Andrew Neil's blog

Climate change debate: 'calm, civilised, informative'

2009-11-24T10:28:45Z

Yesterday the Daily Politics broadcast a debate on global warming between two leading professors in the field. It was calm, civilised and informative.

Above all, it showed that there are real differences to debate and that those who've tried to shut debate down -- not just scientists, the green lobby and politicians but many in the media too -- might be doing us a disservice.

We plan more debates on the run up to the Copenhagen climate summit.

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Professors Singer and Watson in the Daily Politics' climate change debate

President Obama echoes most mainstream politicians in the Western world when he insists "the science is settled". Many viewers watching yesterday's debate must have wondered if that is really true.

Moreover our debate was staged in the aftermath of leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's climate research centre, a leading advocate of man-made global warming of international repute, suggesting something of a cover up when it comes to the raw data on which it bases its conclusions.

Even George Monbiot, one of the country's leading exponents of global warming, describes these e-mails as "a major blow" to his side of the argument.

Indeed in this morning's Guardian he says they could "scarcely be more damaging" and confesses to being "dismayed and deeply shaken by them ... There appears to be evidence here to of attempts to prevent scientific data from being released and even to destroy material that was subject to a freedom of information request ... worse still, some of the e-mails suggest efforts to prevent the publication of work by climate sceptics or to keep it out of a report by the IPCC [the UN's official body on climate change] ... the head of the [university's] unit, Phil Jones, should now resign. Some of the data discussed in the e-mails should be re-analysed."

Mr Monbiot, quite reasonably, doesn't think the e-mails are "the final nail in coffin" of global warming theory, as some sceptical bloggers are claiming. His faith in the theory remains pretty much intact; but he is enough of a believer in full disclosure and transparency to be shaken.

To call for Phil Jones to resign is quite remarkable: he is probably Britain's leading global warming scientist.

Mr Monbiot's honest and fair reaction to the e-mails is in stark contrast to David Aaronovitch's response, who (for reasons he doesn't give) dismisses the e-mails as "quite inconsequential" in today's Times.

Some will wonder what his qualifications are for such a de haut en bas judgement. Whether you agree or disagree with Mr Monbiot, nobody can doubt his expertise in such matters, which is why many will conclude that his response is much more significant (and reasonable).

One thing seems pretty sure: the debate certainly isn't over!

Correspondents are reminded to keep their comments brief and relevant to the content of Andrew's blog.

What was that about teapots and kettles?

2009-11-11T10:07:05Z

We live in an increasingly sloppy world these days, especially when it comes to journalism.

The Sun has made much of the apparent mistakes in Gordon Brown's letter to the mother of a soldier killed in action, including getting her name wrong (he called her "Ms James" when her name is Mrs Janes).

Now a Sky News blog post has fun at the expense of The Sun, pointing out that:

"The Sun's Political Editor, Tom Newton Dunn, has just spent the entire Politics Show over on the Beeb calling Labour's Phil Woolas [a government minister] 'Andy'. Easy mistake to make no doubt, but not as easy as calling Jamie Janes Jamie James! Talk about the teapot calling the kettle black."

Sky News should be careful about kettles and teapots. It is true that the Sun's political editor called Phil Woolas "Andy", but it wasn't on the Politics Show: it was on our very own Daily Politics! What was that about teapots and kettles, Sky?

Andrew (Neil), Andy or Phil (Woolas) and Tom Newton Dunn on the DP (or Politics Show!)

So this is what it has come to: the Sun attacks Gordon Brown for getting a name wrong. The Sun's new political editor then gets the minister's name wrong, calling him "Andy" throughout his interview on the Daily Politics, then Sky has a laugh at his expense at its blog - but then gets the name of our programme wrong in the process.

Sloppy. Sloppy. Sloppy. Perhaps we all need to take a deep breath, calm down and concentrate on what's important, like the recession, unemployment and our predicament in Afghanistan.

Let me mark your card with a sceptical pen

2009-11-03T11:10:47Z

Government ministers have been out and about this morning flogging the virtues of their plans for forcing RBS and Lloyds/HBOS to sell off some of their assets and increase competition for our money on the High Street. Let me mark your card with a sceptical pen.

