Electoral reform is a class issue

So, at long last, after much to-ing and fro-ing and walking to the edge and walking back again, Gordon Brown has committed the government to legislating for a referendum on electoral reform.

The proposed reform is, of course, the Alternative Vote (AV) and not, as many of us have argued for, a system of Proportional Representation (PR). Still, it is hard not to feel some sympathy for the Labour party's 'AV centre' in this debate. When they are not being hassled by PR enthusiasts like me to their left, they are up against a stone wall of conservatism, resistant to any change, within the Labour party itself.

Thus, in today's Guardian report, we hear Tom Harris MP telling us that electoral reform is 'an issue for half a dozen Guardian readers in [my] constituency.' In other words: this is a middle-class issue of little interest or relevance to working-class people.

All those in the Labour party who oppose electoral reform, and especially PR, should take time out from reading The Guardian to take just one look at that sparky publication, The American Political Science Review. They should look at an important paper by the political scientists David Soskice and Torben Iversen. Its called ‘Electoral Institutions and the Politics of Coalitions: Why Some Democracies Redistribute More than Others’, published in the American Political Science Review 100 (2), 2006, pp.165-181.

The gist of the article is that PR systems give you higher social spending and lower economic inequality than Westminster-style majoritarian systems (controlling for other variables). It thereby demolishes – or at least seriously challenges – the assumption that I suspect underlies a lot of opposition to PR in Labour ranks: the assumption that prospects for progressive policies are maximised in the long-run by having an electoral system in which Labour has a fighting chance of forming a parliamentary majority. That’s a piece of Labourist romanticism which – so Soskice and Iversen imply – has no basis in fact.

As I argued in an earlier post, the case for PR is not only that it is fairer in the way it apportions seats in relation to votes. I agree with Peter Kellner and others that this is not necessarily a decisive consideration. It is also that it has better long-term consequences for policy outcomes than majoritarian electoral systems. That, at least, is the finding of the Soskice-Iversen study.

For those of us who support PR, Brown's proposed referendum on AV puts us in an awkward position. I don't know whether to laugh, cry or cheer. On balance, I am currently inclined to agree with Lisa Harker's analysis at Liberal Conspiracy and support the proposed referendum as offering an improvement on the present system. I also understand Sunder's argument that it could help to pave the way for a more proportional system. However, like some commentators in the thread at Liberal Conspiracy, I also think it entirely possible we will get stuck with AV and that yet another chance to change the political system fundamentally in a progressive direction will be squandered.

If it is squandered, then Labour's opponents of reform will bear a large share of the responsibility. So, to those in the Labour party who want to present electoral reform as an issue of relevance only to bourgeois liberal Guardian-readers (like me), I say: how dare you oppose a system that – on the evidence of Soskice and Iversen’s study – is better for social spending and economic equality, for the material interests of working-class people?

Memo to Pickles: the answer to the Tory dilemma in Barking

Paul Waugh has the very interesting scoop that the Tories appear to have taken seriously the idea of dropping out of the General Election in Barking, or putting up a paper candidate and suspending their campaign.

They aren't going to.

CCHQ mused that it would reflect well on the party's new shinynes and comfort with the multi-ethnic reality of modern Britain if it appeared willing to eschew narrow partisan interest to keep the racist candidate Nick Griffin out of the Commons. (So the "right thing to do" comes with a fair dash of enlightened partisan self-interest on the national stage, so the thinking went, but let's not quibble too much).

And they went so far as to consult Searchlight, who naturally told them that the plan could probably do rather more to harm than help the anti-BNP cause. (Democratic parties not contesting the full slate of council seats in what looks like hopeless territory under FPTP is one of the factors that has helped the BNP get a foothold).

Back to the drawing board!

And you cynics at the back should also be prepared to give Tory CCHQ some credit for being worried about our shared democratic commitments.

So perhaps we can find some other way to achieve these desirable goals.

Perhaps without requiring the Tories to sacrifice their own interests.

Nor remove from the voters of Barking the chance to have a say on the big issues like the economy, tax, spending and debt between the major parties.

Hmm.

