Michael White's Blog, page 50

Prince Charles and the family firm: still in business in 2038?| Michael White

Reason suggests we should do away with royal flummery but reason dictates less of what we do than we fondly imagine

On Prince Charles's 65th, it is worth every republican noting, albeit through grinding teeth, that British royal family has been having a good run of late.

Royal weddings and jubilees, the royal baby, no major disasters, even the once-wicked Camilla has turned out to be a popular barmaid in the pub of public opinion. And Prince Philip staggers on impressively unreformed. Next year we hit the 300th anniversary of the house of Hanover's takeover. All those Georges, they've lasted longer than many folk expected at the time.

It is all far better than could be imagined for Buck House image polishers (they have a special uniform) during the Queen's annus horribilis of 1992, let alone the soap opera years which followed it, culminating in the dramatic death of Princess Diana in 1997. Her sons have survived the trauma better than might have been feared and seem to have inherited mum's likeable qualities and flair.

Even the Guardian, which formally and fashionably went republican 13 years ago, found space on the front of today's edition for a sympathetic profile of the bus-pass prince by his friend, Jonathan Dimbleby, scion of another ancient British dynasty.

Sensitive editing picks up the changing zeitgeist and makes a nod in its direction, though Stephen Moss has been allowed to pull the royal leg here.

Mockery offset by respect. All seems serene. Or does it? I was struck several times during the fiesta of special supplements that accompanied Prince George's birth and christening just how much worldwide appeal the royals still command in the internet age, but also how fragile it all is despite the air of continuity.

Continuity? Yes. In 1894 the royals were able to stage a famous photo-op of Queen Victoria with her son, grandson and great grandson, all of whom would be monarchs, including the newborn Edward VIII, though he lasted only 11 months, the shortest reign in history excluding the clouded story of Edward V in the Tower (1483), thanks to bad parenting and the abdication. Poor Wallis Simpson, she was chained to him for ever by the dictates of their "love story".

So last month "the firm" was able to repeat the trick when young George was christened. The Queen, her eldest son, his eldest son and his eldest son (though Princess Georgina would have made the cut thanks to a change in the succession laws). That represents a lot of potential continuity too – as it was meant to do.

Let's rudely speculate for a moment. If the Queen makes 100 (as her mother did), then Charles will finally become king in 2025, when he will be pushing 77: a short reign, let's say 13 years before all that healthy living and organic talking vegetables carry Charles III off to the family vault at Windsor in 2038. I don't expect to be there to see the coronation of King William V and Queen Katie. Born in 1982, the new monarch will be 56 by then, slightly on the old side, but it's not his fault either. Prince George will be 25 and therefore the more likely focus of media attention and (who will he marry?) gossip.

You only have to set that lot out to see just how much could go wrong – or right, of course. By 2038 China will have the world's largest economy, though no one lost any money yet betting on the recuperative powers of the restless United States and its innovative capacities to stay ahead in terms of technological prowess.

But it will be Chinese or Indian space pioneers who will lead the way off the planet. That much has been virtually conceded by President Obama, the American Hadrian, emperor of consolidation and tactical retreat.

Where will Europe be? And where will Britain be in relation to Europe and the wider world? It's hard to predict with any confidence, isn't it? Less important than we have all been for the past 500 years – the prime imperial years (and the loss of America) being presided over by those Hanoverians – but not necessarily paupers or colonised serfs either. Mistakes can be costly, but good calls can ensure a secure future too.

It was ever thus, but more so now. Speed and adaptability to technological and social change, to our increasingly unstable climate and our unruly politics, all will test us and test the made-over Hanoverians-turned-Windsors as much as any of us.

I take the view that the British have long lived in a crowned republic (the 18th century philosopher Montesquieu took that view long before I did) and that it is the US which opted for an elective four-year monarchy, a hangover from the elective monarchs of the middle ages, just like the pope.

Logic and rationality suggest we should do away with the flummery at the next opportunity, which means a referendum when the Queen dies (the Guardian's editorial position). But reason dictates less of what we do than we fondly imagine. There is plenty of evidence that the evidence-driven age of the Enlightenment is giving way to new forms of mysticism and irrational piety.

As the Guardian editorial points out – contradicting J Dimbleby's buoyant assertion – it will all depend on how the monarch behaves, how he is regarded by the same public opinion which cost silly Edward VIII his throne; not his love life, as Tanya Gold says of Edward II in today's Guardian, but his capacity for kingship in the 21st-century model (as Edward II failed in terms of the 14th century's).

Meddling monarchy is not what most people will want, so mistakes will cost him. Edward VII once introduced his son, the future George V, as "the last king of England". Wrong, but not necessarily next time.

There again, in times of great flux, which may be round the corner, a bland hereditary presidency in the Hanover-Windsor model might provide continuity and solace.

It is rarely noted by the immigrant-baiting royalist tabloids (the Mail's editor, Paul Dacre, is also 65 today) that many come from countries - in Asia, Africa and Europe too - where kings, princes and quasi-regal dynasties are familiar and attractive traditions. They are natural monarchists. Whom did you say King George VII should marry?

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Our creaking A&E system needs restructuring, no ifs, ands – or butts

The reasons – ageing population, poverty, booze and fags, etc – are well-rehearsed. But both Labour and the coalition have failed to shout the case for reform to wary voters

Let church bells ring. Put out more flags. Open the white wine for breakfast. At last a coherent case for restructuring the NHS's creaking A&E system has made serious headline news and may start to penetrate public consciousness. It is a moment to seize if progress is to follow.