First, this isn't really the government's plan at all. It is being forced on London by Brussels, which has insisted on a more competitive environment as the price for the multi-billion pound state aid pumped into both banks.

Second, if the High Street needs more competition, why was it that, only a year ago, the government encouraged Lloyds and HBOS to merge? Many commentators, consumer groups and bankers warned this would create a high-street behemoth and HBOS could have been bailed out by the taxpayer without a merger (as was RBS). But Gordon Brown was so keen to save HBOS that he intervened personally with the then Chairman of Lloyds to say competition rules would be waived to allow the marriage to take place. Lloyds' shareholders (which through our pensions probably means you and me) paid dearly for this shotgun wedding -- and now, only a year later, the giant is to be unravelled.

Third, be suspicious about claims that the proposed sell off will herald a new age of high-street competition. RBS has agreed to sell off its insurance arms (so a new master for Churchill) and to get rid of the few branches it still has in England which trade as RBS (NatWest in Scotland will go too). This will still leave RBS with over 2,700 branches throughout the country -- as well as its vast international operations.

Lloyds will also suffer only mild pruning. It's being told to get rid of its smaller building societies (which it intended to do anyway) and its TSB branches in Scotland. That will barely dent the 30% share of High Street deposits and loans it currently accounts for.

Bottom line: RBS and Lloyds will continue to dominate High Street retailing banking for the foreseeable future in this country -- and it will be a long time before any new competition will rival them.

Gordon Brown welcomes banks plan

Apocryphal, some might even say hysterical

2009-10-27T10:14:32Z

Lord Stern, author of the 2006 Stern Report on the economics of dealing with global warming, tells The Times this morning that we should all become vegetarians because "meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gasses." His pronouncement has already provoked hundreds of online comments on the Times' website, many of which take the line (I paraphrase): Hold on, this guy's an economist not a scientist or a nutrionist, so by what authority does he tell us to become vegetarian?

LORD STERN ON TUESDAY's TODAY PROGRAMME

It's a fair question and I detect a growing disconnect between the global warming establishment and public opinion as the December summit on global warming in Copenhagen approaches. Fear that a suitable far-reaching post-Kyoto deal might not be reached has encouraged some to become ever more apocryphal, some might even say hysterical.

We've had the Prime Minister effectively saying there are only 50 days left to save the world, then several campaigners saying the polar ice could have melted in 20 years, now an economist urging us to become vegetarians for the sake of the planet. They may all be right, of course, but I sense the general public isn't buying it and if anything is becoming more sceptical about global warming (recent polls show that is certainly the case in America).

Part of the problem is that, as those worried about global warming become more apocalyptic, so the supposed scientific consensus about the matter begins to fray at the edges. Then there is the problem that global temperatures have actually been falling since 1998: I appreciate there are reasons for that which don't completely undermine the global warming case but when people in countries like Britain don't see much change in their own climate they do question why they all have to become vegans. And there is the simple populist resistance to rock stars and rock politicians who lecture the rest of us on the evil of low cost flying while circling the globe in their private jets.

The media also needs to become tougher in questioning what the experts tell us -- for example, there is much coverage of claims that the Arctic is melting, very little mention that Antarctica, which counts for 90% of the world's ice, has been cooling for the past three decades. And we need to be very wary indeed of events that are clearly stunts: there was much unquestioning coverage of the recent underwater meeting of the Maldives cabinet, meant to highlight the danger to the islands of rising sea levels, caused by global warming.

Hardly anybody bothered to ask the question: are the seas around the Maldives actually rising? The answer, from the world's greatest authority on the subject, the Commission on Sea Level Change, would seem to be no.

It has visited the Maldives regularly in recent years. Its studies show that sea levels today are about 20 centimetres LOWER than they were in the years below 1970, that the current lower level is stable and there is no sign the islands are about to be submerged. Didn't hear any of that amid all the breathless coverage and beautiful pictures. When the cries from lobby groups, politicians and vested interests become ever more strident and the stunts ever more eye-catching, it is time for the media to become ever more rigorous.

