The story of Jory, the dissembling Tory: Eustice – naïve farmer or knowing lobbyist?

A disproportionate number of the new breed of Tory (and Lib Dem) politicians seem either to emerge from the caring, sharing ‘third sector’ or from the serried ranks of the marketing and public relations industries. We have both kinds in Cornwall. Tory George Eustice is one of the breed of professional lobbyists, whose job is to try and influence MPs in ways that benefit their clients and their profits or passions.

Back in February David Cameron recognised the ticking bomb that was lobbying.

'It is the next big scandal waiting to happen... an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money... And we all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear, the ex-ministers and ex-advisors for hire, helping big business find the right way to get its way'

In the USA corporate lobbing goes on incessantly and relentlessly, pitting millions of dollars against anything – healthcare, measures against global warming, restrictions on oil companies - that might affect their god-given right to make profits. With the Americanisation of our politics this is our future too, with lobbyists, strings pulled by their corporate masters, sluicing money into influencing parliamentarians.

It doesn’t take a political scientist to conclude that trust in politics will never be restored while shadowy lobbyists are allowed to go on buying influence well outside the light of public scrutiny. One common-sense measure therefore would be to make the clandestine world of lobbying more open. That’s why the campaign group ‘38 degrees’, who want to clean up our corrupt politics, have urged candidates in this election to pledge to support a mandatory public register of lobbyists. This will help to restore confidence in the political process by making the role of big business more transparent.

On January 12th George Eustice, Tory candidate for Camborne and Redruth, agreed that ‘we all have a role to play in restoring trust in politics’. At that time Eustice still worked for lobbying firm Portland Communications, although he has since given up this job, reputedly after pressure was exerted from his old Oxford friend David Cameron. However, despite his desire to ‘restore trust’ Eustice is refusing to sign up to the 38 degrees campaign for a register of lobbyists.

Indeed, George has been extremely coy in general about his links to the lobbying industry. On 18th March he complained that ‘local Lib Dems’ had attacked him for having a ‘real job [sic] in the real world’. He claimed that he didn’t hide this. Far from it; there was ‘widespread media coverage’ when he took the job in March 2009. Strange in that case that in the seven separate communications received from him by the voters of Camborne-Redruth, there isn’t one single word about his lobbying links. And this despite many paragraphs spent giving great biographical detail about his local roots and the family farm. Surely there’s no reason to hide this ‘real job’ in the ‘real world’ of the private sector.

Instead, when he eventually got around to admitting his recent employment history on his blog he adroitly deflected attention by a somewhat disingenuous description of Julia Goldsworthy’s ‘expenses’.

Meanwhile, all the other candidates in the constituency were signing up to the simple pledge for more accountability about lobbying. But George hasn’t. Last Friday he was confronted by a 38 degrees activist at a hustings in Camborne, where they asked why he was refusing to sign up. According to the activist Eustice wouldn’t reply, promising to do so later, before exiting the meeting very quickly with his minders. One of those informed the activist that all the emails sent by campaign supporters asking George to sign up had indeed been received.

But a day later Eustice denied this. Despite 38 degrees having used an email address still to be found on a Cornish Tory website, he conveniently claimed no emails had in fact been received. Turning things against the campaigners he told his readers this was due to their incompetence in getting the email address wrong. In addition Eustice resorted to a simplistic and tribalist response, painting the campaigners as merely a politically motivated smear campaign being run by local Lib Dems.

This was somewhat inaccurate. For all I know those who have emailed him unsuccessfully may well include some Lib Dems. But they also include Cornish activists, members of the Celtic League and even me, and I would rather plunge my bleeding hand into a river teeming with hunger-crazed piranha fish than use it to vote for the Liberal Hypocrats.

Nonetheless, having begun to sow seeds of confusion Eustice then completely misrepresented the 38 degrees campaign. According to him a register of MP’s financial interests (which already exists) would suffice. This neatly ignores that the demand is actually for a register of lobbyists not MPs, so that the public can know who is lobbying, what corporations and clients they are lobbying on behalf of, and how much they are spending to influence our elected representatives.

Lumping together corporate lobbyists with campaigning groups, Eustice crassly continued: ‘People shouldn’t fear that politicians are exposed to the arguments made by charities, campaign groups or businesses. After all, we live in a democracy and we should have free debate.’ But not free enough apparently to know how much big business is spending to buy our MPs. According to Eustice this is best left to politicians who can ‘then exercise judgement about what they think is the right thing to do.’

Having stumbled on the clever device of merging big business professional lobbying and the local scout hut group, Eustice then claimed the moral high ground. ‘I rarely sign up to pledges directly even where I have a lot of sympathy with the cause … The irony is that 38 Degrees are a lobby group themselves and, to date, the only candidate in this seat to resist their lobbying is me.’ As Spinwatch puts it, this type of argumentation looks ‘obfuscatory’. Precisely what one might expect from someone with considerable experience working in an ‘industry’ where there is a fine dividing line between truth and falsehood.

On Tuesday this week 38 degrees decided to raise £500 for an advert in the Western Morning News to point out that Eustice was the only candidate in the constituency refusing to sign up to this pledge. This was approved by the paper in principle. The money duly raised, the campaign group was then told yesterday that the Morning News was refusing to publish the ad – on the advice of their lawyers!

This seems extremely odd as the ad was merely informing voters who had and had not signed up to the pledge. But plainly the Morning News had thought better of allowing an attack on one of their own. Or had they been subject to undue influence? We will never know. What we do know is that George Eustice prefers to protect the right of big business to lobby MPs in private to making corporate lobbying open and transparent so that voters might ‘exercise their judgement’ on these matters.

57 varieties? Leftist parties in the election

While the nations settle down tonight to watch the latest episode of the ‘Have I got talent? No’ contest, we can take the opportunity to escape the hocus-pocus of Middle England political show-biz for a moment. Let’s remember that there are actually by my count 131 candidates from not quite 57 (more like 26) parties to the left of the Greens standing in this election. Not that you’d know it from their media coverage which in general is even more dire than that for MK.

I begin with a rag tag and bobtail of non-socialist leftist parties. The most venerable is the continuity Liberal Party, whose policies are righteous left Liberalism spliced with genuine internationalism (something that makes the Cornish Liberals’ endorsement of Ukip a standing mystery). The Liberals were intending to stand six candidates (down from 14 in the last two elections and 55 in 1997) but one cocked up her nomination papers.

The well-meaning humanitarianism that glows from the Liberals is nothing compared with that of the Peace Party, whose three candidates enliven the hustings in Surrey and Sussex. Here we find benevolence and benignity on a scale seriously unsuited to party politics. ‘Non-violence, compassion, respect and cooperation’ are their watchwords, with a full set of policies including the promotion of exercise but not of course ‘violent games’.

There are various one-candidate parties. The Landless Peasant Party is standing in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, calling for income tax to be replaced by a land tax, a favourite with radicals back in the 1880s. But they want to move on and replace the oath to god and the queen with one to the people, probably a bit too radical for 21st century Britain. Then there’s the Money Reform Party in Canterbury whose message is summed up in the quotation on their home page: ‘banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin’.

This is the first election in the UK in which animal rights parties (two of them) appear (but this time no pensioners’ parties – now what does that tell us?) The Animal Protection Party is bravely pitching one of their four candidates against Kate Hoey, Labour chair of the Countryside Alliance, in deeply rural inner-city Vauxhall in south London. Meanwhile, across the river, Animals Count in Islington say that electing candidates from the ‘main parties’ would be a wasted vote for animals. Does this include pigs though?

Shading into the socialist left we find the Alliance for Green Socialism, whose base is Leeds, home to three of their candidates. Like most of the left parties they’re challenging the consensus on the cuts. Their candidate in the Vale of Clwyd puts their position succinctly: ‘our present system of economics and politics - based on sell, sell, sell and grow, grow, grow - is corrupt and insane. We need to stop exploiting people and our environment as if there were no tomorrow. We need a system based on people before profit, not profit before people.’

Also opposing the cuts and City greed is Lewisham People Before Profit. Their single candidate is ‘not a hippie-dippy, wishy-washy, trendy-wendy, namby-pamby, airy-fairy, looney-lefty, whingy-nimby. He comes from Birmingham.’

The best known socialist party is probably Respect, which broke the mould in 2005 by being the first party left of Labour (excluding Plaid and the SNP that is) to win a parliamentary seat since the Communist Party back in 1945. George Galloway is now decamping to neighbouring Poplar which probably leaves Respect’s best chance (and most inspirational candidate) as Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham. Respect are only standing 11 candidates this time (down from 26 in 2005) as they go for a targeting strategy.

In terms of quantity, if not quality, they’re eclipsed therefore by the Socialist Labour Party, Arthur Scargill’s child. The SLP stood 65 candidates in 1997, 114 at their peak in 2001 and 49 in 2005. Their 22 candidates this time suggest the party is in decline, an impression reinforced by a chaotically ill-organised website. Nonetheless, they have a last-minute candidate in Camborne and Redruth in Robert J.Hawkins. This must be the twin brother of Robert O.Hawkins who’s simultaneously standing for them in Plymouth Sutton and Devonport.

