Daniel Hannan questions the conventional wisdom about political participation. He argues that we should make voting harder rather than easier so that people value it more. He's obviously one of those Tories who are against weekend voting.
While his suggestion is mischievous, there was wisdom in this Hannan observation: The real reason that people don't vote is that they no longer see the point. This is especially true of local campaigns. The last council elections were, according to every commentator, the most important mid-term poll since Labour took office. Yet, of those who had bothered to register to vote, 62 per cent stayed home.
Even if you were in the 38 per cent who voted, ask yourself what you thought you were achieving.
The most interesting question in politics is not - why don't people vote? It is this - why do they bother?
If you multiply the material gain you anticipate making from any change in the political situation (the small alteration of political outcomes produced by a change in Government from new Labour to Cameron Conservative) by the probability that your vote will change the outcome (very small indeed) the expected gain from voting is almost certainly too small to justify anything but the most minute effort.
So what you would expect to see is stupid people, those incapable of rationally assessing the consequences of their actions, voting and clever people, who can work out it's worthless, staying at home.
Instead you get something close to the opposite.
This suggests that when people vote they are not trying to achieve material gain, but are seeking a way of establishing their identity as citizens and expressing themselves.
Political strategists seeking to move voters routinely look at material gain and how to offer it to voters. I think, in hard political terms, they are wrong to look at it quite like that.
 How the hell do they get away with it?
I took the day off yesterday to pick up some relatives from Heathrow. The flight was supposed to come in 10am. It eventually landed at 7pm. And because of some hassle with the baggage, we only left the damn place at 10.30. A hellish experience for all involved.
Nothing new though, right? Most of us have gone through this. But in any other service industry, if you treat your customers this shoddily, you'd soon be out of business. And the question that came to mind was: how do the airlines get away with it?
Well James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, used his column in The New Yorker this week to answer the question: The airlines’ explanation for the sheer misery of flying is that the important problems—bad weather and an antiquated air-traffic-control system, resulting in overcrowded runways—are out of their hands. But those unavoidable difficulties have been exacerbated by the airlines’ strategic choices, most notably their decision to cut the number of workers they employ and the number of big planes they fly...
Oddly, none of this [the constant delays and bad service] seems to have hurt the airlines — more people than ever are flying, and ticket prices remain relatively stable. In part, this is because, for many trips, there’s no meaningful alternative to flying, which limits the power that fliers have as customers. They can make certain choices — they consistently go for the cheapest flights, making it hard for an airline to raise prices — but anyone who vows never to fly with a particular airline again will likely have an equally bad experience on a rival carrier soon afterward. Like consumers of regional utilities or like drivers who tolerate bad traffic day after day, fliers have accommodated themselves to misery. It’s little wonder, then, that the air-travel market rarely punishes an individual airline for failing to get people to their destination on time: consumers assume, with good reason, that the options are interchangeably awful.
Shocking. Anyone want to start a protest at Heathrow with me?
Murad Ahmed
I wouldn't be much of a guide to what's out there if I didn't make sure you read an extraordinary piece from The New Yorker.
Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize winning classical music critic for the Washington Post, suffers from Asperger's syndrome. And he offers an incredible, rare insight into that world.
Here's a sample: From early childhood, my memory was so acute and my wit so bleak that I was described as a genius — by my parents, by our neighbours, and even, on occasion, by the same teachers who gave me failing marks. I wrapped myself in this mantle, of course, as a poetic justification for behavior that might otherwise have been judged unhinged, and I did my best to believe in it.
But the explanation made no sense. A genius at what? Were other “geniuses” so oblivious that they couldn’t easily tell right from left and idly wet their pants into adolescence? What accounted for my rages and frustrations, for the imperious contempt I showed to people who were in a position to do me harm?
Although I delighted in younger children, whom I could instruct and gently dominate, and I was thrilled when I ran across an adult willing to discuss my pet subjects, I could establish no connection with most of my classmates. My pervasive childhood memory is an excruciating awareness of my own strangeness.
It's worth reading, I promise you.
Max Hastings makes a good point in the Guardian this morning: Ken regards Boris as the only opponent who can beat him. His first hope, therefore, is to cut him off before he wins the Tory nomination.
This is fair enough, but it is pretty rich to seek to scupper Johnson by showcasing his wilder utterances. The entire political career of London's mayor has been an indiscretion, from his dalliance with Sinn Féin and leadership of the lunatic left at the GLC in the 1970s, to his current love affair with Hugo Chávez, burgeoning dictator of Venezuela.
It is only two years since Livingstone was roundly condemned for comparing a Jewish Evening Standard reporter to a concentration camp guard.
The most important paragraph is the first one.
The Mayoral election has already started and the Tories cannot sedately wait for their candidate to be selected before they engage in it.
Fraser Nelson's piece in this week's Spectator should be a set text for all those Tories who are prone to mutiny.
