The Harlow panel give their verdict 3 Sep 2010, 4:48 am

Deborah Mattinson, Britain’s leading pollster and author of Talking to a Brick Wall, revisits the Harlow focus group for their verdict on the coalition government so far…

Talking to a Brick Wall tells the story of the New Labour years from the voters’ viewpoint.

Writing the final chapters during the 2010 election campaign, I set up a panel of swing voters in Harlow, Britain’s fifth most marginal seat. It was made up of people with consistent records of voting Labour (’97, ’01, even ’05) who were now undecided. They were the voters who would determine the election outcome. In the end, their own vote perfectly matched the result, with almost all switching to the Conservatives or Lib Dems.

My last panel session for Talking to a Brick Wall took place just after the Cameron/Clegg double act in the No. 10 Rose Garden. It received a warm reception:

Hopefully a fresh start for the whole country

In the last week of August I brought panel members together again to learn their verdict on the coalition so far. Had their expectations – so high in those honeymoon days – been met?

The focus group were impressed by the flurry of activity that had swept the nation since May. Yet, while some specifics (clampdown on benefit cheats, cutting civil service bureaucracy) were applauded, that early praise was muted.

Overall, it seemed that the coalition’s aim, beyond cutting the deficit, was unclear:

I’m confused about where this is all heading

You’d have thought all the cuts would give a clear direction but I’m just not sure

There was also an underlying anxiety, triggered by announcements about the VAT increase and ending the winter fuel allowance, that the coalition would not, as originally promised, look after ‘ordinary people’ and the less well off.

This was partly driven by perceptions of Cameron himself:

He looks like he’s enjoying this all a bit too much

He’s not in touch with ordinary people. He comes from a privileged background and doesn’t know what it’s like for ordinary people

And partly because the expected brake that the Lib Dem presence was expected to provide had not yet materialised:

Clegg has sold out

He’s a yes man – Cameron’s puppy dog

There were also worries about whether the economic strategy was the right one or whether it would provoke a ‘double dip’ recession. Concern was voiced about job losses and falling house prices.

We’re three months in – towards the end of the public opinion bounce that most new governments enjoy. All that hope is still relatively fresh in people’s minds, while Labour’s ability to provide effective opposition is clearly compromised by the leadership contest.

Right now, the Harlow panel jury is out, but they are already sending powerful warning signals that the government will ignore at its peril.

I shall be visiting Harlow regularly to monitor the voters’ verdict – watch this space.

Talking to a Brick Wall is available to buy from the Biteback website, priced £17.99

Brought to Book: David Torrance 2 Sep 2010, 6:12 am

This week author of Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy David Torrance gets Brought to Book.

What is your favourite book?
I’ve always been suspicious of people who point definitively to a favourite book (how can they be so sure?), but my favourite genre is certainly literary biography. Two, if I may, stand out: Nicholas Shakespeare’s near-perfect account of Bruce Chatwin’s eclectic career and Andrew Motion’s biography of Philip Larkin. Oddly enough, I don’t read much fiction or poetry but devour their official lives.

As a child, what was your favourite book?
The Wombles by Elisabeth Beresford, which I bought second hand and read several times. No child with an imagination could fail to be charmed by the story and its gentle humour.

What book would you take on holiday this year?
I’m on holiday at the moment so have brought a stack of books. F. S. L. Lyons’ 1977 biography of Charles Stewart Parnell was superb and very pertinent (a politician brought down by a sexual scandal), while two books about North Korea – Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty and Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea were excellent primers for a fascinating week in the DPRK (the books, unlike me, weren’t allowed in).

Do you have a favourite political book/biography?
I still think Jonathan Aitken’s biography of Richard Nixon is one of the finest political books I’ve read, and all the more fascinating in that Aitken failed to learn lessons from his subject when it came to his own political career. The late Bernard Crick’s biography of George Orwell is also an intimidatingly good account of a hugely important figure and his contribution to the related arenas of politics and journalism.

Which book published in the last ten years do you think is the most significant?
Probably Never Had it So Good 1956-63: A History of Britain from Suez to the “Beatles” – Britain in the Sixties by Dominic Sandbrook. Published in 2005, this nudged narrative history in a new direction, combining high politics with everyday life to provide a compelling account of 1950s Britain. Sandbrook also wrote this when he was in his early 30s, which makes me more than a little jealous.

