Yesterday, I indulged in some late night speculation, wondering whether the only ‘impossible’ election outcome – the Queen being forced to send parties back to the country – might now have an outside chance of popping out of the pack.

Why consider such an outlandish possibility?

It’s important to do so, I think, because that’s the only way to make good decisions under conditions of radical uncertainty.

Look at how David Cameron’s team is said by the Telegraph to have acted even before polls closed last week:

By shortly after 7pm on Thursday, Jeremy Heywood, the Permanent Secretary at 10, Downing Street, received an extraordinary telephone call.

On the line was one of David Cameron’s closest aides, so confident of a Conservative majority that he spent the next five minutes dictating the names of every minister in the new Cameron government and the names of the civil servants who would be sacked the next day.

Even in the midst of the most unpredictable election in a generation, I suspect the Conservatives were far too committed to their preferred outcome to be well prepared for the labyrinth of choices that would soon confront them.

Similarly, I don’t believe Nick Clegg had really gamed out the dilemma his push for electoral reform would place all leaders in, as they became exposed to the unpredictable and shifting preferences of their own and each others’ backbenchers; and – through a referendum – to those of the public.

I wonder too whether Labour ‘strategists’ (most of whom are actually dyed-in-the-wool tacticians) saw credible routes to power if Gordon Brown resigned. Or was this merely a Hail Mary pass disguised as a game-changing moment?

(My first thoughts when Brown used his decision to stand aside as a negotiating ploy were: (i) Which of the leadership candidates were involved in the decision? And (ii) Will this later be seen in the same light as McCain’s surprise announcement that an unknown Alaskan governor was joining him on the Presidential ticket?)

In conditions of uncertainty, parties need what I think of as resilient strategies – ones that are not easily shifted from long-term goals, but blend this with a sensitivity to unpredictable outcomes, and which look beyond preferred outcomes to encompass a ‘plan b’ (c, d, e…) for failure.

So here’s a question for parties. Which of them has a ‘red team’ that has been isolated from the negotiations and has been asked to think simply about how the party should react to a ‘no deal’?

During the negotiations, the Tories have made major policy shifts, which they are going to find hard to reconcile with their core platform. Labour has initiated what is likely to be a long and acrimonious leadership campaign, which is going to turn it inwards at a time of national crisis. And the Liberal Democrats have sacrificed their reputation as standing for something other than the ‘same old politics’.

Each of them – in different ways – now stands on unstable ground. Unless their strategies are resilient to changed circumstances, they could find their support eroding very fast indeed.

[Read the rest of our After the Vote series.]

A week ago, when I tried to map the outcomes that would follow a close UK general election, I found it hard to find any easy path to the Lib Dems getting their primary goal – electoral reform with full PR.

In all scenarios, I suggested you should:

• Expect an extended period of political instability at a time when the government will face a highly challenging domestic and international agenda.
• Give at least reasonable odds for the whole enterprise ending in ignominious failure.

A referendum would de-stabilise any government, I argued. LibCon because ruling partners would campaign on opposite sides. LibLab because there’d be an obvious risk of losing the public vote, especially if the electorate was mostly motivated by a wish to punish the government.

And if a referendum on electoral reform was won, then the Lib Dems would of course want an election as soon as possible. If it was lost, the party would lose its main reason for staying in a coalition.

The fear of these outcomes, meanwhile, would make it harder to form a government in the first place. Why would any party form a deal if it couldn’t be sure what it was going to get for it?

Now we are deep into precisely this mess. The problem has been compounded by the failure of leaders to recognise the first rule of coalition-building: negotiate first with your base.

As I wrote yesterday:

[Cameron] is making a big mistake if he gets out too far in front of his party. He’s going to need every single of his MPs to back his first Queen’s Speech. And he’ll then be vulnerable to any subsequent rebellion turning into a confidence issue.

And what about Labour? […] Assume Brown goes, I simply cannot see how a new leader will have any legitimacy to lead a Lib-Lab coalition and take power as PM. For a start, there’d be a messy and lengthy succession process. After that the new leader would be damaged goods from the get-go – tarred with the ‘unelected’ brush that so damaged his (or her?) predecessor.