Fraser wonders if, god forbid, David Cameron were to be hit by a bus, who would replace him? The moral of the story is simple: The more Tories ponder the alternatives, the clearer it becomes that there is no better option than the incumbent. Strikingly, no one I spoke to disputes this. One shadow Cabinet member told me that, should Mr Cameron be run over by a bus, ‘I’d kill the bus driver.’
Murad Ahmed
WARNING: INCOMING POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS. Myron Magnet has written a forceful essay in the summer edition of the City Journal about race relations in the US, by way of the Duke "rape" affair and Don Imus. Magnet gets down and dirty in the piece by decoding gangsta rap lyrics and the underclass message they promote. It's well worth a read.
Robbie Millen
What worried many people in the wake of the recent attempted attacks in London and Glasgow, (including Alice Miles in this superb column) was that the alleged attackers were doctors. A tough point to come to terms with if, like me in the past, you argue that there’s a link between social deprivation and terrorism.
Tim Harford, the undercover economist, argues that we shouldn’t be surprised when the most audacious suicide bombings are carried out by highly educated people. For terrorist groups, it’s a matter of brutal efficiency: All in all, the research that professor Krueger gathers together suggests that if there is a link between poverty, education, and terrorism, it is the opposite of the one popularly assumed. We should not be surprised to find that terrorists can add up, read, and even write prescriptions.
What is more surprising is that the attackers in London and Glasgow were so incompetent. Claude Berrebi and Harvard economist Efraim Benmelech studied —there's no nice way to put this — the human-resources policy of Palestinian terrorist groups. They found that older, better-educated terrorists secured more important suicide missions and killed more people. Having more than a high-school education doubles the chance of escaping capture, for example.
If the terrorists in this case do turn out to be the doctors and other professionals who are, as I write, suspected of the crime, it would demonstrate that even years of education and experience do not guarantee a successful attack. Blowing up innocent people is obviously harder than it looks, and for that we can all be grateful.
So intelligent, yes. But also out of their right minds.
Murad Ahmed
As a service, here's an archive of articles where Boris Johnson has mentioned Ken Livingstone.
No big hostages to fortune on the policy front, a bit negative on the congestion charge without committing himself, and an attack on the bendy buses that can be dismissed as a joke.
1. Why we cyclists need to strike a deal with pedestrians - On life as a cyclist in London and being attacked by Ken Livingstone's odious, inhuman, socialistic 18-metre Frankfurter buses blindly pasting the cyclist against the kerb
2. Getting our knickers in a twist over China - Quite often on a Wednesday lunchtime I find myself conferring with my friend Rudi the sandwich man about the madness of Ken Livingstone, and his latest monstrous scheme for London. Rudi blames the congestion charge for pushing up his costs. I can't stand the evil frankfurter buses that crush cyclists to the kerb
3. We'll get more hosepipe bans if Prescott showers us in new homes - Boris doesn't understand why we need hosepipe bans It is true that we have had a dry winter, and that the reservoirs are low. But it somehow beggars belief, when cataracts of the stuff are falling out of the sky, that Ken Livingstone should be so panicked by London's water shortage that he has broken off from welcoming hate-spouting imams to warn us all to take showers rather than baths and not to flush the bog without a very good reason
4. Whatever you do Ken, don't apologise - Boris sides with Ken over his spat with the Evening Standard We have in our newspapers a non-story, a media spat, about the insults that newt-fancier Ken Livingstone is alleged to have dished out, on leaving a party, to a reporter from the Evening Standard. The story is now in its third or fourth day; it is dying; and what does our Prime Minister do? He intervenes! Iraq is still a war zone, our hospitals are filthy, people live in fear of crime, and Blair finds time to demand an apology - on behalf of the Evening Standard - from Ken Livingstone. Well, I do not normally side with Red Ken, but on this occasion I say, Ken, whatever you do, don't apologise.
5. Two wheels good, four wheels bad - P is also for PAVEMENT, which you should only mount in the most extreme circumstances (e. g., if you are driven off the road by one of Ken Livingstone's demented new single-deckers, so long that they can't turn corners)
6. As London goes down the tubes, village pubs call time - The biggest threat to ye old village boozer is not the breathalyser, or even Gordon Brown. It is the misery of trying to get to work on the London Underground. It's Ken Livingstone, and Bob Kiley, and John Prescott, and the Treasury, or whoever is responsible for the unbelievable and chronic chaos on the Tube.
