Further proof of Tony Blair’s obsession with all things American has come with the news that he has hired a top US lawyer to broker a book deal for him. Pundits reckon that a publisher may well fork out $12 million for his memoirs. If so, they’re mad. Not a single publisher has earned back an advance from top level political memoirs in recent years and I don’t see Tony Blair being any different. Alastair Campbell’s diaries have sold comparatively well, but I doubt whether publishers Random House will see any profit from the advance they paid – reckoned to be in the region of £1 million. Publishers need to be far more realistic about the commerciality of political books and stop being so starry eyed when they meet political figures who have a book to flog.
It’s a hard life being a LibDem frontbencher. You toil away, hoping to get the odd mention in the press, but you know much of what you are doing isn’t going to get noticed. And then your researcher gives you something which catches your eye. You write a searing press release and Bob’s your uncle. Well, that’s the theory. As Norman Lamb found out this week, it’s not always quite that simple. As LibDem Health Spokesman he’s done a lot of work on saving community hospitals but his press operation on hospital cleanliness this week rebounded on him when the Norfolk & Norwich hospital responded angrily to being told by Mr Lamb on national television that they were among the five dirtiest hospitals in Britain. A politician in these circumstances has a choice – fess up or stand your ground. Lamb fessed up, admitted he hadn’t talked to the N&N about the report and then sought to made amends by making an immediate visit. A classic example of a politician making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
When I took my ‘A’ Levels in 1980 at a large comprehensive school in Essex, only two people in my year got three ‘A’ grades – I wasn’t one of them! This year, I am told the same school expects up to twenty of its pupils to achieve three ‘A’s. While today’s ‘A’ Levels may or may not have got easier it is easy to make a case for the grades getting higher. While this should rightly make the students feel proud of their academic achievements it surely cannot be good for the long term for an ever higher per centage of students to be awarded the highest grades. It doesn’t give universities or employers an opportunity to judge who the best students really are and it isn’t fair to the students themselves, some of whom get an entirely false impression of their own capabilities. It used to be the case that only the top few per cent would be given an ‘A’. Nowadays it seems that if you get above a certain per centage, you get an ‘A’ – and that varies according to the subject. So while I offer my congratulations to all those who have done well in their ‘A’ Levels this week, I hope they would join with me in hoping that those who oversee our exam system look at the system and make the necessary changes which can last for a generation.
I saw a picture in the Daily Telegraph earlier this week which summed up our democratic malaise. The picture was of a queue of people at a polling station in Sierra Leone. Some had waited two hours to cast their vote in the country’s first democratic election for years. It was a picture which should shame the thirty nine per cent of Britons who don’t exercise their democratic responsibilities. I wrote about this on my blog and was somewhat taken aback at the number of supposedly well informed people who seemed rather proud of the fact that they didn’t bother to vote. Yet it is usually those same people who are among the first to complain about how the country is run. What a pathetic state of affairs.
As every day passes I am becoming more convinced that there may well be a general election in October. On Thursday, I drew a line across an A4 sheet of paper and on the left hand side I wrote down all the arguments Gordon Brown might use in favour of calling an autumn election. On the right hand side I wrote down the arguments against. The left hand side of the paper won by twelve arguments to two. If there is an October election, I certainly won’t be a candidate. But I sympathise with those who are. Having been through it once it’s not an experience I am keen to repeat in a hurry. If you haven’t done it you have no idea what is in store for you. So if you get a parliamentary candidate calling at your door over the summer be nice to them. You might be surprised to know that most of them are doing it for the right reasons.
