@jules_lewis on posterous

Today I belatedly came across a tweet by Jon Baines (@bainesy1969) on the subject of the Op Motorman evidence being presented at the Leveson Inquiry:

Op Motorman, in my mind, is key to the unravelling of the whole phone hacking scandal, and I was fascinated to hear Alex Owens’ evidence to the inquiry. It is clear Owens feels let down by his former bosses at the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). He claims he wanted to pursue the journalists requesting information from Steve Whittamore et al, and the answer, from above, was a clear 'No'.

On Wednesday 30 November Owens described the Deputy Commissioner at the time, Francis Aldhouse, as saying of the media  “We can't take them on, they're too big for us”, a claim roundly denied by Aldhouse on Monday. Perhaps the evidence of the former commissioner Richard Thomas on Friday will shed some light.

Regardless of what Aldhouse did or didn’t say, the fact remains that no journalists were interviewed, let alone prosecuted. If it wasn’t out of fear, then why?

In a blogpost back in October, Tim Turner (@tim2040) highlighted a possible answer in an article he’d read in The Independent.

The article was written by David Smith, the current Deputy Commissioner at the ICO. In it, he clearly distances the organisation from any fear of the press. Instead, he says that “expert legal advice” led to the decision not to pursue journalists:

Any suggestion that the decision not to pursue prosecutions against journalists was driven by a fear of the press is entirely false. We exposed the involvement of the press in the first place. Our decision was based on expert legal advice that pursuing prosecutions would not be in the public interest, because of the difficulty in proving beyond all reasonable doubt that the journalists who received information from Mr Whittamore knew it could only be obtained illegally.

Tim Turner then did something I’d never have thought to do, and even if I had thought of it, would have given a snowball-in-hell’s chance of working: he asked the ICO for a copy of the legal advice. To be precise, he submitted a Freedom of Information request for the advice. Anticipating some of the defences the ICO might throw up, the request was carefully worded to counter these, and astonishingly the ICO responded. Here’s what they said:

In response to your request, we do not hold recorded information in relation to this request. We do not hold a written legal advice in relation to the decision not to prosecute the journalists involved in Operation Motorman

Please do read Tim’s blogpost for the full context of this reply; there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that the ICO is specifically referring to the “expert legal advice” David Smith writes about in The Independent.

So now we have a strange thing.

According to my reading (and I’m no lawyer) of the transcripts of evidence given to the Leveson Inquiry, it seems clear that there is indeed ‘recorded information’ and ‘written legal advice’ in relation to the Op Motorman counsel.

First, from Alex Owens’ evidence given on Monday, the Inquiry appears to have attendance notes of a meeting on 3 October 2003 in Birmingham:

Q - Mr Owens, do you recall going to see counsel in Birmingham on 3 October?

A - I did, yes.  Down in Birmingham, yes.

Q - We have an attendance note of that conference. 

[The transcript is available in full at the Leveson Inquiry website - this link will take you to a text file of the relevant hearing]

There then follows a description of what appears to be a report that Owens prepared for the counsel to advise on, detailing the practices his investigation uncovered. Then Mr Jay appears to read from a record of counsel’s advice:

Q - We can look then under the heading "Gunning".  We can see further information in relation to area searches, but let's look at what counsel advised under his name with regard to the prosecution of the press.  This is what he said:

"Although there is evidence to support a prosecution, a prosecution would not be considered favourable because of the financial aspect."

A - Yes.

Q - Put in other terms, what was he saying there?

A - Basically said it would be too expensive.

In order for Jay to quote from it eight years later, it seems to me there must be a written record of counsel’s advice.

The only way I can harmonise this with the ICO’s response to Tim Turner’s FOI request is that the Leveson Inquiry obtained the attendance note from a source other than the ICO, for example the barrister. Then the ICO could stand by its claim that “we do not hold recorded information in relation to this request”.

However, there is a second example:

Q - I'm going to ask you, please, to look at counsel's written advice, which is under tab 4, which privilege has been waived by the ICO.  It bears the number 48716.

A - Yes.

Q - This is advice that counsel gave, I think, on 22 December 2003, which was now nine months after the research, wasn't it, Mr Owens?