Sure enough, Conservative backbench support looks even more shaky now that leaders have suddenly offered the Lib Dems a referendum on electoral reform.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown’s shock resignation (planned by a small clique) was hailed as a game changer, but a LibLab pact is already facing attack from within his own party (mutual assured destruction for both parties, according to John Reid).

Amidst the uncertainty, too many pundits have tried to maintain the fiction that they know what is about to happen.

How many times have we been told absolute tosh about the negotiations between parties, by people who make it sound as if they have spent the day sitting on David Cameron’s knee, but are actually passing on ill-informed scuttlebutt, or simply making things up?

The truth is this election has left British politics snookered. Four days after the vote, we are still no nearer to knowing what is going to happen.

I’d guess there’s still a good chance that a deal of some sort will be cobbled together in the next few days, but even then, it could fail to make it through a Queen’s Speech (for LibCon a few defectors will have enormous power, while LibLab will need the support or acquiescence of other parties).

So, at the same time, I wonder whether the only ‘impossible outcome’ – the one commentators said could never happen – may now have an outside chance of popping out of the pack.

Maybe we will see no swift resolution, no outbreak of amity, no sudden agreement on what the ‘national interest’ means. Instead, perhaps a fresh election will be the only solution left standing, and not called later this year – but reluctantly – in the next few weeks.

[Read the rest of our After the Vote series.]

One lesson I took from from the Northern Irish peace process was that, when building a complex agreement, trouble results if any party forgets this rule: the first negotiation is with your own base.

Republicans understood this well:

Sinn Féin has emphasised that it is involved in a double negotiation – with its political opponents on the one hand, and with its supporters on the other. ‘For the IRA’s position to have been released or made public without its grassroots having had the opportunity to engage … would have been a total disaster,’ Gerry Adams has argued.

But David Trimble failed to keep his base on side, leading to a long period where Unionists were unable to project a credible position at the negotiating table. Their leaders weren’t taken seriously, because no-one could be sure who they were really speaking for.

Back in 2003, the British government was terrified that stalemate was allowing Ian Paisley’s hard liners to grab power – expecting this to lead to a titanic (and fruitless) ‘battle of the bottom lines’. Their pessimism was misplaced. The DUP was able to advance the talks, precisely because it had a much firmer bond with its own supporters.

How does this lesson apply to today’s post-election shake out in the UK?

Nick Clegg has been forced to by his party’s constitution to keep in close contact with his party – he needs 75% of MPs and 75% of the federal executive to approve any deal. He also went out onto the streets to talk directly to demonstrators backing PR.

Clegg may end up failing to take his party with him – but at least he seems to be trying to keep them on board.

David Cameron, however, seems much more isolated. The Guardian, of course, has an enormous incentive to sow dissent on Tory ranks (it badly wants a Lib-Lab pact that leads to PR), but its account of rebellion within the Conservative Party has a ring of truth about it.

Most damaging was that not all the dissent came from the backbench MPs (who are said to have heard little from their whips). One ‘senior frontbencher’ was prepared to dish the dirt (off the record, of course):

He ran his campaign from the back of his Jaguar with a smug, smarmy little clique – people like Osborne, [Oliver] Letwin and Michael Gove. He should get rid of all of them. The party will settle for nothing less.

For Cameron, there’s an enormous attraction in binding his enemies, the Lib Dems (or as Alex prefers, ‘the frenemy‘) into a formal coalition. He can dump unpopular policies foisted on him by the grass roots, implicate his coalition partners in all the hard decisions about spending, and leave the Lib Dems too unpopular to ever win the argument on PR.

But he is making a big mistake if he gets out too far in front of his party. He’s going to need every single of his MPs to back his first Queen’s Speech. And he’ll then be vulnerable to any subsequent rebellion turning into a confidence issue.

And what about Labour? I wonder if here, too, the interests of the ruling Brownite clan diverge from those of a (currently silent) faction in the party.

Assume Brown goes, I simply cannot see how a new leader will have any legitimacy to lead a Lib-Lab coalition and take power as PM. For a start, there’d be a messy and lengthy succession process. After that the new leader would be damaged goods from the get-go – tarred with the ‘unelected’ brush that so damaged his (or her?) predecessor.

