A Bleak Day For Political Blogging

Guido Fawkes is, and remains, a friend. But I am afraid his blogging over the Hague/Myers issue has not shown the political blogosphere at its finest. His defence is that all he was doing was questioning whether taxpayer should be funding the salary of someone who might be having a relationship with his boss, and as evidence he alleged that they had once shared a hotel room. As if that were evidence of anything...

So on the flimsiest of evidence a young man loses his job and the Foreign Secretary and his wife are forced to issue the most personal of statements, detailing miscarriages and a declaration on the state of their marriage.

What have we come to?

For the record, here is William Hague's statement...

“I feel it is necessary to issue this personal statement in response to press
and internet speculation over the last ten days. Earlier this year a Sunday
newspaper began questioning whether my marriage to Ffion was in trouble, and
last week another media outlet asked whether there was a statement about our
supposed separation. This seemed to be linked to equally untrue speculation
surrounding the appointment of Christopher Myers as a Special Adviser.
Christopher Myers has demonstrated commitment and political talent over the last
eighteen months. He is easily qualified for the job he holds. Any suggestion
that his appointment was due to an improper relationship between us is utterly
false, as is any suggestion that I have ever been involved in a relationship
with any man.

This speculation seems to stem from the fact that whilst campaigning before the election we occasionally shared twin hotel rooms. Neither of us would have done so if we had thought that it in any way meant or implied something else. In hindsight I should have given greater consideration to what might have been made of that, but this is in itself no justification for allegations of this kind, which are untrue and deeply distressing to me, to Ffion and to Christopher.

He has now told me that, as a result of the pressure on his family from the untrue and malicious allegations made about him, he does not wish to continue in his position. It is a pity that a talented individual should feel that he needs to leave his job in this way. Ffion and I believe that everyone has a right to a private life.

However, we now feel it necessary to give some background to our marriage because we have had enough of this continued and hurtful speculation about us. I have made no secret of the fact that Ffion and I would love to start a family. For many years this has been our goal. Sadly this has proved more difficult for us than for most couples. We have encountered many difficulties and suffered multiple miscarriages, and indeed are still grieving for the loss of a pregnancy this summer. We are aware that the stress of infertility can often strain a marriage, but in our case, thankfully, it has only brought us closer together.

It has been an immensely traumatic and painful experience but our marriage is
strong and we will face whatever the future brings together. Several years ago
one Sunday paper reported that Ffion was three months pregnant, without ever
checking the story with us. This made even more difficult the fact that we had
only just experienced another disappointment. We have never made this
information public because of the distress it would cause to our families and
would not do so now were it not for the untrue rumours circulating which
repeatedly call our marriage into question. We wish everyone to know that we are
very happily married.

It is very regrettable to have to make this personal statement, but we have often said to each other ‘if only they knew the truth…’ Well, this is the straightforward truth. I will not be making any further comment on these matters.”

This statement leaves no wriggle room. Look at the last sentence. Hague is not gay. Get it? Some of us never thought he was.

There are several consequences to this. The main one is that Christopher Myers has lost his job. The poor guy clearly felt unable to cope with the media maelstrom and decided to quit both for his own sanity and the sake of the Foreign Secretary's career. It's never good when an adviser becomes the story. I hope he recovers from this ghastly experience quickly and finds a good job soon.

The other main consequence is for those of us who have at least in part made our names through blogging. I remember my part in the John Prescott scandal and after that I decided that was not something I was comfortable in repeating. Since then I have tried (but admittedly not always succeeded) not to descend into the gutter. Would I have defended a Labour politican against such an onslaught? For those who doubt it, they forget (probably conveniently) that I spoke out against the bloggers who accused Gordon Brown of having mental problems. I freely admit that I don't get it right all the time, but when I get it wrong big time I try to hold my hands up and apologise. I hope that happens in this case. The fact that Guido Fawkes has printed the Hague statement with no added comment indicates a growing realisation (I hope) that he called this one wrong.

I am afraid that all of us who blog have been sullied by this experience, even though only one blog was making the insinuations. I said on Radio 4's PM that there was part of me tonight that is ashamed to call myself a political blogger this evening, and I meant it. That may sound a bit holier than thou, but it is how I feel.

I hope Mr Fawkes can look himself in the mirror tonight. Because I sure as hell couldn't.

William Hague on Form

From William Hague's speech to the Tory Spring Conference this morning...

There they were when we met at Blackpool last October, talking of nothing but an imminent election with the arrogant over-confidence that comes from too long in power. Neil Kinnock was even there to say that an election would be called and the Tories would be ‘ground in to the dust’. A triumphalist Kinnock - a sure sign that everything was about to come to grief.