Scratches head.

Eureka!

What if we had preferential voting. Say, the Alternative Vote.

I'm sure I heard somebody talking about that earlier on.

The deal would go something like this:

Voters in Barking could vote for whoever they really wanted to win.

Then, if most of the voters wanted to keep Griffin out, they could achieve that too.

Easy as 1, 2, 3.

So we would find out whether Griffin or an opponent had most support, and I expect a majority would cast preferences for other democratic, non-racist candidates. (It is a scenario in which I would vote Tory, or cast a third preference for our democratic opponents on the right anyway!).

No pacts!

No mess!

Democracy!

So Mr Eric Pickles, can't you see the point?

Five reasons to be cheerful about the Alternative Vote ...

Gordon Brown has today set out the government's plan to legislate for a referendum, to be held within 18 months of the General Election, on whether to change the electoral system to the Alternative Vote.

Next Left has tried to provide accurate information - see"What is the Alternative Vote?" for resources as well as to debate the issues. Peter Kellner believes AV best balances different goals of an electoral system while; Stuart White has consistently argued against this and for PR as producing the most egalitarian social outcomes.

I have supported electoral reform (and PR) all of my adult life, move often arguing for Labour to faster. But I think the (non-PR) Alternative Vote would help achieve a major pluralist change in British political culture, so don't agree with (many) fellow reformers who think it barely changes anything at all.

I argued that in a Fabian Review essay in Autumn 2007How to reform the electoral system that AV is a desirable pluralist change which would break the century-long reform deadlock. I have defended that argument more recently in debates between reformers for Progress and a Guardian correspondence with Neal Lawson.

So what are the key arguments for the Alternative Vote?

1. Every MP needs to seek 50% of the vote, strengthening the constituency link.

Next Left has shown why AV means voters can stop the 'Jedward' candidate, in a scenario where one X Factor act has most initial support among 10 acts in week one. We don't crown them the victor if the vast majority of the audience would prefer another act to beat them. Under first past the post, we do.

In choosing a single winner, in almost every institution in society, the system used usually tries to find a candidate with majority support. (Note that the Conservatives use transferable votes and additional ballots to select candidates with majority support among their own selectorate, yet argue that the voters should not get the same chance).

2. An end to tactical voting: every voter can use their heart and head.

Many voters - Labour voters in the South, Tories in the north, Greens and LibDems where their party isn't competitive, strong Eurosceptics worried about a 'wasted' vote letting a more pro-European candidate in face a tactical voting dilemma. So AV, unlike first-past-the-post, allows every party to poll its full support everywhere, and would for the first time see elections reveal the actual patterns of support across Britain. (Which could also help to depolarise the regional divide in current voting patterns, which might impact on policy too).

Which means a very important change ... No more dodgy campaign bar graphs ever again. This has an enormous impact on the campaign dynamics. At present, in many constituencies and by-elections, the parties seem most focused on producing misleading bar graphs about the horse race. 'Only we can beat X here' becomes the most important message. Now, it would have to be about why voters should support them: the content of their campaign and argument, not their place in the horse-race.

3. Picking the right winning party.

The Alternative Vote, like the current electoral system is a "majoritarian" system. But, because it is mostly challenged by supporters of PR, its major advantage over the current system is overlooked. It is much better at giving a majority to the party which is most popular at national level.

What few people have noticed is how far a shift in electoral geography means the first-past-the-post system is broken in this crucial 'what it does on the tin' claim of its own supporters. Its chances of electing a majority government at all are much lower over the last three decades: its ability to pick the right winner in a close contest depends on an accident of geography which has not been in place for two decades.

It has got away with it because we so rarely have close elections: the two parties only finished within 5% of each other last time for the first time in 30 years. Whenever they do, the electoral system struggles to pick the winner. This was the focus of my Fabian Review essay which set out why:

the hidden truth of our democracy is that the electoral system is broken, and no longer fit for purpose. If elections ever became close contests again, this would reveal that we are playing Russian roulette with British democracy every four or five years.