Much worse than anybody expected

2009-10-23T11:30:31Z

Economic forecasting is always an uncertain business but as mistakes go -- this is a big 'un! Earlier this week I reported that the City and pundit consensus was that the economy had ceased to decline in the third quarter (July-Sept). The optimists expected an uptick of 0.2%, the pessimists thought the economy had stopped shrinking but was doing no better than flat-lining. In fact, Britain's gross domestic product fell by another 0.4% in Q3, the sixth successive quarter of decline, making this the longest and deepest recession since comparable records began in 1955. Not a single analyst of the 35 polled by Reuters before the figures came out had expected a negative result. Neither had ministers.

So the GDP figures are clearly much worse than anybody expected. It looks as if the service sector remains much weaker than economists thought and that, coupled with weak bank lending and low business confidence, are the reasons the economy is still declining. Of course, a decline of 0.4% is a first estimate and GDP figures have been known to be revised to show less decline/more growth. But however you cut it, this is a dismal result.

Its significance, however, is more political than economic -- and it could have immense political significance. The government in general and Gordon Brown in particular had been hoping that today's GDP figures would mark the official end of the recession and that they could head for the election talking up recovery. I've said before that even with a recovery Mr Brown faces an uphill struggle; without one it's probably mission impossible.

Darling: 'Economic confidence is returning'

I suspect the economy will be in modest recovery mode come the Spring election, but for reasons given in my previous blog on this matter, not many will have noticed, which rather undermines the PM's re-election strategy. After all there are only two more sets of quarterly figures (Q4 2009 and Q1 2010) to come out before polling day and even if both are positive, the government risks running out of time to get its recovery message across. There is deep dismay in government that the economy is still in decline, while France and Germany are now recovering. As things stand, Britain could be the last major economy to come out of recession, which hardly supports the PM's claim that we are better placed than anybody else to weather the recession. I suspect the PM is boiling mad this morning; I hope they've locked away the Downing Street staplers and mobile phones.

Hardly like a recovery

2009-10-22T09:29:41Z

After five consecutive quarters of economic decline, figures out this Friday are expected to show that the recession statistically came to an end in the third quarter of this year (July-September).

I say "statistically" because I suspect only statisticians in the City and think-tanks will notice: they expect the latest figures for British gross domestic product (GDP) either to have flat-lined in Q3 or to show marginal growth of around 0.2%. Technically, that would mark the end of the recession but for most folk it would hardly feel like a recovery.

Gordon Brown will place great store by the recession ending. His hope is that, come the Spring election, people will accept that the worst is over and that a steady recovery is now gathering pace.

You can write the campaign speeches now: we're through the worst, we stopped a recession turning into a Great Depression, growth is returning -- don't let the Tories ruin it.

The PM genuinely believes he can win the next election with this pitch, whatever the polls currently say. And it would be foolish to dismiss the possibility. But he has some formidable problems.

Growth had returned to the British economy in 1996/97 but much good did it do John Major's Tories on polling day. Last night Michael Heseltine explained to me why: "We didn't have enough growth for long enough to convince the British people that we'd returned the economy to prosperous growth. Gordon Brown will face the same problem -- even worse because the economy won't be growing as fast in the Spring of 2010 as it was in 1997 when we had to go to the country."

Mr Brown's problem is that people may feel the worst is over by next Spring -- but still not see much of a recovery. The Treasury expects only modest growth next year (so does the IMF and OECD) and senior Treasury sources have told me they expect unemployment to continue to rise until the election -- and even beyond.

Nor does the technical end of the recession in Q3 mean growth is guaranteed in subsequent quarters. The Chancellor is worried that growth will falter at the start of 2010 as consumers and businesses draw breath post-Christmas to determine if the recovery really is underway. He fears investment and spending decisions will be delayed until the outlook for 2010 becomes clearer. So the growth figures for Q1 2010 -- the last before the election -- could be pretty uninspiring, thus undermining Mr Brown's strategy of going to the country with a "we're on our way back" appeal.

Add to that the problem of trust -- all the polls show that voters don't trust what the PM tells them any more -- and you can see the size of the mountain Mr Brown has to climb. A recovery that is seen to be merely a statisticians' recovery is a tough basis on which to seek re-election.

