大象传媒

Here's what David Cameron said to me earlier today.

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Charles Kennedy returns from his holiday today where, if he's sensible, he will have read no papers, no e-mails and picked up no phone messages. I have a picture in my head of the moment he asks "Has much happened while I've been away?" It'll be the first real test of his vow to stay off the bottle.

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How do I answer those who claim that the media is undermining democracy - those who, no doubt, will point to the downfall or the damage done to Messrs Kennedy, Oaten and Hughes in recent weeks? That's a question that I was asked to deliver a lecture on.

It was rather daunting for someone whose usual output is a paragraph here, a catchy phrase there or, at most, a report of two or three minutes in length. Here - in note form - is that lecture - a summary of which appears in today's Media Guardian.

I hope it will stimulate debate among those in the media and politics who are forced to live in what I've called "a troubled marriage" but also from those of you who don't.

Television and democracy: a troubled marriage

Phillip Geddes Memorial Lecture

I didn't know Phillip Geddes. He died aged just 24 when I was completing my first term here at Oxford. In December 1983 Phillip was in Harrods, the Knightsbridge store, when orders were issued for the building to be evacuated. Realising there was a story to be had, he went to investigate the bomb which took his life. My guess is that he never gave a thought to his own safety but simply had a desire to find out what was really going on and to communicate that to others. I salute him. While you'd never want a journalist to lose his life, that is what journalism in my view is all about

It was Adlai Stevenson who observed that "editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff and then report the chaff". This editor hopes tonight to focus on the wheat - the relationship between politics and the media which has dominated, obsessed and fascinating me ever since I left this place.

Why troubled? Why a marriage?

A marriage? Politicians depend on us in the media to communicate. We on them for stories to communicate - we are doomed to live together! A forced marriage, if you like.

Of course we journalists have - and should have - interests that directly conflict with politicians but we also have a shared interest in increasing interest in, understanding of and belief in the value of making informed political choices.

Why troubled? Politicians are increasingly convinced that the media are obsessed with personality, trivia and divisions while ignoring what really matters - policy. We all too often retort that they offer up only spin, soundbites, or obfuscation.

They reply: 'You started it... by not allowing us to debate openly without proclaiming a gaffe or a split'... and so the bickering goes on. Sound like a marriage to you?

Put it another way - it is a breakdown in trust and in respect Like any warring couple we risk boring onlookers with our row about who's to blame. The public may conclude "a plague on both your houses". Arguable the simultaneous decline in voter turnout and news audiences suggest they have already

I am married to a marriage guidance counsellor. Our relationship is as a result without flaw, tension or, perish the thought, argument! My speech today will try to bring this perfection to the relationship between politicians and journalists.

Stage 1 - Both parties have to recognise they share a problem. Our problem is that cynicism & disinterest in politics are bad for journalists just as much as they are bad for politics. Both of us need to look for the roots of this tension

Stage 2 - Don't allocate blame and avoid warnings and threats

Stage 3 - Both parties must listen to and seek to understand the others' problems

Stage 4 - Troubled marriages require both parties to take small steps - there is no Big Bang solution

Stage 5 - we should look - as the election slogan had it - forward not back.

A change of prime minister and an election in which all three leaders will be new to the game gives us all an opportunity to look again at some of the habits, practices and prejudices that have build up over 10 years. But all will have to move quickly as new habits - particularly bad ones are formed fast.

Stage 1 - Understanding the roots of the tension

It's as old as the hills or as old at least as the box in the corner. We demand access. They fear that access will destroy their control and considered decision making . In earliest days Parliament imposed a 14 day rule - nothing could be reported that had been or MIGHT be discussed in Parliament within 14 days!

Churchill defended this: "It would be shocking to have debates tackled in this House forestalled time after time by expressions of opinions by persons who had not the status and responsibility of MPs." The rights of MPs he said had to be protected against "the mass and the machine".

Churchill NEVER gave a TV interview. He demanded to know "Why do we need this peepshow?"

The 大象传媒 was not exactly fearless at this time - no 大象传媒 coverage of election in 1950 until after polls closed and did not cover by-elections so that "we do not influence voters"

Super Mac you might think was keener. No. He called TV a "20th century torture chamber". On emerging from The Turf Club, Macmillan was confronted with what he called "the paraphernalia of press and television".

This was the first political doorstep. He complained that a chap ought to be able to enjoy a glass of champagne and a slice of game pie with a friend undisturbed

Pols always complained and always sought to control. At the start of the General Strike in 1927 Churchill said "it would be monstrous not to use such an instrument to the best possible advantage". He meant PROPAGANDA. As did Eden during Suez, Thatcher during the Falklands and Alastair Campbell during Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Recent tension stems from early success of New Labour in media management. Their behaviour shaped by terror at return to the bad old days of 80s Labour - splits and loonies - and to avoid a repeat of Major years. Media's behaviour governed by a reaction against the sheer effectiveness of the discipline and control New Labour introduced.

Stage 2 - Don't allocate blame and avoid warnings and threats

One book has - in recent times - fuelled this debate. John Lloyd's book "What the Media are doing to our politics". It warns that journalism risks damaging "the democratic fabric that we need to support us".

John deserves praise for getting the debate going. More praise still for his work in helping launch the Oxford Institute of Journalism. I am self aware enough to know that if he'd called his book "What we can all do to make democracy better" I would never be making this speech

BUT - and it's a big BUT - John looks to too many of his journalistic colleagues as if he's simply taken the politicians' side - he's giving them the cover to simply blame us

Furthermore, he's bandying around warnings and threats to do it. Do you really believe our democratic fabric is under threat? I don't.

Look at electoral turnout, the pessimists say. Look at political disengagement - falling party membership and the like - they add.

I regard this pessimism in the same way as I regarded those books in the 1980s which told us Labour could never win again or the ones in the 90s that suggested the Tories couldn't.

Turnout - like political parties - can go up as well as down - in 2005 it reached 61.2% up from 58.9% in 2001. At the last US presidential election it was 56.7%, the highest since 1968.

Can anyone really argue that there was a lack of political engagement during the build-up to the Iraq war?

If we see another recession with escalating interest rates and unemployment, we'll see if there's disengagement. Voters are intelligent consumers - voting less out of duty, less out of "brand loyalty", less out of habit and more when the stakes are high and there's a clear choice on offer.

Away from the overblown rhetoric there is an argument here that needs addressing - that we in the media are undermining faith in the very democratic institutions we claim to be holding to account and undermining the capacity of our society to have a rational debate about the choices we should make.

There is undoubtedly a real challenge to those of us interested in politics to reach those who are least interested BUT fragile democracy is a phrase best reserved for Iraq or Palestine and NOT the UK.

Step 3 - Both parties must listen to and seek to understand the others problems

The politicians' problem is clear - falling turnout, low levels of respect and trust and a frustration that their only contact with voters is mediated by people who they feel make that problem worse and not better.

Later I will go through some of their specific grievances and how they might be dealt with
BUT first I want them - the politicians, John Lloyd and others - to listen to our problems.

I sense a certain nostalgia among our critics. When I was at ITN one of Tony Blair's rushed across Whitehall to tell me they wished they could have Michael Brunson back on the News at Ten. They're nice like that.

To understand why they can't, take a look at how TV business has changed in then less than two decades since I left Oxford.

In 1986 when I left there were four TV channels. No 24-hour news. No Radio 5 Live. No internet. No mobile phones let alone video IPod, Sky Plus... etc

The News at Ten & the Nine O'Clock News were key appointments to view. Panorama, World in Action, This Week, First Tuesday and Weekend World at the height of their influence.