Maybe, maybe, they might hope to wait out the storm that would accompany them taking office and wait for better economic times to heal the wounds – but they’d have a referendum on PR to fight, and that – as I argued last week – could well get ugly.

Surely better to head into opposition with a decent share of the seats and fight a government that – whether its Tory minority or LibCon – will struggle with some of the hardest political decisions of a generation.

But Gordon Brown has no incentive at all to see things that way – opening up a gulf between the leader and a party he still (just about) leads…

[Read the rest of our After the Vote series.]

I have been wondering how the road to reform of the British electoral system might play out. Assume Thursday’s vote gives the Liberal Democrats sufficient power to extract a pledge from one of the other parties to move this agenda forward, what might we expect to ensue?

An easy way to address this question is to assume the Lib Dems end up in the (perhaps unlikely) position of being given everything they ask for on the issue.

A bill would swiftly be pushed through Parliament to switch future elections to Single Transferable Vote in multi-member seats, right? After all, the party’s policy brief on political reform is unequivocal (if frustratingly lacking in detail) on the subject:

The Liberal Democrats will change politics forever and end safe seats by introducing a fair, more proportional voting system for MPs, and for the House of Lords.

Well, no, changing politics forever may not be nearly as simple as that.

The Lib Dems can hardly claim a mandate for a fundamental transformation of British democracy based on what Nick Clegg derides as a ‘clapped out’ and ‘potty’ electoral system.

After all, the party knows that polls suggest public ambivalence, at best, about PR. It would have to offer a ‘fair vote’ on a concrete reform proposal. To me, that means a referendum would be inevitable.

Lib Dems concur. The party’s manifesto describes STV as its ‘preferred’ system, but it also promises to ‘introduce a written constitution’:

We would give people the power to determine this constitution in a citizens’ convention, subject to final approval in a referendum.

So, in the Lib Dem ‘dream scenario’, a government would be expected to

1. Set up a process that it wouldn’t fully control (and that’s not to criticise the need for inclusion and consultation).
2. Through that process, agree a constitution that would contain a package of issues that went far beyond electoral reform.
3. Put the whole package to an up-or-down vote and then live with the consequences.

All this would, presumably take time (creating new constituencies would then take even longer). In some ways, this would be good for the stability of a coalition. After all, the Lib Dems will have an enormous incentive to trigger a new election once PR is in place.

But there would be considerable political dangers as well. One can’t help being reminded of the tortuous process that led to the Lisbon Treaty. It also started life at a citizen’s convention and then floundered through a series of referenda.

Surely a Lib Dem-ish government would risk losing a vote on PR because the electorate objected to other parts of the proposed constitution; or was angry with the government for other reasons (highly likely, in an era of austerity) and used the referendum to punish it.

And if the referendum was rejected, wouldn’t the government fall as well? Either because the Lab Dems pulled support in a huff. Or because the government was simply discredited by losing such as important vote. (more…)

So with a week to go until polling day and the polls still suggesting the possibility of a hung Parliament as the result of the gripping election campaign currently underway in Britain, this is as good a moment as any to start thinking through how such a scenario might pan out – and what it will mean for Whitehall and foreign policy.

First, the obvious question of what colour coalition we might end up with. Many in Labour had assumed that the Lib Dems’ natural inclination would be to snuggle up with them, given their shared progressive tendencies. Rather a rude awakening for them, then, to see Nick Clegg distancing himself from Labour last weekend – prompting plaintive noises from David Miliband on Twitter, who complained that

“Clegg swerve to back Tories needs to be explained to all progressive minded voteras. Old politics not new.”

But according to a senior Tory I spoke to earlier this week, it’s straightforward political logic that the Conservatives would be the Lib Dems’ first choice as a coalition partner, given the political risks they’d run for the next election campaign if they were seen to have propped up “the fag end of an unpopular government”. Well, maybe, maybe not – Lib Dem activists and MPs, most of whem are well to the left of Nick Clegg, might have something to say about that.

More interestingly, though, this same Tory also suggested to me that David Cameron himself might secretly prefer a coalition with the Lib Dems – if the choice is between that and a wafer-thin outright majority.  Cameron’s own position as party leader would be secured by an outcome that puts him in Number 10, coalitions included. But the wafer thin majority scenario would face him with the horrendous possibility of his administration being John Major 2.0 – with Number 10 held to ransom by MPs well to the right of the Cameroons’ Tories.  (As polling of the Conservatives’ prospective parliamentary candidates shows, many of the likely new intake of Conservative MPs are not, shall we say, in the same place as Global Dashboard readers on issues like Europe or climate change).