What the governor had to say

2009-10-21T10:14:19Z

Wow! Mervyn King's speech last night is unprecedented. I cannot remember when a Governor of the Bank of England so clearly placed himself in opposition to the government. He thinks there's been "little real reform" of the banks, that tougher regulation would not prevent another banking crisis anyway and that banks should be split into bog-standard deposit takers which run few risks and risky investment banks, often called casino banks. This division was the law in America until President Clinton repealed it in the 1990s and used to be custom and practice in Britain until the Big Bang of the 1980s. The Brown government has refused to go back to these days

There is a political significance to the Governor's remarks. When Mr Brown moved from 11 to 10 Downing Street he assumed that, with his 10 years as Chancellor, he'd still pretty much run economic policy as PM. Now he has a Chancellor (Alistair Darling) who has become his own man and is unsackable (after the PM backed away from sacking him earlier this year) and a Bank Governor who is off the reservation.

Far from continuing to dominate economic policy it looks as if the PM has lost control of it.

Expenses and unemployment

2009-10-14T09:41:38Z

Two brief thoughts this morning:

1. In a previous posting I indicated that Legg could turn his attention to the big money in MPs' expenses: subsidised mortgages and tax-free capital gains on house selling. That is precisely what he is now doing.

MPs have claimed a lot more for both of these than they have for cleaning or gardening. Legg had better be a robust character: the squeals of pain and anger from MPs so far will be as nothing compared with the reaction when (if) he starts asking for the return of tens of thousands of pounds. I sense he might shy off doing this; if he doesn't we're in for a clash of constitutional proportions.

2. Unemployment rose by 88,000 to just shy of 2.5m in the last three months. The government knows the figures are terrible but takes comfort from a slowing rate of increase. But ministers should perhaps not take too much comfort. A senior Treasury source told me yesterday that unemployment would continue to rise "well into next year", by which I take it to mean that it would only start to fallback sometime in the third quarter. In other words, unemployment is likely still to be rising (to 3m or worse) when the government goes to the country in May/June.

Expenses, Libya and the pound

2009-10-13T10:32:11Z

I appreciate why it is not fashionable to say so but I can understand why some MPs are feeling hard done by the latest twist in the expenses scandal.

After all, MPs from the PM downwards are being requested to pay back money they claimed for gardening and cleaning (all largely with in the admittedly generous rules) while MPs from the Leader of the Opposition downwards who've claimed much more in mortgage payments -- or have made a capital gains tax-free killing when selling off their mortgage-subsidised homes -- are getting off scot free, so far anyway. Of course I understand that the standing of the current crop of MPs in public esteem is only a few notches higher than serial killers (which puts them even lower than journalists) but justice should apply to the unloved as well as the adored.

I think most people agree that much of what was claimed for gardening and cleaning should never have been claimed in the first place -- why should the taxpayer fork out for Nick Clegg's stone wall? -- so the party leaders are probably right to say MPs should bite their bottom lip and stump up (as the PM and Mr Clegg have done). But what is Thomas Legg going to do about those who've claimed small fortunes on their mortgages and made a killing on the sale of their homes? The rumour in Westminster is that he will address these sort of expenses too. If he does, that will cause much more pain than the cleaning/gardening refunds because the sums involved are so much larger.

One further anomaly: readers might be puzzled that former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith did not have to pay back any of her expenses, even though the home she designated as her primary residence (a room in her sister's house in London) was found not to be so by an inquiry, which concluded, not surprisingly, that her main family home was where her family lived in her Redditch constituency. The inquiry also discovered that the nights she claimed to spend in her sister's home was untrue -- in fact, she'd spent 37 more nights in Redditch. But by claiming, falsely, that her main home was in London she was able to claim £116,000 she was not really entitled to. Yet not a penny has been asked back (perhaps because she was judged by a committee of MPs which, when it met, had only one non-Labour MP on it). A strange outcome nevertheless.

