since I’d prefer Royal, I might as well link to another blog that would, too.

It’s probably unlike me to say this about an election, but wasn’t it incredibly dull!

For the broadcasters, it seemed to be an exercise in going through the motions to come to a result that we’ve all been able to predict for weeks – but a slightly more dull, less damaging to Labour result. They might as well have played the results show from the last local election – I doubt anyone would’ve really noticed.

The BBC resorted to bizarre graphics apparently borrowed from The Day Today involving a rapping Menzies Campbell cartoon (‘Ming’s Bling’) and Tony Blair playing virtual tennis, presented by a Radio 2 DJ. I’m all in favour of making these things more accessible – but Ming’s Bling?! ITV were so bored by the story that they didn’t even bother with a special.

The only moderately interesting thing about the election is that the SNP have the most seats in the Scottish Parliament. But it’s no majority, they have one more seat than Labour. Again, it’s interesting to see, but only slightly interesting – and less interesting than the prediction of the SNP doing very well.

The Scottish elections were a practical disaster, with hundreds of thousands of spoiled ballots and an electronic counting system that didn’t work. That was unexpected, and perhaps there are lessons to be learnt, but it’s hardly the 2000 US Presidential Elections.

Dull, dull, dull.

[flashvideo filename=”http://sjhoward.co.uk/video/pat.flv” title=”Question Time, BBC One, 3rd May 2007″ /]