In the past decade audiences for terrestrial news have been in long term decline - viewing of bulletins down by about a quarter since the early 90s.

Worst among young - fewer than 25% of 15-24 year olds now watch 15 consecutive minutes of 大象传媒 News on TV in any given week. Even for under 45s it's less than 50%.

Attitudes to news have changed - focus groups have shown that where people might lie about not watching the news to cover their embarrassment, now some boast about it.

Problem for current affairs worse - squeezed out of prime time as audiences have fallen. Audiences fell by 1/3 between 1994 & 2001. Fallen further in multi channel homes.

Old tricks no longer work. We used to lure people into watching programmes they didn't think they wanted to watch. Schedulers called it "hammocking" - put a popular programme at either end of a worthy one and the middle got lifted. Not any more.

Corporates are now increasingly being advised to ignore traditional media and focus instead on direct communication. Nike care more about sponsoring football pitches than press releases. This has been noted inside government, and ministries are being advised to spend more time and money on direct communication - writing to hospital users, for example, to tell them of progress made.

Political parties know it - at election time they've turned to the internet, e-mail, text, DVDs...etc BUT most politicians forget it in between polling days.

This is why news and current affairs executives are rightly so focussed on what the audience wants. Pick the wrong subject for Panorama or the wrong treatment on the news and you watch the viewing figures plummet. This explains why we may seem to be shouting louder to get a hearing. We are seeking to get attention where before it came for free. This is why there is more focus on personalities - because that's how people connect with TV.

This is why there's more emphasis on the emotional and less on the intellectual. Because that is what works on TV.

This is why there's more informality and a more conversational tone.

Spend half a second thinking about Big Brother and you see all this BUT it is an illusion to think that news and current affairs can exist in a hermetically sealed bubble unaffected by these pressures.

The challenge we in the media are grappling daily with is how to get a hearing in this new world whilst maintaining our values. Politicians should share with us a desire to find a solution for the world as it is not as it used to be or as we wish it might be.

Stage 4 - Troubled marriages require both parties to take small steps - there is no Big Bang solution

I am going to examine the main grievances politicians have and suggest small steps we could both take to restore trust

Who do we think we are? At root of anger of politicians is their proper sense that they are elected and we are not. They are owed therefore respect and assistance in communicating their case to the people
Most extreme form of this expressed by Tim Allan - Alistair Campbell鈥檚 former deputy - who warned that "With their puffed up self-importance, their unelected, unaccountable status and their huge and corrosive influence on political discourse, Paxman, Humphrys et al have become the trade union barons of our day."

I will turn to Paxo & Humphrys in a moment but let's start at home - with reporters.

Many politicians are angry that at election time viewers saw and heard more of me, Marr & Boulton than them. Let's be clear why this came about - because audience research suggested viewers wanted "a trusted guide" - a sort of sherpa to get them up the cliff face of political jargon and obfuscation.

Small step from them - learn, as Andy Marr memorably put it, to speak "fluent human".
Small step from us - cut back on pointless "two-ways". We have too often replaced politicians who don't speak fluent human with reporters who don't either.

All too often - as Broken News has painfully reminded us - a two-way is an excuse to put the word "Live" on the screen next to a man who says "As I said in my report..." who's standing somewhere where something did happen but stopped happening many hours earlier. There are some correspondents whose knowledge and experience means I want to hear them expand on their reports but there are many others too

Another small step from us - tell people the who, the what, the how before speculating why they are telling us this and what's going to happen next. Too much political reporting tells us that an idea shows Brown is winning/or losing; that the minister is safe/or doomed or will provoke a row/or assuage one before telling us what the story is actually about and how it affects you.

Who do we think we are? (part 2)

The interviewers - Paxman and Humphries and co - those dubbed "the sneerers" and "the interrupters" - are alleged to undermine respect for politics.

Let's remember : this is not new... When Robin Day had the temerity to ask the PM how he felt about the criticism of the Foreign Secretary, the Daily Telegraph wondered "whether the PM should have been asked what he thought of his Foreign Secretary before a camera which showed every flicker of his eyelid. Who is to draw the line at which the effort to entertain stops?"

Let's remember too - there's not many in the "and co" - Marr, Sopel, Neil, Boulton, the Dimblebys, Nick Clarke are all very different.

Clarke is a favourite of mine for his splendid question to Alistair Darling: "For the sake of neatness do you think you could answer the question I just asked you?"

One man's rudeness is another's necessary persistence to get an answer. I got some flak for my confrontation with the PM in the election run-up over Labour's poster warning of 35 billion pounds' worth of Tory cuts to public services.

I felt it was justified as it came the day after the Budget, neither the Prime Minister or the Chancellor were prepared to take questions on it; It was a highly controversial claim and reporters had not been invited to the launch.

With benefit of hindsight it's hard to say that Paxman was wrong to ask Kennedy about drink or Humphrys to be sceptical about the case for war. What damaged faith in politics more - their questions OR the failure of politicians to tell the truth in answer?

Remember too who killed the long-form political interview. When I started at the 大象传媒, Weekend World and its 大象传媒 equivalent and Panorama regularly interviewed at length the PM and her senior ministers.

Tony Blair chose to kill it - avoiding Today, On the Record, Panorama and choosing sofa chats, "masochism strategy" punch-ups and to appear on Football Focus, to call radio DJs on the day of retirement and play quizzes on Richard & Judy.

Outside of election run-ups, he has never appeared on the 大象传媒's Politics Show, having appeared only once on its predecessor On the Record (and that was in 1997) and on ITV's Dimbleby once in the run up to last election.

Lord Irvine was a powerful and influential figure in his government - and barely appeared in public at all.

Tony Blair has always rejected a leader Presidential style debate.

Now to be fair to Blair (and to Alastair Campbell who initiated these changes before the Kelly/WMD row) he has introduced major innovations - monthly news conferences, regular "meet the people" type programmes. The question is what happens once he moves on

Gordon Brown has, if anything, been even less keen than Blair on the long interview.

Brown has never been on the 大象传媒's Politics Show, appeared on On the Record only once and that in 1997 and only twice on Dimbleby.

Brown did do a long film on Newsnight expounding his about on his theme of Britishness. Did he feel that there was no interview that would allow him to do that before being asked when he wants to take over from Tony Blair?

Small steps from us :

• we should continue to ensure there is a variety of interviewing styles
  
• we should try to find a place where politicians can think aloud more without craving for next day's headline
• there should be a place for an analysis interview looking at long term policy and for personality interviews like those in Saturday newspapers
• There are now six Sunday political magazine interview programmes. It's time to try something else

Small steps from them :

• if you want the media to take you ideas seriously, stop avoiding places which might discuss them seriously
  
• retain the monthly news conferences - they've not become the place for grandstanding that some feared and do inform people at length about the government's thinking
  
• add televised daily lobby briefings
  
• agree to a leaders election debate
  

Too much Who's Who... not enough what's what ?

This is the oldest complaint of them all. Remember Tony Benn complaining that the media should focus on the "ishoos" and not on "pershunalities"?

After weeks of hearing about Cameron's drug taking, Kennedy's drinking, Oaten's rent boys and Hughes's sexuality... I can see why.

BUT try telling story of past 10 years without saying the word Blair and you'll see how absurd that is. Power is about people and ideas, NOT one or the other.

AND the story of Charles Kennedy shows the tightrope we walk - damned before for raising the issue at all, damned after for concealing the truth.

AND the story of David Cameron shows that there is a way through. On drugs he drew a line and stuck to it. Hughes, in comparison, drew a line then re-drew it in a misleading way and then re-drew it again.