It is the result of decades of Labour-controlled inner city education, which means that the middle classes feel they have no choice but to protect their children and take them somewhere leafy. It is the result of crime, and the danger of being pumped full of lead by the cops for having a cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun, or possibly, under Ken Livingstone's dictatorial plans, of being shot for having any kind of cigarette lighter at all"
7. Bush's pork barrel politics put me off McDonald's - You can't drive a car around London, not when Ken Livingstone is about to slap some loony tax on car use, not when you can't park a car anywhere
8. The phoney war of the Spaniard's succession - We have Ken Livingstone and his ineffable band of loonies filling in their taxi expenses, while the Tube decays, and while King Newt simultaneously spends our taxes on enormous, Big Brother-style posters of himself, in which he asks us to write and tell him how he is doing
Marriage works. It keeps relationships together and children benefit hugely from stable two parent families. The evidence is overwhelming. I've never seen it seriously disputed.
It is a serious sociological observation, not a right-wing cliché. Indeed, the first time I was introduced to the idea was an article, Dan Quayle was Right by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, originally printed in The Atlantic Monthly. I was given it by Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, the intellectual driver of the Clinton-Blair third way.
But it still leaves two questions. Why does it work? And can Government do anything to promote it? I think the answers are linked.
The reason why married couples stay together longer than cohabiting ones is not a mystery. Marriage makes use of a very strong principle of social psychology - that humans strive very hard to remain consistent to their commitments. Robert Cialdini deals with this in one section of his unmissable book Influence.
Marriage works for the same reason that Weight Watchers get you to announce your goals in public and weigh yourself in public, and for the same reason that the Chinese insisted that prisoners of war write their confessions down. Once a commitment is made publicly, even in front of a few people, it becomes much harder to escape from.
Understanding that marriage works through social psychology is important when considering policy.
The suggestion that tax breaks might encourage marriage seems laughable. One Brown spin doctor when asked why he cohabited replied "I would have married, but Gordon abolished the married couple's allowance". Yet this laughter is inspired by a misconception about the tax policy - that the idea is to pay people a small sum to wed. How could the sum ever be big enough for that, scoff the critics.
They've missed the point. The idea is to establish that marriage is a social norm, once again. That it is socially approved of and looked on with favour. Just as they work hard to be consistent, people tend to conform to social norms. Quite a small sum could prove powerful.
One of the hot books in American political debate at the moment is Bryan Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter.
Caplan's theory is, essentially, that James Surowiecki was wrong in his book The Wisdom of Crowds. Ignorant opinions do not cancel themselves out, producing truth. There are systematic biases reflecting a general misunderstanding of markets.
Now Daniel Casse, the Republican speechwriter and strategist has taken issue with Caplan. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Casse takes as an example Caplan's complaints that voters don't understand free trade. He points out that despite this deficiency most politicians have been allowed by voters to pursue free trade policies.
Dan is making an important distinction, I think. Voters have opinions that they don't necessarily want their elected representatives to replicate. They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance. Being able to distinguish between the two is a rare but indispensable political skill.
The hot political debate of the next few years will concern what Blair adviser Matthew Taylor calls pro-social behaviour: This is the need for a radical rethink about social change. Instead of a Government-centric model of change in which we assume our rulers should be given the blame for what goes wrong and the responsibility for making it right, we need a citizen-centric model in which we reinstate ourselves as the authors of our own collective destinies.
Or, as David Cameron calls it, social responsibility: We've fallen into the dangerous trap of assuming that social progress is solely the responsibility of the state.
But social progress is not just a question of state control and government action.
It is a question of social responsibility - the attitudes, decisions and daily actions of every single person and every single organisation in society.
It's easy to regard this as a fairly soft area for policy making. But, if approached seriously, it isn't (as I argued not long ago in my Times column).
David Brooks gives a good example of the complexities in a piece for the New York Times (behind a subscription wall): American schools are awash in moral instruction -- on sex, multiculturalism, environmental awareness and so on -- and basically none of it works. Sex ed doesn't change behavior. Birth control education doesn't produce measurable results. The fact is, schools are ineffectual when it comes to values education.
That's because all this is based on a false model of human nature. It's based on the idea that human beings are primarily deciders. If you pour them full of moral maxims, they will be more likely to decide properly when temptation arises.
We're not primarily deciders. We're primarily perceivers. The body receives huge amounts of information from the world, and what we primarily do is turn that data into a series of generalizations, stereotypes and theories that we can use to navigate our way through life. Once we've perceived a situation and construed it so that it fits one of the patterns we carry in our memory, we've pretty much rigged how we're going to react, even though we haven't consciously sat down to make a decision.
Construing is deciding.
Expect much debate about this sort of thing in the months to come. It's the emerging issue.
When the Guardian was redesigned, its editor said that in future it was going to be broader ideologically, a paper of the liberal intelligentsia, but not just of the left.
So how is he getting on?
The oped pages of the Guardian today consists of the following columns: There is no God, women still don't have enough power in politics, Islamofascism isn't really fascism, we should mourn the decline of albums caused by our accelerated culture, the debauched rich are spoiling everything and need to be taxed more heavily and the Iraq war was really all about oil.