A coalition government, on the other hand, might strengthen Cameron’s hand considerably – above all when it comes to making the tough calls needed on public spending cuts. A government with a tiny majority and less than a third of the popular vote has a de facto legitimacy problem in taking brutal decisions. A coalition with 60% of the popular vote, on the other hand, will find it much easier to claim a serious mandate – if it can agree a joint program.

But it’s also too soon to rule out the possibility of a Lib / Lab coalition. There’s a whiff of panic in the air, with even seasoned commentators questioning whether Labour could be obliterated as a political force. My old boss Matthew Taylor said two days ago that “if Labour trails in a bad third next week, a divided, demoralised and impoverished Party could easily go into a long term decline, becoming a Party whose highest realistic aspiration is to a be a minority partner in a future coalition”; Rachel Sylvester, too, asks whether we’re looking at “the end for Labour”. All this may make for fertile ground for a further-reaching coalition deal than the Tories would be willing to offer – and note that Nick Clegg followed his appearance on the Andrew Marr show with an interview with Patrick Wintour setting out his terms for a deal with Labour.

Whichever of the two big parties the Lib Dems get into bed with in a hung parliament scenario, a massive what-if will be whether The Deal is just a short term political pact – on that runs through to October 2011, say – or a proper continental-style Coalition, built to last for a four year term.  And that brings us to one of the biggest questions in all this: what would be the Lib Dems’ top negotiation priorities.

To the extent that the media are asking this question, their main assumption is that it will be electoral reform that sits at the top of Nick Clegg’s shopping list.  But while that certainly does matter for them, the other sine qua non will be as many seats in the Cabinet as possible. This is all about being seen to be a serious party, ready for government. Today, the Lib Dems have zero ministerial experience, and only two front benchers with national recognition (Clegg and Vince Cable). But if they secured – say – five Cabinet seats, and held on to them for four years, then that could shift how people see the party for good.

I agree with that analysis – and would only add that given the public spending context, there’ll be much more of a premium on some jobs than others. Of course, the obviously top jobs – PM, Chancellor, Foreign and Home Secretaries – will be desirable simply by dint of profile and prestige, even if (as in the case of Chancellor) they’ll be unpopular due to spending cuts. (Interesting to note, incidentally, that in his Paxman interview, David Cameron ruled out any possibility of Vince Cable being Chancellor in a Tory / Lib Dem coalition, saying he disagreed with his underlying analysis of the crisis. That would of course increase the chances of a Lib Dem foreign secretary, always a more politically straightforward job to give to a ‘frenemy’: c.f. David Miliband under Gordon Brown, Joschka Fischer under Gerhard Schroder).

As for the other posts in the Cabinet, I think they’ll fall into two camps. On one hand, there’ll be the big public spending departments: Children & Schools, Housing & Planning, Work & Pensions, Communities & Local Government, Transport, Defence, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Running any of these departments will, for the most part, involve a whole world of pain: unpopular cuts, furious public sector workers who will spend much of their either abusing you or on strike (or both), and a steady stream of bad news stories. I’d also include Health in this list, as I simply don’t believe that any party will be able to protect it a hundred per cent.

And on the other hand, those departments that are not primarily about spending money: Business & Innovation, International Development, Energy & Climate, Environment & Food, Culture (plus the Leaders of both Houses, and Chief Whip). Given the choice, wouldn’t you rather have one of these?  And what’s interesting from a Global Dashboard perspective is that suddenly it’s the departments for global issues that are the really interesting ones, rather than (as has traditionally been the case) the big spending departments.  Also interesting is that these are some of the issues the Lib Dems are most interested in.

So much for the political stripe of a coalition government and its ministerial composition.  Next question: how might it change the way policymaking works in Whitehall?

[Read the rest of our After the Vote series.]

ConservativeHome and ConservativeIntelligence have just polled the 250 Tory candidates in the party’s most winnable seats.