Cameron is playing the personality game just as Blair did - people already know that he has a severely disabled son and is buying a house with solar panels, has a wife with a tattoo, wears the newest Converse trainers and likes The Smiths... Many here may loathe this and wish he'd talk about the issues BUT who can say it hasn't worked for him.

There is, I contend, no going back. However, we in the media should try much harder to cover ideas and try harder too to keep personality in proportion.

"Pershunalities"

Small step for us

• too many of the alleged scandals - you know the ones that end up end up with that damn word 'gate' at the end - add up to very little. There is a danger of political "feeding frenzies"
  In the recent case of Ruth Kelly and the sex offenders I went out of my way to ensure that the 大象传媒 brought light and not just heat to that story
  
• stop seeing all politics through the prism of personal positioning - Brown/Blair split/ Is Kelly going to survive... etc. It is lazy and risks boring the public

"Ishoos"

Small step for us

• Care more about ideas. Not policy per se but the tide of ideas. John Birt's famous attack on "The bias against understanding" pointed out that most mainstream journalism had failed to spot the rise of ideas now called Thatcherism. I think Labour politicians can now complain that we missed the significance of the child care revolution. We need to try harder to find ways cover developments that do not provoke a row or don't have a "peg" which means they must be done that day
  
• We need to allow politicians to think aloud before they have all the answers. In recent months grown up debates have been launched on nuclear power and road pricing. Even the Cabinet split about smoking bans was covered more as an issue than a split story
• We need to cover not only the policy or the politics but both together. Too often in TV News the political correspondent gives you too much of why and not enough of the what. And the policy specialist gives you all the what and no why or whether the idea's a political possibility. One of the 大象传媒's unique but underused strengths is the number of specialists it has. We should combine more to cover both the politics and the practicalities of ideas. Eg/ on the Turner Report Evan Davis and I worked together.
  
• We can learn from the "new readers start here" mentality of the 大象传媒 News website, Radio 5 Live and newspaper sidebars or what The Guardian calls "backstory". Perhaps the "red button" could be used to give people "the back story".
  
• There is no regular programme for the examination of ideas beyond the daily strands - Today, WATO, Newsnight. The 大象传媒 should have one. Either we should just bite the bullet and create a TV "Analysis" programme - like the old Weekend World - despite the inevitably small audience it will get
  OR how about a new programme called "Why?". Why am I going to have to work longer? Why is my hospital cancelling operations when the NHS has had so much money? Why do we need new nuclear power stations? We should use new technology to lead people to more detailed content. The 大象传媒 has made programmes on all these subjects - when a topic becomes hot we should do more to guide people to them via the red button, the internet or even a special day of programmes on News 24 or 大象传媒 Parliament. Beware politicians who say they wish we discussed the issues more. Did this government ever allow any form of debate on the merits of the Euro OR the need for tax rises to fund NHS? Will the Tories now encourage debate or simply say that we must wait for their policy review ?

Small step for politicians

• Dare to have more of your debates in public - learn from Alistair Darling - mocked for being a speak you weight machine - but who kicked off the road pricing debate
  
• Stop blaming media for lack of debate. Look at yourselves. Did you allow a debate on the Euro or tax rises to pay for the NHS or did you suppress it?

"We know we're boring but it's your fault"

A lot of politicians have almost given up trying to engage and have a negative, risk-averse, overly protective attitude. They say it's the media's fault for pouncing on anything as a gaffe or a split and turning it into a screaming headline. Eg Charles Clarke gave a candid interview once on the number of hospitals in financial trouble and was greeted with stories about crisis. Eg. Tom McNally gave a candid interview on beating drink problems - it became another Lib Dem embarrassment

Small step for us

• we need to reward openness NOT punish it... by pointing out that someone's taken a risk by being candid
• we should also admit more readily when we're wrong or the limits of our knowledge. Thomas Jefferson once suggested that "Perhaps an editor might divide his paper in 4 chapters - heading the first, Truths; the second, Probabilities; the third, Possibilities; the fourth, Lies. The first chapter would be very short." It's something we鈥檇 do well to remember.
  
  I have been doing a blog since returning to the 大象传媒. I relish it in part because it gives the opportunity to give a glimpse of the differences between what I know, what I suspect and what I am merely speculating about.

Small step for them

• Stop being so protective about information that should be routinely given to journalists. I have come to hate the evasion and code of the briefing game. Best illustrated with the trivial example. Travel to White House with Tony Blair and we are forced into a parlour game to guess who's attending the summit. "You're well informed, Nick. The people you'll expect to be there will be there." "Well, I expect X, Y, Z" "I've always said you were well-informed.".
  Meanwhile, our American colleagues were simply handed a print out headed "Summit attendees"

• Stop telling lies however white and however small. You always get found out in the end. These days you just wait for memoirs to discover truth eg Lance Price's memoirs reveal that when Number 10 decided to force Mandelson from office they simply invented the story that he had wanted to resign and had been asked to think about it overnight; and "lied" his words about fact they'd invited Schroeder to meet Blair when he turned them down. John Lloyd has written "These are the kind of things you would be annoyed about if you were on the receiving end of them. They are not, however, large matters. There is no suggestion that the prime minister directed such lies to be told, nor that there was a culture of lying in the Downing Street press office." Sorry John, not good enough. Either we can believe what we're told or people like me will pick and choose what to believe.
  
• Try to engage people in what you're doing - there used to be briefings by the PM's senior foreign policy advisers ahead of summits. Now they've been scrapped. When I suggested to the PM that he be more open with the policy making process the reply came from one adviser that they couldn't trust the papers with such openness. Yet, his news conferences have educated people in his thinking to his benefit - and ours.
  
• Realise that publicly funded bodies can't be half in and half out of public scrutiny eg police on terror, security services on WMD
• Open up the institutions to coverage. Parliamentary rules for TV reporting are bizarre.

Last Stage - step 5. We should look - as the election slogan had it - forward not back.

New technology. A new political era will give us new opportunities
TV news is not dead. People turn in huge numbers when their imagination is captured eg Tsunami, Iraq War ..etc
New technology makes it easier for people to get added value eg 175,000 people tuned in to watch 大象传媒 Parliament on television on the day of David Cameron's first Prime Minister's Questions as leader of the Conservative Party, while there were a further 75,000 hits for the channel via broadband.

On Tsunami there were 8 million requests for streamed video.

The internet can guide people to more detailed information. The internet is now the primary source of news for under 30s in America. On Demand broadcasting allows people to download and time shift what interests them. We need to re-think how people find news and current affairs content in an era of using search engines not Radio Times.
We are incredibly lucky in this country - our politics is not corrupt, our broadcasting is not biased, we have three quality TV news services... here's to the future.

Divorce is not an option. Neither is easy contentment. We are doomed to live together. Let's work at it and stop whingeing each about the other.

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The other day I quoted the Cameroonians' defence of their caution on tax cutting. They say, I reported, that Margaret Thatcher did not pledge to cut taxes in her 1979 manifesto. I should, more accurately, have reported them as saying that she did not make specific costed tax pledges like those which the Tories have offered in their last two election campaigns. One of my more rigorous collegaues dug out what the 1979 Tory manifesto actually said : *

"CUTTING INCOME TAX

We shall cut income tax at all levels to reward hard work, responsibility and success; tackle the poverty trap; encourage saving and the wider ownership of property; simplify taxes - like VAT; and reduce tax bureaucracy.

