Copy of Politics Pipe

Climate crunch

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:47:00 -0800

Unless they end in promises, and a treaty within months, Ed Miliband believes the Copenhagen talks will be a disaster. But can the British energy secretary, in Denmark for a frantic round of pre-summit diplomacy, win the argument?

It's breakfast time in the biggest of Copenhagen's Scandic hotels. Over the obligatory croissants and coffee – and, for those who want it, an off-beam version of the English breakfast – 42 international delegations are preparing to go into a second day of talks. Phones tweet; hushed conversations within teams of negotiators form a low conversational hum.

Look closely, and some of the outlines of modern geopolitics are clear. This morning, the Chinese and Indian delegations are seated together, and locked in conversation. Elsewhere in the hotel, the UK's representatives are doing their thing at an early "EU co-ordination" meeting. In a corner of the restaurant, meanwhile, the US special envoy on climate change – an elusive, austere-looking man named Todd Stern – sits completely alone.

From 7-18 December, the Danish capital will fill up with an extra 20,000 people, there to play their part in what officialspeak calls the 15th Conference of the Parties (or Cop 15), but the rest of us know as the Copenhagen summit: the great global coming-together aimed at securing a much more ambitious successor to the Kyoto treaty, and thereby marking a turning point in the human race's fight against climate change. This week's event, organised by the Danish government under the title Pre-Cop Consultations, is much more low-key, though the guest list includes a huge array of energy and climate change ministers, their aides and negotiating teams – called here to compare notes, have brief and not-so-brief "bilaterals", and somehow inject a slow-moving process with some political momentum.

Among them is Britain's own Ed Miliband, who will turn 40 six days after the summit closes, and has the road-worn air of man who has been travelling far too much. In the build up to December, he has been to China, Brazil, India, Mexico, South Africa and Bangladesh, as well as Poland, Russia, and France (before anyone asks, he and his team offset their flights).

On the flight from London, he underlines the gravity of Copenhagen by alluding to past summits, and describing it as "Bretton Woods plus Yalta multiplied by Reykjavik". In Scandic's restaurant, where he sits for the interview, he comes up with an even more mind-boggling analogy: "Imagine if you knew 189 people, and you got them all together and said, 'Here's how we want you to run a significant part of your lives in the next 30 or 40 years – and by the way, you have to unanimously agree that that's how you want to do it.'"

Give or take sleep, and the closed-off proceedings in the main conference room, I shadow Miliband for around 40 hours. On his first morning here, I hear the stiffened small-talk at early-morning bilaterals, best illustrated by the opening exchange between him and his German counterpart Norbert Röttgen:

"Congratulations on your first presentation in the parliament. I heard some reports that it was a triumph."

"It was OK."

"You're being hailed as a great environmentalist, which is good for your first week in the job."

"Second week."

What really defines my time in Copenhagen, though, is a thrice-daily ritual whereby I collar Miliband as he emerges from the formal negotiations, and try – in vain, usually – to get a firm idea of where the conversation has been going. Usually, he wears a pretty much unreadable expression, though it doesn't take any great effort to understand how much work – somewhat worryingly – has still be done. At the end of Day One, for example, I manage to extract a few brief words from 55-year-old Jairam Ramesh, India's stoic minister of state for environment and forests, who audibly sighs, and will only tell me that "there is still a long way to go".

This week, the news media's understanding of what Copenhagen might achieve has pinballed between pessimism and qualified hope. On Monday, headlines confirmed what most insiders knew, when Barack Obama served notice that a legally binding agreement at Copenhagen was now beyond reach, and he was signing up to the Danish government's plan to exit 2009 with a "politically binding" deal, and follow it with a full treaty in the very near future. By Tuesday, rather more optimistic coverage greeted America and China's joint promise that December would see a "comprehensive" agreement, though plenty of voices still counselled caution and doubt: as far as one Greenpeace spokesperson was concerned, the Sino-American declaration was vague enough to suggest the possibility of both "a real ambitious climate rescue deal" and "another meaningless declaration".

There are two tracks to the build-up to Copenhagen. Politicians travel, and meet, and keep their eye on the stuff that will define the summit's headlines. Meanwhile, negotiators who are devoting their entire working lives to the pre-summit process must regularly congregate in some of the world's major cities, and try to push their way through the detail. Britain's chief negotiator is Jan Thompson, an official on loan from the Foreign Office who, in red patent leather biker boots, looks like anything but. She and Pete Betts – a genial, straight-to-the-point kind of operator, who described himself as "a career bureaucrat" – are known to Miliband as "the two degrees", a reference to the rise in average global temperatures that the world has now resolved to avoid. Miliband says he has long conversations with them at least once a week; on their second night in Denmark, they are still talking animatedly well past midnight.

There is, of course, no end of stuff to discuss. The negotiations' key theme is an ongoing and complex face-off between developed and developing countries (needless to say, post-imperial baggage is unavoidable). For countries already panicked by the effects of climate change – most notably, the 43-strong Alliance Of Small Island States – the prospect of a potentially indefinite delay to a legal deal is evidently causing no end of fear. Such rising powers as China, India and Brazil are watched closely, but the story regularly comes back to the US, whose uncertain stance is partly down to its cagy exit from what Miliband calls "20 wasted years", and the delicacy of America's political system: for a president to come to Europe and dish out commitments before the requisite legislation had passed the Senate would be risky, to say the least.

"What is the art of politics?" he wonders (like a lot of New Labour politicians of his generation, Miliband has a habit of asking himself questions). "It's to simplify, not complexify [sic]. Yes, this is complicated. But actually, in the end, it does boil down to some relatively simple things: how much you're going to cut your emissions, how much finance you're going to provide, what you're going to do about deforestation, and what you're going to about technology. I often think that when people say, 'Oh, this is so complicated,' it becomes an excuse. You get, 'Oh, this is all too complicated – it'll take another five years.'"

But how does he gauge success? "Well, you go on trips, and you have a series of dreadful and depressing meetings where you think nothing is moving. And then you have a really good meeting when you can visualise a breakthrough … in Brazil, I said to the foreign minister, 'Are you going to put 2020 numbers on the table for Copenhagen?' And he said, 'Yeah'. And we all looked at each other and said, 'Well, they've never said that before.' And you come out of the meeting and think, 'That was a pretty significant moment.'"

After the first day's talks, there's a dinner at the Royal Danish Playhouse, which ends with a solo ballet performance titled The Egg. But before those delights, he has to go to a Danish TV studio, do British TV and radio spots, frets about how quickly he talks, and tries to face down scepticism at home.

The script he performs for Channel 4 News and BBC Radio is reiterated to me, with additions, later that night. Despite the uncertainty now hanging over any legally binding deal, Miliband says he wants a full enforceable treaty "within months" of Copenhagen, and says that even the end of 2010 is too late. As one of his advisers frantically scribbles down her version of the conversation (the departmental MiniDisc recorder is kaput), he sets out a simple version of what first has to materialise in December: "a set of commitments from developed and developing countries that can show emissions peaking by about 2020."

He also talks endlessly about the importance of "numbers", by which he chiefly means pledges of specific cuts in emissions from all the major developed countries, and hardened commitments on the funding of "adaptation and mitigation" – where richer countries spending billions on poorer countries' defences against a radically altered climate, and the technology needed to curb their output of greenhouse gases.

Britain, via the EU, has already committed to cutting CO² emissions by 34% by 2020 on 1990 levels. EU governments have also promised €22bn-€50bn (£20bn-£45bn) a year for the developing world as part of a proposed €110bn global package, which, relative to claims that the total annual bill may be four times that, looks deeply disappointing. But right now that is not the main point: outside Europe, even if emissions targets are starting to come in, few developed countries have yet come up with figures for financial help for poorer ones – and in the case of the US, neither have been put on the table.

That fact alone makes one particular element of Miliband's rhetoric remarkable. "I'm willing to say to you, if we don't get any numbers at Copenhagen, it's a failure," he says.

I tell him that strikes me as a rather high-stakes position. "Yeah," he says. "But I don't think it would be successful if we haven't got numbers. What is it if we don't have numbers?"

The thing is, I suggest, politicians don't often say things like that. They tend to make a point of leaving wriggle room for themselves. "No," he says, sharply. "We're not leaving wriggle room. I recognise that fact. In the end, people are smart. They know when you've succeeded, and they know when you've failed. And I've known for many months that there's no point in going out and claiming Copenhagen is a miraculous triumph if there's no numbers."

There are, inevitably, aspects of the UK's policy and positioning that plenty of green voices do not like: a new enthusiasm for the uncertain technology known as "clean coal"; enthusiasm for funding half of Europe's post-Copenhagen commitment to the developing world via private-sector carbon trading; and the fact that the UK has so far only pledged £1bn a year in direct climate-related funding for poorer countries.

But here is the most striking thing. On the couple of occasions that I talk to British officials it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, relative to scores of countries, the UK is on the right side of the argument, and pushing hard. They talk about Copenhagen in the kind of dramatic terms that one perhaps wouldn't expect from civil servants. "If we can make this work," says a man from the Foreign Office, "multilateralism has a future. If not, multilateralism goes pear-shaped. And that will affect all kinds of things: food security, water security, energy security."

By early afternoon on the second day, a few delegations have started to peel away, and are preparing to return home. The hotel foyer is divided between an ever-increasing array of suitcases, the activities of a large number of Chinese journalists and ad hoc huddles of negotiators. Not long after 2pm, Miliband bids me goodbye and disappears into a bilateral with the Brazilians: his flight doesn't leave until six, which gives time for talks, and more talks.

Hovering near the negotiations' security barrier, I grab Kevin Conrad, the climate change envoy from Papua New Guinea. Conrad, a climate change star since 2007 when at the UN climate conference in Bali, he challenged the US: "If you are not willing to lead then leave it to the rest of us, get out of the way," looks urbane, preppy, but also visibly rattled. The previous afternoon, I had heard him vent his spleen to the British team as follows: "What can we do to re-energise this thing? It just feels like it's all going backwards."

"I remain frustrated," he tells me. "How do I put this? There's a calculated repositioning of aspirations, where it's being agreed that we're not going to anything that's binding, we're not gong to do anything substantive, and a lot of people blame everybody else for everything going too slow. And for a small island states like ours, that's very disconcerting." When would he like to see a legally-binding deal?

"We don't know why that can't happen now. And what gives us confidence that there won't be more excuses in a year? Or a year later? We are relocating people as we speak because their islands are now inhabitable … This is growing. It's not a theoretical problem."

He adds: "We want people to stick to the original objective – to come up with the substance of a global deal in Copenhagen. All the elements within the negotiations are moving forward, but we want those settled. We think politicians should come in and settle their differences, and close them off. What do we do? Do we just continue with the differences for another year?"

As if to make British hearts swell, however, when I ask him about his perception of Britain's role in Copenhagen, he says :"The UK, in my view, is one of the strongest and most articulate advocates for getting something done."

Having arrived back at home, I book in a call to a British official, which duly happens on Thursday afternoon, when they talk me through some of what was discussed: new moves from Brazil and South Korea, continued uncertainty about how progress on carbon emissions might be recorded, and whether Copenhagen's outcome might be a matter of one text, or "bits of text". Their closing verdict on two days in the Danish capital may be entirely innocuous, though to certain ears, they will only underline what a nervous moment this is. "No decisions," says the voice at the other end of the line. "But useful."