To the SLP’s left we find the major socialist effort – the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition - with 41 candidates. This was a somewhat belated effort to patch together a socialist alternative for the election. Half of its candidates are members of the Socialist Party, whose ancestor was Militant. The Socialist Party is probably the best organised far left party in Britain, along with the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is also involved in TUSC, but their four candidates suggest no great enthusiasm. They’re already sensing the opportunities that will arise after the election, when the cuts are unveiled, in the meantime calling for the working class to vote for TUSC, Respect, left Greens, Dai Davies - the Independent MP for Blaenau Gwent and even Labour elsewhere.

Another of TUSC’s components, along with the Cambridge Socialists and independent trade unionists, several from the RMT, is Solidarity, Tommy Sheridan’s breakaway from the Scottish Socialist Party. Having reached the dizzy heights of six MSPs in the Scottish Parliament elections of 2003 the ructions and split following Sheridan’s court case left the party with no representatives and seriously weakened the Scottish left, even though it’s still considerably more vibrant than the English.

The SSP’s website gets the prize for the most confusing on the political left, going for comprehensiveness rather than clarity. Their policies are, incidentally, to resist the cuts; guarantee jobs for young people; withdraw from Afghanistan; workers wages for MPs and a referendum on Scottish independence.

The Communist Party of Britain has six candidates standing in its own name and another in Leicester under the title Unity for Peace and Socialism. Traditionally the epitome of sectarianism, the CPB has mellowed considerably and was one of the leading enthusiasts for a joint slate of candidates. For some reason however, it decided not to join the TUSC campaign. It’s still supporting some of their candidates and Salam Yaqoob of Respect though. Surprisingly, there’s a CPB candidate in North Devon, not an obvious prospect for the party.

To the left again there’s a plethora of small Stalinist and Trotskyite groups, squabbling over their claims to inherit the true Marxist mantle. Workers Power stands (again in Vauxhall) for ‘the millions, not the millionaires’ although it’s unlikely to get millions of votes. The two candidates from the Communist League and the one of the Direct Democracy (Communist) Party seem to emerge out of the same stable even though they’re competing in Hackney South. Pictures of comrade Stalin adorn both their websites. The DD(C)P calls on the electors to Vote for Abundance!

We mustn’t leave out the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), standing in South Shields but inviting ‘workers, retirees, youth and the community to a great Mayday bash in Newport, Isle of Wight (must be some mistake). Or forget the Socialist Equality Party and the Workers Revolutionary Party, both of which claim to be the British Section of the Fourth International and leading the struggle for world revolution. They fight it out in Manchester Central to solve that that issue.

Finally, the single Workers Liberty candidate in Camberwell is refreshingly honest: ‘of course we won’t win the seat, or come anywhere near either’. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear the Labour Party or the Lib Dems admit the same occasionally.

Bigotgate: control freaks hit the buffers

There was already a distinctly surrealistic air to this election even before the media-frenzy unleashed by yesterday’s gaffe. Ever since the celebrity leader contest backfired so badly on Cameron the gremlins have been getting into the works. Despite their best efforts, issues such as the scale of the hidden cuts, the sordid sleazy culture of our parliamentarians or, like it or not, immigration and population growth, have returned to haunt the Westminster parties. The cosy unspoken gentleman’s agreement whereby these issues, as well as others such as Afghanistan and climate change, were to be airbrushed out of the election is coming apart at the seams.

A Labour candidate in Cambridgeshire is disowned because of ‘sexual boasting’; another in Gravesham is arrested on suspicion of drunk driving after crashing into a roundabout. A Tory in North Ayrshire and Arran is dropped after saying publicly what many Tories no doubt say privately - gays can’t be ‘normal’. A Ukip candidate in Thirsk and Malton is unlucky enough to drop dead from a heart attack during the campaign. What the hell is going on out there?

And then we get bumbling Brown and Bigotgate. Cue astonishment and frenetic commentary from the chattering classes and the media. But I’d wager that it was a lot less surprising to most people outside luvvie London circles. What’s new? We already knew the Westminster political elite holds the voter in contempt, determined to get the distasteful ritual of democracy out of the way as soon as humanly possible in order to return to business as normal. Why, the Labour and Lib Dem parties even went to the extent of abolishing a whole tier of local government in Cornwall in order to have elections only once every four years rather than two.

The Tories treat us like morons with their meaningless PR rhetoric about ‘change’. This is a definition of ‘change’ that turns out to mean no change at all in economic policy or in our creaking constitution. This is a ‘Big Society’ which turns out to be a cover for the ‘Pig Society’ as our posh boys and girls prioritise policies such as cutting inheritance tax for the rich, bringing back fox hunting (not that it ever went away) or encouraging second home ownership. In the first two weeks of the campaign the Tories have hoovered up £3.7 million in large donations from big business, who clearly know what side of the ciabatta bread their caviar is spread on.

Over in the Labour corner we find more conservatives. As an argument against proportional representation Ed Balls comes up with the ridiculous comment that ‘coalition politics is not the British way of doing government’. The ‘British way’ before 1918 was to only allow men to vote. The ‘British way’ before 1832 was to have rotten boroughs. Ed Balls would have been perfectly suited to being a 19th century ultra-Tory.

Labour candidates who make ‘sexual boasts’ are discarded with alacrity yet crooks like Hazel Blears who made £80,000+ from avoiding tax and serial flipping aren’t. Candidates such as Charlotte Mackenzie in Cornwall are allowed to get away with uttering bizarrely false claims and not called to account or ordered to apologise. Supporters such as John Prescott, ex-Deputy PM, are not asked to consult a psychiatrist after blogging that Bigotgate was a Murdoch plot and saying ‘Let’s show them that Britain is not for sale’. John, where have you been the last 13 years? Britain has been up for sale to all comers since the 1980s – Russian oil billionaires, American corporations, European energy companies. You name them; we’ll sell it to them. And isn’t the oily Mandelson just itching to sell off the Post Office to anyone who makes a reasonable offer?

Then there’s the party of unparalleled hypocrisy – the Liberal Democrats. Clegg says ‘politicians who sell their houses and pocket the money still haven’t been held to account’. Yet that didn’t stop him pocketing £312,000 profit on selling his house after finishing a spell as MEP in Europe. Or accepting party donations from non-doms. Let’s not forget that 25 of the 64 Lib Dem MPs in the last Parliament were asked to repay improperly claimed expenses to the tune of £63,588. In Cornwall three of our five Lib Dem MPs had to cough up £8,158.

And the best quote of the election so far has come from Caroline Lucas of the Greens, who branded the Lib Dems as ‘the biggest eco-charlatans on this part of the planet: … Objectively speaking, the Lib Dems are the least trustworthy party on the environment. They have proven themselves the party most likely to say one thing and do another. Their track record is spotty to say the least.’

This is the parliamentary class in hock to corporations and the markets, refusing to come clean on how they intend to make us pay for the failures of an economic system where the bulk of the benefits go to a very small minority. These are the Tweedledum/Tweedledee politicians who have spent such energy in the past three weeks urging us to vote for a party we don’t agree with in order to keep out another party who we might agree with slightly less.

In what passes for democracy in Britain this is rational behaviour from politicians who of course treat the voters with contempt, especially if they happen to live outside ‘Middle England’. Maybe the voters of ‘Marginal England’ (and Scotland, Wales and Cornwall) are not such dupes as they look. The problem is that the three party stranglehold on things isn’t crumbling fast enough. The consolation is that whoever wins this election will within a few months be the most unpopular party/parties ever.

BBC South West election coverage: the saga continues

An amazing thing occurred in BBC’s ‘south west’ election coverage this week. Seventeen days into the campaign and BBC Spotlight finally admitted that MK was actually standing in this election, with a two minute 25 second interview with leader Dick Cole. There was also a short 15 second follow-up on the Sunday Politics Show.

However, just in case anyone became over-excited and began to seriously consider voting MK, BBC Spotlight’s Monday election coverage made up for things. This was a special piece from Newquay on law and order in the town. MK’s strongest candidate – Dick Cole – is the candidate here. But he was for some reason excluded from the interviews conducted by Spotlight’s entry for the best-dressed political editor award, Martyn Oates. Tory, Lib Dem and a Labour candidate rarely seen in the constituency waffled on.

In rather similar fashion last Thursday a report from North Cornwall focussed on second homes. Anyone wanting to hear MK’s distinctive policies on this issue were disappointed. Instead, only the corporate parties were deemed fit to be heard. We therefore had to endure Tory Sian Flynn telling us we shouldn’t interfere with the free market (not much evidence of ‘change’ there then).

When deciding to exclude Dick Cole from the Newquay story the BBC didn’t even have the excuse of no television footage of the other candidates in this constituency. On the BBC News Channel yesterday at midday the third of the BBC’s Town Hall debates – a 50 minute programme – came from ….. err, Newquay. This featured Dick Cole and the Ukip candidate on an equal basis with the three centrist parties. Unfortunately however, the BBC News Channel currently reaches a mere 6.6% of the potential audience. Contrast this with the 49.7% who tune in to BBC1 and even the 16.5% who for some reason watch Five at some point in the day.

