Tony Blair (or was it Alistair Campbell) famously said at the 1997 election victory: “The next general election campaign starts tomorrow.” Clearly this strategy worked for him in terms of giving Labour an unprecedented two, and then three terms of office. But it also tied his hands about what he could actually accomplish in the time. As Charles Kennedy pointed out a little later, New Labour had a massive majority, but appeared to have the ambition of a government leading a hung parliament.

People (even people who liked him) criticised Blair for being all spin and no substance. Many thought this was a surface thing, based around the way Campbell controlled the cabinet press office. In fact, it was the very heart of Blair’s approach — to maximise the length of Labour’s administration, at the expense of its depth.

Brown needs to recognise — publicly as well as privately — that the next election is as good as lost. Even if he somehow clings on to power, he will not have the majority which he does now, which, despite the many rebellionnettes, is still sufficient to push through many much needed programmes. In fact, such a strategy is Brown’s only real hope of an outright victory: if he pursues an ambitious and confident programme, he may find that the public turns to be behind him.

So what should Brown be doing? Three things — first, dismantle cumbersome but failed Labour experiments (but keeping, of course, the things which did work). Second, introduce a long-needed simplification and reduction of legislation. New Labour has been creating new crimes as if law was going out of fashion. They need to turn the clock back. Third, complete the reorganisation of the House of Commons and House of Lords which they have been fitfully working on, and abandoning whenever it became difficult, and settle once and for all the question of either regional assemblies or an English parliament.

None of these things are uniquely New Labour’s fault. The public sector is full of the remnants of failed experiments by many governments. Legislation has been increasing for more than fifty years. The reorganisation of the House of Lords has been rumbling on for almost a century. But these would be landmark changes that would potentially leave Gordon Brown better remembered than Tony Blair.

At the time, John Major, who faced the same unwinnable future, was one of Britain’s most derided prime ministers. Today, with the Northern Ireland peace process now complete, and a slew of medals for British Olympians, people are taking another look. Brown resembles Major far more than Blair ever resembled Thatcher. He needs now not merely to resemble, but also to emulate, if he is to be any more than a blip on British history.

I intend to post a full report shortly. The trip was remarkable: a fact-finding tour which transformed my view of former Soviet Asia (or, as some maintain, former Soviet Eastern Europe). Sadly, the already grim situation in many parts of Armenia, which has never fully recovered from the 1988 earthquake and the collapse of the Soviet Union three years later, is likely now to get significantly worse. Georgia is Armenia’s sole route — apart from ruinously expensive air transport — for imports and exports. What is more, Georgia announced on Monday that it would be abruptly reducing shipments of Russian gas to Armenia. The situation in Georgia and its aftermath are a tragedy which is still unfolding, and this must never be forgotten. But we must also not overlook the knock-on effect on a nation which desperately needs to become economically self-sustaining.

Doctor Who not really your thing? Then perhaps you remember seeing the first two episodes of the fifth series of Spooks, when Harry Pearce and someone unnervingly like Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti are imprisoned under a ‘temporary detention order’.

How do these award winning dramas connect with the rather more lacklustre Gordon Brown? In this: both present a picture of Britain after a few shocks have caused people to put far too much hope and trust in their leaders, and the leaders have responded by rescinding traditional British freedoms for the greater good.

Clearly, a series of invasions by aliens are unlikely to be on the horizon, and even the MI-6 (as script writers still insist on calling SIS) plot which triggers the Spooks episode is pure fiction, notwithstanding what we now know about Harold Wilson’s fears when he was in office.

But the great historical example of this, to which all such fiction alludes, which still looms like a spectre over all debates over freedom, that is, the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s, was neither triggered by aliens nor by the machinations of sinister and secret government agents. It was triggered by the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, and the willingness of ordinary people to sacrifice traditional freedoms for the sake of a supposedly better world.

Gordon Brown has just put through the most wholesale reduction of liberties since the establishment of the Magna Carta. It is unlike anything in the English speaking world. More chilling was its reception by the public. Most people, according to polls, backed Gordon Brown. One man on a vox pop suggested that Brown should go further: “anyone who commits a crime should be kept in prison, until they are either sentenced, or not sentenced”. In other polls, we learn that most people are dissatisfied with the legal system, and want more powers for police and the courts to deal with the criminals swiftly.

Perhaps this all sounds like liberal hand wringing. But, in law, Gordon Brown has created a situation where people may be imprisoned without the intervention of the courts in a situation far short of a genuine emergency. In the six cases that the existing (and equally malign) 28 day legislation has been used, half of the people were never charged. That is to say, no evidence was acquired either before or during their detention that provided a reasonable case for prosecution. But if there was no evidence before their detention, on what basis were they detained in the first place?

