The Business of Government

Update : see http://limits-2-growth.blogspot.com : 1984 as a "Manual for Government" from www.politics.co.uk

WARNING : What follows will almost certainly be regarded as an offence against political correctness, for which I offer no apologies ! Having reflected on the matter over the weekend, I feel it would be beneficial for this country if the Labour Party were to have a leadership election. The other main political parties almost certainly do not want this, which is precisely why it would be a good thing for the rest of us.

A couple of weeks ago, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone appeared on BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" having just returned from seeing his friend Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Chavez, it seemed, had asked Mr Livingstone to submit proposals for providing "technical assistance" on urban planning and development. Let's hope it's sustainable !

Now it sounded to me as if Ken might have been a little jet-lagged, as he managed at one point to confuse David Cameron and David Miliband - a revealing Freudian slip perhaps - before confiding to the audience that he had been invited to appear on Celebrity Wife Swap, although his partner had apparently put the phone down before Ken could take up the offer.

As an admirer (but not that sort !) of Mr Livingstone, I was actually rather sorry to learn that one of the mighty had fallen on such hard times. For Ken (Lord Livingstone, I presume !) would be my obvious choice for a Labour Deputy Prime Minister, and the natural successor of John Prescott in a newly resurrected Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Why do I propose this ? Quite simply, Ken Livingstone (warts and all) understands the business of government. His quote from The Godfather in the rather good 1987 memoir "If voting changed anything they'd abolish it" in which he distinguishes the personal from "business" reflects this understanding, even if he has sometimes forgotten his own good sense.

I have yet to be convinced that the leadership of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats really do understand the business of government. For they seem to offer, or so it appears to me, a continuation of the kind of Hello -or GQ - magazine style politics favoured by The Blairs, even if new media channels are their preferred medium of expression.

As for Gordon Brown, his tenure as Prime Minister appears to reflect a classic confusion of the personal and political realms, after the practice of a former Soviet dictator to whom he has been compared. The wave of sackings over the weekend, and the Prime Minister's attempts to undermine the Labour Party constitution regarding the circulation of ballot papers in advance of Conference for a possible leadership contest, only serve to re-inforce such comparisons.