Across the opinion pages: the Master, technical schools, open spaces and prisoners

Nik Darlington 2.15pm

The Times (£) has a brilliant range of comment pieces published today, worth venturing behind the paywall to read. Opinion genuinely is one of the newspaper’s USPs, along with its beautiful and accessible multi-platform digital interface.

Tuesdays typically mean Rachel Sylvester’s unmissable column, and today she plays on a favourite theme, ‘the Master’. Often enough she has commented how Conservative party modernisers afford Tony Blair deified status, his autobiography a fixture of Tory bedside tables and playbook for the contemporary political scene. This week, however, it’s all about how everyone’s wrongly reading the Blairite tea leaves, including Ed Miliband.

The truth is that Mr Blair was authentically of the centre in a way that neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband is. He was an entryist who had taken control of his party, whereas the current Tory and Labour leaders are both, in background and beliefs, far more of their tribes. The success of new Labour was based on turning this reality into a political strategy that was pursued with ruthless efficiency and consistency. Everything that Mr Blair did and said - to begin with at least - was dedicated to demonstrating that he was more at home on the middle ground than in the Labour comfort zone…

Mr Blair took office promising new Labour would be the “servants of the people”. He lost power when the perception took hold that he wanted to be a Master of the Universe and his MPs turned on him. Neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Miliband have yet shown whether they are the servants of the people or their parties.

Rough reading for both leaders, who feel the weight of the former prime minister on their shoulders in more ways than one. And a reminder, yesterday, of Mr Blair’s uncommon talents.

Meanwhile, Lord Baker, an honorary life member of the TRG, writes about “a new wave of university technical colleges”. The Government is nearly doubling the number of these colleges, which supported by universities provide technical training to pupils between 14 and 19-years-old. Britain’s school leavers need more technical nous to compete in a challenging global marketplace.

We had a few technical schools at the end of the war but these were killed off by English snobbery. Everyone wanted to go the grammar school on the hill, not the one in the town with dirty jobs and oily rags. Germany didn’t make the same mistake: they adopted and still have the 1944 English education system and it is one of the reasons why Angela Merkel is ruling the roost. These colleges are our chance to rectify that mistake.

Under the Labour government Lord Baker, a former Education Secretary himself, convinced Andrew Adonis to trial two of these UTCs. Their expansion was supported by the Conservative party at the last general election, a pledge that has been wholeheartedly fulfilled by the coalition government.

The outgoing Director-General of the National Trust, Dame Fiona Reynolds, eulogises on the centenary of Octavia Hill’s death. With a theme that I also used in an article earlier this year for the Richmond Magazine, Dame Fiona writes that the protection of open green spaces is a battle still being waged, and one still very much worth waging.

When [Octavia Hill] died in 1912, the National Trust had 713 members. We now have four million. While she would no doubt be impressed, she would not be surprised, and she would certainly not be complacent. She believed, as we do, that beauty, nature and heritage are fundamental to the human condition. She spoke of everlasting delight. If she were here now, she would describe the past hundred years of the Trust and what we stand for as one of enduring relevance; a cause which we must never cease to pursue.

Finally, the experienced barrister and chairman of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC, writes that Britain should give in to the European Court’s ruling to award the vote to prisoners.

Far from being harmless, giving prisoners the unqualified right to vote has positive values. How better to promote peaceful coexistence in society than to remove any sense in prisoners of second-class citizenship. It is precisely what the Government is preaching in its recent legislation on sentencing reform - namely, greater efforts to make the rehabilitation of prisoners more vigorous in penal institutions.

The right of every citizen to vote is acknowledged to be a constitutional right. It is in truth not a human right but it certainly is a civil liberty guaranteed by Article 3 of Protocol No 1 to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom, which the UK ratified as long ago as 1952.

Egremont has long been favourable to the Government’s principled and correct stance on penal reform, and last year we published an excellent article by the Howard League’s Sophie Willett. The ‘bang them up and lock away the key’ school of justice is outmoded and discredited; Britain’s prisons are at bursting point. That much is true.

