trevor-ivory

Service Interruption

2008-01-27T09:51:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed a significant lack of postings over the last couple of months. This has been due to my energies being focused on developing a new website. The new website should launch in the next couple of weeks at trevorivory.com and will include a new location for my blog so make sure you check it out over the coming weeks.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T18:38:00.000-08:00

Back from a much needed Christmas break, I would like to wish all readers a very happy 2008.

Personally I had a wonderful Christmas watching my family enjoy spending time with Alex (although this is technically his second Christmas it is the first he really appreciated as he was only four months old for the last one).

More generally, however, Christmas seems to have been marred by a general feeling of uncertainty. In Pakistan, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto may well prove to be the tipping point in the sad political history of recent years; in Kenya an apparently questionable presidential election has pushed the country close to civil war; and closer to home the flow of bad economic news is fueling the economic uncertainty of families whilst a spate of violent incidents has marred the festive season. I hope and pray that the new year will bring better fortune to all.

Politically, it is already clear that 2008 is going to be a year of upheaval at home and abroad - with a presidential election hotting up in the US and a London mayoral race in London. Gordon Brown will be looking for a change in fortune or else his backbenchers may start to look for a change of leadership. David Cameron will be looking to lock-in the Conservative Party's current high standing in the polls and Nick Clegg will be looking to make more of an impact than his predecessor.

Happy new year - it is going to be an interesting one!

It is time for South Africa to wake up

2007-12-09T18:09:00.000-08:00

Anyone who saw Andrew Marr's show this morning will no doubt have been as impressed as I was by the interview with the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. The passion with which he spoke about the plight of the people of Zimbabwe was matched only by the force of his criticisms of the South African President for sitting on his hands on the issue.

Unlike most British critics of Mugabwe's regime, Dr Sentamu cannot be dismissed by Mugabwe as being an imperialist. Dr Sentamu is himself from Uganda and so his criticism that African leaders are sitting on their hands because Mugabwe is black should really hurt them.

What is happening in Zimbabwe today is no better than what happened in South Africa under apartheid and the world must do more to intervene. Gordon Brown was right to boycott the summit this weekend and both he and Dr Sentamu should be praised for taking a stand. It is a stain on the new South Africa that it is providing a veneer of respectability to the regime in Zimbabwe.

Polls, the polls!

2007-11-29T17:26:00.000-08:00

Following hot on the heels of the poll for the Independent earlier this week that gave the Conservative Party a 13 point lead (Conservative 40%, Labour 27%, Lib Dem 18%), the Telegraph/YouGov poll is giving the Conservatives an 11 point lead (Conservative 43%, Labour 32%, Lib Dem 14%).

The real significance of the YouGov poll is that just two months ago it had Labour 11 points ahead of the Conservatives. I am always the first to say that one opinion poll does not an election win, but YouGov has traditionally been the most accurate of the pollsters and so this will make pretty uncomfortable reading for Mr Brown. Although it might be the last of his worries as pressure mounts for a police investigation into the apparent breaches of electoral funding laws, whilst the infamous CDRom is still missing and Northern Rock is still teetering on the brink.

The ironic thing is that these disasters are nothing more than Tony Blair regularly had to face so what has changed? Well apart from the obvious personality change (let's face it Tony Blair was basically a better leader then Gordon Brown), the big change is trust. When you have the trust and confidence of the British people you can weather the storms that much easier, but once that trust and confidence is lost every crisis becomes a test of leadership.

Following Black Wednesday John Major's government struggled to weather even the smallest of political crises, crises that would have barely been noticed before the trust and confidence of the British people was lost on that one fateful day. Even in the last six months we saw Gordon Brown actually being boosted in the polls by his handling of the floods and the foot and mouth outbreak, despite him being the chancellor who has spent the last ten years cutting the flood defence budget and who ultimately has to take responsibility for the pipe through which the virus escaped not having been repaired.

Brown weathered these events and even benefited from them, so what has changed? Trust and confidence. When Gordon Brown told Andrew Marr that he had not taken the opinion polls into account when deciding whether or not to call an election, he was exposed in most people's minds, rightly or wrongly, as a liar. As a result, he lost that precious trust and confidence and as with John Major before him, he needs to fasten his seat belt and get ready for a pretty rough ride.

Is this the next Brown u-turn

2007-11-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

In all the furore about the missing CD Roms, I almost missed this story about the fact that Lord Goldsmith today told a committee of MPs that he would have had to have resigned as Attorney General had the Commons have passed the ninety day detention limit when Tony Blair tried to introduce it. His reason was simple, he could not have voted for it as he did not think it was necessary.

Then, as if Gordon is not having a bad enough week already, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Sir Ken Macdonald, told the same committee that the CPS had neither asked for nor felt that an increase in the current twenty-eight day limit was necessary.

No doubt Mr Brown will plough ahead regardless with the same arrogance he has displayed so often in the past.