It is especially important to cut the absurdly high marginal rates of tax both at the bottom and top of the income scale. It must pay a man or woman significantly more to be in, rather than out of; work. Raising tax thresholds will let the low-paid out of the tax net altogether, and unemployment and short-term sickness benefit must be brought into the computation of annual income.

The top rate of income tax should be cut to the European average and the higher tax bands widened. To encourage saving we will reduce the burden of the investment income surcharge. This will greatly help those pensioners who pay this additional tax on the income from their life-time savings, and who suffer so badly by comparison with members of occupational or inflation-proofed pension schemes." *

It left you in little doubt what they intended to do BUT was not a specific, costed and timetabled pledge like those made by William Hague or Michael Howard. It was a pledge to reform the way taxes worked and not a pledge to cut the overall burden of tax which is lucky because Thatcher put up the tax burden in her first few years in office. Expect Team Cameron to use this as a model when they come to write their manifesto.

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Who's fallen into whose trap?

David Cameron's question today was set as a trap. He invited Tony Blair to confirm that all the most controversial parts of his education White Paper would survive when the legislation itself is published. If Mr Blair said "yes" then he could not back down. If he said "no" then he would be caught doing it. Tony Blair said "yes". But then he responded with a trap of his own. Would Cameron give his support to the bill because, if so, he'd welcome it. Yes, said Mr Cameron.

My guess is that Tony Blair's calculation is that the Tories will hate the idea that their votes may save the government from defeat so much so that DC is forced to change his mind - confirming Labour's allegations that he's always chopping and changing. If he sticks to his guns, DC may split and demotivate his party.

TB's other gamble, I supect, is that the public, and even many in his party, are much too confused by his proposals to be able to judge whether he has or hasn't backed down from what he originally said he'd do. Thus he will be able to compromise while claiming he's not moved at all.

(You can watch today's PMQs here...)

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What did I tell you? at PMQs. Today in New Labour's paper of record, the Sun, he pledges to pursue "reform, reform, reform" of education, education, education and to see rebels one to one to win them round.

He's been convinced, I'm told, that Tony Blair sees his legacy as getting Brown elected prime minister and that the biggest obstacle to that is the Tory campaign to convince the public that Brown is "the roadblock to reform".

Where does that leave Prezza? Sulking, say some Blairites, as he is no longer needed to act as the bridge between the two great men at the top. He won't much have liked the Sun's picture of him in a dunce's hat either.

PS...If you watched the 10 O'clock News last night you may have noticed that my voice sounded like a pubescent teenager's on the point of breaking. I've finally come down with the winter bug so am writing this from my sickbed until the voice recovers.

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"I believe in tax cuts, grammar schools and big business. Mr Cameron, am I still a Conservative?"
So asked one Tory MP at a private meeting in the Commons last week.

Last night in a fascinating interview Rupert Murdoch made the same point in public. "If you believe everything he says," the media tycoon said, "there's not going to be an alternative between him and a New Labour government", before going on to warn of the danger that the Conservatives could end up as a "cheap imitation" of New Labour.

Today the shadow chancellor George Osborne deliberately to always put "economic stability" before tax cuts.

So why are the Cameroonians ignoring the squeals of their natural supporters? Because, quite simply, they believe they need, in PR jargon, "permission to be heard" from the millions who are NOT their natural supporters and don't listen because of what they assume the Tories believe in.

Because they think it's absurd to suffer for policies they either don't really believe in - cutting taxes even when the country's borrowing heavily - or policies that they'll never actually carry out - creating more grammar schools or replacing the NHS with an insurance-based system. See David Cameron's for an explanation. This is and was the "heir to Blair" strategy which Cameron blurted out in private and then denied having said.

Given it worked for Blair why not for Cameron?

It might, but - and it's a big but - the difference is that the Left was intellectually exhausted after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Thatcher's victories in the industrial struggle. The Right on the other hand is intellectually vibrant still and believes that it's now winning the arguments as a high-spending, high-taxing government, which believes in simply running the public services better rather than revolutionising them, begins to struggle.

If Cameron appears to be turning his face against ideas then the coalition of right-wing Tory MPs, Murdoch, the Telegraph and co could all still yet halt the Cameron bandwagon.

The Cameroonians' reply to this is that Margaret Thatcher did not pledge to cut taxes in her 1979 manifesto. She focussed instead on tax and union reforms.

The tightrope Cameron is walking is to reassure the Right whilst not infuriating the centre when, if, they think he was only trying to look centre-ish rather than actually be it.

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I can't get out of my mind a conversation I had with Mark Oaten a few months ago when I pressed him on whether he'd ever run for his party's leadership.

He had, he confessed, one big worry.

"Would people ever accept a leader who鈥�" He began to move around awkwardly and to avoid direct eye contact.

"Who's what, Mark?" I demanded to know.

"Well, who's... forgive me, putting it this way, Nick..."

"Go on," I urged him.

"Well.. who's balding."

How we laughed. Believe me, though, this was a real worry for him and ever since, I saw no sign of any others. If only he'd let that put him off runnning for the leadership and doing that photo opportunity with his family. If only.

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When Neil Kinnock - the man who laid the foundations for New Labour - publicly challenges Tony Blair you know he's got a problem.

Tonight Lord Kinnock described school reforms as "at best a distraction and at worst dangerous". He said: "I make this stand with great reluctance, partly because Tony is my dear friend. Partly because I've got great admiration for him as the leader of my party and my country. But the day was reached - which I hoped would never come - when there was an issue of such profound and lasting significance that would affect not just our generation but others, on which it was important to make my opposition known."

He said he's warned the prime minister that he'd be going public, and urged him to back down. "Politics without compromise", he said, "is like a car without a gear box. It can look quite elegant but you won't get anything out of it."

Doesn't he remember that his leader's car has "no reverse gear"?

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• - What's this?

That's the question many wanted an answer to, but today they didn't get it.

The education secretary did reveal something rather different - that 88 known sex offenders had NOT been barred from working in schools since 1997, and she detailed how the police either had or were checking that they posed no danger to children.

A further 210 offenders had been allowed to work in schools under certain restrictions.

This will not be enough to silence all of Ruth Kelly's critics, but there's no doubt that at Westminster most thought she delivered a comprehensive and a confident explanation of how past cases were being checked and how future problems would be avoided.

Those wanting certainty that their children will not come into contact with sex offenders at school will be disappointed. Those accepting that there can be no certainty - and happy to trust the assurances of the police - will hope that this time the system will give children the protection that we all hope can be delivered.

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• - What's this?

It is - or so the clich茅 goes - Ruth Kelly's "make or break day". I don't mean to be harsh but so what? Ministers come and go. Tony Blair lost Mandelson, Byers, Hughes and all the rest and lived to fight many other days. No, the reason Ruth Kelly's fate matters politically is because it is so intertwined with the fate of Tony Blair. She is in charge of the reforms that are "make or break" for him - schools reforms designed to unleash "parent power" and to restrain the powers of local councils to frustrate it. Even if she were not making a delicate statement today on the issue of sex offenders teaching in schools, she would be headline news.

It's not every day that the man who laid the foundations for New Labour - former leader, Neil Kinnock - comes to the Commons to speak to a meeting of MPs opposed to the prime minister's most important domestic reform. It's not every day that 90 Labour backbenchers publicly declare that they cannot back the policy as it is now. It is not every day that David Blunkett urges - in The Sun, no less - his party to "pull back from the brink".

Clearly today's statement matters hugely in its own right. It must start to restore parental confidence that their children are not at risk from school staff, whilst not terrifying teachers with the prospect that their careers can be terminated by groundless accusations. At Westminster, though, minds will turn quickly to whether Ruth Kelly and Tony Blair can restore the confidence of their own party in reforms which many fear will unleash a free-for-all in schools where the richest, the pushiest and the brightest succeed at the expense of the rest.