Sir Stuart Bell on Monday's Daily Politics

Two stories you might have missed in all the furore over MPs' expenses. First, Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday admitted that the British government supported the Scottish executive's decision to release the Lockerbie bomber -- because to keep him in a Scottish prison would have jeopardised trade and diplomatic ties with Libya. I guess we'd all worked that out by now, but it's quite an admission nevertheless. So much for Ed Balls' claim on the BBC that "nobody" wanted the bomber released. Second, save up if you're going to Europe or America, because the pound is plummeting. Even as the dollar sank yesterday to its lowest level of the year the pound went down too, sinking to a four-month low even against the falling greenback. According to US figures, currency dealers are selling sterling at a faster rate than at any time since records began in 1972. The markets are dumping the pound because they think we're borrowing too much and don't see UK interest rates rising any time soon. Ministers will tell us that a cheap pound is good for exports. But it's hardly a vote of confidence in economic policy.

It's Groundhog Day!

2009-10-12T10:08:59Z

Welcome to Ground Hog Day -- aka the day Parliament returns from its mega summer break. When we stopped broadcasting in mid-July, politics was dominated by Gordon Brown's leadership, MPs expenses and party differences over how to cut the ballooning budget deficit. Plus ca change!

With opinion polls showing the Tory lead as solid as ever -- even discounting a post-conference bounce -- the PM's position remains a matter of speculation. Most Labour MPs had resigned themselves to sticking with him, even if it meant certain defeat (as many think it will). But news of trouble with Mr Brown's remaining good eye has MPs buzzing that this is perhaps a precursor to the PM stepping down because of ill health. Sounds like wishful thinking to me.

Those MPs who thought they'd seen the worst of the expenses scandal will be sorely disappointed. It's back in the headlines with a vengeance. MPs sound aggrieved because the Commons' chief auditor is holding them to a higher standard than they have held themselves -- and demanding they pay back some claims. MPs are bleating that the rules have been changed. But MPs have always been subject to the rule that expenses must be "wholly and necessarily" in the line of duty. Use that yardstick -- common in the private sector -- and MPs will be writing a lot of refund cheques.

Mr Brown makes the latest contribution to the great deficit debate today by announcing a great sell off of state assets, such as the Tote and the Dartford crossing. But this is unlikely to have an immediate impact on deficit reduction, since many of these sales will take a long time to arrange. They also have only a one-off impact on the public finances whereas the bond markets are looking for evidence of major annual reductions -- and that can only come from cuts in spending or increases in tax -- or (more likely whoever wins the election) a combination of both.

It would be wrong to say nothing has changed when Parliament went off for the summer. The Lib Dems and the Tories have given us an idea of how they would cut public spending. Sure, they've announced no more than a down payment, but it gives us an indication of how they would do it. And Labour is now allowed to talk about cuts too.

The most important event between now and Christmas will be November's pre-Budget report when Alistair Darling will have to flesh out exactly how he plans to cut the deficit in half over four years starting in 2011 -- and the other parties will then have to make their dispositions accordingly.

Should be a busy and interesting autumn.

Predictable and well-worn rhetoric

2009-10-08T09:17:55Z

This is David Cameron's day at the Tory conference but it has been George Osborne's conference, just as it was in Blackpool in 2007 when he rescued his party from the doldrums with his radical cut in inheritance tax (a policy which is not quite the Tory priority it was in these tough times).

There are shadow cabinet ministers who fear their boy might have gone too far and been too specific with his "Age of Austerity". That is also becoming the media narrative: his gloomy honesty, they say, will frighten away the voters. But this is the same media that until now was attacking Osborne for not being specific enough about where his axe would fall -- and how hard. There are times when politicians should just ignore what the media is saying.

In fact, not being hard or honest enough is still the more telling criticism. The Shadow Chancellor admits that his announced cuts are only a downpayment on what must be done. But even the downpayment is vague in places, depending a lot on our old friends "waste and inefficiency", who are always threatened by politicians in opposition but somehow manage to survive when they get to power.

Tory leaders know you can't get elected on gloom alone. So today David Cameron will use predictable and well-worn rhetoric to say that after we've been through the Slough of Despond we'll reach the sunny uplands (the excerpt that's been leaked in advance uses language that's not far from that!).

Cameron/Osborne are quite a formidable double act. It was always clear that Mr Osborne would dole out the gloom in Manchester then Mr Cameron would come along to sprinkle a little sunshine.

