My books of the year

I've read some great new books this year, which have been illuminating and fascinating in equal measure. Here are my top five.

Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent

A fascinating social and political history of late 19th century and early 20th century America, Okrent takes us through the saloon bars of the midwest and the rise of temperance activism in the South, through connections with women's suffrage (which the brewers opposed) and the blackmailing of politicians to support the cause. We all know about the connections with gangsters like Al Capone, but this amazing book takes us through the role of Scottish distillers, Canadian bootleggers, Californian communion wine producers and fake rabbis in ensuring that America was kept fairly wet during the dry years. The cast of characters is wonderful, the account both scholarly and accessible. This US book is available from Amazon UK at £17.32.

Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

When the king of sanctimonious self-righteousness Julian Assange tells us that his leaks do no harm, he may reflect that if his revelations about Chinese movement on pulling the plug on the ghastly North Korean regime delay its inevitable occurence, he will have plenty of real lives on his hands. Barbara Demick brings the reality of life in the country to vivid life by talking to those who were fortunate enough to get out, usually to South Korea on a circuitous route through China. Their stories of hunger, medicine-free hospitals, unburied bodies in the street, frozen kindergartens and an ever present climate of fear are shocking because they are the tales of ordinary lives, and often of childhood illusions shattered. It is too easy to snigger at the ludicrousness of the North Korean leadership, but this book shows how serious its continued existence is to the lives of millions of people living in the Northern city of Chongin, well away from the relative prosperity of Pyongnang. The book is now in paperback.

The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour by Peter Mandelson

There were plenty of political books this year, and I greatly enjoyed Tony Blair's and Jonathan Powell's books. I also liked Steve Richards' account of the Brown years, as told by Ed Balls. But for me the best of them was Peter Mandelson's heavily reflective account of his ups and downs in the party and government. It is well-written and captures the internal struggles not only in the government, but in Mandelson's role in it. It also has a compelling honesty in recounting the major events of his life: I particularly enjoyed his accounts of the Kinnock years and the strange struggles that characterised the true origins of New Labour.

The Frock-Coated Communist by Tristram Hunt

This is a great companion book to Francis Wheen's highly entertaining life of Karl Marx. Hunt tells the extraordinary story of Marx's patron and ideological foil, Friedrich Engels who took his reluctant embrace of Manchester capitalism to heart as he enjoyed a champagne lifestyle and became a keen hunter. The book is wonderful account of the relationship between Engels and Marx, the European political movements that led to Marxism and the personal traits that would lead their followers to embrace ideological purity as a virtue that would create so many 20th century monsters. Hunt tells the story with considerable panache, but underpinned by substantial original research. Although it was originally published in 2008, the paperback appeared for the first time in 2010.

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada

Hans Fallada's tale of the everyday horror of life in Nazi Berlin is a rediscovered masterpiece. First published just after the war in Germany in 1947, it tells the fictional story of an ordinary couple whose son's death in the war provokes them into petty acts of defiance. These protests cause fury in the police and a determination to find the culprits. Fallada's cast of characters evoke a spirit of defiance, collaboration and compliance in the increasingly paranoid environment of the city, with the pace of a good thriller. The book was out of print for years until its reappearance in 2010 in an excellent translation by Michael Hoffman. Paperback.

Election skirmishes

I've written this post for the Public Finance blog today.

There is no doubt that the apparently under-resourced Labour election team scored an early victory in the election battle yesterday. The party’s efforts to destabilise David Cameron’s launch of his personalised billboards and slimmed down health policy were effective. In election battles, it doesn’t really matter that not all the £34bn identified by Labour researchers was committed Tory spending: it forced them into a state of confusion over marriage tax breaks (a totemic issue for backbenchers and the Daily Mail) and plans to provide more single rooms in hospital wards.

The Tory machine should have been better prepared than it was for such attacks. But unless Labour itself clears up its own strategy, it may win the odd skirmish, but it will neither win the war nor force a hung parliament. Rachel Sylvester’s account in today’s Times of how Ed Balls and Lord Mandelson have very different approaches to the election campaign has a ring of truth about it. Where Mandelson has shown himself keener to keep the Blairite torch of reform alive in his department – exemplified in recent reports on universities and training – while despite initiatives like yesterday’s on one-to-one tuition, Balls has preferred to exaggerate his differences on schools with his Tory opponent Michael Gove rather than trumpet key Labour reforms such as academies that Gove has been carefully hijacking.