Which literary character would you most like to be and why?
Probably Richard Hannay from the novels of John Buchan. He was a bit of a cad, unlike me.

Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy is available to buy from the Biteback website.

Review: Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy 1 Sep 2010, 10:02 am

David Melding AM writes for WalesHome.org

The Original Red Tory

MANY OF you will think that YMCA exclusively stands for the Young Men’s Christian Association and perhaps recall the Village People’s slightly outrageous hit. Long before the song, in the 1920s in fact, the acronym was used derisively to describe youthful liberal leaning Conservative MPs. Many so labelled – Harold MacMillan, Robert Boothby, Duff Cooper – became well known names; but that of their mentor did not.

Phillip Blond, author of the influential book Red Tory, has called Noel Skelton the “original Red Tory and one of the most important MPs and thinkers of his era”. I confess that Noel Skelton was unknown to me but this important political life has been resurrected by David Torrance in his latest book Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy (Biteback, £25). Torrance is the gifted young author of a series of books that have shed striking light on the Scottish Tory tradition.

Noel Skelton was the Scottish Tory MP who coined the phrase ‘property owning democracy’ in the inter-war years. Skelton believed that the challenge of socialism had to be met by an ambitious programme of Constructive Conservatism (the title of his most influential work) that offered people extensive co-partnership in industry, land reform, and a more direct democracy via the use of referendums. Skelton urged the Conservative Party to take advantage of the new opportunities opening up in the 1920s, surely the most fluid decade in British politics. When his near contemporaries, Anthony Eden, Harold MacMillan, and Alec Douglas Home secured the premiership, they adopted Skelton’s influential phrase but focussed narrowly on its implications for home ownership. Skelton himself had a far wider vision which might be best summarised as Conservative co-operatism.

Torrance has rescued a significant Tory thinker from the slow backwaters of history. The pace and dynamism of inter-war politics is adroitly drawn out and it invites comparisons with the post devolution challenges facing the Conservative Party today. The Tories, as Skelton saw, had to be a national party or be nothing. For Skelton, this meant developing a social and economic programme that could meet the challenge of socialism. In the 1920s, as now, the Conservative Party had a core vote that was larger than any other party but one that was smaller than the combined forces of radicalism. He realised that the Labour Party had a greater potential to attract uncommitted opinion because Tories were so aloof on social and economic issues.

The 1920s certainly echoes loudly in contemporary politics. To detoxify the brand, Conservatives in Scotland – led by Alec Dunglass (the future Alec Douglas Home) and supported by Skelton – considered dropping the very name ‘Conservative’. Meanwhile, the increasingly enfeebled Liberal Party was demanding a move to the Alternative Vote. Torrance brings these debates back to vivid life and his analysis of the Conservative Party’s then new obsession with the use of referendums as a means to counter the siren calls of socialism, is quite apposite.

Serendipity plays a huge part in political success. Worthy candidates are often frustrated and never win the lottery of selection, and those that secure election are constantly at the mercy of events, illness and premature death (whether literal or metaphorical). Skelton died relatively young at the age of 55. He can be compared to his friend Oliver Stanley in this respect. Both might have contended for the highest offices had Fortuna been kinder.

Torrance has given Skelton the posthumous recognition he deserves. As a reddish Conservative myself – perhaps seven parts High Tory, three parts Lloyd George Liberal – I greatly enjoyed this book. It is a timely reminder that unless the Conservative Party forges social and economic policies fit for the whole British nation, failure will be its inevitable reward.

Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy is available to buy from the Biteback website, priced £25.00

The battle of the Blair biographers 1 Sep 2010, 7:33 am

Everyone has something to say about Tony Blair, including Biteback author Francis Beckett, who got involved in a little spat with fellow Blair biographer John Rentoul this weekend.

Appearing on BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live, Beckett took part in a little bit of unkind banter towards the former Prime Minister, with Rentoul telephoning the show to offer his opinion. The ensuing conversation led to Beckett blogging about Rentoul’s attack on the BBC’s use of language, stating “It was an utterly shameful episode, and it sends a shiver up my spine to hear a pro-Blair journalist appearing to renew the campaign of terror [against the BBC], almost a decade on.” Rentoul responded with comment on the BBC’s use of language, suggesting the corporation should “reserve the term war criminal for people such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein who committed war crimes or attempted genocide rather than Blair, who stood against them.”