As Sarah Boseley and Patrick Wintour report, it will not be easy. NHS nimbyism ("hands off our hospital") is a very human response: even Foreign Secretary Hague has done it. As Boseley writes in her analysis piece, communities which hear that their neighbours are getting a five-star emergency care centre while they get a "downgraded" three-star jobby (I live in such an area) may get upset. Sometimes with good reason, often not.

But health ministers under successive governments have failed to spell out, either loudly enough or often enough, why we need to create a two-tier (actually, isn't it a three-tier?) emergency care regime which sees cut knees and minor injuries treated where they should be, at minor injury units attached to health centres, not at either type of A&E proposed today by excellent NHS chief, Sir Bruce Keogh.

Labour had some successes and some failures. It was on Andy Burnham's watch that stroke services were reorganised in the capital so that the death rate could be slashed as victims were driven past their local hospital to a trauma centre for specialist care. Unlike so much which non-Londoners complain about, rightly, London's NHS services are often poorer than in big provincial cities and nice towns. Friends moving back from Devon are terrified.

In yesterday's heated Commons exchanges, Jeremy Hunt appeared to claim the credit for the stroke policy – the more emotive cancer and cardiac services have also enjoyed some centralisation – while piling blame on Labour, which deserves some of it. In reality, both governments must share credit and blame – Labour most credit for raising the NHS's budget and, patchily, its performance since 2000. But both have failed to shout the case for A&E reform to wary voters.

The awkward fact is that pressure on medical services is rising and would be a problem even without the coalition's austerity programme, which has – relatively speaking – protected the NHS from the scale of cuts faced by other services. There are many well-rehearsed reasons for this, ranging from those ageing baby boomers to mounting poverty and poor lifestyle choices (booze, fags, drugs, sugar, fats). Better lifestyle choices and better NHS options – walk-in centres, NHS Direct and its feebler coalition successor, NHS 111 – also add to the pressures from what are known as the anxious well. I am attending a 100th birthday (not my own) on Friday.

So Sarah Boseley's Guardian graphic (pdf) – the one which shows how NHS surgeon-turned-suit Sir Bruce Keogh wants us to use A&E less and pharmacies, GPs and the NHS's wise websites more – is vital if services are not to be overwhelmed, if not this winter, then at some later stage. We have to sort out elderly care better too, so that bed-blocking oldies are not stuck in hospital for want of somewhere to go.

Health Secretary Hunt is doing OK overall so far and I do not share the conspiracy theory that he is trying to blame past Labour errors – notably the over-generous 2004 GP contract, which damaged out-of-hours services – for whatever goes wrong now. As David Cameron clearly realises, it won't work anyway. Burnham left a target of £20bn-worth of efficiency savings to be achieved over five years.

He and his post-Milburn Labour predecessors also left a series of market-facing laws which were bound to open up the NHS to greater diversity of provision – private and charity providers who already work for the NHS – as well as choice for patients. So dominant has the NHS been on British healthcare since 1948 that there isn't enough diversity. My hunch is that "NHS privatisation" scares will prove just that and that the private sector will largely fail to deliver the scale of service (or profit) some expect.

But it is Andrew Lansley, sitting at Hunt's side on Tuesday as exiled leader of the Commons, who will carry the can for whatever goes wrong because his 2012 Health and Social Care Act spelled it all out in largely unnecessary detail and imposed that "top-down" reorganisation of primary care now working its wobbly way into an uncertain future.

It was Lansley, too, who stalled hospital restructuring in a pre-election pledge which hasn't changed much and also binned super-surgeon Lord Darzi's plans to innovate creatively in London's overstretched services. Overstretched in part, I should add, by Labour's lax immigration stance towards east European migrants, since Jack Straw and David Blunkett are this week finally admitting it. Oh yes, Lansley did for NHS Direct too.

None of which changes the fact that A&E needs to be reorganised to fit changing times and needs. It's tricky and mistakes that need reversing will have to be made. Transport links and bus timetables matter a lot too. Our newly announced local A&E shakeup means that our major emergency care centre will now be across the busy M4 and North Circular, but the excellent cardiac centre my wife attended elsewhere has survived.

On the other hand, the acute stroke unit to which I planned to look for my own future use – 10 minutes away by car, 20 by public transport – seems to be in doubt. I grew up in pre-Serco Cornwall, so there's no need to tell me how far you are from your major hospital (Truro or Plymouth anyone?). Good luck wherever you are. But change has to happen. We can't afford not to do it.

NHSHealthHospitalsSocial careMichael White
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Labour MP digs deep for London's traditional upper classes

Karen Buck introduces bill to tame the basement craze which is gripping the capital and distressing the duchesses

An extraordinary thing happened on Tuesday just before Labour rising star Rachel Reeves ripped into the way the government's ill-fated bedroom tax hurts the vulnerable. A Labour colleague, Karen Buck, launched an equally trenchant attack on an even madder manifestation of unfettered market doctrine. She did so on behalf of a more unlikely set of victims: London's traditional upper classes.

It had already been a day of drama. Jeremy Hunt had been dragged to the Commons to brief MPs on top sawbones Sir Bruce Keogh's plans to reorganise NHS emergency services, including A&E. Someone had already briefed the media and Speaker Bercow did not like it.

When Labour's Angela Eagle later protested that George Osborne had announced a date change for his December financial statement by what Bercow called "the mechanism of Twitter" he was very cross. Watch out, Master George!

