Archives for February 2009

As usual on Fridays, I shall leave you in the more than capable hands of my co-presenter Anita Anand.

The pension arrangements of Sir Fred Goodwin, fomer chief executive of RBS, continue to outrage the country.

'Fred the Shred' has refused to pay back any of his pension pointing out that the government approved the £700,000 a year pension deal.

But the Treasury say that they thought they were contractually obliged to pay the pension.

We will be discussing if there is anything the government can now do to get the money back.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown will be in Washington next week to have face-to-face talks with Barack Obama.

Top of their agenda will be how to co-ordinate their attempts to rescue the world from total financial meltdown.

They will be hoping to formulate a cunning plan to put to the other members of the G20 when they meet in London at the beginning of April.

But not everyone thinks that governments have the answers.

Since the recession started to bite riots have swept across Europe as many people with mounting anger blame the politicians for getting us into this mess in the first place.

So just what can we expect in April? With mass protests planned the police have already warned that the growing recession could provoke riots.

We will be talking the deputy mayor of London in charge of policing, Kit Malthouse.

One group of people who are already protesting are Britian's sheep farmers. A little-known European directive has ruled that by the end of the year every single one of the 30 million sheep in the UK has to be tagged in an effort to track all individual sheep in the wake of the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001.

The farmers claim the cost of the operation, which they will bear, will force them under. We will be talking to the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage.

And in a week when politics stood still we will be looking back at the extraordinary events in Westminster following the tragic news of the death of Ivan Cameron.

With us for the whole programme will be the commentator Nick Cohen and the Financial Times' George Parker.

Join us at noon, or catch us later on the BBC iPlayer.

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We are getting used to eye-wateringly large corporate losses in the Great Banking Recession of 2008-9 but this morning Royal Bank of Scotland takes the biscuit: a loss of £24 billion, the biggest sea of red ink in British corporate history.

By cruel irony, it also became public this morning that Fred Goodwin, former boss of RBS and the man who presided over these record losses, is sitting at home enjoying a pension pot so large it will pay him an annual income of £650,000 for the rest of his life. He's only 50. You wonder what he'd have been entitled to had his bank actually made a profit. No wonder Chancellor Darling was fuming this morning -- in so far as this mild-mannered man can fume -- about the need for some of this pension pot to be handed back. Don't hold your breath.

As RBS's losses are announced the government is putting the finishing touches to stage three of its bank bail out: £600 billion in taxpayers' guarantees to RBS and HBOS, the two British banks most in trouble, to insure the toxic assets held by both banks. In return both banks, which have already been bailed out by the taxpayer taking a £37 billion combined stake in them and various other state guarantees to prop them up, will promise to provide extra loans to homebuyers and business worth about £40 billion.

We'll be looking at this third bank bail out and wonder if it will work -- or if the government should have gone for temporary but total nationalisation of both banks, as the Swedes did in similar circumstances in the early 1990s.


Also today, Peter Mandelson gives details of his scheme to sell off about a third of Royal Mail, most likely to a Dutch or German operator. Labour MPs have promised one of the biggest rebellions in 12 years of Labour government so the Business Secretary is announcing a series of concessions today to try and stave that off. We'll be talking to Billy Hayes from the Communications Union; he's unlikely to be satisfied.

Is the benefit culture to blame for the rate of teenage pregnancies? Our guest of the day, Peter Stringfellow thinks so. Figures out today show an increase despite a ten year campaign to cut it by half.

And we'll be looking at political assassinations with the political historian Anthony Howard.

All that on the Daily Politics live at Noon on BBC2 and afterwards on BBC iPlayer.

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Westminster is in sombre mood this morning with news breaking just after 9am of the sad death of David and Samantha Cameron's severely disabled son, Ivan.

Aged six, and suffering from cerebral palsy and epilepsy since birth, he died in St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, during the night.

Early reports suggest his parents had little warning.

We are remaking our programme as I write to take into account this huge personal tragedy for the Leader of the Opposition and family.

We will speak to the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, at the top of the show and to our guests of the day, Charles Clarke and Michael Heseltine.