The survey finds that in terms of personal priorities, cutting the deficit is top-of-the-league. Helping small businesses is priority two and reducing welfare bills is priority three. Interestingly, three issues associated with the modernising agenda (civil liberties, defending the NHS and fighting poverty) score above winning powers back from Europe and reducing the level of immigration.

At the bottom of the league table of personal priorities is a reduction in Britain’s carbon footprint. Just eight adopted candidates said it would be a top priority for them in the next parliament. It was the only policy goal that fell below 3.0 (the middle ranking). If the Tory leadership presses ahead with a decarbonisation strategy it will need to redouble Greg Clark’s tactic of emphasising the wider benefits of all green measures (eg in terms of energy security or household fuel bills). Candidates’ ‘green scepticism’ is shared by the Tory grassroots. 76% of Conservative members want Cameron to focus on energy bills above climate change.

Earlier in the week, Charlie talked about the Tories’ weakness on foreign and defense policy. In many ways, he gave voice to a view felt across the British foreign and defence community. That the Tories do not have a serious and detailed set of national security policies that can be turned into government action. The contrast to the Obama administration is stark. The Democratic President has been able to populate his administration with America’s finest foreign policy thinkers, all of whom have thought deeply about what a Democratic foreign policy should look like.

The Tories are not the only ones blame for the dearth of policy thinking. The British system of government militates against party-based subject-mater expertise. Parties are meant to develop the broad strokes of ideas, which will then be developed and implemented by officials if they enter government. It is therefore very difficult for the Opposition to attract experienced foreign policy thinkers. The pay is low and the rewards are not as attractive as in the U.S. The most a future British Prime Minister can offer is junior ministerial portfolio, working to a senior politician whose background may not be well-suited for a security-related job.

But one issue can be parked at the Tories’ door. Having canvassed a wide section of the London-based foreign policy community, the one issue that keeps coming up time and again is the Tories’ euro-scepticism. As one senior (and decidedly euro-sceptic) thinker told me: “The Tories are rowing back on the pragmatic NATO-EU policy that Malcolm Rifkind developed when he was Defence Secretary.” A widely-respected senior military commander told me only two days ago: “It’s as if a veil descends across their faces when Europe comes up. They don’t even want to engage. But this is not about a European army; it’s about being able to work with allies.”

(more…)

Once upon a time the Conservative Party was the natural home for national security policy. Not anymore. A combination of factors including the very necessary rebranding of the party; a focus on climate change, health and education has meant national security policy (in its broadest sense: defence, foreign affairs, and intelligence) is now, arguably, Cameron’s weakest policy area.

When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, he deliberately set out a different vision than that of his predecessors by focusing on policy areas such as health, education and climate change. This was both a reflection of a shift in strategy – to move the Tories away from its ‘nasty party’ image but also because some of the best minds in the Conservative Party were thinking progressively on these issues (health in particular).

During this process of change national security policies largely became second order issues for the new leader. Cameron delegated these policy areas to colleagues, safe in the knowledge, he assumed, that each would be managed by a safe pair of hands. But he underestimated two forces at play. First the decline in knowledge and experience among Conservative MPs (which is still more than the Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined) in these policy areas and second; a lack of fresh and innovative thinking on national security within the party.

Arguably David Cameron’s first mistake was to assume that experience comes with expertise and sound judgement. In a speech to the think tank IISS on terrorism and national security he was quick to make reference to the ‘wealth of experience’ he had, citing numerous Lords and Dames he had recruited. The message was clear: I’m young and fresh but I have experienced politicians and practitioners on tap. But I’m reminded of a brilliant quote by Chris Donnelly, the former special adviser at NATO – who’s now at Oxford University:

In a period of stability and slow evolution our greatest asset is our experience. But at times of revolution our experiences can be fatal baggage. We can no longer assume that, because something we did worked well in the past, it is likely to continue to do so in current circumstances. If we are to survive living in a revolution, we will need to make a correspondingly revolutionary shift in the way we think about both the risk and the response.

(more…)

David Cameron thinks an IMF bailout for the UK is on the cards:

If we continue on Labour’s path of fiscal irresponsibility, at some point – and it could be very soon – the money will run out. Then you will see the return of what happened under Labour in the 1970s, including emergency cuts to many of the public services on which a progressive society depends.