Incidentally, Ms Kelly may not regard David Blunkett's public declaration of "sympathy" as entirely welcome. He writes that "for a mother of four it must be difficult in the extreme to balance the demands of home with the tyranny of the 'red boxes' that civil servants stuff with papers every night...Understandably Ruth leaves work behind when she finally does go to the bosom of her family...It's no good giving Ruth Kelly all the flak. The answer is the same as that from Hercule Poirot as he gathered togther the suspects in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. They all did it." With friends like that ...

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• - What's this?

Hold the front page. The biggest and most significant political story of the year has yet to be told. You can work it out for yourself if you watch Prime Minister's Questions (not all of it, just a bit) with the sound turned off.

Done that? Notice anything? Yes, Gordon Brown's smiling. Normally he scowls. Is it because he's having another baby? Perhaps but I don't think so. Word reaches me that the Tony and Gordon show is back on the road. They've agreed how to tackle Cameron - by mocking him as Blair did today for changing his policies so quickly and by mocking Tory policy "where it's sensible it's in agreement with the government and where it's not in agreement, it's not sensible". Could there be another reason? Could they have reached another agreement on the handover? I just leave that question hanging... for now.

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• - What's this?

"I'm listening," as Frasier Crane would say. And so are others. Yesterday's Media Guardian ran an article featuring a series of the comments posted on this blog about whether journalists had been too kind or too tough in hinting at, but not exposing Charles Kennedy's drink problem. Can I recommend a read of the comments on my "Why hasn't Ruth Kelly gone?" blog for a revealing debate about the limits of ministerial responsibility (surely they can't be expected to pick safe teachers versus it's their job to carry the can) between Freddy and Ricardo and Stephen. Since starting writing this blog I've not found as much time as I would like to respond to the comments posted on it. It's been too much monologue and not enough conversation, but I have been listening and others are as well.

Let me turn over a new leaf by picking-up on a question posed by Martin - how, he asks, can you pre-announce something - as in "Downing Street pre-announced Ruth Kelly's ministerial statement" Grammatically, he's right. It's a non-word but it does have political meaning in the Westminster village.

Ministerial statements are very rarely announced in advance unless they are for a long prepared launch of a White Paper, for example. A statement made under pressure as Ruth Kelly's will be, is normally announced on the day. That's what I meant when I wrote that Downing Street had pre-announced it. It was a device - that, by the way, has worked - to try and still the daily (hourly?) demand that Ruth Kelly come clean. The aim, in part, was to calm the atmosphere before she spoke.

Incidentally, only a cynic would observe that the day the government chose clashes with the day when former Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, and former aide to Cherie Blair, Fiona Millar, are due to launch an assault on Tony Blair's cherished school reforms with half of Labour's backbenchers and not a few ministers cheering them on.

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• - What's this?

We all now know that accessing inappropriate websites can damage your career but did you know that also includes this site - at least that is if you're a government minister?

No names, no packdrill, but one of Whitehall's finest told me that when he tried to read my latest offering he was greeted with the warning "You have repeatedly tried to access an inappropriate site - this has been noted and logged".

You have been warned.

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• - What's this?

Why hasn't she gone? Surely she can't survive? After more damaging revelations this weekend those are the questions that more and more people ask me about Ruth Kelly. Downing Street's declaration of full support is, the cynics say, surely another sign that her career's coming to a close. I still say she's staying - until and unless she is revealed to have covered up or misled people about her role in this story.

That's what the Tories hoped to prove by calling on her to correct her Commons statement last week. This morning Downing Street tried to pre-empt that by unusually pre-announcing that she will make a Commons statement on Thursday. Last week they tried to still the furore by pre-announcing that she'd survive the overdue reshuffle.

Now this story generates more heat than most - inside newsrooms as well as elsewhere - so I am taking a risk by presenting the latest charges and the case made in her defence. Here goes...

"Ruth Kelly said that 'List 99 covers those barred for life from working in schools' last Thursday but now we know that's not true"

Over the weekend, cases emerged showing that some sex offenders were on List 99 with caveats - allowing them to work with boys rather than girls, only children aged over 14 and so on. The Times today claims that figure could be as high as 700 to 1,000. The Education Department says that new regulations put in place in 2000 allow total bans but before then partial bans were permitted. What about the case revealed in the Sunday Telegraph of William Gibson "personally approved" by Ms Kelly in 2005. The answer, comes back, that the new regulations only allowed a total ban IF the offence (and not the consideration of it) came after 2000. The Speaker of the Commons will have to decide whether the minister was misleading and must return to correct the record or whether she was simply guilty of giving less than a full account and can be allowed to do so in her statement due later this week or next.

"Ruth Kelly said she'd not been involved directly in these cases but the papers report that she 'personally approved' William Gibson in Jan 2005"

I am told that she never dealt directly with any case - not even Gibson's - but that in cases of this sort letters were always sent out with the same wording - "the Secretary of State believes鈥�"

"Ruth Kelly was warned about this but did not react until the story became public last Sunday"

I understand that the letter from Norfolk police sent to Ms Kelly in November was still being dealt with by civil servants who had drafted a reply but she had not yet seen it when The Observer broke the story last Sunday

"The government only promised to change the law when this fuss broke"

The Queen's Speech after the election promised that there would be legislation soon to implement the Bichard Inquiry's proposals to create a single vetting scheme. Consultation on the detail took place last year. Bichard himself said he was happy with the timetable. It is undoubtedly true that this row has pushed forward the time we'll get a new law from late summer to next month at least.

"Ruth Kelly's not told the full story. We have to rely on journalists to find out what's going on"

True. But this is because Kelly has been told that the lesson of past resignations is not to give partial or unchecked information out that is then revealed to be incorrect and forces you to resign - advice Beverley Hughes needed before she was forced out of her job as immigration minister.

"Forget all that, confidence in her is declining"

Maybe, but Number 10's publicly pledged to keep her so it would be a political defeat for Tony Blair to let her go. So she stays. If, however, she gets it wrong on Thursday, she could still go. Of course what matters much, much more to Tony Blair is his legacy project to reform schools. Labour's whips told him that ditching Kelly would not make it easier to win the votes of reluctant Labour rebels. That's why she's still there - for now.

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• - What's this?

Anything you can do I can do better. Babies are the latest must-have accessories for political leaders. Dave's about to have another and now Gordon is too. Over to you Ming, Simon, Chris and Mark!

PS: anyone who's seen the joy Gordon gets from baby John will be delighted for him .

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• - What's this?

Hats off to the Mirror for bringing some fine historical perspective to the debate about Respect. Tony Blair insisted last week that he wasn't being nostalgic whilst simultaneously declaring that his Grandad, who'd grown up in rough, tough Glasgow in the 1930s, would have been shocked at the lack of respect in today's communities. Ah, but he didn't mention his Gran did he? Now we know why. Mary, his Gran - - was a graffiti artist!

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• - What's this?

Well, well. Clear, confident and with backbench support, in her Commons statement Ruth Kelly promised a new law implementing a new vetting system to come to Parliament in February. Talk of the demise of the education secretary was premature.

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• - What's this?

It's a heady brew. Not just the painful and sensitive issue of protecting children from sexual abuse but, and let's be clear about this, the circling of the political pack when they sense a minister is weak and vulnerable. The memories of Soham are too recent and raw, the role of bureaucratic bungling too familiar, the legitimate questions left unanswered for too long, the minister's performance too hesitant, for Ruth Kelly not to be at the centre of a storm.