Mr Cameron will obviously step back from Prime Minister's Questions, which means Gordon Brown -- no stranger to family tragedy himself (he and Sarah lost a child at birth) -- will probably pull out too.

We will still be there live at noon.

We'll also be discussing a number of political issues on both sides of the Atlantic and we'll have the boxer Barry McGuigan live talking about integrated education in Northern Ireland.

But everything in Westminster this morning will be overshadowed by the death of Mr Cameron's son.

The Daily Politics starts at 11.30 on BBC2 and continues until 1pm. You can also watch it later on BBC iPlayer

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Unusually for a Monday, I am leaving you in the more than capable hands of my co-presenter Anita Anand.

On the show today - the Government orders nationalised Northern Rock to increase mortgage lending - £14bn in new loans by 2011.

It's just one of several big financial measures expected this week.

We'll be looking at what the Government hopes to achieve - and the potential pitfalls.

Also on the programme: union boss Derek Simpson on the car industry, the latest gossip on the positioning to take over from Gordon Brown, and Nick Robinson on his new series on Prime Ministers.

All that from noon today on BBC2 and later on the BBC iPlayer.

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As usual on Fridays, I shall leave you in the more than capable hands of my co-presenter Anita Anand.

It seems everyone wants to say sorry. From Jeremy Clarkson to the bankers, apologising is suddenly all the rage.

And the Tories think Gordon Brown should be joining them. But when should you say sorry and do we believe those apologies anyway?

We will be looking at the art of the good apology with agony aunt, Laura Marcus.

One man who thinks he definitely shouldn't apologise is the hedge fund manager Steven Bell. Many politicians feel that hedge funds worsened the financial crisis by betting against the banks and driving their shares through the floor. We'll be looking at how much if any blame the hedge funds should shoulder in this recession.

Talking of which, it seems people in Wesminster are competing to try to paint the gloomiest picture of the economic weather ahead.

First there was the Education Secretary, Ed Balls and then there was the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, declaring that our economy is heading for the rocks. Is there anything to feel optimistic about?

The Bishop of London thinks so. He has said that it might be a good thing to get off the treadmill and reconsider what we really want out of life.

Senior civil servants have certainly been enjoying life. It has been revealed that there were 1,800 examples of hospitality given to 180 officials across Whitehall last year. We will have the details.

And as always we will have a rundown of what's up and down in the political charts.

With us for the whole programme will be the Sun's Trevor Kavanagh and the Guardian's Jackie Ashley.

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Gordon Brown is in front of the House of Commons liaison committee this morning, his twice-yearly interrogation by leading backbenchers.

His appearance coincides with a plethora of horrendous headlines for the Prime Minister, from unemployment reaching 2m (and maybe heading for 3m+) to the Bank of England's grim assessment of this year's economic prospects (or lack of them) to the demise of one of his favourite bankers (James Crosby, formerly of HBOS).

So the senior backbenchers should have plenty of raw meat to chew on with the PM. We'll have the latest on what Mr Brown has to say.

Also today, we'll be talking freedom of speech and liberty.

Yesterday, controversial Dutch MP Geeert Wilders said that freedom of speech had been "harassed" in this country after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith banned him from entering this country to show his controversial film, Fitna, which links the Koran to terrorism.
Right or wrong decision?

We'll be debating that with Ken Livingstone, our guest of the day, and gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, who accuses the Home Secretary of "gross hypocrisy".

We'll also be analysing how to bow out gracefully from political life.

And we'll be answering the burning political question of the week, how old was Titian when he died.

All that on BBC2 at noon - and afterwards on iPlayer.

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The very British show trial that is the current public humiliation of former masters of the universe (aka the people who used to run our banks) continues in print and on the airwaves, with attention now focusing on James Crosby, once boss of HBOS, now adviser to Gordon Brown.

A former senior employee, Paul Moore, claims Crosby ignored warnings that the bank was taking too much risk. Moore says he was sacked for sounding the alarm and replaced by someone less experienced in risk management (HBOS denies the allegations).

The claims are given political piquancy by the fact that Crosby is now deputy chairman of the banking regulator (the FSA), a key advisor to the Treasury and someone on whom the PM has regularly relied on for advice.