Hunt is in a stronger position than seemed likely when he narrowly escaped the jaws of Murdoch over Rupert's BSkyB bid. He has not been health secretary long enough to make sufficient mistakes to derail his career. Faced with a looming crisis in A&E, Hunt dumps excessive blame on Labour's Andy Burnham while taking credit for the bits his Labour predecessor got right.

Hunt could scarcely blame the chief culprit, sacked so Hunt could clean up his mess. As leader of the Commons, Andrew Lansley was seated at his elbow, looking as cheerful as a minister on death row, which he is. Was it not Lansley who shut NHS Direct and binned the saintly Lord Darzi's reforms which might have eased the crisis? It was!

Elected only in 2010, Reeves, 34, has no ministerial record to hobble her. So she took a chainsaw – and a chainsaw voice – to the "despicable" bedroom policy of the hapless Iain Duncan Smith, who was sensibly absent in Paris.

The £14 per week surcharge on "spare" bedrooms is hurting carers, dialysis patients, divorcees' kids on weekend visits, she thundered. Labour MPs piled on the agony (my brother will be evicted, said Steve Pound) while backbench Tories were pretty hopeless.

But the Lib Dems saved the coalition. First, Brummie bruiser John Hemming pointed out that Labour had imposed a kind of bedroom tax (though not retrospective) on housing benefit in private lets in 2004.

It planned to extend the policy to social housing too, confirmed Steve "Three Brains" Webb.

As pensions minister he defended the indefensible so much better than grouchy IDS could have managed. Tory MPs gratefully cheered him. It doesn't happen often.

Buck then introduced a bill to tame the basement craze now gripping the capital's most salubrious neighbourhoods as Russian oligarchs' loot, French funk money, ill-gotten gains of the Arab elite and Greek tax-dodgers all pour into the supposedly safe haven known as the London property bubble.

Buck was talking about cavernous 14,000 sq ft bunkers for ballrooms, gyms, cinemas, staff rooms, games rooms, spas, gun rooms, garages and plant rooms, far bigger than the above-ground house. Even local duchesses protest that "no one needs that much space" – only "marginally smaller than Westminster cathedral" in one planning application.

Yet rich neighbours and planning restrictions in posh Westminster and Kensington are powerless to resist the lawyers and money which loutish developers deploy to destroy once-lovely streets that survived the Luftwaffe. The poor know dispossession only too well, but it is a novelty for duchesses.

Buck's bid to cap cellar mania was backed by dangerous leftists such as Kensington's Tory MP, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. Red Riffo's hour has come.

Planning policyLocal governmentLondonHealth policyHealthPublic services policyMichael White
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Michael Gove: the thinking man's Russell Brand

Education minister tears into shadow minister Tristram Hunt at question time as allegation of 'dumbing down' is made

Mission-creeping judges lobbed a legal hand grenade into the tranquil proceedings of the House of Commons on Monday . Even the slower MPs noticed what it could mean. There was a moment of significant silence. It came at the end of education question time, which had been marked by silences of a different kind and quality. Michael Gove, coalition education secretary and the thinking man's Russell Brand (they both articulate ideas above their station), sat as far away from the dispatch box as a cabinet minister dare during his own question time. He spoke only at the 37th minute of the hour-long session.

Even more remarkable, gorgeous Tristram Hunt did not break his duck until the 50th minute of his first-ever question time as Gove's shadow. When he did, it became immediately clear that silence had been the better strategy. Gove tore into his cheeky question about the need to thwart the coalition's "dumbing down" policy, which would stop ordinary GCSE English students reading the sacred Jane Austen in the way that posh kids do.

That isn't true and only 1% of Eng Lit students currently read a word of Austen anyway, snapped Gove/Brand. So before you try another daft question, study her yourself, he told Labour's Mr Darcy.

Try Pride and Prejudice. MPs emitted a low "oooh" as if their football had just been punctured by a bus. By coincidence one of the session's topics had been the quality of school careers advice ("don't give up the day job, Tris"), which fired up Labour MPs almost as much as news of failing free schools and academies.

Here too Gove/Brand scored an unexpected win. They may have their faults, but free schools are better audited and fixed than dud schools under local authority monopoly control, he snapped again. Gove spoke of "Labour controlled" councils (several times) but he means Tory ones too.

The next dish on the Commons menu was the foreign secretary's statement on nuclear talks with Iran (progress) and with Syria (gloom). William Hague was in statesmanlike mode and everyone behaved very responsibly, so the press gallery emptied. But before it did so Speaker Bercow (why does he flirt with Gove?) allowed a backbench point of order because it was so important, ie about themselves.

Up popped John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the culture committee who has the unenviable task of offending either Rupert Murdoch or Sienna Miller over press regulation. The MP explained that an unnamed judge (actually Lord Justice Maurice Kay) had granted a Thai football executive called Dato Worawi Makudi a fresh chance to try to sue a Labour peer for libel. Who cares? Every British politician since 1689 cares, because the 1689 bill of rights, the nearest thing Britain has to a constitution, should provide absolute protection to the offending peer, ex-FA chairman Lord (David) Triesman. Peers and MPs can say what they like during any official proceedings.

In 2011 Triesman had uttered corruption allegations against four named Fifa officials to Whittingdale's select committee under parliamentary privilege, sensibly refraining from repeating the words outside. Heaven forbid that any football fan suspect Fifa of misconduct – what could possibly be wrong with Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup? But the court of appeal upheld parliamentary free speech until Judge Kay thought it worth another lawyers' beanfeast to take a further look.

