'The Knives' is nigh

Five or so years in the making, my third novel is finally out next Thursday. I'm due to have a piece in tomorrow's Guardian Review about politics and fiction, and after that we will see what kind of coverage may come.... 

 

In the meantime this pre-publication response to the novel from Alastair Campbell is one I wear with pride:

 

'A gripping read from start to finish. A rich, multi-layered account of the complexities of modern government where personal, political and cultural realities mean simple choices are hard to come by.'

For sure I will be at the Edinburgh Book Festival on August 17 for an event with Mark Lawson chaired by none other than Val McDermid, and I will be on BBC Radio 4's Open Book to discuss some of the issues around The Knives on August 21. A podcast I'm doing with the estimable Prospect magazine will also be available from the 21st. Next week there will be an extract from the book and a prize giveaway on the Mr. Hyde website, plus a blog post by me on Foyles' site. 

 

All this and more once The Knives are out, as they say...

Budget 2010: Make the best of us, not the worst

For me as for many, I suspect, the merchant bankers snagged by TV news cameras supping in Corney & Barrow last night (could have been any C&B, didn't matter) looked altogether too relieved and thirsty and ready for the weekend. Not that I didn’t want the markets to approve the ‘Unavoidable Budget’™, you understand – au contraire. I was just fantasising that the markets' handmaidens might have to feel as sober and filled with foreboding as the rest of us, at least for an evening.
Because I have no imagination I couldn’t foretell any of yesterday’s Budget except for what had been leaked, plus the surety that Nick Clegg would be talking it up weasel-style in front of a camera and his imaginary legion of fans. I almost didn’t want to buy outright the Krugman thesis that we are on the brink of a historic error, austerity in a time of weak demand. And I didn’t fancy going along automatically with Alastair Campbell’s tribal reading of the runes: “...George Osborne puts the fragile recovery at risk with his ideological onslaught on public services, by pretending the economy is worse than it is, and using the quisling Lib Dems as political cover.”

However, it seems clear today that the poorest areas and people in this country have been disproportionately hit by Osborne’s cleaver. As Tory minister Bob Neill put it with such candour a few weeks back, "those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt." (Eh?) Anthony Painter gave a strong response today: “any group that disproportionately relies on benefits will be marginalised, plunged into poverty, and facing despair. This is not the way it’s meant to be. Not in a decent, relatively wealthy society. The basic post-war compact on support and advancement for all in exchange for doing the responsible thing was broken yesterday. Not only lone parents, but also those who are poor, mentally impaired or incapacitated, the disabled, certain minority groups, and anyone relying on benefits to get by.”

Now, to say quickly - I do appreciate the rebuttal that to live 'disproportionately' on benefit is not right for any capable and able-bodied person, and in those cases should not be encouraged/tolerated. I agree that the public sector contains waste (and by that I include the NHS) and that Labour was going to have to cut big too. I’m not in fear of 'Bankrupt Britain' but I can feel the horror in the concept of interest on national debt exceeding the economy’s growth rate. I just haven’t ever trusted the Conservatives to do the harrowing – they’ve never been notably skilful at it. But I agree with Hopi Sen that it’s not a case of 'whether' but of ‘whose public sector pensions and pay should be cut.’ (Even John Redwood seemed to show some appreciation of the case for exemption of the low-paid public servant on Newsnight last week.)

And still, the thought of 25% less spending by government departments is stomach-churning. Surely paying more tax would be cheaper? This blog favoured the D. Miliband ratio of spending cuts to tax rises (2:1) rather than what looks like the 77-23 split of G. Osborne. That would be what’s properly called ‘a progressive alternative’, if the tax rises were sensibly applied to some of the sorts of ‘middle and high-income earners’ who were feeling so cheery round the bars of Broadgate and Exchange Square last night. But, but… I also acknowledge and defer to what John Rentoul described the other day as: “a strong “tree” bias (“Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind that tree,” as Andrew Dilnot, formerly of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, once surprised me by chanting in a television interview).” And if everyone with taxable earnings between £37K and £150K is to be taxed at 40%, and at 50% above that, then that’s about as much income tax as I would have thought proper or permissible.

I do understand the thinking and appeal of a firm smack from government so as to teach that Britain should ‘live within its means.’ But the other day John Redwood did that quaint Tory thing of comparing the nation’s economy to a domestic household knuckling down to unavoidable frugality: ‘I know it is asking a lot for an outbreak of commonsense by public sector CEOs in councils and quangos. But can they spare us the crocodile tears and the parade of the bleeding stumps? Can they do what any household or company does when faced with a few percent off their income? Just get on and manage it in the least damaging way possible.’ Redwood’s analogies, however, were all drawn Margaret-style from good Grantham housekeeping: (‘You can holiday nearer at home… eat in more than in the local restaurants… draw some money out of the savings account... buy more of the value items at the supermarket, and put more vegetarian dishes into the home menus.’)
I’m sure a great many Britons have come to terms with the end of their excessive consumption based on borrowing, and so would fit Redwood’s model. If you are a company, though, then you just have to fire a proportion of your staff. And if you are someone who never earned enough to have significant savings, or weren’t reared on a middle-class diet, and did all your eating indoors on ‘value items’ anyway… What commonsense homily has John Redwood got to tell you then?