John Harris

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In pictures: Behind the scenes in Copenhagen with Ed Miliband

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:31:31 -0800

Writer John Harris and Guardian photographer Martin Argles shadowed the energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, for 40 hours during his trip to an intergovernmental meeting in Copenhagen ahead of the main conference there in December

Tories ponder Army's German role

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:11:36 -0800

UK troop levels in Germany could be scaled back if the Tories win power, the shadow defence secretary has said.

The EU's nice stich-up | Ilana Bet-El

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:50:00 -0800

Lady Ashton is apparently a perfectly personable woman, but she was only chosen because she ticked the right boxes

If someone held the patent for the word "nice" they would make a fortune today: the only thing anyone can find to say about Lady Ashton is that she's nice. Sometimes she's just nice, other times she's nice in comparison to Lord Mandelson, her predecessor as EU trade commissioner. She also has nice people skills, and is nice to work with. Perhaps a fashion journalist will cast her eye over her soon and pronounce her dress sense nice; but maybe not. Or maybe one of those "EU diplomats" who are the constant source of all knowledge in Brussels will be so kind as to say she has nice handwriting – or something equally patronising. And that is just part of the problem.

Cathy Ashton was chosen because she is from the right political family, from a state that needed to get a big portfolio but not in finance or trade since it is not trusted on either any more, and because she is a woman. One the whole the dire politicians who made the decision couldn't care less about women – or indeed anything else, given the appalling way in which this appointment process was handled and its ridiculous results – but they have a new problem in their life: the European parliament.

That democratically elected chamber, which they have habitually ignored, has struck again: demanding some form of say, rather than just allowing pure horse-trading to prevail. This came as a shock to the political leaders of the EU this summer, when they nodded through José Manuel Barroso for a second term as European commission president over yet another dinner, only to find the parliament demanded he produce full proposals for his next tenure, and undergo even a semblance of an interview before just being rubber-stamped through. Brussels and the capitals were in commotion over this state of affairs, but nonetheless Barroso had to do it, meeting with all political groups, campaigning to get voted in, and eventually succeeding.

But then, just when the leaders thought everything was safe, the parliament struck again: demanding gender balance in the incoming commission with a threat of vetoing it all (the parliament cannot reject a single commissioner; it can only accept or veto the entire college). A series of quiet meetings suggested they could well be serious – which is where the foreign minister job came in: it is double-hatted, being a combination of the council high representative position (currently held by Javier Solana) and the external relations commissioner, in addition to being a vice-president of the commission. As a commissioner, the new incumbent would have to be interviewed by parliament, and if not found acceptable not only would the new commission be vetoed, but the new internationally touted EU foreign minister would have to be replaced.

So a woman it had to be. And since the EPP – the centre-right parliamentary grouping – demanded the council president's slot, it had to be from the centre left. And a Brit. To this the council added its own requirements: no-one with any international profile (clearly redundant for an international affairs post), or with any experience in large organisations (even more redundant given the new incumbent needs to build a new bureaucracy from scratch). Throw it all in the blender – and voila! Out comes nice Lady Ashton.

The foreign minister position has always been the more serious of the two jobs. It was only because Tony Blair wanted to be called president – and knew he would then be out of office and so put it about he was interested – that the "top job" became at all glamorous. Without his bid it would not have occurred to anyone the job was remotely interesting, and a relatively unknown broker may be the right person for it. But the foreign minister is a position that has the prestige of the council with the money and clout of the commission. Even if everyone assumes an unknown will either botch or do no harm in it, the job will involve a huge amount of influence around the world, and therefore upon all of us in the EU. If you sit on a budget of billions, and control a staff with delegations all around the world, you make a difference – even if you do not intend to. You do not just appoint any old British female from the centre-left for a job that even she was surprised to get.

So for what it's worth, a democratically elected chamber did intervene, a bit, but that does nothing for the reality we are faced with: two appointees who are perfectly nice. And an EU that not only will not have a bigger imprint upon the world, but cannot look the world in the eye, especially not the developing world: for all its cant about transparency and demanding democracy and insisting upon accountability in those poor benighted states that are not as enlightened as Europe, it has done a series of dirty deals to appoint – not elect or even select – two senior officials.

Or rather, to be fair, it is the political leaders who have done the deed, but once again will allow the European, and world, public to blame "the EU", that amorphous nasty body in Brussels that rules us all. For what it's worth, many in that body are having a bad day today: appalled as us all by this dastardly triumph of the narrow, tactical and incompetent body that dares calls itself the leadership of the EU.

Ilana Bet-El

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'Gangbos' aimed at teenage crime

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:44:00 -0800

New injunctions against gangs and action on wheelclampers included in Alan Johnson's crime bill

New antisocial behaviour injunctions – dubbed gangbos – aimed at tackling teenage gang members as young as 14 are to be introduced as part of the new crime and security bill, the home secretary disclosed yesterday.

The civil injunctions will include bans on meeting other gang members, wearing gang colours, going to certain locations or having a violent dog in a public place.

Breaching a gangbo could require the offender to report to the police regularly, obey a curfew enforced by an electronic tag or attend anger management courses.

Similar measures aimed at curbing the activities of adults over 18 who are being sucked into gang culture became law last week, but the new proposals will apply to 14- to 17-year-olds.

The provision emerged when the new crime and security bill was published today by the home secretary, Alan Johnson. He said the legislation would help tackle a range of issues which can affect individuals and neighbourhoods, whether it was antisocial behaviour causing misery to residents or young people engaging in violent gang behaviour.

"I want to help those most at risk, preventing the cycle of crime and violence. The new measures are tough, but they also include measures such as help to leave a gang and compulsory parenting orders when a young person breaches an asbo," said the home secretary.

The crime and security bill also proposed licensing private wheelclamping companies. A statutory code of conduct will place a cap on fines, prevent cars being towed too soon after being clamped and an independent appeals process for motorists who feel they have been unfairly clamped or fined.

The bill's publication coincides with the launch today of a £1.9m national advertising campaign explaining the policing pledge – what the public can expect from their local force in England and Wales.

The policing pledge includes a promise to answer 999 emergency calls within 10 seconds, for neighbourhood policing teams to respond to all messages within 24 hours and to send a patrol out to non-emergency calls within an hour if the caller is vulnerable or upset or if their case is a priority issue. Also, anybody should be able to get an appointment to meet police within 48 hours in non-emergency matters, and dedicated beat officers will spend at least 80% of their time on patrol.

The television, radio, leaflet and press advertising campaign is to be followed by new guidance to police forces from the Ministry of Justice, which encourages them to name and shame recently convicted criminals in each neighbourhood.

The Dorset police is pioneering the scheme with a Behind Bars feature on its website, http://www.dorset.police.uk/Default.aspx?page=2716, which gives details on local offenders who have recently been jailed, including their photograph, name, offence, the length of their prison term and when they were sentenced.

Louise Casey, the Home Office crime adviser, said they needed to be sure there was very clear guidance to all police and local authorities about information they could release about convicted criminals so it was proportionate to what they had done.

Alan Travis

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Police urged to visit all victims

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:32:27 -0800

Police should visit each victim of crime no matter how minor the offence, the home secretary says.

Martin Rowson on EU leadership

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:14:21 -0800

Experts agree politicking has triumphed over ambition in the appointment of two new leaders

Martin Rowson

Unthinkable? Pricing drugs humanely

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:06:10 -0800

Another nasty decision for Nice this week, as the health service's rationing agency turned down Nexavar, which treats liver cancer. Everyone agrees it provides extra months, but it will not be administered – except to the rich – as it fails to provide enough extra months for the money. The watertight logic is that cash blown on one costly treatment cannot be spent on saving other lives. But that hardly makes things more bearable for people being told that the community is no longer willing to finance the union of their body and soul. The sanctity of life is compromised even though there are enough physical resources to give every patient what they need. For drug prices are not governed by scarcity, nor set in a meaningful market. It is precisely because it costs next to nothing to produce one extra course of medication that the bills are negotiated in political fixes, which vary across national borders. (Unaffordable in Britain, Nexavar is now available to patients in impoverished Romania.) The industry says high prices are the only way to recoup the vast sums that it ploughs into advancing the frontiers of medicine. But if we were starting from scratch it would surely be better to finance research collectively, perhaps with big payments for scientists who hit upon breakthroughs. Of course it's unthinkable that a competitive world would ever unite in the way that would be required to put people before profit. But then isn't it also unthinkable to ask people to accept early death when there could be another way?

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Feeling like a plum at Twickenham

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:06:02 -0800

 On Monday we went to the National Theatre to see Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art, about a fictional meeting between WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. It was the performance before press night, so there had been no notices in the papers, although the word of mouth was not particularly good and the amateurs on the internet had given it a panning. "Self-indulgent", "rambling", and "it seemed to go on so long, I couldn't believe it was only 10 when it ended" were not untypical.

So we were pleasantly surprised. It is, at times, rather diffuse and, since it takes the form of a play within a play, you have to watch a superb actor, Richard Griffiths, play a not so good actor, playing Auden in a play which Bennett has written but wouldn't have written, if you see what I mean. Then, just when you're praying for things to get a move on, there comes a great Bennett line, like a scud from the skies. "I'm not a rent boy! I went to Keble," for instance. The printed reviews have varied from doubtful to out-and-out raves.

One thing he got exactly right was Auden's drinking, specifically dry martinis. I've described before the time he came to stay at our house (my Dad had written a book about his work and had nominated him for an honorary degree) and Bennett has caught perfectly his almost lustful affection for his favourite cocktail.

Here is the recipe as the poet demonstrated it to me, then an undergraduate: you take a very large jug and pour in an entire bottle of gin. Then you throw in a whole tray of ice cubes, with a lemon, sliced. Add a single capful of dry vermouth and stir.

My parents had invited some friends and colleagues round to meet Auden, so he sat down, placed the jug on a table in front of him and it lasted exactly the length of the party, about two hours. Then he started on the wine.

 Incidentally, I have learned of an intriguing addition to Alan Bennett's life. Earlier this year the Duchess of Devonshire – Debo, the last surviving Mitford sister – published her second volume of jottings, called Home to Roost. She needed an introduction and told her publisher that, although she had never met him, she would love to have Bennett write it. He was duly approached and, slightly puzzled, agreed. The two have now become great friends and she drops into his house in Camden Town, north London, where they eat cheese on toast. From the lady in the van, through Thora Hird to the Duchess of Devonshire! Does this prove, or destroy, the notion that we are still a class-bound society?

 An event that was not pleasantly surprising was England's rugby match against Argentina at Twickenham. Our cheap seats in the top corner of the new south stand were pretty good, which is more than you can say for the game. Giant screens at either end of the ground let us see Martin Johnson bury his face in his hands, recreating the sensation of watching it at home, only with cold knees.

England were playing in their new plum-coloured change strip and there was a cardboard poster in the same colour on every seat. We were enjoined to hold them up after the two national anthems, in the hope of inspiring the team. We dutifully did just that and the stadium was a great wall of purple – except for the Nike swoosh, in white, on all four sides. We had been conned into taking part in a mass advertising stunt. I don't know why this was so annoying, but it was.

 Most people would be surprised to learn that the commander of Winston Churchill's bodyguard during the second world war had been born Wolfgang von Blumenthal in Berlin, but Charles Arnold-Baker was brought to Britain by his English mother after her marriage to Baron von Blumenthal collapsed. He took his step-father's name, and worked in a great variety of jobs through a long life. He died this summer, at the age of 90.