The Conservatives are demanding an investigation into Crosby's role in the banking crisis, naturally hoping that any dirt will stick to Gordon Brown as well as Crosby.

We'll be discussing all this with the Little and Large of British politics, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears and new Tory Chairman Eric Pickles.

Also, with this morning's unemployment figures now at 2m (1.97m to be exact), having risen 146,000 between October and December (with worse to come), is the Government bold welfare reform plan about to hit the buffers?

We'll hear from one of the private companies bidding for a government contract to run Jobcentre functions.

And we'll be joined by TV presenter June Sarpong on school kids' self-esteem and chef Aldo Zilli on trade union protesters demanding government action to ensure restaurant tips are given to waiting staff and aren't used to top up sub-minimum wages.

All that plus live coverage of PMQs on BBC2 from 1130 this morning and later on BBC iPlayer.

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Last week, when the Daily Politics was first to highlight that the Prime Minister had used the D-word (as in Depression) during PMQs, the Downing Street spin machine was quick to shrug it off as a slip of the tongue. So how will it now cope with the claim of Education Secretary Ed Balls that we're facing the worst recession for over 100 years?

It's worth quoting Mr Balls in full:

"The economy is going to define our politics in Britain in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 and even the next 15 years. These are seismic events that are going to change the political landscape.

I think that this is a financial crisis more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s and we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy.

We now are seeing the realities of globalisation, though at a speed, pace and ferocity which none of us have seen before. The reality is that this is becoming the most serious global recession for, I'm sure, over 100 years as it will turn out."

Downing Street is already drawing our attention to the emphasis on "global" in these remarks. Even so, the implicit consequences for Britain are horrendous if he's right -- and in one regard quite explicit: he says we're heading for male unemployment of 70% in some areas.

I'm not clear what has caused Mr Balls to be so apocalyptic. If this blog has served any purpose in recent months I hope it's been to alert readers to the fact that the recession was going to be long and severe. Now, compared with Mr Balls, I find myself an optimist. Of course things are bad but a 15-year downturn? The worst in 100 years? There is no need, with the correct policy responses (some already in place), that it need be any of these things.

Some will regard Mr Balls as scaremongering. If so, why? I don't understand the politics of being quite so gloomy and David Cameron now has an open goal at PMQs tomorrow. The comments are all the more serious because they come from a man who was effectively Gordon Brown's Deputy Chancellor for over a decade.

Only weeks ago the government was boasting that we were best placed to get through this recession; now it's going to be the worst for 100 years. Either the government is getting its messages in a twist or it knows something we don't.

We'll be looking at the import of the remarks but we'll also cheer you up because it's Hang a Banker Day! Well, not really. But four men who presided over the spectacular rise and fall of two of Britain's biggest banks are in front of the Treasury Select Committee this morning.

Much of the attention will fall on Fred "the shred" Goodwin, the former Chief Executive of Royal Bank of Scotland and architect of the bank's ruinous takeover of the Dutch bank, ABN Amro.

The build-up to this committee has been huge - it's meant to be the "most vicious grilling ever" said one paper at the weekend. MPs will be demanding an apology. The bankers have hired media gurus to help them.

We'll have the latest coverage of the select committee and hopefully - if it finishes in time - be talking to the committee chair, John McFall, a Daily Politics regular.

We'll have the Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Phil Hammond and former banker, and best-selling author, Geraint Anderson.

Our Guest of the Day is Thomas Gensemer, managing partner of Blue State Digital and architect of Obama's internet campaign in the States.

We'll be looking at the state of internet campaigning here. And as Obama appeals for political unity for his bailout plan over the pond, we'll be looking at the American economy with Charlie Woolf.

All that at midday on the Daily Politics on BBC2 -- and afterwards on the BBC iPlayer.

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You know the Recession/Depression is changing the terms of trade of British politics when you have a Labour government reluctant to ban bank bonuses and a Tory opposition saying they are unacceptable -- oh yes, and you have that well-known bipartisan Consensus King John Prescott organising an all-party online campaign against them.

