Despite all the rhetoric across the political spectrum about social mobility, increasing access to the professions and opening up parliament, Westminister remains a closed shop to all but the most privileged.  The intricate mysteries of getting a job in an MP’s office are closely guarded for good reason: increasingly it is used as a shortcut to the top of the political]]> Martin Bright Sat, 04 Feb 2012 19:03:46 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7608478/the-brave-men-of-camp-e715.thtml Last year I travelled with the Holocaust Educational Trust to Auschwitz and the experience had a profound effect. I had been warned it would, but having been a voracious reader of Holocaust memoirs and literature, I thought I was prepared for what I would see. Others have written more eloquently on this subject. Mark Ferguson, who was on the same trip as me wrote an excellent piece on Labour List to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. As he says, there is no ‘normal’ way to respond to what you see at Auschwitz.

As we passed the infamous IG Farben chemical works and the site of the British POW camp E715, I was struck by how little we know about this place, even after the success of the bestseller The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, Denis Avey’s memoir of his time in the camp.

More than a thousand British soldiers found themselves at the ‘anus mundi’ and the unwitting witnesses to the Holocaust. Only a tiny handful ever told their story. One of those men, it turns out was Yitzhak Persky, the father of the Israeli president Shimon Peres, who served]]> Martin Bright Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:10:02 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7594063/matthew-norman-david-brenteron-and-the-end-of-the-compassionate-conservative.thtml Until now I haven’t seen Matthew Norman as a radical figure in British journalism. But his column in the Independent this week was a genuine anti-establishment rant in the best tradition. The headline was a corker: ‘Cameron is the David Brent of welfare reform’ – clear, to-the-point and expressive of the fury of the piece to come (he later describes the man he dubs ‘David Brenteron’ as a ‘galaxy-class hypocrite’ for his government’s betrayal of the disabled in its welfare reforms). It is difficult to choose a single passage from the article as every single sentence drips with delicious anger, but the final paragraph is worth reading in full:

‘Whatever damage peers inflict on this snarling Pitbull of a Bill, however many of its teeth they remove, its advancement has taught us something chilling about the Prime Minister. For all his personal experience, expressions of paternal goodwill towards the disabled and fraternal concern for their carers, at the first clanging of the alarm bells his instinct was to scarper, and leave them in the stairwell to burn.’

Patrick O'Flynn of the Express tweeted this week that the Labour Party's irritation at their ideas on executive pay being poached by the government reminded him of how the Lib Dems used to behave. I think he is on to something. It took the Tories a long time to learn how to do opposition after they lost power in 1997. They still felt that power had been somehow stolen from under their noses, despite the obvious message of the Blair landslide. Long years passed and it was only really when David Davis began to take chunks out of Home Office]]> Martin Bright Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:43:38 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7555783/its-not-about-you-ed.thtml One thing you learn in life is that most people have no idea how they are perceived by others. This is particularly true in Britain, where we don’t generally feel it is polite to tell people what we think of them. Politicians and public figures therefore find themselves in the unusual position of having opinions about them shoved right in their faces. Maurice Glasman’s description of Ed Miliband as having ‘no strategy, no narrative and little energy’ must have been deeply hurtful to the man who elevated a previously little-known academic to the House of Lords.

High-profile politicians must cauterise a certain part of their mind (or is it their soul?) in order to cope with the white noise of personal insult they have to endure. Most people would end up a little odd as a result of this process and it is clear that many politicians start off odd from the outset.

Which brings us back to Ed Miliband, a man who has been reminded of his geeky oddness on a minute-by-minute basis since he became Labour leader. The Labour leader’s fightback interview in the]]> Martin Bright Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:23:58 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7480873/nazis-aidan-burley-and-memories-of-the-bad-old-days.thtml News of the antics of Aiden Burley and his friends at a Nazi-themed stag party in France made me think about the strange ways some Tories like to have fun.

When I was at university in the mid-1980s the Tories were in their pomp. My time at Cambridge was sandwiched between the two Thatcher-era landslides of 1983 and 1987 and those of us on the left felt pretty embattled. Through a mixture of ignorance and accident I ended up at a particularly ‘traditional’ college, Magdalene, which was then all-male and proud of its public school rugger-and-rowing reputation. I was seen as something of a pinko because I went on few marches against grant cuts, dyed my hair, wore an earring and didn’t eat meat. The college culture revolved around the bar and the chaps were very proud of a competition they devised to see how many ten pence pieces they could fit under their foreskins. One charmer once threatened to break my legs when I suggested giving some money from the vast funds the boat club received to set up a poetry magazine. It was that kind of place.

But does this really matter? The opinion polls suggest a substantial section of the British public backs Cameron's stance (although many do not) and this will help him gird his loins for further isolation in a Europe that few in this country feel passionately about. I would suggest he and his ever-triangulating circle are already thinking of the best way to slap the eurosceptic right in the face. And if]]> Martin Bright Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:47:33 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7454318/jewish-divided-loyalty-the-old-lie.thtml In all the furore over Jeremy Clarkson's 'joke' about shooting strikers, people can be forgiven for missing a second row over outrageous remarks made by a public figure.

Paul Flynn is Labour MP for Newport West and known as a reasonable man of the left. Flynn is a campaigning MP who has asked some difficult questions about the Werritty-Fox affair. He speaks passionately about the Iraq War and UK intervention in Afghanistan, which he feels were terrible errors. Having read reports that Werritty and Fox met in Israel with Mossad in the presence of the UK ambassador to discuss a military strike on Iran, Flynn became worried about a neo-con plot. What's more, the ambassador, Matthew Gould, happens to be Jewish.

As a member of the Public Administration Select Committee, Flynn raised his concerns during the questioning of Sir Gus O'Donnell, head of the civil service, who conducted an inquiry into the Werritty affair.

His remarks can be seen in the minutes of the hearing on Wednesday 23 November. The Welsh MP, who proclaims himself a friend of Israel said:

'I do not normally fall

This is, of course, another U-turn. As Chris Bryant tweeted rather brutally after Clegg’s announcement, if the government wanted to save young people from the scrapheap, why did it put them there in the first place. It never made sense to abolish the Future Jobs Fund without putting anything in its place and ministers never sounded convinced when they said the Work Programme would deliver for young people.

It is to the eternal credit of Clegg and those around him that they realised a job subsidy was an essential intervention in a stagnant jobs market. This is not easy to stomach for those who believed the market would eventually provide the solutions — not least Iain Duncan Smith and Chris Grayling who until now have stubbornly stuck to the line that the Work Programme would deliver for young people.

Why and how did Clegg see the light? Part of it was political: a recognition]]> Martin Bright Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:33:44 +0000 http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/7403658/wise-up-mr-grayling-youth-unemployment-is-no-mere-distraction.thtml Could it be that Matthew Taylor, the RSA's chief executive, is even more influential in Downing Street today than he was when he was head of policy under Tony Blair? His latest blog post is certainly causing a huge stir. David Aaronovitch picked it up in yesterday's Times and put a rocket under it.

Matthew suggests a 'bond for hope' to fund a programme to tackle youth unemployment and I hear this has already caused a massive flurry of excitement inside Number 10. Here is the bones of the suggestion in his own words:

'The Government should create a "bond for hope". This would be a five year bond earning say 1% tax free interest (so, below inflation but above what banks are offering). To reduce the worry that this is more Government debt liability, investors would have to carry the risk of Government taking up an option to roll the bond redemption date on by a further five years.

The bond would aim to make £2 billion pounds available immediately to fund roughly a quarter of a million one year jobs for young people costing £150