A - December would be nine months, yes.

LORD JUSTICE LEVESON - So just let's understand this.  This is a barrister who has been instructed by solicitors acting for the Information Commissioner to advise on the material that you've obtained in relation to a potential prosecution?

A - Yes, sir.

Jay then proceeds to take Owens through what is evidently at least two pages of written legal advice. From Lord Justice Leveson’s interjection, it is clear the advice is specifically relevant to Operation Motorman. On this occasion, reference is made to the ICO waiving legal privilege so that the Inquiry could use it. It seems unlikely that they would waive privilege on something they don’t even have a copy of.

Later, during Francis Aldhouse’s testimony the same morning, reference is made to a further meeting with counsel on 27 May 2005, after Steve Whittamore’s conviction.

The idea that the ICO, of all organisations, didn’t make any record of counsel’s advice from numerous meetings on the most important investigation they had undertaken, is ludicrous.

Tim writes that he has sent a follow‑up request to the ICO to clarify whether there were records, that are now lost or destroyed, or there really never were records. I, for one, am very interested to hear the reply, and to hearing Richard Thomas’ evidence on Friday.

 

UPDATE, Friday 9th December

Richard Thomas has now given evidence to the Inquiry. At length. I was unable to hear the live session, so will be playing catch-up over the weekend.

I did, however, come across something of relevance in Thomas' sixth(!) statement to the Inquiry (PDF), dated 6th December, i.e. following the appearances of Francis Aldhouse and Alex Owens.

In it, Thomas claims to have seen a "bundle of legal and related papers which were sent by the ICO to the Inquiry on 22 November 2011 (MOD100048708 to MOD100048827)."

He then refers to the attendance note of the meeting with counsel on 3rd October 2003 as being among these notes:

That S[enior] M[anagement] G[roup] meeting almost certainly took place soon after the conference with counsel which I now know took place on 3rd October. It is worth highlighting that the Attendance Note records Bernard Thorogood advising (MOD100048711) “With regard to prosecution of the press. Although there is evidence to support a prosecution, a prosecution would not be considered favourable because of the financial aspect.” The note later records “The Met have a second phase in their minds which may involve prosecuting of reporters. This would be solely in relation to the criminal record checks.” (MOD100048712)

Thomas also refers to an attendance note of a further meeting with counsel on 20th October 2003, though he doesn't mention the 'MOD' reference number:

The next written record is the Attendance note made by Karen Nolan of her discussion with counsel on 20th October. Bernard Thorogood is recorded as advising “Prosecution of the Press – the scale of the case requires substantial manpower. Several cases and the cost would be excessive both to investigate and prosecute. It would have to be that there was a good purpose to be served in prosecuting the Press.”

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the ICO did indeed retain records of advice related to the decision not to prosecute journalists implicated by Op Motorman. The ICO's response to Tim Turner's follow-up request for clarification could be very interesting indeed.

 

 

 

Am reluctant to give Nadine Dorries the 'oxygen of publicity', and am much more interested in Leveson these days, but I couldn't help mentioning Nadine's incredibly short memory...

Just a fortnight ago, she had this to say about the BBC, and in particular This Week:

Switching on BBC 1 late last night and the This Week programme, I was greeted by a screenfull of Michael Portillo, John Reid and Andrew Neil.  Needless to say I switched straight back off again. 

Why would any woman, even a political one, want to view overly made up, elderly men struggling to hide the liver spots and wearing bright green shirts which scream ‘I’m young and hip, really I am’. Why?

Andrew Neil to Gisela Stuart MP on This Week - "so, you are originaly from Germany Gisela, what's Angela Merkel thinking now". If it wasn't so funny I would ask, what am I paying my license fee for?

 

Yesterday I thought long and hard before responding to what I considered a sweeping and offensive remark from David Allen Green against (among others), judges and police officers. In a response to my blogpost, he stood by his view that "those with power over others will always tend to abuse it", adding that it was only due to the presence of "checks and balances" that "power-mongers" refrain from abuse. No place in David's world-view, then, for conscience and integrity, it seems.

