Next time the LibDems accuse the Conservatives of opportunism, throw this one back their faces. Today LibDem Home Affairs Spokesman Nick Clegg has lambasted the award of a CBE to Met Deputy Commissioner Andy Hayman. He thinks that because of the Forest Gate raid it should have been withdrawn or postponed (as if that wouldn't have leaked out and caused further damage to police morale). Andy Hayman was Chief Constable for Norfolk when I was in North Norfolk. He's a man of integrity and has had a career to be proud of. Of course things will go wrong operationally from time to time, but Clegg has no idea how many terrorist attacks Andy Hayman and his team have thwarted.For Clegg to make this suggestion shows he's not the man I thought he was. I've made no secret that I have always thought he would be a formidable opponent as LibDem leader, but his performance so far as LibDem Home Affairs spokesman has suggested otherwise. He's a man of hidden shallows.
I agree it is appalling. Enough said.
ReplyDeleteClegg has been poor. His recent performance on BBC Question Time was weak. He seemed to decide to go for the views of the historian Niall Ferguson. As well as mispronouncing the name of this brilliant and influential thinker, he got well and truly whipped. The longer Ming survives(purely in the political sense of course), the less will be Clegg's chances in the succession. Is there anyone else, assuming Hughes and Oaten are non-runners...Cable?
It's not just the Forest Gate raid though; after both botched police shootings (that one and Stockwell) there was a flurry of disinformation from the police, slandering the victims.
ReplyDeleteEven if Andy Hayman wasn't responsible he was in a position to both find out who was, and to squash the stories - he did neither.
His 'apology' didn't actually apologise for any of the things his team had done wrong, it just said that they regretted that people were upset about it; there was barely even that after the Stockwell killing.
He may have been a man of integrity when you knew him, but he's not exhibited much recently.
Same thought I had. Usual opportunistic LibDem crap.
ReplyDeleteAnd Clegg? Who the hell is he? He doesn't come up on my radar often. How the hell do they expect the public to know him then.
I've got no time for that sort of opportunism either but, as someone who has been on the receiving end of police over-the-top tactics (which I have good reason to suppose were polictically inspired, if not directed) I think you/we ought to tread carefully with full and unreserved support for the police.
ReplyDeleteThey are human and like anyone else will do what they know they can get away with in pursuit of their role as currently judged by the anti-terrorist hysteria constantly stirred by politicians of every hue. Lately they appear to be getting away with rather too much IMHO - and the more they get away with, the worse it is likely to get. When was the last time they shot a guilty man for example. I've blogged about this at some length, so enough said.
Clegg is all mouth and seems to have no depth of thinking. The more I see of the LibDems the more I think they were blessed with Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy.
ReplyDeleteIt is always interesting to see how contemptuous Andrew Neil is towards any one of them, he knows the back story and is fairly abrasive with fools
Jeremy Browne. Davey is much touted, but looks and sounds like the backroom boy he used to be (though not as much as either of the brothers Miliband). If they want total oblivion, they could always choose Opik (the man who believes we can negotiate a political solution with Al Qaeda - of course, very easy, just agree to the total destruction of Israel, returning East Timor to rule by Indonesia, the imposition of sharia law in Andalucia and Kashmir etc), Featherstone or Teather.
ReplyDeleteAs for Huhne, would the first hundred days of a Huhne leadership look much worse than the soup into which Campbell has led them? PMQs is never any fun for a third party leader, but Campbell had been very good (and so much better than Kennedy) when he stood in for Kennedy during PMQs as deputy leader. OK, so the other two parties didn't have as vested an interest in going for him (as he wasn't the leader), but even that (and having to ask questions on the terra incognita of domestic policy) can only account for so much of the deterioration in performance.
The former athlete seems to have discovered the melancholy truth that it's often better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
Cross Ferguson at your peril - Master Hari certainly found that out this week. Quite often, reading Hari's columns (particularly his one-sided and ill-informed views on Northern Ireland) is to be reminded that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
ReplyDeleteAs for the mispronunciation of Ferguson's name, I'm often puzzled as to why the ex-Sunderland footballer Niall Quin has his forename rhymed with 'Nile', while the Harvard-based historian so often has his name rhymed with Neil. Inconsistent to say the least.
Michael Oakshott beat me to it. I posted before on Clegg's feebleness on Question Time when he tried to criticise Niall Ferguson for being politically incorrect. Definitely over-rated.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, Ferguson might just be a good bet for Mayor of London? Proud to be British, proud of the Empire? He's also better looking than Livingstone.
I would love to get someone of the calibre of Ferguson involved in the party, but I can't see it. He is far too unorthodox to be boxed in a political party. And he is doing far too well in America to be tempted by what unfortunately looks an impossible task in unseating Red Ken. Norris would be a very good Mayor, but the public are stupid to see it. Most of them deserve Livingstone, I just feel sorry for the rest of them.
ReplyDeletePeople complained tht 250 Police Officers turned up for the raid.
ReplyDeleteThey were 100% sure they would find a bomb - if they had found the bomd that their source had told them was in the property then the surrounding area would have needed to be evacuated fast.
Hence 250 Police Officers.
Once thing I don't like is the culture of spin and PR that seems to have become ingrained in the Police.
Get on with your dangerous job - Police have been killed carrying out similar raids - but cut out the spin and hype.