There is none of the animosity/rivalry that so poisoned the Blair/Brown relationship and made government dysfunctional. They run the opposition as a co-operative double-act, with their office doors connecting and always open. If they win the election government process will be more Friends than West Wing.

The pressures of power, of course, can muddy the best of friendships but for now they are in harmony. But don't expect to see them much together come the campaign.

The Tories' own market research discovered that the public doesn't mind these two separately but doesn't take to these two public school Oxford chaps when they appear together.

So don't think the absence of a joint photo-call is evidence of a rift. It's just focus-group driven politics!

The main course will be much more unpalatable

2009-10-07T09:42:14Z

George Osborne had delivered his deficit-reduction appetiser but the main course has still to be concocted. The appetiser has gone down quite well with the commentariat this morning (even the Guardian had something good to say about it), despite its bitter taste. The main course will be much more unpalatable.

The Shadow Chancellor's plans to squeeze public spending should save about £7 billion a year or around £23 billion in a full parliament. That's a decent down-payment -- but no more than that for a party that says it would go faster and further than Labour's plans to cut the deficit in half within four years, starting 2011. The Tories say they would start in 2010 and cut the deficit by more than 50%.

Just how they'd do that was not contained in Mr Osborne's speech to the Tory faithful yesterday -- but then it's not yet clear how the government would meet its deficit-reduction target either. The broad arithmetic was buried away in the Budget Red Book last March, from which it was possible to calculate that departmental budgets would have to be cut by around 10% over three years -- but there were no details of what that meant in terms of spending cuts.

So all eyes will now turn to Alistair Darling's Pre-Budget Report, due sometime in November, when he will have to flesh out his deficit-reduction plan -- and the Tories will have to explain how they would do it quicker and faster. This is something politicians of the Right and the Left cannot shirk: the bond markets will not buy British debt -- and there will be a lot of it about -- unless there is a credible deficit reduction plan in place to reduce the deficit between now and 2014/15.

The cuts will be all the more painful because both Labour and Conservative say they will broadly protect health spending from the axe. Given the size of the health budget (around £100 billion) that means the axe will have to fall even more brutally on other departments (the arithmetic suggests cuts of up to 15%).

On how that will be done, Labour and Conservative are still pretty vague. The Pre-Budget Report will be the time for clarity from all sides.

Reaction on Tuesday's Daily Politics to George Osborne's speech

Blair and Betrayal

2009-10-05T09:22:18Z

Two B words hang over the Tory conference here in Manchester as the first day gets underway: Blair and Betrayal.

The prospect of our former British PM becoming the first President of Europe makes the Tory faithful even more determined to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. But in their hearts they know that, if Lisbon has been ratified by all 27 members by the time the Tories come to power (should they win the election), then a referendum is most unlikely. Hence the murmurs of "Betrayal".

I doubt they will lead to rebellion. All but the most diehard of Tory Eurosceptics know that having a referendum on a ratified Lisbon Treaty could be a major diversion for an incoming Tory government with its hands full. They understand when Cameron's people quietly but firmly point out that the economy, jobs, the debt and an unpopular war in Afghanistan must be the priorities. They still hanker after a vote and think it all desperately unfair. On that they echo the views of the British people. But they know a post-ratification referendum is unlikely and that the unconvincing words their leadership has been mouthing since Ireland voted yes merely postpones what for them will be bad news. They know they will feel betrayed but they are also realists.

Much of the Eurosceptic press seems ready to go along with betrayal. The Times this morning urges Mr Cameron to ditch any idea of a post-ratification referendum. Trevor Kavanagh in the newly pro-Tory Sun takes a similar line. Only the Daily Mail seems to be holding out, though exactly what kind of vote it wants is unclear.

Hopes that Poland and the Czech Republic might hold up their ratification until Mr Cameron is in Downing Street are fading: the word from Warsaw and Prague is that both will have ratified, albeit reluctantly, before 2009 is out, allowing the Lisbon Treaty to come into force on January 1st, 2010.

It is then that the Tory leadership will have to stop the dissembling and tell us their will be no referendum. They will sweeten this bitter pill with promises to demand certain powers be repatriated back to London from Brussels and even hint there might be a referendum on that. The excellent Nick Watts has a pretty good rundown of Plan B in today's Guardian.

