23rd May, 2010
You can’t review your own sister.
Which is a shame. She was bloody bloody brilliant.
But I can’t say that, can I?
Jazz On The Meadow
1
Our Country’s Good
23rd May, 2010
If I have tribal loyalties, they are to Portsmouth Football Club and the Labour Party. It is a sad fact that nowadays, these loyalties coalesce around losers.
Hey ho. I’ve already said it feels more right that Pompey are down and out; the same may well be true of Labour. I should put up and shut up and enjoy the liberties of my teams’ demotions.
Naturally, I am intensely interested in who the next bosses of Pompey and Labour might be. Pompey, excitingly, might be managed by the legend that is David James. He’s put himself forward in the last couple of days, in the light of Avram Grant’s departure. Less thrillingly, perhaps, Diane Abbott has put her hat into the ring for Labour, while Neil Kinnock has endorsed Ed Miliband. Interesting times.
But not everyone shares my fascination. I’m aware that, in other business, there’s a coalition love-in going on, and all eyes are upon it.
The love-in is so sweet that I am nervous of gainsaying it. But I have this feeling that There’s Something Going On with the new government. I can’t quite put my finger on it. But here are some of the things that are bothering me.
1) The fact that I feel nervous gainsaying the coalition
These are times of New Politics, of open-mindedness and compromise. It’s just not cricket to be cynical about it. It’s historic. There’s some reform in there too. Who doesn’t want reform? Who doesn’t want a good old clean up with a nice new broom?
It would be just mean-spirited of anyone to knock these noble efforts.
Hmm. If Alastair Campbell were on their team, I’d be feeling well and truly ‘spun’ into a corner for the mean and nasty. The only dignified way out of this corner, it seems, is to smile, raise a glass and ‘wish the coalition well’. Launch her like a good ship; say a prayer for all who sail in her; cross fingers against rough seas ahead.
But hang on a minute. If this were a Conservative government, I wouldn’t be ‘wishing it well’. I’d be wishing it gone. I can’t really imagine a majority LibDem outfit, but insofar as I can, I’d want that gone too.
I wouldn’t want either party. So why is a fusion of the two any different? The truth is it isn’t.
What we are supposed to be applauding, then, must be their open-heartedness in having sat down and hammered out a deal. Which leads me to my next worry.
2.a) Our Country’s Good
This is the idea that the coalition came together for the good of the country. The LibDems and Tories keep telling us they got into bed with each other “in the national interest”.
I’m not going to criticise a politician for wanting power. Any politician will say he’s doing something in the national interest even if he’s doing it in his own self-interest. Because he believes his hand on the tiller of power is not just in his interest, but ours. Except in extremis, we can’t expect politicians to differentiate between self-interest and national interest.
But it does amaze me that the phrase ‘in the national interest’ has been repeated so much without inducing laughter. Nobody thinks it’s funny. Why? Maybe it’s a nagging doubt about…
2.b) The Electoral Mandate
This is the notion that goes “the people wanted this”. This argument says Labour lost, but the Tories didn’t win. Therefore the electorate is sending a message to the political class: collaborate, bury your differences, sort yerselves out. The electorate is effectively banging the politicians’ heads together.
Add to this the power vacuum – the weakness of the Tories on their own, without a majority – and it is, surely, only right, proper and decent of the coalition partners to bury any Old Politics hatchets and come together, for the good of the nation.
What bothers me about this, is the electorate didn’t vote for a coalition. As my mate Andy says, “I didn’t see Hung Parliament anywhere on the ballot slip. Must have missed that one.”
Voters vote for an MP. One they like personally. Or one whose party politics they prefer. Or they vote tactically. Mostly, they want their party to win. What they don’tvote for is no party to win. What the voters in the 258 constituencies which returned Labour MPs did notvote for is a Tory/LibDem coalition.
The truth is that the coalition is about a bunch of guys teaming up to win on the numbers game. And there’s nothing much wrong with that. Simple majorities, in the end, are the best way to crack on. But there’s nothing God-given, or holier-than-thou, or New Politics, or historic about it.