Back on the larger audience channels the usual daily drip feed of the three Westminster parties proceeded relentlessly. In the fortnight since I began monitoring Spotlight’s output, 12 Cornish candidates have been interviewed – five of the six Lib Dems, three Labour, three Tory and one MK. No Cornish Green or Ukip candidates have made it onto the screen.

Moreover, the context of the Politics Show piece on MK was a story on ‘the smaller parties’ and MK’s exclusion from the serious interviews at Newquay or North Cornwall shows clearly where the BBC is coming from. In addition, this week there was the ‘regional debate’ filmed at Plymouth. This 40 minute programme featured the same three old parties. Although the BBC deliberately allowed a Ukip spokesperson in the audience to have his say. No similar facility was offered to the Greens.

In terms of direct interview time, despite the belated coverage, somewhat late in the day, given to MK’s campaign, the three Westminster parties have continued to hog the limelight over the past seven days as the following chart indicates.

Broke? Or just fooled? How to solve the debt ‘problem’.

Today the media will churn out the same briefing note from the ‘independent’ Institute of Fiscal Studies, warning of the main parties’ refusal to discuss the cuts issue in this election. On one level the IFS has a valid point: the three party con trick colludes in avoiding meaningful discussion of which services and what jobs will be cut until the election is safely out of the way.

All us saps who will pay the price are allowed to know is that the cuts will be far deeper and more savage than those of the Thatcher years. Instead of the election providing a platform to debate what should be cut, we’ve witnessed a swift and unedifying reversion to the cynical old three party politics of dangling short-term electoral bribes and tax cuts in front of a suspicious electorate.

Yet at another level the FSI’s ‘independence’ has strict limits. It works within the assumption that cuts of the magnitude the parties are proposing are actually required. It avoids a number of other issues that are conveniently hidden and not permitted for discussion.

First, do we need to cut the public debt in the first place? Various economists have suggested current levels of UK debt are quite manageable and could be reduced slowly as the economy moves out of recession. Unlike the Greeks a history of repayment, low interest rates and the maturity of most UK debt means that levels of borrowing are actually sustainable.

So why aren’t any of the three establishment parties being more sanguine and relaxed about things? The answer is because all three are fundamentally the same. All three accept that government should cede control of the economy to the market as far as possible. All three swallow the City mantra uncritically. All three want a return to business as usual as fast as possible.

Second, why £80 billion of cuts in four years? Like many other of its ‘policies’ this Labour target of halving the deficit in four years was an ill-considered knee-jerk response to sniping from the Tories and their press. It has no empirical basis at all. It stemmed from pre-election competitive we’ll be tougher than you bicep-flexing on the public debt. Why £80 billion? Why not £60 billion? Or £40 billion? Or come to that £100 billion?

Third, all three centre-right parties agree that most of this (at least two thirds) has to come from cuts in spending rather than rises in tax. Labour, to astonishingly sparse comment, has pledged itself not to raise income tax, which remains at historically low levels. In 1979 income tax was 33% not 20% while the top rate was 83% and not 50%. Surely, there’s some leeway to reduce the debt here?

But no. Labour wilfully throws away this potential tool for deficit reduction as the corporate parties parrot that cuts are the main way forward and cosily agree to deny their collective plans to increase VAT, a regressive tax. Meanwhile, not one is taking the opportunity to propose a radical overhaul of the tax system, switching towards a greater reliance on carbon taxes for instance.

Fourth, why is there not more investigation of those who are lobbying so keenly for cuts and yet set to benefit by them? Take Sir Peter Gershon, advisor on efficiency cuts to the Tories. Gershon is also chair of the board of the General Healthcare Group, the largest private sector health firm in the UK (post-tax profits of £16 million in 2009) and a company set to benefit from shrinking the welfare state. Or is this a powerful reason why our corrupt political class are agreed on cuts rather than taxes?

What is it that the sneering Paxman, the braying Farage and the unctuous Pickles, Tory party chairman, all agree on? On 21st April on Newsnight Paxman said ‘The fact is we’re broke’. Farage has stated ‘Let’s face it. We’re skint.’ Pickles has chipped in with ‘The country is broke’.

Really? The fact is this is sheer nonsense. ‘We’ are not broke. The UK is one of the richest societies in the world. Expected dividend payments in 2010 are £59 billion. Last week the Times published its 2010 rich list of the wealthiest 1,000 families in the UK. Despite the recession last year was kind to the plutocrats, whose combined wealth went up by £77 billion. Hold on though. Isn’t that just about exactly what’s needed to plug the ‘hole’ in the public finances?

Not one commentator to my knowledge has linked the rich list to the cuts. I therefore have a modest and very practical suggestion. Why not levy an emergency wealth tax on this rise and solve the debt problem at a stroke? Then those in our society who are most vulnerable and rely on the NHS, on state schools and on state pensions won’t have to pay the price for the greed of a few. It would still leave the top families with £256 billion wealth to share between themselves. That’s £256,000,000 each to struggle on with.

Alternatively a one-off 24% tax on the wealth of the top 1,000 families would also raise the £80 billion we are assured is required. Or perhaps we should just expropriate 80% of the combined wealth of the richest 20 families in the UK, which raises £100 billion and still leaves them with over a £billion each.

Somehow though, I can’t see these simple and obvious solutions being seriously discussed by millionaires like Paxman or the public school and Oxbridge clique who run the political parties on behalf of corporate capital. Instead, expect some form of coalition government to push through cuts on the Irish or Greek scale in order to keep the bond-holders (and who precisely are they I wonder) smiling.

Paxo stuffed: English bully gets come-uppance

All Celts will have a quiet sense of satisfaction today if they’ve seen the clip of Paxman getting thoroughly flustered by Plaid Cymru’s economic advisor Eurfyl ap Gwilym last night on BBC2’s Newsnight. The condescending Paxman, emitting an aura of palpable irritation at having to interview an upstart Welshman, kicked off by accusing the Welsh of being dependent on public spending, throwing in on the way a sneering insult by referring to ap Gwilym’s position as ‘august’.

Unfortunately for him, Eurfyl then pointed out a small fact he wasn’t aware of – Londoners are more dependent on public spending than the Welsh. At one stage the rattled Paxman ludicrously claimed London wasn’t an ‘English region’. Doubtless for Paxman and the rest of the metropolitan chattering classes it’s still an imperial global city lording it over lesser beings in the provinces and peripheries.

The bullying Paxman raises some larger issues. On the surface, his presence assures us of the existence of a free media, fearlessly and frankly pursuing politicians. Yet in reality the millionaire Paxman is himself a member of the cosy English establishment, sharing their values and assumptions. Apparently harsh questioning of politicians in practice never goes far beyond the surface and serves to legitimate an unsustainable society based on the privilege and wealth of a small minority.

We should expect no more from the patronising Paxman. Although born in Leeds, he was schooled at the exclusive Malvern College, a top public school deep in rural Worcestershire. Current fees a mere £27,000 a year.

This preparation for the ruling class was duly topped off by a spell at Cambridge. Like Cameron and Osborne and the majority of their chums he’s another posh boy, just even more self-assured and arrogant. In his book on the English Paxman identifies their qualities as, among other things, tolerance, common sense and willingness to compromise. Curiously, he fails to mention an obvious inability to be self-reflexive or self-critical.

Contrast the way he tackles what he regards as mavericks such as Plaid spokespersons with the relative respect, if grudging, offered Cameron, Clegg and Brown. Or note the way he interviewed Respect’s George Galloway after Galloway had won his seat at the 2005 election. Paxman launched into an astoundingly aggressive and remarkably sexist and racist question: ‘Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?’

Whether Galloway is or isn’t a demagogue is not the point. As the guys at Media Lens point out, would Paxman ever have questioned a Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet Minister in the same way? In their book Guardians of Power Media Lens provide further uncomfortable evidence of Paxman’s double standards. In 2003 for example he let Blair get away with lying over arms inspections and Iraq.

Earlier, he had also amazingly suggested after Twin Towers that an American ‘pre-emptive strike’ on countries harbouring terrorists would be a viable ‘defensive option’. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, would he ever have suggested the same during the Northern Ireland conflict for example, proposing bombing sources of IRA funding in Boston or New York?

The truth is that Paxman is not an attack dog, but more an establishment guard dog, ultimately sharing its values and protecting the position of the powerful and privileged.

Murdoch’s election: the view from Sky News

Let’s check out the totally unbiased election coverage over at Rupert Mordoch’s Sky News. Browse the ‘latest news stories’. Labour candidates’ misdemeanours loom large and make them easy targets. We don’t need to shed any tears over a candidate in Cambridgeshire (ex-Lib Dem it appears) sending ‘sexual emails’ (unfortunately the demure Sky resists giving further details) or the speed-freak Ed Balls, ‘fined for using mobile at wheel’.