But it is the fact that Kelly is in charge of Tony Blair's most controversial reforms - the ones whose defeat could spell the beginning of the end of the Blair years, and even the normally loyal - that has got Westminster's pulses racing.

The delay of a ministerial reshuffle - due since David Blunkett resigned and pencilled in diaries for Monday - and the news that government whips were asked whether it would be easier to get school reforms passed if Kelly were moved, have added to the tension. That's why a story that Westminster virtually ignored for three days has turned into a feeding frenzy.

Kelly has ignored the rule-book for dealing with these sorts of crises. Rule One is make an early parliamentary statement revealing all you know and admitting what you don't know but promising to come back with all the facts. Yesterday she made a written statement, was then forced into making a televised one and has now been forced into one before the Commons.

All her statements have so far looked nervy and defensive. Enough to have her sober opponent David Willets ever-so-politely wondering if she can stay in her job and his Lib Dem equivalent Ed Davey calling for her head. Yesterday Downing Street tried to still the frenzy by making an unprecedented statement that Kelly's job was safe whenever the reshuffle came. To lose her now would be a defeat for Number 10.

Remember then when you hear all the noise today at Westminster that all minds are not simply on the undeniably very serious issue of child abuse.

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• - What's this?

Where oh where, asked Tony Blair at today's Prime Minister's Questions, was the third contender for the Lib Dem leadership, after both Ming Campbell and Simon Hughes had made appearances. The answer was that he - Mark Oaten - was sitting next to me on the set of 大象传媒 Two's The Daily Politics, where more voters could see him!

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• - What's this?

If you like a fag with your pint, go and have one quick while you still can. In the first of a series of backdowns to backbench pressure, ministers have given in to demands for a free vote. I am assured that this will be a genuinely free vote so - bizarrely - health ministers will vote for a ban and therefore against government policy!

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• - What's this?

My suggestion that the rush towards the centre ground is leaving us ever-so-slightly short of big ideas seems to have struck a chord. In the 60s they called the consensus Butskell-ism (after Butler & Gaitskell in case you're too young to remember). What now I wonder? Blameron-ism? All suggestions gratefully received.

Now I am contractually required to stay neutral but here on my blog I can confess to veering towards the Lib Dems now that it's clear that they're to pick a baldie as leader - whether it's Ming, Mark or Simon. Even between them they couldn't muster a full head of the stuff.

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• - What's this?

Rarely has politics been more fluid. Rarely though has politics seemed so lacking in big ideas.

Day by day David Cameron is shedding proposals that distinguish his party from Labour 鈥� subsidies for private health insurance one day, opposition to tuition fees and support for more grammar schools the next.

Day by day he adopts postures 鈥� concern about third world poverty, climate change and the ethics of Big Business 鈥� associated with his opponents. Already some in his party are taunting him for being an echo of Tony Blair and Labour-lite.

What about the Lib Dems? Mark Oaten will kick off their leadership race today by promising to water down his party鈥檚 distinctive platform on tax 鈥� he still wants a top rate of tax at 50% but now for even richer people. The favourite, Ming Campbell, is said to have opposed party policy on scrapping tuition fees and the owner of two 4 litre Jags makes a curious icon for the party that鈥檚 always claimed to be green-est.

Ask yourself a few questions and you quickly see how convergent British politics is becoming.

• Who鈥檚 in favour of ending taxpayer funding of the NHS? Bringing back grammar schools? Joining the Euro now? Radical tax cuts? No-one (in the big three parties, of course. There鈥檚 plenty of choice on offer if you include Respect, UKIP, the Nationalists, Scottish Socialists鈥�.etc)
• Who backs patient choice, schools choice, smoking bans, helping people off incapacity benefit but not cutting it? Everyone.

Now this convergence is largely a reaction to success. Labour鈥檚 third election in the case of the Tories, David Cameron鈥檚 in the case of the Lib Dems. All politicians now live according to New Labour鈥檚 bible (pollster Phillip Gould鈥檚 book) which preaches 鈥渃oncede and move on鈥�.

In other words, shed those policies that are losing you votes even if you get taunted for making U-turns and being indistinguishable from your opponents. Something Labour did, of course, when they shed most of the policies they stood for in the early 1980s. This is the period of conceding. Let鈥檚 hope we can move on to some Big Ideas soon.

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• - What's this?

Trawling through my archives I have just unearthed an interview I did five years ago with the former Olympic runner who Jeffrey Archer still calls 鈥渟kipper鈥� and who admits to having 鈥渁 rather nasty competitive streak which I've only now begun to realise鈥�. He says he is not obsessed by politics but 鈥渙bsessed by sport鈥� and attacks 鈥減rofessional politicians鈥� who 鈥渄on't have enough time to go fishing or listen to music or to go travelling鈥�

This is Sir Menzies Campbell 鈥� the acting leader of the Lib Dems and the favourite to take over full time from Charles Kennedy. In this interview, he also explained that he hadn鈥檛 run for the leadership against Mr Kennedy in 1999 because 鈥渋f you can't say of the leadership of a political party 'do you really want to do it?', and give an affirmative answer to that, then you shouldn't do it at all. And to some extent my attitude was perhaps influenced by the fact that I was very close to David Steel. He's a close personal friend and I'm close to Paddy Ashdown 鈥nd I've seen the kind of demands that leadership of the third political party in the United Kingdom makes.鈥�

Remember when you read this that Sir Ming was talking to me in September 2000 on 大象传媒 News 24 (credit please, fellow journalists!)

Ming the Olympic runner

CAMPBELL
In 1948 my mother, who was extremely keen on sport, made me sit down and listen to the radio. I was aged seven at the time. And we were listening to the 1948 Olympic Games and I remember Fanny Blankers-Koen, Bill Mankerville, people like that and it made an enormous impression upon me and I determined in that kind of school boy way that one has, that my ambition was some day to run in the Olympic Games

ROBINSON
And of course you did in Tokyo in '64, how did it feel when you got there?

CAMPBELL
Scared stiff. I was thinking about this, the other day because as you rightly say as the Olympics approach every time, I still get that tingling at the back of neck. And I remember running in the Olympic relay final - thirty two of us - and my overwhelming emotion was on of being absolutely scared out of my wits in case I dropped the baton. Or did something that in some way reflected badly on the team or myself. We didn鈥檛 win a medal, but we established a new United Kingdom record for the four by hundred metres, and I was very satisfied by that.

ROBINSON
Now for a while you ran the British Athletics team I think you [above left] were in charge. Is it true Jeffrey Archer [above right] who was on your team used to call you "skip"?

CAMPBELL
I was captain of the British Athletics team two years, in 1965 and 1966 and Jeffrey Archer was - choosing my words with some care - as ebullient then as he is now. He never called me "skipper" in those days, but he now rather makes a point of calling me "skipper", whenever he sees me in public. It's the kind of deferential insolence of our time I think.

ROBINSON
Do you believe that Ming Campbell when he ran at the Olympics, had the same drive, the same obsessive nature or were you slightly different. Did you see it as just that, games, not a life, not a career?

CAMPBELL
I saw it, for the period in which I was involved as the single most important thing in my life and I devoted all of my energy and all of my commitment to it. I was never very, I was never much of an artist, I was pretty much an artisan. I mean I got where I got by a lot of brute strength and a lot of hard work. And I have this rather touching ability still that the way you get anywhere is by hard work. Perhaps it's the Scottish Protestant work ethic at play, in my personality, but for the period in which I was at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964, thirty six years ago, then I felt wholly committed to that and I don't think it's any different. Where I was different was that when the Games came to an end, and indeed when my athletics career came to an end, I had the great good fortune to have other, two other careers, one in the Law and one in politics. So I was very fortunate in that sense.

