Happy Christmas (Keith Richards Style)

It’s Christmas and this blog is going for a rest. I’m off to Scotland to see my family and drink the odd dram. I return for a British election year on Monday Jan. 4 and unless the news is huge or I’m hit by a smart thought (highly unlikely) there’ll be no posts here until then.

In the meantime, thanks for all the comments and for sparing the time to read me. To say Merry Christmas here’s the greatest festive rock’n'roll song, Run Run Rudolph. Written by the peerless Chuck Berry it’s a rare performance of the song by a solo Keith Richards released in 1978. It combines the work of two of my heroes.

David Cameron Lacks a Narrative

In my column this week, I’ve addressed why Cameron is not doing as well as might be expected against a government with so many difficulties. In short, I think he still lacks a narrative after four years in his job:

The Tory leader’s biggest problem seems to be that nagging question I cited earlier: “What’s the story he’s trying to tell?” The Conservatives make a great many announcements on various subjects, but they lack a coherent and binding theme beyond the nebulous “change.” Missing most of all is what might be termed a narrative of prosperity.

Does David Cameron comprehend what was understood by Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher or Harold Macmillan? Namely, that most voters are looking for a potential leader who can explain clearly how they and their family can be better off, even if it involves initial sacrifice.

So far, how could the voters know? The Tories barely mention prosperity. It is an extremely odd omission.

Read the whole thing here.

Next, a Tube Strike: Now Is the (Second) Winter of Our Discontent…

What exactly does the Unite union have against Christmas? It’s just emerged that some of its members are trying to shut down the tube network in London from Tuesday until after Christmas. Not only is the Eurostar knackered. British Airways is on the brink of a post-holidays strike (having been forced to go to court to stop cabin crew striking over Christmas). And now the underground in the U.K.’s capital could be knocked out. Dow Jones Newswires reports:

“Members of the U.K.’s Unite union working for EDF Powerlink, responsible for electrical maintenance on the London’s metro system, will take strike action for four days starting Tuesday after last minute talks broke down Monday, the union reported on its Web site Monday. The workers rejected a two year pay deal of 1.5% for 2009-10, and RPI plus 0.5% for 2010-11. At a meeting Monday, the company made a new offer which included a “marginal increase in the overtime rates,” but no increase in basic pay, reported the union. Strike action will commence Tuesday from 2000 GMT and will end at 2000 GMT Sunday Dec. 27, with a break on Christmas Day when no shifts are scheduled.”

X Factor: Simon Cowell Is No Great Pop Svengali

An interesting post at Comment Central on the successful campaign to make Rage Against the Machine the U.K.’s Christmas No. 1 rather than “The X Factor” winner Little Joe the Geordie.

Danny Finkelstein writes that he regrets that he didn’t join in and buy the boy from Newcastle’s single (”Ah’m just that proud of yer Joe,” as his mentor Cheryl Cole would doubtless have put it when she first heard it).

He, Danny not Joe, says the campaign against “The X Factor” is based on a mistaken assumption that there is a distinction between good authentic pop and evil pop produced by the corporate machine. It’s all produced by the machine, and is none the worse for it. It’s as cut-throat and competitive a capitalist enterprise as any.

Indeed, all pop — good or bad — was the result of entrepreneurial assistance and talent-spotting somewhere. Plus both Rage Against the Machine and Joe are on Sony, meaning the record company has had a great week with the media-hyped race to the top spot.

There’s much in Danny’s argument, but I think it ignores a truth that this campaign is mainly about the character and influence of Simon Cowell.

How Class War Could Benefit Labour

James Forsyth posts on Labour’s class-war attack on the Tories and quotes someone close to David Cameron saying that it is a gift to the Tories. The Cameroons think that Brown’s tactics provide evidence of Labour abandoning the centre-ground. I see what they mean, but I wonder.

Several observations:

1) The narrow specifics - citing the playing fields of Eton etc - make little or no difference (conceivably even damaging the PM because it looks undignified) but the overall aroma around class (as James puts it) is potentially highly damaging to the Tories. When it emerged that Zac Goldsmith was a non-dom, or whenever Lord Ashcroft’s tax status is mentioned, their fellow Tories look uneasy. Why? Because they know it stirs notions of class, privilege and wealth. It allows Labour to point and say: ‘Look, they’re the party for the few and we’re still the party for the many.’ Conveniently, Goldsmith made himself a walking metaphor to illustrate the point.

2) It is said widely: ‘Doesn’t Labour realise that a core vote strategy is a disaster if you are trying to win an election?’ Well, yes, but that’s not really what Labour is trying to do. The party is for the most part in the business of limiting the scale of what it thinks will be a defeat, in order to fight another day. For now it’s all about geeing up the Labour core vote and spooking Cameron in an effort to ensure that he can’t get a winning coalition built. Labour wants to sow doubt in the mind of floating voters and to persuade them that the Tories are remote and uncaring. Class is simply a mechanism for doing so.