I'd say he still has a way to go.
Tony Blair has often being King in the House of Commons. The key is that he finds the very best arguments to advance his position. When the arguments aren't there he is miserable.
But today, when the statement on the European summit was being debated, he managed to be relaxed and strong while completely blathering. It was the reverse of his usual method - there was wit but no attempt at an argument at all.
He still hasn't properly explained how he could have agreed to a referendum before the election and is withdrawing his promise now.
The one argument that he could have deployed - that there is now an opt out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights - looks very ropey.
Here is the Financial Times leader column this morning: Mr Blair tried to prevent the charter on fundamental rights from being made legally binding. He failed. But he has won a lengthy protocol insisting that it cannot be used to challenge UK laws: in effect, it is another opt-out. It may not be legally enforceable, for it discriminates in the application of fundamental rights
I forgot to post on Simon Heffer's Wednesday article. But I really can't just let it pass.
It was a variant on the standard September column. You know the one - "I've been having a lovely holiday in France and come back to realise that Britain is horrible. Why can't we have high speed trains and better bistros".
The Heffer version is "I have been having a lovely holiday in France and come back to realise that British Conservatives are horrible. Why can't we have high speed Sarkozys and nice bistros."
So why can't British Conservatives be just like M. Sarkozy? I think you will find, Simon, that the answer is:
a. that we are not living in France, and issues that resonate there, given its recent history, may not work in the same way over here,
and
b. that the French Socialists have not moved to the centre as new Labour has, so cannot be fought from the Right in the same way.
If Monsieur Heffer is not persuaded by either of these then he might like to explain a couple of interesting omissions from his approved list of Sarkozy's right wing policies. Why did he leave out the Frenchman's support for industrial intervention and more powers for Brussels?
Surely if he thinks the Tories should copy Sarkozy, he thinks they should copy these things too?
I love it when a writer puts their finger right on it. That's what Andrew Gimson did this morning describing the Prime Minister's style of dealing with press questions: Mr Blair's "openness" is nothing of the kind. When confronted by the wild dogs of the press, he makes a great show of emptying his pockets, safe in the knowledge that he has already hidden his money in his shoe.
Brilliant.
 In her defence of Harriet Harman, did Polly Toynbee really call affluent people "the filthy rich"? Did she really dismiss Hilary Benn as "born a millionaire"?
She couldn't have, could she? Wouldn't she be making herself look completely ridiculous? She's hardly a claimant of working families tax credit, after all.
But, dear reader, I fear very much that she did.
Tim Worstall (once described by Polly as "a pendant") makes the necessary point: Harman is a niece of Elizabeth, Countess of Longford
Polly Toynbee: Her descent is as follows: 9th Earl of Carlisle -> Lady Mary Murray md Gilbert A. Murray, Regius Professor of Classics -> Rosalind Murray md (div) Arnold J. Toynbee, historian -> Philip Toynbee, literary critic -> Polly Toynbee,
So, niece of a Countess supported by g-g grandaughter of an Earl.
Hilary Benn is, of course, merely the second son of a Viscount.
Further, the Harman connection is to a title from 1677, the Toynbee one to a title from 1322, revived in 1660.
The Viscountcy dates only from 1942.
Easy to see what's happening here, the ladies are simply ganging up on some unspeakable arriviste.
 Here's something I don't usually do - recommend something I haven't read yet.
I think Paul Berman has been one of the best writers on the war on terror. His books Terror and Liberalism and Power and the Idealists are both unmissable. He is an articulate spokesman for the sort of liberal internationalism championed by David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and the Euston Manifesto signatories.
So news of the appearance of a long piece by him in the New Republic about Tariq Ramadan sent me directly to their site. But it's long (45 pages) so I've printed it off to read on the weekend. I thought you might like to do this too.
What should Hillary Clinton do about the war? Should she tack against the war to secure the party nomination, or stick to her guns to show she is a leader and consistent.
In as superb piece of analysis on Real Clear Politics, Kathleen Parker shows just how much trouble these questions are giving the Senator: Early on during the anti-war surge, she stood bravely by her vote. Then under pressure from the Democratic base, she said she wouldn't have voted the way she did had she known then what she knows now. By the first Democratic debate last month, she said she regretted trusting Bush when he said he would let U.N. weapons inspectors do their work. By Sunday's second debate, Clinton's Iraq War vote was really for "coercive diplomacy."
So can I offer her some advice based on our experience in Britain?
At the last General Election, it became clear that Iraq was Tony Blair's most significant political liability. The Conservatives were desperate to exploit it. Just one problem - they too had voted for the war on Iraq.
So Tory leader Michael Howard tried this line - I wouldn't have voted for the resolution to go to war if I had known the full truth. Yes, I support the war, he said. But, now I know the full story I wouldn't have given my backing to Tony Blair's explanation.