Other stories are a tad more dubious. For example ‘pre-election nerves stall house price growth’ doesn’t exactly summarise the facts. The average increase in prices of 0.2% in April followed massively larger increases of 0.3% in February and March. This is more about the Tory-supporting media’s fear of the catastrophic prospect of a hung parliament, which they equate with economic collapse, general mayhem, riots in the street and the imminent arrival of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Exactly as has occurred in places where coalition governments happen. Place like Germany since the 1940s. Or Finland. Or the Netherlands. In fact most European countries at various times.

Lets’ not worry overmuch about facts though. The Sky voodoo arithmetic was also at work at the weekend when it reported a Tory ‘surge’ in the polls, taking Cameron towards a majority. The ‘surge’ amounted to a 1.5% rise – from a low 32.9% to a still low 34.4%. In the first week of April Tory poll ratings were running between 38 and 39. Some ‘surge’. Some ‘news’.

When it comes to Cornwall we shouldn’t expect too much in the way of evidence of intelligent life at Murdoch Corp. Their election constituency summaries are almost as wretched as the BBC’s. The same tiresome stereotypes crop up regularly. St Ives is a ‘small resort with a large artistic community’. In St Austell and Newquay the ‘successful Eden Project … has drawn a lot of visitors to the area’. Newquay is ‘popular with surfers and stag/hen parties’. In North Cornwall tourism is ‘vital’ and the population is ‘gradually increasing because of the amount of retirees’.

Sky is as inaccurate as the BBC when it comes to the Cornish economy. In North Cornwall ‘the major industry other than tourism is agriculture’. No. Many more people are employed in health and education. In addition, the Sky pen pictures contain a certain bizarre nuttiness all of their own. Bodmin is ‘set on its famously bleak moor’. It isn’t. The main tourist attraction in South East Cornwall is ‘the Eden Project’. Actually this is (just) in St Austell and Newquay.

Sky chooses to inform us that ‘more than 99% of people are white’ in North Cornwall. In the neighbouring South East constituency ‘the area is overwhelmingly white and middle class’. More ‘middle class’ than Truro and Falmouth? Hardly. With this fixation on race in East Cornwall why doesn’t it tell its readers that a large minority of voters in every Cornish seat is now middle class immigrants from south east England?

In Camborne and Redruth Sky, like the BBC, seems to have completely lost its marbles. Ignoring the two roads bypassing Redruth, the six lanes at the newly built Tuckingmill intersection, the six mile Camborne bypass, the main railway line and Cornwall’s biggest urban area, Sky confuses its innocent readers by stating ‘this seat is in a remote part of Cornwall’ (!) This brilliantly incisive comment is then followed up by ‘Falmouth is more of a holiday resort than a working port’. Unfortunately Falmouth is not part of Camborne and Redruth. As the comments on Falmouth are repeated verbatim in the Truro and Falmouth profile, clearly Sky journos have problems with Cornwall’s geography once they move beyond Newquay and those stag/hen parties

In Falmouth we are told that ‘anti-EU feeling over fishing quotas has helped Ukip in the area’. In South East Cornwall too, the euro-sceptic version of the Loony Party gets a gratuitous mention – ‘Ukip has done reasonably well here in the past’. ‘Reasonably well’ means 5.0% in South East Cornwall and 3.8% in Falmouth-Camborne in 2005. In fact they won a slightly higher percentage - 5.1% - in St Ives. It comes as no surprise to find that these comments starkly contrast with the total invisibility of MK. This is even more the case as Sky, rather oddly, chooses not to enlighten us with the party affiliation of the candidates standing.

Put ‘Mebyon Kernow’ into the search engine at Sky News and we find 1 (one) story since 2001. That was back in 2004 and was in relation to the Simpsons (on Murdoch-owned Fox TV) and related to ‘kernow’ and not MK. Meanwhile Ukip gets 90 hits, although they’re eclipsed by the BNP with 302. The SNP rack up 160 hits and Plaid Cymru 76. Although that’s nothing compared with the 6,857 for Labour or 5,235 for the Conservatives. (The extra for Labour is I guess explained by the fact they’re the party of government and Murdoch was backing ‘business-friendly’ Labour up to late last year.)

From socialism to Mackenzieism: the decay of Labour in Cornwall

Sadly, it’s been brought to my attention that a Labour candidate has found it necessary to utter a falsehood. The increasingly unstable Charlotte Mackenzie claimed on Cornwall24 that I had ‘failed to publish a comment’ from her in relation to her absurd claim that Truro-Falmouth was a ‘three-way’ marginal.

Outrage over such petty issues from minor party candidates must be extremely tedious for the average reader so, before retailing the facts of the story, let’s provide some context. Charlotte mysteriously arrived in Cornwall in the 1990s and quickly took over a virtually defunct local Labour Party organisation in Truro and Falmouth, becoming its parliamentary candidate in 2005.

She points out that ‘everyone is tired of the cynical old politics’. This may well be true. However, look no further than her Truro Falmouth Labour News blog to find an excellent example of cynical old politics in action. Here, Charlotte waxes lyrical about issues such as climate change and affordable housing but is either extremely cynical or exceptionally slow-witted in being unable to practice the joined-up thinking that was supposed to be a mark of Labour’s government.

Charlotte supports the ‘international leadership that Labour is providing on climate change’. Forget for a moment that this ‘international leadership’ in reality proves to be yet another example of the emperor’s new clothes. In Mackenzie-World Cornwall is the ‘UK’s first low carbon economic area’. (Why do Labour politicians feel the need to indulge in this kind of demented hyperbole?)

According to Charlotte ‘if more affordable homes are needed new housing does need to be built’ (Jan 2009). In July 2009 she was ‘delighted’ that ‘more new houses are completed and more jobs are created in the construction industry’. In August 2009 it was ‘good news’ that Chiverton Cross would be expanded to accommodate more traffic (only carbon-free?) to ‘support the building of much needed local housing’. Local? She rightly calls for a higher proportion of so-called ‘affordable’ homes but is unprepared to oppose insane and unsustainable rates of house-building, or traffic and population growth in Cornwall that make a mockery of her stance on climate change.

Charlotte welcomes the inclusion of aviation emissions in efforts to combat global warming. But when it comes to Newquay airport her blog falls curiously silent. In fact, like the Lib Dems, she has concluded that ‘Cornwall’s economy needs an airport’. So hot air about climate change rapidly dissipates when faced by the requirement to carry on building airports, roads, houses ...

Am I missing something here? Isn’t this is a level of hypocrisy matching that of the Liberal Democrats in Cornwall? And if not it must be symptomatic of a jaw-dropping degree of dimwittedness. Other contradictions abound in Mackenzie-World.

In July 2008 she welcomed Exeter University’s new Environment and Sustainability Institute at Tremough. This would somehow meet the aspiration to ‘make Cornwall carbon neutral’. But at the same time she welcomed an additional 160 parking spaces. For bikes? Or is it solar-powered cars? And why no mention of the way the ESI has been captured by business interests pushed by the SW Regional Development Agency?

In January this year she was positively ecstatic about the ‘largest council house building programme for at least two decades’. This involves less than 40 (forty) houses. Labour’s plans involve building a total of 69,000 by 2026! In March she complained about the lack of consultation by the Lib Dem County Council before they agreed the disastrous 30 year waste management contract with SITA. Yet her readers were not informed that this was another example of the PFI schemes energetically forced onto local government by Labour and its big business pals.

Mackenzie-World is a place where candidates get tweets that read ‘Hmm, I like Gordon’s new policies … Maybe I should actually vote Labour’ (October 2009). Very believable. And where everything is either ‘great news’ or ‘good news’. The handful of council houses was ‘great news’, the budget ‘good news’, Treliske’s status as a specialist centre for gynaecological cancer treatment ‘great news’. So what about the transfer of upper GI cancer services to Derriford? Oh dear, that doesn’t seem to rate a mention.

Perhaps Charlotte doesn’t think the ‘cynical old politics’ includes deliberately ignoring big issues like housing targets, population growth, the unitary authority, second homes or sustainable transport. Her partner in sophistry, the equally eccentric Jude Robinson in Camborne-Redruth, is, I note from her blog, now attacking Julia Goldsworthy on the sleaze issue.

Fair enough; the Lib Dem record on sleaze is hardly as pure as the driven snow. Yet there’s more than a hint of desperation here. And complaints about sleaze and pledges to ‘maintain high standards’ (Mackenzie, June 2009) are a bit rich coming from Labour, the party that gave us Moran, Blears, Hoon et al.

Indeed, the biggest earner in the old Commons was Labour’s Patricia Hewitt, pocketing the equivalent of around £250,000 a year from directorships on top of her parliamentary salary. The photo in her very first blog entry of our local beacon of standards and rectitude hobnobbing with Hewitt is a standing reminder of Labour’s disgraceful record on this particular issue.

So let’s return to Charlotte’s make-believe world and the (compared to the above) relatively trivial lie in question. On April 10th she landed upon the utterly batty notion that ‘a swing to Labour similar to that to Julia Goldsworthy in 2005 would result in Labour winning this new constituency (Truro and Falmouth)’, putting this on her blog and on a comment on one of mine.