"If you did this to me, you would be sacked and sued on the spot"

2007-11-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

That was how my client today told me he would react if I had telephoned him yesterday and told him that a junior member of the firm had accidentally posted confidential information about my client's business to someone else. "Why don't politicians have the same level of accountability?" he asked.

Good question. My family, together with almost every other British family, has apparently been subject to the most outrageous breach of trust by the Government in the losing of CD Roms containing unencrypted details of every family's names, bank account and national insurance numbers, child benefit numbers and children's names. This is quite simply shocking. As one commentator put it last night, "the security and privacy threat will last for years."

The point that my client was making was that it is not good enough for the Chancellor or the Prime Minister to say that it was not their fault - my client wouldn't care whether it was actually my fault or not he would hold me responsible as the person responsible for the firm's relationship with him. I agree with him; Alistair Darling's position looks increasingly shaky.

More widely for the Government, this is a disaster following just a day after the revelations about Northern Rock. Competence, economic or otherwise, is key to any Government's fortunes and this week has not been reassuring to a public still shaken by the revelation that the Home Office is, "not fit for purpose." Apparently nor is the Treasury.

What the last forty-eight hours have demonstrated absolutely clearly is that the concerns that many people, including me, have voiced about creating a super database of information for the ID card scheme are not just the concerns of conspiracy theorists. It seems to me that tonight Gordon Brown must be acknowledging in private if not publicly that ID cards are now as dead as Planning Gain Supplement, super casinos and all the other policies he has quietly dropped since becoming PM.

Northern Rock owes you £900

2007-11-19T18:02:00.000-08:00

It is not everyday that you make a loan to a bank but apparently we have all lent Northern Rock £900 each - or £24bn in total, which is not far off the UK's annual defence budget. Even more concerning was Alistair Darling's slight change of language today - when he first stepped in to guarantee the deposits of Northern Rock he said that the bank was profitable and that he was just helping it to overcome a short-term credit squeeze, but today he was talking about minimising the risk to the taxpayer.

It was bad enough that after ten "prudent" years of Gordon Brown managing the economy we saw the first run on a British bank since the Victorian era, but now that Mr Darling has apparently misled taxpayers and potentially cost us £900 each, it is hard to see how the Government can regain a reputation for economic competence. I suspect that Gordon Brown will tonight be hoping that Bill Clinton was wrong when he said,"It's the economy stupid!"

More bad news for Brown

2007-11-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

This report from Sky News says it all really.

When deciding not to call an election Gordon Brown said it was unlikely that there would be an election in the next eighteen months. I suspect that the latest polls have done nothing to tempt him into an early election so that is probably still true. The bigger question though is whether Brown will still be calling the shots in eighteen months time.

His remarkable fall from grace has already prompted one senior Labour figure to say to me when we spoke yesterday that Brown was no longer as safe as he once was. I suspect that the reality is that nobody in the Labour Party has the stomach for a leadership contest at this stage - not least the possible challengers who would have to be mad to want to take over the reigns now - but the mere fact that it is being spoken about is remarkable given that it is only a few months since Brown lifted the poisoned chalice unopposed.

Wearing my poppy with pride

2007-11-10T18:29:00.000-08:00

I have just watched the Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall. The service was full of emotion and sadness but most of all an overwhelming sense of pride. Most touching was seeing the last remaining soldier from the First World War come into the Hall at the age of 109.

This is not the weekend for political argument but the breaking of the military covenant by this Government is one of its biggest failings. When British men and women enter our armed forces they are agreeing to make the ultimate sacrifice if necessary to defend our country. In return, we should guarantee them every practical protection and in the event that they are injured or killed, we owe it to them to do everything we can for them and their families.

Lack of equipment, dramatic cuts in troop numbers whilst being engaged on many fronts across the world and the closure of military wards are all very clear evidence to support the British Legion's claim that Gordon Brown and his Labour Government have broken the military covenant. The next Conservative Government must rebuild the morale of our armed forces.

Am I the only one who still cannot see Brown's "vision"?

2007-11-06T18:51:00.000-08:00

So what does today's Queen's Speech tell us about Gordon Brown's "vision" that he so desperately wanted to share with us that he decided not to call an election after all?

Spin, spin and more spin as far as I can see. First off he took a pasting from David Cameron who exposed the fact that even the House of Commons Library has confirmed that the "British jobs for British workers" policy is not just a slogan Brown has apparently borrowed from the BNP and the National Front, but it is in fact meaningless as the policy does not safeguard jobs for British workers anyway - any foreign national would be able to take the jobs he wants to create.

Then he tried to say that the Conservative Party was in a muddle over the issue of the new EU treaty. David Cameron has been very clear, not only will we hold a referendum before the treaty is ratified, but we will also campaign for a no vote in that referendum. We will also change the law so that in future any government will have to hold a referendum before transferring further powers to Brussels. This is in contrast to Labour (and the Lib Dems) who are both intent on breaking their manifesto promises to give the British people a referendum. Us confused Mr Brown, you must be confused!

The same old rehashed announcements and the same old spin. A pretty depressing vision for the UK if you ask me.