But he will be best remembered for his extraordinary one-man tome, The Companion to British History. It took him 30 years to write, is 1,400 pages long, and contains 2m words, covering almost every imaginable aspect of our history and foreign history where it impinged upon Britain, sometimes in eye-watering detail.

I refer to it constantly. It is always scholarly, and, like the work it's most often compared to, Dr Johnson's dictionary, often eccentric.

Before his death he completed the third edition, which is just out now and well up to scratch. New entries includes one on mobile phones: "Described by Norman Lamont as 'one of the greatest scourges of modern times'". Or a final addition to the entry on the Thirty-Nine articles: "Anglo-Catholic priests' cassocks have 39 buttons which, according to the Revd. D. Skeoch, represent those articles he can accept (to the navel) and those he has rejected (below)."

The book is expensive, but good value, at £78. Henry von Blumenthal, the author's son, would like to offer a discount to Guardian readers: email him at info@loncrosspress.com.

 Gordon Brown's strange pronunciations, part 87: the prime minister has been making much of the Conservative party leader David Cameron's "cast-iron" promise, now abandoned, of a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

"I suppose that is a cast-iron promise!" he says sarkily of any proposal the Tory leader makes. Though sometimes he gets it the wrong way round and calls it an "iron-cast promise".

It's rather spoiled, though, by the fact that he seems to be the only person in the English-speaking world who pronounces the letter "r" in "iron", thus: "cast eye-ron promise." It brings you up short and makes it hard to concentrate on what follows.

Simon Hoggart

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Letters: Herman rains on Tone's parade

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:52 -0800

Do I detect a certain regret that Tony Blair failed in his bid to become president of the European council (Comment, Leaders, 20 November)? Is there a single person left in this country who does not share in the shame of the deceit over Iraq?

Anthony Marrian

London

• It is a major missed opportunity for the future prosperity, and indeed safety, of Europe that Tony Blair has been deemed too big a politician for the fragile egos of European leaders. The excuse of Iraq has been used to justify ignoring a man who has both the strategic judgment and courage to represent Europe in the way that its size and importance needs. We are all the losers.

Anthony Garrett

Falkland, Fife

• There are so many negatives about Herman van Rompuy. He's never declared an illegal war, never claimed Iraq has tons of chemical and biological arms, and nuclear weapons; and he's never been addressed as "Yo, Rompy" by an US president. How can such a person command respect across Europe and the rest of the world?

Gordon Mott

London

• I cannot be alone in preferring haiku to dodgy dossiers.

Jon Nixon

Kendal, Cumbria

• Noble Brit, hero Flem, / Herman rains on Tone's parade. / Horse-trade in Brussels.

Michael Rafferty

Omagh, County Tyrone

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'My son was in danger. So was I'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:42 -0800

He left Britain after his girlfriend Rachel Nickell was murdered 17 years ago, to escape the trauma and the press. This week André Hanscombe returned – to force the police to face their mistakes

The picture is attractive – pale skin, a drift of blonde hair, a wide, imperfect smile that makes her approachable and young, fragile – but it is very ordinary, too; a picture to be flipped past, privately, in an album, perhaps with an answering smile – do you remember that day? Yet it has joined a small handful of photographs that tell a particular story of late 20th-century Britain because of the shadows it contains: a mental picture of that same woman stabbed at random, in daylight, 49 times, of her small son circling her body, crying, 'Mummy, mummy, wake up!' Of him finding a scrap of paper, and placing it carefully on her forehead, like a sticking plaster.

Those shadows are compounded by a police investigation that lasted for the next 15 years, and, we now know, by its terrible consequences: Colin Stagg spent only a year on remand, but for the next decade was assumed guilty, harassed, denied work, received death threats. It was felt to be important to keep watching the man who seemed so likely to have killed Nickell, to prevent him from doing it again – but in the end it had the opposite effect: the police were so intent on Stagg that Robert Napper, who was already responsible for two rapes and two attempted rapes, went on to stab and mutilate Samantha Bissett and rape her four-year-old daughter, eventually killing both. (It is now thought Napper sexually assaulted more than 80 women, the so-called Green Chain rapes). The police photographer who attended the Bissett crime scene had to be signed off work for two years.

Nickell's partner André Hanscombe was among those who believed Stagg was probably guilty – he was quoted saying that he was 99% sure of it – and so it was news when, earlier this week, Stagg released a letter Hanscombe had written to him, apologising for the ordeal he had endured, "and any part that I might have had personally to make it worse". Hanscombe happened to be in London, formally submitting a complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Metropolitan Police Authority; so persuasive was the list of omissions and failings that it took only three days for the IPCC to announce they were undertaking an independent investigation.

Why was he so sure Stagg had done it? "Human beings were looking me in the eyes behind closed doors and saying, 'This person did it,'" says Hanscombe. He is an intense presence, restless, very fast-talking, in long paragraphs that loop and tumble over themselves in their need to get their point across. Because this has been his world, his preoccupation, for so long, and because he is so keen not to simplify issues, or blame unnecessarily, it's tricky, initially, to tune in – at first it seems all trees and no wood. But he answers most, even quite private questions fully, thoughtfully; even when snagging on a phrase or a memory brings him close to tears, he insists on finishing, on doing it properly. It is striking that, for all the darkness and pain, he is also a happy presence, quick and funny and charming. "Let's not throw everything out the window, and with hindsight say, 'Yeah, it was obvious,' because it's not obvious. I mean, we're talking about an incredible set of coincidences – two people wearing the same clothes, same description, identified by adult witnesses, in the same place at the same time. That is still valid – flawed, but valid."

Although he was, and is, very aware of how much pressure the police were under to make a conviction, in the days and months after the murder (he says which he was told of on the phone, against all protocol; that no car turned up to collect him, so he made his own way to a station – where, because of his distress, and because, they said, such news was never delivered on the phone, the officers decided he was mad) he trusted the police to do their job. "My first commitment was to Rachel, and to what she would have wanted. And what she would have wanted was for her son to grow up" – for a moment, blindsided, he has to stop speaking – "excuse me, in the best way possible. And to do that he couldn't have a bitter and angry father who was distracted, with his mind on other things."

And so he did what he was told, and co-operated as far as he was able, and especially after Stagg was charged, and then, after a judge threw out evidence obtained in a honey-trap operation, released, tried to forget that the man who he thought had killed Nickell was free – free to be recognised by his son Alex at any point, free to kill again. How did that feel? "My son was in danger. And I was in danger, because I didn't know how I might react if we ever came face to face." The latter possibility was exacerbated by the police. Stagg was not the first innocent man in the frame: a family friend was initially investigated, and arrested, on the basis that he had a supposedly unhealthy interest in Nickell, and because, when Hanscombe and Alex bumped into him accidentally, police observed that the boy seemed to squirm away from him in fear.

"I didn't see it," says Hanscombe, "because he was also in terror from the press mob that we had been protected from for the last 25-30 minutes." But detectives were sure they had their man ("I've had officers saying, 'You know, in my day, we wouldn't have had problems, we'd be hanging him out the window by his thumbs and this would all be over by now,'" says Hanscombe), and this incident was added to "days of being prompted and probed and drip-fed bits of information" – and then, one day, with "'Well, if you had a gun in your hand, would you pull the trigger?' And luckily I had the clarity of mind – another person, or the same person, just with slightly more pressure put upon me, may have responded in a different way." What did you say? "I think I said, 'That's your job, to find that kind of conviction. It's not mine.'"

How did he feel when Napper pleaded guilty, last December? "Numb. Numb." Then, circling back later, "almost as bad as the day that Rachel was killed. Because it was what I didn't really want to know, but now was the time to find out." But it wasn't just that. It was also discovering, from psychiatric reports, that police had been failing to investigate Napper ever since his mother told them he had confessed to raping a woman in Plumstead, south London, in 1989; that if they had followed things up properly, neither Nickell nor Bissett and her daughter need have died.

Although Met assistant commissioner John Yates says he apologised in person on the eve of Napper's confession (Hanscombe says he was so overwhelmed he can't remember), there has been no public apology to Nickell's family. Hanscombe says that isn't what matters to him. What matters is that a system that could allow such a chain of events is looked at closely, and proper checks and balances, a disinterested transparency, introduced; that a Met culture which finds it hard to admit it might be wrong (a situation familiar, now, from the De Menezes and Tomlinson affairs) is altered, and that the public is aware of how many lives were damaged by the many mistakes – not just Bissett and her daughter, or the many women involved in the Green Chain, but also everyone connected to them, and especially their families – which is why Hanscombe is so willing to say what it did to him.

Hanscombe's parents, a Zimbabwean teacher and English secretary, split up when he was five. For a while he lived with his mother, but when he was nine they swapped places – she moved out, and his father, who he describes as a distant disciplinarian and who he is no longer in touch with, moved in. "It certainly helped me understand a lot of things that Alex has been through that I quite possibly wouldn't have done. Alex lost his mother when he was three and in many ways I lost my mother when I was nine." One of the things he understood was that children like Alex "don't need more toys, they don't need more love and affection, they don't need more hugs, they need stability. They need something firm underneath them, and that is a routine – sleep, play, food, entertainment, love and affection, all in the right dose and all at the right time."

In an impact statement Nickell's parents read to the court in December, they mentioned that they had lost contact with their grandson. Hanscombe says that this was unintentional – it was just that the Nickells could not seem to abide by his rules and after one visit to his grandparents Alex returned upset. Hanscombe said, in Alex's presence, that Nickell's mother could not be alone with him; the reply, he says, was that "they'd have nothing to do with Alex until he was 16. I'd send them pictures and videos, and after that he was their flesh and blood, and if he wanted he could have direct contact with him then." He says that Alex has never wanted to, even though it emerged, in one of Hanscombe's few interviews some years ago, that they sent frequent postcards. "For years Alex picked them up and threw them in the bin." He didn't open gifts, either. Do you regret how things turned out? The answer is a quick whisper. "Yeah."

From both sets of grandparents he also learned that secrets kept and explanations withheld were corrosive, so he has tried to give Alex "the opportunity to say whatever he likes – and also to not say what is too difficult for him to say. I'm attempting to walk the fine line between giving him permission and not intruding." Alex hasn't said much, apparently, although when he was much younger, "I asked could he see her and everything that happened and he said: 'Yes.' He wasn't upset. I tried to hide my emotions. I didn't push."

Hanscombe, a semi-professional tennis player, and Rachel, who did some part-time modelling, met at Richmond swimming baths: he was babysitting his two young half-brothers and horsing about with friends, she was a lifeguard. Initially he thought she was about 15 and offered her an ice cream; when he discovered she was 19 he asked her out for a drink. "It wasn't love at first sight. It was more like love at second sight. We just talked and talked for hours. And I'd never had this experience in my life, where you just clicked with someone on every single level." When she became pregnant, partway through a degree in English and history, they felt the news was a disaster, but she researched, read, and thought, and they decided to keep the baby. They had to work hard to make ends meet, but apart from a creeping depression on her part, about, Hanscombe says, things in her childhood, and an unexplained fear of being attacked from behind – "a phobia, the way some people are scared of heights, or spiders" – they were happy.

Becoming a single father would have been hard enough; becoming one in such circumstances drove him to consider killing himself. "We had the press on our doorstep. We had fighting between members of the family, we had the detectives doing their job, well or badly or whatever, we had social workers in the house, we had cameras in the house, microphones." And at the centre of it all a small boy who "cried himself awake, for months and months and months. And it was just hell. Agony. I was totally traumatised, just from hearing him cry. I couldn't stand it. It just put me on the edge of breakdown, every single time."