On the 12th I pointed out now her maths were challenged and, even on her own extremely dodgy assumptions, she was wrong. On the 13th April she repeated the false claim on her blog. On the 21st she claimed that I had rejected a reply from her to my comment of the 12th. Needless to say, this is untrue. No comment was ever received. Indeed, if she can actually show that my calculations were incorrect I’d be delighted to publish the correction.

However, on past experience we can expect no answer.

For example, on 23rd February I asked Charlotte
So are we to assume you don't agree with your Labour Government plans to
a) build 69,000 houses in Cornwall by 2026?
and you do not agree with
b) the population growth to 1.3 million which is implied by this rate of growth?

If you don't agree could you tell us
a) how many houses should be built and
b) what the population capacity of Cornwall is?

No answer was ever received.

On 7th March I asked
Are you not slightly concerned that the population of Cornwall will be 1.2 million by 2099?

No answer was ever received.

On 1st April I asked
Do you think a population of 1.3 million in Cornwall by 2099 is a) good or b) bad?

No answer was ever received.

As somebody else observed, ‘these Labour people seem to descend on your blog like Mr or Mrs Angry, make a series of unsubstantiated assertions and then disappear once they're asked a simple and civil question. Why would anyone in Cornwall ever want to vote for them?’ Why indeed?

Yes, we are tired of the cynical old politics. Including the cynical old politics of Labour. The old politics that fails to see the big picture, the old politics that can’t admit the contradiction between growth and sustainability. Or the old politics that shamelessly proclaims ‘The Lib Dems CANNOT win here’. In Mackenzie-World even this preposterous claim presumably qualifies as an example of rational thinking.

'Other' parties at the 2010 election

This election is further evidence of a strange paradox. As alienation from the political process sat Westminster reaches new heights the number of political parties (and Independents) fighting elections mounts. Veritably, a thousand flowers are blooming (or rather around 3,700+ candidates). Now the nominations are all declared we can see there’s a record number of both candidates and parties standing at the election on May 6th. But who are the major ‘other’ parties?

In England, Ukip are, contesting 92% of seats. Both the BNP (57%) and Greens (56%) have candidates in more than half the seats while the English Democrats are present in 20%. The preponderance of right-wing English/British nationalist parties indicates the direction of English politics these days.

In Cornwall, MK and Ukip are each contesting 100% of seats and the Greens 67%, although one might never guess this from the weight of coverage available to the average Cornish elector. The BBC complaints department has held up its hands in innocence and disingenuously claimed that MK has received ‘some coverage’. As proof they point to a number of stories thrown up by a search for ‘mebyon kernow’ on the BBC news and sport site.

Hold on though. Look more closely at the stories since April 6th and we find that MK appears only as part of a long list of candidates right at the end in six of the eleven stories. This includes one on second homes in north Cornwall, a subject on which one might have assumed they had something of interest to contribute. One (short) story appears on the party but not until the 24th April, over halfway through the campaign. Just two others contained direct quotes from MK spokespersons.

But try the same exercise with Ukip (136 hits), the BNP (130 hits) and even the Greens (106 hits) – though why the Greens should get so many fewer references on the BBC than the far right parties is an interesting question. OK, these parties are fighting all over the place. But Cornish voters are capable of reading about other places. And even when one searches for the party name AND Cornwall we find four hits for MK but five for both Ukip and the Greens. So that hardly makes up for the massive disparity in coverage.

In the other Celtic countries the Welsh also have one progressive party (Plaid Cymru) and Ukip with full slate of candidates. The BNP is rather surprisingly contesting more Welsh seats (48%) than the Greens, while the Christian Party manages to get on the ballot paper in 20% of seats. Scotland, as ever, is different. Here only the SNP of the ‘others’, although it’s hardly an ‘other’ in Scotland, is contesting all Scottish seats. No other party reaches half. Ukip has candidates in 47% of seats, the Scottish Greens in 34% and the BNP pop up in 22% of seats in Scotland.

Other parties fighting more then one in ten seats in these countries are the Christian Party - yet another far right party (12% in England) - and the leftist Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition and Scottish Socialist Party in Scotland (both 17%). Meanwhile, by my calculation there are at least 52 parties contesting this election with just one lonely candidate. These range from the attractively named ‘Reduce taxes on beer’ through the Revolutionary Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) to the Bus Pass-Elvis Party.

Slaying the dragon: BBC Radio Yokel and St George

This morning one of Radio Yokel’s resident village idiots was some puzzled. It was apparently St George’s Day – ‘a day to celebrate Englishness’ said James Churchfield, ‘although we see very little of that’. Poor James. He just couldn’t get his head around this enigma. For some reason St George’s Day had ‘never really clicked’ in Cornwall. It was as if people here were ‘ashamed to be English’.

He’d been talking about this only ‘the other day’ with his sidekick, a woman called Trace, and they ‘couldn’t believe the lack of interest’. It was a ‘shame we don’t remember these days’. Trace seemed to labour under the delusion that St George’s Day was a venerable old custom rather than an innovation only relatively recently foisted on us.

Anyway, young James and Radio Yokel had obviously decided to do their best to encourage interest. This included a four minute interview with Devonian Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who’s searching for a unique person to represent Englishness. The naïve James wondered if ‘English virtues’ such as ‘valour and courage’ still existed. Sir Ranulph reckoned they did and hoped listeners would nominate a ‘local English hero’.

Pressed for examples he came up with someone fighting to reopen their local store. Sensing this was a bit lame and tricky to define as particularly ‘English’, he moved on to a ‘gent dedicated to restoring English martial arts’. Churchfield squeaked with sheer pleasure. ‘I love that’. Then there was a ‘happy procession of English folk’ somewhere up north who paraded with their English flags.

Whatever could Fiennes have meant? English football hooligans? The English Defence League running happily amok in the non-white districts of run-down quaint old mill towns? Realising this was a mite ambiguous he changed tack by saying these happy contented English folk were reclaiming the flag from a ‘way out nasty political outfit’. But which one? The English Democrats? Or, having already noted that ‘we English’ tend to confuse Englishness and Britishness, was he promptly falling into the same trap and thinking of the BNP?

In the meantime Churchfield was even more perplexed. Here in Cornwall, he twittered, people were, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, ‘incredibly proud of St Piran’s flag’ but not of being English. Fiennes noted a similar ‘local pride’ on his native Exmoor. Of course, Exmoor didn’t have a ‘local flag’ like Cornwall. But what does that matter: ‘we’re all English’.

At no point did Churchfield question any of this ill-informed drivel. The very idea that Cornishness might in some way differ from a sense of place on Exmoor could clearly never be entertained in the few brain cells bouncing around the empty space between his ears. Instead, he contrasted Cornwall with Scotland and Wales, where people are ‘much more aware’ of their national days ‘than we are here’.

Having fawned for four minutes the hapless Churchfield then interviewed Jean in Par who was ‘proud to fly the flag’. Jean couldn’t quite articulate what it meant to be English but her comment ‘get us out of Europe, for God’s sake’ hinted at where she was coming from.

Churchfield then recounted a horrific story of a ‘supermarket in Truro' - whether it was Tescos or Sainsburys we weren’t informed- that had ordered their wage slaves to turn up in red and white to mark the day today. This appalling corporate bullying of its workforce was not for a moment questioned by this dozy double act. Indeed, Trace thought it was an excellent idea. In fact, she added in blissful ignorance, we should all wear ‘red, white and blue’ [sic] on St George’s Day.

Ignoring the lamentable intelligence of this excruciating pair and their guest, Radio Yokel had again spurned the opportunity of investigating why there might be such a lack of interest in St George’s Day in Cornwall. For any half-decent radio station this could have been the hook for a more interesting discussion. They might have pursued the question of why the number of Cornish people professing a dual Cornish and English identity is declining and why more and more prefer to assert their Cornishness and reject Englishness. Could it perhaps be because Cornishness offers us a more secure, inclusive and potentially forward looking identity for the 21st century whereas Englishness is home to a ragtag of racists and nostalgic little Englanders still living in the 1940s and 50s?

There's surely a bigger and more serious problem here. Neither James Churchfield, Radio Yokel nor the BBC seem aware that many argue Cornwall is not a part of England and not an English county. An exploration of that might have been revealing. Yet what do we get? Exhortations to celebrate ‘our’ national day and a mindless uncritical celebration of Englishness. While they can carry on doing this and get away with it nothing will change.

Liberal Democrats: hypocrisy here

As the Tory press rounds on that cross between Beelzebub and Hitler, (old) Nick Clegg, it seems cruel to turn our attention to the Lib Dems. Nonetheless, turn we must. The Tories remain the party of big business, bankrolled by another £1.5 million donations in the first week of the campaign alone, and frankly not credible. Labour can’t escape the rotten smell of parliamentary corruption and questionable morality that follows it around. In the light of this, the cosy three party stitch-up (as in tonight’s so called debate hype) is predictably making the Lib Dems look attractive.