It isn’t just a matter of narrowing the dividing lines, it is also about the ground on which Labour fights the Tories. The Pre-Budget Report was an opportunity to restore Gordon Brown’s mantle of fiscal responsibility by highlighting the extent of planned cuts as well as proposals to protect schools and NHS budgets. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, would clearly have been more comfortable doing so. Instead, it was left to the Institute of Fiscal Studies to highlight what the Budget already contained. Instead of credit for honesty, the government was lambasted for its apparent shiftiness.

Labour needs to level with the electorate about its successes, failures and future plans. It cannot win an election spouting dubious dividing lines. Nor can it do so by ignoring the reformist agenda that helped win it three previous elections and which is crucial for middle class support in the marginals. There is certainly something pleasing about seeing David Cameron on the back foot for a day or two. But unless the government can articulate a stronger narrative of its own record, and a more credible sense of what it would do if it won a fourth term that appeals beyond the so-called core vote, Cameron will get his ‘year of change.’

Will class war win Labour a fourth term?

John Rentoul, who continues to illuminate his blog with examples of questions where the answer is 'No', has already gone a long way to deal with the notion that 'class war' will be answer to Labour's problems. Tom Harris does so well today too.

Naturally, those I speak to in No 10 deny that any strategy so crude is under way. And I wasn't alone in celebrating Gordon Brown's recent return to form at PMQs, when he had a few decent jokes about Eton and Cameron's crew. He and Osborne deserve to have their pomposity pricked a bit, and we need more such humour. But as someone who has been a part of Labour politics since the early eighties, I also know that it would be absurd and self-defeating to craft an election campaign around the theme.

That's not to say that there aren't individual actions that can be vote-winners. The PBR attack on bankers' bonuses is believed by Downing Street insiders to explain last week's remarkable council by-election victories. But it is to recognise that Labour will not win by developing absurd dividing lines which place Labour on the wrong side of aspiration. Becoming a party of aspiration was - and remains - the essential insight behind New Labour's continued electoral successes. And it would be absurd to throw it away on the illusion that a greater number of so-called core voters might be persuaded to turn out in May (the idea that there will be a March poll seems fanciful) if they heard the call to the barricades.

Instead, Labour needs to have a much sharper message about what it can do and what it can't do, as well as what it has done. It is understandable that ministers didn't want to reveal the entire departmental budgets ahead of a post-election spending review. And given the uncertainty of the result, it is quite sensible too. Look at what happened when 'priorities' were revealed in defence this week. However, it was a tactical mistake to try to obscure the overall size of likely cuts in the years ahead in last week's PBR statement when it was patently obvious that the IFS would have its own figures within 24 hours. And the government should have been clearer that decisions to raise national insurance or top rate income tax are a temporary and regrettable measure, not a cause for celebration.

At the same time, Labour must do more to highlight its approach to the public services - and its successes which get routinely rubbished by partisan pundits. Despite some criticisms by my friends at Progress, Andy Burnham's health statement last week was a decent attempt to explain a clear approach to NHS reform, even if it was a bit neutered by attempts to please some of the unions. Tessa Jowell has interesting ideas on mutualism. Andrew Adonis is doing remarkable things at transport, showing what Labour should have done ten years ago. Peter Mandelson has grappled the question of university fees and produced a decent plan on skills (just a shame there's no money with it). But elsewhere, the government's approach suffers from a confused message and a perverse willingness to cede ground to the Conservatives on Labour innovations, particularly on schools and academies.

Despite a lot of talk about failures to narrow the gap under Labour, the truth is that chances have been considerably improved for the working classes as opposed to the 'underclass' - those who voted for Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 - with the greatest improvements in health and education for those groups. [See here for example, go to the Excel table 4.1.1]. They might resent the bankers, but they're not interested in class war or dodgy dividing lines (something Cameron could suffer for as much as Labour). But crude attempts to compare the top and bottom 10% social groups don't bring out their improvements. And those voters do want some straight talk from the Labour government that many of them elected, which means an honest appraisal of the last 12 years and an honest assessment of what could be done with a fourth term. And they need to hear it from all the Government.