His solution was to leave the country – to France, initially, and then, when the press tracked them down, to a Mediterranean country he refuses to name. Even there they had only three years before they were doorstepped again — just as Alex was beginning to walk to school on his own. On the face of it Hanscombe has a contradictory attitude to privacy: he is understandably furious with the media's treatment of him, yet some years after Nickell's death he wrote a book full of private details, and has begun another one (which the Met, worried he would prejudice their investigations, persuaded him not to publish). He needed the money, and somewhere to put his anger; the second book sought to answer the question he was asked over and over again.

His gamble, he says, paid off: surrounded by people who knew nothing of his history, and thus treated him normally, Alex became a joyous, if headstrong, child who differed from others only in his reaction to physical hurt and blood. (When Hanscombe cut his leg in a biking accident, he became hysterical, convinced his father was going to die.) Alex's teenage years were different. There was all the usual stuff – such as trouble at school – but also "he became, clearly, much more angry with me. Because one of the big pressures – again, life is all paradoxes – was the fact that I'd taken him somewhere where everyone was healthy and happy and living in a kind of fairy story with their grandparents and brothers and sisters and cousins – it became even more apparent to him that he didn't have those things." Now 20, he is much calmer.

Hanscombe had his own frustrations, too. It was "years and years and years" before even he attempted to date, and although "I do believe you can fall in love again, it just didn't happen, in my case." Partly, he thinks, "it comes back to our closure issue. It's very difficult to be with someone when this is hanging over your head like a bombshell, and somebody else is still in your life and in your heart." It's one reason why he wants this investigation to happen, even if it prolongs his involvement with the case a while longer. "It's so very important to me to get to a stage where I can say, OK, everything I can do, has been done. I've done everything I wish to do towards respecting Rachel's wishes, and setting an example for Alex, and using the voice [I have] to try and make sure that all those other people who have been affected, that their suffering hasn't been in vain. And then I can say, it is now time."

Which is not to say that there haven't been "many, many, many great moments. The intensity of seeking a recovery from these events has meant that we've seen sunsets, we've swum in the sea, we've skied and ridden bikes and laughed and met wonderful people. The happiest moments for me were when I saw Alex in the company of other children, laughing, with absolutely no preoccupations, and I've been fortunate enough to see that many times. You know – in a way it's like a second chance. I've learnt to enjoy life through my son, in a way I thought I never would do."

Aida Edemariam

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Hymn to Belgium's EU president

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:41 -0800

As a Belgian, I am shocked by the disinformation around the candidacy and person of Mr Van Rompuy, especially by the British tabloids (The great EU stitch-up, 20 November). Their comments are an insult. Van Rompuy is not to be an executive president like the US president; he is the chairman, a consensus-builder of a Europe of nations. He is not in favour of a European national hymn, flag or tax. And even if he were, his personal opinion is irrelevant. I am shocked by British nationalism that would rather have a high-profile Briton as president, even if such a strong and flamboyant presidency reduced the role of the national EU members, an idea that horrifies most British. So Europe is OK, as long as it is British.

We are not interested in having an EU president that would only look after British interests, being the puppy of the US president and paying his bills in devalued pounds instead of strong euros. UK citizens do not know anything about other countries; they still think the whole world revolves around them. The empire is long gone, fellows.

And as for the "silly" Belgians: we have one of the strongest economies in the world. Our GNP per capita is higher than the UK's. And if we are so silly, why are our hospitals full of British patients?

Hans Becu

Temse, Belgium

• Having been a "broad church" supporter of the EU for many years, I am so angry about the "stitch-up" that I fear I may even vote for Ukip. For a group of nations which claims to hold sacrosanct the concept of democratically elected governments, the secretive and cabalistic nature of the appointments of president and foreign minister over a dinner in Brussels is despicable. And then to choose two unknown and minor officials to fulfil what should have been significant and respected posts makes the EU a laughing stock among the other major players in global politics. Shame on Sarkozy and Merkel and the other European leaders who allowed this travesty to take place.

J Fanshawe

Twyford, Hampshire

• Was this really the failure to create the leadership Europe needs? Cathy Ashton said she was not an "ego on legs". Aside from the aversion to another Napoleon or Bismarck built into the European DNA, concentrating all European advocacy in the hands of one traffic-stopper would always have provoked clashes with national leaders. The EU's top two officials should co-ordinate, largely behind the scenes, so that European advocacy is constructed on unified positions and strategies for the long haul. Then individual heads of government should be supported to run on them.

Tim Dyce

Brighton, East Sussex

• Cathy Ashton has an interesting political background that you overlook (From obscurity to the most powerful woman in the UK, 20 November). She probably becomes the first former staff member of CND to hold such a high diplomatic position. She was a staff administrator at CND in the late 1970s, and rose to become national treasurer and an elected vice-chair at the time of the Euromissile crisis in 1983. I think this is an excellent background to put some flesh on the aspiration in the Queen's speech on Wednesday to "work towards creating the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons".

Dr David Lowry

Former director, European Proliferation Information Centre

• I wonder what it says about British attitudes towards politics and celebrity when a career involving being leader of the House of Lords and European trade commissioner ranks as obscurity.

Robin Pinguey

Liverpool

• Nothing demonstrates the incompetence and mediocrity of much of the British media more than the repeated contention that "nobody" has heard of the Belgian prime minister. We have now been in the European Union for over 35 years but, thanks to the backward parochialism of our media, the public still have little or no understanding of it.

Ian Flintoff

Oxford

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European Union: Now to make it work

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:40 -0800

Are Herman van Rompuy and Cathy Ashton the best of all available choices as the European Union council president and the high representative on foreign policy respectively? Undoubtedly not. Yet they are competent people and they are the choices that the EU has now made. Were Mr van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton chosen in the most persuasive way to win confidence across Europe and to impress the rest of the world? Certainly not that either. But in a Europe that recoils from the superstatism that direct election to such posts involves, they were chosen by the only process that existed.

No doubt about it, this has been an underwhelming 48 hours for Europe, but it could have played out worse and could also have been very much more disruptive. What took place in Brussels on Thursday was a compromise deal between big member states and small ones, left and right, north and south. But the provisions of the Lisbon treaty have now been fulfilled. The new council president and the new high representative are nominated. We are where we are, rather than where we, or others, might like to be. So where does the new European Union created by the Lisbon treaty now go?

The first thing to say is that this new post-Lisbon EU has a lot of growing to do. But the most important thing to say is that there is nothing in these arrangements that can plausibly be caricatured as a federalist superstate. That does not mean such caricatures will not continue to be made, especially in this country. Nevertheless the appointments represent a clear victory, at least for now, of the intergovernmental approach to the EU rather than of any federalist challenge to it. In this EU, nation states will call the shots. To prove himself worthy of his hire Mr van Rompuy will be expected to curb his federalist instincts.

The choice of two low-profile leaders means that there are two immediate political winners from the process. The first is the European commission, under its renominated president José Manuel Barroso, who has emerged as at least the first among equals in the new Brussels lineup. The other winners are the large member states. France and Germany set the terms for the two appointments. Angela Merkel, with her preference for an inward-looking Europe, is the godmother of these arrangements. But Britain was a winner too, handed the opportunity to shape EU foreign policy and, crucially, to build the new external action service (EAS), the EU's new diplomatic corps.

Baroness Ashton's priority should be to ensure that this EAS allows her to punch her weight alongside national foreign ministers and in global arenas. She should demand the secondment of the brightest and the best from member states to enable her to do this. Our own Foreign Office should show the way, whichever party is in power. She should recognise that the member states will always be jealous of their access to the big global powers, such as the US, China and India. She will have to work with the member states there. But she might be smart to give particular focus to building a really effective presence in high-profile or important small or medium-sized countries where the EU collectively can make a difference that the member states cannot match – places like Belarus, Ukraine, Morocco, Burma and Thailand.

Today's Europe is a graduate of the school of hard knocks. Its idealism has been tempered by experience. It is and always will be an imperfect union, and the new post-Lisbon arrangements will take some getting used to. But this is the union we have got and it is a union that we need. The benefits are worth it, the processes matter, and it is hugely in Britain's interests, whether under a Labour or a Conservative government, to make it work as well as possible. Europe has immense common interests and a big role to play in the world. Now it needs to deliver. You wouldn't, if you could choose, start from here, but it is time to get on with the job.

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Fear and loathing in Dagenham

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:05:39 -0800

On a walkabout in east London, Nick Griffin is a magnet for feelings of grief as well as anger

On Thursday Nick Griffin paid his first official visit to Barking and Dagenham as the newly declared British National party candidate in next year's election. This took the form of "walkabouts" and the one I attached myself to went up and down the slopes on either side of Dagenham Heathway station on the District line, where there are shops and cafes and pubs and more white people than you can easily come across in Barking town centre, at the constituency's western edge.

Walkabouts are of course contrivances: the point is not so much to meet people as to be photographed meeting them. A small media mob followed Griffin and his minders. He shook hands with a couple of men in a white van and sat down at a table of drinkers in the Lord Denman pub. One passerby shouted: "Love ya!" and another: "Good luck!" How much of this had been pre-arranged is hard to say. The two women sitting outside a cafe who told him to piss off were obviously not in the script, but the drinkers and the white van – which passed us more than once, honking cheerily – may well have been. What can be said is that his appearance on Question Time has done him no harm.

A woman wanted to be photographed with him: "I saw you on that chat show." Then three white schoolboys posed with Griffin at their centre. A few other schoolboys – black this time – loitered at the crowd's edge. It wouldn't have been a surprise if they too had asked to be in a shot. Griffin appeared before them as a minor celebrity in a suburban high street. He might have been opening a new Boots. His face is soft-featured and he seemed anxious to please.

A reporter from the Barking and Dagenham Post asked whether, if elected, he'd serve all his constituents, no matter their origins or colour. Griffin said of course – he would work for anyone who had a right to be here and paid their taxes. So who would be excluded? The answer was many of those people who had "poured in" over the last few years, encouraged by a government that wanted to gerrymander its parliamentary constituencies. This is the BNP line: the Labour party has deliberately promoted immigration so that it can build up vote banks, with results that are particularly visible in Barking

His supporters followed him. Several were in their best suits. Richard Barnbrook, who is probably the second most famous member of his party, wore a sand-coloured number that might have been supplied as off-duty wear to the Afrika Korps. Another follower, buttoned up in lilac, turned out to be Lawrence Rustem, a Barking councillor and Elvis fanatic and "the only half-Turkish member of the BNP". He said he was "a refugee from Hackney", where he'd been mugged 18 years before. Consequently, he joined the party and became an activist. "For me, it's been a long form of revenge for what happened to me that night," he said.

Some things about the crowd were no surprise: that it was white, male and mainly about 50 years old. What I hadn't prepared for was the sense of loss and grief. Bob Bailey, who leads the BNP opposition on Barking council, outlined his career: son of a steelworker in Scunthorpe, 12 years in the marines, and now employed by "the security industry". The steelworks had sacked his dad, who never worked again, and now faced an uncertain future under Indian ownership. "We don't make anything any more, we don't own anything any more. It's an absolute disgrace. The country's just knackered. People have given up hope. They don't believe in anything, not in themselves, not in their neighbourhoods, not in their history. "

Bailey's solutions included the nationalisation of key industries, political withdrawal from the EU and military retreat from Afghanistan. He described it as "the politics of old Labour" combined with a "forward-looking nationalism". So far, so sweetly reasonable. Then I mentioned Barking's Labour MP, Margaret Hodge. "Poisonous bitch. Lives in Islington. A multimillionairess and a foreigner to boot."