3) If class war politics finds no echo during an election, you can bet it will at some point if the Tories manage to win and form a government. They would have to make cuts and would probably quite quickly become deeply unpopular. With unpopular governments, voters reach for the stick closest at hand with which to beat them. Sometimes it is sleaze, sometimes it is that they’ve just been around too long. It can easily be class - or rather the notion that they “Cameron, Osborne and co” are just “not like the rest of us so how can they possibly understand?” The voters hate the political class when it is overwhelmingly middle-class, think how they’ll view it if it is perceived as being more upper-middle class or lower-upper class.

Old Politicians Speaking Clearly

Danny Finkelstein on Comment Central performed a great public service the other day by pulling together footage of every prime minister since Lloyd George. All the clips bar that of Bonar Law have sound and, as Danny says, it is fascinating to hear their voices. Lots of fun, especially if you run them simultaneously and create a sort of Prime Ministerial mega-mix.

But what struck me most about some of the clips was the directness of manner favored by old-style prime ministers. On camera they tended to speak very clearly, with precision and largely unleavened by attempts at humor.

But the way politicians talk to us has changed for the worse. As deference declined and emoting came to be valued over reason, we wanted them to soften their style, to learn to become television performers in order that they would conform to the expectations of our multi-media age.

BA Strike: Where Is Charlie Whelan?

As the strike battle between British Airways and the trade union Unite gets ever more bitter, the government is very, very quiet on the subject. The Christmas strike may be off, but not before some passengers felt compelled by the chaos to book alternative travel (I know I did for Christmas Eve). There may be renewed action in the new year.

At this point, for some odd reason my thoughts turn to my old mucker Charlie Whelan. Where on earth is he?

Charlie is a very close friend and ally of Gordon Brown. He’ll be crucial to Brown’s election campaign and behind the scenes he’s an expert spinner and political fixer in tricky situations. When the history of the last 18 months is written, I’ll wager he played a key role in persuading the big union bosses not to abandon Gordon Brown when it looked like they might.

But what’s his day job? Charlie is the powerful director of the political department at Unite. The union whose members voted to try and and mess up Christmas for BA passengers.
Just pointing it out.

Cancelled Christmas. An update.

Since I blogged about the impact of the British Airways strike on my Christmas plans I have been inundated with calls (at least two) from those concerned about the situation. I’m booked to fly to Glasgow on Christmas eve.

Some in the comments section were not impressed that I should feel so aggrieved. Don’t I realize there’s always someone worse off than yourself, especially at Christmas? Indeed, and I take the point.

Copenhagen: Watch America Get the Blame

It is reported that all is not well at the extraordinary circus in Copenhagen. The talks appear to be going not quite as the organizers planned.

True, many international summits aimed at securing a deal feature a large amount of expectation management with those taking part seeking to create a sense of mounting excitement and drama. Then, when a resolution comes with minutes to spare, those who sealed the deal can claim that this proves their brilliance. But this time, from a distance, it looks like more than that. There is the possibility of there being no deal, or only a weak accord patched together to spare the embarrassment of the leaders descending on the Danish capital.

New Global Taxes. Doesn’t the world economy have enough problems?

Two weeks ago Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy were at daggers-drawn over the French president’s crowing that he had stitched up the British on key EU appointments and would crush the Anglo-Saxon economic model. Now the pair are best friends again. They wrote a joint opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal last week and even seem to be coordinating their policies, if the latest announcements are anything to go by.

The French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has confirmed the speculation that the government will copy the British tax on bankers, by introducing a one-off 50% levy on bonuses above 27,000 euros ($39,000; £24,000). A bill will be introduced in January.

Number 10 will be very excited by this development - no doubt seeing proof they are again “leading/saving the world”.

But out of Copenhagen comes news of a much bigger British-French initiative. The Independent reports that Brown and Sarkozy have endorsed a proposal from the Ethiopian government for a global Tobin Tax on financial transactions to fund a climate change deal. The Ethiopians also envisage global taxes on aviation and shipping.

Combined the package of measures would, they claim, raise £100 billion which could then be wasted/invested (depending on your view) by poor countries on reducing their carbon emissions. At least we can be certain that not a pound/dollar/euro of this money would be squandered by rulers and officials in the developing world buying large Mercs or BMWs in which they might travel about their countries visiting various carbon-cutting projects. Perish the thought.

But the heart does sink rather when I read of these latest proposals at Copenhagen. Much of the world economy suffered a massive coronary recently and is still, painfully, attempting a difficult recovery. Trade, free-trade, needs boosted; innovation and invention require urgent encouragement. Growth is the only way out.

Yet, a significant chunk of the global political elite thinks that the solution to the problems facing us at this moment is increased taxes on shipping, aviation and financial services. It is hard to see how they will help.