One of the biggest belly-laughs of the day comes courtesy of PMOS quoted by PA:

“He will make sure he does vote in future on important votes,” said Mr Blair’s official spokesman. “This was a one-off.”

This was apparently a one-off occasion on which Mr Blair has missed an important vote. Presumably, the September 1998 vote to cut student funding, the April 2000 vote on the Freedom of Information legislation, the January 2001 vote to ban hunting with dogs, the November 2001 vote on Afghanistan airstrikes, the November 2001 vote on anti-terror legislation, the February 2002 vote on single-faith schools, the March 2002 vote on the licensing of hunting with dogs, the February 2003 House of Lords reform vote, the June 2003 vote on hunting with dogs and with the use of knives specifically form all-knives.org, and the December 2004 ID cards vote – all of which were variously described as ‘important’ or ‘crucial’ votes – were just one-off occasions where the PM didn’t bother voting too.

In fact, he has the worst voting record of any modern PM, turning up for just 94 out of 1250 votes in the last Parliament – a pitiful 7.5% attendance rate. Most MPs, by comparison, turn up for about 65% of votes.

So really, the fact he bothered to turn up for the first vote was more of a one-off.

Last time he lost a vote, Blair threw his toys out of the pram, then said he’d not lost his authority. Yet, despite having a Parliamentary majority of sixty-six MPs, he still can’t get legislation through Parliament.

Let’s break this down. Mr Blair leads 356 MPs. There are only 290 other MPs. Yet Mr Blair can’t get legislation through Parliament. As much as I happen to agree with the fact that this particular legislation is completely useless, it cannot be denied that Mr Blair is losing his authority.

No doubt Mr Blair will make a big deal of the fact that he only lost by one vote. But that means that at least sixty-seven of the people he ‘leads’ voting against him. That’s nearly 20% of the Parliamentary party. And not only did he lose, he’s so out-of-touch with his own party that he thought the legislation would fly through, and didn’t even bother voting himself. Now that’s losing authority.

Mark Oaten has been forced to resign as the Lib Dem Home Affairs Spokesman, as he has some, erm, Home Affairs of his own to take care of, after some Away-from-Home Affairs to be reported in tomorrow’s News of the World.

The 41-year-old father of two allegedly had an affair with a 23-year-old rent boy. If you’re going to screw up your career, I guess you should do it in style – and a homosexual affair with someone half your age is about as far as one can credibly go, I guess.

Some will no doubt claim that it’s unfair he’s had to resign over something which says nothing about his professional competance, and I have some sympathy with that point of view. But it’s just not a realistic stance to take in today’s society, sadly. He had to resign, because he would never be allowed to talk about the issues.

More surprising is that he gave a classic non-apology in his statement, of the type perfected by New Labour:

I would like to apologise for errors of judgement in personal behaviour and for the embarrassment caused, firstly to my family but also to my friends, my constituents and my party.

He apologises for errors in judgement – that is, getting caught – and the embarrassment it caused, but not actually for the incident itself. Which is surprising, because I thought he’d be the kind of guy to give a grovelling apology practically for being born. But then, I guess he’d have had to resign as an MP as well if he’d gone down that route, so perhaps it’s not so surprising.

On something of a sidenote, it’s been an amazing couple of weeks for the NoTH – Sven allegations last week, more promised this week, a journalist in the Palace, and Oaten allegations this week. Certainly not bad going on their part.
One Springeresque final thought on Mr Oaten: His website hasn’t been updated yet. It says

It’s been an eventful past couple of weeks … I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend with my family before making any decisions on what the future may hold.

Somehow, I doubt he got his wish.

Nick Robinson’s latest blog post seems to suggest that he’s hearing mutterings of Mr Blair’s departure happening later this year.

Could they have reached another agreement on the handover? I just leave that question hanging… for now.

Does this mean he has some info that he’s not ready to share quite yet? Interesting… Or am I just reading too much into it?

As the Conservative leadership content heats up to an almost tepid finale, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the next General Election will be fought between Gordon Brown and David. But which David? Well, Cameron, most probably. Let’s be realistic here. The chances of David Davis winning are – well – low. This represents an interesting moment in modern politics – the heavyweight, overbearing Labourite vs the touchy-feely everyman Conservative. Reverse the party allegiances, and that could’ve been written ten years ago. Well, maybe not. John Major was never exactly heavyweight or overbearing, but he was clearly very ‘establishment’, which Brown also has a flavour of. Or summert.