However, to assess any party properly we need to ask if their deeds match up to their words. What is their record rather than their rhetoric? The Lib Dems, out of office since their participation in the wartime coalition 65 years ago (Churchill’s not Hitler’s for anyone tempted to believe what they read from the former Mussolini fans at the Daily Mail), are fortunate in having no recent record to scrutinise.

Not on a UK government basis that is. But they do on a Cornish basis where they ran the County Council off and on for several years after the 1980s. So let’s see if the Lib Dems are honest and truthful, beacons of political integrity glittering amongst the deceitful dross of Labour and the Tories.

On the environment the Lib Dem manifesto promises an ambitious ‘target for a zero-carbon Britain that doesn’t contribute at all to global warming’ by 2050 and a reduction of carbon emissions of 40% on 1990 levels by 2020. They recognise that aviation comprises a ‘serious problem in the fight against climate change’ and promise to cancel plans for a third runway at Heathrow. All well and good. But they qualify that by saying ‘in more remote parts of the country, flights are a vital lifeline’.

These ‘remote parts’ must include Newquay. While the Lib Dems want to ‘ensure people use alternatives where that makes sense’ when they had the chance they bottled it. The Lib Dem controlled County Council committed the taxpayers to paying a large subsidy to Newquay airport, in the process producing a 356% rise in carbon emissions by 2030 in Cornwall from aviation. One can only assume they think there are no alternatives in remote Cornwall, where we still have to go up Lunnon by coastal steamer and wait patiently for the railway and dual carriageways to reach the Tamar.

Lib Dems claim in their manifesto they are the party of ‘radical decentralisation’, bringing new powers to local communities. Given this, one might have expected the 100 or so pages of their manifesto to promise a democratically elected assembly for Cornwall, to match the extra powers promised for Scottish and Welsh devolved institutions. But no. Not a peep about Cornwall. What about the Lib Dems’ four page Change that works for the South West. Here Cornwall does receive two mentions. One is in the context of all the people who’ll gain from their raising the tax threshold election bribe and the other is under a picture of Paddy Ashdown at St Columb.

In practice the Lib Dems in (local) office gave lukewarm support to campaigns for a Cornish Assembly and failed miserably to stand up against the regional quangos. While promising ‘radical decentralisation’ in practice they shamefully colluded with Labour’s anti-democratic local government reform and managed to centralise power on Truro at the same time as effectively scuppering the Assembly campaign.

On housing, the Lib Dems, like the Tories, promise to return decisions on ‘targets to local people’ and ‘locally agreed plans’. Is that ‘people’ as in developers hand in glove with planners, or ‘agreed’ as in mock consultation and a planning system thoroughly biased in favour of developers? What they say nothing about is the unsustainable population rise in Cornwall (and other non-metropolitan areas). Their only concrete (no pun intended) answer is to bring empty houses into use. This is no answer. They specify 22,000 empty properties in the ‘south west’. Cornwall has around 10% of this housing stock. So that’s 2,000 or so in Cornwall then. Of a planned 68,000.

Yet it was the Lib Dem County Council who in 2007 kindly offered the RDA to undertake a massive increase in house building to 53,000 houses in 20 years (four or five times local needs). And it was Lib Dem councillors on the old Kerrier DC who promoted massive housebuilding in Camborne-Redruth.

I could go on. The Lib Dems are hardly squeaky clean when it comes to sleaze for example. See here and here and here. And why didn’t they blow the whistle on the expenses system years earlier? For other examples of the gap between Lib Dem rhetoric and the sad reality see here and here.

From all this is seems the Lib Dems are the party of rank hypocrisy you can certainly believe in. Let’s finish by reflecting on Clegg’s advice to voters in St Austell and Newquay where the local Lib Dems have spent most of the past fortnight trying to dupe voters into believing it’s a ‘two-horse race’:

"I think that everybody knows MK hasn't got a hope of getting any MPs here and certainly hasn't got a hope of wielding any influence in Westminster. So talk about wasted votes - that is a wasted vote on a spectacular scale. I think the decision is quite different - do you support a party, the Liberal Democrats, which has Cornwall sort of coursing through its veins or do you vote for a party, the Conservatives, that is basically a party of the Home Counties? That's the choice.”

Now compare that with his comment on Lord Adonis’s advice to Lib Dem voters to vote Labour in Labour-Tory marginals.

“Vote with your heart. Don’t be told by politicians like Lord Adonis you’re only allowed to have a choice of two.

“I think it’s really arrogant for Lord Adonis to sort of declare at a time when we have so much choice in our lives – from the holidays we take, from the mobile phones that we choose, from the food that we choose and so on – [that] uniquely in politics, you are only allowed to choose from the red team or the blue team.

“Vote with your heart; vote for the values and the policies you believe.”

Say no more!

‘Fair, balanced and proportionate’: BBC 'SW' and the ‘big lie’

Compare and contrast. On Monday Dick Cole of MK received his first UK-wide television overage (a two minute 38 second interview) on BBC2’s Daily Politics programme at 12 noon. This has around a quarter of a million viewers. Two days later Nick Griffin of the BNP was interviewed (for three minutes 45 seconds) on Radio 4’s Today programme (between six and seven million listeners). MK is standing in all six Cornish constituencies; the BNP in only one. MK received 6.8% of the vote in last year’s Euro-elections and is represented on Cornwall’s unitary authority. The BNP received 3.0% and isn’t.

Meanwhile …

On the 10th, Simon Read (simon.read.01@bbc.co.uk), editor of BBC Spotlight, claimed their coverage was ‘fair, balanced and proportionate’ and wrote ‘I believe MK will qualify for some coverage on BBC Spotlight’.

On the 14th he wrote ‘We are planning to cover MK’s campaign, so please keep watching .. . I expect to see them appearing on Spotlight in the near future’.

On the 16th, he wrote ‘There may well be (coverage) later in the campaign … it’s likely MK will appear on BBC Spotlight … during the campaign’.

On the 21st, over two whole weeks into the election campaign, MK had still not received a single mention on BBC Spotlight, let alone an interview. If there is anyone so unfortunate as to rely only on BBC Spotlight for their information they could not have an inkling that MK is one of the five parties contesting all six Cornish seats.

Simon Read would clearly have been familiar to Goebbels, who wrote that ‘The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies. Even at the risk of looking ridiculous’.

Let’s update Spotlight’s election coverage over the first half of this week. On Monday there were two election stories. The first covered Labour’s South West manifesto and involved a long interview with Ben Bradshaw. The second was on the NHS. Only the three corporate parties were involved.

On Tuesday there was a report on housing. Again, the policies of Tories, Labour and Lib Dems were summarised and one candidate from each party interviewed. This included two Cornish candidates – Sheryll Murray (Con) in South East Cornwall and Steve Gilbert (Lib Dem) in St Austell and Newquay. Gilbert said housing should be for ‘local need not developers’ greed’ (so why did Lib Dem Cornwall County Council offer to build over 50,000 houses in Cornwall then?) and sported his St Piran’s badge. He might almost have been an MK candidate – apart from the rancid stench of hypocrisy.

Today was dominated by the egg thrown at Cameron in Saltash. With Clegg also poncing around Redruth, where he was interviewed flanked by a grinning Terrye Teverson and a somewhat less grinning Julia Goldsworthy, the two parties inevitably received considerable coverage. However, Spotlight decided to restore ‘balance’ by then interviewing Labour and Ukip (?!) people.

Spotlight’s political editor Martyn Oates, who unaccountably appears to believe that sporting a City trader spiv look is de rigueur for political editors these days, took care to mention Conservatives, Lib Dems and Labour.

The total direct interview time over these past three days has been as follows:


MK won 6.8% of the votes in the last (Euro) elections of 2009 and is represented on Cornwall Council. Labour received 5.0% and isn’t.

Election nominations: MK shock

Cornwall Council has got around to listing the nominations for the election. Cornish citizens were in a state of shock after realising that MK was standing in all six Cornish constituencies as they’ve been barred from local television. The other parties standing across the board are the Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Labour and Ukip. The Greens have four candidates, the BNP one and the Cornish Democrats one.

In addition, there was one last minute surprise candidate at Camborne and Redruth. The appearance of a Socialist Labour Party candidate - Robert Hawkins from North Cornwall - now makes it seven standing here. This is the first time Arthur Scargill’s party has stood in a General Election in Cornwall. In last year’s Euro-elections it received a thousand votes, 0.6% of the total.

The rumoured Veritas candidate in Truro and Falmouth didn’t show, which was less of a surprise given the far right Veritas seems to have been moribund for the last six months.

Meanwhile, Labour’s Phillipa Latimer in St Ives gives her address as Holborn and St Pancras, believed to be just down the road from Porthemmet. The only other candidate in Cornwall without an address here is Labour’s Michael Sparling in South East Cornwall, who lives in Tavistock but was apparently last seen stuck in Hong Kong.

This is not, however, as strange as the Ukip candidate for Chelsea and Fulham in London whose address is given as ‘France’!