The government is on the ropes over bank bonuses, though the matter is more complicated than populist media coverage suggests and it's an easy issue on which opposition politicians can carp from the sidelines.

Bonuses for the executives who have brought our banking system to its knees are obviously unacceptable to almost everybody; but bonuses for those further down the banking food chain are often a big part of their remuneration.

That might lead to perverse incentives but it cannot be unravelled quickly. Even so, whatever the felicities, it is a toxic issue for the government.

The Government has called on the banks to be sensible - which might strike many as inadequate -- but has stopped short of ordering banks to cancel bonuses, which is probably what most voters desire.

They say they'll put new pay guidelines in any new agreements made with banks seeking help under the government's new multi-billion pound scheme to insure the banks against future bad losses. But that's unlikely to satisfy a growing anti-banker mood. We'll be looking at the details.

Also on the show today - Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is in hot water over thousands of pounds in parliamentary expenses she's claimed for her constituency home. She insists she's followed the rules, but that hasn't stopped one newspaper labelling her the 'minister for dodgy expenses'. We'll discuss this with the Daily Mail's political editor Ben Brogan.

David Cameron says he wants to send his kids to state schools - 'if they're good enough'.

Does it matter where politicians' children go to school? And we look at the cosy Westminster club of lobby journalists.

All that on BBC2 from noon today and later on the BBC iPlayer.

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As usual on Fridays, I shall leave you in the more than capable hands of my co-presenter Anita Anand.

Gordon Brown was pipped at the Presidential post yesterday as Tony Blair had a very public photo op with Barack Obama.

Mr Blair told the President `you don't need cheerleaders but partners, not spectators but supporters'. It was vintage Blair and enough to make Gordon choke on his morning cuppa. We'll have the footage.

And it's been a week of industrial strikes and unrest - a week in which Gordon Brown's slogan `British Jobs for British Workers' came back to haunt him as oil refinery workers went out on strike over the use of foreign contractors at the plants.

The strike raised the spectre of nationalism and protectionism and the far right BNP set to work leafleting on the picket lines at Lindsey. So could this dispute have helped the electoral fortunes of the BNP? We have some exclusive analysis on just how well they are doing.

And the House of Lords is debating Gaza today ahead of next week's elections in Israel. Hamas this morning again fired rockets into Israel - we'll be debating British policy on the conflict and what next week's elections may bring for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Also on today's show - British protocol took a tumble this week when the Union Jack was wrongly displayed (upside down in fact) as the Prime Minister met the Chinese Premiere. So how could such a faux pas get past the eyes of those in charge of such important affairs of state? We'll hear from an expert on the waving of the British flag.

Our guests of the day are Nicholas Watt of The Guardian and Iain Martin of The Daily Telegraph.

Don't forget we want your views on all the stories of the day - email us at daily.politics@bbc.co.uk. And you can sign up to our daily email at bbc.news/dailypolitics. See you at noon on BBC-2.

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Another Bank of England interest rate decision at Noon today, with the City expecting another half point cut to just 1%, a new historic low.

Frankly, it doesn't matter much to you or me, either way. Interest rates are already so low that a further cut is unlikely to be passed on to most borrowers; nor will it do much more to stimulate the economy that previous cuts have not achieved (though it could discourage savings even further).

So what other measures could the Bank of England conjure up to stimulate the economy? We'll hear from Tim Congdon, economist and a former 'wise man' advisor to the last Conservative government. He argues the Government needs to increase the amount of money in the economy to get us out of recession (or is it depression?). Printing money? Quantitive easing? We'll discuss what needs to happen next.

Also on the show today, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg announces his latest plans to improve education - he'd scrap Child Trust Funds and target the money saved at children from poor backgrounds.

Mr Clegg has also indicated he might make this extra investment in primary schools the price for Lib Dem cooperation in a hung parliament. We'll speak to former Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell.

And as an MP is sued by a constituent who claims she has not done her job properly, we ask whether MPs should have job descriptions and performance reviews to keep them up to scratch.

All that on BBC2 from Noon today.

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Gordon Brown hates the idea, so does Europe, even Barrack Obama claims not to like it, though he campaigned on it and some of his fellow Democrats are pretty keen on it.