In Zimbabwe, the Movement for Democratic Change has pulled out of the elections, ostensibly because they will not be ‘free and fair’, though we all knew that they would not be free and fair anyway, but, in reality, most probably because they recognised that violence and killing would increase until Mugabe was confident of victory, and even if Morgan Tsvangirai was victorious, there would be no reason to believe that Mugabe would step aside. But Mugabe has nothing like the legal power to fix the election which Gordon Brown has just given himself. Under the 42 day rule, Mugabe could have had virtually the whole of the MDC rounded up on suspicion of terrorism. He has more or less accused them all of terrorism anyway, he merely lacks a law that would give him the powers he wants.

Of course Gordon Brown would never do such a thing. But, when Lord Carrington negotiated the creation of Zimbabwe in 1980 out of the civil war in Rhodesia, nobody ever thought Robert Mugabe would do such a thing. The whole world watched the ‘miracle of Rhodesia’. The world watched again when the office of prime minister was abolished in 1987 in favour of an executive president.

Clearly, in a world of better organised criminals and better organised terrorists, we need a legislative framework which enables police and the security service to function effectively. But, at the moment, as a nation we are sleep walking into a future where our basic freedoms have been abolished in order to protect them. Can we be so blind? Or is it that most of us feel unthreatened, because we know that only Muslims, and extremists at that (or their family and friends) are liable to be targeted? What about when that is extended to Eastern Europeans? And what to Jews? And then trade-unionists? Then evangelical Christians? Political opponents of the government of the day?

In the words of Martin Niemöller, protestant pastor who died in a Nazi concentration camp:
First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

If twentieth century history has a lesson, then it is this: when tyranny comes, it does not come as an onslaught, but little by little, as one freedom after another is eroded.

On the surface of it, this sounds like the classic story of political hubris: public pressure forces a politician to champion a moral cause, only for them to be found out as a culprit. It’s the old story that dogged John Major’s ‘Back to Basics’ campaign, although Major himself wasn’t found out until years later, and, in any case, by ‘Back to Basics’, he really meant returning to Conservative economic basics, not basic moral values.

Far be it from me to defend the Conservatives, but on this occasion I need to come out and say that this story is not the simple one that it appears to be, and that Caroline Spelman deserves a fairer hearing, and a second chance.

We could talk about it being ten years ago, at a time when things were less clear cut, we could talk about the fact that it appears that the nanny genuinely did a bit of phone answering and message taking, and we could talk about the fact that Caroline Spelman was a new and inexperienced MP, who probably got some bad advice from someone. We could also point out that, if she hadn’t taken a stand to clean up the Tory party, nobody would even be talking about things that took place ten years ago.

I’m not convinced that any of those things stand up on their own, and I’m not convinced that, if they don’t stand up singly, that they have any value cumulatively.

However, there is one thing which puts this story in a completely different light from the Conway, Chichester and other scandals we have seen.

It is this: Caroline Spelman stopped what she was doing of her own accord. This is absolutely crucial, and none of the media commentators seem to have recognised its importance. Spelman was not threatened with blackmail to make her stop, she was not put under party discipline to make her stop, she did not receive angry letters from her constituents, or face tough questions from journalists, or a series of high profile media stories. She looked at what she was doing, decided that — whatever advice she had been given before, whatever anybody else was doing, and whatever the personal benefits of carrying on — it wasn’t right, and it wasn’t going to be part of her lifestyle as a politician.

Some would see this as an admission of guilt. In fact, it is an all too rare demonstration of moral purpose.

Whether Caroline Spelman knew what she was doing was wrong or not when she started doing it, she reached a point where she decided she should not be doing it, and stopped. Some people might say that this is all very well, and might let her off the hook technically, since it supports the claim that she was unaware she was breaching the rules, but still does not excuse her setting herself up to clean up the affairs of other Tory politicians. In fact, it is exactly the moral quality which someone needs who wishes to challenge others to follow her example: “if you become aware you are breaching the rules, stop”.

Have we learned nothing from 2000 years of the New Testament. Or, for those who bitterly oppose the moral teaching of Jesus Christ having any role in modern society, have we learned nothing from twelve years of Harry Potter? We cannot take the magic of Hogwarts into the real world, but Dumbledore and his second chances have a lot to teach us.

In an ideal world, all politicians would all be perfect all of the time. But in the real world, it’s not just that not all politicians will be perfect, but that all people will be imperfect. Again, that’s something we could have picked up from faith, or children’s literature, if we didn’t have the perspicacity to spot it ourselves. In the actual world we live in, it is far more important to have politicians with the integrity to change what they do when they realise they are doing it wrong, than to have politicians who have never yet been found out. It is exactly the quality of ‘carrying on until you are found out’ which is the essence of sleaze, although it is usually then followed by ‘denying it as much as possible’.