Always a clever way to apologise that. My first boss always told me to use those exact words. Well because they are true. You rarely mean to cause "upset". The police in this case certainly didn't. But do they regret the raid? Absolutely not. If the intelligence said there was a threat then they were right to act. How many of the people complaining were the same people who complained that the police didn't follow leads before 7-7. Damned if you, damned if don't...
ReplyDeleteFar too unorthodox? A bit like me, then. For whom do you vote if you want more prisons built, the Human Rights Act scrapped (yes, we'd still be signed up to the Convention, but the people who've exploited the HRA - like Dennis Nilsen - would, once again, have all the trouble and expense of taking their cases to Strasbourg), abolition of the monarchy, STV for Euro and local government elections, the House of Lords kept as it is (rather than an elected second chamber made up of another set of full-time polticians answerable to the Whips, especially if the hideous closed list system is used), stopping the over-expansion of higher education (which, apart from filling universities with people intellectually and temperamentally unsuited to higher education will just mean all the top jobs go to those with money or connections, when unpaid work experience and internships will become ever more important - guess who the only people able to afford such unpaid work experience will be?), IR35 scrapped, those earning below £12,000 taken out of tax (instead of taking income tax and NI off them on incomes as low as £4,000, then making them fill in forms for a benefit in all but name, which is incompetently administered, riddled with punitive means-testing, and open to fraud) and the TOCs re-integrated into Network Rail?
ReplyDeleteI'm tribally Labour, but when it comes to any thought of standing for or holding office, I'd probably be much happier as an independent social democrat (rather like the late independent socialist MP, Peter Law).
Well said Iain, but let's be honest, are we really that surprised that the Lib Dems would engage in such opportunism?
ReplyDeletePromoting Clegg may turn out to be one of the best thing the Minger has ever done.
ReplyDeleteI never rated Clegg, and now his weakness is there for the world to see.
I suspect his stock will drop steadily from now on.
Re Niall Fergusson. He is better out of the party than in it. Read his article on Brown in last week's STelegraph. If Boy George could land half the blows that NF did, Brown would be black and blue.Beats me why GO has not developed a strategy and the appropriate soundbites to deal with this so called big beast. Jeff Randall also has his number.
ReplyDeleteSorry strayed from the subject of Clegg. Who is he?
If the intelligence said there was a threat then they were right to act
ReplyDeleteWhich intelligence is this then? The intelligence they initially claimed came from weeks of MI5 surveillance, or the intelligence they later admitted came from an informant they didn't really trust?
If they were right to act were they right to storm the house without identifying themselves? Were they right to shoot an unarmed man (again)? Were they right to drag their suspect down the stairs on his face? Were they right to deny the shooting, and blame the other suspect while holding both so they couldn't respond to the lies being told about them?
It's often said that the police should be supported because they have an important job to do - that's true, but it's also important that they do it properly and they're not.
Honouring the people in charge of both the Forest Gate raid and the Stockwell murder, and (possibly more importantly) the campaign of lies that followed each of them is an insult to all concerned, including their badly led junior officers.
I wouldn't want to be provocative, but how about Norman Lamb as LD leader?
ReplyDeleteIt has, after all, been said by some that the increase in LD majority was no reflection on Iain, when it was a case of a sharp operator (Lamb) enjoying a first-term incumbent's bonus.
Being a sharp operator at the local level may not translate into being a good party leader, but Lamb strikes me, all the same, as a much more credible prospect than, say, Norman Baker.
I think the Tory Party should think again re. Iain and the A-List. He's most amusing (his humour has mellowed considerably since the rather witless partisan bitching about the government seen on his Politico's website diary in 01), enjoys intrigue and gossip (if elected to Parliament he could probably write a set of Diaries to equal those of Alan Clark), and has run a business (which makes a change from all the professional politicians). I'm sure a lot of Labour and LD supporters who visit this blog would think to themselves 'Well if we must have a Tory MP after the next election, let's have an agreeable cove like Iain'.
this brilliant and influential thinker
ReplyDelete"Niall" really isn't any of those things...
You might not agree with him, but do look at how many people buy his books on both sides of the Atlantic, even though his views are hardly mainstream(to say the least). And Time Magazine clearly disagree with you.
ReplyDeleteWell brilliant is subjective I grant you. I and many other think it. But he is certainly influential(based on his book sales on both sides of the Atlantic). Hence the big deal with Time Magazine.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 12:02 said:
ReplyDelete"They were 100% sure they would find a bomb - if they had found the bomd that their source had told them was in the property then the surrounding area would have needed to be evacuated fast."
If they are 100% sure there is a bomb, you evacuate the area first. In any case it was supposedly not a bomb but a "chemical suicide vest".
I'm with oop norf and agree with his (her?) comments.
Clegg performed poorly on Qestion Time & while being a Guardianista may work for many members of the chattering classes it doesn't make me think better of him.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand on this particular case I think you are wrong Iain. Both police investigations have been disasters & worse in both cases somebody in the police has briefed the press on things which turned out to be untrue & could have seriously prejuduced a case if there had been one. Everybody else has to do something for honours but civil servants get them with the rations - they should at least not get them if something goes wrong.
It may be, as yoyu say , that we don't know how many terrorist attacks he has stopped, but then you don't know either & thus is a poor basis for argument. It may well be zero - neither of us know.