The outcome is pending as legal meters tick away. But Whittingdale thought it worth lobbing the legal grenade back – what a threat to uninhibited debate a libel suit would be for MPs and their witnesses, he warned. As MPs' shop steward Mr Speaker agreed. Fight, fight! Get the unelected judges' tanks off our AstroTurf! In post-Leveson Fleet Street they call this "the chilling effect" on free speech. But at least politicians can be kicked out by the voters.

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John Major chastens Cameron's coalition but should be mindful of his past | Michael White

A decent man, Major has his heart in the right place concerning our unequal society, but he has contributed to its rise

Oh dear. Sir John Major is at it again, the second controversy in a month. His latest intervention into public life is all over the front page of the Daily Telegraph. People ask is he restless? Determined to cause trouble for David Cameron's coalition? Is he suddenly hungry for the limelight again or chippy about the unexpected restoration of the Tories Etonian ancien régime which he had thought banished?

The short answer is none of the above. Major remains the "classless Britain" kind of Conservative he was when the still unknown Ken Livingstone watched admiringly as Councillor Major chaired Lambeth Council's housing committee during a rare interlude of Tory rule there in the late 60s. As ex-PMs go he has been a model of reticence and decorum. But he is entitled to have his say occasionally when he thinks things may be going wrong.

He's always been a decent man, a bit prickly and sensitive to slights, a good hater towards those who have done him harm, but a One Nation Tory who came up the hard way and has not forgotten what that means. With the best will in the world, those who have never known the social or economic insecurity of a rented walk-up flat in Brixton with a shared kitchen, cannot know those feelings, though imaginative ones can probably grasp what it must be like.

Major's speech to the South Norfolk Conservative Association (he has a home in Norfolk) makes several obvious points pleasing to Telegraph and Tory ears. Some are good ones. Older voters feel "unsettled" to see society embrace same-sex marriage. It is silly to be rude to Ukip voters and to squabble in public (as his party so disastrously did during his uncertain seven year rule).

Higher interest rates ("normal" ones of 3% to 5%) to yield better pensions for annuity-holders and savers? Er, up to a point, Sir John. Some pensioners do suffer as others don't. But artificially high rates would hit the recovery in the wider economy and the prospects of younger people – the respectable and aspirational poor, as Major suggested in last month's speech in the Westminster press gallery – who are also suffering.

But his most interesting point in Friday night's speech is the Alan Milburn point – disputed by some academic research again this weekend – that social mobility has stalled in modern Britain, as it did not when it took him and Milburn from poverty into the cabinet. There's plenty of evidence to support his claim that society's upper reaches are still dominated by public school and Oxbridge types, not least the sight of a moneyed and privately educated cabinet.

It remains plain silly – possibly just pandering to a party audience – to blame the Blair and Brown years. Margaret Thatcher, the grocer's daughter raised in high-minded austerity, deliberately set out to reverse postwar egalitarianism and restore a more risk-prone, entrepreneurial society after 1979. She constantly evoked Victorian Britain as her inspiration.

Social democratic Britain had got itself into a pretty unattractive pickle by 1979. So one could see her point. But the consequences were predictable and predicted, a more divided society in which the rich and clever did even better and those on the bottom suffered. Major as well as Blair and Brown tried (not hard enough?) to mitigate the worst effects, but the world was changing and globalising – so they were running up a down escalator.

That said, Major was a Thatcher lieutenant, the one she backed to succeed her after her ejection from No 10 in 1990, though it did not last for long. Once in power he replaced her poll tax with the council tax, an unfair burden on Sir John's aspirational poor which still survives. I do not doubt his sincerity in warning Cameron to look out for the silent, uncomplaining majority of Tory voters – or calling for a windfall tax on the rascally energy companies – but he contributed to the ugly manifestations he now repudiates, energy privatisation included.

We all rewrite our own history and Sir John is no different. Major attended not a comprehensive – as the Telegraph had it, since corrected online – but Rutlish Grammar school. He commuted out from Brixton, possibly feeling awkward about it all, and got three O-levels before leaving aged 15.

The distinction is important. Grammars were selective (I attended one myself), some of them mimicking public school habits, some highly elitist. Comprehensives were Labour's attempt to stop wasting so much talent at 11 – more successful than critics concede, though with problems of their own.

The Telegraph was also mistaken in saying that the education secretary, Michael Gove, was a straightforward state schoolboy. Adopted in Aberdeen he started out that way but later won a scholarship to Robert Gordon's College, the local private school. Good for him, he went on to Oxford and Tory glory, but these details matter.

And while we are on the subject, another Tory education secretary closed a record number of grammar schools. The culprit's name? Thatcher.

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Marine A's sentence must consider wider social context

Michael White makes the case for leniency in the sentencing a marine sergeant for the murder of an Afghan prisoner

The actions of Marine A that led to his court martial and conviction for the murder of an Afghan prisoner were both shocking and wrong. From what little the public could hear and see of the evidence, the verdict was correct. Does that mean he should face the maximum sentence or leniency? In my opinion, the latter. It's what we would wish for ourselves – and we sent him to Afghanistan.

"War is hell," as the American civil war commander General William Tecumseh Sherman once observed. What the forces are asked to do on our behalf remains pretty hellish and must often – always? – scar the survivors physically or mentally for life. That is not to say it is not also fascinating, exhilarating (military memoirs like The Junior Officers' Reading Club make this abundantly clear) and sometimes very necessary.

Whether Britain's 12-year war in Afghanistan is necessary is open to debate. But political and military strategy is not the responsibility of a 39-year-old Marine sergeant, even a battle-hardened veteran with experience in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. The backbone of any army, senior non-commissioned officers do what they are told to do to the best of their often considerable ability.