For it turned out within hours that the Prime Minister who had calculated on an early election before he was found out had been rumbled already; that the leader who had prepared for the battle did not have the bottle to begin it; and it has since turned out that he is the same leader who agrees a European Treaty but can’t decide whether to attend the ceremony, calls a minister incompetent but couldn’t decide whether to sack him, calls a review of round the clock drinking but then can’t decide to go ahead and put a stop to it as he should; this is the Prime Ditherer of the nation. He reminds me of the American state Governor who once said ‘I’m not indecisive. Or am I?’

Perhaps this is no surprise, but for me the truly astounding fact we have discovered in recent months is that a Cabinet without John Prescott and Margaret Beckett is less competent than the Cabinet when they were in it.

Not only have they lost the bank account details of every family in the country and let out thousands of criminals early because they failed to plan for prison places, but we have a Home Secretary who is scared to walk down the street and a Chancellor who appeared to have dreamt he was delivering the budget and then woke up to find that he was."

Portillo Documentary Was a Hit

The Portillo documentary on BBC 4 last night was a gripping 90 minutes of political TV. As regulars know, I'm no great fan of Mr P, but this programme was superb. I think he may have found his niche. Like several of his other TV documentaries he imposed himself on the narrative, and again, it worked. He sought to explain the Thatcherite legacy on the Conservative Party and did it very well. His main theory was that the Party had still to recover from the way Margaret Thatcher was overthrown and that David Cameron is the first leader to look as if he can administer the necessary medicine. His star witnesses all seemed to agree with at least the first part of thatr sentence.

The star of the whole programme was Michael Howard. His cameo appearances showed a self knowledge and analysis of his own limitations which was gripping to watch. He knew the party had to change but knew that his own personality would not let him introduce some of the measures needed to do it.

There were one or two factual howlers - David Mellor was never in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, for instance - but overall the programme demonstrated how this genre of documentary can work. I'm not sure what appeal it will have had outside the political classes, but they deserve to be catered for too.

As a footnote, it was also interesting that Portillo admitted that his candid interview with William Hague was the first time the two men had spoken since 2001.

You can watch the programme HERE (until 3 March)

Hague Attacks Brown's Pensions Legacy

I am not in Nottingham this weekend at the Tory Spring Forum. It's the first time for quite a few years I haven't been able to go, but the wonders of the internet mean that I can still follow what is going on. William Hague's speech this afternoon is not the normal Hague knockabout. It's not laced with the usual string of jokes. It looks to me a good indication of the tone of the event - a conference which has the air of a party serious about power. Of course Hague wouldn't be Hague without the odd bit of political banter, so I bring you this extract in which he lays into Gordon Brown for stealing £100 billion from Britain's pensioners...

...And when I say that the failure of Labour is absolute, that brings me to another typical day. Yes, it's the day each month when I have the great privilege of questioning the Deputy Prime Minister at the despatch boxes of the
House of Commons. It's not normally about foreign policy. The time he said he had come back from the 'Balklands' has put paid to that. Sometimes it's about post offices, since he is in charge of co-ordinating government policy on that subject, with the result that 4,000 of them have closed since Labour came to power.

But a few months ago I asked him a simple question. The question, the answer, and the real answer, tell you much of what you need to know about this Government. The question was, since Gordon Brown in his first budget took £5 billion from the pension funds of the nation, what is the total cumulative amount now? This is not of course, as easy as it looks, not just ten times five, because there is all the interest and all the dividends that pensioners would have earned which has also been lost. And the answer was, basically, 'you tell me the answer'. Well, there are two problems with that. One is that ministers are paid to answer questions in the House of Commons and after the next general election we will be only too pleased to answer them instead - but until then it's their job. The second problem is that John Prescott either knew the answer and did not want to reveal it or genuinely had no idea of the extent of Labour's damage to pension funds, and I don't know which is more worrying.

Eventually I did give him the answer, whereupon he, somewhat bizarrely, asked me for....the answer. Well the answer, according to the experts, is that the truly colossal sum of £100 billion has now been lifted from pension funds by the Chancellor. That means that those students at Leeds University can never enjoy the strength of occupational pension provision their parents enjoyed. And I do not believe that any man who did that to them should be our Prime Minister.

If our country had, like a company, a balance sheet, it would show that that £100 billion had been removed from its assets. And it would also show, with the vast growth of public sector pensions at the same time, that even bigger numbers had been added to the liabilities. If someone did that to a company there is no way you would ever call them prudent. And if they spent all the money without improving the public services it was given to you would call them utterly incompetent instead.