Funnily enough this was not a mere political ploy. He actually believed it. But it didn't work. It looked opportunistic as well as being a piece of lawyerly (Howard was a lawyer) evasiveness. In the election, he ended up being forced to argue that he would have attacked Saddam if he had known that the Iraqis did not have WMD. A position held by hardly any voter.
The lesson from this episode is that any attempt to escape responsibility for a pro-war vote will fail. Even using arguments, which you believe and can justify. The Senator needs to understand that she is stuck with supporting the war and arguments about detailed bits of resolutions are pointless.
The British experience endorses Kathleen Parker's view entirely: Clinton would have done better to stick to her original principle: She did what she thought was right at the time and wishes the war had been better managed. That's an assessment other war supporters can share and that war protesters can respect. Americans tend to be forgiving of errors in judgment made in good faith. They are less forgiving of fudging history in the service of politics.
 On Sunday Michael Portillo addressed the question of grammar schools and made this observation:
Graham Brady, the party’s Europe spokesman, produced compelling evidence that on average all pupils in areas that have grammar schools do better than others elsewhere. Even those who fail the selection exam, and therefore go to comprehensive schools instead, do better.
He refuted the Tory leadership’s argument that this is because grammar schools are found only in more affluent areas. Pupils in Trafford, where there are grammars, outperform those in Bury, where there are none, even though the cities are socially similar. Children “in leafy Oxfordshire”, wrote Brady (a dig at Cameron’s own constituents), “fail to reach the national average”.
“Two brains” Willetts had been defeated on the evidence (but not necessarily the politics) by Brady, who always struck me as one of life’s plodders.
Let's leave aside the fantastically Portilloesque and fantastically unnecessary description of Mr Brady as a "plodder", shall we? Instead let's concentrate on the argument that Michael finds so persuasive.
Was the evidence produced by Mr Brady indeed compelling? Er, no.
The mistake he has made is a fairly simple one. Trafford grammar schools do not only contain children of parents living in Trafford. Children living in neighbouring areas go there too, depressing results in Bury and raising them in Trafford.
Saturday's Telegraph contained another gem from Charles Moore. His passionate, lucid attack on the Israel boycotters is essential reading.
It includes this: The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.
The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement.
And concludes thus: As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.
Read it all, though.
An open secret maybe, but those rumours about Tinky Winky are true. Here’s the proof: The Tellytubbies are set to be banned in Poland after a government media watchdog decided they encouraged homosexuality.
Government controlled public TV may said that the children's TV programme had fallen foul of Poland's government appointed Children's Rights Spokesman, who believes that the show is "gay propaganda".
A special committee has been appointed to examine the claims including allegations that Tinky Winky's handbag was breaking down gender barriers and encouraging homosexuality.
Of course, this is silly news, but it’s worth taking seriously because it’s one of many stories about the rise of homophobia that are coming out of Eastern Europe. Such as this one.
 Andrew Sullivan describes yesterday’s scene in Moscow:
A new low-point. Today, a homophobic mob set upon a group of Russians and Europeans who were trying to present Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, with a memo from 40 members of the European parliament requesting that gay Russians be permitted to assemble freely in the city. The cops arrested the gay activists - not the violent mob.
So is this just a cultural and moral issue that us “liberal” westerners just can’t understand. Maybe. But I prefer this argument from Peter Tatchell, one of the gay campaigners that were attacked in Russia. With the demise of communism, religious fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism are filling the void. Homophobia is the hallmark of these reactionary movements. Queers are a new scapegoat.
Worrying. But Tatchell ends on a note of optimism. Yet unbowed and defiant, they are often leading the resistance to authoritarianism and spearheading the struggle for democracy and human rights. Bravo the gays!
Murad Ahmed
Janet Daley returns to grammar schools with this remark: Team Cameron, meanwhile, sinks deeper into utter confusion and incoherence. On the one hand, it insists that the past week's political nightmare (including the chorus of attacks from critics like me) has been just what it wanted; on the other, it bursts into floods of tears and accuses me of being nasty and unhelpful for pointing out the potholes in its own road to the future. Conservative spokesmen are apparently allowed to say vindictive and merciless things about the way middle-class parents raise their children, but those who take the assault personally must remain constructive and helpful in their response. OK, this is me being helpful.
I think she means me, ladies and gentleman.
I realise, with a bit of a sigh (I often find myself moved by oped columns, naturally, but rarely to floods of tears, I must confess), that I am wasting my time here, but I should point out that her suggestion that Conservative spokesman said "vindictive and merciless things about the way middle-class parents raise their children" is twaddle. The merciless things Janet objected to she first span up before objecting to them.
And I didn't say that arguing against Conservative grammar schools is nasty and unhelpful. I said that calling David Cameron's advisers "juvenile idiots" was nasty and uncalled for. Which it was.