A foreigner by this definition is a woman born Margaret Oppenheimer of wealthy German Jewish parents in Egypt in 1944, who has lived in the UK for at least 60 years and is minister of state for culture and tourism. That doesn't seem a very forward-looking definition. What chance then that the BNP accepts as full citizens all the Africans, Indians, Pakistanis and eastern Europeans who have so utterly transformed Barking since the 1990s? Their numbers are growing, and the BNP likes to cite their presence in Barking as an example of sneaky government strategy. In fact, they arrived through a much more chaotic agency, the free market.

Throughout most of the last century, the people of Barking and Dagenham depended on two institutions. For work and wages, there was the Ford car plant, which at its postwar peak employed 40,000. For housing, there was the local authority. In the 1920s at Becontree, the London county council built the largest municipal estate in Europe and smaller developments followed. In the words of Darren Rodwell, a Labour activist born and raised in the borough, Barking had "its own social system". You married and got a council flat. Children came along. You moved upscale to a three-bedroom house. When Margaret Thatcher's administration introduced the right-to-buy, this paternal system broke down. Tenants bought at discounts and sold on for a profit or let the houses to inner London authorities that needed to place homeless families. Most of the old housing stock is now owned privately. Relatively cheap property and fast trains into London make Barking an obvious destination for migrants. A borough that was once exceptional for its whiteness and familial connections changed with a bewildering speed that left its Labour rulers divided and broken. The party now accepts that voter alienation and disaffection were "endemic". In 2006, the BNP won a dozen council seats.

Some blame Hodge, who, like one of her Barking predecessors, Tom Driberg, has more of the West End about her than the East End. Others accuse a complacent local council that had never shed "workerist" attitudes born in the old Ford plant. The BNP fright has changed all that. Hodge has moved the centre of her operations to the town, knocked on doors and recruited 150 members, many non-white. In her office I met young men and women from, or with parents from, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Caribbean, as well an 83-year-old former mayor, George Shaw. All of them said much the same thing: the party had to reconnect to the electorate.

My guess is Griffin will lose, and possibly badly if Labour can get its targeted voters to the polls. But can they? Rodwell told me of his reconnecting spiel when he knocks on doors: "I can't do anything about the weather, West Ham or Gordon Brown … but you can try me on anything else."

Ian Jack

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Hershey considers audacious $17bn go-it-alone bid for Cadbury

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:04:31 -0800

The US chocolate company Hershey is considering an audacious go-it-alone attempt to buy the besieged Cadbury confectionery empire through a takeover offer of at least $17bn (£10.2bn) to edge out Kraft's £9.8bn hostile bid.

Sources close to the situation last night said that Hershey has lined up deal financing from Bank of America and JP Morgan for a bid. The maker of Reese's Pieces and Hershey's Kisses has held talks with Italy's Ferrero over a joint approach but is now examining the prospect of making an offer on its own.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, pressure for an aggressive approach is coming from the Hershey Trust, a charitable foundation set up by the chocolate maker's late creator, Milton Hershey, which still owns a controlling stake in the Pennsylvania-based company.

Such a move would be spectacularly ambitious. Hershey has little presence outside North and South America. With a market capitalisation of £5.2bn and annual sales of £3bn, it is little more than half the size of Cadbury, which has a market cap of nearly £11bn and generated revenue last year of £5.3bn.

Hershey's possible offer, which is still weeks away, would reportedly include at least $10bn in cash from the company, $2bn in shares and, potentially, a further $3bn-$5bn from outside investors. This would exceed Kraft's formal bid 12 days ago which was for 300p and 0.25 Kraft shares for each Cadbury share, worth 717p on the day it was launched.

Hershey and Cadbury already have ties. Hershey produces certain Cadbury products in the US, including Creme Eggs and Dairy Milk bars, under a long-term licensing deal struck in 1988, although the US firm uses a different recipe to suit American tastes.

Unions in Britain are already deeply concerned at the possible impact on Cadbury's global workforce of 46,000. A buyout by Hershey would focus attention on the US firm's recent controversial cull of 3,000 jobs in the US and Canada through a shift to cheaper labour at a factory in Monterrey, Mexico.

With an auction gathering steam and speculative hedge funds snapping up shares, analysts believe that Cadbury's chances of hanging on to its independence are diminishing fast. The British firm's embattled chief financial officer, Andrew Bonfield, has been in New York this week to talk to shareholders.

Andrew Clark

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Tories may pull troops out of Germany

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:57:43 -0800

British troops could be withdrawn from Germany by a future Tory government if other Nato states agreed to take over the UK's commitments there, the shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, has said.

Fox said it is "no longer necessary" to keep 20,000 military personnel in Germany, nearly 70 years after the end of the second world war. Ending the deployment would free up forces to carry out vital Nato operations outside Europe, he said.

The number of soldiers in Germany has been scaled down over the years and their presence is now centred on Herford, near Hanover, where the 1st Armoured Division is based.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Fox signalled his determination to conduct a "wholesale recasting of our foreign and defence policy … If other countries are willing to take up roles in continental defence, that leaves Britain and France able to take on expeditionary roles," he said.

New Nato member states from eastern and central Europe, particularly Poland, should take over Britain's commitments in Germany, he added.

A final decision will depend on negotiations with Nato allies, especially France, and on the Ministry of Defence's ability to handle the return of so many soldiers, for whom there is no accommodation in the UK. "Finding a more creative diplomatic solution in Nato will be a priority for an incoming Conservative government.

Fox said he had told civil servants to prepare plans for cutting the MoD's administrative costs by 25% – some £3bn – by 2012.

The Tories are also looking at fast-tracking younger commanders with combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to senior posts.

Damien Pearse

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Calls from Merkel told Blair he would not get EU's top job

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:34:30 -0800

Tony Blair warned Gordon Brown a week ago that his campaign to become the first president of the European Council was doomed after a decisive intervention by the German chancellor Angela Merkel, according to senior Whitehall sources.

To the dismay of key ministers, who wanted Brown to push for Britain to take an economic portfolio in the European commission once Blair's hopes were dashed, Brown insisted on maintaining his candidacy until moments before Thursday's European summit.

The prime minister hailed the summit as a victory after Britain secured one of the two jobs created under the Lisbon treaty – the high representative for foreign policy taken by Britain's current European commissioner, Lady Ashton.

The summit concluded quickly on Thursday, but only after weeks of horse trading across the EU and a bitter row in London. Blair told Brown that his chances were over after a second – and decisive – phone call with Merkel late last week. Merkel told Blair she bore him no ill will but that the job would have to go to a leader from the dominant centre right.

"Tony informed Gordon at the end of last week ... that he saw no realistic chance of getting agreement around his candidacy," a Whitehall source said.

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who heads the EU grouping of Labour and social democratic parties, told the Guardian that Europe's two big political tribes, the Christian and social democrats, agreed months ago to split the jobs between them. He said Brown had known for some time that Blair had no chance.

"There was an expectation that at a certain time there should come a change from Downing Street... We all knew it couldn't be otherwise," added Rasmussen.

Senior ministers told Brown that Britain's interests would be best served by securing a major economic portfolio in the European commission. Brown, who agrees that new legislation on financial services could pose a threat to the City of London, did draw up contingency plans for an economic job: retain trade, or aim for the internal market or competition policy portfolios.

No 10 had not lost hope that Shriti Vadera, an ex-minister now working for the G20, or the FSA chief Adair Turner might be persuaded to take one of these posts.

But a second group of ministers advised Brown that an economic job would have played badly in the media after Britain had made such a great play for the presidency. Brown therefore kept Blair's name in the frame in hope of increasing UK leverage to secure the high representative post.

"There were two groups in government," a key figure said. "There was the real world argument – the best interests of the UK are served by securing a strong economic portfolio to protect the City. Then there were the media managers."

Brown believes it is wrong to play down the significance of the high representative post, not least as Ashton will have enhanced status in the commission.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said Ashton's appointment may have been part of a deal that would give a major economic job to France. "If Gordon Brown has done a deal that would mean a French commissioner being in charge of the economic issues that affect Britain the most, then that could be a serious concern," he said.

The Guardian today reveals that Ashton was spied on by MI5 in the late 1970s. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty and a friend of Ashton, said: "Cathy was vice-chair of CND. She was subject to intrusive surveillance by MI5."

Ian Traynor

Nicholas Watt

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A great EU stitch-up that demeans democracy

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:26:00 -0800

The appointments of Herman Van Rompuy and Cathy Ashton lay bare the rot at the core of the Lisbon project

It's not often that the front pages of the Daily Mail and the Guardian have identical headlines. Still, both newspapers are right: it is a great EU stitch-up, this back-room installation of favoured placemen. Saying so doesn't make you rightwing or leftwing; it makes you a democrat.

You might expect me, as a Conservative, to object to the appointment of Labour's Baroness Ashton. And, while Herman Van Rompuy is frequently described as "centre-right", he is a Belgian Christian Democrat which, other than on some moral issues, puts him to the left of Labour.

But my objection isn't to these particular candidates. It's to a racket that concentrates power and freezes out the voters. Hillary Clinton calls Baroness Ashton her counterpart. All right, then, let's compare the way the two polities choose their leaders. Barack Obama got to be president of 300 million Americans following an exhaustive (and exhausting) series of primaries and ballots. By the end of the campaign, voters knew exactly what they were getting. Herman Van Rompuy, by contrast, was selected at a private dinner as everyone's third choice: the candidate whom no one knew anything against.

I've often wondered why Guardian readers don't get more agitated about Euro-elitism. The proudest boast of the British left, down the ages, was that it took power away from a remote caste and dispersed it more widely. This was the creed that inspired the Levellers, the Chartists, the Suffragettes; the motive that lay behind religious toleration, the extension of the franchise, universal education, appointments by competitive examination, equality for gay people.

Yet, when it comes to the EU, a surprising number of people who, in any other context, would consider themselves progressives, line up behind the most anti-democratic project in the western world. Van Rompuy and Ashton are precisely the kind of unelected office-holders that an earlier generation of radicals would have railed against.

Consider their careers. Van Rompuy owes his position to his mastery of Belgium's labyrinthine coalition trade-offs. A brilliant back-room operator, he went so far as to change the locks of the parliamentary chamber last year in order to prevent Flemish MPs meeting there.

As for Lady Ashton, she has never once taken the trouble to get herself elected to anything. A former chairman of a health authority, she went on to work for a quango before being appointed a life peer. She then steered the Lisbon treaty through the upper house without conceding the referendum that all three parties had promised in their manifestos.

She became a European commissioner not because of any special aptitude, but because Gordon Brown was determined to avoid a byelection, and so couldn't send an MP. And she owes her latest promotion, again, not to any particular expertise in foreign affairs but because it was generally felt that Labour ought to be compensated over Tony Blair not getting the presidency.

Every chapter of that story negates the democratic principle. Every page would have had Wilkes and Paine howling about arbitrary government.

I have nothing against the baroness. My problem is with the system that elevated her, a system that heaps power in the hands of officials who are invulnerable to public opinion; a system that gives unelected commissioners a monopoly of the right to initiate legislation; a system that swats aside referendum results when they go the "wrong" way.