I'm talking about protectionism, which always rears its head when times get tough. Politicians and commentators have assured us that we would not repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, when two American politicians gave their names to a piece of protectionist legislation -- the Smoot-Hawley Act -- which sparked off retaliatory beggar-thy-neighbour action across the globe and is widely believed to have prolonged and intensified the Great Depression.

So we will not be silly enough to let history repeat itself ... except that there are signs that it already is. Yesterday the EU -- no mean slouchers when it comes to protectionism itself, especially in farming -- warned of possible trade litigation against the US if Washington pressed ahead with a "Buy American" provision in its forthcoming economic stimulus bill, which is already looking like old-fashioned pork-barrel politics rather than a genuine attempt to kick start the US economy.

President Obama flew the protectionist flag during his campaign and his congressional Democrats now expect him to deliver. But "Buy America" will undoubtedly provoke retaliatory action, probably led by France (which is already sneaking cheap loans to Airbus to help see it through the recession).

The developing nations -- China, India, Brazil, even Russia -- are also hurting badly in the downturn; expect them to resort to protectionist measures too.

Banking protectionism is already here: major banks have stopped lending across borders; the withdrawal of foreign banks from the British market is the main reason credit has dried up (British banks are continuing to lend).

Most vocal of all, we have calls from the picket line for Gordon Brown to live up to his promise of "British jobs for British workers" and, now, even "British jobs for British graduates."

We're talking to the economist Will Hutton and one City analyst who predicts that what used to be the unthinkable -- global protectionism -- will happen. If he's right, the future could be grim indeed.

Inevitably, we'll be talking snow, again. It's bought much of the country to a standstill, closed thousands of schools and even closed parks. There have been tragic deaths, but have we become a nation obsessed with health and safety laws.

At midday we'll have PMQs live, and top analysis with our Political Editor, Nick Robinson.

Author Freddie Forsyth will be getting angry with the bankers. And Quentin Letts will be here, telling us why its important for politicians to play the blame game.

Throughout the programme, we'll have the Olympics Minister, Tessa Jowell and the Tory Leader in the House of Lords, Tom Strathclyde.

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On today's Daily Politics our guest of the day is Robert Winston, the Labour peer and fertility expert.

We'll be discussing dementia. The government's outlining its strategy to deal with the disease this morning. It's one of the most pressing problems the UK faces, with the number of sufferers expecting to double to 1.4 million in the next 30 years.

Also today, we'll be looking at the continuing row over foreign workers. The wave of wildcat strikes sweeping the UK shows no sign of abating; if anything they are gathering momentum. Union leaders and employers are locked in negotiations aimed at preventing a further escalation of the crisis.

Yesterday afternoon, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson dismissed workers concerns, suggesting the protests were xenophobic. Maybe. But it's also clear that when unemployment shoots up -- as it is now -- migrant workers become a toxic issue. We'll be talking to UKIP and an MEP about the row.

We'll also be looking at genetics: should we be able to screen embryos for cancer genes? And we'll be looking at the art of political photography with the celebrity photographer, Dean Freeman.

That's all that at midday on BBC2 -- and afterwards in iPlayer.

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Let it snow, let in snow, let in snow.... As Westminster grinds to a virtual standstill, we at the Daily Politics wouldn't dare let something as minor as a little snowstorm keep us off the air- we're working away today searching out stories, guests and whatever else we can lay our hands on this morning....

As contractors at the Sellafield nuclear site walk out in support of protests over the use of foreign labour, that sparked wildcat strikes across the UK. Business Secretary Lord Mandelson urges workers to call off planned "sympathy strikes" we look at the political ramifications of the action.

What happens to Parliament when MPs are battling through the snow to get to the chamber, will business be cancelled? Do you still get your expenses and is the restaurant still open? Our intrepid reporter Anne Alexander has waded through the snow and will bring us the very latest from the Commons.

With more revelations over the weekend in the 'cash for amendments scandal' we look at political lobbying in Westminster. Is there ever a case for it?

All that and more, we're working away at the Daily Politics, tune in at 12noon to find out how we got on. In the meantime be careful on your sledges!

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