My point (if I have one) is that the electorate appear to be looking for a change in leadership style, and bizarrely it’s Labour who are likely to supply this, while the Conservatives are desperately trying to emulate Blair. Which is somewhat unusual, and seemingly unwise.

But perhaps the Conservatives aren’t going for the Blairite approach at all. Perhaps they’re actually trying on the ‘chat-show Charlie’ Lib Dem approach, given that Charlie Kennedy is seemingly the most liked of the party leaders. If Cameron can manage to turn the Conservatives into something resembling a modern party, where a wide range of views are held, openly discussed, and considered, instead of the Labour approach of everybody being whipped into Tone-clones, then maybe he’ll be very successful. But then, when the Conservative party get talking, they seem to suddenly discover that they really don’t like each other, and re-enter the wilderness years where a number of factions roughly equal to the number of Conservative MPs appear, and no-one quite knows what’s going on, or what the party stand for, but are united in their dislike for the current leader. And the next leader. And possibly the one after that, too.

It seems rather cruel to criticise Cameron before he’s even taken office. But heck, since when has that stopped me? At the end of the day, in all likelihood he’ll do a reasonably good job. But without the united support of the party, that’ll mean nothing.

Clearly, the fact that Blair has finally been defeated is humourous in itself, but the reactions to it have also tickled. Start off with the desperate-to-be-loyal Blairites, who insist that, despite the fact that 30 of his own MPs have defied him, he has apparently not lost his authority. Yeah, right.

And then, on the other side of the political fence, the amusing interview with IDS, in which he said it was important to stand together and vote as a party on these issues. Until it was pointed out that several Tories had voted Labour’s way. When suddenly he completely contradicted himself and told us he’d always thought that it was on issues like these that politicians should vote with their consciences. Well done with that one.

Today, we descended further into the realms of bizarre claims and general ridicule as Mr Blair claims that he’s more in touch with the common man than his MPs. I think there’s a chance his head is more in touch with his own rectum that most people’s, but that’s pretty much all he’s in touch with.

The Parliament Act was designed to stop an elite band of Lords from preventing the passage of a bill favoured by the people. It is undeniable that the current Labour government have taken advantage of this, and forced through legislation that is at best controversial, and even potentially unpopular with the people, thanks to their huge Commons majority. It’s clear, therefore, that an archaic law is being abused by a modern-day government to the potential detriment of the democratic process. Why, then, don’t we reform this law?

We now live in an age where referenda are relatively easy to organise, especially if held alongside local elections. And when viewed in the context of the Act only having been used seven times in almost 100 years, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to suggest that the Parliament Act should be reformed to suggest that the Commons can only overrule the Lords in the case where the Commons has the backing of the majority of voters in a referendum. In that way, the Act would truly be restricted to being used when the people’s wishes are being ignored by the Lords, and would also prevent the abuse of the Act shown by the Labour government.

Obviously, urgent legislation couldn’t be passed using these measures, but then it is highly unlikely that the Lords would have any wish to delay urgently necessary legislation anyway. This change would appear to give more power to the Lords, and perhaps slightly increase the obstinacy of the Chamber, invoking more use of the Act than at present; however, viewed on another level, it takes power away from the Commons and returns it to the people the Commons is supposed to represent. It’s also possible that the piece of legislation being passed would be one that no-one really cared about, and so wouldn’t really be motivated to cast a referendum vote upon, but again, that’s unlikely as by the very nature of the process the legislation involved is likely to be controversial.

The final consideration is whether this would actually return power to the people, or increase the power of those in the media. Of course, in reality, it would probably do a bit of both – but we manage to get through General Elections every four years or so without worrying whether the votes are those of the people or those of media moguls, so I don’t see why we can’t manage the same in a referendum once every 13 years or so.