Ken Clarke, his new minister, thinks such talk is unrealistic and irresponsible:

ANDREW MARR: So let’s return to the main matter then: the economy. Is it possible that this country would go bankrupt, would actually be back in the 1970s position of having to go cap in hand to the IMF?

KENNETH CLARKE: I don’t think it’s a realistic possibility, though I mean I’m as gloomy as most people. I just think 2009 is going to be a dreadful year. And actually I don’t want it to be. I think it’s very important to realise the constraints of a responsible Opposition.

Personally, I think the chances that the IMF will have any money left to rescue the UK are vanishingly small. Jules has much much more on this…

As everyone waits to see what Obama plans to do about reforming foreign assistance in the US, back here in Britain change is in the air too: the Conservatives are coming clean about what they really think about DFID, the Department for International Development.

For a while now, there have been whispers that the Tories don’t really buy into the idea of an independent DFID – and that perhaps (gasp!) they might be considering merging it back into the Foreign Office, where it resided until 1997. Well, following last week’s Independent interview with Conservative aid spokesman Andrew Mitchell, we can put that notion to rest: “We are very committed to DFID continuing as an independent department of state”, says he.

So, a ringing endorsement of DFID, then?  Er, not quite.  Here’s the full context:

The shadow International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said DFID had begun to encroach on the work of other departments and to come “perilously close” to setting its own foreign policy, a role he said should be reserved for the Foreign Office. He said the Foreign Office will be given much greater influence over the use of overseas aid should the Tories win the next election …

“There are times when DFID comes perilously close to pursuing its own foreign policy and that is not right,” Mr Mitchell said. “Foreign policy is decided by the government and the Cabinet, led by the Foreign Office, and DFID should not be an alternative to this. We are very committed to DFID continuing as an independent department of state. But we would make it more of a specialised development department and a little less like an aid agency,” he said.

That left me wondering just which specific instances Mitchell was thinking of in arguing that DFID was coming close to having its own foreign policy.  Iraq? Afghanistan? Climate change? (Thinking that Paul Wolfowitz might not be such a great idea for President of the World Bank?) Sadly, we don’t know.  Earlier today I called his office to ask him to elaborate, but he declined to say more.

This is a shame, on two counts. First, because it’s a cop out.  For the Opposition front bench spokesman on international development to argue that the Department he shadows has come ‘close to pursuing its own foreign policy’ is a serious claim – and one which he ought to be prepared to substantiate.  To fail to do so leaves him open to accusations of offering soundbites rather than reasoned argument.

More fundamentally, though, it’s a shame that Andrew Mitchell wouldn’t elaborate because this debate needs to be had.   (more…)

As President Elect Obama and his new foreign policy team contemplate how to deal with the growing number of security challenges that will confront them on Inauguration Day, a bi-partisan group of experts has tabled a series of thought-provoking ideas for how to reform the U.S government.

The report from the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR) shows the U.S national security establishment at its finest – willing to think far into the future, push creative ideas and suggest the reorganization of vast swathes of government. (Full disclosure: I served pro bono as an adviser to the team). It stands in sharp contrast to Gordon Brown’s timid reforms, outlined a few months ago in the now-forgotten National Security Strategy. In fact, the report is veritable smorgasbord of ideas that any up-and-coming Tory security specialist should pick from.

The first recommendation, which a Conservative Party ought to consider when they take office – and legislate to repeat with every new Parliament — a National Security Review, which should prioritize objectives, establish risk management criteria, specify roles and responsibilities for priority missions, assess required capabilities, and identify capability gaps. This would go well beyond both the traditional Defence Reviews, as it would take in all of governments, and leave the National Security Strategy to elaborate on strategy and policies rather than being the hotchpotch of policies and reform proposals that it currently is.

To implement this, the U.S report suggests National Security Planning Guidance, to be issued annually, in order to provide guidance to departments based on the results of the National Security Review. This, too, would make sense in Britain where the National Security Strategy has not been able to force any change in the way departments operate because it never moved into specific requirements.