But anyone who has read war books, let alone experienced conflict first-hand (as I have not), knows that when someone is trying to kill you, fear is a component of the adrenaline rush. Experienced soldiers should know better than to shoot their prisoners, and most don't do so. But it happens in all wars and all forces, including ours.

In Naples '44, his memoir of being a British intelligence officer in Italy in the second world war, Norman Lewis describes how he had interviewed enough American soldiers to have concluded they had sometimes been ordered to shoot German prisoners, but that plenty of farm boys from Tennessee were troubled by this because they knew it was wrong.

Not just the Americans, of course. The British army in Iraq is still embroiled in civil and criminal proceedings. Torture and death inflicted on Kenyan prisoners during the brutal Mau Mau uprising in 1950s Kenya is only now coming into full daylight; and the counterinsurgency in Malaya and other retreat-from-empire stories are replete with such incidents.

Secret files from the second world war – including the alleged torture of elite prisoners for information at the "London Cage" in Kensington? – are still under lock and key. One of the charges laid against the notorious publisher Robert Maxwell, a penniless Czech refugee who ended the war with a Military Cross, included the shooting of prisoners. His biographer Tom Bower quotes him saying as much.

Of course, Maxwell's "take no prisoners" attitude explicitly arose from hearing that his mother and sister had been executed as "hostages" by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. I think we can all follow that, though we probably like to think we would not stoop to the level of Nazis in retaliation. Colonel Tim Collins, of Iraq war fame, sets out how badly the enemy can sometimes behave in today's Mail, which is campaigning for leniency.

Collins' military career ended over allegations (later dismissed) that he had pistol-whipped an Iraqi prisoner who had been planning to kill the colonel's Iraqi assistants.

Clearly discipline and morale in British ranks were damaged by the conflict, for which military and political leaders must accept much blame. It is a hard balancing act to maintain, though I am listening to Radio 4's Thought for the Day as I type and recoil from hints of moral equivalence between us and the German regimes of 1914 or 1939.

But Marine Sergeant A's war was fought in a local as well as a wider context. Several marines had recently been killed in Helmand. Body parts of killed or maimed colleagues were said to have been hung from trees by the enemy. "I picked up my mates' brains," said one of the other two accused who were acquitted last week at Bulford military court in Wiltshire. Marine A's father had just died too, the Mail reports.

I'm tempted to liken the killing to what some jurisdictions call " a crime of passion" – as mitigation, not an excuse. Perhaps the stress of living and fighting in such a grim environment may also explain the idiocy whereby the murder was filmed on one of the soldier's helmet cameras. The fatal footage was later found by civilian police on a laptop.

It's not hard to see how the circumstances arose that led to the prosecutions, but as in the case of SAS sergeant Danny Nightingale, convicted of illegal possession of a pistol and ammunition, the disparity between peaceful Wiltshire and Iraq or Helmand is striking.

Military authorities have their duty to uphold the law, but they are as fallible as civilian prosecutors. Most of us don't know the details – being in the courtroom always matters – but it's odd.

A case for leniency? Senior soldiers are divided on the point. Major-General Julian Thompson, of Falklands fame, urged a five-year sentence in the Times. General Lord Guthrie, and ex-chief of staff, took the other view – "murder is murder" – and urged a tough stance against "battlefield execution".

But there is a wider social context to consider. Society consists of all sorts of trade-offs about things people feel strongly about in opposing directions. They're potentially dangerous to social cohesion and some people are far too careless about stirring things up, burning poppies on Remembrance Sunday being one recent example by Islamist idiots. It didn't happen this year, fortunately.

But the immediate background to Marine A's conviction (can the trial have been timed to coincidence with the annual Remembrance celebration of military sacrifice?) included two widely reported incidents that must have been extremely distasteful to many people who could be forgiven for linking all three, however tenuously, in their own minds.

One was the escape in a burqa from TPim surveillance of Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, the 27-year-old terrorist suspect. What a chapter of accidents and idiocy, what a gift to rightwing columnists in search of easy copy and a chance (wrongly) to blame Nick Clegg. Mohamed had his passport and computer access; he had broken restrictions imposed on him 20 times; he received training in Somalia. What's more, he is suing the government for breaches of his human rights.

Hard to beat in the "you couldn't make it up" department? Apparently not. The Mail has been digging into the case of Yonas Admasu Kebede, a failed asylum seeker of Christian heritage from Ethiopia, for whom hard-pressed Newcastle city council has been required by the court of appeal to provide training, board and lodgings to allow him to become a pilot. The facts are disputed, including his age, family circumstances and background (an orphan or the abandoned son of wealthy Ethiopians?), but it is not a story to warm a taxpayer's heart.

If we are, as we seem to be, lenient, if not lax towards newcomers to whom we have only modest obligations – I put it no stronger – and possibly ambiguous feelings – again, I put it no stronger – then why not leniency towards someone who did a bad thing in very difficult circumstances in the service of the state?

Royal NavyMilitaryMichael White
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John Cole: on paper and on TV, a man of integrity

His integrity was never in doubt, visible in newspaper offices as it would later become to millions of BBC television viewers

John Cole could be a wonderfully awkward colleague, a man quick to take issue with sloppy facts and with what he might regard as sloppy opinions too. But his fundamental integrity and decency was never in doubt, visible in newspaper offices in Belfast and London as it would later become to millions of BBC television viewers.

His late fame (he was uneasy with notions of celebrity) and that of his herringbone overcoat were a source of amused delight to his friends.