ROBINSON
Now you've chosen a whole series of competitive careers, and I assume you like to win in all of them.

CAMPBELL
Yes I hadn't acknowledged that freely until quite recently when I drew to my own attention the fact that you win or lose races, if you are an advocate, a Scottish equivalent of a barrister, you win or lose your case and if you want to be a Member of Parliament you win or lose your seat. And indeed every night you win or lose the vote. So somewhere underneath my personality there's a rather nasty competitive streak which I've only now begun too realise.

Why he didn鈥檛 run for the leadership against Charles Kennedy in 鈥�99

CAMPBELL
I couldn鈥檛 satisfy myself that I was bound to win, but then you can never do that in an Olympic final. You have to make a judgement. I made a judgement as to whether the qualities which I possessed and the way in which I would have wanted to lead the party, had I been the leader, were likely to be acceptable to the membership of the Party at that time, and I formed a judgement after careful consideration that probably the Party, if I can put it this way, wasn't ready for me.

ROBINSON
Was it a point of lifestyle because it's known that you enjoy a life outside of politics. You talk about your life outside politics. You feel that, to use that word obsessive again, that modern politics requires people to be obsessive.

CAMPBELL
People often say to me "are you obsessed by politics?" and I say "no, I'm obsessed by sport". I mean I watch the most ridiculous sport on television at three o'clock in the morning simply because it's sport. I don't do the same for politics. I think we've got to a stage when we've got professional politicians, in the sense that they are wholly committed to the House of Commons and to their constituencies and to their ministries, if they become ministers, and I suspect that as a result they are less good at all, in all three of these roles, because they don't have enough time to go fishing or listen to music or to go travelling or things of that nature. There's a remark I think made by a famous er Jamaican philosopher
who said, "what do they know of cricket that only cricket know?", and I think that you can plagiarise that to some extent and say "what do they know of politics that only politics know?" . If all you know is about politics, then I suspect that your ability to exercise good judgement, to put things in proper perspective is likely to be limited by that.

I asked myself, eventually, the question, do you really want to do this job. And if you can't say of the leadership of a political party "do you really want to do it?", and give an affirmative answer to that, then you shouldn't do it at all. And to some extent my attitude was perhaps influenced by the fact that I was very close to David Steel. He's a close personal friend and I'm close to Paddy Ashdown who became, who has become a close personal friend and I've seen the kind of demands that leadership of the third political party in the United Kingdom makes. And I decided, twelve months ago, that for that and a number of other reasons that seemed important at the time, I wasn't going to put my hat in the ring.

ROBINSON
Regrets?

CAMPBELL
For about ten minutes every day and then common sense kicks in.

On co-operation with Labour - controversial at the time the interview was recorded in 2000 and again now

CAMPBELL
I've got three principles that I put in play every time there's any question of co operation. . First, is it consistent with Liberal Democrat principle. Second, does it help us to achieve Liberal Democrat policies and to influence the Government, and third, is it in the interests of the people of the United Kingdom. So long as a policy proposal satisfies these three criteria, then in my view it's something that Liberal Democrats should be prepared to discuss with the Government. First, is it consistent with Liberal Democrat principle. Second, does it help us to achieve Liberal Democrat policies and to influence the Government, and third, is it in the interests of the people of the United Kingdom.
So long as a policy proposal satisfies these three criteria, then in my view it's something that Liberal Democrats should be prepared to discuss with the Government.

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• - What's this?

It was - people say - Westminster's worst kept secret. I refer, of course, to Charles Kennedy's drinking.

The implication, therefore, is that we political reporters conspired to keep it that way - a secret. Hold on a second. Not so fast. There is a big, big difference between knowing that Charles Kennedy drank a lot and knowing that he had a drink problem and was undergoing treatment.

I knew the first but certainly did not know the second. The same is true of all the political reporters I know and all but Charles Kennedy's closest circle. I knew that Mr Kennedy sometimes drank more than he should. I could see that for myself and I heard it from those who worked closely with him.

I took the view that until and unless he failed to perform his public duties properly, or his own MPs decided his drinking was a reason to rebel, this would remain just Westminster chatter. Plenty of people in politics - and let's face it in the media too - drink more than they should.

More importantly, Mr Kennedy himself and some of his aides - and let's not mince words here - lied when asked about this.

Jeremy Paxman was famously the first to ask - he was met not just with a denial but a furious row about intruding into a politician's private life. When Mr Kennedy missed the budget debate in 2004 and sweated his way anxiously through a party speech, I interviewed him and asked him about his drinking. I was fobbed off.

Last summer something changed. The 大象传媒 received information that Mr Kennedy was undergoing treatment for an alcohol problem. This was put to Mr Kennedy's office who issued a flat denial. With that - and without independent evidence - the 大象传媒 decided it could not run the story.

In November, Charles Kennedy pulled out of a speech in Newcastle. His press secretary rang round to tell me and others that this was because his son was ill, but pleaded that we respected the privacy of the family. It has since emerged that at that time some of Mr Kennedy's colleagues thought he was unfit to appear in public.

It was only yesterday when he was faced both with a parliamentary revolt and a warning that ITN were to run anonymous allegations that he was undergoing treatment that Charles Kennedy confirmed that he did indeed have a problem and was receiving help.

Believe me, until then, that wasn't simply a secret we'd not thought it right to tell you. It was a secret that left me and many in Westminster open-mouthed. If you look at the pictures from last night's news conference you'll see that for yourself.

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One sign of how the fall-out from Charles Kennedy's statement is developing - MP Vincent Cable spoke to me this morning - you can see it here...

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• - What's this?

British politics has never seen a statement quite like this. Not merely a leader confessing to battling a drink problem, not merely admitting therefore to having lied repeatedly about it but also then triggering a leadership contest and insisting he'll stand and wants to win.

Many voters and party members may applaud his candour and sympathise with his personal crisis. They may condemn the media for forcing a private problem into the public gaze. Many of his own MPs, though, are likely to be more brutal, believing that he has repeatedly ignored their personal pleas for him to confront his problems and their invitations for him to stand aside.

He has invited party members to decide his future. It is though still open to his parliamentary colleagues to pre-empt that contest and to pass a motion of no confidence in him. Just under half of his shadow cabinet signed a letter withdrawing their support before today's confession. Now they must decide what to do next.

Here are just a few of the things Mr Kennedy and his office have said about allegations about having a drink problem:

5 January 2005 on Today programme
"[A]s I said in an interview before Christmas - if there's a perception of anxiety on that score there needn't be"

18 December 05 his office issued a statement rebutting Paul Marsden story in Mail on Sunday
"Paul Marsden is claiming that Charles Kennedy had a drink problem, which Charles Kennedy strenuously denies. The Mail on Sunday made clear that we dispute his 'facts' and his allegations."

On Dimbleby, ITV1, 18 December 05
Dimbleby asked: "Has it been a battle to stay off the booze, have you had to have medical support in any way at all?"
"No, no, no, that is not the case, it is a matter on all fronts - if there's something my doctor really wants me to do over this holiday period as a matter of fact, is give up smoking and I think he's right," said Mr Kennedy."

To Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight, July 2002
"How much do you drink?" Mr Paxman asked.
"Moderately, socially, as you well know", was the reply.
"You don't drink privately?"
"What do you mean, privately?"
"By yourself, a bottle of whisky late at night?"
"No, I do not, no."