However, the right to vote is not God-given, as Sir Louis agrees. Nor should it be beholden on any sovereign government to afford certain constitutional rights to individuals who transgress this country’s laws and bring harm to fellow citizens.

Reform the nature of a criminal’s penance, certainly; but that penance must still be served.

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When Ed Balls has George Osborne running for cover, the Coalition should really start to worry

Nik Darlington 7.55am

When in opposition, the Conservative party was entirely right, politically speaking, to back the Labour Government’s spending plans.

Roles now reversed, the Labour party would be entirely right, politically speaking, to back the coalition government’s spending cuts. Many in the Labour party might believe this to be anathema, much like many in the Conservative party were aghast at George Osborne’s decision to ape, for a time, Gordon Brown’s fiscal diarrhoea.

But they miss the point, in favour of the principle. And on this precise point, principle is a luxury Labour cannot afford. Until the Labour party has a credible answer to questions about what they would cut themselves, for instance, they remain irrelevant to the only debate that will matter in 2015, namely the economy.

The recent upturn in Labour’s fortunes - driven largely by a more relaxed and self-confident Ed Miliband - has seen their building record poll leads, and their leader nudging ahead of the Prime Minister in (un)popularity stakes. The most important sign of Labour’s recovery, however, is that the party is closing the gap on economic competence.

Above all, this is a sign of the voters taking a verdict on the Government’s perceived economic incompetence. It cannot be a verdict on the Labour party’s economic strategy, because that party hasn’t got one.

Yet. Some in the Government have said it is a surprise that the polling has taken this long to get this bad, considering the policies they are having to pursue. That may be true, but people have maintained their trust in the painful but necessary economic path the Government has set out.

But that painful economic path has barely been pursued. Many ‘cuts’ (in reality, cuts in the increase in public spending) have been backloaded to the second half of this Parliament. Could this turn out to be a strategic error of the tallest order?

There are seemingly irreconcilable ideological differences between Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, which could get in the way of Labour crafting a credibly alternative economic strategy. Nevertheless, recent policy appointments, such as Andrew Adonis and John Cruddas, demonstrate a bold intent to craft a policy platform that mixes the traditional and the new in the Labour movement.

If the end result is that Ed Balls has George Osborne running for cover on economic issues, the Government should really start to worry.

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The story of Shin Dong-hyuk: hope springs from North Korea’s gulag

Nik Darlington 2.22pm

“Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.” Alexander Pope.

How many people will have to die, needlessly and sadistically, in North Korea before hope is fulfilled?

Few stories permeate the confines of the grotesquely named Democratic People’s Republic, and few that do are as powerful as that of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have escaped to the West from a North Korean concentration camp.

Shin’s story, Escape from Camp 14, has been described as a harrowing and extraordinary account of the grim semi-existence endured in the country’s gulags.

And a wonderful interview of Shin is out today on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, by books editor David Blackburn, which I wholeheartedly urge you to read in full. Here is but a short extract:

Shin is nearly 30. He is short, maybe 5 and a half feet tall. He is immaculate in a well cut suit and sharp black shoes. His hair is neat and he carries himself with dignity. He is slim but there is evident strength in the line of his shoulders and the set of his hips. This is not the protein-shake variety of physique, the kind that takes up too much space on the Tube and develops diabetes. It is the lean, wiry type that can withstand 10 degrees below zero without a coat.

There is something about Shin, probably the knowledge of his past, that, I am ashamed to admit, makes me shift uncomfortably in my very comfortable seat. There is nothing quite like being confronted by one’s own indifference.

Does a vigneron in Rousillon shed a tear for the Greeks?

Nik Darlington 9.42am

Suppose that North-Eastern England, the region tending to be most heavily dependent on internal transfer payments, went bust, à la Grèce. Would the rest of England feel happy, or even obliged, to bail the region out? Of course it would.

Even if Scotland went belly up, despite all the rumblings of independence, the rest of the UK would come to its aid - as it did, for instance, to bail out Scotland’s biggest financial institutions (and the North-East’s, come to think of it).