Peter Kellner's post refers to his analysis (in his submissiont to Jenkins) showing that AV would have given a majority to the major party with more support among the whole electorate, while FPTP would not. This is an argument I have never seen FPTP supporters respond to, but Kellner's historical analysis appears valid.

4. AV is the most extremist-proof electoral system

AV would make it harder than the current system for the BNP to win seats in the House of Commons, requiring them to appeal to half the electorate in a seat like Barking, removing the chances of coming through with 25-33% in a three or four way contest.

By the same token, it is difficult for small parties. However, the Greens' chances would probably be much better than those of the BNP, since one can imagine them winning second preferences from a range of parties in their top target seats in places like Brighton. Since the removal of the "wasted vote" argument allows smaller parties to poll their full support: it makes clear, where environmental candidates may attract say 10% of the vote, that candidates who want to win face more pressure to have something to say about their concerns and issues.

5. More pluralism and grown-up politics

The central argument for AV is less about proportionality than about pluralism. Our current electoral system creates incentives for much exaggerated hostilities between those who you are ideologically closest to. Try talk to LibDems and Greens about each other, especially if there is a by-election on! But politics, like society, is becoming more plural, but the electoral incentives are against this. Preferential voting changes this.

What I think is especially important about preferential systems (AV, AV+ or STV) is that they insist on pluralism on the campaign trail, rather than only making it part of a post-election negotiation. (Some PR systems, like those in Scotland and Wales, do not do this). If you want and need votes from most voters, not only your natural supports, it provides a positive reason for a politics of mutual respect while arguing differences more clearly too.

***

Questioning common arguments against AV.

1. AV would be a fix to keep the Conservatives out forever.

This is a popular myth, which we will hear from newspaper columnists and bloggers. But it is evidently nonsense. A preferential voting system did not prevent Boris Johnson being London Mayor.

There is no doubt that the Conservatives would have been able to form majority governments several times under AV, including in the 1980s. The reason is simple: many more voters preferred a Conservative-led to a Labour-led government.

The difference would have been subtler, but still significant: Conservative candidates would have had to appeal to a wider electorate than was the case in the 1980s.
And the lack of any checks and balances on the Thatcher government would now be different in a range of ways: devolution would prevent the poll tax being imposed on Scotland without consent; the human rights act and the loss of a built-in hereditary Tory majority in the Lords would check the 'elective dictatorship' which Lord Halisham had warned about under the previous Labour government.

Almost all claims about party advantage or disadvantage under AV are exaggerated, and any attempt to reform electoral systems on that basis is likely to be frustrated too. (Nor is it possible, when a referendum is held, given that a narrow party agenda would never win a broad public majority). Voters would react to a new system in ways that can not be predicted.

AV would have helped Labour in 1997, when everbody who did not vote Labour or Tory preferred Labour to win, but would have hurt them in 1983, when the opposite was true. (An AV election at the time of the last European elections would probably have been worse for Labour). AV could well be good for the Liberal Democrats. The Jenkins Report suggested it would halve the disproportional under-representation. But many LibDems believe their share of first preference votes could fall (as it has done in most PR contests), as voters have a full range of alternatives.

Nobody knows for sure would gain or lose as voters and parties adapt to a more open system. All that can be said confidently is that it would be better for candidates and parties with a broad popularity, worse for "pariah" parties which are widely detested, and that it would disadvantage candidates and parties with intense but narrow support if they are also strongly opposed by a majority of voters. Such candidates and parties can win under first-past-the-post.

2. AV "exaggerates majorities"

There is something in this common argument from PR supporters, but I don't think the projections from the highly unusual 1997 election are the knock-down argument that is often presented. (Especially as voters behave differently in different systems). The scale of the 1997 election under first-past-the-post was itself a kind of "do it yourself AV" among the voters against an almost unlikely "pariah" party of government. 31% voted Tory, and 32% preferred a Tory-led government to a Labour one, which was the preference of three-fifths of all voters.

What is overlooked is the important difference between AV and first-past-the-post in why a party wins a majority.

