Michael White's Blog, page 4

Why Owen Smith is wrong to talk about a Labour split

The Labour leadership challenger is being misguided – a divorce would only damage all sides

Is the Labour party in imminent danger of splitting? In a Guardian interview, the leadership challenger, Owen Smith, says it may if Jeremy Corbyn remains in charge.

On Radio 4’s Today programme, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, dismissed the warning as misguided. “There is no way I am ever, ever going to allow this party to split.”

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Published on August 04, 2016 04:47

Homing in on the housing crisis: where did it all start to go wrong | Michael White

Successive governments since Thatcher have helped make a bad situation worse by stoking up demand while inhibiting supply

Two days after the BBC again aired Cathy Come Home, Ken Loach’s 1966 drama about homelessness, up pops the Resolution Foundation to remind us that the problem hasn’t gone away. Far from it, in the opinion of some experienced observers.

According to the thinktank’s latest report , which led Tuesday’s Guardian and Radio 4 news bulletins, home ownership is at its lowest level (64%) since 1986, when Margaret Thatcher’s election-winning boom in council house sales was still gathering momentum. It peaked at 71% in April 2003.

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Published on August 02, 2016 03:47

Cameron is not the first to have pushed his luck with an honours list

Aides and chauffeurs have long been made candidates for awards by outgoing PMs, but now the public mood has changed

When is a good time to announce any kind of honours list in Britain? Never is a good time and always has been, as David Cameron was reminded when he opened the Sunday papers. There in the peaceful sunshine of his Oxfordshire constituency home, free from the care of state at last, he found his own resignation list plastered all over the front pages.

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Published on August 01, 2016 05:45

Corbyn v Smith: a battle not for the ballot, but for hearts and minds

Any sensible judge knows that fiddling with the party rulebook will not win this struggle for the membership’s enthusiasm

“I’m with the Corbynites on this one,” is not a sentence I try to write very often, and I last did it when Corbyn voted against David Cameron’s token bombing raid over Syria last year. But here we are, facing an imminent high court ruling on whether or not the incumbent should be on the September leadership ballot paper.

Of course it should – and sensible judges know they should steer clear of what are essentially political decisions, not subject to the kind of legalistic jiggery-pokery evident in the court application launched by Labour donor and ex candidate, Michael Foster. No disrespect to Foster or his legal team, but it would be a disaster if they derailed the leadership contest now, even though we and the bookies assume that Corbyn will win handsomely and continue his reign of error. As I write, Owen Smith is laying out his challenger’s stall. Full marks for intelligent opportunism and courage, but it’s not going to reverse the Corbyn tide – not yet.

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Published on July 27, 2016 05:34

A lord's 'veneer of establishment credibility' was worth little to BHS | Michael White

Supposed members of the establishment such as Lord Grabiner QC don’t offer much value these days, as the retailer discovered

Parliament’s damning report on “King” Phil Greed’s role in the BHS scandal has slipped too quickly back on to next day’s inside pages, a controversy clearly too close for comfort for some media tycoons. King Phil himself has created a diversion by threatening to sue the Labour MP Frank Field for saying he has behaved “worse than Robert Maxwell”. Field doesn’t seem too bothered. Clever Frank.

But surely more attention needs to be paid to the role of Lord Grabiner QC, the non-executive chairman of Greed’s Arcadia group from 2002 until last year’s final meltdown, and a very grand legal grandee.

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Published on July 26, 2016 07:04

'Elitist' is a glib label hung around Westminster’s neck by lazy media | Michael White

On both sides, ‘elite’ is an insult readily hurled, but there are far fewer old-school types in parliament compared with 30 years ago

It’s good to read that Theresa May’s new cabinet is less public school dominated than David Cameron’s, less so than any since the Attlee team elected in 1945 by some accounts. More diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity, too – more representative of modern Britain.

Excellent. But does that make it less “elitist”? I doubt it. On the Labour left and the Brexit right “elitist” is a term of abuse easily hurled at anyone who sounds a bit like one of Michael Gove’s “experts”, saying something that fact-averse people don’t like.

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Published on July 17, 2016 04:04

PMQs is a bear pit – but Cameron just about managed to tame it | Michael White

His performances weren’t as steely as Thatcher’s or as lawyerly as Blair’s, but the outgoing PM held his own at the dispatch box – and threw in a few jokes

Whatever mixed feelings David Cameron may have when he resigns the premiership in some ignominy later today, one task he will happily relinquish is the weekly ordeal of prime minister’s questions.

Cameron dismissed Ed Balls as a 'muttering idiot'

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Published on July 13, 2016 04:39

Theresa May faces a challenge of Churchillian proportions | Michael White

Thoughts of past Tory prime ministers also taking office at times of national crisis will likely be playing on the mind of No 10’s newest occupant

Even the most assured of all-conquering politicians, a Churchill, Thatcher or a cocky young Blair, relishing their long-imagined moment of arrival at the top of Disraeli’s “greasy pole” of power, feels a sense of awe at the hallowed rituals of the day: the drive to the palace, the kissing of the royal hand, the entry through the big black door, the snappers on the pavement outside, inside the staff’s wary applause.

Which of them could not be aware of the burdens of history now falling on them. In war and peace, crisis and calm, they have fallen on every prime minister since the canny Norfolk squire, Robert Walpole, first established the de facto office, became its longest occupant (1721-42) and in 1732 occupied the jerry-built terraced house in Downing Street, handily across the park from King George II who gave it to him. Many prime ministers have disliked the place – and still do.

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Published on July 12, 2016 23:00

Elected or not, Theresa May was always the best candidate for PM

The new leader’s proven competence at a time of acute national challenge arguably overrides the lack of a personal mandate

Why am I not alarmed at the prospect of Theresa May becoming prime minister this week without a contested leadership election, let alone a general election, when Gordon Brown’s similar “coronation” in 2007 left me full of foreboding?

Two reasons stand out. The most important is that the British state faces an existential crisis by virtue of 23 June’s slender majority to withdraw from the EU. It desperately needed to fill the power vacuum created by David Cameron’s refusal to stick around and sweep up the broken glass from his reckless referendum gamble.

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Published on July 12, 2016 05:18

Gloom descends again on France as chance of sporting glory is missed

Defeat all the more painful as French were in dire need of good news after tumultuous period of terrorism and civil unrest

What a tragic rollercoaster of a time for France. Bombs and savage murders, widespread floods that affected the heart of Paris, a series of violent strikes and then Britain’s Brexit vote – and the disruption still to follow. Thank goodness for the reassuring spectacle of the Tour de France and the chance of glory hosting football’s Euro 2016 championship.

But no. The Tour is still whizzing through the towns and villages of the republic in all their magnificent diversity – we watched it pass close to our holiday destination in the south-west the other day. However, Portugal’s 1-0 win over their more fancied French rivals on Sunday night left the same communities feeling distinctly gloomy.

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Published on July 11, 2016 03:40