It may not have quite the same ring to it, but a message to ministers to give it to the voters straight could help bring back many of those who now say they will vote for other parties. It is rather more likely to do so than recreating the Tooting Liberation Front.

Universities must give students a better deal if they want higher fees

I have a piece in today's Independent, arguing that if universities want fees to rise to as much as £7,000 a year, they must provide students with a better all-round deal. And this should be an explicit part of the forthcoming fees review. Here's an extract:

In the coming weeks the Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, will announce the terms of reference for a review of student fees. The cross-party investigation is likely to recommend an increase in tuition fees from £3,225 to as much as between £5,000 and £7,000 a year, increasing the proportion of courses costs paid back by students after graduation. But if universities want the right to charge higher fees, there is growing political consensus that they must also be prepared to improve greatly the experience they provide for undergraduates.

The Higher Education Policy Institute has shown that the combination of teaching and private study for undergraduates in some humanities and social science courses amounts to just 14 hours a week, though it is much higher in the more demanding universities and the average is 29 hours, including 14.5 hours' contact time. But the higher the fees become, the greater the expectation of students and their parents.

This isn't just a problem with domestic students. Overseas students, who contribute £4bn a year in fees (more than eight per cent of the total income of UK universities) already pay £10,000 to £20,000 a year for most courses. Their numbers have grown over the last decade, but there is greater competition within Europe, Australia and the United States, and Chinese and Indian students increasingly have less expensive options closer to home. Unless they feel they are getting good value for their money, they will go elsewhere.

Some universities are recognising how important it is to provide a good student experience. Lancaster, Manchester and the London School of Economics give students clearer commitments on contact time, class sizes and access to lecturers than many. Others, like Northumbria, provide substantial hands-on facilities and work experience in subjects such as law and health.

But there is still a sense among too many vice-chancellors that they should be allowed to charge higher fees without needing to improve substantially students' overall academic and pastoral experiences. That's why the terms of reference for the new review must explicitly include the issues that Mr Willetts suggested [contact hours, class sizes and employability]. It will be hard enough selling another fees increase to Middle England. Unless their anxieties about what happens at university are addressed, it may prove politically impossible. Vice-chancellors must raise their game if they want the right to raise their fees.

The Labour Party has learned to love Peter

Peter Mandelson received a well-deserved ovation from the party conference this afternoon for a brilliant morale-boosting speech. I first worked with Peter back in the 1987 election, when I was a press officer during the campaign, and have always being impressed by his skill and political judgment. Today's speech was just what the party needed to hear in the midst of a media narrative that has written the party off for next year's election. We need to set a clear sense of what a Labour government would do for the future, as well as showing where we have delivered in the past. As the BBC reports, he said:

"You win elections on the future not the past. This will be a change election. Either we offer it or the British public will turn to others who say they do." The new Labour project, which Lord Mandelson helped devise in the early 1990s, was "far from complete", he insisted. He said Labour needed to "explain with confidence, clarity and conviction" the differences between it and the Conservatives, saying the election was "still up for grabs".....Labour would win the next election if "we show the British people that we have not lost the fighting spirit and appetite for change".

Mandelson sets a reformist tone for pre-election debate

A very good speech from Peter Mandelson in the Progress event at the LSE today. He rightly emphasised Labour's reform record and credentials, and cleverly set up serious dividing lines with the Conservatives over minimum standards.

There was much talk of academies and foundation trusts, and a sensible exposition of the differences between the two parties on the role of the state, not least on issues like minimum waiting times for treatment. By providing such context, he has made it much easier to explain the different approaches between the parties to savings and cuts that will be needed in the future.

We start from a position of credibility given that the big success story of British social democracy in the last twelve years has been the rescue, revival, and rehabilitation of public services as a vital part of our national life. Britain's welfare state and public services survived the Thatcher/Major era – but only just.

Since 1997 Labour has, in effect, saved the NHS, transformed educational standards and dramatically widened access to educational opportunity. These achievements are now taken for granted, almost discounted by those to the right and left of us. It has led to public service innovation, with the introduction and dramatic expansion of Sure Start and Children's Centres, for example, and modernised the delivery of existing services with for example, the establishment of NHS Trusts and academies.