Today he seems to have gone a step further. Perhaps deciding that attack is the best form of defence, David singles out police officers for attention in a further blogpost today.

The essence of his post is captured in another of his sweeping tweets, which Ben Goldacre neatly skewered soon after:

[Thanks to @domcoke for that image. I'd link you to David's original tweet, but he regularly purges his timeline, so am unable to.]

David's post uses video footage from the Occupy Oakland protests to make another of his sweeping judgements:

And, sadly, one can quite imagine an English police officer doing just the same thuggery, whilst their colleagues - usually so very quick to arrest for "public order offences" and "breaches of the peace" - happily look on.

Unquestionably, the actions depicted in the video are shocking, and I hope the incident is investigated thoroughly. It is being reported that Oakland police are investigating; I would expect some form of independent inquiry at least.

But it is a massive, and unjustified, leap, to judge every police officer by the standards depicted in that video. However strongly we feel about the deaths of Ian Tomlinson, or Jean Charles de Menezes, and whatever we feel about the actions of police officers connected with their deaths, can we really use those feelings to infer anything about all police officers?

You will probably not have heard of James Thorburn-Muirhead, as his case did not make the mainstream press. He was jailed for sixteen months in June this year, in part for stealing funds from his clients; the sum of his criminal proceeds was agreed at close to £200,000. His profession? You can surely guess.

Would it be fair for me to tar every member of his profession as tending to screw their clients? Of course not, that would be a deeply offensive to those in the same field who maintain their integrity and have no need of the 'checks and balances' required to deal with the occasional Thorburn-Muirhead.

David now claims he knew his blogpost would provoke ire, and seems to feel that this somehow proves his point:

As I expected, most of commenters at my post http://bit.ly/soZcSL were more angry with me than at the footage of police brutality. QED...

What I struggle to understand is how a blogger who generally comes across as rational and willing to engage, is unable to grasp the reason for people's negative responses. 

---

Postscript: Yesterday I was called a troll and blocked for questioning David's views; today I find myself unblocked. Perhaps this is a side-effect of David feeding all of his tweets into the memory hole, or perhaps I was merely sin-binned, rather than red-carded. 

 

We all say daft things on Twitter from time to time. It’s a difficult medium for conveying complex ideas; occasionally 140 characters just won't do. We soon learn that when we read something we find offensive, it makes sense to find out if the author really meant it before sounding off. Even such luminaries as David Allen Green, rising star of legal blogging, can fall foul. Last night he posted this:

“Police officer and tabloid journalist, banker and judge, criminal and priest - those with power over others will always tend to abuse it.”

I thought it a poor variation of Lord Acton’s famous dictum “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” David rightly pointed out that “abuse” and “corruption” are not the same thing, so I thought I’d better re-read his tweet and make sure I hadn’t misunderstood anything else. Fortunately, it comprises mostly simple words and I was pretty sure I ‘got it’.

Just to be sure though, I read it again. And it is still, to my mind, a sweeping, judgemental, and offensive remark. It’s that word ‘always’. Others clearly had no problem with it – I enviously dream of one day having dozens of retweets for a pithy ‘truism’.

Needless to say, a couple of tweeters (not guilty) pointed out an obvious omission from the list: lawyers (ouch). An easy jibe, you might say, and don’t lawyers get enough flak as it is? Perhaps, but do they not also exert a certain amount of ‘power’?

And why ‘tabloid journalist’? Is David saying they have a ‘power’ that other journalists do not? Does a George Monbiot or a Robert Fisk have power? Doesn’t their power derive at least in part from being given a platform to influence thousands of readers? If we follow that argument, then a Twitter user with a large following, or the legal correspondent for a weekly magazine might also be considered to have a certain amount of power. Oh.

Why did I find David’s tweet offensive? Hopefully I don’t need to spell it out, which was why I was surprised David wouldn’t budge on it a day later. Where do we start?

Judges take an oath which goes something like this: “I, (name), do swear that I will well and truly serve our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth in the office of (office), and I will do right to all manner of people after the laws and usages of this realm (or colony), without fear or favour, affection or ill will. So help me God.”

Police officers have something similar: “I, ... of ... do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.”