Janet Daley is able to make intelligent and worthwhile arguments without resorting to such nonsense. I don't like tangling with her particularly, since I like her. But I felt her invective was such that it would be cowardly not to respond.
I've read many, many excellent columns by Janet. The original grammar schools piece wasn't one of them. I didn't think that printing the same points again improved it.
Fraser Nelson gets it.
His Spectator column this week is an excellent survey of the Tory policy leap that has been lost in the debate about grammar schools: The system Mr Willetts seems to be proposing could become a more potent force for social mobility than a reimposition of grammar schools ever could.
Mr Cameron appears inclined toward a version of the voucher system that transformed Swedish education when it was introduced in 1992. The dynamics are as simple as they are powerful. Any qualified teachers can set up a school, as long as they prove there is a demand and meet minimum standards. The state pays them a fixed amount per pupil: about £5,000 per year. State education would be open to any school, or community, that wanted to participate. And that’s it.
He continues: In Mr Blair’s system, new schools can only open once they have a found a sponsor willing to part with £2 million in areas that fit ‘deprivation criteria’. Academies usually replace failed schools, thus adding nothing to the number of schools. Negotiations often take two years. And if the organisers want to open a second school, they must start this whole process from the beginning — and run the dispiriting gauntlet of the LEAs yet again
Mr Willetts is proposing to correct each of these defects. There would be no sponsorship criteria, new schools could open wherever there is a demand, and multiple school licences would be granted. Mr Cameron said on Monday he would ensure the ‘LEAs cannot strangle new schools at birth’. Mr Willetts envisages a large number of smaller, boutique schools rather than a new Grange Hill with a cast of hundreds in every neighbourhood.
Or we could continue arguing about a half a dozen selective schools in Kent.
 Calling all of Comment Central's American friends. I need your help.
I've decided I need to keep a closer eye on US political consultant Bob Shrum.
Not stalker stuff, you understand, just enough to know about the big controversies he's involved in. And I'd also like to know when he's in Britain and anything he says about the political situation here.
Why?
Because Shrum is a close adviser to our Prime Minister Designate, Gordon Brown. Guido Fawkes has tales of him addressing Brown's think tank, but that's not the half of it. He is a long-standing ally and strategist for the Chancellor.
Independent columnist Johann Hari speculated last year,in a column that is very well worth reading, that Shrum could have a profound effect on Brown's strategy: In addition to drawing out the powerful populist side of Brown, Shrum may also draw out some of his uglier instincts.
Hilariously, Hari regards this as "mildly encouraging".
Anyway, I'm persuaded we ought to be keeping an eye on Shrum. His forthcoming memoirs sound juicy, for instance.
Remember. I'm relying on you.
I know I've already included it in the Daily Fix, but (not for the first time) Rachel Sylvester's column in the Telegraph this morning is particularly well worth reading.
She suggests that the split between the Home Office and the Department of Justice has disturbed the balance of power in Whitehall. And that Gordon Brown will be content to see that disruption.
I recommend it to you.
Janet Daley is angry about Tory policy towards grammar schools. Fair enough. But I wouldn't want her to think she has a monopoly on anger.
I found her column this morning about the Tory grammar school policy infuriating - insulting and cheap in places, entirely ridiculous in others. I like and respect Janet, but I think she really let herself down.
Here's the opening sentence on the Tory's grammar school : Well the Tories certainly have stolen the limelight from Labour.
How incredibly self-absorbed some Conservatives can be. The idea that last week's speech by David Willetts stole the limelight from Gordon Brown's ascension to the Premiership is ludicrous.
She continued: Conservatives presented the commentariat with a target to die for by flinging their party into a perfectly executed suicide mission.
This is an interesting manoeuvre. I have never seen anyone present anyone else with a target by committing suicide. Let alone a target to die for. But I'll take it from Janet that this is physically possible. She then caps off her mixed metaphor with this: And their leader - or the clique of juvenile idiots who advise him - still doesn't get it.
How dare you, Janet. What a pathetic, rude thing to say. Just because you disagree with their position on school selection doesn't justify your remark. David Cameron employs some very able people, a number of whom have been independently successful. I don't always agree with them either, but such a personal attack is lamentable. It is worth noting, in passing, that the political advice of these "juvenile idiots" hasn't done Mr Cameron much harm so far. Now they are reduced to silencing Michael Howard, who has been a generous patron of their Brave New Party, when he threatens to erupt publicly over the abandonment of a policy which he regards as sacred to the Tories' meritocratic credentials.
If Michael (who incidentally is an honourable person who would not stoop to the insults used in Janet's piece) does regard being in favour of grammar schools as sacred, and perhaps he does, then it is surprising it wasn't his policy when he was leader. The party wanted to allow schools to set their own selection policy while simultaneously arguing that it was against the 11 plus. This wasn't a coherent policy and was always going to need to be changed.