In Britain, such a document would have to be tied to the Budget and preferably the Comprehensive Spending Review. But with a National Security Planning Guidance, the Treasury and other Departments will be able to draft   multi-year resource plans for each department and ensure consistency with the National Security Review. Perhaps a part of a future Comprehensive Spending Review would by  a National Security Resource Document, which could contain  which presents the government integrated, rolling six-year national security resource strategy proposals.

The report suggests that a Presidential Security Council replace the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, thus removing an artificial divide. In many ways, the Brown government foresaw this development with the creation of a Cabinet Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development. But the establishment of a cross-government committee was not accompanied by reforms of the Cabinet Office and so did not create anything resembling the U.S set-up. In fact, the last couple of years have seen a well-reported hallowing out of the Cabinet Office.

Adapting from the U.S report, the Conservative Party should look at ways to adapt the idea of a Director for National Security, who would work to the National Security Adviser and manage the Whitehall decision-making process. This would allow the Prime Minister to appoint a political National Security Adviser –- like Pauline Neville-Jones -– but have a Civil Servant manage the bureaucratic work. The Cabinet Office would have to be considerably expanded with permanent staff covering key countries and issues. Decision-making would still have to lie with Ministers and Cabinet, but the fact that modern policy-making require a stronger center is recognized by everyone except the current officials in the Cabinet Office.

I would add the idea of having Prime Ministerial Regional Envoys or in the cases where Britain has a large-scale, multi-departmental commitment, like Afghanistan, Resident Ministers, such as Harold Macmillan’s role in Austria, Duff Coooper’s in Singapore and Oliver Lyttelton’s in Cairo during World War II. These individuals would have the clout to manage all departmental interests, have a direct link to Parliament (and so could keep the arguments for interventions alive) and ensure the necessary delegation of authority. Their constituency duties could be dealt with like the Speaker’s. Now that I’m thinking about the subject, I’d add the previously-floated ideas of upgrading the UK military representative in the U.S to a Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff akin to John Dill’s role during WW II.
 
To get the right kind of people supporting missions, the report recommends a National Security Professional Corps and a National Security Strategic Human Capital Plan to identify and secure the human capital capabilities necessary. Here too the Conservative Party should take note. Though there are Arabists in the Foreign Office and micros-finance specialists in DfiD, Britain does not really have a cadre of national security professionals. And why not? National security work is, after all, the most imrpotant kind of work and now cuts across all departments so it makes sense to create a career-path and incentives for people.

As changes cannot only happen in the Executive branch. The report therefore recommends the establishment of Select Committees on National Security in the Senate and House of Representatives. This, too, makes sense in Britain where the various Select Committees tread on each others toes, and fail to provide oversight of cross-department issues. A Lords/House Select Committee on National Security seems like a good idea.

The next election will not be fought on defence policy and few have been won on the strength of bureaucratic reforms. But the Tories will need to have serious ideas ready if they hope to change the country’s foreign and security policy. This U.S report shows how it can be done.

Picture the scene:  It’s Labour Party Conference 2008, Geoff Hoon is busy in interviews saying the Cabinet is totally united. While James Purnell argues that the party needs a vision on BBC 2,  Hazel Blears talks to the BBC about her belief that the Conservatives will stand on the sidelines during economic difficulties. And then Paul Waugh, Political Editor of the Evening Standard, is handed a note by one Blairite conspirator with a list of names that would make up David Miliband’s first Cabinet.*

Prime Minister – David Miliband
Foreign Secretary – James Purnell
Chancellor – John Hutton
Home Secretary – Alan Johnson
Health Sec – Andy Burnham
Education Sec – Jacqui Smith
Business Secretary – Ed Balls
Defence – Jack Straw
Justice – Liam Byrne
DIUS – Jim Murphy
Work and Pensions – Mike O’Brien
Chief Sec to Treasury – Kitty Ussher
Transport Sec – Yvette Cooper
Environment – Caroline Flint
Cabinet Office – Hazel Blears
DCLG – Ed Miliband
Commons – Harriet Harman
Int Devpmt – Pat McFadden
Culture – Ben Bradshaw
Chief Whip -Tony McNulty

Let the stirring commence.

*Quite a good list – no?

Uniting the Republican Party and John McCain on climate change is a fiendishly difficult task, as a fascinating article by Stephen Spruiell shows.

