Industry | 2010.01.11
Hugh Muir's diary
The race is on for No 10. Will there be enough time to seal the deal?
• Tough talk on health yesterday, but as he sets off on what could be the road to Downing Street, David Cameron will know there is no more important issue than the impact on the planet of climate change. What would he do if the Tories won power? Here is one area in which he desperately needs to "seal the deal". And he might ask how that will be helped by events surrounding Nirj Deva, his party\'s development spokesman in the European parliament. On one hand, Deva led a delegation to Bangladesh last November which praised the prime minister there for her role in tackling the challenges of climate change. Just before Christmas, as the Copenhagen summit was reaching its denouement, members of the European parliament were surprised to receive an email from Deva\'s chief of staff flagging up a nine-minute video made by an American meteorologist suggesting that manmade global warming doesn\'t actually exist. Dave, as we know, says global warming does exist, and accepts that we must act to curb it. But still he is some way from convincing a great many of the unconvinced in his own party, be they sceptics like Roger Helmer or chiefs of staff in Brussels. So many deals to seal between now and polling day.
• Yes, it\'s the year of change, say the Tory ads; and this may indeed be so but beware, for some change is illusory. Mary Ann Sieghart, reporting for The World This Weekend on Radio 4, described Harriet Harman as the deputy prime minister. Sometimes change is scary.
•But this will be of little consequence to her set against events in the Leyton and Wanstead constituency, the berth soon to be vacated by the expenses-shamed MP Harry Cohen. Here we are, with the election under way in all but name, and Leyton and Wanstead remains the only London constituency without a candidate. Many claim national officials have been dragging out the process so they can parachute Harriet\'s other half, Jack Dromey, into the position. But if so they should have a care, because it seems that locals have a wheeze that would see Cohen resign immediately, thereby forcing an inconveniently speedy byelection and scuppering the carefully calibrated campaign to foist Dromey on them. Harry hasn\'t yet joined the plot. But what did the national party do for him during the dark days of trouser-gate last summer? Why shouldn\'t he?
•Some say Harriet, as deputy party leader, if not quite deputy prime minister, has ample opportunity to make the case for Jack – and, naff though it would be, there is a precedent. Dromey was shortlisted in Pontefract and Castleford before the 1997 election but the faithful preferred Yvette Cooper, then a policy adviser to the Treasury team. Harriet took it badly, and let Tony Blair know it. "He wasted God knows how long listening to Harriet complaining about Jack Dromey not being selected," records an incredulous Alastair Campbell in The Blair Years. But lightning won\'t strike twice. Harriet won\'t let it.
•One thinks of Alastair on reading the latest FourFourTwo magazine which has a fascinating interview with Chelsea\'s Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti (pictured). The football legend is everything the club could want. Results so far seem to bear that out. But his English is not yet very good and thus, it would appear that when the team requires what the specialists term a "bollocking" he enlists an assistant to help him with the swearing. "I wasn\'t able to speak angrily to the players in English. I just couldn\'t express it to the players. Still, Ray Wilkins helps me with this," Ancelotti tells the magazine. And this does seem to replicate the relationship Alastair had with Tony Blair, on whose behalf he would sometimes speak to underperforming ministers. Sometimes industrial is the only language these people understand.
•But for the most part, MPs understand fear, and so one wonders how many takers there will be for the trip to Brazil later this month being organised by the British group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (enrolment closing date tomorrow). On one hand, there is Brazil, always fascinating. On the other, there is the Mail on Sunday. Still, life\'s a risk.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/[...]gh-muirs-diary-carlo-ancelotti