With a bit of confusion over who said what resolved, the spat concluded harmlessly enough, but with today’s release of Blair’s memoirs refuelling the fire one only has to observe the Twitterati to know that this won’t be the last heated exchange of words.

Francis Beckett is the author of What did the baby boomers ever do for us? and his blog is available to read here.

Tim Coates and Mary K. Blewitt OBE up for the Big Red Read Prize 1 Sep 2010, 5:35 am

As part of Redbridge Borough’s Book and Media Festival you are invited to take part in the Big Red Read! It’s the perfect opportunity to turn off the television, forget the mobile and journey into another world.

All the books included in the Big Red Read are available from Redbridge libraries and you can download a copy of the Big Red Read brochure from the Redbridge website.

Two of our wonderful Biteback authors are nominated for the Big Red Read Prize – Tim Coates for Delane’s War and Mary K. Blewitt OBE for You Alone May Live – so have a read of both and see who gets your vote!

Voting closes on the 18th September and winners will be announced in October at a special red carpet award ceremony as part of the “Word of Mouth” Festival.

Is there life in the political memoir? 31 Aug 2010, 8:08 am

By Iain Dale

I make no bones about it. I love political memoirs and biographies. OK, I may read the occasional football biog, but political autobiographies and biographies are what I read most. I’m in the middle of Peter Mandelson at the moment. Hmmm. Perhaps I should rephrase that. However, the genre of political biography has been on the decline for some time. This is because the major publishers have caught massive financial colds in publishing them. A few years ago Bloomsbury paid a huge amount of money for David Blunkett’s diaries. They clearly thought he would be the next Alan Clark. Boy were they wrong. Blunkett rather cannily held onto serialisation rights, which fetched a six figure sum. He was rumoured to have made £400,000 from the book, and the publisher? They paid a quarter of a million pounds and sold, er, 4,000 copies in hardback. I don’t think it ever made it into paperback. Other publishers duly took note.

There was a time when every two bit backbencher would be able to get their memoirs published. No longer. I reckon there will be very few takers for the memoirs of most ex Labour cabinet ministers like Geoff Hoon, Jacqui Smith or John Denham. I may be wrong, but I doubt it. Even smaller publishers would blanche at taking them on. This is a shame because no matter what you think, they all have an interesting story to tell. But none of them would sell more than a couple of thousand copies. Is it worth the bother?

I can see the day when such politicians might well get their memoirs published but only as an e-book. The biggest cost of any book is the print cost. This is usually well over 50% of the cost – sometimes up to 80%. If that cost can be taken out of the equation then suddenly a book may become viable. What no publisher has yet worked out is how to price e-books. I suspect there is a £10 price barrier, although it could be as low as £5. Biteback is about to make its entire catalogue available as e-books. But even now, we’re not sure how to price them. But if publishers can get the pricing right for e-books it could mean that the political biography and memoir genre gets a new lease of life. Let’s hope so.

Johnny vs Johnny 31 Aug 2010, 6:00 am

John Nicholson, author of new Biteback release We Ate All the Pies, received his first copy over the Bank Holiday weekend, and by way of celebration went out, had a few drinks and ended up on stage with Johnny Vegas at the Edinburgh festival.

To watch what happened, click here.

WARNING: This video contains some moderate violence and the odd expletive…

A little taster of Biteback’s new release We Ate All the Pies 27 Aug 2010, 7:49 am

To whet your appetite, here’s a little taster of our new book We Ate All the Pies by football-mad John Nicholson. (Sorry for the food puns, couldn’t help ourselves!)

“Pies have become a legendary football ritual that many feel obliged, compelled or delighted to indulge in. Recently, it was claimed on the BBC news website that one in three people who went to watch Scottish football had a pie on match day. That’d be over 20,000 just at Celtic Park! A volume of pies so huge it would need to be transported in the sort of big trucks normally reserved for Emerson, Lake and Palmer in their seventies pomp.