By the time you’re done, you’ve scratched through so many lines and penciled in so many revisions that the document is barely legible. I wish I could show you my copy of the energy section of the 2008 Republican Platform’s working draft. You wouldn’t be able to read it, but you’d see what I mean.

The original draft accepted the reality of climate change and argued for ‘measured and reasonable’ action, while cautioning against “the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by the aficionados of centralized command-and-control government.”

But it has proved contentious in committee. So what were the rows about?

Firstly, and most strangely, the word ‘global warming’ has proved controversial. Of course, experts tend not to use the term and prefer climate change (which helps “to convey that there are changes in addition to rising temperatures.”)

But Republicans are nervous about the warming word for another reason. They are unconvinced the world is getting hotter. The phrase “increased atmospheric carbon has a warming effect on the earth” has therefore been excised from the draft platform. And climate change has been used in preference to global warming throughout.

Compromise was also necessary to keep the door ajar for McCain’s preferred policy of cap and trade:

The working draft purposefully left McCain enough room to continue his support for an artificial ceiling on carbon emissions. The subcommittee improved the working draft by specifying that any proposals “should not harm the economy,” but it did not add anything that explicitly precludes McCain from supporting cap-and-trade. McCain is still free to argue that a cap-and-trade regime wouldn’t inhibit economic growth, and conservatives are still free to disagree.

Any cap and trade scheme must have no economic downside, in other words. (Or could any downside be balanced against the economic impact of unchecked warming?) Policy responses must be ‘global in nature’ as well, which would probably translate into a tough policy on China.

But this may not be enough for base. To sample its thinking, head over to the Republican Party site that solicits grassroots opinion on the platform. Here are extracts from the five most recent contributions that mention global warming:

Do NOT add “global warming” to the GOP platform. Do not fall for this nonsense. Its a fraud.

Under no circumstance should the platform even mention global warming, unless its a statement to acknowledge the evidence that we aren’t causing it.

I just saw on Drudge that there is to be a plank for global warming. If the Republicans fall for this false science, I have no one left to vote for and our economy will be ruined. Read what Senator James Imhof has to say about it all. He knows.

I cannot believe that the GOP is adding global warming to its platform. How can I respect my party if it can’t even come up with its own scams to increase the size and power of government, but has to adopt scams from the like of Al Gore.

Global Warming is a hoax! Why would we get on Al Gore’s bandwagon?

I would say there’s 80% agreement with the statement: “Man Made global warming is the biggest lie ever sold to the U.S. and the world.” For McCain as President – or for any President who bought a treaty home for ratification – there’s a long struggle ahead.

Over on the Guardian website, Nick Brown, a senior Labour leader, is supporting Russia’s invasion of Georgia to make a partisan political attack against David Cameron. You have to read it to believe it.

No doubt there is cause to criticize Georgia – I certainly have. But at a time when civilians are dying, Russia has invaded a neighbouring country (refusing to honour a ceasefire agreement) and David Cameron stole a march on both Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the Labour Whip’s article is, frankly, pathetic.

RICHARD ADDS: it may be even lower than Daniel reckons.  Check out Andrew Sparrow’s theory that this is all a coded attack on David Miliband.

Jim Pickard at the FT’s excellent Westminster blog has been wondering whether David Miliband really has the common touch.  “Will the public warm,” he wonders, “to the former policy wonk who – despite shedding the previous Mr Logic image – is still best known as an intellectual?”

In seeking to answer that question, he turns to Gideon Rachman’s profile of Miliband from earlier this year.  “Here,” he proffers, “is one extract:”

“Amartya Sen is a brilliant man,” remarks Miliband. “I think his argument that there is a fusion tradition – a liberal tradition that is concerned with social justice – is right. And I admire his work on capabilities, and on freedom as capability.”

Hmm: is that really all that nerdy?  It’s not as if Miliband is the only Cabinet member who’s into Sen: so are Gordon Brown, Douglas Alexander, and Hilary Benn (who quoted his views on freedom at length in his preface to DFID’s third White Paper).  David Cameron turned out to be a fan too, when he made his first big speech on development back in 2006.

Here’s a profile of Sen from back in 2000 by Meghnad Desai in case you haven’t made the acquaintance of this excellent writer; his book Development as Freedom can’t be recommended highly enough.