And all this has required a huge injection of additional cash. The New Labour mantra of "invest and reform" summed up a policy which has seen public spending on the NHS double in real terms since we took office. Per pupil funding in schools has also doubled. At the same time public service delivery has been opened up to a diversity of providers with a new range of choice for patients, parents and service users.

So, while the headlines may be about belt-tightening, the subtext is a much more important repositioning of the Labour argument towards a reform agenda, and away from the rather unproductive early efforts to appease its leftwing critics.

Labour, then, have always been committed "state reformers" and should feel no nervousness about the label. Rather, today's challenges require us to accelerate the pace of reform......The way forward is not to get rid of individual service entitlements as the Tories propose. It is to set a framework that allies these entitlements that the public rightly expects to the creation of a greater space for our public servants in how they deliver the services for which they are responsible.

To be fair, Ed Balls, who has been criticised for his attitude to reform, effectively pre-empted this repositioning with his academies blitz last week, as Mandelson reminds us. Alastair Darling has already shifted the spending argument and Andy Burnham at health is a strong reformer by instinct.

Once the argument is coherently and consistently framed again in these terms, Labour is in a stronger position to deal with the details of Michael Gove's school proposals and the vacuousness of BMA spokesman Andrew Lansley's health policy. This speech could prove to be a very important turning-point in the pre-election debate.

Moving the tuition fees debate on

Lord Mandelson's speech to Universities UK, in which he argues that any fees rise must be linked to access, is important for two reasons. The first is that he is clearly making a serious effort to engage with the parts of the education sector for which he is responsible. But the second and more significant is that he has effectively made clear that an increase in the maximum level of fees will come after a review due to start later in the year. In his speech, he says this:

“I do not believe that we can separate the issues of fees, access and student support. Any institution that wants to use greater costs to the student to fund excellence must face an equal expectation to ensure that its services remain accessible to more than just those with the ability to pay. Whatever funding mix for higher education we develop, there must always be a link between what an institution charges and its performance in widening access and supporting those without the ability to pay.”

Of course, it could be argued that this doesn't say anything new, and he assures us that he doesn't wish to pre-empt a review which is likely to see fees increase from £3225 to between £5,000 and £7,000 a year some time after a 201o election. Both main parties are happy for a review to report then, as happened with Dearing. And neither party will want to argue the case for an increase. But today's speech suggests a rise is inevitable, not least if universities are expected to bear cuts in their grants after 2011 with the main parties trying to protect schools, hospitals and overseas aid.

After all, the notion that fees that are paid by income-earners after graduation are deterring would-be students is hardly borne out by the record numbers of applicants this year, after several years of rapid rises. Even the Lib Dems seem set to abandon their opportunistic opposition to fees.

This shouldn't mean that universities don't have to make a better case for a fees increase than they have been making to date. Universities need to make more of their wider contribution to the economy and society, through research and teaching, or their role with schools in lifting aspirations and improving social mobility. They also need to do a lot more to show students that they are getting a good deal, with first-class teaching and learning resources. These too should be a part of the review of fees. After all, getting students to apply is only a start; ensuring they get the most from their university experience matters just as much.

The short and pointless life of DIUS

Amongst the results of yesterday's reshuffle was the abolition of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). The functions of the department, created a mere 23 months ago, have been merged into Peter Mandelson's burgeoning empire, and may be the better for it. But the rapid demise of a department created merely to allow Ed Balls to absorb a host of other departments' children's issues into his Department for Children, Schools and Families illustrates the sheer pointlessness of departmental restructuring.

The truth is that the Department for Education and Skills - which covered schools, nurseries, colleges, universities and training - was a perfectly coherent department, and one of the most successful in Whitehall, before the decision was made to split its functions into two departments and add a lot of non-educational functions to the new DCSF. Splitting the two made little sense - even if it brought science and innovation alongside further and higher education, as this blog made clear at the time, not least because further education faced dealing with two masters, but also because it made a nonsense of a vision for lifelong learning that had hitherto been a mainstay of government policy.