David’s position, as I read it, is this: no matter how sincerely a judge or police officer makes his oath, no matter how hard he or she works to maintain their integrity, “those with power over others will always tend to abuse it.”

It’s that word ‘always’...

Are there police officers that have abused their power? Of course there have, sadly. Judges too? Not an area I know much about, but I would imagine so. So should all police officers and judges be tarred with the same brush? Of course not! That would be a ludicrous over-generalisation.

In his other guise, David posted on the JackofKent blog today, positing (presumably tongue-in-cheek) “Jack of Kent's Law of ‘Witch-hunts’”, an adaptation of Godwin’s law:

“The longer any person or entity is placed under any deliberate and sustained scrutiny, the probability of someone complaining of it being a "witch-hunt" approaches 1.”

David was responding to Michael Silverleaf QC’s widely reported plea on behalf of News International that "it is not appropriate … for claimants to conduct a crusade. The proceedings must not be conducted as a witch-hunt against my client." This was in regard to forthcoming phone hacking ‘test cases’ which will set a precedent for damages that might really sting. News International could be facing around 60 suits, and might understandably prefer to settle them at the Sienna Miller end of the scale, rather than the Graham Taylor end.

Coming from News International, this plea is hollow, and I fully agree with David’s description of it as pathetic. However, and digressing for a moment, I do think an all-out News International ‘witch-hunt’ might be a Bad Thing. For example, it could be a distraction from looking thoroughly at the wider picture. The Leveson Inquiry is set up to examine the ethics of the press as a whole, not just Murdoch’s seedy corner of it.

But of course it’s ludicrous to cry ‘witch-hunt’ just because someone subjects you to some rightful scrutiny. As David puts it at the start of his piece, “Those who want power without responsibility never respond well to scrutiny.”

By way of comparison, how did David respond to those daring to scrutinise his sweeping judgement of people who exert power? He called us trolls. Hmmm, trolls and witches, it’s hard to tell them apart sometimes...

I generally enjoy David's tweets, but am currently find myself unable to do as I have been unceremoniously blocked in the last hour or two. That seems to me an extremely thin-skinned response to a genuine attempt at engagement.

 

 

This article also appears on the fledgling Cornish Gazette - check it out!

Since May 2010, Cornwall Council has webcast many of its meetings, including Full Council, Cabinet, and Strategic Planning meetings. Early interest was high, with over 1,000 people watching the first live broadcast, and twice that number watching the archived version. In the first three months of what was initially described as an experiment, over 17,000 views were recorded.

A year later, online interaction was added in the form of a CoverItLive chat window, where viewers can discuss the meeting as it happens. Recently a Twitter window was also added to the webcast page, echoing live tweets with the hashtag #ccwebcast. Archived meetings are indexed so viewers can jump to the part of the meeting they’re interested in, and all documents referred to in the meeting are available from the webcast page.

While initial enthusiasm seems to have waned, almost six hundred people watched the most recent Cabinet meeting on the morning of the 12th October, falling to just two hundred for the Extraordinary meeting in the afternoon, when the Council budget was on the agenda. There is no way that 200-600 people could be accommodated in the Council chamber, so it would seem the webcasts are an unqualified success. This is reflected by the Council’s decision in March to continue webcasting meetings until April 2013, with additional broadcasts of meetings of significant local interest, or where major decisions are to be made.

Of course, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Transparency and participation are clearly still novel concepts to some people, and there have also been technical difficulties. For example, even after eighteen months of practice, some councillors still need reminding about microphone abuse:

Camera operators occasionally struggle to find the speaker before their comment has been made, and the debate has moved on. This was particularly apparent last week, when a trainee was getting their first ‘hands on’ experience in the chamber. The Council is considering introducing software that will automatically focus the camera on the live microphone, which should help address this issue.

There have been moments, too, when Councillors seem to have forgotten they were broadcasting live, as in February this year when Graeme Hicks made an unfortunate remark to Doris Ansari, only to apologise later. Despite these lapses, and to the Council’s credit, there is no delay in broadcasts. Other ‘live’ broadcasts often introduce a short time lag giving time for bloopers and outbursts to be muted, but Hannah Rees, Communications Manager at the Council is clear: “people at the meeting are aware they are being broadcast live and are therefore responsible for their own comments.”