John was an Ulster Protestant of progressive views, not an easy position to occupy in the second half of the 20th century when his instinctive moderation put him at odds with stances in both divided communities that were often more extreme and sometimes trendier. John didn't do trendy any more than he did frivolous.

That put him at odds with younger staff when he worked at the Guardian, who were more sympathetic to nationalist aspirations, even to republican ones, during the 30 year "Troubles" which began in 1969 and rapidly escalated into British troops on the streets, rival terrorist movements, internment and direct rule. Everyone got things wrong – including John – but whatever the differences, friendships were sustained.

By the same token Cole's adhesion to the right wing of the Labour party and the TUC – the men (mostly men in those days) struggling to modernise the ailing British economy and vituperative labour relations – was also a recipe for disagreement over the Guardian's editorial policy, about which he cared so passionately.

When I first knew him in the 1970s John was Alastair Hetherington's deputy editor at the Guardian, then still based in the Thomson-owned Sunday Times building in Gray's Inn Road, just south of King's Cross where the paper now resides. The memory of the historic shift from Manchester was vivid in many minds. Much of the paper was still produced there on hot metal linotype machines, as they had been for a century. Change was already in the air. Much more loomed.

John had been the paper's labour correspondent, then a pivotal post. One predecessor's motto had been "file late and long" so that the sub-editors would chuck it all into print unedited. As news editor and later deputy editor John was more disciplined, a moderniser. Editorials had to be written to length.

In addition to running much of the leader policy for the busy Hetherington, Cole took an active role in the wider paper, but also handled management dealings with the National Union of Journalists (I was an NUJ negotiator) during turbulent times. With hindsight that may have been a poisoned chalice.

Though some senior staff expected him to succeed Hetherington in the editor's chair in 1975, his main rival, Peter Preston, had quietly immersed himself in learning about production, especially the new technologies emerging from America. It was a doubly shrewd move.

When Preston won the editorship, Cole soon moved to the Observer, then not Guardian-owned, serving as deputy editor to Donald Trelford and engaging with the political and labour writers. Sparks sometimes flew with the famously independent columnist Alan Watkins, a Welsh non-conformist, more louche in his personal habits, less respectful of the grandees.

Throughout his successful climb through Fleet Street John had been sustained by his wife, Madge, and three sons. Then in 1981 something unexpected happened. John was appointed political editor of the BBC in the gentler pre-rolling news era. Cocky colleagues predicted that the Ulster accent would finish him off. I argued (I am still owed a fiver bet) that Cole's knowledge and integrity would secure him in the post. So it proved to be. During the Thatcher decade when partisan feelings were inflamed Tory politicians did not complain about John Cole. "We knew he was Labour, but he was straight," I recall Thatcher courtier Woodrow Wyatt telling me at the time. So John's career as a high-minded print journalist of the old school ended on the cusp of show business journalism – an instantly recognisable public figure, liked and respected, a bit like an actor who has toiled for decades in rep before achieving late stardom in a sitcom hit.

Yet what mattered to the private Cole was the common good. He once proudly showed me a letter sent by a reader who had written to the ex-president Lyndon Johnson enclosing a Cole editorial praising LBJ's Great Society anti-poverty programme. For John LBJ was not the president of the Vietnam debacle, but the anti-poverty president who had grown up poor himself. The reader had approved of this emphasis too. So the ungainly Texan's gracious acknowledgement of a good opinion from the Guardian tickled Cole's vanity as TV fame probably didn't. That was John Cole.

John ColeBBCNational Union of JournalistsNewspapersTelevision industryMichael White
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Britain's spy chiefs make daylight debut like a trio of Draculas in winter sun

The intelligence and security committee's questioning made Sir David Frost's gentle sofa technique look like Klaus Barbie

Another historic milestone in the battle for parliamentary oversight was passed when Britain's spy chiefs summoned a committee of MPs and peers to justify their behaviour and reassure the public they are not a threat to national security.

To the average Ukip voter watching on almost-live TV, the nine members of the intelligence and security committee (ISC) must have looked a shifty bunch. The chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, is a Scot, so he must be some kind of traitor. Labour's George Howarth sports a beard (communist?). Tory Mark Field was born in Germany (Hun?).

As for that Hazel Blears ( "His and Hers" as Sir Malcolm called her in his rough Edinburgh accent), she rides a motorbike. Yes, there is plenty there for the spook community to get their digital teeth into.

Obviously it would have been more appropriate if the committee had been kitted out in orange jump suits and taken to M16 HQ at Vauxhall Cross or to GCHQ in Cheltenham for their interrogation. But constitutional niceties must be respected, so the three intelligence chiefs came to Westminster's Boothroyd Room and pretended to be grilled by the ISC. Even then they insisted on a two-minute TV pause button in case anyone blurted out a SECRET.

Fat chance. A slice of the session was devoted to the sensitive question of whether or not any of Britain's "security partners" – a more comforting label than "Pakistani intelligence" – ever mistreat or even torture suspects arrested on MI6's say-so. Not these days, the squeamish politicians were assured, although hints were dropped that things weren't perfect after 9/11.

It can be more confidently stated that no one was mistreated or tortured during Thursday's chat, which made Sir David Frost's gentle sofa technique look like the Gestapo's Klaus Barbie. "Sir John, do you want to say anything?" Sir Malcolm asked Sir John Sawers of M16. "Just to add my support to what Sir Iain [Lobban of GCHQ] and Andrew [M15's Parker] have said." It was like listening to old BBC output: "Is there anything you'd like to tell us, Mr Attlee?" "No."

