Our prison system is set up for punishment, but rehabilitation takes a back seat. I hope under a Conservative government that will change. Being tough doesn't just mean locking people up and throwing away the key. A tough politician will take tough choices - and that means locking up fewer people and devoting more resources to preparing prisoners for life on the outside. Only in that way will reoffending rates drop.
The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze.
The British ambassador to the Holy See is someone whose job is to understand and mutually interpret the attitudes of the Vatican and the British government and to broaden their mutual sympathy. I can't easily imagine Widdecombe expressing anyone else's opinions, yet that is one of the central skills of diplomacy.
Piffle. Just because Brown can't imagine Widdecombe taking a brief, it doesn't mean that she can't. Indeed, history demonstrates she can. She can be as diplomatic as anyone if it is required. And I'd like to see anyone better places to understand and intepret the attitudes of the Vatican and be able to convey them back to the Foreign Office.
Purely as a piece of symbolism, there is something in this appointment to upset most people.
For 'most people, read 'most Guardian readers'.
For the Vatican, there is the fact of a woman who won't hesitate to tell them what to do;
Oh really? Widdecombe may be many things but she's not thick. She will completely realise thaty telling the Vatican want to do isn't part of the job descroption of a British ambassador.
but she won't, when she does so, be representing any significant strand of British opinion.
Says who? A man who thinks he represents a significant strand of British opinion - in Islington.
Since she left the Church of England in principled disagreement over women priests, she clearly represents a minority opinion among British Christians.
Does she? She represents many Anglicans who despair at the way their own church is going. And she also represents hundreds of thousands of British Catholics.
Her contempt for Anglicanism doesn't really fit her to explain the religious landscape of this country.
I know from personal discussion with her that she feels absolutely no contempt for Anglicanism. She left the Anglican church out of conviction. That does not mean she is contemptuous of it.
For secularists she is anyway anathema, rather like the post she is proposed to fill.
Another outrageous and unjustified assertion. I know many people of no religion who greatly admire Ann for the strength of her convictions. I am one of them.
Within the Catholic church, as a prominent straight single lay conservative, she forms part of a minority of, oh, about two.
I think that was a passing attempt at satirical humour. Best he doesn't try that too often if it is as incisive as this example.
She is certainly not the candidate of the Bishops' conference,
Well if Brown is so well informed about the Bishops' wishes, perhaps he'd share with us who their candidate is. He can't because hasn't got a clue. And why should an ambassador be appointed by virtue of whether they are approved of by bishops?
but she has also been attacked by the conservative Damian Thompson, who calls her the rudest woman in Britain, and the liberal circles around the Tablet think she would be a catastrophe.
Liberal circles around Islington, he means. And Damian Thompson thinks she's the rudest person he's met. He should get out more. David Aaronovitch is one of the rudest people I have met. But I think he probably make quite a good ambassador.
This is not an appointment that could be made by anyone who thought Britain's relationship with the Vatican was something that really mattered. After all, Melanie Phillips is not going to be our ambassador in Washington.
Ooh, another lame attempt at humour designed to persuade Guardianistas that Ann Widdecombe really is the spawn of Satan. Don't worry, Andrew, they already think that anyway without any help from your poisonous little keyboard.
Now it may well be that the whole thing is a joke, a rumour got up to please her. She must fancy the job or she would have denied the stories more vehemently than has happened. The superficial advantage for the British government of having her as ambassador in Rome is that she would be in Rome, and not underemployed in the House of Lords. But no one in the House of Lords can make very much trouble, whereas diplomats who can't manage diplomacy can damage their country's interests.
Facile. It is usually the House of Lords which causes trouble for most governments. As for the last comment about diplomacy, this is one sentence where Brown and I can agree. Where we disagree is thaat Ann Widdecombe is perfectly capable of using diplomacy to achieve positive ends. She always says that her proudest moment in politics is when she freed a constituent from prison in Morocco. By which she means she got him out, she didn't spring him. This involved delicate and diplomatic negotiations with the Moroccan government, all carried out by her in her capacity as an MP, not a Minister. She even travelled to Rabatt twice, at her own expense, to do it. Don't insult her by saying she is not capable of diplomatic achievement. This case (which I have considerably shortened in description) is proof of that.
There is only one decent argument for her appointment: even though she's an amateur, she can't be less diplomatic than the supposed professionals who produced the memo suggesting that the Pope endorse a brand of condoms when they were asked to plan for his visit. Nor is she likely to run off with a journalist or even a gogo dancer as recent ambassadors elsewhere have done.
But wouldn't it be great if she did? (I knew you;d enjoy reading that bit, Ann!).
But if we are to have an ambassador to the Vatican at all, we should have one who knows something about diplomacy, and not just foreign policy.
And we will. So all is right with the world and God will be in her heaven.
I now invite unsuccessful candidates and anyone else who is not now elected to a select committee to apply for the following vacancies:
1. ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS – FIVE VACANCIES REMAIN
2. ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIT – THREE VACANCIES REMAIN.
3. HEALTH – ONE VACANCY REMAINS.
4. JUSTICE – TWO VACANCIES REMAIN.
5. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION – FOUR VACANCIES REMAIN.
6. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY – THREE VACANCIES REMAIN.
7. WELSH AFFAIRS – FIVE VACANCIES REMAIN
Last year Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski published an excellent (and serious) book called "Why England Lose". I've just glanced at it again. Here is their analysis, from the book, of the phases of England's Football World Cup campaigns. I haven't changed a word:
Phase One pre-tournament: Certainty that England will win the World Cup
Phase Two: During the tournament England meet a former wartime enemy.
Phase Three: England conclude that the game turned on one freakish piece of bad luck that could only happen to them.
Phase Four: Moreover everyone else cheated.
Phase Five: England are knocked out without getting anywhere near lifting the cup
Phase Six: The day after elimination, normal life resumes.
Phases Seven: A scapegoat is found
Phases Eight: England enter the next World Cup thinking they will win it
In the Show this week we talk about the Budget; the rise in VAT; whether there is any dissent in the coalition; should further cuts be made to aid the deficit; is it right to have the NHS Budget ring fenced; should help be given to aid people to move to where the jobs are; should there be a cap on none EU immigration and finally what should be done about the England Football team!
To listen to the podcast click HERE, or you can also subscribe to the show in the Tory Radio section in the podcast area of Itunes.
Deborah Mattinson was at the heart of Labour's polling organisation for many years. Indeed, she was Gordon Brown's personal pollster.
The bare facts of Peter Walker's life and political career can be found in other obituaries. The salient episodes include his rejuvenation of the Young Conservatives in the 1950's – it's hard to believe now what an astonishingly influential group they were then, not only politically but also socially within the Party; his election in 1961 to the old Worcester Division of Parliament at what was then the extraordinarily young age for an MP of twenty eight; his role as Secretary of State for the Environment (1970-72) in what was the first 'super' department of Government and then as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1972-74); and his three Cabinet posts under Margaret Thatcher (MAFF, Energy – when he played an under-stated but supremely influential role in destroying Arthur Scargill's brand of anarcho-Socialism during the Miner's Strike - and Wales) over a grueling 11 year stint at the apex of government.
For those of us who knew him, one of the intriguing questions we often thought about but never asked (at least not in my case!) was the paradox inherent in a political career which enabled Peter Walker to serve both Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher. The answer lies in his unswerving loyalty to the Tory Party. I think he was fond of Heath and admired the fact he was also a self-made man who had made it to the top of the Conservative Parliamentary Party, the membership of which was dominated largely by aristocrats of major and minor hues. In Mrs Thatcher, he recognised similar echoes from his own modest social upbringing. He admired her steel and resilience, although he saw it as his role to occasionally remind the Party via much-celebrated (at the time) 'coded' speeches at various Conservative Party conferences, that the rampant individualism which some associated with 'Thatcherism', was far removed from the main tenets of Conservatism.
But he was no great philosopher, of course. He was a pragmatist who sought to get the job done with the minimum of fuss. He understood that good government can be defined as quick and decisive political leadership, aimed at achieving the common good. He was never partisan in the sense that he would rarely put narrow Party interests ahead of sensible decisions. By making himself rich when so young, he endowed his political career with irreproachable independence, both from those who sought to influence the political process from outside, as well as from the wealthy plutocrats within the Party whose practice it was to patronise young Parliamentary upstarts and mould them into conformity.
He was a shrewd judge of politicians and I remember during the 1987 election, when we were sitting in the Darlington Conservative Association bar late one night trying, in our own way to help a young(ish) Michael Fallon win his seat, he told me that John Major would succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. A pretty amazing call. I don't think John Major himself had thought that one through by then.
During that campaign with him, I learned that politics can be fun. He laughed all the time. He was supremely confident in any situation, even the time we arrived in Sheffield to be met by a baying mob who tried to tip our car over. 'It's got a solid roof, Chris. It'll be fine.' A bottle of champagne was nearly always opened at the start and end of every campaigning day.
His family was a source of pride and strength to him. He hated overseas travel as a minister if it meant nights away from Tessa and the children, to whom he was utterly devoted. He was kind and unfailingly helpful to everyone who worked for him.
It is a rare blessing that his illness was held at bay for just long enough for him to see his son Robin become the Member of Parliament for Worcester this year.
Quite simply, a wonderful man.
CHRIS GUYVER IS A DIRECTOR OF LUTHER PENDRAGON
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My IN CONVERSATION interview in Total Politics this month is with Alastair Campbell. Here's a much longer version (one third longer) than the one which appears in the magazine. It's relatively unedited so forgive me if there are any errors. If you'd prefer to read the shorter, edited, polished version, click HERE. This week we talked about why I no longer wants to be a Member of Parliament; why on earth anyone would, and how depression can effect people; what can be done to restore faith in politics; what we may see in The Budget this week; how ironic it is to read about Labour criticising possible cuts when it has been their economic mismanagement that has got us to where we are today; political affairs, and should we really care?
To listen to the podcast click HERE, or you can also subscribe to the show in the Tory Radio section in the podcast area of Itunes.
