Jacqui Smith and the adult films scandal: who cares?

Today the news broke that Jacqui Smith had claimed expenses for a number of pay per view films including ‘adult films’ (known to most of us as porn). She immediately apologised, claiming she accidently claimed the money thinking it was an internet bill.

The amount of the expense was £67, which seems so high for an internet bill that it would warrant checking before the claim was made. However thoughts like this have been brushed aside in the ‘Smith claims for husband’s porn’ scandal.

But this might be a good thing. It is clear that the level of scrutiny on MP expenses needs reviewing and this review is more likely to come from public pressure driven through the media.

It was refreshing to see Eric Pickles on Questiontime last week get hammered by the audience for his second home arrangements when he lives 37 miles outside of London.

But the problem with the current debate is that it’s too complicated. Many people aren’t aware of the expense rules for MPs or the time pressures on politicians like Eric. It is difficult to say what is fair and what is not. This means people can be engaged in the debate based on flimsy information or not engaged at all.

However when it comes to claiming tax payer money for adult movies then this is something easy to understand and has broad appeal amongst the electorate. It was interesting to see the BBC in its coverage cite the Sunday Express. I bet it’s not often the BBC use stories the Express break for their political news.

If I was working on the follow up story now, I would investigate smaller expenses further. How many extra costs accidently get slipped into ‘internet bills’ and the like across parliament? It’s like sticking an extra 15 minutes on the time sheet. If everyone does it, it can get accepted as part of the employment culture and that is a slippery slope.

Whatever though, let’s keep these stories focused on the human interest angle. How keen do you think people were to watch Jacqui Smith’s husband apologise today.

Politics: Leadership vs. Management

I started this blog by saying that I believe the paradigm of politics is changing. The essence of what politicians try to communicate, i.e. their political position, is becoming secondary to the way they communicate it and how this makes people feel.

I had a flippant conversation a couple of weeks ago, in which I suggested elections should be fought on the grounds of competence rather than ideological beliefs. It is difficult to predict the crisis’ a government will face in a term, so surely it is better to be led by people who are calm and collected under pressure and good at solving a problem?

With this in mind, I proposed general elections look more like a graduate recruitment assessment day than a forum for ideological debate. The public should watch live David Dimbleby give the proposed cabinet a task and then assess them on how they work together to complete it.

This should be followed by competency based interviews with questions such as ‘Describe a time you have persuaded a person to take a certain course of action’ and ‘Describe the biggest problem you have faced. What did you do to overcome the problem?’

The argument against
Matthew Paris, a conservative political columnist for the Times, prompted me to think of this in his article ‘Put away your mops and buckets’

Paris argues that politicians are becoming ‘glorified shop managers’ devoid of political position. They assume the big ideological questions are settled, the business of government is agreed and democratic politics is about who runs the business best.

To Paris this is negative. He says: “We want politics to be about more than wiping up spillages...We are looking for leadership dominated by a human mind, a unifying set of ideas, and the beat of a human heart.”

Despite my flippant comments about competency assessment, I do agree with Paris in principle. However in practice all too often the messages communicated do not correlate with the action being taken. Gordon Brown saying “British jobs for British workers” is a prime example. It’s a great sound bite underpinned by political principle, but in practice it’s an impossibility.

Paris describes politicians as ‘feeble managers’. But this is not acceptable. Someone with a vision and a set of unifying ideas needs the managerial skills to implement their vision effectively.
Otherwise the unifying ideas they preach are pointless and misleading.

Political Point Scoring - Defection to the Tories

On the front of the Sunday Times today was a story titled ‘Tories steal welfare guru from Brown’. It reported the defection of David Freud, the government’s chief advisor on welfare, to the Conservative party. He is expected to be made a peer in the coming week and take up a front bench position.

After reading the story the question left in my mind was, “Have the Conservatives lured Freud to their party because he is a capable politician with a shared ethos on welfare or is this a political strategy designed to damage the government?”

The answer is probably a bit of both.

The story cites Freud as meeting with George Osborne before the defection which suggests some form of vetting and consensus building. Still, in terms of the Labour – Conservative divide this is a strange move. Traditionally the approach taken to welfare by the two party’s is polar.

But maybe political positioning in this case is secondary to the damage it inflicts on the government by being splashed across the front page of a Sunday Newspaper. Is the timing just a coincidence? Were the Conservative Party comments quoted in the article made merely off the cuff? I very much doubt it.

I remember reading about the defection of the Conservative MP Alan Howarth to the Labour Party in 1995 in the run up to the 97 election. The announcement was carefully planned so as to inflict the greatest damage possible on the Conservative Party.

It is probably not a surprise then to see the latest YouGov poll embedded into the Sunday Times article showing the 12% lead the Tories currently have over Labour. This demonstrates the toll stories like this are having on the government.

All in all it's a good day on the political strategy front for the Conservatives.