Sawers, Lobban and Parker were what TV crews called "doughnutted" by a wholesome cross-section of citizens who looked as if they were up from Cheltenham for the day. Like ordinary members of the public (the cunning of it) all wore poppies believed to be able to fire 1,700 rounds a minute if anyone blurted out a SECRET or even hurled a pie, as happened to Rupert Murdoch.

No one did either as the spooks made their daylight debut, a trio of Draculas in the winter sun. Sir Malcolm may have dreamed of appearing with a long-haired white cat in his lap ("this committee has ways of making you talk, Mr Parker. My associate, Sir Ming Campbell, is not as sweet as he looks"), but thought better of it, though he did prod them a bit. So did Ming and Biker Blears. No, no, no, the chiefs replied to every prod.

In this very British tea and crumpets atmosphere opacity was all. The whistleblower Edward Snowden was not mentioned until 3.09 (long after James Bond's namecheck), the Guardian not at all, though Sawers put the boot in over media leaks ("al-Qaida are lapping it up" he said) and Lobban, the one you might not want to meet after dark, got quietly angry about it. Parker was more sorrowful, perhaps because his knighthood has been lost in the post.

Watching voters must have noticed that the trio slid over past intelligence gaffes, their failure to predict 9/11 or the Arab spring. "Why did you fail to notice the second world war until 1943, Sir John?" "We are not crystal ball gazers."

They also felt sorry for themselves. Digital technology has made their carpeted lives and £2bn budget so much harder than it has for bearded Islamist boys in their stinking caves. Politicians make the rules, we just obey them, they said.

OK, if you say so, though it sounded like buck-passing. But Sir Malcolm won't tell: it's a SECRET.

SurveillanceGCHQUK security and counter-terrorismMI5MI6NSAThe NSA filesData protectionCounter-terrorism policyMichael White
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David Cameron exchanges verbal blows with Ed Miliband over A&E cuts

Prime minister insists NHS is doing better than ever and denounces crimes of the Unite union at every opportunity

David Cameron was given the Andrew Mitchell treatment on Wednesday: stitched up and misquoted in his own PMQs. How cheeky is that? And who would dare do it to him? Not vengeful coppers on this occasion, but Ed Miliband. That's who.

It happened as the two party leaders exchanged verbal blows safe inside their parallel universes. The Labour leader was cross about the grim prospects for A&E units this winter thanks to the coalition's callous sacking of NHS nurses and six-figure payoffs to sacked managers, 2,000 of whom have since been rehired.

The Tory leader kept insisting that the NHS is doing better than ever (except in Labour Wales) and that patients can barely move for the extra docs (5,000), midwives (1,000) and health visitors (ditto) piled high in every ward. Except in Wales of course, where Labour has cut health spending by 8.5% and old people are being herded into rural extermination centres to balance the budget (I made that last bit up).

But Cameron is not a man incapable of two thoughts at once – he went to Oxford. So every time an obliging Tory stooge gave him an opening (and even when they didn't) he denounced the crimes of the Unite union for engaging in what he called "industrial intimidation" during the Ineos-owned Grangemouth oil refinery dispute in Scotland.

Ah, Scotland. Here was a day when the defence secretary, Phil Hammond, was poised to announce the rescue of Govan shipyard (ancient Portsmouth's shipbuilding history being sacrificed in the process), a rare chance for Scots MPs, especially SNP ones, to express gratitude. Strange to say, they couldn't quite bring themselves to do so.

In any case the prime minister wasn't interested in an industrial drama in which management and unions had behaved well to save jobs. Cameron wanted Daily Mail-style aggro where managers' families are intimidated by aggressive union picketing, where folk are told their neighbours (the ones who work for Ineos) are "evil" and "Wanted" notices are put through what the PM called "children's letter boxes." (Shouldn't there be parental porn filters on kiddies' letter boxes? Oh, do shut up.)

The payoff for Cameron was that he could link Unite's boss, Len McCluskey, with his pawn, the man who was tormenting him about A&E. At one point the PM likened Miliband to a Sicilian mayor in hock to the Mafia ("Carry this consignment of cocaine through customs at Heathrow, Eduardo MiliBandito, or your right hand will feed the fishes").

It seemed a bit strong, even for Dave Flashman. Odder still was that the PM found no time to mention Ineos management's Sicilian threats to shut the refinery and petro-chemical plants at Grangemouth unless union members and two elected governments ponied up some pay, pension money, hard cash and guarantees. Intimidation and threats to kiddies Christmas happiness? You could say that.

Miliband didn't. Ineos boss, Jim Ratcliffe, is a tax-allergic billionaire and sports fanatic who lives in Switzerland. He has a 255ft yacht and is building new tankers in Korea. What's not to like about him? But the Labour leader has party problems of his own in nearby Falkirk and decided to stick to A&E.

At one point Miliband recycled an old dodge first used against prime minister, Jim Callaghan, by a headline writer at the Sun. "The prime minister is saying 'crisis, what crisis?' How out of touch can he be?" he roared, though Cameron said no such thing (nor did Callaghan). He'd been verballed, just like Mitchell.

Safe in his silo, Dave took no notice. There are now "20,000 fewer administrative grades in the NHS", he roared back. That sounds like a lot of grades, more than they had at the Imperial Court in Beijing. But it was good to know that the post of third assistant (2nd class) to the joint ninth under-manager for radiography is a thing of the past at Streptococcus District General Hospital.

David CameronEd MilibandUniteTrade unionsNHSHealthScotlandLabourConservativesMichael White
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If Jeremy Paxman is not fussed to vote, what hope for the rest of us?