It will not please the diehard Eurosceptics but I suspect the majority of Tories will resign to realpolitik.

They will then try to banish from their minds the horrible (to them) thought of President Blair sweeping into Downing Street to meet Prime Minister Cameron.

The only thing that cheers them up is the thought that it is an indignity that Prime Minister Brown might have to endure first.

The reuslts of a Daily Politics survey of Tory councillors on a EU referendum

Seven months for The Sun to boost Cameron

2009-09-30T08:23:15Z

The Sun is not the force it was in British elections ("It's the Sun wot won it" the paper plausibly claimed after the Tories' surprise narrow victory in 1992) but this morning's decision to switch its allegiance back to the Tories (it supported the Tories from 1979 and switched to Labour in 1997) is significant nevertheless, primarily because it has been done so far in advance of the election.

The Sun's political influence doesn't come from its partisan coverage of the election campaign or its final editorial endorsing its favourite. It comes from its day in, day out, week in, week out championing of the leader and party it wants to win, and constant rubbishing of those it wants to lose.

The reason it had very little influence in the 2005 election was that, for months before, it couldn't really make up its mind who it wanted to win and, as the election approached, came out only half-heartedly for Labour. As a result, it influenced few minds on polling day.

Contrast that with its relentless support for Margaret Thatcher and the Tories in the 1980s and daily attacks on Neil Kinnock ("the Welsh Windbag"), who it regularly portrayed as unfit to run the country. This constant barrage of pro-Tory and anti-Labour propaganda encouraged Sun readers to take a certain view of British politics and when it came to the close-run election of 1992 it had clearly influenced those who couldn't quite bring themselves to vote for Kinnock, even though they were disillusioned with the Tories.

The Sun will be influential again if it now puts its firepower at the service of David Cameron and the Tories -- and turns on Gordon Brown and Labour. I'm assuming an election on the first Thursday of May. That gives the Sun seven months to boost Cameron/Tories and disparage Brown/Labour. It is that prospect that dismayed Labour election strategists and ministers last night -- and had the Tories chuckling with relish.

Mr Cameron has kept his distance from Sun proprietor Rupert Murdoch, though he gets on well with his son, James.

But he knows the value of the Sun campaigning on the Tory leader's behalf among its working class and Middle Britain readership. The Sun of the late 1970s and early 1980s did much to make Margaret Thatcher, who seemed shrill and rather upper-middle class, appealing to ordinary voters. If the Sun now attempts to do the same for Mr Cameron, an old Etonian, then it will be a potent force in the run up to the election. If it also "does a Kinnock" on Mr Brown then the Tories will benefit from a double whammy.

In the multi-channel, internet age, with tabloid circulations declining, newspapers are not the power they were and the Sun will never again be as influential as it was in the 1980s. But it still sells around 3m copies a day, giving it around 9m readers. Its decision to put its weight behind the Tories is a major boost to Mr Cameron and a body blow to Mr Brown. Readers of this blog should not be surprised, however: we told you the Sun would abandon Labour many moons ago.

Why are 'we' so keen on Gaddafi?

2009-09-24T10:29:56Z

Just a quick thought of a blog today, after all the excitement of the Lib Dems in Bournemouth.

As I watched Colonel Gaddafi (the Libyan dictator formerly known as Mad Dog) harangue the UN general assembly yesterday, calling the Security Council terrorists and ripping up the UN Charter, it made me wonder why our government was so keen to have close and friendly relations with him.

Much diplomatic and commercial wooing has been going on -- we learned just how much during the al Megrahi affair -- allegedly so that Britain gets access to Libya's oil and gas reserves.

But don't we depend more than enough already on unsavoury and unstable regimes for our energy supplies?

Why would adding Colonel Gaddafi to our list of suppliers make us any more secure? Any who would not rather cut back a little on their energy consumption rather than see any of their money end up in this guy's coffers?

I look forward to your answers ....

This blog is open for people to comment about the subject of Andrew's blog - but we reserve the right to delete entries which are excessively long or off-topic.