Ertblog

Whatever happened to joined-up Government?

Gordon Brown axed a little known tax break in last week's Budget.

The Home Computer Initiative gave people the chance to buy a home computer out of untaxed income.

But Brown didn't tell his cabinet colleagues. Several Government departments signed up for the scheme just days before he axed the perk.

Given that Brown is so keen to trail budget decisions, you'd have thought he could have tipped them off not to bother, to avoid disappointing their employees.

It just shows that joined-up Government is a soundbite, not a policy.

Awesome Arsenal

Could this be their year?

Arsenal were simply awesome tonight as they swept Juventus aside in the first leg of their Champions League quarter final.

A 2-0 score hardly did justice to the north London team's dominance. The fact that two Juve players were sent off in the dying minutes says everything about the way the Italian team were utterly vanquished at Highbury. Outplayed and outpaced.

Arsenal haven't had their own way in the Premiership this season, but their young team has flourished in Europe. No-one would bet against them winning the European Cup for the first time this season.

Chelsea should be worried. Jose Mourinho is looking less special by the day, for all Roman Abramovich's millions. He was lucky to take over when Arsenal and Manchester United's great teams were fading. Arsene Wenger is creating a new generation as the Gunners prepare to move to their new stadium. It's game on.

Arise, Sir Freddie!

Drawing a series may not be the greatest triumph in sport.

But England's achievement in squaring the Test series in India is enormous. Amazingly, it is 21 years since England won a test match - never mind a series - in India. The Ashes heroes triumphed despite a fearful list of injuries. Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff proved his star quality in leading the team to glory, especially after missing the birth of his child to lead his country.

Bring on the Ashes re-run in Oz!

Come back Mr Dalton, all is forgiven

Once upon a time, budget proposals were the greatest secret In Whitehall. 

Chancellors of the Exchequer disappeared into purdah weeks before the annual budget speech. Revealing proposed fiscal changes was a resigning matter. In 1947, Labour's Chancellor Hugh Dalton fell on his sword for spilling the beans to a lobby correspondent just before his budget speech. (Which at least spared him from the infamy of devaluing the pound two years later.)

Today, all these conventions have gone out of the window. Government spinmeisters trail budget decisions weeks before the event. Or fly kites that never take flight, to make the real budget seem more voter-friendly.

It's probably inevitable. But it makes us all very cynical. Hugh Dalton must be turning in his grave, wondering how honour could have been devalued so swiftly after he made his sacrifice.

Oops!

Standards aren't what they used to be in journalism.

Budget day is one of the great set-pieces in political journalism. After weeks of speculation, the media finally get the chance to report the real decisions. Today's budget was Gordon Brown's 10th - an extraordinary landmark, regardless of your view of the Chancellor's decisions. It may - or may not - be his last before taking over as Labour leader and Prime Minister.

One senior journalist made a terrible howler today. Anne McElvoy of the London Evening Standard repeatedly referred to Brown's achievement in completing a decade as chancellor. In two articles. Quick maths lesson for Ms McElvoy. Gordon Brown became Chancellor on Friday 2 May 1997. (A lovely warm day, I seem to remember.) Less than 9 years ago. Do the maths...

Hearts attack

Who'd be a football manager?

Yesterday, Steve Bruce looked the very epitome of the ashen-faced soccer boss immortalised by Private Eye as his Birmingham City crashed out of the FA Cup in a 7-0 home defeat by Liverpool. City's woeful performance will have done nothing to steel them for the fight against relegation.

Today, Graham Rix was fired by Hearts chairman Roman Romanov after just four months at the Scottish Premierleague club. Rix's demise was the latest in a series of bizarre decisions by the Romanovs. George Burley had led the team to the top of the league before he was sacked in October. Later, majority shareholder Vladimir Romanov picked the team for a game against Dundee United, prompting a player revolt. (Not the first time a Romanov has faced a revolution.)

If you buy a football club, you expect to get your own way. But why do so many club owners seem to have the Midas touch in reverse? Take Newcastle United. Hiring and firing Graeme Souness - a manager past his sell-by date in the Premiership - cost the Geordie club around £7 million. Less than two years after paying off Sir Bobbie Robson. They're now on the hunt for yet another manager....

Steve Bruce probably won't be on the shortlist after last night...