3) The New Gospel
The Historic Agreement (click to read)
Speaking of God, is it just me, or is The Coalition Agreement reaching biblical status?
“Even if you’ve read 100 party manifestos, you’ve never read a document like this one,” Nick Clegg told an audience of civil servants at the Treasury on Thursday.
Not only is it the best thing since sliced bread, it is better than two other loaves of bread joined together. “Not one party’s ideas, not even just two parties’ ideas, but a joint programme for government based on shared ambitions and shared goals. Compromises have, of course, been made on both sides, but those compromises have strengthened, not weakened, the final result.”
Strewth. This is a nine-day cherry-picking job. Pretty well done, actually, with some welcome excisions from the Tory manifesto and the thornier issues kicked into the long-grass of commission land.
But insofar as it is a brave new document, it is (by definition) one that we did not vote for. It’s a new programme for government which has not been endorsed by victory at an election.
Which is why I’m so anxious about
4) The “strong and stable” argument
By which I mean the repeated calls for “strong and stable government”, the rigging of the constitution with the 55% rule and the disingenuous call for a fixed-term parliament. I’ve covered some of this elsewhere, so I won’t repeat myself. But here we have a newly-concocted plan for government presented as a sacred text by a coalition which thinks its marriage has been blessed in heaven.
With all this goodwill from above, it’s surprising that they also feel the need to rig earthly rules. It’s pretty revolting. There are several ways in which this rankles. Not least in their own world-view: on the coalition partners’ own narrative, the people gave no one a clear majority. Or, to put it another way, the people did not want a “strong and stable government”.
Best plan, then, is to try to arrange it so that the people don’t get to vote again for a long, long time. Wow. Is five years long enough, guys?
Oh dear, I’m so firmly in cynics’ corner, I’ll never get out. I haven’t even started on
5) Clegg’s Political Reform, the biggest and the best since 1832….
…. from a man who commands 57 seats in parliament.
No denying it. I’m a sore, sour loser. I’d better turn my attention back to Pompey and Labour. Like our friends in government, I should turn adversity into creative opportunity. Here goes.
There’s a song we sang in Fratton Park when we were promoted to the Premiership in 2003. With just a couple of tweaks, it becomes a song for the Losers’ Coalition. It is, I know you will agree, historic and noble and just what the people wanted. I have created it in the national interest. Knock it at your peril.
(to the tune of Knees Up Mother Brown)
Now we’ve been demoted
This is our new song
We are Portsmouth
We are Labour
Back where we belong.
The 55% trick: the Coalition’s first inauspicious move
14th May, 2010 (updated 17th May)
I’m not agreeing much with the Guardian these days. But Vikram Dodd is bang-on.
First move under the ‘new politics’ of the Coalition is to rig the constitution.
Please don’t be fooled by any of the spin around it.
1) last week, Cameron was complaining about so-called ‘unelected prime ministers’. So much so, that he swore to legislate against them when he got to power. Any ‘unelected’ prime minister must submit himself to a general election within six months, he cried. Now he’s changed his tune. He’s suggesting legislation for fixed parliaments, the point of which is to allow governments (and prime ministers) to change without going back to the voters. It’s breathtaking.
Which man do we listen to? Last week’s Cameron, or this week’s?
If you want to make a constitutional change to a fixed parliament, put it in your manifesto next time round. You can change the rules-of-the-game for future parliaments, but not the existing one. As it happens, I quite like the idea of a fixed parliament. (Though I think five years is too long.) But the point is, it’s the opposite of what Cameron was selling us during the election.
2) if you like the idea of fixed parliaments, don’t be fooled by the notion (peddled by Gummer on Radio 4 today) that they stop a government rigging tax-giveaways etc to make elections easier to win. They don’t change that – in fact they even give the government a very clear date to work towards!
3) if you like the idea of fixed parliaments – and this is the key disgrace – don’t be fooled by the idea that ‘stability’ justifies a 55% rule. It simply doesn’t. Look at the maths of the current parliament.
Can Labour and the LibDems combined force an election? No.
Can Labour and the LibDems and every other MP combined force an election? No. (They could only muster 53%)
Can anyone force an election without at least some Tory votes? No.