Under AV, only a party which is broadly popular across the whole electorate can win big. That isn't the case under FPTP, where an efficiently concerntrated vote could see a party win with a plurality even if most voters feared that party a great deal. (So extreme parties like the German Nazis or Communists in Weimar Germany would have done better under FPTP than a preferential system).

This is because AV picks a winning party for a relevant, not an irrelevant, reason.

The idea that FPTP favours large parties, not small parties, is a myth. It favours geographically concentrated parties, big and small, and discriminates against those with support around the country. Welsh Nationalists often do better than the big parties on a votes to seats ratio for Westminster; Scottish Nationalists do much worse! This is morally and politically arbitrary.

What matters under AV is how popular the leading candidates and parties are with the whole electorate, including those who did not vote for them.

3. AV is not vulnerable to the anti-PR arguments which resonate most strongly

AV is not PR. Whether this is a strength or weakness is a matter of taste.

The point is missed often by supporters of the current system, who have rarely paid attention to what they are 'agin'.

AV is still quite frequently wrongly described by politicians and commentators as the "Alternative Vote system of proportional representation" (as in ConservativeHome's immediate reaction last year). This then allows a range of stock GCSE politics stock objections to PR to be voiced, even though these are entirely irrelevant to a comparison between the current system and AV.

The following anti-PR arguments are irrelevant to any argument against AV from supporters of the current system. I fail to see what of value in the common system is lost in a switch to AV, and FPTP supporters making anti-PR arguments do not provide one.

* "The tail wags the dog" and smoke-filled rooms.

This objection of "disproportionate" power to smaller parties under PR in coalition negotiations is irrelevant here, because AV does not make coalitions more likely. (It is also the case that AV+ would often deliver majority governments, in all but two post-war elections, but would require parties to reach a higher share to win a majority).

* "Two classes of MPs".

I am sceptical of the importance of this charge, though it is one often voiced by MPs, as an objection to the Scottish/Welsh German-style system. (Some MPs are also hostile to overlapping constituency responsibilities under STV: that seems to me a weaker argument still). In any event, it does not apply to AV at all. There is no change to the constituency boundaries at all. Similarly, any concern about larger constituencies, under a regional PR system or STV in rural areas, or the (marginally) larger AV+ constituencies falls too.

* Letting in the BNP.

AV would make it harder for the BNP to win representation than the current system does, though parties would have more incentive to address real issues which were driving support for protest candidates, beyond an extreme racist fringe. Several forms of PR (such as those in use in Scotland, Wales and London would make BNP representation more likely), though that can be argued as throwing up a democratic preference that should be voiced and addressed.

***
So why not PR?

This is a good challenge. A good argument which can be made for PR, as opposed to AV, or indeed for the Alternative Vote + which is halfway between the two, despite being labelled "PR" by most. I am sympathetic to it: I agree with Stuart White about the egalitarian outcomes delivered in more consensual democracies, and am against any 'theological' arguments between different systems. I will support any more pluralist system which can carry the day, support STV for local government and a PR elected Senate alongside an AV or AV+ Commons, and have supported calls for ideas like citizens' conventions to deliberate about the choice which should be put. (But I don't favour a multi-option referendum: it would be a tactical disaster, where supporters of the status quo could easily sow "systems confusion" to try to win).

But I also think it is much harder to win that argument for full PR than its supporters often assume.

There is broad support for PR but it is also quite shallow - and I do not think the broad cultural argument for a shift to full PR has been won.

Take these findings from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust polling last summer.

Put one way, the case for PR is broadly popular, and has been consistently for 20 years.

This country should adopt a new voting system that would give parties seats in Parliament in proportion to their share of the votes.

63% agree with that, and only 22% disagree, so what possible problem could there be for refomers.

And 56% agree that the electoral system produces governments which don't represent most ordinary people (25% disagree).

But here is the very next question, to the same 1000 people in the same poll.

The present system of voting is the only way that the country can get strong one-party governments which can get things done.

Well, 53% agree with that and only 29% disagree.

61% would like a referendum to sort the issue out, with 24% against.

That is where the case for PR is most vulnerable: coalitions and power-sharing remain dirty words in British political discourse and alien to the British political culture, even as our institutions change and support for doing politics differently grows.