The first pie I ever ate at Ayresome Park was memorable. It was a freezing cold afternoon in 1974 – it always seemed to be freezing at the Boro; I don’t recall one warm day in the whole of the 1970s. As I bit into it, a belch of hot air was released in a steamy cloud into the smog-filled grey afternoon. It smelled fantastically savoury and meaty but it tasted somewhat different. First, the filling was bouncy, as though partly comprised of rubber bands. This is because it was padded out with gristle: eyes, lungs and arseholes. The flavour was peculiarly tangy and unlike anything I had ever tasted previously. It was salty but oddly perfumed. Looking back, this was probably because it was past its sell-by date – not that such a thing as a sell-by date existed back then. But I was used to vaguely unpleasant food at home so I ate it all.

It left me with a sore throat! I’m no doctor but I’m sure a pie shouldn’t make your throat sore. God knows what was in that thing but whatever it was it wasn’t in me long as it had exited out of my arse at speed a couple of hours later.

So that wasn’t a good start and it put me off the whole football pie experience for many years. Indeed, I’m fairly sure I’ve not actually eaten a pie inside a football ground since! But as usual I was very much in the minority in this regard. I did have an especially good curried pasty at Boston United once though and a vegetable samosa at Leicester City too. Both highly recommended.

Eating a pie full of thick, viscous gravy and a few pieces of undefined protein while standing on a terrace surrounded by thousands of people is actually a tricky business. The tendency is for pie innards to burst and pour down your arm, giving you third degree burns in the process, rendering your lips numb and blistered, as though you had just witnessed a nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll. Then the whole thing falls apart and you are compelled to cram the last half of the now fractured miasma into your mouth, all in one go, to prevent losing the whole lot on the ground.

These days a TV camera will inevitably be trained on you as you inhale the bloody thing and you will briefly be the laughing stock of the watching football nation.

But this has not diminished pies’ desirability – quite the opposite.

Go to any ground and you’ll hear the chant ‘Who ate all the pies?’ directed by fans, ironically often on the chubby side themselves, towards a ‘husky’-sized player. It is the only foodstuff to regularly feature in such mantras in any sporting venue, so deeply entrenched has the humble pie become.”

We Ate All the Pies is available to buy from the Biteback website priced £9.99

Failing Intelligence by Brian Jones 26 Aug 2010, 10:25 am

FAILING INTELLIGENCE: The true story of how we were fooled into going to war in Iraq by Brian Jones

“Compelling and depressing stuff from the Whitehall expert on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” Professor Peter Hennessy

This book provides the truth about Iraq’s WMD and how the British government used and misused intelligence to lead us into war, by the UK’s most senior and experienced intelligence expert on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.

As the former head of the UK Defence Intelligence Staff’s nuclear, biological and chemical section, Brian Jones is ideally placed to explain how Britain was taken to war and the way in which the intelligence reporting on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was manipulated to justify Saddam Hussein’s removal from power.

Jones calls on his own experience and knowledge, a variety of leaked documents, and the expert testimony given to a series of inquiries, including the current Chilcot inquiry, to examine how and why Tony Blair and George W. Bush managed to deceive their legislatures and their electorates into believing that Iraqi WMD were a real threat that could attack the West within 45 minutes.

He describes how Blair and Bush sought to use subsequent inquiries to cover up their own culpability in the deception, in order to facilitate re-election and keep their jobs. In conclusion, Jones pulls together the lessons that should have been learned both in relation to the use of intelligence to justify policy-making and with regard to broader international issues of security and governance.

Failing Intelligence is available to buy from the Biteback website priced £9.99

Why the hell do we love football? 26 Aug 2010, 7:05 am

In his regular Football365 column, John Nicholson discusses his new book We Ate All the Pies.

“Football is a major part of millions of people’s lives, a part that they simply cannot live without, as compulsive as any addictive narcotic. We buy the shirts, the season tickets, the magazines, the TV subscriptions and of course, the pies. We drink in pubs and watch it on big screens, we meet up and talk about it – talk about it endlessly. We visit websites to find out news, views and to abuse those with whom we disagree on message boards. We take it all for granted as a normal part of our daily lives. But how did we get here?

In We Ate All The Pies I go back through the history of my football life to better understand how football gets under your skin from an early age, buries itself deep and never leaves you; how it helps to create a lifestyle and an attitude for you, how it expands your horizons and helps shape and express the person you are.”

You can read the whole column here.