Opposing such a system doesn't make you anti-Europe; it makes you pro-democracy. Anyone who believes in representative government should be outraged by what happened on Thursday: a lifelong quangocrat was appointed in secret to a post created by a treaty that we never got the chance to vote for.

Were the radicals wrong? Are we better off being governed by a self-perpetuating elite? What fools our fathers were if this be true.

Daniel Hannan

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A push to simplify credit card 'gobbledygook'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:33:55 -0800

Most cardholders never read the long complicated legalese in a credit card agreement -- and that could spell trouble.

Hooray for poet Herman Van Rompuy

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:10:28 -0800

The verse-writing of the new president of the European Council is good in parts, says the former poet laureate

First let me say this: on balance, I would far rather that people in politics were writing poetry than not. Where are the poets in the House of Commons? So let's give Herman Van Rompuy a round of applause.

However, I am suspicious of the haiku as a form. I have read a great many over the years – it is the default form in schools, and children are always being made to write them – and have come to believe that haikus are particularly popular among those who don't have time for poetry.

At its best, the form has a delicacy to it which can be very beautiful. At its worst, a haiku is a miniature place for people who don't like poetry to hide in. When a haiku works, it has a simplicity and brevity which I like – and brevity is close to the very heart of poetry. But if you don't pull it off there is a flatness and banality to the form.

I am not sure Van Rompuy totally avoids that. There is, I'm afraid, a touch of the Basil Fotherington-Thomas in some of his work – an awful conservative, picturesque prettiness.

Some are good, though. My favourite is Water:

Puddles wait

for warmth to evaporate.

Water becomes a cloud

He captures an idea of transience here, and of cyclical return – ideas which are central to the tradition of haikus. It is a scene of quietness, but there is threat in it.

Light is good too. It has an ecstatic aspect to it, which again is in the best tradition of the form, and there is a shine on it which is appealing:

Light on the sea is

brighter than on land.

Heaven is breathing

Not all Van Rompuy's nature poems work, though. There's a terrible grandiosity in Time, and a clichedness:

Life is sailing

on the sea of time but

only the sea remains

There is a precariousness about haikus. They are such delicate things, and getting them right is an art. It is all too easy to wobble.

But Van Rompuy's nature poems, even the bad ones, are much better than those about politics. The best one can say about the comically named Square-Brussels-Meeting Centre is that at least Van Rompuy means it when he says he's a European:

A palace arises

on the mountain, full of light and green.

In full glory.

Would Tony Blair have written of the EU: "A palace arises ... in full glory"? I don't think so. Judging by the poems, Van Rompuy is not only a charming, attentive and sensitive man, but he's clearly in the right job.

Andrew Motion

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No new rules on fish conservation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:08:02 -0800

New EU rules aimed at conserving fish stocks have been voted down, but the current restrictions will remain.

History? It's history

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:00:00 -0800

If the past is another country, Ed Balls has just confiscated the passports of our schoolchildren

Ed Balls has announced that primary school history is to be subsumed into an "area of learning" called "historical, geographical and social understanding". Personally I did prefer the words "history" and "geography", partly because they're shorter. Presumably Balls, who is highly educated, knows that the importation of a value word like "understanding" is a tactic associated with totalitarian regimes. So why does he do it?

Balls says he is strengthening the role of history in primary schools; but Prince Charles apparently doesn't think so, and on the face of it the new subject headings will do little to appease the Historical Association, which frets about the dilution of pure history in secondary schools. It is squeezed out by other subjects, subsumed into humanities, and taught in a way that promotes analytical skill, hence that word "understanding". Whether history is being downgraded or not, it seems likely that a party called New Labour, in which every young minister is a bright-eyed technophile, might not be keen on the H-word, and might be tempted to use it as children now do: "You're history" does not mean, "You are replete with the riches of civilisation". It means: "You're finished."

There also lurks an association between "history" and "British history" with all its embarrassing aspects. The motivation of our empire builders was crassly mercantile, so perhaps we ought not to revisit it. But then again, why does Balls want to foster cross-curricular "understanding" at the expense of traditional subjects? For no more moral reason than to compete in a globalised economy. The pressure of international competition means that we live in a very fast-changing world. Well, I do. Since I became a writer 20 years ago, most of my favourite bookshops have been killed by the internet; Britain has changed from a literary to a visual culture; and the book as a physical artefact is fading.

There is too much of the present just at present, and knowledge of history is an escape from it. It is also a defence against the enthusiasms of the media. While key stage 3 teaches the importance of historical chronology, the recollection of dates is regarded as a bonus rather than being essential, which clashes bizarrely with the obsession with anniversaries among journalists. I was sick of Darwin by about 2 o'clock on 1 January this year. I prefer to remember other things that happened 150 years ago besides the publication of On the Origin of Species; or it might be that I am interested in some event taking place, say, 83 years ago, which – the intervening time not being a round number – I will have all to myself.

History also shifts the focus from living celebrities to dead ones, and I do prefer my celebrities to be dead. They can't profit from their fame; they won't be given tables ahead of me in a restaurant; and the fact that their fame has survived death is proof that they were somehow significant.

History is not now compulsory at GCSE level, and it wasn't when I was at school either, there being no national curriculum to make it so. But everyone did it. When my eldest son told me he was dropping history, it was as though he'd said he was having his memory erased – and I can't bring myself to write down his answer to my question: When was Disraeli prime minister?

Our government of veneerings might consider that we won't appreciate the new if we can't call up a mental picture of the old. If we were to take our cue from LP Hartley and his suggestion that "the past is a foreign country," then we might regard the study of history as a kind of multiculturalism, in which case it would escape some of the stigma undoubtedly attaching to it.

Andrew Martin

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Health care rhetoric heats up before key vote

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:38:17 -0800

Traditional Senate decorum yielded to brass-knuckle politicking before a key procedural vote.

Health care: Senate vote Saturday

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:22:07 -0800

To debate or not to debate the Senate's health care reform bill; that is the question.

Public pay is bloated. But don't forget the virus source

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:30:00 -0800

The wild escalation of top salaries goes across both sectors – and so must the solution: a high pay commission

If ever there were a need for a high pay commission to put some rationality into out-of-control top pay scales, this is it. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is looking for a new chief executive. Its chairman, Trevor Phillips, called in Hayes Consulting to establish what the salary should be. It suggested a staggering £200,000 – more than the prime minister. Why so much?

It's a poisoned chalice of a job, under daily assault from a hostile press that mocks, abuses and misrepresents whatever the commission does. The chief executive is attacked for spreading extreme political correctness, encouraging a litigious culture, and any other social crime that takes a rightwing journalist's fancy. The commission, with its many legal responsibilities on race, gender and disability, is a tricky outfit to manage – but not worth £200,000.

Out of the question, said Phillips, and the job was advertised at a range between £160,000-£185,000 for someone with experience of public management. Finally chosen was a former chief executive of a tough local authority, now a senior official in the Treasury.

Harriet Harman is minister responsible for the commission, but when this appointment landed on her desk to approve the £185,000 salary, she put her foot down. She is the author of the equality bill now progressing through parliament, and architect of its clause one duty for all public authorities to see that their policies narrow the gap between rich and poor. How could the head of the equality commission be paid such an equality-busting sum?

The successful applicant volunteered to accept a lower salary – £170,000, their current Treasury pay grade – despite moving to a more demanding post, but that is still too much for Harman. I haven't named the person, who no more deserves to be singled out for shame than thousands of others. Everyone looks at those above and below them on the ladder – the problem is that there is no one to stop the top of the ladder taking leave of planet Earth.

As for remuneration consultants like Hayes, they are not arbiters at all. They are partly responsible for both the public and private sector's sky-rocketing pay scales. There are only a handful of these pay consultants, all working in lock-step: most FTSE 100 companies use one of three consultancies to set boardroom and executive salaries. Consultants bring charts showing what others get paid, asking if this company or quango wishes to be fishing in the top pool of talent. Do you wish to see yourself as a top organisation, in the top quartile? Yes, of course, they all say. Like Lake Wobegon, everyone wants to be above average, no one wants to be below par, and so remuneration consultants inflate the pay scales. The unjustifiable is justified because everyone does it – as with MPs' expenses, when no one stepped back and said enough is enough. Now the person in charge of MPs' salaries and expenses is paid more than they are.

Harman is challenging the whole toppling edifice. The result is that the EHRC appointment is stuck in an impasse. It's unclear what happens next: it may be re-advertised for considerably less. Harman thinks that anyone who will only do the job for a stonking salary is by definition unfit for a post that requires passionate commitment to the cause of equality. The successful applicant would be wise to listen to the public anger on top pay. Here is a chance to step up and show that service matters most. Taking a sizable pay cut would earn great respect and set an example.

It might lead to shaming others – such as Mark Thompson and his monstrous £834,000 BBC salary. It is less than the head of failing Channel 4 is paid – but so what? The glory of being BBC director general should largely be its own reward. If he had cut his pay to beneath the prime minister's, he would be a figure of respect and the BBC's future would be considerably more secure.

What of the shocking behaviour of John Kingman? Only a year in post as head of UK Financial Investments, the new body overseeing our unwilling investments in banks, he is to leave for a mega-salary, poached by Rothschild – who may yet be gazumped by Lazards. Whatever his talents, his desirability is much enhanced by his pivotal inside knowledge of public investment. He should refuse: "No, here I stay, not a robber banker but a public servant protecting the citizens' interest."

But don't imagine that public ethos is dead. Unsung heroes inhabit every corner of the public sector, quietly refusing enticements from headhunters.

The swelling ranks of private companies providing public services rely entirely on management poached from the public sector. But many honourably refuse. Dave Hartnett, the head of HM Revenue & Customs – high chaser of tax-evaders – could command mighty pay to work for the tax-avoidance industry, but he wouldn't think of it.

The virtue of public servants has been ignored by politicians for many a long year. Conservatives and Blairites instinctively "know" that private is smarter than public. The civil servant who crosses over the private line is not only better paid, but more admired. If pay is the only measure of respect, it's unsurprising that pay wars break out. Local authority chief executives saw their average pay rise 11% to £148,000 in 2008: the highest is on £240,000.

Harman wants a clampdown on mushrooming public pay – and she quite rightly identifies the cause of the problem: "The huge salaries in the private sector have fed across into the public sector in a way that has got to be pulled back." Liam Byrne, the Treasury chief secretary, is conducting a review of public sector top pay, but as Harman points out, this is a virus caught from the greed in the private sector. Overpaid public officials are still paid less than their private sector equivalents – despite the propaganda of the Taxpayers' Alliance to the contrary. There is a limit to how far public salaries can fall behind. Eventually these would become disrespected jobs for disrespected people, second class, depressed and despised.

This umbilical link between the sectors means Byrne's review of public pay will be meaningless if it has nothing to say about private salary scales. The weak promise of a bill to curb future bank bonuses will not calm public fury as this year's bonuses of some £6bn are announced.

That is why the government needs a high pay commission that, as well as defining reasonable top-to-bottom ratios for public pay, can set guidelines for the private sector too.

Polly Toynbee

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'EU wants to be a supersize Switzerland'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:22:08 -0800

The mood in Brussels is bleak as experts agree politicking has triumphed over ambition in the appointment of two new leaders, writes Ian Traynor

Europe's hopes of translating its economic power into global political clout have suffered a severe setback as a result of the timid choices on new leadership made this week, analysts, officials, and diplomats conceded on Friday.