The BBC presenter's disaffection should serve as a reminder to the political class just how unpopular it has become

Do we need to worry whether or not Jeremy Paxman votes at every election, as the Guardian reports? The BBC presenter confided to the Radio Times that he shares widespread public disdain for the "tawdry pretences" of modern politicians and the "green-bench pantomime" of Westminster politics.

Yes, we should worry. He's an influential fellow, Paxman, a TV star with high visibility and a reach far beyond BBC Newsnight's night owl audience. Only last week he upbraided the comedian and actor, Russell Brand (video) on air for admitting that he has never voted and glibly predicting a revolution ("it is totally going to happen").

Young Brand strikes some convincing emotional notes when he talks about poverty, despair and social exclusion. But he is less rigorous in his analysis of Britain's past or current state, let alone its future. As a love-peace-and-tax-the-rich man he will be disappointed if his predictions of revolution are fulfilled. It would be far more brutal than he seems to imagine and almost certainly come from the right, not the Brandite left. The populist contours are already visible.

So Paxman's political disaffection (I sense it is only part of a deeper personal disdain) should serve as a reminder to the political class just how much of a whipping boy it has become for alienation. After all, he is a well-to-do member of the political elite himself, albeit one who does less heavy lifting than the average junior minister in return for rather better rewards. In a real sense he lives off politicians (as do people like me).

When Douglas Hurd was a minister 20 years ago he made a speech warning scornful journalists that it is easier to criticise than to do. He even suggested that more such talented people ought to put their shoulders to the wheel and try it, as few do. At the time I thought Paxman was the man he most obviously had in mind. Multi-faceted pundit Sir Simon Jenkins, who writes for the Guardian, is a rare example of columnist as high-powered committee man with his own share of distinguished successes (he helped save Covent Garden from demolition) and some failures.

But Paxman speaks to a wider malaise in which the media itself plays a larger part than it ever cares to admit. Yes, politicians promise too much and under-deliver. But the idea promulgated by Brand, that they deliberately "lie and deceive'' while remaining indifferent to voter needs, is risible. If anything, current politicians are too keen to appease voter demands – better services for less tax – than to tell hard truths about our problems.

The media usually engages in similar pandering: it sides with its customers against the politicians and other handy scapegoats. We can see the process on air and in print every day; when Paxman bullies a very junior minister like Chloe Smith on Newsnight because her boss didn't turn up; when the liberal media ducks reporting sensitive issues involving (say) pressures caused by buoyant net immigration; when the Daily Mail ("the paper that hates Britain") rails against varied officialdom, as it does every day.

The headline on the Mail's front page on Tuesday is: "£10k bill to teach asylum seeker to fly". It's a colourful read about asylum-seeking brothers from Ethiopia whose parents abandoned them to the care of the council/taxpayer and who only have leave to remain in the UK until next year. Banned from access to higher education (and its costs) but helped by self-styled "public interest" lawyers they have beaten their council in the courts to win taxpayer funding for some flight training. Arggh!

As an old hand at reading the newspapers, I suspect this story is broadly true, as reported, though this is far from being safely assumed. For a host of reasons, ranging from haste to blinkered partisanship, all newspapers get things wrong (including the Guardian) and edit selectively. Will the "flying asylum seekers" be reported elsewhere? If not, is it because the Mail's version is flawed – or because we avert our gaze?

It's not all polarised. Even Richard Littlejohn's Tuesday column is quite civil to Muslims (despite the headline). What troubles me most are issues where coverage is so divergent between news outlets that readers or viewers might fairly assume they were examining completely different events or proposals. Why does it matter? Consensus can be a boring but necessary part of life, at home as much as in politics. Compromise is part of the process of politics whereas polarisation fuelled by outrage (real or fake) is more fun, but also more dangerous. Just look at the righteous naivety of the Tea Party in the US, ravaging the Republican party as a fighting force and doing a lot of harm – cliff-hanging budget battles, for example – in the process.

As one party wit put it: "We're running out of angry white men" to win all but local elections. But angry nationalist populism is on the rise across Europe in year six of a recession that has blighted so many lives and worsened economic inequality.

Indeed in Britain, Europe is the obvious example of Tea Party-style divisions that are deep and cultural. Ukip is its manifestation and should be called the Sovereign-Tea party, as an FT columnist quipped the other day, though polling data suggests that the underlying driver of Ukip's electoral success is fear of the effects of immigration on the economy and society, most acutely in parts of the country less directly affected by it.

Do we discuss it like sensible adults? The Mail routinely accuses the BBC of soft-soaping the issue (and is sometimes right). Tuesday's Mail carries the headline: "How migrants leave a £100bn hole in the public purse", based on an academic study from University College London, the full findings of which were rather more complex. On Radio 4's Today programme a co-author of the study was interviewed with the former ambassador Sir Andrew Green, of Migration Watch, a more experienced interviewee – and it showed.

Health tourism, benefit claimant rates, long-term pension obligations, depressed wage rates, demographic trends, the need for skilled workers, there are plenty of surveys and studies that offer differing conclusions or can be interpreted to suit prior convictions. Voters need honest help from politicians, thinktanks and the media in navigating these tricky policies in ways that command confidence, however grudging, from both right and left.

Paxman was right to tell Brand that if he doesn't vote – he never does – he can't complain. But if the privileged presenter is really as disaffected as he sounds, what hope is there for us lesser mortals? Try harder, Jeremy.

Voter apathyJeremy PaxmanBBCNewsnightBBC2Television industryMichael White
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