This is an argument (along with 'lets in extremists' - which has much more resonance now than two years ago) where PR advocates have struggled to engage fully with how to win the argument with non-expert audiences).

I would argue that the case can be made better in practice than theory. So I argued in the electoral reform debate at Saturday's Progressive London conference that there was a "paradox of pluralism". Electoral reform (whether PR or AV) would help to unlock a more pluralist culture in British politics, which the current system rules out. But to get electoral reform, we need to win the argument that pluralism works in politics.

But this need not be a 'chicken and egg' problem. We see stronger support for PR in Scotland after a decade of devolution.

If we want to create a more pluralist politics, we have to get on and show that it can work. I think the Alternative Vote could help us to do just that.

The Alternative Vote would make British politics most engaging and more pluralist. It is difficult to see any strong argument, except force of habit, for opposing the change. Nor should the strongest advocates of pluralism and PR make what they see as the best the enemy of the good.

Auf Wiedersehen Oskar

How far was the political breakthrough of Germany's Die Linke party due to the charismatic leadership of Oskar Lafontaine? Once the SPD's candidate for Chancellor and its Finance Minister in the third way era, Lafontaine is now standing down as leader of the left and leaving politics, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

In this guest post, Denis MacShane reflects on Lafontaine's impact across several eras of German politics, and asks how his departure will change the politics of the German left.

***
The shock news that Oskar Lafontaine the eternally youthful No-sayer of the German left is standing down as leader of the Left Party (Die Linke) and as a German MP opens the door to fascinating possibilities for the German left.

Lafontaine underwent a serious cancer operation last November and has now announced his retirement from politics.

This removes one of the most charismatic mobilisers on the European left. Lafontaine has been a star figure and unfulfilled hope of the German left ever since the Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt era came to an end with Schmidt's defeat as Chancellor in 1982.

Like Labour in the 1980s or the French socialists today, the German left after 1982 went up every cul-de-sac they could find.

Lafontaine played a left card by calling for Germany to quit Nato. He played an anti-union card by opposing the German unions' campaign for a 35 hour week which was won just as the relatively closed economy of west Europe imploded under the pressure of Asia's export focused industrialisation.

Lafontaine had a power base as Premier of the small Saar Land or region on the French border.

He ran against Helmut Kohl in 1990. His Cassandra-like warnings that the economic consequences of German unification would cripple German growth and job-creation after the fall of the Berlin Wall have been more than justified.

But Cassandras never win elections and Lafontaine the orator darling of the left and the 1968 generation could not reach out to a wider audience. Like Neil Kinnock he was the hope of his party but not of the wish of the voters.

He was attacked while speaking in the 1990 election and his knife wielding assailant cut deep as much into his psyche of the Peter Pan of the German left as into his flesh.

In March 1998, I was sitting with Gerhard Schroeder in his armoured BMW after speaking with the future SPD chancellor at a closing meeting in his Lower Saxony Land campaign.

It was Oskar Lafontaine conceding that Schroeder, his eternal rival since young socialist days for the affection of the SPD activists, would be the candidate to take on an enfeebled Helmut Kohl in the September 1998 federal election.

Schroeder and Lafontaine chatted amicably as Gerd offered Oscar the top job of Finance Minister and they discussed who would get other jobs. Suddenly Schroeder realised there was a British MP in the car listening and noting and put down the car phone.

Lafontaine was fascinated by Labour's success and the SPD's 1998 campaign was modelled on Labour's 1997 win even to the point of copying the pledge card which I handed to Lafontaine.

But in government Lafontaine could not handle the über realism and "New Middle" style of Schroeder. The radical darling of German politics was the Green Party's Joschka Fischer who became Europe's most innovative and stylish foreign minister leaving Lafontaine in the shade.

The SPD had inherited a poor debt and fiscal position from Kohl and had no idea how to set about reducing the 4 million unemployed. Schroeder decided to rebuild German industrial capitalism by holding down wages and Lafontaine refused to be the police man for this policy.