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• - What's this?

And stories move fast too... now I hear this is a PERSONAL statement to pre-empt allegations of drinking too much soon to be made by my old colleagues at ITV News.

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• - What's this?

News travels fast....I was just about to broadcast the following story when I heard that Charles Kennedy is to make a personal statement at 5.45 pm. Perhaps he knew!

The 大象传媒 has learnt that just under half of Charles Kennedy's Shadow Cabinet have signed a letter informing him that they no longer have confidence in his leadership. The letter has not yet been presented to Mr Kennedy but he is said to be aware of its existence. Eleven out of 23 party spokespeople - ranging from junior to senior figures - signed the letter before Christmas. This did not include the three men most likely to run for party leader if Mr Kennedy stands down or is removed. Had any one of Sir Menzies Campbell, Simon Hughes and Mark Oaten added their names there would have been a majority of Mr Kennedy's top team calling - in effect - for him to resign. Those who signed the letter hoped it would convince Mr Kennedy that he had no choice but to stand aside. Many of the signatories hoped it would stay secret but some - frustrated that their leader continues to resist calls on him to go - have made its existence public.

I forsee two possibilities - either Mr Kennedy does a John Major (1995 for the non political trainspotters among you) and calls for a motion of confidence in his own leadership - or he stands aside.

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Diggin around the Tories' past pronouncements on the NHS - the ones that David Cameron wants to escape from - I came across a clip of Margaret Thatcher you might enjoy. Not the one about the NHS being "safe in our hands", but her justification for why she planned to go private for an operation she needed.

They were words that caused outrage but, amusingly for those watching how the two big parties are converging, now can be seen as a forerunner of this government's pledge to deliver patient choice within the NHS!

Watch the clip here...

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Safe in his hands... that's what David Cameron wants people to think when they ponder whether to put him in charge of the NHS. Ever since Margaret Thatcher first used that phrase the Tories have struggled to fend off Labour accusations that secretly they yearn to break up the health service.

But today's speech marks more than mere political re-positioning. It represents a significant moment in the debate about healthcare in the UK. Many Tories - backed by not a few health experts - believe that taxes alone cannot fund the healthcare we need or indeed want, and they believe the UK will one day have to move to an insurance-based system like much of the rest of the world.

By declaring that will NEVER happen whilst he's leader, David Cameron has ruled out even debating the subject. Is it an embarrassing U-turn? Labour says so but of course that's the charge they also face as they now privatise parts of the NHS with abandon.

Proof that the politicians are learning what the NHS need and the public want? Or as one cynic put it to me - it's a story of the NHS for slow learners.

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So Charles Kennedy promises to be "direct and aggressive" in a political fight he "relishes". The question is whether this is the eloquence and bravery of the condemned man or the words of a man who really has decided to "raise his game". The initiative lies with him.

The call by one of his MPs for an instant leadership contest is unlikely to win much favour since Mr Kennedy's enemies know he'd run in it and probably win. Their hope was that he got the message and walked away.

Some wanted a parliamentary coup like that organised by the Tories to topple IDS and install Michael Howard. In the Lib Dem version Ming Campbell is Howard and new rising star Nick Clegg is being lined up as their David Cameron.

The problem with this plot is that many party activists don't want it. They want Simon Hughes instead and he won't pass up the opportunity to be leader lightly.

And Mark Oaten doesn't want it because it would see his chance of leading disappear. So, until and unless the Lib Dems can unite behind the ABC candidate 鈥� Anyone But Charles 鈥� they are stuck with him.

Unless of course his relish for the fight disappears when there isn't a gun pointed at his head.

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As if wasn't bad enough.

As if being kebabbed by Messrs Merton & Hislop didn't seal it, I have now added exposure as an intellectual fraud to my list of recent achievements as 大象传媒 political editor.

Last night on University Challenge, a News team were beaten - no, overwhelmed - oh all right then, slaughtered by a team of writers.

I'm often asked to list my scariest moments on TV. This was it. Sitting for half an hour under the glare of studio lights knowing that your credibility is being being stripped away layer by layer is, to say the least, alarming. Now I know everyone says this but I did know the answers to some of their questions but in this game you have to be first to get "the starter for ten".

Increasingly desperate I pressed my buzzer and blurted out the wrong answer only to be rewarded by the full-on Paxman sneer. Off air, Jeremy couldn't have been more generous, even agreeing to sign a question card for my son who watches the programme each week after Cubs.

"Bet you know more than your Dad" he wrote. Thanks Jeremy. If you think we were bad, remember that we beat the MPs team to get to the final.

New Year's Resolution 2006 - stick to the day job.

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So that's all right then. A key member of Team Kennedy has rushed to his aid.

The Lib Dem Leader in the Lords declared this morning that he didn't want his party to be plunged into a bitter leadership campaign between now and May. So a planned, calm, leadership campaign after May's local elections is all right then.

Lord McNally has said more explicitly what many of Charles Kennedy's closest colleagues have said so far only in code. Over Christmas, the Grand Old Man of the party, Alan Beith, said that the New Year would provide an opportunity to consider whether Mr Kennedy was up to leading the party to the next general election.

Before the festive period, the party's current deputy leader and heir apparent, Sir Menzies Campbell, had refused to give Kennedy his unequivocal backing.

So too the Lib Dem's education spokesman, work and pensions spokesman and many others. They are doing this in public because they do not believe that their leader has listened to them in private. Charles Kennedy's colleagues say that this deeply private man barely blinks when told to his face that he's not performing, leaving them not just unnerved but uncertain whether he's listened to a word they've said.

The message now is plain for all to see - if you don't get your act together, be in no doubt that the bullet's in the post.

PS Perhaps we should now hear from Paul Holmes MP, the chairman of the parliamentary party, who said that calls for Mr Kennedy to step down were a "made-up story" and insisted he had not been approached by anyone expressing doubts about Mr Kennedy's leadership.

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There'll be hearty laughter in the Barroso household today and a few raised eyebrows in tomorrow's papers after the verdict of Today programme listeners that Jos茅 Manuel Barroso runs Britain.

Lest you forgot or never knew, Senor Barroso is the President of the European Commission. He beat Messrs Blair, Brown, Murdoch and even the boys behind Google to the title.

The electorate is, of course, never wrong. 'Today' listeners may be using this poll to send the message that Europe does more than they would like.

Is that, though, the result of a master plan by the dastardly Senor Barroso? He would point out that given that he does not even get to choose the members of his own Commission - a body smaller than some county councils which can only propose laws and not actually pass them - this is an implausible idea.

So can you dismiss the verdict of Today programme listeners? Not that fast. The problem of Europe is that voters - not just on Today but in electorates across the continent - cannot easily identify a name to blame for political developments they dislike.

Take just one row on the Euro map at the moment. Euro-sceptics are warning that the Commission could soon have criminal powers - powers they believe are a defining characteristic of the government of a nation state and, therefore, should never be given to the EU. This follows a European Court of Justice ruling that "Community legislature may take measures relating to the criminal law of Member States when that is necessary for the achievement of an important Community objective".

The ruling was about EU environmental protection regulations - such as those controlling the cleanliness of beaches. If you're concerned by this, who should you blame? The Court, the Commission, the governments who agreed to the rules of the EU and would have to agree to any extension of EU law? What about Jose Manuel Barroso? Why him? You can't even vote for him - except, that is, in the Today programme poll.

P.S.

Happy New Year, by the way and forgive my long Christmas break. I needed it after a frantic 2005 and to prepare for a 2006 which, if anything, could be even more dramatic.

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