Viewer comments, posted in the CoverItLive chat window, are moderated, however. There has been confusion over just what rules are being followed, but this has now been cleared up. Moderation rules are similar to those used in many other hosted chats: “We reserve the right to remove and/or moderate, without notice, any disruptive, libellous, offensive or abusive post.”

Many #ccwebcast tweets are pulled across from the Twitter view into the CoverItLive chat, but whether or not this happens can seem arbitrary at times. The key consideration is said to be relevance, but in a recent webcast it was noted that an apparently relevant tweet wasn’t copied across until it had been retweeted by a Councillor.

Perhaps more worrying, some tweets seem not to have appeared in the Twitter feed at all, and this has led to questions about censorship. Asked about this, Hannah Rees said “we don’t moderate the tweets in the twitter feed to the right of the chat window, we aren’t in the business of censorship on a public forum such as Twitter.”

The Twitter view only shows about a page worth of tweets, with older tweets simply disappearing off the end of the view. Given that Twitter itself seems to ‘lose’ the odd tweet, perhaps the Council should get the benefit of the doubt on this issue? To clear up any lingering confusion, a clear notice is to be added to the webcast page, due in part to, ahem,  reader feedback.

So what does the future hold?

Hannah Rees would like to see the Twitter feed appearing in the Council Chamber, where Councillors could see what other people are saying about the issues being discussed. At the moment, only a few Councillors follow Twitter discussions, notably those of the infamous ‘Twitter Gang’: Andrew Wallis (@CllrAWallis), Alex Folkes (@alexfolkes), Rob Nolan (@RobNolanTruro), Steve Double (@stevedouble) and Jeremy Rowe (@CllrJeremyRowe). Seeing people’s comments in real time would certainly represent a step towards true engagement, but whether or not the Council’s more traditional Councillors are ready for some of the knockabout comments made on Twitter remains to be seen!

If you have any suggestions for improving participation or transparency in Council meetings, why not suggest them here, or tweet them straight to @cornwallcouncil!

 

In her rush to defend Liam Fox yesterday, Nadine Dorries joined him in trying to deflect some of the attention onto Jim Murphy, the shadow defence secretary:

(TheyWorkForYou, Hansard)

I would hope Dorries knows perfectly well the answers to her presumably rhetorical questions. If not, I'm happy to supply them.

Jim Murphy has an interest in Cellcrypt, the smartphone encryption company emerging at the centre of the Liam Fox row. In July, Murphy visited Washington DC on a four day trip funded by the company. How do we know this? Because he properly registered this interest on 12th August. He also referred to this interest in the debate:

(TheyWorkForYou, Hansard)

As for why this interest was not mentioned before, Liam Fox answered that question himself, not five minutes earlier: this had been the first opportunity to discuss the matter in the chamber.

Dorries presents us once again with the time-worn dilemma: is she merely incompetent, or was she trying to deflect attention from Fox's travails with a lazy smear?

If it was the latter, then she should have picked a better target than a member's financial interests.

Dorries-watchers with longer memories than, er, Dorries, evidently, will recall that she has had her own problems with the register of members' interests.

On entering parliament in 2005, she registered two properties from which she derived an income: a house in Gloucestershire, and a 'holiday home' in South Africa.

In May 2009, these were still declared as financial interests, despite assurances by Dorries at the time that: "I do NOT own a home in South Africa ... I do NOT own a home from which I receive a rental income." In another blog, she assured readers "I haven't owned a holiday home in South Africa or owned a home in the Cotswolds since marriage split."

(this issue was ably blogged at the time by Chris Paul here, and Tim Ireland here)

By the next update (10/06/2009), Dorries had managed to sort out her entry in the register, a mere two and a half years after her split from Paul Dorries.

Jim Murphy, by contrast, got his financial interests registered in three weeks, and declared them openly at the first opportunity.

Something about stones and glass houses?

 

 

 

Party conferences are a time for unity, for presenting the public with a single clear message. Not least when it comes to the most important issue facing us; no, not weekly bin collections, the economy.