Unlike Britain where there was an almost Teutonic iron discipline in the Labour cabinet until after the 2005 election German SPD politics were chaotic, vain, and driven by personal ambition and ego.

After 2000 Lafontaine looked over the political landscape and reverted to a youtful leftism. He launched his own left party and then merged it with the left-over Stalinists of East German communism who had a following amongst those East Germans who were the loser of unification.

He found plenty of supporters in west Germany as many SPD activists could not stomach the compromises of Schroeder's New Labourish embrace of global capitalism.

Germany's PR system of voting makes it easy for any breakaway left party to get some traction and Die Linke won seats at regional and national level. The question of whether the SPD should form an alliance with Die Linke bedevilled and bedevils German left politics as does the relationship with the anti-industry Greens.

Like a left version of David Owen there were too many bitter memories of Lafontaine walking out of his party and government to make rapprochement easy.

Advocates of ultra electoral reform might ponder the break down of the democratic left in Germany which PR has helped accelerate.

The winners in terms of increased votes as a result of the economic crisis has been the liberal rightist Free Democrats who are now in coalition with Angela Merkel's CDU. Lafontaine, far from opening the door to a new era of left politics in Germany just greased the slip path to power for the right.

But German politics will be duller with his passing. There is no one of his stature in Die Linke. A new generation of SPD leaders are now in place though as yet no one of Willy Brandt's or Helmut Kohl's stature or Gerhard Schroeder's vote-winning appeal has emerged.

But with Oskar now retired the German left may find that more unity, more discipline, and more team-work are better ways to win power than compelling oratory and catching headlines.

***

Denis MacShane is Labour MP for Rotherham and a member of the Fabian Executive Committee. You can read more of his commentary on international issues at denismacshane-international.blogspot.com.

Sources close to ...

We can expect Andrew Rawnsley's new book 'The End of the Party' to contain plenty of revelations to grip the Westminster classes. Only after Servants of the People was published in 2000 did the Blair-Brown rivalry became such a dominant central narrative of British political reporting over the last decade. It seems likely that the 700 pages of the new book will be informed by just as many people singing like canaries about the moments of high drama inside New Labour over the last decade.

Premature excitement led to a bizarre new piece of journalese being coined yesterday in the Mail on Sunday's front page splash yesterday, reporting "claims linked to a new book" by Andrew Rawnsley.

In other words, as the story went on to report, "It is not known if the allegations referred to above have been included in the book", though rumours of "what may or may not be in Mr Rawnsley's book have been circulating for several weeks".

It must be quite a boon to hard-pressed newsrooms that the MoS can put a 'journalist asks No 10 about controversial rumour' scoop on the front-page itself. Surely anything at all can now be splashed if you are prepared to pick up the phone and get it denied. (Though there were several follow-ups claiming the book does "contain" the reports, in The Spectator, The First Post and several blogs. It may do or it may not, but none of us know).

The Mail's splash may have been a clumsy attempt to spoil the forthcoming Observer serialisation of the Rawnsley book, which will be one of the first major hits of the new-look Observer, due to hit the newstands in three weeks time.

The Guardian today reports that.

The Mail on Sunday has not seen the book, not due out for some weeks. It may make uncomfortable reading for Brown, but not for reasons given by the Mail.

So there are good reasons to think that may be an authoritative steer.

***

When it is published, the new Rawnsley book will also provide plenty of chances to play 'guess the source', though as Robert Harris pointed out in his Guardian review of 'Servants of the People', not all of the secret sources did an enormous amount to cover their tracks last time around.

And one day all may be revealed, since Rawnsley wrote in the preface of the first book that:

“In the modest expectation that someone may find it of a future use, I will make my source material available when the current Prime Minister is no longer in power.”

Though he has not taken that opportunity yet during the last two and a half years.

However, the longest-running Westminster sourcing debate was not about something in Servants of the People but an earlier 1998 column, reporting Blairite frustration at the Paul Routledge biography of Gordon Brown.