Labour has to offer an alternative, of course. No sitting on the hands. I further agree with Hopi Sen that this alternative ‘needs to be built on creating growth’, ‘we need to create jobs to grow’, and so we ‘need to be talking about measures to support private sector job creation and these can’t be simply extensions of State Aid.’ For sure, with all these benefit cuts we’re looking at a big reserve army of the unemployed. But, really, where will the jobs come from? Can anyone say? They’re hardly going to emerge blithely when people are afraid to spend, businesses afraid to invest, and our imagined export markets are outbidding each other in the austerity stakes, Germany 'leading by example' etc.

Over to you then, D. Miliband...

The Tories, The Wire, Law & Order and Chris Grayling

I'm glad I went to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham last September. No, really. It's the sort of thing one ought to do at least once. And I saw and heard some interesting things and some reasonable people. Chris Grayling, currently the Shadow Home Secretary, popped up at numerous meetings and talked a fair bit of sense, at least to my mind. I was particularly struck by his contributions to a panel on work and welfare, where he talked about the need to 'reinvigorate social mobility’ and spoke with what sounded like sincere feeling about the 'appalling worklessness’ of failed estates left to fester as ‘separate worlds’ in our society. Being a Tory, he advocated more back-to-work support for people wanting to get themselves sorted out, and big sticks to be wielded on non-participants. But he didn't mind when someone suggested that he and James Purnell at Work & Pensions didn't seem to have too many vital differences on policy. ‘I hope there’s not many’, Grayling offered. (He testified too to the influence of David Freud, a Blair-appointed government welfare advisor who duly jumped ship to the Tories this year.)
Where I found Grayling most human and appealing was when he argued that beggars, addicts, thieves and other individuals with form in the criminal justice system could yet be wooed back into meaningful work, albeit under a form of threat in the shape of loss of benefit entitlements. A guy from NAFCAS in the attention argued that some such people are hair-trigger types who might get pushed over the edge by such hardline strictures. But Grayling was quietly, ruefully insistent that there had to be a stick behind the carrot - there just had to be… He struck me as the most mild-mannered guy one could imagine donning the judge's black hanging cap.
But all of those good impressions seem soft and slack to me now, following Grayling's utterly foolish Silly Season argument that the American TV show The Wire functions as a portrait of contemporary inner-city Britain. I can't improve on Alastair Campbell's assault on said comments here. But I hope Grayling will think again, and put that bit of opportunistic shallowness behind him.

Citizen Campbell at the Staggers

On a day like today - when I'm feeling rather like the creaking old horse who would be most kindly served by a sharp bolt to the head - it's surely a chance at inspiration to look and see what sort of a fist Alastair Campbell has made of editing the New Statesman for a week. (After all, I went for a couple of runs this week, my first such in maybe a year, and my calves, thighs and soles are still riven with pain; whereas Mr Campbell, famously, could jog for England, and still seems to get all his writing done, unlike me.)

Campbell's NS editorial is a gee-up speech to get Labour aroused and proactive for the next election. He comes out jabbing with a crack at the Opposition ('The Tories are not that far ahead. More importantly, they are not that good') and for sure that sounds like the forceful, entitled voice of experience, given Campbell's former dynamic position at the heart of government - though, somehow, still, I can't stop thinking that said position was not one to which I or anybody else in the country elected him.

In his view, "the Tories, Lib Dems and nationalist parties are not being subjected to sustained policy attack" and that of course would be his stock-in-trade were he back at the helm, but I'm not sure even Campbell could shoulder-charge the scrutiny away from government all that effectively when nearly every day has the potential to be a Bad News Day. (I mean, I was on a plane yesterday and so read the FT cover to cover... Jesus Christ, pass the revolver.)

AC's big planks, it seems to me:

1. "There has to be an excitement to the pre-manifesto process."

(Seconded, comrade. Let's have a carnival of ideas.)

2. "This government has saved [the NHS], as promised. Yet health – and education – have virtually disappeared from the political battleground..."

(Not true. For better or worse Cameron has proposed that the Tories contest this very Labour-like ground, so we've heard plenty already and we'll hear yet more.)

"[B]oth [health and education services] would be at risk if the Tories were returned. Young voters in particular need reminding what Britain under the Tories was like."

(I don't think that's going to wash. You can't fight Margaret Thatcher or John Major in 2010, only what's in front of you.)

3. This is what Campbell thinks Labour should important from Obama, and not just a lot of verbless sentences, but: "A clear, robust strategy. Teamwork. Organisation. Values. Hard work. Rebuttal. Attack operating at several levels. Message discipline. Creativity. Enthusing and empowering new supporters. And never even contemplating defeat."

All well and good and motivational. Maybe a bit thin for a weary Party trying for a fourth win in a row, whatever faith Campbell has in the cleansing, past-eradicating qualities of a strong message. But then I'm sure he's keeping his best stuff back for private consultations with Labour's Top Team. I mean, probably.

Alastair Campbell: Reading Him Writing on His Watching Himself

As blogs go, Alastair Campbell's is of more obvious interest than most, although - as with his bestselling Diaries, and as with the public pronouncements of his former boss - you really have to read hard between the lines to separate what he means from how he wishes you to see him. But then that's also true of a lot of less famous bloggers...

Still, if you want to really tie yourself into knots on the subject of the relatively small but endlessly dynamic and self-referential world of Meeja, do read Campbell's account of attending a private screening of Armando Ianucci's already much-acclaimed movie In The Loop, and his careful explanation of exactly how, why and when he will be contributing to the publicity drive for the film. You could say it's a study of a master at work; or you might feel less charitable; or whatever. Mr Campbell won't mind, he's made of sterner stuff, as we're quite often reminded.