Labour: fading here

If a yawning contradiction lies at the core of Tory policies then there’s an empty chasm in Labour’s. The Labour Party in Cornwall has reached the end of its useful life. Never succeeding in putting down any real roots here it’s like a stray dog that’s become an old family pet. It’s time for the voters to do the sad but kind thing and put it out of its misery as painlessly as possible.

Pummelled at the polls and in danger of being beaten into third place in the UK, there’s little discernable reason left for a Labour Party. In the mid-1990s its ideological heart was ruthlessly torn out and sacrificed at the altar of Blairism. Now it’s a neo-liberal party with a social conscience. With two others like that already (if we suspend our disbelief for a moment and take the Cameroonians at their word) the centre-right has become a somewhat crowded market place.

Labour offers the same cuts in public spending as the others, only slightly slower and the same corporate brand politics, only less slick and even less credible. On top of that it has an appalling record. It must be proud of things like building the most efficient surveillance state in Europe, a morally bankrupt foreign policy, a failed economic policy (remember ‘no more boom and bust’), a record on green issues that even the President of the Royal Society described in 2005 as ‘gutless’ or a statist bureaucratic mentality that pays lip service to diversity in theory but not in practice.

It’s hardly an appealing record. When it comes to Cornwall Labour has learnt nothing. It’s striking how its apologists can produce long lists of Labour ‘achievements’. But they’re all spin-offs from a general increase in public spending since the days of the Tories. There’s not one outcome that results from a policy specifically designed for Cornwall. The very idea would be anathema for centralist Labour.

The specific claims that Labour makes - such as new university campuses - were dependent on European grant aid. And that in turn was already in process in the last days of John Major before 1997. Labour merely finished the job but then promptly handed over its management to regional institutions based outside Cornwall. Moreover, check out the lists of local organisations that lobbied for many years for Objective One funding after 1992. The name of the Labour Party is strangely absent.

Labour candidates have dismally failed to comprehend a key lesson of Cornish politics – it helps to distance yourself from London. The long incumbency of Labour’s Harold Hayman in Falmouth-Camborne in the 1950s and early 60s was the result of his image as a constituency man who put local interests before party politics. Since Hayman, Labour has forgotten something that even the Tories seem able to understand. (David Mudd was a classic example and see Caroline Righton’s election pledge).

Instead of standing up for local interests Labour candidates have brainlessly parroted the latest idiocies from their masters in London. For them eco-towns and building 68,000 houses to accommodate in-migrants are the best things since vegetarian pasties were invented. Meanwhile, campaigns to devolve power to Cornwall or recognise Cornish difference are opposed, sneered at or belittled out of hand.

No wonder then that Labour is facing meltdown in at least five of the six Cornish constituencies. In east Cornwall and St Ives they haven’t a hope in hell and are fighting to retain their deposits. In those constituencies their candidates have only had weeks or months to make themselves known. In St Austell and Newquay no identifiable Labour campaign is visible. Even in Camborne-Redruth the Labour vote is haemorrhaging rapidly to the Lib Dems as this constituency inevitably follows the others in mid and west Cornwall and becomes a two-way fight between Lib Dems and Tories.

Social worker politics, kowtowing to the RDA, being business-friendly and promoting a population of 1.3 million in Cornwall by 2099 is going down like a damp squib. So all that’s left is bluster and arrogance. Jude Robinson in Camborne-Redruth assures us that she’s finding ‘people strongly Labour’ and voters switching from Tories and the Lib Dems to Labour. In your dreams, Jude. Even Labour-leaning pigs can’t fly.

Meanwhile, in next door Truro and Falmouth the increasingly eccentric Charlotte Mackenzie comes up with the notion that if there were a swing to her from the Lib Dems (very likely I’m sure) the same as occurred in 2005 in another constituency but in reverse (if you follow me) she’d be home and dry. But even this utterly daft claim turns out not to be true. For the record here’s why.

Charlotte MacKenzie said...
Change the tune pls CZ. The graph you refer to may be familiar in Lib Dem la la land leaflets. But even the Torygraph acknowledges +5 per cent more as Labour's 2005 voteshare A swing to Labour similar to that to JG in 2005 wd result in Labour winning this new constituency (Truro and Falmouth).
10 April 2010 23:54

Zetetist said...
Charlotte, you seem to miss the point of this blog which was to point out how both Lib Dem and Labour are being disingenuous in their selection of statistics. Your comment only reinforces that point.

If I understand what you're saying correctly you're suggesting that if a similar swing occurs from LD to Labr in Truro and Falmouth as occurred from Labr to LD in 2005 in Falmouth and Camborne then you'd be home and dry.

Let's look at this claim without the blinkers of party tribalism.

According to your preferred Telegraph set of notional results the notional T and F 2005 result was
LD 40.97%
Con 31.72%
Labr 19.04%

The swing in Falmouth and Camborne 2001-05 was 19.05% (The LD vote rose by 10.42% and Labour's vote fell by 8.63%). So let's extrapolate that across to the notional Truro and Falmouth 2005 score and reverse it.

LD 40.97 - 8.63 = 32.34%
Labr 19.04 + 10.42 = 29.46%
Con 31.72 - 3.58 = 28.14%

Oh dear, you still lose. Even in this scenario which is about as likely as aliens appearing in Boscawen Street and beaming up Terrye Teverson for experimentation on apparently human lifeforms.

More likely is that the Tory vote will go up and the Lib Dem and Labour vote will go down. Given the current polls it's neck and neck between Tories and Lib Dems with Labour trailing and fighting for 3rd place. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but there it is.
12 April 2010 09:28

I did helpfully point this out to her in a comment on her blog but for some reason she chose not to publish it.

Lib Dems surge: grinning here

I was intending to review the Labour Party and its candidates in Cornwall today but that joy will have to wait until tomorrow. The commentariat is calling it the ‘biggest shock to the electoral landscape for years’ (Independent), with ‘Nick Clegg nearly as popular as Winston Churchill’ (Sunday Times). (Despite being exposed as an alien!?) And it’s all down to just 90 minutes of a TV ‘debate’ that managed to avoid most issues of consequence.

But let’s put this into perspective before getting too hysterically excited. First, it’s a movement in the polls of around one in ten voters. But the effect of this is magnified by the primitive operation of our rusty first past the post system. Second, look closely at the polls and you’ll find that the Lib Dems were already on the rise before the debate.

The TV ‘debate’, play-acting a Presidential election in the absence of a President, was a last ditch attempt by the three English corporate parties to maintain their grip on parliamentary politics. Rather than an earth-shattering revolutionary wake-up call for a new politics, it was intended as a highly managed reinforcement of the old. The unreformed parliamentary system was in grave danger under the short-term blow of the corruption scandals and the long-term effect of slow but steadily growing support for fourth parties. Something was needed to divert attention from the former and put a cap on the latter.

And to that extent the first debate succeeded brilliantly. Before, the poll ratings of ‘others’ were wavering between 11.5 and 12.0%, four whole points above their level at the equivalent stage of the 2005 election. Four days afterwards and they’ve suddenly fallen by two points and the trajectory is, for the moment, downwards.

However, the best laid plans of mice and men etc. The debate had an unintended and unexpected consequence. Unintended by the mandarin class who cobbled it together that is. For all their denials the Lib Dems have been as deeply implicated in parliamentary putrescence as the others. As a reward for not blowing the whistle on its corrosive culture years ago they had to be allowed to join the Presidential charade.

Combine their presence with an arrogant underestimation by the political class of the depth of loathing and alienation for them outside the Westminster village. Clegg, no less telegenic than Cameron and considerably more so than Brown, was well placed to catch this wave of inarticulate ill-will from that quarter or third of the electorate who are sufficiently interested to vote but insufficiently involved to understand much beyond the celebrity politics the media feed them.

Here was someone they hadn’t really noticed before. Someone who seems energetic, confident and, most important, someone who wasn’t called Cameron or Brown, both hopelessly tainted with the rotten stench of decay and disillusionment. Of course, it could have been anyone unknown, anyone ‘new’ or fresh. Perhaps not Nick Griffin, admittedly. Or that Bercow baiter and Burkha hater, the braying Farage either. But it could easily have been someone more telegenic or intelligent, for example Caroline Lucas of the Greens or even Alex Salmond of the SNP.

But it wasn’t. Cue surge in polls for the Lib Dems.

A couple of questions arise. First, will it last until May 6th? And second, what effect will it have on fourth party votes, particularly parties of the left such as MK, Plaid Cymru or the Greens.

We need another week or 10 days to answer the first question. Gordon Brown was wandering around the TV studios yesterday and today looking surprisingly chipper, almost but not quite charismatic, given Labour’s pathetic third place in the polls. Surely this can’t be because our ludicrous voting system is projected to give Labour the most seats despite getting fewer votes than either Tories or Lib Dems? Maybe it was the sight of the Tory knives coming out for Cameron, whose airbrushed glow suddenly sports a five o’clock shadow.

