by Charlie Edwards | Feb 13, 2008 | Influence and networks, UK
Last November Alex posted about Brown’s woes inside the No.10 bunker. Sue Cameron is back today with more insights into life in Downing St.
The trouble with Gordon Brown’s Number 10 is that you never know whether you are watching a farce or a tragedy. The Downing Street machine is so elaborate as to be positively baroque – yet somehow Mr Brown cannot find the levers that will give it lift-off. He and his minions – there are well over 200 people in the prime minister’s office – appear as characters in search of a strategy. Which is where the farce emerges.
Consider: Mr Brown has just appointed outside communications expert Stephen Carter as his chief of strategy. Beneath Mr Carter is Spencer Livermore, who is director of political strategy in the prime minister’s office. Then there is Nick Pearce, who is head of strategic policy at the PM’s policy unit, which is based in the Treasury and is answerable to both Mr Brown and to Alistair Darling, the chancellor. (Do concentrate at the back.)
There is also an entire strategy unit – with 42 staff – headed by Stephen Aldridge. This outpost of the Cabinet Office, housed in Admiralty Arch, provides strategy and policy advice to the PM. It assists other departments “in developing effective strategies . . . including helping them to build their strategic capability”.
Now Number 10 is looking for more top spinners to beef up its strategic communications unit (no, this is quite separate from any of the other strategy chiefs, directors, units etc mentioned above).
I’m told its remit will be to take a long-term strategic view (what else?) as to how Mr Brown can “put together a coherent and consistent story”. There is the rub. As one minister put it: “With Blair I always knew what the story was – with Gordon I haven’t a clue what the bloody story is.”
One of those reportedly approached to strengthen the PM’s team is Luke Swanson, head of communications at Pearson, which owns the FT. Mr Swanson says: “We never comment about ‘people’ things.”
“It’s all throat-clearing,” says one sceptic. “They are avoiding doing anything.” Which may be the tragedy. Mr Brown with his brilliant mind risks being trapped in a cruel, Kafka-esque Whitehall web where he cannot move.
by Jules Evans | Feb 13, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
Looks like another mate of Boris Berezovsky’s might have been assassinated in London…This time it’s Arkadi Patarkatsishvili, or Badri as he was more commonly known, who was the richest man in Georgia, and Berezovsky’s long-time partner.
He was found dead yesterday in Leatherhead, outside London. He was 52, and apparently died of ‘heart failure’. The police said: “As with all unexpected deaths it is being treated as suspicious. A post mortem will be held later today to establish the cause of death”.
Badri was recently accused of plotting a coup against the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili. The government of Georgia claimed they had recordings of the tycoon discussing ways to bump off the president, and that they got these recordings after being tipped off by British intelligence. You can listen to the alleged recordings here, as they’ve been helpfully posted on youtube.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMpHJBK7Rw 425 355]
He was the richest man in Georgia, the owner of Imeda TV station (recently closed by the Georgian government) in which his partner was Rupert Murdoch. He also owned many Russian assets with Boris Berezovsky in the 1990s, including the main TV channel, ORT. Back then, his head of security was one Andrei Lugovoi, who is now wanted by the British government for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.The whole thing is incredibly murky. Badri told the Sunday Times a month ago that he feared for attempts on his life, and his fears seem to have been well-founded. Was it Georgian intelligence killing off an enemy of the state? Was it Russian intelligence trying to discredit the Georgian government? Was it just an accident? If it wasn’t, then one thing is clear – it’s open season for assassinations in London.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia
Paddy Ashdown is in trenchant mood in today’s FT.
With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, Nato in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility. The consequences for both Afghanistan and its allies would be appalling: global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan; our domestic security threat would be gravely increased and a new instability would be added to the world’s most unstable region.
But then neither is continuing as we are. So what should we do?
Some say more troops should be sent and they are certainly needed. Some say those Nato members who are not sharing the burden of the fighting should do so – and they should. Some say we need more aid – and we do. We are putting into Afghanistan one 25th the troops and one 50th of the aid per head of population that we put into Kosovo and Bosnia.
Increasing resources in Afghanistan is clearly necessary, but it is not sufficient. Even if we were to provide what was necessary, and even if everyone pulled their weight, we would still find it very difficult to turn the tide, which is now running increasingly strongly against us.
Adding troops is key to this problem. But as James Travers’ argued in his regular national affairs column yesterday:
Adding 1,000 NATO troops and more air support won’t fix what’s wrong with this attempted rescue of a failing state. As Manley found and studies warn, unco-ordinated strategies countering the insurgency, corruption and the booming opium business aren’t working and demand hurried reconsideration.
And what about increasing resources? Clearly this is crucial – but let’s be realistic. The U.S. has spent the same amount on aid and development in Afghanistan over the past five years as the military burns through in Iraq every three weeks. And resources follow priorities.
So finally it begs the question: do we need a strategy? According to Ashdown:
What we lack above all is a strategy that all (including, crucially, the Afghan government and the international military) can buy into. We know well enough what the objective is – to help President Hamid Karzai’s government to govern so that we can hand over the tasks we are doing, including the fighting, to them.
And based on a strategy, we need to develop a plan – but as Ashdown notes, we haven’t agreed a single person to head up the fractured international effort, with the authority to bash international heads together and provide the support the government of Afghanistan needs to begin winning again. So what would Ashdown do?
Firstly, we (the international community) have to concentrate fiercely on the necessary and not be distracted by the merely desirable. To have too many priorities is to have none.
The first is security.
Our second priority should be governance.
The third priority, linking these two, is strengthening the rule of law, from the judiciary, to the police, to the security structures, to the penal code.
I think governments might suggest that this is what they are already doing in Afghanistan. The problem they would point to is coordinating their efforts . But I think there is also something to be said about how they go about developing and implementing policy; and here I think we need to take a very different approach. I call it Connecting the Dots – and I think it’s what we desperately need to do with complex problems such as Afghanistan’s future.