In this, Caroline Spelman has also shown that she is different from the sleaze brigade: she has voluntarily referred the matter to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

It may seem rather surprising that I am defending a Tory here. But my fear is that Caroline Spelman will go the way of Estelle Morris — someone who didn’t feel she was good enough at her job to stay in politics (despite some quite substantial evidence to the contrary), and left, making way for those who really were not good enough. If Caroline Spelman stands down as Tory Party Chair, and subsequently as an MP, she will not be replaced by a Tory who is more honourable, merely by a someone who is better at appearing honourable.

This is a superb result on a night where, in many places, the Tories were counting up their trophies.

Well done to all those who made it happen!

A gang which cheated thousands of holiday makers out of a total of more than £6 million have been given sentences of between three and seven years, but £5.6 million of the money is unrecovered, and will be paid back by credit card and insurance companies and an industry body. So, is this a fair sentence, or are we encouraging criminals?

A few months ago someone broke into my car. He caused about £500 worth of damage, didn’t get my SatNav which wasn’t in the car anyway, but did find my iPod which I had left somewhere because I’d forgotten about it. In exchange, he left behind one drop of blood which, thanks to CSI Bordesley Green (soon to be a major US series endlessly repeated on Channel 5), resulted in a conviction and two months in jail. He probably got fifty quid for my iPod, or maybe as little as twenty. Twenty pounds for two months in jail — you’d think that would deter him. As it happens, in the week that he would have got out, my car was broken into in exactly the same way again, and with the things rummaged through identically. This time the thief didn’t get anything, only broke a window (the previous time he destroyed the locking glove compartment), and left no blood behind. Same bloke? Very probably. If it was the same bloke, then he clearly decided that risking two months in jail was worth it for an iPod.

2 months for £20, versus three years for a million pounds (I understand there were six in the gang). To make crime pay at the same rate, the holiday-scam gang should have been given 4166 years each. Or the kid who broke into my car should have been given 58 minutes.

Our system doesn’t add up. Of course, the gang now have criminal records, and will be tagged by the police if ever they try to scam again. But if the bloke who stole my iPod read the story, he’s probably thinking that three years for £1 million is time worth doing. After all, to earn that much, once you take income tax into account, he would have to be on more than half a million a year. Which, unless he also has talents in football and gets picked by a top side, is unlikely ever to come his way.

There are three things which deter criminals, and you need all three to make the system work. There has to be a high chance of them being caught, there has to be a relatively short time between the offence and the conviction, and the punishment has to significantly outweigh the apparent benefits of committing the crime. As a nation, we seem addicted to increasing the sentences for crimes we find particularly horrifying. This is emotionally satisfying, but doesn’t actually help: making the criminal certain he (or she) will be caught, and catching them quickly, before they offend again, is a much more effective strategy. However, with crimes where the criminal believes they are getting a substantial financial benefit, the penalty must be substantial enough that, even with calculations about the likelihood of being caught, the kind of calculating criminals who are expert in financial crime and fraud decide that it is simply not worth it. Until then, sentences like this one will simply encourage potential criminals to have a go.

How dismal.

Don’t get me wrong here. I believe Tibet ought to be free, and I believe that China should face up to world opinion. But that is not a blank cheque for protesters.

Here’s the story. According to PR Week, “Any PR agency that works for the Chinese government runs the risk of demonstrations outside its offices, campaigners have warned”. Apparently the Free Tibet Campaign has issued a warning, saying “Any PR agency that is trying to assist China in its twisted distortion of the truth would be potentially exposing itself to our protests outside its offices”.

If this really is true, and if this really what they meant, then I think that the Free Tibet Campaign has established that it is really not so different from the Chinese government it opposes. I sincerely hope that this is not what they meant.

In a free society, everyone must have the freedom to make their case to the media, to other people, and to opinion formers. Hiring a PR agency to help you make that case is legal, and it should remain so. There are lots of people, organisations and groups out there that I don’t agree with. But, in a free society, I must defend their right to make their case. As soon as I decide that one case is too heinous to be presented, then I have moved from being a free-speaker in a free-society, to a totalitarian advocating that only views which chime with my own should be expressed.

Twenty or so years ago, everybody thought that Robert Mugabe was marvellous, for the peaceful transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. Events have shown that Mugabe was never interested in justice and fairness, but only in the promotion of his own interests and those of his own followers. This is by total contrast with the work of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

I hope that China eventually gets the message that freeing Tibet is in its own interests — and, even more, that ceasing to support atrocities in Sudan is a must-do if it is to play a full role in the international community. But I hope also that the Free Tibet Campaign learns that making threats against free speech is neither helpful to their cause, nor appropriate to the society in which we, here in Britain, live.