Or maybe it was because now he expects the snarling pack-dogs of the Tory press to round on Clegg rather than on the tawdry record of his government. It’s possible this unwanted attention will quickly puncture the Lib Dem hot air balloon. On the other hand, its equally possible that, with the much sought after momentum now established, the Lib Dems will sweep up even more disaffected voters. After all, this is ‘change you can believe in’, in the sense that it’s not actually change at all. Protest yet get the same policies. Have your cake and eat it. Voting Lib Dem, is, despite the wails from the Tories, hardly a high-risk activity.

If this happens and momentum builds then Brown should be very worried indeed. Expect the Labour vote in particular to crumble as Labour voters disappointed or disgusted by the last 13 years depart in droves for the other non-Tory but equally establishment party.

As for fourth parties they might be blown away by the Lib Dem hurricane. Or, once people realise they’re actually standing, may on the contrary benefit from the stampede away from the discredited old parties. This could especially be the case in seats such as Brighton Pavilion or, dare I say it, Barking where they already have an established presence.

Once people kick the Tory/Labour habit then you can never be quite sure where it could end. The genie may be struggling out of the bottle.

BBC ‘South West’ election coverage: some facts

Last Wednesday BBC Spotlight covered Ukip at some length and included an interview with a Green Party spokesperson plus Lee Jameson, Labour candidate for St Austell and Newquay, about fuel prices. Given the constant assurances of Simon Read, editor of BBC Spotlight, that MK would also receive coverage I began to monitor the BBC’s output in more detail.

The Thursday 6.30 Spotlight programme contained a report on rural town centres. This summarised Con/Lib Dem/ Labour policies but mentioned no other parties. It was followed by a story about small businesses. In a contrived report on chutney making there were a couple of negative mentions of Labour. This was rounded off by the anchor woman’s trite comment ‘interesting stuff, isn’t it?’ Actually, quite the reverse. But that didn’t stop Spotlight continuing with its dreary story and interviewing Alastair Darling and a clutch of shadow ministers for Tories and Lib Dems. Then there was a reminder to viewers to watch the stitched up three way ‘debate’ later.

However, this was then followed by a story on the Green Party manifesto that summarised some of their policies and then a (fairly robust) interview of a Green representative.

On Friday the idea Spotlight considered to be of great local interest turned out to be gipsies and travellers. Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem candidates were each duly filmed and then interviewed while the policies of these three parties were summarised. The Labour interviewee was the hapless Jude Robinson in Camborne-Redruth. This was followed by a general chat with Spotlight’s ‘political editor’ Martyn Oates, who took care to mention each of the ‘big parties’ but no others. This character has a blog at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/martynoates/2010/04/ Needless to say, in the five entries there is just one mention of MK, in a list of 'others' standing in Truro and Falmouth.

The Saturday Spotlight midday news had a 54 second story on Prescott visiting the ‘South West’ but this had been dropped from the 5.20 slot so we never got to know what happened to the old bruiser.

The South West opt out of the Politics Show today included a long piece on old people and the silver vote. Tory, Labour and Lib Dem policies were all summarised in some detail. Candidates for the three corporate parties were then questioned by four ‘members of the public’ in a carefully controlled interview in a brewery in Dorset. The reason for the location was somewhat obscure other than it was also old.

There was then an interview with a Ukip spokesperson while the programme finished with a constituency profile of Torbay. Martyn Oates set the latter in the context of a Tory-Lib Dem battle although did manage to make the strange and gratuitous observation in passing that Labour was weak here unlike in other deprived areas such as Plymouth and Camborne (?) where there ‘is a strong Labour vote’ (?) Four candidates were then interviewed – Con, Lib Dem, Labour and Ukip. The other two – the Greens and BNP – were merely noted at the end of the piece.

The total direct interviewing time for the main parties in Cornwall is shown in the bar chart below. Of course, in addition to the direct interviewing the policies of the three Westminster parties on the issues selected by Spotlight were summarised several times and these parties also mentioned by name many times in the reports.


Eleven days after the election and BBC viewers in Cornwall have still to be informed that MK is contesting this election or that it’s actually contesting all six seats here.

Election bias: BBC unrepentant

On the 10th of April I sent this complaint to the BBC.

Congratulations on your Election 2010 web pages which help show the value of continuing public sector broadcasting in the UK. This is particularly the case given your welcome coverage of the ‘minor’ parties, too often ignored by a combination of our centralised media and an antiquated electoral system.

However, I note a glaring and inexplicable omission on your Parties and Issues page. Here MK, the Cornish Party, has been ignored. The intention of the material presented on this webpage is presumably to maximise information for voters. But any voter in the six Cornish constituencies may be forgiven if they are puzzled by MK’s absence.

I’m trying to second guess the reason for this. It can’t be the proportion of seats in the target area contested. Like the Westminster Parties, the SNP and Plaid, MK is contesting all (100%) of Cornish seats. By your own figures the BNP is contesting around 55% of seats, the Greens 46%, the English Democrats 27%, the Scottish Socialist Party 17%. Even Ukip is not contesting all seats but 82%. I repeat: MK is contesting 100%. In Cornwall, the Greens are contesting 67% of seats, the BNP 17%, Respect and the English Democrats none.

It can’t be the lack of elected representatives in these target areas. MK is represented on Cornwall’s unitary authority which, in the absence of a devolved institution, is the main administrative unit in Cornwall. In contrast neither the Labour Party, Ukip, BNP, Greens, Respect nor the English Democrats have any representatives.

It can’t be the longevity and history of the parties. MK was formed in 1950 and began contesting parliamentary elections back in 1970. It’s more venerable than 13 of your listed parties whereas only six of those listed have a longer history.

It can’t even be the total number of seats being contested in the UK (if this were the reason then it seems bizarre to exclude a party merely because it seeks to represent a small territory and/or ethnic group). According to their websites Respect seems to be contesting just four seats, the Northern Ireland Green Party just one. Yet these parties appear in your list.

I therefore remain puzzled. Here in Cornwall it’s being suggested the BBC is deliberately biased against MK. Can this be the case? Surely the reason cannot be that you have no-one capable of writing the profiles for MK and its leader, especially given that there is at least one book devoted to the history of the party.

I look forward to an explanation.

I received no reply from the BBC in London. So on the 15th I emailed Simon Read, editor of Spotlight, coupling this complaint with another about the invisibility of MK locally. Read explained the BBC elections site as follows.

Our threshold for a party and party leader profile on the BBC Election 2010 website is all parties standing candidates in at least one sixth of seats in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, and/ or with representation at Westminster, the European Parliament, or devolved institutions.

As Mebyon Kernow do not reach that threshold, we have not profiled them and they do not feature on the page you refer to. However, we do link to the Mebyon Kernow website from our list of party websites, which is linked to from that page and can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8571757.stm

How very convenient! The Scottish Socialist Party (contesting 10 of Scotland’s 58 seats) and the English Democrats (around 100 of England’s 533) just squeak over the one sixth barrier. Respect, only contesting 11 seats in the UK, happen to have an MP. This smells strongly to me like a post-facto justification. It still seems intolerable that a party contesting all the seats in its territory is completely ignored.

But I forget - the territory in this case is Cornwall which in the minds of the BBC apparently doesn't exist. Under these bizarre and ludicrous 'rules' MK would have to put up 89 candidates before receiving coverage (or a cheaper option would be to stand seven candidates in Wales or four in Northern Ireland). As we have no devolved institutions and Cornwall is a mere part of a gerrymandered Euro-constituency the only other option is to get an MP elected. Why does no other party have to jump such a huge barrier before getting the oxygen of publicity? It would be interesting to hear what those parties so stridently calling for 'fairness' think about this.

At the same time Read explained the BBC’s local approach to MK.

We are making sure our coverage of the election campaign is fair, balanced and proportionate. To do that, we have to make decisions about how much air time each party will be given, and the most important criteria for us is performance at the last General Election. We also look at how many votes were polled for a party in other recent elections(for example, council elections), how many candidates are standing, and other factors.

I believe Mebyon Kernow qualify for some coverage on BBC Spotlight during the campaign, and we have already had some discussions with the party about that. It is also quite possible they will get some coverage on other BBC outlets, such as BBC Radio Cornwall.

This is a slightly different answer from another on the 14th to a reader of this blog.

We are planning to cover Mebyon Kernow's campaign, so please keep watching!

In common with all BBC News programmes, we are aiming for coverage which is balanced and proportionate. When we decide how much coverage to give a party, we look at a range of factors, the most important of which is performance at previous General Elections. We also consider how many candidates are standing, and how well or badly the party did in recent European and council elections.
On that basis, we realise that MK should get some coverage on BBC radio and television, and I expect to see them appearing on Spotlight in the near future.

And to another reader on the 16th.

There may well be later in the campaign.
We're aiming for fair and proportionate coverage, and we decide how much time a party gets based on a number of factors: the most important being performance at the 2005 General Election. We also take into account votes at European and council elections, levels of representation and so on.
It's likely MK will appear on BBC Spotlight and BBC Radio Cornwall during the campaign.

The waiting goes on. And on.