To be fair to John Denham, he has been a good secretary of state, and his promotion to communities secretary is deserved, even if his department has with the help of the Learning and Skills Council, presided over some very messy college funding crises. But by splitting the departments, Gordon Brown actually weakened the voice of universities and colleges in government. At least that weakness should be remedied with Lord Mandelson in charge. But wouldn't it have been a lot easier to have recreated, dare one say it, a Department for Education?

Plane Stupid just acts plain stupid

Tom Harris is spot on in puncturing the pathetic pomposity of Plane Stupid in its justification for Leila Deen's common assault on Peter Mandelson yesterday. The idea that people put themselves above the law simply because they oppose a new airport runway is absurd.

The notion that they have some sort of right to break the law because they have decided despite evidence to the contrary that "nobody" (apart from weary travellers, London business and many airport workers, I suppose) is in favour of a third runway at Heathrow is the mob politics of fascism. As Tom points out, Ms Deen has the right to express her views in the ballot box or in many forms of non-violent protest.

What further evidence do the police need to prosecute this woman?

Wise counsel from Peter Mandelson

My dealings with Peter Mandelson may go back a little further than Matthew Taylor - I worked as a temporary Labour press officer during the 1987 election with a desk just outside his office in the smoky Walworth Road complex then occupied by the People's Party - but I entirely share his analysis of the business secretary's speech in New York. It is just the sort of speech we need from Labour ministers at this time.

Advance billing for his speech to the Council of Foreign Relations suggests that he will say that governments in a recession

"have to be right, even if it means more time before we are seen to deliver.....As nations, we must keep a steady nerve and cool judgement, constantly refining our policies as necessary."

According to a briefing to the Guardian, he will say Labour is in a tough place politically as he urges his cabinet colleagues against daily initiatives to combat the recession, as they only raise false media and public expectations of instant results, while the end of the recession simply cannot be forecast. There are no manuals, blueprints or precedents to dictate what to do.

With today's Mori poll putting the Tories in a 20-point lead, this is wise counsel. The public wants to see results from the big injections of funding and VAT cuts already made rather than new ideas each day. It wants the banks to lend again and more job security. The government needs to show how it has made a difference - and, given that Germany and Japan are clearly also very badly affected by the recession, there is still a case to be made for explaining the international aspects of the recession without underplaying what is happening here.

Mandelson recognises the need for honesty from the government both about the scale of the problem, what we know, what is being done and the chances of success. I don't share the Cameron desire for a full-scale mea culpa from Gordon Brown, but an acknowledgement that politicians of all colours - including the Tory front bench - supported the deregulated environment that led to the City boom and bankers' irresponsibility would not go amiss.

As Matthew says, there is a sense that the Mandelson speech supports his view that the government needs to focus on governing rather than actively maneouvering over the next election (or worse, a post-election leadership contest), when the latter is not only pointless, but self-defeating (indeed taking a more stately position would show a marked contrast with Cameron's petty point-scoring).

And in a timely warning to colleagues about avoiding populist panic measures, Mandelson also calls for some restraint there too.

"Governments must neither ignore the public's anger and impatience, for example on bank bonuses, nor be pushed into hurried judgments because we fear accusations of indecision."

We need to hear more along these lines.

A bad hair day for the Tories

Not only are the Tories embroiled in a sleaze scandal of their own making (given their desperate attempts to smear Peter Mandelson) but one of the lies that they have been telling about Labour's record - that it has failed to narrow the gap between rich and poor - has been thoroughly disproved by the OECD. Labour's poll ratings may not yet have improved in some polls, but with Cameron's general feebleness on the economy, the Tories' reputation is taking an overdue battering.

Mandelson´s Return

Mendoza, Argentina - Peter Mandelson´s return to the cabinet was on the front of the excellent English language Buenos Aires Herald this morning (though it was being ignored as is usual with UK politics on BBC World News) where we started a fortnight´s trip to Argentina. It is a brave and imaginative move by Gordon Brown, confirming that he has had a new lease of life since his successful conference speech. It is a good idea to bring Margaret Beckett back to a frontline role too, and the promotions for Jim Murphy, Tony McNulty and Jim Murphy are richly deserved. Those predictions of a low key reshuffle were wide of the mark. Brown now needs to ensure he takes the right steps in ensuring the Downing Street machine - and his own ability to delegate - match the sense of surprise and creativity shown in the last few weeks.