Overall, I think mine is a pretty good suggestion, even if I do say so myself. But I’m no expert, and I’m sure there’s some major factor I must be overlooking. So, if you can see the flaw in the plan, feel free to comment and let me know. The future of the Parliament Act needs to be debated – so let’s get on with it 😉

What can really be said about accountability in modern day politics, when the same guy can resign twice from the Cabinet within ten months? Is there any chance he’ll go for a hat-trick in a year? I know I’ve said many, many times that the lack of accountability is the worst aspect of the Labour government, and, of course, they’ve even gone as far as to incentivise their dirty form of government. It is, quite simply, wrong.

That said, it’s quite comical to look through my emails this morning: There’s one from 7pm last night – “I am not resigning, says Blunkett” – one from 9am this morning – “Blunkett preparing to resign” – and one from 10am – “David Blunkett resigns”. Talk about a fast mover.

Of course, the idea of a big pay-off, and the pretty certain guarantee that he’ll be working for New Labour again in the very near future must have made the decision to resign rather easier to take. A culture where a select few are protected and continually rehired after being sacked or resigning in disgrace is not a healthy one, but quite clearly, it’s a New Labour one.

As no-one can fail to have noticed, earlier this week, 82-year-old long-term Labour supporter and Conference-goer Walter Wolfgang was physically removed from the Conference centre by ‘heavies’ after showing the single word ‘nonsense’ during Jack Straw’s speech. The police then detained him under Anti-Terror Legislation when he later tried to re-enter the hall.

This gentleman clearly posed no terrorist threat. His only ‘crime’ was to utter a single word when the Labour bigwigs didn’t want him to. And yet he was held under the ‘crucial’ Terror Laws that we were assured would only be used in the most extreme circumstances to detain the most dangerous people.

For some time, people including myself have been arguing that

Laws [cannot be] restricted to what they were meant to be used for. Judges and the police have a nasty habit of sticking to the very letter of the law … If this government continues to make laws which are this full of gaping holes, sooner or later it’s going to turn round and bite them back.

And yet, in the face of police blatantly flouting Mr Blair’s publicly stated intentions for the laws, all he’s done is apologise to Mr Wolfgang. He’s not revisiting this legislation, and he’s not even disciplining the police force. In fact, Mr Blair wants to extend the powers available to the police. And all because He, in His infinite wisdom, has bypassed thousands of years of history and declared that protection of the common-man is now more important than the freedom of the innocent. The logical conclusion of which is surely that we just lock up – or kill – everyone who we don’t like the look of.

The terrorist threat to this country may be different to that which we have faced in the past, but it’s no so great that we should sacrifice the central tenet of our justice system and beliefs. If we change something so fundamental with so little thought and debate, then what is left to protect?

Ruth Kelly, the government minister determined to introduce something eponymous during her tenure, is apparently to ban junk food in schools. My question is: How?

Many schools are locked into implausibly long contracts with suppliers, from both catering and vending machine companies. These contracts include a great financial disincentive to early ending. So where’s the money coming from to end these contracts by September 2006? Or does the government plan to do something quite sneaky, like change the law to make it illegal to supply such items in schools, and hence make any company doing so a law-breaker? It’s an interesting idea, but it’s hardly true to Labour values.

Or is Kelly just going to leave the ending of the contracts as each individual school’s problem, possibly meaning that many will get into financial difficulty, and, by definition, all will have less to spend on, erm, education?

Or, in typical New Labour style, is this a well spun fudge? Kelly actually said…

So today I can announce that we will ban poor quality processed bangers and burgers being served in schools from next September.

It would therefore appear that good quality processed bangers and burgers will be fine. And which company is really ever going to admit to selling ‘poor’ quality ones? And how is this ‘quality’ going to be regulated and judged?

On the subject of vending machines, the words falling out of Kelly’s mouth were actually…

And because children need healthy options throughout the school day I can also announce that from next September no school will be able to have vending machines selling crisps, chocolates, or sugary fizzy drinks.

It’s noticeable, particularly on the fizzy drinks front, that most ranges have now switched over to production with ‘no added sugar’ – so presumably they don’t count as ‘sugary fizzy drinks’. And so on that front, there needs to be no change. As for crisps and chocolates, that seems fair enough, but it clearly doesn’t rule out all sweets, biscuits, and similarly unhealthy snacks. And, of course, school ‘tuck shops’ will still be able to sell all of these things – because they are not vending machines.

Perhaps I’m just being overly cynical, but it appears to me that Kelly has announced a headline-grabbing policy of precious little substance. How very New Labour.