So it can't have been pleasant on the eve of the Conservative conference for party faithful to hear Andrew Tyrie, chair of the Treasury select committee, slating the Government's long-term economic policies as "inconsistent and incoherent". To add insult to injury, he also called the Big Society 'irrelevant', and criticised the hike in overseas aid. To cap it off, he also pointed out that Government's strategy for growth is 'unclear' (a polite way of saying there isn't one), and called for business taxes to be cut. 

This on a day when George Osborne was widely reported as being against tax cuts for the time being, perhaps even during this parliament. Like in this interview for The Telegraph:

“We’ll see how things develop in the rest of this parliament,” he says. “I’m a Conservative who believes in lower taxes. They lead to a more enterprising economy. But I’m not somebody who believes you can fund lower taxes by borrowing more money because that is a deceit and the public are smart enough to see straight through it.

"My first priority is to deal with the deficit. I don’t want to be a Chancellor who cuts taxes one year and has to put them up the next."

 

When I have a white van driver tailgating me with his main beams on, pretty much the last thing going through my mind is "I wish we were doing this 10mph faster"!

Today's announcement by transport secretary, Philip Hammond, that motorway speed limits will be raised to 80mph is being portrayed as a victory over the health and climate change departments. As if the Tories needed to further emphasise their idolisation of the bottom line, Hammond is described in The Independent as wanting a "rigorous cost benefit analysis of speed limits" which will look beyond simple safety issues.

It might be instructive for Hammond to go and explain this cost benefit analysis to the next family grieving over a motorway fatality.

Will putting up the speed limit make motorways more dangerous? Fortunately for Hammond, this is a question with no clear answer, due to the many other factors affecting motorway safety. It is always possible to point at Germany, where speed is not limited on an antiquated system of autobahns, yet boasts a relatively low number of motorway fatalities.

Conversely though, I doubt anyone could argue that increasing motorway speeds will make them safer. There is widespread flouting of the 70mph limit, with the Department of Transport reporting last year that one in seven vehicles recorded were exceeding 80mph. When 80mph is the speed limit, will these drivers now be doing 90mph?

There are other factors that affect motorway safety, such as traffic policing and speed enforcement. Hammond assures critics that police will enforce the new speed limit more rigorously.

How is this going to happen, exactly? The simple answer is, it won't.

As a result of government cuts, police forces across the country are shedding thousands of officers. Naturally, one of the areas impacted is traffic policing. Earlier this month, The Telegraph published results of FOI requests to all police forces about their road policing. Of the 35 who responded, 20 had already cut the number of dedicated traffic officers. In May this year, 25% fewer people were breathalysed than during May 2010, and there was a 3.6% fall in prosecutions for driving offences, including speeding.

Similary, road safety partnerships, who maintain speed enforcement cameras as well as providing safety education to road users, are also having their funding slashed. The result is that speed cameras are being torn down around the country. Some will applaud, seeing this as a small victory in some imagined war on motorists. But the number of people killed or seriously injured as a result of a traffic collisions rose in the first quarter of 2011, the first rise in four years.

With road policing and speed enforcement are being cut, is now a good time to encourage yet faster driving?

But there's more to the analysis than 'simple safety issues'. What about those economic benefits? It seems the only argument being put forward in favour of this change is a supposed reduction in journey times, which will somehow 'boost the economy'.

However, it's claimed that driving at 80mph burns 20% more fuel than 70mph. I know, this claim is made by those pesky environmentalists who think climate change is a 'big deal', but until Channel 4 get round to doing a fact check, let's entertain the idea. If you really want to give the economy a boost, you're probably going to be among the one in seven doing 90mph, anyway.

Let's stick to the speed limit and do the maths. We're going to ignore the new 20mph zones at either end of your journey that the Tories offered as a sop to their coalition partners, and will eat up any time savings.

A 56 mile journey takes 48 minutes at 70mph, and 42 minutes at 80mph. You'll save six minutes, assuming you're not caught behind a 'simple safety issue' related incident. That's 12.5%.