And if reintroducing grammar schools is sacred, it is also surprising that it hasn't been the policy of any Conservative Government since 1964. By rejecting Clause Four, New Labour was seen to be embracing public opinion and throwing off ties to its own vested interests. By rejecting grammar schools and the principle of academic selection, which are overwhelmingly popular with the public, Cameron's Conservatives are doing precisely the opposite.
So proposing selection is popular, is it? Let's see. Is any politician ready to get up and announce that they are in favour of secondary modern schools? Thought not. But secondary moderns are the other 75 per cent of the policy, aren't they. School selection became unpopular because 75 per cent of people don't go to the grammar schools. It's interesting that everyone calls the selection policy a policy to bring back grammar schools. No one ever calls it a policy to bring back secondary moderns. What else, pray, could David Willetts have meant when he implied that grammar schools had effectively been rendered useless to the cause of social mobility by the selfishness of middle-class parents who will insist on ferrying their offspring to "tennis coaching or music lessons" and even - good grief - arranging for private tuition to fill in the gaps left by appalling state schools?
If it were not for all those greedy middle-class (boo) families out there bunging up the few remaining grammar schools with their over-privileged darlings, there might be a chance for poor, disadvantaged (hooray) children to get a fair crack at them. So tainted is the notion of selective schooling that we must embrace a system which cannot be corrupted by the self-serving bourgeoisie. (Never mind that the favoured system - selection within schools by streaming and setting - would be just as corruptible by parental help and support.)
So let's get this straight: it is now the official Conservative view that parents who struggle and sacrifice their time and money in the interests of helping their children to get on in life are a problem. No, Mr Willetts, it will not do to say that that was not quite what you meant. It is what you damn well said. And it is not just morally objectionable, it is logically absurd from your own point of view.
Not only did David Willetts not quite say this, he didn't say it at all. The things that Janet calls "morally objectionable" and "logically absurd" she made up before attacking. David Willetts did not describe middle class parents as selfish or wrong for wanting the best for their children. He simply said that because they do and act upon it more these days, the 11 plus is no longer as good a test of pure ability as it was and that grammar schools don't work as a driver of social mobility as well as they used to.
All the stuff about the self-serving bourgeoisie is a figment of Janet's imagination. It wasn't in the speech or anything anybody said about the speech. I have no idea where she got it from. If you genuinely wish to improve the lot of the disadvantaged, then you cannot want the poor to remain in poverty - and yet by saying that it is only the poorest (those families in receipt of free school meals) whom you deem to be worthy of support, you are effectively branding all those who climb out of poverty by their own efforts as unworthy of your help. So staying poor becomes virtuous (deserving) but pulling yourself out - or pushing your children out - of poverty becomes a vice (undeserving).
Uh? Maybe I am a juvenile idiot too, but I don't follow. David Willetts used free school meal numbers as a useful measure, in the absence of a better one, of seeing how well the social mix in grammar schools matches that of the local population. Nobody said that being poor was virtuous or otherwise The fate of the underclass and its dire educational prospects is a national tragedy for which some remedy may or may not be possible. But it will certainly not be found by automatically ruling that anyone who is not permanently, irredeemably disadvantaged is ipso facto undeserving.
Again, no one said this. Mr Willetts is, famously, a very intelligent man: surely he understands that not all advantages are "unfair advantages".
Yes, you are right, Janet. He is intelligent and therefore does understand this. The Cameron project has, at a stroke, restored patrician condescension to the heart of Conservative philosophy. Apparently oblivious to the sinister aspect that their own upper-class, public-school backgrounds would inject into this debate, they have revived a species of class war that prevailed in this country long before the Marxist version: the aristocratic loathing of the middle-class upstart.
The destitute are sympathetic because they can be patronised and "helped": the real enemy is the striving, overly-conscientious burgher who insists on helping himself.
Of course the striving middle class, who want to improve themselves, should be given every chance and it is vital that the Tories be on their side. But in practice it is these people who turned against grammar schools hardest and quickest. They found their children going to second-class schools, and labelled failures.
I understand that many Conservatives believe in re-introducing grammar schools. There is certainly a case that can be made. And Janet is within her rights to make it and dissent firmly. But a combination of rudeness and attacking arguments that you first put up yourself can't be allowed to go unanswered.
 I regard David Brooks of the New York Times as one of the best conservative columnists in the world. A view that Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome shares.
Unfortunately, his columns are behind the NYT subscription shield (though he is good enough to be worth the fee on his own). This week he argues for a new strategy for conservatives: What the country needs is a candidate who can transcend current categories and give a speech laying out a human capital agenda.
Brooks believes that George W. Bush's great political achievement was to create an idea - compassionate conservatism - that transcended traditional policy debates inside his party. But compassionate conservatism had substantive problems: It involved blending church and state in ways that made people on both sides uncomfortable. It was too small an agenda to build an entire domestic policy around.