But does a vigneron in Rousillon shed much of a tear for the Greeks? Or more to the point, a bank manager in Berlin? Or a station master in Stockholm?

The emotional flaw at the centre of the European Union is that however many years of postwar ‘good Europeanism’ there have been, Europe’s citizens (has that term ever felt less secure?) still feel the tug of the historic, the local and the familiar, more than the modern, the continental and the abstract.

A Greek default and eurozone exit makes dreadful economic sense, unless, perhaps, you’re Greek. Yet Europe’s emotions are directing the popular response, and, in the case of those northern Europeans with apparently unimpeachable morals, even the economic response too.

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European Parliament must find a bigger voice amidst the chaos

Nik Darlington 11.08am

The European Parliament is vast, its shiny superstructure reflecting the functional surroundings of Brussels back on itself. Yet when the citizens of Europe glance proverbially in its direction, it is not a reflection of themselves that they see - a reflection of their current plight - but a remote and faceless edifice.

However once inside, the Parliament shows itself for what it is. Or at least it offers a glimpse of what it could be.

Much happens here, but few follow it, fewer truly understand it, and even fewer, maybe, genuinely care about it. Whatever one’s views about the European Union, this is something to be regretted.

What we think of as the “European Union” is in fact a smorgasbord of not always complementary (nor complimentary) institutions.

Briefly, the Council consists of ministers passing laws, coordinating policies, and generally representing individual governments depending on the subject matter (e.g. agriculture or transport). Note that this is not the European Council we read of David Cameron attending with other heads of government. That irregular grouping sets the EU’s political direction and has no power to make laws.

The European Commission comprises nominees from individual member states who are assigned a portfolio (Lord Mandelson was a trade commissioner, for instance), and represent the interests of the EU as a whole.

Then there is the European Parliament, a body of more than 700 directly elected representatives from throughout the EU. Members (MEPs) serve Europe’s citizens in a similar way to how our MPs operate in Westminster - in essence holding the executive to account, scrutinising legislation, acting on behalf of constituents, and voting on new laws. MEPs typically stand for office as candidates of traditional political parties - e.g. the Conservatives, Labour, or France’s UMP - which subsequently coalesce with other European parties under like-minded umbrella labels.

As Europe lurches from one crisis to another, I believe it is the European Parliament that has to take the lead.

At a seminar for senior editors yesterday in Brussels, an Italian socialist MEP, Roberto Gualtieri, said: “Non è una problema economica, non è una problema tecnocratica, ma è una problema democratica”. Europe is on the brink because it is suffering a crisis of democracy, above all else. While Rome, Athens, or elsewhere burns, unaccountable placemen fiddle at the fringes. Or so the narrative goes.

The response of Europe’s leaders has been politically anaemic and economically heavy-handed. Throughout the continent in recent years, failed governments have been thrown out by voters. Largely in favour of rightist or centre-right alternatives, although the Left’s renewal is gaining traction. And while politicians have scarcely been so reviled, the political process has scarcely so mattered.

At the same time, euroscepticism has probably never been as strong. And not only in Britain. Why? Because at a time of public frustration, citizens are demanding a greater voice - maybe not their voice, necessarily, but a voice that represents their hopes and fears. The European Union, however, is seen to be inimical to that visceral democratic desire.

It needn’t be. A more self-confident and, crucially, better understood European Parliament can be that voice. Its members do, after all, have a democratic mandate. Of course, European elections in Britain typically attract few voters, but apathy is as much the fault of the electors as the elected.

The European Parliament also has, in the experienced German politician Martin Schulz, a president (akin to the Speaker of the House of Commons but with more political power) with strong opinions about the current crisis, and opinions that diverge from the inflexibly austere forces that have led the EU’s response to date. Brussels sources point out that President Schulz’s strong opinions are not weakly held, not shall they be meekly guarded.