This was the highly contentious passage:

Mr Blair has always thought, in the words of one Cabinet Minister, 'that he owes a large debt to Gordon'. This sense of debt comes not from a feeling on Blair's part that he stole the leadership from Brown. It comes from an appreciation of the crucial and difficult contribution Mr Brown made to the modernisation of Labour, and an understanding of how hard it was for him to lay aside his ambition to lead the party. As a result, Mr Blair is prepared to put up with a lot from Mr Brown.

But not, I get the strong impression, much more. The Chancellor is exhausting the patience of the Prime Minister. According to someone who has an extremely good claim to know the mind of the Prime Minister, he still regards Mr Brown as 'a great talent' and 'a great force'. But he is wearying of the Chancellor's misjudgments, of which this was 'a classic'. It is time, in the words of the same person, for Mr Brown to get a grip on his 'psychological flaws '. The Government cannot afford any further 'lapses into this sort of nonsense'. If this is what Mr Blair thinks - and I have very good reason to believe that it is - then the Prime Minister is right.

Alastair Campbell was frequently accused, and vehemently denied, being the source who had "an extremely good claim to know the mind of the Prime Minister".

Yet the storm created by that Sunday newspaper column may have been because there was at least one person with a rather more direct claim "to know the mind of the prime minister" than that.

What Dave should be asked about JT

There is a lot of coverage of the private life of England football captain John Terry in the Sunday newspapers.

The failure of a Terry super-injunction is being seen as an important case in the issue of media freedom, as John Kampfner argues, though it remains the case that we have developed quite extensive privacy case law with very little Parliamentary or public scrutiny.

The more parochial football question is whether Terry should be England captain in a World Cup year. The 'cash for access' allegations in December made over Terry's involvement in tours to the Chelsea training ground seemed potentially more serious than the FA acknowledged publicly. (Terry claimed the money was going to charity). It is harder to see why Terry's private life is relevant, especially as a good deal of the criticism seems to focus less on his having an extra-marital affair but that he did so with a teammate's ex-partner.

You might well expect politicians to steer clear of the JT question.

But there is surely one political leader who ought to be asked about the implications for his own flagship policy.

Conservative leader David Cameron is very keen on sending "signals" about marriage.

Isn't this the perfect opportunity for him to explain to us all why John Terry, the
£170,000 a week England captain who is worth an estimated £17 million, certainly merits the Cameron pro-marriage tax break?

Back to the future ... or not

I have set out why I am very sceptical about the conventional Westminster wisdom that Gordon Brown made a political mistake in calling the Iraq inquiry, because it is perfectly obvious that he would be getting slaughtered politically and in the media had he not called it, and that the conventional wisdom would then be that he only had himself to blame for such an obvious unforced error.

Now, watch out for a further twist. Let's find out whether any of those who have warned about the dangers of dredging up old ghosts also turn out to be tempted by a "Why Labour must regret that it ever let Tony go?" meme.

My ex-colleague Martin Bright is first out of the blocks with the eye-catching journalistic conceit of Tony Blair? The next Labour prime minister, but I rather doubt he will be the last.

Bright writes:

I was not a great fan of Blair in power. I do not share his politics. But watching yesterday's performance I couldn't help thinking back to when he first left office. I appeared on Newsnight at the time and argued that there would be a massive Blair-shaped hole in British politics when he was gone ...

In its present mood, Labour will never have him back, but that may just be a sign of the depth of the crisis within the party.

Well, that could certainly be one strategy to make a 2015 or even 2020 General Election about the Iraq war of 2003 as well. As we saw yesterday, Blair remains sincerely committed to the decisions for which he was responsible, while his defence further entrenches the views of his opponents and supporters.

The real depth of a Labour crisis would be in believing that only an ex-leader could offer leadership in future.

So, if Martin wants to try to shake off that despair, perhaps he might find useful a bracing polemic It's over: Labour's only hope is the next generation in The Spectator for the last party conference.

the next generation [should] begin seizing control of the party. The fortysomethings who now dominate the Cabinet have left it far too late to move against the Blair-Brown duumvirate that held the party in thrall for too long.

Its a piece from "a lifelong Labour supporter, on why all of those who have led the party to its present sorry state must now stand aside".

By one Martin Bright.