So now Brooks argues for a human capital agenda. Its chief advantage is that it: leads to policies that cut across left and right. At the very least, it means preserving low income-tax rates, which cause people to work harder and develop their capacities. It means creating high-quality preschools for children from disorganised single-parent homes. It means giving parents more school choice so they can take advantage of the information they now have about failing schools thanks to No Child Left Behind.
It means increasing child tax credits to reduce economic stress on young families. It means encouraging marriage, the best educational institution we have. It means a national service program, so young people can experience the world.
I can see his point, but as a political message I think there is a problem. Won't people get the idea that Republicans see them as units of production? I am not sure the language of human capital is very attractive to the pieces of capital themselves.
Maybe it would be better framed as Opportunity Conservatism, incorporating the attractive idea of social mobility.
 Some headlines, opinion pieces and thoughts from around the world.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial: Britain After Blair - Who is Gordon Brown? After more than 10 years at 10 Downing Street, he will leave behind a Britain that has bolstered its standing in Europe, solidified its role as one of America's closest allies and built London into a global financial hub. His Labour successor will be hard-pressed to do as well.
Kevin Sullivan in Washington Post: Briton's decade of achievements dimmed by embrace of Bush and Iraq War At the same time, those who know Blair well said he believes that Britain is best served by a prime minister who keeps an airtight relationship with the U.S. president and stays "inside the tent" with him to influence policy. He established such a close relationship with President Bill Clinton that many American observers were surprised when he hit it off so quickly with Bush, Clinton's political opposite. But Blair was just being consistent.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft in Slate: Why do Brits dislike Tony Blair? Although the religious faith worn on his sleeve would seem normal enough in an American politician, it's perplexing in a country where Church of England services are now attended by less than 2 percent of the population, but even that seemed at least authentic.
Alan Cowell in International Herald Tribune: Brown about to take over in Britain - but who is he? Brown's manner is far from the silver-tongued smoothness of Blair, once nicknamed Teflon Tony. Indeed, with somewhat faint praise, Blair has likened his successor to "a great clunking fist" of a politician who will lead Labour into battle against the polished Conservative leader, David Cameron.
A. N. Wilson in the New York Times: A player who never found his stage Being a man of quick though skin-deep intelligence, Mr. Blair found out very quickly that there are in fact fewer and fewer areas over which British politicians, perhaps any politicians, have control in today’s world.
In yesterday's Telegraph Janet Daley argued that Thursday's results were no breakthrough. She pointed out that: As yesterday's Sunday Telegraph reported, in 750 key wards, the average Conservative share of the vote increased by just 0.4 of a percentage point.
Well, yes. They did increase by just that percentage since last year. But they increased by vastly more than since the last General Election, which is surely the point.
I think Janet is right to argue that these results do not guarantee a Tory election victory. The opinion polls tell us exactly what the position is, and it is obvious that the Conservatives are not quite there yet.
But she goes further and uses the results to argue for an angry strategy rather than a nice one. And I think this is quite wrong.
The Conservative party used an angry strategy for eight years. And it failed. It has been using a nice strategy for two years and it is working much better.
I am at a loss to understand how the strategy being urged on Mr Cameron by Janet would improve the Tory showing. How does it differ from that adopted by William Hague before 2001?
Who advised John Browne to attempt to injunct Associated Newspapers?
This is a worthwhile question for BP investors to ponder. For while Browne made mistakes, he may not have been alone.
I have every sympathy with the desire of the former BP boss to keep his private life private. But his strategy for suppressing the story was imbecilic. Someone should have told him:
- That once Jeff Chevalier (Is that his real name? It is a cartoon male escort moniker) had gone to the press, the story was going to come out. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with press relations would have known that. The only sensible response would have been to work on damage limitation.
- That such an exercise would have had a high chance of success. The story would have run but, sensibly handled by BP, it would not have been treated unsympathetically.
- That court action was unthinkable unless he was willing to tell the whole truth to the court. This might provide more uncomfortable details than might otherwise have been in the public domain.
It is possible that Lord Browne ignored all the advice he was given and pressed ahead with the action. The BBC's Robert Peston has written an excellent short post on Browne suggesting that he had become too powerful inside the company.
But perhaps the internal advice was to press on.
In the Telegraph Andrew Pierce has written a worthwhile profile containing this: He took advice from Anji Hunter, a key BP executive, who was once the gatekeeper to Tony Blair at No 10. They agreed that he should do it [talk about his sexuality] when he appeared on Radio 4's Desert Islands Discs.
This was clearly good advice. It wasn't followed through.
BP investors and management need to consider how Browne's catastrophic misjudgement was made. If it was his alone then clearly the culture of the company needs to change, but his departure may take care of that. But if others were involved, the company's communications operation may need a more thorough re-evaluation.
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