So, for a 20% increased spend in fuel, you shave 12.5% off your journey time. At 135p per litre and rising, I think many people will be able to do a little cost benefit analysis of their own.

With real potential for harm to be brought about by this change alongside police funding cuts, and no more than illusory benefits, why this daft proposal?

 

I am clearly not the only one wondering what the heck Labour are playing at, and Ed Miliband particularly.

Labour, by all accounts, should be polling a lot better, particularly as they're now the only party in opposition. Miliband is polling terribly, with only half of Labour supporters believing he has the right qualitities to be Prime Minister, and just a quarter of the general public. This after just a year of leading the party, with no major challenges besides the council elections.

Of course, it's not all about the polls, which are notoriously hard to read in conference season.

It can't help though, that Labour are sending out an incredibly weak message. It's all very well trying to fob the public off with a policy review, but it's really time for Labour to show they have some answers. With George Osborne announcing we have six weeks to avoid some sort of financial catastrophe, and the IMF more or less singing from the same hymn sheet, it's not enough for Labour to say "well, we wouldn't do it like that..."

If we are truly bordering on national emergency, at least in financial terms, isn't it about time Labour either put forward some alternatives, or better still, offered some cross-party support?

Even when making proposals, such as the disastrous announcement on tuition fees, Labour are being exposed as a party lacking any clarity and direction.

Only Douglas Alexander has struck me as making any useful contribution to Labour's outlook. He is successfully (in my view) reframing the Labour position on the economy in a way that the public will understand. His message, that you can't blame the collapse of Lehman's on Labour for building too many schools and hospitals, will resonate with people who are sick and tired of hearing about "the mess we inherited." George Osborne must surely know the time limit is expiring on that tired old excuse?

Alexander also seems to be one of the very few Labour MPs prepared to apologise for mistakes made by the last government. Indeed, in a Guardian interview published on Friday, he accepts there was massive complacency in the party:

After two decades in which the centre-left was beating the right, the centre-right is beating the left because the left made a historic misjudgment. We thought after the crisis that the collapse of confidence in the market was matched by, and leads to, a rising confidence in the state. That has been disproved in voting patterns in country after country. We are not entitled to succeed the Conservatives, we have to earn that right.

It remains to be seen whether Labour really can shake off that complacency, and whether Ed Miliband is the one to lead the party to that succession.

 

Every time I read Nadine Dorries' latest blog post (Tim Farron - outed), my irony filter goes into meltdown. Before I am forced to look away for the sake of my own health, a few words.

First, there is the smear itself. I'm not going down the 'typical Tory' route here, because we all know perfectly well that politicians of every stripe are capable of getting 'down and dirty'. There is no point getting tribal about this.

What's typical of Dorries' post is her use of deniability, the cornerstone of a successful smear.

She uses the term 'outed', with no other reference to the rumours being spread about Farron, which he strongly denies. Dorries gets to label Farron, but leaves herself a reply if criticised: "Oh, I didn't mean 'outed' in that sense, how unfortunate. I meant it in the sense that he's supposed to be a Christian, but puts his job before his conscience" (which is the gist of the rest of her post).

Dorries can also deny she got the image of Farron from PinkNews' article on the smears, signalling that she knows perfectly well what 'outed' means. The image is widely available elsewhere, of course...

Dorries, of course, has been the victim of one or two smears herself. Would this make her think twice before smearing a political colleague? Apparently not.

In her post, Dorries holds up a supposed standard of Christian behaviour for Farron, and claims that he falls short:

I'm sorry to have to do this to Tim, but he is not being entirely truthful, either to himself or the faith he professes to have

This is where the irony meter goes off the scale, of course. Since Dorries had made herself the arbiter of what the Christian faith means Farron 'should' do, given his faith, perhaps I can remind Dorries of a verse or two from a book that will presumably be familiar to her:

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; because the judgements you give are the judgements you will get, and the standard you use will be the standard used for you. Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the great log in your own? And how dare you say to your brother, "Let me take that splinter out of your eye," when, look, there is a great log in your own? Hypocrite! Take the log out of your own eye first, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother's eye.

Matthew 7: 1-5 (New Jerusalem Bible)

I could hardly put it better myself.