Others countered, however, that the new faces promoted to European leadership positions – Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium and Lady Ashton from Britain – should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Critics within EU structures and experts outside agreed that low politicking had prevailed over lofty ambition in deciding who should take the two posts running EU summits and leading European foreign policy.

Both posts – the president of the European Council (Van Rompuy) and the high representative for foreign and security policy – are established by the Lisbon treaty, finally endorsed this month and coming into force in 10 days. A central aim of the reform blueprint is to enable the EU to punch its weight more effectively on the international stage.

"We've got a great opportunity with this [foreign policy] post," said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank. "Is Ashton up to it? Based on her track record, it is quite possible that she is."

But Carl Bildt, the ambitious Swedish foreign minister who was keen to secure the job for himself, ridiculed the appointment as "an historic missed opportunity".

On the other side of the political spectrum, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the Franco-German Greens leader, said: "Europe is sinking to a new low."

The bulk of the criticism was directed at the appointment of Ashton rather than Van Rompuy since the Belgian, as a prime minister, is viewed as more qualified for his role which, in any case, is being scaled back to that of chairing EU summits and mediating between government chiefs.

"People say she might grow into it," said a senior EU official. "But I doubt it. It's very disappointing. This job demands political answers and strategies."

Thursday's EU summit in Brussels, at which leaders made the two appointments, had been preceded by weeks of argument and contest for the highly coveted posts. The ferocious manoeuvring meant there was no consensus, portending a lengthy and acrimonious summit.

But in the end, it appeared EU leaders did not have the stomach for the fight. The decisions were taken by consensus in record quick time by agreement on obscure figures, neither of whom have the standing or experience to threaten EU national leaders or the European commission chief, Jose Manuel Barroso.

The main criticism was the failure to aim high, instead settling for two leaders seen by many as decent, respectable mediocrities.

"The EU is losing influence rapidly and these appointments make that worse," said Simon Hix, professor of European politics at the London School of Economics. "The rest of the world was expecting big figures. But Europe has shown it would rather be a super-sized Switzerland."

Ashton sought to deflect the reservations, while acknowledging that policy-makers and experts would harbour severe doubts. "I think for quite a few people, they would say that I am the best person for the job and I was chosen because I am, but I absolutely recognise there are a number of candidates around, all of whom would have been extremely good, extremely able," she told the BBC. "I hope that my particular set of skills will show that in the end I am the best choice."

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister who leads the European Socialists, grouping the various national social democratic parties, and who played a key role in securing the job for Ashton, insisted she had "high capability and a smart style".

"The appointments have strengthened the influence of the European parliament and of the European political parties," he told the Guardian.

Hix responded that the jobs were distributed not on the basis of merit, experience, or qualification, but for internal reasons of a European political fix.

"It's a typical example of how dysfunctional the EU has become. Cathy Ashton knows nothing about foreign policy. She got the job because she is a woman, she is British, she is from a big member state. But she gets no respect from anyone in foreign policy circles."

Supporters counter that in her current job as EU trade commissioner, Ashton has proved competent and effective in a tough brief that entails negotiating as an equal on Europe's behalf with the Chinese, the Brazilians and the US.

"She is used to speaking for Europe internationally and she's been effective," said Leonard. "And Europe has real clout on trade. But the challenge is geopolitical, how the EU can build itself into a big global power. And the question is how quickly will she be able to make the shift to a totally different prism."

Amid the fallout from Thursday's summit, at which Van Rompuy was the favourite but which Ashton obtained hers by default, a hardheaded reckoning was tallying the winners and losers.

"Barroso is the happiest guy in Brussels," said one EU official. "He can't believe his luck."

The German and French leaders, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, looked satisfied. Van Rompuy was their preference and Ashton's victory means they face no British competition for the powerful economic portfolios in the new European commission.

There was surprise and drama in Brussels on Thursday, but today a mood of worried anticlimax settled over the European capital. The new age of mature European assertiveness and leadership that is supposed to be the purpose of the Lisbon treaty was less than palpable. Instead there was a familiar sense of nagging self-doubt and decline.

Ian Traynor

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Police chief attacks Tory Met plan

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:59:00 -0800

Tory MP accuses Acpo president Sir Hugh Orde of being 'patronising' after he says it is critical that police forces stay free of political influence

The head of Britain's senior police officers sparked a political row today by savaging Conservative plans for elected commissioners.

Sir Hugh Orde, who as the incoming president of the Association of Chief Police Officers has proved himself an outspoken figurehead, said the Tory proposals would damage the fight against crime and cause resignations from the service.

He warned that some of his members would quit because they believe the plans represent political interference.

Under the proposals, commissioners would be directly elected and have the power to fire police chiefs. Orde has also called for politicians to address the need to merge some of Britain's 44 police forces to create as few as nine in order to tackle crime more effectively. He is supported in this by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson.

But the combination of a desire for less political control and the creation of superforces was criticised by some political figures.

Councillor Dave McLuckie, the chairman of Cleveland Police Authority – which would be likely to disappear under any mergers – said senior police figures could not have it both ways by arguing for huge forces with little or no political accountability. "Sir Hugh Orde is entirely right to highlight the huge dangers of a system which would effectively put police constables under political influence or even control.

"What is a total contradiction is the argument now being promoted ... that we need to revive the disastrous and discredited debate over force mergers and the idea of creating a handful of 'superforces'," he said.

Orde used the strongest language yet heard from a senior police officer in his attack on the Tory manifesto commitment. "If one just thinks about that for a moment, the agenda is local policing," he said. "There will be no votes in protecting people from terrorism, from organised crime and from serial rapists that cross the country because they won't be local and they won't get you votes."

Police chiefs have opposed the Tory plans ever since they were announced, with two particular events further stoking their fears. Last year, the directly elected Tory mayor of London, Boris Johnson, effectively ousted Sir Ian Blair as Met commissioner just days after becoming chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority. In September, Johnson's top police aide, Kit Malthouse, used a Guardian interview to announce he and the mayor "have their hands on the tiller" of Scotland Yard.

Orde added: "Even the perception that the police service of this country ... is under any political influence, I think that suggests you cannot argue that you are a proper democratic society. It's as simple and as stark as that.
"We should not be influenced by anyone who has any potential or suggestion for a political basis.

"I would not be surprised to see chief officers not want to be part of a system where they can be told how to deliver policing."

The Tory plans appear to have united all levels of the police service in opposition. The Police Superintendent's Association warns they will damage the service, while the Police Federation – which represents rank and file officer – is also opposed.Simon Reed, the federation's vice-chairman, said: "We have sympathy with what Hugh Orde is saying about the independence of operational policing. It has been the mainstay of policing since 1829."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Sir Hugh Orde was right to highlight the dangers of the Conservatives' plans to politicise the control of the police.

"The last thing British police need is an elected sheriff leading the shootout at the OK Corral.

"Accountability must come from a broad-based police authority elected to represent all strands of the local community."

Neither Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, nor anyone from the thinktank Policy Exchange, which supports the proposals, were available for comment. On its website the Tory party says of its plans: "By introducing directly-elected police commissioners, and by requiring all police forces to publish crime maps and hold quarterly beat meetings, we will enable local communities to hold their police force to account."

Vikram Dodd

Sandra Laville

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Karzai 'would fall in weeks' if Nato exits

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:24:39 -0800

David Miliband says UK needs more time to shore up Afghan government

The Afghan government could fall within weeks if Nato pulled out troops now, David Miliband warned today as he urged British opponents of the war to give the fight to rebuild the country more time.

In an interview with the Guardian at the end of a visit to Kabul for the presidential inauguration of Hamid Karzai, the foreign secretary said: "If international forces leave, you can choose a time – five minutes, 24 hours or seven days – but the insurgent forces will overrun those forces that are prepared to put up resistance and we would be back to square one."

At the end of a day spent visiting British troops and officials at the headquarters of the international military effort, Miliband said that Afghans were "sad that they need anyone, but they are passionate that my goodness they do – because if we weren't here their country would be rolled over".

He agreed that public anxiety about the war is growing in Britain as a result of rising casualties. "Afghanistan wasn't on the front pages until the last six months for obvious reasons," he said. "Now for tragic reasons there is a lot of interest. What we have to do is explain to people that the costs of staying are real but they are less than the costs of leaving."

He called for the three main party leaders to remain united in support of the war, despite growing unease, in particular from Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader. "Nick Clegg and David Cameron ask serious questions about different aspects of the campaign. They can do that , and they should be asked," Miliband said. But he challenged opponents of the war to show that retreat would not harm both Afghanistan and Britain.

"I don't think British opinion is about to flip to a position that says withdraw now," he said. "But there is a high degree of concern about the casualties, understandably, there is a high degree of concern about the complexity of effecting a strategy in a country with history as complex as this, and there is a high degree of concern about all the partners that we have got.

"There is a natural reaction to 18, 19, 20-year-olds, your neighbours, relatives and your friends being killed. It makes you ask, why are we there, can you succeed, is it worth it?"

Concerns about Karzai's failure to combat bribery and extortion in Afghanistan led Gordon Brown to warn earlier this month that he would not put UK troops "in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption".

After meeting Karzai today Miliband said the Afghan president had asked him "to convey to the British people his gratitude for the sacrifices being made by British soldiers in defending his country. In particular he repeated to me, as he had to the prime minister, his condolences and his shock at the terrible killing of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman."

The foreign secretary said Karzai's estimation of a three- to five-year deadline for the handover of security control to Afghan forces would not mean an end to western involvement. "My argument is not stay or go, my argument is we stay for a purpose, for a period, for progress," he said. "Artificial timetables just give succour to your enemy. We are going to transition, and transition is a better word than exit.

"The argument we have to take on is the argument that it is futile, and we have to take it on directly by saying that it is making a difference towards a goal – the goal is hard, but the goal is clear."

Miliband agreed that Britain should look beyond its military efforts in the south of the country.

"It is important we don't fall into a trap of 'Helmandshire', that we are creating a colony," he said.

Julian Glover

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Postal strike fears grow as talks stall

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:08:40 -0800

Union may suspend talks if no headway made over modernisation plans

The postal dispute could reignite next week if Royal Mail continues to stall over peace talks, sources close to the Communication Workers Union have warned.

The two sides began negotiations under the auspices of mediation service Acas this week but it is understood that little headway has been made. "So far, it's been a case of talks about talks," one source said. "If no progress is being made you can't rule out the union going back to strike action."

Next Thursday, the CWU will review what progress has been made after it called off strike action earlier this month in order to try to thrash out an agreement with Royal Mail over its modernisation programme.

If the union believes that the two sides are no closer to reaching a deal, it is expected to suspend the talks.

Further strike action before Christmas could also be announced as the ballot for industrial action which was passed by CWU members last month still remains in place.

The Guardian has also learned that Roger Poole, until recently the chairman of the Northern Ireland Parades Commission, has been appointed by the two sides to act as an independent mediator.

Poole, also a former assistant general secretary of the Unison union, began mediating on Thursday.

Four more days of talks are due next week, culminating in Thursday's review when the CWU – as well as Royal Mail and Poole – will assess how well negotiations are progressing.

Earlier this month, the two sides reached an "interim agreement" where the CWU committed to calling off industrial action in return for holding talks under Acas to agree how to implement a long term modernisation programme of the business.

This would cover the introduction of "walk sequencing machines" next year, the impact of modernisation on postal workers' workloads, pay and job security. The two sides have also committed themselves to local reviews of practices to resolve local disputes.