An icon lives

You can still ride a real London bus.

London's best loved bus, the Routemaster, has been given a partial reprieve. A couple of heritage routes still operate Routemasters. Today, as we took a cab from Charing Cross to Wigmore Street, we enjoyed the sight of a Routemaster following us, lights blazing in the March sun.

The bus was a 'B' reg, dating from the year when Winston Churchill retired as an MP.

See http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/ini-heritage-buses.asp for more details.

In search of Churchill

Deep under London, Winston Churchill's memory is cherished. Last year, the Queen opened a new museum honouring her first prime minister and Britain's greatest war leader. The Churchill museum is an extension of the Cabinet War Rooms, the heart of Britain's wartime government.

The centrepiece of the new museum is an extraordinary interactive chronicle of Churchill's life. Click on a year, and the exhibit tells you what he was doing on a given day. Suddenly, a flight of Spitfires roar overhead, the Merlin roar echoing round the underground room.

Churchill was unique. He was an MP for 64 years (give or take the odd break, thanks to a capricious electorate). He was born when Disraeli was PM, and died during Harold Wilson's first administration, when the Beatles were helping to create the swinging sixties.

The museum displays Karsh of Ottawa's famous photo portrait of Churchill, taken during a visit to Canada in 1941. The image captured Churchill's defiance. But Martin Gilbert's book In search of Churchill revealed that it was far from authentic. Karsh snatched the PM's cigar, resulting in a gloriously belligerent expression. Gilbert's book published another shot taken that day, before Karsh stole the premier's cigar. It suggests Churchill at his most human.

That human side of Churchill was wonderfully captured in the diaries of John Colville, his wartime private secretary. Colville saw the premier in all his moods. Reading the entries, you get a vivid image of life at the heart of Government when Britain's survival was in the balance. (How can anyone who didn't live through that amazing time complain about stress?) It's difficult not to warm to a man who, seeing his private secretary approaching with a telegram in the darkest days of 1940, exclaims 'not another country gone west'!

Sleazy does it

Today's headlines will do nothing for Tony Blair's reputation. Another stack of stories about Labour's secret loans, and polls confirming that voters think Blair has offered peerages for cash.

A decade ago, Blair made the political weather, punishing the Tories with devastating attacks on cash for questions and lying ministers. He derailed John Major's 1997 election campaign within days by focusing on sleeze. He promised that Labour would be whiter than white. Voters thought the days of politicians on the make were over.

But Blair has proved as a huge disappointment to anyone who trusted him to set higher standards. Within months of his first landslide in 1997 he was mired in controversy over Bernie Eccleston's Labour donation. He claimed to be a 'pretty straight kind of guy'. The evidence suggests otherwise. The mystery is why Blair - an intelligent man, who recognised that Labour had to change to win the trust of the electorate - couldn't see that claiming to be whiter than white wasn't enough. He had to prove it by his actions.

The reason is that Blair, like most politicians, has far too little contact with the real world. He should spend more time in the Dog and Duck, listening to real voters, and less time in the corridors of Westminster and the studios at Millbank.

It was 30 years ago today...

I was about to set off for school. We were due to sing Santa Lucia in our music class. But I felt off colour: full-blown (boy) flu was sure to strike. And HTV's courtroom drama, Crown Court, was on tv after the lunchtime news. (I didn't mention this to Mum...) A sick note was prepared, and I looked forward to a lazy day at home.

Mid morning, the news came through that the Prime Minister had resigned. Harold Wilson - barely 60, and just two years after returning to Downing Street - was stepping down. It was the shock of the year. (Apart from second division Southampton beating hot favourites Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. And possibly the Wurzels getting to number one with 'I've got a brand new combine harvester'...)

Wilson said later he never intended to stay more than two years. Later, insiders suggested the PM knew that his mind was going, an early sign of the tragic impact of the Alzheimer's disease that would kill him. But on 16 March 1976, the nation was stunned.

Three decades on, Wilson is unique. The only PM in living memory who has chosen to go. All his successors have been forced out by election defeat or internal rebellion. Tony Blair could learn a useful lesson from the last Labour leader before him to win an election.

(For the record, Wilson actually won four polls to Blair's three, though 1966 was the closest he came to a landslide!)