In Britain, the public seems to prize that certain sort of parliamentarian who stands tall, is independent and speaks out “for the people”. Europe’s problems are indeed largely economic, but the solutions must be political. And those solutions must be seen to be legitimate in the eyes of Europeans.

There is only one European institution that can achieve this, and therein lies the European Parliament’s unenviable, but also unmissable, opportunity. And, some might add, its duty.

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Lib Dem wins London Marathon!

Nik Darlington 10.32am

The Liberal Democrats don’t win many things these days but one of the party’s backbenchers led the field of MPs in yesterday’s Virgin London Marathon.

Greg Mulholland romped home in 3 hours 42 minutes, thirteen ahead of his closest challenger and fellow marathon veteran, Ed Timpson.

It is probably not a portent for the next general election, but here is the full list of MPs with their times from the official results page:

• Greg Mulholland (LD, Leeds NW) - 3h 42
• Ed Timpson (C, Crew & Nantwich) - 3h 55
• Alun Cairns (C, Vale of Glamorgan) - 4h 03
• Chris Kelly (C, Dudley S) - 4h 17
• Jack Lopresti (C, Filton & Bradley Stoke) - 4h 22
• Graham Evans (C, Weaver Vale) - 4h 46
• Ed Balls (L, Morley & Outwood) - 5h 31

Making Mr Mulholland’s feat all the more impressive is that he had already run the Paris Marathon last weekend, before setting out on a 600-mile bicycle ride from Yorkshire to London, in aid of the Jane Tomlinson Appeal 10th Anniversary Challenge.

Alun Cairns finished impressively in just over 4 hours having aimed to complete the 26 miles and 325 yards course in something closer to four-and-a-half hours.

And shadow chancellor Ed Balls thanked the crowds for getting him home in his target time of five-and-a-half hours.

As someone who ran their third (and final!) marathon yesterday, I know that it is the slow plodders like Mr Balls who deserve our most respect. I will always maintain that anyone can do a marathon, and while few can do it quickly, it takes a different strength entirely to drag yourself across the finish line after so many hours of running.

Well done to everyone who took part, on what was a perfect morning for running. And thank you to the crowds, who truly did get us all home.

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I’m wishing all MPs the very best for the London Marathon (as long as I’m not overtaken by Ed Balls)

Nik Darlington 8.31am

The weather forecast might be frightful (I prefer my going hard, hot and dry) but I am actually looking forward to lining up alongside more than 30,000 fellow runners this Sunday in the 2012 Virgin London Marathon.

It is, however gruelling, the most wonderful event. Life changing, even. And indescribably so.

Yet this is a political blog, so here’s the politics. On Sunday, I will be sharing the starting line with eight MPs - some, like Alun Cairns, completing their first marathon and others, like Ed Timpson, their umpteenth (for the record, seven in London and nine overall).

The field comprises six Tories (Cairns and Timpson are joined by Graham Evans, Chris Kelly, Philip Lee and Jack Lopresti), one Liberal Democrat (marathon veteran Greg Mulholland) and one Labour MP, none less than the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls.

One shouldn’t really be partisan about these things and comment on the paucity of Lib Dem and Labour MPs taking up the challenge. The Lib Dems, after all, have very few MPs, and some of them are Charles Kennedy and John Hemming.

But are there really no other Labour MPs than Ed Balls able to run a marathon, or even to contemplate running a marathon? (There’s a joke in there about political parties lasting the course: answers on a postcard please.)

I’m actually rather pleased that the pugnacious Mr Balls is the man to put his hand up. As keener readers know, the shadow chancellor and I have form when it comes to on-field rivalry, both turning out occasionally as wicket-keepers for the Lords & Commons cricket team. I desperately hope I don’t see him approaching over my shoulder, but I wish him all the best - the very best, in fact.

They are all running on behalf of worthy causes, including a variety of local hospices (I am raising money this year for St Richard’s Hospice, Worcester).

And I hope as many readers as possible will turn out and cheer on them - and all the other runners - whatever the weather, as people of all shapes and sizes achieve the most Olympian of feats, in this, the most Olympian of years.

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