What Happened To 'Class A' Political Journalism?

My appetite whetted by this week's local electoral melodrama, I've been searching for some Class A political journalism to feed my lust for pragmatism. 

There were little flashes of it from a few of the TV people. Michael Crick, who blew the lid off the Andrew Mitchell stitch-up, was rude as hell to Farrago, no doubt furious at having stuck to him like a leech in the hope of discovering anything coherent and coming up empty-handed. That left the usually mild-mannered Gary Gibbon to go after the rest of the gang. Desperation set in after the AutomEtonian responded to every single question with the line that this week was simply about local councils. He genuinely seemed to forget he was the Prime Minister, and I guess it's easy to see why. This seemed to put Gary in such a foul mood that he went after Flash Nick and Millibore like a mortar crew on speed. Each prevarication was interrupted with a fresh round down the tube, and another explosion of disbelief at the factually-twisted response. 

The only problem with the Gibbon assault was the apparent premise of the questions on capital spending: that it's the job of the state to fill every hole in the infrastructural landscape. Creating a whole new mountain range out of UK public debt is strange medicine indeed, whatever the cause. Ironically, Flash Nick went closest to a straight response, saying that while they'd barely invested a bean of new public money, the coalition has done a great job of attracting private capital to public projects. If that's true, then let's hope they've overcome the planning fallacy, and the PFI vultures leave a little flesh on the state carcass for the rest of us. 

As for Ed, well... 

In the end, the howling in my soul could only be quieted by re-reading "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72". Forty years on, nothing has changed. The vicious wheels of the party political machines are still flattening the best interests of the citizens into the road in the rush for power and patronage, and Thompson's substance-fuelled take on the political animal is so brutally right that the recognition will make you laugh like a hyena. This, for example, could have been written today:

"This also reinforced my contempt for the waterheads who ran Big Ed's campaign like a gang of junkies trying to send a rocket to the moon to check out rumours that the craters were full of smack."

Now why doesn't anyone write about politics like that anymore?

Is it merely because today's journalists are sober, or have they abandoned hope that we can produce anything different to the current stage-managed pantomime?

A Thumping Pay Rise For Central Bank Non-Execs?

I was bemused to see the call for a giant pay-rise for the Bank of England's non-executive directors earlier this week. Especially given last week's admissions by certain former central bankers that no one is in charge and they don't understand how advanced economies actually work - not to mention last year's independent findings that the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street suffers from undue deference and group-think.

Surprisingly, the argument for the pay-rise is not that inflation has increased above the Bank's own target (a bit close to home), or that the value of their work has shot up dramatically in the light of global economic events (er, it's arguably gone down). 

No, apart from an 'increased workload' (which the FT interprets as a reference to the aforementioned independent reports, prepared by others), the central rationale is that they're underpaid compared to the non-executives in other (failing) banks. Apparently it's a bit unseemly for the non-executive directors of such a grand old institution to be effectively donating their services, and a pay rise will 'boost their prestige', as the FT puts it. One "reformer" is even quoted as saying:

“Continuing to call this body the court and paying people so little conveys the wrong impression externally.” 

Fans of corporate politics might sense that someone is teeing-up the existing non-execs, like so many golf balls, ready for the new Governor to drive them into oblivion. 

Farrago

You've got to hand it to Nigel Farage. I don't know whether it's the cigar, the pint-fuelled interviews, that he survived a plane crash caused by his own campaign banner or the fact that the UK's leading proponent of immigration controls is an elected European official with a German wife. Whatever it is, Nigel Farage has breathed some life into UK politics.

Not that I'm a Ukipper, as it were, or a "clown", "fruitcake", "loony", "closet rascist" or anything else that the Autometonians have surprisingly labelled Nige's new best friends. And I'm no supporter of the other guys either. The Lib Dems are strangely inert, apart from some genuinely helpful peers. And anyone familiar with my take on Nude Labour will certainly gather that I'm no fan of the Two Eds. Old wounds from the Brown Years begin to seep whenever their mugs fill the screen - especially that of Balls. There's a terrifying zeal in those eyes...

Nope, I can't bring myself to support any of the current crop of politicians or their pantomime parties. But that hasn't prevented the rise of a certain grim fascination with their squabbles, especially now that Farage has joined the fray. And recent trips to the Interior have demonstrated that I'm not alone. I reckon it'll be tough to round up a four-ball on polling day.

So Nigel, too, needs a nickname. And a word I learned for a university revue suddenly comes in handy. A "farrago" is a "confused mixture". That will do nicely.

Image from the Guardian.

We Need A Working Party

When Kenneth Clarke starts barking about "fruitcakes" and "loonies" you know the Tories are rattled. He claims to have been referring to supporters of the UK Independence Party, but the attack will have echoed amongst the supporters of all political parties:

"It is very tempting to vote for a collection of clowns or indignant, angry people, who promise that somehow they will allow us to take your [sic] revenge on people who caused it [whatever 'it' is]."

Surely this defines the entire House of Commons?

But YouGov's latest poll shows that only a narrow majority of Labour supporters actually believe politicians can improve our lot (the greatest triumph of Hope over Experience since records began). 

The rest of us tend to be more realistic. After all, the state is a means of facilitating our own personal efforts to solve society's problems, not a means of getting someone else to solve them for us. Hard work from each of us is required, not party politics. Party politics is mere pantomime. Or in Clarkey's case, just so much dogma doodoo. 

So we don't need a UKIP, or an Official Monster Raving Loony Party for that matter. We need a Working Party - a barn-raising, a bee, a 'dugnad', as the Norwegians call it. And we should lock our MPs in the Commons until they figure that out.

Image from Dogster.com.

No One Is In Charge

It's a pity that we only get an insight into the shortcomings of most organisations when people leave them.

Two of the more recent insights have come from John Gieve, a former deputy governer of the Bank of England, who is wringing his hands about who is "in charge" of the UK economy; and Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a former member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, who has reportedly told the IMF: “We don’t fully understand what is happening in advanced economies.” 

One would have thought it was pretty bloody obvious to anyone who had loitered among the top brass of the economic establishment that no one is in charge. I mean no one is in charge of even understanding how the British economy fits together, let alone actually tasked with managing it as a system. Everyone is organised into silos that barely interrelate. Surely the UK is not alone in this.

It's naive of central bankers to be still anxiously discussing their lack of understanding and leadership, especially given the events of the past decade. Our economies are a fairly loose collection of economic victims, rather than cohesive units that operate together as part of some grand scheme.

So, shouldn't we be facing the fact that events are outside of our control, and breaking open the silos, instead of pretending that the great and the good in our Treasuries or Central Banks have all the answers?