You only need a 55% majority if you want to immunize the Tories against all possible alternative coalitions.
In that context, Cameron’s historic generosity in ‘handing back to parliament’ the right to call an election beggars belief. His language on this issue reveals his real attitude to the primacy of parliament – “I’ve made this change,” he boasts on television (BBC, 14th May) as if it were his change to make. It is not. As if it were a done deal. It is not. This will need to go before parliament. And parliament will decide.
Here’s more: The 55% trick: protecting you from democracy | Vikram Dodd | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.
Glorious defeat
16th May, 2010
A big and slightly scary man came and sat next to me at Wembley yesterday. Nodded hello. Sat quietly for a bit. Then suddenly stood up, spread his arms and screamed “I DIE!”
It took me a moment to realise he was joining in with the song, arriving without warning at our section of the ground, which goes “Portsmouth till I die, Portsmouth till I die, I know I am, I’m sure I am, I’m Portsmouth till I die.”
AM writing in The Times, 2003, sent by Jules Smith
In the post on the morning of the Cup Final, I found a clipping kindly sent to me by a fellow Pompey fan. It was an article from 2003 by Anthony Minghella writing in The Times, about the joys and miseries (mostly miseries) of following Portsmouth, and his then obsession with the computer game Championship Manager. Even in the fantasy version, the problem was that the cast-offs off one of the rich clubs would cost more than (and beat) a Pompey 1st XI.
The economics of the game, aside from being unsustainable – I guess you didn’t need to be brain of Britain to see that coming, even in 2003 – were spoiling the fun of the game by preventing a level playing field.
So yesterday, we were playing a Chelsea XI picked from a squad worth around £300m. Ours, to be sold in an emergency fire sale, I guess starting tomorrow morning, might yield £35m.
Looked at that way, our 1-0 defeat was nothing less than a miraculous victory.
I felt a little blue on the way home. You always hope, especially in the FA Cup, that you can pull off a cheeky win. That’s the romance of the Cup. But actually what I noticed was that I was feeling better than I felt on the return journey after our FA Cup victory in 2008.
I thought at the time that it felt hollow because Anthony should have been there to share it with us. His last message in my inbox says, “I hope there’ll be a few games for me soon”. We had never experienced anything like an FA Cup Final for Portsmouth, and life is indeed cruel that it did not afford him that opportunity.
Another reason for the muted joy was that we did not convincingly thrash Cardiff City. The game seemed slow and unexciting, perhaps a function of the size of the stadium and the distance from the action. We Pompey fans are used to the bearpit that is Fratton Park.
But I don’t know. Was it really the absence of Ant? Or the less-than-thrilling football? Or was it the fact that Pompey won the FA Cup, when we never win anything?
I suspect it was the latter. Anyone who by accident of birth finds themselves singing the Pompey chimes will know that the tune, and the loyalty, stays with you. Pompey fans do not grow up and become Chelsea fans or Man U or Liverpool. Pompey fans are Pompey till they die.
That’s all well and dandy, but Pompey never win. Sure we have the occasional run, but basically we’re crap. The lot of the Pompey fan is to arrive full of hope, sing his heart out, terrify the visiting team with the best and most vocal support in the land – and then to depart crestfallen.
My experience of following Pompey is mostly about the long, dejected journey home. After years of that sensation, it comes to be the desired outcome. Pompey fans have a perverse but Pavlovian response to loss, which is to pick themselves up and come back for more. I noticed two banners among the crowd: one, optimistically, called for “Pompey in Europe”. The other, a more accurate reflection of the Pompey character, declared, “You will never break our spirit.”
So, travelling home after the match, contemplating my own private woes, and the very public woes of Pompey – Cup defeat; relegation; unimaginable debt; the forthcoming firesale of the squad; a bleak, impossible future – I found myself oddly comforted by the familiarity of it all. We are losers. We are stoics. We are loyal. We are Pompey till we die.
If there has been a quintessentially ‘Pompey’ moment in PFC’s recent history, this was it. And so, more than after the 2008 victory, I wished Ant had been there with me, analysing, bemoaning, sharing and – finally – savouring defeat.