But it is understood that Royal Mail union members in London, where the industrial action was the most severe, remain particularly concerned over Royal Mail practices.

Royal Mail is far less efficient than its rivals and postal workers have to spend hours each day sorting mail by hand before beginning deliveries.

The company is introducing automatic sorting machines but the union argues that managers are using modernisation to push through working practices resulting in unreasonable workloads and hours for staff. There is also concern that the changes will lead to thousands of redundancies.

The interim agreement allows for a "period of calm" with the "intention of both parties to make significant progress by early December with the aim of concluding a final agreement by the end of 2009".

Tim Webb

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Parental choice on schools 'increases social divide'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:56:21 -0800

Poor parents pick child's school because it is close to home, while middle-class parents go on good academic record

Giving parents a choice over primary schools increases the social divide, a study reveals.

The majority of poor parents pick their child's primary school because it is close to their home, while nearly half of middle-class parents opt for a school for its academic record, researchers found.

Since 1988, parents in England have had the right to express a preference of school. Successive governments have believed one benefit of this is to force under-performing schools to up their game. But academics at Bristol University and the Institute of Education London University argue that parental choice fuels class segregation in schools.

They asked 11,533 parents why they preferred one school to another on application forms. While two-fifths of parents with no qualifications said a school's proximity to their home had been the most important reason for choosing it, this was the case for only 20% of parents with degrees.

Only one in eight parents with no qualifications said academic record had been the main factor in their choice, compared with two-fifths of parents with degrees.

Some 44% of the parents who would be counted in the top fifth of earners in England said a school's academic record had been the most important reason, compared with 20% from the lowest fifth.

The study also showed parents with degrees were more likely to choose schools with a religious ethos. Just over 1% of parents with no qualifications said a school's religious ethos had been the most important factor.

Anna Vignoles, professor of the economics of education at the Institute of Education and one of the main authors of the study – Parental choice of primary school in England: What type of schools do parents choose? – said the findings showed "parental choice tended to lead to greater class segregation in schools".

She said: "Although it would be deeply unpopular with parents, the only way of guaranteeing socially integrated schools would be to run a lottery system. Schools have not got substantially more segregated, but we have one of the more socially segregated systems in the world

"We might give parents a choice for ethical reasons, but if we want social integration, choice will not bring this about."

She added that studies had shown that parental choice had failed to improve educational standards in England.

The number of schools using lotteries to allocate places has risen sixfold since 2001, research by the London School of Economics showed last month.

The system has proved controversial among parents in areas where it has been applied to break the middle-class tactic of buying a house in the catchment area.

Jessica Shepherd

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Hedge watch

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:04:51 -0800

Labour pledged to cut high hedges in 2003. Did it work?

Tory donor probe 'could drag on'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:59:40 -0800

The Electoral Commission is accused of dragging its feet over a probe into donations to the Tories by the company of Lord Ashcroft.

'Gang asbos' extended to children

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:51:27 -0800

Children as young as 14 could be banned from wearing gang colours or having violent dogs, under government plans.

Senate panel clears Burris of legal wrongdoing

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:41:35 -0800

The Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter Friday clearing embattled Illinois Sen. Roland Burris of any legal wrongdoing.

Lib Dems can keep £2.4m donation

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:17:30 -0800

The Electoral Commission rules that the Lib Dems can keep £2.4m in donations which was said to came from a fraudster.

Council red tape 'wasting £4.5bn'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:38:59 -0800

Needless bureaucracy is costing councils in England £4.5bn a year - money that could be spend on front-line services, according to a report.

Police 'may quit over Tory plans'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:52:10 -0800

Police chiefs may quit if a Conservative government forced directly elected commissioners on them, Sir Hugh Orde has said.

After Farage

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:34:41 -0800

Testing the mood at UKIP leadership hustings

Sikh to be BNP's first non-white member

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:47:48 -0800

Rajinder Singh says he supports far-right party's anti-Islam stance

A Sikh man who has campaigned for the BNP in support of its anti-Islam stance has been put forward to be the party's first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh, who is in his late 70s, has twice lent support to Nick Griffin during the British National party leader's court appearances and appeared in an election broadcast for the party in 2005. There have been suggestions that he could stand as a BNP candidate at next year's general election.

Singh, who came to Britain in 1967, used to pen a regular column for the party's Freedom newspaper and has spoken at BNP meetings where he has been vehement in his criticism of Muslims, talking about his experiences at the partition of India in 1947. He was born in Lahore, which became part of Pakistan after partition, and blames Muslims for the death of his father during the bloody split of India.

The BNP's senior members voted last weekend to hold a party-wide ballot on whether to allow non-white people to join. That followed the party's agreement to a court order last month to use all reasonable endeavours to revise its constitution so that it did not breach the equality bill in the face of a challenge to its membership policy by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Martin Wingfield, the communications officer for the party's two MEPs and the its prospective parliamentary candidate for Workington, wrote on his blog in support of admitting non-whites, and Singh in particular. "I say adapt and survive and give the brave and loyal Rajinder Singh the honour of becoming the first ethnic minority member of the BNP," wrote Wingfield.

Singh, a former teacher from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, said he would be "honoured" to become a full member of the BNP.

"I got in touch with the BNP on certain core policies that appeal to me," he told the Independent. "I also admire them since they are on their own patch and do not wish to let anyone else oust them from the land of their ancestors."

In 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the US, he said he wanted to set up an Asian Friends of the BNP group to act as a supporting body and conduit for funds for people sympathetic to the party's anti-Islamic stance.

A BNP spokesman said he would be "quite happy" to have Singh as a member, adding that the retired teacher recognised that he was a "guest of ours". "We have always maintained it's not really about skin colour, it's about ethnicity," he said. He emphasised that the party's membership list, suspended following last month's court order, remained closed for the time being.

Haroon Siddique

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Poll: Public shifting blame for recession

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:37:53 -0800

Opinion about which political party is responsible for the recession is shifting, according to a new poll.

Education body 'to miss deadline'

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:44:51 -0800

Education Minister Caitriona Ruane admits a new single education body is unlikely to be in place by the new year deadline.

I am best for new EU job - Ashton

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:27:02 -0800

Labour peer Baroness Ashton - the surprise choice as EU foreign minister - rejects claims she lacks experience for the role.

Open Secrets

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:03:12 -0800

Are boring Euro documents the most interesting?

Two Arkansas men reflect national health divide

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:56:36 -0800

CNN's John King looks at two men on different sides of the health debate and their senator caught in the middle.

Standards MP faces expenses row

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:43:19 -0800

The new head of the Commons standards committee stands down pending an inquiry into his own expenses.

Puzzling choices

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:09:57 -0800

What EU appointments mean for bloc's future

Yesterday in parliament

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:15:08 -0800

19 November session

Free homecare proposals

The schools secretary, Ed Balls, shrugged off criticism from a senior Labour peer of the legislative programme outlined by the Queen on Wednesday.

In the Queen's speech debate, Balls faced repeated opposition taunts over barbed remarks from Lord Lipsey about the commitment to offer free homecare to the neediest elderly people.

For the Liberal Democrats, David Laws asked Balls to comment on Lipsey's claim that "one of the consolations of your government losing the next election is that it would be to sweep away one of the most irresponsible acts put forward by a prime minister in recent history".

Balls insisted: "We are making a commitment now, with money now, to give support now, in their homes, to the most vulnerable people in society."

Andrew Murrison (Con, Westbury) challenged Balls over Lipsey's comment that the policy amounted to "an admiral firing an exocet into his own flagship".

Balls said: "Not for a moment – I couldn't for a moment begin to even unpack that analogy, let alone know what the hell it means."

GCSE questions

The schools secretary tried to wrongfoot his Tory opposite number, Michael Gove, by firing GCSE questions at him.

He accused Gove of trying to "run down" the achievements of young people by claiming that they only had to respond to "Mickey Mouse" test questions.

Balls asked him to "explain how a fluoride atom can change into a fluoride ion".

Gove said: "Atoms, whether fluoride or otherwise, are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. The way in which you transform an atom into an ion is either by adding or taking away an electron.

"The type of ion you are probably responsible for producing is one that is relentlessly negative.

"One of the problems, however, with you when it comes to tackling sub-atomic particles is that sub-atomic particles, if handled insensitively, can sometimes create nuclear explosions."

Dennis Skinner and the NHS

The Labour veteran Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) launched a passionate defence of the NHS, drawing on his experiences of heart surgery and treatment for cancer.

He praised the organisation and said it was often only when people went through life-changing circumstances that they appreciated its value and life-saving expertise.

Skinner said he had undergone a double heart bypass operation, which led him to admire the ethos and teamwork among nurses and doctors.

MPs' expenses

The leader of the Commons, Harriet Harman, moved to reassure voters that the government was determined to implement reforms to MPs' expenses.

Sir George Young, her Tory shadow, called for assurances that the government would support the opposition if it tabled amendments to forthcoming legislation to implement Sir Christopher Kelly's reforms in full.

Harman told him: "If there are any other issues you think do need legislation ... If there are any issues where members feel they can't be dealt with by resolution of the house or by the existing powers of the existing Ipsa [Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority] ... I would be happy to discuss those issues.

"I don't want anybody to convey to the public the idea that we have all gone on to the back foot on this."

Employment of MPs' spouses

Moves to ban MPs from employing wives and husbands at taxpayers' expense do not require further legislation, Harman said.

The Ipsa did not need a legal right to bar spouses but would instead not reimburse MPs, she added.

NHS drugs

The shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, called for a system of "value-based pricing" for NHS drugs after the disclosure that patients with advanced liver cancer would be denied a new drug, Nexavar, under draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

"It will be our intention to move to a system of value-based pricing in the NHS, so the reimbursement price to pharmaceutical manufacturers should be reflective of the value of that medicine – the therapeutic value, the innovative value and where appropriate the wider value to society," he said.

The health secretary, Andy Burnham, said Nice's decision was "provisional and subject to appeal".

The X Factor v the European Council

The Tory Nigel Evans said it was "rather bizarre" that more people were interested in The X Factor's "Jedward" twins than the future president of the European Council.

Harman said she could not work out how The X Factor related to the "important issue of making sure there was a coherent voice for Europe".

UK 'a failed nation'

The UK is beginning to look like a "failed nation", with the government's foreign policies adding to division and confusion caused by "multicultural mayhem", the Tory peer Lord Howell of Guildford said.

He added that a new government would have to deal with a changed global context that the present administration was not tackling.

The Foreign Office minister Lady Kinnock of Holyhead, pointing to Tory policy on Europe, warned there was "no future in diplomacy by tantrum".

Infected haemophiliacs

The introduction of a measure aimed at helping thousands of haemophiliacs infected with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood transfusions was welcomed by campaigners.

The contaminated blood (support for infected and bereaved persons) bill, piloted by the former Labour minister for the disabled Lord Morris of Manchester, was given a Lords first reading but stands little chance of becoming law.

Harriet Harman fan club

Peter Bone (Tory, Wellingborough) told Harman he had set up a Harriet's Official Tory Supporters group – HOTS – but was the only member.

He congratulated her on winning the Spectator's Parliamentarian of the Year award.

She replied: "All the time I've spoken to you across the dispatch box, I realise I have not realised you were hot before. Thanks for pointing it out."

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Helpline for 'ignored' children

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:51:27 -0800

A helpline for children who feel their personal problems are ignored is announced along with a five-year plan on children's rights.